Thursday 26 November: The confusing consequences of the PM’s mission to save Christmas

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/2020/11/26/lettersthe-confusing-consequences-pms-mission-save-christmas/

920 thoughts on “Thursday 26 November: The confusing consequences of the PM’s mission to save Christmas

  1. Morning, all Y’all – at least, I think it is, but it’s really too dark to tell.
    Hope Y’all have a better day today than it was yesterday!

  2. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    At the risk of appearing Scrooge-like, I’m with these three letter-writers. It is, after all, only a temporary problem. Our family is now planning a Christmas Day in mid-summer:

    SIR – Every year there are many families around Britain who are separated at Christmas from relatives across the globe.

    They manage – why can’t the rest of us? Now that we have come this far, why spoil it all for the sake of a Christmas get-together?

    Jill Creak
    Beckenham, Kent

    SIR – The best Christmas present you can give to your family is to stay away from them.

    You could be giving them the gift of life, which costs nothing and doesn’t even need to be wrapped up.

    Janie Binns
    Stockport, Cheshire

    SIR – The Government appears to accept extra deaths as a price worth paying in order to save Christmas.

    Why, then, is it not prepared to do this for the long-term security of the economy and the sanity of those it governs? Surely these are infinitely more important to our national wellbeing than five days of feasting with our families, however much we may look forward to them.

    Richard Longfield
    Weston Patrick, Hampshire

      1. ‘Morning, JN. You should address this to the numpties in government, in view of their econony-wrecking decisions.

      2. ….. and less fatalities than Hong Kong ‘flu in the late sixties, and then the Government didn’t collapse in a whimpering heap in the corner.

    1. Trouble is, it’s ‘jam tomorrow’. Come Spring or Summer, the message would be – “Don’t celebrate Easter with your families – we’ve come this far – why spoil it for the sake of an Easter get-together?” Rinse and repeat.

    2. Good morning Hugh and everyone.

      “It is after all only a temporary problem” you say. But what about the solution?

    3. I live alone, stuck in my dead mother’s house, in a place not of my choosing. My entire world of work has disappeared and I am cut off from humanity. What feels easily done to some may not apply across the board.

      1. I sympathise (not that I can do anything to help). It is no coincidence that suicides have increased since lockdown. They may have “saved” us from dying of Covid (if, indeed, they have), but they most certainly have not conquered death. Non-Covid deaths are significantly higher. The “cure” is worse than the disease!

        1. Thank you. I don’t normally whinge – caught at the wrong angle – but the downplaying of any ill effects that may accrue to those of us without a fortunate home life (I understand yours is also not ideal) occasionally gets my goat.

          1. I agree and it’s good to let off steam occasionally. You are right; my home life isn’t all honey and roses, but I have to deal with the hand I’ve been dealt. I wouldn’t have chosen it, but I have to make the best of it. Alcohol helps, of course, as does Nottl 🙂

  3. Britain is facing ruin, but deluded Tories are still refusing to accept it. 26 November 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/40cec19d99a769e5f75d5e79d197ec693ec94bafca13ca21d59bdccfb0210c0c.jpg

    In fact, the scale of the catastrophe is even worse than the official forecasters admit. Nobody knows what the impact of extreme QE will be on the structures of the financial system. The cultural damage is unquantifiable, with a return to welfarism, statism, an exodus of foreign workers and a growing sense that money is free, that government doesn’t really suffer from a budget constraint. The OBR is optimistic in other areas: it thinks the economy will only be 3 per cent smaller permanently than it would otherwise be, which as Pantheon Macroeconomics says, implies that “scarring” will be less than half the scale seen after the previous three recessions.

    “It is the end my friends.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/25/britain-facing-ruin-deludedtories-still-refusing-accept/

    1. A clever cartoon from Bob if one looks at it as a disaster of government policy in the face of CV-19. However, isn’t the end game of the CV-19 scam to push the civilised world into mass debt and therefore ripe for takeover by the elite psychopaths? I thought that their video telling the people that you will own nothing but be happy was indicative of that. The lack of government help for millions of self-employed and the clear attack on the hospitality sector to push these people into penury only makes sense in the light of the overall scam.

  4. Surprising how so many people of the Left didn’t realise the depth of economic damage the lockdowns have caused.
    I wonder what they thought would happen.

  5. When it comes to anti-vaxxers, mockery is a big mistake. 26 November 2020.

    When it comes to anti-vaxxers, though, mockery is a mistake – and a mistake we could all come to regret. For the sake of their lives and ours, we need them to change their minds. And calling people idiots is a less than infallible means of winning them round to your point of view. Just ask anyone who campaigned for a second EU referendum.

    Obviously I’m not likening Leavers to anti-vaxxers. But if anything is to be learnt from the past five years of British politics, it should be about the drawbacks of mockery as a campaigning tool. Because not only will mockery fail to win anti-vaxxers round, it will almost certainly push them further in the opposite direction. When mocked for their views, people naturally tend to feel hurt and alienated. They don’t say, “Sorry, yes, you’re right – I am a honking great moron. Thank you so much for pointing it out. I simply couldn’t see it before. Probably because I’m a honking great moron.” Instead, they dig their heels in – and commit even more passionately to the views you’ve derided.

    The labelling in this article of all those opposed to this vaccine as anti-vaxxers is the guide to its nature. Propaganda doesn’t do argument or subtlety. The pages of this blog are filled with people who are not going to take any of these vaccines and none of them that I have been able to discern, have anything in principle against the process itself. So it is elsewhere. How can a microscopic world view have suddenly become a major movement? The answer is that it hasn’t. People’s suspicions of this particular process are well founded and scepticism understandable.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/comes-toanti-vaxxersmockery-bigmistake/

    1. 326802+ up ticks,
      AS,
      According to much of the rhetoric that was out there and being a long term real UKIP party member I must then apologise for being a double type moron, I see.

      My, as I see it now, mistake was I could never condone treachery in a kiss X and forget manner within the polling booth and follow the currant form.

      PS, I’m glad to say.

    2. “Sorry, yes, you’re right – I am a honking great moron. Thank you so much for pointing it out. I simply couldn’t see it before. Probably because I’m a honking great moron.” – yup, that works well, so it does.

  6. When it comes to anti-vaxxers, mockery is a big mistake. 26 November 2020.

    When it comes to anti-vaxxers, though, mockery is a mistake – and a mistake we could all come to regret. For the sake of their lives and ours, we need them to change their minds. And calling people idiots is a less than infallible means of winning them round to your point of view. Just ask anyone who campaigned for a second EU referendum.

    Obviously I’m not likening Leavers to anti-vaxxers. But if anything is to be learnt from the past five years of British politics, it should be about the drawbacks of mockery as a campaigning tool. Because not only will mockery fail to win anti-vaxxers round, it will almost certainly push them further in the opposite direction. When mocked for their views, people naturally tend to feel hurt and alienated. They don’t say, “Sorry, yes, you’re right – I am a honking great moron. Thank you so much for pointing it out. I simply couldn’t see it before. Probably because I’m a honking great moron.” Instead, they dig their heels in – and commit even more passionately to the views you’ve derided.

    The labelling in this article of all those opposed to this vaccine as anti-vaxxers is the guide to its nature. Propaganda doesn’t do argument or subtlety. The pages of this blog are filled with people who are not going to take any of these vaccines and none of them that I have been able to discern, have anything in principle against the process itself. So it is elsewhere. How can a microscopic world view have suddenly become a major movement? The answer is that it hasn’t. People’s suspicions of this particular process are well founded and scepticism understandable.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/comes-toanti-vaxxersmockery-bigmistake/

  7. The EV and EV batteries debate continues:

    SIR – Jane Sullivan (Letters, November 24) is right to be concerned about the environmental impact of electric car batteries.

    However, with three or four gigafactories being built in Germany, two Tesla factories in America plus more on the way, and more than 100 large-scale battery factories in China, the question is not whether our Government should think about the environmental impact. It is already too late. The question is: should we import all our electric vehicle batteries or build factories to supply them domestically?

    Patrick Fossett
    Cobham, Surrey

  8. Today’s DT Leader:

    Rishi Sunak had braced his Cabinet colleagues for some sobering news in his spending statement yesterday and his warnings were more than realised. While grim fiscal and economic projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility had been long anticipated, to hear them spelled out in detail was startling. The biggest fall in growth since the Great Frost of 1709; borrowing at levels not seen since the Second World War; debt higher than the country’s annual output; and the economy still 3 per cent smaller by 2025 than predicted in his March Budget.

    Yet this gloomy set of forecasts was not matched by the retrenchment that might once have been expected in the form of spending cuts or tax rises. The latter may yet come in next year’s Budget; but far from trimming the nation’s cloth, the Chancellor rattled off a succession of substantial spending commitments that belied the Government’s parlous financial circumstances.

    Apart from foreign aid and a freeze on pay for senior government workers outside the NHS, the public sector emerged almost unscathed. This was the contradiction at the heart of Mr Sunak’s statement. The fiscal position is unsustainable, as the Chancellor acknowledged, and yet the opportunity offered by the pandemic crisis to rethink how the state functions has been ducked.

    Once again, the private sector is expected to shoulder the burden.

    Hundreds of thousands of perfectly viable businesses have been wrecked by the response to the virus, yet they will have to pay the increase in the minimum wage announced by the Chancellor and help fund the generous public sector pensions that remain untouched while their own are hit.

    Mr Sunak is a free marketeer and his own frustration could be sensed if not articulated. The rhetoric did not quite match the reality. In the two areas where he had made cuts in the teeth of objections, including from Tory MPs, he made the perfectly valid point that circumstances justified the decisions.

    Given the fact that jobs in the public sector have been protected, the freeze on pay only for the better-rewarded was generous. It means a lower-paid public servant keeps his or her job and gets a pay rise while someone in the private sector on the same income is left facing unemployment or a pay cut.

    The reduction in the foreign aid budget was also justified and the argument that this will somehow “damage the UK’s place in the world” is disingenuous. As the Chancellor pointed out, the UK will still be the second largest aid donor in the world and, in any case, contributes yet more through the global projection of military help, shared R&D and generous private humanitarian largesse. The country will simply not understand those MPs who cannot see this is necessary in the circumstances.

    The money saved will help support retraining and apprenticeship initiatives that will be needed as unemployment rises to levels not seen for 20 years. The Chancellor’s spending statement foreshadowed significant increases in infrastructure investment in the years to come, with the publication of a new strategy and the creation of a Northern-based bank to raise the funds. New roads, railways, hospitals, and schools are all promised, with the emphasis on helping areas that have hitherto lost out as part of the so-called “levelling up agenda”. A £4 billion pot of cash to fund purely local projects is specifically designed to help in this endeavour.

    Investment in full fibre broadband and scientific research is welcome, as is the emphasis on the UK as a whole in an effort to confound the separatists who would dismantle the world’s most successful union.

    The background to this statement could hardly be forgotten, however. As the Chancellor said, the health emergency is not yet over but the economic emergency has hardly begun. Nor was there a mention of the other elephant in the room, Brexit. Without a trade deal, a short-term economic hit is inevitable. Indeed, most of Mr Sunak’s departmental settlements apart from Defence were for the next year only while stock is taken of the impact of the pandemic and Brexit.

    The new Covid restrictions to be imposed today on the English regions will arguably have a far greater impact on the economy than anything outlined yesterday. If London is placed in Tier Two or even Tier Three, further damaging the nation’s premier economic powerhouse, even the most pessimistic calculations of the Chancellor and the Office for Budget Responsibility may look positively rosy by next Easter.

    In just 10 months, Mr Sunak has emerged from relative obscurity to become an effective and persuasive occupant of the Treasury. He eschews the nit-picking micromanagement beloved of predecessors like Gordon Brown and his instinctive liberalism occasionally shines through the quasi-socialist, big state strategy that he is obliged to follow at the moment. But once a vaccine has made normal life possible once again, he and Mr Johnson need to plot a way out of this political and economic cul-de-sac.

    The leading BTL comments:

    D Walker
    25 Nov 2020 10:06PM
    The two sectors worst affected by the Government’s lunatic response to a Low Consequence Infectious Disease are Hospitality and Retail. Both have been systematically and very unfairly punished for daring to offer service to the public; both have have large numbers of staff, often part-time, on minimum wage.

    The retail sector, in particular, was already struggling because of greedy landlords; greedy councils-car park charges and the internet. We’ve already lost several well known brands this year with many more teetering on the edge.

    A rise in the minimum wage will destroy tens of thousands more jobs. Their staff – often women fitting their job around their domestic responsibilities – will find it almost impossible to find alternative employment.

    They are being thrown on the scrap heap by this appalling Government.

    Boris will be remembered as the Prime Minister who deliberately destroyed the High Street and the British pub.

    Patrick Taylor
    26 Nov 2020 12:00AM
    All aspects of the state machinery have failed in this crisis except the military. From health/PHE to education to home office – all have been shown to be useless, disjointed and ineffective. There is no accountability. Look at the civil service and how work shy they are. It’s bloated and and sluggish. The government should be simplifying the management structures through all organisations. We need doers (frontline) not quangophiles and revolving door ‘execs’.

    Foreign aid – 0.7 to 0.5 – should be at least double. That 5 or 10 billion could solve a lot – pay freeze no pay freeze etc. We are in a hole and doesn’t quite make sense, right now, to be giving away money we don’t have.

    Kevin Bell
    26 Nov 2020 12:44AM
    An effective and persuasive occupant of the Treasury? You are kidding aren’t you? The belief that government spending on useless green projects and pork barrel infrastructure vanity projects will lead us out of this mess, wholly of the government’s making given the billions of money wasted on furlough fraud and testing, is just ludicrous. Where was the encouragement of innovation, entrepreneurship, deregulation and productivity?

    David Lyme
    26 Nov 2020 6:19AM
    The over riding impression from yesterday was that our responses to this coronavirus variant will go down in history as the greatest act of self harm ever committed by a nation.

    1. “Mr Sunak is a free marketeer and his own frustration could be sensed if not articulated.” – so, what did he do about it? Absolutely eff-all, in fact, he bowed down to the statists and kissed their a**e. Another all hat & no cattle Tory, at least as good, if not better, as his excellent colleague Patel.
      Christ on a crutch! When will the UK actually do something useful?

    2. 326802+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      It does come across as the politico’s tire of the train set and are now finding, as with
      “losing crib” that “losing monopoly” is a fascinating game.

    3. ….. “he and Mr Johnson need to plot a way out of this political and economic cul-de-sac.”
      The only plotting Sunak needs to do is chuck Johnson overboard. For a bigger splash, add Halfcock as well.

  9. ‘Release the Kraken’. Anti-Trump trolling at its finest. Think about it, the use of the name of a mythical sea creature for a campaign of mythical allegations! Wonderful. Better send out for more popcorn!

      1. Morning Bob, you’re clearly convinced Trump won, so why don’t you accept my challenge of a £50 bet (proceeds to charity) on the outcome?

        1. First I’ve heard of your challenge, how do we prove who really won? If Biden is inaugurated that doesn’t man he won in reality only in the world of Hunger Games mainstream media.
          Was Maradona’s goal using his hand really a goal, was their world cup victory really a victory or just a sham?

          1. I’m just getting the criteria in place, are we betting on Biden getting inaugurated or are we betting on the fact that he won a fair and free election with no cheating.

          2. But who will judge the judges?

            A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

            [Paul Simon The Boxer]

          3. What, like Brexit, you mean, where we voted by over a million majority to leave and still haven’t left?

          4. I’m afraid we didn’t. We are still in “transition” until 31st December 2020, which means we are still paying, still subject to the ECJ and still liable to all their diktats. If we do actually leave (preferably with no deal rather than the Withdrawal Agreement which doesn’t actually make us free and let us take back control) then we will have left. At the moment, we have “left” in name only as we are not yet free and independent.

          5. Well ok, I understand the point and agree we’re in transition. However, I disagree that No Deal is the preference because I believe we should be aiming for a Canada type deal.

          6. Any “deal” that the EU will agree to will be in their favour and won’t be a good deal for us. I should have thought their attitude and dealings over the last four and a half years would have convinced anybody of that. That’s why I prefer a “no deal” (ie WTO trade rules) to any stitch up concocted by the EU. Once we are out and free, they will realise that coming to terms that are not punitive to us is their best option. At the moment, they are convinced they can “punish” us for the effrontery of voting to leave their “paradise” – and believe me, they will if they get the opportunity.

        2. Good morning Cochrane

          Neither you nor I know what the truth actually is.

          Your wager suggests that the outcome will be determined by things and people which are fair, disinterested and honest. But if this is not true the outcome will not be true either.

          My view is that Biden will probably win but somewhere down the line – perhaps in ten years time – the full truth (whatever that may be) will emerge.

  10. The BBC’s former popularity continues to evaporate. They are alienating the older listener and viewer, and are failing to attract the youngsters. Their arrogance and their bias is so ingrained it would seem to be beyond salvation. This can only end in one way:

    Older viewers’ loyalty to BBC is on the wane, says Ofcom
    Satisfaction levels among middle-aged, middle class audiences have fallen for the first time

    By
    Anita Singh,
    ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
    25 November 2020 • 6:30pm
    Tim Davie

    The BBC is losing the loyalty of its older, upmarket audience, a report has found, after a year in which the corporation concentrated its energies on wooing the young.

    Satisfaction levels among viewers and listeners aged 55 and above from middle class backgrounds are waning, according to statistics from Ofcom.

    At the same time, despite its efforts to appeal to teens and 20-somethings, the proportion of young people using the BBC each week fell from 86 per cent in 2017 to 79 per cent in the past year, while working class audiences also said they did not feel represented by the national broadcaster.

    In its annual report on the BBC, Ofcom said: “For the first time, satisfaction levels among audiences who typically use the BBC the most, and have been most satisfied with it, are beginning to show signs of waning.

    “Older people and those in high socio-economic groups have traditionally consumed more BBC content and been more satisfied than the UK average.” However, the amount of time this demographic spends with the BBC is falling “and older audiences in particular are starting to show signs of decreasing satisfaction,” the report said.

    The proportion of over-55s with a “positive impression” of the BBC fell from 64 per cent in 2018 to 62 per cent.

    Programmes that appeal to older, more upmarket audiences have dropped down the BBC’s list of priorities, the report showed.

    Hours of original programming devoted to arts and classical music have fallen by 21 per cent in the past two years and by 44 per cent in the past decade. History programming was down 25 per cent since 2018 and 45 per cent since 2010.

    The survey also showed dissatisfaction with Radio 2, a station with an average listener age of 52 and which has been accused of moving closer to commercial stations with its mix of pop and celebrity. Only 69 per cent of listeners now believe it “offers something that other radio stations do not”, down from 75 per cent when the question was posed a year ago.

    Overall, 87 per cent of the population now use BBC services (television, radio or online), down from 92 per cent three years ago.

    Working class audiences also complained in the survey of feeling unrepresented in BBC output, along with people with disabilities and those living outside London and the South East. Residents of Scotland, the West Midlands, the West of England had the worst perception of how their communities were represented.

    Ofcom warned: “If audiences do not consider the BBC a core part of their viewing, they may not see value in the licence fee, which in turn risks the BBC’s ability to deliver its mission and public purposes in future.”

    The regulator said that the BBC was taking positive steps to engage young people. But television viewing has fallen faster among 16-19-year-olds than any other age group, and Netflix remains their “go-to” service.

    Under its former director of radio and education, James Purnell, the corporation ploughed millions into BBC Sounds, believing its podcasts and playlists would be a hit with the young.

    However, Ofcom raised doubts and said BBC Sounds “has yet to demonstrate its impact on listening among young people”.

    Vikki Cook, Ofcom’s director of broadcasting policy, said: “The BBC faces the challenge of serving all its audiences, whatever their age, background, location.

    “Tim Davie [the director-general] has been pretty clear since he took over that the BBC doesn’t deliver to all audiences equally, and our research has corroborated that.”

    Trust in the impartiality and accuracy of BBC News has fallen, among women and the working class in particular.

    Only 54 per cent of adults consider the corporation’s news output to be impartial, and Ofcom said: “There is a risk that future relationships with audiences could be jeopardised if audience concerns around impartiality continue to grow.”

    Women are less likely to rate BBC television news as accurate, trustworthy or impartial compared to the same period two years ago. Ofcom said: “We cannot be certain of the causes of this decline, but perceptions of the BBC’s election coverage may have been a contributing factor.”

    Consumption of BBC news among working class audiences has fallen from 71 per cent two years ago to 63 per cent.

    The audience for BBC One news bulletins has fallen from 65 per cent of the viewing public in 2010 to 53 per cent in 2019/20, although figures have risen during the pandemic.

    1. Much of the Black orientated propaganda on recently has me hitting the off switch. But R4 is not exactly going to have the dope smokers clustering around their trannies shouting for more either. Maybe a bit more drill rap required.

      1. I am convinced that the pushing of diverse ethnicity down our throats is making us far more racist than we were. We used to judge people by things other than their race – now we are encouraged to concentrate on their race. There is undoubtedly a sinister ulterior motive in this policy.

    2. ….and from Twitter-

      ob_Kimbell

      BBC Question Time audience figures
      8.3 million on 22 Oct 2009

      0.7 million on 19 Nov 2020

      6:34 AM · Nov 25, 2020

    1. Absolutely, ‘two stops from Dagenham’. I guess he’s given up being a serious commentator.

    1. Don’t worry. With John Kerry leading the US green charge, things will only get worse.

      We can only hope that the tree huggers are right because if shutting down our industrialised world is not going to reverse climate change, we are going to be fighting extreme weather with our bare hands.

    1. The Left never, ever change.

      If Penguin only published books that they approved of, they would go out of business. As it is, the whole sodding point of reading is to educate yourself. I’ve read Mein Kampf and books on Stalin, communism and practically every other ism.

      With modern Lefties wailing about printing the work of someone they hate they are no better than the book burning Nazi’s. Hell, they destroyed the work of dissenting academics as well – do they not see the irony? Do they not understand that the modern authoritarian Left are just the same as the old authoritarian Left? The same ideas, the same conceits, the same arrogance, the same bitter, spiteful petty hatreds? The same desperation to label 2 legs good, four legs bad, paint a yellow star on his door, he doesn’t agree with our ideology!

      You there! The one demanding blacks don’t get stopped and searched! An arm band for you!

      Gah, I hate them because they are too damned blind to see just how thoroughly, completely, utterly seethingly evil they are.

  11. Biden and the return of the war hawks. Spiked 26 November 2020.

    Yet, with the decidedly hawkish Blinken, Sullivan, Haines and potentially Flournoy all occupying key national-security positions, and Biden himself seemingly keen on re-animating some nebulous notion of global leadership, one can certainly expect a more assertive and potentially destructive America from now on. Indeed, Biden, with Blinken whispering in his ear, has repeatedly talked of taking on Russia, calling it an ‘opponent’ of the US on the campaign trail, and later stating, in a barely veiled allusion to Putin, that he was going to ‘make it clear to our adversaries the days of cosying up to dictators are over’.

    This partially explains Vlad’s reluctance to recognise Biden as the President Elect. He knows what’s coming and sees no need to placate the incoming government. If we bear in mind the policies of previous Democratic administrations a direct clash is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/11/25/biden-and-the-return-of-the-war-hawks/

  12. Ahahahaha,that bastion of leftard virtue,winner of the Orwell prize for Journalism Carol Catlady……………….

    “Late last night with the Banks v Cadwalladr hearing scheduled for

    10:30 this morning, Carole Cadwalladr finally admitted what we all knew,

    there was no evidence to back up her claims that the Russians financed

    the Brexit campaign or that Arron Banks was involved in shady deals with

    the Russians. Why she left it to the eve of the hearing to admit it was

    all bollocks defies belief, cynics might note she still has two

    crowdfunders running. One to fund this hopeless case and another to fund

    her “investigative journalism” – which produced this bollocks.

    She now has to pay £62,000 of costs on account this morning as a down

    payment, expect that figure to go higher. She has avoided the

    humiliation of appearing in court this morning by submitting in writing

    an amended defence which

    “… removes the Truth Defence and the Limitation Defence”

    Which is legalese for “it was all complete cock ‘n bull”.

    https://twitter.com/socialm85897394/status/1331884937537056768?s=21

      1. “Today Carol Cadwalladr was ordereed to pay Aaron banks £62,000 for his part in Brexit vote rigging.’

        Enough to imply he did rig the vote on a first read but utterly deniable. Also ends with the BBC line insistence that Brexit was rigged and relates to Aaron Banks, while Cadwahstasname is made out to be the victim with ‘ordered’.

    1. Th Guardian ought to use this in their publicity:

      You couldn’t make it up – but our journalists can.

  13. 326802+ up ticks,
    Lets not be to hasty lads, we don’t want to jeopardise the
    bojo semi re-entry plan do we,

    breitbart,
    EU Threatens to Walk Out of Brexit Talks Unless Britain Accepts Brussels’ Demands

    1. If Boris gives in to the EU the Conservative Party will not only be wiped out for the next election it will be wiped out for ever.

      The trouble is that Boris Johnson probably does not give a toss for his country or his party so he feels he hasn’t much to lose as he has nothing any more other than a harridan mistress.

      1. 326802+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        In my book I believe as with many of them they have much to gain via the semi eu re-entry &
        the re-set.
        The 4.5 delay IMO shows quite clearly their true intentions regarding brexitexit.
        Next GE, no politico’s that were in the lab/lib/con coalition party
        last GE should be entertained.
        Reclaim party names from pretenders must surely be the order of the polling day.

      2. If he feels he has nothing to lose then why not just tell the EU to, excuse me, FOAD. At a stroke he would have the country behind him. Or at least the 52% who voted to leave.
        Edit; “he has nothing to lose”.

        1. If you use Google, it will bring up plenty of cases where warnings were made either explicitly or by implication. Hmmm “good”? Given that the warnings do not seem to have been heeded, it depends on whether or not you support or oppose unrestricted immigration.

          1. 326802+ up ticks,
            EdA,
            I personally believe what has been revealed especially these last few years that the welfare of children,keeping one head,having ones rear exit firmly attached to ones torso, answers the immigration question.
            Ps
            Batten warned rhetorically & in book form, I can think of no other politico party leaders doing the same but for one ,
            R S Churchill.

  14. Bluss it was cold at the market at 9 am. Half the stalls not there. Freezing. Foggy. Better now – sunny – but temp not much above 3ºC

    One of the (many) things that pisses me off about the Fishy Hindoo Chancer (sic) is the implication in a lot of his bollocks that the present disastrous condition of what we used to call the economy is somehow all down to us fecklessly catching the Plague – and spreading it about.

    1. Only the regular greengrocer & bakers stalls & fish van in Matlock yesterday with one other van that I didn’t take a lot of notice of.

  15. The discovery that Matt Hancock is close friends with Davos chair Klaus Schwarb and has been planning the UK’s entry into the ”Great Reset” is proof that Boris Johnson’s administration are just bag carriers for the global government billionaires.

    Brexit is therefore rendered almost irrelevant. Thanks to Hancock, May and Johnson, the billionaires will still control Britain, and even more than before.

    In fact, if you look at the picture below, Schwab and Hancock literally hold your future in their hands…. and they’re going to take your car away too !

    https://twitter.com/DarrenPlymouth/status/1328422535680192512

    1. Yes, Polly, I have been thinking this for some time; Brexit is almost irrelevant, although not quite. We will be out of the frying pan but immediately we will have the flames of global fire to deal with.

  16. Crisp muncher, Gary Winston Lineker, was invited to comment on the passing of a grossly obese, cheating, drug addicted wendyballer on Radio 4 this morning. I wonder how much licence/taxpayer’s hard earned money went into the moron’s overstuffed bank account for two minutes of obsequious verbal diarrhoea. Several thousands, I shouldn’t wonder.

  17. Just glancing at the BTL comments in The Grimes about the cheating Argentinian foopballer (sic) – they are almost all drooling with how wonderful he was and how the World will never be the same. Anyone would think that Christ had descended from the Cross and scored a winner.

    1. Frog tele is doing the same. All news channels infested with fawning resumés of his wendiyballing career. and the ‘Hand of God’ incident. Couldn’t be anything to do with him being Argumentinian and getting one over the evil ‘Roast Beef’, could it?

  18. Manufacturing error clouds Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine study results. 26 November 2020.

    In a statement on Wednesday, Oxford University said some of the vials used in the trial didn’t have the right concentration of vaccine so some volunteers got a half dose. The university said that it discussed the problem with regulators, and agreed to complete the late stage trial with two groups. The manufacturing problem has been corrected, according to the statement.

    Experts say the relatively small number of people in the low dose group makes it difficult to know if the effectiveness seen in the group is real or a statistical quirk. Some 2,741 people received a half dose of the vaccine followed by a full dose, AstraZeneca said. A total of 8,895 people received two full doses.

    Another factor: none of the people in the low-dose group were over 55 years old. Younger people tend to mount a stronger immune response than older people, so it could be that the youth of the participants in the low-dose group is why it looked more effective, not the size of the dose.

    Morning everyone. This is the clinical trial that justifies mass immunisation? Seriously?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/26/manufacturing-error-clouds-oxfords-covid-19-vaccine-study-results/

    1. No time to do it properly, following accepted protocols. Hell, just bang some goop into a vial and get it injected! It’ll be fine…

        1. …but not the doctor or nurse who injects you. Ask for a signed letter, stating that they accept responsibility should anything go wrong.

    2. One experienced person to measure the dose followed by another more experienced person to verify the measurement: not too difficult to organise, is it? Another question, where do these companies find >10,000 people to take an unknown potion? If the companies are free to mass vaccinate the population without the fear of being sued for problems, what protection do the trialists have?

      1. You are right, Korky. (Good morning, btw.) You won’t find me having any anti-Covid19 vaccination voluntarily.

        1. I’m with you on that, Elsie. In addition I will NOT be having any future seasonal flu vaccinations as I do not trust the bastards.

    1. Yet she lies, insults someone and gets away with it. Long after the event she has to pay costs – well, other people pay costs because they hate Brexit.

      The lies and smears stick, she walks away. She doesn’t care. She won’t until her home is taken from her, she’s sacked, discredited and every paper turns away from her denying her a career. Hell, even then she’d get funding from the bitter, spiteful Left.

    1. Yes, it’s probably awful. Of course, nothing stops those people putting their own money forward, does it?

      Ah. I see. It’s someone else’s money they want to control. They have more than enough for themselves.

    2. Not diverse enough, those dolls. The money buying those would be better spent on a few spares for a despot’s Mercedes.

      1. 326802+ up ticks,
        Evening JS,
        The cars the dolls are behind the wheels of are new, why would they need spares when they can get new new cars via overseas aid ?

  19. PHEW!

    Having emptied the first and smallest of the 5 woodstacks, I have, over the past few days, got a start made on refilling it from the stack of logs waiting to be sawn & chopped.
    Absolutely gloriously sunny this morning but still a bit nippy so having to defrost thew fingers at regular intervals.
    The DT got back from 3 weeks looking after her mother yesterday, so I’ve sent her to Cromford for the paper this morning.

    I see things in the USA are still rumbling on with the MSM and others trying to shut down the debate.

  20. Receiving many ads for Black Friday, the latest from Adidas with a pic of the statutory blick. I was thinking of asking in the comments as to whether they were expecting looting just tomorrow or every Friday. I’ll get me hoodie.

  21. Receiving many ads for Black Friday, the latest from Adidas with a pic of the statutory blick. I was thinking of asking in the comments as to whether they were expecting looting just tomorrow or every Friday. I’ll get me hoodie.

  22. SIR – Aid money can be the difference between life and death for millions of women, children and men. The pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis prompt us to think deeply on the question: who is our neighbour?

    We have one common home and the goods created therein are for all to share, ensuring the poorest and most vulnerable are at the centre. We firmly believe that our aid budget is an expression of this.

    The Government has a vital leadership role next year when Britain hosts the G7 and climate talks. We urge ministers to ensure an ambitious action plan so needed for our common home and her people.

    Rt Rev John Arnold
    Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford
    Chairman, Cafod
    Rt Rev William Crean
    Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne
    Rt Rev Joseph Toal
    Roman Catholic Bishop of Motherwell

    Tell that to the rough sleepers and down-and-outs on our own streets. Charity, initially at least, begins at home.

    1. Good point, Tony Scofield:

      SIR – Charity begins at home. It is quite proper for the Chancellor to cut overseas aid at this time.

      A reduced budget may encourage some of those who administer the aid to spend it more wisely in the future.

      Tony Scofield
      Glastonbury, Somerset

      1. Cut out China, those with space rockets and Africa which Lammy told us did not want honkey money. Problem solved.

    2. I thought the amount of aid money simply dictated whether those creaming it off went for a BMW or an Audi.

    3. The old fallacy that the “third world” suffers for want of money. Throwing money at bad culture buys more bad culture.

      1. Trouble is, Sue, none of it goes to bad culture. It goes into the pockets of tyrannical dictators.

  23. It looks as though Woking with 148 cases, whatever that means, is heading for Tier 2 with 0.0014 cases per 100,000.

    How on earth can anybody take Hancock et al seriously.

        1. Not sure if our local hospital still has the sign outside saying

          If you have Covid-19 please don’t enter the hospital.
          If you don’t have Covid-19 please don’t enter the hospital.

          1. Also – nobody who’s truly independent to check whether hospitals/NHS trusts are making up figures on admissions, and the degree. I bet they’ve got people – including the police to ‘step in’ when necessary, to stop anyone but those who work there or who are (the few that still do) coming for diagnosis or treatment from entering – journalists (except the ‘invited’ on ‘special tours’ [meaning they’ve made the necessary ‘preparations’ to fool them]) and the concerned public in particular.

            Any geneuinely concerned staff will unlikely help out by whistleblowing through fear of being caught, arrested and/or losing their jobs/careers through blacklisting. Besides, I’d bet good money that the number of properly conservative (not Cameroon type) people working in the NHS is at about the 3% level or less. Lots of useful idiot left wingers and crony wet centrist Blairites/Cameroons though, all willing to do their part without knowing what’s REALLY the agenda and endgame that those behind has has in store.

        2. Johnson & Co have bastardised the word ‘case’ when used in medical terms. Their ‘case’ is a positive result from an equally bastardised procedure that was not designed to identify infections. Then they ignore the clear statistical evidence for ‘false positives’ from this procedure.

          Listening to a short piece of 5Live as I drove to the rubbish tip, very apt I thought, I was really bothered by the responses from three women and a man talking to Campbell. All were for ‘protecting’ and hoping for the vaccine, and worst of all was the male, he wanted the whole of the UK completely shutdown until the vaccine was being rolled out. I can only assume that the pre-interview researchers filter out many dissenters and so an almost uniform opinion, that is in line with government thinking, is presented to the listeners.

          1. Don’t any of these people look at the data freely available from the ONS, or ask who is going to still have a job by next summer?
            People who need protection can stay at home, the rest of us should be allowed to live a little.

    1. Anyone notice that the BBC has ‘changed’ the reporting of COVID on their webpage giving the ‘figures, originally for ‘deaths’, ‘cases’ and hospitalisations over a 7 day period, then to 14, now to 22. Amazing how each shift came just when the figures, especially the cases, started to come down.

      Pandemic > casedemic > what next to scare everyone into submission? Vaccine or no travel/holidays, no going to events (even outdoors), maybe even no job? Wear a COVID-pass wristband (the new prisoner tattoo?) or take your travel pass smartphone everywhere, OR ELSE?

      Meanwhile, the (truly) independent media (the few left) are starting to report ‘issues’ with at least some of the vaccines, significant problems with the testing accuracy, finding out real information from the authorities, ‘The Great Reset’ / ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (WEF/Schwab), all the while the MSM (including the DT) deny any of it or that this is to transfer huge amounts of wealth and power from the public to billionaire-owned multinationals, big tech/social media/pharma, all controlled by a left-wing compliant MSM and civil service and with politician puppets, some in cahoots and some cajoled, bullied or worse.

      It’s no coincidence that Trump ‘lost’ the US election or that the Tories here are essentially no just ‘along for the ride’ and have little control any more, just doing as they’re told by the ‘experts’ and the media. Also – Matt Hancock (former digital minister) seems to be VERY chummy with Mr Schwab.

    2. There are of course a number of criteria on which tiers are assessed – e.g. how woke a town is.🤔

  24. Another distinguished serviceman is no longer with us. The destruction of two U-boats in just five weeks was a remarkable achievement, and his rescue of 40 submariners would have been at considerable risk to his ship if another U-boat had been in the area. It is like something out of the Boys’ Own Paper…

    Captain Duncan Knight, naval officer who took part in the destruction of two U-boats – obituary
    He was awarded the DSC for his actions in 1941 and 1942 off Gibraltar

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    25 November 2020 • 9:08pm
    Duncan Knight in 1941

    Captain Duncan Knight, who has died aged 100, sank two U-boats in similar circumstances, five weeks apart.

    In the early hours of December 7 1941 he was officer of the watch in the destroyer Hesperus, in the Atlantic west of Gibraltar, when the radar operator, Leading Seaman John Sheard, reported an echo dead ahead.

    Ordering the ship’s searchlight to be switched on, Knight expected to see a fishing boat: instead, right ahead, fully illuminated by the searchlight, was a surfaced U-boat on the same course and a similar speed to Hesperus.

    Knight could see men in the conning tower who had obviously been unaware of Hesperus’s approach, and as they disappeared below, and the U-boat dived, Knight rang for “Action Stations!”

    “It was the most exciting moment of my life”, Knight wrote. “For 18 months we had hunted for U-boats without success and suddenly we were almost alongside one!”

    As Hesperus passed through the swirl of water left by the U-boat on the surface of the darkened sea, Knight released a pattern of five depth charges set to explode at shallow depth. For the rest of the night Hesperus, joined by her sister ship Harvester, searched using their radars and sonars, but dawn broke on an empty and silent sea with no sign of a U-boat or any wreckage. Hesperus returned, disappointed, to Gibraltar; however, postwar analysis proved that Knight had sunk U-208.

    On January 15 1942, Hesperus was part of the escort of a homeward bound convoy from Freetown, in foggy weather and a heavy swell, not far from Gibraltar. Again, Knight and Sheard shared the middle watch, when at 02:10 Sheard suddenly reported an echo on the starboard side about one and a half miles away.

    Knight altered course and increased speed, called the captain, and ordered “Action Stations!” When starshell was fired to illuminate the radar echo, there was a U-boat at full speed on the surface.

    His captain, Commander A A Tait, took over the conn while Knight, whose action station was as gunnery officer, had opened fire with Hesperus’s 4.7 in guns when Tait decided to ram. Hesperus struck the U-boat a glancing blow, so forceful that the German captain, Kapitänleutnant Horst Elfe, was catapulted into the sea.

    As the U-boat scrunched along Hesperus’s side, a pattern of depth charges was released and the U-boat stopped about 200 yards off. Lieutenant David Seely and a boarding party set off in the ship’s whaler, hoping to capture an Enigma machine, but the U-boat sank less than 15 minutes after Sheard’s first radar detection.

    Despite the known risk of other U-boats being present, Tait picked up some 40 survivors of U-93 who were landed in Gibraltar before Hesperus was sent to Falmouth for repairs.

    For skill and enterprise in action against enemy submarines Knight was awarded the DSC and Sheard the DSM.

    Duncan Dalziel Knight was born in Kingswood, Surrey, on October 20 1920, a descendant of Captain Charles Mansfield, who had commanded the 74-gun ship-of-line Minotaur at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and scion of a family who peopled the Empire over several centuries. Educated at Banstead prep, he chose Dartmouth over Harrow and joined the Navy in the Anson term of 1933.

    Knight served in the cruiser Amphion on the Africa station under the future Admiral Sir Bob Burnett, victor of the Battle of North Cape, and had been at sea for a year when the ship received the signal “TOTAL GERMANY”, the call that war had been declared.

    He recalled his first wartime order, when during the night of September 4-5 1939, he heard the guns ordered to “Load, Load, Load, and no bloody skylark!”

    As a newly promoted sub-lieutenant in June 1940, he was one of the armed boarding party who stormed the French flagship in Portsmouth after the fall of France.

    Later that year, Knight and he took part in Operation Lucid, one of Churchill’s madcap schemes to blockade the invasion ports and set them on fire. Bad weather prevented a first attempt: on a second try, Knight’s ship, the elderly merchant ship River Tyne, was sunk by a mine off Dieppe and Knight was rescued by an MTB, only to find that his uniform and effects had already been sent to the “deadmen’s store” because his initials were “DD” – which in naval parlance means “discharged dead”.

    Throughout the war the weather was the worst enemy, and Knight could never forget the experience of hauling exhausted and injured men, often covered in oil, on board: “The merchant seamen,” he wrote, “were the real heroes of the Battle of the Atlantic.” Knight himself was permanently seasick, a condition which was cured on return to harbour by a bowl of hot chips and tomato sauce.

    Duncan Knight, Assistant Chief of Staff (Communications) and Senior British Officer at Nato headquarters in Naples
    Duncan Knight, Assistant Chief of Staff (Communications) and Senior British Officer at Nato headquarters in Naples
    In April 1943, in the destroyer Goathland, Knight took part in one of the first successful “Headache” operations in the Channel, when with specially trained German-speaking operators embarked, she intercepted the radio conversations which not only gave away the enemy’s position but also their intended movements.

    It was Knight’s first experience of being under fire, and as the night erupted in a blaze of explosions, at first he found it difficult to not to duck, but took his example from his captain, Lieutenant Commander Nigel Pumphrey DSO, DSC, who “was quite unmoved”. The merchant ship and an escort were sunk, but several men in Goathland were wounded, including Knight, who was admitted to hospital, and Mentioned in Despatches.

    Knight specialised as a signals officer, and saw the end of the war as Fleet Wireless Assistant in the British Pacific Fleet in the cruiser Bermuda, whose duties took her to Formosa, Yokohama, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

    Postwar, Knight undertook a number of highly secretive appointments, as liaison between the Admiralty and GCHQ, including responsibility for the 1,500 strong Admiralty Civilian Shore Wireless Service which manned listening stations at home and abroad intercepting foreign wireless traffic for analysis by GCHQ.

    Knight also commanded three ships, the destroyers Comet and Caprice and the frigate Blackpool. He interspersed these seagoing commands with first-class shore appointments including to Nato in Oslo and Naples.

    On retirement from the Navy, Knight was private secretary to the Lord Mayor of London for some 18 months before being appointed general manager to Trinity College of Music; he guided the college from an underfunded private institution to a fully funded higher education establishment.

    In 2001 Knight was invited by the survivors of U-93 to their annual reunion, to discover that Horst Elfe was a German senator and recipient of an honorary CBE for his work towards Anglo-German relations.

    Knight married Flavia Drake in 1947. She predeceased him in 2010, and he is survived by their son and two daughters.

    Captain DD Knight, born October 20 1920, died November 8 2020

  25. Wankcock in the House if my memory serves me, “…hope is on the horizon,” and, “…the end is in sight.”

    Lying slime-ball, this nightmare will continue until the government are informed by their masters that the UK economy is beyond broken. Then phase II…

    1. 326802+ up ticks,
      Afternoon KtK,
      Then judging by his successful actions over the course of a year in raising patriotic type
      members & finances taking the party into the black better try to in-duce Mr Gerard Batten to return to the fray.

  26. In other news, a couple of days ago, Bloomberg issued an updated index of the world’s top 500 billionaires. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/

    I was surprised to see that in the entire Arabian Gulf there were only three Saudis and two Emeratis on the list, compared with sixteen from the UK.

    I am absolutely certain that there are numerous Gulf citizens missing from the list, having met many extraordinarily wealthy people myself. They accumulate wealth, not because they need it or want to use it for philanthropic purposes, but merely because they want to be wealthier than their friends and business associates. They are some of the meanest and least generous people I have ever come across.

    I could relate many anecdotes but one small one comes to mind. I happened to meet a Saudi man whose family name was associated with amazing wealth. He invited me to tea one afternoon. We sat on some cushions in a room in a small building attached to his house. The room was barely clean, his robe was creased and his headdress was askew. I thought that he must be a poor relation who wanted to tap me for a loan. Then he said: “I’m very happy today”. When I asked why, he said: “Two days ago I bought 20 tons of gold. I sold it today and made $20 million profit.” He must have had at least half a billion in liquidity to be able to have such a flutter, so I expect he would have been on Bloomberg’s list if they had known anything about him!

  27. “Coronavirus pandemic could wipe out 25 years of increasing gender equality, new data from UN suggests”. Telegraph. Cripes, it will be doing calculus next, clever little booger.

    1. Given that COVID and the lockdowns (sounds like a third-rate pop group!) are the brainchild of the WHO (UN) and all the woke people currently in charge (including social media, multinationals, MSM and politics), they only have themselves to blame. Besides, it’s harming almost everyone in a very signifiant and long-lasting way (not just women and minorities), except those behind it all, who’ve got far richer and more powerful, and are currently seeking to go much further.

  28. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a26f970d5a16c395152871478dfa92df796449e34542ae4353bd5e96171b8c20.png Was there ever a more absurd, virtue-signalling daily advert posted in British newspapers than this one by the government?

    99% of turners (the proper name for lathe-operators) are white males; as are those inspecting the work done. Have the government reflected this? Oh no, of course not.

    Get a cute, young, mixed-race female in a hard hat to give a pseudo-interested look at a workpiece in a lathe (the confusion on her face is all too apparent, she hasn’t the foggiest idea what she’s looking at) and there you have it: contemporary Britain in a snapshot.

    Also, why the hard hat? I never saw anyone inside a factory wearing such attire. Out on site, maybe, but in a machine shop, never!

      1. If she is the HSE wallah, Paul, why isn’t she suitably attired in proper protective clothing and equipment. Is she inspecting that turned component by eye, with nary a micrometer in sight? Will she question the turner for turning it without having a cutting tool in the toolpost? (How did he manage that?). Will her hair get caught up int the chuck? Will that tiny tabard protect her from splashing coolant and hot, sharp turnings?

        Every aspect of this concocted posed photograph screams that it was done for no other reason than virtue-signalling and nothing, whatsoever, to do with the realities of industry.

          1. And, as you already know, Paul, a high-viz vest worn in a fully-illuminated room is about as much use as a hard-hat worn where there is nothing but a ceiling (or a sky!) above you.

    1. 99% of turners might be white males now (though I suspect that the figure is actually a little lower than that) but in 1944 my grandmother was promoted to checker, having spent 2 years as a turner… and 100% of the turners were women. Working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week; making both heavy and light shell casings.

      Agreed that it’s a completely absurd picture… which is a pity because there’s no reason why women can’t do such work.

      1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3e12ef3deec47c3fb0867caa2d6cbe21fe91c20f21555287fcd20886002a9de.jpg Here is a wonderful tinted monochrome photograph of my mother, sitting at a large industrial machine (her hair tied up in a scarf) in the centre of a group of her workmates (both sexes) at a shoe factory in Kettering, Northants, where she spent a large part of WWII as a teenager.

        The machine she operated was a Large Singer leather-sewing machine. She also operated a press that punched out the holes in sheets of leather for brogue shoes.

        1. That’s lovely. No pictures of granny. I don’t suppose they would have been too keen to have cameras inside a munitions factory. I remember our local saddler having one of those machines – just a bit heftier than my mother’s 1920s domestic Singer treadle.

          Women proved, through both wars and in many years since, that they could do work of almost any sort. So why on earth are we still having to explain that they can?

          1. Precisely. Especially since every single Spitfire and Hurricane was delivered from the factory to the airfields of operation by female pilots.

          2. More mundane, but equally important, huge acreages of crops where sown and tended and gathered by the girls of the Land Army. Yet 30 years after the war ended the girls in my agri class were advised (not by all, but by all too many) that we were foolish to be there and had no hope of success.

            I am looking on with delight as one of my clients takes his daughter into the farm business; they are both thriving on the experience. There a few more “Smith and Daughter” entries in the business pages these days, but it’s taking a very long time.

        1. No tools in the toolpost and it’s clearly been turned and why an iPad?
          Hair like that near a lathe or a drillpress is a no no (or it was in my day)
          The lathe looks like a Colchester Master like I had in my workshop

          1. Good morning, Spikey. The Master (Mr Harry Lime) and I used to share a Colchester home, btw, but he seems to have gone off on a Sabbatical of late.

      1. They take us for fools and, it seems to be, a high proportion of the public rely only on the MSM. which has turned them into frightened hedgehogs … Moral: switch off MSM, go search your tablet for podcasts or TalkRadio …

        1. What’s the difference between the House of Commons and a hedgehog?

          On a hedgehog, the pricks are on the outside!

      2. The problem with that reckoning, Corim, is that one set of imbeciles will be voted out, only for another (probably worse) set of imbeciles to be voted in. There is no light at the end of a very long and very dark tunnel.

        When will they ever learn? mooted Bob Dylan, back in 1962. I think he was speaking about the electorate.

        1. I was thinking more of legal challenges to the ruling party elite for crimes against humanity, fraudulently pushing fake science and profiting themselves and their friends at taxpayers’ expense, much the same challenge as is happening in Italy.

      3. 326802+ up ticks,
        Afternoon C,
        The only way to rectify that way of thinking is to stop proving it every GE surely.

    1. Because you, Mr Burns, have failed to do your duty as an MP and stand up for your constituents.

      1. Anyone who expected any logic from these cretins in Government was doomed to disappointment. Apparently the whole of Derbyshire, rural bits included, will be in Tier 3 and worse off than in lockdown – this is beyond lunacy! For all the good it will do I have written to my useless MP again.

        1. Dear Mr Bleau (probably wrongly spelled)

          As your MP I am delighted that HMG is taking active steps to enable the population to stay safe. I was personally assured by the Secretary of State for Health (and Death) that he has listened to cynical (sic) advice and is following the science.

          I understand that you have strong feelings, but would remind you that Derbyshire contains a very large number of extremely vulnerable people, and that your attitude does nothing to help such fellow citizens.

          Please do not trouble yourself to contact me again.

          Sgd: For and on behalf of A Wanqueur, MP

      2. The tiered system did not work, so the 2nd lockdown was introduced. The re-introduction of the tiered system shows that 2nd lockdown was a failure. Is there any way out of this imbecilic cycle? 3rd lockdown is bound to happen in the new year.

    1. With the way the child is looking at the start it feels that the someone is egging the child on to hit the cat. Wonder what would happen if one of the cat’s claws had blinded the child in one eye.

      1. But in our unjust world it would be the cat rather than the child which would be ‘put down’.

  29. Ah bless,in these tough times you have to take a little joy where you find it………

    Suzanne Moore darling of the leftards recently unpersoned for transphobic crimes is now weeping and wailing all over the place about “unfairness”

    This from a woman quite happy to destroy others for HER agendas and wouldn’t recognise “fair” if it bit her in the ‘arris

    ConWoman debunks the crocodile tears nicely

    “So all that is happening to Moore is precisely what she was quite happy

    to do to others. Rather than the Hollywood-style image of a poor

    truth-seeking columnist victimised by an ideological media monolith,

    this is a story about rats fighting in a cage. They are all as bad as

    each other: that is why they work at the conservative-hating Guardian. They

    are all actually quite conservative in their quest for an unfettered

    progressivism and once again have demonstrated their illiberal

    tendencies. That is why this is all so entertaining, but certainly no

    more than that. But then the absurdity of the Guardian has been entertaining for more than 100 years.”

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sorry-suzanne-youve-been-guardianed/

    1. When I think over the poisoned atmosphere she and her fellow travellers have created for men – particularly white men – the saying “revolutions devour their own children” come to mind.
      Yes, there were insulting attitudes towards females and yes, they needed changing, but babies and bath water, dear/darlin’/ me duck …….
      I notice that she and her fellow harpies tend to steer clear of cultural practices like polygamy and FGM.

      1. Not to mention sharia where the testimony of a woman is worth 1/4 that of a man’s (and women are but goods and chattels anyway).

    2. From comments on here about her column yesterday, I believe she got hammered in the BTL comment.
      Hence when I eventually caught up with it, they’d all been deleted!

    3. It was George Orwell who said that when we get to the age of 50 we each have the face we deserve. It has nothing to do with good looks or prettiness – indeed a cruel, mean-spirited ‘handsome’ or ‘pretty’ person generally suffers from the Dorian Grey malady while a pleasant but plain looking person can have a countenance which may not be beautiful but which is agreeable to behold.

      This woman does not have a pleasant face and it is her own fault that she doesn’t. Had she had been more pleasant her face would have been so too..

  30. The press today is full of plaudits for that Argentinian footballer and indeed he may have been a “great” dribbler, a “great” shooter, a “great” tackler, a “great” goal- scorer etc. etc. but was he a great footballer? The reputation of Diego Maradona will remain permanently tainted by his blatant and deliberate foul of which he was proud rather than ashamed..

    Michael Schumacher may have been considered a “great” racing car driver but he was a cheat and not a sportsman – his reputation will also remain permanently tarnished by the fact that he deliberately shunted Damon Hill’s car in order to win the Formula One championship that year.

    And who thinks Ben Johnson was the greatest sprinter of his generation?

    Once you condone cheating or turn a blind eye to it the whole point of sport has been lost.

    1. Good morning, Rastus.

      At least in his obituary, today, the DT called him (in the very first paragraph) “… a liar, a cheat and an egomanic.”

      If I had been responsible for compiling that obit I would have added “… a druggie and a moron.”

      Few things irk me more than to read countless vacuous eulogies about this cretin being the “best ever”. That is an insult to the likes of Pelé, Alfredo di Stefáno, Johan Cruijff, Lionel Messi and a few more who were not only similarly (if not better) sumptuously-skilled footballers, but far better sportsmen.

        1. First old man to second old man: “Did you know that, on average, European males over the age of 70 have sex once a month but for Japanese males over the age of 70, it is once a year?”

          Second old man, after long pause: “ I never knew that I was Japanese”.

    1. They don’t make wankers, but if they did, they would probably be as useless (and tasteless) as the crap “beer” they concoct.

  31. I’ve been trawling the web and I stumbled upon some good news from the government, now there’s something to tell your grandchildren. Those of you who have been harbouring doubts about our loss of liberties and rights, and the likelihood of next years local elections being postponed can rest easy. The elections will go ahead on the prescribed date whether or not we’re in Lockdown 4 or 5. To save the NHS and to keep electoral officials from harm the election will be held by postal vote. Remember, you read it here first.

        1. Yes lots of legal cases, lots of lawyers getting rich and lots of judges dismissing the cases as being without merit.

          1. I’m rooting for Trump – not because he’s the best choice, but he is better than Biden but more because it’ll send the Left absolutely apoplectic with rage.

          2. Which cases are those ?

            What did you think of the PA hearing yesterday ?

            The Dems were crushed !

          3. Crushed? You mean the ruling not to certify any more results? That ruling which was made after the state results were certified?

            At least fourteen cases dismissed as worthless so far.

  32. Evening, all. The government hasn’t got a clue how to deal with Covid, but it has found an excellent way of controlling the citizens, unfortunately. Had a friend ring up to ask how I was doing. We ended up complaining that the govt hasn’t got a clue and the only way to keep sane was to ignore the daily bulletins and generally not watch TV!

    1. Good evening, Conwy, if it is a good evening, which I doubt.

      Add to what you say the fact that virtually ALL MPs are supine tossers who haven’t got the guts to hold the government to account.

      1. Indeed. I understand that the sheeple are crowing for more restrictions. Next they’ll be begging to wear a yellow star as they head for the gas chambers (ie vaxipass heading for the jab).

        1. 326802+ up ticks,
          C,
          It is going to meet opposition when the ovis element have to attend a vet to get the ear nipped and a tag attached, a colour coding hairdo won’t upset to many.

      2. 326802+ up ticks,
        Evening VW,
        There ain’t a grain of truth in your post. there is a bloody boulder.
        ALL the way, for at least the last three decades.
        The only change being the downhill
        travel got more acute in the treachery department after every GE.

      1. Me neither. It is as though Rommel and Goebbels have been reborn and visited on us. The only thing lacking are the uniforms.

        Edit : I meant to name the fat slob Goering and Goebbels.

        1. Actually I rather admire Rommel – brilliant tactician by all accounts. Perhaps Goering and Goebbels??

    2. That’s when the blogs/fora come into their own.
      You look beyond the headlines and post your findings online for those of us interested enough but don’t have the time to do the same.
      We can decide who to believe and who to dismiss. (No names no pack drill Pretty Polly :-))

      EDIT: Typo. It’s that time of the day 🙂

          1. Even current updates to phone apps are suspect these days.
            Why does a simple pedometer on my phone I’ve had for two years now suddenly need access to everything on my phone and associated external devices ? To count how many steps I’ve taken when I use it?

          2. Not sure what ours does – I lost access to Patient Access some time ago. The last time Ii visited the surgery, apart from the flu jab last month, was when I had shingles in 2019.

          3. Personally, I am trying to carry on as normal a life as I can, using any loophole to get round the Covid nonsense.

          4. When some do take to the streets in protest, as with the 600 in Manchester recently, the swivel-eyed loons over on Breitbart condemned them with a vehemence usually reserved for BLM marches.
            Why? Apparently those protesters “don’t look like middle-class Tory voters.”
            We really are fecked if we’re relying on the Further-/Far-Rright.

          5. I rarely bother visiting Breitbart these days.

            There was a lockdown protest near here the other week – a few people were arrested just for being there.

          6. There are some good, rational people posting over there.
            Admittedly you have to trawl through all the dross to read their comments.

          7. That is the bit I find hardest; I used to have an excellent social life which gave me a break. Now I am all too available and my life seems to consist of washing, cooking, shopping, dealing with MOH’s requirements and there’s no let up. Riding is the one bright spot in the week.

          8. There’s always somebody worse off – I couldn’t cope with caring for someone with dementia, however much loved they are.

            Today, my exciting day consisted of – washing, and hanging it out on the line; cooking shortly, but last night I made enough for two nights so not much to do there. At least we can have a glass of wine with it.

            I packed up some things for the post and walked down as the mobile PO is open for an hour or so on Thursdays.

            Shopping will be tomorrow’s excitement.

          9. I have to admit I find it tough because I am neither temperamentally nor emotionally suited to it, but needs must. I did accept “in sickness and in health” after all, but I don’t really want to be doing it. I did two washes yesterday (bedding and towels/clothing) and another two today (clothing and towels). It isn’t helped by the new washing machine not having a very big capacity, unlike the old one. I cook for MOH, who goes to bed early, and then, later, for myself. I have been raiding the sherry, I admit! 🙂 I try to limit shopping to once a week, but that isn’t always possible with consumables being used up and having to be replaced. There’s only so much storage space in the fridge (another new purchase which doesn’t have the capacity of the old one). I used to scoff at the adage “a woman’s work is never done” until I was forced to become a housewife!

          10. I admit, I do find that difficult. The daily grind seems to have me on a treadmill. I just finish one thing and there’s another to do. Walking the dog gives me a bit of a break (although I find it difficult to follow the mindfulness advice; “take your time ..” – yeah, right! Once I’ve got back, I’ve got to do X,Y and Z!) and I get to talk to other dog walkers and my neighbours. My alcohol consumption has certainly gone up since lockdown #1!

  33. Just learned that Dorset will be in Tier 2, presumably because of Bournemouth and Poole. Those of us in rural Dorset are pretty pi$$ed off.

      1. We are “High Risk” – yeah, right. Ditch Telford and Wrekin and the big towns in the West Mids and we’d be (rightly) Low Risk.

      1. Federal courts will take it seriously. It will eventually go to the Supreme Court. There are just too many affiants and examples of fraudulent activities in the voting centres.

        Apart from any other consideration, Joe Biden only became the Democratic presidential nominee because Bernie Sanders was bought off enabling the vote to be rigged in favour of Biden. Likewise Harris was so unpopular that she hardly figured at all in that race. So two deeply unpopular corrupt politicians are all of a sudden presidential material?

        Trump won by a landslide.

        1. Wake us up when it gets to Trumps Supreme Court, until then it will only add to the court cases that Trump has lost.

          How many cases has his team lost now? The only maybe win was a judge stopping the certification of winners in PA but that was after the result was certified.

          Any news from San Antonio where the city is suing Trumps campaign for unpaid fees that date back to February.

          1. I reckon you must live in a parallel
            Universe to me. If you cannot see the corruption you must be blinded by prejudice. You and I will never agree so probably better that we ignore each other.

            I can only suggest otherwise that you actually read the Claim for Georgia. Admittedly it is 104 pages comprising testimony of sworn affidavits but then you appear impervious to a contrary opinion to your own. In England we call that attitude a closed mind.

          2. I only scanned the start of that document, you say that there are sworn affidavits then why for heavens sake has nothing been forthcoming in court before now?

            I see a lot of pro Trump / anti Biden prejudice here with just about every ridiculous tweet being spread as fact. If Trump could stop his minions spreading rubbish, then facts might be visible.

            You are right I am in a different universe,.Canada has a very different view of Trump and his ways, that is what being at the receiving end of his friendship does.

          1. I remain amazed that even on this site of grumpy old men like me that the implications for the World of a fraudulently obtained Biden victory does not scare the shit out of them.

            We have a half a dozen blinkered trolls on here talking up Biden and who appear to be paid up members of the Soros Open Society Foundation or its affiliates. They are tediously spouting undiluted nonsense and dismissing the legitimacy of every genuine complaint which must number in the tens of thousands.

            Thankfully Trump retains the best lawyers and Sidney Powell, herself a brilliant lawyer, has the backing of wealthy patriots.

          2. Whoever wins or loses, it is in the interests of Biden, Trump and America that the result should be seen to be honest.

          3. that sentiment is one that I can certainly agree with.

            Not that it is going to happen. We saw democrat voters in the last election reject the result with their silly Not my President chants, it will be worse if this election result is overturned. Then look at all of the rumours floating around the internet about how Trump has been cheated, many will never believe that the result is valid.

          4. The election of either of them is becoming secondary to the principles of what is happening here.
            A total lack of trust in the process is being established.

            For my tuppence-worth, it’s a disaster for democracy whatever the outcome.

          5. Assuming we are looking at the same comment, It was JSP.
            It popped up on my notifications because I got a reply from you to a comment I made about what you had posted.

  34. A man was sitting on a blanket at the beach. He had no arms and no legs.
    Three women, from England, Wales, and Scotland, were walking past and felt sorry for the poor man.
    The English woman said, ‘Have you ever had a hug?’ The man said, ‘No,’ so she gave him a hug and walked on.
    The Welsh woman said, ‘Have you ever had a kiss?’ The man said, ‘No,’ so she gave him a kiss and walked on.
    The Scottish woman came to him and said, ‘ave ya ever been fooked laddie?’
    The man broke into a big smile and said, ‘no’.
    She said, ‘Aye – Ya will be when the tide comes in.’

  35. Just scratching my head wondering why deaths from and cases of covid are higher in areas of the country than they were before the national lockdown

    1. A) because they are reporting virtually any death as “from”, rather than “with”, Covid now because numbers are not backing up Project Fear sufficiently and b) they are testing more, so finding more “cases” regardless of false positives.

      1. You wish. The majority of leave voters were the well off middle classes who don’t live in shitholes like Bradfordistan. Or the rest of the poor north.

        1. Many Leavers were in the north, Phizzee. They were sick of seeing their jobs undercut by the ‘free movement of eu labour’. Cambridgeshire is wealthy middle class (except us) and they voted largely Remain, the only other area outside London to do so en bloc.

          1. I consider anyone with a job nowadays as middle class. The demographic did show older people vote leave and younger people vote remain.

          2. Probably not oop north, it is too cold for a café culture there. And they are not sufficiently sophisticated!

          3. I am from oop north, and probably from further north than you hailed from so I am somewhat qualified to diss my own!

          4. Listen oop, you!

            Are youse one of them that’s “not sufficiently sophisticated” too?

            I’m no havin’ it! 😘

          5. Nah I ain’t soffisticated at all, perish the thought! Soffistication scares me stiff, them that are, no wot I mean, rite? Innit?

          6. Indeed. One of my newer neighbours is a fugitive from Cambridge. She said it was a relief to be able to talk freely now she lived somewhere that voted to leave!

  36. Brian, the world’s leading expert on European wasps and the sounds that they make, is taking a stroll down his local high street. As he passes by the record shop, a sign catches his eye. “Just Released – New LP – Wasps of the World & the sounds that they make – available now”
    Unable to resist the temptation, Brian goes into the shop. “I am the world’s leading expert on European wasps and the sounds that they make. I’d very much like to listen to the new LP you have advertised in the window.” “Certainly, Sir,” says the young man behind the counter. “If you’d like to step into the booth and put on the headphones, I’ll put the LP on for you.”
    Brian, the world’s leading expert on European wasps, goes into the booth and puts on the earphones. Ten minutes later, he comes out of the booth and announces, “I am the world’s leading expert on European wasps and the sounds that they make and yet I recognised none of those.” “I’m sorry Sir”, says the young assistant. “If you’d care to step into the booth, I can let you have another 10 minutes.”
    Brian, the world’s leading expert on European wasps and the sounds they make, steps back into the booth and replaces the headphones. Ten minutes later, he comes out of the booth shaking his head. “I don’t understand it”, he says, “I am the worlds leading expert on European wasps and the sounds that they make, and yet I still can’t recognise any of those!” “I really am terribly sorry”, says the young assistant… “I’ve just realised I was playing you the B side!”

    Don’t blame me – I only pass them on

  37. That’s me for this chilly day. I am so glad that the danger of Norfolk has been identified by the “men of science”. I feel safer already.

    I hope to join you tomorrow – after moving the settee in the sitting room. Looking for one of the kittens ping-pong balls, I happened to look under it. I realised that no one has hoovered there for ten years!

    A demain.

    1. Not sure why you would need any thinggys to change a password. The request is not from Lagos, is it?

        1. From who/whom (keep the pedants happy).

          What do they want you to do with the thingy?

          What password do they want you to change?

        1. In which case, you have probably appeared to them as someone trying to access your account from a computer/phone that they haven’t seen for a while.

          I get it all the time, because I set my PC always to wipe all history when I log out, so every time I reappear the site thinks it’s a new poster.

          Try it from your usual laptop and see what happens.

        2. I suspect its from Mr Rashid. Is the change being requested by a web site or to access your computer.

          1. The scams often ask you to insert your old password before constructing a new one. Of course, they are only interested in the old word! Soon after, old friends, ex wives, your boss, the guy in the office you hate, all get some sort of message.

    2. Hi Plum.

      I have not a similar problem
      but never-the-less a problem!
      My laptop for the last three days
      has continually closed down,
      completely!
      Today it is telling me i need to
      replace the battery…… why?
      I have the availability of an
      instant electricity supply …
      so why the money grabbing request?

        1. As do I Plum,
          are you, by any chance,
          with BT? … I went back to
          BT because TalkTalk was
          less useful than BT …!!!

        2. Hmm, that’s happening to me currently. It’s necessary to hit the BT hub icon, which says ‘Connected’, hit ‘Disconnect’ then immediately ‘Connect’ and all’s well within 2 seconds.

    3. If it arrived out of the blue, be suspicious.

      “It’s the scam you’re expecting” almost caught me out.

  38. Sussex is in Tier 2, which will pi55 off Hastings because they are the lowest in England (108 per 100k, 13 deaths).

  39. Oh look………..

    David Cameron is also a devotee of Klaus Schwab, who is a devotee of Soros and Gates, just like Matt Hancock, and completed the 5 year ”Young Global Leader” course of the World Economic Forum, Davos where he ”pushed boundaries” and ”disrupted systems”………………

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/nominate-a-young-global-leader-today/

    Just by purely innocent random unconnected coincidence, all David Cameron’s major policies were identical to Davos billionaire policies, and now, by purely randon innocent coincidence, David Cameron has a fortune of $50,000,000, and recently bought a Cotswold house for $20,000,000………..

    Just like Lord Mandelson…. it’s all a mystery where the money came from !

    1. Tell me more about Bill Gates vaccines inducing polio in India PP
      And the Indian government expelling the Gates Foundation from India. Could do with a laugh.

      1. It was no joke for Africans injected with Gates’ Tetanus jabs. There were no cases requiring Tetanus injections in those populations but now the legacy of those injections are unimaginable.

        Why not do your own research instead of asking us to do it only to have you question whatever we say?

        1. I did my own research corri. In India Gates and his mass testing discovered all those previously unknown polio victims. The Indian government were so embarrassed they took over from Gates & Co.
          Discovered, not caused.

          1. That is not what I have read. Gates’ vaccines have caused numbers of unforeseen issues in those receiving them. As ever a few years have to elapse before side effects from vaccines show up.

            Possibly the worst accusation against Gates remains that no parental consent was obtained before the vaccine was administered to thousands of children. Doubtless Gates will have slipped a few rupees to impoverished parents to buy compliance.

            The world does not need the supposed ‘benefactions’ of the likes of Bill Gates, a flogger of and massive investor in Pharma and vaccines.

          2. Seems Gates has been doing what India and African leaders should have been doing but weren’t.
            “Shoot the messenger!”

          3. Gates has no God given right to interfere in the health of people in Africa with his bogus vaccines. He has no medical knowledge or credentials and probably has even less medical credentials than the current Ethiopian Head of the World Health Organization, a puppet of Gates and China.

          4. His aims are noble and, at least, effective. Unlike foreign aid this is his money. How he spends it is fine.

            The problem is he can’t solve the fundamental problems of education and tooling.

    2. They claim it comes from publishing memoirs, lecturing students in the States and after dinner speaking.

      Strange that their memoirs find themselves on the remainder shelves in bookshops for 99 pence and that to earn such sums from speaking engagements would require them to speak continuously 24/7 for a hundred years.

  40. Thought for the day:
    If one is not in a vulnerable category and has no underlying health problems, is it better and safer in the long term to try to get Covid now, and the immunity it should in theory give, or accept one of the many vaccines on offer?

    1. Reply for the day

      I’ll stick with 99.5% chance of not dying if I get this coronavirus which is far better odds than any cobbled together vaccine which I will never take.
      Live each day as if it’s your last. One day you’ll be right and will have gone out on a high.

        1. What odds.
          The vast majority of people will not catch coronavirus or if they do they will survive.
          I was diagnosed with cancer of the rectum on my 52nd birthday. I was told that because I had sought medical advice quickly I had a 98% chance of surviving. 22 years later I am here to tell the story and I thought those odds of survival were fantastic and have proved to be so.
          Now you can tell me about the odds you’re talking about.

          1. The vaccine prevents you getting Covid, so a 90% prevention rate is then multiplied by a 99.5% chance of survival if you’re in the 10% who still get the virus.

          2. No doubt within that 90% prevention rate will be a large number of people who will have some sort of immunity anyway.
            It takes 10/15 years to develop a vaccine. https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation
            I do not believe a safe vaccine can be developed in 8 months. Some talk about Big Pharma pooling their resources to develop a vaccine quickly.
            As someone on this blog said a few days ago:
            It takes a woman 9 months to ‘make’ a baby but 9 women cannot make a baby in 1 month.

        1. I am not vulnerable, nor indeed
          are more than 99% of the UK
          natives….. but just in case, so you
          can say at my Funeral:

          ‘I did tell her!’

          1. Different use of “vulnerable”!

            I meant catching it, not dying from it.

            I would not dare “tell you” even at the graveside.
            I don’t fancy being haunted.

            };-))

      1. Many of them are in care, and care simply does not care. These girls are desperate for affection and attention. Those girls who do live at home do not have parents as we understand the word, some may not have a birth parent in the home.

      2. All they get from the school is being told that to believe a Pakistani man is a potential rapist is racism and the worst possible sin. Also that sex should be free, because contraception and abortion and bennies.

    1. Rotherham again.

      Do these bastards pay no attention to what happened around them?
      They must regard themselves as above the law and able to act with impunity.

      Don’t bother to answer, I know.

    2. You may have to ban me for the following

      What an evil piece of human excrement,
      this, continuing, saga of events against
      our most vulnerable makes me furious.

      When help is offered through Social Services,
      one is told one is too old or a combination of
      the following:
      Age of Applicant.
      No Partner?
      No CBD … or even CDM!
      Not possible in your area! [Why not?]
      …. and so it drones on, almost as if
      directed by some [devilish[ force!

    3. Filthy, f**king Muslim Beast.

      Dear God … there is coming a
      time when You and I will need
      a trade-off!!

    4. “9 Jun 2016 — Farage’s UKIP party aide, 30, is a ‘predatory and dangerous paedophile’ jailed for year-long sex attacks on seven-year-old boy · Aaron Knight was .”

      1. That’s one against dozens of Muslims who have a book that tells them it’s normal.

        I’m sure such things bring you great joy but you’re going to have to accept that there is a huge problem with Muslim paedophilia and an even bigger problem with the state endorsing and encouraging it.

          1. When it turns a blind eye to it, it does by default. If people (and we all know which people) can get away with it with impunity (and they know they are untouchable), that’s tantamount to encouraging it, I would have thought.

          2. 326802+ up ticks,
            Evening C,
            What are those that are seemingly protecting those that are condoning mass paedophilia by employing the three monkey mode, hiding themselves .

          3. js,
            Banned on breitbart for truthtelling.
            No recollection of being asked my views.
            You forgot entwhistle also didn’t you ?

          4. js,
            Check my back post there is plenty of anti paedophile material and their umbrella
            party’s lab/lib/con coalition, also employees / police / councils.

            Your past post are hidden what else is ?

          5. 326802+ up ticks,
            O2O,
            Got a strong feeling this jennifer down voter has a soft spot for paedophiles
            this is the second time she / he / it has down voted an anti paedophile comment.

          6. Maggie opened a lot of doors for Jimmy Savile.
            A brave hospital manager who risked the wrath of Maggie by denying Savile access to the children’s ward.

          1. Because, despite claims here, there are not 10s of thousands of victims. There are certainly several hundred, it may even amount to a thousand; but rather like the number of Russians slaughtered in the last war… the tally grows every time it is wrongly repeated.

            It used to be said than “no chieftain died without a thousand in his train”, yet deaths in clan warfare were, in fact, minimal.

            The fact remains that any child is infinitely more likely to be assaulted by a close friend or family member than by anyone else (and since 86% of the British population is white then there are far more white paedophiles than those of any other colour) and far fewer of those are found out because most children don’t turn in their fathers, grandfathers, uncles or brothers. Britain’s “worst paedophile” was murdered in prison last week … just for the record he was neither differently tinted nor an adherent of Islam.

          2. For one thing, many of the girls don’t have parents in the sense we know of them and when those who did have caring parents went to the police to complain, they were given short shrift and nothing was done.

      1. Catherine Cooke was married at 13yo, thrice-widowed by her mid twenties
        Unlike some, we seem to have moved on.

          1. Her first husband was an elderly hunchback employed by the East India Company. Died soon after the marriage???
            Her second was killed in an encounter with pirates.
            Her third suffered a particularly gruesome fate when he upset the native ruler. Fascinating story.

          2. That’s her.John Harvey was her first husband. After years of fighting the Company for her husband’s estates she gave up and returned to Norfolk. Where she is buried.

          3. I find histories of that kind fascinating.

            Being a bit weird, I used to like reading the gravestones in old churchyards and examining the records.

            Almost every old church one comes across in England has a few interesting characters buried outside or commemorated within, with windows or plaques.

          4. She was one of those minor passing characters in a history book, usually never mentioned again.
            Like Violet Jessop and the Titanic.

          5. I, too, like reading old gravestones. I never considered it weird, just an interest in history 🙂

          6. Also buried in that churchyard was my Gt Grandfather’s first wife – who died shortly after childbirth aged 31. Her last baby of seven died a few weeks after her. Only one of her children survived to adulthood.

          7. I noticed a gravestone in one of the local churchyards to a woman who had died young. There was also a gravestone for her child of a few days. The dates made it obvious she had died in childbirth and her child hadn’t survived long, either.

          8. Yes – it’s in very poor condition – and I took that photo in 2009. Samuel’s mother died a year before Esther, but I couldn’t find her grave. Samuel himself has no grave – not even a death certificate, as he disappeared one day while swimming in the sea at Ogmore.

          9. Yes – though he probably had a good country life once he’d escaped the child mortality years.

          10. Yes, I have that somewhere in my vast collection! I’ve also recently read “How to Read a Graveyard”.

          11. Sounds good – I will look out for it. My friends think my love of reading tombstones is slightly macabre. My Zimbabwean friend says that graveyards are no joke in her country as everyone is too close to them.

          12. I found it in the university library (I was killing time, if you’ll pardon the pun, while I was waiting for my car to be repaired after it had been called in for a manufacturing fault). As I got a call to say the car was ready before I’d finished it, I ordered it from my local library and collected it just before they shut for the first lockdown. I kept it for months because I couldn’t return it!

          13. Did I mention that along the way she was captured by pirates, used and abused, before eventually being ransomed back to the British?

    1. The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. Someone must have still been around 6,000 years after that and people will still be around in 6,000 years time unless of course you decide to have a vaccination.

      1. We’ll be here, but if this nonsense tax and waste government continues we’ll be poorer than Ice Age man.

    2. Just below my house, here in Norway, are scuff marks where the glaciers slid slowly by – but they are gone now.
      Of COURSE there’s climate change! There was vine growth up here in Viking times, FFS, and they didn’t have power stations or 4×4 cars! What else might have changed the climate… the sun. just maybe?
      Arseholes, the lot of them.

        1. But what’s the cause? If it’s the sun, there ain’t owt we can do about it. Apart from get in a fluff, of course…

          1. Well, it isn’t CO2 that’s causing any warming. Studies of ice cores have shown that CO2 increases lagged temperature rises; in other words, the temperature rose and then CO2 increased. If people were truly serious about tackling global warming climate change, rather than taxing the bejaysus out of us using that as an excuse, they would stop building on green spaces and reduce population growth.

          2. I completely agree re reducing population growth (and the good news is that the growth has slowed), however the scientific consensus is that CO2 is a problem.

    1. So the chap who climbs it every year to make sure it stays British has tested positive?

    1. It’s awfully easy to lie when you know that you’re trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading.

          1. It could be, but I haven’t had it yet 🙂 It was the end of the day a few days or even a week ago (every day tends to be the same at the moment). I noticed afterwards that peddy had gone AWOL so I assumed the two were related.

          2. I couldn’t remember exactly, largely due to the fact I had started to skim peddy’s posts after the way things had been going over the last few weeks and months. I just got the impression that he thought he had been a bit too OTT and things had got out of hand.

      1. Fair enough. I missed that.

        He’s regular Nottler and I hope that all regulars get through the difficult times.

        1. I am an architect, an expert in my field with a number of high profile buildings and much else in my portfolio. I am now semi retired and my profile is readily available on this forum.

          I have nothing to hide and neither do I pretend to be something I am not.

          When I comment on the farce of the government response to Covid it is because I was the architect of the Immunology and Signalling Laboratory at The Babraham Institute near Cambridge. I had to understand the processes in order to respond to the scientific brief.

          That does not make me a scientist in the field of immunology or signalling but it does give me an insight into the processes and the detailed experimentation regimes implemented before vaccines are released upon the population without due testing.

          I also did work at John Innes and the Farm Institute in Norwich and have some understanding of plant breeding as a result.

          I find it depressing that some posters on here question my posts without giving their credentials which probably amount to sweet FA.

      1. I never found him to be spiteful, Corrie, but he was regularly attacked when the new posters ganged up on him.

        1. I missed that. I found him intensely annoying and tried to avoid arguments with him. He sided with Jennifer JSP and Lady of the Lake both of whom hated my guts for reasons unclear to me. He was a disingenuous creep.

          I mostly comment on things I know something about. I never expected to be downvoted repeatedly by Jennifer JSP but this is now a regular event.

          1. You also commented that Trump had won by a “landslide”, clearly proving that that you do comment on things you know absolutely nothing about. Biden had the largest “pro” vote in history – 80 million. Even the nut cases at Fox News agree he won.

          2. You would say that wouldn’t you. If you believe Biden secured a larger vote than anyone in history you are an idiot and oblivious to the overwhelming evidence of a massive fraud. Either that or you have money in the game as a Democrat.

          3. “If you believe Biden secured a larger vote than anyone in history you are an idiot …”, really Corim, really, do you honestly believe all this utter shite about Trump having won?

          4. Trump won with a landslide. It is obvious to me.

            I have to ask why you come back time and again and make your provocative and contrarian comments without providing any proof whatsoever to substantiate your own perverse claims for a Biden victory.

            You ridicule the evidence of election corruption posted by me and others but provide no contrary evidence as to the purity of Biden who most identify as utterly corrupt along with his son Hunter Biden.

          5. Because every US state has confirmed its electoral results. Biden won. Stop deluding yourself – or get help.

          6. It may be obvious to you, from 3000 miles away, but to those of us who have lived here for more than 40 years, through seven different presidents, we have seen first hand, the difference Trump made, and it was not good. And no, I am not a democrat!!

          7. There’s really nothing I can say. Even Trump acknowledges Biden won, and therefore authorized the formal transfer of power.

            p.s. I live here in the US, have done for 40 years now. You don’t. So, to your point, don’t comment on things you know absolutely nothing about.

          8. Is this shaping up as another spat?

            It’s not a good idea to call another poster an idiot or accuse them of corruption.

          9. …and then you really will need help, as Dopey Joe is taken away by the men in white coats and the Harris becomes your President.

          10. All you see is a pincer movement by Cochrane and jackthelad. I say what I think. They say what someone is paying them to say.

            They are both trollng me as you might well know.

          11. Lotl is a good member of this forum, but she doesn’t hold back on things she believes. I think that’s how we should all try to be.

          12. just treat it as a gentle I don’t agree but not enough to comment about it..

            I see that you have gained a downvote for this comment

          1. Well I’m sorry to hear that. I always considered him a good friend, but recently he’d become more acid than before.

          1. No, but I don’t think gleefully admitting to deliberately tripping people up shows a friendly disposition.

          2. I have always thought that she didn’t really mean it, whereas peddy definitely did (he mentioned it and similar actions on more than one occasion and seemed to take great glee in it). Maybe it’s just me, but that was the impression I got and I then started to look at him and his posts in another light after initially being positive towards him.

          3. I rarely comment or intervene in these spats, but one a few weeks ago was very telling. Someone snapped back at the usual point-scoring pedantry, which was met with “It’s only a bit of gentle leg-pulling”. No it wasn’t! It was a real dig. It only became ” a bit of gentle leg-pulling” when flung back with added interest.

          4. I agree that what might have started as “a bit of gentle leg-pulling” tended to go too far after a while. There was, I felt, a genuine undercurrent of something not nice in some of the exchanges.

          5. P-T’s sense of humour and peddy’s sense of humour are at totally opposite ends of the scale. I’m not sure whose is better, but I know whose humour I prefer.

          6. I got the impression from what he wrote that peddy would be harsh (in every sense, physically and intellectually) on anyone he considered his inferior. It was the language, the vocabulary and the expressions which made me think that. I am a sociolinguist, after all. People reveal a lot by how they express themselves.

          7. Often it isn’t so much WHAT people say as the WAY they say it. Their choice of language, for instance, can be very revealing, as can the sentence structure. It’s a bit like body language; it’s unconscious most of the time.

          8. Which is why commenting here is so precarious. Talking to someone face to face gives all of these things away. It takes a bit of effort to put one’s self across on paper, and some people are good at dissembling, so we never know.

          9. We miss the tone of voice and the twinkle in the eye when we have to rely on the written word. All the paralinguistic features which help us to interpret what’s being said are missing. With writing, what you see is what you get with few nuances in the main, but unfortunately, people who don’t like others still put that over by the way in which they address them. It’s a matter of styles and registers.

          10. Which is why we need to talk face to face. Bugger this Skypey/Zoomy shite too. We need to look into someone’s eyes as we talk.

      1. There was, poppiesmum, and so he is now trying to “wean himself off” the NoTTLe site which he used to enjoy but also found rather addictive. The recent arrival of a large number of new posters who he found to be rather adversarial were not at all to his liking, hence his decision to leave. I hope that one day he may return but after the events of last week I suspect that when he returns – if ever he does – it won’t be for a very long time.

          1. The people on this site are more real to me than the people I meet around our village. That is why it is addictive.

          2. Scarcely. You possibly know it as you spent some time in Cambridge. Not Grantchester, we are over the hill from there. It is just that people are so accepting of the propaganda. Nobody seems to question anything.

          3. My wife’s parents lived in Coton. In my lifetime Cambridge went from one of the most beautiful cities to one of the most ruined from modern developments.

            I remember Pety Cury before the demolition of a larger part if it. Likewise the Red Lion Inn with its revolving door giving access eventually to a mediaeval courtyard. I believe the Eagle Inn survives just about.

            I remember the approaches from Grantchester over the fields when we thought Cambridge a paradise beckoning us. All now lost by a dreadful hotel and other crass developments.

            Er…Do I sound drunk to you as my limpet trolls claim?

          4. My wife’s parents lived in Coton. In my lifetime Cambridge went from one of the most beautiful cities to one of the most ruined from modern developments.

            I remember Pety Cury before the demolition of a larger part if it. Likewise the Red Lion Inn with its revolving door giving access eventually to a mediaeval courtyard. I believe the Eagle Inn survives just about.

            I remember the approaches from Grantchester over the fields when we thought Cambridge a paradise beckoning us. All now lost by a dreadful hotel and other crass developments.

            Er…Do I sound drunk to you as my limpet trolls claim?

          5. No, not drunk at all!

            Petty Cury was so atmospheric and interesting, it was a delight to wander along it. Yes, the Eagle is very much as it always has been. Cambridge has been utterly despoiled, it no longer meshes, but this is typical of many places, all part of the plan sadly of trashing our history.

            We live in Barrington which is probably three miles as the crow flies from Grantchester, and only 10 minutes from Coton – I often visit the farm shop at Coton Garden Centre. It is an interesting village with 49 listed buildings, and perhaps the largest village green in the country which meanders through our village. We have the only thatched school in the country, although it is extended now with tiled roofing on its extensions. Sadly a 240 housing estate is being built further up the road, just a quarter of a mile away in the old quarry grounds – this will totally change the character of our village. A sign of our times. Sigh.

        1. Thank you, Elsie…. is this Peddy or Ready Eddy you are talking about?

          I think the real problem is the times through which we are living, and what we are witnessing is ‘displacement activity’ amongst our group. We must stand firm, we need each other in these difficult times. What ‘they’ want most of all is for us to squabble amongst ourselves (however small our group); it makes their task so much easier.

          If anyone in interested, Chateau la Bergère St Georges is a crackingly good St Emilion (Waitrose) when on offer.

          1. Aldi do a very good (French) Malbec @ £4.69 – avoid the Argentinian version, it seems to have been touched with the hand of Goad.

          2. I was referring to Peddy, Ndovu. With regards to any products available in Waitrose, as Annie and Korky will confirm it is best to avoid the Waitrose in Colchester until the roundabout road works outside their store are completed. (Gridlock most hours of the day.)

    1. He got a real kicking about grammar pedantry about a week ago, and hasn’t been seen since.
      :-((
      Concidentally, the number of comments has halved, too.

      1. PS
        It was not intended as such.

        People asked after me when I got struck down by the whatever lurgee it was in March, and when I read about it later I appreciated the fact that anyone cared.

        Nottle should look after its own, even the ones we don’t particularly like.

        1. I hope we do look after each other – and at least ask after the missing ones. Korky being one of the more recent to suffer misfortune, hopefully he received some positive energy from NTTL, because I know folk were concerned for him.

    2. We haven’t discovered what has happened to Duncan Mac. He said in one post that he spent his working life in the forces Does that mean he is a fairly high ranking military man?
      I am sure he must be well known in his part of Scotland. I hope he is OK.

      1. Last I saw of DM he upvoted my comment on Mrs Clinton being appointed Chancellor of QUB. That was some time ago.

      2. He did say in his last post that Mrs Mac was not in the best of health, but they were definitely going to spend Christmas as a family together.

        1. I am dredging my memory but was there not a little contretemps ‘twixt himself and another poster here after the post about Mrs Mac? The one in which he referred to this person in gaelic as a ‘cailleach’ (I think that was the word).

          1. Ah, that would be Jennifer SP. He and she never did get on, not least because she called him a Vicious Old B’stard.

          2. Well, I wasn’t mentioning any names, you see…… I thought the ‘cailleach’ was a well deserved accolade.

            It took me a while to work out what the VOB (badge of honour) actually meant. I cannot believe that someone actually called a fellow Nottler that, but then I belong to an era when courtesy and decency still stalked our land.

          3. Those of us who have been on here a long time have, in general, become good friends. Some, of a newer vintage, can let their feelings spill over if they don’t like what they read. That particular poster has had spats with many people, including me, although I now tend to avoid her as far as possible.

          4. JSP does tend to speak her mind. Some might not agree agree with her.
            They need to get over it, not everyone will always agree with them.

          5. It isn’t a case of not agreeing, it’s the manner in which she expresses her views, Jack. You can speak your mind without antagonising the person you disagree with because of the way you address them.

          6. Maybe some posters need not to be so arrogant and sure they know it all, Jack? I taught for a long time, but I hope I’m not didactic in my posts and hopefully, I don’t assume that I am the only one who knows anything about certain subjects.

          7. Thanks for the bouquet Jack, but I’m afraid that your comment just gives them something to hang a bit more hate on.

          1. Possibly but there have been some good exchanges between Peddy and Grizzly over inappropriate language usage.

            Well I think that is what they were, they kept lapsing into Swedish.

          1. It seems that it is protected by the downvoter, who, for once, seems to be at a loss for words.

            Anyway, as far as I’m concerned he and his cockroach mate are both blocked.

          2. Thank you. This illicit downvoting is becoming very tiresome.

            I express a view and am almost immediately downvoted and otherwise attacked for my posting by about half a dozen on this site.

            I feel that they are targeting me personally for the reason that others posters are not subjected to the same malevolent attention.

            I am perfectly capable of defending my opinions but simply wish to register that there are a number of trolls on this site who apparently wish to disrupt debate.

    3. I miss Peddy’s foodie updates.

      I do hope he is alright .
      He could be very cutting, but, he has been around for ever , and he exercised a bit of wisdom sometimes.

      1. It’s a good job we’re all different; those “foodie updates” were a real turn off for me 🙂

          1. Hi Plum,

            I must admit that sometimes I used to salivate with envy at his ability to go to all that trouble – I know that I wouldn’t have bothered if I was cooking for myself only. :o(

          2. Hi Lass,
            Too true….my cooking skills are reduced to chicken and salmon/fish/eggs in as little time as it takes possible. Total bore cooking for one. Life is pretty shite at present….WTF is going on….?

            Hope you’re both ok….. luv x

          1. You must have been even more annoying than usual that day! You seldom have anything much to say except to deliberately wind people up.

          2. You must have been even more annoying than usual that day! You seldom have anything much to say except to deliberately wind people up.

    4. a big bust up last week and several derogatory comments made to him one night. We haven’t seen him since. I hope that he is OK, the threat of pedantry gave posting a comment the tinge of anticipation.

      We should never not be nice to him.

        1. The preamble at the top of the page would suggest being nice is mandatory.

          Unfortunately like the covid virus, nice has a nightly curfew.

  41. Thinking of Maradona and his “Hand of God” goal in 1986. These days with VAR, he would have been sent off (straight Red) and England would have been likely victors and through to the semi-finals.

    1. I’m not so sure about that. Back then, VAR would probably have been more useless than it is today, and the interpretation of its findings even more awry.

      1. Pat Jennings played at the same world cup.
        Couldn’t be two more different footballing greats from that era.

        “Despite retiring from club football in 1985, Jennings played his final international game at the 1986 World Cup, on his 41st birthday, making him at the time the World Cup’s oldest-ever participant.”

        1. I guess NI doesn’t have a huge number of goalkeepers to choose from (sorry couldn’t resist), but good on him.

          1. Sadly true, small pool to pick from, unlike Big Jack’s Republic, when even Tony Cascarino wore the other green shirt. Successfully. In our absence, that team was a pleasure to watch and support.

          2. If the IRFU is all-Ireland, why don’t the Republic and Northern Ireland’s FA combine for international competitions?

          3. Like the Ulster rugby squad? Makes sense.
            Why does England always reject suggestions of a GB football team?

          4. Power. International football, like rugby and so on, is not a competition between countries because it’s a competition between football associations.

          5. I won’t cheat and use Google. Was that the world cup when all 4 UK nations were represented?

          6. You got it 🙂 Before that, our Home Internationals were a World Cup qualifying group. It guaranteed a British team would always make the finals. The other countries complained and changed the system. British teams had to go into the pool along with the other countries and qualify by right.
            Under their new qualifying system all four UK teams qualified for the WC finals. Couldn’t have happened under the old system.

          7. I know that Wales reached the quarter-finals but lost to Brazil. I don’t know why but the great John Charles was not selected for the match, sitting it out on the bench, although his brother, Mel, played in the game.

          8. Just Fontaine was the star of that World Cup. Put us and Scotland out on his way to setting a then WC record.

            ETA: Could be wrong, but I believe Pele made his debut back then.

          9. Historical reasons, probably. When the home nations’ FAs were first set up, there weren’t many other countries to play against, so a UK team would have been all but unbeatable. Now, especially with devolution and Scotland pushing for independence, there is no chance of a combined FA. That said, there is a GB Olympic football team.

          10. Why is football included in Olympic sports? Seems crazy to me; but then, they included synchronised swimming!

          11. I think it’s down to both history of organised internationals and that all five nations get individual votes when things are decided or powerful people get elected..

      1. If Dominion Software had been used, it could well have been Argentina winners by one clear goal: 1.75 to 0.75.

    2. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

      Nothing compared with the Spanish ref red-carding Mal Donaghy in NI’s crucial game v Spain on their home ground in ’82.

      ETA: Unlike the English, we held out and beat the hosts in front of their fans on their own ground.
      Admittedly, in the next round, Platini slaughtered us all on his own 🙁

          1. “Massimo Busacca’s decision to send off Van Persie has generally been regarded as one of the worst refereeing decisions of all time…”

            That’s a long list of bad/biased decisions.

  42. In Norfolk – Tier 2 of course – since 28 February there have been 1.6 deaths per day “from” Covid.

    Clearly a terribly dangerous part of the country. Just like Greater London (also Tier 2) with 26.8 deaths per day….

    1. It’s the same here, Bill. We have had relatively few in Shropshire itself, but we are tied in with Telford for numbers recorded. Worse still, being lumped in with the “West Midlands” we are in the same region as Birmingham!

      1. There is said to have been a “cluster” just south of the City of Narridge – where, in fact, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is to be found!

  43. It’s a sad day for the centre-right when NoTTLers are more liberal than Breitbart mods.

    “Jack S Angry Citizen • an hour ago • edited
    Two replies now “waiting to be approved”

    EDIT Now three replies “waiting to be approved”
    Breitbart is fecked. Too pro-African.”

    1. Label label label. I assume you just go places looking for an argument?

      Why this attempt to smear and deride all the time?

  44. HAPPY/UNHAPPY HOUR – Are you listening God?
    Does anyone remember David Kossoff’s ‘Conversations with God’ BBC Radio?

    Well, I had a chat with God earlier today. I asked him to give me a break.
    I feel like giving up so please find some other poor sod to annoy and leave me alone.
    Preparing lunch I took the chicken casserole from the oven ….it was stone cold!
    The oven had decided to give up too!
    OK God you win….thanks! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cbc6d6e0fc879aac0603f3bf84348d3971752fdaf526075fa8658cd058be619.jpg

    1. Some days are stone, Plum. I frequently find myself in that situation (not the chicken casserole, just feeling I’m at the end of my tether), then it eases up for a while. KBO and drink sherry 🙂

          1. As one addict to another, go for it.

            Of course, that’s the problem with addicts, they encourage each other.

    2. I remember listening to David Kossof on the radio, Plum.

      Bad luck with your oven , did you manage to eat something this evening ?

      I sent up a few words to big G the other day , a car was tailgating me on a familiar lane around here , and I am always cautious on bendy roads, cyclists , horse riders need space.

      I was pootling along , and the car behind was quite clearly not a local car.. I drove round the bendy bit adjacent to a broadleaf wood and about five pheasants scuttled across the road in front of me , I beeped my horn and nearly slammed my brakes on , the car behind honked me like mad and overtook me on a very dangerous stretch , just narrowly missing a car coming in the other direction!

      The pheasants escaped , big G works in many mysterious ways!

      1. Glad that you know that horses and riders need space (minimum 6 ft like Covid19), Maggie. All too many people try to take your foot out of the stirrup.

      2. I had a bowl of soup….

        Maybe good news about the oven…..no point in contemplating the alternative…!

        G works in mysterious ways……yeah right…

      3. Our next door neighbour stopped at traffic lights a couple of weeks ago and someone slammed into the back of her car. Nasty experience.

        She got the car back last week after it was taken away for repairs.

      4. Belle, have you ever done a steam pudding (I’m thinking about Christmas pudding) in your mega pressure cooker?
        I’ve looked it up and it seems as lengthy as using a saucepan or a steamer over hot water.

        1. Anne, my SM a mega good cook and baker,
          has often said that the long, slow steaming
          process required is not replicable by forced
          pressure … I don’t know if she is correct but
          her, home-made, long steamed Christmas
          puddings are unsurpassable!

        2. I would be a bit scared to do one in the pressure cooker . I had a very bad experience with mine last winter, the house stank of smoke as I had forgotten all about the pea and ham soup I was cooking. I have put ithe PC out of the way for the time being .

  45. From, of all places, the BBC

    Before the national lockdown, 23.5 million people lived under tier one, but this time it will be just 700,000. And while 8.5 million lived under tier three restrictions in its previous classification, under the new system it will be 23 million. The government’s argument for the regional approach is geography matters – mapping the likelihood you will come into contact with someone who has the virus.
    But clearly someone who is a sceptic can make the same point about the geography and that the decision can be made at a more local level.

    1. “From, of all places, the BBC”

      Majority of British voters say “BBC? Wot’s that?”
      But you keep plugging them.

      1. Increasingly the BBC is distrusted by more and more people. It is haemoraging fees as people switch off.

    2. Round here, in rural parts, we can walk happily every day and not come within six feet of other people. We are, however, treated the same as Birmingham and Telford, which are urban areas. Makes no sense at all – yet that seems to be par for the course.

      1. So how large should the lockdown zones be if they are to be effective? That is assuming that they can be effective that is.

        We live about a two hour drive from Ontarios hot spot and even though they are locked down in Toronto, we still live what passes for a normal life nowadays (well almost). Trouble is quite a few Toronto folk are driving out our way to escape the big city and detected covid cases are rising steadily

        In this past week quite a backlash has started against city folk. Restaurants, hotels and even some shops are refusing to serve anyone from the hot zones. We are just waiting for the bridges to be barricaded.

        1. My view is that lockdown #1 didn’t work, lockdown #2 isn’t working, so we might as well live with it and get on with life. Perhaps people wouldn’t be fleeing urban life if they weren’t locked down?

          1. We’ve never locked down for normal or even bad flu years, so there is another agenda at play here, and it’s not the virus, which is now endemic and will be with us indefinitely. When enough people have been made redundant, and most small businesses have closed – what will be the next step in this charade? Dodgy vaccine coercion?

          2. Let Amazon do your
            shopping for you!!

            Fairly obvious really!

            I would post a funny face
            but it is not remotely funny,
            ……..it is friggin frightening!

          3. White flight from London to the provinces is a result of the policies of the Muslim Mayor. Khan is stealthily destroying London as an economic powerhouse.

            The same flight is occurring in the States. Democrats from California feel so disenfranchised by the state policies of the Democratic officers that they are moving to more friendly environments as may be found in Texas. Much the same applies to the unfortunate occupants of the Eastern Seaboard states.

            It is highly likely that these former Democrats voted for Trump whose policies favour their work ethic and endeavours.

            Edit: The Democrats deserted them years ago and the four years of Trump’s pro business policies have turned lots of former Democrats towards him.

  46. The ‘flu that killed 50 million, BBC 2 9pm.
    1918/19

    Could be interesting.
    Particularly if one scales up the population between then and now.

    It’s a repeat.

    1. I understand it wasn’t the ‘flu that killed so many people, but pneumonia associated with it, probably exacerbated by mask wearing to avoid contagion. Just as current mask-wearing is causing oral thrust and similar problems to arise.

      1. You may have that down to a “T”.

        };-O

        It was certainly more complicated than is often stated, but I can’t help thinking that we are making mistakes in a similar manner, just different mistakes.

    2. About 6x as many people living today as did then. 25x as many died back then. Oddly enough, no government shut down their economies. Neither did ours in 1968/9 for Hong Kong flu. Neither did we just a few years ago when we had a very bad flu season. There seems to be a common theme developing. I wonder how today’s ‘experts’ will react?

      1. It strikes me that the more we “know” the less we really know and the more we over-react.
        Hey ho…

  47. The more I read about Covid ‘hotspots’ the more I remain convinced that the NHS is the principal spreader. Far from being our wonderful NHS the organisation appears to be the main obstacle to our ‘recovery’ from the flu virus.

    A public inquiry but including evidence from independent medical practitioners would doubtless shed more light on the obvious failings. Go to hospital, contract the flu virus.

    Go to a testing centre to be told that you have the flu virus when the greater certainty is that the warped test is giving a false positive.

    In the Book of Incompetences this governing party and its medico advisors Top the Bill.

    1. Good evening, Corim.

      I believe, as a rule of thumb, one
      should under no circumstances
      be admitted to a Hospital ward;
      A&E seems faraway from the
      wards, not only in care but also
      in cleanliness!

    2. Yup. The NHS gave my MiL COVID during her current sojourn in our local hospital. Well, at least according to the eighth in a daily series of tests. Fortunately she isn’t showing any symptoms, so it might be a false positive. On the other hand she’s now upped the alleged infection stats for the area.

    3. Exactly. In my experience working in hospitals (doing surveying or monitotring contractors installation work), the worst culprits are a) the cleaning staff and b) off-duty (at lunch, on a break, having a smoke) staff generally. Rather like the left-wing ‘mask-up’ politicians, activists and so-called journalists who don’t when they’re off camera.

      I should note that its easiest to transmit germs, bacteria and viruses around if your job takes you all over the entire site, which is what cleaners, and to some extent, porters, etc do.

      This never would’ve happened in the ‘old days’ of the NHS when ward sisters and others had full control and ruled their areas like a rod of iron. Now, it’s just Blairite ‘managers’ and third rate cheapo staff, many of whom originate from countries where hygeine is a low priority and not following rules on such things is the norm.

    4. My son who is currently jobbing at a well known fast food chain is convinced that they are the biggest spreaders!

  48. Goodnight, Gentlefolk – the rest may go hang but remember, tomorrow is POETS day so give the bile an early break.

    1. Easter was effectively cancelled, as it was during the first lockdown. To Christians, Easter is far more important than Christmas.

      1. To Christians maybe but for the masses it is a choice between an overpriced chunk of chocolate for Easter or the best that credit can buy for Winterval.

    2. The simple answer is that we are a Christian country. All it needs is someone in authority to tell them.

        1. You may have lapsed, but you still had the upbringing. I wouldn’t mind betting you have a conscience, for one thing.

        2. Lapsed maybe, but still a caring, loving and special person, the way you were brought up.

        3. We are still a country based on Cristian values as opposed to sharia but there will be a tipping point in the future.

          1. 326802+ up ticks,
            Evening KP,
            The governance party’s dictate it, it is on the parliamentary canteen menu.

        4. You do not have to go to church to live by the Christian values you were no doubt brought up with. Because someone goes to church doesn’t make them a better person or a better Christian.
          You seem to be an alright person to me.

    1. He apologized. It seems that when a celeb (or thereabouts) apologises, all should be forgiven and forgotten.

  49. Unbelievable. Three of my comments “pending” on Breitbart have been “removed” by their mods.
    Even we Centre-Right are being censored for no apparent reason.

    ETA:“Jack S Angry Citizen • 8 hours ago • edited
    Two replies now “waiting to be approved”

    EDIT Now three replies “waiting to be approved”
    Breitbart is fecked. Too pro-African.”

      1. Have I upset you in some way 🙂
        Even we centre-right are being censored now. “for no apparent reason”

          1. This is not a fishing expedition but an attempt at serious argument and debate. Your arrogance apparently knows no bounds if you think for a single moment that people like me are impressed by your snotty remarks.

          2. While you’re here, I seem to have bought and downloaded “The London Encyclopedia – 3rd Edition.”
            Any London buildings of note I should look out for?

          3. Karl Marx is entombed in Highgate Cemetery. Best to visit his grave now before it is removed and a public lavatory built on its site.

            If on the other hand you wish to visit my buildings I suppose you could start with Richmond House Whitehall, followed up with its predecessor, Drummond Gate in Bessorough Street and Rampayne Street, part built over Pimlico underground station.

            Then you could take a look at the reconstruction of the interior of Lambeth Palace Chapel with the restoration of the Laudian Screen.

            If you still have a stomach for this take a look at the Privy Garden Restoration at Hampton Court Palace for which I was the Architect along with other projects including two Landmark Trust Apartments, the restoration of the Great Kitchen Chimneys and the designs for the repaving of Base Court, subsequently realised by others but without crediting me for the designs. The bastards won an award for copying my work. I undertook numerous other restoration projects at HCP.

            I could go on but a lifetime of good work would be lost on some of the idiots posting offensive comments on here.

          4. “The nadir of stucco’d terraced housing” had me hooked.

            “If you still have a stomach for this take a look at the Privy Garden…”

            ETA: Whatever happened to the “Bear Gardens?”

          5. It must be good to be able look at a beautiful building and have the satisfaction of knowing that it was your design.

            I worked in the IT world and yes there are products that I can say that I was responsible for but there is nothing tangible that I can lay my hands on.

  50. Because 2020 hasn’t unleashed enough horrors, giant lizards from Argentina are invading the southern United States.

    The black-and-white tegu, which can grow up to four feet long, has long been spotted in Florida, with accounts of its presence in Georgia cropping up in May.

    Now the dog-sized reptiles have been reported in South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and as far away as Texas.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8986787/Invasive-dog-size-lizards-invading-southeast-months-sightings-Florida.html

      1. Nope, but the thought of giant lizards crawling everywhere must be a bit of a nightmare for many.

        What happened to BJ, he just vanished into mid air.

        1. I don’t know, but I wish him well wherever he is. I just thought you’d taken up the doom and gloom niche in his absence 🙂

        2. “What happened to BJ, he just vanished into mid air.”

          You should know TB. Seems you’re of his “followers”
          The others are an odd bunch.Baggie and ogga among them.

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