Friday 27 November: A town with few Covid cases kept in strict lockdown by the tier system

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/27/lettersa-town-covid-cases-kept-strict-lockdown-tier-system/

711 thoughts on “Friday 27 November: A town with few Covid cases kept in strict lockdown by the tier system”

  1. Chris Whitty warns people to not hug elderly relatives this Christmas. 27 November 2020.

    The chief medical officer has warned family members not to hug elderly relatives this Christmas as he revealed that he will spend the festive period treating patients in hospital.

    Professor Chris Whitty said that just because close physical contact between people from three different households will be legal, that does not mean it is safe.

    Speaking alongside Boris Johnson in Downing Street on Thursday evening, he told the public to “take it really seriously during Christmas. Don’t do stupid things”.

    He said: “Would I encourage someone to hug and kiss their elderly relatives? No I would not… if you want them to survive to be hugged again.”

    Morning everyone. The Hug of Death? This is pure fearmongering! Even should you infect granny she would have only a marginal probability above the average of succumbing to an infection that 99.97% of those who catch it survive!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/26/chief-medical-officer-warns-families-not-hug-elderly-relatives/

    1. Meanwhile, hospital covid infection rates are …….
      Heck, if I saw Witless approaching my bed, it would be like the Grim Reaper without the awesome presence.

    2. “Even should you infect granny she would have only a marginal probability above the average of succumbing to an infection that 99.97%”, simply wrong.

      1. There are some arguments you can’t win, even with facts (however clear those facts are). Sometimes you just have to accept, for your own sanity, that the non-acceptors don’t, and won’t, change.

        2. Of course, but my post is not really a reply to Minty, who quite frankly holds some of the most bizarre views I’ve ever heard, but more a message to the more sensible members of this community.

    3. I believe that Chris Witless and Patrick Unbalanced are exactly that – unbalanced. They are idiots of the first order. Why they are still being listened to I just can’t understand. And BoJo is utterly out of his depth and not even swimming feebly. He is drowning.

      Good morning everybody. Foggy here in Surrey. (As in Westminster) .

    4. “He said: “Would I encourage someone to hug and kiss their elderly relatives? No I would not… if you want them to survive to be hugged again.””

      Pure emotional blackmail and not worthy of someone in his position.

    2. ‘Morning, Annie. There is so much ‘wrong’ with the lower photo that you should inmediately go into hiding in a safe house, before yours is raided…a white, seemingly middle class family sitting down together to enjoy a traditional Christmas lunch, the little woman doing the serving…you really are pushing your luck!

    3. ‘Morning, Annie. There is so much ‘wrong’ with the lower photo that you should inmediately go into hiding in a safe house, before yours is raided…a white, seemingly middle class family sitting down together to enjoy a traditional Christmas lunch, the little woman doing the serving…you really are pushing your luck!

  7. Morning all. Tiers before breakfast….

    SIR – Lincolnshire – a large, essentially rural county – will be placed in Tier 3 after the national lockdown ends on December 2. When it outlined the reintroduction of tiers, the Government said it would be looking at case levels, spread among the population, and pressure on hospitals.

    I live in Bourne, a rural market town in South Lincolnshire, a few miles from the border with Rutland and Peterborough, which will both be in Tier 2. In my electoral ward, there were four cases in the seven days to November 20 – way below the national average. Adherence to the restrictions in the town has been good and rates have been extremely low throughout the pandemic. Any hospital admissions are to Peterborough City Hospital, which will be in Tier 2.

    And yet the Government has chosen to lump us in with coastal places such as Skegness and Boston, which are 40 minutes’ drive away and with which we have no public transport links.

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    As a result, our local pubs and hotels (which have all spent huge amounts on outdoor eating areas) will have to remain closed, we will not be able to travel into Peterborough (our nearest city), and mixing will effectively be banned.

    Compliance with restrictions is to a large degree dependent on the public, as legal enforcement is not practicable. For the public to comply there needs to be logic – something that is plainly lacking in these broad-brush decisions.

    Helen Elliot

    Bourne, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Before the second lockdown I was in Tier 1. A month later, the situation is so improved that I will be in Tier 2. The reality is that this is a political sop to those northern regions still sadly in Tier 3 – a demonstration that we are all in this together.

    Rather than dragging the whole country down in pseudo-solidarity, it might be more useful to identify what the specific problems are in the North that mean infection rates remain high, and to address them directly.

    Mark Jamison

    Fetcham, Surrey

    SIR – Let us hope that the Prime Minister has been better advised before his latest tier decisions than he was when he forced us into a second national lockdown.

    Sir David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for risk and evidence communication at the University of Cambridge, told a Commons select committee this week that it was “completely inappropriate” to present the projection of 4,000 deaths a day by late November, criticising the presentation of such spurious data as a justification for the decisions that were being made, and adding: “No matter what you say about scenarios they will be interpreted as predictions.”

    It is shocking that the responsibility for this inappropriate behaviour lies with none other than the person appointed by the Government to “ensure and improve the quality and use of scientific evidence and advice in government”, namely Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.

    Hugh Brass

    Rendcomb, Gloucestershire

    1. Mark Jamison says, “Rather than dragging the whole country down in pseudo-solidarity, it might be more useful to identify what the specific problems are in the North that mean infection rates remain high, and to address them directly.”

      It makes one wonder if the higher rates in the North might have something to do with the (now) irregular meetings of some the diverse population, who have to be told what to do every Friday?

    2. Shocking, but hardly surprising, Hugh. Mark Jamison – they will never admit to identifying the specific problems in the North that lead to high infection rates; that would be “racist”. I camped in Bourne last year. It’s hardly a metropolis.

  8. SIR — How dare the Government, in our name, cut the already paltry amount given to ease the burden of the most vulnerable in the world?

    Yes, people in this country have suffered from Covid, but nothing like the poorest abroad – people who have never had security of food, accommodation or healthcare. In a time when the whole world is being affected, we shouldn’t cut the amount we give to those who need it most.

    Hope Price
    London N3

    Hope against Hope.

    There is clearly no hope for you, Hope; you are truly a hopeless case! I can’t yet work out what is the most idiotic, crazy and utterly gormless part of your plea.

    The obsession with funding (out of our pockets) the continued overbreeding of the third world to even further destroy the necessary balance of nature and, eventually (sooner rather than later), kill us all off as a species.

    Or your clueless faith that the money squandered abroad somehow does NOT go into the pockets of tyrants to make them richer and wield more power.

    Wake up, you vacuous clown!

    1. SIR – The latest financial figures make for horrific reading.

      The truth behind these figures is that the Government, in adopting a blame culture, fails to see that its own poor management has created this crisis. First it let the scientists take the blame for the financial mess, and now it just blames Covid. But it always had better options, which it did not take.

      People are sick of this bad decision-making, and the knee-jerk reactions to what is often not a deadly virus.

      Peter Murray

      Nottingham

      SIR – The Chancellor has signalled the economic pain ahead, but has shown an unwillingness to tackle it head-on.

      There are clearly economic winners and losers in this pandemic, the winners being those trading goods online, those given generous emergency PPE contracts, and those in the public sector, who have been largely shielded from job losses. Private-sector workers, especially those in sectors reliant on physical customers, are the main losers.

      Livelihoods hang in the balance, and the Prime Minister’s previous reported remarks (“f— business”) do not convince me that this Government understands the importance of supporting grassroots companies. A 20 per cent sales tax on online deliveries for 2021 would be a good start.

      Paul Barrett

      Oxford

      SIR – In the same week that the Chancellor reduces foreign aid and freezes pay for public-sector workers but doesn’t mention any tax increases, National Savings and Investments (a state-owned organisation) slashes its interest rate to 0.01 per cent.

      If that isn’t a stealth tax, what is?

      Andrew J Morrison

      Bellevigne-en-Layon, Maine-et-Loire, France

      SIR – Some years ago, I served in an embassy and watched money being shovelled out of the door because, the reasoning went, if it was not spent we would not get it next year.

      One such project was for an orphanage. It had been fully funded and ready to go for a year. The only thing it lacked was orphans. No one challenged the spending.

      Last year, the UK spent more than
£15 billion in overseas aid. Unbelievably, £71 million went to China. This was money that we had to borrow to spend.

      Apparently £5 billion would help to solve Britain’s care problem. Yet our politicians prefer to give the money to other countries. Could those opposed to the aid cut justify their position?

      Stephen Orwell

      York

      1. The other day Nick Robinson kept bashing Sunak over the head with an invented teaching assistant facing a pay cut.

        The alternative is that her job is destroyed. what I didn’t understand is why Sunak didn’t simply say – look, the person who pays for your teaching assistant has just lost his job. No pay rise for him! We either freeze pay or we destroy the job entirely. Which would you prefer?

        The BBC is thoroughly anti business. It doesn’t seem to realise – or accept – that half of the public sector is waste and that private enterprise pays those bills.

      2. Epidermoid mng. Pole sana, Kenya power decided month end bonus was cutting power for 2 days, so catch up mode [again].

        Interesting tones on the above, being used.

    2. The cut is about the same as the loss of GDP so the 0.7% will remain the same. So actually no cut at all.

      1. I’m glad someone else saw that. I suppose there’s the argument that 0.7 of smaller number is less, but I think the measurement was taken as an exact cash amount in good times rather than tracking against economic performance. That sort of deliberate incompetence is the sort of thing the state would do.

    4. Morning Grizzly ,

      There is nothing worse than viewing very wealthy black Africans brushing aside the begging cup of an impoverished blind man .. people like that have NO charity in their hearts , no altruism , and absolutely no time for the impoverished tribes from where they emerged.

      Money is squandered on monuments of wealth.

      The same is happening here in the UK, HS2 and many other schemes like electric cars for the wealthy!

      1. Morning, Maggie.

        There are too many self-interested people of all hues on this planet. The only good thing is that the planet will continue to survive after mankind has extinguished itself. This will give an opportunity for other—far more intelligent—species to flourish.

        Humanity might have become sophisticated, invented culture, art, music, and a million other wonderful things; however, it doesn’t possess the common sense to look after all that it has created.

        1. Hi again Grizzly.

          You have just tweaked a tiny thread in me , and illuminated everything that is wrong about our species , and as I am just a small spec in this wonderful planet , there’s not alot of strength in my howl to be heard.

          I am really glad you can be heard , because yours is more like a roar .

        2. The thing is there are vast numbers of effective human beings who are valuable and worthy.

          These are the ones who try to live sensibly, who don’t litter and who do valuable research. Aside from the not littering I’m not counting myself as one of them but as with the Left’s desperate racism brushing the whole population as worthless isn’t right.

          However one thing mankind is adept at is destroying. We do that so easily and so very well that it wouldn’t just be us we wipe out.

    5. There’s nothing to stop Ms Price giving her own money away.

      If she’s that bothered she could become an aid worker, living overseas. Instead she would rather our money were spent on them.

      Does Ms Price not see the excessive salaries of state officials? Does she not see the homeless in her own blasted city? Is she so utterly, twisted Left wing that she can no longer appreciate the chaos and havoc her own wretched mayor is causing?

      Ms Price is the atypical champagne Lefty.

      1. As was suggested elsewhere; HMG could set up a funding portal through the gov.uk website, into which all of the Hope Price’s, John Major’s, Tony Blair’s and the rest of the wailing Leftwaffe virtue-signalers would be able to make their donations.

        Problem solved, superiority complex intact, taxpayers unburdened.

        Maybe the taxes saved could go towards lessons in arithmetic for the poor souls who cannot understand the simple statement of fact made by Johnny Norfolk regarding the reduction in GDP also applies to the reduction in any fixed fraction of GDP.

      2. she’s welcome over here, gladly give her a guided tour, but NOT as an aid worker. I’d rate her chances here, about 1 week. But I guess the tone of such a transgender post’s supposed to get a reaction, even from Islington. From what I’ve read on here, the response seems quite clear = “Useless and fired”.

  10. So just over a month ago all our respected expert covid scientists and all our erudite politicians were saying that all we needed was a short lockdown to save Christmas and finish off the pandemic, i can’t remember all the silly names they gave it.
    Now just as we come to the end of the lockdown vast areas of the country are going into higher tiers than they were before the lockdown.
    So all that be concluded that it either never worked or they were just lying and stalling.
    When will all these people that have got everything wrong be held to account?

  11. I bet Witless and Unbalanced will be the life and soul of the socially distanced Christmas party this year.

  12. I must say that I find the phrase “Black Friday” extraordinarily offensive. It should be “Bame Friday” or, better still, “Friday of Color (sic)”

    Surely people realise that Black Names Matter?

    Good grief, what is the press coming to….

    4. Considering it’s often tat that doesn’t sell through the rest of the year because no one wants it I think the name appropriate.

  13. The eradication of free speech (and, indeed, common sense) continues unabated. Just one person complained! From the DT:

    Exclusive: Eton College dismisses teacher amid free speech row prompted by lecture on masculinity
    By
    Camilla Turner,
    EDUCATION EDITOR
    26 November 2020 • 9:00pm

    Eton College has dismissed one of its masters amid a free speech row prompted by a lecture which questioned “current radical feminist orthadoxy”.

    The £42,500-a-year boarding school has been accused of “prioritising emotional safety over intellectual challenge” after it allegedly banned a presentation on the theme of masculinity from being delivered to students.

    Will Knowland, who has taught English at Eton College for nine years, alleges that he has been dismissed for gross misconduct following a dispute over a lecture he was due to give pupils earlier this year.

    The lecture, titled “The Patriarchy Paradox” was part of the Perspectives course which is taken by older students to encourage them to think critically about subjects of public debate.

    But Mr Knowland’s lecture, which he had prepared in video form and uploaded to the school’s intranet due to Covid, was never given to students.

    “The Head Master felt that some of the ideas put forward in my lecture – such as the view that men and women differ psychologically and not all of those differences are socially constructed – were too dangerous for the boys to be exposed to,” Mr Knowland said.

    “I explained to the Head Master that I wasn’t endorsing all the ideas in my lecture, but I wanted the boys to be made aware of a different point of view to the current radical feminist orthodoxy, which insists that there’s something fundamentally toxic about masculinity.

    “In my lecture, I pointed out that, historically, masculine qualities like strength, courage and tenacity have often been as beneficial to women as they have been to men.”

    Mr Knowland wrote a detailed letter setting out his view of events in a letter addressed to the Eton Community on Thursday which he said was to address the “rumours” about why he had been dismissed.

    In his letter, seen by The Telegraph, he explained that schools have a legal duty to offer a balanced curriculum adding that he believes the topic of masculinity currently “lacks balance” in the way it is taught at Eton College.

    He described how before his lecture was broadcast to students it was circulated among fellow teachers of the “Perspectives” course, one of whom complained about its content.

    “The Head Master sided with the complainant and asked for the video to be removed, which it duly was,” Mr Knowland claimed.

    He said that the dispute arose when he refused to remove the lecture from his personal YouTube channel “Knowland Knows” which has 746 subscribers.

    “Because I believe passionately in free speech, I said I would only take it down if given a clear reason, which is how I ended up being dismissed,” Mr Knowland alleged.

    He said he is appealing against his dismissal, and if this fails he intends to take the school to an employment tribunal if necessary.

    In a fundraising page he set up to raise money for legal fees for a possible tribunal he said: “I have been dismissed from my employment. My wife and I will be made homeless, along with our five children.”

    An Eton College spokesman said: “As this matter is being appealed as part of the College’s disciplinary process, it would not be appropriate to comment before a final decision is made.”

    I think this is the ‘offending’ article on YouTube, but I have yet to listen to the whole thing:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wTHgMxQEoPI

    1. In a fundraising page he set up to raise money for legal fees for a possible tribunal he said: “I have been dismissed from my employment. My wife and I will be made homeless, along with our five children.”.

      The reality of the coercive and malevolent nature of Cultural Marxism!

    2. In a fundraising page he set up to raise money for legal fees for a possible tribunal he said: “I have been dismissed from my employment. My wife and I will be made homeless, along with our five children.”.

      The reality of the coercive and malevolent nature of Cultural Marxism!

    1. Just wondering at what moment the passengers on the Titanic stopped believing in the science and the experts.

      1. I never believed any of this planned pandemic nonsense. They manufactured a highly infectious flu virus in a Wuhan laboratory. It’s release was planned as is the release of the next strain in January 2021.

        The immunology scientists have by and large been sidelined. Whitty and Vallance are drug pushers, not scientists.

      2. 326838+ up ticks,
        B3,
        Funny you should ask that I do know the precise moment,
        when the orchestra stopped playing the sh!te hit the fan.

      2. Just don’t watch, Cori, not just a monster but a brainless monster, driven by the contents of his underpants – both of ’em!

  18. Neil Olivers latest programme covering The Great Plague on tonight

    He says that during the great plague that people went all year without experiencing anything untoward, nobody they knew even had a pimple let alone open sores and boils, then someone came along and burnt down all their houses and stole their land.

  19. Surprise, Surprise! ! –

    London was placed in Tier 2 after Mr Johnson, a former Mayor of the
    capital, overruled the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, who had
    insisted at a meeting of the Covid Operations sub-committee on Wednesday
    night that the capital should go into Tier 3

    1. Listening to the Delingpod last night they mentioned Gove and about how he suddenly converted to globalism

      1. Morning Bob,

        I listened to that. Thanks for the link. It’s doubtless a follow the money scenario. Polly will be able to cite the meeting with Schwab/Gates/Soros (delete as appropriate – or not, as the case may be) that marks the turning point.

      2. Politicians (of all persuasions) will inevitably turn, at the drop of a hat, towards anything that will increase their power base and/or fiscal acquisition.

        This basic tenet applies to ALL politicians.

        1. Good morning Grizz and all
          I know this will be close to your heart but the same applies to the police they never ask for fewer laws do they.

  20. 326838+up ticks,
    It could also earn you a back hander if you were a stranger, is there specific days then say Monday, Wednesday, Friday ?
    for X to take place according to the politico overseers ?

    breitbart,
    Govt Scientist: Kissing Grandma at Christmas Could Deliver ‘Deadly Dose’ of Coronavirus

    1. The are several doses one would not want to get at Christmas or at any other time of the year.

    2. Remember Melina Mecouri singing, “You can kiss me on a Monday, a Tuesday…but never on a Sunday”!

    1. Very good indeed, Richard, and on that note I shall sign off now from this site or I’ll never get a thing done today!

    2. You remind me of a small joke

      Five Germans in an Audi Quattro arrive at the Italian border. The Italian Customs Officer stops them and tells them “It’sa illegala to putta 5 people in a Quattro.”

      “Vot do you mean it’s illegal?” asks the German driver.

      “Quattro meansa four” replies the Italian official.

      “Quattro is just ze name of ze fokken automobile” the Germans retort unbelievingly. “Look at ze dam papers: ze car is designed to karry 5 persons.”

      “You canta pulla thata one on me!” replies the Italian customs officer. “Quattro meansa four. You have five-a people ina your car and you are thereforea breaking the law.”

      The German driver replies angrily, “You Dummkopf! Call your zupervisor over. I vant to speak to someone viz more intelligence!”

      “Sorry” responds the Italian officer, “He can’ta come. He’sa busy witha 2 guys in a Fiat Uno.”

  22. A gentle reminder:

    Martin Niemoller

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

    1. What about the Christians, the gypsies, the homosexuals and everyone else who opposed the Nazis?

  23. DT Story today

    Those who follow my posts here will know that I have bemoaned the passing of the old-style General Paper for Sixth Formers and have argued that more than ever today we need young people to think coherently. In my view a course in objective thinking should be compulsory for all those planning to go to university.

    But rational thought is considered poisonous: they are trying to stop Jordan Peterson’s new book being published and the deep rot has now entered Eton College where a master has been sacked for the unforgiveable sin of trying to get his pupils to think.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/26/exclusive-eton-college-dismisses-teacher-amid-free-speech-row/

    Exclusive: Eton College dismisses teacher amid free speech row prompted by lecture on masculinity.

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

  24. 326838+ up ticks,
    We have had same , will have again as sure as the Dover illegal intake is a daily occurrence, in reality Justice for the decent indigenous should outrank BLm, covid / flu by a country mile.
    If the teacher Paty issue happened here in the UK, same age group should be incarcerated under the At her majesty’s
    pleasure rulings, but would be,NO, more likely to be given lines.
    breitbart,
    Four Pupils Indicted in Teacher Beheading, Including Daughter of Man Who Launched Campaign Against Him

  25. Largest number of Prevent referrals related to far-right extremism. 27 November 2020.

    The figures demonstrate what Brokenshire later described as a “more diverse, much more complicated” threat picture. “Not only the threats from Daesh [Isis] or al-Qaida-inspired groups and individuals but the growing threat from right wing terrorism, as well as risks from the far left and single-issue extremists,” he said.

    Social media provided a means for far-right and other extremists “to challenge mainstream messaging and promulgate twisted perversions of the truth” – trends that the minister said had been “accelerated” by the Covid-19 crisis.

    Yes but who does the “referring” and who decides what are “perversions of the truth”?

    This is bureaucratic propaganda, there is no threat, growing or otherwise, from “right wing terrorism” that remotely matches that of Islam.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/26/just-one-in-10-prevent-referrals-found-at-risk-of-radicalisation

  27. ‘Morning, Peeps. For those who may not have seen the ‘impartiality poll’ that first appeared yesterday, here’s the DT’s article about it:

    BBC news output receives lowest impartiality score of any British broadcaster, new survey finds
    The BBC scored just 58 per cent, while Sky News was the highest-rated with 69 per cent.

    By
    Anita Singh,
    ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
    26 November 2020 • 9:10pm

    BBC NEWS
    The BBC’s news output has the lowest-ranked impartiality score of any British broadcaster, according to a survey of viewers. The corporation has fallen below Channel 5 for the first time.

    Ofcom asked audiences for each of the main channels whether they believed that the news programmes they watched were free of bias.

    The BBC scored just 58 per cent. Sky News was the highest-rated with 69 per cent, followed by Channel 4 (66 per cent), ITV (63 per cent) and Channel 5 (61 per cent).

    It is the first time in the annual survey that the BBC has fallen behind all the other broadcasters. Channel 5 has now overtaken the corporation as perceptions of its impartiality improve.

    Ofcom said: “We learned that people’s views of the impartiality of BBC news are shaped by a range of factors, only some of which relate directly to its news and current affairs content.

    “Some told us that their views were influenced by the BBC brand, its funding mechanism and its portrayal across wider media.

    “Once again our research shows that audiences rate impartiality as the lowest-scoring aspect of the BBC’s delivery of this purpose.

    “There is a risk that future relationships between the BBC and its audiences could be jeopardised if audience concerns around impartiality continue to grow.”

    Ofcom said it would monitor the progress made by the corporation over the next 12 months after Tim Davie, the director-general, said he planned to put impartiality at the heart of the BBC’s output.

    It also welcomed Mr Davie’s new rules warning presenters that they must not express political views on Twitter. Ofcom said: “Although the use of social media by BBC journalists and presenters is not within our remit, we consider that this is a useful step and is likely to help improve perceptions of impartiality.”

    Not sure the BTL comments will be up for long, but here’s the top few:

    James Newman
    26 Nov 2020 9:42PM
    I am absolutely horrified that FIFTY EIGHT percent of the public still think the BBC is impartial. In a way, Channel 4’s figure of 66 percent is even more terrifying.

    I’ll cling to the hope that the survey was conducted mostly among hipsters flouncing around doing nothing in London.

    Nigel Wheatcroft
    27 Nov 2020 1:04AM
    The BBC does not report the news it gives it’s opinion of the news

    Frabjous Day
    27 Nov 2020 1:48AM
    Exactly

    Worse, it tries to “influence“ the news.

    Matthew Gibbs
    27 Nov 2020 5:32AM
    @Frabjous Day

    Much worse – it actively and vigorously suppresses the news it does not want us to hear.

    William Munny
    27 Nov 2020 2:27AM
    @Nigel Wheatcroft And only reports news it agrees with.

    Chris Martin-Smith
    27 Nov 2020 12:31AM
    The BBC has become a depressing, demoralising and degenerate left wing dumbing down social engineering project.

    Richard Lewis
    27 Nov 2020 12:01AM
    The fact that a pitiful production such as Ch4 news and its band of lefty luvvies scores so highly is simply a reflection of the dumbing down of our entire society over the past 40 years As for the BBC woke show masquerading as impartial news / productions…simply confirms the TV licence should be done away with immediately…it has allowed the self-righteous, liberal mediocrity to take over and we are all the worse for it.

    1. …and whilst on this subject, here are Simon Heffer’s views:

      No-one over the age of 55 who tries to watch BBC television or listen to its radio services will be surprised to learn, from Ofcom’s latest report on the Corporation, that people in their demographic are gradually giving up on it. As one in that age group, my own consumption of what the BBC offers is largely restricted to Radio 3, which shines like the proverbial good deed in a naughty world.

      Elsewhere, Radio 4 appears to have become Victim Radio, with an endless stream of programmes featuring people, usually from minorities, complaining about some injustice, usually inflicted on them by the state. This schedule of gloom is punctuated by profoundly unfunny Leftist comedians (I use that noun in its broadest, often unintentional sense). My wife likes Gardeners’ World, but that is becoming ostentatiously woke and in any case is now off for the winter. Other than that, little else appeals: the world our age group really wants to see on television is best represented on the Talking Pictures channel, whose success, believe me, is not coincidental to the BBC’s decline.

      There appeared to have been a conscious decision to marginalise the middle-aged and elderly in pursuit of a younger audience, but that has been a disaster. The reach of the BBC in the 16–19 age group, which five years ago was 61 per cent each week, is now just 39 per cent and dropping like a stone. It isn’t much better for older groups in their 20s and early 30s. That, of course, is the generation that watches almost everything over the internet – Netflix, Amazon Prime and so on – and gets its music from Spotify and other streaming services.

      Why should it care about the BBC, or need it? If there were some genuinely intelligent programmes on, treating people as though they weren’t entirely stupid, then many well-educated young people might tune in for a documentary, a properly-made drama or a talk programme. However, like well-educated middle-aged and elderly people, they are confronted, more often than not, by a tsunami of patronising, formulaic, dumbed-down rubbish. Civilisation, Monitor and The Forsyte Saga reached a standard half a century ago that can now only be imagined.

      It is not difficult to see what has gone wrong. First, “elitism” and “excellence” have become dirty words, and the group of people who like such quality are largely uncatered for on television and, on radio, only really on Radio 3 and rare Radio 4 programmes such as The Moral Maze and the consistently good The World Tonight. Everything else is about accessibility.

      Second, much of the BBC’s output is driven by its obsession with quotas. According to its employment targets, published in the Ofcom report, 15 per cent of its staff have to be from ethnic minorities; that is despite just 12 per cent of people in Britain being from those minorities.

      For the avoidance of doubt: I’d be delighted for the BBC to draw half or three-quarters of its staff from ethnic minorities if they could provide a better service than the present payroll; but at the moment, this sort of affirmative action not only patronises those who supposedly benefit from it, but it means the BBC selects more heavily from minorities than, demographically, it should, and therefore chooses people whose life experiences and tastes are inevitably less likely to reflect those of the core middle-aged and elderly audience. That core audience will therefore feel increasingly alienated, not just by output aimed at the young, but by output that reflects a Britain in which they do not live. According to Ofcom, this sense of alienation is especially strong in Scotland; perhaps because they feel saturated by English metropolitanism.

      Some of the most preposterous things in television dramas seem to be the result of the virtue-signalling of overpaid, self-righteous white executives. Thus in the 2017 adaptation of E M Forster’s Howards End – set in Edwardian London – street scenes included various black actors. The BBC should of course show programmes that reflect black people’s lives, but this did not: black people were not common in Bloomsbury in 1908, though one might well have seen an Indian, in London as a student or training for a profession. Similarly, Mrs Bast was played by a woman of colour; Forster gives no indication in the novel that his character was anything other than a white Englishwoman. The BBC should give work to black actors, but in contexts where it is credible.
      The Corporation could, if it chose, learn much from American drama, which is and has for the best part of 20 years been the best seen on television here. Series such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire and Breaking Bad lacked an agenda; they just told good stories really well and, in the case of Mad Men, with absolute faithfulness to historical detail, even if that meant reflecting the marginalisation of black people in 1960s New York. Too many BBC dramas undertake social re-education: inserting people of colour, or in same-sex relationships, into drama series in contexts that do not inevitably chime with real life. The BBC has become enslaved to the woke agenda and is afraid to pass up any opportunity to advance it.

      If the young are being driven away from the Corporation’s services by alternative platforms and technologies, people of middle age and older are driven away when confronted with depictions of reality that are, to them, increasingly unreal, but that snuggle comfortably in the fantasies of BBC executives and the disconnected people they hire to write for them. The drift away of older people from the BBC is marginal now – down from 93 per cent reach five years ago to 89 per cent now – but if the 89 per cent who are left continue to be served up a world that is alien to them, the decline will become a torrent.

      This does not even begin to take into account the perception of BBC bias in its news and current affairs output; a perception that may well be exaggerated, but of which there have been too many examples for it to be discounted altogether. It is something to which those with the wisdom that can come only with age tend to be very sensitive. And, as I have written recently, the Corporation also has a governance problem, as shown in its grotesque mishandling of the Martin Bashir scandal over his 1995 Princess Diana interview. The potential damage on that front, if the BBC does not have a full, transparent, independent inquiry, seems beyond the Corporation’s imagination. Unless it wishes next year’s Ofcom report to read like a charge-sheet, it had better rectify this complacency at once.

      The BBC’s conduct will always be measured against the value it is perceived to be giving for its licence fee. It may provide an enormous amount for £3 per week, but if the viewing and listening public deems much of it pointless or less appealing than it can find elsewhere, quantity becomes irrelevant. It must get real about the lives and interests of most of its customers. It needs to stop trying to cater for an audience it has largely lost, and who in any case seldom pay a licence fee but piggy-back on their parents’, and start to look after the core audience it is in imminent danger of losing. Otherwise, the next charter renewal procedure in 2027 could turn out to be its last.

      This BTL comment caught my eye (must be a Nottlr):

      Sharon Maugham
      26 Nov 2020 3:45PM
      I watched ‘Life’ recently, starring Alison Steadman. About a house divided into four flats and the families who live there. Enjoyed it, but couldn’t help noticing that the four families included: 1 black guy (tick), 1 mixed race guy (tick), 1 disabled girl plus her wheelchairbound friend (tick, tick), a gay couple (tick), and 2 lesbian couples (tick). I don’t mind, but it’s so heavy handed – really like a box ticking exercise – and not at all representative of ‘life’, not mine anyway.

      2. 1 disabled girl plus her wheelchairbound friend (tick, tick), a gay couple (tick), and 2 lesbian couples (tick)

        Not seen or heard of it (Life). Would I be correct in assuming that the above are all white people? Though one of the lesbians may be non-white.

        White privilege on-screen means hogging all the disabled & gay roles. While blacks are consigned to the able bodied, heterosexual backwater.

        The head count, boxticking is all worth noticing but just as important, if not more so, is who plays what. Who gets to be gay and disabled. Who gets to play the criminals, child molesters etc. Who gets to play the quiet, dignified law abiding, exemplary human beings and so on.

        Twice in the last week I’ve turned on the TV to see episodes of something called Grantchester having never seen one second of it before. It’s clever stuff – depicting a nostalgic view of 1950s Britain. Well, nostalgic except there are non-white people shoehorned in all over the place, overt homosexuality, lesbians and an aggressively feminist agenda.

        The funny thing is, both times I turned on the TV it was a scene with the two main characters interviewing a ‘suspect’ at the police station. I say ‘suspect’ as the first time it was a black youth, the second time a Pakistani and at this stage in 2020 is there a single person remaining fooled by this pathetic whodunnit routine? Because the second I see them on-screen I know they will turn out to be entirely innocent. All that remains is find out which white person dunnit instead. I don’t know why these productions even bother with the charade anymore.

        There’s only one place black and brown people commit crime and that’s in real life.

    2. This is article 6 (1) of the BBC’s charter

      To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and
      engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and
      impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s
      understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content
      should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and
      depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news
      providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing
      freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local,
      regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the
      democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens.

      As I understand it, the charter is the legal basis for the BBC to exist. Since it is in clear and blatant violation of its charter, its leaders should be held to account. They do a gross disservice to the country.

      As for ‘championing freedom of expression’ I suspect that supporters of President Trump were not graced with the same freedom as those of Mr. Biden in the US elections!

      1. ‘Morning, Sg. You know that, and I know that, but it’s not up for debate in view of the smothering of free speech…

    3. The BBC was typified by Robinson saying ‘Trump has lost this election. He is the loser in America.’

      Partisan, biased, blatant. That the election result hasn’t even been firmly declared is evidence of this. The BBC has an agenda and it is pushing it, at any cost.

    4. i’ve started to watch Al Jazeerah which will give you some idea of my opinion of the BBC’s impartiality!

      1. I gave you an upvote but be careful! Al Jazeera, at least in Arabic, emanates from Qatar and is the virtual mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood!

        1. That’s interesting Mr Sguest.

          Al Jazeera are very disapproving of the major problems in Cabo Delgado, whilst BBC totally ignores the problems of Islam there.

          1. I haven’t watched Al Jazeera or the BBC in English recently. But Al Jazeera in Arabic has a sinister agenda, especially against Egypt where the MB is quite rightly banned as a terrorist organisation.

          2. The BBC reporting of Rohinga was disgusting. Completely ignoring the decades of abuse the Buddhists had suffered and even when that was pointed out to try to claim the Muslims were still put upon – no, utterly foul.

    5. “whether they believed that the news programmes they watched were free of bias.

      The BBC scored just 58 per cent. Sky News was the highest-rated with 69 per cent, followed by Channel 4 (66 per cent), ITV (63 per cent) and Channel 5 (61 per cent).”

      Good God, why are there so many idiots in Britain?

  28. Why the imposition of harsh and questionable lockdowns? One reason, among many known only to Johnson et al, is to coerce the population into accepting the vaccine. The latter has been described as the light at the end of the tunnel, another lie, that light is the Great Reset train that is going to roll over the UK if this nonsense isn’t stopped.

    Regarding the Oxford botched dosage saga, it is out in the public domain but there is more to this story. Those keen to accept this potion should really read a bit more and not merely go with any advice or urging from Hancock et al.

    Full article here

    Stop Press: A poll has found that almost half of doctors would not take a rushed Covid vaccine. A poll of readers of Medscape UK found that of 308 UK doctors, 4 in 10 would not get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as one is approved by the MHRA. Medscape has the details.

    Lockdown Sceptics website here

      2. Even that poll could, and on the BBC would, have been presented as:

        “Nearly two thirds of doctors would jump at the chance of getting the new vaccine as soon as one is approved by the MHRA”

  29. So just over a month ago all our respected expert covid scientists and all our erudite politicians were saying that all we needed was a short lockdown to save Christmas and finish off the pandemic, i can’t remember all the silly names they gave it.
    Now just as we come to the end of the lockdown vast areas of the country are going into higher tiers than they were before the lockdown.
    So all that be concluded that it either never worked or they were just lying and stalling.
    When will all these people that have got everything wrong be held to account?

        1. Oh come on! What is it with you conspiracy theorists that leads you to answer ever post with an insult?

    3. Bob3, I assume that all these inconsistent lockdowns are a conditioning exercise to lead people into believing that they cannot live as they once did i.e. what was considered normal, and in future they will have to live under government prescribed “New Normal”? The latter phrase was bandied about quite regularly early on but appears to me to have dropped out, perhaps because it was seen as giving the game away. Build Back Better has taken over here and elsewhere and implies improvement is being planned. That idea is of course a fallacy for the population as a whole, the “Better” is for the people running this outrageous scam. Lockdown, or a derivative of this crime on the people will never be ended by Johnson and his successors, only the people can end it.

      1. Morning Korky,

        We have all been trained to separate our household waste into two seperate bins, newspapers/ glass / tin foil/ batteries etc , and then drag the appropriate bins on said days to the end of the driveway for collection.

        We have also been trained to remember when our road tax is due (car discs no longer required) and we now have many mantras to chant and remember .. Clunk Clink, Only a fool breaks the 2 second rule, hands face space , and so it goes on .

        We are so easily conditioned .. not quite to the extremes the Germans or North Koreans are , but we are getting there!

        1. Morning, T_B. Good points but this nonsense is on a different level with an underlying evil attached to it. Just looking at Hancock with that permanent, ‘I’ve got you where I want you’, smirk of superiority makes my blood boil.

    4. When will all these people that have got everything wrong be held to account?

      Morning Bob. Don’t hold your breath. We have some of the most egregious War Criminals on the planet walking the streets of the UK with no possibility of their apprehension and trial!

      1. 326838+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        As for deportation, not all the while
        the lab/lib/con rear exit coalition party has support.

        Rear exit not to be confused with Brexitexit.

  30. Morning all, I see the headline that 60 Tory MPs are threatening to vote against the cut in foreign aid.
    I do hope some MSM rag publishes their names so we all know who they are.

    2. 326838+ up ticks,
      Morning VVOF,
      I have then ALL down as gunners the westminster political artillery, gunna do this, gunna do that, masters at firing a rhetorical salvo of sh!te and hitting the gullible ovis
      every time.

      1. Another con by the Cons!
        In these troubled times the foreign aid should not be subject to any percentage of GDP. 0% is toom high, we borrow money to give away!

  31. BREAKING NEWS

    In an effort to boost morale among the elderly during these anxious times, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that a new award will be granted in the New Year’s Honours List. All those born in 1950, or before, will be entitled to this award, which has been modelled on the Army’s “Theatre Honour” system, honouring units which have made a significant contribution in a theatre of war. Speaking in an interview this morning, the Prime Minister explained:

    “This brilliant new award recognises the immense sacrifices and sterling contribution made by the older generation, who kept our amazing country strong and .. er … amazing … through the difficult years of the struggle to rebuild our broken economy that followed the Second World War.

    The award will be known as the “Distinguished National Resolve” ribbon and all those that qualify by date of birth will be entitled to use the post-nominal letters,
    DNR.”

    1. A cunning ploy to assign those born in 1950 or before to have DNR written after their name when entering hospital.☹️

        2. Peddy has gone off in sulk after being told off by Ndovu and JSP has got repetitive strain injury from downvoting.

          Welcome back.

    5. You have been missed DM, and a few weeks ago , to tempt you back I put some nice music on here for you..

      Road to the Isles .. sung by Harry Lauder.

      Hope all is well with you and your family.

    6. Todays’statement from the PM:

      “The most brilliantly triffic thing about me and my amazingly brilliant and triffic government is just how fantastically, brilliantly, amazingly and triffically well we have handled Covid.”

      (Boris is hoping to be awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Hyperbollicks)

      1. The sight of Johnson and Hancock yesterday laughing and smirking on the front benches yesterday was disgraceful and distasteful in the extreme in our given circumstances. There was no evidence of concern or gravity. They could scarcely contain their glee. They must go.

  33. I got an answer for the buffoon and foreign aid. Give no money to anybody but offer free doses of the COVID vaccine.

    That might well kill two birds with one stone! Cheap at half the price.

    1. He is right about Labour destabliising Britain, but that was Phase One. Phase Two is what the Tories are doing now.

      1. 326838+ up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        He is right alright then the transition took place so did the
        continuation proving IMO they were/ are a coalition.
        Post referendum the make believe tory’s I am sure could not believe their luck, believing all their eids had come at once
        still having support after the nine month delay action via may the treacherous.
        The political ratchet clicks up success on a daily basis, with a great deal of ovis help.

    2. I used to think the JRM was the answer until I realised that I was not asking the right questions.

      1. 326838+ up ticks,
        R,
        Running escort to the wire for may the treacherous, support / opposition, stock pacifying phrases, one more little shove, nearly there, exit in sight.

    1. In essence, it is against international law to impose vaccination without consent. This is the Nuremberg Code, set out after the trials at Nuremberg.
      Those who decide to impose compulsory vaccination are wearing the same white coat and using the same ethics as Dr Mengele.

      1. I think I read it first last week on Lockdown Sceptics. But I thought that piece was quite well-written.

      2. I sent mine the pdf version of the lead article on Lockdown sceptics this morning, setting out in a very scientific way the faults with PCR testing.

  37. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7b689db277974c1a992ebb067b9151b36e6f75102abc9ccb00ade2bd56caf26c.png

    A customer asked me: How much will it cost to make a table?”

    I answered him: “£1,500.”

    He said: “That’s expensive for this job!”

    I asked: “How much do you think it would cost you?”

    He answers me: “£800 maximum. That’s a pretty simple job, right?”

    The conversation continued: “For £800 I invite you to do it yourself.”

    “But … I don’t know how to.”

    “For £800 I’ll teach you how to. That way, besides saving you £700, you’ll get the knowledge for the next time you want to make one.”

    It seemed right to him and he agreed. I continued: “However, to get started you need tools: a table saw, a planer, a pillar drill, glue, clamps, a jointer, a band saw, etc, etc.”

    “But I don’t have all this equipment … and I can’t buy all of these for one job!”

    “Well then, for £250 more I’ll rent my stuff to you so you can do it yourself.”

    “Okay,” he says.

    “Okay! On Tuesday I’ll be waiting for you to start doing this work.”

    “Oh, I can’t on Tuesday. I only have time today.”

    “I’m sorry, but I’m only available Tuesday to teach you and lend you my stuff. Other days I’m busy with other customers.”

    “Does that means I’m going to have to sacrifice my Tuesday, give up my tasks?”

    “I forgot. To do your job yourself, you also have to pay for the nonproductive factors.”

    “That is? What are those?”

    “Overheads, bureaucracy, taxes, VAT, security, insurance, fuel, electricity, heating, light, etc.”

    “Oh no! To accomplish these tasks I’m going to have to spend more money and waste a lot of time!”

    “Look, I’ll make you all the material you need. Lorry loading is done Monday evening or Tuesday morning. You’ll have to come at 6.00 a.m. for the loading of the lorry. Don’t forget to be on time to avoid traffic jams and be on time.”

    “6.00 a.m! Nope! That’s far too early for me! I used to getting up much later.”

    “You know, I’ve been thinking. In order to get the job done, I’d be better off paying you the £1,500.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “When you pay for a job, especially handcrafted, you pay not only for the material used, but also:
    Knowledge,
    Experience,
    Training,
    Tools,
    Services,
    Time,
    Punctuality,
    Accountability,
    Professionalism,
    Accuracy,
    Guarantee,
    Patents,
    Sacrifices,
    Safety and security,
    Payment of tax obligations.
    No one can denigrate other people’s work by judging prices. Only by knowing all the elements necessary for the production of a certain work can you estimate the actual cost.”

    I did not write this dialogue, but am sharing it to support craftsmen and entrepreneurs.

    1. This quote is attributed to John Ruskin

      There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey. It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

      1. Astronaut John Glenn:
        “I guess the question I’m asked the most often is: “When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?” Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

      3. As well as the purchaser of the cheap product, the manufacturers and retailers of the better quality product are also cheated of the sales that should be theirs.

      4. I think it was Neil Armstrong, before his trip to the moon, said he is reminded that all the parts which make up the rocket are supplied by the lowest bidder

      6. As well as the purchaser of the cheap product, the manufacturers and retailers of the better quality product are also cheated of the sales that should be theirs.

    3. Good morning, Grizzly. When I was a cinema manager I was often asked to be present at work by some Head Office or other person who wanted to visit. I explained that Tuesday was my day off, but that I was always present all day on a Saturday. “But I don’t work on a Saturday” was their usual reply, to which I replied “Nor do I on a Tuesday.”

        1. I have always worked in jobs where you are literally ‘on the job’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – but you then had long breaks in which to recover and do other things.

          A boarding school housemaster who also teaches 30 lessons a week, runs a different sporting team each term, gets involved in drama and music and other cultural and academic activities starts work a few days before term starts and continues until after the end of term.

          In our current work, running our residential courses, it is the same – we are always on duty when our students are with us but we try to make the most of the time when we are not running our courses and we go sailing!

          1. When I moved into my first rent-free police house in 1974 I was told, in no uncertain terms, that it was rent-free because I was never off duty! I had to be ready, able and willing to undertake any duty at any time, day or night.

            [Of course, it was never mentioned that it was rent-free due to the paltry wage I received at the time.]

    5. ‘Morning Grizz,on the same lines,the bloke has a car that won’t start,has it towed to the garage and the mechanic examines it closely then picks up a hammer and gives it a clout
      “Try it now sir”
      The car starts first turn of the key
      “Fantastic” says the punter “How much is that”
      £50 sir says the mechanic
      “£50,that’s outrageous,all you did was hit it with a hammer”
      “No,pal the £50 is for knowing where and how hard to whack it”

    1. A magnificent animal, in my expert* opinion, Bill.

      *I’m known in the clachan as a fine judge of pussy.

          3. He was robbing booze stores to fill the house with good cheer for his 50 family visitors over the “festive” season.

          4. Well jolly good for him! We are doing much the same! But we only have 3 b(a)ubbles! Winning!

          6. How very nice to read you, HJ.
            I mam pleased to know your
            Christmas preparations are
            coming along nicely.

        1. We’ve had a lovely day here in Derbyshire and I’ve got 2/3 of the woodstack I’m refilling done.
          Unfortunately, as the sun dips below the valley sides at 13:00, it gets cold VERY quickly so I abandoned today’s efforts about 14:30ish with cold toes & fingers.

          1. I have also just finished splitting and stacking some firewood. It is quite a warming task isn’t it?

          2. Knackering too.
            Once sawn & split, I then have to lob it over another woodstack before actually stacking it.
            I’ve got 5 stacks. The Pantry Stack, which is outside the pantry.
            The Hollybush stack, next to the holly bush and 3 conjoined stacks between them, one of which is the one I’m rebuilding. I should finish this winter with 1½ of the original stacks unburnt.

          6. Here’s a good read: Norwegian Wood, by Lars Mytting. All about how to cut, split, stack, dry & burn firewood.
            https://www.bookdepository.com/Norwegian-Wood-Lars-Mytting/9780857052551?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base1&utm_source=NO&utm_content=Norwegian-Wood&selectCurrency=NOK&w=AF7LAU9SJTPRBDA8VC2D&pdg=pla-293946777986:cmp-8702387657:adg-93158610611:crv-408426388788:pos-:dev-c&gclid=CjwKCAiA5IL-BRAzEiwA0lcWYuwg5s7eKMIpg6tziu3isxXuJS-cyjdfg_FtZEQpXFTs16BqB2UWlRoCYpQQAvD_BwE

        2. It has here too, real fen weather although we are at the most southerly end of the fens almost in Hertfordshire.

        3. Clear, but decidedly cold here. I have bit the bullet and lit the Rayburn, which will now stay in until Spring. It smoked liked Vesuvius about to blow until I got the chimney drawing; I had forgotten just how much we needed to heat up the joints before they stopped letting smoke through 🙁

          2. Who? Is Duncan back? I’ve been steam cleaning the bathroom and am looking a bit woolly haired (headed!)

    1. 326838+ up ticks.
      Afternoon Rik,
      If we could have a penny for every mile a UKIP activist had walked over the years in setting up the referendum we would nigh on settle up the nation dept.
      Plus all the anti UKIP rhetorical abuse Not from brussels mainly but from these Isles whilst the abusers were busy via the polling booth building our present odious maladies.

      This time nearly five years ago we were looking forward to leaving the eu up until
      the cry rent the air “We” have won, now leave it to the tory’s.

  42. From the Grauniad [via the BBC papers]: The Guardian’s front page reports that a former neighbour of Matt Hancock is supplying the government with “tens of millions” of vials for NHS Covid-19 tests “despite having had no previous experience of producing medical supplies”. Alex Bourne denied that he profited from his personal contact with the health secretary. He told the Guardian that after offering his services to Mr Hancock in a Whatsapp message, he was directed to a Department of Health website where he formally submitted details of the work his firm could do. Mr Bourne’s lawyers said there was no further follow-up with Mr Hancock after this. A health department spokesperson said it did not comment on Mr Hancock’s personal relationships.

    2. 326838+ Up ticks,
      Morning SB
      Does he wear a towel on his head and answer to Mo, if so really,really worry.
      Would the brother hood like to amend the vials in any shape or form ?

    3. According to the blurb for Mr. Bourne’s company, they are a packaging company” with a conscience”, so that’s OK then! Phew!

    4. The cronyism of this government has been blatantly obvious for months. The appointment of Dido Harding to run the ‘world beating’ embarrassment Test and Trace was an obvious signal.

      Edit: Harding.

      3. Ah yes, Dido Harding – from Wiki: She is a former chief executive of the Talk Talk group where she faced calls for her to resign after a cyber attack revealed the details of four million customers. A member of the Conservative Party, Harding is a friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron. Harding was appointed as a member of the House of Lords by Cameron in 2014.

          2. BT was bad enough – Talktalk was worse – we went back to BT in 2011 after six years of Talktalk. Took a bit of getting out as well, and in the end I had to demand my refund which they should have paid earlier.

  43. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/carole-cadwalladr-should-now-return-her-orwell-prize

    “Carole Cadwalladr should now return her Orwell Prize | The Spectator

    A small but significant event has just occurred. This morning the legal case between Arron Banks and the journalist Carole Cadwalladr was due to start. The case came about because of Cadwalladr’s claim that Arron Banks – who was a founder of the Leave.EU campaign (the non-official Leave campaign) – was offered money by the Russians. Cadwalladr has been going around for years making these and other unfounded accusations in every forum and on every platform she can manage. It is not as though her campaign has been obscure. The Observer newspaper has supported her, and as her entirely unsubstantiated claims grew, she was shamefully awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism.

    Although she claimed to see Russian agents everywhere it was finally Banks who decided to sue Cadwalladr. She crowdfunded – posing as the underdog truth-teller against the big rich Russian agent – and then last night (having rinsed her supporters for cash till the last minute) she pulled out of the hearing. As Guido reports here she conceded that she had no evidence and could not go ahead with the case. She is now reportedly forced to pay a first down-payment of £62,000 in costs, with more to come.

    Perhaps it is necessary to say at this point that I have never met either Banks or Cadwalladr and have no special love for either of them. But what has just happened is something that should cause a certain ripple of consequences.

    Firstly, it should be noted that the campaign of defamation which Cadwalladr has engaged in over recent years has been poisonous. I have read many of her unsourced, unsubstantiated claims with amazement that they were ever published. For years she has pumped these claims about Russian agents and Russian money throughout our body politic. In the process she has not only attacked individuals, but every member of the British public who voted for Brexit in 2016.

    Cadwalladr and her financial backers have for years pretended that the British public were misled into voting for Brexit. Instead of listening to the genuine concerns of their fellow citizens they engaged in a smear-campaign against us. They pretended there were not serious reasons to vote the way we did, but only vacuous, stupid people, led down the wrong road by agents of a foreign power. It was an outrageous claim, outrageously encouraged and tolerated by Cadwalladr’s colleagues and peers because she seemed to be confirming their own bigotries and prejudices.

    She and her friends pumped poisonous toxins into post-2016 Britain, from a position of considerable privilege and with some serious financial backing of their own. Now, when Cadwalladr has to stand up just one of her claims in court it turns out – as some of us guessed all along – that she cannot. She never had the evidence to justify her attacks on Banks or the British public.

    A decade ago Cadwalladr’s predecessor Johann Hari was forced to hand back the Orwell Prize for journalism after being found to be dishonest in his reporting. Perhaps this year Cadwalladr could do the decent thing and voluntarily hand back her award as well. Her behaviour has in fact been far more damaging to this country and the journalistic trade than Hari’s ever was. It is one thing if a newspaper wants to continue to publish the unsubstantiated claims of a conspiracy theorist. It is quite another that a distinguished award for journalism should continue to encourage such behaviour.”

    1. Those making serious accusations must be free to do so but they must also accept that there may and should be consequences from making allegations that prove to be without foundation.

    3. I remember my dismay that the Paul Foot prize was awarded to John Sweeney who maligned the reputation of doctors trying to protect babies from lethal parents.

    4. Are Putin and Soros the same person? I am getting confused because both seem to be responsible for everything that happens nowadays.

        1. To me Putin gives me the impression that he is much more honest than our own politicians.

    5. Why is it acceptable for O’Bama and Biden to be anti-Brexit but not acceptable for any other foreign politicians to be in favour of Brexit?

      And why do they want Jordan Peterson to be silenced when BLM can get away with preaching anti-white racist filth?

      1. Why are they so anti brexit? They can talk about Irish land borders but really to them, what does it matter? They can probably screw the UK in aunilateraltrade deal far more easily than they will be able to when dealing with the EU treaty approval process. Must be a big irish democrat voter base.

        Blm racist filth? You haven’t been paying attention have you? Only white man speaks racist.

    1. Two queues.
      On the right, you get the real thing.
      On the left, an unknown substance on the cotton bud.

      1. 326838+up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        I see it as a more sinister movement updated from history appertaining to the re-set campaign, on the left to work, on the right,to shower.

  46. The USA contains the best of minds, and the worst of minds …. why so many of the latter?:

    Had King James’s Privy Council contained a proto-Anthony Fauci in 1620, there might not have been a Thanksgiving holiday for the current-day Fauci and his peers to cancel four centuries later. The transatlantic voyage that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock would have been unthinkable under the ‘stay safe’ philosophy that now governs American life.

    Nearly half the 102 occupants of the Mayflower died in their first year of settlement at Plymouth, sometimes at a rate of three a day. Such a mortality rate was predictable. The earlier outpost at Jamestown, founded in 1607, lost 66 of its original 104 settlers in its first nine months. By 1609, following the also predictable loss at sea of a ship coming to resupply the colony, starvation at Jamestown had grown so dire that residents dug corpses from their graves to eat any remaining flesh, later reported the colony’s first president in 1625.

    Other early settlement casualties included the outpost of Roanoke, which simply disappeared. Overall, for every six would-be colonists who ventured across the Atlantic, only one survived, according to one estimate. Trying to establish a new life in the New World was most definitely not ‘safe’.

    And yet the voyagers kept coming, driven by something beyond safetyism — religious zeal, ambition, passion for discovery, the desire for greater freedom. Those Americans who later spread across the continent, whether as solo explorers or in wagon trains, likewise eschewed a ‘stay safe’ philosophy.

    Today, we are strangling American society in order to avoid a risk of death so infinitesimal — roughly 0.001 percent — for the majority of Americans that it would not have registered in any possible cost-benefit analysis governing both notable American endeavors and quotidian activities over the last four centuries. Our current Thanksgiving Day mantras — ‘Stay within your pod. Stay within your bubble. Stay within your household’ (in the words of a University of California, San Francisco, epidemiologist); don’t travel, don’t share food, don’t touch your family members or friends, speak only in hushed tones — make a mockery of the spirit that creates a country and sustains human life.

    This present moment is less like that first Thanksgiving celebration and more like the Salem witch frenzy of 1692. To be sure, the coronavirus is real; witches were not. The virus has cost thousands of lives; witches did not. But the fear that has gripped much of the population over the last year, whipped up by sundry experts and authorities, is as disconnected from reason as that emblematic burst of hysteria in colonial Massachusetts and other such panics throughout medieval and early modern Europe. The shared features of all such contagious fear events include the following:

    The belief in ubiquitous threat
    Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has advised Los Angelenos to ‘assume that everyone you encounter is infected’. Under even the most liberal assumptions of undetected community spread, however, only a small fraction of Los Angeles’s population would be infected and currently contagious.

    As for the threat of death, most of the population faces none from the virus. The average age of coronavirus decedents is 80, which is four years higher than the average life expectancy for US males in 2018 and just a year under the average life expectancy of females. Most decedents have underlying co-morbities. Up to two-thirds of coronavirus casualties may have died of other causes by the end of 2020. Forty percent of US coronavirus deaths have occurred in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Sadly, death is already the fate of virtually all residents of such facilities, however much we may understandably try to defer it.

    Scapegoats and stigma
    Public officials have piled onto those intransigents who do not wear masks in the great outdoors, blaming them for the spread. Outdoor mask refuseniks have been screamed at and shamed by citizen enforcers of the outdoor mask dogma. The media imply false causal connections: ‘Wisconsin health officials reported more jaw-dropping COVID-19 infection numbers Thursday,’ recently reported the Chicago Tribune, ‘as people continued to flaunt recommendations to wear masks’ (emphasis added). But there is no evidence for open-air transmission, absent highly unusual packed settings and prolonged contact. Transmission, per the CDC’s own contact tracing guidelines, requires a cumulative 15 minutes of close contact with an infected person, overwhelmingly in poorly ventilated, cramped indoor settings. In the outdoors, circulating air disperses any possible viral dose to the point of non-existence, even if most outdoor encounters were not too fleeting to be of concern.

    People who have recovered from the virus are shunned as pariahs, despite their lack of infectious status.

    Amulets and ritualistic gestures
    The mask is believed to possess totemic power, even though there is little evidence that its use correlates inversely with community spread or that it protects wearers from infection. A new gesture is being added to the ritual of ostentatious plein air mask-wearing: the supplemental hand defense. In the faculty housing area of the University of California, Irvine, masked walkers now regularly cover their mask with their hands if they see an unmasked passerby approach, no matter the large berth each will give the other and their short-lived proximity.

    Magical formulas and the arbitrary exercise of government power
    Once hysteria takes over, any expectation that public officials will act according to reason is discarded. New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio has long set a metric for re-closing the city’s schools: a three percent infection rate among the tested population. He arrived at the number in conjunction with the teacher’s union. How did the mayor and union come up with it? We don’t know. Is it related to anything real? By definition, no. The evidence is by now overwhelming that children have virtually no risk of dying from the virus, nor do they spread it to adults. A random sample of 16,000 students and staff in New York City schools yielded only 28 positive tests; none of those cases resulted in serious illness or death. The New York City school system, were it a free-standing community, would be among the nation’s safest places to reside. Nevertheless, the mayor, along with other mayors across the country, has now reshut the public schools, guaranteeing that the academic skills of black and Hispanic children will fall further behind those of whites and Asians. More racial strife and phony charges of systemic racism will follow.

    Virginia requires that children from age two onwards wear masks. Such a practice, lacking any grounding in actual science, will likely have crippling psychological consequences.

    The rising caseload and the oncoming Thanksgiving holiday have triggered a new explosion of arbitrary government dictates. Oregon’s governor is limiting social gatherings to no more than six people. How did she arrive at that number? By no known body of evidence. If it existed, presumably the six-person ceiling would be universal. But Yolo County, California (where Sacramento is located), has a 16-person cap on Thanksgiving and other gatherings, while Kentucky is limiting Thanksgiving to eight people from two different households. The state of California magnanimously allows a grand total of three households. Before celebrating such relative liberality, note that California requires that the lucky three social units (whose members must of course all be masked) disperse after two hours. That three-household, two-hour ceiling applies even if the gathering occurs in a public park, where the chance of transmission is at its lowest ebb.

    Without any advance warning, Los Angeles County shut down all outdoor dining on November 23, signing the death warrant for thousands of restaurants and casting thousands of workers back into unemployment. Restaurant owners had invested thousands of dollars into outdoor heat lamps and other outdoor dining equipment; they will have to throw out thousands of dollars of food.

    Los Angeles County has no evidence of any transmission among outdoor diners. It is reacting blindly to a rising case count, even though more than 72 percent of the new cases reported on November 21 were in the lowest risk category — people under 50 — and nearly half of the 34 county residents who died of COVID-19 on November 21 (per the usual over-inclusive count methodology) were over 80. Protecting those octogenarians does not require wholesale business destruction.

    The experts are so confident in their fear-induced hold over the popular mind that they feel no compunction about self-contradiction. The CDC has acknowledged that there is little surface transmission of the virus. Yet it recommends that should someone be so rash as to attend a Thanksgiving gathering outside his home, he must bring his own food and utensils so as to avoid touching his host’s kitchenware. We are regressing further back along the civilizational path to medieval times, when everyone carried around his own spoon on his belt. At least those medieval trenchermen followed the environmentally sound practice of reusing their spoons. The CDC advises that all utensils and plates be thrown out after the Thanksgiving meal, showing yet again that environmentalism is usually just empty virtue-signaling.

    The experts fear no rebellion over rules that destroy the very thing that they purport to regulate. Bringing your own meal to Thanksgiving and not even sharing it cancels the spirit of holiday. Thanksgiving becomes indistinguishable from those cheerless ‘family dinners’ where every teenager microwaves his own chosen frozen food and then slinks back with it to the privacy of his bedroom and smartphone.

    Fetishes
    Case counts have been the object of veneration for months, despite their near meaninglessness. The obsession with the case count is an implicit admission that the death rates have been a disappointment, for they are falling rather than increasing. Currently, infections among the young make up the lion’s share of new cases; in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for example, 61 percent of confirmed and probable cases are connected to the university there. Most of these cases among the young are asymptomatic: the infection is so mild that the infected person is unaware he even has it. These infections are being picked up thanks to mandatory testing in college and school settings. It is not just the young, however, that are frequently asymptomatic. Across the entire population, a whopping 40-45 percent of cases are initially unknown to their bearer before a test comes in positive.

    A rising case count among the least at-risk population is not something to be feared, since it heralds the approach of herd immunity. Males in the 20-29 age bracket without underlying conditions have 99.9997 chance of surviving a coronavirus infection; females in that age bracket have a 99.9998 survival rate. The risk of death is 630 times higher for individuals age 85 and over compared to 18- to 29-year-olds.

    Yet since the start of the pandemic, the media and their bevy of public health sources have histrionically covered case counts, usually on an hourly basis, as if they signaled imminent doom. A curious thing has happened of late, however. We are only now learning that the summer was not a time of crisis, contrary to the daily headlines. That period is now being cast as a halcyon benchmark against which the current dark crisis is to be measured. ‘There is a real danger in complacency, and we are seeing the effects of that play out in real time,’ an infectious diseases specialist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School recently told the Washington Post. ‘Across the country, we have begun to see another increase in infections and deaths after a period of time with low transmission.’ Who knew? Neither the experts nor the media let on that we were ever in a period of low transmission.

    And despite today’s raging headlines, the current crisis is still largely anticipatory. Los Angeles County’s director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, has been leaning heavily on the promise of future disaster. ‘This much of an increase in cases may very well result in tremendous suffering and tragic deaths down the road,’ she told the Los Angeles Times on November 12. For now, however, the number of hospitals that are severely burdened nationally is small; at least a quarter of all cases now being labeled as coronavirus hospitalizations in the daily media count were likely admitted for other problems and only retroactively classified as coronavirus cases following a positive test. California governor Gavin Newsom has put 94 percent of the states’ residents under another stay-at-home order. But only six percent of the state’s hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, up from four percent in early November.

    Nationally, the case fatality rate and presumed infection fatality rate continue to drop.

    Human sacrifice
    Almost all the businesses being sacrificed on the altar of coronavirus fear are as innocent as the vestal virgins of old. The public health authorities have no idea what is driving the current spread. They have no hard evidence that outdoor or indoor restaurant meals are responsible; they certainly have no evidence that shopping is responsible. And yet millions of livelihoods are being destroyed in the exercise of inebriating, limitless power. ‘We don’t want you going into restaurants and sitting and eating outside, and we don’t want you going into retail establishments either,’ Los Angeles’s ubiquitous Barbara Ferrer pronounced recently. Ferrer has no basis for stigmatizing retail establishments.

    The shaming of heretics and dissenters
    Neuroradiologist Stanford scientist Scott Atlas and the physician scientists who signed the Great Barrington Declaration have been denounced for challenging the efficacy of economic lockdowns, school shutdowns, and outdoor mask requirements. Their heresies have been borne out by the evidence.

    False agency
    The director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, a major purveyor of pandemic panic, claimed in the Wall Street Journal that the pandemic was threatening ‘jobs and businesses’. It is not the pandemic that is threatening jobs and businesses, however, political decision-making is. COVID is also ascribed a power that it does not likely have. The New York Times has dedicated a special section to ‘those we’ve lost’ from COVID (ignoring the many more people we lose each day to cancer and heart disease). One alleged COVID casualty was a 101-year-old veteran. We are to believe that without COVID, he would have lived an indefinite number of further years.

    An advanced civilization builds towards the future, as the Pilgrims and other New World settlers understood. It accumulates social and economic capital to be drawn on by individual discoverers and entrepreneurs for further progress. Now, however, we are cannibalizing our economic inheritance, in the fantastical belief that government transfer payments, generated from ever increased debt, can substitute for private economic activity. Our capital, now being recklessly destroyed by arbitrary government fiat, will take generations to rebuild. We take for granted everything that hard-won prosperity has provided us — well-functioning services (compared to Third World disorder), dependable maintenance, the luxury of choice. We will miss such prosperity when it follows the fate of those millions of businesses whose loss is causing despair, substance abuse, and suicide.

    A mature civilization understands that risk is part of life and that there are higher purposes — even mere sociability — than avoiding death at all costs. No great venture can be accomplished if staying safe is life’s only guiding principle. Now, however, our elites mock courage and perseverance, explicitly repudiating the virtues that built this country. President Trump, upon leaving the hospital after a coronavirus infection, admonished the country to not ‘be afraid’ of the virus, in the Washington Post’s words, and to not ‘allow it to dominate’ our lives. That imminently reasonable exhortation, once expected in a leader, is still being denounced by public health experts and the media nearly two months later. If Americans do not repudiate this ethic of fear, future Thanksgivings will be even bleaker than this year’s.

    Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

    https://spectator.us/salem-thanksgiving-coronavirus-panic-safetyism/

    1. A “mature civilisation”? With BPAPM and Halfcock and Glove in charge? So say nothing of Witless and Unbalanced.

  47. You can take the horse to the water, but you can’t force him to drink:

    5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms

    Surely the journalist class should be intrigued by the historic implausibility of Joe Biden’s victory. That they are not is curious, to say the least.

    By J.B. Shurk
    NOVEMBER 23, 2020

    In all the excitement among objective journalists for Joe Biden’s declared victory, reporters are missing how extraordinary the Democrat’s performance was in the 2020 election. It’s not just that the former vice president is on track to become the oldest president in American history, it’s what he managed to accomplish at the polls this year.

    Candidate Joe Biden was so effective at animating voters in 2020 that he received a record number of votes, more than 15 million more than Barack Obama received in his re-election of 2012. Amazingly, he managed to secure victory while also losing in almost every bellwether county across the country. No presidential candidate has been capable of such electoral jujitsu until now.

    While Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 totals in every urban county in the United States, he outperformed her in the metropolitan areas of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Even more surprising, the former VP put up a record haul of votes, despite Democrats’ general failures in local House and state legislative seats across the nation.

    He accomplished all this after receiving a record low share of the primary vote compared to his Republican opponent heading into the general election. Clearly, these are tremendous and unexpected achievements that would normally receive sophisticated analysis from the journalist class but have somehow gone mostly unmentioned during the celebrations at news studios in New York City and Washington, D.C.

    The massive national political realignment now taking place may be one source of these surprising upsets. Yet still, to have pulled so many rabbits out of his hat like this, nobody can deny that Biden is a first-rate campaigner and politician, the likes of which America has never before seen. Let’s break down just how unique his political voodoo has been in 2020.

    1. 80 Million Votes
    Holy moly! A lot of Americans turned out for a Washington politician who’s been in office for nearly 50 years. Consider this: no incumbent president in nearly a century and a half has gained votes in a re-election campaign and still lost.

    President Trump gained more than ten million votes since his 2016 victory, but Biden’s appeal was so substantial that it overcame President Trump’s record support among minority voters. Biden also shattered Barack Obama’s own popular vote totals, really calling into question whether it was not perhaps Biden who pulled Obama across the finish lines in 2008 and 2012.

    Proving how sharp his political instincts are, the former VP managed to gather a record number of votes while consistently trailing President Trump in measures of voter enthusiasm. Biden was so savvy that he motivated voters unenthusiastic about his campaign to vote for him in record numbers.

    2. Winning Despite Losing Most Bellwether Counties
    Biden is set to become the first president in 60 years to lose the states of Ohio and Florida on his way to election. For a century, these states have consistently predicted the national outcome, and they have been considered roughly representative of the American melting pot as a whole. Despite national polling giving Biden a lead in both states, he lost Ohio by eight points and Florida by more than three.

    For Biden to lose these key bellwethers by notable margins and still win the national election is newsworthy. Not since the Mafia allegedly aided John F. Kennedy in winning Illinois over Richard Nixon in 1960 has an American president pulled off this neat trick.

    Even more unbelievably, Biden is on his way to winning the White House after having lost almost every historic bellwether county across the country. The Wall Street Journal and The Epoch Times independently analyzed the results of 19 counties around the United States that have nearly perfect presidential voting records over the last 40 years. President Trump won every single bellwether county, except Clallam County in Washington.

    Whereas the former VP picked up Clallam by about three points, President Trump’s margin of victory in the other 18 counties averaged over 16 points. In a larger list of 58 bellwether counties that have correctly picked the president since 2000, Trump won 51 of them by an average of 15 points, while the other seven went to Biden by around four points. Bellwether counties overwhelmingly chose President Trump, but Biden found a path to victory anyway.

    3. Biden Trailed Clinton Except in a Select Few Cities
    Patrick Basham, a pollster with an accurate track record and the director of the Democracy Institute in D.C., highlighted two observations made by fellow colleagues, polling guru Richard Baris of Big Data Poll and Washington Post election analyst Robert Barnes. Baris noted a statistical oddity from 2020’s election returns: “Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.”

    Barnes added that in those “big cities in swing states run by Democrats…the vote even exceeded the number of registered voters.” In the states that mattered most, so many mail-in ballots poured in for Biden from the cities that he put up record-breaking numbers and overturned state totals that looked like comfortable leads for President Trump.

    If Democrats succeed in eliminating the Electoral College, Biden’s magic formula for churning out overwhelming vote totals in a handful of cities should make the Democrats unbeatable.

    4. Biden Won Despite Democrat Losses Everywhere Else
    Randy DeSoto noted in The Western Journal that “Donald Trump was pretty much the only incumbent president in U.S. history to lose his re-election while his own party gained seats in the House of Representatives.” Now that’s a Biden miracle!

    In 2020, The Cook Political Report and The New York Times rated 27 House seats as toss-ups going into Election Day. Right now, Republicans appear to have won all 27. Democrats failed to flip a single state house chamber, while Republicans flipped both the House and Senate in New Hampshire and expanded their dominance of state legislatures across the country.

    Christina Polizzi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, went so far as to state: “It’s clear that Trump isn’t an anchor for the Republican legislative candidates. He’s a buoy.” Amazingly, Biden beat the guy who lifted all other Republicans to victory. Now that’s historic!

    5. Biden Overcame Trump’s Commanding Primary Vote
    In the past, primary vote totals have been remarkably accurate in predicting general election winners. Political analyst David Chapman highlighted three historical facts before the election.

    First, no incumbent who has received 75 percent of the total primary vote has lost re-election. Second, President Trump received 94 percent of the primary vote, which is the fourth highest of all time (higher than Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, or Obama). In fact, Trump is only one of five incumbents since 1912 to receive more than 90 percent of the primary vote.

    Third, Trump set a record for most primary votes received by an incumbent when more than 18 million people turned out for him in 2020 (the previous record, held by Bill Clinton, was half that number). For Biden to prevail in the general election, despite Trump’s historic support in the primaries, turns a century’s worth of prior election data on its head.

    Joe Biden achieved the impossible. It’s interesting that many more journalists aren’t pointing that out.

    https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/

    J.B. Shurk is a proud American from Daniel Boone country.

    1. I also heard that the average age of people dying of Covid was higher than the average age at which people normally die prompting the view that one should try to get Covid in order to live longer!

      1. Life expectancy in this country is an average of 81. Average age of those dying of (or with) covid this year is 82.4.

        1. Correct, but if you reach the 81 year average, your life expectancy is something like another 5 years, so what Covid is doing is killing the elderly earlier than expected (obviously).

    1. Easy way round the ban – buy a bag of crisps, even if it is ‘served’ on a plate. Maybe pubs can start selling mini mince pies to supplement their drinks. A local independent clothing store has started selling cans of cheap fizzy drink so that they can stay open (as a ‘grocery’ store).

      1. All running on gas, and lots of import across the channel, where they are smart enough to have useful nuclear power.

    1. I have been banging on about this for some time. The moment Nigel Farage made the gross mistake of withdrawing his candidates from constituencies where a Conservative Remainer held the seat a proper Brexit was likely to be lost.

      Why did Nigel lose his nerve at the vital moment? It has destroyed his credibility.

      1. I don’t think he lost his nerve. I think he believed that Boris was going to do the right thing. I did!

        1. Indeed – and I also believe that it was his only choice, because he couldn’t guarantee all Tory voters would switch to TBP, thus winning and avoiding splitting the vote and letting Labour/Lib Dem candidates in.

          At the next election (assuming we have one that is not rigged like the US and we’re not a dictatorship openly run by the civil service and corporates), TBP/Reform Party will have its chance, because the rest of the mainstream parties have lost all credibility, rather like the MSM.

          Eventually, the masses will see through what has been going on/covered up over the last 4 years (and especially since the pandemic broke and the goings on at the recent US elections). I just hope it isn’t too late to turn things around before we go beyond the point of no return.

          Unfortunately, too many on the political Right have been more keen to pontificate from their homes and offices, rather than roll their sleeves up and do something – i.e. taking risks and not just keep putting out videos critcising the left in order to make a nice pile of cash.

          1. TBP suffers from the same problem as LibLabCon. They all believe the problems caused by Thatcherite economics can be fixed by more Thatcherite economics.

          2. The last time we had any ‘Thatcherite economics’, Mrs T was PM. Not since. And even during her time in office, it slowly waned as the Heathites, aka the wets, aka The Cameroons/Mayites (essentially Blairites wearing a blue rosette) retook control.

          3. Don’t be silly, it started with the IMF visit to the UK in 1977 and hasn’t stopped since. Lurching from one crisis to the next patching things with short term fix attempts like sticking plasters on broken bones. Economically since the mid-late seventies we’ve been neoliberal and monetarist. Economic stats are put above people’s well-being. Unemployment is ingrained and tolerated as people have to be sacrificed to the god of 2% inflation. Trying to balance imports and exports. Nah why do that when we can sell land to foreign investors and compound the problem of domestic house price inflation which has already priced many out of buying a home at a reasonable age. Years spent in austerity with mass unemployment for nothing but ideological reasons, and fear of inflation without ever really understanding where inflation comes from. If you think economically that Blair, Cameron et al were any different from Thatcher you’d be wrong. The differences between them are social not economic.

          1. Not often you’re wrong but, damn me, you’re right again! I, on the other hand, am not! Such high hopes eh?

          2. I have become a terrible cynic, unfortunately. I used to believe the best of people, but I have learned from my mistakes, alas!

      2. 326838+up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        In place of gross mistake insert
        orchestrated treachery, letter to UKIP nec decrying G Battens
        successful leadership, then the LBC rant maligning the whole UKIP membership who supported & gave him a platform.
        In vote splitting pro johnson mode one minute then anti johnson back peddling next.
        For him it is a complicated issue getting his life back.

      3. I don’t know, but a full-on leaver stood in a seat held by a remainer last time and lost her deposit, so perhaps Nige was saving money?

    3. My wife’s comment listening to that over my shoulder: “That woman has balls.” She meant it in a good way.

  50. A spot of Old Noll. We have the joylessness with none of the oratory or love of country.

    “It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

    Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

    Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

    Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

    Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

    Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

    I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

    Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

    In the name of God, go!”

      1. Hello Sue,

        Perfectly put. We have all been conned into parting with cash .

        Yet one observes the oil rich gulf states dripping in gold , and what have we wasted our oil revenues on , oh yes the list would stretch around the world .

        For a small country 850 miles long by 360 miles wide , we are being stuffed and wrecked , and now being badly put upon.

    2. Piddling twaddle

      We have sold our birthright for a mess of potage , and are now relying on the hospitality trade to compensate for the strong industry we have either sold out on or given away .

      So , if there is such a thing as climate change , the West has stoked up the chimneys of the Far East to provide us with goods we think we need , which has only a half life.

      This country is now full of drunkards and druggies.. totally dependent on artificial sources to boost their own personality to convivial .

      Any one who has had to have an emergency visit to any A+E on any normal weekend of the year would be shocked and a shaken rigid by the disgusting sight of people affected by drink and drugs .

      Not nice at all .

      In the old days in the RN , sailors were put on a charge for being drunk and disorderly , and sometimes would have had stoppage of pay.

      Once the pubs open again , we will hear of many unpleasant things , of that I am certain .

      All we have heard of this lock down , and in fact during this year are the moans and groans of the public being denied drinking time in a pub.

      The hospitality TRADE… not industry , employs young people who are traditionally poorly paid and poorly educated .. they are trapped in a hopeless spiral .

      Everything is a blinking mess.

      Why on earth is the UK paying a penny of aid to wealthy China , is beyond belief.

      1. Off Topic, Belle.
        Have you used your whizzy pressure cooker to make Christmas puddings?
        I’ve looked it up, and it sounds as time consuming and as much hassle as using a saucepan or a steamer over boiling water.

          2. I do it on medium for about 9-10 hours, Anne. I put boiled water from the kettle in first, probably about two inches or so up the side of the slow cooker basin, switch it on high for half an hour to get it going, then lower the pud into the basin of the slow cooker, turning the slow cooker to medium. The water should be two thirds to three quarters up the side of the pudding bowl. I top up with boiling water part way through. On Christmas day I use the slow cooker to heat it up, about four hours starting with the hot water again first of all. For both steaming and re-heating you could give it a blast on high for the last hour. I have read that 8 hours cooking time is sufficient but I am a bit nervous about this. I once left it on for 18 hours overnight and the fruit was a bit caramelised in places, although not cremated… I won’t be doing that again. I use Delia’s recipe which does seem to be foolproof. Barley wine I have been able usually to get at Tesco.

      2. The hospitality trade has taken the biggest hit in this pandemic response. Most of those young people will be unemployed when the pubs and restaurants are forced to close for good.

        We should be shunning China and their dodgy cheap goods – not sending them borrowed money we haven’t got.

        1. I do check labels very carefully. That’s how I discovered that Colgate toothpaste (permanently on offer in cheapo shops) is made in China.

          1. is it possible to buy anything that does not profit China? If something is not made in China, it probably is assembled locally from components made in China

        2. We are shunning Chinese goods here, labels are checked carefully. No Chinese Christmas tat for us.

    3. Is the climate change issue a reason for giving the Chinese money to build more coal-fired power stations?

      1. 326838+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Many paid twice for the privilege of being sold out, once via membership fee regarding lab/lib/con coalition party then the
        wretch camerons missive singing the praises & benefits of remaining in the eu, then charging for the postage.

    1. I like that they cannot show photos of this infant, that will help locate him.

      With all of the criticism made of youth, here we have school kids stating the bleeding obvious but adults sticking to their rules and regulations.

  53. A great response by DT readers to the Editorial today beoaning the social media giants taking all their ad revenue and wanting governments to regulate them. Particularly by those showing up the DT’s hypocrisy, poor journalism and support of the very crony corporates and politicians who are censoring and gain wealth and power because THEY support the ‘response’ to the ‘pandemic’. The MSM only now complain when their existence is threatened – where were THEY when ours was via the lockdowns, censorship, taking away election wins (US), severely curtailling our rights and freedoms?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/27/tech-giants-must-made-pay-using-newspapers-content

    Comments (as of 27/11/20 17:08, copied and pasted manually)

    —————————————–

    Paul Bradshaw 27 Nov 2020 2:50PM
    Can’t you request that Google de-index “The Telegraph”, thus ensuring that Google can never again profit from ads posted near DT content?Flag

    David Burdon 27 Nov 2020 4:19PM
    @Paul Bradshaw Yes. They can 1. Set up a robots.txt file. Or 2. Simply tell Google that they will charge them.
    I believe these moves are happening all around the world.

    The Sage 27 Nov 2020 2:42PM
    I believe I’m right in saying that circulation figures for printed newspapers have been in continuous decline for the last 20 years. So it would appear that the newspapers have had plenty of time to take effective action in response to the threat. But what have they done …?

    Al Dente 27 Nov 2020 2:11PM
    Will such legislation be thought through? What will happen to bloggers who refer to articles, for example. Will we have to be checking our comments to ensure they don’t accidentally match a bit of opinion somebody wrote on a paper we don’t read? Doesn’t this effectively copyright opinions? After all, that is about the sum total of news content at the moment.

    What about the current state of journalism and it’s divisive wedge needs support? Shouldn’t a free market supporting publication like the Telegraph suck it up, rather than seeking to use the monopoly position of big tech players to assert it’s own dominance? The Telegraph suggesting state subsidy and supporting red tape eh? Shame.

    Patrick Davies 27 Nov 2020 2:01PM
    To paraphrase a certain young lady ( at the time), you would say that wouldn’t you?

    Josh Smith 27 Nov 2020 1:54PM
    Already tried in Spain. Google just shrugged and shutdown their news service in Spain and the publishers lost all that traffic.

    David Braddock 27 Nov 2020 1:56PM
    And France – they couldn’t reverse it quickly enough when they realised that the traffic they need to generate their ad revenues was going to collapse.

    Joss Wynne Evans 27 Nov 2020 1:51PM
    As an example of bland two-facedness this piece takes some beating. As the Telegraph has put up a piece about The Eton master, Will Knowland, being fired for refusing to remove a video from Youtube, I think it worth posting the video so Telegraph readers can absorb the shame that Eton has broght upon itself by viewing the piece – The Patriarchy Paradox – for themselves. Interestingly The Telegraph also mentions the outrage of the Random House staff who have the ignorance to object to Jordan Peterson, who himself has some views on the same subject.

    https://www.tarableu.com/the-patriarchy-paradox/

    Chas Cowie 27 Nov 2020 1:40PM
    Why bother. The MSM is simply a mouthpiece for the increasingly authoritarian government. If you want protection you should start doing your job and questioning the government.

    david james 27 Nov 2020 1:25PM
    At least the dt is ad light.the daily mail i have given up on banners that cover half the page and videos that blot out the rest.i make a note no to buy from any of those!

    Karen Dulchaointigh 27 Nov 2020 1:21PM
    What the Tech giants need is a heavy handed regulator to hand out eye watering fines for their successful attempt to affect the outcome of the Presidential election and the unsuccessful attempt to affect the Brexit referendum. They also need to be fined for trying to censor content for no other reason that it doesn’t fit their narrative.

    Carolyn Bates 27 Nov 2020 1:27PM
    @Karen Dulchaointigh Hear, hear.

    Jerry Geleff 27 Nov 2020 1:07PM
    Great thought, but for one thing. I would not leave this to government to muck up. Put this in the hands of the private sector. After all, any infringements will come out in civil, not criminal, court.

    Carolyn Bates 27 Nov 2020 12:37PM
    I cannot believe this article. The threat to newspapers is because, just as with Big Tech, which they are complaining about, they have become propaganda machines of the Left. One example is the huge number of threads concerning the alleged election fraud in the US, that have been taken down when the comments do not reflect the DT’s position.

    There is no longer freedom of speech, but freedom of the Press has not been affected it seems.

    Al Dente 27 Nov 2020 1:56PM
    @Carolyn Bates Is it the left that are to blame, or the corporatisation of leftist messages? I know the distinction won’t matter around here probably, but I think we need to get to the truth of things going forwards.

    I should qualify my statement in saying that I am not political, more tired of being in the middle of some political sandwich made of puke and bile instead of bread.

    gabrielle teare 27 Nov 2020 12:28PM
    Tech giants like Amazon and the supermarkets should face a covid tax

    Andrew Badger 27 Nov 2020 10:30AM
    ‘Google and Facebook take 80 per cent of the annual £14 billion digital advertising revenue’.

    The point you are missing is that if Google and Facebook didn’t exist, the digital ad revenue number wouldn’t be £14 billion, it would be several orders of magnitude less. The best way to sustain the profitability of a newspaper is to write for your reader base; the DT is increasingly choosing a different path to conform to some mad leftist plan to take over the universe. Fix that and your survival will be assured.

    Be MALLET 27 Nov 2020 10:52AM
    Some people like to read what pleases them. Some don’t !

    Keith Scarborough 27 Nov 2020 10:02AM
    Competition is a healthy thing. Having enjoyed a monopoly for so long the newspapers need to negotiate some kind of agreement with the social media platforms. I pay to read the content of this newspaper. Social media is free. Be careful what you wish for.

    Brian O Shea 27 Nov 2020 9:39AM
    A similar law passed in Germany saw Google removing the affected newspapers from Google news altogether – before the publishers eventually came back and asked to be relisted after seeing their traffic plummet, a step they said they had to take because of the “overwhelming market power of Google”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/31/spain-newspaper-google-tax

    Neil Turner 27 Nov 2020 9:08AM
    Prediction: in Donald Trump’s second term (ridiculed by this newspaper) he’ll go after Google, Facebook and Twitter. He’ll change the US Communications Legislation to reclassify them from ‘platforms’ (with no editorial responsibility or accountability) to publications. Facebook and Twitter have actively censored right wing content,,such as Trump’s Twitter feed,,whilst targeting Democrat voters to remind them to vote. No such reminders were given to Republicans.

    I can’t wait to watch the feathers fly. This was discussed at length a week ago at a hearing when Zuckerberg and Dorsey were dragged over the coals by some brilliant cross examination from Republican senators. All of the above of course, blanked and censored by the DT. It used to be a NEWSpaper.

    PJW Holland 27 Nov 2020 9:09AM
    @Neil Turner Facebook have also systematically targeted people who quite innocently reposted any article that may have been in any way considered remotely sympathetic to Trump. Those people have been attacked and permanent censorship applied.

    What a sinister outfit Facebook has become…. since Cleggie was recruited by it.

    PJW Holland 27 Nov 2020 9:08AM
    Be careful what you wish for. I pay to see the DT. I may post links to content on social media. That attracts readers to the DT… but most of the content is behind a pay wall. What is proposed here is likely to impact, most of all, on the advertising opportunity afforded by such posts…

    Simon Coulter 27 Nov 2020 8:51AM
    I see the DT filched £100 from my account without even the courtesy of telling me in advance the subscription was due to be renewed or afterwards, that it had been renewed. Worried I might otherwise have blocked it? Sometimes, like many who comment a lot, I think you should be paying us for the value we add.

    David Barnett 27 Nov 2020 6:31AM
    So if the media are making money from the tech companies that would obviate the need for subscription fees.

    Al Dente 27 Nov 2020 3:17PM
    @David Barnett It would also dictate the tone of the articles.

      1. I joined the 1 month free trial subscription for the DT and then phoned them about a week later to cancel so I didn’t have to pay after the month was up. Dominic at the DT said he would have to cancel it that day but he could make a note to email me a reminder to cancel just before the month was up. Just to be on the safe side I put a reminder in my phone to cancel thinking he’d probably forget. But I maligned him, the reminder came through but I’d cancelled it the day before.

    3. I am sorry. I just don’t get it. It is the only game I know that manages to be desperately boring and physically dangerous.
      If it never happened again we would be able to kid ourselves that it was interesting from photographs.
      The same photographs would give the impression that the sun always shines in this country.

      1. Try profesional baseball. It takes a beer an innings to bring that sport to life.

        Come to think of it, most American sports are like that

        1. Baseball, Basketball, Ice Hockey, American Football: 50 minutes of “time-outs” and 10 minutes of play in every hour.

          1. But at least in hockey you get to hit people.
            That desire would overwhelm me if I had to play cricket.

          3. Off topic your conversation but i just watched Masterchef the Professionals and and a SOUTH Yorkshireman has just got through to the semi-finals. I demand a recount !!!

          4. I was an avid fan of that and the bog-standard version of Masterchef until a couple of years ago [I refused to watch the kiddie version or the nonentity version]. Unfortunately I got more and more irritated by the incessant drivel from that fat-gobbed, talent-free, barrow-boy pillock, Wallace. So I stopped watching it.

          6. And they do it very well. Why is there a need for Wallace? I’ve forgotten more about food than he’ll ever know.

          8. There is a Derbyshire chap doing very well at the moment. He used Henderson’s Relish in one of his recipes. They referred to it as Yorkshire Relish. 🙂

            I think he is through to the semi final.

          9. It’s wonder they didn’t call it “Worcestershire [sorry: ‘Yorkshire’] sauce for vegans” since it contains no fish or animal matter. I still have half a bottle of Hendo’s in my cupboard (the one I bought in Helmsley two years ago).

          10. I haven’t had it before but i will get a bottle. I like trying things at least once. I made a mistake with Sevruga though. No wonder they drink ice cold Vodka with it. for me it was too strong. I’ll stick with the Elsinore caviar.

          12. No. I have tried other ‘good ones’ . There is an English Caviar but i found them too strong.

        2. I have just spent a week listening to that song. It does confirm my understanding. Thank you.

        3. There seems to be a canal next that tow-path. I want to throw myself into it. Even the butterfly at time mark 3.30 became catatonic.

          2. Yes. I realised and edited.
            But there are some slow moving rivers. Like cricket. And this song.

      3. You need to put in three teaspoons of Marmite to make it projectile. Do that and then spray paint over it and you have home made pebble dash effect. This is how all houses in Bradfordistan are now decorated. © Rashid Ent’ Inc.

    5. I remember camping near Cheltenham and walking out with the dog one Sunday morning to find a village cricket match going on, a steam train crossing the bridge as I took the footpath to the local church and thinking this was England as I always knew it. What have we lost?

      1. Warm beer.

        Evening, Conwy – answering honestly – practically everything that we treasure.

          1. I am on my second glass of vino – the only beer I like can only be found in Belgium and Chermany (he says through gritted teeth!)

          2. I am just finishing off the Shiraz that I hesitated about starting yesterday. It’s not been a good day with the dog deciding that he absolutely HAD to go out at 2am, 3am, 3.30am, 4am, 5am and 6.30am. As I had to be up at 7.30am to make sure I took delivery of a parcel, that didn’t leave me much time for sleep. I am banjaxed, to be honest. The hairy little B fell asleep at 06.30 and snored his way through until midday, unlike me who had to get up and complete the household tasks; emptying the dishwasher, making breakfast, etc, etc 🙁

          3. Don’t wish to sound facetious here but how about installing a dog flap with a nogo for other animals?

          4. He’ll be 17next week and needs help negotiating the stairs, unfortunately. Otherwise, I’d just let him do his own thing.

          6. How about an outside kennel for your dog? Or if not that leave him outside all night the first time he needs to go out? I expect Nottlers will think me horrid for suggesting either of those : blame living in flats in London til I was 21!

            Edit: (Added). Didn’t read further down so didn’t know his age. I take it all back Conway. Sorry.

          9. Particularly as it’s freezing tonight. I was just telling him this morning on our walk that he had it pretty easy; nice warm home, his own bed, regular meals, regular exercise, lots of cuddles. Quelle vie de chien!

          10. He deserves the best for the companionship he gives you. Our pets don’t ask for much – food, warmth and unconditional love. They give back just as much.

          11. That’s okay. You weren’t to know. You can bring an outside dog in and they adapt well (that happened with my first dog as an adult – he thought he’d died and gone to heaven!), but making an inside dog stay out when they’ve never been used to it doesn’t go down well.

          12. I can imagine. We were never allowed 4 footed pets (council flats) and only ever had budgies. After Alf and I married we moved away from London. Had our children in the next 4 years and they had guinea pigs and rabbits but we never had dogs. Hope you had a better night last night.

        2. The future of Britain lay in Europe, John Major said in his speech on … ‘will still be the country of long shadows on county (cricket) grounds, warm beer, …

      2. it was never really England as I knew it but on occasions that I managed to stumble across a cricket match, it certainly showed a relaxed, civilised way of life.

        Our golf clubs are having similar problems with catering. After the inter club matches, some clubs put on a nice snack for the teams, others give a sandwich but more and more now just give nothing. The friendly banter between competitors is being lost.

        1. 326838+ up ticks,
          Evening PT,
          What have we willingly lost
          via the polling booth.
          What we willingly lost was “just not cricket” as the saying goes, it was loving the party more so than the Country.

    6. I prepared delicious cricket teas for quite a few years where we lived before, when elder son and husband played the game .

      I loved the warm feeling of delight as two teams of sprog/ grown men tucked into my food , fresh sandwiches , home grown tomatoes , lettuce , local cheese , scones, butter and jam and either freshly made chocolate cakes or Victoria sponge cakes.. Strong brew of tea or jugs of squash .

      Everything eaten .. and nothing left over!

  55. The move towards world government.it is the end of democracy as we have known it. It is happening all over the world.

    2. Yes it’s had its day I’m sorry to say! The world will come more and more to resemble China!

      2. The politicians cannot wait to become elected dictators. The younger generations have been brainwashed at school to believe its what they want.

    1. The third image would have lots of green ticks underneath trees being cleared, so houses could be built, with a queue of Migrants waiting to move into them.

      1. 326838+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        What I find very odd is that the very peoples say, on social housing waiting list and those that are against mass uncontrolled immigration are the very same peoples that support / vote for the uncontrolled immigration coalition party and ALL the odious consequences, again & again, no change.
        lab/lib/con/Stockholm syndrome
        seen in action.

    2. That first picture is a very sad image.

      My wife would have loved to be able to give her mother a hug last month because the opportunity will now never come again.

      1. Yes, it’s heart breaking.

        This whole covid response, world-wide, has been dehumanising. We seem to be governed by autistic technocrats. Here in France, some bigwig civil servant has just said that he recommends having Christmas dinner as a family, but just make sure you put granny and granddad in a different room for their meal. This is beyond satire.

        1. The care home sent us a parcel with the few possessions of hers that we want to keep. The parcel arrived this week but is just sitting in a spare room, opening it is going to bring it all home with a thud.

          1. It’s heartbreaking. When my mother died, more than 30 years ago, my marriage was on the rocks, although I couldn’t fault my ex for the care he showed her, or the way he cleared up her flat.

            I did find it therapeutic going through the bits and pieces he brought home for me to sort out. She was a hoarder and the letters and photos in particular set me off on family history research.

  59. I am away for the night. Have a smooth evening sticking pins in wax effigies of your least fave politicians.

    A demain. I hope.

  60. Was it wise to kill a top scientist in Iran, will it do Iranians a massive favour and save countless lockdown lives and small businesses from going bust?

  61. https://twitter.com/oflynnsocial/status/1332357567687823361

    Following the science.

    Those living under Tier 2 restrictions will not be allowed to linger to drink in pubs and restaurants after eating, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson has announced. Asked how long drinkers can stay in the pub after purchasing “a substantial meal” – now required under law in order to have a drink – the Downing Street spokesperson said: “We’ve been clear that, in Tier 2 I believe, that you need to have a substantial meal if ordering any alcohol and it remains the case that the guidance says that once the meal is finished, it is at that point.”

    The move is also likely to provoke anger amongst publicans, who have been advised that those wanting soft drinks or coffee do not need to eat
    a substantial meal. It has not been clarified why the virus is more likely to spread to over a glass of wine than a mug of cocoa.

    Talk about a Whitehall farce.

    Some inventive tweets on the thread along with anger and despair at just how stupid and petty Johnson & Co are.

    https://twitter.com/m0xom/status/1332324747414286336

    The Standard

    1. Please Mr Halfcock, how many squares of loo paper may I use at a single sitting? What’s my allotted time?

    1. ‘They really have no idea do they?’. In a Pub or Restaurant that needs to comply the diner will just leave some food on their plate and say ‘i haven’t finished yet!’

      1. There is usually a way round these idiotic restrictions. There is a bar/épicerie (grocers) not far away. The bar is closed but you can get a glass of beer (sous le comptoir) while you decide which newspaper or packet of rice you wish to buy. It sometime takes ages to decide.

  64. 326838+ up ticks,
    Tis surely a stitch up.

    breitbart,
    UK Clinics Offering ‘Virginity Tests’ and ‘Virginity Repair’ Exposed

      1. 326838+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        Yes I do believe it was a cock up that initially brought this issue to light.

  65. England just finished well in Capetown to win the first T20. Bairstow and Sam Curran doing the biz.

          1. Straight bat, me!

            Bairstow (and Barstow) are Viking names. Bair (Bar) comes from Bär (same pronunciation) meaning ‘berry’. Stow means ‘place or location’. The name means “The place where berries grow.”

  66. Ahem

    Here’s a simple question that seems to stump the government.

    You give a company a £12 billion contract for a project.

    The project fails dismally and the product is dangerous and not fit for purpose.

    Do you

    1. Terminate the contract.

    2. As above and sue them for breach of contract.

    or

    3. Give them another £10 billion to carry on.

    If you answered 3 you are a winner, just like Serco.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a652cbffab5e4841c801f3f80a91648f1edcab0f592e2db351b2dc5c548d9831.png

    3. Just making sure that when they are thrown out of government they have half a dozen directorships lined up.

    4. this Pademonium is certainly showing how the whole world is based on cronyism. To think that almost everyone was so critical of Trump appointing family to white house roles, same thing really.

      They tell us that our off the shelf track and trace system is working, they just lack the staff to trace.

      Our boyos even screwed up the government payroll system, implementing a new system before it was tested and then being surprised when problems showed up. At $3,000 per consultant per day, IBM are not too swift at fixing it.

  67. Follow up from my MP’s office,it appears the DWP is just as good at ignoring them as they are me

    My reply to him

    “With apologies to Peter Jay this is how I imagine the response from the DWP

    Bernard:Have you seen the memo from Jonathon Lord’s office Sir Humpy??

    Sir Humpy: Indeed I have Bernard,indeed I have,what arrogance,what sheer
    bloody impertinence don’t these people realise our systems are the work
    of years,nay decades of work to produce the frustrations of the damned
    in our clients,we excell all other departments in High Blood
    Pressure,Heart Attacks,Strokes and Brain Aneurysms

    ,the amount we have saved the Government in future pension payments is legendary

    Bernard: So no action then Sir Humpy??

    Sir Humpy:What do you think Bernard,we ignore our own minister why would we
    run around for some jumped up backbencher and his fetid serf of a
    constituent?? The very idea,sheer impudence!!

    Bernard: I fully understand Sir Humpy but what if the serf dies of cold,shouldn’t we at least cover our arses??

    Sir Humpy: Yaas,I suppose,I know,send the file to that chap Parkinson,you
    know the one give him a months work with a six month deadline and he’s
    still always late.It’s almost a Law.

    Put a note on the file telling him to give it a bloody stiff ignoring,that
    way if there’s any follow up we can say we sent the file for “special
    handling” Sorted

    Bernard:Yes Sir Humpy

    That’s it I hope reading this amused you and Jonathon Lord as much as it did me writing it

    Yours Sincerely”
    It’s a subtle ploy here,hopefully Jonathon Lord will be so incensed at being called a “jumped up backbencher” even in a comedy sketch it will stir him to action{:^))

    1. Evening Rik. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t his assistant ask you to kind of write your own complaint and then he would “add a few words” or something to that effect?

      1. Exactly that vw,if fact they asked the DWP to respond to them as well as to my complaint
        Nada
        In somewhat sarky tone I told him I was amused rather than angry the DWP was ignoring him as well as me
        “It’s good to see we live in such an egalitarian society,we are all equally ignored”
        Wind the buggers up and see how they run!!

        1. Rik – you have to “allow for coronavirus”!!! That is the cause of any delay or ignoring of letters/emails/Cock-ups (particularly that) in fact Everything Is due to coronavirus. Plus the fact that “they” are government departments you are dealing with. The worst of all.

          The most frightening 10 words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”.

    3. I wrote [by email] to my useless MP yesterday to say how ridiculous it was that the whole of Derbyshire was going to be in Tier 3 – so far not even an acknowledgement from an underling!

      2. Mine – Paterson, whom Rastus considers to be a good egg – (and the neighbouring Con MP, the Pole Kawzinscki) is not happy that we are now in Tier 2 (from Tier 1), apparently. Not that anything will happen. Best to ignore the government and carry on.

          2. Exactly! We are now “High Risk” when before lockdown #2 we were medium (in reality, very low) risk!

      3. I see your avatar is of Citizen Smith. I assume you were a fan. Some are being shown on Forces tv on Freeview very soon.

  68. It is extraordinary that we are being told that we cannot have who we want even in our own homes. It is, in effect, being imprisoned. We should, as perfectly responsible citizens, decide who can come into our houses and who cannot. Even in wartime we were not subjected to restrictions like this

    My stupid MP … ignorant spoilt rich landowner , living in an enormous protected country estate .. an ex soldier, he knows nothing of the deprivations that people suffered during wartime .. utter idiot of the first order .

    https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18902188.mp-astounded-dorset-placed-tier-2-coronavirus-restrictions/

    1. Moh says… What a stupid opening statement from an ex soldier, “Even in wartime, our country was not subjected to restrictions like this.” During the second war, villages were locked down and access to the beaches was denied, The public were under very strict rules how they should behave , which they did without the Know-betters interfering.

      1. The beaches might have been mined and shut off with coils of barbed wire, but people still ventured there to save their dogs if they got through the barricades, I’ll bet.

    2. My next door neighbour came in this morning, to borrow the cat basket. I needed to clean it up a bit and it was too cold to leave her standing outside with the door open.

      1. I visited a friend who lives near me , hadn’t seen her properly for months because she is sheltering , seriously . We speak on the phone etc, but I had to see her and her husband to see how things really were .. I wore my mask and they ushered me into the house , she hadn’t been out since March .. I was quite prepared to have a conversation in the garden through her window..

        I feel protective of Moh though , and even though I doubt we are unsafe , not will to take unecessary risks. He will be fine when he plays golf next week, so he says! The clubhouse and shop won’t be open though .

        1. Hadn’t been out since March?? I’d have gone stir-crazy long ago! At least she’s got a husband – but it must be so hard for people like them. I’m not depressed, but I am angry that our freedoms have been removed, and so many small businesses made bankrupt, people out of work…….

          1. I am so enraged at the destruction I can scarcely contain myself, Ndovu. If someone like me, and I am somewhat reserved and mild-natured feels like that, what must of the rest of the country be feeling like? And to see Johnson and Hancock smirking on the front benches…… Now we know why we were disarmed of hand guns.

          2. The criminals are the only ones with weapons now. All we can do is let off steam here and on Twitter. I avoid politics on Facebook, except animal posts.

          3. She is missing a large part of a lung .. She is going spare , but has a nice large garden to compensate . I am also angry that businesses , proper little businesses with clever innovative people are going bankrupt .

            Florists are finding life difficult , various animal rescue centres around here are really getting hammered .

            I think Britain is reaching the point of no return , we will probably collapse like the fall of the Roman Empire , that is what is so frightening .

          4. The country won’t collapse, but we’ll all be poorer, except the elite and their chums. Not only financially poorer, either, but all the cultural things we have been unable to do this year – concerts, theatre, sports, social events etc.

    4. 326838+ up ticks,
      Evening TB.
      Many peoples who have their MPs feel the same way yet still fund that MPs lifestyle,the way I see it is they and party are going to continue in the same vein as they have been doing for years if they continue to find support &. the party votes.
      Where else are they going to get 80 K & expenses.

      2. Much as I would love to believe this is freemasonry in its full regalia, unfortunately it isn’t. These “preposterous robes”, as you so rightly put it, are the costume he wore to the Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate on 13th October 2017.

        https://youtu.be/mLM8-M85QSk

        1. The people flanking him were also wearing them. Some sort of diabolical cult i expect. The cult of Satin.

      3. Much as I would love to believe this is freemasonry in its full regalia, unfortunately it isn’t. These “preposterous robes”, as you so rightly put it, are the costume he wore to the Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate on 13th October 2017.

        https://youtu.be/mLM8-M85QSk

  70. ‘Night All
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fa9b9b4aba1be50abdb70b462195f1989529aebe9989de2efff0972de0bff99.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fed1b1648fa043222d9d22f212986bb0bd6342bbbc873667da8d27bda6334535.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ed0d29ddb6b694164dba955b605b945b40b688185aa9d8840b8c37f1aaae9da9.png
    Contraversial
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/19b134fb24b6b4dada639f5fffd8965d6b561ca81f674d1bb8ab54ea33dc39ec.jpg
    Been There
    https://i.imgflip.com/4o2u50.jpg

    1. Hits the nail on the head for me. We’d be more helpful by sending condoms and the contraceptive pill. Lots of them.

  73. Why is it that drivers in Merkin films, whenever or they see a car behind them, they assume it is following them?

      1. Is the Pope a Catholic, Jeremy? Well the answer to both your question (re Bush) and mine (the Pope) is exactly the same: which one?

        :-))

  74. “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” Judge Stephanos Bibas, today when the Federal court rejected Trump election lawsuit in Pennsylvania.

    Hey ho, exactly as predicted.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/27/trump-voter-fraud-lawsuit-rejected-pennsylvania-court

      1. Good evening Corim. Your post appears to be the first you have made this evening. Do you really think that “Please go away you silly little man” is the kind of constructive discourse that makes this forum enjoyable?

        1. In this particular instance I think my comment appropriate. I always seek to make constructive comments on this forum and if you ever followed those comments you would have to acknowledge that I have done so. You will also have noted that the troll Cochrane has followed me closely and that after I comment I immediately receive a downvote. (Usually emanating from Jennifer SP).

          I suggest you awake from your self righteous slumber and witness the true disruptive elements on this forum. Please do not take offence. I am one of a few who make genuine contributions and do not side with the disruptive elements which you are in danger of doing.

          Edit: Perhaps you could challenge the unsubstantiated and biased claims made by Cochrane and save me the trouble of doing so. Thought not.

        2. Don’t be too hard on him – someone’s probably put something nasty in his bedtime cocoa.

          1. Hard on him? You’re joking! I was being extremely polite and controlled.

            You wanna hear hard? ;@)

          3. I see you have recruited a down voter.

            Do you lot communicate beforehand, awaiting my very occasional comment whilst lying in wait before piling in with your obnoxious comments. It certainly looks to me as though you do.

            I have made a note of you lot and will be keeping a close eye on your misdemeanours in future. I respectfully suggest that the Moderators do likewise.

        3. In this particular instance I think my comment appropriate. I always seek to make constructive comments on this forum and if you ever followed those comments you would have to acknowledge that I have done so. You will also have noted that the troll Cochrane has followed me closely and that after I comment I immediately receive a downvote. (Usually emanating from Jennifer SP).

          I suggest you awake from your self righteous slumber and witness the true disruptive elements on this forum. Please do not take offence. I am one of a few who make genuine contributions and do not side with the disruptive elements which you are in danger of doing.

          Edit: Perhaps you could challenge the unsubstantiated and biased claims made by Cochrane and save me the trouble of doing so.

          Thought not.

          1. There you go again! “Self righteous slumber”. That’s not just rude, it’s a personal attack which is quite unjustified. Please reconsider your intemperate remarks.

          2. My comment is nothing of the sort and you know it. Wake up to what is going on around you. Exit the bubble or whatever constrains you and live a life for God’s sake.

      2. Corim, your posts to Harryk
        are perhaps due to your frustration
        with the way HMG is digging the
        hole even deeper, but they are not
        acceptable to one of the more
        reasonable posters on this forum

        1. I have no time for Harry Kobeans. I would rather ignore him but the chap intercedes in my conversations and irritates me.

          He gives no evidence for his assertions. However if you support his kind I give up and in that event will quit this forum. It really is no longer worth contesting these people.

          It is so one sided as to be a replication of the US Presidential elections where a demented twat is about to be given the leadership of the free world over to the globalist elites. If that does not bother you I am sorry. I have simply had enough. Put it down to yet another victory for Cochrane over common sense.

          Cheerio. I have better things to do than read strictures from you.

        2. I have no time for Harry Kobeans. I would rather ignore him but the chap intercedes in my conversations and irritates me.

          He gives no evidence for his assertions. However if you support his kind I give up and in that event will quit this forum. It really is no longer worth contesting these people.

          It is so one sided as to be a replication of the US Presidential elections where a demented twat is about to be given the leadership of the free world over to the globalist elites. If that does not bother you I am sorry. I have simply had enough. Put it down to yet another victory for Cochrane over common sense.

          Cheerio. I have better things to do than read strictures from you.

    2. Exactly. It was always predicted that some judges had been bought and paid for by the DNC machine.

      1. This is always a possibility, which is why they have a Supreme Court, which is supposed to be above all that.

        Mind you, if their Supreme Court is anything like the concoction created by Blair in its image to replace the Law Lords, it is probably itself politicised, and there is no ultimate recourse when all the institutions have got themselves corrupted by politics.

        All they have left then is good grace and acceptance of whatever fate delivers, and be better prepared next time.

        2. Our Supreme Court very deliberately betrayed democracy.

          Why should anyone believe that the US supreme court is not prepred and eager to be just as treacherous?

        1. Will you do me a real favour and explain to Garlands, our most active moderator, that the JSP bitch and her friends on here are again deliberately targeting me.

          Free speech is now under a real threat on this forum and should they succeed I am off.

          1. Don’t worry, Cor. I think Garlands knows fine about the “cailleach” and recognises her tactics.

            Anyway, don’t go – make a joke of it, mock ’em, laugh at ’em. If you leave, they’ve won.

          5. You’ve got plenty of support here. Just block them or ignore their taunts. The rest of us don’t want You to go.

          7. Corrie there are, maybe, 50 or 60 of us on here who get on well. If one or two decide they want to disrupt then why let them win. That’s what they want. Ignore them that’ll really annoy them. They’re attention seekers, spoilt brats.

      2. Block him Cori – doesn’t half reduce blood pressure and you won’t get anymore cowardly downvotes.

    1. Now – unfortunately – easily ignored by BPAPM and Halfcock and Glove. “Yesterday’s woman”; “Past it…” “Out of touch”.

    3. You only need to see John Kerry is now the man in charge of climate changy stuff to see that the US is in deep doggy doo. In with the carbon tax, out with manufacturing to China or Mexico.

      Up here of course, Trudeau is having orgasms about his new playmate. A horrible sight.

      Oops move this comment down one to Engineer Andys comment on Bidens team.

        1. I didn’t even need to look at that picture to know that it was our glorious leader on his hols in India. He did take an Indian chef with him on that trip to cater a reception at the embassy – apparently Indian chefs are hard to come by in India.

          1. It is not photoshopped and there are many others making him look like one of the Village People. He even publishes them himself.

  77. All together now:
    “Revolutions devour their own children.”
    The tergiversations require a fair degree of concentration.

    “The disgraceful crusade against the LGB Alliance | The Spectator

    Brendan O’Neill

    In Britain, in 2020, a gay-rights group is being hounded for daring to promote the virtues of same-sex attraction. Mobs of angry people are trying to destroy it. They’ve branded it hateful, disgusting, dangerous. They have even tried to bankrupt it. For the ‘crime’ of saying it’s fine that people of the same sex are attracted to each other, this group has become the target of one of the most vicious campaigns of the year.

    Only it isn’t old-style homophobes with blue rinses and crucifixes who are waging war on this gay-rights group. It’s the PC left. It’s supposedly correct-thinking commentators, trans activists and others who pride themselves on being progressive and decent. What might once have been Bible-waving fundamentalists or homophobic skinheads is now right-on millennials.

    The group in question is the LGB Alliance. Anyone who thinks that cancel culture doesn’t exist, that it is a myth made up by right-wing culture warriors, should Google the LGB Alliance. The hatred for this group is intense. The efforts to cancel LGB Alliance – by branding it a ‘hate group’, depriving it of opportunities to raise money, and robbing it of the oxygen of publicity – are out of control.

    Its crime? It is sceptical of some of the claims of transgender activists. Hence there is no ‘T’ in its name. Its aim is to protect and promote the interests of people who are attracted to the same sex – that is, lesbians, gay men and bisexuals – and therefore it believes that the reality of sex is quite an important thing. As its website says, ‘We believe that biological sex is observed in the womb and/or at birth and not assigned’. It also believes that current gender ideologies – such as genderfluidity, sex as a ‘feeling’, the idea that a man who identifies as a woman can be a lesbian, etc. – are ‘pseudo-scientific’.

    The key reason the LGB Alliance rejects the ‘T’ of transgenderism is because it believes that the cult of genderfluidity poses a risk to the rights of people who are attracted to people of the same sex. For example, if people with male body parts can identify as lesbians – which they can, and often do – then this shrinks the space for actual lesbians (women attracted to women) to express their concerns and interests. That is why a lesbian group called ‘Get the L Out’ stormed to the front of the Pride march in London in 2018 — to raise awareness of the possible erasure of lesbians if born men can be lesbians too.

    For raising these concerns about the new gender ideologies – politely, intellectually – LGB Alliance has been rounded on in a deranged way. There was another explosion of hatred against the group this week. The gay magazine Boyz became the target of visceral contempt for daring to retweet the sinners of LGB Alliance on its Twitter feed. Boyz faced a ‘blistering backlash’, said Pink News, with relish. Boyz responded by suggesting that people should not jump to conclusions about LGB Alliance and we should ‘hear them out’. That made matters worse. Hear someone out? That isn’t the done thing in the cancel-culture era. We silence people, we don’t listen to them.

    Soon, mobs of people were targeting companies that advertise in Boyz or who stock this evil magazine. And these efforts to marshal the power of capital to silence a gay magazine were successful. Pride has disassociated itself from Boyz. The Vauxhall Tavern said it would no longer stock it. Eventually, the magazine was defeated by the mob. It apologised to ‘all our readers, venues and advertisers for the publicity we have given to the LGB Alliance’.

    There is a whiff of neo-Stalinism to all this. A publication was essentially blacklisted for expressing a view that runs counter to the new orthodoxy. It was forced into a very public climbdown in an effort to save its business and the jobs of its staff from the unforgiving mob. All for promoting a group that has the temerity to exercise its freedom of association to promote the interests of lesbians, gay people and bisexuals rather than anyone else. In the past it would have been nutty homophobes who tried to revoke the freedom of association of gays and lesbians; now it’s the hyper-woke.

    LGB Alliance has also been prevented from fundraising. Its haters were successful in getting it removed from the JustGiving and GoFundMe websites. One of LGB Alliance’s founders — the barrister and gay-rights stalwart Allison Bailey — is being investigated by her Chambers for being ‘transphobic’. The message is clear: if you dare to question the orthodoxy, if you talk about sex rather than gender, if you think lesbians are female, then you will be crushed.

    People often misuse the word bigotry. A bigot, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself’. So, tell me – who are the real bigots in the mad crusade against LGB Alliance? The alliance itself, for merely talking about the reality of sex and same-sex attraction? Or the furious, insult-spewing mobs who are doing everything they can to shame and shut it down? I think we know the answer.”

  80. Good night all but, before I go, I have a couple of questions:

    Are we really allowing the trolls, stupidity and flashes of temper to drive away seasoned NoTTLers?

    You nearly lost me in the Summer over BLM and historic events. Are we, deeper thinkers, to be cast into the wilderness and let the woke win?

    Watching a programme on how the Stasi operated in Berlin under the DDR, I’m really sad to think that, in the twilight of my years I might yet be subjected to that kind of blind acceptance.

    1. Morning Nan. There is nothing that can be done in practical terms to rid ourselves of Trolls. To ban them is to see them reappear in another form. To respond to them; to answer their lies and provocations, is to assist them in their efforts to destroy this blog. We all know who they are and that should be sufficient. If they really disturb you then I suggest blocking though it is not something I would do myself. They should really encourage the rest of us because through them we get a daily reminder of the evil that hides behind their activities.

      1. Agreed. The best thing to do when you get a xxx comment is to ignore it. I know that for some reason, some Nottlers seem to bear the brunt of certain unfriendly users (I won’t call them Nottlers as they would never pass muster if membership were by nomination and seconding) and this must be very frustrating.

        The rest of us must all support by not upvoting, downvoting or in any way responding to their comments, even to defend other Nottlers. Remember, they don’t know you and you dont know them so whether they like or don’t like what you say matters not a jot in the grand scheme.

      2. I’m not so worried about myself but about those leaving as a result of trolling. I’ve just blocked JackS and the Cockroach so they don’t bother me.

        JSP is another matter – she is now actively driving people like Cori away. Her downvotes don’t bother me, as I just see them as a cowardly way of shewing disapproval for someone without the guts to make a counter argument or state why you disagree.

        1. Jack S is just an irritant, and not worth getting upset about. He’s been around a long time and is probably lonely and bored. Cochrane just likes to annoy and get people riled up. JSP – also lonely and bitter. Try not to engage and she’ll leave you alone.

          1. Agreed J, I try not to feed the trolls but the lengthy responses of others, take up so much space on an already creaking disqus.

          2. I think some people, more than others are feeling the strain of the last few months.

            I have found this forum addictive, but a place where I can share my views with like-minded people. .I try to ignore the ones I find disagreeable. If that makes it an echo-chamber, then so be it.

          4. More than that, J, it shews that she is so pi$$ed off that downvoting is her only means of attack – to which we all just shake our heads and ignore it.

  81. Good evening, Chums.

    A little light reading …. ten pages
    but worth the time spent reading it?

    MP-briefing-26-Nov-2020.pdf(lockdownsceptics.org)

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