Wednesday 2 December: Setting tier against tier is destroying what’s still left of British decency

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/2020/12/02/letterssetting-tier-against-tier-destroying-still-left-british/

726 thoughts on “Wednesday 2 December: Setting tier against tier is destroying what’s still left of British decency”

  3. I like the thinking!
    SIR – Might we be able to help so-called wet pubs by bringing our own substantial meal and paying “forkage” to eat in on their premises?

    John Dinnis
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    2. Just spotted a story in the ‘Worcester News’ that a pub has gone into partnership with the chippy next door – one provides the drinks and the other the “substantial meal”.

      1. of course ‘substantial’ is subjective, especially as the govt is anti obesity.
        The best tactic would be to allow punters to have a drink while they are perusing the menu, which is a tradition in most restaurants.

    3. He has out-thunk our government but, there again, my dog could do that without any effort at all.

      ‘Morning, Oberst.

  5. BBC is accused of ‘blatant disregard’ for female achievers in Sports Personality selection

    The BBC’S Sports Personality of the Year award was at the centre of a gender equality row last night after only one woman was shortlisted. Hollie Doyle, the jockey, was the sole female nominee announced by the corporation on a six-strong list of contenders – the first time in almost a decade there had been so few women in the running. The shortlist was denounced by MPS, campaigners and former nominees as showing a “blatant disregard” for women’s sport. THE BBC Sports Personality of the Year award is at the centre of a row over gender equality, with only one woman on the shortlist confirmed last night.

    In the good old days, i.e. before the BBC had been hijacked by the Left, the public would send in votes for any sporting individual of their choice. All the votes were then counted and those receiving the most votes went forward for the competition. These days, some faceless Lefty at the Beeb decides who will be in the competition.

    1. ‘Morning, George, if everyone who watched sent in their vote, a total of three wouldn’t make for much of a competition.

      No, they have to go on deluding themselves that there is a mighty army of viewers out there who desperately need the BBC lefty to do the nominations.

  6. Good Moaning.
    Absolutely beautiful sky.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-list-the-tory-tier-rebels

    Full list: the Tory tier rebels

    1 December 2020, 8:30pm

    This evening, the House of Commons voted to enact the new tiered system, which will come into force when the national lockdown ends this week. Boris Johnson did not emerge unscathed though, with 78 MPs voting against his proposals, including 55 MPs from his own party. Labour leader Keir Starmer instructed his MPs to abstain on the vote, but 15 decided to vote against the government’s plans.

    Below is the full list of MPs who voted against the tier restrictions:

    Conservatives

    Steve Baker

    Robert Syms

    Adam Afriyie

    Imran Ahmad Khan

    Graham Brady

    Andrew Bridgen

    Paul Bristow

    Christopher Chope

    Greg Clark

    James Daly

    Philip Davies

    David Davis

    Jonathan Djanogly

    Jackie Doyle-Price

    Richard Drax

    Iain Duncan Smith

    Mark Francois

    Marcus Fysh

    Cheryl Gillan

    Chris Green

    Damian Green

    Kate Griffiths

    Mark Harper

    Philip Hollobone

    David Jones

    Julian Knight

    Robert Largan

    Pauline Latham

    Chris Loder

    Tim Loughton

    Craig Mackinlay

    Anthony Mangnall

    Karl McCartney

    Stephen McPartland

    Esther McVey

    Huw Merriman

    Robbie Moore

    Anne Marie Morris

    Robert Neill

    Mark Pawsey

    John Redwood

    Mary Robinson

    Andrew Rosindell

    Henry Smith

    Ben Spencer

    Desmond Swayne

    Craig Tracey

    Tom Tugendhat

    Matt Vickers

    Christian Wakeford

    Charles Walker

    Jamie Wallis

    David Warburton

    William Wragg

    Jeremy Wright

    Labour

    Apsana Begum

    Richard Burgon

    Mary Kelly Foy

    Andrew Gwynne

    Mike Hill

    Kevan Jones

    Emma Lewell-Buck

    Ian Mearns

    Grahame Morris

    Kate Osborne

    Bell Ribeiro-Addy

    John Spellar

    Graham Stringer

    Zarah Sultana

    Derek Twigg

    Independent

    Jeremy Corbyn

    Julian Lewis

    DUP

    Gregory Campbell

    Jeffrey M Donaldson

    Paul Girvan

    Carla Lockhart

    Ian Paisley

    Gavin Robinson

    Jim Shannon

    Sammy Wilson

        1. …and long may he be so – he and his fellow unreformed Marxists serve as Labour’s drag-chains while Captain Sir Kneel-Hindsight busts a gut trying to get his party back on its feet.

          ‘Morning, BoB.

    3. Needless to say, the useless time-server in my constituency did not protest. Wanqueur extraordinare

      1. Same here…made all the right noises in the past few weeks, but somehow managed to avoid putting her vote where her mouth is.

        ‘Morning, Bill.

  7. Cornish police are to deploy extra border patrols to prevent those living in Devon from crossing the county line to have a drink, coming as they do from a tier deemed to be high-risk.

    We have elderly friends in Devon, a mile from the Cornish border. Are the police going to stop them physically from going to the supermarket and pharmacy, which are in Cornwall?

    What has become of our once noble and decent country?

    Dr Martin Henry
    Good Easter, Essex

    I’ll tell you what has become of it, Dr Henry. We, on the reasonable Right, have continued to sit in apathy with our thumbs up our arses whilst the Left quietly, unobtrusively, succinctly and insidiously marshalled their forces to take over every echelon of society.

    They installed their generals and lieutenants into the top levels of education, parliament (all parties), the news media, the armed forces, the judiciary, the police and every other area of influence in the country. They did all that whilst those of us on the Right continued to tut-tut into our port and prune our roses.

    We sat back and let it happen. The question is: do the Right have the “stuff”, i.e. the balls and the brains, to start the fight to get it back?

    2. Unlike say, Poland or Hungary, this country has had nearly 1,000 years of reasonably peaceful development.
      We have lost the ability to recognise danger to our liberty.

    3. 327115+ up ticks,
      G,
      Those on the “right” were tut tutting a bloody long time via major, cameron, clegg, may,johnson.
      All the while 27 plus years “batty Batten”
      that far right renowned racist & party members were maligned & castigated & finally taken OUT with input via “nige” & current party Nec.

      As a credible party under the leadership of a decent patriotic proven leader of a calibre
      the Country sorely needed.

      The three monkeys, have a strong grip on the supporter / voters in regards to the very recent ex pro eu rubber stampers
      coalition, but party first within the lab/lib/con coalition is what has brought us to such an odious pretty pass.

    4. Never mind the land border disputes between the EU and the UK in Ireland, it’s pitchforks over the Tamar now!

      1. 327115+ up ticks,
        Morning JM,
        May one ask, why, via the polling booth it was allowed to get to the point of peoples must die before
        sanity / common sense makes a return.

  8. In whom we Trust…….. not……

    SIR – Dunham Massey Park, a National Trust property near Altrincham, Cheshire, covers 192 acres of woods and walks and is very popular, especially at weekends.

    For some months the National Trust has restricted the number of cars allowed to park in its car park in order to encourage social distancing. Pre-booking, for just 70 cars, is necessary to secure a space in the vast car park there.

    Fortunately it is still possible to gain pedestrian access to the park via various gates and stiles. However, many come by car and consequently parking through Dunham Massey village is bumper to bumper.

    Social distancing is not in evidence there, totally defeating the object, and creating a hazard to pedestrians and cyclists along the narrow lane through the village and beyond.

    Marilyn Parrott

    Altrincham, Cheshire

    SIR – National Trust members need to get organised if they want to change matters. Clause 35 of the Charities (National Trust) Order 2005 enables members to submit resolutions at the Annual General Meeting if at least 50 members can be signed up. A statement of up to 500 words will be sent to members with the AGM papers.

    Normally, I doubt the National Trust executive would worry too much about an AGM resolution, but next time it might be different. The deadline is June 30 2021.

    Kerry Attwell Thomas

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. The normal way to deal with AGM rebellions is to allocate controlling share options to the executives and their associates, and then to ignore anything coming up from the independents.

      The question is whether, after all the cancelling of subscriptions by disgruntled NT members, there are enough members even to register a disagreement with the executives?

  9. Lunar mystery

    SIR – A Chinese spacecraft has landed on the Moon. Can anyone advise whether viruses can survive in that atmosphere?

    Carey Waite

    Chailey Green, East Sussex

  10. Allison P today, not up to her usual standard I fear:

    Ever since I began my first novel with a scene in which a frantic woman distresses shop-bought mince pies to pass them off as homemade at her daughter’s school carol concert, I have become a repository for stories about women’s Christmas disasters.

    There was the solicitor whose 10-year-old son altered his letter to Father Christmas, putting “Hamster” at the top instead. The frantic mother managed to track down the last baby hamster in London and sped to a far corner of the city in her lunch hour to collect the tiny creature, whom she stashed in a cage under her desk. Unfortunately, the hamster woke up during a meeting with an important, notably humourless, American client. The squeaky-wheel noises caused consternation among the firm’s partners. All men, obviously, and therefore exempt from Father Christmas duties.

    In possibly the greatest act of gender discrimination in history, the bringer of Christmas presents is commonly perceived to be a male. Ho, ho, ho! Very amusing.

    Yesterday morning, Himself and I had our traditional Yule-related exchange:

    Him: “What’s going on? Why are we having all these bloody deliveries? We’ve had three today.”

    Me: “It’s Christmas, darling.”

    Him (in puzzlement): “So?”

    Isn’t it the same in every family? Women do everything, and on Christmas Eve your husband asks: “What have we got my mother?” Or (a favourite of mine): “I hope we haven’t forgotten the Stilton.”

    Frankly, I’m surprised that a document about this Covid Christmas, released by Sage, the Government’s deeply weird Scientific Advisory Group, has been criticised for being sexist. “Women carry the burden of creating and maintaining family traditions and activities at Christmas,” it said. Tweeting the document, Sky News anchor Sophy Ridge demanded: “What century are we in?”

    I hate to say this, Sophie, but when it comes to the sexes at Christmas we’re still roughly in about 1839. It is women, not Santa, who shoulder the sack of gifts; instead of a crack team of elves, at least we now have Mr Amazon to help.

    “Do I have to do EVERYTHING?” Yes, obviously you do, but I’m not sure most women would have it any other way. Christmas unites the female rage for perfection with our heartfelt wish to make our families happy.

    Sage’s document reminded me of Craig Raine’s wonderful poem A Martian Sends a Postcard Home. It’s written from the point of view of a Martian who attempts to describe what he sees on Earth to his fellow aliens. The scientists can describe everything that women do at Christmas. You just know they’ll never understand it.

    Thank heavens for Mother Christmas, eh?

    She seems to have upset more than one BTL commentator:

    Brian Thorne
    2 Dec 2020 7:56AM
    A lot of women bring this on themselves by constantly banging on about it from the end of May, having decorations up in September and buying all their presents by October and then spend all the days up to Christmas Day moaning about how ‘ they do all the work’!

    Stop it! Stop this blo ody obsession with Christmas and stop blaming us men!

    We don’t care!

    Oh and another thing, Radio stations, please stop this craze of playing Christmas records from the first week in November!

    Aargh!

    Damon Hager
    2 Dec 2020 7:08AM
    Not often we read an article by a middle-class, female MSM journalist talking about how great women are, and their rubbish husbands.

    Thanks for that injection of novelty, Alison!

    (I understand the article was tongue in cheek, but honestly, the trope is getting tiresome. Incidentally, who will be collecting the detritus of your Christmas, once it’s over? Those vast armies of female bin-men?)

    PHILIP HOW
    2 Dec 2020 7:29AM
    If I were a snowflake I would be offended by this article, but I’m not. Just a single father of three children, who has done everything for every Christmas for the last 15 years. Even before I divorced my wife, it was me that made Christmas work, and my kids would back me up on that. Having said that, I guess this article makes me feel that I am better than most husbands. …available 😉

    1. Every so often, Allison chucks out an article that could be written by Mrs. Gove.
      We all have our off days – particularly when we have a quota to fill.

      1. Yes, I think that must be it. These columns don’t write themselves…she appears to be bereft of anything original to say today.

        Manners….’Moaning, Annie.

          1. I think we’ve all been pumped full to bursting with Covid-19, voting systems, lockdowns and a crappy government.

    2. I am missing my annual fix of ‘Another Rock and Roll Christmas’ played over the Tannoy at Debenhams. Can’t remember when I last heard it.

      Does anyone know if there is anyone in Germany under the age of 75 with the name ‘Adolf’?

  11. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1a3ca9949fdc0df8796f4d4ba110693c8d615317a6653431663804c753e2ed47.png This is more clear evidence for my theory. Mankind might have evolved as the cleverest organism to have ever lived; however, his cleverness does not make him the most intelligent.

    Like me, you Mr de Quetteville, have worked out that mankind reached a peak around 1900. Several centuries of discovery and innovation, plus positive developments in art, literature, music and culture, peaked around that time. Since then a seriously progressive—and now accelerating—decline is very apparent.

    We, as a species, are simply not fit and proper to be the progeny of our illustrious forebears.

    1. 327115+ up ticks,
      G,
      The last three decades the voting booth can confirm that appertaining to many.

    2. Call me cold-hearted, but this is to be expected if you eliminate the cleansing process of natural selection.

          1. Good morning, Mrs Macfarlane.

            Are there more amiable sites on Disqus? Are there more amiable sites anywhere on ‘social media’?

          2. Nah, you’re right, there aren’t! Just occasionally it gets a bit – well, you know – tetchy here!

          3. What do you expect from a bunch of grouchy old folk, who only get out of bed for their morning grump?

          4. From my observations, it seems to be the evening night cap or three that causes the problems.

  13. ‘Morning again. Today’s DT Leader:

    It is less than a year since Boris Johnson’s general election triumph, a stunning victory against an unreconstructed Marxist for which the Prime Minister should have the nation’s eternal thanks. On Tuesday night, in the House of Commons vote on the new tier system, he suffered the largest rebellion of his premiership. For the first time since March, there is no political consensus in Westminster behind the Government’s Covid restrictions. After Labour’s decision to abstain, the new regulations passed based on the votes of just 291 MPs with nearly 60 Tory MPs defying the Prime Minister.

    Under the circumstances, it is extraordinary that Sir Keir Starmer opted not to take a position. How governments should respond to the pandemic is the greatest question facing democratic societies in decades, and Labour has no answer apart from vacuous posturing about the state of the UK’s testing regime. The new tiers threaten to drive millions more into unemployment, many of them in Labour-voting areas. Sir Keir may think that he can bide his time until the full cost of this calamity becomes too obvious to ignore, but his willingness to vacate the political field at a moment of national crisis will not go unnoticed by the public.

    Even so, Labour’s abstention did have the effect of exposing a deepening rift within the Conservatives, putting the Prime Minister’s authority over his party under question as never before. The rebellion encompassed all shades of Conservative opinion, from freedom-loving Brexiteers to the stalwarts of Theresa May’s cabinets.

    In the Commons earlier in the day, Mr Johnson had struck an emollient tone. He unveiled a financial package to support the hospitality industry, and attempted to reassure MPs that the restrictions were not open-ended. In response to repeated interventions by MPs on the profound unfairness inherent in the crude drawing of regional boundaries, with low and high infection areas lumped together in defiance of common sense, he also suggested that tiers would be decided on a more “granular” basis in the future.

    But in the Commons debate there was evidence of a more profound philosophical split – between government lockdown orthodoxy, which has seen ministers follow France and Spain in imposing restrictions whenever case rates rise, and increasing numbers of Conservative MPs voicing support for a more risk-based approach. Many Tories now argue that No 10’s strategy is less a proportionate response to the virus than a heavy-handed and illiberal regime which undermines our fundamental freedoms at the risk of permanently damaging our prosperity. The failure to publish a proper cost-benefit analysis for the new tiers only confirmed them in such a belief.

    The Prime Minister will no doubt be hoping that the fires of rebellion will cool over December. If the system works as intended, regions should be able to drop into less stringent tiers, permitting more activity to resume while controlling the spread of the virus. However, given how extensive restrictions are even in the lowest tiers, we are still set to face a gruelling winter, the price ministers expect a grateful nation to pay for a brief reprieve over Christmas. More companies are likely to follow Debenhams into liquidation, in an avalanche of bankruptcies and unemployment that support schemes like furlough will be unable to prevent, despite their vast cost to the taxpayer.

    These will be difficult months, and the Government’s situation has not been helped by a sometimes confrontational approach to its backbenchers that will take time to rectify. The shift in the great weight of Tory opinion away from a narrow focus on Covid towards how to save a shell-shocked economy is also a problem for No 10, which has tended to give the impression of caring about infection rates above all else.

    However, the prospect of a vaccine in short order brings hope, and assuming that it can be deployed at scale and at speed, the challenge of returning the country to prosperity is surely one also perfectly suited to the Prime Minister’s talents. If he can finally release the nation from the misery of lockdown and conceive a pro-growth package consistent with Tory principles, there is no reason why he cannot reunite his party, and show that he is still the leader who won such a resounding victory last year.

    Some leading BTL comments:

    barry smith
    1 Dec 2020 11:23PM
    ‘The price Ministers expect a ‘grateful nation’ to pay’. I know this lot of Ministers are incredibly stupid, but surely even they don’t think any member of the public is grateful to them for anything!

    And DT, let’s be clear, Johnson has no future as PM, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it. This is safe ground at dinner parties, sorry what’s app and zoom calls. Everybody agrees the PM is totally unsuited to the role and the sooner he goes the better. We should thank him for defeating Corbyn and move on.

    Clarissa Flynn
    1 Dec 2020 10:44PM
    This sounds more like desperation from the Telegraph than a realistic assessment of the situation. The supposed sunny uplands of a post Covid world will be permanently blighted if they are achieved on the back of a coercive vaccination program. The spectacle of Cabinet ministers yesterday spouting that people who declined the vaccine could have their movements restricted was concerning to say the least. How are we ever going to put our faith in these people again, when we already know that they have imposed lockdowns based on selective and misleading data and false projections (4000 deaths a day, just as an example)?No amount of pro-growth policies will cancel out my memory of this betrayal and the economic destruction that they have caused. Why would I ever trust these people again?

    Raymond Forster
    1 Dec 2020 11:46PM
    He’s lost my vote come what may now. I voted for him with great hopes for our great nation once full national sovereignty and sense of identity was restored following our leaving the EU. But his actions since May, and particularly since October, driven through with the kind of mendacious and specious data, ‘science’ and ‘analysis’ – of the sort Mrs May used to try and keep us tied to the EU with – have shattered my belief in Johnson, and the Conservative administration. There is hardly anyone in the Cabinet who is trustworthy. The really sad thing for us poor Brits is that there really is nowhere to turn; Starmer is as much a charlatan as Johnson. As for the rest of the parties, of what value are they – they contribute nothing to the national debate or state of the nation – they are wasted votes. But those votes that Johnson gained when he promised us freedom, well, my vote is gone for certain …. I wonder how many others will be too?

    1. There was a documentary last night about how Amazon (led by the world’s richest man) (the company, not the endangered forest and the world’s lungs and medicine chest) intends to take over the world. Coronavirus may well give them the means to do so.

      1. Yes. If you find out about something and decide to buy it you then do an online search. The result is around three pages of Amazon, before a single independent supplier is found.
        Of course Amazon, Google and the others all go hand in hand.

    2. “Sir Keir Starmer opted not to take a position” – as I posted the other day, “Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake” (Napoleon). Starmer doesn’t need to oppose, as the tories have effed it all up on their own, and in fact he risks getting splattered by the fan-borne excrement if he does oppose – what if it turns out to be a terrible mistake? Either way, the tories don’t come out smelling of roses. Let the tories have the blame all to themselves, and he can whoosh in at the next GE and take over.
      Not stupid.

  15. Watch. Sir Graham Brady addressing Parliament along with a broken Prime Minister. The weight of the enormity of what he has done, why we do not know at the moment, has got to him. The Country and the Tory party destroyed in under a year, some achievement. Rotting in his own personal hell for the rest of his life will be too good for this charlatan.

    https://twitter.com/oflynnsocial/status/1333791652104736768

      2. Add Desmond Swayne to that list. Not only are his speeches good, he is entertaining to watch.

  16. Good morning all.

    Looks like a wintery morning.

    Moh was as excited as excited can be .. up early for golf and straight into a competition.. and now probably now teeing off on the first hole.

    My dog walks have been interesting, because the golf course has been closed as well as the practise range , Moh carries an iron , his sand wedge , and has been practising lobbing the ball high , sometimes plopping it down into a furzey clump or bracken..

    The dogs ignored the balls and were more interested in rabbit scents or pheasants sitting tight.

  17. How Many Coronaviruses Are There?
    Coronaviruses didn’t just pop up recently. They’re a large family of viruses that have been around for a long time. Many of them can cause a variety of illnesses, from a mild cough to severe respiratory illnesses.

    The new (or “novel”) coronavirus is one of several known to infect humans. It’s probably been around for some time in animals. Sometimes, a virus in animals crosses over into people. That’s what scientists think happened here. So this virus isn’t new to the world, but it is new to humans. When scientists found out that it was making people sick in 2019, they named it as a novel coronavirus.

    Human Coronavirus Types
    Scientists have divided coronaviruses into four sub-groupings, called alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Seven of these viruses can infect people:

    229E (alpha)
    NL63 (alpha)
    OC43 (beta)
    HKU1 (beta
    MERS-CoV, a beta virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)
    SARS-CoV, a beta virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
    SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19
    Why Viruses Change
    Coronaviruses have all their genetic material in something called RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA has some similarities to DNA, but they aren’t the same.

    When viruses infect you, they attach to your cells, get inside them, and make copies of their RNA, which helps them spread. If there’s a copying mistake, the RNA gets changed. Scientists call those changes mutations.

    These changes happen randomly and by accident. It’s a normal part of what happens to viruses as they multiply and spread.

    Because the changes are random, they may make little to no difference in a person’s health. Other times, they may cause disease. For example, one reason you need a flu shot every year is because influenza viruses change from year to year. This year’s flu virus probably isn’t exactly the same one that circulated last year.

    If a virus has a random change that makes it easier to infect people and it spreads, that strain will become more common.

    The bottom line is that all viruses, including coronaviruses, can change over time. Scientists and doctors call slightly different versions of a virus new strains.

    Second Coronavirus Strain
    You might have heard that there’s more than one strain of the new coronavirus. Is it true? The answer appears to be yes.

    The theory about different strains of the new coronavirus comes from a study in China. Researchers were studying changes in coronavirus RNA over time to figure out how various coronaviruses are related to each other. They looked at 103 samples of the new coronavirus collected from people, and they looked at coronaviruses from animals. It turned out that the coronaviruses found in humans weren’t all the same.

    There were two types, which the researchers called “L” and “S.” They’re very similar, with slight differences in two places. It looks like the S type came first. But the scientists say the L type was more common early in the outbreak. One may cause more disease than the other. Scientists need more data to really know what these strains mean to human health and COVID-19.

    What to Expect
    As the coronavirus keeps spreading around the world, it will probably keep changing. Experts may find new strains. It’s impossible to predict how those virus changes might affect what happens. But change is just what viruses do.

    NEWSLETTER
    Stay Up-to-Date on COVID-19

    https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-strains#1

    1. Sounds like my tapestry/needlepoint.
      However hard I try, there are inevitable differences between the chart and my work; partly because the mistake is small enough not to matter, or simply because the chart doesn’t allow for the canvas being different from the paper.
      Viruses are opportunists; they adapt to circumstances. And that includes getting weaker so they don’t curtail their futures by killing off all their hosts.

    2. When I was in Broadstairs for the folk festival a few years ago, I drew the short straw and found myself cast as ‘Betty’ in the Mummers Play. It was bad enough with a big white beard like Santa Claus, and having to squeeze into a charity shop dress designed for a lithe maiden rather than a fat old bloke. My main challenge was over my mammary deficiency.

      Luckily, near the beach was this gift shoppe selling buckets and spades mostly, but burrowing inside, I found the perfect thing – rubbery and round and squishy. Just like the real thing really. I bought two.

      I had them out the other day, and it turns out they were cuddly viruses – like a teddy bear, but virus shaped with little pointed spikes all round. Every child should have one, or two.

      1. Good morning, Jeremy

        Have you come across Opus Anglicanum? My late sister was married to one of the singers in the group.

  18. Sporting news for my fellow F1 fans. George Russell to replace Covid isolator,World Champion Lewis Hamilton, in the next Grand Prix race.

    3. Brilliant Belle, thank you.
      My mum and dad went to Berwick Market on a regular basis and introduced us to things like Chinese Gooseberries (Kiwi fruit), chicory and wonderful cheese from Mammets the cheese monger, which was through the alley where Raymond’s Review Bar was, into the small street that connected Berwick Street with Shaftesbury Avenue.
      Brings back very many happy memories of life in London.

  20. THIS is what I call a letter.
    I doubt 2020 will produce anything more succinct.

    “SIR – When a national health system requires this much protection and causes this much destruction, it’s time for an alternative system.

    Brigit Foster

    Oxford”

    1. Is ‘Brigit’ an English spelling? Certainly I believe that the continental systems of health insurance work better than the UK’s 1947 mk 1 model.

      1. I worked with a Brigette.
        She was as English as I am.
        It’s one of those names that parents tend to dolly up according to the fad when the child is born.

        1. Sometime variations come from way back. I went to school with a Karin – spelling from a Swiss great-granny but it confused a lot of teachers.

          My baby name books offer six or seven variants for Bridget. I have to find names for about 40 heifer calves every years – so I have a number of reference books for the purpose as finding (for example) 15 – 20 girls’ names beginning with U is quite a challenge.

    2. The problem is people aren’t aware of how they work. They’re told that they have to pay and don’t want to.

      However what is deliberately left out is that their other taxes are lower as a result.

      Can you imagine the treasury suddenly saying ‘right, we’re no longer paying for the NHS, here’s £290 a month back’?

  21. The Prime Minister, with his usual “flowery” use of the English language, said of the vaccine, that “the cavalry are arriving at the top of the hill”
    I reckon its more like the Famous Duke of York, with his 10,000 men – look where that got him!

    1. Top of the hill, far from it. I think that Tennyson wrote about it after lord Cardies famous charge.

  22. Thought for the day

    These NHS Staff Were Told The Swine Flu Vaccine Was Safe, And Now They’re Suffering The Consequences
    Dozens of NHS workers are fighting for compensation after developing narcolepsy from a swine flu vaccine that was rushed into service without the usual testing when the disease spread across the globe in 2009. They say it has destroyed their careers and their health.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/shaunlintern/these-nhs-staff-were-told-the-swine-flu-vaccine-was-safe.

    1. Just heard that Britain is the first to approve the vaccine. Thus we are volunteered to be the guinea pigs for the world. Thank you, Hancock.

      3. 650 MPs first in line followed by their immediate families. Then the staff of Imperial College not forgetting Bill Gates, Soros, Obama, Clintons etc.

      4. thank you for testing the vaccine thoroughly.
        Our inept Canadian government probably allows for a further three months testing before we are given the opportunity.

  23. 327115+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    December: Setting tier against tier is destroying what’s still left of British decency,

    When the political knife entered Mrs Thatchers back decency
    common sense took a hike along with many a self respect.

    These political cretins via the polling booth take the cosy
    lifestyle as a given, granted alternately to the lab/lib/con coalition by the “party first” ovis type membership who shout for change but retain the status quo with their vote.

    The coming re-set has been on the cards & coming to light more so since the Maggie assassination, it is not new, just
    another casualty under the three monkey mode of voting.

        1. Plod save us all! I know of another religious book which contains some very fruity passages. Allez-y, Lancashire Constabulary!

          1. The craven, politicised bullies would not have the integrity or the courage to treat the reading of the Koran in the same way.

    2. I am sure that our repulsive Archbishop of Canterbury would support the police and want to ban The Holy Bible altogether. Will nobody rid us of this turbulent priest?

      1. 327115+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Being of the other persuasion I never did trust johnsons role model “enery,” the footings of the whole enterprise was on dodgy ground to kick off with.

    3. Strangely, the Police have never objected to these quotes being widely disseminated:

      “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Qur’an 2:191

      “Make war on the infidels living in your neighbourhood.”Qur’an 9:123

      “When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.” Qur’an 9:5

    4. Strangely, the Police have never objected to these quotes being widely disseminated:

      “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Qur’an 2:191

      “Make war on the infidels living in your neighbourhood.”Qur’an 9:123

      “When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.” Qur’an 9:5

      1. 327115+ up ticks,
        Afternoon J,
        Probably because to bring it to light more so would leave them open to aiding & abetting.
        The likes of orchestrated avoidance of the evil shameful
        rotherham paedophile actions by police / council members is unbelievable, covered up for over 16 years.
        Many of the ovis cannot see the
        instruction manual resting between the dispatch boxes to be of any importance even when coupled with a parliamentary
        canteen halal menu because the party lab/lib or con comes first
        regardless.

      1. Some of the toilet paper on sale is not fit for purpose.
        Still it’s better than Izal and the TP supplied on German railways circa 1966-7……….rough doesn’t go anywhere near it.

    2. We had a Furry Purry like one of those when i was a kid. He use to claw all four of the legs on the kitchen table.

  27. Burnley double stabbing – Woman ‘knifed in neck’ at Marks & Spencers as shoppers hit high street after lockdown. 2 December 2020

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7da94ccae6914346c3e5e0fad73c6a41e97f51d43d2e113082d64177f1a54ee1.png

    A WOMAN was “stabbed in the neck” in a double knifing in a Marks & Spencer today – as shoppers hit the high street after lockdown lifts.

    No pretending this time!

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13358418/two-people-stabbed-burnley-marks-and-spencer/

    1. Ooh, I dont know. He might have been trying to smuggle out some white bedsheets he was trying to shoplift.

    3. A knife has been recovered by officers, who said they think it is an “isolated incident” after taking the local man into custody.
      Similarly isolated to the car attack and double killing in Germany ? Just asking.

    1. That’s why they are going to test it on oldies first. I guess some of the care and health staff are of childbearing age.

      1. Does this mean there may be an outbreak of infertility among old ladies?

        Dear God! However will I break the news to Mrs. Mac?
        :¬(

    2. Maybe Trudeaus wish to spend billions giving the vaccine to african and asian countries is not such a bad idea after all. Population explosion imploded in one generation.

      Don’t ethnic minorities suffer from the effects of covid more than whitey?

        1. I don’t think the expensive and difficult to handle Pfizer one will be going there. They will be getting the cheaper version from Astrazeneka.

          1. 🙂
            They had also crossed my mind.
            Think of the saving to the taxpayer if fewer results of inbreeding are produced.

    3. Watch, and if she’s 10% correct, be afraid, very afraid.

      Some people are now questioning why this stuff has to be held at -70 to -80 degrees. These people claim that that level of cooling is most unusual for vaccines. Something not right with this, including Wancock’s enthusiasm – he’s praised Klaus Schwab in public – and the undue haste with which this vaccine is being rolled out.

      https://twitter.com/FXdestination/status/1333814087520821249

    1. It only hurts if you forget to take your thumbs out of the way!

      (And wasn’t there a bird in the Wild West Show song called the oomeegoolie bird?)

  31. Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is APPROVED by regulators for use in UK and could be rolled out across the country NEXT WEEK. 2 December 2020.

    A Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for use in the UK – paving the way for mass vaccination to start in just days.

    Officials said the vaccine will be made available ‘from next week’ as Health Secretary Matt Hancock declared ‘Help is on its way’.

    Morning everyone. You take this you want your head examining.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9008767/Coronavirus-vaccine-Pfizer-BioNTech-approved-regulators-use-UK-an.html

    1. The UK is the first country to approve this vaccine , 800000 doses from Belgium expected in the UK next week. Perhaps we are being used as guinea pigs. A suspicious and possibly reckless decision by the MHRA?

        1. Morning Anne – It’s a “granular” concoction with many secrets, good and possibly not so good.

  33. Morning all. We are so tired of tiers…..

    SIR – Cornish police are to deploy extra border patrols to prevent those living in Devon from crossing the county line to have a drink, coming as they do from a tier deemed to be high-risk.

    We have elderly friends in Devon, a mile from the Cornish border. Are the police going to stop them physically from going to the supermarket and pharmacy, which are in Cornwall?

    What has become of our once noble and decent country?

    Dr Martin Henry

    Good Easter, Essex

    SIR – The danger of the present Covid regime is that people will eventually have had enough of it.

    This is not about staying indoors, or not able to go on holiday, or to the pub. This is about people losing their jobs and the work of a lifetime, and about banks realising their security, which in many cases will be the family home.

    It is about children taken away from fee-paying schools. It is about divorce and suicide and permanent economic and social damage. People properly warned and advised would surely make better decisions for themselves than remote government, and the economy might carry on with the benefit of very specific personal action.

    Malcolm Parkin

    Kinnesswood, Kinross

    SIR – When a national health system requires this much protection and causes this much destruction, it’s time for an alternative system.

    Brigit Foster

    Oxford

    Advertisement

    SIR – I live in a hamlet, not even a village, miles from Stratford-on-Avon or Solihull, but in Warwickshire, so in Tier 3. I and many quiet rural dwellers are not “united in anger”.

    Our pub is closed, but if it were open visitors would come from Solihull and other high-incidence areas. Tier 3 is no great sacrifice. It is for the greater good – a concept which we appear to have lost sight of – and it’s not forever.

    Pat Barsby

    Deans Green, Warwickshire

    SIR – Not allowing pubs in Wales to remain open after 6pm or even to sell alcohol obviously makes them unviable. Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, is forcing them to close by stealth. If he has evidence that hospitality is a driver of infection, he should instruct them to close. If not, why is he intent on destroying an entire sector of the economy?

    Graham Low

    Malpas, Cheshire

    SIR – I never thought that, on entering a pub, I would be delighted to have a member of the bar staff say: “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but the kitchens are extremely busy and it may be at least an hour before you get your meal.”

    Alan Mottram

    Tarporley, Cheshire

    SIR – Might we be able to help so-called wet pubs by bringing our own substantial meal and paying “forkage” to eat in on their premises?

    John Dinnis

    Petersfield, Hampshire

    1. Good morning all! I think Pat Barsby has “lost sight of” the concepts of personal choice and freedom along with her marbles!

      1. It would be a “great sacrifice” if she was trying to run a business that is about to fail and take her house with it!

        ‘Morning, Sue.

      2. Probably sitting in her smug house, on a smug gold plated pension.
        Failing that, she’s on 100% pay for doing Sweet FA.

      1. Indeed.
        An economy based entirely on tourism, where every inhabitatnt hates the tourists.

    3. How does Pat Barsby know it “is not forever”? I question whether it is even “for the greater good” when there have been 30,000 excess non-Covid deaths and the suicide rate has increased.

  34. Good morning, all. Touch of what the forecasters now call “grass frost”. Funny pink sky.

  35. Morning again

    SIR – Eton’s Head Master, Simon Henderson, is reported (November 27) to have felt that some of the ideas put forward in a lecture by Will Knowland (now sacked as a master) were too dangerous for the boys to be exposed to.

    Anyone fair-minded and rational who listened to the video of Mr Knowland’s lecture before it was removed will conclude that such a view is untenable. The danger was not to the boys but to the Head Master’s unpopular campaign to convert the Eton culture of free expression into one of toeing the “woke” line.

    Mr Henderson has forgotten Voltaire’s words in his Treatise on Tolerance: “The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs.”

    Christopher Benson

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – Eton College has enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for centuries. It would be a tragedy if such a reputation should be jeopardised because of one temporary custodian who has been headmaster for merely five years.

    The phenomenon known as “wokeness” is becoming a form of competitive virtue-signalling. It is infecting museums, the National Trust, and our schools.

    The “woke” have the right to idiotic ideas; they have no right to be respected for having them, nor to promote their ideas to schoolchildren.

    John Pattinson

    London SW6

    Advertisement

    SIR – The British Library has apologised for placing Ted Hughes on its critical list, the Welsh government is going to have to apologise about Lord Nelson (Letters, November 30) and the Head Master of Eton may yet have to do so about Will Knowland.

    Meanwhile the fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, are still deliberating their council’s precipitate and ill-informed decision to remove a stained-glass window from a set celebrating the scientific achievements of six famous members of the college (including Crick, Chadwick and Venn).

    The victim was Sir Ronald Fisher, fellow and president of the college, represented by the Latin square taken from the jacket of his famous book The Design of Experiments.

    His crime, according to the historian Sir Richard Evans, was described in an article in the New Statesman earlier this year, “R A Fisher and the science of hatred”, with the subtitle, “The great statistician was also a racist who believed in the forced sterilisation of those he considered inferior”.

    This statement would be libellous if Fisher were alive. Both parts have been disproved by evidence submitted to the college.

    Professor AWF Edwards

    Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

  36. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – A Chinese spacecraft has landed on the Moon. Can anyone advise whether viruses can survive in that atmosphere?

    Carey Waite
    Chailey Green, East Sussex

    More to the point, why was the far side of the moon chosen? Is it really there at all??

    Edit: Oops, like buses…Epi got there first.

  37. Slime-ball Wancock crowing about the ‘vaccine’ being rolled out next week. When challenged by Ferrari on LBC that there exists resistance to accepting this potion Wancock crowed that the numbers clamouring for the jab is growing. Also, according to the slime-ball, “…the Regulator is fiercely independent,” of course, just like SAGE.

    ALL adults dosed up by Easter? Why would a government want to vaccinate everyone including those people that have a natural immunity? There’s one here that will not be partaking.

      2. According to the Slime-ball the rollout is to start with the most vulnerable. You may have a point, BT.

    3. I gather ethnic minorities will be prioritised.
      Fine. Given the constant inflow, it will be years before they get round to me and mine, so plenty of time to observe any unwonted reactions.

    5. Nor I. It makes no sense to vaccinate people who’ve already had it – they have the T cells to produce the antibodies.

  38. Morning all, some of you may know of my lack of confidence in my local Tory MP, indeed at the last GE I could not bring myself to give him my vote, in fact did not vote as all candidates pro EU.
    After the Chequers fiasco, we exchanged emails where I made my feelings known that it should be voted down. It ended with the fact he would (and did) vote in support of Treasonous May numerous times and I subsequently informed him he would not be getting my vote in any future election.
    Imagine my surprise to see that he was one of those MPs who voted against Johnson. Has he grown a pair, I may have to rethink him a little, or has self preservation come into play.
    Early days of course but one thing is certain, Johnson has proved to be a disaster both to the country and his party.

    1. Good morning VvOF

      I suspect that Boris is suffering from the long term after effects of his illness, and the distraction of becoming a father again, in his early middleage.

      1. I know time is catching up when 56 is considered “early middle age”!

        I remember all too well on my 35th birthday, I was entering middle age. There was this dread feeling at 45 when I was closer to 60 than I was to 30.

        Hitting 60 was actually not half as bad as I imagined it to be when I was younger. Free prescriptions, a pension to pay the Council Tax, and no longer having to feel guilty about not having a job or a career. Being 60 was not much different to being 59, and the horrors of being 70, 80 or even 90 are not the precipice into degeneration I once imagined them to be, just normal really. I just stagger on until they bury me now.

          1. Just four weeks will allow you to buy a first class stamp….(the rate goes up next month to 85p. 17/- in real money. To post a letter….

          2. ‘Morning, Bill, I can remember when it was just tuppence ha’penny – the same price as the DT.

        2. I’ll be 60 in 6 months or so, assuming good fortune. It’s alarming, I tell you: I felt and feel 28 for years, keep catching myself thinking about a career move (too old now), pretty lasses (ditto – older than their fathers), and the body is rapidly falling apart, like an old British Leyland Allegro. I can’t even drink much any more, without coming over all unnecessary!

      2. Morning Belle, whatever the reason he is doing a disservice to the nation being held hostage to SAGE and their dodgy graphs etc.
        It only needs the expected sell out of Brexit to complete his legacy.

    2. 327115+ up ticks,
      Morning VVOF,
      As with major, cameron, clegg, may, and now johnson ALL treachery merchants, do the supporter / voters not believe these politico’s are working to an anti UK agenda, and if they do believe it why are they still giving succour via the polling booth ?

    3. Sadly my useless MP, despite public pronouncements about how damaging Tier 3 is and will be, did not vote against – my thanks to all the MPs who did despite the bullying of the whips. My MP is now in Tier 2 [very unlikely to vote for her again] and may well move up to Tier 3 [will actively campaign against] if she doesn’t buck up!

      1. They’ll never buck up, Bleau. Never. They are self-serving cowards. They don’t give a toss for their constituents.

      2. I see Paterson didn’t vote against, nor did Kawczinski. We should not be in Tier 2 – we are only there because we’re lumped in with Telford and Wrekin.

  39. Turning back migrant boats at sea ‘could be key component in tackling crossings’. 2 december 2020.

    Turning migrant boats in the Channel back to France could be a “critical component” in tackling the surge in crossings to the UK, a minister has suggested.

    But the French government is yet to agree to the tactic, Home Office minister for immigration compliance Chris Philp said.

    My God! This is on a par with Archimedes in the bath and Einstein at his desk. A seminal moment in human history! Send them back and they won’t arrive! Who would have thought it!

    1. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere recently that we have paid France £28m for more “help” in stopping the flow but that they “have not agreed to accepting any returnees” or something like it.

  41. Mail to Mr R…..

    “I pressed the government again on where are the results of the tests of other drugs that might help treat CV 19 patients”.

    That is one of the key points about this story, and it goes right back to the beginning.

    Why didn’t Boris Johnson do the obvious thing in Jan/Feb when it became obvious C-19 was serious? To call in the UK’s senior practicing medical professionals and ask them to create the best possible response. Including isolation, identifying who was at risk, drug re-purposing and all other relevant measures.

    He didn’t do that. There was no conference with practicing professionals as far as I’m aware.

    Instead, Mr Johnson actually prohibited doctors trying anything new. Innovation was not allowed, the only therapy was paracetamol and oxygen.

    Mr Johnson called in civil servants and academics to decide what to do. All of them are connected in some way, mainly through funding, to Gates.

    Then there’s the crucial issue of March 19. The day NHS instructions changed. Suddenly it was fine to re-purpose existing drugs, but only as part of the Gates Oxford trials.

    So if the foregoing is all true as I think it is, then it’s pretty obvious that right from the start Mr Johnson and Mr Gates had an arrangement. I expect that goes back into 2019 to Event 201 in New York on October 18.

    After all, we know vaccine research was happening at Jenner in January and that Mr Whitty was meeting Gates reps in London late 2019.

    So it looks that there’s a lot here which has never been made public.

    My guess is that Gates selected the UK for his vaccine research because he couldn’t do it in the US as public funding wasn’t available but Johnson gave him all the finance he wanted and allowed him to lead the response.

    So Mr Gates acquired control of
    drug re-purposing and, because he wanted vaccines to take priority, new therapies were sidelined.

    That’s my basic hypothesis and has been for a while. There’s a lot here to investigate and uncover, and I am worried about Mr Johnson’s motives.

    Polly

  42. Dominic Frisby is very popular with many of us Nottlers.

    Here is an article about him in today’s DT: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comedy/comedians/bbc-has-diversity-everything-except-opinion-meet-dominic-frisby/

    ‘The BBC has a diversity of everything except opinion’: meet Dominic Frisby, Nigel Farage’s favourite comic
    He mocks ‘hate speech’, Left-wing platitudes and Government overreach – and all in witty musical style. Is he anathema to BBC commissioners?

    By Dominic Cavendish
    2 December 2020 • 10:50am

    Dominic Frisby: ‘Cancel culture is just modern excommunication’
    Dominic Frisby: ‘Cancel culture is just modern excommunication’ CREDIT: Steve Best

    The comedian Dominic Frisby supports Brexit, thinks the world of Nigel Farage, mocks the concept of hate speech, critiques Left-liberal group-think, disdains big government, and thinks we’re out of our depth with debt. And he articulates all this through the medium of satirical song.

    You may well not have heard of him and that’s one reason why he helps define the state of British comedy. Though that checklist of preoccupations might make the 51-year-old sound like a rabid Right-winger to some, Frisby’s modus operandi is gentle: catchy music, droll lyrics, a push-back not a fightback. He’s inspired by Noel Coward, PG Wodehouse and Gilbert and Sullivan, and exudes the warmth of a Victorian knees-up. He’s arguably more attuned to the popular mood than a dozen ubiquitous comedy “faces” and yet his main platform is YouTube. The powers that be aren’t rushing to give him airtime.

    Wasn’t Tim Davie, the new director-general of the BBC, supposed to be “tackling” the Left-wing bias in comedy? “I can confirm that the phone hasn’t rung once,” Frisby says, flashing the first of many grins that explain why he’s able to disseminate contentious material without looking like he’s got an axe to grind.

    His indictment of the Corporation sounds more measured than plaintive. It’s still damning. “The BBC remains by far and away the best platform there is in the UK for a performer. But where it stands in the culture war is pretty clear and that’s not changing: Remain-voting, technocratic, Left-of centre worldview, diversity of everything except opinion. If the BBC commissioned something that wasn’t from the usual suspects and gave people from outside the club a chance, they could have a huge hit on their hands.

    “There’s a large majority in England of people who believe in small government, individual responsibility, low taxes, traditional Conservative values – but they’re ignored. Why is there no comedy on our mainstream channels representing that view? People in BBC comedy think that because we have a Tory government, they’re punching up. They don’t realise that they’re punching down because their culture is almost totally controlled by the Left – it’s subsidised, which makes it beholden to its paymasters.”

    Frisby (the son of the late playwright Terence Frisby, best-known for the 1960s comedy There’s a Girl in My Soup) is this week releasing a new album, his second, titled Anthems for the Excommunicated. If the title doesn’t explain everything, three new tracks indicate what he’s on about: I Am a White Man and I’m Sorry; I’m Gonna Marry Gary; and Arise, Sir Nigel.

    Whether it’s an exaggerated mea culpa for being “responsible” for all the world’s ills, declaring oblivious devotion to a bloke in a dress, or celebrating the much-vilified Farage’s knighthood, he induces smiles and intakes of breath in equal measure. There’s a pulse of defiance (and despair) beneath the mischief: he’s out of sorts with the times – “I’m like [a] libertarian Billy Bragg,” he says, “but with jokes.”

    “Excommunication is rampant at the moment. Hence the title of the album,” he says. “Cancel culture is just modern excommunication. When we studied medieval history at school, I used to think, ‘What’s the problem with being excommunicated, surely you just got on with it?’ – but then you see it in the real world, how your life can be ruined, your income gone, no one wants to talk to you or be seen talking to you.

    “Even the guy I write the music with, who goes by the name Noah Fleetwood, won’t put his real name on it. He doesn’t want to be cancelled. But I get so many nice messages from people going, ‘Thanks so much for your song, it articulated what we were feeling but felt we couldn’t say’ – so it’s working.”

    The “woke movement”, he continues, “is a form of authoritarianism. Zero Mostel said one of the functions of comedy is to undermine pomposity – it’s a way of attacking authority. I’m trying to do that through my songs.”

    Does he have sympathy for the semi-pariah actor Laurence Fox, then? “I think he’s great. He gets smeared and straw-manned left, right and centre, but he is dealing with arguments that few have the cojones to take up but that badly need [making].”

    The album notably contains a 2020 update of 17 Million F— Offs, a mock folk song released last year that scampishly revelled in the way that powerful pro-EU institutions, politicians and celebrities had been told where to stick it at the 2016 referendum. You might describe it as “a breakthrough in name only”: it has had millions of views online, and was performed to Union Flag-draped crowds outside Westminster at the hour of exiting the EU on January 31. It was pretty much adopted as the Leave anthem. Yet despite scraping into the official charts, and even reaching number one on Amazon, it has had next-to-no airplay.

    It takes guts to pen and perform a song like that at a time as divided as this. “Remainers who weren’t blinded by their hatred of Brexit could see that the song was funny and true,” Frisby maintains – “true about the misinformation, Project Fear, the second referendum campaign. So I felt like I had the upper hand.” Still, he experienced a lot of viciousness online.

    Dominic Frisby in Money Pit, the TV show he fronts with Jason Manford
    Dominic Frisby in Money Pit, the TV show he fronts with Jason Manford CREDIT: Dave/Dominic Frisby
    The spite spiked when he was selected as a Brexit Party candidate for the 2019 general election. “I got a lot of nastiness online and people scrawled some horrible stuff on my Edinburgh Fringe posters. I lost a lot of work as well.” But he isn’t backing down from his unfashionable positions. Though it’s obviously in jest, genuine admiration informs Secretly in Love with Nigel Farage, a teasingly silly ditty recorded in the style of Barry White, evoking a family-man whose furtive late-night pleasure comes from ogling clips of his hero speechifying in the EU.

    “I think he’s a brilliant politician. He has clear principles, unlike many in Westminster, and fights passionately for them.” The admiration is mutual – they’re now mates and Farage invited him to “a boozy lunch” last month (recorded and streamed as part of the latter’s Step Up series), in which they discussed, among other things, Frisby’s latest book Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future.

    Underpinning his libertarian satire is his fairly remunerative and self-taught expertise in matters financial; he writes a column for MoneyWeek, presents the TV series Money Pit (with Jason Manford), and has penned books on heavyweight subjects (albeit with a light touch): Life After the State and Bitcoin: the Future of Money? There’s clearly far more to this eccentric, bearded figure – usually seen in a top hat, carrying a ukulele – than meets the eye.

    Frisby’s album Libertarian Love Songs is out now
    Frisby’s album Libertarian Love Songs is out now CREDIT: Steve Best
    Frisby’s live gigging experience (post-drama school) dates back to the 1990s, but his first viral hit came in 2012. “Take the prudent savers and just give them a squeeze, that’s the economics of Keynes,” he purred in Debt Bomb – a parody of Tom Jones’s Sex Bomb. It’s even more apt in 2020. He worries about our borrowed billions: “Fiat money is being debased like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a very dangerous situation.”

    The song that maybe feels most bang on the money, though, is I’m Gonna Marry Gary. “It started as a joke. I said I’d fallen in love. My friend said, “What’s her name?” and I said, “Gary”. The song wrote itself after that – there was no real agenda. It was funny to have this bloke obsessing over a woman and his mates going “She’s got balls.” I got a 6’ 7” guy to play Gary on the video.

    “There wasn’t an underlying pro- or anti-trans sentiment, it was just the comedy of someone not being able to see what’s right in front of them. It’s a pretty harmless, stupid song – but a couple of the people involved begged me not to put it up, because they were scared of the repercussions – that they’d lose work.” There’s no escaping the threat of excommunication.

    He pressed on with it, anyway. And he would now like to submit it for the UK’s 2021 Eurovision Entry, if possible. “It’s a happy, catchy, feel-good song for all the family, that represents Britain today,” he deadpans, with a twinkle.

    Anthems for the Excommunicated is available now. Info: dominicfrisby.com

  44. Good morning my friends

    DT Article by James Crisp in today’s DT:

    Michel Barnier under pressure not to give too much away as Brexit talks go to the wire
    The Commission has received a ‘serious warning’ from France that it was making dangerous concessions on key negotiating lines

    I fear the question is not ‘what will the EU give away?’ but ‘what will Boris Johnson give away?

    This BTL comment sums it up:

    The last few months have shown us very clearly that Boris Johnson is not very clever so I am worried that he does not yet understand that if he betrays Britain by surrendering to the EU then he and his party are finished?

    1. The tories won’t be “finished”, almost everyone will forget by the next election, and they’ll likely be re-elected based on the uselessness of the opposition.

  45. Just had an e-mail purporting to be from the courier DPD, which claims they attempted to deliver a parcel today and to get it re-delivered I have to cough up £3. Judging from the IP address, it’s a clever scam to extract my credit card number. The worrying thing is how they got my email address.

    2. I’ve had three text messages this week saying they are going to deliver a parcel order via DHL. No order was made by me and how did they get my mobile number?

    3. Every person you have ever emailed as a friend; every club, society or political party you have ever given your email address to, and every company whose mailing list you are on will hold your email address. The potential for leakage or improper disclosure of your email address is enormous. You only have to have one friend who forwards your email onto another friend, and your address is compromised. The best you can do is maintain at least two email addresses – one that is your personal one that you do not use for anything commercial (eg. On-line purchases) and at least one other that, if it is compromised, you can close down. Gmail, Hotmail and Outlook are just three of the options for a free email account.

      1. I still get spam emails purporting to be from friends and aquaintances who were hacked years ago. Yahoo was wide open to this kind of fraud.

        I got hacked one day when I was reading an article in a Chinese newspaper. A few minutes later several of my friends got a dodgy link. They were all people whose email addresses I had left on gmail after I’d used a borrowed Ipad while staying in London. I’ve never saved anyone’s addresses on gmail since then, only in my laptop’s address book, though of course they are on emails I send out. I try to be careful and use Bcc when emailing to a group. I have several email addresses, but two I mainly use.

        1. Sadly, there is only one way to be absolutely sure of never being troubled by this problem and that is never to use the the internet. Otherwise, one must be cautious, aware of the problem and take as many precautions as are reasonable. You seem to be doing all you can; that is all any of us can do.

      2. I already use two e-mail addresses, one for on-line purchases and one for friends and acquaintances. It was the latter that got hacked. 🙁

    4. Have a look at DPD customer service UK page. There is a normal phone number to ring – and an email address etc too. You could ring them, tell them you have a possible fraud / fake delivery and if they have a fraud dept – they may ask for a copy of what was sent to you.

      1. Checking the IP address usually suffices, taking care to look for minor variants on the kosher equivalent, such as ‘m1crosoft.com’.

    1. 327115+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      These governance peoples that have been voted into power again, seem to think that the chinks are our china plates.

    1. Good afternoon Johnny

      I posted an article about Dominic Frisby earlier the afternoon – did you see it?

    2. I’d simply say to those complaining – how did you get here?

      Every single thing they use and take for granted was paid for and built by a white man. I’m more than happy for them not to make use of that infrastructure – at any level.

  48. Sadiq al-Mahdi, who has died of Covid-19 aged 84, was Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister and the great-grandson off Mohammed Ahmed Ibn el-Sayyid Abdullah, the “Mad Mahdi” who proclaimed himself the Islamic messiah, routed the Anglo-Egyptian forces around Khartoum in 1885 and beheaded Charles Gordon, Britain’s most famous general. (Lord Kitchener later desecrated the Mahdi’s tomb and took his skull to use as an inkwell.)

    Sadiq al-Mahdi, a tall, erect figure in snow-white robes, inherited his great-grandfather’s mantle as leader of the Ansar, a Sufi Islamic movement his ancestor had founded. But he lacked his decisive leadership qualities and his three years at the helm of weak and shifting coalitions ended prematurely in a military coup in June 1989.

    He was born at Omdurman on December 25 1935, the son of Siddiq al-Mahdi, a politician who married his cousin, Rahma Abdullah Jadallah.

    After a traditional Muslim education Sadiq read PPE at St John’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1957.

    Following his father’s death in 1961 Sadiq al-Mahdi assumed the leadership of the Ansar and in 1964 was elected leader of Sudan’s largest opposition party the National Umma Party (NUP).

    He served as prime minister twice. His first period in office, from July 1966 to May 1967, was ended by Ja’far Al-Nimeiri’s military coup before he had a chance to get his feet under the prime ministerial desk.

    His second, from May 1986 until June 1989, ended when he was ousted in a military coup headed by Omar al-Bashir.

    Those three years saw the formation of three unstable coalitions, riven by factionalism, corruption, personal rivalries and scandals, which failed to live up to al-Mahdi’s promises to mobilise government resources to bring food relief to famine areas, reduce the government’s international debt, bring an end to an ongoing civil war and build a national political consensus to address the country’s disintegrating economy and social structures.

    Al-Mahdi could be charming and was a skilled conversationalist – diplomats referred to his “Western’’ face – but talk was rarely followed by action. As one senior Western aid worker was quoted as saying, “Things were so bad that it is hard to imagine anyone who could have made them worse. People were prepared to follow anybody with the ability to get rid of al-Mahdi and his cronies.’’ Al-Bashir’s coup was said to have been organised with the connivance of Egypt,

    Al-Mahdi was imprisoned and put under house arrest for almost seven years until he escaped to Eritrea in 1996. (He had also spent periods in prison several times before in 1969, 1973 and 1983.) He used his time in jail to study and write a number of books on politics and Islam.

    He returned to Sudan in 2000 and, though subject to constant harassment, publicly blamed al-Bashir’s “misguided policies” for creating the crisis in Darfur and demanded the government co-operate with the International Criminal Court in The Hague where al-Bashir was wanted on charges of genocide.

    In 2010 he unsuccessfully challenged al-Bashir for the presidency in elections criticised as falling well below international standards. But by the time al-Bashir himself was deposed in a coup in 2019, al-Mahdi had come to be regarded by many Sudanese as a “face from the past” and the NUP was just one among many voices.

    In October al- Mahdi’s family revealed that he had tested positive for Covid-19. He was sent for treatment to the United Arab Emirates, but developed complications.

    Sadiq al-Mahdi was married twice, and had ten children. His daughter, Mariam, is deputy leader of the NUP. One of his nephews is Alexander Siddig, an actor best known for his roles in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and in the Game of Thrones series.

    Sadiq al-Mahdi, born December 25 1935, died November 26 2020

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/11/30/sadiq-al-mahdi-great-grandson-mad-mahdi-became-democratic-leader/

    Related Topics

  49. Toy Boy has said that yer French can go to ski resorts but NOT use ski-lifts.

    On BFMTV last evening, they had a doctor (masked, of course) saying that banning ski-lifts because of the risks posed by queues was nonsense. There was no more risk to anyone than in queuing at the bakers or at a supermarket checkout.

    Refreshing to hear – but Toy Boy and his peasant PM will take not a blind bit of notice.

    There are quite big protest marches at the big ski resorts today by locals demanding that hey be allowed to work.

    1. Caroline tells me that it has also been declared illegal to go ski-ing in a foreign country so if you cross the border you may well be stopped to see if you are carrying skis or other equipment.

      1. She is – as usual – quite correct. The border situation will be the complete opposite of that in the Channel.

      2. Apart from anything else, I can see a practical problem; Just take the ski areas of Chamonix and Courmayeur in France, the Aosta Valley in Italy, and Verbier in Switzerland – and three countries can be seen in a day on a single ski pass: the Mont Blanc Unlimited. And then there’s the thrill of waking up in one country and smoothly gliding into another. Ski areas such as the Matterhorn, Portes du Soleil and the Milky Way have linked runs that make it easy to nip back and forth across the border as much or as little as you like.
        https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/travel/cross-border-skiing-is-best-done-in-an-alpine-setting-1.204154

        Perhaps that’s why Micron wants the lifts closed?

        1. Nah – he is frightened of snow – Maman doesn’t let him out. So he wants to ruin everyone else’s holiday.

          2. ‘gay brothels’?

            I didn’t know there are
            such establishments;
            am I naive or thick …
            or quite possibly both?

            Good afternoon, Phizzee.

          3. Good afternoon Garlands. You have obviously never enjoyed the delights of the S&M scene of East Berlin.

          8. Had to earn some money somewhere. Not all of us had a public school education. I worked the cloakroom and those leather cloaks were heavy.

          9. When I left school we were were told not to wear the Old School tie when visiting a brothel and that only the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope could get VD from a lavatory seat!

    2. I’m not a skier but I suspect that getting to the top of the ski-run on foot rather than using a lift would be a lot more dangerous than queuing then riding up with other skiers.

      A. most skiers are relatively fit
      B. most skiers are relatively young
      Thus even if they contracted Covid they would be unlikely to die or suffer serious ill effects.
      An uncontrolled tumble down a mountainside would most likely cause severe injury, if not death.

    3. If everyone in the queue wore their skis they would automatically be 2 metres apart.

  50. Trust Big Pharma,trust Pfizer,after all they have a perfect track record

    Oh Wait……………….

    Violation Tracker Parent Company Summary

    Parent Company Name:

    Pfizer

    Ownership Structure:

    publicly traded (ticker symbol PFE)

    Headquartered in:

    New York

    Major Industry:

    pharmaceuticals

    Specific Industry:

    pharmaceuticals

    Penalty total since 2000:

    $4,747,652,947

    Number of records:

    80

    https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/pfizer

  51. Every cloud has a silver lining …….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0686f49204e1dddeb61ad93e33add586c40afabad7ad54cf6a14551d58c7226f.png

    Summary

    Effects of the pandemic on sales growth have helped to cement Smith & Wesson’s name for a new generation.
    The recent spinoff comes at a unique time to allow the company to focus on its core strengths.
    Solid balance sheet strength will give the company enough flexibility to continue designing winning firearm concepts.

    Investment Thesis
    Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (SWBI) has been one of the winners during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the recent spinoff of its ancillary product brands and a solid balance sheet position, the company is set to become the premier pure-play U.S. firearms manufacturer.

    ;¬)

          9. Actually Phizz, I have been reliably informed today by a very woke BAME that that expression is no longer acceptable!

          15. A few days ago, somebody in this forum mentioned that the new acronym to describe those of the black persuasion is FUN.

            Not quite sure what those letters stand for…

  52. Completely OT – one of the talks on the Arts Society list that I posted yesterday was about a project to make an archive of the diaries of ordinary folk – not politicians or military leaders….. People like us.

    This is a link to the Archive. https://www.thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/

    The talk was by Irving Finkel – to whom I could listen for hours.

    1. That’s precisely the reason, Bill, why I wrote my autobiography, charting my life from 1944 to 1974. Available on Kindle under the title, Not A Bad Life and it will only cost you USD 5.00.

  54. The BBC News last night was full of warnings to us all about fake news on social media about the Covid 19 vaccine and how this must be eliminated.

    We need to be clear about some of our definitions:

    fake news = news we don’t want you to hear even if it is true;

    no evidence of election fraud = we shall not publish evidence we do not like; we shall successfully destroy all trace of this evidence; we shall bribe or blackmail those who get in our way.

          1. I don’t watch Newsnight but OH does usually put the Beeb 10pm news on. So we see one but not the other.

      2. Sadly, he won’t. But, ever the optimist, I shall be keeping my betting slip for Trump to win in the vain hope that he eventually might.

        1. Here’s one for you: Biden is confirmed as POTUS, makes the biggest pigs ear for the next 4 years, and Democrats are destroyed at the next election, with Trump re-elected with a crushing majority.

          2. Thatis far more likely than Trump winning this year’s election, all that is happening now is their democratic processes are being further harmed by outlandish attempts to invalidate the election result.

            Cash for pardons eh?

        2. Here’s one for you: Biden is confirmed as POTUS, makes the biggest pigs ear for the next 4 years, and Democrats are destroyed at the next election, with Trump re-elected with a crushing majority.

        1. If the Supreme court switch the result there will be plenty of rioting to distract from political news coverage.

          No looting neded this time, they all stocked up during the black Friday/ cyber Monday sales weeks.

  55. From the Telegraph –

    BBC – Sports Personality of the Year
    “Sport proved in 2020 how central it is to our lives and, more than any other,
    Marcus Rashford underlined the huge difference it can make.
    He is the very essence of a sports personality.”

    Sports Personality of the Year?
    The clue is in the word PERSONALITY!

    1. The idiotic word ‘personality’ was brought in by vacuous cretins at the BBC, way back in he 1960s, to replace the programme’s original (and most apposite) title of Sportsman of the Year.

      How many of those who have won the title possess any form of personality?

          1. But I think she did win one year. She also swore at the photographers one time, I remember. And she dealt with an attacker quite forcefully. She’s also a very down to earth type of person and easy to talk to.

            She’d get my vote, if I had one!

    2. Would you bet a large sum against him winning?
      I wouldn’t, even after Hamilton’s records.
      My one caveat would be that they might split the woke vote and allow someone to sneak past on the inside.

          1. Isn’t that the one who was quarantined out of Strictly with an invisible case of the ‘Rona?

          2. Wasn’t it her dancing partner who has tested positive for Covid I think they have found a stand in, although she is the amateur dancer.
            It still “takes two to tango” ……but i never watch it anyway.

      2. I thought the thrust of the Telegaffe article was that it was wrong that Rashford wasn’t on the short list? Thus no one can vote for him??
        If you want a really nauseating article [I hope you’ve finished breakfast] see the Radio Times’ article about what a great example Hamilton is and his dignity in taking the knee!

    3. That sports personality scenario has been a bit of a joke for years.
      Hamilton owes all of his success to other people. Sure he drives a car, but the money and the team work behind him represents a massive structure.
      If he keeps spouting off the way he is, he’s not going to any support at all.
      At least athletes and other sport stars actually get out of breath participating in their sport. He only gets short of breath because he can’t seem to keep his opinions to himself.

  56. To ruin your evening, an item about the publicity shy:

    The trouble with Prince Harry’s eco-alarmism

    Laughing at Harry means we avoid having to take him seriously and subjecting his words to serious criticism

    Joanna Williams

    ‘What if every single one of us was a raindrop?’

    I have no idea what goes into the Californian drinking water, but the Duke formerly known as Prince Harry seems to have been knocking it back.

    We are fortunate indeed that, despite having fled stateside to secure greater privacy, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to send us regular character-improving missives. This week sees Harry return to a favorite theme: climate change.

    Speaking at an online event to mark the launch of WaterBear, a new subscription television platform for environmental and conservation documentaries, Harry pondered:

    ‘Every single raindrop that falls from the sky relieves the parched ground. What if every single one of us was a raindrop, and if every single one of us cared?’

    The ground in my little corner of southern England is far from parched right now, but I guess the fact I am also not a raindrop indicates that Harry is not speaking literally. Indeed, I am sure he is quite genuine when he says: ‘Being in nature is the most healing part of life, I truly believe that’s one reason why it’s there.’ Perhaps it is understandable that Harry has come to see nature as existing for his personal healing. Unlike, say, the survivors of earthquakes, tornadoes and floods, who might hold a very different view of nature.

    It is all too easy to mock the one-time heir to the throne turned Hollywood royalty, who comes complete with Netflix tie-in and, sadly, corona-curtailed frequent flying.

    But what if instead of laughing, we take Harry seriously? His recently acquired penchant for woke suggests he has his finger (almost) on the pulse of elite opinion. Whether by design or by accident, Harry soaks up the zeitgeist before reflecting it back to us with all the sophistication of a Malawian elephant.

    Take another statement Harry made at the WaterBear launch:

    ‘But the moment you become a father, everything really does change because then you start to realize, well, what is the point in bringing a new person into this world when they get to your age and it’s on fire?’

    This rhetoric of the world being ‘on fire’ is the language used by Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough and Extinction Rebellion protesters. It comes from people who are feted, not mocked. It is the language heard in UN assemblies and the UK Parliament.

    Laughing at Harry means we avoid having to take him seriously and subjecting his words to serious criticism. And we need to question the merit of the ‘world on fire’ message. Sure, it makes for an evocative, powerful and disturbing image. But it is also terrifying and fatalistic. As Harry suggests, it leads inevitably to the question, ‘what is the point in bringing a new person into this world?’ Indeed, what is the point of doing anything if our fate is so definitely sealed?

    And for all Harry talks about his future progeny, many climate activists have brought the deadline forward. Back in 2018, the UN warned that we have just 12 years to limit a climate change catastrophe. So, only 10 more to go. If the world is truly on fire, we need to do far more than imagining ourselves to be raindrops.

    The ‘end-is-nigh’ alarmism beloved by campaigners does far worse than seed passivity. It can lead to eco-anxiety, a phenomenon described by Psychology Today as a ‘psychological disorder afflicting an increasing number of individuals who worry about the environmental crisis’. In a survey carried out for the BBC, almost three in five (58 percent) children said they were concerned about the impact climate change will have on their lives. Nearly one in five claimed to have had a bad dream about the climate crisis, while 17 percent said their concerns affected their capacity to sleep and eat normally. Poor Greta may find solace for her own struggles through activism, but this is disastrous for other people’s children.

    Harry reminds us that when it comes to children, ‘We can’t steal their future, that’s not the job we’re here for.’ Instead, he urges us to think about how we can ‘have our desire fulfilled without taking from our children and generations to come?’ Sadly, this stoking of generational grievances does little other than cultivate a sense of victimhood in young people. Young people have not had their future’s stolen. Our planet is not literally on fire. Climate change and our response to it must, of course, be taken seriously, but despite the ever-shifting deadlines of activists, our future is not already mapped-out.

    If Harry wants to make a difference, his next sermon should dial down the psychedelia and fear-mongering. We already have more than enough celebrities skilled in regurgitating the woke zeitgeist.

    2. “We can’t steal their future, that’s not the job we’re here for.”

      No, it’s to crash the economy, destroy 21st century life, and send us and our descendants back to the Stone Age.

    3. There’s a lot of alarmism, but not a lot of practicality. Because practical solutions are outside his power. What he wants is to make enough gulible idiots demand from supra national government – the ones unfettered by the annoyance of democracy – to do what he wants.

      He, of course, won’t pay for those decisions. Perhaps if he did, perhaps if he lived on a council estate in Dagenham on minimum wage working 8 hour shifts 80 miles from his home and his wife a jobbing actor out of work more than in it he’d think differently.

      If he wants to preach the least he can do is live the life. Dear blasted life, his security bill alone could feed London’s homeless. I detest the man.

    4. Having read his ravings yesterday about coronavirus being a rebuke from Mother Nature, I really think the guy has lost the plot!

      1. I think the pair of them are on something Californian.. funny stuff that people smoke or snort ..
        His poor brain is addled . He must be tormented mentally by his appalling behaviour and disloyal conduct unbecoming of a gentleman.

        He has a life with his mongrel of a shallow minded manipulative actress . He has made his bed , tough titty Harry , you are toast.

    5. “We can’t steal their future, that’s not the job we’re here for.”

      No, it’s to crash the economy, destroy 21st century life, and send us and our descendants back to the Stone Age.

  58. A humbling obit in The Grimes today:

    Janine de Greef

    “As Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy on the morning of June 6, 1944, a courageous teenager in southern France set out on a journey that would end her own epic struggle against the Nazis.

    Janine de Greef, a vibrant Belgian of 19, was one of the founding members of the Comet Line, a secret army operating in Brussels, Paris and Bayonne that enabled nearly 800 Allied airmen to evade German security forces and return to Britain after they were shot down over occupied Europe.

    That morning, she headed for the Pyrenees with her mother, Elvire, her brother, Freddy, and Micheline Dumon (obituary, November 24, 2017), who was then head of the northern section of the Comet Line. Taking a route the De Greefs had travelled many times with Allied airmen, they were now on the run, their lives in danger, trying to reach neutral Spain.

    Farther north, the Gestapo had arrested several of the escape line’s key helpers, and it was finally closing in on Comet Sud, the southern section, which had been run by the De Greef family for three years.

    After crossing the Bidasoa river and trekking through the Pyrenees, the party eventually reached the Basque city of San Sebastian. There, they were met by staff from the British embassy in Madrid and a secret agent known as Monday, who was from MI9, the intelligence agency responsible for escape and evasion. Janine de Greef was, at last, in safe hands, and would be in London within the week.

    She had left her home in Brussels in May 1940 when the Germans invaded western Europe. She then joined a convoy of cars carrying the staff of the newspaper L’Indépendance Belge, for which her mother had worked, along with her father, Fernand, Freddy, her grandmother Bobonne, and an Englishman called Albert Johnson, who had been a chauffeur in Brussels. They hoped to catch a ship to the United States or to England.

    Instead, they reached the seaside town of Biarritz on the southwestern coast of France, where they rented the Villa Voisin, a tidy, detached house with a garden at the end of a discreet cul-de-sac in the village of Anglet. Years after the war, a small marble plaque was placed on a gate post acknowledging the building’s significance to the Comet Line.

    The organisation was started in 1941 when its most prominent members included Andrée de Jongh (obituary, October 15, 2007), and Elvire de Greef and her family. De Jongh, given the codename Dedee, was a nurse inspired by the exploits of Edith Cavell, who was executed during the First World War for helping Allied soldiers to escape from Belgium.

    Working with her father, Frederic de Jongh, and others, Dedee helped to set up the Comet Line in Brussels and establish links with Paris. Elvire de Greef, known as Tante-Go, opened up escape routes over the Pyrenees, set up safe houses, recruited guides and forged links with British agents and officials in Spain. The two women often worked together, and their codenames became the stuff of folklore. Indeed, women played prominent roles in most of the escape lines; they were usually young, charismatic and quite exceptional. According to the historian MRD Foot, who documented the work of MI9: “Evaders often found that they had to trust themselves entirely to women, and without the courage and devotion of its couriers and safe-house keepers, nearly all of them women, no escape line could keep going at all.”

    He added: “There was a tremendous readiness to help the Allied cause in that originally small but uncommonly tough segment of the newly conquered populations which refused to accept the fact of defeat.”

    Janine de Greef was a complex character. Discreet and unassuming, she was also often too generous for her own good. She was a serious and voracious reader who kept a diary written in a mixture of English, French and shorthand, which might have been difficult to explain had it ever been found by the Germans.

    On Wednesday, October 15, 1941, she records details of her first assignment with Allied evaders. “I have a train at 12.24 . . . I am in splendid form, I feel the bones of my haunch, I have no belly, nervous legs. I did the way very quickly without tiredness.”

    The next day she picks up the airmen, referred to as Bobby and Allan, who arrive at 10.45. Later, someone gives her a copy of Little Women, which she reads “alone on the bed with a glass of gin beside me”. The airmen leave for the Pyrenees the next day. “I hope I shall get stronger,” she writes.

    At the same time RAF Bomber Command was increasing the number of sorties its aircraft were flying against enemy targets, but the German defences were also taking a heavy toll on the British bomber force. More and more downed airmen were trying to evade the German security forces.

    One of these was Sergeant Bob Frost, a gunner serving with No 150 Squadron, flying Vickers Wellingtons from RAF Snaith in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Frost had baled out of his bomber over Belgium in 1942 after it was hit by anti-aircraft fire during a raid on Essen. He was given shelter by a farming family in the village of Kapellen bij Glabbeek and then passed on to the Comet Line in Brussels, where he was reunited with two other members of his crew before being taken to Paris.

    In an interview in 2016, Frost recalled meeting Janine de Greef, who took him and five other airmen from Paris southwest to St Jean de Luz. “She made that journey from Paris twenty-odd times during the war,” he said. “A real heroine, that girl!”

    When an older woman got on the train during the journey south, one of the airmen, an American, apparently offered her his seat, but did so in English. Frost said he was afraid and looked at De Greef. “She didn’t bat an eyelash,” he said.

    Like Janine, the rest of her family also appeared to have strong nerves. Her indomitable mother disguised her resistance activities through her involvement in the black market, which thrived on the Spanish frontier. She even counted a number of German officers among her customers. Fernand, codenamed Oncle Dick, got a job as a translator with the German occupiers and was able to steal documents and ID cards, which Freddy helped to copy and forge.

    Johnson, codenamed Be, also remained with the family. Ostensibly a handyman, he guided many evaders across the Pyrenees.

    Quite remarkably, the entire family survived the war without ever being arrested. Of the 3,000 civilians who helped the Comet Line, about 700 were taken by Nazi security forces during the course of the war, including Andrée de Jongh. She was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1943, but survived and was awarded the George Medal by the British. Others were not so lucky; more than 250 were executed or died in the camps.

    Elvire de Greef was also awarded the George Medal. Janine received the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom. Her citation outlined the many occasions on which she had shepherded evaders to the Spanish frontier. “In all her work for the Allied Cause,” it said, “Mademoiselle Janine de Greef proved herself to be a most courageous, loyal and patriotic helper.”

    Janine Lambertine Marie Angele de Greef was born in Brussels in 1925 into a middle-class family. Her father was a businessman. Aged 15, she was still at school in the Belgian capital when German forces invaded the country.

    After the Nazi surrender, she was decorated by the Belgian government and the United States as well as the British. She returned to the family home at 424 Avenue de la Couronne in Brussels and was employed by the British embassy as a commercial attaché.

    Described as a spiritual person, she developed a broad interest in all religions. She was regarded as kind and charitable and used to feed the stray cats in her neighbourhood with the finest fillet steak. She loved to travel and built up a collection of photographs from around the world.

    Discouraged by her mother, Janine never married or had children, but was secretive about her relationships. Her surviving family believe she had an affair with Johnson during the war, and that photographs point to a relationship with an RAF officer in 1945.

    She moved into her mother’s downstairs flat after Elvire’s death in 1991, but the building was later damaged by fire and her medals were stolen. Undeterred, she continued to live in the derelict building — far worse things happened during the Second World War, she said — until it was refurbished.

    In Brussels she often attended the annual reunion of the Comet Line and a Requiem Mass for those who died in its service. According to Helen Fry, author of a new book on MI9, Janine de Greef had been a key figure in an “indispensable civilian secret army”.

    Sitting next to the former Wellington gunner Bob Frost at the 2010 reunion, she just shrugged when asked how she had managed to have such presence of mind at such a young age. “You had to live,” she said, “and not worry.”

    Janine de Greef, Comet Line member, was born on September 25, 1925. She died on November 7, 2020, aged 95”

    1. I can see the headmistress of the girl’s school I attended standing proudly , and informing us , not lecturing , explaining how many silent heroines were worthy of our attention , so many like Helen Keller , Marie Curie , Florence Nightingale , Odette, Anne Frank , Edith Cavell and so many more who were there doing stuff without a second thought for their own safety. Example is set by precept .. a favourite expression used by the headmistress. of my school.

      1. The criss-cross blast tape was still on the interior windows at my girls’ school when I started there, long after the war.

        2. I always thought my school’s motto

          Pro Patria Populoque

          was a bit pompous.

          [For the country and the people]

          6. The motto of Bill Thomas’s school was:

            Concordia parvae res crescunt

            Small things grow in harmony
            Harmony was the matron.
            Allegedly

          7. Ad Astra was ours (and our badge was an eagle on a rock). No wonder I was keen on the Air Force! 🙂

          9. “Labor omnia vincit” ; something we were painfully aware as we dragged bulging satchels home for a non-relaxing evening of homework …. and more homework.

          10. “Spiritus intus alit”… the spirit within sustains. Translated by the irreverent as “a wee drop of the right stuff keeps you going”.

    2. ‘Sitting next to the former Wellington gunner Bob Frost at the 2010 reunion, she just shrugged when asked how she had managed to have such presence of mind at such a young age. “You had to live,” she said, “and not worry.”’ I can’t see her being happy with Tier 3 although, of course, she had much more to worry about!!

    3. Thanks for posting, Bill. I never cease to be amazed by the courage of the resistance, with the odds so heavily stacked against them. One word of betrayal and that was usually the end.

      1. There was a very good BTL comment – “And to think that the thing that most worries my 19 year old is that the broadband speed may not be fast enough for his computer games…”

      2. It’s what irritates me about the 107 million members of the resistance comments, one sees.

        (And yes I’ve done cheese eating surrender monkeys too.)

      3. I have had the inordinate honour of meeting a venerable Basque woman who, as a teenager, carried secret messages hidden the bread that she was delivering.

        1. Worked with a Pole who was SOE, parachuted back to Poland, arrested, escaped back to England.
          Nicest and humblest bloke you ever met.

    1. Absolutely right Rik. It was evident that any debate would be “my constituents shouldn’t be in this tier” the next county/area is in tier … the one below of course. They should all have been completely against any and all tiers.

      1. There’s an old song by Ken Dodd ‘Tears for Souvenirs’,……….many people have been contacting the morning TV media suggesting that politicians should set an example and take the vaccine first and before the ongoing experiment is carried out on the elderly and infirm. But I think the precedent of the reply is that they are far too busy effing everything else up,……….. as usual.

        1. A few days ago the Guardian claimed that they couldn’t find a single politician willing to be vaccinated.

          Is this fake news?

        2. But if they did take the vaccine in public would they actually just pretend it was the vaccine they were taking?

          The level of trust in politicians must be at an all time low.

          1. Of course they wouldn’t have the real thing. Sterile saline solution would be my bet, except for those that voted against the government yesterday.

  61. Does any one else use Virgin media to supply Wi-Fi ?
    Ours has been almost no existent over the past few weeks unless you sit near the router it’s not possible to get a signal.
    Virgin are being seriously criticised on internet forums.
    It’s suggested that many people who are now working from home are putting a huge demand on the signal strength.
    Old codgers at home can’t get a signal unless they upgrade their system which of course cost more money. I guess that’s okay if you can claim the costs on expenses, but not if your an old pensioner stuck at home twiddling the elderly thumbs.

    1. I use Talk Talk at home and contrary to what seems to be everyone else’s experience of them, as yet (please fate, don’t be tempted) I have no complaints.

      1. I have also used them for years and its a very good service. I am less than 2 miles from the exchange which I believe makes a great difference.

      2. We were with TalkTalk from 2005 – 11. The customer service was the worst part. It was abysmal and when we left them and went back to BT, it took them ages to do the refund we were entitled to.

        1. Good afternoon, J.

          I was with BT [always] but was persuaded to try TalkTalk;
          I went back to BT in 2013. For the last month I have been
          plagued by TalkTalk for an alleged outstanding balance of
          £31.34 [this sum represents nothing!] So far I have ignored
          the threats [as I do with the telly licence reminders] since BT
          have assured me that they dealt with TT’s outstanding Contract
          balance, which was part of the deal….. We shall see!!
          If I suddenly disappear I will let you know which prison I am in!!

          1. Good afternoon, G

            Why has it taken them seven years to come up with this derisory sum you are supposed to owe? Do you still have any paperwork from when you changed over? It might be work a look, if you have.

      4. I use Zen Internet, as recommended by my pet computer nerd.
        Fingers crossed – so far no complaints.

    2. We’re with BT and they forced us to have their router last February. We’re supposed to be on fibre now, though not right to the house. The wifi signal we get now is not appreciably better than it was before, but doesn’t drop out quite so often.

    3. From what I’ve seen, it may be a case of you gets what you pay for.
      Isn’t Virgin always claiming it’s cheaper?

      1. A couple of years ago, when we were having trouble with our internet, I got into an interesting conversation with one of the OpenReach engineers sent to assist. He explained that, despite the ISP promises of high speeds, the attenuation on speed caused by copper wire between the substation and the house meant that the claimed speeds were physically impossible to achieve.

        Anyway, the more interesting part of the conversation was that he had, the previous day, transferred his father over to Virgin, and when Virgin was available in his area, he would be doing the same, because it is a far better service.

        Make of that what you will.

      2. We have had fibre in our road for many years it first came with NTL Home. i think it was in the mid 90s when it was first installed and we were connected. But we hardly used it then.
        A BT engineer did once confirmed to me that the broad band companies do gradually reduce the signal so they can entice the customers to upgrade. There are several people in our road who run a business or work from home and the have regular ‘freeze outs’ using the virgin system.
        I’m going to get a quote from BT two of our sons use it fairly locally and have a much more satisfactory result than we do. I hate the predicament of being screwed over……as it were. We pay over 60 pounds a month for our package, TV broadband and land line. The item costs, use to be separated on the bills, but not any more.

        1. It’s not the signal strength they reduce: it’s the broadband data transfer rate they throttle down. However, that is a different issue to measured broadband speeds, which in our case varies from 20Mbps to less than 2, depending on time of day, which is simply a consequence of the number of users.

        2. It’s not the signal strength they reduce: it’s the broadband data transfer rate they throttle down. However, that is a different issue to measured broadband speeds, which in our case varies from 20Mbps to less than 2, depending on time of day, which is simply a consequence of the number of users.

    4. The internet provider signal should have nothing to do with the signal strength supplied by the wifi router, they are two distinct systems.
      If you need to cuddle up to your wifi router to get a signal, maybe the router needs a swift kick up the megabits to get it to behave. A reboot normally works on our router when it stops listening.

      Our internet service is through a 4G wireless service, that has suffered with so many people working from home, the demand is now far greater than they planned for when erecting the tower several years ago. Not much we can do about that apart from whine to the supplier to increase capacity.

      I suppose that if Virginia Virgin supplied the router, it is possible for them to control wifi signal strength based on external internet speed but that is certainly not something that we see on this side of the Atlantic.

      Thanks for correcting the spell checker David.

  64. Boris was quite buoyant at PMQs this morning despite his humiliation last night. He is still determined to leave the EU on 31 December 2020. France is urging Barnier to walk out of negotiations with no deal. Some hopeful signs.

    1. I find it amazing that although Barnier is meant to be negotiating on behalf of all 27 members of the EU he spends the vast majority of his time haggling on behalf of France

      1. I thought that’s what the EU was for. France is the yappy poodle stuffed with treats by Mummy Germany in the vain hope she will shut up.

      3. Good afternoon, Janet.
        ‘I find it amazing … he spends
        the vast majority of his time
        haggling on behalf of France.’
        What else would you expect?
        That he be impartial?
        Shirley knot?

    3. Macron is almost as unpopular in France at the moment as Johnson is in Britain. What better way, he thinks, of becoming more popular than by attacking the British?

      1. The French have never ben able to get over Agincourt Richard let alone Trafalgar and Waterloo.
        Not too long ago we made a trip with the local U3A to London , Westminster and the houses of parliament, the H o Ls. Back in the day, when President Charles De Gaul was making a state visit he had refused to walk through the adjoining chamber between the lords and Commons, because of the two huge paintings on the wall both depicting Victories against France. The plan was to cover them (the hooks are still in the wall) but they ushered him through a side door to make him feel more at ease more comfortable.

        2. The reason that the French were decades behind most civilised countries and got the reputation for French smelly drains and poor plumbing was that they did not want plumbed in flushing lavatories because they reminded them of water loos.

          1. We stayed in an old farm house in Le Linde on the Dordogne a few years ago and the toilet was blocked when we moved in the guys came the next day to clear it and they arranged for the Septic tank to be emptied the next day ……we were out ! 😏 Merde…… scuz my French…..

  66. That’s me for this grey, dreary damp day. No sunshine. Just gloom all day – and the weather wasn’t much better. Same forecast for tomorrow. It’s all the fault of the virus, of course.

    Have a jolly evening checking the attic for old diaries (see my earlier post).

    A demain.

          1. Have you found anywhere in the UK that has decent satay on the menu? I can still remember the street vendors in Singapore and their amazing satay even after over 55 years.

        2. Brenda O’Malley is home making dinner, as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door. “Brenda, may I come in?” he asks. “I’ve somethin’ to tell ya.”

          “Of course you can come in, you’re always welcome, Tim. But where’s my husband?”

          “That’s what I’m here to be tellin’ ya, Brenda. There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery…”

          “Oh, God no!” cries Brenda. “Please don’t tell me..”

          “I must, Brenda. Your husband Seamus is dead and gone. I’m sorry.” Finally, she looked up at Tim. “How did it happen, Tim?”

          “It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned.”

          “Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?”

          “Well, no Brenda… no. Fact is, he got out three times to pee.”

    1. Is the bottom one teaching Gus and Pickles how to do their Bill Thomas ladder impressions?

  69. The rescue of the Around-The-World yachtsman – by a fellow Frog – is quite impressive …

    ‘Just terrifying’: Vendée Globe sailor rescued after yacht breaks in half

    “I didn’t have time to do anything,” said Kevin Escoffier. I just had time to send a message to my team. I’m sinking, I’m not joking. MAYDAY.”

    Escoffier, 40, the French sailor who was lying in third place in the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race, was talking after his dramatic rescue. On Monday afternoon, 840 miles south west of Cape Town, in strong winds and heavy seas, his 60ft carbon fibre boat PRB slammed into a wave at 27 knots and broke in half. PRB is one of the latest generation Imoca 60s with foils to lift it up so that it is practically flying. Escoffier abandoned ship and took to his life raft.

    Sydney to Hobart yacht race gets green light to go ahead this year
    Read more
    Race Direction immediately alerted Jean Le Cam, the competitor closest to PRB, who diverted his boat Yes We Cam! towards the zone. The veteran 61-year-old, who is appearing in his fifth Vendée Globe race, arrived at around 16:15 UTC and soon located Escoffier’s life raft, establishing visual and voice contact.

    However because of the big seas and winds gusting 35 knots Le Cam’s initial attempt to recover his countryman failed. Then he lost sight of the life raft altogether. With the onset of night, and the increasing severity of the situation, a further three boats were diverted from their courses to assist, while Le Cam continued his search.

    In the black of night Le Cam saw a distant flash. “The closer to the light I got, the clearer I saw it,” he told the Vendée Race Committee. “It is amazing because you switch from despair to an unreal moment in an instant.”

    Positioning himself upwind of Escoffier’s life raft, Le Cam shouted: “We are doing this now!” Then the boat was falling backwards, too fast in reverse, on to the life raft. “He was just there, two metres off the stern, and thank goodness I had prepared the red life ring that is usually in the cockpit. I threw it to him, he caught it and then he managed to pull himself in to catch the transmission bar [rudder link arm]. And that was it.”

    Escoffier recalled: “When I found myself on board with Jean, we hugged each other. He said to me: ‘Shit you’re aboard. That was tricky!’ I replied: ‘I have spoilt your race. You were doing so well.’ He replied: ‘That doesn’t matter. Last time it was me who upset Vincent’s race.’”

    This rescue mirrors another during the 2008-09 Vendée Globe, with roles reversed. Vincent Riou, then the skipper of PRB, rescued Le Cam from his upturned Imoca which had capsized 200 miles west of Cape Horn. Le Cam was trapped inside his boat for 16 hours during which time it was not known if he was safe or not.

    1. In the coronavirus briefing on TV this afternoon, he made reference to his Far Eastern heritage, saying that he saw merit in the readiness of many Asian countries to adopt better public health measures than we do.

  72. Watching MASH on TV, which I like to do because it’s good and a product of happier times. But the Sony channel bill it as “an adventure war drama”, even though they play it with the original canned laughter track (which BBC2 removed back in the 70s). So comedy is now drama. What is comedy?

    1. I was allowed a break from homework every Wed eve when MASH was on (I seem to remember it was always screened on Wed at 9.10pm), when it was played without the laughter.
      I have tried rewatching many times since but the laughter ruins it. It was far more poignant without it.

          1. There were others in the film. Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman and a whole cast of others were in it.

        2. Donald Sutherland Tom Skerrit at al, excellent. I’m surprised they agreed to share screen time with that oaf Gould

    2. I loved MASH, and as you say it was a product of happier times on TV.

      That was set during the Korean war, but when I was a nurse in the RN in the 1960s, some of our RN nursing tutors (male ) had served in Korea , the conditions were appalling , and many service men succumbed to frost bite and lost their toes and fingers . Our services were not provided for properly re clothing , the conditions they fought in were freezing.

      QARNNS Nursing sisters served on hospital ships in WW2 and during Korea , they told us Korea was a hard horrible war.

      1. Evening T-B – I enjoyed Mash and have the box set. It demonstrated to some extent the progress in surgical techniques prompted by the war demands. Vietnam was an evil war on both sides and I am glad our PM did not allow our troops to be employed in the conflict.

      2. My late boss Sir William Whitfield was commissioned to design a commemorative tablet to our troops who served in the Korean War. It was to be installed in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral (Whitfield was the surveyor to the Fabric and Cathedral Architect at that time).

        A slab of Korean slate was sent from Korea but on arrival was found to be cracked. Pressure of time meant that the plaque was formed and regimental badges and lettering carved on Welsh slate. The calligrapher and stone carver was the late David Kindersley, a pupil of Eric Gill.

      3. Our services were not provided for properly re clothing …Nothing has changed, it seems 🙁

        1. Actually, I have read quite a few comments from serving soldiers that their kit is very good these days. If it’s true, it’s probably a result of governments being so embarrassed by the furore over bad kit at the beginning of Gulf War 2 that they actually did something about it.

    3. What is comedy?

      These days it is a gang of unwashed, gobby pinko louts who stand on a stage and shout abuse about conservatives to get a laugh from their peer group.

      1. Balance to what, exactly? I haven’t heard anything on the other side from a columnist.

        If two people were discussing the issue from both sides and another transcribing the debate, then perhaps, but all this is is a rant designed to generate ragebait clicks.

        It serves no useful purpose, given the author will almost certainly not engage in debate with readers in the Comments below the article, and may well demand the moderators censor readers by deleting all the comments, as many leftist/feminist ‘columnists’ have done before on the DT.

        Bear in mind this sort of ‘take over by stealth’ has already happened at The Times. There is more than enough leftist opinion on other newspapers. Note also that DT videos on their YT channel almost never have comments allowed. Now we know why.

        I have to wonder, given the shift to the left of the paper overall, how their readership is still growing online – it’s not left enough for anyone of a Guardian persuasion to go there (why would they even if it was – the Graun is free), so where’s all the new online subscribers coming from?

        I was one since around 2000 – before they started charging – and I know from experience over the last 2-5 years (especially the last two) that a huge amount of subscribers were royally peed off at the change in tone and political stance, and that a large number, like myself, unsubbed from their annual subscription.

        I don’t believe their figures on readership, especially as they’ve stopped using the same verified metric as the other ‘serious’ newspapers and done thir own thing. It is important to the Barclay Bros that it looks like things are going well, despite the mandemic, because they apparently are still trying to sell the newspaper. Why would they if their subscriber base is up well over 100k in one year, with only a relatively small drop in hard copy sales over the same period?

        All smoke and mirrors, I think.

        2. Balance, as in inviting Left-leaning journalists to write for them in order to counter their Right-leaning columnists, albeit the latter seems to be decreasing in number these days as you imply.

    2. When you start an article with ‘Margaret Thatcher was an egotist’ you’re just provoking for no value. Where is his proof? What evidence does he provide?

      Arguably so is he. He’s riding on the coat tails of a better woman than he will ever be. What does Lady T deserve? A 200 foot tall bronze statue in Scargill’s back yard – and for this hyphenated twerp to be welded inside it.

      1. Sorry, addendum. Not 200 feet, 500. We could call it the statue of salvation and force Lefties to pay obeisance there with graffiti or defacement punishable by flogging and stockade forced to look up at the great lady.

      2. Even so, while Thatcher ignored the organic links between art and society, she nonetheless knew they were there, and that they harboured atomic power. As she declared to the Academicians: “The health of society depends as much on the discouragement of rubbish as on the fostering of excellence.” Consensus is staid, Thatcher always believed; convictions are what we need. Here’s two for South Kesteven District Council: your Maggie is rubbish, and she will fall.

      3. Margaret Thatcher was an egotist. So said Charles Moore, her biographer, who’d long suspected she was keen to be written about. Where sculpture was concerned, she proved him right. She was immortalised more than once while still alive, and she never complained on the grounds of either aesthetics or modesty. One marble statue was erected in London’s Guildhall in 2002; she turned up and praised its handbag. Another appeared in the Palace of Westminster in 2007, and she tried a joke: “I might have preferred iron, but bronze will do.” She was no loss to art criticism, or comedy.

        I think Charles Moore was wrong to call her that, I really am so surprised he summed her up , just like that .. very mean minded of him. Another chap assassinating her character .

    3. 2. there is no instruction for the
      bottle feed. and where is jerry?
      coming into balsa i expect
      out of the long crack down to
      pulsing and deepening. he rectified
      the fridge. he calls this harmony.
      it made us soar & soar / i was
      not made for jerry, and nor were you.
      watch the stacks again, international
      orders wheel & fall from heaven
      (thank you, it means well)

      This is the second verse from a poem by Cal Rev Calder. Make of it what you will. I think Jerry is probably one of his boyfriends. You can read the rest at the link. The Torygraf isn’t even fit to wipe your Rs on nowadays.

      https://partisanhotel.co.uk/Cal-Revely-Calder

      1. Rather like another ‘article’ in today’s paper moaning that some female jockey I’d never heard of is the only female (note: not ‘woman’) on the shotlist for BBC SPOTY this year, because it’s not ‘equal’. Funny how I thought that equality meant those who did the best got the accolades, not just divvying things up by race, gender, etc to fit quotas etc.

        Let’s hope those still subscribed vote with their wallets and show the Editorial staff the error of their ways. It’s not as though they’ll print letters critical of the paper. Rather like most of the MSM, money talks.

        Get woke, go broke. It’s the only way.

        1. Hollie Doyle fully deserves to be on the short list for Sports Personality of the Year (far more worthy than a lot who’ve won it). She competes on level terms with the men and is doing extremely well (a century of winners is hard enough for anybody to achieve). She herself just wants to be known as a jockey, not a “female jockey”.

        2. It’s upside down. The broader white stripes should both be on top of the red stripes on the flagpole side.

  79. Is there ever going to be a time when we do not hear Noddy Holder singing his Christmas song. I think that most of us were around for its debut. I am now thoroughly sick of it.

    4. The most wonderful thing for me about moving to Sweden is the fact that I’ve not had to listen to that disgusting dirge for over nine years now.

    1. Cant see any batteries. It must be powered by that tiny solar panel at the front.

  81. Reporting Scotland interviewed Ms Freeman, the Scottish Health minister earlier this evening. Next week Scotland will receive 8.1% of the 800,000 Pfizer vaccine doses, around 64,000 doses
    What we gleaned from this is that the vaccine is in batches of 957 doses. The batch has to be defrosted, and then “mixed”. It then needs to be moved to the recipients, initially those in care homes. No further detail as yet.
    The vaccine needs to be kept at -70 degrees, not -80 as originally reported. What happens after it is defrosted and mixed is not clear at all. What temperature must it be kept at for distribution and injection.? What is the shelf life, time and temperature, after mixing/preparation? Ms Freeman made it clear that the vaccine would go to the care homes and the old folks would not be moved to the vaccine. Some details still had to be sorted out. Um, like can they get smaller batches?
    Ms Freeman said that the Scottish Government had bought 23 “fridges” for this process. Apparently retired NHS staff, volunteers, as well as GPs would be involved in the vaccination process. Vaccinations will start next Tuesday, 8th December.
    Ms Freeman was not asked how the vaccine was tested, nothing on that crucial subject at all.
    I am not very impressed. I spent years in logistics, distributing ambient, chilled and frozen items. Setting up something new is not something that you can do over a weekend. It takes planning, and trial runs, analysis, review and amendments. And that is with trained and experience staff. Of course the NHS will have experience in storing drugs, but I’d be surprised if it involved these kind of very low temperatures. Normally drugs would be stored between -18 degrees and ambient. Commercial equipment will cope with temperatures down to -30., and cold stores and vehicles are widely available.
    Coping with temperatures, and preserving the chill chain to -70 degrees is a different matter.

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19440049.2011.604045

      1. Yes. I know of no set up in operation for moving items frozen with dry ice. Finding people who understand this stuff and its use will not be easy. They are taking about distributing a million doses in a couple of months…

      2. https://www.amazon.co.uk/VEVOR-Nitrogen-Container-Cryogenic-Canisters/dp/B088LJXBTN/ref=pd_sbs_328_2/262-1688425-3350644?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B088LJXBTN&pd_rd_r=bbdc7dd2-e81b-4a2f-9e63-3a169b90f4b0&pd_rd_w=dBjuR&pd_rd_wg=2pihh&pf_rd_p=2304238d-df78-4b25-a9a0-b27dc7bd722e&pf_rd_r=DYHSFP89NH6DCKXZKK26&psc=1&refRID=DYHSFP89NH6DCKXZKK26

        The idea that vaccines can’t be moved about in small quantities is crazy. These things can be carried around in a small car and keep stuff at the appropriate temperature for decades. And they’ve been in regular use on UK farms for half a century. I really can’t believe that medics won’t be able to manage them.

        1. Been using those since whenever to chill steel samples for lab testing. Put sample in wee stainless basket with long wire handle. Fill dewar with liquid N2 to the level (if wearing wellies, make sure trousers are OUTSIDE the wellies, in case of a spill – you don’t want liquid N2 inside yer boot). Place basket with samples into dewar. Put on lid. Wait.

          1. Exacto.

            They are used in many industries by all sorts of people. Farm ones generally have a monthly contract for topping up the liquid N as they are in use full time to maintain the temperature for the bull straws. The wee stainless baskets have labels on to tell you which bull is which. (A bull straw is about 6 inches long and no more than a couple of mm in diameter, so you can pack a lot of them into a dewar.)

            My point is that they are not only used in labs, they’ve been outside the lab for half a century, they are not something which requires a qualification to handle (though they do need a pair of good gauntlets to fish out the frozen contents). If they can be used on farms then they can easily be used by anyone with even a peripheral connection to the medical industry. Batches of 30 or 40 or 100 doses can be moved about in an ordinary car (I’ve take a full dewar from A to B on occasions without the slightest difficulty).

            If they want depots to store them in they should have a word with some of the semen companies – they’ve probably got space to spare considering the contraction of the dairy industry in recent years.

  83. I repeat a post I made two days ago vis a vis Covid-19 mRNA vaccinations:

    corimmobile 2 days ago
    Any ‘vaccine’ that needs to be stored at -80 degrees isn’t a ‘vaccine’. It’s a transfection agent, kept alive so it can infect your cells and transfer genetic material. Don’t let them fool you. This is genetic manipulation of humans on a massive scale. Shut it down.

      2. Genetic material is often stored at minus 120 degrees or below a method known as cryogenics. I think the -70 or -80 degrees storage suggests that the vaccine contains genetic material as indeed does the description mNRA which means Modified RNA. One of the companies claiming expertise in mRNA, set up by some Harvard whizz kid, has never produced a drug or a vaccine before and is actually named MODERNA.

        They may as well have given the vaccine production to their favourite Dido Harding, authoress of our ‘world beating embarrassment’ Test & Trace.

          3. I express opinions based upon my experiences for the most part. If you have contrary views express them rather than trying to provoke a reaction with your ever discourteous remarks and your downvoting allies.

            Again, what qualifications do you have to dispute my remarks?

    2. Perhaps you could let us know what qualifications you have to make such a judgement. And have you offered the UK Government your expert services? Thanks!

      2. I designed the Immunology and Signalling laboratory at The Babraham Institute near Cambridge, an animal testing facility run by the BBSRC.

        Inevitably I listened to the scientists and laboratory technicians and received many answers to my questions about the efficacy of animal testing. I was persuaded that animal testing was a necessary step from the development of vaccines to the production of animal (pig) organs for potential transplant into humans.

        I claim no particular expertise but simply state what anyone with half a brain could research for themselves.

          1. Well it is more than you have to offer.

            I explained that I do not consider myself an expert on immunology simply that I have a greater awareness of the issues derived from experience of working with clinical scientists on a number of laboratory buildings including John Innes in Norwich and the adjacent Farm Institute.

    3. Copied from a blog site elsewhere:

      “There is a couple of other things you should know. 40m doses are coming to you from Pflzer, a company fined 2.6b dollars (yes, billions) by the US government in 2009 for mis selling dangerous products and submitting faIse claims to government healthcare programmes. Their mRNA science behind this ‘95%’ effective vaccine hasn’t even been thoroughly tested on animals, let alone humans. In a 2017 a German trial of an mRNA rabies vaccine involving only 101 participants resulted in 10 of them suffering ‘grade 3 events’ – that’s hospitalization to you folks. One other participate suffered a ‘more serious’ reaction, it was never classified so could have been grade 4 – disability, or grade 5 – death. If you believe the words vaccine and rushed should never appear in the same sentence, you should take the time to look up Pandemrix, a swine flu vaccine rushed out in 2009, it gave hundreds narcolepsy, a terrible debilitating and incurable condition.”

          2. Another good reason for saying “No! No! No!” My heels are digging in even harder. I will take a screenshot for future reference, for when they come to dig me out of my bunker.

          1. Somewhere earlier in the day I posted a line from Berliner Zeitung that indicated a rushed vaccine was a bad idea.

      2. The vaccines are patented and funded by Bill Gates. Gates has promised the WHO that his vaccines will incorporate chemicals which will sterilise women recipients and cause a decline in population.

        Gates is a Eugenicist with ambitions not dissimilar to those of Hitler. He believes himself an exceptionally brainy individual. The reality is that his MS-Dos based software was stolen from Steve Jobs (Apple) and his Microsoft Operating System light years behind Macintosh OS.

        1. Gates was detested in the maths department where I worked for that very reason and accordingly everyone used linux where possible. My first introduction to using a computer was Apple and remained so for several years – when I had to use Microsoft some years later I was amazed at how clumsy, unwieldy and backward was the system.

          1. We had Microsoft at work (ended up with XP, which wasn’t too bad) but have only used Mac or Linux at home.

          2. I used a CAD system designed for McDonnell Douglas for aircraft design called Radraft. It was brilliant and we had Sun Microsystems ‘Spark’ stations which were quicker in 1995 than much of what we have today.

            Eventually the cost of licences meant that the practice for which I worked decided to move to Autocad. The partners realised that if they adopted Autocad then they could hire and fire at will since most European countries used that system, particularly in engineering platforms.

            They duly cancelled the expensive Radraft licences and switched to the cheaper Autocad and were enabled by so doing to be rid of the experienced technicians on decent wages to be replaced by foreigners from Eastern Europe on lesser wages.

            At that point I quit the practice because it became impossible to get anything done.

            Subsequently in my own nascent practice I switched from Microsoft to Macintosh and from Autocad to Vectorworks. I have never had occasion to look back.

            When I receive files in ACAD (.dwg) format I translate them and import into my system. This exercise, along with the examination of imported files, merely highlights that anything supported by Microsoft is by definition crap.

          3. I used a CAD system designed for McDonnell Douglas for aircraft design called Radraft. It was brilliant and we had Sun Microsystems ‘Spark’ stations which were quicker in 1995 than much of what we have today.

            Eventually the cost of licences meant that the practice for which I worked decided to move to Autocad. The partners realised that if they adopted Autocad then they could hire and fire at will since most European countries used that system, particularly in engineering platforms.

            They duly cancelled the expensive Radraft licences and switched to the cheaper Autocad and were enabled by so doing to be rid of the experienced technicians on decent wages to be replaced by foreigners from Eastern Europe on lesser wages.

            At that point I quit the practice because it became impossible to get anything done.

            Subsequently in my own nascent practice I switched from Microsoft to Macintosh and from Autocad to Vectorworks. I have never had occasion to look back.

            When I receive files in ACAD (.dwg) format I translate them and import into my system. This exercise, along with the examination of imported files, merely highlights that anything supported by Microsoft is by definition crap.

          1. Thank you for posting. The more I study the vaccination programmes, the more I am inclined to the view that the coincidence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the US Presidential Elections are key.

            The Democrats used the Covid restrictions in order to promote absentee voter ballots. It is now so obvious.

            In the UK the Covid-19 pandemic has been used by Gates’ boughten politicians to enable a roll out of completely unnecessary vaccinations, the patents for which are held by Gates and the efficacy of which are highly dubious.

            We witnessed a similarly diabolical misuse of vaccines after Swine Flu immunisation programmes. Many of those suffering hideous injury, having been coerced into taking the vaccine, are still awaiting compensation 11 years on. Again, in that instance Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) were covertly given immunity from prosecution should the scheme go ‘tits up’ which it duly did.

            Anyone taking any of these vaccines is putting their lives at risk.

    4. Good evening, Corim.

      I do not know much about anything!
      I am not necessarily agreeing with
      all your posts but rather to give you
      an upvote to counteract the down-voter.

        1. I had felt a little left out!! :-))

          While you were AWOL the
          Boss deleted one of my
          posts…. I was extremely
          impolite but was driven to
          distraction!!

      2. Thank you G. No worries I am ignoring the downvotes. I continue to make comments based upon my personal experiences.

        Take an upvote to cancel the downvote you received for supporting my ability to
        comment.

        Edit: I try always to inform but regrettably there are a few on this forum who simply wish to provoke arguments as opposed to putting their own rational arguments against views with which they might genuinely disagree. More often than not they hold no sincere views and simply wish annoy and to disrupt.

    1. The Welsh Scotch eggs probably went the same way as Ken Livingstone’s London walnut whips!

    1. Ada ” Bert, did you have a substantial meal down the pub?”
      Bert ” No Ada, they only had scotch eggs.”

      1. I bought a lovely king-size summer duvet from Betty’s of Holt 20 years ago. I still use it.

        It cost me £19 in the sale.

    3. Aw, my local Debenhams in Westfield White City didn’t come back after the first lockdown. It became a Harrods outlet store, which seemed to be doing well, till the second lockdown hit. Hopefully it’s now back up and running again.

    4. Ada ” Were there many people in the pub at lunchtime Bert?”
      Bert “Dunno – couldn’t see ’em for Scotch eggs”.

    5. Joke!

      We went for a hike at the weekend , despite the blustery conditions , and despite taking 2 steps forward then 3 steps back we battled against the weather quite well.
      Then it happened, from nowhere came down the sandwiches, sausage rolls, scotch eggs quiche and Vol-au-vent and then I realised we were being buffetted by the wind.!

  87. I remember waking up at 5am the day after the US election, I put the tv on expecting the worst and was please to see Trump way ahead and taking Florida as well.
    Then Biden came out and did a victory wave very early in the morning while on the way to a press conference, this was still at the time when Trump looked like he was winning by a landslide.
    I was thinking that he must have lost his mind, but who knew.
    But he wasn’t nuts,he already knew that he had won at that stage it would have been impossible to know if the election wasn’t fraudulent, whether he got his wires crossed and went too early and didn’t stick to the plan who knows.
    But to me looking back now, that is the most obvious sign that something was afoot.
    Not long after that Trump had cottoned on to what was happening and sounded angry even though he was miles ahead, he knew when the counting stopped in all the swing states even though he was miles ahead at the time.

    1. There is no evidence that the election was stolen and fraudulent unless the Democrats were very skilful and clever at covering up the evidence, bribing and blackmail. But nobody, I am sure, could possibly think that the party which gave the world the Clintons and Obama could possibly stoop to dishonesty?

      2. What’s happened to the claim that all valid ballot papers were printed with a unique code in UV sensitive ink?

      3. How do you explain those vertical steps in the vote graphs for Biden then? Or the bellweather counties voting mostly for Trump? If there’s a good explanation of these things, I just want to see it.

    2. The time difference between the UK and US varies from a minimum of 5 hours to 8 hours (ignoring Alaska and Hawaii), so assuming someone had won at 12 midnight on the East coast and 9pm in California, is premature to put it mildly.

  88. ‘Nuff Said…………

    “You can’t sit in a pub and have a drink because it will spread Covid.
    You can sit in a pub and have a drink and a scotch egg because that
    won’t spread Covid. The logical conclusion is that scotch eggs prevent
    the spread of Covid. Who needs a vaccine?”
    I hear sausage rolls are a sovereign remedy too…………………………

    1. And … as we all know … a chunk of a decent pork pie is a universal panacea for all ills.

          2. Our local notaire (equivalent of a solicitor) is one of the few people who is far better looking wearing a Covid mask than when he is not. I think we can see why our constabulary friend wears a beard.

    3. This is a truly remarkable virus; not only can it tell the time (it won’t be virulent before 10pm in England), it is geographically aware (it will be virulent after 6pm in Wales) and, the icing on the cake, it can discriminate between your having a “substantial meal” – aka a scotch egg – and your eating a packet of crisps with your drink.

  90. ‘ “What if every one of us was a raindrop? If every single one of us cared? We do, because we have to, because at the end of the day nature is our life source. Being in nature is the most healing part of life. I truly believe that’s one reason why it’s there.” – ‘Prince’ Harry of Santa Monica.

    I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

    2. We have discussed this further down the thread ..

      The chap is very impressionable , and I fear he is brainwashed and brain dead . Wiped out by his weirdo mulatto wife ..

      I think the same sort of thing happened to John Lennon and David Icke.

    3. I’m afraid Prince Harry is beyond help. He’s a raindrop, and I suspect that he’s fallen on his head.

      Someone should compose a song about it…

      1. We need people of stature and backbone in the Royal family. I propose Duncan Mac, chieftain, Clan Mac of-that-ilk to replace him. :•)

        1. As is well-known on at least one side of the Atlantic, the Netflix series “The Crown” is a documentary about the Royal family. Given that it is history and not drama, your proposal is a good one.

          1. The Crown is a poorly-scripted and risibly-acted soap opera that has no bearing on reality. Even worse is Netflix’s penchant for adorning its programmes with subtitles in a pidgeon and indecipherable Americanese and not proper English.

          2. I found it entertaining but as a drama and not history. Given that it is designed primarily for the US market, the subtitling is bound to reflect the US variant of English and, most Britons would find no difficulty in understanding it.

      3. Raindrops keep falling on his head,
        But all that they see is that the poor man is brain dead.
        Crying not for her
        ‘cos he’s never gonna stop the Bame from complaining

    4. They said they were stepping away from public life to pursue careers of their own.

      Those careers seem to be pontificating to the public from a pulpit of abject luxury. I seems they meant ‘we want the publicity but not the duty. And we want to get paid millions for telling people how to live. Oh hang on, that’s precisely what they want.

      They should be ignored. They are irrelevant, spoiled, pretentious idiots.

  91. A simple question to all those who think the American presidential election was stolen – what would it take for you to be convinced that Biden won?

      1. So no answer then. It’s not a difficult question Bob. So let me phrase it another way; would anything convince you that Trump lost?

          3. No he didn’t. You constantly repeating this doesn’t make it a fact and is not proof of fraud.

      1. One of the easier questions, after all we hold elections every year, so what would it take?

          1. I know (and thank you, I’ve corrected it). Just wondering if you have an answer as no-one else seems to…

          2. I don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. But surely an election is a clearly and objectively defined thing, the candidate who gets the most votes is the winner. An electoral system that allows ambiguity is an electoral system that should be scrapped.

          3. The US system is actually closer to ours i.e. first past the post with the added oddity of the Electoral College. This has meant that several recent Republican presidents have actually lost the popular vote. In this case Biden got almost 6m more votes than Trump.

          5. There are a number of Democrat candidates who’d agree with you, but no it balances out the interests and influence of the different states.

          6. So, I guess, going back to your first question, what it would take is for Trump to concede defeat. Until then, we are merely onlookers.

          11. I don’t know, but surely, if he believes he has lost and as an astute businessman, he wouldn’t keep throwing good money after bad if he knew, knew, he was going to lose?

          12. The direction given to the Electoral College is known but there are 18 states I believe where the delegates are not bound by the public vote. The people only indirectly elect the President. Remember the same discussion in 2016 where some believed the College would elect Clinton?

      1. I think law works the other way around and the accusers need to prove that he didn’t win.

        1. Of course I do – democracy that’s untainted by fake-news, untainted by targeted, politically motivated censorship and the corrupt practices, together with the vote rigging, of the Biden campaign. Democratic elections untainted by street-violence, or coercion by implied violence.

          The soi-disant “Democratic Party” knows nothing of democracy, as I understand the word.

          2. I’ve followed the news covering the legal proceedings in some detail, from both the MSM and alternative media, and I’ve formed my own opinion.

            Let’s just say, after examining the evidence, I have judged the Democrats guilty of massive fraud in the US Presidential Election and against that judgment there is no appeal.

            ;¬)

      2. Water does flow uphill at Electric Brae (Croy Brae) between Knoweside and Dunure in Ayrshire.

        I’ve been there and seen it.

    5. Suggest you do far more research on the findings of the investigations.
      If you think Biden won you are just believing the MSM

      1. Watching YouTube videos posted by people I’ve never heard of and whose background can’t be checked, does not meet my threshold of credible sources that I should pay attention to.

        1. Then you have a very narrow vision, You sound like a slave to the leftie MSN. Are you still in your 20s or 30s. ? as you have much to learn.

  92. Evening, all. I thought destroying what is left of British decency (or, indeed, anything that is properly British these days) was the whole object of the exercise. That and keeping people cowering in their homes muffled up to the gills. I celebrated the end of lockdown in much the same way as I carried on through lockdown; I went riding, working towards Stage III, even if I don’t take the exam. That meant more work without stirrups. I shall struggle to walk tomorrow despite having had a soak in a Radox bath! To think that when I did my Stage II I jumped a whole course without stirrups. Mind you, I was a) nearly twenty years younger, b) approximately three stones lighter and c) most crucially, riding twice a day three times a week and doing my three (mucking out, hauling bedding, doing the muck heap and strapping – ie vigorous grooming – horses on a regular basis).

  93. A friend sent me this, this morning:

    Rapid Response:
    Covid-19 vaccine candidate is unimpressive: NNTV is around 256
    Dear Editor

    Pfizer’s vaccine “may be more than 90% effective.” (Mahase, BMJ 2020;371:m4347, November 9) Specific data are not given but it is easy enough to approximate the numbers involved, based on the 94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000. This yields a Covid-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a “vaccine effectiveness” of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039). The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them……We’ve already heard that an early effect of the vaccine is “like a hangover or the flu.” Will vaccinees who are later exposed to coronaviruses have more severe illness as a result of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), a known hazard of coronavirus vaccines? Is there squalene in the Pfizer vaccine? If so, will vaccinees be subject to autoimmune diseases, like Gulf War Syndrome and narcolepsy that have been associated with the adjuvant?

    We already know that current Covid-19 vaccine trials are unlikely to show a reduction in severe illness or deaths. (Doshi, BMJ 2020;371:m4037, October 21) Will they be like seasonal influenza vaccines, which have not proved to be lifesavers, and may even have increased overall mortality in the elderly? (Anderson et al, Ann Intern Med 2020;172:445) We need a lot more time and a lot more data, especially in view of massive uncertainties about Covid-19 case definitions and statistics.

    ALLAN S. CUNNINGHAM 13 November 2020

    Competing interests: No competing interests

    https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4347/rr-4#:~:text=Relative%20risk%20(RR)%20for%20vaccination,0.0043-0.0004%3D0.0039).

    1. “The other 255 individuals derive no benefit” maybe so as a pure stastical number but the distribution of the one who does benefit out of the total 256 is random, therefore the premise of the article that those 255 may be suffering side effects unnecessarily is false because you cannot identify the 1 out of 256 who benefits.

    2. “The other 255 individuals derive no benefit” maybe so as a pure stastical number but the distribution of the one who does benefit out of the total 256 is random, therefore the premise of the article that those 255 may be suffering side effects unnecessarily is false because you cannot identify the 1 out of 256 who benefits.

    3. If these vaccines work on those most at risk, why not just vaccinate them. That would allow hug a granny to resume.

      The US is reporting about 180,000 new cases a day, basically who cares how many cases of the sniffles there are. How many of the 2,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths a day could be prevented by protecting those in care homes.

      1. If these vaccines are so good and safe, why are governments indemnifying all the firms developing them against lawsuits concerning side effects?

      2. My local rag claims that care home residents in Wales WON’T be offered the vaccine. Make of that what you will.

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