630 thoughts on “Sunday 20 December: Has the Government grasped the scale of the vaccine challenge?”

    2. I’m just reading a book about children evacuated in 1939 and ’40. When I heard of the mass exodus from London, that sprang to mind immediately.

  3. It’s Christmas 2021, and we still haven’t rid ourselves of Covid or Hancock

    Rod Liddle – Sunday December 20 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Here’s a topical joke for you. Chap goes to the doctor. He says: “Doc, I’m really worried about this Covid thing. How lethal is it? Do I need to wear a mask? When will we get a vaccine? And how long will the vaccine last?” And the doctor shakes his head and says: “How would I know? I’m not on Facebook.”

    It was a remarkable thing that the very same people on social media who, in late 2019, were experts in European law, blockchain and international trade tariffs were revealed three months later as brilliant epidemiologists, opining wisely on R numbers and viral loads.

    But then, you might just as easily amend the last line of that quip to: “I’m not a columnist.” Spare a thought for us, please, doomed to write week after week from a position of total and utter pig ignorance, required to address issues of scientific import equipped with nothing but our arts or social science degrees.

    Our only consolation is that the politicians were similarly ill-equipped — a caveat they will be sure to wave around come the inevitable inquiries. “I’m sorry, we didn’t have a clue about anything, at any point. Blame Whitty.”

    Anyway, I wish you all a lovely, constrained and sanitised Christmas and, if you are of the view that next year will be any better, a continued relationship with your drug dealer — because it must be powerful skunk he’s supplying. Me, I can see 2021 all too clearly.

    January: As a seasonal gift, the government announces that people returning from holidays in Burkina Faso or Turkmenistan are no longer required to quarantine. A bill to remove the South Downs to make way for a giant lorry park passes its first reading. Everywhere in Britain is in tier 4, a new tier where you are allowed to touch only your spouse and even then keep your hands well above the waist. “Sorry — it’s tops only for a while,” says our health secretary, Matt Hancock. “Everything will be OK by Easter,” he adds.

    February: Protesters attempt to demolish several London bridges, calling them “obscene relics of imperialism”. A heavy snowfall is described by the Met Office as “the inevitable consequence of global warming”. Matt Hancock admits things may not be OK by Easter, but “they definitely will be by, oh, June, probably”. Schools are still closed but even so teachers are on strike, refusing to do the washing-up or put the bins out. A mutant strain of Covid is discovered on a campus at Oxford University that, aside from the usual symptom of a slight cough, renders its victims “pampered sanctimonious tossers”, doctors say.

    March: To mark a year since the first lockdown and the upcoming anniversary of the death of George Floyd, the population is urged to bang saucepans together for the NHS while simultaneously taking a knee. Hundreds of elderly people escape with minor injuries. A new report suggests the vaccine, now rolled out to more than 40 people, is “99.9% effective for at least 17 hours”. Turkmenistan is back on the quarantine list, crushing many people’s hopes of an Easter break in the Kyzylkum desert. Tier 5 is introduced for skanky northerners, among whose number Covid is spreading rapidly. They are banned from contacting each other on social media, and from eating pies.

    April: There are worries about Joe Biden, who has been comatose since January 4. The queue for lorries crossing the Channel now starts at Ullapool. In a celebrity edition of Who Do You Think You Are?, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, is informed that 50% of his DNA is descended from lichen.

    May: Matt Hancock announces that “things will be back close to normal” by October, although he doesn’t specify which October. The government is accused of nepotism when it is revealed that its inquiry into poverty was carried out by people who, between them, own 72% of the country. There are claims from some left-wing Democrats in America that Joe Biden has been “clinically dead since at least 1994”.

    June: Some skanky northern towns are released from tier 5 and the inhabitants immediately begin copulating in the streets. A period of delightfully warm weather is described by the Met Office as “the inevitable consequence of global warming”, rather than, as some insist, “summer”.

    July: Covid cases increase sharply after the launch of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s “Get Rat-arsed to Help Out” scheme, in which people are paid for their first eight drinks. The chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, says: “It is absolutely clear now that when people leave their homes to do stuff, the death rate tends to increase. And not just from Covid. The answer to this is obvious.” Polling for the important “Decolonising Physics” project finds a small number of people from ethnic minorities are mildly annoyed by both the concept of gravity and Robert Boyle’s 1662 laws about the pressure of gases. The former American president Donald Trump is discovered in the White House, hiding in a cupboard with some Doritos.

    August: A groundbreaking Brexit trade deal with Cameroon is announced. There will be no shortage of yams in this country. Attempts at Manchester University to abolish gravity — “ a stain on our past”, according to a letter signed by 71 academics — are under way. Thunderstorms strike the southern UK: “they will be a daily occurrence for ever”, according to the Met Office. Teachers have ended their strike and are now “willing to do light chores around the house, although not gardening,” according to union officials.

    September: Although Covid cases are still rising and the entire country is in tier 6, only eight people in the UK have actually died since the start of the year, all from household injuries. “The answer is obvious,” says Sir Patrick Vallance, urging the government to stop people going down stairs or lifting things. President Macron of France is discovered in a small boat near Margate trying to scoop up fish from the sea.

    October: Under the new tier 7, people are banned from having breakfast while listening to the radio. In Xian, China, a man arrives home from the wet market with a small bag of civet cat testicles, from which he intends to make a tasty meal for his wife.

    November: Nicola Sturgeon announces an independence referendum and says Scotland will apply for EU membership: in the interim the national currency will be methadone. In Xian a man and woman are found dead in their home after consuming a meal described as “sweet and sour weasel bollocks”. Boris Johnson announces a break from lockdown on December 25 for 45 minutes so that people can gather for the Queen’s Christmas message.

    December: Matt Hancock announces that life will “return to something approaching normal” by Easter. In the meantime we must pull together and “stop going up and down stairs”. Luckily people no longer need stairs, since a government act in October banning gravity. Meanwhile, 304 people in Xian have died of what the World Health Organisation describes as a “new variant illness with a swift lethality, initially occasioned by chewing the gonads of a small mammal”. Christmas Day, everywhere, is rather quiet.

    Elderly advised to shun family at Christmas

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fa423f644-4205-11eb-a0e7-d2b8bc0d7416.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

  4. I find it hard to believe that anyone would be so daft as to appoint a solicitor who is obviously in cahoots with the other party:

    SIR – Melissa Lawford rightly warns against home-buyers using solicitors recommended by developers.

    During my 50 years as a solicitor, one was not allowed to act for both sides on a property transaction, due to conflict of interest, and your report proves that this should still be the case. An independent solicitor will always look beyond the immediate transaction and warn of possible pitfalls.

    David Lyall
    London SW3

    1. Developers also throw in stuff like carpets and cookers; for which the buyers will be paying on their mortgages years after the items have worn out.

  5. ‘Morning All

    Never mind Covid,when do we get a vaccine for the Stupidity Virus??

    “Motorists whose cars break down on a live lane of a smart motorway will

    not be spotted by specialist radar on 95 per cent of the network because

    only 23.86 miles of carriageway has the technology, the Sunday

    Telegraph can reveal….”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/19/highways-england-fails-fit-radar-spots-motorists-stranded-live/
    Not so smart…………….The first family annhilated by a lorry as is inevitable will sue the idiots for millions
    Oh wait,that’ll be us taxpayers

    1. Good morning, Rix-Redux. I’m afraid that any family “annihilated” will be in no position to sue anyone.

        1. There’s usually someone left, somewhere.

          My only experience, to date, of one of these M’ways was on the M6 in a horrendous rainstorm where all the signs were lit up telling us to “drive on the hard shoulder” which was at least 12 inches deep in water….

          If I’m ever able to drive to Scotland again it seems that I will find that the northern end of the M6 has been smartened… from that experience I would infinitely rather that it remains dumb.

          1. Simon had to go to Wolverhampton last week (from Hunts). Somewhere along the way he encountered one of these smart m-ways. He says it was terrifying.

    2. I don’t understand why there isn’t carnage on the Continent in countries where they have been using the hard shoulder as an extra rush hour lane for years?
      Have they just implemented it better?

    1. Silkie Carlo, there is a logical explanation for that.
      There has been a long, slow takeover of the BBC, Parliament and the courts (where a few refuseniks still hang out, but heavily outnumbered).
      Forty years ago, we didn’t have this situation, because they would not have got away with it, and the willing helpers were not in place to carry out the globalists’ wishes.

      Global government comes directly from Kruschev’s Conquest without War plan in the fifties and sixties. My ex husband grew up in a country that was under the Russian sphere of influence. He believed in global government, because it was an idea that had been pushed when he was at university there.

      1. The WEF pushes strongly for world government.

        Now look at British politicians who go, or have been, to Davos.

        Now you know who will betray you!

  7. SIR – Simon Heffer has obviously not sampled a properly cooked turkey, or enjoyed an excellent turkey sandwich late into the evening with that last glass of red. He may be a loather, but I bet he is outnumbered by the lovers.

    Jacqueline Dawson
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    Quite right, Ms Dawson, but even better is a turkey and gammon sarnie, with plenty of homemade chutney…

  9. Christmas and New Year is always dire for the suicide stats I fear the restrictions will make things far worse being the last straw for many

    A comment from elsewhere

    “The boy was starting to sound very down on the phone, the wife picked up
    on it about a week ago. He lives on his own, not the strongest
    mentally. Drove to Portsmouth yesterday, stayed over, drove back with
    him today. About 10 hours driving. You can see the difference in him
    already. Couldn’t have left him any longer. These bastards need to swing
    for this.”
    Right attitude for me
    Another
    “I am due to pick up my 80year old mother tomorrow,her carers have been cancelled and there will be no food in the house and arranging a delivery now would be almost impossible.
    What should I do?”
    I really really hope this is a rhetorical question because the answer you divot is you go and collect your mum as arranged and if any jobsworth tries to get in the way you rip their arm off and beat them to death with the soggy end

  10. The BBC is about to mark its own homework and presumably, in the process, to bounce the judicial enquiry into coming up with the least damaging response. The arrogance and the stupidity of this wretched organisation is breathtaking. Their motto of ‘We are never wrong’ is on display yet again:

    Exclusive: Panorama to investigate itself over Princess Diana interview scandal

    The programme, likely to air in the new year, will examine the methods used by Martin Bashir to obtain the scoop

    By
    Robert Mendick,
    CHIEF REPORTER
    19 December 2020 • 9:30pm

    Panorama is investigating itself over Martin Bashir’s interview with Princess Diana.

    The flagship current affairs programme has commissioned a documentary into Mr Bashir’s conduct in securing his interview with the Princess and subsequent allegations of a cover-up by the corporation.

    The programme threatens to take navel gazing at the BBC to a level that even the satirists on the comedy programme W1A might not have dared attempt.

    John Ware, an award-winning journalist and a former stalwart reporter on Panorama for 25 years, has been drafted in by BBC executives to carry out the investigation.

    The programme, likely to be broadcast in the new year, is examining the methods used by Mr Bashir, currently the BBC’s religious affairs editor, to obtain the scoop, including faking bank statements to persuade Earl Spencer to introduce Mr Bashir to Princess Diana.

    Mr Bashir is unlikely to ever appear again on the BBC but is currently signed off sick suffering from the after effects of Covid-19 and a quadruple heart bypass.

    The interview, broadcast in 1995, remains one of the greatest landmark events on television, and included Princess Diana’s disclosure that there were “three people” in her marriage in a reference to the Prince of Wales’s infidelity with Camilla Parker-Bowles.

    A few months later, a Sunday newspaper revealed that Mr Bashir had ordered a BBC graphics artist to mock-up bank statements falsely showing Earl Spencer’s head of security was taking payments from a tabloid newspaper and an offshore company.

    The BBC investigated the claims internally, leading Tony Hall, its then head of news, to effectively exonerate Mr Bashir as an “honest man”. That inquiry will now come under Panorama’s withering glare.

    The BBC has in the past deployed Panorama to investigate itself – although never the programme itself. Mr Ware previously carried out an investigation into the Today programme’s “sexed up” Iraq war report by Andrew Gilligan. Mr Ware accused Greg Dyke, its then director general, of “betting the farm” on Mr Gilligan’s story without having checked his notes. Mr Dyke resigned shortly after in January 2004.

    Multiple sources have insisted strict “walls” have been put in place within the BBC so that Panorama is being treated like any other news outlet. One source suggested Panorama was receiving less help from the BBC than rivals in its attempt to unravel events 25 years ago.

    The Panorama programme puts the corporation in a difficult position because it also has a duty of care towards staff and former employees including Mr Bashir and Lord Hall, who is now chairman of the National Gallery’s board of trustees. The appointment is made by Downing Street and should Panorama heavily criticise his role in the alleged cover-up that would turn the pressure on the former director general.

    A separate, judge-led independent inquiry has been instigated by the BBC which is presided over by Lord Dyson, a former Master of the Rolls. Lord Dyson has written to Earl Spencer requesting his cooperation and that he hand over a dossier of evidence which the Earl says proves Mr Bashir’s deceit. The inquiry declined to say if Earl Spencer or Mr Bashir were helping Lord Dyson.

    Mr Ware declined to comment when approached by The Telegraph last week.

    * * * *

    No BTL comments allowed.

      1. BBC comedy certainly is not dead-

        We watched the Kent Director of Health doing verbal somersaults on the BBC news when he denied that 8,000 “asylum seekers” landing at

        Dover this year could have brought the new variant Coronavirus to Dover.

  13. US cyber-attack: Russia ‘clearly’ behind SolarWinds operation, says Pompeo. 20 December 2020.

    US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Russia for what is being described as the worst-ever cyber espionage attack on the US government.

    “We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,” Mr Pompeo said on Friday.

    It’s not clear at all since there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that an attack occurred at all, let alone a Russian one. Trump himself is doubtful and one would like to think that the President receives better briefings than the Secretary of State. Which lead us to the Giant Elephant missing from the room. Why is China not represented here? Are we really expected to believe that a country pressing the borders of India and claiming Taiwan and the South China Sea and is the world’s second most powerful economy is doing absolutely nothing on the Cyber Warfare stage? That it is pursuing a Foreign Policy to intimidate all who oppose its policies while sitting behind the Great Firewall twiddling its digital thumbs?

    The reason for this omission appears to be that China is too tough a nut to crack, Russia on the other hand is economically weaker and may be attacked with relative impunity. This view is supported by the vast increase in anti-Putin/Russia propaganda (a threefold increase over the last month) and will offer Biden the opportunity to talk tough when he is inaugurated.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55374945

    1. The BBC is full of it.
      Like there is “no evidence” of election fraud.
      There is a ton of evidence. What the BBC don’t want is to look at the evidence. I wonder when it was that the last journalist left that Broadcasting Blx Corporation.
      EDIT: In fact: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55321643 – still blames Russia, but at least there seem to be some people willing to look,

        1. Regarding election fraud?
          The trouble with that article is that it does not provide a link to the report but lays it at the door of the judge, giving the last word to the critics. If it were an honest article it would give a link to the report and then refute it point by point, or at least a few points, with reason. The fact that someone from Dominion denies the allegations is not news, and the fact that it’s refutation stops at simple denials is a sign of bad faith and bad journalism.
          Still, if you are interested: https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20423772-antrim-county-forensics-report

          So I am more inclined to look at someone like this who weighs things up in detail. E.g. https://youtu.be/Dh1GeC-i9F4 – as I tend to be busy, I download stuff at home and listen while I am driving or doing other stuff.

  14. Good morning, everyone. I am still reeling from the behaviour of the Met police thugs yesterday. Is there nobody in the House of Fools willing to expose this?

  15. ‘Naked and starving’: letters tell how English paupers fought for rights 200 years ago. 20 December 2020.

    They were destitute, their children were starving and their short, pitiful lives were often marred by heartbreak and suffering. But they knew that, morally, they had rights, and they understood how to make their voices heard.

    Now, previously unpublished letters of penniless and disabled paupers living in the early 19th century reveal the sophisticated and powerful rhetoric they used to secure regular welfare payments from parish authorities, despite being barely able to read and write.

    These were the people living on the fat of the land while exploiting the Black African Slaves on their Caribbean plantations!

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/20/naked-and-starving-letters-tell-how-english-paupers-fought-for-rights-200-years-ago

    1. Good moaning, Minty.
      Slightly OT. The good old Speenhamland system. Alive and well and sucking life out of the C21 taxpayer.

    1. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. It’s an impossible job, and not helped by people’s constant carping.

      1. 327566+ up ticks,
        Morning LtP,
        I assume you mean me, but in my defence the
        “well warranted carping” really started in regards to major through the wretches cameron / clegg,
        continuing with may the treacherous,and now a highly suspect johnson.

        These type politico’s should consider themselves lucky it is only “carping ” …. at this moment in time.

        1. Agree with that, and I dread to think what our recent crop of PMs (and Opposition Leaders) would have made of this. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

          But Covid is unprecedented for all of us, and the Government is having to react to events rather than follow a plan, and try and keep life as normal as possible. If they get it wrong occasionally (or even more often than that) then I can understand that.

          1. Well, no. The Black Death is a precedent, as is Spanish Flu. The actions taken by this government have been ineffective, late, inadequate and inconsistent..
            Consider where we would now be if the virus were really deadly, say, killing 2 out of 3 infected, and was at the same time far more transmissible?

          2. More recently we have Asian ‘Flu and Swine ‘Flu. What is unprecedented is shutting everything down and deliberately destroying the economy.

          3. 327566+ up ticks,
            Afternoon ItP,
            They way I see it is that it is another version of flu,
            and far from giving us the truth statistically they have through manipulation, for whatever reason deceived us wholesale.

            What they are doing currently is laying in future
            premature deaths via cancer, ect,ect, through lack of attention and that is not a maybe that is a real fact.

            We live with these other much worse maladies, we also import them as in the case of TB that was nigh on eradicated in the United Kingdom.

            Keep up the same voting pattern & the peoples are condemning their own families to death / serious maiming.

            Sod the three monkeys ask the peoples to remember the Jay report when entering the polling booth.

      2. But surely you should not want to be prime minister if you are not prepared to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune mentioned by the Danish Prince? Also you must learn Kipling’s “If” by heart learning to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you!

        A good, regular and salutary Kipple would do Boris Johnson no harm!

        1. And, to be fair, I haven’t heard Boris complaining. It was me doing that.

          But, yes, UKIP seemed to concentrate Tory minds quite successfully, we need them back.

  17. Brooding in the Marble City beside the Great Swamp. 19 December 2020.

    The cognoscenti are whispering, whispering of a failure of will and steadiness in the SCOTUS in the matter of the Texas constitutional lawsuit against several states for a failure to provide equal rights to Texans and the citizens of six other states in election process.

    According to listeners in the halls of SCOTUS actual screaming could be heard in debate among the justices over whether or not to hear the case. This is unheard of within the most exclusive club in the world. Mutual dislikes and contempts are carefully concealed within that charmed circle. An alternative version of the story has them screaming at each others’ screens.

    On this occasion, Roberts and the liberals made common cause to prevent acceptance of this case under “original jurisdiction” in this case arguing against Thomas and Alito. Kavanaugh and Barrett were supposedly admonished by Roberts to abstain from argument on the basis of their lack of experience. With Kavanaugh this would be easy. IMO he is a broken man, torn to bits and mortally wounded psychologically.

    1. Roberts actually said (or screamed) that he feared leftist mobs in the streets if the court heard the case.

    2. This establishes a context for SCOTUS decisions in which fear of the mob will decide rather than the concept of the constitution as a compact of the 50 states, a compact created by state ratifications and which cannot be changed except through ratification of changes by the states.

    3. In other words, SCOTUS is no longer an honest broker and referee among the states.

    4. What is left – force majeure? Pat Lang.

    The view from the US!

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/12/brooding-in-the-marble-city-beside-the-great-swamp.html

    1. They are correct to fear the mob, but they should still decide according to the evidence presented and follow the Constitution.

    3. Ah… but there’s no evidence…
      An example of the debunking that goes on. ‘That story can’t be true, because the judges do not meet in person because of covid.’ – as though a conversation could not be heard by a third party in any case, or as though the meeting could not be hacked – or listened to subsequently if recorded by one or other of the parties.
      Coney-Barrett has a youngish family and is very vulnerable and Kavanagh really did go through the grinder. The “Left” and I hesitate to call them that, because they are far removed from the Trade Unions which made up the real Left, are behaving abominably.

  18. Dan Hodges on the report farce

    As one former victim, Sammy Woodhouse,

    told me: ‘I want justice. As a survivor I want to keep the pressure on

    to put this right. If we understand who’s doing this we can prevent and

    tackle it. But the report doesn’t do that. It’s pointless.’

    There’s

    a reason. Windrush. Grenfell. Footballers taking a knee. The impact of

    Covid on black and ethnic communities. The British people are

    consistently told to view issues through the prism of race. Save for

    one. When it comes to the systemic mass child abuse, they are instructed

    to turn a blind eye. To do so, the Home Office says, is in the public

    interest.

    The Home Office is wrong. It

    is not in the public interest to continue to cover up of one of the

    darkest chapters in our nation’s history.

    Last week the victims of Britain’s Asian grooming gangs were betrayed once more. They must not be betrayed again.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9070905/DAN-HODGES-reveals-inside-story-cover-abuse-young-girls.html

    How naive,between the creeping infestation within and the abject fear of TPTB of Moslem rioting should the real truth be officialy revealed those poor children never had a chance…….

    1. I think that Dan Hodges has finally managed to escape from the malign influence and control of his mother, Well done him.

      1. It’s an odd world where I find myself agreeing with Dan Hodges and loathing a lying, incompetent [at best] hypocritical, so called Conservative government!

        1. Dan Hodges has been writing sensibly for years.
          Like Tom Harris, he’s a Lefty, but not one blinded by dogma.

      2. If ever there were someone for whom the expressions “crone” and “toothless bearded hag” were invented, it is she.

  20. Feels really grim this morning so a few (some wry) laffs

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cbdaf0c5afed9b9a79ae7f2554505eecba2b63888b7a74bf03d5a6a53c01b4b8.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d98fa043682ad2fd4b11415de8c849d36ac3f4031723f4f3082a27c1539635d1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/036e37fa8576693d6f54fc4e326d25c6847dd16e6daa95e27bd407bf2667f05f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e8eb01f7b643700371cdfa32b1750a6eda972a8bd0d3b26db31f7e15ce55f667.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/50542de160f663f43339cb814ecdeaca029e7b78ecfc1b02ca53d56570e5005f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57c80a68ab899d3eaa46730573be56401c57148a84ddcfecfa31133f6f9208b1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a92fea7d128b6b6a40b8fbb80311f1749fdea43afb272928deea9762c8165c19.png

    And finally

    You can’t leave London!!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/739ce703a882fce37a7db51ca9febf4f1d9d9a8f4bf78fe075d04092937a127e.jpg

  21. “I’d like to say very bluntly: Our mission is to redistribute wealth.” This is a quote from New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio last Friday.

    In the meantime, among other dangers, Mr. Biden plans a ‘partnership’ with those ruthless communists in China, and he plans to lift sanctions on the world’s most dangerous terrorist perpetrator, Iran.

    I wonder how many Democrats had the slightest idea of what they were voting for, if indeed they did!

      1. California is suffering the same ‘flight’. I read that Musk is moving manufacturing and Texas is seeing a vast increase in people moving there from Ca. You reap what you sow.

        1. And his company will carry over to Texas the adherence to the same policies that caused all the problems in California.

    3. Should Biden actually make it to the White House the howls of anguish from the Democrats in a year or so will be loud and long.

  26. London locked down,arrests if you try to leave………….

    Meanwhile………

    “You’ll be pleased to know the Air India Delhi flight landed at Heathrow at 0708 hrs this morning after a four hour delay.”
    Fuckwits,fuckwits everywhere…………

  27. ‘Morning, all. From the DT Letters page:

    SIR — At Chrimbold, we all like to celebrake togethermost, for unto us a Savoury is burnt. Harkit, a host of Harrod’s Anglers thwing-thwangit on the harpy, all warbly in the throakus there, sing the goodish tilings ‘Rosanna is ex-Chelsea!’ while sherpas nosh their lox in the backgrove and throo wisely men falolloping a celestibold starloder, travelit from East Kilbride, wearing shifts. Deep joy!

    Notwithstandit, this year, deckly halls with hollylopper boughage if you will, but no rocketing around the Chrimbold tree with other peeploders, kneeclappers upmost and nimbold, no quaffly the dry-sherrit or paunch, nor pulley cracklers with much fumbly and snoggage under the middle-toe. Folly, folly! There must be no sitly down in Mick’s companage, to traditionole dinnit of roast turnkey with all the trimmage, follocked by figgy pudloder. You may squeak in your bubble but you must maintail a sociable distinction at all times to contain virold inflection. Remember the drill, “Handlebars, Kneeclappers and Bums-up daily.” Patients must be our watchworm as we pass through this Vale of Tiers. May the spirry of Chrimbold past be with you all.

    Oh yes!

    Archie † Bishop of Cantabria
    Lambeg Palace

  28. A quote from Heretics of Dune written by Frank Herbert in 1983.

    “Quite naturally, holders of power wish to suppress wild research. Unrestricted questing after knowledge has a long history of producing unwanted competition.
    The powerful want a ‘safe line of investigation’ , which will develop only those products and ideas that can be controlled and, most important, that will allow the larger part of the benefits to be captured by inside investors”.

    Sound familiar?

    ‘They’ didn’t want the help of Labs or private enterprise sticking their nose in regarding researching the virus, manufacture of PPE and developing a vaccine.

      1. 327566+ up ticks,
        Morning E,
        Could very aptly be applied to the lab/lib/con coalition party, post early doors referendum result.

  29. This is a monumental U-turn that devastates us all. 20 December 2020.

    The public is fair minded; we know circumstances can change. The failure is around messaging, planning and clarity, and no amount of apology can eclipse the fact that this is a monumental U-turn that will devastate businesses and private life. Many will wonder if the sacrifices they made earlier, often for the sake of preserving the holiday season, were worth all the pain.

    This is just the latest of a series of stupid decisions since it is in effect an admission of failure. As to the sacrifices of the population; they have been squandered to no purpose whatsoever. We are now in the third Lockdown, (the tier system is simply Lockdown by another name) which makes perfect sense of Einstein’s dictum that: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

    The Government response to the Virus has been a complete and utter shambles from day one. It will be seen in historical terms as a greater disaster than WWI since it will leave behind an impoverished and broken Britain. We would have been better off as a country had nothing at all been done and we had allowed the virus to carry out its work. We could have cared for the infected and comforted the dying while living our lives. Did we live any longer in a democratic UK there would be a vote of confidence in the House and a General Election.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/12/19/monumental-u-turn-devastates-us/

  30. SIR – I was pleased to read that MPs may have to work during Christmas to pass the relevant legislation over Brexit. Many others will have to work at this time, and it is right that politicians should do so.

    We are seeing classic EU brinkmanship: leave it until the last minute and slide a deal through without time for full scrutiny.

    We know that the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties were not what they were dressed up to be. This is the most important piece of legislation in years, and it has to be fully understood.

    Mike Metcalfe
    Glastonbury, Somerset

    Of course the slithery barstewards are going to sell us down the river.

  32. Oh well just like everything else they come into contact with, the THEY have effed up Christmas for millions and they don’t seem to care but,……..When are our ‘really on the ball’ media going to ask the question of our political classes. “Have you taken the vaccine yet and can i see proof of this”?
    Now the THEY are suggesting unless you have had the vaccine you will not be allowed out of you home. But how will the vaccine work if as Hancock suggested this morning the new strain (and the cause for tier 4) that was talked about last weekend, has actually been around since September. And why is it necessary to have two types of vaccine unless they know some thing THEY are not telling us. Again………

    1. Hancock reported as saying Tier 4 continues until vaccine rollout completed – so, 2 x 60 million doses in 2 months… that’ll be right. Man can’t even find his own arse with both hands and a map.
      Morning, all!

      2. Wanted more whistle blowers………..

        Julie Coffey, a Sheffield GP, has refused to wear a mask in shops and says coronavirus vaccines are being rushed through without proper safety checks
        Hundreds of NHS and care home staff have formed a group opposed to vaccinations, wearing masks and testing in hospitals.

        The group, NHS Workers for Choice, No Restrictions for Declining a Vaccine, has gained more than 250 Facebook members in a month. They include a GP, several accident and emergency nurses, healthcare assistants, lab workers, and private and public care home staff.

        SPONSORED
        It says it is not an anti-vaccine group and exists to support healthcare workers, but The Times found posts saying that the Pfizer-BionTech coronavirus vaccine was a new frozen virus, similar to smallpox, to be “unleashed” on the world. They compared it to “poison”.

        One member who works in a GP’s surgery, said that she would rather quit than help with a vaccination

    1. Well thats not going to go down well, we cannot have an antibiotic and the
      media discredited ivermectin being effective.

      They have done a good job of discrediting it though, hardly a mention in search engines.

      1. Ivermectin kills the virus in vitro – but in very large doses. So far trials using doses likely to be safe (from using it for decades on animals) have not proved effective in vivo. Trials are continuing.

      2. Doxycycline is in use, together with dexamethasone (very cheap, and effective, unlike the much vaunted but not useful HCQ).

  34. Just heard from a friend.
    Her 90 year old mother is having Christmas on her own as her son – whose wife died a couple of years ago – now cannot spend the holiday with her. So he will be on his own as well.
    Normally, they both spend Christmas with our friend and her husband.
    Nice one, Bozza, Half-hour, Witless and Unbalanced.

    1. That’s depressing for all concerned. They have my sympathy – that’s about all I can contribute, I’m afraid.

    2. I just hope to God that the day will come when these bastards, who have inflicted so much pain and misery on the lonely and the vulnerable, will be hauled before some court or tribunal and made to pay dearly for their brutality.

      ….. but I won’t hold my breath.
      :¬(

      1. 327566+ up ticks,
        Morning DM,
        I find it slightly confusing which set of bastards you mean, those currently overseeing, the ones prior to them, or the ones before that, many of them are the same political wretches.
        Then again you could mean their repeat supporting cast.

    3. We always have Jim, an 85 year old widower, with us for Christmas. Caroline met him when she played at his wife’s funeral 7 years ago. He lives alone and cherishes his independence but we now have a curfew between 8.00 p.m.and 6 a.m. in France so we keep a bed made up for him so he can stay overnight whenever he wants to do so.

    4. If they have both been tested and are negative, there is no problem with them being alone together.
      My sister and B i L have had to cancel their trip oopp narth to the wilderness of a farm in the north Pennines because of Boror’s madness.
      Basically because they are afraid the police will stop them on the road and arrested them and or heavily fine them and turn them around.

        1. Well Anne you see the problem all over but if a labour politico who had tested positive and travel to Glasgow and back first class surely it’s allowable for them to get together for a few days, wheres the harm.

  35. Police will make ‘no apology’ for enforcing new Christmas Day lockdown rules. 20 December 2020.

    Police have said they will make “no apology” for enforcing new Christmas Day lockdown rules.

    It came as five police officers were injured and 29 people arrested following anti-lockdown protests in central London.

    Hundreds of people joined marches down Oxford and Regent Street on Saturday, and were dispersed several times by police.

    But Met commander Alex Murray, said: “Our fight against the virus is not over. The rules are very clear and our collective actions in the next two weeks will have a direct impact on how quickly our city will recover. If people ignore these new rules, make reckless decisions that risk lives, I make no apology for the subsequent enforcement action that will follow.”

    So speaks the Stasi!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/19/police-adopt-light-touch-enforcing-new-christmas-day-lockdown/

    1. But Met commander Alex Murray, said: “Our fight against the virus indigenous population is not over. The rules are very clear and our collective actions in the next two weeks will have a direct impact on how quickly our city will recover. If people ignore these new rules, make reckless decisions that risk lives, I make no apology for the subsequent enforcement action that will follow.”

      1. What about you and me, Paul. We are not part of the ‘indigenous population’ in our respective countries, we are nobbut wogs!

        Does this mean we have a higher status than the ordinary Norsk or Svensk?

        1. Interesting thought, Grizz. Hmm…
          When I’ve finished me Fullers ESB (the most perfect Sunday lunchtime beer), I’ll let you know.
          But, in the household here, my status is lower than the mud on he cat’s paws!

          1. Fuller’s ESB (Extra Special Bitter) NEEDS to be savoured in an English pub, drawn from a well-kept cask by a beer-engine, and quaffed leisurely in the sunshine.

        2. Ever since it occurred to my children that they are BAME, they have been on the lookout for ways to exploit it.

    2. But Met commander Alex Murray, said: “Our fight against the virus indigenous population is not over. The rules are very clear and our collective actions in the next two weeks will have a direct impact on how quickly our city will recover. If people ignore these new rules, make reckless decisions that risk lives, I make no apology for the subsequent enforcement action that will follow.”

    3. “…The rules are very clear…” I suppose he means the Rules of Engagement for bashing innocent citizens?

    1. “Save lives”?? Idiot Halfcock – what about all the people who will almost certainly die from cancer because they won’t be tested early enough? What about all those suffering as operations are postponed, and the hundredfold increase in the waiting list for routine surgery??

      1. But there are always ambulances and staff plus translators ( on the taxpayer of course ) waiting at Dover for those who haven’t paid in- and probably never will.

        Got talking to a man a few days ago. He worked regular 12 hour nights. He told me he had been sent a message from the NHS to attend an appointment he needed. Trouble was it was NOT at his local hospital, but one about 12 mile away. So after finishing his shift, he stayed awake, went to the hospital – only to be told “Hasn’t anyone told you – – your appointment has been cancelled “. Exit one VERY tired and angry man.

      2. Never mind those who have committed suicide (rates are up) due to isolation, loneliness and sheer panic thanks to government doom and gloom.

        2. I actually have a blood test booked for Christmas eve morning, i’m sure that will be cancelled and a long (12 months) awaited appointment with an orthopaedic (hip doctor) surgeon on the 5th of Jan i suspect that will be cancelled as well.

          1. KBO Eddy.
            I eventually had a blood test last Friday….
            After seeing concerned Dr. I was told the results would take a week or two! Keeping fingers, legs, toes crossed and anxious to hear the results. Dr. is female…

    3. Oh, wunnerful! That’s 350,000 in week. Of course everybody needs two injections. There are 66m of us. How long will it take? 66m/350,000 = number of weeks, times 2.
      Or 7 years. Way to Go! Hancock!

      1. I think that the US managed 4 million doses last week, don’t even ask about the sample dose that Canada received. We are all going to be waiting a long time for the little prick.

        There are now serious reactions to the jab being reported in Alaska and Chicago, maybe this first vaccine is not the magic pill.

        1. There has never been and there will never be a “magic pill”; pharmacology doesn’t work by magic.

          All drugs cause adverse reactions, some mild, some serious. At the beginning of this year I was prescribed a drug which has been on the market for 35 years and has been taken, without problems, by millions of people; but I had an adverse reaction. It’s normal, it happens. That’s one very good reason for having several vaccines and not just one. Just as my GP gave me a prescription for a different drug for my problem; which worked without causing me any more difficulties.

          1. Hi Jennifer.
            The most of the adverse reactions are listed in the many-folded leaflet that comes with the drug – 1 out of 10 found this & that, 100 oo 1000 found those and these others, and so on. Can make interesting reading… or not, depending. But normal, as you point out.

          2. I always read the leaflet, that’s why it is enclosed. But you don’t know, until you take the pills, whether you are going to be 1 in 10, or 1 in 10,000 or just fine. My adverse reaction was debilitating, but not life threatening. As per instructions I persisted for a while and then spoke to the doc again.

          3. I was given a blood pressure pill a few years ago – my reaction was horrendous. I was shivering – in sunny 28 Celsius, with a sweater and padded coat on. I took myself off them ( doctor went apeshot ) and I flatly refused to take anymore. I have since found out my neighbour is on the same one – -with no problems whatsoever.

          4. My reaction was much less violent, hence the instruction to “see if it settles down”. But as things got worse rather than better she changed it. As I say, it’s been on the market for decades and used by millions … with no problems whatsoever. The luck of the draw and the variations between individuals simply have to be taken into account every time any drug is prescribed.

            And no one has suggest that we should abandon the penicillins even though they cause anaphylaxis in considerable numbers of people.

      2. Had Radio 5 live on in the early hours of this morning. Absolutely amazing to hear a constant queue of callers, almost deliriously happy, telling everyone that they had had the jab and ” It was brilliant – -and SO easy “. It was like listening to the worst actors in the world. Who on this planet says – at about 3am – -that having a needle full of whatever put in you was ” brilliant”?

      3. A rather pessimistic view. The vaccine being used at the moment is difficult to transport and store – the Oxford and other vaccines aren’t, which means the rate of vaccination will pick-up soon. It’s also not necessary to vaccinate 100% of people to achieve herd immunity. Add in refusnik anti-vaxxers …

        2. The vaccine is not really “difficult to transport and store”. It has specific requirements, that’s all.

          If tens of thousands of farmers across the world can manage to keep bull semen at a similar temperature all the year round, and remove it from flasks whenever required; then it should not be beyond the capabilities of even junior medical staff to manage it for a few weeks or months especially since it can be kept, quite safely, for a few days after thawing.

          Of course it will be easier to use a vaccine which can be kept in a normal fridge… but not significantly so. The fuss being made about a bit of cold storage is ridiculous.

          1. In which case surely you welcome the thought that it could take 7 years to vaccinate everyone?

          2. How other people make their decisions is up to them. As I say elsewhere the incompetence of the government has brought us to this place. amongst their failure was the decision not to repurpose existing, known, safe drugs. Hundreds died as a result. There is no certainty that the vaccine will provide immunity, that the vaccine effects are long-lasting, or that being vaccinated will stop a person spreading the virus.
            Rationally the government would have closed to country up tight, no one in or out, at the beginning of the year and then let the virus run wild here. Herd immunity on around six months and perhaps half a million dead. These would be the “vulnerable”, like myself. Damage to society, and to the economy, would have been minimal.

          3. Which drug should have been repurposed to save hundreds from a covid-19 death?

            You’re not still sold on HCQ are you when pretty much all studies show it to be useless.

          4. There are others, and Nottlers have placed videos and links on here. I have not kept a note. However the initial NHS treatment – paracetamol and oxygen – was no treatment at all, was it?

          5. Yes it was. Oxygen to aid respiration, paracetamol as an anti-inflammatory. About the only thing that seems to help is dexamethasone which is a steroid that can help relive ling swelling and pulmonary odema. It’s a well known drug amongst death zone climbers who tend to carry a few shots with them to deal with HACE and HAPE. Yet it’s just a stronger anti-inflammatory than paracetamol. The treatment is basically the same protocol of anti-inflammatory and oxygen.

          6. Correct. Instead they let all and sundry in and locked down the fit and healthy as well as the vulnerable and effectively put a stop to the economy. If you had wanted the perfect blueprint for the Great Reset you couldn’t have found a better one.

          7. I really can’t understand the ethical issue at play here.

            Abortion is legal. The abortions were elective not forced. The waste would just be incinerated. Now instead it’s used in developing and testing therapeutic solutions, which can only be described as an act of good.

            We’ve as near as possible eliminated diseases like measles. It was cells from an aborted foetus that allowed that. AFAIK there’s no ‘ethical’ MMR vaccine.

            They are just cells. There was no sentience at the time of the abortions.

  38. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    In a pandemic you can’t please all the people…

    SIR – Although at this stage there is inevitably a limited supply of the Covid-19 vaccine, I wonder if our politicians have given sufficient thought to the logistics once adequate supplies become available.

    The task may well involve administering two doses of vaccine to more than 50 million people. Last Wednesday we were told that 140,000 people had been vaccinated. One does not need to be a mathematician to calculate how long it will take at this rate to protect the majority of the population. Even at a rate of one million doses per week we are looking at a two-year programme.

    This issue is so urgent that it requires a “military mindset”. It is far too important to be left to public health bodies and the primary care components of the NHS. We must learn from the mistakes made in the Test and Trace programme.

    Malcolm H Wheeler FRCS
    Bonvilston, Glamorgan

    SIR – On Friday I spoke to friends in Israel. They are in their 60s, and had an appointment to be vaccinated on Monday.

    Israel has just received the vaccines. England was the first to get them, but I don’t know anyone here who has had one. We are in our mid-70s, but have been told by our surgery that it has received no instructions yet.

    Why am I not surprised that we are in this position? Do we ever get anything right? At this rate there will be another pandemic before we all have our jabs.

    I have lost my faith in the Government and the NHS.

    Margaret Benmayer
    London NW4

    SIR – Last Wednesday a 91-year-old friend attended a clinic at the Wigan Athletic stadium for her Covid-19 vaccination.

    Despite arriving at the appointed time she was forced to queue outside in the rain for an hour, and was so cold when she reached the door that one of the staff on duty gave her their coat.

    This is surely yet another example of NHS bureaucratic incompetence. In any private company the organisers would be fired.

    Brian Donaldson
    Wigan, Lancashire

    SIR – It is shocking that some people are having to wait so long to be vaccinated.

    I was called last Wednesday into a local health centre, which was administering 25 vaccinations an hour.

    We queued outside in a socially distanced manner, and were then invited indoors, into an area with well-spaced seating, where the vaccinations took place. After 15 minutes we left with a card, having booked our next appointment in 
three weeks’ time. The atmosphere was very pleasant.

    I was told that, by midday Friday, the centre expected to have carried out 900 vaccinations. Why can’t other centres be as well organised ?

    Margaret Barrett
    Market Bosworth, Leicestershire

  39. SIR – The Government has set ambitious targets for reducing emissions, backed up by its 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution.

    The size of the challenge was demonstrated a couple of days ago. The country required about 40 GW of electricity; 57 per cent was provided by gas, 5 per cent by coal, 16 per cent by nuclear, 10 per cent by electricity imported from Europe, less than 1 per cent by wind and the remaining 11 per cent by solar, hydro and biomass.

    The dash towards electrically powered heat pumps in place of gas and oil boilers, and the switch to electric vehicles, will greatly increase demand just as coal and nuclear power availability reduce significantly.

    The level of investment in the 10-point plan is trivial – about 8 per cent of what HS2 will cost. When is the Government going to start providing the resources required to create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs, open up a huge export market and secure the UK’s place as a leader in the fight against climate change?

    Jos Binns
    Camerton, Somerset

    Well now Jos, it’s like this…the fight against climate change (as you put it) is already lost, because we cannot cure what we didn’t cause.

    Now, where’s that cheque from the taxpayers for £10,000 for my new heat pump?

    1. Jos the reference point for your thinking appears to be stuck in the ‘old normal’. You surely must get with the programme of the ‘new normal’ where the people (serfs) will be re-educated to live as they are told by the elites. Choice will be severely limited and as for all those ‘green’ jobs? Flim-flam from the architect of both our demise and the rebuilding of the UK as a neo-feudal state, Johnson the Bastard. Have you not read that by 2030 you will own nothing but you will be happy?

      1. ‘Morning, Korky. What he and the rest of us will own will be the most monumental debt mountain.

        1. Morning, HJ.

          I thought that the debt mountain was the whole point of this exercise. The debt would be the way in for the elites to expropriate the people and hence, the people will own nothing. All in 10 years.

    3. You’ll need the money Hugh.

      Our heat pump costs far more to run than our previous oil fired boiler.

  40. SIR – Where are the redwings this year?

    Usually by this time in December our holly trees (and our neighbours’) have been stripped of their berries.

    Brian Organ
    Downend, Gloucestershire

    Are you in a Tier4 by any chance Brian??

  41. SIR – As banks prepare to start paying dividends and bonuses again, they should consider their responsibility and self-interest in supporting the wider economy.

    Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the bedrock of employment and economic growth in the UK. According to surveys by City UK and McKinsey, over 500,000 may not survive the next 12 months. Many small-business owners have turned to high-cost credit cards and overdrafts.

    On a more positive note, more than 10 per cent of SMEs see opportunities for growth in the “new normal”, but their survival and growth depends on access to affordable finance.

    In recent months UK banks have closed their doors to new SMEs, choking off this vital lifeline. This is in contrast to countries such as the US, where banks are better at recognising their wider social responsibilities. Banking-sector investments in socially driven lenders such as Community Development Finance Institutions can help to bridge the financing gap for viable businesses left by banks as they desert the high street.

    Banks need to step up their efforts to support SMEs. This Government should lead the way by using its own shareholdings for wider public benefit.

    Peter Udale
    Director, Responsible Finance
    Winchcombe, Gloucestershire

    Peter Udale, you of all people should know that the banks are there to screw their customers, not to help them. You must have been watching all those expensive and utterly meaningless cuddly bunny adverts on the telly…underneath all that froth they are still unhelpful self-serving bastards.

    Edited for obvious typo.

  42. Police to stop people fleeing new Covid tier 4 areas, Hancock says. 20 December 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7845d83323a0ef77602f8627eeb4011675316a3304bf46ca1966ad4b83acfdb6.jpg

    Police will be asked to stop families from driving out of tier 4 areas, the health secretary has said, while extra officers will be deployed at railway stations.

    The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, warned that extra police would be at London railway stations to stop people leaving the city for “unnecessary” journeys following images of chaotic scenes on Saturday night.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/20/police-to-stop-people-fleeing-new-covid-tier-4-areas-hancock-says

    1. Wonder what’s an unnecessary journey? Providing food for an elderly houseboud relative who was expecting not to be in their own home at Christmas, perhaps? I can see this leading to serious trouble, maybe even the Army called out.

    4. Yesterday before the midnight hour they were helping people to get on to zee trains…………..

    6. I bet all those REAL criminals in the Tier 4 areas will be rubbing their hands in glee at the moment – no intervention from police who are more busy telling well people to go home. If I get stopped and turned back (driving only) when visiting my parents for Christmas (which I can as they are my support bubble), I’ll video and/or name and shame the officer(s) who do so, given I am legally allowed to travel to and stay at their home.

    7. Keep everyone locked in their houses – – -We can’t let them see how many coachloads of replacements are being ferried in.

    8. Good God. Do they have nothing better to do? Obvs not. I suppose the crims are “resting” just now. What a break eh.

      1. “The underworld is playing its part by cutting back on crime…” statement by Dick Head of the Yard and Sad Dick, Caliph.

        1. Of course they are cutting back. Why go out pillaging now when you can wait a few days and have unhindered access to all of those empty homes.

        2. They’re all making multiple claims on the furlough scheme and the money is paid directly into their bank accounts. Why go out and thieve when the government is so free with our money.

          Probably quite a few have been paid vast sums for non existent PPE.

  43. Matt Hancock realises that the NHS is staffed by ethnic diversity , vitamin D dependent staff.

    He just hasn’t got the resources to see this Pandemic through safely.

    4. I would have thought more of him had he said “the Government… virus, Saving more businesses and livelihoods and left out “saving” the bl..dy National Covid Service.

  47. Adding a ‘colonialism disclaimer’ to Rorke’s Drift is an insult to our free and educated society

    Appreciation for the heroism displayed in Rorke’s Drift does not endorse imperialism. Why are we no longer allowed to think for ourselves?

    SIMON HEFFER
    19 December 2020 • 11:00am

    One would have thought that obsessives of political correctness would praise and value the work of Elizabeth Thompson, who after her marriage was known as Lady Butler, and was in 1879 almost the first woman to be elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (she failed by just two votes, and it was 1922 before a female painter finally made it). Her husband was an Anglo-Irish soldier, and she specialised in that most unladylike of subjects, painting battle scenes. One, her 1880 representation of the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu war (which had happened the previous year) hangs in the Royal Collection in St James’s Palace in London.

    However, Lady Butler’s considerable artistic and personal achievements as a painter are now, it seemed, compromised by the sort of thing she used her considerable talent to paint. The Defence of Rorke’s Drift has now been labelled with a statement – or is it a warning? – that it has links to colonialism. It is on one level yet another example of people who have decided they know better than us telling us what they expect us to think, and in a free and educated society it is a monstrous insult both to the memory of the painter and to the public who view her work.

    One must admit that had there not been a British Empire, and had the colonisation (for reasons principally of commercial gain) of large stretches of Africa not been a facet of it, Lady Butler would have had to choose a different subject. But hers is a picture that reflects a desperate struggle and the heroism explicit in it, when not much more than 150 British soldiers tried to defend a field hospital against an attack from around 3,000 Zulu warriors.

    She painted it after meeting some survivors on their return to England in the autumn of 1879, and they dressed in their sometimes blood-stained uniforms. It was, and must remain, one of the most glorious episodes in the history of the British Army: the men succeeded in their defence, and 11 Victoria Crosses were won that day.

    However, current thinking (and we must hope it is a strain of thought that, too, swiftly passes into history) seems to have it that it would have been morally preferable for the men to have been slaughtered and the hospital obliterated; for the new labelling is intended to convey a sense of shame that our country should have had its soldiers there in the first place.

    It is like equating them, ethically, with the barbarians of the SS who wantonly murdered women and children caught in their path during Hitler’s conquests in the Second World War. Or perhaps it paints them as worse, given that even some reputable historians have conceded and described the unyielding heroism, in a doomed and evil cause, of those cornered at Stalingrad and who met their deaths elsewhere on the Eastern front in the Russian advance of 1943-45.

    Queen Victoria commissioned Lady Butler’s painting because the bravery of the men of Rorke’s Drift inspired her and the nation. Only an idiot could fail to recognise what a very different country Britain was 140 years ago, and it would take an even bigger idiot to conclude that one should impose the values of the present day – values, that is, of a vocal and politically-motivated minority – on the actions of people so long ago. Yet that is what the Royal Collection has chosen to do.

    Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the collection has re-labelled 62 works of art to ‘expose’ links to slavery and empire. Because of his alleged links to slavery the philosopher John Locke also has the finger pointed at him, as does the victor of Blenheim, the first Duke of Marlborough.

    L P Hartley’s enormously wise injunction that ‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’ seems of no consequence here; but all logic and common sense dictate that it should be. One is not endorsing imperialism, colonialism or violence by appreciating Lady Butler’s painting or what it says of her talents. It is notoriously hard to make moral judgments about history when one has not actually lived through it, unless one well understands the moral climate of those times.

    One can analyse the past and work out why things happened; but one can only gauge their morality by measuring them against the standards of that age and society. Hitler’s genocidal mania, his rampant totalitarianism and his utter disregard for human life were seen as wicked by his contemporaries. By contrast, many millions around Europe believed in the 19th century that imperialism had a benign, civilising, moral purpose. A minority did not. It was not a clear-cut matter. At the heart of what is intellectually warped about labelling of this sort is that it pretends otherwise, and makes a certain brand of political obsessive feel better not about representations of the past, but about allowing the past to be represented at all.

    Where this leads to is anyone’s guess. Our art galleries are full of pictures of distinguished soldiers, sailors and airmen who engaged in acts of ‘violence’. Are they to be blackguarded in this fashion too? There was hardly a leading soldier of the Great War who had not fought in the Sudan, South Africa or India in wars or conflicts that the self-flagellating obsessives would not now categorise as morally offensive. Are all pictures linked to war to be condemned for their ‘violence’, even if the violence in which the subject engaged was in defence of what still passes for our civilisation? Has the time come to vilify Nelson’s Column, the Wellington Arch, or the statues of Montgomery and Slim in Whitehall? And what about the Cenotaph? Didn’t the Glorious Dead it commemorates sign up for violence when they joined the Armed Forces, and participate extensively in it?

    Where this egregious absurdity ends is anybody’s guess. Should we condemn the paintings of, for example, Lucian Freud because he exploited and manipulated and abused many of the women who posed for them, and should they be labelled accordingly? Should all copies of Philip Larkin’s poems be marked with a label reminding potential readers that in his private life he was known to make disparaging remarks about black people?

    Should listeners to the music of Benjamin Britten be warned that he harboured feelings about small boys that would these days have had him hauled for questioning before a public inquiry? Should Radio 3 announcers always solemnly intone before playing Wagner that he was a professed anti-Semite, or that Elgar was a known sympathiser of the British Empire? Should any Charles Dickens novel or theatrical representation of it be prefaced by a statement of his abominable treatment of women? Should any Roman Polanski film ever be shown again because of his paedophilia? Should Carlyle, liable to make outrageous statements about black people, imperialism, feudalism, human rights and democracy even be allowed to be mentioned? The list is endless.

    Too many people are afraid to engage with the fascism of the left that drives this retroactive censorship and distortion of history. It has to stop, for intellectual reasons and for the reasons of the integrity of our culture. A work of art, whether a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, a poem, a book or an opera, must be judged primarily by its aesthetic quality. The French and Germans are good at this and have learned this lesson; the former publish still and appreciate the novels of the Nazi sympathiser Céline; the latter, despite the stain that persecution of the Jews has left on their country, still celebrate and perform the works of Wagner, even if they are under no illusions about some of his poisonous views. We need to grow up, and act similarly, or we shall become a nation of fools.

    Leading BTL comment:

    Aaron Schneider
    19 Dec 2020 12:43PM
    The first mistake that people on the right (and in the centre) make when engaging with the Woke lot is to accept that colonialism was somehow evil. I will believe until my dying day that the British Empire was one of the greatest forces for good that the world has ever seen. Saying things like “these men were products of their age,” while very true, gives the loony lefties a leg up. Were there isolated incidents in which individuals behaved badly? Yes, of course. No decent human being could ever excuse the massacre at Amritsar, and as an Australian, I am still furious about the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese.

    Ultimately, however, empires are a natural part of the human condition, not some strange uniquely evil preserve of white Europeans. Almost every part of the world has seen the rise and fall of empires, and an empire should not be praised or condemned based on the fact that it was an empire, but rather for the things that the empire did. The British Empire was, on the whole, a tremendous force for good. The sooner people start defending the Empire rather than apologising for it, the sooner we will vanquish the evil idiocy of the Woke. As the French political philosopher Pascal Bruckner said (and I paraphrase), after 2,000 years we can say confidently that it was a good thing that Caesar defeated the Gauls and that Vercingetorix was forced to surrender. The Romans united a land of disparate warring tribes, and they brought peace, stability and the benefits of Greek and Roman thought to the Gauls.

    I do hope that it will take less than 2,000 years for people inside and outside of Britain to stand up and say the same thing about the British Empire.

    1. Ah the Zulus,that vegan empire of peaceful crofters and agriculturists who scraped a living herding their tofubeasts and living in perfect peace and harmony with their tribal neighbours until the evil British invaded and destroyed an African nirvarna*

      *History lesson in UK schools circa 2050

    2. 327566+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      Could not agree with SH more, in my comment history some time back I did post ” there are those that will come for the village war memorials”

    3. I must declare a personal connection with colonialism; my father was involved when he worked for the British colonial system in the Sudan where I was born in 1946. I hope that not too many of my friends here would like to see me cancelled!

      1. Mr T,
        That makes you both an immigrant and an an emigrant, indeed perhaps slightly nomadic when one thinks of yonder yacht.
        “A wandering minstrel I —
        A thing of shreds and patches
        Of ballads, songs and snatches
        And dreamy lullaby!”

    4. Largest democracy on the planet? Rule of law, schools, English as common language, savagery ceased, cricket, tea plantations, mills, railways.
      What vicious, grasping, evil, empire brought that about? Us.

  48. I’m just wondering what criteria our government uses for the lock downs and the covid advice.
    I think one of the gauges must be Fun.
    Virtually every pleasurable activity people can do well apart from rumpy pumpy and that is only a birthday event for most, to pass the time has been curtailed and that I bet they will clamp down on that next.
    I’m sure the scientists are getting together thinking oh it’s Christmas, people will be enjoying themselves, we can’t have that not even for a few days in prison camp Britain, lets spoil it all for them at the last minute to get the biggest effect.

      2. Let’s just say that scientists tend to be on the ‘autistic spectrum’ and therefore do not understand human emotions.
        Morning, Olaf’s Relict.

      3. They will certainly have factored in the psychological effect on people before making their decisions. I am sure the effect of cancelling Christmas has been considered in relation to persuading people to have the vaccine.

        1. From the outset this scam has been predicated on creating a vast mountain of debt while at the same time the behavioural scientists on SAGE keep turning the screw on family life and human interaction i.e. do not meet or hug grandma, friends, lovers; close places of entertainment, relaxation, exercise; social distancing, mask wearing (how soon will this be mandatory outside of the home?); exhortations to stay indoors, restricted travel, the list goes on.
          All of these restrictions, and more, are designed to create a deep slough of despair and desperation in the population which will then queue up obediently for whatever panacea the government offers: in the first instance that is the vaccine. What follows is anyone’s guess but it will not be nice.

  49. – Picture you upon my knee, just tier four two and two four tier
    Just me for you and you for me, alone!
    Nobody near us, to see us or hear us,
    No friends or relations on weekend vacations,

    1. Might I humbly suggest a slight modification to your last line:

      No friends or relations and vile vaccinations

  51. Good morning, all. Late on parade. Things to do.

    Are we in Tier 5 yet? I am not sure whether I can open the front door today….

  52. 327566+ up ticks,
    I make him right old Roosee that is, the thing we mostly have to fear is fear itself, especially if it is politically constructed fear.

    In my mind this covid 19 going on 30 must get in line with much older, PROVEN much nastier maladies / viruses, and the monies laid out so far
    on what the overseers see as an extremely dangerous virus would have been better spent on researching our daily PROVEN DANGEROUS ailments from which peoples are dying from before getting the virus which in many cases seems to be an additive after death.

    Oddly we have the antidote to three of the viruses, one which would have a 100% no sh!te, straight up success rate.
    Stop kissing X lab/lib/con candidates in the polling booth.

  53. Good morning all

    Moh playing golf this morning despite sunshine and showers .

    We had another deluge of rain last night, the garden is on a slight slope so is therefore very squidgy.

    I have read the letters and the responses . Nothing to add there .

    However ,what about this .. an article in our local rag!

    ‘HOSPITALS and care homes across Dorset have been told to take down their Christmas decorations by Infection Control due to fears of spread the Covid-19 virus.

    All hospital departments and some care homes in Dorset, including children’s wards and specialist eating disorder units, have been advised to remove festive as the NHS are concerned about people touching and pulling down the decorations.’

    https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18956543.dorset-hospitals-care-homes-told-take-christmas-decorations/?ref=ar

    1. Block up the chimneys so that Father Christmas can’t come down – talk about super-spreader.
      And cull the reindeers – foot and mouth – ask Ferguson.

      1. London now smokes with vapours that arise
        From his foule sweat, himselfe he so bestirres:
        ‘Cast out your dead!’ the carcase-carrier cries,
        Which he by heapes in groundlesse graves interres

        Now like to bees in summer’s heate from hives,
        Out flie the citizens, some here, some there;
        Some all alone, and others with their wives:
        With wives and children some flie, all for feare!

        Here stands a watch, with guard of partizans,
        To stoppe their passages, or to or fro,
        As if they were not men, nor Christians,
        But fiends or monsters, murdering as they go …

        John Davies, from ‘The Triumph of Death’. Davies (1569-1626) was another poet to live through the plague outbreaks in London in the 1590s:

        1. Good morning Maggiebelle

          I had forgotten the 16th Century plagues recalling the Great Plague of London in 1665 and the Black Death of 1346 ff.

          I am surprised that BLM have not wanted to politicise or ‘weaponise’ these events in some way.

    2. Why are some people such miseries, dedicated to seeking out and exterminating all forms of joy?

  54. I see the great London exodus has set the people free to seek the promised land.

    I wonder how far and wide the plague ridden Londoners will spread new variant CJD, oops, I meant COVID, during their 40 years in the wilderness.

  56. Good morning my friends

    So the Christmas plans of both our sons, like those of millions of others, were thrown into complete disarray last night. Henry was to have spent Christmas in Rugby with Jessica’s family; Christo in Cambridge with Katy’s.

    The PM’s reluctant Christmas climbdown is a disaster for his personal credibility
    One of Boris Johnson’s character traits is beginning to look incredibly dangerous

    ROSS CLARK
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/20/pms-reluctant-christmas-climbdown-disaster-personal-credibility/

    A BTL comment with which I agree:

    I have argued for sometime that Boris Johnson should have delegated responsibility for Covid policy to somebody else and concentrated all his efforts on Brexit showing that if the EU refused to accept Britain’s sovereignty there was no alternative but No Deal and WTO. He also should have ensured that Bill Cash’s legitimate and necessary amendment was not surrendered and squandered as it has been by Mr Gove’s treacherous visit to Brussels.

  57. I hurt my back recently, boo hoo & ouch etc.
    Yesterday I went to a public swimming pool for a bit of physio. Seven people in the water, in various dedicated lanes.
    Did a few lengths and started to swim gently on my back. The Covidian on duty rushed over to tell me that backstroke was forbidden under ‘guidelines’. Naturally I queried the meaning of the g-word, because I was swimming alongside an actual guideline.
    My late father often said that if the Germans had invaded GB, they would have found plenty of volunteers.

    1. Were they against you breathing upwards? – -or did they expect you to breathe face down – without getting your mouth clear of the water? Any friend with a scuba tank they’d lend you?

    3. I’m afraid the other day I got caught peeing in the deep end of our baths – the lifeguard shouted so loudly I nearly fell in

  58. Management Lesson – maybe Boris could learn

    Johnny wanted to have sex with a girl in his office. But she belonged to someone else…

    One day, Johnny got so frustrated that he went up to her and said, ‘I’ll give you a £100 if you let me have sex with you. But the girl said NO.

    Johnny said, ‘I’ll be fast. I’ll throw the money on the floor, you bend down, and I’ll be finished by the time you pick it up. ‘

    She thought for a moment and said that she would have to consult her boyfriend… So she called her boyfriend and told him the story.

    Her boyfriend says, ‘Ask him for £200, pick up the money very fast, he won’t even be able to get his pants down.’

    So she agrees and accepts the proposal. Half an hour goes by, and the boyfriend is waiting for his girlfriend to call.

    Finally, after 45 minutes, the boyfriend calls and asks what happened.

    She responded, ‘The cheating bugger used coins!’

    Management lesson:
    Always consider a business proposal in its entirety before agreeing to it and getting screwed…!!!

  59. From today’s Penarth Times – the local paper famous for the headline “Man Found Drunk in Street”
    “Covid outbreak at Cardiff coronavirus vaccination centre” https://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/18947799.covid-outbreak-cardiff-coronavirus-vaccination-centre/
    Nine staff members at a mass vaccination centre under the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board have tested positive for coronavirus, NHS bosses have confirmed.
    Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said some workers have tested positive at the Splott vaccination centre and other staff members are being tested.

    So, you can get vaccinated and the effectiveness of the vaccine tested straight away!

      1. Parents looked at a house at 15, Railway St, Splott, back in the mid-70s.
        Romantic address, that.

          2. I thought they were going to change the name of that place to Föcking? Or was that just a ruse to stop the Britons travelling there?

            There’s still Oberfucking apparently, even if they do change it.

        2. A friend of mine used to live in Splott, can’t remember the street name. That was in the 90s, but I don’t think that 20 years had seen a lot of improvement in Splott.

        4. Paul,

          I worked in Cardiff in the late nineties,
          there was a superb flea/general market
          in Splott, every Saturday/Sunday.

    2. The staff must have all had the vaccination themselves, right? Well, I guess they did say the vaccine wouldn’t stop you from getting the virus!

    3. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
      Edit: Is that the Splott vaccination centre or the Splatt! vaccination centre?

  60. Matt Hancock today hit out at ‘totally irresponsible’ Londoners who fled to the capital last night after Boris Johnson effectively cancelled Christmas for around 16 million people in southern England.

    The Health Secretary sighed and shook his head as Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme showed him social-media images of large crowds queueing on a packed platform at St Pancras Station to travel to Leeds.

    Yesterday the PM slapped new draconian measures – dubbed Tier 4 – on London, the South East and East of England in a desperate bid to combat a surge in cases caused by a ‘mutant’ strain of coronavirus.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9072273/Coronavirus-UK-Fury-Northerners-fears-Londoners-spreading-new-mutant-strain.html?ito=push-notification&ci=61591&si=7271111.

    What else did he expect , they are all flocking down this way as well.

    This thing is way out of control now, badly managed . The behaviour scientists have failed!

    1. Or it may be going exactly as the Behavioural Insight Team expected. It depends on your perspective. Mandatory vaccinations, now, anyone?

    2. “… Londoners who fled to the capital last night …”

      Surely that can only be a good thing for the rest of the UK?

    3. Exactly the same thing happened last time! Is one definition of insanity not repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

    4. “… Londoners who fled to the capital last night …”

      Surely that can only be a good thing for the rest of the UK?

  63. Seems that several European countries have stopped all flights to & from the UK, based on this “new”, apparently more infectious variant of COVID-19.
    Netherlands, Belgium, Italy now, France & Germany considering it.

      2. From gov.uk:

        From 4am, Saturday 7 November 2020, the Home Office is implementing immigration powers meaning visitors arriving into the UK from Denmark will not be permitted entry into the UK. This excludes freight and hauliers.

  66. Things have got so bad at the DT that it now accept US Democrats/never Trumpers’ views and censors actual conservatives.

  67. DM Story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9072409/Archbishop-Canterbury-tells-elderly-avoid-church-Christmas.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

    Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby tells the elderly NOT to go to church on Christmas Day as he warns it is ‘too dangerous’
    The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby today told the elderly not to go to church on Christmas Day as he warned it is ‘too dangerous’.

    This makes me think about writing another version of the Monty Python Lumberjack song:

    I’m an Anglican I’m okay
    I preach all night but I never pray!

    Caroline, a Roman Catholic, is astonished by this.

    1. By contrast, our local priest has organised two “midnight” Masses on Christmas eve – because of social distancing, we cannot fill up the church as usual, so we’re having two services: an earlier one for families with children and for anyone who wants to go to bed early! This morning, the priest announced that if two Masses weren’t enough he would be delighted to celebrate a third!

      1. Our priests are going on strike, FFS! On Christmas eve, no less, so even if you can get into church, there’ll be nobody to lead a service.

          1. “Tu autem cum orabis intra in cubiculum tuum et cluso ostio tuo ora Patrem tuum in abscondito et Pater tuus qui videt in abscondito reddet tibi”
            — Mat. 6:6

          3. I was just about to suggest that too. Organise it yourselves and show the clergy they are not required. They do not have the Christian mindset.

          4. Not sure what their problem is. Maybe they don’t get a priority pass for the Pearly Gates? Anyhow, there’ll be no donations in the offertory plate this year, then.
            As I say to all who want to stike for more pay – if the job is so awful, go work somewhere else.

    2. As one who has attended Christmas day services over the years and seldom failed to catch something: a cold or a cough, and one year ten days of ‘flu misery, I think he may be correct.

      That does not mean that he should not be ignored if celebrating Christmas in church is an important part of ones year..

      1. My ancestors risked their lives to go on Crusades. Unfortunately they failed to stamp out Islam.

    3. Not really a surprise, gvien previous form, and the increasing anti-religious bent of the CoE since the 1960s. I’d wager a large number of vicars and bishops believe more in Marx than God.

  68. The PM’s reluctant Christmas climbdown is a disaster for his personal credibility

    One of Boris Johnson’s character traits is beginning to look incredibly dangerous

    ROSS CLARK

    There was a grim predictability to the Prime Minister’s cancellation of Christmas for nearly a third of the population. It is the same pattern we saw in the spring and in the early autumn. First, he resists his advisers. Then comes a crunch scientific briefing – and he crumbles. Last Wednesday, Boris Johnson said it would be “inhuman” to cancel Christmas at such short notice. By Saturday, three days closer to the event, three days of shopping, cooking and booking tickets later, he cancels Christmas anyway. By his own reckoning, the Prime Minister has just committed an act that is even worse than “inhuman”.

    Johnson doesn’t want to stop us doing things. He wants to get the whole Covid thing over with and get back to being the liberal Conservative PM he always imagined being. But, ultimately, he hasn’t quite got it in him to over-rule scientists bearing prophecies of doom. From Neil Ferguson’s 500,000 deaths, to Patrick Vallance’s dodgy 4,000 deaths-a-day graph to Chris Whitty’s new variant that is 70 per cent more transmissible than the old variant, when he finds himself in a roomful of boffins determined to change his mind, change it he eventually will. Moreover, to judge by past experience he will have agreed to Tier 4 without asking the tough questions about the 70 per cent claim that he should have asked.

    It is too easy to say that Johnson is weak – and a tad unfair. He isn’t that weak. A real weed would give way immediately. He would accept whatever Vallance or Whitty told him without a whiff of protest, effectively ceding all power to his advisers. Johnson’s problem isn’t that he gives way at the first opportunity but that he gives way at the last opportunity – at the point when everyone who is possibly going to change their mind about something has already done so.

    Politically, this is an incredibly dangerous trait of character. It keeps leaving Johnson in an unfortunate time zone: three days behind Sir Keir Starmer.

    The Prime Minister does not impress the people who were ahead of him in changing his mind – they are left thinking he should have seen the light earlier.

    Why did he leave it until Saturday to cancel Christmas, they will say, when we all knew about the new strain of the virus last Monday? And in the other direction? All you will find there are the truly resolute: those who are never going to change their minds under any circumstances; those who think, pandemic or no pandemic, new variant of the virus or no new variant, a government steps over the line when it starts ordering us to stay at home and forbids us from meeting members of our own families.

    Unfortunately for Boris, a good number of this latter group sit on his own benches in the Commons, or at least they did until most of the seats were taped off. Were they actually sitting behind him in debates, he would hear their protests more clearly. He would be able to sense the first whimpers of dissent. Instead, the protests get put out on Twitter. Did the Prime Minister even see it coming that his own backbenchers would immediately demand a vote on the Tier 4 restrictions, as we had on the November lockdown and the new Tiers which replaced it? Surely, he must have realised that.

    Those of conspiratorial mind will be suspicious of why the cancellation of Christmas was left until Saturday, after the Commons had risen for the Christmas recess.

    It seems not to have been intentional, but it looks bad, delaying a decision until MPs have sloped off back to their constituencies. Given there are no festivities to be had, what is the point of the holiday anyway? If I were an MP I would rather be detained in the Commons all next week, to vote on Tier 4 and also to scrutinise any EU trade deal that the Prime Minister might attempt to sneak through at the last moment, rather than be discharged to an almost-empty house from which my intended house guests have just been barred.

    The tragedy is that for a few days Johnson had a good, middle-way policy. Having made the rules, he wasn’t going to change them at the last moment, and risk inspiring civil disobedience in the process. Instead, he wanted to appeal to our own judgment – it was up to us to decide whether we wanted to take the risk of a family gathering or to leave it until the spring, when Granny, at least, would have been vaccinated.

    Instead, we’ve had three new sets of rules unleashed on us in just six days, upsetting the plans of millions. It is no way to treat a country. Never mind the virus, there are too many variants of Boris Johnson for any of us to keep up with.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/20/pms-reluctant-christmas-climbdown-disaster-personal-credibility/

    2. Boris is, of course, the man who said that a second lockdown would be “catastrophic” before changing his mind again a few days later and imposing just that thing!

  69. This is not about a moderately serious illness.
    What is happening is an all out assault on Christianity. There will only be a handful at Midnight Mass, where before the churches were frequently packed. One of the two most significant feast days in the Christian calendar has effectively been wiped out, religiously, socially, by decree.
    The Adversary is now in control and the consequences will be suffered by all. Our civilisation was founded on Christian principles and our laws are Christian laws. Our Christian society came down through the centuries. The Mass I served as an altar boy was the same Mass attended by Charlemagne.
    It does not matter to non-Christians, it seem. They dominate the media in all its forms. They have not recognised that the destruction of Christianity is the destruction of the society that gave them everything.
    One does not need to be a car mechanic to recognise that the car won’t go any more.

    1. 327566+up ticks,
      Evening HP,
      It must pose a worry for many as in, will it damage the voting pattern in any way ?

    2. Why on earth Jennifer voted that comment down I cannot understand. Christianity, the bedrock of our society, has been systematically under attack since the sixties and the promotion of the “permissive society”. I’m no Mary Whitehouse, but the breaking down of morality and the loss of the sense of right and wrong have not been an improvement. Now we have an ideology that openly proclaims itself to be “submission” which is determined to eradicate all threats (ie alternative viewpoints) which is not only encouraged, but given special privileges. Are we at the end of days?

      1. Christianity is no more “under attack” than we are under the 1940 blitz. Christianity is doing just fine.

        As for the “sense of right and wrong” well there’s plenty of that about too, even if a lot of the people on these pages get muddled up between the two.

    3. Not so sure, HP. I think that the secularists that dominate the media in all its forms do indeed recognise that the destruction of Christianity is an essential part of the destruction of society. It is another string to their bow alongside the destruction of Family and so many other bedrocks of society. That is what the Cultural Marxists seek and are achieving.

    4. At this point, I cannot see us being allowed to have Easter. All for our own safety, of course, and that of the most vulnerable in society (as though the Government cares about them!). At some point, we shall have to have our own private underground services.

      1. 327566+up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        A parallel society will spring up especially when prohibition kicks in,
        🎵
        At the foot of the hill was a neat little still where the smoke curled up to the sky,

      2. The Soviets couldn’t eradicate Christianity. In adversity, it got stronger. There’s plenty Christians (underground) in China, too.

        1. And you cannot (and no has tried to) prevent anyone from celebrating Christmas or Easter – on any other day in the church calendar.

          Where “two or more” cannot gather together then one alone may pray with just as much effect and with no need for church, chapel, temple or any other building.

        1. Never understood why he wasn’t put in his place – Oh Hell I’ve just worked out he was!

    2. That’s heartbreaking. I don’t think I have ever seen it so clearly demonstrated that when your relative goes into one of these places, they have complete power and you lose any ability to influence the person’s care.

  71. Overwhelming public support for Tier 4 despite criticism of government’s handling of crisis. 20 December 2020.

    More than 70 per cent of the public support Boris Johnson’s new tighter tier 4 restrictions, according to a YouGov poll.

    They would say that wouldn’t they? Interestingly the same poll said,

    However 61 per cent said they think the Government has badly handled the issue of COVID-19 rules around Christmas, and only 33 per cent said they have handled it well.

    The framing of the questions must have been tortuous!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/tier-4-rules-public-support-yougov-b1776755.html

    1. I had the misfortune to catch Radio 4’s one o’clock news today. Talk about being laid on with a trowel. Two well-spoken (and carefully put forward) nurses explained how desperate it all was and given our nurses are angels you’d need a heart of stone not to believe them….so its no wonder Joe and Jessie public think the more Tiers the merrier.

        1. ” must make the decision for themselves. ” – – but that is exactly what the govt DON’t want us to do.

  72. With reference to Rik’s post below as the Psychiatrist pointed out: “No pleasure foregone is worth an extra five years in a Nursing Home in Weston-super- Mare”

    1. Afternoon Stephen. From what I’ve seen you are better off dead than in one of these nursing homes!

      1. Oh its not so bad. Incarcerated since March sans visitors my MiL in her nineties is learning new skills like Romanian and Latvian knitting. An unexpected bonus was being helped to dress by a (male) Jamaican carer!

        Afternoon Minty et al (Just back from a 300 mile round trip to check up on our elderly bed-bound charge.)

      2. Try a Canadian home. No real rules so maximise profit by packing em in four or more to a room. See how many they can kill off with covid.

  73. DT Article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/christmas-present-sperm-donor-baby/

    My Christmas present to myself: a sperm donor baby
    I was 42, single and desperate for a child. The donor option wasn’t easy, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done

    Maybe we ought to have advertisements on TV like the ones reminding us that A Puppy Is Not Just For Christmas and telling us that we should not treat living creatures as mere playthings to gratify our own selfishness.

  74. Different world,just watched the Smithsonian channel Doco on the invasion of Okinawa
    It should (along with many others) be compulsory viewing in our schools for 16+ year olds
    Those who whine about the use of atomic arms on Japan should be forced to watch it ten times in a row with their eyelids naile to their foreheads

    1. 327566+ up ticks,
      Evening Rik,
      6pm / 7pm “yesterday” channel 25 should be shown on a daily basis throughout the teaching years,

    4. It’s generally accepted that Uranus is not visible to the naked eye. However, you could use a mirror.😎

  76. I note that the PTB are still calling any death where the person has tested positive and dies from whatever cause as a Covid death in the statistics.

    If Hancock tests positive and someone shoots him in the counting period will that be a Covid death?

    It would appear so.

    1. If – and of course it is a very big if – the government actually wanted to solve the problem of illegal immigration they would impose clear, strict rules and be rigorous in ensuring that these rules were always kept.

      That they do not do so makes many people think that they actually want illegal immigrants to find their way into Britain.

      1. I remember a tv Police program where they stopped a driver and eventually found out that he was an Afghan who had been deported back THREE times already. Here he was for the 4th time, driving on the motorway, no insurance, licence or MOT. And he didn’t give a damn. The police were even joking with him.

    3. 1 – I don’t believe the figure is that low.
      2 – All being hidden in their “community” here in the UK.
      3 – All willing to commit the worst crime against innocent people to ensure they stay
      here if threatened with deportation.

    5. That’s 37,000 potential Covid-18 spreaders, over whom the PTB has no knowledge, data, or control. A thundering disgrace …

      Perhaps we should have a Minister for Repatriation of Rubber Ribbers.

    1. Who else was on offer – Corbyn? Hunt (who IMHO is just as much an Establishment person as Cameron, Tony Blair or Joe Biden are)? Unless the boomer population all deserted the Tories, there was no chance in say Nige’s lot getting in.

      It all dependes now on whether the masses will wake up from their stupor after being conditioned to be good little drones/serfs as regards COVID and The Great Reset/4th Industrial Revoloution that is to follow. If so, THEN a major shift in politics will occur.

      The first test will be in the US to see how many pro-Trump protesters will turn out in Washington DC on 6th Jan 2021 when the final count of the election votes is carried out. If millions turn out, then it’s Game On for such big changes to happen. If not, then things will likely get a LOT worse before it gets better, if ever, and will take decades.

      1. I’m on record from several years ago saying Mr Hunt was being groomed to become the leader of The Conservative Party. (Son of an Admiral & Related too Virginia & Peter Bottomley an all that) so still in with a chance? :-((

  81. DTStory by Patrick O’Flynn

    After his Christmas flip-flop, the last thing Boris can do is go soft on Brexit
    The spectacle of Mr Johnson acting decisively on his central mission to “Get Brexit Done” with or without a deal is just what he needs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/20/christmas-flip-flop-last-thing-boris-can-do-go-soft-brexit/

    A BTL Comment:

    I wonder if Mr Johnson’s sexual intemperance in being psychologically incapable of being faithful to his wives, mistresses, and girlfriends – even the mothers of his unknown quantity of children – explains his inability to stand firm and show any moral resolution.

    People often say that a person’s sex life has nothing to do with his or her ability to do a job. But a politician’s job depends on trust and if you cannot be trusted to be constant and reliable with those with whom you are most intimately involved, how can you be trusted to constant and true to those whom you haven’t even met and who trusted you to keep your word to them?

    1. To be fair, you can’t expect Boris to keep a record of every encounter he has had. It could be used against him – by the taxman for one.

  83. Evening, all. Has the government grasped anything of what’s been happening this year (or indeed for the last four years)?

    1. 327566+ up ticks,
      Evening C,
      ALL going successfully to plan, possibly could not believe the coalitions luck, the true proven opposition the very designers/ activators of the referendum erased.

      1. Had a nice phone chat with one of my brothers yesterday, ogga and thought of you. My big brother told me that all our politicians are twats but, “people will keep voting for twats”.

        1. 327566+ up ticks,
          Evening SE,
          I do get accused of repeating that very fact by many of the ovis but it never deters them from doing the same thing again & again.

          The politico’s count on it for a living, and they ain’t been let down yet.

          Big bro, good mindset.

    2. The recent ‘report’ from the government showed that the the largest group of cases involved white British people, but the MSM hid the fact that that group makes up about 85% of the UK’s population, and only 3-5% Asian-muslim, whose group made up just a bit less at around the 25% mark if I recall The Lotus Eaters video on this. That means the Muslim population is 5x – 8x as much involved if the population size is accounted for, as are many other ethnic minority groups. If that info was released by the media, that WOULD be damning.

      Far worse was that the Establishment at all levels tried to cover up what was going on, often blaming the victims, most of whom were young women and children. Rather says a lot about The Police, local authorities, social services, the justice system, the media and many politicians, including those who tried to stop investigations and vilified the few courageous journalists and MPs like Sarah Champion (and it’s not often I heap praise on a Labour MP) for speaking out about it and getting the enquiry going in the first place.

      It also vindicates a certain other political figure who has been demonised by the media who I won’t name in case Disqus uses my naming them to shut me down. Most of us know who this person is, and it’s not Nige (though he has been heavily criticised for speaking out on this subject).

      1. As I commented the other day.
        Take 21 gangs, 11 are white, thee or four men, and are gang rapists attacking a few victims.

        10 are “Asian” (Pakistani Muslims in reality), they are made up of dozens of men attacking scores of young white girls.

        But the “majority” are white because 11 is bigger than 10.

      2. The report also failed to make the point that most white abusers are sad loners doing it online, even if they are coordinated with other sad loners, whereas the Muslim gangs acted together in groups and targetted young white girls.

  85. My contention with the vaccine is that if it was any good it would already be on sale and very expensive at that

  86. Just had the bottle of Georgian wine that was recommended to me. Excellent, so it is! Good flavour, no sweetness, so an excellent reccomendation! I’ll order it again.

    3. Excellent. I’ve ordered 3 for Christmas, same grape variety and method, but different vineyard by the looks of it.

    6. Was at the Russian supermarket yesterday, and they had quite a lot of Georgian wine. It all had Stalin’s picture on it! I refuse to buy any product with that mass-murdering scumbag printed on it.

      Can you imagine German or Austrian wine being sold with Hitler on the label? Or Chinese wine with Mao…actually, it probably is!

        1. If I were drinking wine, I would have reflexively spat it out on the keyboard at the very idea!

        2. The first taste of English wine I experienced was in the Refectory restaurant in Richmond on Thames next to the churchyard where we would visit for Sunday lunch most weeks. This was 1978.

          The wine was named The Maids of Biddenden, in Kent. The maids were allegedly Siamese twins joined at the hip. The restaurateur claimed that they both married but as to whether to one man or two was not clear. The mind boggled.

          The same restaurant served Stanleys Australian red wine which was better than most of the other stuff available in England at that time.

    7. Just bought a magnum of Chateauneuf-de-Pape in Waitrose, as an offering for the former neighbours who invited me for Christmas Day. Thanks to Boros, that’s now cancelled. I’ll be Johnny No Mates on Friday. Boxing Day’s page may be late. And I may be quite pissed.

      2. We are still trying to fathom what restrictions apply to us but I think we are Tier 4. On our walk earlier today next door neighbours were decorating the neglected listed K6 telephone box. A few other villagers stopped to chat.

        We all agreed this government’s policy is to support the roll out of vaccines and has nothing whatever to do with public health. Eminent immunologists and epidemiologists and thousands of medical researchers are on record as saying the mRNA vaccines are a risk to health. The same applies to paper and cloth face masks.

        We need to take a stand. This has gone too far. Johnson and Hancock will be given a seat at the high table of the Davos elites and will rub shoulders with Blair and other traitors.

      4. We are still trying to fathom what restrictions apply to us but I think we are Tier 4. On our walk earlier today next door neighbours were decorating the neglected listed K6 telephone box. A few other villagers stopped to chat.

        We all agreed this government’s policy is to support the roll out of vaccines and has nothing whatever to do with public health. Eminent immunologists and epidemiologists and thousands of medical researchers are on record as saying the mRNA vaccines are a risk to health. The same applies to paper and cloth face masks.

        We need to take a stand. This has gone too far. Johnson and Hancock will be given a seat at the high table of the Davos elites and will rub shoulders with Blair and other traitors.

        2. I’m definitely Tier 4. The next Borough is Tier 2. The nearest pub to my old place can carry on, with “substantial meals”. It’s less than a mile away. Meanwhile, I’m locked down. I was able to attend Church this morning, as long as no-one sang. Hymns were downloaded from Amazon. I’m no longer an organist, but a fecking DJ.

        3. Shopping yesterday and carrying a load, the face nappy was so obstructive of proper breathing that I started to become dizzy & had to stop & take off the nappy to recover.

  87. What odds on Hamilton taking the knee to accept the BBC sport nonentity of the year, if he wins it?

    1. The BBC and the Establishment carry on as though all these things – awards, knighthoods etc – still have meaning to the majority in Britain.

      1. I enjoy the highlights that are shown and although sad it’s interesting to see which sporting greats have died, a bad year this year I fear.

      2. Given the lack of (good) sporting events this year, I’m surprised that the progamme wasn’t reduced from its normal 2hrs down to a 10 minute slot on BBC Four or the Red Button. Best place for it. Stopped watching this show after Des stopped presenting it and it got silly, then woke.

        Wouldn’t it be good if Fury won and on a live acceptance feed he gave the BBC the middle finger.

      3. Not me, Stig. PS – New Avatar?

        OOPS – I think I am going DooLally. Of course, Geoff, you are really the MLE (Middle Land Exile).

          1. Indeed, Geoff, I noticed my mistake as soon as I pressed the POST button, but my correction didn’t arrive quick enough.

      4. Not me, Stig. PS – New Avatar?

        OOPS – I think I am going DooLally. Of course, Geoff, you are really the MLE (Middle Land Exile).

      2. It must be ‘so hard’ being Lewis. Did he do anything for his home town of Stevenage following his success? Did he heck.

    5. It will probably be named a “Hamilton” in his honour and be classed similar to “winning an Oscar”. And how many there will also take the knee.

    1. I don’t think that tyre lever would reach the sensitive bits when upright. Doesn’t seem long enough. And why would anyone be filming this?

  89. Perusing the D/M TV Christmas Week there is a surfeit of good films to view over the cancelled ‘Seasonal Fun’ … Thankyou Doris.
    Today-
    Shadowlands – BBC2 2.45pm.
    followed by Catch Me if you Can – 5.50pm
    and 9.30pm The Death of Stalin
    All without those infuriating Ads….

    For Saddos only – pour yourself a large favourite tipple, relax in your fave chair
    and switch off/on….zzzz

        1. You’re welcome – the cast looks good. I’m not sure whether I’ve already seen it. I’ll probably give the first episode a go this evening.

  91. Anybody got any fresh conspiracy theories??
    ‘Cause just about all mine have already come true……………..
    Covid Passports
    https://twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1340654678716149761
    Edit
    I’m calling it now,the timing of the announcements was DESIGNED to make Londoners flee to the shires before midnight,all those selfish superspreaders…………
    Whole country in tier 4 lockdown by next weekend,all with no Parliamentary scrutiny as they’ve all buggered off for Christmas
    Fascists and Statutory Instruments

    4. I’ve heard people claim that Biden won the US election…but I realise that’s a bit far-fetched.

    5. All the current theories are as worn out as last year’s gym shoes, but that doesn’t seem to stop the Incognizanti from promoting them.

    6. As the contract for the “covid passports” was only £42,000, I presume this was for the little cards we’ve seen, showing the date of the first and second jabs.

      1. That is nowhere near enough money wasted. It much be £42,000 each for the equivalent of a business card.

    2. Perhaps we ought to create a variant on the game of Knockdown Ginger? Let’s call it Lockdown Ginger where the gang slam the front door behind them and flee as fast as they can before before a snoopy neighbour can get the police along to investigate….

  93. Building up,better drop a batch off
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8c48b2bd6018f99483097fae65576d31dd9814965df7e8277400919e18e6b908.jpg
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Tytler_cycle.png/1280px-Tytler_cycle.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/746c07f48d320fb084d8886e4f506fc0edd831eacaf7289addbf6282fe8d72d8.jpg
    https://media.thedonald.win/post/XuTJJcDO.jpeg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ffb0e5378a7ed4b022b0c7d5f47f7697e977c7d80e8db7cb13e385dcd3baeb73.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e5599575e145ca01d53fc8d5d513f2f176968080ec2e79853587196d122f07ed.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3eaf3a586fe6c80284bf92f83f51f3cf51b57be743f19a2dfce9bc846d7108f2.jpg
    And finally
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4fa3829cef98d54ac12d07e121b12e29b8108a3ca7d734683f99b7a1670a3f5b.jpg

    1. Any person or party in power facing an election this year would have fared badly, owing to the covid-19 effect. Boris Johnson would probably not have won a General Election in the UK. I’m not surprised Trump lost – due partly to an electoral reaction to the pandemic. He was on a hiding to nothing, as would have been most other leaders (although New Zealand appears to be an exception, probably because of its remoteness).

      1. Funny then that outside the 6/7 states which (inprecedentedly) “shut down” counting, Trump did uniformly better than in 2016 … yet in those states in the big cities did worse.

    1. We had braising steak, cooked for over three hours in my old black pot, with carrots, mushrooms and cabbage, with the warm up of the remains of last night’s pommes dauphinoise.

      1. Preceded by smoked salmon washed down with sauvignon blanc from NZ, and with the steak, a South African Shiraz Malbec.

  97. 327566+ up ticks,
    The only way is the USA way of sentencing or , say eight consecutive
    life sentences should work out about right if they are letting them out at eight years served.

    breitbart,
    Asian’ Rape Gang Leader Released Just Eight Years Into 26-Year Term

    1. Dont forget the barbaric conditions in their prisons.

      Life in a concrete cell with almost no human contact is harsh – just right for that gang leader.

    1. Well, that’s just normal, isn’t it?
      We will accord their sovereignty as much respect as they give ours!

    3. God bless Macron, no way Boris can do anything but stick to his red lines with dialogue like this coming from the EU.
      Please keep to your hard line stance Macron.

      1. Ah, but in its collective head it is a nation. It struts about trying to convince sane people that it is, too.

    1. That poem is as creepy AF!
      I can’t believe so many idiots are swallowing this cr……..oh, never mind.

      That puke-making sentimentality is just the juvenile drivellings of perpetual teenagers whose only raison d’être is constant confirmation that their views are shared by everyone else.

    2. 327566+ up ticks,
      Evening S,
      “You can have everything you dream of in a day and with a click” inclusive of being a woman in need of a
      stitch on d…,
      taint exactly poet laureate material is it ?

  102. From the Telegraph via Yahoo. A dire warning, it is all terrible, we can’t stop it etc etc, (of course).

    “Cases of the new mutation of Covid grew “exponentially” during the November lockdown, minutes from the Government’s Nervtag committee reveal, in papers which suggest Tier 4 measures may not be able to stop its march.
    Records of their meeting last Friday detail the scientific findings which led the Prime Minister to order sweeping restrictions.
    As well as suggesting that the new variant is 71 per cent more transmissible than the previous strain, the analysis suggests that the infectiousness could push up the R by as much as 0.93.
    Overall, scientists from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) concluded that the new variant could mean “an absolute increase in the R-value of between 0.39 to 0.93”.
    But they warned that any estimates of the frequency of the variant – VUI-202012/01 – “may be underestimates” as the strain is difficult to sequence.
    The paper warned: “It was noted that VUI-202012/01 has demonstrated exponential growth during a period when national lockdown measures were in place.”

    However I have highlighted the phrase which seems to mean that they don’t know anything really as they cannot find it.

    1. So having established that it spread exponentially during the lockdown – they put in another lockdown!

      1. Exactly, nothing seems to add up except terrible twins Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock being double agents.

        1. Watching Halfcock on the news this everning, he was starting to look more and more like Pinocchio………..what a charlatan.

          1. To be fair, and I loathe the man, who would take on the poison chalice that his role has become?

          2. I don’t think he sees it as such – he seems to take great deight in making up rules to upset people’s lives. We’ve all seen the photos of him simpering and cosying up to Schwab and Gates. He loves his role.

    2. When all these journos talk of ‘exponential growth’, they do reliase that the exponent can be 1 or 0, mean the growth rate does increase or does grow at all? All this talk is is SAGE advisors throwing their weight around, not really knowing what is going on, or, more likely using the pandemic for their own political reasons and a power grab.

      1. Long gone are the days when a Government had a few scientists in the Cabinet. IIRC, Harold Wilson had half a dozen PhD holders in his.

        1. Too many PPE/economics/law graduates or journos. Politics and government needs a wide range of experienced people from different fields of work – preferably working in the department their career was about, or at least one with similarities.

          Preferably people who are also good managers, which doesn’t mean they have to be Directors. Most of my best managers were upper middle ranked ones who didn’t have huge egos and pretentions of grandure.

          1. No well trained economist should ever have contemplated shutdown without a Cost-Benefit analysis of economic costs vs. lives of those lost (mostly old).

          2. Canyon imagine the uproar if the chancellor insisted on a cost benefit analysis before approving a shut down? Wicked Tories would be the nicest comment from the left wing press.

            Economic cost vs lives is a can of worms, would any politician go there?

          3. It’s well known that trashed economies also cost lives – but the calculation could never be anything other than vile and there would certainly be situations where the time factor was a problem.

            The QALY (quality adjusted life year) used by the NICE people is bad enough.

          4. Huh.
            Try to find a politician without pretentions of grandeur and an ego the size of the sun, or even one who might listen to good advice.

        2. It wouldn’t do any good. The Canadian government is riddled with high achieving MPs with experience in their field, they still speak horlicks and achieve the square root of sod all

      3. It seems to be NERVTAG of which the arch terrorist is none other than Neil Ferguson of always getting it wrong fame.

      4. It seems to be NERVTAG of which the arch terrorist is none other than Neil Ferguson of always getting it wrong fame.

  103. MB has spent the day decorating the tree and generally titivating Allan Towers. I have been making and decorating food presents.
    We now have one very over-excited small dog. He has been flying backwards and forwards between kitchen and sitting room insisting I admire each stage of MB’s work.
    Thank goodness he doesn’t understand enough to wake us at 4 am on Christmas morning (“he’s been….”).
    At least, I don’t think he does.

    2. If the two mince pies and glass of sherry you left by the fireplace have disappeared by 4:00 am, Sparty will be beside himself with excitement (forgetting that he consumed them himself)

      1. If he scoffs two mince pies he’s liable to be very sick. Dried grape not good for dog at all.

      2. Gawd – I’d not be able to face the vet.
        As long as he sticks to Rudolph’s carrot we’ll be all right.

        1. One of my neighbours used to throw stale bread etc out on the grass behind our houses for the “birds”… they eventually stopped, but not until we had a plague of rats.

          My springer managed to eat half a currant bun one evening before I reached her, no more than 6 or 8 currants – but we had a very bad night. I dread to think what a mince pie would do to a wee chap like your Sparty.

          1. He is one of life’s chancers. We have to be extremely careful.
            Currently, I have “Christmas boxes” of presents for various households.
            They will definitely not be placed under the Christmas tree.
            (I gather vets’ main job at Christmas is clearing out dogs who’ve found the carefully wrapped box of chocolates or reached up into the tree for the chocolate decorations).

          2. He is one of life’s chancers. We have to be extremely careful.
            Currently, I have “Christmas boxes” of presents for various households.
            They will definitely not be placed under the Christmas tree.
            (I gather vets’ main job at Christmas is clearing out dogs who’ve found the carefully wrapped box of chocolates or reached up into the tree for the chocolate decorations).

    3. You wait! Mine knows when I have to get up early and takes great delight in ensuring I get up to let him out every two hours. I had two days when I was able to sleep in with almost unbroken sleep. Last night, because I had to be up at 07.15 to go riding, it was a case of up, down, up, down – how dare you go to sleep? Needless to say, when I dragged myself out of bed, said hound was snoring his head off and had to be woken up to have breakfast and go for his walk. Dontcha just love ’em? 🙂

      1. Couldn’t sleep last night. Got up at 01:30, went downsteairs to read, fell asleep in the sofa and woke up covered in cats – all heavy, warm & fuzzy. Very relaxing it was, and the cats seemed pleasedd too (especially as I was in “their” sofa). Next thing I knew, it was 7:30, but equally dark.

        1. It was very dark this morning! I went out running shortly after 7am, but was at least able to console myself that it will, in theory, be a little lighter at the same time next week!

  104. That’s me for the day. I’ll look in tomorrow before I go for the CT scan.

    Europe cut off, I see. Curious timing – given that the “variant” must be just as active in the countries that are banning flights and trains to and from the UK.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. Yet another puzzle to add to the long list of impossible things that we are now supposed to believe before breakfast every day.

    2. Nah. You see its’ a Hancock special. The fact that the WHO were reporting about 26 Covid-19 variants months ago is mere co-incidence. Ours in made in GB and ’tis the real thing.

      2. There were 1356 strains in the UK in mid April. More than 10,000 have now been typed. The variations are all pretty marginal. On the other hand this one hasn’t been found in most of northern Europe up to now and may indeed be “made in GB” as there is some question over whether it may have mutated in a long-Covid sufferer.

  105. 327566+ up ticks,
    I take it 48% of the nation would say the same, but I am glad to say 52 %
    would say that’s sh!te.

    Dt,
    Heartbreak at Christmas – our spirit is finally broken.

      1. Can’t come soon enough! He is a disgrace to Christian believers. In fact, he is neither a Christian nor a believer.

          1. For what it’s worth I think he got fed up and buggered off to the other side of the universe waiting for it all to pass over!

          3. Eventually after three days of crying out allowed in the Synagogue and crying, God spoke to the Rabbi and said: “Rabbi what on earth is wrong?”. And the Rabbi replied: “Lord, my son has become a Christian….” And the Lord replied: “What do you mean your son…”

    3. “Bishop Sarah” came to Barts this morning to do adult baptisms and confirmations.

      Her sermon featured the predictable propaganda. She claimed to know a woman “whose body has been racked with long Covid” and who “wears a mask whenever she’s out and about, not because she’s afraid but because she cares and doesn’t want to spread…”.

      I expect nothing better from her.

      Traditional nine lessons and carols this evening. Glorious. Only the choir could sing of course but they were on fine form and the church was as full as three feet distancing and “bubbling” allows.

          2. A priestess, named Sarah Mullaly,
            Set out her flock’s spirits to rally
            She preached and she spoke
            With the Word of the “woke”
            But the worshippers thought her doollaly.

    4. A certain amount of doubt has always arise about both his conception and his misconceptions.

  108. This is from 6years ago but is still true as far as I can see. Anyone else aware of this? Probably true as only male blood donors are being sought regarding Covid-19 antibodies plasma.
    https://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/uwenews/news.aspx?id=2795
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53137573
    “Professor Kent said, “Since 2003, all women, whether they had a history of pregnancy or not, were deemed unfit or undesirable for plasma donation. Since 2010, all UK Fresh Frozen Plasma has been produced from male plasma, while female plasma, once separated from red blood cells at the first stage of processing, is discarded and sent for incineration.
    “Although all female plasma is discarded at the first stage of processing, the UK blood service does not inform women donors that this will take place. This presumes that some women would not wish to donate blood if they knew this, and that women had no entitlement to such information.””

    1. This is a very odd piece of information since I know a couple of women who are apheresis (plasma and platelet) donors. They are a very small minority of that group of donors, but they do exist. So it seems that not all UK blood is treated in the same way.

      Only male donors are being sought for the antibody trial simply because men tend to have SARS-CoV-2 more seriously than women and tend to produce more antibodies. (I had this conversation at a donor session a couple of months ago.)

      For general purposes most plasma donors are Rhesus negative and women with this type may have been given Anti-D Ig if pregnant, but otherwise there is no reason to reject female donors.

      However to remove whole blood and return red cells, retaining plasma and platelets requires a higher blood volume and more men are likely to have this.

      This from my own experience as a whole blood donor for 43 years and from my brother-in-law who has over 250 apheresis donations on his record.

      1. when they first came up with the idea of covid antibody treatments, there were interviews on US TV with women who were amongst the first plasma donors.
        It sounds unlikely that they would dump fifty percent of the plasma supply.

        1. It seems very strange. But I just let them take their 480ml + a few test tubes full and drink my cup of coffee.

          I know from b-i-l that most apheresis donors are men and that the larger body size (blood volume) is part of it. Of course some blood is use whole so nothing gets thrown away then.

          All being well I’ll be making my 100th donation in January. And if the ladies and gents at Welsh Blood are not too busy I’ll ask them about female plasma.

          1. Do you get a medal or priority supply after 100, thats a lot of arms full.

            Would you believe that the Canadian blood service will not accept my blood, I have been in the UK too much and they are still worried about mad cow disease,

          2. My brother couldn’t give in Canada, and can’t give in NZ.

            Here in the UK no one who has received a transfusion can ever again be a donor.

            I will get a certificate and a lapel pin to replace the “75” one which I received some time ago and possibly a piece of glass or some other fancy think with the logo, and the number and the date. If things ever return to normal it will probably be presented at a nice lunch party to thank long term donors and also long serving donor-care staff. I’ve got a lump of cut glass for my 75th (the earliest that you get any award other than a lapel pin … you get them at 10, 25, 50, 75 and 100) presented at a very swish lunch at Chester racecourse.

            No priority supply, but I was once taking a friend to an outpatient clinic at the local orthopaedic hospital when a doctor stopped me in the corridor, put a finger on the lapel pin (I think it was a 50) and said, quite loudly, “Well done, we need more people like you”. I was crimson with embarrassment but he quite clearly meant it sincerely.

  109. So the mystery takes on an astonishing new twist, just as Brexit looms……..

    Blockade ! What an amazing coincidence !

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/20/britain-faced-eu-wide-travel-ban-wake-covid-mutation-could-disrupt/

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9072287/Netherlands-bans-flights-UK-January-1-discovery-mutant-Super-Covid-strain.html

    The alleged new strain of C-19, noisily advertized to the world by the terrible twins, Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock, is now to be used as a reason, or more likely as an excuse, to isolate the UK from continental Europe with nothing moving in either direction.

    This looks like it might be a ruse to stop or punish Brexit, and it looks that the terrible twins, Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock, might even be in league with the Davos billionaires who direct Europe and who might be behind thie new development!

    Is this true? It looks logical. It’s surely not impossible. Who can rule it out for sure ?

    1. You are stating the bleeding obvious. Johnson and Hancock have signed up to the Gates’ vaccination programme and we are paying for it. As with Democrats in the States this lot fight dirty.

      1. A very good program on last night – -called Opioids, Inc showed how one firm in the USA pushed and pushed one drug, bribing doctors to prescribe more and more – – – and then the whole scheme got busted. I couldn’t help but see similarities with here and now. It is not listed to be repeated this week but if it is on again I strongly recommend you give it a look. Based on reality – NOT a dramatisation.

        1. I have been distrustful of the motives of large pharmaceutical companies for thirty odd years and since I became involved in designing laboratories.

          The scientists, having been taught the basics at public expense, would take up so called ‘incubator units’ on the campuses of the publicly funded research institutes, announce a new drug and pass it off to the city. Suddenly the forecourts were filled with Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati and other exotic brands of motor.

          Mostly nothing came of the wonder drug but the scientists walked away with millions to set up their next scam.

        2. Have a look at the Swine flu pandemic that wasn’t. Big pharma did the same as now, only the media weren’t on their side back then and discovered it was all made up, including at the WHO. This is mkII, the more refined version, with the help of the CCP and the MSM. 10 Years of brainwashed young people also to help them.

          2. Having had a peek into Big Pharma recently via someone else’s experience, I share your cynicism.

        3. the scheme was busted and so was the company.

          I wax only prescribed oxytocin once, I took one pill and that was enough, the rest went straight back to the pharmacy.

          1. Do you really mean oxytocin Richard? Or do you mean oxycontin?

            Oxytocin is a hormone largely related to birth and lactation…

          3. There’s a place for opiate pain relief and I confess to getting very angry when it is withheld or severely limited in the few days prior to death. Addiction really shouldn’t be on the doctor’s mind when the patient is terminal and in agony.

            As someone who can’t cope with NSAIDs my only choice for severe pain is an opiate, but it is very, very, very hard to persuade most doctors to supply even enough for a few days.

            There is no doubt that the drug company acted very badly… but there is no excuse for the doctors, no one has to take the handouts.

      2. The downvoter is again tiresome and desperate for a response. Targeting me as per usual and also Rastus I notice this evening.

        About time she was banned again. She has no arguments, next to nothing to say and exhibits just a vicious underhanded streak.

        1. Wretched woman seems to have targeted Horace as well as you and Rastus tonight. God knows why.

          Her “black list” continues to grow…

          1. I have downvoted you this time. This nightly rant against Jennifer is beyond a joke. Are you really not above ignoring a small provocation.

          4. He claims not to care about downvotes, but the hypocrite makes an almighty fuss when he gets one. Could he be bipolar like his sister?

          6. If your beloved Jennifer would stop downvoting other contributors for no other reason than she has taken against them, perhaps nobody would “rant against her” as you put it. Have you considered that? As for your downvoting me, do you really imagine I give a flying f**k?

            And here’s a thought: since you are a resident of Canada, rather than worry about what happens in this forum, maybe your time would be better spent on a Canadian website discussing your own affairs and suggesting solutions to the problems that your Prime Minister is causing over there.

          8. My late sister Beryl was apt to switch from reason to obnoxiousness at the flick of a switch.

            She was adjudged to be bipolar, suffered the ECG abomination in the sixties (after swallowing a bottle of ‘nerve’ tablets and having her stomach pumped) and probably never recovered from that particular experiment designed by the supposed scientific experts of that time.

            Any person believing in the independence and probity of the medical profession and its subsidiaries, the pharmacists, doctors and consultants, with few exceptions, can now see first hand how corrupt they are.

  111. Parliament should be recalled
    We have a national emergency accelerating rather quickly.

    Our ministers will soon be running around like headless chickens .

    There are blockages at our ports and Europe has closed its borders .

    1. 327566+ up ticks,
      Evening TB,
      Personally I believe we should be setting up a war cabinet
      of sane peoples power, independent of the 650, the lab/lib/con & any current supporters of the coalition.

      The 24/6/2016 result hurt the political class a great deal
      they tasted people power and it was not to their liking.

    3. The first thing to do is identify which ministers and which MPs are double agents.

      I think it’s pretty obvious……

    1. 327566+ up ticks,
      LD,
      Being much needed medical staff arriving on the Dover beach they are covered by the overseers.

        1. The freight traffic queue is heaven sent for the remoaners – and the travel ban and tier 4 in the south east – all supporting the “Brexit is a disaster” narrative. The perfect storm is all coming together nicely.

  114. Is it certain the new variation is accelerating the spread of the virus?

    No, but scientists say preliminary evidence suggests it does.

    Boris Johnson said it may spread up to 70 per cent more easily than other strains of the virus, potentially driving up the ‘R rate’ – which measures how quickly the virus spreads – significantly.

    Spread how, by which method . … Hands face space?😷

    1. When is the last time we saw a newsreport without the could / might / possibly catch phrase?

      Can’t go to Europe? Canada and the US are still allowing flights. The new tourism office motto is Come lock down with us!

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