Saturday 23 January: It makes no sense to slow down vaccination in some parts of the country

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/01/23/lettersit-makes-no-sense-slow-vaccination-parts-country/

814 thoughts on “Saturday 23 January: It makes no sense to slow down vaccination in some parts of the country”

  2. ‘Morning All

    I see we’re getting project fear on steroids again……….

    “Follow the science” my arse

    Which science?? Whose science??The science of abject failure Ferguson who predictions have been proven wrong time and time again yet who has crept back into power via NERVTAG??

    Or perhaps Michie a committed communist who actively wants to destroy our society and replace it a “Workers Paradise”

    This isn’t science,it’s Lysenkoism,twist reality to fit your political visions and the hell if it kills millions on the way or destroys our society……….

    Heaven forfend we might listen to real scientists like Didier Raoult the most cited microbiologist in Europe or Michael Yeardon a former Phizer VP

    Bah a plague on them all!!

    https://assets.amuniversal.com/22bad4a0df2b01382507005056a9545d

    2. Rather crude propaganda. Surely we can do better?

      I upticked those above parodying those who take away our basic freedoms, but this rather nasty and insidious sneer against all environmentalists risks throwing out babies with the dirty bathwater. What is the agenda being pushed here?

      2. The green movement is about controlling people. That’s the agenda being pushed by the WEF and the UN.
        I could pick holes in a couple of the points made, but essentially it’s right. Science has been used to pile on more regulations to control people.

  6. Denmark’s PM backs ‘zero asylum seekers’ in lurch to the right. 23 January 2021.

    Denmark’s Social Democrat prime minister has declared that she wants the country to receive “zero asylum seekers”, relaunching her party’s drive to be as restrictive on immigration as the populist right.

    “That is our goal,” Mette Frederiksen told Denmark’s parliament on Friday afternoon. “We cannot promise zero asylum seekers. But we can set up that vision.”

    Morning everyone. It is a guide to the hold Cultural Marxism has on the UK elites that almost any party could have won any General Election in the last twenty years by including opposition to Immigration and Foreign Aid in their manifesto!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/23/denmarks-pm-backs-zero-asylum-seekers-lurch-right/

    1. I seen posts on line about lockdown demonstrations in Denmark, wasn’t sure if it was fake news or not.
      Nothing on the MSM so I assume they were true.

    3. A magnificently merry morning Minty.

      But now even if a political party promised opposition to Immigration and Foreign Aid in its manifesto nobody would believe them. Is there a single main political party that has not persistently betrayed its voters?

      Manifesto promises mean nothing at all

      But there was one broken manifesto promise which destroyed a political party completely. In his narcissistic lust for power Nick Clegg went back on his promise about university tuition fees and that has probably finished off the Lib/Dems as a meaningful political force forever.

      And the fact that a certain multinational company* subsequently employed this piece of excrement and gave him an obscenely large salary after he lost his parliamentary seat tells us a lot about that company’s integrity.

      * Facebook – if you had forgotten

      1. Obscene salaries paid to “retired” politicians are nearly always payoffs for past services rendered.

      2. Morning Rastus, reports are surfacing that Faceache may well have been hacked last night, users have yet to be told by the company any explanation.
        I would like to think the “Deplorables” are starting to make their feelings known.

  7. Denmark’s PM backs ‘zero asylum seekers’ in lurch to the right. 23 January 2021.

    Denmark’s Social Democrat prime minister has declared that she wants the country to receive “zero asylum seekers”, relaunching her party’s drive to be as restrictive on immigration as the populist right.

    “That is our goal,” Mette Frederiksen told Denmark’s parliament on Friday afternoon. “We cannot promise zero asylum seekers. But we can set up that vision.”

    Morrning everyone. It is a guide to the hold Cultural Marxism has on the UK elites that almost any party could have won any General Election in the last twenty years by including opposition to Immigration and Foreign Aid in their manifesto!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/23/denmarks-pm-backs-zero-asylum-seekers-lurch-right/

  8. Denmark’s PM backs ‘zero asylum seekers’ in lurch to the right. 23 January 2021.

    Denmark’s Social Democrat prime minister has declared that she wants the country to receive “zero asylum seekers”, relaunching her party’s drive to be as restrictive on immigration as the populist right.

    “That is our goal,” Mette Frederiksen told Denmark’s parliament on Friday afternoon. “We cannot promise zero asylum seekers. But we can set up that vision.”

    Morrning everyone. It is a guide to the hold Cultural Marxism has on the UK elites that almost any party could have won any General Election in the last twenty years by including opposition to Immigration and Foreign Aid in their manifesto!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/23/denmarks-pm-backs-zero-asylum-seekers-lurch-right/

  9. Covid Laffs

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d34f05e16d5db247c90ca280f07e423af173fd86e49093781584ffd176936654.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dda7f8abc2a77293e579fea8b10fde6afad511c4829c91d20641f76590aaf969.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53407425c9f3df29aed4902a37a488eb97d6fbb1d6b097733e1106c53bb4807a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f76e655413b19b5029a2ccc6e78236f34af7528df59f70f5e96aa1fb1e22ce45.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6aa6c630aebb043966246cb1b1be0ad01bc4587eca30ba04eb20e754d49668e9.png

    1. These are too true!
      Especially the one about viewing freedom as selfish. That should be everywhere.

  12. ‘Morning Peeps.

    This one made me smile:

    SIR – Peter Anderson omitted one small but important word in his letter (January 22) on Amazing Grace. John Newton, who wrote the song, was a former slave-ship captain, and later became an abolitionist.

    I agree that this will confuse the woke, who prefer a binary world of right and wrong, viewed exclusively through a 21st-century lens coated with anti-reflective layers of hindsight.

    Richard Packer
    Westcott, Surrey

  13. A couple of letters about our Beloved Broadcasting Corporation:

    SIR – Yesterday, BBC Radio 4 led on a “good news” story for the UK – that Nissan is committing long-term to Sunderland “after Brexit”.

    Surely this is a first for the BBC – is it down to licence-fee worries or the new director general?

    David Ratliff
    Newcastle upon Tyne

    And…

    SIR – If the nation’s mental health is deteriorating as a consequence of the pandemic and lockdowns, then much of the blame lies with how the BBC presents these matters.

    Clive Myrie’s recent reports on the six o’clock news are a case in point. Do we really benefit from listening to Intensive Care Unit staff having to break bad news to relatives, or watching gravediggers at work? Most adults will have had some experience of grief – we do not need the BBC to hammer home the message that this pandemic is causing many deaths.

    The BBC should consider the impact of its reporting, though I suspect increasing numbers of viewers are simply reaching for the off switch.

    Jane Moth
    Snettisham, Norfolk

    As I may have pointed out before, Jane Moth, Myrie and his ilk are merely award-chasing. ‘Good grief’ is bad telly.

    1. I turned off the farming programme this morning when they started explaining how we feed ourselves is decided not by planting, growing and harvesting crops or raising and dispatching farm animals, but rather how much respect we give to BAME vets.

      Address unconscious bias and everyone will be fed well, it seems. So they believe in London anyway.

      2. I don’t recall any mention of a BAME Vet supervising operations in the recently reported story of The Goat Car Wash Slaughter House….

        Morning Jeremy et al

    3. What I find particularly annoying about the main news is how do and why to journalists arrive on busy hospital wards dressed up in all their protective clothing and stand making reports about the conditions. We don’t need it !
      We know !
      And meanwhile as sick patients are isolated from family visits, some if not most people will never see their loved ones’ alive again.
      And we see once more, some ‘fanny annie’ journo is standing in the ward telling the story we are all ready aware of. And the time we see these people they are sitting at the same desk opposite the news caster in the studio !

      2. I think the NHS/government/BBC etc feel there is a need because there are too many phone-videos, taken by people in empty parts of hospital which one might expect to be empty at certain times, and purporting to show that there isn’t a crisis. It wasn’t helped by medical staff letting off steam on tic-toc clips and the like last time round.

        I agree re the over-doing of presentations and the fact that journalists can go where family, (not even a single one) are not permitted

    4. The BBC’s hospital war zone reporting last April was a low point even by its wretched standards.

  15. Only ‘X’ people allowed in the shop at any one time; queue outside the pharmacy/shop in freezing wet weather no matter how old or infirm; substantial meal with a pint or glass of wine but…

    https://twitter.com/EssexPR/status/1352663506525581313

    An out of control government lacking real leadership evidenced by the “leaders'” inability, or more likely their unwillingness, to engage with a wider spectrum of scientific and medical knowledge.

    1. 328757+ up ticks,
      Morning KtK,
      The only change since major had a curry
      has been for the worse.

    2. 328757+ up ticks,
      KtK,
      Same with smoking ban, a non smoking bar internally would have worked leaving the choice to the peoples.

  16. Today’s interesting offering from Charles Moore:

    We must not allow takeovers by global firms to undermine British science

    Witnessing Pfizer’s attempt to take over Astra Zeneca several years ago shows the benefits of British innovation

    CHARLES MOORE
    22 January 2021 • 9:30pm

    As I wheeled my 88-year-old mother into the village hall this week to receive her Covid vaccine I felt, for the first time since the plague reached Britain last March, that something positive was really happening. It remains early days, of course. The vaccines could be defective. The virus’s mutations might outsmart them. The supplies might fail. But still … the fact that there is a choice of vaccines, and that Britain is several weeks ahead of comparable countries, prompts thoughts about how science, business and government can co-operate.

    I think back to my almost accidental involvement in a story in 2014. At the end of April that year, I got a call from John Casey, an old friend and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He had been talking, he said, to Sir Alan Fersht and Professor Rob Miller, both great scientists in his college. They were worried by Pfizer’s attempt to take over the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca.

    They questioned the British policy of not interfering in foreign takeovers: “Good technology networks take decades to build but can be easily destroyed.” They feared that Pfizer, seeking tax advantages and short-term shareholder rewards, would strip away the knowledge base AstraZeneca had built up with Cambridge University. Could I write about it in this newspaper?

    As Dr Casey put it with embarrassing truthfulness in an email to Prof Miller: “Charles Moore doubts this is the sort of thing he can do well, since he doesn’t know about science”. He added, however: “He thinks this is something his paper ought to cover.” My suggested solution was that distinguished scientists should write a letter to the Telegraph, and we should make it news.

    This duly happened, led by Fersht and Miller. Their argument was not against foreign takeovers as such: many small British companies bought by bigger US ones thrived, they said. The problem arose in the Pfizer case: “It is essential for the scientific future of the UK and its technological base that we have a pharmaceutical industry that is committed to work with UK universities and research scientists … We scientists need AstraZeneca. So does the UK.”

    Fersht and Miller had direct personal experience. Sir Alan, a globally renowned pioneer in fighting disease through protein engineering, had been able to advance his Medical Research Council project in the early Nineties with support from AstraZeneca’s precursor, ICI, which funded four key lab positions. Later, when AstraZeneca emerged from ICI’s break-up, it wanted greater research interaction with Cambridge scientists. By 2014, as the takeover bid loomed, it was moving its headquarters to Cambridge. Its greenfield site was next to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which has won 12 Nobel Prizes shared between 16 individuals.

    For his part, Prof Miller, who runs the Whittle Laboratory in Cambridge, appreciated the comparable advantages coming from Whittle’s decades-long association with Rolls-Royce. The partnership gave the scientists “complete intellectual freedom” (as opposed to forcing them to bend to commercial demands) but also “access to Rolls-Royce’s strategy at the highest level”. Protected from takeover by the government’s “golden share”, due to its military applications, the company could take a long enough view to create what Prof Miller calls “deep technology networks”. Even before the threat to AstraZeneca arose, he had been publicly arguing the wider cultural point about nurturing scientific ideas. He believed that these networks are Britain’s best way of crossing what scientists call “the Valley of Death” – the place where brilliant primary research is not translated into product.

    The Telegraph letter appeared in early May 2014, with surprisingly dramatic effect. Until then, there had been little public attention paid to the takeover. Many scientists had held back, perhaps anxious that criticism of Pfizer might starve their future research of money. That hesitation was itself a symptom of potential trouble. Now, however, there was safety in numbers. Scores of well-known colleagues piled in, adding their signatures online.

    According to Pascal Soriot – then, as now, the chief executive of AstraZeneca – the rumpus came at a key moment. Dragged home from a holiday by the Pfizer bid, he flew into a gloomy situation. Takeover artists and lawyers surrounded him with arguments why AstraZeneca should accept the offer. The letter appeared in this paper the following morning. Mr Soriot felt emboldened to fight back.

    Opinion began to move. One Boris Johnson, at that time Mayor of London, fretted publicly that Pfizer might not be sufficiently committed to research in Britain: “I don’t think politicians can be entirely aloof from this.” Within three weeks, Pfizer had dropped the bid. Although the Telegraph letter had implied that government should intervene, this did not actually happen; there had been enough shift in shareholder mood for Pfizer to back off.

    Nearly seven years on, where are we now? If you take the train from London to Cambridge and look to the right as you approach the city, you will see what is known as the “Bio-medical campus” – the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, the Royal Papworth Hospital and the AstraZeneca HQ and global research centre are almost hugger-mugger. AstraZeneca has more than 200 research connections with Cambridge academics. It has further developed its university networks – hence the key vaccine partnership with BioMedica, a company spun out of Oxford University.

    As for Whittle in Cambridge, it works not only with Rolls-Royce, but also with Mitsubishi, Siemens and now Dyson. During the pandemic, it has put its “rapid technology development teams” on to ventilator work. Prof Miller’s own current work is on zero-carbon flight. He is also raising £24.6 million for a new, extended Whittle lab supporting aerospace start-ups.

    In the scientists’ view, Britain is in a much better place than it would have been if AstraZeneca had been taken over. It is not that Pfizer is a “bad” company. After all, its vaccine, developed with BioNtech, seems to work. But they welcome the fact that the British Government was free and bold enough to buy large amounts of different vaccines. (In passing, I feel one should defend Kate Bingham, who headed the vaccine taskforce and used her business links established over 30 years to make quick arrangements with Pfizer. Last November, she attracted media hostility for her “irregular” methods. Now that they have got things done, her methods look pretty good. Not for nothing did Winston Churchill, during the war, press a gang of “irregulars” into service.)

    Fersht and Miller welcome the competition. The Pfizer/BioNtech jab is more complicated and expensive, but innovative – “a different type of vaccine altogether”, says Sir Alan. Oxford/AstraZeneca’s more economical one is what he calls “more classical and more typically British”. It is a great benefit to have both and, indeed, to have the luxury that the failure of a third vaccine – Imperial’s – to find a commercial industrial partner, can be borne.

    These lessons ought to help the future British relationship between government, business and science. In this week of change across the Atlantic, Sir Alan brandishes a letter, written by Joe Biden a few days before he took office, to Eric Lander, president of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. It sets out five questions for scientists, saying: “Science and technology have flourished in the United States because of a rich ecosystem of people, policies, and institutions. This ecosystem must be nurtured and refreshed to succeed in a rapidly changing world.” It would seem to be a good moment to enrich that ecosystem here too.

    1. Even Charles Moore is hooked on vaccines as the only way forward. Surely one advantage of having our own independent pharmaceutical industry must be that it wouldn’t unquestioningly accept the Gates foundation line.

      1. 328757+ up ticks,
        Morning BB2,
        Currently I do believe that a great deal depends on the paxoing of brown envelopes.

      2. Like mask wearing, the vaccine is a box ticking exercise.
        We will have the O/AZ version in the vain hope that it will give our grandchildren a bit of freedom and a future.
        However, we fully expect that the government will keep ‘finding’ new C-19 mutations to keep the farce running. Whether it is saving its face or covering its @rse, I leave to your judgement.

    2. Successive governments have thrown us to the dogs. Our aeronautical excellence was given away to the USA. We have allowed endless take-overs and asset stripping by foreigners. A woollen mill in the Borders was bought and the machinery was sent to India -a tiny example. An entire Ford factory went abroad – a big example. The failure of successive governments to retain essential strategic enterprises on the basis of specious arguments, “services over manufacturing”, has resulted in the country being helpless in the face of aggression. No shipbuilding capability, no warship building capability, no aircraft industry, no coal, no reliable energy supply, no weapon makers, no steelworks, no big vehicle manufacturing, no military vehicle manufacturing. that’s the big stuff. All the small stuff is probably made abroad also.
      In the late 60s we had a British Army on the Rhine. In the event of a Soviet attack the purpose of our Army was to stop the Soviets reaching the Atlantic coast, hoping to stop them at the Rhine. Our army had enough ammunition and supplies to allow them to fight for six weeks and no longer.
      If the Soviets were still coming after six weeks we would have used nuclear weapons. That was the plan.
      How long could a British Army last today?

      1. The entire Ford factory went to Turkey thanks to money (ours, as it happens as we were a net provider) provided by the EU.

        1. Turkey, I thought so but could not be sure I was remembering correctly. I was thinking logically, “why would the EU want to do this, except to suck up to Turkey and attack the UK.?” Ah…

  17. Morning all

    SIR – As a retired GP I have been glad to help give Covid vaccinations and proud to witness the colossal co-operative effort that has made this possible.

    On several occasions in the last two weeks, more than 1,000 elderly people and front-line staff have been given vaccines on a single day at a local surgery. As a result of this and similar efforts, our district is already able to offer vaccines to groups of patients further down the priority list.

    We are now told we must slow down in order that areas such as London and the South East can catch up, to avoid accusations of a postcode lottery.

    This is no lottery – the achievements have been made due to the efforts of local teams and I see no justification in penalising our communities because of apparent shortcomings in other parts of the country.

    The only justification for reducing supplies would be vaccine shortage, and we are told that this is not the case.

    Dr Martin Shutkever

    Pontefract, West Yorkshire

    Advertisement

    SIR – After a full career as a GP and latterly working with the Care Quality Commission, my recently retired cousin has, after many weeks of trying, finally been taken on as a volunteer to help with the vaccination programme.

    They use him to drive patients to appointments while they train other people to give jabs. Bonkers!

    Jennifer Reynolds

    Okehampton, Devon

    SIR – With a little bit of ingenuity would it not be possible for the Church of England to create a church service for people while they are getting their inoculations at Salisbury Cathedral?

    Simon Morpuss

    Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

    SIR – Allison Pearson (Feature, January 20) suggests that it is wrong to claim that a patient with Covid is admitted to hospital every 30 seconds.

    Last Saturday, using latest data, there were 3,569 new admissions and diagnoses with Covid – this is equal to slightly more than one new patient with Covid every 30 seconds.

    Ms Pearson writes that those diagnosed in hospital should not be counted. Given that we know Covid-19 can go undetected, that suggestion would exclude thousands whose Covid was caught in the community, but who only tested positive upon admission.

    It is also wrong to imply that these new admissions would have caught Covid in hospital.

    Professor Stephen Powis

    National Medical Director of 
NHS England

    London SE1

    SIR – A £500 reward for testing positive (report, January 22) is a brilliant way to keep the Noughties generation in funds. There can scarcely be a teenager in the country who would not go round to a friend with the virus to catch it themselves.

    When lockdown ends there will be a spending spree and the Government will get lots of it back in taxes. 


    John Wilson

    Yeovil, Somerset

  18. TV tears at teatime

    SIR – If the nation’s mental health is deteriorating as a consequence of the pandemic and lockdowns, then much of the blame lies with how the BBC presents these matters.

    Clive Myrie’s recent reports on the six o’clock news are a case in point. Do we really benefit from listening to Intensive Care Unit staff having to break bad news to relatives, or watching gravediggers at work? Most adults will have had some experience of grief – we do not need the BBC to hammer home the message that this pandemic is causing many deaths.

    The BBC should consider the impact of its reporting, though I suspect increasing numbers of viewers are simply reaching for the off switch.

    Jane Moth

    Snettisham, Norfolk

    2. 328757+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      Sad to say they do consider it deeply IMO Jane is hearing the result.

  19. Reposted from late last night

    Saturday 23rd January, 2021

    Damask Rose

    Have a brilliant and Appropriately Epic Birthday

    and

    Innumerable Happy Returns

    With very best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus

    We hope the new piano is joyous and life enriching and you have enjoyed the score we posted earlier!

    We were going to paste in Don Partridge’s Rosie but we have been listening to a mammoth evening of Neil Diamond songs so we are posting this one for you which was recorded when you were Sweet 19!

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

    1. Neil Diamond filled our tv screens for much of last evening. From Glastonbury to the Chalk Farm road Roundhouse.

      1. We watched much of it. Of course my beloved grew a little bit tired of his greatest hit!

      2. I watched a fair bit. I never realised what a grumpy bu**er he is.

        I was surprised that I found his later performances disappointing. Songs I have loved and heard him sing many times in the past sounded quite curtailed. No sustained notes just a rendition of syllables in tune.

      3. I’ve got a double CD of his hits and often play it. I saw him in The Jazz Singer in 1980 which was the last time I visited a cinema

  20. Morning all! Had my Oxford vax yesterday afternoon, no side effects whatsoever – yet.

  21. Morning all.
    More bad news last evening, the mate I met at Willesden Technical college in the mid 60s and on a whim journeyed to South Africa with, late 60s. Is critically ill in an Oxford hospital ICU department. He’s not expected to recover. But nothing to do with covid. The family are not allowed to visit. And the staff are not actually sure what is wrong with him.
    Via yet another amazing unlikely coincidence (one of three) in my life, i was fed with this information. My best friend’s ex work colleague from years ago in London. Now lives next door to the unfortunate JH and his family.
    I spoke to him last summer and we had made a promise to get together again.
    There is a some what tenuous link. But serious misfortune has brought us back into contact.

    1. How horrible. Someone I know got mysteriously ill some years ago, and was at death’s door when they finally diagnosed IgG4-related immune condition, now controlled by medication. Rare diseases are hard to spot!

      1. An maybe more especially in over 70s with all the other stuff going on at the moment.
        Very difficult times.

    2. Not a nice piece of news to receive and even worse when you know there is sod all you can do.

      1. I’m gutted, we were a group of 7 young lads we had met at our youth club in Mill Hill. We were on holiday in Benidorm I had my 21st birthday spread over 3 days. John and I were sitting on the beach together. He said this is the life….let’s go to Australia.
        I said that’s too far. He replied what about Canada? I said too cold. But I replied what about South Africa?
        Yep that’ll do. After applying for emigration with in 12 months we were on our way to Cape Town, a 12 day cruise on the Pendennis Castle.
        I stayed two years he lived there for over 30. Was married 3 times and had lost of children and consequently grand children.

  22. Good morning from a white Derbyshire Dales!
    We had a light covering through the night and the yard thermometer shewing -2°C with another splattering forecast for a couple of hours time.

    Just listening to a Fox News piece from yesterday. It looks as if Biden is determined to make ordinary Americans suffer.

    https://youtu.be/lDwqXYMgco4

        1. Not too bad thanks, Garlands! I fear I still have some anaesthetic/morphine sloshing around my pore brain but otherwise functioning OK! And yes – I’m doing the exercises 4 times a day!! Walking about and showering etc so getting there. Having to sleep on my back is a bit of a bogey, though!

          1. Morning, Sue.
            Isn’t it just! I put a small pouffe (as in footstool) at the bottom of the bed to act as a bed cradle and to stop myself sliding down the bed.
            The exercises reminded me of my school’s unsuccessful attempts to make a passable ballerina out of me.

          2. Bend zee knees! Lift zee buttocks! Point zee toes! And heaven help you if you use the wrong leg to start going up/down stairs! we have a spiral staircase and Hector and the cats are keeping well out of the way of my flailing sticks! the grabber is good fun though!

          3. Cripes. I thought straight stairs were bad enough.
            Ours have a brownish patterned carpet, so I have to keep an eye out for Spartie as he’ll suddenly stop to investigate something – across the other side.

    1. Quite normal for glowball warming Bill.
      According to the thousands of overwhelming experts.

  28. Good morning, all, late on parade today – one of those nights. Anyway…

    Making Up

    A lady is walking down the street to work and sees a parrot outside a pet store. She stops to admire the bird. The parrot says to her, “Hey lady, you’re real fuckin’ ugly!”

    The lady is furious! She storms past the store to her work. On the way home she sees the same parrot in the window and upon seeing her it says, “Hey lady, you’re real fuckin’ ugly!”

    So now she’s incredibly ticked. The next day on the way to work she sees the same parrot and once again it says, “Hey lady, you’re real fuckin’ ugly!”

    The lady is so furious that she storms into the store and threatens to sue the store and have the bird killed. The store manager apologises profusely and promises the bird won’t say it again.

    So, the next day, when the lady walks past the store after work, the parrot says, “Hey lady.”

    She pauses, scowls with an icy stare, and says in her coldest voice, “Yes?”

    The bird struts back and forth on its perch in a cocky manner, then shrugs at her and says, “You know…”

    1. A man is walking past a pet shop and there’s a parrot in a cage outside. As the man passes it the parrot squawks “Moish Diane’s a wanker”. The man goes into the shop and says “Hey I’m a Jew and I find what that parrot says offensive” The shopkeeper apologises and says it won’t happen again. The next day the man is passing and the parrot shouts “Moish Diane’s a wanker” Again the man goes into the shop and complains so the shopkeeper tells him he definitely won’t say it again.
      Next day the man is passing and he notices the parrots beak is taped up and the parrot is glaring at him. The man is pleased and sticks 2 fingers up at the parrot whereupon the parrot puts one wing over one eye and makes the wankie sign with the other wing

    2. A man is walking past a pet shop and there’s a parrot in a cage outside. As the man passes it the parrot squawks “Moish Diane’s a wanker”. The man goes into the shop and says “Hey I’m a Jew and I find what that parrot says offensive” The shopkeeper apologises and says it won’t happen again. The next day the man is passing and the parrot shouts “Moish Diane’s a wanker” Again the man goes into the shop and complains so the shopkeeper tells him he definitely won’t say it again.
      Next day the man is passing and he notices the parrots beak is taped up and the parrot is glaring at him. The man is pleased and sticks 2 fingers up at the parrot whereupon the parrot puts one wing over one eye and makes the wankie sign with the other wing

  29. I meant to post this yesterday. It is a letter in this week’s Spectator about an article the previous week in which a CofE priest had lambasted the wazzocks “running” the Church. If you are not an Anglican, it will mean nothing, If you ARE – quite a lot. The writer is obviously a NoTTLer in waiting:

    “Paradise lost
    Sir: After reading Jonathan Beswick (‘Critical mass’, 16 January) I am writing to express the shame I feel as a lifetime member of the Church of England at our Church’s attitude to this pandemic.

    Here was the greatest opportunity in 70 years to demonstrate care for our fellow people, to advertise our faith and love and to keep the Church in the public eye. I hoped that there would be thousands of Church members flocking to help the lonely and the isolated. But I find my local church locked. This was the chance for the Church to show commitment and sacrifice for the good of the community, to cast aside timidity and get on with normal life, as does the postman, the milkman, the parcel delivery brigade, the health service and many others. Why are our priests so timid and frightened? They are supposed to be our leaders and consolers in times of crisis. The very people who believe death holds no fear for them seem afraid to open their own doors, let alone the doors of their empty churches.

    If that had been Jesus’s attitude there would have been no Christian culture for the past two millennia. There may soon be no C of E after this exhibition. What a tragedy. What a disgrace.
    Peter Laverick
    Poling, West Sussex”

      1. Alms for Oblivion.

        Those who enjoyed Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence of novels would probably also enjoy Simon Raven’s Alms for Oblivion – another sequence of novels based on a central character called Fielding Grey.

        ‘Time hath, my lord a wallet at his back
        Wherein he puts alms for oblivion’

        [Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida]

    2. My thoughts exactly. Our local church is run by a group of women, who cower and obey every regulation emanating from Canterbury. Actually they go even further – they closed the churches after Christmas even when it was NOT required!

      If you want to implement fascism – just tell the women that the measures are there to keep the community safe.
      Concentration camps? Necessary to stop people dying!
      Yellow stars? They save lives!
      etc.
      Only Conservative women will then use their brains to question this assertion.

  30. My Calendar informs me t’is Burns Night tomorrow: *** Or should that be the 25th???

    Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
    O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
    Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
    Wi’ bickerin brattlis!
    I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
    Wi’ murd’ring Haggis*!

    * Favoured by Warriors (Vide Duncan). 😉

    2. Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
      Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!
      Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
      Painch, tripe, or thairm:
      Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
      As lang’s my arm.

      The groaning trencher there ye fill,
      Your hurdies like a distant hill,
      Your pin wad help to mend a mill
      In time o need,
      While thro your pores the dews distil
      Like amber bead.

      His knife see rustic Labour dight,
      An cut you up wi ready slight,
      Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
      Like onie ditch;
      And then, O what a glorious sight,
      Warm-reekin, rich!

      Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
      Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
      Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
      Are bent like drums;
      The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
      ‘Bethankit’ hums.

      Is there that owre his French ragout,
      Or olio that wad staw a sow,
      Or fricassee wad mak her spew
      Wi perfect scunner,
      Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
      On sic a dinner?

      Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
      As feckless as a wither’d rash,
      His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
      His nieve a nit;
      Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
      O how unfit!

      But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
      The trembling earth resounds his tread,
      Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
      He’ll make it whissle;
      An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
      Like taps o thrissle.

      Ye Pow’rs, wha mak mankind your care,
      And dish them out their bill o fare,
      Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
      That jaups in luggies:
      But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
      Gie her a Haggis

      1. OK, i suppose I’d better post this one:-

        Efter the style ‘o Rabbie Burns

        Oh whit a sleekit horrible beastie
        Lurks in yer belly efter the feastie
        Jist as ye sit doon among yer kin
        There sterts tae stir an enormous win’
        The neeps ‘n’ tatties ‘n’ mushy peas
        Stert workin’ like a gentle breeze
        But soon the puddin’ wi’ the sauncie face
        Will hae ye blawin’ a’ ower the place
        Nae maiter whit the hell ye dae
        A’bodys gonnae hiv tae pay
        Even if ye try tae stifle It’s like a bullet oot a rifle
        Hawd yer bum ticht tae the chair
        Tae try an’ stop the leakin’ air
        Shify yersel fae cheek tae cheek
        Prae tae God it disnae reek
        But aw yer efforts go assunder
        Oot it comes like a clap o’ thunder
        Ricochets aroon the room
        Michty me a sonic boom
        God almichty it fairly reeks
        Hope a huvnae s**t ma breeks
        Tae the bog a better scurry
        Aw whit the hell, it’s no ma worry
        A’body roon aboot me chokin
        Wan or twa are nearly bokin
        A’ll feel better for a while
        Cannae help but raise a smile
        Wis him! A shout wi’ accusin glower
        Alas too late, he’s jist keeled ower
        Ye dirty bugger they shout and stare
        A dinnae feel welcome ony mair
        Where e’er ye be let yer wind gang free
        Sounds like jist the job fur me
        Whit a fuss at Rabbie’s party
        Ower the sake o’ wan wee farty

    3. Morning Stephenroi, my calendar tells me the day after that, Recycling is due to be collected.
      Despite having Scottish neighbours just round the corner (in lockdown that equates to the other side of the world) I know which calendar event I pay more notice of.

      1. I seem to have a Geekish calendar that tells me the day before tomorrow’s the day event (please see screen grab below) !

          1. Just remember vvof, the information you have is not what you want. The information you want is not what you need. The information you need cannot be obtained….

    4. When sailing around the Med we met a very cheerful and very loud Scot who was ardently patriotic and said that Robbie Burns was a great hero and inspiration to the world.

      Unfortunately his memory, like the best laid plans of mice and men, had completely gan agley – he could not quote from or even recall the title of a single poem written by Robbie Burns.

  32. Listening to TMS during tea in Galle. Slagging off Britain for introducing cricket to Ceylon as a colonial method of enslaving the locals. Agnew encouraging the British bashing. That’s me done with TMS after all these years. Switched them off and will put the volume up on Sky tv coverage.

    1. I have always liked Aggers – I don’t want to be disillusioned: I have so few illusions left.

    2. I didn’t hear the piece but might he not have been mocking the woke?

      He could do so that way, where he would never get away with it otherwise.

    1. Morning Bill,

      The gentle simplicity of your illustrated puss cat daily diary is such a delightful distraction .

      Thank you for sharing the little beauties with us all.

    3. Good morning, Bill

      Is that a Burley wood-burning stove? Is it as good as it is made out to be? We have a Clearview and a Woodwarm – both of which are very good.

      1. It is. The only problem is that the glass has “clouded”. Because the sitting room and dining room are open plan, and the floor immediately above the sitting room is open – that small stove provides heat throughout half the house 24/7.

        1. Do you mean grime on the inside of the glass from the smoke? If so it is easily cleaned with a scrunched up sheet of newspaper, dampened and then dipped in the ash. A tip I got from NTTL once upon a time!

          1. Nah – I clean the glass every morning. The structure of the panel has altered and there is a permanent “cloudiness” which can’t be removed by any of the methods I have tried. A new glass is a ridiculous price – so we soldier on.

          3. Thank you. I am always suspicious of “wonder” products….but then you would expect that!

        2. We have had the Clearview for nearly thirty years and apart from changing the sealing rope around the doors and having to make the doors close more tightly we have not had much to do to it. However the glass is not as crystal clear as it used to be.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65ee372b98c3fd1ef72c1ad0aa5d875dae0b835a9f126a817ee73fbbf8a706c6.jpg

          We have had the Woodwarm for about ten years. The glass door remains completely clean and we only have to give it a wipe at the end of the season.
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1ac94e7ab625140e89e715aa2c6b998a1808dd06c06ffa4eb17d6beae71312ae.jpg

      2. Ours is an Esse. A good decision to have that installed in January 2010, just before we were snowed in!

      1. So do we, Sue – except that they have now discovered that they can jump on to the worktop in the kitchen…….grrr!!

    5. Two questions…

      How long until they are cooked?

      And what do you serve as an accompaniment.

    1. We are getting that shit.
      Panic – part of the country now in ultralockdown. Only food shops allowed to be open, everything else closed tighter than a bull’s arse in fly season. Started south of Oslo, in Follo, now spreading everywhere – and I mean the panic, not the virus.

      2. Morning OB.

        Britain is now regarded as a PARIAH STATE!

        Can we blame the transportation of this new variant on the French .. who have encouraged , and thrust at us thousands of illegal migrants over the past 12 months ?

        1. 328757+ up ticks,
          Morning TB,
          Lest we forget the lab/lib/con ARE mass uncontrolled immigration party’s and still find favour in the polling booth, there does not seem to be a great need for a “controlled immigration party” at this moment in time.

        2. Morning Belle, the blame should be placed firmly at No10 with their lack of resolve to stop the transportation.
          Surely those that voted for them must now seriously hope that a viable alternative is available next time round.
          I feel we are at the precipice, perhaps with a last chance to save the country for our kids and grandkids.

        3. Good Morning Lovely Belle

          Of course if reliable statistics were available which showed that a significant amount of the infection came into the country as a result of illegal immigration then I am sure that the politicians – as well as the MSM and the BBC – would remain as quiet about it as they are about the “Asian” rape gangs.

        4. See earlier today – crowds at immigration at Heathrow.
          That doesn’t help. Far more entering by plane than rubber dinghy.

    2. Weren’t some eminent scientists saying recently that if a strain is more easily transferred it’s also likely to be less lethal? It seems that doesn’t fit the narrative, so let’s have more fear!

        1. To boil it down to its essentials; Boris is a journalist and hasn’t a scooby about science or even the desire to create anything more than a dramatic headline.

      2. If you read the press, you’d think the virus is an evil, cunning devil continually coming up with new ways to torture and kill us, rather than a prosaic illness that can be treated.

      1. From what I’ve read and been told by sis-in-law suggests it is an extremely unpleasant procedure.

      2. Good morning TB and les autres.,
        Without wishing to upset scientists and clinicians and diplomats, intubation looked risky in Italy almost a year ago; the CCP had said that their virus was so contagious that autopsies were to be avoided. Consequently, people were dying with tiny blood clots* in their lungs but no one knew. Autopsies could have revealed that, in which case medics would have realised earlier that CoVid was also a blood disease.
        In any case, hospitals are doing their best.

        (* gurgle tells me that the expression is micro-vascular pulmonary thrombosis)

        3. This was picked up months ago. Very few SARS-CoV-2 patients are now intubated – only where the patient is unable to breathe by other means is it done. CPAP is the favoured method if a simple increase in available oxygen is insufficient.

    4. My fear is the scam artist scientists will declare that people will be 30% more dead.
      Imagine the BBC running that every news program!

      1. Reminds me of an article in an Irish newspaper which is supposed to have said “There are people dying now who never died before”.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Aeneas, and the Irish headline concerning a 2-seater aircraft that crashed into a graveyard,
          Irelands worst plane disaster struck this morning when a two-seater aircraft crashed into a cemetery. Irish rescue workers have so far recovered 828 bodies. Digging continues…

    5. Apparently, despite COVID, the number of deaths in total for 2020 was less than 10-12 years ago, and only about 10% higher than 2019. All that just for a small bump, almost exclusively made up of people who would likely be near the end anyway.

      1. Apparently a lot of fictional figures regarding the number of deaths in 2020 are being bandied around by those who have a vested interest in obscuring the facts. 100,000 excess deaths over the 5 year average is not a “small bump” it is a very large bump and the “made up of people who would likely be near the end anyway” claim is another (very cruel) piece of fiction. Just because someone in their 50s or 60s had diabetes did not mean that they were likely to die any time soon.

        1. Given the AVERAGE age of the people who’ve been classed as dying WITH (not of) COVID is 82, I’d call that near the end of their life for most. As you may recall, the number of people (at around about Christmas) who had died with it under 60 and otherwise healthy was less than 400.

          I’m saying that far more people will die because of the economic hardship that will be coming (what we’ve endured thus far in that regard is small potatos in comparison) will make the number of ‘with’ COVID deaths look like a blip. There are millions of people that will soon find themselves out of work and the government cannot keep borrowing yet more money to prop them up – we’ll go bankrupt.

          That’s not to minimise any of the deaths, but I strongly suspect if we DID take off all those very elderly and with significant illness with likely less than 2 years of life left, we’d probably end up with a total of around 10k ‘excess deaths’ over a 2-3 year period.

          I believe the number (over the longer term) who will die within the next 25 years well ahead of their time will probably be between 250k and 500k – due to the economic crash to come because of the ‘cure’ to COVID (which will at most last 1 year).

          When the flu pandemics of the 1950s and 60s came to these shores, people kept working despite large numbers of people dying. We cannot afford not to. The problem all along was the poor management of our hospital and care home systems and the NHS management discharging either untested or, worse still, proven COVID infected patients back into nursing homes.

          The same thing happened in blue states in the US (NY in particular), which is why they have a similar death rate to ours. Countries that did not do this (or to a similar extent) and have a better run (funding isn’t the problem, as worse-funded ones still did better) healthcare and care home system.

          1. As you may recall, the number of people (at around about Christmas) who had died with it under 60 and otherwise healthy was less than 400.

            This claim is the most egregious piece of pure fiction.

            That number was not those who were “healthy” but those with “no other condition”. But most of the “other conditions” were not expected to cause death within 20 years, let alone two years. It is perfectly possibly to live a healthy life with a chronic, managed, condition for a very long time.

            That’s not to minimise any of the deaths, but I strongly suspect if we DID take off all those very elderly and with significant illness with likely less than 2 years of life left, we’d probably end up with a total of around 10k ‘excess deaths’ over a 2-3 year period.

            Which comment does more to minimise the deaths (100,000 of them) than just about any other tripe I’ve seen. If you can’t write sense, you could, at the very least, refrain from writing such appalling nonsense.

          2. Have an uptick. Add in those who have failed to get treatment in time (cancer, heart disease, liver/kidney problems) and those who have committed suicide.

    6. As a btl commenter explained, the alternative number is an increase of “up to” 3 percentage points. From 10% to 13%.

    8. Of course lockdown will go on longer; it’ll go on ad infinitum if they can manage to keep thinking up enough scare stories to keep the populace cowed and compliant.

  35. ‘Morning, all.

    Been thinking about George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984” and the comparison with our present troubled times, which has often been remarked upon, here and elsewhere. Suggestions have been made, not altogether jokingly, that the Government is using Orwell’s fantasy as an instruction manual.

    Many of the similarities are striking – the perpetuation of wars, the official policies towards families, described by Orwell as “ownlife”, the forbidding of sexual relationships (sexcrime), the holding of incorrect views that differ from the Party line (crimethink), the erasure or rewriting of history, the cancelling or “un-personing” of dissenters, the restrictions on travel, the encouraging of neighbours to snitch on each other and of children to snitch on their own parents – the list goes on.

    In “1984” there were “telescreens”, through which the Party gave out instructions, while observing folk going about their daily lives – today we have the mainstream broadcast media, enthusiastically pushing Government propaganda into our homes and electronic devices like “Alexa” and “Siri” listening to us, “smart phones” that track our every movement while surveillance cameras, equipped with facial-recognition software, monitor the streets and public places and “smart meters” keep a close eye on our use of energy, enabling the state to shut-down supplies at a whim.

    Of course, there are differences too. In Orwell’s world, these harsh rules only applied to Party members – civil servants as we call them now – the ordinary folk (plebs) were largely unaffected and indeed, some effort was made to ensure that they remained in a state of controlled but contented ignorance, and the “Thought Police” moved among them, to check their thinking.

    But in one way, the PTB have exceeded even Orwell’s dire visions of dystopia – in “1984”, at least the damn’ pubs were still open.
    :¬(

    1. As I put it many years ago in a post I made to the DT – One Blair wrote the nightmare vision; another Blair used it as an instruction manual for his dream society.

    2. 328757+ UP ticks,
      Morning DM,
      Since triggering treachery in regards to UKIP as a planning party used by tory political rustlers being shut down as a credible pro UK force, they have had to look elsewhere.

    4. There’s even a TV programme called “Room 101”. (I always try to add a bit of intellectual rigour to any analysis.)

    5. ‘Afternoon, Duncan, I have recently been watching the complete ‘World at War’ series and it is alarming to concur that your likening today with Orwell but I also see great similarities with Hitler’s rise to power after the 1933 fiddled elections.

    6. I’ve never read 1984, but it’s quoted so frequently these days, I almost feel that I have read it.

  36. SIR – You report (January 21) that the University of Leicester proposes to stop teaching Geoffrey Chaucer’s work and other medieval texts in favour of a “decolonised” curriculum devoted to diversity, with modules on race and sexuality, as this is what “students expect”.

    I always understood that the purpose of a university education was to introduce students to knowledge and ideas that they do not expect.

    To do otherwise merely confirms current agendas and deprives a future generation of both a deep knowledge of their chosen subject and a context in which to develop their ideas.

    Ursula Starkie
    London SW8

    SIR – The academics at the University of Leicester (a welcoming and diverse city), who wish to push through an agenda of race and sexuality in the English department, may have scored an own goal.

    They should reacquaint themselves with The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, like Shakespeare, writes about all manner of people and their lives.

    Avril Wright
    Snettisham, Norfolk

    Oh dear , it certainly isn’t as black and white as we first thought, is it?

        1. In the good old days when we were able to run residential courses for “A” level French students we sometimes sang songs to the accompaniment of my guitar after dinner. Of course we had to sing in French because we had a strict French Only rule. This meant that I had to translate English songs into French ranging from traditional folk songs, to songs by Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Eric Clapton so they would know the tunes of the songs we sang.

          Here is my French version of The Wild Rover which, in my not-so-humble-opinion, gives the song a rather stronger story line than the original.

          Le vagabond fier

          (loose translation of The Wild Rover by RCT)

          J’ai joué le vagabond toute ma vie
          Et j’ai jeté mon argent pour vin du pays
          J’ai jeté mon argent pour cidre et bière
          Mais je ne ne peux plus jouer le vagabond fier.

          Et c’est non, non, jamais
          Non, non, jamais mon vieux,
          Puis-je jouer vagabond
          Il faut que je sois mieux.

          J’ai rencontré une jolie fille à Dinan,
          Elle m’a dit que je n’étais qu’un sale fainéant,
          Elle m’a dit que je n’étais qu’un très mauvais homme
          Elle m’a dit qu’elle ne pouvait aimer d’vagabonds!

          Et c’est non, non, jamais
          Non, non, jamais mon vieux,
          Puis-je jouer vagabond
          Il faut que je sois mieux.

          Elle a tout essayé pour me reformer,
          Elle a tout essayé mais sans aucun succès,
          Corrompons-la, c’est que je me suis dit,
          Et peu de temps après elle venait à mon lit.

          Et c’est non, non, jamais
          Non, non, jamais mon vieux,
          Puis-je jouer vagabond
          Il faut que je sois mieux.

          J’ai pensé que la victoire était la mienne
          Mais son père disant que sa jeune fille était pleine
          Avec son fusil à l’église m’a conduit,
          Donc mes jours de vagabond sont vraiment finis.

          Et c’est non, non, jamais
          Non, non, jamais mon vieux,
          Puis-je jouer vagabond
          Il faut que je sois mieux.

          4. Collected I believe in East Anglia, although with a different tune to that used by the Dubliners when they popularised it.

          5. “Trad. arr. XXXX” as the record sleeves tell us.

            Many folk songs were collected in different areas with only small variations and musicians, for many generations, set them to tunes of their own memory or devising. And why wouldn’t they – that is the whole nature of folk music and the thing that makes it so pleasurable.

          6. Was it? I certainly wouldn’t argue with with a man who voluntarily wears bells round his ankles.

    5. As Chaucer’s Pardonner said in his sermon :

      Radix malorum est cupidatas

      Love of money is the root of evil.

      Mind you the Pardonner was as big a hypocrites as the rest of them and was effectively just giving a sales pitch in order to sell his bogus knick-knacks. I suspect that there are some corrupt influences at work behind this Philistine decision at Leicester University.

      1. I wonder whether all the universities have brought this on themselves by attracting different cultures .. People will soon be completing degrees in Black magic and voodoo and tribal rituals ..

        Money has ruined education . Why do people want to kick out our rich historical heritage , and the lessons we learn from great authors .

        So have John Bunyan and John Milton been discredited as well?

        1. Different cultures are good, when you’re learning. You can adopt the best of them all, and hopefully be a better person that you would have otherwise been.

          “Why do people want to kick out our rich historical heritage” – because they wish to replace it with their own. And, of course, they to be in charge. They naturally reckon that the existing is somehow biased against them, without realising that they are, in fact, absolutely effing useless, and that’s why they don’t get on as they reckon they deserve. It’s all someone else’s fault.

          1. It’s really not quite as simple as your second paragraph implies. There are good reasons as well as bad ones to vary curricula or to offer a course that is a little different to those on offer at other universities – provided that the course is well taught. Yes there are youngsters who want to blame the world for their problems, but they are a minority (however vocal) and it is only a vocal minority of the old who wish to condemn them all in the same breath.

  37. And it’s a moderate snowfall at the moment, but a very wet & slushy snow I’m afraid.

        1. J walked down to get the paper – he said it was bitterly cold but pleasant in the sunshine – and he had a good view of a heron by the stream.

          1. Cold, crisp and sunny here! Made it into the garden to feed the starving birds! I think I need a rucksack for the things I forget!

          6. I have new snow boots, with flip-out spikes in the heel and toe. Excellent spikes for ice, absolutely effing lethal on marble shopping-centre floors… have to remember to flip them in :-((

          2. Nah! saw it looked fairly bright through the bathroom window so opened it for a quick look.

      1. Thank you for posting that, Rastus. Evocative of a different age. It made my eyes fill up.

    4. Hmm, I rather suspect that Britain’s social cohesion has not only gone down the pan but now resides in the sewer together the rest of the swamp-dwellers.

      ‘Afternoon, Mags.

    5. Wotcher, Maggie,

      It’s not OUR social cohesion the PTB think about. It’s their own – as overlords, with us (whatever “us” becomes – universally coffee-coloured, not-so-bright workers, perhaps) just working to keep Them in the state to which They are becoming all-too-quickly accustomed. :o(

      At least we can remember when things were different…

  39. OT – last night, on Netflix, we watched “The White Tiger”, a film adapted from a novel which we had both enjoyed (though it is a grim tale).

    To our surprise and delight, the film was stunning. And I don’t very often say that. Well, hardly ever.

    I recommend it on a snowy day when gardening is not on offer.

  40. BBC rejects complaint against Laura Kuenssberg for saying ‘nitty gritty’ after anti-racism campaigners claimed the phrase started in slave trade

    The BBC political editor used the phrase while speaking on talk show Brexitcast
    She used term while speaking about departure of No.10 press chief Lee Cain
    But the use of the well-known phrase sparked a complaint from one listener
    BBC has rejected the complaint, which was originally dismissed by editor

    Anti-racism campaigners say term is from slave trade, but this is disputed

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9178325/BBC-rejects-complaint-against-Laura-Kuenssberg-saying-nitty-gritty.html

      1. I cannot believe that just one wokeist twerp complained to the BBC about Nitty Gritty .. the BBC thankfully rejected it , and I do hope the BBC start to reject lots of other idiotic claims.

        1. Not necessarily – there are soooo many ‘White Knight’ middle class white leftists who like to complain ‘on behalf of’ their ‘BAME brothers and sisters’ (yeah, right) to virtue signal their wokeness – because Laura isn’t woke enough for them. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it was someone like that.

        2. Not necessarily – there are soooo many ‘White Knight’ middle class white leftists who like to complain ‘on behalf of’ their ‘BAME brothers and sisters’ (yeah, right) to virtue signal their wokeness – because Laura isn’t woke enough for them. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it was someone like that.

      3. 328757+ up ticks,
        Morning SB,
        The only one they had at that moment in time before dropping to zero.

      4. I suspect it was a significant Black who complained , some well known name who probably haunts the corridors of the great educational institutes .. Testing the system, I expect!

    3. It is more likely that ‘nitty gritty’ originated as African American slang. It has an African American ring to it. But in fact, no one knows.

      1. Talking of getting down to the nitty gritty, there is one memorable seaside postcard depicting a beach with a young woman buried up to her neck in the sand and a chap with a bucket and spade saying:”If I dig you out, what’s in it for me?”
        Her reply: “Sand Mister!”

      2. Nitty gritty is thought to have originated in a term
        used by slave traders to refer either to the women or to the remains at
        the bottom of the transport ships that were covered in lice and grit.

        Direct quote from Collins Dictionary.

        …so it was a slave trader term.

        1. Collins online lists the only known etymology as African American rhyming slang for ‘sh*tty”.
          https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/nitty-gritty
          They make no mention of slavery, and the first written use of the term is from 1930 so the slavery connection is highly unlikely. It actually comes from a consultant to Bristol Council making stuff up.

          The link True Belle gives is actually a very thorough discussion, which the DM does very well when it chooses to. Their science pages are excellent, surprisingly.

        2. All the more reason to use it as often as possible, directly linking back to it’s slavery roots to rub these wasters’ noses in their idiocy.Give them an inch and they’ll take ten light years. The Left must be stopped.

          1. “Inch”? “Inch”??? That is a racist term – because it indicates the amount of space a slave was allowed….

        3. I wouldn’t trust anything from a woke dictionary that defines ‘facism’ as:

          Fascism is a set of right-wing political beliefs that includes strong control of society and the economy by the state, a powerful role for the armed forces, and the stopping of political opposition.

          Take out the redundant ‘right-wing’ pejorative term, and it describe the Democrats to a T, for example.

          1. Fascism is left wing socialism on steroids, because it’s all to do with control of the individual. Right-wing politics is about the individual taking charge of their own life.

        1. I had always assumed it was related to ‘nit picking’, something people used to have to. That was a slow detailed exercise I think often accompanied by deep conversations with careful analyses.

    5. Interesting that a complaint from one single person has been noted, considered, rejected, and publicised.

    6. Hi Belle! This is completely OT but I can no longer see my notifications and profile on my iPad, and have to use my old mans lap top to check on them! I’ve just seen a lovely message from you a couple of days ago, so thank you for that and huge apologies for not replying sooner! 💕

    3. It was still Ringway when I first flew from there to New York on a Pan Am charter flight that was delayed 9 hours. It was a Boeing 707 too. Way too small for transatlantic flights in recent years?

    4. Perhaps it’s being held up by French Customs because someone ate a prawn sandwich and once visited Cornwall.

      1. My Uncle Hugh was the world’s first authority on African music and dance. He recorded and filmed this when he first moved to South Africa as a young man and became fascinated with the subject. He set up the African Musical Library and worked at Capetown University and wrote several books.

        His elder son, Andrew, made friends at Oxford with Jeremy Taylor and they both formed a little jazz group together. Jeremy followed Andrew to South Africa where he became a school teacher – but he also played in coffee bars, wrote songs and made recordings. Ag Pleez Deddy became a sort of South African national anthem! Jeremy was then persuaded to join Andrew and his brother Paul in a show called ‘Wait a Minim’ which they took to London’s West End and Broadway.

        There is quite a lot about Dr Hugh Tracey on the internet. But here is a song from my good friend, Jeremy:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P7siem6Goc

    2. This could be a new sport, arrange 10 or 15 cardboard cutouts just in view through the windows and ask a neighbour to phone in an anonymous tip. Film plod arriving in force and publish it, what fun to be had.

        1. True, but I suspect that the SC isn’t truly as independent as they would have us believe.

          2. That was Blair’s intention when he first proposed its setting up and his wrecking crewgovernment passed the Constitutional reform act 2005.

            I suspect I’m teaching egg-sucking!

          6. For a while I vaguely believed that the Legal Eagle (who?) was one and the same as that other Lord Phillips on the Supreme Court.

          7. Good Afternoon, Bill

            Only what one would expect, given that Blair created our Supreme Court in place of the perfectly good Law Lords.

    2. That is a very interesting article . Brave words. So should medics say, you are far too fat and have many risks ahead of you because you are fat , or you have a history of drug taking , or you have alcohol problems .. or you are a risk taker , you climb mountains , row singlehandedly across the ocean, sky dive , deep sea diver ? All life is precious .. This is what makes us the noble Christian country we aspire to!

      1. They might say something like that to the mountaineers – but not to the fat people or smokers or druggies or drunkards – oh no! Mustn’t criticise their lifestyles.

        People to some extent make their own life chances.

  45. Snow’s lying on the road now, caused a problem for an Iceland Delivery van up the hill earlier on:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d0b2bd5ce27a4b415bf8b779882db2f83cd3d9dc62373946a4218277687634e1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a1a8de5ae1a6eeca2e62711a4aaf0c76fbb447c97f48a7aae8f6a9819033874e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5021eafcc66d9107bcba5ca77dc180cbd39bd93c21a2edf9d001bb7f3ce4e186.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff05bfa7c852481018940d09521e0b8d00397b236749093d32cfb41480d54583.jpg

    1. Coming from Iceland, you would have thought the chap would have been familiar with, er, ice….

      1. I suppose after you’ve paddled your van across a choppy North Sea, you’re too tired to think straight.

        1. They do some decent curry. And Greggs. I had a delivery recently and the delivery guy was in tee shirt and shorts.

          I asked him if he was cold. He said no. He spends most of his time in the freezers!

          2. A saw one just before Christmas as i delivered our local cards,…..i asked him if he was doing it for a bet. No he laughed.

          3. No better or worse thanks for asking. Hospital phoned me and told me to take aspirin prior to all the tests. I think they will be injecting a dye to show where the clot is.

            I heard it said that posties wear shorts because the sorting rooms are so hot.

          4. I had me head in a CT scanner a few years ago, looking for the clot in my brain (no jokes, please!).
            They said the dye injection might make me feel a bit weird, and then injected it.
            It certainly was weird, it was as you could imagine someone holding a candle-flame to your bum-hole! So watch out!

          6. Phizzee, I have no idea what has happened to you, but please take care and do as you are told! Love to you!😘

          7. Dear sweet Sue.

            I have been examined by my Doctor and a nurse and they are of the opinion that i’m a blithering idiot damn fool suffering from a blood clot in my lower left leg. Doc spoke to the Registrar and booked me in Monday morning. They don’t work weekends as everyone knows no one gets ill then.

          8. There was a chap helping to remove the covers from the track at Haydock today and he was dressed in shorts and a tee shirt! It had just been snowing, so it must have been cold.

          9. I asked him if he was cold. He said no. He spends most of his time in the freezers!
            Our youngest did that during his student days.
            He took a job on the checkout a week later.

          14. It’s why i quite like Greggs unlike anything bought in a Supermarket which tastes of nothing.

    2. A bit of snow on the road (again) in Stupidland and all the cars skid off the road.

      ♬When will they ever learn …♬

    4. The van driver had trouble on those roads? Do they fit slick tyres instead of normal tyres with a tread?

  46. 328757+ up ticks,
    I can understand going for a vaccine in tablet form to comply
    with a state of “proven emergency” more personal people control, but to have an armfull of, not time tested vaccine
    injected straight into the system seems a mite dangerous and a wee big bit OTT.

    What is also glaringly obvious is the whole mucking fuddle is being completely disorganised by a group of proven treacherous,odious, politically criminally insane politico’s.

    https://twitter.com/berniespofforth/status/1352913473211158528

    1. 328757+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      What do you believe is a deciding factor
      regarding the various vaccines among the politico’s Og ?

      Without a doubt the quantity of paxo
      within the brown envelopes, Og.

          1. Ceramic, I’ll have you know! Nae beepin’ at airports! Was out the next day! Trebuchet!

          7. They had me going up and down stairs on Wednesday am. 2 sticks, no blood, lots of opioids and off you hop!
            Delighted to be home but am a bit woozy sometimes. Old man says he can’t tell the difference!

          1. It went very well and I was out the following afternoon! I think the risk of infection from the increase in covid cases was becoming a bit worrying and I was able to walk with sticks! I’m able to shower etc and the old man is a great cook! Bit of pain but the morphine is good!

    3. Does Ms Clements think that the virtue-signalling rainbow excuses this appallingly dictatorial and nagging tweet?

  49. Has Storm-in-a-Dcup posted lately? I recall that sometimes she would come up with some real gems.

      1. That song was No. 1 on my 21st birthday in Feb 1972. But not this later, inferior, version.

        BTW: it was written by Lynsey de Paul.

  50. I was very surprised to read/hear that Hong Kong is only just putting its first lockdowns in place.

    Of all the places on earth where I would have expected Covid to be rife, giving the proximity and number of inhabitants, HK must be right at the top of the lists.
    I wonder what has suddenly caused the change.

    1. I think that’s rather what they’re hoping for. Bit pointless really. Lock ups don’t work, masks don’t work. This is all for the benefit of the failed health service.

      1. ” Lock ups don’t work, masks don’t work. ” – – Migrants sat in hotels don’t work either.

  52. Earlier this morning i had a long chat with Bruce. He told me that the state of Victoria is now Covid free.
    They had some serious issues last year, but due to the people obeying the strict regulations it’s all over ……for the time being.
    Bruce thinks they might have a lot more people who want to play tennis arriving soon. But the general consensus in and around is that the locals will not be going to watch any of it, as it sort of insults their long and strict dedication in becoming free of the Virus. I think i agree.

    I had a text message with an invitation to book a vaccine slot, it gave me 4 options for next Monday four slots available after 17:00, i can’t manage any of them on Monday, i have something very important to do Tuesday and i can’t risk having a possible reaction to the vaccine.
    But it told me to look further ahead on the page, which i did but there was no way to access any other future appointment slots.
    But it seems to me that more ‘experts’ are saying that just because you have been vaccinated, it does not mean that you will be safe, as it takes up to two weeks to become effective. And it is possible to still catch the and not have serious symptoms and even pass it on.
    So,……… i have to leave my safe home environment, go into a building i have never been to in my life, sit down amongst many strangers, answer questions, take my coat off, roll my sleeve up take the jab, continue to sit and wait for any adverse immediate reaction. Walk out and get home, but will i be safe to drive ?

    1. I got the text on Weds. Hammersmith clearly now doing 65+. Can’t decide whether to respond.

      1. I first had a phone call (private number) from an American lady, i thought it was a scam, she said she was from our local surgery (doctors office) but being taken by surprise and on the hoof as it were i had difficulty responding to her offers as i needed to see the kitchen calendar where all our future appointments are registered, i had to decline the offer.

    2. The only reaction I have heard of is the booster jab; a lady in her forties (frontline) was off work for 5 days, but she takes an immuno suppresant and we guess that it was her body getting anxious rather than anything potentially harmful in the vaccine.
      Your arm may be sore for several days.

  53. Trust study shows inhaled nitric oxide may help patients with COVID-19 pneumonia

    https://www.rbht.nhs.uk/research/trust-study-shows-inhaled-nitric-oxide-may-help-patients-covid-19-pneumonia

    Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that nitric oxide was one of the NOx gases emitted by diesels.
    In that case, banning diesels from cities might have removed an important gaseous compound within emission zones that was actually promoting higher levels of oxygen intake within the population.

    The above study suggests that the NHS should scrap the ventilators and hook up patients to diesel exhausts.

    DCM – Diesel Cars Matter?

      1. Good point.
        Giving people gases that don’t supply oxygen to the haemoglobin (e.g. CO2) stimulates the breathing reflex.
        Likewise Nitric Oxide might inhibit the oronasal receptors from invasion by the COVIDs.🤔

    2. NO is a vasodilator. Control blood flow around the body by relaxing blood vessels. Not produced by diesel combustion.

  54. Ok, here goes, details pixellated to respect privacy.
    A family I know has had Covid over the New Year and beyond.
    The young children unaffected. Mother reasonably ill, sore eyes, sore throat, headaches, loss of taste & smell, like a variant of flu.
    Husband (alpha male in his forties) no symptoms, good recovery.
    Healthy grandmother was very poorly for several weeks, felt awful, but forced herself to get up and stagger around her house; hopefully she is on the mend now.
    Granddad in his eighties, completely unaffected; he had received the part one Pfizer jab in December.

    1. I could have felt a right prick going for a Pfizer jab.
      Fortunately I had it in my left arm.

    2. A family I know had it recently too.
      Nobody was vaccinated. Mum in her fifties, ill for a few days, tired for a couple of weeks. Dad, similar age, no symptoms. Grown up children in early twenties, small symptoms.

  55. POETS CORNER

    “Mad Hancock tolls the knell of parting day,
    His tidings dire, by national media spread,
    The masked-up homeward plod their weary way,
    And leave the world to Covid and the dead.

    Now fades the longed-for freedom on the word,
    And all the pubs in solemn stillness stand,
    Tonight, there’ll be no joy nor laughter heard,
    As snoopers snoop and everything stays banned.”
    — Duncan Mac (Allergy (sic) to a Country’s Graveyard)

    3. I used to live near that churchyard. Heartbreakingly, behind the church are buried two of the schoolboys who were swept off the cliff at Land’s End in the 80s. The brother of one of them is buried there too – he died in a motorbike accident aged about 21.
      I always used to wonder there were any surviving siblings. Terribly bad luck for the family.

  56. I see that following all the negative comments and downvotes (including the tens of thousand that were deleted by YouTube), The White House official YouTube channel has now removed and turned off all comments. How open, how Democratic. How ‘back to the bad old days’…

    2. Should probably have never had comments and downvotes on an official channel.

      Here is a message with the official government position, if you don’t like it go forth to your social media circus and vent there.

      1. The problem is that the MSM aren’t asking the new administration the hard questions they did of Trump’s. For example, the new Press Secretary (I think deliberately) misrepresented the vaccination rate by taking the average since the start (500k per day), rather than the latest before the inauguration (apparently well into the 900k per day), then pretending the ‘new goal’ of 1M per day was ‘amazing’ and then brushed off questions on the subject.

        This was not the only subject where such lies were allowed to go without questioning further. Note that during the election, the Biden campaign said time and gain that ‘they had a plan’ for COVID, and yet now say ‘nothing will change for the next few months’.

        Only the public have been asking the hard questions – now they are silenced. Note that The Telegraph also silences Biden critics and that of its own coverage, and Biden isn’t exactly going to go onto small, conservative social media sites to check what people are saying, is he?

        2. But especially with Trump, I think that the administration should have a platform where they could present their position.
          That’s it – no feedback, no dissent, no argument. This is our position.

          Then response should be through other media. The fact that the msm is in love with biden is another issue.

        3. They will never hold Biden to account. Just as they never held Obama to account, or Pelosi for her shocking behaviour during the Trump Presidency.

      2. The problem is that the MSM aren’t asking the new administration the hard questions they did of Trump’s. For example, the new Press Secretary (I think deliberately) misrepresented the vaccination rate by taking the average since the start (500k per day), rather than the latest before the inauguration (apparently well into the 900k per day), then pretending the ‘new goal’ of 1M per day was ‘amazing’ and then brushed off questions on the subject.

        This was not the only subject where such lies were allowed to go without questioning further. Note that during the election, the Biden campaign said time and gain that ‘they had a plan’ for COVID, and yet now say ‘nothing will change for the next few months’.

        Only the public have been asking the hard questions – now they are silenced. Note that The Telegraph also silences Biden critics and that of its own coverage, and Biden isn’t exactly going to go onto small, conservative social media sites to check what people are saying, is he?

    3. The first public act of President Biden was to speak to the nation from the Oval Office. Except there was a car park visible through the window. It was a set, he was lying. So Biden starts his Presidency and his first act is to lie to the American people.

    4. Tch tch Andy, it’s just par for the course for the most popular President ever to be elected by the American people!
      Doesn’t every President who just got 84 million votes have to turn off comments under their speeches?

  59. South African Covid variant may make vaccines 50 per cent less effective, claims Matt Hancock
    In video footage of webinar with travel agents, Health Secretary warns importation of new strain could ruin UK vaccination drive
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/22/south-african-covid-variant-makes-vaccines-50-per-cent-less/

    Amazingly comments are allowed for the time being. Here is a BTL comment.

    They tried to give us the hope that we would be set free when we had a vaccine. However, now that we have a vaccine the politicians are still not ready to set us free so they have to find excuses for delaying freedom day.

    1. Ooo, the evil, evil Covid is so fiendishly clever!

      How about turning that headline round to reflect another point of view?
      “Vaccine inadequate to protect against normally occurring Covid-19 variants”

      However, all is not lost. As Dr MIchael Mosley writes in teh Daily Mail “…the great thing about mRNA vaccines is that not only are they safe and effective, but if the coronavirus mutates, the current vaccine can be rapidly ‘tweaked’.”
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9177439/DR-MICHAEL-MOSLEY-reveals-simple-steps-make-effective.html
      Look forward to regular vaccinations. Why restrict yourself to a vaccine once a year, when the evil virus is constantly changing its form in a desperate bid to kill you?

      1. Plus, we’ll all be amazed at how these ‘vaccines’ also lower the birth rate by some miracle as well. Are scientists that naive that they can’t see we’ve been played since the start of all this? Whilst I’m not saying western governments and big pharma/tech created the virus (IMHO likely escaped via poor standards at that lab in Wuhan and then the CCP allowed it to spread worldwide to spread the pain and the blame), I think they and their WEF chums had a plan after the aborted swine flu ‘pandemic’ of 2010/11 so they could guarantee they effectively controlled things with China going forward.

        We’ll all just be serfs with no power and little money after the first (of many) pandemics ‘ends’ – because the restrictions and financial pain will be crippling and likely near permanent. Meanwhile, the Dt publishes an article on how the uber rich are ‘coping’ by ‘walking a different beach each day’, yadda, yadda…

        Odd how that article is now missing in action on the front page of the website within 9hrs of it being published.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/explore-new-beach-every-day-one-per-cent-lockdown-3/

        Still, whilst the comments are there, the DT and uber rich are being slated for their attitude.

    2. Why is the DT picking up English usage from across the pond.

      ‘Importation’? What’s wrong with just ‘import’?

  60. I know the DT is trying to pull on the heartstrings (to get people to be good little serfs and take the vaccine and stay at home otherwise), but seriously – showing two obviously obese middle-aged people getting married in hospital whilst on ventilators rather shows why we’ve done far worse (like the US) than many other countries in similar situations geographically:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-vaccine-uk-covid-variant-lockdown-end-deaths/

    Maybe if many UK citizens didn’t eat so many pies and got off their backsides and properly exercised outside (+ vitamin D) on a regular basis, the number of deaths would be far lower – evn amongst the elderly.

    1. Pies… I miss pies, me. Wish I was a good enough cook (like SWMBO & Firstborn – how did that bugger get all the talent?) to make pies. Sigh

        1. I can barely fart in my own pants these days.
          As for cooking anything worth eating, well…

    3. Your last sentence is undoubtedly true but it would be just as true if there was no pandemic.

    4. As we are locked down with nothing much else to do but eat and drink and only allowed one exercise session per day, it is almost as if they are encouraging us to end up on ventilators.

  61. I know the DT is trying to pull on the heartstrings (to get people to be good little serfs and take the vaccine and stay at home otherwise), but seriously – showing two obviously obese middle-aged people getting married in hospital whilst on ventilators rather shows why we’ve done far worse (like the US) than many other countries in similar situations geographically:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-vaccine-uk-covid-variant-lockdown-end-deaths/

    Maybe if many UK citizens didn’t eat so many pies and got off their backsides and properly exercised outside (+ vitamin D) on a regular basis, the number of deaths would be far lower – evn amongst the elderly.

  62. Someone posted a link to the donations made by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation the other day, and I was idly scrolling through it out of interest.

    One name caught my eye with which I was not familiar – the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London.
    This organisation was founded in 2010, and boasts on its website that it has placed stories with every leading media outlet in the UK. It also says that privately funded investigative journalism is changing the face of news.

    I’ll bet it is.
    A list of their donors reveals the usual suspects, apart from the B&M Gates F, who gave them 350 000 dollars to “Inform and engage communities.” The Open society is there, the Wellcome trust, the Rowntree foundation etc.

    The Guardian also has its own similar privately funded news organisation of the same name, which is also funded by Gates and the Open Society.
    It seems to me that “news” is not just stories fed to newspapers by the government (Euthanasia is good! Poor woman was trapped in a marriage by evil laws allowing her ex to delay a divorce! Woman loses 24 stone!), but increasingly the broadsheet news is coming from these privately funded sources.

    The work of the Bureau for Investigative Journalism is given away free, according to its website! How generous of them.
    Needless to say, it appears to be staffed mostly by Ophelias.

    And then people say things like, but if there had been fraud in the US election, an investigative journalist would have reported on it, but they didn’t, ergo, there was no fraud.
    This is a fundamental shift of the whole news industry, when journalists are paid by people whose goal is to push an agenda, rather than people whose goal is to make money by selling papers.
    I’m not sure how many people realise that that crucial change has taken place.

    1. Don’t forget that good ol Bill gave $3.4M to the Telegraph to fund its ‘Global Health Security’ section in 2017. I bet that never gets mentioned in the paper. Anyone still a subscriber – keep mentioning it in any COVID related article, to help readers make their own minds up as to whether the paper’s coverage is compromised or not.

      2. The Telegraph did declare this source of funding nearly three years ago, although the amount was withheld.

        Global Health Security: about this site

        1 FEBRUARY 2018 • 8:00AM

        Our Global Health Security coverage is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This support comes without strings and we retain full editorial control over all the content we publish.

        The area of global health security is broad and includes topics such as:

        ▪the spread of communicable diseases like Ebola, Zika and dangerous new strains of influenza
        ▪non-communicable conditions including obesity, heart disease and diabetes
        ▪the rapid rise of antibiotic resistance and new superbugs
        ▪the growing threat of bio-terrorism
        ▪social and political instability sown by war and natural disasters including drought and famine

        The site was launched in February 2018 and its aim is to raise awareness and understanding of these and other issues and how they relate to us at home. Over time, the site will grow to include breaking news, features, debate and opinion – all supported by Telegraph editors, correspondents and subject matter experts from Britain and around the world.

        We hope that you, our readers, will also contribute via our social media channels and comment and communities functions.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/about-this-site/

        The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also declared this funding, made over three years ago.

        HOW WE WORK

        GRANT

        The Daily Telegraph

        Date: November 2017
        Purpose: to support content production to raise awareness in the UK around global health security and engage audiences in solutions, greater research and cooperation
        Amount: $3,446,801
        Term: 51
        Topic: Global Health and Development Public Awareness and Analysis
        Program: Advocacy
        Grantee Location: London
        Grantee Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

        https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2017/11/OPP1179441

      3. The Telegraph did declare this source of funding nearly three years ago, although the amount was withheld.

        Global Health Security: about this site

        1 FEBRUARY 2018 • 8:00AM

        Our Global Health Security coverage is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This support comes without strings and we retain full editorial control over all the content we publish.

        The area of global health security is broad and includes topics such as:

        ▪the spread of communicable diseases like Ebola, Zika and dangerous new strains of influenza
        ▪non-communicable conditions including obesity, heart disease and diabetes
        ▪the rapid rise of antibiotic resistance and new superbugs
        ▪the growing threat of bio-terrorism
        ▪social and political instability sown by war and natural disasters including drought and famine

        The site was launched in February 2018 and its aim is to raise awareness and understanding of these and other issues and how they relate to us at home. Over time, the site will grow to include breaking news, features, debate and opinion – all supported by Telegraph editors, correspondents and subject matter experts from Britain and around the world.

        We hope that you, our readers, will also contribute via our social media channels and comment and communities functions.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/about-this-site/

        The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also declared this funding, made over three years ago.

        HOW WE WORK

        GRANT

        The Daily Telegraph

        Date: November 2017
        Purpose: to support content production to raise awareness in the UK around global health security and engage audiences in solutions, greater research and cooperation
        Amount: $3,446,801
        Term: 51
        Topic: Global Health and Development Public Awareness and Analysis
        Program: Advocacy
        Grantee Location: London
        Grantee Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

        https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2017/11/OPP1179441

    2. Well at least canada does it openly, the government has a program to support the media (bribes).
      Surprisingly not much anti trudeau press despite his incompetence at everything except corruption.

      There were many investigations into the election results by various state administrations, they all declared themselves blameless. Why didn’t Guiliani and that sidekick lawyer Powell come up with any real evidence of fraud? Powell in particular was very adept at dragging up unlikely theories.

      If there hadn’t been way out claims about fraud, more viable claims might have seen the light of day but the whole fraud scenario lost credibility when we started hearing about the US embassy in Rome working with the UK secret service to have partial counts downloaded to germany and adjusted before being sent back to the state machines. For heavens sake just do it the old fashioned way and stuff / lose ballot boxes.

    4. If it was a ‘certain Effnic Minority’ (by numbers, not age) it would be

      Ifeelyours, not Ophelias

    5. You make a very valid point. The crux of it is who do, or can, we trust for truthful reporting? Investigative journalism requires time, skill, and resources that ordinary folk do not have so where does the money come from to pay investigative journalists a living wage, or set up and maintain a web site, or pay for travel? Is there a web site for fact checking (Snopes or AAP, for example) that hasn’t been accused of being paid for by Governments or malign billionaires? Personally, I believe that the multiplicity of information sources that we have today is our best protection in that we are not reliant on a single or a few newspapers or TV stations for information. We have enough web sites, national and foreign newspapers, radio and TV stations and streaming sources to sort out the wheat from the chaff and make our own judgements about the truth.

        1. Perhaps, but if you get confused, isn’t there a web site specially for us – Confused.com?

        2. Perhaps, but if you get confused, isn’t there a web site specially for us – Confused.com?

      2. I work on the basis that I don’t believe it, then see what facts there might be that cannot easily be spun – such as, a tree fell on a car. The reasonong as to why the tree fell can easily be spun – evil Tories didn’t want to spend the money on managing the condition of trees by the road, for example. And seeing it on TV / Twitter, whatever – the pictures are often manipulated or carefully selected, all smoke & mirrors, really.

        1. Talking of trees falling. You will recall the old philosophy question “If a tree falls in the middle of forest and no-one hears it, did it happen?”. Apparently, the new version is “If a man shouts in the middle of a forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?”

      3. If the media were evenly funded by left and right wing groups or individuals, then perhaps. It seems to me though, that it’s the left that dominates MSM outlets. Anything leaning to the right is in a minority and often seems to be more of a cottage industry. Less overt, although it seems to be coming out of the closet more and more, is the education system, rife with left wing teaching. Not to mention the Civil Service. I need a(nother) drink.

        1. I am not sure what “left” and “right” really mean these days. The true, hardline left-wing – the Communists of whatever flavour – are as ruthless, intolerant and dictatorial as any so-called right-wing government of a banana republic. Even the Nazis were pretty socialist (the clue is in their name) yet are reviled by the left as being of the right. Whether left or right, I share your distaste about the trends in the teaching system.

      4. If the media were evenly funded by left and right wing groups or individuals, then perhaps. It seems to me though, that it’s the left that dominates MSM outlets. Anything leaning to the right is in a minority and often seems to be more of a cottage industry. Less overt, although it seems to be coming out of the closet more and more, is the education system, rife with left wing teaching. Not to mention the Civil Service. I need a(nother) drink.

  63. Two years with no new glasses I suppose.

    I read the headline as faith healers.

    Coronavirus latest news: Faith leaders play ‘vital role’ in combating vaccine hesitancy, says Robert Jenrick

        2. We only ever shook hands, thankfully. Then it turned into a “wave for peace”. Never cared for any of that, myself.

        1. Have a look at the comment I posted this morning attaching a letter in this week’s Spectator.

          1. The writer is correct.

            The ecclesiastical leaders of all faiths should have made a stand, but the State would have sent in the heavy mobs, with the support of the woke..

          2. They should have made a stand regardless, but today’s spineless and compliant religious leaders are not the stuff of which martyrs are made.

          3. They remind me of the Russian clergy who were allowed to continue as long as they kowtowed to the state.

          6. This was the beginning of the article from a London priest in the Spectator last week that led me to post the item this morning.

            “On a beautifully sunny Maundy Thursday last year, during the first lockdown, I removed my cassock, slung my satchel over my shoulder and rode my bicycle to Lambeth Palace and back. At the halfway point I paused briefly to slip a letter under the Archbishop of Canterbury’s front door, before heading for home and the sad prospect of a solitary evening mass.

            In my letter I asked the Archbishop to reconsider his request that we not pray in our churches. Communal worship was still forbidden, but the government clearly considered it lawful for the clergy to continue to go into their churches to pray on behalf of their absent congregations. Surely that is what we are here for? Of course, his request did not affect me — the Archbishop has no authority to close churches and tell clergy to stay at home — but many clergy were evidently doing what they were told. Some bishops, in other dioceses, even threatened legal action if we didn’t toe the line.”

            It went on to describe the shocking things he had done – such as holding services in the street, ringing the bell etc etc.

          10. I agree.
            Oddly enough the Anglican community here is doing all it can to keep services going, even to the extent of socially distanced, masked, communion services in people’s homes, as well as Zoom and services in Churches.

      4. If there is no Easter service at my local church this year, I’m putting one on myself. I am utterly disgusted, but sadly not surprised, at the attitude taken by the church of England.

        1. No wonder the membership is declining. What is the CofE for? Doesn’t seem like much, they don’t even want to maintain their own “plant”, those beautiful, historic buildings (I was married in one that dated from 1052) for the benefit of humanity. Don’t even want to pray any more, lead their congregation in singing uplifting hymns, ministering to people’s souls. Bollox to them.

          1. What is the CofE for? Keeping, the folk who observe the Sabbath out of Waitrose on a Sunday Morning?

          2. When Sunday opening was a question, we lived in Newport Pagness on the High St, and would watch the worshippers come out of church, walk along the High St into the all week Paki shop, come out with alcohol, and drive off. Such BS, it was.

    2. We’ve just come back from a walk around a small lake near us and we saw lots of people out and about. The only ones wearing a bl..dy stupid mask were white. All the BAMES were happy to go without.

      1. It’s now compulsory to wear a mask in our local park.

        Very few people do, although most carry one.

        No doubt les plod will be organising a raid.

    3. Just as the play about the usurping, murderous tyrant is known as a The Scottish Play,
      And the play about the Scandinavian prince with an oedipus complex is known as The Danish Play
      That the dusky Venetian general wracked with jealousy is known as The Cypriot Play
      I thought that Coronavirus was, along with Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, another Roman Play
      Until they told me that Coronavirus was an unmentionably Chinese virus.

    4. Isn’t the AoC absent at the moment, just when millions need (decent) spiritual guidance?

      4. He’s nobody who can give guidance for anything. The GPS in your phone would be better!

  64. I’ve not been able to see my wife in the care home for over 3 weeks now but today I was allowed to see her through a closed window (both of us have had the jab). Thankfully she still recognised me and she was her normal cheerful self. Even though she’s lost the power of speech you can’t hold a conversation through a closed window but having seen her I’m a lot happier.

    1. Just been speaking to my MiL by telephone as her Nursing Home stopped visiting two weeks ago. I checked with admin they don’t have a Covid outbreak but they are ‘barrier nursing’ the residents. I’m told that they are short staffed due to a number of staff self-isolating. The management group are trying to recruit staff. In my experience many of the carers are from Eastern Europe so I suspect that with travel restrictions they may be finding that source of recruits has dried up.

      1. Carers from Eastern Europe and the Philipines were usually hard working and very kind and loving to their patients, that was our experience when MiL was in care for nearly four years .

    2. Just been speaking to my MiL by telephone as her Nursing Home stopped visiting two weeks ago. I checked with admin they don’t have a Covid outbreak but they are ‘barrier nursing’ the residents. I’m told that they are short staffed due to a number of staff self-isolating. The management group are trying to recruit staff. In my experience many of the carers are from Eastern Europe so I suspect that with travel restrictions they may be finding that source of recruits has dried up.

    4. Life is a total shiT.Do the “carers ” understand family ? I do hope so, F.A.

      K B O .and our thoughts and love to you..

      At least my carers will know to pull the plug … and after Mick Mcarthy … what is The point …BLOOBIRDS …..

      1. The staff in the home were only following orders from the NHS (where have I heard that before?) . I couldn’t ask for more caring staff – there’s only 8 residents in the home and it’s so well run I don’t have any worries. They were as upset as I was at not being able to see her but hopefully soon things will get better, as long as I can see her I’m happier

        2. I am glad that you have had some good news. I heard a couple of hours ago that an old friend from my Entry had died – we Brats are getting fewer and fewer.

          1. All too much of that kind of news, Enri, and I send my condolences.
            One could hope for a good wake to celebrate the deceased in appropriate manner, but I fear not these days.

          2. Thank you for those words of solace. Of particular sadness to those of us who spent many years in the Armed Forces is not to be able to drink a group toast to absent friends nor to parade at their funerals.

            Edited to correct a typo.

          3. Vikings used to drink gravøl (grave beer) for the fallen. I follow the tradition.
            These days, I guess you just have to do it alone. But send him off properly, anyhow. It’s only proper, and he’ll thank you for it when you meet up again! :-))

          4. Drinking to the fallen is a custom that dates back to the armies of antiquity. The Vikings carried it on in their own gentle and restrained fashion 🙂 I like the idea of Valhalla – must keep sword in my hand!

          5. I have a tiny Thorshammer (Mjølnir) with me, on my keyring. It’s wrought iron, and chose me rather than the other way around – it was in the root ball of my lemon tree, no idea why or how, and I found it when repotting the tree! So, I keep it with me.
            Here’s the Norwegian Telemark Batallion getting ready and manning up for a showdown with the Taliban. This clip provoked untold upset amongst the government and the nice lady Defence Minister, who said they shouldn’t have been beastly to the Taliban (so why send them to the Stan with weapons? Idiot). The Major, with the beard giving the speech, is famous in Norway for kicking ass. And after this clip, Taliban ass was duly kicked.
            https://youtu.be/GxOSqSUgNzE

          6. Unfortunately (usually for the kickers), no amount of “ass-kicking” has ever subdued the Afghanis for any length of time. It’s been tried often enough but, like the Spanish guerrillas in the time of Bonaparte, you can’t defeat those who do not accept the concept of defeat.

          7. Indeed.
            Anyone with half an inkling of history would know that. Even the Soviets couldn’t do it, and well before them, the Brits. Best kept out, but what politician will turn down the opportunity for some glory? Unfortunately, it’s not them that does the dying.

          8. That’s an interesting story about the iron hammer – the Norns must have a plan for you. The clip you linked me to was very short and I stayed on Youtube to watch some other videos of the Telemark Batallion – very interesting and quite stirring.

          9. I have a tiny Thorshammer (Mjølnir) with me, on my keyring. It’s wrought iron, and chose me rather than the other way around – it was in the root ball of my lemon tree, no idea why or how, and I found it when repotting the tree! So, I keep it with me.
            Here’s the Norwegian Telemark Batallion getting ready and manning up for a showdown with the Taliban. This clip provoked untold upset amongst the government and the nice lady Defence Minister, who said they shouldn’t have been beastly to the Taliban (so why send them to the Stan with weapons? Idiot). The Major, with the beard giving the speech, is famous in Norway for kicking ass. And after this clip, Taliban ass was duly kicked.
            https://youtu.be/GxOSqSUgNzE

          12. The deaths of old friends – from wherever – are always hard. Friends from military days may well have been closer than most.

            Another of my university class died last year – that is the third since we graduated ( and another didn’t even survive to finish the course). There were only 41 of us, and we were only the class of 1976. Too soon to be “drawing out of our pen” … to use a somewhat agricultural simile (appropriate for an class of agri students).

          13. Thank you for those words, JSP. I suppose that it is inevitable that, as one ages, going to weddings is overtaken by attending funerals. My condolences on the loss of your former class-mate.

          14. Thank you. We had lost touch, but it was still something of a shock to get the news.

            But there are consolations. In the last decade I’ve been to the weddings of 2 nieces and a nephew and I now have a total of 6 great-nieces and nephews… the latest is just 10 days old. The generations continue even when our allotted span is done.

          15. The best thing about baby nephews, nieces and grandchildren is that you can always return them when you’ve had enough!

          16. At the moment being able to get close enough for a cuddle would be good. But Skype is better than nothing.

    7. Alec, my heart goes out to you. So glad she recognises you and that you still make each other happy. ❤️

    8. That is cruel to be so parted, Alec. Those who make the rules have no humanity, it seems to me. Glad you were able to see her.

  65. Cold War traitor George Blake ‘who sent 600 spies to their deaths by betraying them to the Russians’ was flagged as ‘unreliable’ and ‘un-British’ by MI6 superiors
    Notorious MI6 double agent George Blake died on Boxing Day at the age of 98
    He was feted in Russia after escaping from a prison term for spying for the USSR
    A newly uncovered report from 1961 said he was unreliable and ‘very un-British’
    The report said it had been a mistake for MI6 to recruit Blake in the first place

    What a horrifying end some of our spies must have endured in the hands of the Russians , but even more so , what on earth were MI5 playing at.. and as we know , many more double agents surfaced!

    1. 328757+ up ticks,
      Afternoon TB,
      Currently there are no double agents with in political circles, they are out & out enema
      agents no pretence any longer.

    2. Even after discovery they were honoured and feted, Sir Anthony Blunt being a perfect example.

        1. Whilst Blunt was certainly establishment I don’t think that the same could be said of Blake. His history suggests that he was more of an outlier – and deemed useful for that reason.

  67. I’ve been looking through a plie of old paperwork and came across something long forgotten. An Item over 100 years old. It’s an original programme for a Christmas concert for No. 3 squadron of the Royal Flying corps. I’ll try and see if i take a photo and up load it.

      1. I forget how long ago it was but i offered the Programme tor RAF Hendon and they didn’t even bother to reply to me.
        If i can find out where the squadron were stationed i’ll get in touch that way. I haven’t been to RAF Hendon for years.

        2. I own a sweetheart brooch with an AG single wing (most are pilots’ brevets); I offered it to the Air Gunners’ Museum at Elvington on permanent loan. They said they’d only take it as a donation.

    4. I think 3 Sqdn was the first operational squadron which after the war was still 3 Sqdn in the RAF. I was on 3 Sqdn Canberra B(I)8s in Germany ’62 to ’65

      2. I’ll have to wait Alec until they get back to me. There are a lot of associated photographs on line but no other info.

      1. I’m sure 3 Sqdn association would love these. Write to them , Bill has given the link below

    6. Excellent. I have an elderly friend who worked in the Admiralty during WWII mostly for the Head of the RN. She showed me a copy which she has of an edition of the house magazine from that period.

      1. It was was all drawn and painted by hand, and it’s difficult to see but all of the cast billing was of course typed by and old typewriter. On the back (not shown) is a drawing of one of aircraft of the era dropping leaflets saying,……… A Merry Xmas from No 3

        1. Likewise the Admiralty’s house mag – on an old/new? Imperial War Model typewriter and hand drawn cartoons – held together with a treasury tag if I remember correctly.

  68. Do people want to be free? Or do they prefer security at any price?
    The extraordinary argument that it’s okay to sacrifice freedom for security has returned
     DT article by Arthur Daley’s Auntie Janet.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/23/do-people-want-free-do-prefer-security-price/

    But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt,
    And by their vices brought to servitude,
    Than to love bondage more than liberty –
    Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty

    [John Milton: ‘Samson Agonistes’]

    No wonder they don’t want students to study Milton and Chaucer any more. It might make them have to think.

    (I tried to post this as a BTL comment but it seems I have been given a Lammy-Henry – I have been black-balled!)*

    *(A miracle – the comment has now been posted after all and I seem to have received an Albino white paint testicular job)

    1. A chap called Paul Lewis posted this BTL comment under the Janet Daley article quoting Thomas Jefferson;

      “If you are willing to sacrifice your freedom for a little security you deserve neither, and will ultimately lose both.”

      How keen and swift we are to throw away all the common sense and wisdom the human race has acquired over the ages.

      2. What are the 5 fundamental British values?

        These values are Democracy, Rule of Law, Respect and Tolerance, Individual Liberty.

        Satirical critics have described British values as “driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way home, to sit on a Swedish sofa and watch American sitcoms on a Japanese TV.”

        1. Satirical critics have described British values as “driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way home, to sit on a Swedish sofa and watch American sitcoms on a Japanese TV ” whilst moaning about all of them.
          The view from an expat Brit.

        2. Satirical critics have described British values as “driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way home, to sit on a Swedish sofa and watch American sitcoms on a Japanese TV ” whilst moaning about all of them.
          The view from an expat Brit.

    2. Thinking’s hard. Responsibility is even harder. Far easier to give all that away to the state and make it their problem.

  70. That’s me for the day. Managed a walk – a bit of fresh air – but a dull, gloomy day. A chilly night and a COLD day tomorrow (winter weather in winter – shock).

    Have jolly evening – and DO remember that new Netflix film “The White Tiger” Really good – the MR and I talked about it a lot today.

    A demain.

    2. Bill,

      Moh and I have just finished watching “The White Tiger” .

      We became quite wrapped up in it , and anyone who wants to watch , do … but be prepared for the final few minutes , and the message was…. well I will not say another word ..

      I think the Asian Tiger still roars, and we could be in for a bad shock.

    3. It has been snowing on and off all day here, Bill. When the dog and I went for our walk, I thought it was going to be a Capt Oates moment.

    1. LAST (SERIOUS) POST

      What is NOT said by the effing government is that the vaccine is of NO use when travelling abroad NOR when returning to the UK. You will need new negative PSR tests at £150 a throw per person each way per trip.

      Barstards.

    6. Bert: “I’ve forgotten how to do the Breast Stroke”

      Ada: “Just follow me you’ll soon get the hang of it”

      1. These days, they say “sharp scratch”. Which is a shame, since “just a little prick” could be countered by “Oh – can you see it from there”…

        1. Hi Geoff

          In my mind I’m running through the collection of Eric Gill postcards my late father in law was sent by his Supermarine workmates .. lots of them were very cheeky !

          Moh has a huge collection of postcards and WW1 cards in a wicker basket, grandfather’s and his fathers. what on earth do we do with stuff like that ?

          1. Well, they do sell well at auction…
            Or redecorate your smallest room with a wall collage. Perhaps overlaying them so that the punchlines are hidden.

          2. Good evening, Belle.

            In previous days a visit to an
            Antique Fayre would not only
            have provided you with a list
            of Suppliers of such wares but
            they would also, freely, give you
            advice and help; in these days of
            reduced freedoms you might do
            worse than have a roam through
            Ebay, if nothing else it will provide
            you with an idea of what these may
            be worth on the open market.

  72. As I get older I remember all the people I’ve lost along the way.

    Perhaps safari guide wasn’t the best job for me.

    1. #MeToo, Mola. As the youngest of nine, I am now the sole survivor and of course, both my parents have gone too.

  73. Piers Morgan on the death of Larry King:

    “Larry King was a hero of mine until we fell out after I replaced him at CNN & he said my show was ‘like watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your new Bentley.’ (He married 8 times so a mother-in-law expert) But he was a brilliant broadcaster & masterful TV interviewer.”

      2. Any piece of music you listen to, you can immediately say if it’s pre-Bach or post-Bach, except Handel who was neither and Buxtehude who was Bach’s inspiration.

  78. Hats off! to the folk who had a wedding despite the restrictions. Weddings are social occasions at which the wider society celebrates with the newly married couple.
    The Rabbi could not denounce them all enough, and in pretty strong language.

    1. First heard this at the Church of St Mary, Mildenhall. performed by the City of London Sinfonia. Happy to report that the River Lark (some 200 m away) didn’t rise to the occasion…

      1. I first heard it in Sheffield University played by what was then the Lindsay String Quartet with Roger Cropper playing violin. Cropper had a great mop of hair and was very animated which distracted somewhat from the performance. It would have been 1970 or thereabouts.

        1. Peter Dyson conducted. Related to George, and my vacuum cleaner. The concert was promoted by Mildenhall and District Music Club, of which I was briefly the Chair. The evening was somewhat marred by Canon John Eley throwing a hissy fit because someone had the audacity to bring a (only slightly) noisy child to the concert.

    1. Anglo French enmity goes back to the days of The Black Prince and The Burghers of Calais.

    2. Good evening, Plum.

      Of course they don’t like us! Not only have
      we consistently beaten them in Battles and
      Wars, we have also rescued them from their
      own follies … that loss of patriotic pride is
      unacceptable to yer French!

      1. “…unacceptable to yer French cheese-eating surrender monkeys!”

        There, fixed it for you, little g.

  81. Fanny farts.

    Facebook apologises for banning users from mentioning National Trust beauty spot Devil’s Dyke after branding it ‘hate speech’

    1. There must be a fair few villages that can’t mention their names on Wokebook, I should think.

        1. Marsh Gibbon

          Eastern France is particularly rich in names that don’t translate well….Bitche, Asswiller, Willy spring to mind.

          2. And one should choose one’s words carefully, when referring to young males from Nancy.

          1. Even now, coming from the Newmarket side, turn left and you are soon into deepest and most tranquil Suffolk

  82. Harry’s war Silicon Valley: Prince blames social media for the Capitol riot and the ‘destruction of the Amazon’ and says we’re all part of a Big Tech ‘human experiment’ – while complaining about suffering ‘mothership of harassment

    oops, Harry may well have bitten off more than he can chew.

    He’s offending his hosts, he’s offending the Woke, and above all he’s queering his puppeteer’s pitch.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9177599/Prince-Harry-complains-Meghan-subjected-mothership-harassment.html

    2. To think that it is only a few years ago that many thought of him as the likeable young royal. Ah well.

      In the maelstrom following the resignationof the canadian governor general (she dared to shout at some staff members and made them unhappy) , some of the woke youngsters are suggesting that dear Harry would make a lovely GG.

        1. the mind does wonder at what they were thinking when they came up with that idea.

          The last tingthing we need is his wokeness as GG. With woke Trudeau doing his best to ruin the country, we need a tough GG who would say no to idiotic laws being sent for royal assent. I don’t suppose yer Donald is free is he?

          1. Would be worth it just to see the smug grin wiped off Trudeau’s face!

            Did the outgoing GG offend her staff? Was it a genuine incident, or a culture clash with younger workers?
            The culture among younger people is very different these days…it must be hard being a boss who is vulnerable to a twitter storm. Anyone could take offence at anything.

          2. When I did my final show we were allotted students to help prepare. Mine failed to show up before 10am, had the nerve to say I wasn’t there (I’d given up waiting as he was supposed to be there for briefing at 08.30 and there was no sign of him more than an hour later so I went into town to get stuff I needed) and then when I shouted at him for being late he came over all offended. Needless to say, he was completely and utterly useless and I had to do all the prep myself. No doubt he got a first (helping prepare a final show should have been part of his marks and I gave him a really poor report for bad timekeeping, being unable to follow instructions and spending his time chatting with his girlfriend when he should have been sanding the exhibition walls – all of which doubtless was totally ignored).

          4. Those who drew students from my year (a large number of whom were mature students) as helpers generally got a good deal.

          5. That culture clash is what I have been thinking but apparently before Trudeau selected her as GG, Julie Payete had been fired from two previous positions because of her management style.

            I wonder what they would have thought of our CEO, you hadn’t lived until you faced a barrage of muffin crumbs as he berated you during his second breakfast. Despite that mannerism he was the best boss we ever had.

          6. Ah, not such a good choice then. Unless you want to undermine the role of GG…no, that’s too Machiavellian.
            Not sure I could have lived with that mannerism!

      1. The Queen and Prince Philip ensured that Charles would have the best tutors and guidance whist he was at Trinity Cambridge.

        Glyn Daniel, the Cambridge Professor of Archaeology, was given the task of guiding Charles at Cambridge. I know this because the wife of one of my wife’s great uncles was Glyn Daniel’s Secretary and I recall she was most impressed to have been introduced to Prince Charles by Glyn Daniel.

        It seems that whilst Charles has been given a lot of sound advice throughout his life he has chosen to take the advice of obsequious charlatans. This can be seen most obviously in the truly awful mish mash of styles and kitsch developments at Poundbury.

        Edit: Charles appears to have passed on his poor judgement and lack of taste to his second son.

    1. Indeed.

      In 30 years time, I wonder whether the child will do a Hamilton or an Obama, and disassociate himself from one of the parents.

      1. He will be a well-adjusted conservative child, not a liberal, so I’m sure he can handle his parentage!

    3. Most of them gushingly congratulatory though.

      If you post stuff on Twitter for all the world to see… you can expect to attract the usual proportion (or rather more) of twits.

    1. I remember the sports field and the cricket pavilion from visits in childhood. Being a Brummie, it was work at Bournville, or Austin, Longbridge as a school leaver, I did neither, until much later, went to Longbridge.

    1. It took me about three minutes of hard work to see the stick people, rather than the prettily-dressed ladies.

      3. Thank you, Jeremy, now I see them.

        Funny, Mags, that so far it’s been us men who have difficulty.

  94. Interesting article on ‘smart’ motorways in the DT:

    Smart motorways trade ‘driver safety for lower costs’, police and crime commissioner says

    The key points, which the author, a police and crime commissioner describes as ‘flawed and fatal logic’ are the last three paragraphs:

    A spokesman for Highways England said its staff were “aware of the ongoing concerns” and are “working hard” to deliver the improvement Mr Shapps requested.

    – they actually lied to Shapps, because they claimed refuges would be far closer than they actually were, before he authorised their expansion.

    He pointed out how there were 27 fatalities and 100 casualties on hard shoulders between 2014 and 2017.

    There were 38 fatalities on ‘smart’ motorways between 2014 and 2020. However, ‘smart’ motorways account for less than 20% of the UK motorway network. Do the Math, as they say.

    Meanwhile, ‘managed motorways’ with gantries relaying speed restrictions and advice have led to fewer multiple collisions, fewer rear shunts, less tailgating or vehicles drifting across lanes and even reduced speeding

    Surely having gantries over motorways with hard shoulders would have the same effect?

    1. What are ”Smart Motorways” for ?

      To transfer huge sums of public money to friends and cronies in the private sector, some of which finds it’s way back to politicos.

      Same as HS2.

    2. Germany is full of smart motorways, and they don’t have these accidents – they must be keeping a better eye on the hard shoulders.

        1. If you break down on a German motorway, you are obliged to put a reflective triangle a good distance behind your car, which gives approaching motorists some warning. Plus they come down like a ton of bricks if you don’t have the emergency flashers on. Do the same regulations exist in Britain?

          2. I never heard of any! The first thing you do is dash back a hundred metres or so to set it up!

    2. The very last thing that vulnerable over 75’s need are threats from the BBC. These folk often live on the basic Old Age pension and can barely survive on its risible sum as it is. None of us want to see our hard earned cash and pensions wasted on the BBC which has failed to report news impartially for years snd decades ago.

      Meanwhile we are forced as licence payers to watch blatant political bias in reporting, distortion of the facts, and most recently and obviously perpetual lecturing about how evil we all are to not support ‘President’ Biden, a crook of the first water.

    3. Yo T_B

      Without the benefit of the BBC, how can the Wokers guarantee, that the ‘correct’ news is watched.

  96. Barmy Boros and Horrible Hancock announce lockdown to July 17 !

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/23/government-quietly-changes-law-give-councils-lockdown-powers/

    Which way does the wind blow with Boros and Co………

    Hancock and Klaus Schwab………..

    https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/956851034797891584

    Hancock and George Soros…….

    https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1075319635464081409

    Hancock and Bill Gates…….

    https://twitter.com/matthancock/status/1088390904858202112?lang=en

      1. ….. and there be kept in close confinement until Monday, when he shall be taken to a place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead.

        1. We live in an Age of Unreason where shysters and charlatans dictate rules to otherwise formerly free peoples.

          The very thought of quite how this intellectual minnow, Hancock, has risen through the ranks to become a Minister of State gives me a severe headache.

          It would appear that any idiot can be bought by the globalist elites and the pathetic Hancock character falls easily into that category.

          The tragedy for our country is that this example of base treachery is not alone.

          1. Problem is, the corruption is so deeply embedded in the very fabric of the political system, I can see no way of cleaning house, without civil disorder and violence.

            Certainly, such a fundamental change to the ethics of politics can never be brought about via the ballot box. All parties are “in it together” without exception.

Comments are closed.