Tuesday 16 February: Vaccination itself makes domestic vaccination certificates unnecessary

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/2021/02/16/letters-vaccination-makes-domestic-vaccination-certificates/

685 thoughts on “Tuesday 16 February: Vaccination itself makes domestic vaccination certificates unnecessary”

  1. Another Rose by That Name

    This handsome doctor gets a visit from a VERY gay patient.

    “Ooh, Doc,” says the gay man, “I’ve got a terrible pain up in my rectum! Have a look and tell me what’s wrong, will you?”

    “I know what you’re up to,” says the doctor, “you’re just after a quick thrill!”

    “No! Really! It hurts!” whines the flamer.

    “Oh, all right”, says the doctor as he pulls on the rubber glove. After poking around up the gay man’s backside, he feels something!

    “Well, I’ll be… No wonder you’re in pain”, exclaims the doctor, “Of all things, you’ve got a ROSE stuck up there… No… wait a moment… there’s a whole BUNCH of roses!”

    “Oh” the gay guy says, “Read the card! Read the card!”

  2. Oh, well, no-one here to barder my eek, so in the best tradition, I shall bog-off, Round The Horne, and make my way up the apples providing my lallies will support me.

  5. I was going to say “I’m first for once”, but I’m a long way back in the queue! ‘Morning, all!

    1. First, it was the government and the people against the virus.
      Now, it’s the government and the virus against the people.

    2. Much like the conflation of the EU and Europe, I notice that the Covid-19 is now coronavirus as per the common cold, seasonal flu etc.

      We will never be rid of coronavirus. Fact!

  11. “ Bird spotters who breached lockdown restrictions to catch a glimpse of a rare bird have been handed fines.
    The Northern mockingbird, not often seen in the UK, was first spotted by Chris Biddle in his garden in Exmouth, Devon, on 6 February.
    He tweeted about the sighting, prompting excitement among twitchers.
    Five were fined for travelling to the town to photograph the bird after Devon and Cornwall Police were contacted on Saturday over the lockdown breaches.
    In a statement, the force said: “It was reported that a number of individuals, suspected to have travelled from outside the area, were trying to photograph a rare bird which had been seen in a garden.”

    They’ll be up before the beak swiftly.

    Then they’ll be doing bird

    1. WTF is a “bird spotter”? Is that the news media’s attempts at belittling a popular and harmless pursuit? Shall we start to refer to journalists as “lie peddlers”? Or just “wankers”?

      2. Churnalists; they merely regurgitate their social media feeds as, for example, “The bBC has learned…” (other dregs of humanity are available).

        Investigative churnalism has sunk to the levels of having an obvious agenda/pre-written headline to support and editing any interviews to fit. See any ‘Panorama Special’ for details.

        Oh, good morning by the way. I wasn’t dragged up in a barn.

    1. It is a grey start here too, but something extraordinary has happened, which I have never in my life experienced before. The post has already arrived, which means I am reading my post over breakfast! Not sure what has gone wrong with their usual system of delivering at about 11:30.

  13. Good moaning. A cheerful piece to kick off the day:
    Melanie Phillips on Greenery Wokery.

    “The outage of sanity

    As Texas freezes in power cuts, the only sure renewable is climate madness

    Melanie Phillips

    Feb 15

    Britain’s prime minster Boris Johnson has said he wants to turn the UK into the “Saudi Arabia of wind” power.

    How enlightened. Or, in the circumstances, the literal opposite.

    As Texas and other southern American states are hit by ferocious snowstorms, millions have been left without heat or light. The Hill reports:

    Southern states dealt with widespread power outages, with Texas seeing the most with more than 2.8 million homes losing electricity as temperatures dropped, according to poweroutage.us.

    The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) moved to rotating outages on Monday morning, cutting off power to thousands of homes at a time to manage the high demand. “Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said in a release.

    But the power outages aren’t due only to high demand. As Anthony Watts reports:

    Ice storms knocked out nearly half the wind-power generating capacity of Texas on Sunday as a massive deep freeze across the state locked up wind turbine generators, creating an electricity generation crisis.

    Wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of energy in Texas, accounting for 23 per cent of state power supplies last year, behind natural gas, which represented 45 per cent, according to Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) figures.

    …At the same time the freezing temperatures were driving electricity demand to record levels, ERCOT reported while calling on consumers and businesses to reduce their electricity use as much as possible Sunday, Feb. 14 through Tuesday, Feb. 16.

    “We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. “At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units. We are asking Texans to take some simple, safe steps to lower their energy use during this time.” Capacity is expected to fall short of demand by as much as 20,000 megawatts today, while the National Weather Service in Dallas predicts record low temperatures between -6° F to 3° F for Monday night.

    … It is sad and ironic that in a state known for its huge petroleum and natural gas resources, the lack of reliability of wind power has brought the state to its knees in a time of crisis, not unlike that which California experienced in 2020 during record heat where wind and solar power could not keep up with demand and was near collapse.

    As I observed here, wind power and renewable energy present blackout risks because, as the UK National Grid has warned, they increase the “unpredictability and volatility” of the power supply. There have been many other such warnings.

    Surely only a totally recklesss, brainwashed or insane prime minster, state governor or other official in charge of the power supply to millions would ignore this?

    Speaking via video link to a round-table climate discussion at the UN in New York last September, Boris Johnson said that the UK held “extraordinary potential for wind”. The following month, he told the Conservative party conference:

    We believe that in ten years’ time offshore wind will be powering every home in the country…your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle – the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands.

    …Far out in the deepest waters we will harvest the gusts, and by upgrading infrastructure in such places as Teesside and Humber, and Scotland and Wales, we will increase an offshore wind capacity that is already the biggest in the world.

    Maybe the people of Texas might like to have a word with him.”

    2. Thanks Annie. Unfortunately nothing will persuade the greenie zealots just how increasingly precarious our electricity supply has become, thanks to the wholesale adoption of ‘renewables’. There will never be a substitute for a stable and reliable source, such as nuclear. Sooner or later we will all come to regret the bogus preaching of the eco-loons.

    3. Thanks Annie. Unfortunately nothing will persuade the greenie zealots just how increasingly precarious our electricity supply has become, thanks to the wholesale adoption of ‘renewables’. There will never be a substitute for a stable and reliable source, such as nuclear. Sooner or later we will all come to regret the bogus preaching of the eco-loons.

  14. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a79050702ab02a26e86a030529559b7b51c0e32a0601011ae93a54722567683c.png I’m left wondering just what that cretin of a rector’s motives were. Upsetting the natural order by removing a ‘pest’ (in reality, a wasp is a devourer of real pests) not only upsets the balance of nature—something modern man is very good at—but also creates unforeseen problems that need to be addressed.

    A similar occurrence to this happened at another time in North-West London. Schoolchildren were urged to collect wasps on the payment of a small fee for how many they caught and destroyed. Later that summer the pitch at Lord’s cricket ground turned brown as the result of an infestation of leatherjackets (crane fly larvæ). Those grubs had proliferated in a wasp-free environment.

      1. Morning, Nursey.

        To do that I’d have to be clearly as demented as are those who attend seances.

        1. In our yoof, Bill and I plus 4 friends were chatting one summer evening in our sitting room. The conversation turned to the supernatural and we jokingly called on the Devil.
          A bloody great black cat jumped in through the open window. It’s a wonder we didn’t have heart attacks then rather than 50+ years later.

    2. ‘Morning Grizz. I would like to think that we have made some progress in such matters since 1916…

      1. Or that the C of E has been populated by short-sighted fools for longer than we thought. I presumed the halfwittery of Welby and co. was a recent phenomena. (do do di do do)

  15. You’d only need a passport if the vaccine didn’t work…

    How else could you infect someone who’s had the vaccine?

    1. I would be astonished to be served anything that good in any NHS hospital. I assume it is a Paris-Brest but what is the connection with La La land, I have no idea.

      1. 10/10.
        French heart glue; ironically named after a competitive bicycle ride.
        The clue is the word ‘Brest’. Let’s face, the wokes don’t understand the word ‘niggardly’, so a missing letter ‘a’ isn’t going to be noticed.

          1. Ironically, maybe. Many professional cyclists have died because their hearts stopped when they were sleeping. They were taking EPO, a substance that increases oxygen absorption in the blood, facilitating more effort when cycling competitively. However, it makes the blood thicker, to the consistency of syrup. The heart gets gummed up and stops. “Heart glue” indeed.
            To stop riders dying this way, their trainers would wake them up every hour or so during the night.

      2. You are an old fuddy-duddy, blackbox2. Everyone knows that is a Paris-Chest dessert.

        :-))

        1. Ah, of course. Silly me!

          “Chest-feeding” has now entered our family’s vocabulary, but not with quite the meaning those people intended.
          A chest-feeding frenzy occurs when my children are at home and we’ve come back from the supermarket with Russian ice cream.

  17. Academics will be able to sue universities if their free speech is violated. 16 February 2021.

    Writing for The Telegraph, the Education Secretary warned of the “real and alarming threat” of censorship at British universities.

    One of the major legislative changes the Government plans to introduce would enable academics and students to seek compensation through the courts if their free speech has been impinged on.

    Morning everyone. Individual sues billion dollar industry over obscure point of law! One can see how successful that is going to be! One suspects that this anti-Woke campaign is nothing more than vote catching persiflage. The appointment of the “Free Speech Czar” can easily be mitigated by a similar manoeuvre to the recent BBC Chairman; much talk but just another docile apparatchik!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/16/academics-will-able-sue-universities-free-speech-violated/

    1. I imagine that the Free Speech Union will crowd-fund and sponsor a few cases, until the universities get the message.

    2. Can you imagine Jordon Peterson bringing a case against Cambridge University or even winning it if he did?

      What I would love to see is Anne Widdecombe bringing a case – and winning it – against The Women’s Institute who cancelled a talk she was due to give because she had the incorrect opinion of Brexit and the Conservative Party.

      1. I would like to see the fair Anne Widdecombe contesting Boris Johnson’s parliamentary seat at the next general election. She could found a new political party with the support of Tom Pearce, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, and Tom Cobley.

  18. Mail to YKW….

    What about Tony Blair PR and Marketing?

    Aren’t you concerned that Tony Blair of very suspect QinetiQ and Carlyle Group fame has been working with Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock for some time?

    What are they up to? I have a pretty good idea what’s happening.

    Mr Blair is a go between and is doubtlessly working for two parties simultaneously. He’s very close to Mr Soros and Mr Gates.

    The presence of Mr Blair working with the Conservative Party proves that “Conservative Woman” yesterday was right!

    I see Mr Blair’s close friend, Mr Mandelson, another go between, who also knows Mr Soros and Mr Gates is back as well as Mr Blair.

    How convenient, that is doubtlessly not a coincidence !

    Polly

  19. Opening paragraph of Tom Harris’ piece in the DT:
    “There really ought to be some sort of Scottish newspaper headline generator so that users can have some fun filling in the blank spaces after the words “Scottish ministers accuse UK government of…”
    Anyone remember the game of Consequences?

    Nicola Sturgeon
    met
    Peter Murrell

    He said to her
    “I want to screw you”
    She said to him
    “I want to screw Scotland”

    The Consequence was
    They took over the SNP

    And the World said
    “Can you grow bananas in Scotland?”

      1. I think they are equally unpleasant; at least by pairing up, they’ve saved two other people from a life of misery.

        1. You’re not wrong, Anne, Peter Murrell is a real nasty piece of work, a 24 carat shit.

          Lacking any kind of charisma, he’s always preferred to work behind the scene, pulling Wee Krankie’s strings to achieve his ends. Unfortunately for him, the major part he played in the attempt to “fit-up” Wee Eck Salmond on false sexual assault charges has been publicly exposed and now both he and his wife are in serious political trouble.

          1. Strangely, not serious enough. Evidence to the committee that they set up and chair has been edited, selected, redacted and withheld.
            The apparent conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by building a spurious case against Salmond goes uninvestigated.
            I mean, who appoints the Justice Minister, the Lord Advocate, and the Chief Constable, eh? Oh, it’s the First Minister, that’s all right then.

        2. Allegedly, Nipoleon’s former nickname was ‘Seaweed’ as even the tide wouldn’t take her out.

          1. Gawd, that reminds me of my one and only visit to Dunbar.
            Foetid seaweed sloshing back and forth along the harbour. And bloody cold and grey as well.

  20. Morning all

    Here are the vaccine letters

    SIR – A vaccine protects the recipient, so why should anyone who has received one worry about being near someone who hasn’t? Vaccine “certificates” to enter shops and pubs are therefore a ridiculous idea.

    Joe Greaves

    Fleckney, Leicestershire

    SIR – Allowing unvaccinated staff to work in care homes puts at risk the lives of residents, workers and visitors.

    For care workers, vaccination should be as much a condition of employment as turning up for work on time. We don’t permit airline pilots to fly while drunk on the grounds that demanding sobriety would infringe their liberties.

    Marion Shoard

    Strood, Kent

    SIR – Are consumers allowed to ask that anyone coming to their house (emergency plumbers, for example, or taxi drivers who take disabled people like me to get to medical and jab appointments) be vaccinated? Or is concern for our own health and welfare considered discriminatory?

    Anne Jappie

    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Travellers are far more likely to acquire mutant Covid in a quarantine hotel than abroad, especially with shared ventilation systems.

    Returning travellers would have grounds to refuse to put themselves in harm’s way in one of these facilities, and to go home instead and request GPS tracking anklets.

    Vaccinating returning travellers before entry into a quarantine hotel would also make good empirical sense.

    Dr Alexander Barber

    Camberley, Surrey

    SIR – It is reasonable for measures be put in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19, in particular of new variants that might enter the country. However, a cost of £1,750 might mean that many will be unable to afford to travel to attend a funeral or say a final goodbye to loved ones. New Zealand has a process by which these fees can be waived on compassionate grounds.

    Ruth Driscoll

    Marie Curie

    London SE1

    SIR – The Covid-19 virus spreads best in closed, unventilated spaces. So why do buses run without all of their windows open? It should be mandatory.

    Stephen Goldwyn

    London N3

    SIR – On our daily walk, I remarked to my wife that a sad aspect of our current existence was that I had become used to the closure of pubs, restaurants and “non-essential” shops.

    Back home, I read this in The Sunday Telegraph: “A senior government source confirmed that from March 8 people in England would be allowed to drink coffee on a park bench, or have a picnic with anyone from their own household.” What on earth has become of us in one short year?

    Ron Thomas

    Stroud, Gloucestershire

    1. Do Anne Jappie and Marion Shoard realise that you can still get and pass on the virus after having been vaccinated?

    2. Do Anne Jappie and Marion Shoard realise that you can still get and pass on the virus after having been vaccinated?

    3. Surely Marion Shoard meant to say “We don’t ban airline pilots from flying while drunk on the grounds that demanding sobriety would infringe their liberties.”

  21. Bowled over by a baby

    SIR – I am the sixth daughter of the 9th Lord Hawke (Letters, February 15).

    My father, the nephew of Martin, 7th Lord Hawke, who captained the Yorkshire cricket team, remarked that my birth was a maiden over.

    Prunella Servatius-Hawke

    The Hague, The Netherlands

    1. My grandfather was a farmer – he had bought several farms during the agricultural slump of the 1890s – and he desperately needed a son to carry on the business. He had 7 daughters. By the time his 5th. daughter was born, he was so cross that he stomped across the yard, and a harmless stag turkey pottering about and minding its own business, suddenly found itself being whirled around my grandfather’s head and making a splash landing in the duck pond.

  22. Former president is cooked over a fire while Vladimir Putin is kicked in the groin by Alexei Navalny in floats from Germany’s cancelled satirical carnival. 16 February 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34a99662d1d8e474b0be868f9ee5f027aa4d5ab0902bba80a5d708bbed23cc19.jpg

    Carnival floats mocking Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel feature in this year’s German parade which has been scaled back this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The former US President is depicted naked as a suckling pig above a fire, while Putin is kicked in the groin by his jailed critic Alexei Navalny.

    The Rose Monday parade in Dusseldorf normally attracts thousands of spectators who came to see the hotly-anticipated floats designed each year by Jacques Tilly, Germany’s leading carnival float designer.

    There is nothing humourous about these. They are all inherently nasty and one notes all suitably Woke!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9262181/Trump-roasted-fire-Putin-kicked-groin-Navalny-German-carnival-floats.html

    1. That Trump float is very, very nasty indeed, and is the result of four years of the German media consistently portraying Trump as some kind of sub-human.
      Shame on them.

  23. Sex and gender

    SIR – Ideology now trumps science at a legislative level, with the Maternity Bill referring to a “person” rather than a “woman”.

    Sex is biologically determined at the chromosomal level and cannot be altered. Gender, until recently, was always a synonym for sex.

    The theory arose that gender roles are socially constructed, so these roles can be altered (for example, who takes out the dustbins). Activists now assert that, instead of altering gender roles, gender itself can be altered.

    Such irrationality has resulted in the present ludicrous situation whereby so-called males may give birth in maternity wards and take maternity leave. This absurdity is the result of arguing from false premises.

    Jacqueline Block

    London NW11

    1. Ideology now trumps science at a legislative level…

      Ideology now trumps common sense Ms Block! Once the tenets of Feminism were accepted everything else became inevitable!

    2. A large section of yesterday’s ‘The Secret Life of the Zoo’ on More4 was about the zoo’s most proflic breeder, Seabiscuit, where we observed the male seahorse showing off his dad-belly to attract a mate to make him pregnant, followed by a fairly uncomfortable labour, where he gave birth to over 100 offspring, 90% of whom survived.

      I anticipate advances in genetic modification, so humanity can aspire to the new-improved form of breeding, and women can be rendered obsolete, except as wage slaves and egg donors.

        1. While I was trawling on my phone an hour or so ago I came across a ridiculous piece of tosh – someone “felt violated” when they read the ingredients list on Digestive biscuits. Apparently they include bicarb of soda and wholewheat flour. The name originally indicated that it was good for the gut function.

      2. Or, totally in the other direction, genetic modification to parthenogenic reproduction. Makes us males completely redundant.

  24. Sussex spotlight

    SIR – Do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex seek privacy or publicity?

    Their antics are tiresome.

    Dr Richard A E Grove

    Isle of Whithorn, Wigtownshire

    1. So is their title, Dr Grove. We residents of Sussex rue the day that Brenda settled on such titles. Zara Tindall seems to have managed quite well without.

  25. Article from the DM which may confirm my thoughts about Bill and my very different reactions to the vaccination:

    “On the other hand, if you have already been infected with Covid, you are nearly twice as likely to have side-effects after a jab, reveals data from the ZOE Covid symptom study, in which a phone app allows its 280,000 users to report infections, symptoms and vaccine reactions.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9263327/Why-effects-Covid-jab-actually-good-thing.html

      1. Pfizer is the mRNA.
        AstraZeneca is the old fashioned vaccine that uses dead viruses.
        To anthropomorphise the immune system, I think that if the patient has already had Covid, the immune system gets really shirty because it thought it had successfully zapped the lurgy first time round; so to make sure this time, it goes into overdrive. Putting a stake through the virus’ heart in a manner of speaking. Hence the patient feels really unwell.
        But that is merely my feeling based on observation in Allan Towers.

        1. OH had the Pfizer; I had the AZ – neither of us had any reactions. So perhaps the bug we had last winter was not covid after all.

          How is MB?

  26. It appears that the DT Letters Page comments facility isn’t working today – 8am and none posted yet, and clicking on ‘view comments’ makes the page freeze (it would normally say that there are no comments). Other articles have a similar problem.

    1. Yes, I noticed that.
      There is the little comment speech bubble at the top of the column, but the BTL section refuses to load.
      Maybe the subbies were out on a bender.

  27. Good morning from a less cold Derbyshire. 4°C in the yard but very damp and overcast with showers forecast with a bit of sunshine too.

    A Telegraph item reminds me that 20 years ago I was still trying to switch career into teaching. I was in the Science Staff Room at Yarborough School in Lincoln where I was on Teaching Practice when the news of the Foot & Mouth outbreak was announced.
    As the headline asks, I’d say we’ve not learnt a thing.

    20 years on from the foot and mouth disaster, have any lessons been learnt?

    Key figures at the heart of the crisis reflect on how the UK tackled the disease and why the current pandemic feels all too familiar
    By Charlotte Lytton
    14 February 2021 • 6:00am

    The pyres were everywhere: mounds of animals aflame in the countryside, the images burning across news bulletins and front pages. From Cheltenham to the Lake District, Northumberland and Devon, farms were fighting to beat back a virus that was swallowing up their livestock – one that would, as a report would later surmise, go on to “cause a national crisis… probably one of the greatest social upheavals since the war”.

    The first sign of the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak was a limping pig, spotted at an Essex slaughterhouse. Within months, six million animals had been culled, the general election delayed and an £8 billion hole blown in the UK economy.

    “The alarm bells were ringing,” recalls Paul Cheale, chairman of Cheale Meats, where the first suspected case arose 20 years ago this Friday (February 19). “But boy, did we not realise how loud they were.”

    Advertisement
    Hoping it was a case of swine vesicular disease, which shares some symptoms with foot and mouth but is significantly less serious, the positive diagnosis came 24 hours later; the slaughterhouse – and the nation’s farmers – were sent into a tailspin.

    The abattoir of 30 years standing was cordoned off; press poured into the winding lanes of Little Warley. “It’s strange to be the centre of attention like that, with everyone wanting answers,” Cheale, now 82, reflects. “I couldn’t give them.”

    Humans can’t catch foot and mouth, which affects cattle, pigs and sheep – the latter being asymptomatic. The last outbreak in Britain had been in 1967, while bovine spongiform encephalothopy (BSE, or Mad Cow Disease) had led to the slaughter of 4.4m animals in the mid-Nineties.

    The farming industry was used to weathering storms, then, but still “I didn’t realise – and I don’t think anyone else did – just how fast it spread,” Cheale says of the disease. “It seemed to spread in the wind.”

    By March 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture had ordered all sheep within two miles of a known case to be slaughtered; by the end of the month 90,000 animals were being killed each week , many by Cheale’s employees, who had been seconded to national culling duties.

    The Army was tasked with the “apocalyptic” job of burying hundreds of thousands of carcasses in disused airfields.

    “The logistics to handle this were the same as the logistics in the First World War. It was a massive operation,” says Sir David King, who had been Britain’s chief scientific adviser for a few months by the time the severity of the crisis became clear. At its outset, he was learning of the escalation through newspapers alone: “I thought ‘right, this is something I should be involved in’.”

    On assembling a group of experts, including the chairman of the Food Standards Agency and eminent epidemiologists, it was deduced the means of controlling the outbreak by that point had been “completely wrong”, having been based on analyses from the 1967 spread, which primarily affected pigs. This time, cattle and sheep were the vectors of disease. Britain could vaccinate, as the Netherlands had already done to control a small outbreak, or cull any farm found with the infection, as well as those around it.

    “In that way, you create a boundary around the farm that has the illness, and this immediately cuts back the spread of the disease,” adds King. “That’s what I said to the Prime Minister [Tony Blair] and he said: ‘Fine, you’re going to manage this pandemic.’”

    Which is King what did: presenting findings to the public via press briefings and travelling by helicopter to farms around the country by way of assurance that the epidemic was being handled – even though power struggles at the top between different government departments threatened to slow things down.

    The crowds of farmers King met, sometimes in the hundreds, were in disbelief that they were being ordered to set their businesses alight.

    “People’s livelihoods were literally burned before their eyes,” Eric Pickles, then MP for Brentwood and Ongar, told Parliament a fortnight after the outbreak was declared. “The sight of the smoke that rose over my constituency from a great cauldron on Monday was depressing; I am sure it will remain with me for a long time.”

    The Government offered compensation for the animals slaughtered, but the knock-on effects were severe: breeds reared for years to particular specifications suddenly extinguished, the European Commission banned British milk, meat and livestock, pig imports to the United States and Japan were blocked and overseas customers were finding business elsewhere.

    A spate of farmer suicides followed – three in the Welsh county of Powys within a matter of weeks soon after the outbreak began. By June, almost 8,000 agricultural workers had lost their jobs.

    Slaughtering on the Government’s behalf meant most employees from the abattoir in Little Warley could stay in work, but Cheale worried that he might never part with the grim association the outbreak being discovered there had wrought.

    It has not been definitely established where the first case came from but, Cheale explains, the mentality at the time was “someone’s got to be blamed”. This, he “and the trade” believe, led to the conviction of Bobby Waugh in 2002. The proprietor of the pig fattening unit in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, was found guilty of wilfully failing to alert officials that his animals had the disease. He was given an overnight curfew and ordered to pay £10,000 in costs. “It’s wrong,” Cheale says of the conviction, adding that Waugh was “a bit of a fall guy”.

    Both Cheale and King have seen significant echoes of the 2001 crisis in the current pandemic: “It’s remarkable how similar it is,” Cheale says.

    King sits on the Independent Sage group created last May and is dismayed by how little appears to have been learnt. Foot and mouth “was such a disaster, we started off managing it so badly, we never wanted to be in that position again. The trouble is that memories in government are not long lived,” he says.

    The 2001 outbreak ceased after six months, at which point King formed a foresight programme, made up of 345 global experts, to stop any future zoonotic disease (such as Covid) in its tracks. In 2006 they produced a report on their findings. “If you read that now you feel like crying,” he says.

    Britain’s advice, as King’s report made clear, is always to isolate fast. “With a pandemic of this kind, you have to get ahead of the disease,” he says of coronavirus. “Once it’s beginning to spread too rapidly, you can’t manage it.”

    Yet, by the time Covid was flourishing in other parts of the world, “we’d made zero preparations. It was as if it all took us by surprise. This is bound to detract from the standing and trust in science,” he says.

    That border controls remain a source of debate bewilders him, too: “100,000 deaths, and I’m telling you, that could easily have been reduced to 5,000.”

    Unlike foot and mouth, vaccination is now the only conceivable route out of the current crisis. But the 2001 epidemic left a bitter legacy – a report five years on found the economy in rural areas lagging far behind metropolitan parts of Britain, not to mention the lives and livelihoods lost. Most got back on their feet, eventually. As this pandemic rages on and a £300bn economic crevasse widens, we can only hope for the same this time around.

    1. The pig had been transported from Northumberland to Essex.
      Until then, few realised that so many small, local slaughterhouses had been closed by a deadly combination of EU diktats reinforced by British snivel serpents gold-plating the rules.

      2. I believe that British abattoirs were built with a clearance of 6 feet rather than 2 metres.

        The nasty minded sort of person who takes great glee in gold-plating rules loves being employed in a capacity which gives full rein to his petty administrative vandalism.

        Such people deliberately refuse to see that the fact the 2 metres is longer than 6 feet is irrelevant to either safety or efficiency and as a result many thriving slaughter businesses were destroyed to slake these nasty little meddlers’ lust which benefited the French greatly. Indeed, it is unimaginable that French busybodies would ever try to punish French businesses in order to profit English ones which is why Britain could not continue to be part of the tyrannical EU.

        Jeremy Taylor wrote a marvellous song about this sort of mindset and gave birth to a word which is now in common usage and appears with him credited for its etymology in the OED:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz44_Sp0K8A

      3. I read at the time (in Private Eye) that prior to the outbreak, abattoirs processing less that a given number of “units” would have to close. UK inspectors classed one litter of pigs as a unit but Germany defined one piglet as a unit, thus ensuring that their small local abattoirs would remain open, while those in the UK were closed.
        Consequently, British animals were shipped huge distances for slaughter. Madness.

    2. Animals were moved around the country. Sheep were transported hundreds of mile. Presumably to get the best prices. Vehicles were not cleaned after delivery, it was one load of animals out and another in. Farmers were not in the food business, they were in the subsidy business.

      1. There was one isolated outbreak at Belford near my Brother in Law’s farm which was put down to leakage seeping from the so-called “sealed” lorries taking the carcases of culled animals from the Scottish Borders into England for incineration.
        It was later revealed that the term “sealed lorries” simply referred to the lead or plastic anti-tamper seal placed on the lock mechanism of the lorry.

      2. I think you’ll find that animals were transported hundreds of miles because the local abattoirs had been closed down (due to onerous regulations).

        1. As well. The nearest abattoir to Northumberland is not in Wales. There were lots of things going on.
          One of the first farms in the Borders to get F&M was filthy. It isn’t very clean now.
          The disinfectant mats at farms and other places were around ten feet long. A tractor tyre is six feet in diameter, so the mats should have been (pi x 6) =21 feet.
          A completely amateurish shambles. Now repeated with people.

    3. Lessons will never ever be learnt.

      In this area , there a huge dairy farms similar to factories , the poor cattle are squashed and squeezed in , the calves are consigned to crates, rows of them , like tiny caravans on the side of the hills, the stench from the slurry ponds when the weather gets warmer makes one’s eyes water .

    4. I was working at Norwich airport at the time and the government placed a blanket ban on all items of meat and dairy produce being taken through airports and onto aircraft. It was a constant battle with passengers who “knew their rights” and demanded that such items be permitted to travel with them.

      One such idiot came through with two whole Stilton cheeses in his possession and he aggressively told me that I was not going to prevent him from taking them with him. After I’d stopped giggling and straightened my face, I advised him to get someone to come and collect them from the airport and take them away. In fact I offered him a number of alternative suggestions, each of which made him angrier. He then told me that if I refused to permit him onto the aircraft with the cheeses, then he would take them into the car park, break them up and feed them to the birds!

      At that moment I took possession of both cheeses and confiscated them. I explained that he would not listen to advice and there was no way I was going to permit him to throw such a substance all over the car park to attract rats. He then told me that he was going to get the police to arrest me for theft of his cheese. I pointed the way to the Special Branch office and invited him to be my guest.

      [And no, I did not take the cheese for my own use. I followed procedure and had it taken away for ‘confidential salvage’ (i.e. destruction).]

      It was a constant battle to try and assure passengers that my hands were tied over such rules but few were willing to listen and still they brought prohibited items with them. In the first three months of the sharp objects ban (following ’11/9′) we filled five dustbins with knives and scissors; and that is at just one small provincial airport.

      The public routinely ignored the sharp object rulings: they were certainly not going to heed any foot and mouth legislation.

      1. Good morning, Grizzly

        Whenever we go to Britain in a car we stock up with Stilton and other British cheeses that we cannot buy readily in France as well as Branston Pickle, bacon and ginger beer. Caroline also buys a year’s supply of tea because the tea sold in France is both too expensive and useless. She alsoos buys her and gluten free stuff as France is way behind Britain in offering such goods.

        I shall be very far from gruntled if officious officials use Brexit as the excuse to stop me buying British comestibles.

    1. Good morning Anne

      Richard Littlejohn is the voice of sanity , but sadly just a whisper in the dark, no one in power seems to be thinking the same things.

  29. Good morning – late on parade as I wanted to make a loaf before the power goes off.

    Thaw continues. Not much snow left. Temperature continues to rise.

  30. Trigger Warning – this column may contain opinions that DON’T offend you. 16 February 2021.

    Anyway, long story short, Rogue’s Rock — which is currently being repeated on the oldies channel Talking Pictures — has just fallen foul of the TV watchdog Ofcom, 47 years after it was first broadcast.

    But, curiously, Chubby Oates isn’t to blame. Ofcom has taken exception to an episode shown on Boxing Day which featured an actor in blackface. The regulator has launched a formal investigation after receiving just one — yes, one — complaint. If it is upheld, the channel, which was started by a father and daughter in Watford, could face a hefty fine.

    For the record, I’m not defending blackface. Or denying that the game has moved on since the 1970s. No one in their right mind would make Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language or The Black And White Minstrel Show these days.

    Well I wouldn’t object to Blackface and I would probably welcome The Return of the Black and White Minstrels. The reason for this action by Ofcom is that Talking Pictures is in its essence anti-Woke, it largely portrays a world prior to Cultural Marxism and is thus heretical. Ofcom, like its clone Ofsted, is not some neutral observer enforcing the rules, but an arm of the Woke Inquisition. The sooner they can put Talking Pictures out of business the happier they will be!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9263901/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Trigger-Warning-column-contain-opinions-DONT-offend-you.html

    1. There is nothing inherently bad about a white person blacking their face, or a black person whiting their face. Both are part of traditions in several different parts of the world.

      1. I wrote a very strong letter to the Joint Morris Organisation, which insures members of the Morris Ring, the Morris Federation and Open Morris, after an announcement that anyone found dancing in blackface is to be thrown out of the movement and denied public liability insurance. It is traditional in Welsh Border Morris, because soot is a cheap
        disguise and nothing to do with race, unless you count Welsh miners as
        an ethnic minority.

        I then heard on the grapevine that the committee was considering how to exclude me from future events, including Freaks in the Peaks weekends I attended the first of back in 1996.

        I welcome an investigation into Ofcom itself for proceeding with what is clearly a hate crime.

          3. As one respected black man put it: “Why would a cute young black boy want to willingly transform himself into an ugly old white woman?”

    3. My response that, no doubt, will be lost in the ether:-

      I am offended by being continually advised by Anti-White Racists that I have somehow benefitted from slavery, an activity that I’ve not only never indulged in or, so far as I am aware, any of my forebears, but one which a distant several times great-uncle died whilst boarding an Arab slaving dhow off East Africa during the efforts to stamp out the foul trade.

      1. The people who most benefited from slavery were the black slaves themselves who were effectively liberated by the whites when they were taken out of the hell holes that existed in many parts of Africa. They were the ancestors of people who are now far better off in the West than the descendants of black people who stayed in the hell holes.

        Much of the indigenous black population of Africa also benefited greatly from British colonialism because they benefited from the brief period of prosperity, peace and security that British rule gave them before the cruel chaos, genocide, plague, famine, endless civil war and anarchy returned in places like the Sudan after the British had left.

    4. Any time I have complained about anything, I’v been told to “get lost” as one complaint means nothing. It is hard to believe that there have been no complaints about “Mrs Brown’s Boys”, one of the vilest programmes around. Foul language is now compulsory.

      1. The first season was pretty amusing, haven’t seen any after that. If there’s something on you don’t like, switch channels and watch something else. I’ve always held the view that anyone who writes complaint letters to TV channels about the things they show must be a complete wazzock.

        1. Thank you. I don’t write to the TV channels*. They are the people who commissioned and paid for the trash. I watch little TV, except Steven Seagal films, of course.
          I was making a general comment about how some complaints are picked up and actioned because they fit the narrative, whereas hundreds of other complaints may be dismissed.

          *Naturally, that does not by itself mean that I am not “a complete wazzock”, which I suspect is not a compliment.

          1. I only watch TV at work. At home I stream films and shows or I watch something I downloaded as I thought it was good enough to keep. I watch what I want when I want. I pay for netflix and I use various internet sites for things I want to see that aren’t on netflix.
            I don’t mind a bit of Seagal either, though the earliest stuff is the best.
            I streamed a cracking show recently. It was called ‘A Discovery of Witches’. It’s based on a trilogy of books I haven’t read, but so far only two seasons. I guess the full story will finish next year but it was really good. I also watched ‘Two weeks to live’ which I highly recommend if you love quirky humour with your action.

    5. This is getting ridiculous now.

      Why can’t people accept that it was a different time when such things were perfectly acceptable.

      Christ as a kid I loved Freddie Starr and Jim Davidson. They both appal my kid!

    7. I reckon I would enjoy the Black & White Minstrel Show far more today than I ever did previously simply because I would know how many woke people it was very much annoying.

    8. How come they censor programs with white men pretending to be black but promote shows where men pretend to be women?

      1. or shows with black Ann Boelyns. I’m waiting for an enterprising film maker to make a film about Martin Luther King with Mel Gibson in the lead.

  31. Well that is a bit bloody annoying.
    Won one of Going Postal’s mugs on their crossword competition and it arrived this morning, with a broken bloody handle.
    Thank you Royal Mail.

    1. A man worked in a post office. His job was to process all mail that had illegible addresses. One day a letter came to his desk, addressed in a shaky handwriting to God. He thought, “I better open this one and see what it’s all about.” So he opened it and it read:

      “Dear God, I am an 83 year old widow living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had a hundred pounds in it which was all the money I had until my next pension cheque. Next Sunday is Easter, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?”

      The postal worker was touched, and went around showing the letter to all the others. Each of them dug into their wallets and came up with a few pounds. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected 96 pounds, which they put into an envelope and sent over to her. The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of the nice thing they had done. Easter came and went, and a few days later came another letter from the old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened. It read:

      “Dear God, How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your generosity, I was able to have a lovely dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day, and I told my friends of your wonderful gift. By the way, there were 4 pounds missing. It must have been those thieving bastards at the post office.”

      1. As the GP mugs are only ½pinters, it was always intended to go on display rather than use.

    3. You’re bloody lucky it turned up at all.

      The Royal Mail has been atrocious since it was privatised.

      1. …and since it is now a purely commercial enterprise, the ‘Royal’ should have been dropped on the day of the takeover.

        1. The German government owned delivery service in the UK, DHL, now has the Royal Warrant on its vans.

    1. You bet! Seehofer is a Bavarian, and he is not totally in favour of unlimited refugees reaching Germany (though he notoriously did nothing in 2015 when he was Minister-President of the Free State of Bavaria). He’s had “fall guy” written on his forehead since the moment he joined the Berlin government.

    2. My wife showed me an article in a Dutch paper which disclosed emails from Dutch government officials indicating they did the same thing. One wonders if it was orchestrated and if so, by whom? Brussels, perchance?

      (edited Ditch)

      2. 329476+ up ticks,
        Afternoon SSA,
        It does put content into there being a coloured ( black) network
        operating, money triggers actions, vast amounts of money can therefore chart a nations crooked course.

        Ps, The “ditch” you mention would that be regarding johnson and an abode he could be found at.

      1. …or in our case, will they let over 400 acres of good arable farmland be turned into gigantic ‘solar farms’ that neither produce food nor biofuel but generate about 0.01% of the total electricity requirement?

        We are protesting against ENSO’s ‘Bramford Solar Farm’ and EDF’s plans for another, closer to Bramford.

    1. A son in Texas has almost no heating. He has air con and it reverses to heat the house. However it is effectively air source heating, as required after 2025 in the UK.

      Air source heating & my son’s air conditioning do not work when the outside temperature is less than say 3 degrees C.

      Beware installation of air source heat pumps.

      Yesterday Houston minus 9C , Anchorage (Alaska) minus 8C

      1. You can get some that work at pretty chilly temps – tehre were some we saw working at -20C here, for example.

        1. Dimplex claims that their heat pumps work down to -20C, however in the real world they give up at -6C or -7C.

    2. This is why it’s really important that all houses have Smart Meters installed.

      Then the Government can make sure that the Elite still have power when the rest of the population are cut off.

      1. Thank you Bob as it means I don’t have to wonder if my computer is throwing a wobbly. It also means that the best part of the newspaper is not available.

    2. Announcement soon to appear:

      The Daily Telegraph very deeply regrets ever having opened a Comments section because, like all wokists and potential wokists, it hates people expressing their own points of view. Consequently the editor plans to make these sections as inaccessible as possible before closing them down completely.

      1. Having logged in on Best Beloved’s password to the DT and going to the letters, scrolling down to ‘show comments’ I find that there are just 12 as at 10:24. The earliest at 12:35 am (=00:35 hrs) and the latest (and last) at 03:34 hrs. Nothing since.

    3. Announcement soon to appear:

      The Daily Telegraph very deeply regrets ever having opened a Comments section because, like all wokists and potential wokists, it hates people expressing their own points of view. Consequently the editor plans to make these sections as inaccessible as possible before closing them down completely.

    5. You need to get with it, Dean; wake up and smell the ganja, dude! Comments are for wacko proles, man! Chill and feel the zeitgeist.

      1. Hey, Beatnik, the fake news website of the year needs comments, Dude. Restore the balance and let the robber barons know the peasants have had enough, hombre.

        1. We need to get all Wat Tyler (not to mention Robert Kett, George Loveless, Robert Catesby and even Robin Hood) on their sorry arses, Dude.

          1. Hey Beatnik. Welcome to the Reverse-Robin Hood World. Billionaire bankers get bailed out while ordinary folks that lose money courtesy of their activities get squat and pay taxes to bail out the billionaires, Dude. Rich investors back “Green Technologies” that toss poor folk into fuel poverty while reaping gazillions.

          2. Sounds like a plan, Man. If you can’t beat them. Right, now where did I put that Gieves and Hawkes waistcoat and cummerbund?

    1. Just had a lovely sunny walk to Cromford & back for paper, a bit of shopping and dropping some firewood off at my concentration points.
      After a dull start it’s been quite pleasant up here!

      1. Blowing a hooley up here and I’ve just come back from a recovery in it. Next doors hens keep laying the same eggs

    2. Glib and oily Mandy’s lies and mortgage I could not excuse
      Twice I sacked the sleazy bugger though his spittle shone my shoes

      [From a song by RCT c.2000 about Blair, the populist prime minister from a minor public school]

      He is still determined to cause as much grief as he can.

    3. I think he has succeeded in creating a Stake holder society…….with a lot of folks carrying stakes just in case…..

      1. 329476+ up ticks,
        G,
        That search was only a cover, the real target was
        was the long dead stiffened eel slab.

      2. 329476+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Bob,
        I tagged the lab/lib/con the coalition long ago, little chance of convincing the multitude though that a political name change via the polling booth means beneficial changes regarding the peoples / Country’s welfare, far from it.
        As we are witnessing the coalition have their own agenda and that agenda is supported by the peoples regardless of consequence.

        The facts are there , recorded to be checked.

      1. You’re welcome to mine (even though I don’t have any). I loathe the stuff. Now, Tia Maria and Warninck’s Advocaat (I know, controversial) are yummy!

        1. I love Tia Maria too mmmmmm and Benedictine.

          Bailey’s is good, but not quite as good as a perfect egg nog but the guy I knew who made it died before I learned how, then i discovered Bailey’s, then it didn’t seem to matter. I haven’t had egg nog since my friend passed away.

          2. Theres a joke there somewhere.
            How do you make an egg nog?
            Throw it down the Alps doesn’t work

          3. Try a ‘shot’ that I invented when I was running a nightclub.

            Fill a small shot glass almost to the top, then over the back of a spoon, slowly pour a little Bailey’s so it floats on the top.

            Named Baby Guinnes from its appearance but it tastes line Tiramisu in a glass.

      2. A variation on a real drunkard’s drink that uses Irish Whiskey and cream as opposed to Brandy and milk.

      4. I had the recipe for making home-made Bailey’s. If I remember correctly, it used cream and Fussell’s condensed milk as well as other ingredients. It tasted identical to the real thing, but you had to finish it up within a few days before the cream went off.

    2. That is a real experience from a holiday way back in yer sarf of France. I and two friends went camping for two weeks. Every morning, for breakfast, we had Bailey’s on our cereal because we had no fridge to keep any milk.

  40. What a ”coincidence” that Davos billionaire stooge Tony Blair is now in with the Conservative Party pulling the strings of Johnson and Hancock…. and Davos billionaire stooge Lord Mandel of Fondle is back at the same time pulling strings in the Labor Party !

    This is almost certainly the Davos billionaires moving their messengers, go betweens, double agents and chess pieces into position to ensure the Davos writ rules Britain……. and as part of the billionaire game, naturally all team players become extremely rich………

    Splashing out hundreds of billions on useless HS2 and useless tunnels to NI have loads of opportunity to divert a few bil to those who really matter, just like the rock bottom price sell off of 750 government buildings to Soros, selling gold at rock bottom price for friends and cronies shorting profits, and rock bottom sale of QinetiQ loaded up with $7.5 billion at the last minute to Soros in Tony Blair’s Nu Labor days !

    This is Deep State at it’s ultimate and finest !

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99d7f67a418e6ca5d99c29a375e4f7c5bbaba94766f3934006d2b1df6bdd7f4d.jpg

    1. Is there somewhere I can apply? I can carry a briefcase, deliver messages, that sort of thing.

      1. Call Tony or Fondle on 666 666 666… they’ll fix you up..

        Worked for Boros and Hancock !

  41. Where is Sue Macfarlane?

    Did ye no see the photo of me pease puddin’ that I put oot for ye, yesterday, hinny? It were canny scran! 👍🏻

    1. Yer pease puddin’ looked a funny colour .. it wasn’t yellow and it wasn’t green .

      I wondered what it was .. thought it was a lump of brawn 😉

    3. OK bonny lad! Ah fund it! Looks grand but I do need to ask what pulse you use? Is it split green or yellow peas? Do you boil them in ham/bacon stock and do you add butter?

      1. Why-aye, bonny lass. Every Christmas I buy a boiled ham that comes in a plastic bag and is surrounded by a jellified ham stock. I boil the yellow split peas in that stock seasoned with a little black pepper. I then soften a finely chopped onion in a lot of butter and then stir it into the pease pudding. Finally, I add some small dices of ham and mix them in. When cold, I eat some (well, you have to try it) with slices of ham, hard-boiled egg, a few pickles and some salad (occasionally I have some chips too). I put the rest of the pease pudding into small plastic containers and freeze them.

        When I make mushy peas, I always used whole dried green peas and soak them overnight first in boiling water with a teaspoonful of bicarb. The next day I rinse them off and boil them in clean water. I do not season them until mushy (frequently scooping off the floating skins from the pan) and I only use salt and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar (to replace the natural sugars lost when they’ve turned to starch before the drying process). These are best served with fish and chips, steak and kidney pie, or with a roast lamb dinner with mint sauce.

        1. Coincidentally, just yesterday I was on the phone to my 88 year old second cousin Anne, and we were discussing pease pudding recipes, as I’d just made yellow split pea soup! Your recipe sounds fab and I might just have to nick it! I loath mushy peas, but really appreciate your effort!
          So, do you eat it nine days old?

          1. Pease puddin’ hot.
            Pease puddin’ cold,
            Pease puddin’ in the pot
            Nine days old.

            Home made mushy peas are a million times better than the travesty served by most chip shops.

  42. On the off chance nobody else has, I wish you all:

    Happy Pancake Day, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday

  43. Alan Frost writes – “I have abstained for the past 11 months from most of the things I love. What can I possibly give up for lent?” Well here’s my suggestion…stop writing stupid letters to the DT

    1. I’d rather Philip Duly go first. He has no idea what he’s talking about, especially zero rated VAT items and about the costs of the self employed (which someone in the DT [can’t remember who] explained very well as regards things like sick and holiday ‘pay’).

    2. Seeing as Lent starts not long after the end of the Dry January that some fule invented, they could give up giving up.

    1. Michelle from ‘Allo Allo’: “Now listen carefully. I will say this only once…”

    2. Michelle from ‘Allo Allo’: “Now listen carefully. I will say this only once…”

    3. I guess that the bomb making was a success, but they obviously didn’t follow H&S guidelines for the demo.

    5. From the language the report initially used, I thought these ‘experts’ were some naive fools been conned or kidnapped into working for them, rather like the scientist Yinsen from the first Iron Man film…’experts! experts!’

  46. Whilst the ‘No comments’ issue appears to be affecting the following and many other articles, I dispaired at the attitude of Celia Walden (too much inlfece from he husband, methinks):

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/not-stamping-rights-bring-vaccine-passport-trying-save/

    She makes such stupid comparisons to not breaking rules and laws when they involve a person NOT doing something and especially doing noting to themselves that may or may not impact their long term health, whereas taking a vaccine that (unlike EVERY ordinary medicine in the UK for DECADES) has only been trialled for short term side effects and not for 5-10 years is the opposite.

    The civil liberties ramifications as regards anything other than foreign travel are just as bad, given the vaccine passport (to get into a pub/restaurant, cinema/theatre or sports event, or God forbid a supermarket/other essential shop) is the equivalent to ‘show me your papers or else!’, which is patently NOT the same as not breaking the speed limit, or going through a metal detector at an airport.

    Unless and until long term testing of the COVID vaccines are complete, I won’t be taking one. I will (proverbially [for the US Dem types]) fight this tooth and nail to stop ANY kind of COVID passport for any activity within the juristiction of the UK government. And I don’t care if they try and wheedle out of responsibility by saying ‘the private sector set this up themselves as private businesses’ – especially after they are blatantly encouraging them to do this.

    Any Tory MP that doesn’t stand on my side of this publicly will never get my support again, and I will do my damnedest to see they are ejected from office at the earliest opportunity at the ballot box (not to allow Labour in) – and permanently.

  47. In London 35% of healthcare workers have still not taken up the vaccine despite being offered it.

    20% of all the people who have died of COVID contracted it whilst under the tender care of the NHS.

    But let’s not let people play sport outdoors eh?

  48. Well, what do I say, except a Very Big Thank You to NOTTLers.
    Just as I was about to whisked off to Sarf Essex to collect Willum, the door bell rang and a lovely bouquet arrived.
    For once, I’m lost for words.
    (“Phew,” say the Massed Ranks of NOTTLers)
    When we return from the architectural gem that is Basildon Hospital, I will post a bulletin.
    Thank you, again for your kindness.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3741f5499d3236d88d437588d0b8f10154216ba62b5a6ba36d2820d878b26cf8.jpg

  49. Phew – power back on (three hours ahead of schedule). You don’t half miss it when it isn’t there…

    Anything happened while I have been mute?

        2. 🎼🎶🎵
          They called the bustard Stephen,
          They called the bustard Stephen,
          They called the bustard Stephen,
          ‘Cos that was the name of the ink, Quink Quink!
          🎶🎵

    1. Letters BTLs were open to read a few minutes ago, but got a fault message when I tried posting one.

      1. Only about 14 comments, they really are censoring comments.

        Another article also has just around a dozen comments. Trouble at t’comment mill.

        1. Look at the times posted, all in the small hours.
          I think it’s more a foxtrotted system than censorship.

    2. I suppose it’s funny that he doesn’t seem to understand the reason for Europe’s low vaccination rate is precisely because of the EU. His solution is, as is usual for him – more EU.

      It’s a bit like lopping off an arm and blaming the knife.

  51. 329476+ up ticks,
    Never despair johnson and co won’t leave you a floundering as he did with the UK fishing industry,

    breitbart,

    Verhofstadt: EU President’s Vaccine ‘Fiasco’ Has ‘Ruined Ties with the UK’

    2. Is the general public THAT stupid or their will has been broken for them to believe this sort of cr@p is OK?

  53. The huge BBC website main headline of the moment appears to be about some kind of family disagreement in some Middle Eastern place nobody could point out on a map. In this country this would be called a “domestic” and if police attended they would simply ask those involved to “keep the noise down”.
    I’m fed up with squirrels and trivia, irrelevancies, and social media mush being pumped out by the BBC in spaces that should contain news. On the other hand, I do.not suppose that anyone at the BBC knows what is “news” any more.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

    1. I clicked on your link and found this horrible story

      A mountain rescue volunteer has said saving a colleague who suffered life-changing injuries in a fall was the worst mission of his career.

      Chris Lewis, 60, suffered severe spinal injuries when he fell 500ft (150m) in the Lake District on 6 February.

      He was part of the Patterdale Mountain Rescue team going to the aid of two campers from Liverpool and Leicester after one fell ill.

      Both campers have been fined £200 for breaching coronavirus lockdown rules.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-56081225

      1. Yes. It was on the local news. Volunteers risk their lives to rescue stupid people. Even experienced mountaineers, fully equipped, think twice before going up in the hills and mountains at this time of year, especially. Weather can change in a trice.
        Nor are they insured, to pay for the rescue and any subsequent costs such as a lifetime pension for any volunteer badly hurt.

    1. So typical of modern government that the first thing the Covid Recovery Group does is design brightly coloured visuals and slogans.

      1. What was the name of the political party that Chuka Upper and Anna Sourberry founded and which lasted a whole 5 minutes?
        It had three black lines as its logo.

          1. The invalid is sitting in the adjoining chair and catching up on emails and news.
            It would worry him stiff if I suddenly went all caring.
            🙂

  55. 33 cases of ANOTHER new Covid variant are found in UK: Scientists identify strain linked to travel from Nigeria with the same mutation as South African and Brazilian versions that makes jabs ‘slightly less effective’

    The strain, called B.1.525, has been spotted 33 times already but experts say this could be an underestimate
    The variant carries the E484K mutation found on both the South African and Brazilian coronavirus viruses
    And it also shares similarities with the Kent strain, which is up to 70 per cent more infectious and deadlier
    The B.1.525 variant was first detected in Britain in mid-December — but this doesn’t mean it evolved here
    It has already spread to 11 countries including the US, Canada and Denmark, which are not on UK’s ‘red list’
    It has been linked to travel to Nigeria, where 24 per cent of coronavirus samples analysed were the variant
    For comparison, the UK has only found it in 33 of 70,000 genomes sequenced, or less than 0.4 per cent
    By LUKE ANDREWS HEALTH REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE

    PUBLISHED: 10:42, 16 February 2021 | UPDATED: 12:36, 16 February 2021

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9265045/UK-spots-33-cases-Covid-variant.html

      1. And as the great poet, John Milton, wrote:

        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….

        1. Dumping your responsibility on to big state is a lot easier than shouldering it yourself. Much like people who seem to need a sign to tell them where to park, or not to smoke, litter, spit, steal…[insert endless series of poor behaviour] much easier to blame than accept that you’re at fault.

          This happened much around 1999-2000. Suddeny everything was someone else’s fault and ‘Oi got my woights!’ took precedence over ‘that is my duty’.

        2. Dumping your responsibility on to big state is a lot easier than shouldering it yourself. Much like people who seem to need a sign to tell them where to park, or not to smoke, litter, spit, steal…[insert endless series of poor behaviour] much easier to blame than accept that you’re at fault.

          This happened much around 1999-2000. Suddeny everything was someone else’s fault and ‘Oi got my woights!’ took precedence over ‘that is my duty’.

          1. Yep. The more we are kept locked up the less we are able to become resistant to the virus.

            It’s utterly pointless, but government was given a frightening number and reacted accordingly.

        3. We enjoyed today’s news that six asylum seekers housed in British Army barracks are suing the Government as their accommodation is

          not good enough.

    1. I am sick to the back teeth of every time I listen to the radio about cv some group is claiming inequality. There may well be an inequality of outcome, but there is no conscious (or even unconscious) inequality leading to a worse outcome for some groups. The entire message is that if you are white male and stale, its your fault you have survived and others have not. Of course, there are more male deaths than females but I’m sure that won’t stop the bleating.

      2. It may have something to do with the amalgam of white races producing a tough and superior human being?

      3. Recently the boss of KPMG told his staff to stop whining and playing the victim card.

        The Board fired him.

    2. I feel there is probably some connection to “Indians less likely than white people to take covid jab” too. If you know that your rellies back home are having remedies, why would you take the risk of the jab?

      The Daily Mail managed a whole article on the mystery of why India has so few deaths without mentioning Ivermectin or HCL once!

  57. 329476+ up ticks,
    At least we can be thankful for one thing surely, this virus has stopped ALL other maladies dead in their tracts.
    You phone up the surgery and say you are suffering a major fall of farmer giles you are likely to hear them say, “Yes we have had our eyes on that strain of covid for some time”.

  58. BREAKING NEWS

    Secretary of State for Health, Mad Handjob, has issued a statement advising all those susceptible to infection by Covid-19’s Brazilian variant, to wear a merkin at all times.

  59. Is Starmer for real or is he a cardboard cut-out pretending to be an Opposition ‘leader’. He and his party have been clamouring for months for harsher lockdowns and then the prat comes out with this tosh. If ever a government presented a succession of open goals and the Opposition ‘leader’ missed them all…

    https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1361634851154198530

    1. Perhaps Starmer could start by telling his far-left buddy, Khan, to stop destroying our (not Khan’s) world-class tourist destination, namely what used to be the most revered capital city in the world.

      1. He’s a lawyer. IMHO, the nearest he gets to ‘doing actual business’ is when he goes to the toilet.

  62. DT Story

    ‘Deep regret’ EU’s vice-president says attempt to stop vaccines getting to Northern Ireland a mistake
    Maros Sefcovic says commission ‘has learned the lesson and will do its utmost to protect peace in Northern Ireland’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/02/16/eus-vice-president-deeply-regrets-attempt-stop-vaccines-getting/

    “These are but wild and whirling words” as Hamlet said

    ‘Fool me once- shame on you; fool me twice shame on me‘ as most sensible Nottlers would say. We were not born yesterday.

    So what is Maros going to do to win back our trust? Stopping all the customs mischief at the borders would be good for a start but I doubt if he would be prepared to do that!

    (I can’t get into the Comments section to make a BTL remark. I think that the DT is soon going to ban comments altogether once more.)

    1. Good afternoon Rastus, what likelihood that the buffoon or his government will dare suggest that the EU cease such mischief?
      It is not for Maros to win back my trust, he never had it in the first place, just as the buffoon never had it.

    2. The DT has seemingly had problems all day today with reader comments facilities ‘not working’. I’m sure that’s going to be their go-to excuse from now on when comments mysteriously vanish or aren’t allowed at all.

      1. I suspect it’s an issue with Lyvefyre, which hosts the DT comments (like Disqus does here). It’s possible to see comments on a few pages (the Letters being one), but the last visible post was made around 3 am…

        1. After several minutes, mY PC decided to open up the comments – all 12 of them. Obviously Matt Biddlecombe had nothing to do at 2am or so, having been one of the ‘lucky’ ones able to post a comment.

          1. This site was founded when the DT ditched comments via Disqus. At the time, it was generally assumed that the Barclay twins had been pressured by No. 10 to silence the overwhelmingly Eurosceptic voices below the line.

            It later became clear that the cessation of Disqus comments was purely based on the cost of moderating them. This was confirmed in a telephone conversation with a former DT journalist – initials AG – (on a totally unrelated matter).

            Here, moderation is done entirely by half a dozen committed regular posters. For the love of it. We should be grateful.

          2. Yet another big mistake by the DT – they were willing to accept thousands on non-paying ‘guests’ – mostly trolls – who proceded to leave a huge amount of either carp or nasty comments each day, then decided in March? of last year to ditch the ’20 free articles per week’ for them because they finally realised that each troll stayed on just one article per day, some posting hundreds of vile or propaganda (either Ruskie, Chinese or Momentum) comments.

            Not sure what the DT now uses – an algorithm plus a few mods – given some comments sections get removed completely (some never to return for certain ‘journalists’) after genuine readers absolutely slate them – even if done so without being nasty.

            At least here we can discuss ‘issues’ with you guys, whether actual topics or problems we have when debating an issue. Far more civilised. I’m still surprised that so many people still put up with the carp on the DT when, using a few sleights of hand, you can read DT articles FOC, even if that means not being able to comment directly and having to do so here.

            The DT comments sections really went downhill after Disqus was dropped. I remember Lord Tebbit commenting as such, because he couldn’t follow discussion threads any more, having to scroll down an entire comments area to find one he was using an hour ago. Still, not as bad as the Mail’s system. Waste of time commenting there.

            Guido Fakes has sadly gone a similar route – their autocensor is even worse than the Telegraph’s, actually deleting or shadow banning (saying it is ‘being moderated – for hours, by which time the comment has lost all impact) comments that are considered ‘edgy’ (which actually are just very critical/lengthy) – especially those criticisng the website for their seeming change of tone towards being more ‘establishment-friendly’.

  63. Dear All,

    Bill was discharged today. He is now sitting in HIS armchair in the breakfast room with a very chuffed Spartacus gazing adoringly up at him.

    The nutritionist made no dietary recommendations because, given Bill’s rapid recovery and his advanced age when he had the ‘episode’, whatever he was eating seemed to be just fine.

    There will, of course, be follow-up appts. I think the NHS budget is now sitting on Bill’s desk in his office. Not for too long, we hope.

    I will keep you all posted.

    p.s. Thank you for Bill’s card and balloon. He was really took aback. I hope it doesn’t encourage him to try another spot of attention seeking! 🙂

    3. So pleased to hear things are improving, hopefully the stent will having him vaulting five bar gates in a trice. ( I originally typed “in a jiffy” but I had a sudden premonition that our resident pedants would say I was implying Bill would undertake this sport in nothing but a small padded envelope) { double checks imply/infer – bite me whatever}

    4. I hope you’ve made him a nice mug of tea/coffee/cocoa. 😊👍🏻

      More hugs coming from Skåne!

      1. He has coffee and some basic buns that I made this morning.
        His preference is for childhood cakes.

      1. Nah, she’s a nurse, she’ll wake him up at all sorts of strange times just to check all is well…

        1. 🙂 I have had people ask if I’ve been sleeping all right these past few nights. The disapproval when I admit I’m sleeping normally is palpable. “Hard Hearted Hannah” is the unspoken comment.
          Quite frankly, I was just relieved that knowledgeable people were dealing with a problem that was well outside my expertise.

          1. Glad to hear you’ve been able to sleep. A good night’s rest is important for your well being. MOH got up at 03.00 this morning, left the landing light on, attracted the dog’s attention and I had to get up to investigate because I heard the dog fall down the stairs! Fortunately, he must have been okay because he took himself into the dining room and settled on his mat.

    10. Glad to hear, however, not been around so much lately, so I am not too sure what precipitated the hospital stay. But I am sure he is in very good hands with Nursey in charge!! Take care yourself.

    12. Great news Anne! You must both be delighted to be at home together! And so soon after the trauma! Best wishes and love to you both. 💕

    14. Glad to hear it.

      By the way you posted a photo of you both in a pub I think in London. Which pub was that if you recall? It reminded me of my one time watering hole The Red Lion on Whitehall – Parliament Street – Cannon Row.

      1. It was Whitehall, but not the Red Lion. It was closer to Trafalgar Square. I think it was a cafe rather than a pub.

    16. Hopefully the balloon wasn’t one of those designed to shower the recipient with glitter? I had one of those when I was in Frimley Park having my legs pruned. Fortunately, I twigged. The box weighed rather less than an empty box of its size. I opened it in full ‘bomb disposal mode’…

    17. That’s good to hear. Hope that’s all the health scares you’ll ever experience done and dusted now!

  64. We woke up this morning to find that the central heating was not working. The boiler was in “Lock Out”. I tried pushing the start button a couple of times, but it wouldn’t work. The next thing to be done was to check for fuel. As there is no gauge on the oil tank, this entails climbing over the wall onto the top of the tank and dipping in a long bamboo cane. Plenty of fuel. I made a phone call and this afternoon the man from the heating company came and fixed the boiler
    There was a sprocket broken and that had prevented the fuel pump from working. Warm again…

      1. Same problem here with hot water.

        I will pay for skill and knowledge – £80 an hour is high, but acceptable. The £120 we were charged for the first hour was just profiteering. The part, available commercially for £150 (rounding up to give a 20% profit and including postage) they charged me double that and an hour’s work when it took the chap barely 20 minutes.

        The company was gascare in Southampton. I felt ripped off, and that’s becoming prevalent. I won’t use them again, ever.

        1. When my business was installing wiring and fuse boxes for Bars, Pubs and Nightclubs i would work out what parts were needed then triple the price. Add 25% and that was what they were charged. They seemed happy.

        2. Talking of being ripped off – I recall, back in 1996 when I was a lowly junior draughtsman (before becoming an engineer), our plotter printer was on the fritz, so we called out a repairman. Cost – £150. The problem – the carriage rail was greasy and needed a wipe with a tissue to ensure the print head moved smoothly across. Time spent – less than 5 minutes. Nice work if you can get it. I was paid £10k p.a. at the time.

          Lesson learned. Also – when wiping the rail, be careful of the data ribbon attached to the print head – the edge of that plastic part is VERY sharp and WILL cut your hands.

          1. I may be the only retirement bungalow resident in the entire world who has a full size commercial colour laser printer / photocopier. It’s in a handy store room which Alexa knows as the Print Room. I do the printing for the parish (when we’re allowed to meet). After years of p1ssing money up the wall on HP toner cartridges, I bought a full-size machine on eBay, for not a lot. These things cost thousands new, but they’re generally leased. After five (ish) years, they tend to be sold on for peanuts. So the current machine is the fourth. Eventually, they die. The hard part is disposing of them.

            Anyway, my point is that I very occasionally need the services of an engineer. Last time was three years ago, and the callout cost us £75. You woz robbed… :-((

          2. Ahem….

            I also have a bungalow in which i reside retired. I have an HP Laserjet printer 5550 DTN.

            It’s about the size of a large washing machine and weighs 55kilo.

            Bought for notalot and never had any trouble with it.

            So there !

        3. Just checked them out at Companies House. A friend had p1ss poor / rip off service from a South Coast based company a few years ago. Wondered whether they might be the same people. They are not. Reviews on Google are instructive, though… :-((

      1. We used to have one of those (a Watchman), but it threw a hissy fit and refused to work. We now have a system similar to yours (the dippy cane).

    1. The Chinese will eat anything. Now, if we could persuade them to try cannibalism, the world population could be reduced…

    2. The emphasis on bats reminds me of all those churches ruined by bat droppings. But of course bats, unlike the churches and their congregations, are a protected species.

      1. Bats are a nuisance but can be deterred with bat boxes and special roof tiles.

        In my experience the single worst threat to churches comes from pigeon droppings. When working on churches my first Architect’s Instruction usually contained the words: ‘Shoot the pigeons’.

    3. From the article:

      UK researchers used machine learning to predict associations between 411 strains of coronavirus and 876 potential mammal host species.

      Their machine learning model integrated characteristics extracted from genomes, such as protein structure, as well as ecological and other traits.

      The authors acknowledge that their results draw on limited data on coronavirus genomes and virus-host associations, and that there are study biases for certain animal species, all of which present uncertainty in the predictions.

      …. just another load of old bollocks then, much like Ferguson’s notorious “models” for predicting epidemics and about as valuable.

      2. What you don’t know is that the machine was programmed with only one question:

        What don’t the Chinese eat?

        And answer came there, “None”

  66. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fadf91b4382430c2b4fac5d914f0e094099eefb7f07045aebff3c9de6c74b664.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2200bff426ab67565a4d55087aa4e4bd016ba94f0154081eee184a09f47d6a89.png How Derbyshire bobbies dressed for, and coped with, the winter weather back in the 1950s (when I were nobbut a sprog).

    I wonder how today’s indoor, snowflakes excuse for bobbies, would cope with this sort of weather in their black blouses and baseball caps?

          4. I have but I’ve never had one. I’ve had many a Yorkshire fritter (or fishcake). Two thin slices of a large spud, with a small fillet of cod sandwiched within, then dipped in batter and deep fried.

          5. I was in a chippy in Northampton once and asked for a pea fritter. They looked at me as if i was mad.

  69. A Scotsman, a Welshman and an Irishman were having a drink in a pub (where else?).

    The Scotsman said, “When my son was born we decided to name him after a special day; so we called him Andrew, after St Andrew’s Day.

    The Welshman replied, “That’s funny we did the same; we called our son David, after St David’s Day”.

    The Irishman then spoke, “What a coincidence, we did the same. Have you met my son, Pancake?”

    3. Round my way, we’re due 17degC weather within the next week. Positively barmy! And what do we read from the papers about this? Beware of nasty hayfever.

      ((facepalm))

  71. These HAVE to be parodies,right?? please god right??

    “In a sense, the premise of the neostructural paradigm of discourse holds

    that the collective is responsible for outdated perceptions of society, but

    only if Marx’s critique of nationalism is valid; otherwise, Foucault’s model of

    Lyotardist narrative is one of “capitalist rationalism”, and therefore

    intrinsically impossible. An abundance of desituationisms concerning the role

    of the participant as artist exist.

    It could be said that the primary theme of the works of Madonna is the

    genre, and eventually the failure, of postdialectic reality. The premise of

    nationalism suggests that culture is capable of truth.

    But Parry[2] holds that the works of Madonna are not

    postmodern. Sontag’s analysis of the capitalist paradigm of discourse implies

    that society, paradoxically, has intrinsic meaning, given that truth is

    interchangeable with sexuality.”

    https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

    And

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c6a222edca05b0d9699d85c43fb2309b47241b80eb85c59fa3f3cd811b2595d3.png

        1. “It could be said that the premise of pretextual rationalism states that reality has significance.”
          Does that mean the world was more real before mobile phones?

          1. No, it means that it only seems that way, though that in itself may only be an existential illusion.

      1. One of the partners in the first architectural practice I worked with resembled William Morris, founded a school in South London for his spoilt brats based on Summerhill and the methods of A S Neill viz. the kids left alone can decide for themselves what lessons to attend and be as slovenly as they wish.

        At our meetings with the Crown Estate Commissioners in Carlton House Terrace he would display a copy of some Communist rag such as Freedom wedged into the back pocket of his trousers. He read the Guardian as we all did in the seventies.

        Each day he would do nothing but write cleverly composed letters to contractors, consultants and others but incorporating some new word read in the Guardian on his journey to South Kensington from Forest Hill.

        He had literally swallowed the dictionary.

        1. On a couple of occasions, I’ve been involved in an unwanted tit-for-tat exchange on Discus. When the discussion starts going round in circles, I throw in some meaningless waffle from a non-existent German-sounding philosopher which is supposed to seem deep and meaningful.:

          “As Emmanuel von Hilhausen said in this paper on individuality, “The souls is subservient to the being””

          If all goes silent for a while, I can guarantee the other party is frantically trying to find the original quote by the elusive Von Hilhausen.

          This normally stops the exchange in its tracks when they realise they have wasted time going down a blind alley.

    5. This makes more sense…

      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

      Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

      1. I know Wolves lost that day, but those excuses are pathetic. And no, it wasn’t the referee.

      4. I remember seeing something like this, or maybe it was this, when I was building a website many years ago. Never understood what it was about, all Greek 😎 to me, I’m afraid.

    8. If I may translate:
      A synthesis of dialectic interoperabilty is the essence of the Lyotardist interpretation of structural paradigms and their relevance to the works of Madonna’s paradox of the artist as a capitalist. Sontag explained that Madonna’s merging of music and sexuality rendered all genders interchangeable, within the perceptions of internalized meaning and the paradoxes of the self.

      I can keep that up all day. More simply, as an artist, sell sex or go broke.

    9. Just tried Tw@ting that and got this:-
      https://twitter.com/BeardedBob7282/status/1361754608427802627

      If you go to the bottom of the page and then page up a couple of times:-

      The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator. To generate another essay, follow this link.
      If you liked this particular essay and would like to return to it, follow this link for a bookmarkable page.

      The Postmodernism Generator was written by Andrew C. Bulhak using the Dada Engine, a system for generating random text from recursive grammars, and modified very slightly by Josh Larios (this version, anyway. There are others out there).

          1. Phantom pains can be relieved by following a regime of special exorcises.

            ….. I’ll get me holy water.

        2. I am getting sharp pains in my feet. I can only walk a few yards. Got a spare pair of legs? :@)

    3. If they want a hedgehog cull a certain NoTTLer will be issuing a call to arms!!
      (retreats to shed to sharpen my pike)

      2. Doesn’t matter around here.

        The Badgers have eaten them all.

        For practical purposes they are extinct.

        1. Shh! For the bunny hugging brigade, badgers can do no wrong. They couldn’t possibly wipe out Mrs Tiggywinkle (or carry TB).

    6. Honestly they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Trying to whip up hysteria against an innocent little animal.

        1. They are now enjoying taking the piss. They think they have won. How wrong can they be. Time will tell as more and more of the scam is revealed by the day.

          ‘Germany calling, Germany calling’ has nothing on this malodorous construction. Fake science, fake testing, fake cases, fake news.

          Those accepting vaccines might well wind up infected with HIV. It is a crime that the best available scientific advice has been cancelled by the media, those with opposing scientific opinions ostracised and threatened for their livelihoods, dissenting health workers threatened with dismissal from their jobs and all the time lying politicians stretching incredulity at their perverse laws and restrictions on our civil liberties.

          1. That’s not until tomorrow… Just did rather splendid pancakes. Canadian Very Strong Bread Flour seemed to help. Now disposing of the last bottle of Aldi Argentinian Shiraz. Not so much because of Lent, but the calories. It’s a good excuse, though.

    3. If someone were to ask me to take an anal swab test, I would tell them to stick it up their arse.

  74. 329476+ up ticks,
    May one say, it just doesn’t add up the virus that is, it seems if you have a
    deficiency in maths you could very well be in jeopardy, if so where does that leave abbot ?

    2. Don’t forget that he said live on a webchat with a black man – “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”

      1. There must already be enough Bidenisms to fill a book, and he’s only been in the job for a month.

    1. Apropos Hartlepool that’s where my Dad’s 88 year old cousin lives! The one who makes pease pudding! She would definitely agree with you!

          1. Called him a monkey-hanger. Once. But he’d worked on the accent & spoke a mild version of RP.

  83. 329476+ up ticks,
    I am beginning to strongly suspect that odiousy is outranking decency &
    democracy, of course it had to come to it eventually the polling booth dictated that.
    Expect to see more of silicone now the sun rays are getting stronger reptiles like to bask.

    breitbart,

    Tony Blair Pushes Boris to Create Global Coronavirus Vaccine Passport at G7

    1. Tony Blair was basically running a policy and law department store while he was in office….

      This way for human rights…. that way for climate change and marriage….

      If you had enough dough, you could have anything you wanted within reason… and now that Blair is ”advising” Johnson, it’s pretty obvious Johnson has opened his own policy and law department store too !

      1. Boris should tell Blair & Co the same as Ron DeSantos did to ‘President’ Biden, even if it is the more polite version, referring to short piers and long walks…

        1. No way will that happen…

          With two ex wives, a new one tucked up, and an unknown number of children, but probably at least eight, Boros is likely hungry for money and the Blair ”pile it high, sell it expensive” method of policy and law trading with billionaires very probably has enormous attraction…

          After all, all the others apparently did it since 1990, so Boros will likely think why should I miss out ?

          He’ll think well if Major’s worth $70 million, I want to be too.

        2. No way will that happen…

          With two ex wives, a new one tucked up, and an unknown number of children, but probably at least eight, Boros is likely hungry for money and the Blair ”pile it high, sell it expensive” method of policy and law trading with billionaires very probably has enormous attraction…

          After all, all the others apparently did it since 1990, so Boros will likely think why should I miss out ?

          He’ll think well if Major’s worth $70 million, I want to be too.

      2. 329476+ up ticks,
        Evening PP,
        I do believe that I have mentioned in prior post the political groups in the close shop have been a coalition for decades, it makes for any dubious issue so much easier to pass into being when ALL political players are on the same side.

    1. As I’ve said before :You must respect my Diversity (and all the effing well that goes with it!)

    1. It should be set to zero. You shouldn’t get paid for failure, and contracts should never be X amount of time, however good or bad you do in your job. Even for footballers, never mind public sector employees.

      1. I agree; they should be sent away with a flea in their ear, but alas! that is never going to happen. Capping what they get is the best on offer, unfortunately. Even that has been quietly dropped (on Friday, a good day to bury bad news).

      1. Thank you, Alf. I’m not sure it will do any good, but it might give them some inkling of how we feel (and let them know we’ve noticed their sneaky behaviour).

  86. I think i might be dumping Peskyfish website. Marketplace has recently opened. The boats didn’t go out again today and they only have Cornish Lobster @£34.99 per 0.6 kilo.

    Sod that.

    They are having difficulty selling fish to Europe so i would have thought the prices would come down for the home market to sell more of the catch. The prices have gone up.

    1. Yes, I had a look there too. A lot of salmon of varying types on offer, presumably farmed, we don’t buy farmed salmon because of parasites and worms. The lobster had gone by the time I looked at it. Not a great deal of variety there, sadly.

      1. The boats have remained in safe harbour because of the poor weather. I will be interested to see the prices when they start landing a full catch.

        At the moment the prices are terribly high and it’s not just them.

        Seafresh are selling 500gms of skinless Turbot fillets for £62.

        I think i will stick to Iceland/Fish . Frozen Haddock at £4.00 for 450gms.

    2. You have a downvote, Phizzee. I think it might be an error from this person, fat finger……

  87. I think i might be dumping Peskyfish website. Marketplace has recently opened. The boats didn’t go out again today and they only have Cornish Lobster @£34.99 per 0.6 kilo.

    Sod that.

    They are having difficulty selling fish to Europe so i would have thought the prices would come down for the home market to sell more of the catch. The prices have gone up.

  88. From ZH:

    “A top court in The Hague issued a “shock” ruling that curbs the power of civic authorities to impose sweeping coronavirus-related curfews which should have significant reverberations legally for similar scenarios in other countries.

    “The curfew must be lifted immediately,” the court said in a statement, underscoring that the Dutch government is abusing its powers by violating freedom of movement and assembly in particular. The pandemic curfew must be reversed immediately, the government has been told, which comes after weeks of fierce protests by an angry population which seems to have rejected it in unison.”

  89. Quick question – the DT BTL comments don’t seem to be working – is this the DT’s problem or has my computer developed some sort of problem?

      1. I know of a young man who was acquiring these coins several years ago. If he has the wisdom to sell at these prices he will bank a small fortune….

        1. I’m sure there will be beneficiaries, but my life experience just makes me incapable of buying something as intangible as that.

          1. Agreed. He is in software programming so had the skills to mine the coins for the square root of bu@@er all.

          7. Thanks Phil. One small point they don’t appear to be answerable to any regulator (which may not necessarily be a bad thing…)

          8. When bitcoin first appeared there were many articles in the media slagging it off. Even saying the only people using bitcoin were drug dealers and weapons merchants.

            The real reason is governments have no control over it.

          12. People were paying fractions of bitcoin for coffee and cake in Borough Market London. Those traders were effectively getting other people to pay for their investments. Still, that’s market traders for ya.

          13. For the small investor it is the wrong time to buy bitcoin. Too much risk. Saying that it could still top $100,000.

            I’m buying in on the ground floor with another digital currency. Dogecoin.

          17. Through an online broker like Kraken. There are others.

            As usual it is about buying low and selling high like the stock market. I wouldn’t invest anything i couldn’t afford to lose. Like betting on the horses.

            Just think if you had bought shares in Facebook when it launched.

            If with the stock market you wanted to invest i would say spread betting of say £100 over Tech/Medical/robotics over 10 companies @ £10 a throw.

            With digital currency it’s best to get in early with a small amount and wait and see.

          20. It’s a crypocurrency set up as a joke, but ironically is now gaining traction in the wake of the Gamestop kerfuffle and Bitcoin rise.

        2. If enjoying an investment bubble:

          When the value of your investment doubles, self half immediately.

          If it continues to expand self half again, once it has doubled etc etc.

          All the way up buy long options to sell as it goes down to hedge the bets.

          2. And potentially a huge one if it collapses.

            Assuming that the sellers of the options honour the contracts, which is unlikely..

          3. The biggest investors in digital currency are Hedge Funds/Wall St. At least if they don’t or can’t pay they can open a window.

            My investment this time round is £20. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t perform but i’m betting it will do better than the banks.

          4. I would love to know the source of that information, I suspect a bubble may be about to burst.

          5. Elon Musk said it when he bought in to dogecoin. He’s now suggesting they sell their blocks. Probably because that will lower the price and he will hoover up.

          6. Talking his book.

            I very much doubt that legitimate (yeah yeah, I know) hedge funds would do anything other than dabble.
            As the saying goes, don’t bet more than you can afford to lose.

            The more I read about Musk and his enterprises the more convinced I become that he is a conman. An innovative conman, yes, but so were many of his predecessors.

    2. I had two. I bought @£300 each and sold when they got to £8000, net profit of £15,400. I’m happy with what i gained.

      I’m now buying Dogecoin which is selling at about 5p.

      I do believe digital currencies are the future.

  91. Up to a point, Mr. Polley, but London overreacted badly in 1916 and it really went downhill from there.

    The Irish president has a cheek lecturing Britons about history

    Irish nationalists are just as guilty as the British of rewriting history – if not more so

    OWEN POLLEY

    In a column for The Guardian, the president of the Republic of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, has accused academics and journalists in the UK of feigning “amnesia” over the legacy of British imperialism. While Irish citizens engage in “ethical remembering” of their shared history with Britain, he thinks Brits are not confronting “uncomfortable aspects” of their past.

    This may not be amnesia on Higgins’ part, but it is delusion and conceit.

    In the UK, historians and commentators who regard the Empire as anything other than a disgrace are scarcely tolerated. In contrast, if you scrape aside Higgins’ jargon about commemoration, you’ll find age-old republican clichés that blame Britain for all Ireland’s problems, past and present.

    The stories that the Republic tells itself about its formation have barely changed in 100 years and they are challenged rarely by its historians and columnists. Indeed, since Britain voted for Brexit in 2016, anglophobia has been resurgent in Ireland. Despite all his talk of ‘understanding’, Higgins has done little to challenge these sentiments.

    His column is a plea to examine thoughtfully events 100 years ago that led to the partition of Ireland. In the opening paragraph, though, Higgins shows his insensitivity to unionists’ perspective on the formation of Northern Ireland. “Six of the nine Ulster counties remained in the United Kingdom,” he writes, “and the rest of the island opted for self-determination.”

    The formation of the Irish Free State is cast as a positive outcome of self-determination, while Northern Ireland’s birth is portrayed as a passive or negative side-effect of imperialism.

    This is certainly not unionists’ view. The creation of Northern Ireland was their act of self-determination. They campaigned energetically to retain their cherished place in the UK and avoid absorption by an ethnic-nationalist Irish state. The home rule parliament at Stormont was not unionists’ ideal outcome, but it protected their British identity and political links to Westminster.

    Higgins’ contention that academics and journalists have avoided critiquing ‘imperialism’ is ridiculous. His piece was published after eight months of British self-flagellation, as institutions from the Church of England to the National Trust discussed how best to purge themselves of symbols linked to empire.

    On the day the article appeared, a conference at Churchill College, Cambridge examined the “racial consequences” of Britain’s wartime prime minister. Scholars suggested that the British Empire was worse than Nazi Germany and described Churchill as the “perfect embodiment of white supremacy.”

    In Ireland, atrocities committed in the name of nationhood are treated very differently. There is little contrition or embarrassment about events like Easter 1916, when a small group of rebels launched a bloody insurrection in Dublin, with little support from their countrymen. Higgins alludes to the “pain and resentment” caused by nationalist violence, but he explains it away as resistance to “injustices perpetrated in the name of imperialism.”

    In fact, Ireland was not a colony when partition took place. It had been part of the UK for over 100 years and was represented by 103 MPs in the House of Commons. That didn’t stop Irish nationalists blaming British ‘imperialism’ for their problems. And more than 200 years after Ireland ceased to be a colony, its president believes that its society is wrestling with “complex legacies of colonialism”. His message is: yes, we’ve done some regrettable things, but, ultimately, they were your fault.

    The irony is that Irish self-pity receives a relatively sympathetic hearing in Britain and, politically, the UK continues to concede to nationalist demands.

    The ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland was designed largely to accommodate violent republicans. Successive governments agreed to “legacy” arrangements that ignored or minimised the IRA’s culpability for the Troubles and directed the blame at British armed forces. Prime ministers issued grovelling apologies for a few deadly incidents involving soldiers or police officers, while terrorist godfathers remained unscrutinised.

    Most recently, the government agreed to an Irish Sea border that cut Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK and compromised its place in the Union. Why? To placate Dublin and allay its false claims that trade checks on the island of Ireland were a threat to peace and a breach of the Belfast Agreement. The recent history of relations between Ireland and Britain is an inglorious tale of British abasement.

    Of course, this is an identifiably unionist view of the past. Other perspectives are available and Michael Higgins is entitled to his. He’s not entitled, however, to patronise British journalists and historians just because they don’t echo the clichés and canards of Irish nationalism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/14/irish-president-has-cheek-lecturing-brits-history/

    1. thr Irish have hoovered up the privileges that th UK has showered on them. What other nation in the world allows citizens of the neighbouring country to waltz in and out without a passport, take advantage of their health service, vote in their elections, and then blow them up in pubs?

  92. Mr Ward on song over on his Slog:

    “And finally, the time has come to discuss the relationship between the word “independent” and Janet Yellen, the reinstalled US Fed boss about to lead the investigation into wrongdoing by RobinHood and its clearing house Citadel in the growing Gamestop/Reddit scandal. Last year, Ms Yellen earned $1.4 million in speech fees from…..Citadel.

    I think I’d call that a 100 per cent correlation between Yellen and Conflict of Interest. How about you?”

          1. It’s Sturgeon’s complete lack of humour that makes her so unlikeable. Can’t wait for the end of her medieval reign!

    2. Hitler grabbed people by the power of his rhetoric. All Drakeford does is bore them to death with his whining tone.

  94. Harry and Megan once again demand privacy..this wil be confirmed when
    they’re on the Oprah Winfrey show..average viewers 16.4 million.

  95. Looks like Meghan Markle or whatever the hell she’s now called is now
    going to have to search for other planets to tell that she doesn’t want
    publicity now that she’s told the 7.4 billion people of Earth.

          1. When bread flour became as rare as hen’s teeth (or rocking horse droppings), I ended up buying 16 kg each of “Prestige Flour” and “Norfolk Crunch” from Heygates. I divvied both up into 1.5 kg bags (Chinese, from Amazon, who else) and I’m now down to my last 2 kg. Both have been very good, but I’ll prolly stick to the supermarket stuff as long as it’s available…

  97. Allison Pearson clearly does not think much of either Migraine or her toybaby husband!

    He no longer deserves our sympathy – he deserves our total contempt.

    Meghan’s talk-show move undermines the very monarchy that made her
    The last thing the Queen needs is another explosive TV interview with family members – especially when they left their royal duties behind

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/meghans-talk-show-move-undermines-monarchy-made/

    Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah will be aired in March and last 90 minutes
    Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah will be aired in March and last 90 minutes CREDIT: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
    Say what you like about Prince Charles, he’s never shown us his bunions. The heir to the throne must, perforce, cut a more dignified figure than his younger son and for that we must be grateful.

    Prince Harry put his foot in it (both of them actually, without socks or shoes) in a romantic black and white photograph which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex released to announce they are expecting their second child. (The pregnancy explains why Meghan succeeded in getting a postponement of her recent successful privacy trial against the Mail on Sunday for “confidential reasons”.)

    The baby – judging by the size of that bump he or she will be born not long after big brother Archie’s second birthday in May – will be eighth in line to the throne. This pregnancy is a blessing coming after Meghan’s miscarriage last year and everyone will wish the young family well.

    As is so often the case with the Sussexes, though, there is something contrived about the communication. The picture shows Meghan, head in a beaming Harry’s lap, lying in the dappled shade of a tree. It is one of those artfully artless shots that celebrities post on Instagram to show how authentically natural they are while, out of shot, you just know the poor stylist, hairdresser and make-up artist are sweating buckets to make sure everything looks perfect.

    It’s almost as if each detail of the portrait were selected to make a point. “See how grounded we are! We lie on the grass! We disdain footwear! We are free spirits not uptight, stuffy Royals like, to take a completely random example, William and Kate!”

    Misan Harriman, who recently became British Vogue’s first black cover photographer, somehow snapped the “spontaneous” moment in LA remotely with an iPad from London. “With the tree of life behind them and the garden representing fertility, life and moving forward, they didn’t need any direction, because they are, and always have been, waltzing through life together as absolute soulmates,” said Harriman. Spoken totally spontaneously, I’m sure, and in no way prompted by breathless, sub-Bridgerton prose signed off by the Duchess and her PR team.

    Although such prompts have been known to happen. Finding Freedom, a doting, unauthorised biography of the couple published last year, reported events and dialogue which many believe could only have been known to the two people present at the time.

    We will never unlock the mystery of that remarkable act of ventriloquism. Nor will we find out whether Meghan’s strange, scolding, self-exculpating letter to her father, Thomas Markle (published in the Mail on Sunday), was written with a bigger audience in mind. The judge ruled in the Duchess’s favour before any court proceedings began. Pity. It would have been interesting to hear from the man who raised Meghan, who paid for her private education; the darling daddy to whom she was seemingly devoted until he naively cooperated with a reporter before the Royal wedding. Or maybe she thought he would look bad in the photographs? Either way, he was hastily written out of the fairytale by his calligrapher daughter.

    By now, even the most ardent Royalist – no, actually, let’s make that especially the most ardent Royalist – may find themselves deeply irritated by a couple who left the UK to escape the attention of the ghastly, prying media, but who seem perfectly happy to invade their own privacy when it suits. And please don’t get me started on the allegations that Meghan’s treatment at the hands of the British media was cruel, even “racist”. A billion column inches raved about what a “breath of fresh air” she was and delighted in the happiness she brought our favourite cheeky prince. Any change in tone was caused by the Sussexes and their sensitivity to criticism, no matter how well deserved. The Duke and Duchess’s not entirely convincing ambivalence about being in the public eye was superbly summed up in a Daily Star headline: “Publicity-shy woman tells 7.67 billion people; I’m pregnant.”

    It was the best of British irony. California-born Meghan would never get the joke. Harry’s old mates in the regiment would. So would the Prince, unless he has drunk too deep of wheatgrass shots and chai lattes. That’s what we all fear, isn’t it?

    As if that wasn’t quite enough “unwanted” media attention to be going on with, now we learn Meghan and Harry are planning to do “wide-ranging” and “intimate” TV interview with Oprah Winfrey. The “tell-all” 90-minute special, to air on CBS on March 7, will focus on the Duchess of Sussex who will discuss “everything from stepping into life as a Royal, marriage, motherhood and philanthropic work to how she is handling life under intense public pressure”. The public pressure that would surely be quite simple to escape by staying home with Archie and maybe not risk embarrassing the Royal family in front of 40 million Americans.

    It has been reported that Prince Harry will join the show later. Will it be a non-speaking appearance? Or will he be given cue cards? Rule nothing out. The awkward fact is that Meghan’s sole claim to global fame, the reason why a former cable TV actress commands such a high-profile interview at all, arises from her husband, and hence from the Crown.

    After the devastation caused by Prince Andrew’s Newsnight appearance, I would say the very last thing the Queen needs right now is another explosive TV interview featuring close family members. How very unkind to Harry’s Granny, who celebrates her 95th birthday in April. It’s one thing for the “spare” to leave the country and carve out a happier life for himself out of the shadow of his brother, the heir. Quite another to leverage your status to moan about the vast privilege of being Royal.

    Do Meghan and Harry care? I doubt it.

    The UK, and its people, who gave them such a rapturous, heartfelt reception at their wedding in May 2018, are increasingly irrelevant to their ambitions. That pregnancy announcement photograph was targeted at a US audience. With good reason. No American would quip, as one cynical Brit did, that the baby’s middle name should be “Netflix”.

    Nonetheless, the Oprah interview could turn out to be the final straw. Until now, the Windsors have treated Harry with kid gloves, leaving the door open for him to resume Royal duties if things went wrong. Yesterday, Palace sources suggested the Sussexes are set to lose their last Royal patronages, a mark of displeasure if it’s true. How much longer can they hang onto their Royal titles if they use them to become talk-show-circuit celebs, undermining the monarchy that made them?

    Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer Royals who wear socks.

    2. That’s what they were always going to be – talk show circuit slebs. However it will eventually wear off. (The sooner the better).

      1. ‘…… leaving the door open for him to resume Royal duties if things went wrong.’

        What could possibly go wrong…..

        1. It’s a real shame. I think the public had a soft spot for Harry but he has thrown a lot of that goodwill away. He insulted the Queen when he didn’t consult her before announcing his “retirement” from the Royal scene.

        2. I always thought he was rather grubby , I expect he had been around abit , probably a visit to the military medic with a dose of STD to be fixed , that sort of thing, well I mean , he was a party animal and liked to frolic .. he was more than laddish , just a thick Royal yob .

    3. Symbolically, Harry should ‘Surrender his Sword’ as an intro to the “wide-ranging” and “intimate” TV interview with Oprah Winfrey …

    4. Regrettably the attention given to those non-entities is pervasive.

      We will never be rid of them. We will have to endure the same diet of crap we experienced with the death of Diana.

  98. The former Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is to become
    the leader of the World Trade Organization following the WTO paying bank
    fees to ‘help release her large inheritance that was ‘difficult to
    access’ because of government restrictions.

      1. Nope. She is an obese corrupt place person for the corrupt World Trade Organisation. Trump sensibly blocked her appointment and the dolt Biden, whether out of spite or ignorance or both, has sanctioned the appointment.

        God help us all.

        I wonder where her supposed inheritance came from. Answers on a postage stamp.

  99. 329476+ up ticks,
    Just a thought but am watching “The Quatermass experiment” and there are a few similarities cropping up, you don’t think, no couldn’t be, hold on it’s taking a nasty turn, the sh!te seems to have hit the fan………

    1. 329476+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      You seen whats happening Og ?
      ALL is being revealed on channel 81, the bloody takeover of london by aliens is out in the open, before our very eyes, the aliens have horns, that bloody b liar is into everything.

      “The Pit” AKA parliament.

  100. Night All

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e89d70f246fd2681d3d5af267284e1ddfdd12d820e331dbc1b8454c18eb0794f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fdfb49ed1a40958c73f0204dfb63d7992bbd2fdd36bcb0ca7eec12b0fb2df1f5.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/407e698710c1aef73f866a810de5048d0eb02578b9120280730d4d510ad618db.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32439443278d51f7fc9ae70bfbfd22c3e18a27aaa960b283826947f639f75bdf.jpg

    Finally

    https://media0.giphy.com/media/l4KibK3JwaVo0CjDO/giphy.gif

      1. Cori that is exceptionally kind, thank you. I’m sorry the inconsistent measures imposed by government have had an adverse affect on you and I hope you will get some new (paid) assignments in the not too distant future.

        The local architect we are using was recommended to us by the building firm who worked on my daughter’s redevelopments. We contacted James about a year ago about the possibility of extending a small property on a restricted site in Bathampton. He put in a fair amount of work looking at previous planning histories, meeting us on site and then giving us sound advice about what the planners would or would not accept – all free of charge. In the light of his advice we didn’t proceed. However, we said to him at the time if we found a more suitable property we would engage his practice.

        I learned from working with David Trench for over five years, that once you have established a good working professional relationship it pays dividends in the long run. So once again my thanks and all the best for the future.

        PS I may have the odd enquiry….!

        1. No problems. I do not lack experience having slogged away for years and accomplished several significant major modern buildings (two of which are listed Grade II and Grade II*) and a load of conservation stuff from major projects at Hampton Court Palace to Norwich Cathedral, the restoration of the interiors of Christ Church Spitalfields and much else in between.

          I believe I mentioned my association with David Trench previously. Whilst David has retired from Trench Farrow he is still actively contributing to the mix according to the news items I have read.

    1. But not a waste of time if it involves shifting taxpayers’ cash into best mates big pharma pockets – at the same time that taxpayer cash is responsible for raising the pharma share price so that the investors make the most fabulous gains, especially those in the know and responsible for it all. Oh dearie me no, not a waste of time at all. Amazing how many can profiteth from taxpayers’ cash.

        1. Pol we don’t have the First Amendment in the Uk – you may want to rephrase your statement?

          1. Well, Blair was selling off state assets cheap to Soros and it’s impossible to imagine he didn’t get a cut which would explain why he’s so rich.

            As to Boros, he’s in with Gates, and what’s the big attraction of a trillionaire ?

          2. Well, Blair was selling off state assets cheap to Soros and it’s impossible to imagine he didn’t get a cut which would explain why he’s so rich.

            As to Boros, he’s in with Gates, and what’s the big attraction of a trillionaire ?

    2. Polly

      That article implied that herd immunity in the cities worked , but the rural communities were suffering more. Also the population is usually younger , no great old age groups either. Of course they have other diseases to cope with !

      The other interesting factor was that Indians tended to be on the slender scale, bodywise and didn’t suffer from obesity .. Western diet is the clue .

      I would think that the same applies to Africans and Arabs as well.

        1. Yes, I read that too – The Indian govt could not afford the vaccines so they dished out HCQ and zinc to as many as possible. Also ample Vit D available.

        2. It was more sinister than that PP. The Chinese factory producing 50% of the world’s supply of HCQ was totally destroyed by fire a few months ago.

          Collusion or what?

        3. It was more sinister than that PP. The Chinese factory producing 50% of the world’s supply of HCQ was totally destroyed by fire a few months ago.

          Collusion or what?

        4. They did in at least one state – Uttar Pradesh, if I remember correctly. The others got Ivermectin, I think.

      2. Also vit D readily available at Indian latitudes – their skin has been designed by nature for optimum uptake.

  105. I filled the first two pancakes I made with some minced beef that I’d fried with some onion, garlic, tomato puree, balsamic vinegar, celery salt, black pepper, beef stock, oregano and thyme.

    I grated some cheddar cheese on top and baked them in the oven for 20 minutes whilst I fried the other pancakes for pudding. I had lemon juice and Lyle’s golden syrup on those.

    3. Mouth-watering, Grizzly. I had planned to try some cream cheese and eggs pancakes today, but in the end ran out of time. So I may try what you had (easy on the golden syrup) tomorrow.

        1. I don’t own a TV, Grizzly, and in the late 1960s I was managing a cinema and worked evenings. But the expression “Go easy on the mayo” was one Americanism I picked up at a point lost in the mists of time.

      2. Freshly squeezed lemon and sugar, as always, on the gluten-free pancakes made by my lovely wife.. Caroline and I are both now well shriven.

        1. Lucky people. Here in Scotland our churches are locked up and our priests are on a permanent sabbatical.

  106. Edwina Currie eyes return to politics

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-56063279

    She is standing for election as a county councillor in Whaley Bridge. Her judgment hasn’t improved:

    “I was watching the American election and the people involved were both older than me. Joe Biden has been an absolute hero. He has come out of retirement to fight and did it with grace and dignity.”

    1. Edwina Currie… Well her judgement is flawed , who in their right mind would drop their drawers to that most boring Grumpfutock of all time , John Major , yeugh, how horrible .. He reminds me of Ed the talking horse!

      2. John Major had, at the time of their affair, power, which is one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs known to ambitious woman.

        You could say the same about every politician who has an affair, but somehow the secretaries never get the stick that Edwina Currie did. If you look at the old photos of her as an undergraduate in her sharp evening dresses, she was very attractive.

        1. I’ve always thought she was an attractive woman, especially when compared to her Parliamentary neighbour, the chinless wonder, Margaret Beckett.

    2. That ignorant old bag, loose woman as she was, has lost all connection with the mood of our nation.

      Apart from a few idiot visitors on here such as Geoffrey Woollard I can think of few, apart from the usual agitators, who would throw their weight behind Joe Biden. Biden is an embarrassment, riddled with the infections of his past misdemeanours and with a back record of family corruption which everyone knows about.

      Biden’s son is corrupt and a paedophile and his brother is also evidently corrupt.

  107. Talking of monstrous women (Edwina Currie), I see that ‘Countdown’ is about to become an all-girl production. Anne Robinson will take over from Nick Hewer later this year.

    It’s the end of the world as we know it.

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