Sunday 21 February: Halt HS2 and spend the money on improving existing rail services

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/2021/02/21/letters-halt-hs2-spend-money-improving-existing-rail-services/

730 thoughts on “Sunday 21 February: Halt HS2 and spend the money on improving existing rail services”

  3. Definitely not PC

    If you are easily offended please refer to your offensive counsellor and contact the local thought police

    A twin-engine passenger plane has an engine failure and the altitude and speed are both decreasing rapidly. The pilot speaks over the intercom…
    “I’m sorry it has come to this ladies and gentlemen, but unfortunately we are going to have to jettison the luggage in order for the aircraft to remain airborne”.

    Baggage is thrown out but still the plane’s speed continues to decrease. Once again, the pilot gets on the intercom, “I hate to do this, folks but in order to save the majority we are going to have to start off-loading some passengers. The only fair way is to do this alphabetically, so we’ll start with the letter ‘A'”.

    “Africans? Are there any Africans on board?” There was no answer so the pilot calls, “Black people, are there any black people on board?”

    Again silence. “C – coloured people? Are there any coloured people on board?

    Still there is silence. A little black boy sitting near the rear of the plane turned to his mother
    and whispers, “Mum, ain’t we African? Ain’t we black? Ain’t we coloured?”

    She replied, “Yes, Son but for the moment we is Nïggers. Let them do the Muslims first. If that don’t work, we is Zulus”.

  4. Off to bed, having quaffed my beef tea. ’til morning light delights us, God bless you, one and all.

    3. Beef tea? Good grief, I didn’t know it still existed.
      Must rootle out my Mrs. Beeton – the one with adverts for Mazawattee Tea.

  5. 0430h Bore da i bawb.
    Coming to the end of a boring night shift. Only an hour and a half to go then it’s off home to get some schlaf.

  6. Paradise? No, but the Britain of my youth was FREE. 21 February 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ada522f4b9068424f41e2358549e747de6e7695a256029fdccda3f187fe466d0.jpg
    Children are seen playing outside in Dedworth, Windsor in 1950. It was not paradise – though by comparison with now, the liberty of children to live free-range lives was so astonishing that many find it difficult to believe it happened at all.

    Morning everyone. My very earliest memories are of roaming unchecked on my tricycle up and down our street but no further than the MAIN ROAD; the Ultimate Barrier, where we used to gather, sometimes twenty or more of us, and watch the traffic and play. Later at the vastly increased ages of seven and eight we roamed without limitation over a vast area, the Town, Cow Pastures, Woods, Parks, Beauty Spots; built dens, paddled in streams and fished, putting our catch in Jam Jars and taking it home, all without the slightest supervision. Though we didn’t realise it this was the last of a Sylvan Childhood Idyll that had existed in the UK for hundreds of years. Now it is no more and the children of today are no more than Window and TV Tourists. It is futile to mourn the past but if you do not do so you have diminished yourself and become just another State Clone. That loss of Self, of the Past, of our History is now an aim since without them you exist only in the present and can be controlled by its Lies!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9282407/PETER-HITCHENS-Paradise-No-Britain-youth-FREE.html

    1. What curious clothes we wore as children. I was looking at my childhood (post-Victorian) photographs and was amused at how formally I was always turned out.

  7. Paradise? No, but the Britain of my youth was FREE. 21 February 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ada522f4b9068424f41e2358549e747de6e7695a256029fdccda3f187fe466d0.jpg
    Children are seen playing outside in Dedworth, Windsor in 1950. It was not paradise – though by comparison with now, the liberty of children to live free-range lives was so astonishing that many find it difficult to believe it happened at all.

    Morning everyone. My very earliest memories are of roaming unchecked on my tricycle up and down our street but no further than the MAIN ROAD; the Ultimate Barrier, where we used to gather, sometimes twenty or more of us, and watch the traffic and play. Later at the vastly increased ages of seven and eight we roamed without limitation over a vast area, the Town, Cow Pastures, Woods, Parks, Beauty Spots, built dens, paddled in streams and fished, putting our catch in Jam Jars and taking it home, all without the slightest supervision. Though we didn’t realise it this was the last of a Sylvan Childhood Idyll that had existed in the UK for hundreds of years. Now it is no more and the children of today are no more than Window and TV Tourists. It is futile to mourn the past but if you do not do so you have diminished yourself and become just another State Clone. That loss of Self, of the Past, of our History is now an aim since without them you exist only in the present and can be controlled by its Lies!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9282407/PETER-HITCHENS-Paradise-No-Britain-youth-FREE.html

  8. For years, I have been plagued by anxiety dreams about those whom I rely on to trust taking advantage of my own vulnerabilities and destroying something I find precious in front of my eyes.

    Last night, I remember two incidents from my dreams. I took half a tablet from my precious and diminishing supply of medication in order to enjoy my ration of a good night’s sleep twice a week,

    One was a shopkeeper, a delightful old-fashioned little knick-knack High Street shop, not long established, but made me deeply nostalgic for a much better time when there were many of such shops, and how rich they made our lives. They are on the verge of extinction though, and struggling to make a living. I bought a bag of sweets, priced at £5.95, and a handful of loose ones. “That’ll be £10.95, but I’ll take `£10.” said the lady proprietor. I knew this was the wrong price and that I was being deliberately had, yet I paid up. I was worried that I was allowing this shopkeeper to be dishonest, yet she was also providing the community something of value, and it needed to be supported by paying a little more than the price on the packaging. Was I right?

    Then I was in a shower room. I had a minor ailment that required me to be clean. I had had a thorough shower the night before, so all I needed to do was to wash face and hands. There was a male therapist, about 30, who was successful in treating my condition and making me healthy again. Yet he was a rampant homosexual, and we all knew it. He told me to take off all my clothes and to have a wash-down. As I did so, he locked the door of the shower room, and spent the entire time admiring my body, explaining how he loved the fur on my bottom, and my charming little winkle. Every time I turned my back to him, I felt him getting closer. I felt deeply uncomfortable, since I am not this way inclined, and once even said that if he went inside I would make sure he never worked again. Yet, he was treating my condition, and I myself have been in a situation where my own demons have made others feel uncomfortable. Was it not charitable at least to tolerate his?

    I woke up thinking whether it would be better for them not to behave in this way, and spare me a lot of bad feeling about their behaviour, or whether it was far greater to put up with their bad behaviour, so that the much greater they had to offer could survive, and also that I too may not be judged and destroyed by my own lapses in behaviour? I really do not know, but I do know this has something to do with the explorations Christians must undergo during Lent.

    My thoughts then turned to my muse Alma Deutscher, who in her childhood produced some of the finest romantic classical music in modern times that was up to the level of the great masters of the past. She has just celebrated her 16th birthday. I have long adored girls and women who have kept their hair long and unspoilt, For me, it is a “blanket of love” with the weight of it over my arms, the softness over my body, and the fact that here was something lovely and natural that had not been cut down and destroyed in the false impositions of progress and fashion. Alma’s hair has not been cut all through her wondrous childhood while she was creating her beautiful music, and in recent years, she has been wearing it loose, with its classical loveliness flowing over her violin as she plays. As she matures into a woman, the sheer voluptuousnes of her waist-length hair transcends her little girl image into something that is truly divine.

    Last year, though, the lockdown struck, and all her bookings have dried up. Instead of working on new work, she took her childhood masterpiece opera ‘Cinderella’ and completely revised it. She explained in an interview “My last full production was when I was 12, and I have learnt a lot since then, so I spent many months in the lockdown completely updating the orchestration and rewriting the opening scene with the spirit of music (which was always performed with Alma herself on her violin)”. When I heard a few preview snippets, I was horrified. Her old orchestration, where one could hear clearly every fabulous note and the interplay in the counterpoint each carrying musical meaning, because a “wall of sound” mush of strings and brass, in the fashionable “Action Movie” style, and that famous scene where the violin spirit is a great irritant distraction on the exhausted Cinderella trying to go about her chores, became “Oh, hark, I hear a violin!” in a clunky cliché that coarsened and robbed the entire scene of its subtlety that makes the opera so exceptional.

    What was upsetting though was a picture taken of her in the summer, where her lovely hair was 8 inches shorter than it was before, and another photograph taken during rehearsal of ‘Cinderella’ when it was shortened again by another four inches. It is now barely to the armpits, when once it flowed to the waist. It diminishes her goddess-like wonder and makes me sad for what there once was.

    However, as with the other two examples, is it up to me to suffer and endure this demon that so disappointed me, because the main part of what is on offer is so much greater, and relies on me not demanding perfection in others, any more than I can honour it in myself?

    1. I’m not a believer in Freudian dream analysis Jeremy so I shall attempt no explanation but simply observe that living is the Loss of Innocence.

      1. Me too. Freud had great imagination, but my experience of dreams is that it is a coming to terms with very real and usually recent experiences, processing memories and nothing to do with the fantasies of others, even if they are illustrious and well-regarded classical sources.

        How do you see Innocence? Is it the opposition of Guilt? Or is it something else?

        1. In this case, a lack of experience of unpleasantness, a retention of joy in being and exploring, the opposite of cynicism.

        2. Well it is not in opposition to Guilt since this would imply that it has position or opinion. Perhaps T.S Eliot and of course Zen and the condition of Enlightenment sum it up best.

          A condition of complete simplicity
          (Costing not less than everything)

    2. I will need more coffee before being able to handle that one, Jeremy.
      Good morning, btw.

    3. When I was about 20 I wrote a banal little song which I liked at the time even though it was pretentiously self-conscious. It was about loss of illusion and awareness of my own creative inadequacy:

      And I’m trying to say something – but I don’t know what to say
      And I wish I had some idols who have not got feet of clay
      And I wish I was original and gave and earned respect
      And I wish my mind was real and not a pseudo-intellect.

      2. It would simply delay their arrival but if Number two had gone as well they would have been up there all day….

  10. Myanmar coup: Facebook shuts down military’s page, as thousands protest. 21 February 2021

    Facebook has deleted the Myanmar military’s main page for breaching its standards prohibiting the incitement of violence, as police arrested a well-known actor wanted for opposing the military coup and thousands gathered for mass protests.

    Facebook said it deleted the military or Tatmadaw’s page under its standards prohibiting the incitement of violence.

    “In line with our global policies, we’ve removed the Tatmadaw True News Information Team Page from Facebook for repeated violations of our Community Standards prohibiting incitement of violence and coordinating harm,” Facebook said in a statement.

    Perhaps the headline should have said Facebook commits suicide. Now no one in their right mind likes Myanmar’s Military but this is an example of where censorship gets you. First it’s just a few opinions, then people and then before you know it you are ordering the world. The Delusion of Censorship is telling yourself that you are an independent arbiter of Truth, a protector of the Helpless and Downtrodden when in fact you have become a player for the other side. In essence Facebook has now become The Globalist News. Just another MSM propaganda outlet.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/21/myanmar-coup-facebook-shuts-down-militarys-main-page-as-well-known-actor-arrested

    2. I found an alternative viewpoint on the situation in Myanmar/Burma from the Youtuber ‘Black Pigeon Speaks’:

      https://youtu.be/QOl2fHVjWmg

      Like in many nations nowadays, there’s more nuance to what is going on than just the biased viewpoint of the political elites/MSM. BPS lives in Japan and seems to have a wide range of knowledge about East Asia.

  11. Morning all

    H2S. Letters it seems…..

    SIR – Simon Bathurst Brown (“In defence of HS2”, Letters, February 14) is wrong to denigrate Britain’s rail network. Given its size, population and geography, I would argue that Britain is the best rail-connected country in Europe, in terms of both travel convenience and timetable frequency.

    From my local station there are direct, regular services to six major cities, including London. One change of train at Derby or Nottingham connects, again with direct services, to a further 22 cities across the country, in addition to serving many important towns along these routes.

    HS2 is a London-centric vanity project, offering high-speed travel to a limited market. With its anticipated cost of £135 billion, it will also deprive the existing network of essential investment.

    John Blackburn

    Nottingham

    SIR – The Government demanded that HS2 should be designed to reach a top speed of 250 mph – which many experts said was unnecessary, given the relatively short distances concerned. This severely restricts its route, as curves cannot be included, forcing the line through homes and sensitive areas, including 28 sites of special scientific interest and 108 ancient woodlands.

    Advertisement

    The argument that journey times will be shorter ignores the fact that there are no stations between London and Birmingham, so many of the headline time savings will be eaten up by additional journeys required to reach HS2.

    Furthermore, even after completion of the final phase, HS2 only reaches about half way up England, so the true long distances don’t benefit from the dramatic cuts to journey times seen in other countries.

    Of course, the case for HS2 has further collapsed now that many people have discovered, thanks to Covid-19, that they no longer need to travel for work anyway. I’m sure the vast majority of the population would prefer to have superfast broadband for everyone, rather than an over-fast railway for a few.

    Gordon Findlay

    Newcastle upon Tyne

    SIR – It is all very well for Mr Bathurst Brown – writing from Camberley, which is unaffected by HS2 construction – to seek to defend this project.

    He might like to reflect on its impact on those of us who live in the London Borough of Camden. This includes (according to the council) the demolition of 220 houses – with up to 1,000 people losing their homes – and very many years of construction noise, air pollution and traffic disruption, aside from the impact on businesses and the destruction, in an inner London urban area, of precious open spaces, trees and community facilities.

    Kaz Stepien

    London NW1

    1. John Blackburn, we certainly are not! Have you even travelled on Continental railways?
      Travelling by rail in Britain is an expensive, inconvenient nightmare, starting with the hefty charge for leaving your car at the station.

      1. I think that Mr Blackburn is both right and wrong. He is correct in that in the UK we have a significant amount of choice as to where we can go via train for the area covered, but he’s wrong that doing so is convenient.

        Outside of the (pre pandemic) packed rush hours, train services are very limited, and many stations outside of those service major towns and cities are poorly served by connecting public transport, having to often rely on very expensive (and not always that great) local taxi services or walking long distances to complete a journey.

        In addition, because many trips are not possible via a reasonably direct route (not just down to the Beeching cuts, but poor timetabling/co-ordination of routing between different franchises) because of poorly timed connections (often having to either wait ages or needing to go a long way out of your way to get a connecting train to your destination), it is by far cheaper and quicker to go by road.

        Our nutty ticketing system also means that the cost of going from A to B unless booked increadibly early (or you’re lucky) is far higher than it needs to be for buying one ticket – I’ve saved myself about 30% on the price by buying two tickets for the same route – all it needs is the train to physically stop at a station half way there. Some people have had to buy half a dozen tickets in order to get a big saving for doing much the same over a longer journey. That might be ok when capacity is tight in the rush hour, but outside that when it doesn’t matter?

        1. I love travelling by public transport in the Netherlands. It truly is an integrated system. If I want to, say, visit the Frans Hals museum in Haarlem, I use an Oyster-type top-up card on the train from Amsterdam. There will always be a bus station outside the railway station, no matter the size of the town.
          I take the bus using the same payment card, which is valid on all NL public transport. The smaller private rail companies on the borders also have the same integrated ticketing system. A return ticket costs exactly twice a that of a single trip. The same price at all hours, all year round.

      2. I’ve travelled on continental railways, including the TGV and Eurostar. I don’t find them particularly cheap or convenient. They certainly don’t seem to run to time on the Marseille-Lille stretch. I suppose I am lucky inasmuch as I can drive to Crewe relatively easily and unless Storm Brian is causing havoc with the railways, I can get most places by train.

        1. In my experience, French and German railways are better at small, local stops than the UK network is. They have many stops in small villages, with free parking, for example.

  12. Sussex saga

    SIR – It is clear now. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex believe that, while service is universal, the financial rewards are better in America.

    Dr Richard A E Grove

    Isle of Whithorn, Wigtownshire

    SIR – I cannot help wondering if the statement from the Sussexes was a case of jumping before being pushed.

    I also sense an underlying resentment as they appear to thumb their noses at the idea of royal service and duty – something that the rest of the Duke’s family have been carrying out for decades. We need to get the Oprah interview – and the inevitable furore that results – out of the way, so we can close the book on this couple.

    Tony Foot

    Mosterton, Dorset

    SIR – Please may we have our county name returned rather than used for commercial purposes in the US?

    Peter Vince

    Horsted Keynes, West Sussex

    SIR – As always, I admire the Queen for taking such a difficult but necessary decision for the sake of her nation.

    Deirdre Lay

    Cranleigh, Surrey

    1. This reminds me of a line from a Marty Feldman film:

      The wages of sin is death ……….. But the hours are good!

    2. If they were truly sincere in their desire to help the needy, they might consider donating 99% of their Netflix fee to UNICEF or some such.
      Mind you, £1m doesn’t stretch very far in La La Land; maybe donate just 95% instead. They should be able to make £5m last.

  13. Morning again

    Help for hospitality

    SIR – I cannot understand why the hospitality industry has been singled out for such draconian treatment during the pandemic.

    In my area, at any rate, pubs and restaurants have rigorously enforced all the rules brought in, often at great cost to themselves. I have not heard an explanation of their role in Covid-19 transmissions that justifies the restrictions.

    In supermarkets, by contrast, I have found little evidence of social distancing, with large numbers of shoppers mingling without much supervision.

    The responsible hospitality sector should be allowed to reopen fully once all the most vulnerable people have been vaccinated, and there should be a substantial decrease in alcohol duty, bringing us into line with the levels that apply in Europe. The industry needs a shot in the arm.

    Peter Woods

    Malvern, Worcestershire

    SIR – With the hope of fewer restrictions, more freedom and spring on the horizon, our lives may slowly begin to return to some form of normality.

    However, for the housebound, the lonely, the bereaved and many others, such relief will not be on offer, and their lives will remain largely unchanged.

    We brightened up these people’s lives during the pandemic, whether through the odd knock on the door, a telephone call or help with shopping. It is to be hoped that, even in busier times, this will continue.

    Pauline Hawkes

    Pitton, Wiltshire

    1. I have removed this post because I misread Peter Woods’ letter and the comment I made thus made no sense at all – rather like me at the moment!

  14. SIR – I read with interest your report that lung cancer scans could save thousands of lives, according to a study at University College London Hospital NHS trust.

    This comes as no surprise to those of us who have known, since the original study published in The Lancet in 1999, that low-dose CT scanning could detect early lung cancer, leading to a potential cure for thousands of smokers and ex-smokers. Many other studies have supported these findings.

    A number of independent companies started offering such scans, along with similar CT-based tests for colon cancer and heart disease, to the public in 2003. Most of those who shared this vision were vilified by the medical establishment, which, for whatever reason, was fiercely opposed to such services being available in the private sector. We were accused of being a “burden to the NHS” and taking advantage of the “worried well”.

    Imagine how many lives of smokers and former smokers might have been saved had such private providers not been driven out of business by political dogma and professional jealousy, and had instead been allowed to develop their services, also improving access to the still inadequate NHS CT service.

    Dr John Giles

    Founder, Lifescan

    Robertsbridge, East Sussex

    1. Imagine how many lives would have been saved, could still be saved had the medical establishment followed the old ethical obligations of my youth. All this time, practically the whole of the pandemic, a safe effective treatment has been available but has been ignored, fraudulently reviewed and negligently avoided in what will be one of the greatest medical scandals of all time.

        1. And possibly because the indians appear to be using the various treatments. You know, those ignorant people who supply a high percentage of our doctors and techies.

          1. Most drugs sourced by the NHS come from India. At the same time there are online Pharmacy operating in India but apparently it is unsafe to buy their drugs. I smell a cartel at work.

    1. I like my coffee in an afternoon (preferably espresso-based ‘flat white’ at 1300hrs).

      The morning is the domain of tea. After all, I am a proper Englishman, untainted by American bad habits! 🤣

    2. I grew up in a household where my mum liked and thus made weak tea. I then went to college, learnt to like black tea (milk frequently being stolen by house-mates), then working in the Construction industry where strong ‘builders tea’ means that the teabag stays in the mug for twice as long as my mum’s tea.

      If you can get used to the stronger taste, it’s far better for you, with a LOT more antioxidants (this was proven on a BBC health programme with 2.5 – 3 minutes ‘ teabag dunking time’ as the sweet spot of taste vs goodness).

      1. Sister in Law’s method of making tea:-
        Fill mug with boiling water,
        Wave teabag over the top a few times,
        Add milk,
        Drink.

        Ditto for making coffee except it’s the teaspoon dipped in the coffee jar and waved over the mug.

        1. Sounds like my mum’s tea. When I’m visiting, I have to remind her that I like strong tea. She dunks her teabags like rich tea digestives. For my black tea, if I forget the time when I poppoed the teabga in, I check by seeing whether I can still see the bottom of the mug or not. Doesn’t work so well when I’m on holiday in Cornwall, as their very soft water means that doesn’t happen.

        2. I am seen as a fuss pot at work as I dont accept anyone’s offer when they offer to ‘get the wets in’
          The trouble is, almost everyone makes tea in mugs, not a teapot. Worse, they put the milk and the tea bag into the mug and then pour hot (if it’s boiling, it’s a bonus) water onto both.
          The resultant cuppa is vile.
          Funny thing is, wheneverI get the wets in, which I have to so as not to be accused of making ‘Jack’ brews, everyone comments on what a nice cup of tea I make.
          If only they would all use a teapot (oh, and add the milk to the tea and not vice versa)

          1. Not a lot of difference between using teabags in a teapot or in a mug, PROVIDED the water is boiling, you allow time to brew and you DO NOT put the milk in until after it’s brewed.

    1. Don’t you just love it when Black blokes start taking the piss out of patronising White politicians!

      1. He’s also taking the piss out of the 8* billion folk who voted for Biden…….

        * latest computer estimates….

  21. Good morning all. I wonder how much HMG is paying Brash and Trash to ensure that every day’s headlines feature them and NOT the failings of the government.

        1. ‘Most commonly, et al. indicates other contributors’ – (Uncommon contributors are also available)

      1. The very same.

        I so named them long before they married – and was roundly condemned for being unkind. I suggested that my critics should wait and see – because I have not always been wrong.

        Present events vindicate me.

        1. I think many people ignored similar feelings of unease in an effort to welcome her to our country.

    1. Exactly what I at least have been thinking almost from the start. And have written countless times to my MP. Having this much control over people – government has relished their power. Encouraging news one day the next day a contradiction. It’s all about big Pharma, those in the club (Soros, Gates, certain scientists) have given western governments the opportunity to impose all these pointless restrictions and there will have to be an uprising from the public to make it possible for proper normal life to return.

  24. 329610+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Sunday 21 February: Halt HS2 and spend the money on improving existing rail services

    I would tend to believe it is to late to scrap the train set on account of the
    already signed contracts, and the investments by household names
    ( political) who will want their investment honoured then, ALL aboard the
    compensation special that will will have to be added.

    May one ask WHY is it that these issues that find no favour with the peoples are given a head start plus before rhetorical action is taken.

    Some issues are even inclusive of seriously injured mentally scarred children as in paedophilia covered up for decades, before justice was seen to be done then only a minimum amount was meted out to the tip of an odious iceberg.

    IMO the herd on entering a polling booth put party damage limitations high on their candidate kissing X list, so the innocents do / will continue to suffer.

  25. Today’s #CovidClownworld

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b5de17c0b5db6d085dd75bfdd235022d3faf9560cb7db901543d1b2ebdea37c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57b5e5d7b4e62be0ccfd06b604da77a13bc1c3fea0d6f793eddf815ba2f84f6a.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a4185f14ea00c79af9865d496a9db97ddb65859096aa12e2307a03a6da853bf.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f3ac5de838e8c0262280fe71fb3fd2eaedcead6ab476c4f0271a6223c8e0d7b6.png

    And Finally

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b33dedea5087f4cfe9ea9b7c22bd17deebc4398a3827f956f232af2034f4836b.png

    1. Brilliant.
      I might be mistaken, but does any one else think that at last the government and media had actually run out of ‘experts’ on everything.

  27. 329610+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    UK Should Send Vaccines to Third World Now, Says World Health Org Head Okonjo-Iweala

    Would this put us ( white folk) at risk of being accused by the blm & supporters of being voodoo users,that would surely be the blm mindset.

      2. Maybe they should have bought some vaccines themseles, rather than be useless and then demand freebie handouts.
        Just a thought.

  28. Some chewy reading for a Sunday morning…………

    “But realising they could do it was only half of the two bit jigsaw. To make

    it happen, the government needed something else, the handmaiden of all

    authoritarian states, the identification and vilification of a common

    threat to the people. In the very early days, the novel coronavirus

    fitted the bill perfectly. But humans are strange creatures that need

    but the slightest prod to hate their own kind. Before long we became a

    nation divided, between lockdown fanatics and lockdown sceptics, between

    mask fanatics and mask sceptics, between the majority automatons and

    the minority resistance.

    Before long, the fanatical majority bore down ever harder on the

    sceptic minority, and as it did so became ever more confident of its own

    certainties. The more they projected their contempt and hatred on the

    sceptics, the more confident they became in their own certainty, that

    they were 100% right, and so the more they became Milosz’s fanatics and

    thugs. As they came to internalise their certainty, they came to know

    that they were 100% right, and that could only mean one thing, the

    sceptics were 100% wrong. Even worse, the sceptics are dangerous, and

    must be eliminated, as vermin that threaten to damage the very fabric of

    safety woven so artlessly around the fanatical majority.”

    https://dr-no.co.uk/2021/02/17/naturality-and-familiarity/
    Several other good articles,interesting blog

  29. I see that Biden’s VP is already having to fulfil part of his responsibilities such as calling foreign leaders.

    This is a cartoon that I saw in the Washington Times. It reminds me of a small anecdote.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a14c35bc497e31acd1a6197ab0dcb56bbf1e5180f0a7b12ad10f98e4f47c4f8a.jpg

    Many years ago I was invited to dinner at the home of a friend and his (British) wife in Washington. He is an American diplomat, a brilliant Arabist who has spent his professional career in the Middle East, including two ambassadorships. There was only one other guest at the dinner. We started eating around 8.00 pm. A short while later, the phone rang. It was President Regan needing to speak to the other guest whom he invited to be the new ambassador to Iraq after several years without diplomatic relations.

    My point is that there was President Regan, in his office dealing with matters of state late into the evening. Whereas Biden can barely function after his afternoon nap!

    I think it is fairly obvious that Biden is suffering from the beginning of dementia. That is not his fault and he ought not to be mocked for it. But someone with his symptoms should not be President of the United States.

    1. To be fair, Reagan was going senile during his second term, with his wife apparently helping him in more respects than was even admitted years later. Even so, his time in office was far better for the nation than any president since, but still far from perfect.

    3. If the Democrats were so determined to win the election – and possibly cheat to do so – why did they choose Biden if not because they wanted a senile puppet in office?

  30. Good morning all

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/20/sadiq-khan-appointee-labelled-racist-accusing-diane-abbott-disloyalty/

    Sadiq Khan appointee labelled ‘racist’ after accusing Diane Abbott of disloyalty to ‘her own community’
    Toyin Agbetu, recently appointed to the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, made a series of disparaging racial remarks in a blog

    An activist appointed by Sadiq Khan to review London’s statues has been labelled “racist” after he accused Diane Abbott of being “disloyal to her own community” and David Lammy of being a “poor example of Africans”.

    Toyin Agbetu, who was recently appointed to the Mayor of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, made a series of disparaging racial remarks about senior black Labour politicians in a blog online, The Telegraph can disclose.

    The remarks have led Shaun Bailey, the black Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, to urge Sadiq Khan to immediately remove the commissioner due to his “racist past”.

    It comes after the Mayor faced intense criticism over the composition of the commission to review London’s landmarks, with historians claiming it lacked expertise and excluded conservative opinions.

    In a blog post condemning Ms Abbott’s decision to run for the Labour leadership in 2010, Mr Agbetu said the Hackney MP had been “disloyal to her own community and, worst yet, with minimal coercion, willingly betrayed herself” by engaging in frontline politics.

    He added that Labour would not win black votes by “elevating a woman who – to be frank – the African community is embarrassed about”.

    Mr Agbetu directed similar criticism at Mr Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, Baroness Scotland, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and Baroness Amos, who has served as British High Commissioner to Australia.

    “Lammy, Amos and Scotland are all poor examples of Africans whose quest for influence and status has dwarfed their duty to human rights, social justice for African people and opposition to imperialism,” he said.

    He added: “Many Africans in positions of status cling to their scraps of celebrity as if they are owed it by virtue of their ethnicity.”

    Mr Khan has previously faced criticism for the appointment of Mr Agbetu after it emerged the activist heckled the Queen during a 2007 service at Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

    As the ceremony began, Mr Agbetu shouted: “All of you sitting here are disrespecting my ancestors. In the history of the Maafa [black genocide], the British are the Nazis.”

    He then accused black members of the audience of being “a disgrace to our ancestors.” A video of the incident continues to feature prominently on the activist’s website.

    Separately, Mr Agbetu was found to have posted antivax content online on the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in November last year, prior to it being approved by medical regulators around the world, when he posted on social media: “Apparently a magical vaccine is around the corner from the Viagra specialists. There’s a lot of nonsense out there and it’s coming from the clowns in No 10.”

    While the new City Hall commission is intended to diversify London’s landmarks, critics have said the panel omits conservative opinions and expert historians.

    Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar recently warned: “To compose a panel without any politically conservative historians is both illiberal and lets the false ‘decolonising’ assumptions go unchallenged.”

    In a letter to Mr Khan calling on Mr Agbetu to be removed from the commission, Conservative mayoral candidate Mr Bailey said: “When he’s not comparing British people to Nazis, Agbetu is casting doubt on the safety of Pfizer’s vaccine.

    “For the safety of Londoners and the communities that you and I come from, you must remove Agbetu from his post and publicly denounce his lies.”

    A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “Sadiq makes absolutely no apologies for acting to ensure our public realm reflects the amazing wealth of diversity of our city and our history.

    “City Hall carried out an open and transparent recruitment process in order to form an inclusive and representative board of the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm.

    “All panel members were assessed for the role by a review panel and a decision was made on the basis of what they could bring to the role.”

    “Toyin Agbetu was appointed for his significant expertise, knowledge and experience as a social rights activist and in setting up Ligali, which challenges the misrepresentation of African people and culture in the media.

    “His vast experience will provide a valuable contribution to the Commission.”

    Mr Agbetu declined to comment.

      1. It certainly is .

        We have been invaded by a species that is so subtle and entitled , if you read about the history of the Channel Islands during the war or the attempted invasion of the Falklands , do we never ever learn from history.

        Those genocidal blacks need to be kicked out of here , they are usurping the authority of our culture and laws .. To my mind, London diversity appears to be becoming very tribal .

        Enough is enough, our country needs to be reclaimed.

        1. 329610+ up ticks,
          Morning TB,
          I totally agree so do many of the herd
          until they reach the polling booth and
          reinforce the governance party’s
          ( close shop) intrenchment, vote & whinge is a Nation killer.

        2. Reclaiming one’s country is illegal in International law. Deporting large numbers of invaders is genocide per the UN definition.

    2. All this hoohah is meat and drink to Khant. It gives little runt all the attention that he craves.
      Wait for expressions like ‘coconut’ to surface.

    3. “City Hall carried out an open and transparent recruitment process” surely that’s a lie!? Or does it mean that the process was biased and they don’t deny it?

    5. You know, I really can’t be ared to be arsed. Let the silly buggers eat each other whilst the rest of us get on with life.

    6. Good morning Truthful Loveliness

      I was just about to post this article (on which, of course no BTL comments are allowed!) but I scrolled down and saw that you had already done so.

      Black on black racism is an interesting development.

      We need to get this clear:

      i) A white person criticising a black person in any way is racist;
      ii) A black person criticising a white person is not and will never be racist;
      iii) A black person criticising a black person is racist.

      Ergo: any criticism of a black person is, ipso facto, racist.

  31. BBC stops me viewing iPlayer on my Sony DVD/media player with no notice.

    I’ve not been on disqus recently because I’ve been trying to find out why I’ve been cut off iPlayer despite having paid now for previously free TV licence.

    Turns out that the BBC has pubished a very long list of TVs that now no longer will work with iPlayer. Even more annoying when they keep plugging iPlayer on terrestrial TV and suggest I buy a USB stick.

      1. The problem now is that media companies have the ability to summarily turn you off because every service provider gets the identity of the device that is being used and manufacturers can render the device inoperable unless you are identified with an email address and if necessary a subscription to the media company.

        All utilities are now becoming completely out of our control and that’s why I don’t want smart meter for energy supplies.

    2. A lot is because the device uses older operating system software. My ‘old’ (2014) Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 tablet cannot use the iPlay Android app because of a similar issue as it uses Android v4 and cannot be upgraded as it is built into the unit, unlike a PC which (sometimes with changing a component or three) can be upgraded, or, in the case of my 9.5yo (Windows 7) PC, can still run the iPlayer – for now – because it’s still a very popular OS platform and the BBC would lose a lot of viewers if they did.

      A lot of these ‘problems’ are the conspiracy between electronics manufacturers and content creators/platforms to get people to keep buying new equipment, whether they need it or not.

      Rather like why car firms have heavily promoted cars with big wheels and low profile tyres as a ‘fashion statement’ and it makes the cars handle a lot better (in reality they don’t that much, only under extreme conditions or at illegal speeds), when in reality they are far more susceptible to damage (terminally so) from pothole, etc, wear much more quickly and cost 2-3x as much as ‘sensible’ tyres. IMHO car firms get kick-backs from tyre manufacturers by them subsidising their fitment on brand new cars.

    1. How to be less white:
      – Whinge more
      – Develop a strong sense of grievance that blames everybody else because you, personally, are a useless tw*t
      – Sit on your arse and await handouts
      – Stab people, and deal more drugs
      – Have millions of kids, just don’t be around to raise them. Leave that to others.
      – Do only destructive things
      How’s that to be going on with?

        1. Never mention the historical rifts between the various tribes – who often sold the losers into slavery. There are none so hypocritical as those…

          1. “There are none so hypocritical as those…” who throw stones?
            I’ll get me chasuble.

    2. How can a big company like Coca Cola be going along with this evil nonsense? What happened to them?

    3. 329610+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      OK,
      We give a welcome return to the Black & white minstrels will that help ?

    4. Keep drinking CocoCola and your teeth will be less white; in fact, they will be blackened stumps.
      BTM – Black Teeth Matter.

    6. Was it a white or non-white person who said “try to be less white”?
      And does ” be less white” – mean ” be more black”?

    8. What are you expected to believe in?

      Cripes alive, that’s the most offensive racist twaddle it’s possible to conceive of.

    2. I think Minty might point out that the ‘communist take over of our education system occurred decades ago starting with the abolition of Grammar Schools….

    3. I shall only regain my respect and approval of Nigel Farage when he admits that he was far too quick off the mark in saying he approved of the catastrophic deal when he had not properly reflected on the effects on the City, on fishing and on Northern Ireland.

      It takes a big man to admit that he has been wrong and very few politicians are capable of doing so – they think it would show weakness to do so.

      Is Farage big enough to admit that he was wrong on this issue or will he obfuscate and bumble and defend his error of judgement? We shall see.

      1. ‘Afternoon, Richard I’m still waiting to see and read, the manifestos of both Farage’s ‘Reform’ party and Fox’s ‘Reclaim’ party.

        I also wonder if the similarity in names is deliberate or if, as they both claim to want to put British Politics and culture back to what it was, could they amalgamate?

        1. They could call an amalgamation R2
          Then the Leftwaffe 🙂 could call itself D2 (Dodgy Democrats)

  34. Good morning, my friends

    When will Remainers admit they were wrong about Brexit?
    Many appear to have Stockholm Syndrome – and continue to suck up to EU powers no matter how badly they do

    JULIE BURCHILL : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/21/will-remainers-admit-wrong-brexit/

    A BTL comment with which I totally agree:

    The trouble is that the Brexit we have got is not a very good Brexit – “no deal” would have been far better.

    I blame the odious and disruptive Mr Gove’s last minute intervention which led to the surrender on fishing and Northern Ireland. And of course the financial sector has no clear direction following Brexit.

    Yes, the remoaners need to accept that Britain has left the EU. But the Brexiters need to accept that the “deal” they have got is a very shoddy deal.

    1. Morning, Rastus.
      Just repeat at 5 minutes inervals “All politicians are self-aggrandising slimeballs and asswipes”, and you won’t be far wrong.

    2. They won’t agree they were wrong – and the comment makes the very valid point that we sold out in the end and that has caused the problems for the fishermen, NI, and also the City. The EU’s obstructive form-filling is another problem for exporters. Remainers just think all that hassle could have been avoided by staying.

  35. 329610+ up ticks,
    Dt,
    We must believe in vaccines, restore our way of life, and acknowledge the harms caused by lockdowns

    This will never come about all the time the ovis trust & believe the lab/lib/con, close shop coalition party acts with integrity and for the benefit of the herd.

    Deny a lab/lib/con candidate a kiss X at any given opportunity and regain a lost lifestyle.

  36. ‘I jumped up and I screamed’: Alaska woman bitten on ‘butt’ by bear hiding under toilet. 20 February 2021.

    An Alaska woman had the scare of a lifetime when using an outhouse in the backcountry and she was attacked by a bear, from below.

    “I opened the toilet seat and there’s just a bear face just right there at the level of the toilet seat, just looking right back up through the hole, right at me,” he said.

    I do remember getting up one morning and the dog poking its cold wet nose into my nether regions which caused me some considerable surprise!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/20/jumped-screamed-alaska-woman-bitten-butt-bear-hiding-toilet/

    3. Exactly what type of toilet allows a bear to conceal itself under the toilet lid. The mind bog-gles.

      4. A cludgie, with a bin for the droppings. Bear gets into bin, sees keyhole above, then the light goes out…
        Many lay-by toilets are similar “earth closets” here in Norway, and Firstborn has a two-seater in the back of his woodstore. Not been used in a while, though, since the farmhouse has a proper flush toilet – with heated floor!

        1. I shall consider myself enlightened! I have heard of snakes and spiders but a bear bite would take a lot of explaining to the Doctor.

    4. How did it get around the u-bend? Man, that bear must’ve been starving to do all that!

      No pickernick baskets to half-inch?

    7. “I opened the toilet seat and there’s just a bear face just right
      there at the level of the toilet seat, just looking right back up
      through the hole, right at me,” he said.

      He said…..? I thought it was a woman. Perhaps he went in as a he and came out as a she after the bear had bitten his kit off.

      And why after lifting the seat and seeing the bear did the idiot sit down?

  37. Talking of the obnoxious Johnson clan, Gillian Reynolds writes in The Sunday Grimes today, thus:

    “I can’t stop tuning to Rachel Johnson on LBC on Sunday nights. I am fascinated by the difference between her in real life (clever, confident, sharp) and her on-air persona, that of a viscountess visiting a village fête, seeming to listen while neatly evading bores and nutters. It was good to hear her last Sunday, deep in actual conversation with the chatty former UK ambassador to the US Sir Christopher Meyer on the subject of Donald Trump. In a recent Radio Times column she wrote of being advised, when she joined LBC, to forget everything she’d learnt at the BBC. Perhaps that included engaging with ordinary people.”

    1. I find the whole Johnson clan totally odious. The prime monster, his father and his siblings.

      1. After Livingstone BJ was a breath of fresh air as Mayor of London. However, his credibility has been shredded to pieces giving his ineptitude of not seeking other scientific opinions on the management of this novel virus.

        1. There have only been two and a half Mayors of London…Bring back the GLC.London , was a better,happier and safer place
          in those days….

          4. Those were the days my friend
            We thought they’d never end             – well, not like this shambles.

            Mary sings this with such nostalgic passion it makes ones heart heavy. Superb.

      2. Johnson the father, has escaped to France and applied for citizenship.Hopefully the rest will follow.

      3. I quite like Stanley – he’s passionate about saving elephants and other creatures from poaching and trophy hunting. I’ve seen him on a few demos.

      5. I met BoJo once way back when he was our MP. A friend (who had a huge house at the time) hosted a local Conservative Party meeting which he attended.
        He was witty and charming, nothing like the comic buffoon persona he used to play up to on progs such as HIGNFY.
        I think, over the years, the comic buffoon overtook his genuine persona and now has taken control of him except it ain’t comic any more.

        1. We met him once at, I think, the Colchester Oyster Feast. Again, pleasant, polite, humorous but not the over done buffoon character.

        1. What was true Uncle Bill is the effing length of the questions read out by (i’m free) Mr Humphries on specialist subjects.
          I suffered the inherent stupidity of Pointless yesterday and if that isn’t well and truly fixed, then i’m a member of the royal family.

          1. ALL TV quiz shows are fixed.

            The only one I watch is Univ Challenge – and they stop recording that when there is a “technical problem” and then restart.

          2. All TV competitions are fixed. There.
            We watch a show about interior design. Very amusing. The basic has escaped departure twice, but the basic who is the judge has kept her on. I suspect that the competitor will “learn so much, and improve so much” that she will win.

          3. I have noticed that point on question length too. One show had two people get all their first section questions correct – no passes or delays in answering. They should have had the same points at the end of the round but there was three points difference. Purely down to question length.

  38. Talking of the obnoxious Johnson clan, Gillian Reynolds writes in The Sunday Grimes today, thus:

    “I can’t stop tuning to Rachel Johnson on LBC on Sunday nights. I am fascinated by the difference between her in real life (clever, confident, sharp) and her on-air persona, that of a viscountess visiting a village fête, seeming to listen while neatly evading bores and nutters. It was good to hear her last Sunday, deep in actual conversation with the chatty former UK ambassador to the US Sir Christopher Meyer on the subject of Donald Trump. In a recent Radio Times column she wrote of being advised, when she joined LBC, to forget everything she’d learnt at the BBC. Perhaps that included engaging with ordinary people.”

    3. Words from the mouth of a local undertaker on Thursday ” Where are the NHS getting all their death figures from? ” . . . He clearly doesn’t believe them.

      1. No-one in the MSM is questioning that either. They just believe everything they are told.

    4. My late MiL is one. 12 tests with only the last showing positive – because she was initially put in a ward with suspected COVID patients. Died of ‘severe kidney injury’, caused by dehydration because we couldn’t convince the nurses she wouldn’t drink because she was paranoid about wetting herself and we weren’t allowed to visit to encourage her to drink. An indirect COVID death.

      1. That’s terrible, AA. Your poor Mum-in- Law. And yourselves, knowing she dehydrated for no good reason.

      2. That’s terrible, AA. Your poor Mum-in- Law. And yourselves, knowing she dehydrated for no good reason.

        1. The main problem was she didn’t have a named nurse, so at each shift change it was back to square one, where the new nurse was of the opinion that if someone was thirsty they would drink. Couple that with not being trained to deal with elderly patients with dementia and it was a recipe for disaster.

      4. That is appalling. It is a well known problem with the elderly. Often their ‘dementia’ is the result of toxicity caused by constipation and dehydration.
        Clear them out, rehydrate and give them Vit.B. Within a few days most have returned to normal.

    5. My late MiL is one. 12 tests with only the last showing positive – because she was initially put in a ward with suspected COVID patients. Died of ‘severe kidney injury’, caused by dehydration because we couldn’t convince the nurses she wouldn’t drink because she was paranoid about wetting herself and we weren’t allowed to visit to encourage her to drink. An indirect COVID death.

    6. My late MiL is one. 12 tests with only the last showing positive – because she was initially put in a ward with suspected COVID patients. Died of ‘severe kidney injury’, caused by dehydration because we couldn’t convince the nurses she wouldn’t drink because she was paranoid about wetting herself and we weren’t allowed to visit to encourage her to drink. An indirect COVID death.

  40. At the risk of emulating Master Jill – here’s some interesting news from the US:

    “Meanwhile, a nationwide eviction crisis is here, and there’s no way to stop it.

    According to research firm Moody’s Analytics, about 12 million renters owe an average of almost $6,000, which includes past due rent, late fees, and unpaid utility bills. In total, some $72 billion is owed.

    “These are low-income households,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “They’ve probably already borrowed as much as they can from family or friends. They have no resources left.”

    In New York City alone, tenants owe a whopping $2 billion in back rents.

    1. Fear not, Biden and the Black One will waive it all – let all them not whites go free.. After all, paying rent is a form of slavery, as any fule kno.

      1. What do you mean making available a significant quantity of large empty cardboard boxes for the homeless? That would work….

  41. I quite like to watch Saturday Kitchen and the antics of chefs and Matt Tebbutt. But yesterday the BBC nasties shoved Nagga Munch-jetty and Charlie Stayt around the table. I had to switch off.
    What a horrible pair of childish spoilt brats they are. And rightly so have been taken to task for their pathetic behaviour on social media.

    1. I like watching it too. Always end up laughing at Matt’s behaviour. I think i will give this one a miss or at least watch it on fast forward.

      1. I went back to the programme later but she wasn’t there, but returned towards the end for a few minutes, but I’d had enough of their supercilious laid back ‘do you know who we are’ BS. Matt is a good presenter unlike those two horrors.
        She also had what I considered a hidden message in her out fit. It was a grey with a huge roll neck and one shoulder completely exposed. I expected as a result her shoulder was cold.

        1. My kids used to laugh at those assymetric dresses – ‘economy models’ because they had bits missing.

    1. The ingredients of the vaccine in the picture seem to include ethanol. Maybe the slammers have noticed too.

      1. The covid vaccines contain Madin-Darby Canine Kidney, or MDCK cells.

        As we know…Dogs are haram for Muslims.

        I say let them die.

        1. I wouldn’t go that far, just tell them that it is their choice. Accept the vaccine or go to the back of the queue.

          One of todays DM scare stories is how the limited acceptance of the vaccine in mainly Pakistani areas could delay the end of the lockdown.

          1. Continue Lockdown in areas with a high number of cases like Luton and Bradford and quarantine them and let everyone else out.

            They are the ones living on a flat Earth in the 15th century.

            There is no cure for stupid.

    1. Someone posted – a few weeks back – a compilation of screenshots of articles from the Grauniad since 2009 (I think) showing the annual “NHS Winter Flu Crisis”.

      I ca’t find it – but it underlined the lies we have been fed in the last 10 months.

        2. It begs the question: does the NHS do anything different to prepare for this crisis? It can’t have the government lock everyone up for a year, ever year, can it?

          Ah. Of course it can.

    2. They wouldn’t know what a crisis is if it bit them on the bum. A crisis is along the lines of the Cuban Missile one. 99% of the rest are just a ‘difficult period’ where decent management and zero politicisation would go a long way in ensuring they never happened again.

    4. Its never gone away just changed its name. There is no cure for the common cold or flue. I have never had a flu inoculation and have prefered to build my own immunity. All i have ever heard about the flu inoculation is the trouble it causes. and they have it again the following year. The worst flu I have ever had was in 1957. i revovered in 3 weeks. Even at my age I have a 95% recovery rate and a prefere those odds to an unknown inoculation

      1. I used to be anti the ‘flu jab, but after a particularly nasty bout of ‘flu I tried the jab, on doctor’s advice; so far with no ill effects.

        I remain vary wary of the Covid ones, unfortunately I suspect it will be forced on me if I ever want to see my grandchildren again.

        1. This is what annoys me. Having given the pharmaceutical companies freedom from any liabilities regarding the concoctions they knock out, the politicians cannot be seen to make the vaccinations mandatory.

          They will instead rely on commercial pressures from holiday travel, hospitality venues, sports/music gatherings pushing for proof of vaccination all in the name of elf’n’safety to ‘protect their customers’.

          Leaving the spineless political class to follow the ‘political’ science and scoop up the brown envelopes for an unnecessary job well done.

          I’m not normally in favour of banning things, I prefer to leave that to the Leftwaffe, but it would please me if every hospitality venue on these islands barred politicians from their premises for destroying our lives for over a year.

          1. Leftwaffe 😊
            I havent heard that before. I shall take pleasure in using that next time I speak to my socialist friend.

          2. Often used in conjunction with lawfare, as in Leftwaffe lawfare, used to silence the right (as in correct).

  45. Noticed this scare-story in yesterday’s Daily Express, warning of a new pandemic which is looming on the horizon, posing an even greater threat than Covid-19.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ed8b2b95fba0ee4c5ea2d79fb53e952bc44c99f8002978b675e5c02c17389c0.png

    My first thought was that any virus that swelled the brain size of our politicians might be no bad thing – the 75% mortality rate would be a bonus – but now I’m thinking that if the half a brain cell each of them has were to be made bigger, it would probably only succeed in making them more stupid than they are already.
    :¬(

    2. Ah, but they are so empty headed the swollen brain would have plenty of room to manoeuvre…

    3. Ah, but they are so empty headed the swollen brain would have plenty of room to manoeuvre…

    4. There was another scare story (or to ‘prepare us’ for the next wave of authoritarian lockdowns to finish our spirit off) about some ‘deadly, contagious’ avain flu variant found in some Russian farm or suchlike recently.

      Meanwhile, looking past the main content of the following article in the Mail, we get a very telling account of how the common cold variant from the coronavirus family (not the rhinovirus version) appears to convey a high amount of protection against COVID-19 because it is similar enough that anyone with a reasonable immune system or better will recognise it and thus get only very mild symptoms at best.

      Yes, I feel sympathy toward the few unfortunates who, via genetic bad luck are more susceptible to knock-on effects of COVID via an overractive immune system, perhaps it should be that (if they want to) they are immunised with the most vulnerable.older population and just give the rest of us a coronavirus family common cold to convery natural protection.

      That would mean that the reopening could happen even quicker and we wouldn’t have to worry about any long term side effects on the large section of the population that are of reproductive age or younger, concentrating on best protecting the vulnerable with the least impact on their daily lives, leaving the rest of us to get on with working/earning and everyone being able to socialise again.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9281575/Five-genes-explain-healthy-young-people-die-Covid.html

    6. China already has pneumonic plague, which has a 100% fatality rate. Presumably it hasn’t been weaponised because it can’t be faked. Not that I’m cynical or anything.

    2. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

      (William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming)

    2. Where’s the COVID-safe, completely independent ventilation system? What about the waiter/waitress? 🙂

  53. Very Awkward………….

    Gab comment:

    “I’m sorry that the 1,200,000 NHS staff are having a tough time caring for its 19,392 ‘with Covid’ patients today.

    And 68,000,000 of us are having a tough time having our normal lives ruined to ‘Protect the NHS’

    Especially 10,000,000 kids whose education has been cancelled.”

  54. Ahem
    “Cost of a mission to Mars $2.8 billion
    Cost of UK Test & Trace system £22 billion”
    Politicians should be hanged for this alone

    1. 329610+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Rik,
      How do they get into such positions of power do their mums have a say ?

    2. Someone’s done very nicely from Test & Trace, and I’m sure average profits have gone up as a result. Enough to prove that the National Economic Recovery is well, and the rest of us can afford higher taxes to finance the borrowing.

      2. I thought a bacterium was a two humped camel. Why anyone would want to hump a camel twice only God Allan with the snack bar knows.

        1. “We all get the hump, cameelious hump, from not having enough to do.”

          (Paraphrase of Kipling)

      1. I seem to recall that she was quite happy for a child to be killed at any point up until postpartum.

  56. 329610+ up ticks,
    Surely,and I know it will be painful for many the best lasting remedy for the return to a society of decency & self respect is to kick into touch the lab/lib/con close shop coalition group.

    Why is it that with every vote for the close shop the ovis invite &, guaranteed, receive trouble, what is compelling the herd to follow a voting pattern that has living daily proof shown to be killing the Country ?

      2. I got to understand yer Aberdeen & Glasgow accents & dialects, but haven’t lived there since 1992 so am a touch rusty.

      3. I got to understand yer Aberdeen & Glasgow accents & dialects, but haven’t lived there since 1992 so am a touch rusty.

      1. I think that’s true of the humour of all the people of the British Isles – the ability to laugh at oneself. Perhaps it comes from being inhabitants of island, and cut off from mainland Europe.

        1. I’ve only just become aware of this series but what has impressed me the most is that it is funny without recourse to left wing wokery and / or belittling of the non-left/woke that the current crop of England based comedians push so hard. The Scot Squad series seems only to be available in Scotland (BBC STV) and not on DVD ( 6 series so far ) , weirdly season 6 is on You Tube, as a non license payer I think I can probably watch that. I have a theory that the quality of a comedian/entertainer is directly proportional to their IQ, some of the best humour and/or writing has come from Doctors or Graduates, is it then not surprising that the Scotland that gave us some of the best brains behind the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution also produce rattling good humour .

        2. HSBC appears not to realise we’re an island. Their idiotic advert (I had to endure it yesterday because I missed the racing and caught up on the ITV hub, where you can’t skip the ads) claims “we are not an island” – yes we are, you pillocks! If you don’t know that, I’m not entrusting my money to you!

      2. Many Scots are fantastic folk who are just as fed up with the statist berks as we are. The problem is they’ve a strident, obnoxious, hard Left proto communist twonk running their government.

        Hang on. Whassername Boris’ wife and the green crap.

        Sigh.

    1. I wonder if this ‘Doctor’ knows that NASA is a branch of the US government and not the UK’s?

    2. I’m fairly sure is a real account and that she was being ironic.

      Try posting Rik-Redux’s comment:

      Ahem
      “Cost of a mission to Mars $2.8 billion
      Cost of UK Test & Trace system £22 billion”
      Politicians should be hanged for this alone

      3. Surely 22 million?

        Yes the cost was utterly offensive and it likely wasn’t needed. It was yet another quangocrat appointment for that woman who sits on about ten – all of which could be scrapped.

        1. I don’t know, I was quoting R-R; but I suspect billion is more likely given the way we waste money

        1. Are you really sure?

          Look at some of the comments on the Twitter account that NASA have for the Persevere project.

    5. That’s got to be a fake account. No one is that stupid, even by the comedy standards of the fanatical europhiles.

    4. The example set by the Church of England has been woefully inept and disappointing. Welby is incapable of getting anything right

      1. Yes, he even married Meghan Markle to someone he called “Harry”. Does this make their marriage invalid?

        1. Since she is a divorced woman, their marriage according to the rules of the CofE is indeed invalid cf. Wallis Simpson.

        1. I was very tired this morning, shingles is so draining, but I think I’ve got off very lightly – this may be due to the vit D3 I’ve been taking over the last 18 months after my ankle fracture. I may have inadvertantly strengthened my immune system as well as my bones. Perhaps this stuff really does work!

          4. Sorry to hear that ppsmum.. I had shingles some years ago acupuncture cleared it up quickly….
            A weakened immune system can put you at risk.Shingles is caused by varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox.
            Anothher virus!

          5. I can certainly recommend turmeric for zapping generalised achiness and everything being an effort.

          6. Thank you. For some reason we have just stopped taking it, I can’t remember why….. oh, I do remember now – Charles felt he was starting to smell of turmeric which he found disconcerting – I suppose it was the way his body metabolised it. I was not affected in that way at all, strangely. We have some left, I will start taking them again. I have to say that a brush with shingles has made me feel that I am starting to fall apart at the seams, even though our elder son at the ripe old age of 36 suffered similarly after being off work with burn-out.

          7. I went down with shingles last year. One of the many weird and random symptoms of this virus I went down with first in November 2019.

          8. Poppiesdad is still suffering from shingles’ pain and discomfort 18 months later (Oct 2019) especially during these winter months. He was, and is, so much worse than I have been. For me, it is nothing worse than mild chicken pox; for himself it was a totally different ball-game, Solpadeine Max every four waking hours for several weeks. I cannot understand why I have got away so lightly when every virus that wafts across my nose knocks me off my feet for days – the story of my school life, I caught everything that was going around +++.

          9. What worked for me was aloe vera. Take a small piece of leaf and split it. Then rub the juice well into the rash. I had mine right in the middle of my back, so the only way I could get to it was by attaching the leaf jellyside up to a wooden spoon with a bit of blutac, and then aiming well.

    2. Time to get the ladder out and breadcrumbs to rescue them.

      On second thoughts, maybe not you Eeyore

      1. In 80 years, I have never see a cat corpse at the foot of a tree.

        Cats always make their way down – just like to fool stupid humans that they are stuck..!!

        2. Reminds me of the apocryphal story about the Fire Brigade coming out to rescue a cat from a tree, then driving away and accidentally running over the cat.

        3. Get a stick, poke them out of the tree and see if they land on their feet.

          or whether they do an impression of your ladder exploits

      1. Why are Abbot’s Bromley School, near Lichfield, Staffordshire, and Heathfield Knoll School both twice under “Chinese Control”?

      2. I don’t see the problem, it’s investment. A lot of private school students come from China.

      3. Many UK universities (my former college included) now have Chinese branches. Rather chilling.

    4. Bring it on, Plum, that’s all I can say. I said before Christmas that I gave the EU at most, 2 years before it tore itself apart.

      They seem to be making a good start.

  63. Afternoon all.

    We’ve had a great time today although brief. We decided to drive down to Littlehampton, which we sometimes do in the winter, and then a nice walk along the promenade. Saw lots of families out with kids on bikes, scooters, electric scooters, electric unicycles (adults) and an adult on his electronic skateboard (didn’t even know they existed). We had a great time, chatted to some of them, and really enjoyed ourselves. Saw only about 4 people wearing a face nappy and everyone was 😃 happy. No shouting at children (miracle) and it seemed perfectly normal. There were a couple of groups of people who seemed to feel it necessary to social distance but all in all it was just like old times. I recommend an outing to everyone.

    1. Yes, I had a lovely walk with Spartie. Met an ex-neighbour and we chatted for a good half hour. Few hundred yards on, met another couple of chums – another half hour chat.
      Spartie was very good; he pottered about and chatted to doggy friends without a single whinge or fidget during the whole time.

        2. It’s one of those small pleasures that you miss when they’re gone. They are more important than we realise.
          When Bill and I worked at the local mental hospital, many of the elderly depressed came from retirement hotspots like Frinton and Clacton. They had made the mistake of thinking that somewhere they had loved as a child would be the same when they were 60+. They uppped sticks and removed themselves from familiar people and surroundings. Add an aimless existence and often loneliness and depression followed.
          Let’s hope you are soon back to Dolly walking; it must be extra frustrating now the weather has picked up.

          1. When i am more proficient on my crutches i will take her out. She doesn’t pull on her harness.

          2. We were talking about that on the way home. vw said she could see the draw of the elderly moving to the coast. Fine on a day like today but what of the past few weeks when there were storms and snow. Rose coloured glasses on a day such as this but moving late in life you leave behind all that is familiar and when one of you dies the other is left lonely and without the familiar. Sad way to end a life.

          3. It’s interesting how many people retire to the coast, leaving friends and family miles away, and then sadly one of a pair dies and the other is left all on their own without any backup. Living on the coast seems like a very good idea but …

  64. It has been a lovely sunny afternoon, but!

    Walked the dogs, fiddled around in the garden , had lunch , boned rib of beef which shrank to a few miserable slices , my new crown , back molar that I had fitted last week , came out .. I cannot believe I paid a small fortune for such a miserable looking crown . Now secure in a safe place untill I contact my busy dentist again .

    We had the windows open fresh air , listening to the birds singing , air the house out etc, and one of the neighbours decided to have a bonfire . The smoke drifted down the various driveways , enveloping the garden in a smokey fug .

    The first fine sunny day , no breeze and how thoughtless can neighbours be. It is still puthering on , drifting down .

    1. Bonfires are illegal in France now but we have a déchètterie only three minutes drive away and, much as I enjoyed bonfires, I find I can save much time by putting my clippings straight into the trailer.

        2. Brittany/Pays de le Loire. Having a bonfire in France – is it ok to light a fire outdoors? We believe that since 2011, burning green waste in one’s garden has become illegal in France. Someone else wrote that farmers can have them other than March to October but I don’t know.

    3. Put a note through their door telling them how inconsiderate they are and the next time they do it you’re gonna chuck a housebrick through their living room window. Sign it from a neighbour across the road from them. Stand back and watch the fireworks. :@)

      Complain loudly if your Dentist tries to charge you for refitting the crown.

      2. Puthering and nithering are part of my lexicon , inherited from my father . I can think of no other suitable adjectives, Grizzly.

        Yes of course you are the second person in the world that I have heard using that expression , not including me .

          1. My elderly aunt used that mythered expression … I guess she meant flustered / everything going on at once , phone ringing, just as the scones were due to be taken out of the oven, and the milk simmering in the pan , and the dog fussing around , all on a warm day, as she brushed her hand across her forehead, and wiped her hands on her pinafore!

            Is that how you see it?

    5. How inconsiderate of the neighbours, Maggie.

      We have barred bonfires in our garden. Things get composted or put out in the council garden waste bins. Nice big wood pieces are dried for 12-18 months and then put on our open fire in Winter (together with eco-logs and eco-type coal).

    6. How inconsiderate of the neighbours, Maggie.

      We have barred bonfires in our garden. Things get composted on put out in the council garden waste bins. Nice big wood pieces are dried for 12-18 months and then put on our open fire in Winter (together with eco-logs and eco-type coal).

  65. That’s me for this eventful day. Tree cats. Bold and fearless. AND they have learned to wee outdoors.

    I shall have to have a glass of medicine to calm me down!

    A demain

    1. Do cats naturally roost in trees .. I mean do they all climb trees .. why on earth do they like climbing , and what encourages them , a bird or squirrel?

      3. They like to be elevated – ours spend hours on the back of the sofa when not sleeping in it!

    2. Moh bought a pair of pink flared Farah trousers in the early seventies and wore a huge wide belt . He was never a jewelry wearer though , and wouldn’t even wear a wedding ring either ( We were married) He had a huge pair of sunglasses, aviator style ..

      2. I don’t wear a wedding band. Never have, hate wearing jewellery. When we were married, it wasn’t something we could afford, either.

    4. Flared trousers are a sight better than skinny. Well cut from good fabric they can be quite something, for both sexes. Hang, flow, texture and colour – oh yes.

          1. I’m waiting for my Oxford bags to come back in fashion. (and for my waist to be 28″ again)

          3. When i was 17 i worked in a French Bistro. I had a bleached blond quiff and a plaited pony tail. I got a mention in the Good Food Guide as a customer remarked i was a David Bowie lookalike.

            I kid you not.

    5. Flared trousers are a sight better than skinny. Well cut from good fabric they can be quite something, for both sexes. Hang, flow, texture and colour – oh yes.

          1. When the Barbers said your hair is very thick my standard reply was : “yes its got an IQ of 2″….

          4. IQ 0, occupation bookie’s runner.
            IQ 2, occupation Church or Army
            IQ 1, occupation bargee…

          6. When the Barbers said your hair is very thick my standard reply was : “yes its got an IQ of 2″….

      4. Indeed – during the first lockdown, my hair resembled a 1970s footballer player’s (not permed like Keegan’s though!) – I’m in my 40s. I’d had it cut in early February 2020 and was due for another trim in early April…which turned into early July.

        Just to be on the safe side, I’ve been getting a No.3 hair cut since, but I naively thought that the lockdown from the week before Christmas would be only for a few weeks, having had my hair cut in early November. The top’s ok, but the sides and back are now quite long again. Only me at home, and I’m not going to try and cut my hair myself – I only trim my sidies!

        My advice – use conditoner as well as shampoo – it makes combing/brushing longer hair much easier.

        1. Ever since I read a report by an NHS Dermatologist that he was being inundated with patients suffering from scalp skin problems which he put down to the ingredients in many shampoos, I gave up using a well known brand in favour of Radox shower gel. It works perfectly well. (I’ve never used a conditioner).

          1. I’ve tried not ‘washing’ my hair at all – just rising/massaging it, but my hair gets way too greasy and itchy within a week – epsecially (as at the moment) when I have longer hair, never mind the two or so ‘experts’ say you’re supposed to keep that up before it returns to its natural feel and look.

          2. I remember an experiment on television, Raymond Baxter was the presenter on Tomorrow’s World, where a woman had her long hair wrapped up in a towel for about 6 weeks and didn’t wash it. At the end of that time it was unwrapped and looked really good and healthy. So you just need to persevere Andy!

          1. You think that’s bad – a few years ago, when I was barely in my 40s, some local yoofs mucking about called me ‘grandad’ when I politely but firmly old them to stop and to go home.

    1. Fencing off children’s play areas wasn’t about keeping them safe. It was about taking away as many reasons as possible for people to leave their homes. Spiteful bastards.

    4. Criminal Mastermind Tony Blair – Boris Johnson – Corruption Alert !

      Criminal mastermind and Johnson administration advisor, Tony Blair, is an expert at laundering vast amounts of public money straight into the pockets of friends and cronies, and into his own pockets too…….

      Tony Blair was running a policy and law department store and fiscal laundry when he was in office. Davos billionaire George Soros was his star client and they met in New York at the Plaza Hotel in April 1996 to plan their financial and political partnership.Top of the list was George funding New Labour in return for all the policy and law he wanted from Tony to complete his progressive globalist ambitions. As well as selling off valuable state assets cheap to George at bargain prices which were then sold on for massive profits and consequent share outs.

      This way for devolution and speech laws… that way for climate change, open borders and human rights.

      If you had enough dough, you could have bought any law or policy you wanted from Tony Blair… and now that Tony is advising Johnson and Hancock Ltd, it’s pretty obvious Johnson has opened his own policy and law department store too for Davos billionaire clients such as Gates, Soros, Rothschild and others….

      Now, it’s this way for Net Zero and Build Back Better.. and that way for Vax Passports and Great Reset. HS2? Third floor, just beyond the Northern Ireland tunnel.

      Trade offs, kickbacks, sweetheart deals, commissions and stuffed brown envelopes? That’s Accounts on the top floor.

      The others were laundering since the 1990s, so Johnson and Hancock Ltd, purveyors of policy and law to billionaires, doubtlessly think as Major, Blair and Cameron are worth $75 million plus each, let’s call in the criminal mastermind Tony Blair to make us all rich…

      The mafia couldn’t do it better !

        1. I wonder what he would’ve said if the journo asked if the vial’s leftwover liquid could be taken away and independenetly analysed to see what it was. Notice that whenevre a ‘prominent person’ is ‘vaccinated’, you never see the vial amongst several others being chosen randomly – it’s all set up, ready to go…

          8. I recall Flotex was on the approved list for flooring in government buildings which were normally purchased through The Crown Suppliers, allegedly at a discount.

            Another truly awful carpet product was Heckmondwike.

            Needless to say I specified Grade 5 Wilton.

            Edited: Heckmondwike Bonded Fibre carpets.

    6. Blair to photographer: “Remember to catch my good side”.
      Photographer: “You haven’t got one”.

    7. A Muslim doing the job?

      No problem with that, but the whole thing looks like a set-up.

      Carpet, covered arms, fanny-hat, strange neck scarf, even the white coat looks as if it’s been flung on as an after-thought.

      1. Slammers don’t have to follow the ‘bare below the elbow’ rule – germs presumably don’t exist on their sleeves, or the head coverings that the female docs have to fiddle around with while getting to their stethoscopes.

          1. Heaven forbid any British person would be so bold in what is still (albeit less and less, esp with the ultra woke archbishops) a Christian country.

      1. Indeed. Old-fashioned enterprise. But why is it needed to get around the pig’s ear our own side has made of thing?

  71. The deal we are being offered, take an experimental vaccine with potential lifelong risks to life and limb so that we can get back our freedoms at some point in the future when there was no need to take them away to begin with is the type of coercive deal you get from the sort people that are trying to bully others through conscience and menaces, not what you would expect from a caring government, I don’t like this at all it is the devils work and only evil can come of it.

  72. The deal we are being offered, take an experimental vaccine with potential lifelong risks to life and limb so that we can get back our freedoms at some point in the future when there was no need to take them away to begin with is the type of coercive deal you get from the sort people that are trying to bully others through conscience and menaces, not what you would expect from a caring government, I don’t like this at all it is the devils work and only evil can come of it.

    2. Will anybody contradict this ridiculous statement? If the vaccine doesn’t immunise you what the hell is it for? Just to line the pockets of those “in the club”.

      1. I fear it may yet turn out to be about sterilisation.

        Let’s face it, there are too many people in the world.
        If you really want the world to fall apart so that the population collapses, who do you vaccinate first if it’s dodgy, Europeans and “The West” or Africa and Asia.

        The West dies, it’s occupied by Africa and Asia, they do as they do, and destroy the infrastructure.
        No West to bail them out, populations shrink as they did in the 13/14th centuries when plagues were rife.

        1. I would have thought that if cutting the population is the aim then the target should be those who breed like rabbits – not whitey. Whitey doesn’t want to destroy its own infrastructure – we built it.

          2. Nope.

            Turn that on its head.

            Who keeps the planet alive, with medical, technical, and other innovations?

            Kill off the producers and then what? What’s left will die out naturally. War famine, disease, etc.

        2. Given what the Africans have been doing to themselves and the few white people left since they all got independence, especially those left with a decent infrastructure and resources like Zimbabwe and now South Africa, that doesn’t bode well for those of us here that could still have kids (I won’t be having the vaccine unless dragged there or they are independently proven to be 100% safe over the longer term) and the rest still breathing by the time such a side effect is ‘found’.

          I just heard about the new wave of imminent farm grabs in South Africa endorsed by the ANC government, and yet, the rest of the world does nothing.

  76. Is there nothing the BBC can’t screw up? I used to enjoy Ski Sunday, even after they began including snowboards, but … Tonight was billed as a review of the Alpine ski [FIS] world championships, which finished today. Naturally the BBC decided to allocate half of the programme to whining about the lack of “ethnic representation” at ski resorts! Given the hugely diverse [44 nations?] entry for the championships that seemed a bit odd but it seems the BBC want be be “woker than the average” pinko! Off switch time.

    1. You’ll be delighted to know that lunchtime on Radio 3’s ‘Private Passions’ the guest was a Lesbian Poetess….

    2. Nobody stopping them learning to ski, being good at it, training and putting in the hours, and making the team.
      Just like white folk.

        1. Just like Eddie the Eagle they were viewed as an oddity and to be laughed at.

          I think the BBC is as institutionally racist now as it was then. Just promoting the other side.

      2. Come to think of it, universal white snow was a badge of Empire, invariably spread by slave-owning, English chaps wearing pith helmets …

    4. That’s a point. Normally MB is glued to it; he has totally ignored it this week. Thinking back, he was moaning about the wokeness and general blethering a couple of weeks ago.

    5. ((facepalm)) time! So much for new BBC Supremo Tim Davie coming in with a new broom on that subject. It’s getting worse!

  77. Thought for the day:

    Imagine that the vaccine, in six months time, is discovered to have such dreadful side effects that nobody who has had one is allowed to travel…

    1. I’m torn between wanting their ghastly vaccine programme to fail but not wanting to lose the good folk who’ve given in.

    3. Far worse than that – what happens if it causes irreversible sterility/infertility in all who take it? Not so much of a problem from a day-to-day healthcare perspective or for the over 60s, but for the human race generally?

      If that happened, I’d bet good money that Bill Gates, his WEF chums and their families were miraculously not affected despite taking ‘the same vaccines’, rather like Ernest Saunders recovery from dementia.

      Meanwhile, as I reported on earlier today, the Mail is running a story where the secondary part shows that most people who have had the common cold variant (reasonably recently) from the coronavirus family are then protected from serious illness from COVID because their immune system recognises the similarity and goes into action…

      I’ve been asking whether this would be case for ages now, having found out that this common cold variant exists not that long after the first lockdown started last year. I’m amazed that no-one – media or scientists, bothered to look into that at the time, but then they poo-pooed the treatment for the closely related SARS-CoV-1 (SARS 2003) virus – hydroxychloroquine, which a certain former occupant of the White House promoted, took and, despite being not exactly a healthy man, seemingly did far better than our PM in combatting the virus when he got infected.

      1. There is little Corvid in Africa not including South Africa.

        Do you remember the reports about India saying it was being dstroyed by Covid, well no longer what a turnaround.

        Both of these are due to the mass use of hydroxychloroquine. it works . Why willl thery not admit it in the west. I would take hydroxychloroquine rather than the unproven so called vacine.

        1. Sadly it isn’t available in the UK except on prescription (it’s apparently available over the counter in poor nations). That means either having a very nice, non-ideological NHS doctor who’s prepared to do what’s right (same for administering higher does Vitamin D and zinc), whatever the damage to their career, or we get an (expensive) private GP to do so just when the money’s tight.

          I’m not surprised why so many poor people abroad, especially in Africa and the subcontinent are more than dubious about vaccinaes, especially ‘Western’ ones, because of the very bad hsitory of their unethical usage and sometimes illegal testing without consent. Especially when a cheap alternative just means the vast, vast majority will at most get just minor symptoms.

          What also is telling is that, despite a lack of food and fresh water, the rest of Africa being not obese and being actually quite fit in comparison to their fatter SA neighbours and us lot in the West means that they won’t suffer anywhere near as many deaths – plus they have lots of nice sunshine to get that very useful vitamin D to boost their immune systems.

          1. Curiously, the Chinese manufacturing plant for 50% of the world supply of hydroxychloroquine was mysteriously destroyed by fire a month or so ago.

        2. I understand that anti malarials such as hydroxychloroquine are commonly used in Africa hence the fact that Covid has no great effect.

          The Indians are more advanced than Africans in so many ways and have sussed out the Soros and Bill Gates political hoax shenanigans.

          Their government rapidly issued packs of a mixture of tried and tested drugs and made them widely available in the cities.

        3. Because anything that Trump recommends must be rubbished – even if many people suffer or die.

      2. Why look at mundane solutions when there are so many opportunities for well paid jobs and huge potential profits for big pharma.

        Another, even nastier, thought: what if having the vaccine makes the common cold as serious as Covid, but creates a virus that won’t respond to vaccines like the common cold doesn’t appear to.

  78. Doing a roast dinner for one is a bit of a faff but sometimes worth the effort
    Roast loin of lamb,roast spuds and onion and a selection of steamed veg with a lamb gravy
    Washed down with half a bucket of Malbec
    Lush,and the same again for tomorrow night if I can keep my hands off the other half…………

      1. {:^)) If they always came out as it did tonight you’d be right,however I could regale you with some truly epic culinary disasters……..

        1. I bet you’ve never set out to make a Victoria Sponge and ended up with a Victoria biscuit!

          2. Some years ago i did do several through the early Summer Sunday afternoon party for about 20 or so people. A long table under the carport which had vines and Magnolia hanging down.

            I think when we are let out i might do another one.

            It’s the South coast though and i haven’t got room to put people up but….

          3. but…… I’m on my way. My napkin is tucked inside my collar, I am licking my lips. So is Poppie.

    3. Those of us who live alone must make the effort otherwise we will fade away!

      Your dinner sounds delicious!

      1. Oh, gosh, are you all right Phizzee? We need all the stitches present and correct in this nttl.blog tapestry of ours.

        1. I’m okay Poppiesmum. Stable and a couple of G&T’s down the hatch. Just getting into a comfortable position.

          1. Are you more comfortable than you were and not in as much pain? I read the other day that you had to get up during the night several times because of the pain… is the nhs doing something for you? And is Nurse Dolly on duty?

          2. The pain is manageable provided i don’t move around much.
            I am under the Haematology Consultant and the Vascular Consultant and tests are ongoing.

            Dolly is never off duty if i have a biscuit in my pocket.

            Thanks.

  83. Evening, all. The less said about today the better as far as I’m concerned! Hope Plum is feeling better.

      1. It’s just been one catastrophe after another and, after a week with little or no unbroken sleep, I’m finding it hard to keep on top of it all. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully by then I shall have successfully completely unblocked the cloakroom loo (MOH took the cardboard former from an empty loo roll, tore it up, dropped it in the loo and tried to flush it away – unsurprisingly, the system didn’t like it!), which was the first of the series which greeted me when I got up. I knew I should have stayed in bed 🙁

        1. It is like having a toddler, having a spouse with dementia – I often thought this about my Mum who lived with us for two years when she had dementia. At the time I had a full-time job and two teenage boys. On one occasion she phoned my husband at work, fortunately she didn’t phone me! – to tell him she had accidentally flushed her false teeth down the loo; she had, for some reason, wrapped them in a tissue. He managed to retrieve the upper set, but the lower set were never to be seen again, off on their hols towards the North Sea. But of course this incident was not the end, we had to sort her teeth out. Unbelievably our dentist had a peripatetic dentist who came out to see her, this involved 4 appointments. Equally unbelievably my mum cancelled one of them as she ‘wasn’t in the mood’ that day for a bit of dentistry. The dentist said not to worry, they were used to this with the elderly – I thought my Mum didn’t know how lucky she was to have a visiting dentist.

          Edit: I had to re-write. Stuff in the wrong place. Blooming iPads.

          1. I said that to a friend who rang me this afternoon; it’s like having a young child. You need eyes in the back of your head. Fortunately I managed to turn the taps off before the sink overflowed 🙂

          2. Commiserations, Conway – I can’t think of anything worse than dementia. My husband’s mother lived with it for years – his father looked after her at home as you do, until he was persuaded she would be better being cared for in a home. I think the stress shortened his life somewhat. She was in the nursing home for four years but deteriorated mentally to the stage where she knew nothing and nobody.

            Our good friend who lives in Spain cared for his dear wife for nearly 20 years all through the stages of her dementia and was distraught when she finally died. He’s now in his late 80s.

            It really is the cruellest of diseases, both for the person and the carer.

          3. My grandmother lived with us for a couple of years after my father died – Mum had to go out to work and at first she was compos mentis enough to be there for me when I came home from school. But she gradually deteriorated, and went from needing a commode to smashing windows with a poker one night as she was having hallucinations. I was six years old at the time and Mum had reached breaking point – Grandma went into the local mental hspital and died there. In her case it was vascular dementia – at least it was a shorter decline than Alzheimers.

            How are you today with the shingles? I hope it’s improving.

          4. Hi Ndovu – I am just tired and lacking in energy, and achey – I feel a bit of a fraud as the rash isn’t too bad.

            My mum had vascular dementia too and in the end I just couldn’t cope either, she had hallucinations (“what is that parrot doing on your shoulder?”) but she wasn’t violent.

          5. Grandma thought we were being invaded by three men so she chased them with the poker and smashed the window. There was nobody there of course. I think that was the last straw for my mum – and I was only six.

            It sounds as though you are recovering, slowly – but the lack of energy lasted several weeks for me after the rash and pains had gone.

          6. Thank you for the insight and warning, I might gave started to get worried otherwise. I slept for an hour or so this afternoon. I can’t understand though that the discomfort from the rash is minimal. I am aware that ‘they’ are there, but that is it

          7. Thank you for the insight and warning, I might gave started to get worried otherwise. I slept for an hour or so this afternoon. I can’t understand though that the discomfort from the rash is minimal. I am aware that ‘they’ are there, but that is it

        2. Nowt I can do other than utter empty platitudes, Con. My thoughts are with you though.

  84. One of today’s stories:

    A United Airlines Boeing 777-200 suffered an engine failure just minutes after taking off, strewing hot and fiery debris across a Denver neighbourhood.

    It took me twenty minutes – Google etc – to find out the engine manufacturer. Perhaps journalists don’t ask the right questions.

    ‘Twas a Pratt and Whitney PW4000 that caused the incident; it could have been much worse …

    1. Pratt and Whitney produced the Twin Wasp radial engines that powered the Flying Fortress and Liberator both aircraft that helped save us all in WWII.

      I too had to search and was mightily relieved that it was not a Rolls Royce engine. The Derby company has enough to contend with thanks to the Boris Johnson led government rabble.

    2. I thought American airlines bought American engines, so the chances are it wouldn’t have been RR.

      1. Not necessarily so, Conway:

        “American Airlines and Rolls-Royce celebrate 1,500 engine event at TAESL
        Thursday, 16 August 2007
        American Airlines and Rolls-Royce today celebrated the 1,500th engine to come through the joint venture maintenance and repair facility, Texas Aero Engine Service Ltd (TAESL) in Fort Worth, Texas.”

  85. Evening all, this may be all false misinformation, we will know in a few hours if so.
    Is there anyone here who would be the least bit surprised if this came to pass.
    I hope the elections in May go ahead, it would be an opportunity to let the buffoon know what the people feel.

    https://youtu.be/e7bdm67K8uo

    1. Free? Well not quite yet and we can’t run our Easter courses or even give firm dates yet for our summer courses.

      Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose! (Kristofferson)

      1. Morning Rastus, I’m afraid it is an intolerable situation we find ourselves in with no real end in sight. Your situation where you are trying to run a business cuts no slack in the minds of TPTB, the truth being you or I do not matter until they want our votes.
        B@stards, the lot of them!

      1. The abysmal results in the Euro elections brought about change, perhaps similar results in May local elections will send a message to the buffoon, nothing else seems to get through.
        BTW I would always choose an independent candidate or similar than Kneelers party.

  86. Monday 22nd February 2021

    Grizzly

    A Magnificent Birthday

    and

    Very Many Happy Returns

    for our old friend from

    Caroline and Rastus

    We hope you will make some culinary delights to celebrate the occasion and maybe you will commemorate it by getting out your palette, paints and canvas to create another beautiful painting. (We remember the impressive elephant you posted on the Nottlers’ site a year or two ago.)

    As Paul Simon wrote:

    How terribly strange to be 70!. This song was produced in 1968 the year my beloved father turned 70 – he was in sparkling form and the age did not seem very strange to me! In fact I passed that milestone nearly five years ago.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3NYWzHLEZw

    1. Having rediscovered the plot wot I lost last night!, may I wish you, George, a very Happy Birthday. Enjoy the beef!

        1. Wishing you a very Happy Birthday Grizz! A special day for a special person and I hope it’s a wonderful one for you! Get cooking/painting/relaxing and enjoy it! 🎂🎉🍾and yer divent lyuk a day ower 69, pet!

          1. Why-aye, bonny lass; I divvent feel a day over 17! 😇

            Many thanks, man Sue, and a big hug is comin’ your way. 😘👍🏻

      1. Less stressful so far, thankfully, but very tiring – I had virtually no sleep again last night, so I went to bed in the afternoon to catch up, only to be rung up by my bank wanting to know if there was anything they could do to help! I forbore from saying, not ringing me up would be a start! 🙂

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