Friday 12 March: Did the Sussexes consider the mental health of those they vilified?

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),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/03/12/letters-did-sussexes-consider-mental-health-vilified/

779 thoughts on “Friday 12 March: Did the Sussexes consider the mental health of those they vilified?”

  2. Bribed with our own funny money … 12 March 2021.

    De Toqueville wrote that a real democratic republic would only last in the US until the politicians learned that the citizens could be bribed with their own money. De Toqueville was a conceited fop, but he got that right.

    Republicans tell pollsters that they like the 1.9 trillion new law? Sure they do! Why would they not? Lots of money in new forms of the dole are in there. And, there is the prospect of making the dole permanent. Hey! You can be like the teachers, no work required, vacations on the beach somewhere, anywhere. Shh! Don’t post on FB about your great new life. The boobs will catch on.

    Bread and circuses fellow boobs, that is where we are now. The government being created will own you all, feed you with funny money, tell you what to think. Ah, they are re-creating the USSR.

    “Man is born free, and is everywhere in chains.” I have long believed that JJ Rousseau should have been strangled in the cradle.

    Evil has come upon us. Pat Lang.

    Morning everyone. The view from the States.

    https://turcopolier.com/bribed-with-our-own-funny-money/

    2. Morning Bill, evidence of a smattering of snow during the night but clear skies now

  4. ‘Morning All

    Funny Old World…..

    Is it just me or does

    the hysterical weeping wailing and shrieking about this particular

    murder feel completely and utterly “Off”

    Almost like a pre-arranged campaign waiting to be launched as soon as the “Right” victim appears with the “Right” murderer..

    22 Dead in Manchester………Meh

    3 Gay men dead in Reading…………..Meh

    10’s of thousands raped in our cities,some murdered………….Meh

    Pretty child slaughtered in a park by an illegal……………………………………….Meh

    “The torture inflicted by five Wandsworth men on Mary Ann Leneghan and

    her friend has never been seen before in this country, according to an

    expert.”…………………….Meh

    (Warning account is VERY harrowing)

    https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/713852.the-most-sadistic-abuse-ever-seen-in-the-uk/

    1. Yes just more controlled opposition again.
      They want to control what we get angry and care about,

    3. I am getting that feeling very strongly. A “nice” convenient crime with a white, male suspect, no less.

    2. I like…

      ‘Woke’ is only a useful bit of slang and the ‘Great Reset’ a metaphor acquired through too much peering into their electronic gadgets.

  8. Morning all.

    SIR – You report that three million people have already completed the 2021 Census. I received my letter on Tuesday and it clearly stated that all householders should complete the Census on Sunday March 21 2021, or as soon as possible after that.

    How can so many people not follow a simple instruction, and why does the website allow data entry before this date? With a change in the guidance, will they have to resubmit their details at the correct time?

    John Edlington

    Lincoln

    The answer, Mr Edlington, is in several parts:

    1. People who can follow a simple instruction are a vanishing breed and the contact letter is in English, which the recipients have to understand in order to ask for a version in their own language, which they will then dutifully do. Yeah, right!

    2. Experience shows that if 20 million people (my guess) all log in on Census Day to fill in the forms, it’s a very safe bet that the government-designed Census application will crash for some time, leading to frustration and then eventually non- compliance

    3. As a former Head of Software Support & Development for a major oil company’s research laboratory I know that although there may have been extensive testing, actual contact with end-users in bulk is far harsher than contact with the ‘gentler’ Development team

    4. As an amateur Genealogist I kept my paper responses to the 2011 Census and wanted to see what kind of questions were being asked this time in these days of Wokeness, so I filled in my form on line and saved it ready to send in a few days ahead of Census Day

    5. Those of us who are elderly and are suffering lockdown in our houses know exactly where we will be on March 21st – the same as the last 365 days unless we croak before then

    6. Far more important in my view is the worry about how many illegals and others will simply ignore the letter (if they receive one at all) leading, as usual, to gross underestimates of the population. Who is going to police it, especially in ghetto areas? Those who really know the score are the food suppliers and supermarkets.

    Incidentally, millions of people who are blind, have poor eyesight or lack computers will have to go online (!) or phone an 0800 number to get a paper version. Another ploy to bear down on us inconvenient old folk, whose taxes over the years (and now) have paid for this census.

    P.S. I am still deciding whether to fill in the Religion question as a Jedi or an Onanist.

    1. Morning RC. It seemed oddly thin to me. None of the questions that I thought it might be sensible to ask!

      1. As it is supposed to give the authorities the heads-up on how and where to allocate resources i don’t see why they bother at all. Funding is cut year on year for services.

    2. I can accurately predict the situation in my simple household on 21st March. So, Mr Edlington, I have completed the census on line.

    3. And furthermore, Classic fm (and presumably other radio stations) are still regularly broadcasting Government ads which ask us all to complete our forms on Sunday (March the 14th) or sooner.

    1. Now not bothering with a token gesture, so that they can close again after a few minutes.

    1. Morning Rik. I’m pretty sure this already exists! The name and address of anyone who posts on this site alone is already known to the Borg!

      1. GCHQ operatives spend all day looking at kiddie porn. They are not interested in us old fogies.

        1. Morning Phizzee. No I think there has been a reorganisation and we have been handed over to 77 Brigade!

          1. They are still hamstrung by the available technology.

            They tried to reintroduce mass spying on the citizenry with the Investigatory Powers Act. It’s still bouncing around like a demented rubber ball in a Squash court.

            Given the abilities of detectives i don’t think i will worry too much about the Brigade.

    2. I shouldn’t worry too much. There isn’t enough storage capacity in the world. As it is with email scanning they can only look for trigger words like ‘Bombmaking’, ‘HowtomakeSarininyourbath’ and ‘Shopping’.

    3. I think that story is a rehash from at least 10 years ago. It was discussed with Telecoms companies and found to be almost impossible to implement. This was under the Data Retention Act.

      The Government targetted the biggest Telecoms companies. The companies haggled them down to keeping the data for six months because of the sheer amount of data.

      The Government still needed Home office permission to get any of said stored data.

      Though they are still doing it the EU abandoned it as too expensive and unworkable.

      .

    4. I’ve always assumed that my browsing history is stored somewhere, so I am very circumspect in my searches.

      1. I often search for things I have mislaid in the fridge, Annie. So I guess the police will shortly accuse me of being an obese food snacker!

        :-))

  11. Royal Navy warships head huge international fleet in show of force against Russia. 12 March 2021.

    Royal Navy warships are spearheading a massive international fleet, braving brutally sub-zero temperature Baltic seas in a show of force against Russia.
    Heavily-armed Type 23 frigates HMS Lancaster and Westminster are at the head of the flotilla, along with war vessels from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

    The four navies join forces to practise war-fighting against nations threatening Europe.

    So two frigates, two patrol vessels and a minehunter? I’m sure that kept Vlad up all night!

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-navy-warships-head-huge-23688157

    1. May I fiddle Minty

      All the seaworthy warships that the Royal Navy has are in a not very huge international fleet in show of force against Russia.

      As the fleet also has warships from those stalwart maritime Nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia,

      a. crime will be reduced in UK
      b. Crops will rot in the fields of Lincolnshire

      c. Ladies of the night will get proper sleep

      12 March 2021.

  12. Good morning from a dull, damp and dreary Derbyshire. At a smidgeon above 0°C, not very warm either!
    The Dearly tolerant is off back South for the next 10 days or so to help her sister clear their mother’s house out so it’ll be the Still at Home and myself up here.

    1. When we lived in the USA the local Sheriff issued Mrs D with a police strength pepper spray.

  14. SNP’s contentious hate crime laws pass despite free speech fear. 12 March 2021.

    The SNP’s controversial hate crime laws were passed at Holyrood last night despite lingering concerns they will undermine freedom of expression.

    The second part of the legislation has caused controversy because it would criminalise the “stirring up of hatred”, which could lead to charges over comments perceived to be offensive even if that was not the intention.

    A toe in the water! Thus does tyranny establish itself!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/11/snps-contentious-hate-crime-laws-pass-despite-free-speech-fears/

    1. What else does anyone expect from a nationalist socialist party?
      The group they have chosen to demonise is the English.

        1. As the English are a white-skinned race, you don’t need to emphasise it, Phil. If you’re “British” that’s a different matter.

    2. There is more to come, as I have posted above.
      When I look at this I consider the fact that when I was a youth there were considerably fewer laws than there are now. I therefore wonder if these laws, and many, many others, are necessary for the peace of the realm and safety of citizens. Or is it the case that there is now an even greater greed for power and total control amongst those who become politicians?

    3. There is more to come, as I have posted above.
      When I look at this I consider the fact that when I was a youth there were considerably fewer laws than there are now. I therefore wonder if these laws, and many, many others, are necessary for the peace of the realm and safety of citizens. Or is it the case that there is now an even greater greed for power and total control amongst those who become politicians?

    4. Now they can’t say they hate the English – the words foot and shot spring to mind

  15. Off Topic

    The hunt for the holy grail of fake meat: a plant-based steak that tastes like the real thing

    The hunt is on for burgers and steaks that bleed and taste like the real thing

    Why do Vegans and Veggies want to eat food that tastes of the ‘Real thing, yet say we should not be omni-or carnivores?

    A bit like.Blacking Up or a White man playing Black Parts, etc in the theatre

    Eat your Tofu and and Nut Roasts and suffer for your new found religion

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/03/11/endless-search-holy-grail-fake-meat/

    1. There are many flavours of vegetarianism. Not all of them are zealots like vegans.

      Some people are concerned about the way animals may suffer (i do) and chose not to promote the slaughter.

      I applaud their principled stand. But i won’t be giving up meat any time soon. While still pining for that bacon sandwich. Hence meat free meat.

      IMO

  16. Morning all

    SIR – In their interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex expressed concerns regarding their mental health. Did it not cross their minds to consider the mental health of those they were vilifying, two of whom are over 90 years old?

    We are led to believe that nobody is more aware than they are when it comes to mental health, but I wonder.

    Sheila Hale

    Hitchin, Hertfordshire

    SIR – The Duchess of Sussex has a pack of cards stored for use against our monarchy and press. If anyone says they don’t believe her stories, she takes out a card and plays it. Piers Morgan came under fire in just this way.

    However, as someone who has had mental health issues and has known other sufferers, I can say that I was not affected by Piers Morgan’s comment. He was giving his opinion on the whole interview, not just one part of it.

    Patricia Roberts

    Nairn

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    SIR – I found Meghan to be refreshingly honest. The big takeaways for me were the degree of racism and emotional abuse (to the point of suicidal thoughts) she suffered at the hands of “The Firm” and British tabloids. She was over-controlled by palace staffers. The lack of compassion and support when Harry and Meghan appealed to family members was appalling.

    Now, as California residents, they seem happy to be free to voice their own opinions and make their own decisions. We are proud to have them.

    Dr Victor N Ogilvie

    Altamonte Springs, Florida, USA

    SIR – If the Duke of Sussex, in his position of wealth and privilege, was incapable of getting support for himself and his wife, what kind of ambassador can he be for the cause of mental health?

    A P Lodge

    Winchester, Hampshire

    SIR – What exactly does “mental health” mean? I see a mother slap her little son in the street, and I get angry. I see an old man stumble on the pavement, and I feel sorry for him. My boss bawls at me for being late, even though she is late every day, and I resent her hypocrisy. My son falls sick, and I worry.

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    All of these reflect a healthy mental state. So, what’s the opposite? When do I need to look after my so-called mental health?

    Perhaps happiness and unhappiness have been appropriated by psychologists as indicators of mental health. The unhappy mind is sick, the happy mind is healthy. Anger, grief, remorse and frustration are no longer states that naturally arise in the healthy mind in response to the manifold phenomena of human life, to be accepted and endured. They are instances of mental sickness.

    If this is the case, “mental health” is an empty phrase. It sounds good but is phoney. Like saying that something difficult is not difficult but challenging.

    Smiley Fogg

    Copenhagen, Denmark

    2. As someone who has been under par mentally for many years, following a traumatic divorce and a concerted campaign of prejudice against my sort, whereby I am to be excluded from family life and the workplace because I do not have the correct “protected characteristics” (a hearing incapacity doesn’t count), perhaps I can offer some insight into the difference between depression and stress?

      When I was prescribed Prozac in the 1990s, the “happy pill” that would correct personality issues, I ended up a dreamless zombie in the armchair, no doubt appropriately stripped of anything that could concern others, but as a person, I may as well have been a lump of meat.

      I was then put on Trimipramine, and old tricyclic that had long been “upgraded” by the Prozac family, and rather sneered on by the medical profession. I did not get, nor expect, euphoria or the solution to all my troubles. How I can best describe it is that it made the impossible merely difficult. Difficult is good enough,

      Since Trimipramine (which is the only antidepressant that does not suppress REM sleep, and allows dreaming, which I find therapeutic) was made generic in 2013, all control over its price was lifted. This enabled the cartel, with the assistance of the Department of Health, to put up the price to NHS GP surgeries for a pack of 28 from about a fiver to £200. The clinical commissioners have now banned the drug on cost grounds.

      As we all know, the Department of Health, which we are instructed to applaud like some Politburo member, is corrupt, and the rottenness of it has been exposed by the money allocated by the Treasury for Test & Trace. Need I say more?

        1. That is true. I held up medication for five years after my marriage broke down, but got to the stage where I would wake at 2am, be half asleep before dragging myself out of bed at 9am. I’d be half-awake, with about an hour’s productive work at 9pm and then keel over by 10 or 11pm. I was going down and down, and medication was the only way left to correct this. A year later, I was also in the thick of legal proceedings and also threatened with the “Actively Seeking Work” test by the authorities. Nobody would employ me, except as an agency casual. There were Equality & Diversity targets to meet. Also after I left college, I was legally aided fighting for reasonable contact with my children, and needed a barrister and an expert witness and simply could not afford to have to reapply for legal aid whenever I found a job.

          All those years I was on Trimipramine, I would take one tablet at 9pm and this would buy me 13 nights in a fortnight, a good night’s sleep. Much later on came the morning anxiety, and this eventually went on all day, but I knew that if I took my tablet at 9pm, I could sleep it off, and really looked forward to going to bed. Yes, there were anxiety dreams, but in a way it was a relief then to wake up and realise I didn’t have to sort out the latest demands on me in my dream.

          When the Department of Health and the Cartel did the dirty on me, I had to ration what tablets I had left, along with 100 more I managed to source in Germany in 2019. After much research online, I found that 400mg of Valerian root enabled 1/2 tablet of Trimipramine to work just as well, and also did something about the morning anxiety. Of course, my doctor knew nothing about this, since it’s not in their licensed textbooks as approved by the Department of Health. To qualify for CBT, you need to be able to predict a major relapse nine months in advance, and then come up with reasons why their online service, designed in America, was not effective. Even so, you get a 13-week crash course, and then abandoned with no follow-up.

          I now have had to cut my dose to 1/2 tablet, alternating with 1/4 tablet, taken every three days. it’s not enough, and my sleep has deteriorated, but at least it buys me some good nights until these run out.

          I am paying through the nose in my Council Tax on adult social care, but I imagine most of this money is going on bonuses for executives.

    3. Dr Ogilvie. We are happy that you are happy. You’re welcome to them.

      Smiley Fogg (what a name) You sound far too sensible.

  17. SIR – The arrival of the Winchcombe Meteorite raises an interesting question in British law. Who owns it? Is it the freeholder of the drive on which it landed?

    As the value of rocks from space has only recently been recognised, I think it unlikely that the Crown will have established a historic claim.

    Nigel McKie

    Helston, Cornwall

      1. As it is of Scientific interest it should be given to the relevant group to study.

        Anyway. That’s the high principle dispensed with…

        Auction it on Ebay.

        1. Probably better to sell it via an established auctioneer who sells fossils and geological stuff , eg Bonhams.

          Might be worth between £500 and 1000.

  18. 330224+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    I have no idea how long this issue can continue as deflection
    material but it is working a treat,

    Friday 12 March: Did the Sussexes consider the mental health of those they vilified?

    The truth of the matter and facts that must be faced is, this
    couple have “joined the herd”

    Those that posed the ( chaff) question should also ask
    ” Did the governance parties consider the mental health of those they regularly dangerously vilified over these last three decades especially” ?

    Did the supporter / voters ask the same prior to kissing X the lab/lib/con candidate ?

    This is not in defence of what they have done “rhetorically” they have abused their positions of power prior to joining the herd in a serious sticks & stones manner, it should be viewed as such, then dropped.

    More serious matters via the political overseers are taking place daily, that is, action is being “taken” by them concerning anti English / GB issues and the polling booth tells us it is being done with the people’s consent.

    For starters how is the DOVER replacement party membership booster coming on ?

    As has been ask before when you replace the head of granddad’s axe then the shaft, whos axe is it ?

  19. Failing the test

    SIR – One billion equals 1,000 million. The budget for NHS Test and Trace is £37 billion in total: £600 for every man, woman and child in Britain.

    How can that make sense?

    Ted Awty

    Wimborne, Dorset

    1. I suspect the share for some of the government’s cronies is a lot more than 600.

      2. Yes they are milking the state openly now. No more stories about Railways, Foreign Aid, or non- existent Armed Forces!

  20. SIR – Many years ago I saw a production of Salome at La Scala, Milan, in which Salome carried the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

    If only this Salome had received the training that Nicholas Young recalls (Letters, March 8), to give the appearance of carrying a heavy load when the object is in fact very light. A human head weighs around 11lb – yet Salome bore it as if it weighed no more than an average sirloin steak.

    Alexandra Rous

    London SE23

    1. Can I say that she has never exhibited any of the signs of depression, none of the lethargy or inability to communicate that accompanies the condition. The very opposite in fact!

        2. She didn’t have to rely on her skills to fool Harry. She used another part of her body for that.

          Good morning, Billy. How are the goats? Gruff?

          1. The goats have been absent since before Christmas. The farmer doesn’t answer e-mails – so I have no idea what has happened. Mass produced curry?

      2. Probably depression to do with the pregnancy if she had it at all. Women can become irrational with post natal depression because of hormone imbalance. It doesn’t explain why she was irrational before and after though.

        *Happy to be corrected (unlike Meg).

        Good morning, Minty.

    1. Also, there is now the firm intention to incorporate into Scots Law four UN Treaties.
      The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
      The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
      The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
      The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)

      Scotland is now a one-party totalitarian state, with no credible opposition, where you are not free to speak your thoughts in your home.

      1. I have to say Horace, it’s the first time in 40+ years that I want to get out of this badly-run and divisive country. I have put up with the anti-English, anti-Tory rhetoric for all that time, but watching that disgusting, sleazy, racist Paki telling us that we’re too white and shoving through his incendiary Hate Bill through the wee pretendy parliament, is the final straw. If it wasn’t for the girls being established here… Anyway, rant over and I will stand up to the bullying ba****ds! Just remember, this is the sort of thing we have to put up with! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/040cbbd0f3360d3a8ff4150bbd9ebb11ac34edd88760ed8c600ca71d05e720ec.jpg

        1. Is this real? If so isn’t it incitement and shouldn’t its perpetrator be punished?

          1. Oh yes Rastus! Found on every lamp post on the Glasgow Road at the end of our lane! Can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with for the May elections! The leaflet about postal voting came in a plain envelope but when opened, out popped a personal letter from the “Dear Leader” complete with SNP logo!

    2. The sooner Scotland is no longer a part of the UK the better!

      There should be a population exchange – those who can no longer abide the SNP should be helped to come to England while all those who have entered England illegally should be sent to Scotland in a swap.

  26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSZRA0uKLes

    A lot of heavy armour is moving into Ukraine where a US Lieutenant General Roger Cloutier is visiting ostensibly for “meetings”. One finds it difficult to believe that the Ukrainians would be dumb enough to try and squeeze out the Donbass. The Russians would never allow that! Of course they will be blamed for it when they respond!

    https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/3205598-delegation-of-nato-allied-land-command-arrives-in-ukraine.html

          1. My brother in law insists on having what you referred to yesterday as, a spam head! It frightens the horses, doncha know, and he used to be a jockey!

      4. So they don’t have to stand in front of a mirror for hours on end trying to find the center parting. Like you do.

    3. If that were a train with our tanks on it, it would be on the Circle Line
      Twelve tanks to look like many

    4. Putin will not allow the military recapture of the Donbass but I doubt that he has ever much cared about it for itself. I thought the whole intention was to take the coastal area all the way round to the Crimea, giving land access to the Crimea and making the Sea of Azov a Russian lake. It didn’t work because Obama finally took over from the greedy EU and gave Ukraine what it needed. The Donbass is proving expensive, there is talk of it going back to Ukraine via diplomacy.

  27. BTL comments are no longer allowed at the DT, so I’ll say it here.

    ‘SIR – I found Meghan to be refreshingly honest. The big takeaways for me were the degree of racism and emotional abuse (to the point of suicidal thoughts) she suffered at the hands of “The Firm” and British tabloids. She was over-controlled by palace staffers. The lack of compassion and support when Harry and Meghan appealed to family members was appalling.

    Now, as California residents, they seem happy to be free to voice their own opinions and make their own decisions. We are proud to have them.

    Dr Victor N Ogilvie
    Altamonte Springs, Florida, USA’

    I assume that Dr Ogilvie, had he been alive 150 years ago, would have taken the line of many of his compatriots ‘We gave the accused a fair trial then took him outside and strung him up.’

    1. Now, as California residents, they seem happy to be free to voice their own opinions and make their own decisions. We are proud to have them.

      And of course pay for their security, they are just 2 downtrodden people driven out of the UK to the land of the free and gullible.

      1. ‘We are proud to have them’. That’s a major upgrade on the Royal ‘we’. The mendacious grifters live in California and Dr Ogilvie lives 3000 miles away in Florida.
        California has been closed down for most of the past year whilst Florida sensibly stayed open, thus allowing businesses to survive.

    2. I wonder how the good doctor had the intelligence to qualify – he seems alarmingly thick! Frankly anyone who believes the ravings of Migraine needs their own mental health checked!

      1. He’s 78 years old, a Democrat and was a colonel in the USAF! No mention of why he’s a “doctor”!

        1. VA (Veterans Association?)
          Clinical/Psychologist who also donated money to the Democrats

          answers a lot about his letter

      1. If ever GB News needs an example of how to be a trusted and worthy news outlet, they need to look no further than this channel in Australia.
        Perhaps the channel is not perfect but they do seem to stand head and shoulders above the rest.

        1. It was very distressing to hear that Meghan had such trouble learning the National Anthem.

          I’m sure that the Guardian will suggest a simpler version for black people.

      2. Good morning Nickr

        Thank you for posting. Quite the best commentary I have come across on this topic.

        1. As I wrote, Andrew Bolt is loathed my the Left, so I feel it my duty to promote his opinion and a very good morning to you, too, Richard!

    1. It’ll pass, Bob. I’m in Staffordshire. It was chucking it down half an hour ago, blue sky now.

      1. Good morning, Mrs Macfarlane.

        We had two inches of snow yesterday. It then turned to rain at midday and by evening all the snow had gone. It’s now persisting it down with rain on a strong south-western wind.

        1. Good morning Mr. Grizzly! Very formal this morning! It has now stopped snowing and is hissing down very cold rain – sometimes horizontal!

      1. That’s an intriguing British website you’ve got there, Billy.

        It shows my part of southern Sweden, very clearly, but it doesn’t show any of the top part of Jockland!

  29. Apropos my comment yesterday about the man in custody in connection with the murder of the London woman.

    The coverage today is, IMHO, even worse than yesterday. It is truly shocking.

      1. It looks rather as though a deliberate attack was planned by his “colleagues” to punish him for “letting down the Met” (sarc)

        2. Last Friday a 16 year old Chinese girl was stabbed to death at a takeaway in Wales. A Chinese man has been charged. There are no pictures. It is almost certainly Tong Business. The Police asked for no one to speculate!

          2. Any victim is a concern. Had this woman disappeared anywhere else other than London we would not be reading banner headlines for days after.

            A new law to protect woman? How about enforcing an existing law against sexually abusing children? Thousands of men were involved in the industrial scale sexual exploitation of white under aged girls in northern cities and nothing very much came of it; the main stream media tried their level best to ignore it for resons that were never satisfactorily explained.. A token few before the courts and some out on the streets accompanied, one witness victim claimed, by teenage girls.

          3. “Thousands of men were involved in the industrial scale sexual exploitation of white under aged girls in northern cities and nothing very much came of it…”

            Not to mention the thousands of men who were involved in the industrial scale sexual exploitation of white under aged girls in towns and cities NOT in the north; e.g. Aylesbury, Peterborough, Oxford, Banbury, Berkhamsted, Bristol, Norwich, Telford, Kidwelly, Plymouth, Islington, Birmingham and Westminster (among others).

          4. The scale as reported in the north was greater and overlooked earlier by deliberate actions. Interesting though how this ‘business model’ was rolled out nationally.

    4. Totally agree. Maybe he should have been christened Winston and developed a deep tan.

    5. What about this as a thought.

      By naming him and giving so much detail and photos of his family it will be impossible for to to get a fair trial if he pleads not guilty.

      Some smart arsed barrister will claim that so much information was given out that no fair trial can be held and on a technicality no further action will be taken.

      Dare they?

      I no longer believe this couldn’t happen in England.

          1. The evidence was compelling. And, by then, press coverage of suspects was limited and cautious, as now…oh, wait a mo.

  30. Scotland is Sorosland.

    So is England.

    So is Wales.

    The infiltration runs deep.

      1. 330224+ up ticks,
        S,
        Proving that, for the best innerpicket of the blueflade, pick flowers.

    1. Morning. There does seem to be something not quite kosher about the arrangement.
      I wonder if my local publican has a side line in dodgy PPE?

    2. Blind panic produces the “How will we be saved?” reaction. When that happens reason and usual standards of behaviour go out of the window. Hancock became a sales target, and he didn’t understand that. That often happens to politicians; they are very vulnerable because they have no experience of the rough and tumble of business.

    1. They sound like us BTL. Except they don’t seem to do jokes. Like this one…

      What’s the difference between the Italian mafia and the Scottish mafia?

      The Italian mafia make you an offer you can’t refuse, the Scottish mafia make you an offer you can’t understand.

  34. ‘President’ Biden has at last addressed the nation on the coronavirus.

    He said: “A year ago, we were hit with a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked. Denials for days, weeks, then months, that led to more deaths,”

    Here is a summary of what actually happened ‘a year ago’.
    – Jan. 6, 2020, a travel notice was issued for Wuhan, China, due to the spreading coronavirus.
    – Jan. 20, the day the Chinese finally admitted the virus could be transmitted through the air, the U.S. announced they were already working on developing a vaccination.
    – Jan. 29, President Trump formed a coronavirus task force
    – Jan 30, the White House declared a public health emergency and restricted travel to and from China.
    (Mr. Biden said: “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science,”)
    – In February, as President Trump vowed in his State of the Union address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus and worked with the private sector to “expedite the development” of a coronavirus vaccine,
    – Feb. 24, the Trump Administration sent a letter to Congress requesting at least $2.5 billion to help combat the spread of the coronavirus
    – In March, President Trump announced the purchase of approximately 500 million N95 respirators.
    – March 8, President Trump signed a $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus outbreak, with the majority of the money going to federal, state and local agencies.
    – The Trump administration continued to ramp up testing, fast-tracking potential vaccines and developing a distribution plan, getting PPE out to states in need and was preparing use of the Defense Production Act.

    Therefore, Biden is an outright liar.

    The tearful reaction to his speech by those freaks in Hollywood can be summed up by what Nancy Sinatra said: “We are so blessed to have Joe Biden as our president. Great job, voters.” She later said she “can’t stop crying.”

    God Help Us!

    1. I find more chilling than “Therefore, Biden is an outright liar.”, the fact that the US MSM is 100% complicit in going along with this lying … including all the lying and cheating which was carried out in the November Presidential election ,,,

      1. Agreed. But if such blatant lies can be stated by the President of the United States, how can any further pronouncements he makes have any credibility? Nothing he says can now be trusted.

        1. There is a certain American woman who has married into our royal family who has discovered that if she can get the unthinking masses and the MSM behind her she can lie through her teeth and be praised for stating “Her Truth”.

    2. No questions from journos allowed – AGAIN. I saw the live reaction from Michael Knowles on The Daily Wire YT channel and I couldn’t believe the lies of this doddery puppet president. Trying to pretend that the Trump administration had done nothing, then riding on their coat-tails with the 100M vaccines in 100 days. Vaccinations were already at 910k on the day he was sworn into office and ramping up, meaning his ‘promise’ was going to be achieved without ANY intervention on his administration’s part.

      1. I expect Biden’s version of events goes down just fine with his 81 million “voters” …

        1. Amazing how The White House YouTube channel has had a huge drop in viewership since the end of January. Also, every video gets ratioed and no comments are ever allowed. Sounds familiar to us (mostly ex) Telegraph subscribers, doesn’t it?

          Yet again, Biden walks away without taking any questions from journos. He spoke for just 23 minutes (unlike Trump’s State of the Union and press conferences) – I suspect his pills would be wearing off soon and he was off to bed whilst Harris laughs her way through the job.

          I hope that some patriotic insider is recording what’s REALLY going on behind closed doors in the Biden White House and leaks it to the world…sooner rather than later.

  35. Women’s Hour has just begun on Radio 4. Top of the bill – A discussion on ‘How insulting is the word “woman”?

    I’m sure some of you erudite Nttlrs will be able to enlighten me.

      1. As I said before – know your enemy. Besides, I need the background noise to cover the constant whine of ‘Artillery tinnitus’. One exception is ‘The Archers’, no one should have to suffer that. not even lawyers or politicians.

    3. I listened to someone spouting on about women in Film in the USA as a washed up the breakfast bit and pieces.
      Was that it ? I don’t know who she was but she had tree accents in one she strangely emphasised three ‘Os’ every time she said stoodio.

    4. Shouldn’t the word Woman! (a synonym of Oi!) always have an exclamation mark and invariably be barked?

      [ARP helmet in situ!]

      2. I must say I did not share JL’s taste as far as the fairer sex is concerned but here is a link to his song ‘Woman‘

        Peter and Gordon recorded another song called ‘Woman as did Harvey Andrews in his song “Gift of a Brand New Day“. (Attached in subsequent links)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhfWiU8wGCc

          2. Ah, Peter and Gordon.

            Peter Asher: singer and record producer, the brother of Jane Asher.
            Gordon Waller: got arrested, whilst drunk, for urinating on a police car.

          5. As a producer, Peter Asher did some rather good work with Linda Ronstadt. If you like her style, which I do.

          6. Very much so. I was only watching some of her old videos (along with some by Rita Coolidge, Crystal Gayle and Emmylou Harris) just the other day.

  36. Illegal alien rapes. murders, and dismembers a young woman in Exeter last year and nuffink happens …. no mention in Parliament … no suggestion that we ought to actually stop the invasion …

    ONE Met. policeman (not yet taken to trial) appears to have murdered a young woman and there is hysteria in Parliament with lefty baroness suggesting a curfew on men by 6 pm every night …. taken up enthusiastically by twitter lefties (BTW what happens if there are crimes or fires after 6pm? – are no Met police to leave the station?) …

    1. That is so typical of the way the woke and seemingly disingenuous media have been conducting their reporting business for a long time.
      It seemed that they just can’t be bothered when the offence is committed by a non white person. Stabbings in London are still rife and barely get a mention. They should be calling for the sacking of the useless Mayor who is obviously out of his depth.
      But today as you rightly point out LD before a trail and or as far as i understand no positive identification of the body parts. Women are lining up to be interviewed on Clapham common with understandable malice in their comments but nothing was done about the above !!

    2. The bias of the politicians and MSM has become completely predictable. You know as well as I do that if the suspect had been BAME there would have been no headline reports in the MSM and no discussion in the Houses of Parliament.

      Has the balance tipped too far? Are we lost forever?

      1. Bon Jaw Rastus
        I can’t tell you how many times i have to switch TV channels during these woke days, sometimes it appears that i’m living in another country.

          1. We have a bout 30 channels Obs. Plus catch up and recordings, but not long ago all the bloody advertising seems to have been sinc-ed.

          2. I gave up on watching ‘livestream broadcasts and the bBC i-player’ over 3 years ago. It was obvious long before then that the adverts had been synched, as channel-hopping had been transformed into advert-hopping…often to the same adverts!

            I prefer getting my ‘news’, pain-free, on platforms such as this.

          3. I remember when staying in New England whilst waiting for my wife to get ready for our day out, sitting watching US TV and i couldn’t find one programme that wasn’t interrupted by advertising every 5 minutes.
            It’s getting very much like that here now.

          4. The writing was on the wall (screen?) when the UK tv authorities raised the time per hour that could be used for adverts from 9 minutes to 12 minutes(?), a couple of decades ago. Since then, ‘hour’ long programmes have been divided into four parts, rather than the previous three, to accommodate this extension.

            Fully agree on US tv adverts: I spent a lot of 2000-2003 nipping back and forth to the US. I noticed that programmes squeezed adverts in just before the end of the show credits. Then the next show began, with the tease for the storyline being shown before more adverts ensued followed by the opening credits.

            The practice of speaking over the end credits and/or reducing the credits to a postage stamp while the tv station advertised the latest reality bollocks they were flogging was a big push for me to give up on their nonsense.

            Box sets and YouTube now fill my limited screen time, at my time of choosing…books and music fill the ‘void’ of the rest of my life. 😀

      2. This left wing ideology has infected every and all of our institutions. It has now gained such momentum as to be a natural (unnatural) force.

        We are doomed.

    3. AFAIK he hasn’t been charged, so why do the Media feel the desire to splash his personal details – and his wife’s photo – on their front covers?

      1. I would have thought with all the coverage, he couldn’t possibly get a fair trial.

  37. Morning all.
    Here is a unique opportunity for all you erudite and brainy Nottlers. Just been announced that Egg Heads are looking for teams to take on the ‘Egg heads’ for the next series.
    Come on you lot,……… email eggheads@12yard.com ………..could be yards ?

    1. Morning RE – I work on the principle of ” keep your mouth shut and look a full/[should be fool]. rather than opening your mouth and proving it”.

        1. morning sos – I shouldn’t write either.
          I will change full to fool. Thank you

    2. I’d do it, but I don’t know anything. Although we did go on university challenge a while back.

      In the audience.

  38. ‘Morning, all.

    Today’s DT Letters page sees Mr. Nigel McKie writing from Cornwall, to ask who owns the meteorite that came down at Winchcombe. Is it the person who owns the freehold of the land where it struck?

    I shouldn’t worry if I were you, Mr. McKie. Once the “Great Reset” is complete, such questions will be redundant. As Herr Klaus Schwab of the WEF has told us, “You will own nothing and you will be happy!”

    I imagine that includes meteorites.

    1. When i first heard about it on the news it was quite exciting and the picture displayed made it look as if it was about two feet across. But seemingly it was the size of a conker !

  39. SIR – I found Meghan to be refreshingly honest.

    Dr Victor N Ogilvie Altamonte Springs, Florida, USA

    Personal Physician to Cringe, female partner of Ginge and Cringe Ltd,

    1. Pandering to all your prejudices Doctor? For a psychologist why don’t you try a bit of introspection?

        1. Someone posted earlier that he was a psychologist which is what i based my post on.

    2. Presumably he’s not a psychiatrist, or, at least (IMHO) not a proficient one, otherwise he would’ve spotted her (IMHO) blatant lies and attempts to manipulate and bully – including her own husband – for her own personal (including wealth) benefit. Even a blind man could see that.

      I bet that this chap isn’t a regular Telegraph reader. More like the NYT or Washington Post. Note also that from a quick Interweb search, he is a vehement Biden supporter. Quelle surprise!

      I wouldn’t want him to be my doctor.

  40. we didn’t have a new lavatory seat at each Army posting

    Daddy was an Orficer

    SNCO’s and the lads would never use the worfd Lavatory

    1. In the few AMQs that we lived in we never thought to ask for a new bog seat – just cleaned the old one

      1. When we left Blundell’s the Headmaster gave the Leavers a brief address in which he said:

        1. Never wear the OB tie when you go into a brothel;
        2. Only the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury can get VD from a lavatory seat.

  42. Thoughts From A Friend:

    I was lying around, pondering the problems of the world, I realised that at my age, I don’t really give much of a rat’s ass anymore.

    If walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal. A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water, but is still fat.

    A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years, while a tortoise doesn’t run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for 150 years. And you tell me to exercise?? I don’t think so.

    Just grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to remember the ones I do, and the eye sight to tell the difference.

    ************************

    Now that I’m older here’s what I’ve discovered:

    1. I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

    2. My wild oats are mostly enjoyed with prunes and all-bran.

    3. I finally got my head together, and now my body is falling apart.

    4. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

    5. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

    6. If all is not lost, then where the hell is it ??

    7. It was a whole lot easier to get older, than to get wiser.

    8. Some days, you’re the top dog, some days you’re the hydrant; the early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.

    9. I wish the buck really did stop here, I sure could use a few of them.

    10. Kids in the back-seat cause accidents.

    11. Accidents in the back-seat cause kids.

    12. It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.

    13. The world only beats a path to your door when you’re in the bathroom.

    14. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he’d have put them on my knees.

    15. When I’m finally holding all the right cards, everyone wants to play chess.

    16. It’s not hard to meet expenses . . . they’re everywhere.

    17. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

    18. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter . . . I go somewhere to get something, and then wonder what I’m “here after”.

    19. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

    20. Have I Posted This Message Before?

    4. Sadly, it appears to be a photoshop job.
      The background is from some trashy magazine with her pasted on top of it.

  44. I posted this last night.

    Back again, ‘cos, like BoB, I’ve checked the DT Letters and posted on the 7th March BTL, as if i was my Best Beloved, the following:

    judith ewing
    12 Mar 2021 2:42AM
    For those bereft of comments on the DT Letters there is an alternative at https://nttl.blog/

    However be aware, An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website originally 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. Edit ()

    I hope I don’t overstep any other NTTL guidelines by doing this – it is obvious that The DT has left many people feeling lost and lonely.

        1. Or maybe even switched.
          My slant on modern politics etc.
          It’s funny how when ‘the weather’ turns nasty and it’s wet, old ruts that were recognised footpaths fill with water and people walk on the edges to avoid getting bogged down and consequently the paths become wider.
          This Nottlers site is a good place to be, on the edge as it were, without getting too bogged down.

    2. Do the same on Conservative woman too. They seem quite like us. We could do with some fresh blood.

      1. Conservative Woman allow BTL comments and have quite a few who post. They are not lost and lonely.

  45. Putting the furniture back after Trevor the painter. Gosh, some of the chairs are filthy! Years of accumulated dust. Very embarrassing!

    Just had a hail storm. Sunny again.

  46. The Reclaim These Streets Group wishes to hold a vigil for Sarah Everard at 6pm at Clapham Common on Saturday.
    The Metropolitan Police have said it would be unlawful.
    Caroline Noakes, a former Conservative minister , has asked Priti Patel to give it the go-ahead.
    Seems a risky event in these dangerous times for women.

    1. Well, the police have already threatened them. How much worse will it be for those ladies alone on the Common with an oversupply of burly policemen?

        1. Spot the truncheon……similar to spot the ball (which I once won in a nudist magazine)

          1. Please elaborate Spikey! Was it the truncheon, the ball or you (the nudist) that won?

          2. Spot the ball competition Sue – it was in something called H & E. I’d never be caught without my clothes on……well I’d hope not! Not a pretty sight

          3. Gawd: Health and Efficiency.
            A chum of ours kept them under a floorboard in his bedroom. He went on to become a pillock of the establishment and a Rotarian.

    2. 330224+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Cs,
      Looks very much like to me the wrong peoples are being asked, the police & priti awful that is.
      The police are obviously
      overwhelmed even with added marshalls & public grasses helping out with policing covid, plus priti & party are busy with importing via DOVER much of the material that needs policing to start with.

    4. Amazing how this is fine and yet anti-lockdown protests are not. Besides, Clapham Common ain’t a safe place – even for blokes.

  47. There are quite a few articles in the Telegraph where comments are allowed, even on Scotland’s Politics but I did not see any regular commenters on the DT letter’s page entering the fray.
    Perhaps they are on holiday.

    2. Eddie has transitioned – to a genuine eccentric. How quintessentially English is that? He was also very good in Whiskey Galore, to my great surprise.

      Edit: This went on the wrong comment. It was supposed to to be to Bob of Bonsall. My fault this time I think.

      2. It is the modern version of Whisky Galore and I agree he was good in his role as the TA commander. The new version closely followed the Classic film.

        1. I always thought that Sgt. Odd was a bit weak in the original, the 2016 version was better. Also the denouement explaining the strategy of the islanders was far better, much more like the careful cunning of farming people. It was a surprise to find that the 2016 version was in some way an improvement on the classic. Mrs. Waggett was a better part too.

    1. What a nutter he, it is !!!
      Much admired for his multiple marathon running but ………

      2. She did vocally support JK Rowling. Izzard has always been ‘edgy’. Never one to join the sheep.

        She also said that if she was misgendered it would be of no concern. Recognising the difficulty some people may have stumbling over the correct form.

          1. As Dizzy Izzy has said (dammit what’s the bloody pronoun!) doesn’t personally care about being mis-gendered.

  49. I read that in Wales people are being allowed to meet others in gardens.
    It reminded me of an old joke.
    A welsh family living in an old mining village are becoming worried about their son who is now in his early 40s. he’s not too bright and never really taken to socialising. They hear that their neighbours Niece is coming to stay foe a week and she’s a spinster in her mid 30s.
    The get excited and try to instruct their son to chat her up over the fence.
    From their kitchen window they see her heading to the WC at the bottom of the back garden. And point her out to their son. She;s quite attractive Ewen why don’t you go and say hello. I He’s very shy so he says he’ll see her tomorrow morning.
    He tosses and truns all night wondering what he might say to her. He sits out in the garden in nervous anticipation. She emerges from her back door and he stands by the fence and as she passes says Good morning ………….and stuck for more words says, and going for a crap are you ?

    1. Being horrifically socially awkward myself and more inclined to be rude to people out of fear than to engage (something I’ve got better at) when I met the warqueen she was crossing the road and so looking at her was I that i drove straight into a hedge.

      She dashes over and I stammer for something, anything to say and ended up with the immortal lines of ‘probably broken the radiator.’

      To wit she replied ‘You’re cute’ at which point I turned beetroot red and stammered – I don’t remember this from the roaring in my ears. The rest is history.

      2. It was the beginning of the Michaelmas Term in 1986 and I heard a wolf whistle coming from a group of boys. I went and asked what had provoked this audible expression of approval to which they replied:

        “Gosh, Sir, Have you seen that fantastically attractive new girl who has just joined the Sixth Form?”

        In fact it was the new teacher of French and Spanish.

        To pull – or – rather adapt – a quotation out of the eyre:

        “Nottler, I married her!”

  50. The DT has a long and well balanced article this morning about violence against women and violence against men too, driven by the Everard case. What they don’t understand is that violence against men is quite simply tolerated, the sentences have been going down for about 15 years, all violent men know exactly the tariff for what they do if they get caught and they have become more brazen. Violence is a way of life for them, so guess what, they are violent to women as well.

    There was a time when GBH got you five years and almost no exceptions. Now you might well get away with a suspended and weekend gardening, especially if you can do a ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ in the dock. A woman committing GBH on a man is unlikely to get more than a suspended, even if she bottles him.

    The Everard case: The officer accused previously exposed himself in fast food outlet. No man with a career and responsibilities does that. He might misbehave sexually, wandering hands etc. but he won’t wilfully destroy himself; it strongly suggests he was losing it. The reports were ignored because once people work out the man is an off duty rozzer, they make stuff up. Then the serious head injuries while in custody – not a fight because no one else was hurt, so it sounds like attempted suicide by bashing his head on the wall. My guess is he will go to a secure mental hospital, not prison.

    1. The root of the problem is that the state no longer values human life, the ideology is all important and anything else is collateral damage. This is exemplified by unbelievably lenient sentences given across the board (and the state-sponsored termination of pregnancies; the attitude to the elderly as we we have recently seen in many care homes; the lack of interest in the young girls tortured, raped and murdered by the recent additions to our towns). We see the results daily – the breakdown of our society is deliberate and occurring before our very eyes and ‘they’ are very nearly there now, success is within their grasp. There will be no return until we hit rock bottom. Perhaps we will simply disappear.

      1. I can remember Teddy Boys having a knife fight on Clapham Common in the fifties….
        One of them died and the killer was hanged.

        1. I remember the hut on Clapham Common where a group of Polish men would play chess of an evening.

          I remember The Windmill where you could sit in a Bergere chair and enjoy a few pints of Young’s Special or Winter Warmer of a Sunday.

          I remember the sight of red cigarette ends in the bushes where the local gay men loitered on the pull.

      2. Sorry to disagree rather, I think the weak sentencing is just wishy washy liberals doing what they do. Plus pressure from HMG to keep the numbers in prison down.

          1. Until it is their son that gets beaten up, or their car that gets stolen, then they demand to know what the ‘useless police’ are actually doing!!!!!!!

        2. Mr Dodger. They are all in together, be they conservative, labour or liberal. Frankfurt School point no. 8: An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime.

      1. To reassure women that they have got the bloke who did it. If it is absolutely clear, that is fair enough.

  51. From Baroness Jones
    ‘Men just don’t understand the pressure that women are under and if this has sparked intense scrutiny then I’m really happy.’

    The Baroness doesn’t bother to elaborate.

    Serious question. (most unlike me) Can anyone give me examples of this pressure that only relates to women?

    1. Men.

      Although you’re right. The Baroness wmoan was just being a typically divisive, hypocritical Herbert.

    2. When I lived in London in the early 70s I would have hesitated to walk that route alone at 9pm, and I was a reasonably large very fit athletic teenager who had easy recourse to the ‘run away’ strategy.

        1. Sarf Lunnon was frankly effing dangerous, especially for a teenager who was ‘off base’.

          1. I recall watching the Brixton riots on TV and suddenly realising that it was less than half a mile away from my comfortable home…

          2. ‘Arf a mile? Other side of the planet by London standards. I never lived in a more parochial minded place.

          4. Foolishly perhaps I used to hitch hike home after missing the last Bus in Sarf London. I survived but wouldn’t recommend it!

        1. Being leered at by a man in the next seat in an otherwise empty bus while he masterbates

          3. You do seemed to have led an eventfull life.
            I however have walked many miles on public roads, strolled through numerous parks and spent many many hours on public transport without such incidents.
            Is there a trick to it?

          5. Dangers and such concerns apply to all in the wrong circumstances, although I take your point about lone women.
            When either of my 2 daughters were potentially in such a position I made sure their safety came first, even to the extent of getting out of bed in the early hours to drive to pick them up because the travel arrangements went awry.
            I hammered home the message to never put yourself in a dangerous position, never to split up from your friends and travel alone at night etc.
            Myself and Mrs VVOF even arranged self defence lessons from a WPC friend when they were school children.
            I think some of it stuck.

          6. I commend you on your care and parenting.

            We are living in different days now. Young people have been led astray in their eduction and hoodwinked into thinking things other than reality.

          10. You tell me how to do that and i will help you.

            We cannot treat Society.

            My post was about a person learning how to defend themselves.

            After meeting you you could very well give me better advice on that subject.

          11. I detect a hint of disbelief. Maybe that is part of the reason things are slow to change.

          13. Urgh! Gee, disgusting.
            You do know that, reaching over and grabbin the tool (yes, I know…) and swiftly bending it in half (use some effort here, and speed), is effective in that priapic moment? As in, he’s unlikely to get a hard-on again?

    5. Wihout wishing to be (too) rude, having seen pictures of the good Baroness, i don’t think she’s at risk from rapacious men

  52. Good morning……….

    Lockdowns, Masks and Markle…….

    How can I help you ?

    Oh hello, Mr Soros, yes your plan is going very well thank you… Western covilization is teetering on the edge before the final plunge, just as you requested.

    A billion lodged in my account ?

    Thank you, Mr Soros, that will do nicely…..

    Goodbye.

  53. Mothering Sunday looms.

    To explain this, some history.

    Mother says she doesn’t want flowers.

    We don’t get her flowers.

    Mother has tantrum/hissy fit. Apparently did want flowers.

    We arrange a bouquet.

    Bouquet too big and fancy. Just get supermarket flowers.

    We get supermarket flowers.

    Wrong sort of flowers, not the ones she likes.

    We find – online – the ones she likes.

    A lot of complaining that mothers day has been missed and why did we bother/not get it right.

    Not enough variety in the colours.

    Ever since, she’s had a card.

    Contrast with mother in law.

    Bottle of sherry/gin/whisky/Polish vodka/brandy/merlot.

    ‘Oh, thank you!’ and cue sloshed MIL.

    In fact, the key to my life so far has been balancing the inebriation of MIL with the amount of time the warqueen has to spend with her.

    1. I thought Mothering Sunday was the one day that every husband is nailed on for a shag? No?

      Oh dear. I got so much wrong when I was married.

    3. Mothering Sunday (when servants were allowed a day off to visit their Mother Church and their family) or Mother’s Day (an American commercial festival)?

  55. The strange case of George Galloway, unionism and Putin’s RT mouthpiece. 12 March 2021.,

    Galloway is no Communist. He does, however, like his employer. Speaking to the Sunday Times last week, he rubbished concerns that the Russian president was an autocrat or that RT was propaganda.

    Why does he not criticise Putin, he was asked. “Because I like him,” Galloway replied. “I wouldn’t rant and rave about him because I agree with him. I agree with him on Syria. I agree with him on the geopolitical issues of the day.”

    Galloway has been censured by the UK’s media watchdog because of his coverage of the 2018 Salisbury attacks. He has cast doubts on whether the Putin regime attempted to assassinate anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny. And he has denied any suggestion of Kremlin interference in UK politics. He did all of this on RT, while preparing for an election campaign.

    So there we are then! I never thought to be in bed with George but it looks like we are bosom buddies!

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19154093.strange-case-george-galloway-unionism-putins-rt-mouthpiece/

  56. Boris Johnson will not grant a second Scottish independence referendum
    PM is set to warn that such a vote during a pandemic would be reckless as the plan to counter “Scexit” ramps up

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/11/boris-johnson-will-no-second-scottish-independence-referendum/

    Of course giving Scotland their own Parliament in the first place was an essential part of Blair’s plan to destroy Britain.

    BTL Comment with which I agree:

    As Tam Dalyell – who was a Scottish Labour MP, Old Etonian and The Father of The House of Commons pointed out – The West Lothian Question has never been addressed. Why should the Welsh, the Scottish and the Northern Irish have their own assemblies while the English do not?

    Here is a solution which might work and save money!

    i) Allow each country just one set of representatives to cover both the United Kingdom Parliament and the National assemblies. This would cut down considerably on the amount of MPs that need to be paid and given over-generous expenses;

    ii) English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would sit in Westminster on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then travel back to their own countries to sit in their regional assemblies for the rest of the week. Of course no new building would be needed for a separate chamber for English MPs because they would stay in Westminster. The cost of the new Scottish Parliamentary building was scandalous so we would be spared that expense again.

    But would the porkers ever agree to be separated from the trough?

    3. The solution that will work is to dissolve the Wee Pretendy Parliament and both the Assemblies and bring the duties, responsibility and accountability back to Westminster.

  57. The old jokes are the best….

    A farmer bought a rooster to service his flock of hens. He put him in a field with a hundred hens and went in the house for lunch.

    When he returned he noticed that every hen was sitting down with all their feathers well and truly ruffled. The farmer was truly amazed as he’s only taken an hour for lunch. Then he looked across the field and saw the rooster spark out with his legs in the air and must certainly be dead.

    As the farmer approached the seemingly dead rooster expecting to bury him

    The rooster crowed, “Sod off mate…I’m trying to lure those vultures circling above down here”.>/spoiler>

      1. Old English Game bantam cockerel I think…

        Have kept bantams several times over the years. Best of all the chicken eggs with deep yellow large yolks.

  58. President Biden is crumbling before our eyes. 12 March 2021 • 12:14pm

    Joe Biden’s decline has become so painful to see and so embarrassing to watch that it feels cruel to mention it. But it’s even more cruel that Biden’s team act as if it’s not happening, and most of America’s media look the other way.

    From the moment he wheezed up to the lectern and peered into the camera, you could tell Biden was on top form: croaky sentiment, sporadic belligerence, and only the occasional moment when he looked oddly distant and perplexed, as though he didn’t understand the words he was reading.

    He got through twenty minutes, then tottered off without taking any questions or falling over his dog. This is how low the bar now is for Biden. And we can see how hard Biden has to fight, and what a long run-up he requires, if he is to clear it.

    We can see it in his struggle to follow the simple lines on his autocue, and in his bungling of the simplest ad-libs. We see it in the clips of his increasingly desperate handlers trying to block him from questions at his rare and carefully managed appearances before the cameras. Most of all, we see it in his eyes.

    Congratulations pal! Progress of a kind I suppose. The trouble is Nottlers were talking about this last year! And still no mention of his Paedophilia!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/12/president-biden-crumbling-eyes/

    2. The BTL comments under that article reflect what many of us here have been saying for some time.

      This leading BTL comment by David Walton has generated a string of comments which agree with him:

      It wasn’t just the American media who ignored it though was it? The DT journalists ignored it as well and the paper pulled the same stunt it has with the Meghan & Harry farce by closing down comments during most of the election.

      Journalism as I understood it has morphed into something else. It certainly isn’t journalism.

      1. It certainly isn’t journalism.

        No it isn’t. It’s lies and propaganda! You can trust nothing that you read or see in the MSM!

        1. Ironically these lines are from Bruce Springsteen’s “Magic”

          Trust none of what you hear
          And less of what you see
          This is what will be (This is what will be)
          This is what will be ….

          And the freedom that you sought
          Driftin’ like a ghost amongst the trees

      2. To be fair, not ALL the US media ignored this issue – it was only the left wing and Democrat party supporting ones that did. The Telegraph’s move leftwards on many issues (never mind their disgusting treatment of Trump and fawning all over the Dems/Biden/Establishment GoP old guard) rather mirrors the London Evening Standard, which used to be quite a reasonable paper until the 2000s. There’s a big difference between the ‘MSM’ in the UK and in the US.

        1. The clips of some of the views expressed on Australian TV which some of our Nottler friends have posted are most encouraging and show that not everybody is won over by the Duchess of Sussex’s self-pitying attack on the royal family.

          When Migraine dumps Harry who will want him? He won’t be able to return to Britain and even the Americans cannot be incapable of seeing just what a very nasty, treacherous, black-hearted but white-skinned person he has become so they won’t want him either.

          Perhaps the policy they are applying to Shamima Begum should be applied to this repulsive fellow – stripped of his British nationality and not allowed back into Britain.

          1. They will let Harry come back to Britain and take very early retirement in something a lot smaller than Frogmore ‘cottage’. Unless he has lots of money, which he has, and exercises him right to return as a citizen, and shacks up somewhere impressive near London as a private citizen and spends the rest of his days porking cute dolly birds, like his uncle.

          2. There’s always the Royal Palace – The Tower of London, I’m sure visitors will pay to see him and he’ll thereby earn his Keep!

    3. It’s about time someone shot the horse to put it out of its misery. The jockey too while they’re at it.

      1. Afternoon Phizz. If there’s another article like this, particularly in the American MSM, it will probably be the end! Kamala will take over, which I’m pretty sure was the agreement before the election!

      2. I predicted he wouldn’t last six months. Looks like I was optimistic.

        1. I still think he’ll be kept in place just long enough that KH gets the end of his term plus two full terms in office.
          By which time the GOP will be history and the Dems will have rigged future elections with votes for 16 year olds.

  59. Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by car bomb in Malta.

    She had been working on what the Panama papers revealed. She found a direct link at the top of Government. The Prime Ministers wife.

    Of the three Hitmen that arranged the murder one of them is singing like a canary. He has been sentenced to 15years in prison. He was the lookout. He has implicated a Tycoon who financed it and two Government ministers. One of them being the Prime ministers chief of staff. They deny involvement.

    They were warned by that minister that the police were about to arrest them three weeks before they were arrested.

    After Daphne’s despicable murder the Prime minister was forced to resign. The other two ministers along with the chief of police and the ex-Prime minister and his wife should be thoroughly investigated and be in the dock.

    Bent Politicians, Money laundering and Murder.

    Don’t you just love Politicians.

    *The hitman apologised to Daphne’s family in Court. That won’t get him very far. If he doesn’t die in unexplained circumstances in prison…They will be waiting for him.

  60. I do wish people would stop banging on about concerns over mental health.

    No one has concerns about their unbroken leg or their non-cancerous lung or not having diabetes.

    The problem to be taken care of is mental illness.

    1. Wars come in many guises….

      We are currently in the biological and psychological stages which combined are bringing us closer to the hot stuff.

      Long planned to create civil unrest.

    2. Hi Stormy.

      Just to recap a DT letter this morning .. So true , don’t you think?

      SIR – What exactly does “mental health” mean? I see a mother slap her little son in the street, and I get angry. I see an old man stumble on the pavement, and I feel sorry for him. My boss bawls at me for being late, even though she is late every day, and I resent her hypocrisy. My son falls sick, and I worry.

      All of these reflect a healthy mental state. So, what’s the opposite? When do I need to look after my so-called mental health?

      Perhaps happiness and unhappiness have been appropriated by psychologists as indicators of mental health. The unhappy mind is sick, the happy mind is healthy. Anger, grief, remorse and frustration are no longer states that naturally arise in the healthy mind in response to the manifold phenomena of human life, to be accepted and endured. They are instances of mental sickness.

      If this is the case, “mental health” is an empty phrase. It sounds good but is phoney. Like saying that something difficult is not difficult but challenging.

      Smiley Fogg
      Copenhagen, Denmark

      1. Absobloominlutely right TB. Too often, being unhappy is conflated with being depressed.
        And dont get me started on GPs signing off staff for stress when they go sick after not getting the answer they wanted to a work question e.g a leave request being turned down

      3. You need to worry when a) you can no longer make decisions, b) you sit at the table and cry uncontrollably because you feel you can’t go on, c) you wish you were dead because then it would all stop and you’d get some rest and d) it is a real struggle to motivate yourself to get out of bed in the morning because you feel you can’t face the day and everything you have to deal with.

          1. Had a bad week for lots of reasons, but I’m coming up out of the trough now, thankfully. There is a possibility I might get respite for one day a week. Fingers crossed. How are you?

          2. Pleased you may have turned a corner. Respite sounds promising.
            Bumbling along; lacking mental, emotional and physical energy to do anything much. CBA syndrome writ large!

          3. Indeed. It’s an effort to do anything and if I can find an excuse – any excuse – to do nothing, I will 🙁

  61. This is a fascinating article

    Africa again!

    South Africa’s Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, 72, who made thousands of bare-breasted virgins dance before him in annual festival, dies after weeks in hospital for diabetes treatment

    WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Goodwill Zwelithini passed away in the early hours of Friday, palace revealed

    Zwelithini was well-known for flamboyant lifestyle, famously buying luxurious palace for each of his six wives
    During his 49-year reign, he revived festivals where bare-breasted young virgins danced in front of him

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9354171/South-Africas-Zulu-King-Goodwill-Zwelithini-dies-aged-72.html

      1. Good afternoon Richard ,

        I really enjoyed reading the article about your uncle , there is something really hypnotic about different tribal music .

        I am 11years older than the twins ( brother and sister , and 4 years older than my other sister) they have lived in South Africa for over 55 years .

        The younger pair will have had no recollection or knowledge of my own early childhood in the Sudan and Egypt and Nigeria .
        I was always interested in local music , and have a cd of African music from all over Africa.

        Years ago when I visited the family in South Africa , I was left to my own devices whilst they were working , I had the swimming pool, beautiful tropical indigenous garden to enjoy , several huge Ridgebacks for company , and the maid who I enjoyed chatting to , and the radio!!!

        When I was on my own I tinkered with the radio , to listen to various stations , and I found several African music channels , instruments playing etc and sat back with a gin and lime juice and enjoyed an hour listening to all sorts of stuff.

        My younger sister and her husband returned back from work , and saw me listening to the radio , strode over and flicked the radio off, asking me what on earth was I doing? They must have assumed I had gone bush , I really didn’t have the energy or any excuse under the sun explaining why I was listening to African music . But… I felt very shocked that they should have presented such a narrow mind re the variety of instrument those musicians were playing .

        ( Nope , they weren’t complaining about my single gin and lime juice , just the local music ! When in Africa eh?)

        2. Every Sunday in JHB under the Harrow road fly over, they had local people dancing and lots of music. I bought some records, but they were lost along the way some where or other. I especially liked the Kwela music and the boys playing guitar like instruments made from old oil cans with pieces of wood for the necks and with wire strings attached.

        4. Uncle Hugh’s sons , Paul and Andrew, got together with some other South African entertainers in the 1960’s and produced Wait a Minim which was an international success which went to the West End, Broadway and Australia. Your family may well know of Jeremy Taylor who was in Wait a Minim with my cousins – he wrote Ag Pleez Deddy which became the unofficial National Anthem.

          Jeremy became a good friend of mine and he now lives in France and has been to stay with us. It is very sad that he now has Parkinson’s which has devastated him – he is a truly lovely man. I often post his songs here but here he is playing one of the pretty little songs written by an African guitarist that Uncle Hugh came across:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiQUb51RAXg

          1. From time to time a South African boat drops anchor near Mianda. When this happens I get out my guitar and play the melody of Ag Pleez Deddy and the boat’s crew cock up their ears because they recognize it.

      2. here bare-breasted young virgins danced in front of him

        Has the makings of a being a ‘Slammer’ then

      3. Rastus – The precursor to the film Zulu , Zulu Dawn,was about the total wipeout of the British troops by the Zulus in a battle shortly before Rourke’s Drift.
        It started with a mass wedding where hundreds of bare breasted beautiful Zulu girls danced in front of their intended husbands and the Zulu king.
        It was a spectacular start to a disturbing and gory film made by the Americans but including Peter O’Toole in the cast.

    3. Interesting how pale skinned they are compared to other Africans from further North, closer to the equator.

  62. 330224+ up ticks,
    May one ask, on the point of sorting out change to pay the boatman on crossing over to the other side, could one be reasonably excused in using a pepper spray ?

    Does it’s illegal tag also apply to the higher echelons of the law & politico’s ?

    Personally I would make it illegal for women NOT to carry a pepper spray.

    Any self respecting rapist / molester with a watch will wait until 6.01 pm before going into action whilst all the male Lone Rangers ( protectors of women plus) are incarcerated.
    The green party is a segment of the lab/lib/con/ green coalition via the pillow
    group, remember, your vote is needed for more of the same.

  63. Welcome to the Free Speech Union’s weekly newsletter. This newsletter is a brief round-up of the free speech news of the week.

    NCHIs

    The FSU has published a report on non-crime hate incidents by director of research Dr Radomir Tylecote. An Orwellian Society: Non Crime Hate Incidents and the policing of speech argues that the recording of these non-crimes against people’s names on the police’s national database – and which show up on people criminal records when employers carry out enhanced DBS checks – has a chilling effect on free speech. Radomir had made a video summarising his report and written a piece for Spiked in which he concludes that the police “should have no role in policing speech”.

    Also this week, ex-policeman Harry Miller was in the Court of Appeal in London challenging the High Court’s decision not to declare the recording of non-crime hate incidents unlawful in a case he brought against Humberside Police and the College of Policing last year. Miller’s lawyers argued that this practice “violates the right to freedom of expression” and affords a “heckler’s veto” to anyone wanting to silence an opposing view.

    The FSU had pledged to help Harry with his legal costs should he be unsuccessful. You can contribute to the FSU’s litigation fund here.

    Hate Crime Bill

    After a heated debate in Holyrood, the Scottish Hate Crime Bill was passed last night. During the debate, a reference to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which “allows for the expression of information or ideas that offend, shock or disturb” was added to the Bill, but other amendments, concerning the definition of “male” and “female”, the removal of protections for “cross-dressers” and the inclusion of sex as a protected characteristic, failed.

    FSU assistant director of research Emma Webb has written a piece for The Critic tying together the Harry Miller case and the Scottish Hate Crime Bill. A society without freedom of speech, she says, is one “with the life crushed out of it. This is why, historically, free speech is the canary in the coal mine when darker days are looming”.

    Toby Young, the FSU’s General Secretary, said last night: “This is a dark day for Scotland and reveals the Scottish government’s ugly authoritarian streak. How long before being a member of the SNP becomes a ‘protected characteristic’ and any criticism of the party is punishable by seven years in jail?”

    Cancel Culture Reaches Critical Mass

    Ofcom tweeted that by Tuesday afternoon it had received 41,015 complaints about Piers Morgan’s comments on Monday’s episode of Good Morning Britain and had launched an investigation under its ‘harm and offence’ rules. Morgan faced criticism for his remarks about the Duchess of Sussex’s mental health revelations during her and Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, and dramatically walked off the set of GMB on Tuesday, mid-broadcast, for the last time, after the programme’s weatherman, Alex Beresford, criticised him and defended the Duchess.

    CNN reported that Meghan Markle herself complained to ITV about Morgan’s remarks, leading ITV to demand an apology, which Morgan refused, opting to quit instead. Morgan told journalists on Wednesday that he believes in freedom of speech, and tweeted: “On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more time with my opinions.”

    Toby has written to the CEO of ITV, Dame Carolyn McCall, to request clarification on the reported facts, and how, if the reports are true, the broadcaster’s behaviour is “consistent with ITV’s duties under section 5 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code”.

    Morgan’s wasn’t the only scalp claimed by the Duchess. Ian Murray was forced to resign as executive director of the Society of Editors after issuing a statement on Monday on behalf of the Society headlined: “UK media not bigoted.” He claimed Meghan’s branding of the British press as “racist” was “not acceptable” and lacked “supporting evidence”. More than 160 “journalists of colour” signed an open letter to the Society written by Guardian journalist Haroon Siddique criticising the statement. Following the letter, nominees in the forthcoming National Press Awards, an event organised by the Society of Editors, began to drop out and Murray lost the support of his Board.

    Winston Marshall is reportedly taking a break from the band Mumford & Sons, for which he played the banjo, after praising Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a book by the journalist Andy Ngo. In a tweet, which was quickly removed, he wrote: “Finally had the time to read your important book. You’re a brave man.” Following a tsunami of criticism on Twitter, Marshall apologised and said he’d use his time away from the band “to examine my blind spots”. Ngo’s book can be purchased here.

    Gordon Beattie, founder of PR company Beattie Communications, has resigned as Chairman for a post on LinkedIn that read: “At Beattie Communications, we don’t hire blacks, gays or Catholics. We sign talented people and we don’t care about the colour of their skin, sexual orientation or religion. That’s the way it should be with every company – only hire people for their talent, experience, knowledge and wisdom.” After the first line of the post was taken out of context by people claiming to be offended by it, Beattie apologised, saying he was being “deliberately controversial” to draw attention to his company’s meritocratic hiring policy. But the criticism continued, forcing him to resign. “It’s a wrench to step down as chair but I feel I have no alternative,” he said. “The time is right to go.”

    James Moore lost his position working for NHS Wales for a social media post comparing the attitude of Welsh nationalists towards people in Wales who don’t speak Welsh to the treatment of black people in apartheid South Africa. Writing in UnHerd, Paul Embery said Moore’s defenestration was depressingly familiar: “Moore’s case follows a well-worn pattern. First, the miscreant must apologise profusely for his foul deed. Then his employer must fire him (or at least issue a strongly-worded statement distancing itself from his views and assuring the world that they do not reflect the organisation’s own values). And, finally, in cases where the target has any sort of public standing, Media companies must deny him a platform in the future. And all too often, all three – the offender, the employer and elements of the media – will duly oblige.”

    Uncancelled

    Brian Monteith, editor of ThinkScotland.org and member of the FSU, whose ads were banned by Facebook, ostensibly for “vaccine discouragement” – despite none of the articles in question discouraging vaccines – credits the FSU with helping him uncover “the disturbing truth about what was going on”. He explains in the Mail on Sunday: “Political opponents, almost certainly Scottish Nationalists, were abusing Facebook’s anonymous complaint system to trigger an automatic ban.”

    The FSU organised a letter, signed by numerous MPs and peers, and sent it to Facebook’s Oversight Board, which led a few days later to a “rare apology” from Facebook. Monteith goes on to denounce censorship and cancel culture, concluding: “I believe free expression and opposing views are an essential part of discovering the truth. But those that believe in control have no such scruples, while big tech overlords in Silicon Valley sit back and collect their vast, ever-swelling revenues.”

    Following the intervention of the FSU, Calvin Robinson has been reinvited as an external speaker at an educational event after being no-platformed two weeks ago. Jan Macvarish, the FSU’s Education and Events Director who played a pivotal role in getting Calvin reinvited, said: “I am delighted to say that Calvin Robinson’s invitation to speak at an event for school teachers has been restored following fruitful dialogue with the organisers. They had felt under pressure to cancel his proposed presentation on the lack of viewpoint diversity in education, when a few other speakers and attendees raised objections. Following productive and thoughtful discussions amongst the broader group of teachers involved, many of whom were keen to hear from Calvin, it was decided that the event should go ahead as originally planned.”

    Professor Gregory Clark

    The FSU has pulled together a letter, signed by over 70 academics, objecting to the cancellation of a seminar by Professor Gregory Clark at Glasgow University’s Adam Smith Business School. The seminar, entitled “For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: a lineage of 400,000 individuals 1750-2020 shows genetics determines most social outcomes”, was due to be given last month, but was “postponed” after more than 100 Glasgow academics wrote to the Vice-Chancellor urging him to cancel it.

    Our letter in support of Professor Clark points out that section 26 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005 imposes a legal duty on higher education providers to uphold academic free speech. In addition, Glasgow University issued a statement on academic freedom in 2018 saying it supports the right of “individuals, groups and societies to arrange events, conferences, lectures and seminars on challenging topics with speakers who may be controversial”.

    The signatories of the letter include the current executive director and president of the Economic History Association, as well as 15 ex-presidents, and some of the leading economic historians in the field, including Niall Ferguson and Deirdre McCloskey.

    You can read a story in the Scottish Times about the letter here.

    Effects of cancel culture

    Vogue magazine has highlighted the negative effects of cancel culture on mental health, explaining: “A culture that encourages people to be quick to cancel and reluctant to forgive is dangerous. It creates an environment that doesn’t allow anyone to correct their behaviour (they should’ve known better), nor learn from their mistakes.” The article ends with some advice by psychologist and author Kimberley Wilson, including “get off social media” and “remember that cancelling is not actually about morality; it’s about dominance”.

    Meanwhile, twenty employees at Teen Vogue have written a letter publicly criticising the newly appointed editor Alexi McCammond, 27, for tweets she sent as a teenager with pejorative references to Asian and gay people.

    Universities

    Julie Burchill is hopeful that the tide is turning on woke censorship, citing the recent establishment of the Free Speech Champions as well as the planned “replatforming” of previously cancelled speakers, including Maya Forstater, Kathleen Stock and Professor Selina Todd, by a new group called the Cambridge Radical Feminist Network. “The silencing comes from the intellectual inadequacy of the envious,” she says.

    A new report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology by politics professor and FSU Advisory Council member Eric Kaufmann found that universities in Britain, the US and Canada are discriminating against conservatives. According to the data, which rely on eight surveys of academics and graduate students, “Seventy-five percent of conservative academics in the social sciences and humanities in the US and Britain say their departments are a hostile environment for their beliefs.” Kaufmann concludes: “Universities cannot reform themselves. Reform will require regulatory oversight from government, along the lines of new policies recently announced by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in Britain, until things change.”

    Legislation

    Writing in the Guardian, Barrister John Bowers QC and former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission David Isaac argue that the recently announced creation of a ‘Free Speech Champion’ by the Department for Education is unnecessary and misguided. The proposed legislation would further complicate an already complicated legal area and would have the effect of burdening universities with litigation. Existing ECHR Guidance is more than adequate, they argue, summing up: “We deplore the cancelling of any meetings which are lawful, but these issues will not be helped by further legislation or litigation.”

    H.R. 1, a Bill recently passed by the United States Congress, will have the effect of censoring “more online political speech than anything those working in Big Tech have dreamed up”, according to Eric Peterson, writing in Reason. Any individual or organisation placing a political ad will be required to include within the ad their “name and give a means for the viewer to find the sponsor’s street address, telephone number, and website URL, and say that the ad is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee”. Furthermore, all platforms hosting political ads will have to maintain a database of all ads costing over $500 for each advertiser. Peterson argues that this would have a chilling effect on free speech because “these rules would be impractical for any small companies to comply with, leaving potentially only the largest and most profitable companies to run political ads”.

    Heresy and moral loopholes

    Making the case for heresy, which comes from the Greek for “choice of belief”, Mick Hume says that “free speech only needs defending for those deemed heretics and extremists. The mainstream and orthodox thought can look after itself”. Drawing on Socrates, Sir Edward Coke, John Milton, John Wilkes, and John Stuart Mill, Hume insists that “free speech for all is a virtuous end in itself, regardless of what is being said, because it is the living proof of our autonomy, equality and right to choose what we believe”.

    Evolutionary psychologist and FSU member Chris Paley is the author of Beyond Bad: How Obsolete Morals Are Holding Us Back, released this week. In the book he describes cancel culture as a “loophole in morality”, explaining: “Condemning misbehaviour is a convincing signal of virtue: declaring your anger at those who engage in some misdeed improves hearers’ perception of you more than if you simply state that you don’t engage in the transgression yourself. To put it simply, virtue signalling is an easy way to improve your standing in society, and at no personal cost.” The book can be purchased here.

    Will Knowland

    FSU member Will Knowland, the Eton teacher who was sacked for refusing to remove a video lecture from YouTube without being given a good reason to do so by the headmaster, is challenging his dismissal at an Employment Tribunal. He is looking for feedback from FSU members, especially teachers, on whether they felt his lecture, the Patriarchy Paradox, was offensive, either in content or delivery, in relation to any protected characteristics, particularly sex or sexual orientation. If you would like to help Will with his court case by testifying to that effect, you can reach him at knowlandw@gmail.com.

    Sharing the Newsletter

    We’ve received several requests to make it possible to share these newsletters on social media, so we’ve added the option to post them on various platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. Just click on the buttons below.

    If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here. For students, pensioners and veterans, annual membership is only £24.95.

    Kind regards,

  64. One for VOB.

    Captain Cook sailed the world and made some wondrous journeys. Until he
    got to Hawaii. The tribes came out and shouted: “Alloa !!!”

    Taking that to mean the Polynesian welcome of ‘Aloha” he stepped ashore
    with confidence.

    Little did he know that they were Scottish football fans, who then ate
    him.

    1. I remember when Trebor Blackjacks were ¼d (one farthing) each.

      You’d suck one and have a black tongue all day!

      2. Some red wines make it look as if i’m wearing red lipstick. Of course i’m not….i only use flesh tones…..

          1. I’m two years ahead of you and I needed Wiki to remind me of that fact. The Australian Wagon Wheel is 14mm greater in diameter and 4mm thinner than the UK version. Not a lot of people know or care that. Do not ask about the Canadian version.😎

      5. I tried to buy one blackjack at the Shanty Cafe on the way home from school but they wouldn’t take my farthing 🙁

  68. The body (what Dick Head called “human remains” yesterday – what is wrong with “body”?) of the missing London woman has been found and identified.

    Even more stuff being printed – column feet of it – about the chap in custody.

    Let’s not waste time with a trial or jury or any of that bollocks. Life plus 99 years.

    1. The police are very protective of their own until someone steps over the line, then there is no sympathy whatsoever. In a case like this the evidence has to be very strong before the police turn on an officer. I suspect the man is very un-well and very obviously guilty. This is not “arrest the local nutter and stitch him up in the press” which happens quite often, this is a serving police officer. Different rules from civilians.

      1. I think you are rather missing the point that is being made.

        This man cannot possibly get a fair trial.

        1. They are digging in a number of places.

          Perhaps there are more remains to be found?

          1. One hopes not.
            But that doesn’t change the issue over the reporting.

            I might have had more sympathy if the police had made an appeal for more women to come forward if they had been approached/attacked by the man.

  71. Muslims are doing very bad things in NE Mozambique. There has been no indication so far that the UK government is going to send troops there to deal with this problem by killing all the jihadis. Why not, I ask? Mozambique is a member of the Commonwealth. Members of our military all benefit greatly from these kind of advanced training opportunities. They have been fighting somewhere or other around the world for most years since WW2. It gives them an edge that cannot be gained on firing ranges, or exercise. It would be a better use of resources than deploying them in the Middle East or Afghanistan as we are doing at the moment.

    PS Why does every Defence Review reduce our military strength and capability? This despite the world becoming increasingly unstable and dangerous. Despite arms manufacture taking years rather than months as it did in WW2. Despite a self evident need for greatly increased naval power as we look across the world and not to Europe?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-africa-56365847

    1. 330224+ up ticks,
      Afternoon HP,
      Because given time they will come up with “we have given brexit a try & we have found it wanting” so have to revert to asking the eu for assistance,

      1. M. Micron said some time ago that he fully expected Mr Johnson to come crawling back to the EU within six months.

        Expect more hassles at the border for the next few months.

        1. 330224+ upticks,
          Evening J,
          I do not believe they really left, the 9 month delay set the course
          and triggered limited damage to brussels culminating in the “deal” I was a member of the party that called for total severance
          then deal, the one time leader of that party gave a route OUT of the grasping eu tentacles in book form in 2014 the” Road to Freedom” the party under his leadership HAD to be taken out, and via treachery was.

        1. Bowl of Porridge every morning -1 min 40 sec in a 1,000 watt microwave – magic.
          Scrambled eggs excellent
          1/2 cook baked potato – then 20 mins in a real oven

      2. They are handy, but I wouldn’t describe our microwave as the first port of call when I’m cooking.

      3. Great for heating things through. No good for cooking, although I do kippers in mine. 2 minutes and they’re perfect, and no kippery smells in the kitchen.

      4. They have their uses but not as a primary cooking thing, they’re quick and convenient for defrosting or reheating particularly if its a fairly small quantity as it saves using the large oven. Porridge, scrambled eggs and kippers are also quick and easy.

        1. Heating custard with slices of banana for the grandchildren (and me), we know how to live the good life.

        3. We have a microwave/fan/grill combo oven. We use it a lot. The grill is the most fierce that we’ve ever had before. On its highest setting (it has 3) it can grill bacon in 4 minutes. Any longer and it will catch fire.

    2. I (once) made the mistake of putting a couple of plates with gold rims in to warm. Lesson firmly learned.

    5. Put some butter in a bowl (with a bit of foil on) to melt, and the damn thing lit up like a fireworks display. Just a bit of black on the inside, fortunately.

    8. Ah. I have to be vigilant; I have caught MOH trying to warm up a tin of beans in the microwave before now and just managed to rescue the situation. I need eyes in the back of my head some days.

    1. Caroline cuts my hair for me. Why doesn’t his stonking, brilliant oven-ready trollop cut his? He looks a disgrace.

      2. What gas mark is suitable for oven-ready trollops? Assume that she’s self-basting and requires regular turning to retain her succulent juices.

      2. What have sheep done to offend you, Plum? It’s Johnson and he’s a unique pile of excrement.

    2. “What day is it, ?” asked Pooh,
      ” Why it is jab day,” squeaked Piglet,
      ” Eeyore day then,” said Pooh.

    3. “What day is it, ?” asked Pooh,
      ” Why it is jab day,” squeaked Piglet,
      ” Eeyore day then,” said Pooh.

        1. Have you considered taking up Tiddly Winks it’s much less athletic but at times can be really expletive laden…..?

          2. Pay someone else to do them for you….or, if you want to play Tennis again do the fookin’ exercises !

          3. I have less than three weeks to get fit enough to ride the Connemara. Physio is NOT going well 🙁 In fact, for the last week (due to various circumstances) physio has not been happening at all.

    5. The reason why people want to be rich is because being so would allow them to escape bad situations that make them unhappy.

      It’s not the cash, it’s the freedom.

      If I can do nothing for my family it’s to ensure Junior never has to deal with a bored, lazy and unhappy co-worker who is taking his unhappiness out on him.

      1. Having more money than you need doesn’t guarantee anything. Everyone makes the wrong choices at some point. Everyone has to live with them.

        Shit happens and then you die.

      2. You coud say that about anything.

        It’s not the cash, it’s the private jet
        It’s not the cash, its the caviar
        It’s not the cash, it’s the Armani suits
        It’s not the cash, it’s the Mayfair penthouse
        It’s not the cash, it’s the maid, butler, gardener and nanny
        etc, etc

  77. I see that Migraine’s accusation of racism towards the Royal Family is still generating comments at home and abroad.

    How the Royal Family in general, and the Queen in particular, can be accused of being racist is beyond me. The Queen is the revered head of several countries with majority black populations and is represented by black Governors General. Furthermore, she is head of the Commonwealth of 54 nations and 2.4 billion people, of which only a small minority is white.

    If there was one iota of racism in the RF, I doubt if there would be so many smiles in this photo!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/044ee27fe66fa32467549964bed2897b7c2d2bcb734c333d0f153f9c49b33c0e.png

    3. The Duchess of Netflix/Wokedom is a race-baiting drifter.
      The Duke of Netflix should be thoroughly ashamed of himself, and her.

    4. Are you sure that Prince Phillip isn’t doing his elephant impersonation out of picture with his pockets pulled out, while Her Maj and the lady next to her are looking at the steel band?

  78. Why I love to watch the BBC news channel…

    Thought that would grab your attention. I notice that many people no longer watch the BBC and I fully understand why. However, I watch it through different eyes than the average viewer and their lies and scare tactics don’t bother me. I know it’s all propaganda (BS). I watch it through the eyes of a researcher so I don’t end up angry or depressed.

    Like all liars they are prone to making mistakes and often those mistakes are aired only once which means most people miss them. For months they reported deaths as covid deaths. Then, probably realising there will be some fallout at some time in the future and the fact they are teetering on the edge because of their anti-British woke agenda, they can perhaps save their bums by recalling certain aspects of their reporting.

    More recently they have been recording deaths as “with covid” rather than “of covid”. Then they went further still by saying “with covid on the death certificate”. I learned long ago that only the top two causes of death are entered on the death certificate if there were multiple causes. It seems that if someone died from heart failure but only had traces of covid which had nothing to do with causing the death, covid would be put as the second cause. Then those deaths were added to the covid statistics fooling people into believing the person or persons had died of covid.

    The biggest “mistake” came a couple of weeks ago when Chris Whitty during one of the daily updates said that NOBODY had died of the flu this winter and all deaths were due to covid. I didn’t see this repeated so the casual viewer might never had seen him say it.

    As covid deaths are similar to the numbers of flu deaths each year than it shows that everybody died of a flu called covid. Add these snippets to everything else going on and you realise that it’s not just the lockdown that’s a scam…it’s the bloody virus itself.

    1. The question is whether any of those seriously ill in hospital with a respiratory infection are even tested for flu. I have no idea. But the sudden drop to zero of flu cases everywhere is perplexing to save the least.

      1. They simply renamed the flu…covid.

        How else could the flu have completely disappeared?

        It would have been more believable if at least some people had died of the flu.

    2. The ONS were publishing weekly Covid-19 and ‘flu deaths on the same report some months ago. It was horrendously difficult to separate the data so I stopped trying to, so now you say they’re reporting zero ‘flu deaths. They’ve twisted and turned the data from the start of the ‘Pandemic’.

      1. You see what I mean by liars…

        They forget the lies they said before when they tell more lies.

        I do wish people wake up before our journey to hell becomes irreversible.

    3. Every death has been due to covid. Every one of them! Yes, including the stabbings.

      Why are they lying though?

      1. Why are we on lockdown is more to the point…

        Duff covid reports are merely the excuse.

        1. The initial reports from the health people presented a frightening scenario which set the politicians on a frenzy.

          Since then the hyperbole has gone bonkers to keep people afraid.

          1. Exactly…

            The lockdown is key while they scrap passenger planes and fossil fuelled cars while also crashing the economy and making everybody skint.

            People really do need to wake up and quickly.

          2. Fair dues, that’s the intent. Control travel and transport and make goods so expensive no one buys them.

            Now we have massive unemployment and a massive collapse in tax revenue and more, a massive demand for welfare.

            What has the state gained? It’s now utterly unfundable. Double taxes and unemployment will soar ever higher. If the state wants to then keep borrowing all it does is accelerate national poverty.

          3. Agenda 21…now Agenda 30 to reduce the carbon footprint to neutral in just 9 short years from now.

            Everything happening today has been planned for years.

            There is no pandemic … just the flu now called covid.

    4. Honda, another interesting item was that Dover had very high incidence of Covid reported.

      [one always suspects that is because of all the illegal immigrants]

      Once people started complaining about this hazard to their health, Dover suddenly became one of the places in SE England reported by the BBC as having the lowest Covid rates.

      God certainly moves in mysterious ways!!

      1. If we don’t have civil war this summer then I don’t know what…

        I put a piece on a local social site about Agenda21 expecting to be ridiculed and received many upticks and no arguments against. People are finally waking up and Mr Blobby is fast running out of waffle. Gonna be a much more interesting year than 2020 me thinks.

  80. Story in Daily Wail:

    “Gavin Williamson categorically rules out ditching GCSEs as he says exams at 16 ‘are going to be there for an awful lot longer’ as he warns Covid has caused the ‘single greatest disruption to our education system since the Second World War’”

    No, you tosser. It was YOU and your idiot colleagues who effed up the education system – NOT the virus.

  81. That’s me for this curious day. Bright sun; quite chilly; hail storms; gales…and more promised tomorrow. G & P do NOT like rain and hail!

    Most of the furniture back in the newly decorated rooms. More to do tomorrow.

    Have a jolly evening – making sure that all men NoTTLers are off the streets by 6.30 pm.

    A demain.

    1. Somehow Streetnottler doesn’t quite have the same cache as Streetwalker…….

      1. Cache ? Well Nottlers don’t really want to be discovered. Streetwalkers do i suppose.

      1. We met for lunch once. That was three years ago. Of course it couldn’t possibly be because of me. It must be Covid or something……. :@(

          1. I didn’t get the bloomin’ chance ! We shared a platter. The waitress kept putting large G&T’s in front of me. ZZZZZZzzzz gone…

          3. How is it in FranceLand? Stormed your Chateau yet? Perhaps you should stick a minaret on your battlements. Just to be safe. :@)

          4. Silly as coviuk. They haven’t a clue.

            I play the call to prayer frequently, hoping the faithful will fall in the moat, so far no luck…

      2. Does he give up the internet for Lent?

        I used to give up the Daily Mail for Lent.

          3. Jensen looks good, but the DS was so futuristic for 1955, and all those hydraulics… absolute magic, it is.

    1. Thanks. Had a quick look, and I agree with her, but I can’t spare an hour and a half of my remaining lifespan on watching all of it. I preferred her on Salvage Hunters…

      1. A whole hour and a half of your remaining lifespan?

        I’m delighted to read that you have longer left than we might have guessed.

        };-O

    1. Claudius went from being able to sit on my shoulder to being – well, that big!.

      A lovely photee.

    3. They remind me of the Mexican anecdote:

      “Learn to relax, Pedro; let the ash fall …”

        1. In Essex they say “she’s buzzing” whether the dogger is male or female.

          Allegedly.

  85. Must be a record, I only managed 3 mins of BBC Points West local news and reports of racial abuse being expressed at the deputy Mayor and the Mayor.
    Shock and horror, it seems if you keep playing the Race card, you get a reaction. TV turned off before I throw something at it!

    1. Look East started blethering about mental health; MB found other uses for his time.

  86. President Biden is crumbling before our eyes
    There is no clear answer as to why his team do not trust the president to give a press conference

    DOMINIC GREEN

    Joe Biden’s decline has become so painful to see and so embarrassing to watch that it feels cruel to mention it. But it’s even more cruel that Biden’s team act as if it’s not happening, and most of America’s media look the other way.

    On Thursday night, Biden marked the first anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdowns and his fiftieth day in the White House by giving the first televised address of his presidency. He hadn’t been seen in public for three days.

    From the moment he wheezed up to the lectern and peered into the camera, you could tell Biden was on top form: croaky sentiment, sporadic belligerence, and only the occasional moment when he looked oddly distant and perplexed.

    He got through twenty minutes, then tottered off without taking any questions. This is how low the bar now is for Biden. And we can see how hard Biden has to fight, and what a long run-up he requires, if he is to clear it.

    We can see it in his struggle to follow the simple lines on his autocue, and in his bungling of the simplest ad-libs. We see it in the clips of his increasingly desperate handlers trying to block him from questions at his rare and carefully managed appearances before the cameras. Most of all, we see it in his eyes.

    “What am I doing here?” Biden asked after fumbling his autocue lines in an address in Texas in late February. He reached for the cue cards that are now his constant companion. “I’m gonna lose track here.”

    Biden’s supporters call him “gaffe-prone”. It’s true: he’s always thought with his mouth open. It’s also true that he bravely overcame a speech impediment in childhood, and that anxiety and age can cause a stutter to recur. But these aren’t gaffes or stutters.

    Compare how he moves and sounds now to how he was a year ago, let alone five years ago. Biden looks and sounds frail. He seems visibly distressed at his inability to carry out the simplest requirements of office – and at a time when the requirements are simpler than usual.

    When Biden dodged the press during last year’s election campaign, his aides called it Covid-19 precautions. As the pandemic ends, he will run out of excuses for not travelling. He doesn’t look capable of leading an international summit, let alone taking the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call.

    Earlier this week, the Commander-in-Chief forgot the name of the largest department in the US government, the Department of Defense, as well as the name of the man he recently appointed as its leader, Lloyd Austin.

    “Thank you to the Sec… the former general… I keep calling him general… my… my… the guy who runs that outfit over there,” he flailed.

    Biden is the first President in decades to reach fifty days in office without giving a press conference. He missed giving the traditional speech to Congress in February. His handlers refuse to name when he might talk to the press, and only offer that it’s “something he will do in the future”.

    There’s only one possible explanation. Biden’s team don’t trust him to manage one of the simplest requirements of modern political office. But they know they can’t defer the reckoning.

    The longer Biden waits, the more newsworthy his delayed appearance will be, and the greater the scrutiny of his performance. And once Biden has surrendered to the rising expectation that he speak live and unscripted, he will be expected to do it again, and again, just like any other President.

    This presidency is turning into a theatre of cruelty. It can only end one way. Sooner or later, Biden will be caught in the spotlight. The Democrats who promoted an unfit candidate to America’s highest office, and the media who covered for him, will be exposed as having betrayed their responsibilities to the American people. The people’s trust in democratic institutions will decline further. And we will all be party to Biden’s public humiliation.

    Dominic Green is deputy editor of The Spectator’s US edition.

        1. Like Tony Blair. But the Americans will fight, and their country will be weakened which is exactly what the WEF wants (see video).
          Very depressing.

        1. Thanks.

          Here is a cut and paste for those who had the same problem as I had:

          ALL ABOUT ME
          Meghan’s Misery
          Theodore Dalrymple

          March 12, 2021

          Meghan’s Misery
          photo credit: Bigstock
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          Mrs. Clinton, who knows a thing or two about phoniness, praised Meghan Markle’s decision to speak of her “mental health” before tens of millions of her very closest counselors. Mrs. Clinton said it was brave of her, but brave was not the word for it; exhibitionist would have been better, together, perhaps, with scheming, opportunist, histrionic, self-serving, egotistical, and shallow, amongst other things. If there were a Nobel Prize for self-pity, Ms. Markle would have been a strong contender—rather like Mrs. Clinton herself.

          The very idea of mental health as being anything other than the absence of raving madness (which undoubtedly exists) is an invitation to superficiality. Health itself is a difficult enough and contentious subject, and the World Health Organization’s definition of it, that it is not merely the absence of disease but the presence of complete physical, psychological, and social well-being, is a godsend to totalitarians. On this definition, there is probably no healthy person in the world; and if there were he would be almost insufferable, complacent, dull, and a first-rate bore. Dissatisfaction, after all, is the permanent condition of mankind. “Mental hygiene,” the expression that was used before “mental health” came into vogue, is even worse: It conjures up a kind of disinfectant that kills mental germs, leaving the mind scoured and cleaned like a gleaming lavatory pan.

          I am not arguing for romantic agony, of course, and the exaggerated value given to personal suffering. The romantics have a lot to answer for. I once read a sentence of Coleridge, the great romantic poet, that described his supposed agonies, and in which there were seventeen exclamation marks. No sentence that contains seventeen exclamation marks can be telling the truth, but it was an invitation to anyone who thought that he suffered more than Coleridge to use eighteen such exclamation marks in a sentence in order to prove it.

          “Any single dictum of the 17th-century French aristocrat La Rochefoucauld tells us more about human life than the entire oeuvre of Freud and all his followers.”
          Of course, the real progenitor of Meghanish psychobabble (which, apart from the family into which she married, was absolutely standard-issue for those who make a mental, and even a professional, career of self-pity) was Sigmund Freud. No man ever did more to reduce human self-understanding than he. Thanks to him, people become self-obsessed without self-examination, and look at their experience through a theoretical lens so distorting that it is difficult to tell anymore what they actually do experience. Those who have undergone—I almost used the modern cant term survived—many years of psychoanalysis emerge almost like brainwashed prisoners of North Korea.

          Any single dictum of the 17th-century French aristocrat La Rochefoucauld tells us more about human life than the entire oeuvre of Freud and all his followers. For example, he says that in the misfortunes of our friends there is something not unpleasing. This is horrible and unflattering to humanity, perhaps, but we recognize it immediately as being true; it is both obvious, in the sense that at some level we knew it already, for otherwise we wouldn’t so quickly acknowledge its truth, but at the same time revelatory, in the sense that we never brought it to the forefront of our mind.

          La Rochefoucauld’s dictum is valuable because it confronts us at once with the unstraightforwardness of our thoughts and emotions. Once we have read it, we can no longer think of ourselves as completely benevolent beings; we realize that our motives are always mixed. I concede that the dictum might not be true of everyone, that there may be some sweet-natured persons of whom it is not true, but if so they are few, and I am not one of them—though I am not especially ill-natured, either, in this respect being about average.

          Dr Johnson is likewise incomparably more profound than Freud. Open Johnson at any page and you will find wisdom, honest reflection, and genuine self-examination that is a world away from the self-indulgence of Meghanish emotional incontinence. Having turned at random to the 155th essay in his series of essays The Rambler, I find Johnson speaking of our knowledge of ourselves:

          No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

          It seems generally believed that, as the eye cannot see itself, the mind has no faculties by which it can contemplate its own state, and that therefore we have not the means to become acquainted with our real characters; an opinion that, like innumerable other postulates, an enquirer finds himself inclined to admit upon very little evidence, because it affords a ready solution of many difficulties.

          Dr Johnson will have no truck with this evasion. If his essay were read, understood, and taken to heart, it would make redundant half the help-seeking of the distressed, insofar as so much of our distress is the natural consequence of frequently repeated faults that are known to be such even as we commit them. Throughout this, and all his other, essays, Johnson tells us things that are obvious but revelatory:

          The mischief of flattery is not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition by raising an opinion that honor may be gained without the toil of merit; and the benefit of advice arises commonly, not from any new light imparted to the mind, but from the discovery that it affords of the public suffrages [i.e. public opinion]. He that could withstand conscience is frighted at infamy, and shame prevails when reason was defeated.

          The praise of Meghan and her weak and hapless consort for their supposed bravery in exposing to the world in conditions of gross and unearned privilege their trivial miseries is calculated precisely to suppress the influence of honest ambition, which in their case would be to slide away into the background and be heard no more. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer has the following lines in Psalm 84, praising the God-fearing persons who trust in the Lord and:

          Read More
          Who going through the vale of misery use it for a well: and the pools are filled with water.

          They will go from strength to strength.

          Meghan and her consort have followed this advice: They certainly go through the vale of misery, or at least of claimed misery, and use it for a well. They will go from wealth to wealth.

          Theodore Dalrymple’s latest book is Around the World in the Cinemas of Paris, Mirabeau Press.

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    3. Looking at this it is clear that the comments have been selected and edited and do not give an accurate picture of what readers’ comments are. But what do you expect from the pathetically Woke DT?

      1. Since comments have largely been closed down, this is just nonsense. A reminder – it’s almost exactly five years since the DT zapped all ability to comment. Hence this site.

        1. This site is vastly superior, Geoff. Praise Allah for the Daily Telegraph and their idiot management!

          1. Thanks, Paul. Someone posted a link to nttl.blog on the 7th March letters page this morning. The response from Wendy McNally (IIRC) was that she had looked, and didn’t like it. The DT site was ‘better organised’.

            Hmmm…

          2. Good.

            We do not want Wokers, just diverse opnions, put forward in a friendly way

            If the world tdoes urn to custard, we will get Mr T to put the two ‘lads’ on Zoom 24/7/365

            PS wot iz zoom?

          3. Zoom – an interwebby video calling thing.
            Seems OK. Used a couple of times to talk to family-in-law (why would I do that??) in UK.

          4. I confess that now our church services are exclusively on Zoom, I don’t bother. My excuse (should I need one) is that I have a lousy upload speed. More importantly, it merely reminds me of what I’m missing.

          5. I’m not into religion, but the atmosphere of a church is a big thing when I go in. Large or small, plain or decorated, there’s a something about those buildings – maybe some spirit has soaked into the walls – that I fully understand the absence of would be troubling.
            One or twice, just sitting in a plain little church, I have been reduced to tears by it.
            So, I sympathise, Geoff. Absence of the being in church, and the organ. I’d not be interested in zoom praying, either. A walk in the woods for solitary contemplation would be better especially when the spring flowers start to blossom. Can’t get better than that.

          6. They are hoping to restart services at my church on Palm Sunday (28th March). I doubt it will be services as I know and love them, though. Probably no singing, communion at arm’s length (and no wine) and masked up to the hilt. It’s the last stipulation that will stop me going.

          7. The DT is so well organised it drove me away, must be about 7 or 8 years ago now!

          8. Quite. I cancelled my subscription a few months ago, but became bored with the ‘repetitive Esc key’ trick to get past the firewall. Like the Speccie, most of the articles are bolleaux – I only go there for the comments BTL…

          9. I miss Charles Moore and Norman Tebbit, and some of the financial or economic articles. I don’t miss those ghastly female columnists or the islamic fashion and gardening references.

        3. Happy Anniversary for the 1st April, Geoff. Daily we have cause to thank you for setting it up.

      2. There are 1,400 comments BTL on that article and they’re pretty hostile to both H&M and the DT.

  89. A genuine change in attitude or just a PR sleight of hand? The words of the ‘spokesperson’ suggest the latter.

    BBC cancels The Mash Report, show criticised for ‘Left-wing bias’

    The BBC has cancelled The Mash Report, the satirical show that became the focus of criticism over perceived left-wing bias in the corporation’s comedy output.

    The programme, hosted by Nish Kumar and featuring Rachel Parris, below, regularly targeted the Government and Brexit.

    Tim Davie, the director-general, has made impartiality one of his biggest priorities and signalled on his arrival last year that the drive would extend beyond news to comedy shows.

    He has vowed to restore trust in the BBC by better reflecting all sides of the political divide.

    Critics of The Mash Report included Andrew Neil, who described it as “self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged Left-wing propaganda”.

    Neil said the programme was a political show by another name, adding: “When it comes to so-called comedy the BBC has long given up on balance, on radio and TV. Nobody seems to care. And I don’t want right-wing comedy, whatever that is. I’d just like comedy.”

    Mr Kumar makes no secret of his political leanings, telling a Guardian interviewer: “I am absolutely guilty of the accusation levelled at me by furious people on the internet in that I have not got over Brexit.”

    The decision to axe the show after four series was first reported by The Sun. A BBC spokesperson said: “We are very proud of The Mash Report but in order to make room for new comedy shows we sometimes have to make difficult decisions, and it won’t be returning.

    “We would like to thank all those involved in four brilliant series and hope to work with Nish Kumar, Rachel Parris and the team in the future.”

    In 2019, Kumar was booed off stage for making Brexit jokes at a charity event held by the Lord’s Taverners.

    He was pelted with a bread roll, prompting the event host and Taverners’ ambassador, Greg James, to say the behaviour of some of the crowd was “appalling”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/11/bbc-cancels-mash-report-show-became-focus-perceived-left-wing

    2. I attended a dinner where rolls and other bits and pieces were being thrown around.

      Something hit the stem of a wineglass on the top table and took it out. There was the very distinctive sound of breaking glass.

      The bowl of the wineglass dropped cleanly onto its base and not a drop spilled.
      Everyone stopped and stared in amazement. Absolute silence and then people started to discus the freak event.

      I suspect one could attempt that a million times and never succeed again.

      3. See, I’d call that racism, sexism and a threat. It’s not comedy at any level.

        If a white fellow had presented that, plod would be all over them so… why is he not in jail?

        1. A particularly vicious attack on one of our members who had been going though a very rough patch recently.

        2. Saying “fuck you*” to a fellow poster, for no logical reason, crosses my red lines. This follows many other so-called microaggressions.

          3. Sad that he is gone in some ways – but he and his friend JSP seem to enjoy being nasty to other Nottlers.

            I know that I am pretty nasty to those in the public eye – especially slebs, politicians and those in the MSM – but they want to be in the public eye and I have no personal connection with them. However, I like to think that our fellow Nottlers are friends so if I disagree with their views I try to say so without personal abuse.

          4. Quite so. PTV and JSP were both driving people away. I never intended this site to be an ‘echo chamber’, but neither was I prepared to let the snarky stuff continue.

          5. As you probably know, I’m of the don’t block, don’t ban, let the readers decide, school of thought.

            But, when posters drive off those of a less robust disposition, it doesn’t bode well for any of us.

            More power to your elbow.

          7. Must admit, that surprised me. Peddy was OK, to the extent that I sent him some rakfisk (Norwegian fermented trout) at Christmas 2019… admittedly, he fed it to his cat, but even so.

          8. There’s a backstory, Paul. I don’t want to air dirty washing in public, but it’s not an exaggeration to say he only survived his illness thanks to the ministrations of a certain Nottler. Which he repaid by accusing her of theft.

          9. Ah… Oh.
            I got the parts of that, didn’t make the connection.
            Hope the cat enjoyed the fish.

          14. Me neither but it might have been a mod as Geoff suggests. In the event Peddy was in Addenbrookes (near my own home) and I had offered to visit him but received no feedback.

            Some folk blow hot and cold.

          16. I know.

            Some other Nottlers were prepared to remain undecided after hearing from the other side.

            I really should not add anything to this… BUT… the person in question is in need of our help, friendship and forgiveness. No matter how annoying…pedantic.. irritating…and with no sense of style about foot ware !

            We really do need to

          18. Now, if you happen upon some Gravalax, and Schnapps of course, I will willing take it off your hands: Skol

          19. Gravlaks available from IKEA and, likely, Waitrose… I’ll put you on the list!
            :-D)
            BTW, Firstborn stills his own… tastes like antibac handwash :-(( – at least, you can’t overindulge (and it’s 65%), the taste is pretty bad. Activated charcoal helps take some of that flavour away.

          20. I have a mate, an ex CPO, who lives/lived in Noggieland

            Last saw him in the 80’s: went to see Kon Tiki..crap Flight Deck

            I di go with Her Majesty to Narvick, when he went to War Graves/Memorial, again back in the 80.s

          21. I work for an ex-CPO. He’s MD of the company. Normally resident here, but went to UK (where his wife lives) in April last year and hasn’t returned. Likes rum…

          22. JSP used to appear on Guido Fawkes under the name of Calmdown.

            She/he upset many contributors.

          24. I’m not so sure about that – Calmdown has reappeared on Guido as Calmdown Again claiming to have been an officer with 4th Royal Tank Regiment.

          26. JSP used to appear on Guido Fawkes under the name of Calmdown.

            She/he upset many contributors.

          27. Well I miss both of them.
            Jen knows a lot about agricultural matters and PTV once gave me some very helpful dental advice/information. I get upset by people who advocate violence, and especially by cruel racialist remarks.I I try to avoid the urge to downvote,

      2. I did get a yellow card recently from the Boss. I am trying. Which will probably guarantee a RED card sometime in the future.

        I should just be myself and everything will be sunshine and clover.

        ***Markle whinge mode off….

      3. I did get a yellow card recently from the Boss. I am trying. Which will probably guarantee a RED card sometime in the future.

        I should just be myself and everything will be sunshine and clover.

        ***Markle whinge mode off….

    1. What danger?
      They are all accountants, engineers and architects and of course gynaecologists…

    2. Not a single women’s rights group, left wing activist, celebrity, feminist, media outlet,

      MP or Lord has questioned the danger these men pose to our women

      Even more Dangeroos, our Security, way of a Christian Life, our laws (not Sharia etc

      1. “Not a single women’s rights group, left wing activist, celebrity, feminist, media outlet, MP or Lord has questioned the danger these men pose to our women.”

        If any dare to comment, it’s usually to say something like: “White men rape women as well, you know – and there are more of them.”

        1. The difference is, in our culture it is reprehensible and treated accordingly, in their culture it is celebrated and correspondingly no punishment.

          3. Fuck that. A raped 12 year old who doesn’t consent to marry is stoned to death. I wonder what his Enthroned Archbishopness has to say about that.

            *Archbishop Welby. ‘Well i would just like to say in the most strongest terms….wibble’.

            As to all the Christian Churches here, across Europe and Africa (that have been burned to the ground) and not forgetting the other Churches of other most reverently respected parishes of Venezuela and all the other New normals, Geoff and Sorrows and of course the self serving GatestoHell I would bend both knees.

            With my commitment to Christ i hope to live forever.

            Not if i can help it.

    3. If you notice how ugly some of these complaining women are then you might understand why.

    4. 330224+ up ticks,
      Evening LD,
      Mass uncontrolled immigration has kept the
      political lab/lib/con close shop coalition alternating governance operating for decades.
      The parties memberships refuse to acknowledge they have been suckered for decades.

        1. Man after me own heart.
          :-))
          Had a pint of “proper strength” IPA earlier, at 6,5%, lovely smell of hops when you open the can, wonderfully lemony and, well, hoppy.
          Had a good week – Mothers bank finally delivered details related to the Power of Attorney stuff allowing me access, and her finances are in good shape, and all critical payments are on direct debit (insurances, council tax, and so on). In fact, the pensions my Dad left her look like they earn more than I do… way to go, Dad. Way to go!

          1. Excellent, Paul. Visited former neighbours on Tuesday*, and had a couple of bottles of Hog’s Back Hop Garden Gold. Notable for the fact that it exclusively uses Fuggles hops from the parish.

            *This was obviously illegal. As was much of my birthday weekend.

          2. Ooo… I remember the HB. Unobtainable here, although we do get a lot of imported British beers.
            Beer revolution here means that the big breweries are competing with the micros to brew beers with flavour (Shock! Horror! Scandi beer with flavour!), and they are doing a good job of it.
            The IPA I just had is Hansa (Bergen brewery) from the wine monopoly, as it’s 6,5%. Normal supermarkets can only sell under 5%. Not quite as good as the Nøgne Ø microbrewery, but really nice all the same. It’s good to get an IPA at proper strength, makes all the difference.
            They also to a fusion beer, a mix of Belgian white ber and IPA. Sounds awful, but is actually a really good combo, especially lightly chilled.

          3. The HBB was almost established in Seale, but they chose Tongham in the end. I’ve moved slightly further away, but I’m still within their ‘free delivery’ area if I spend enough. Their brewery shop has a vast range of beers. They even stock Efes Turkish lager – though I’m not a ‘yellow beer’ drinker, and don’t know why they bother…

            The brewery is now owned by the chap from Thatcher’s cider. And it has it’s own hop garden.

          5. Can’t be illegal if it’s your birthday, Geoff. You get a “get out of jail free” ticket that day!

          9. Mother set up the POwer of Attorney so long ago, I had forgotten.
            Took a while to enact, and then to get sense out of Barclays, but it’s the hell of a relief these things are actually OK. So, celebrated with strong ale and then wine. Bad head in the morning, mixed dark beer and red wine. Oh, well…

          11. Phew!!!! What a load off your mind. Everything is so bloody longwinded and complicated.
            Just printed off reams of insurance stuff for elderly chum’s house – and my black cartridge ran out with only 2 pages to go. Looking at the bumph, a mind-boggling weekend beckons.

          12. I feel your pain, Annie. I have given up on domestic printers. I churn out the Parish newsletters. Not everyone can justify a full-sized commercial colour laser printer/photocopier. Yet they can be picked up on eBay for not very much. And toner cartridges for even less…

  94. Here’s one for you.
    A few while ago, it occurred to me that, if I went to bed and died in my sleep, how pissed off I would be to wake up dead! (if you see what I mean).
    One of the major events in one’s life, and you miss it because you fell asleep! God, that would make me cross! Never mind that it would be a peaceful way to go, I’d like to be there when it happens, note the experience, see what happens. Not zedding like some bloody geriatric sack of potatoes. Grr!

    1. Just hang ono your ‘puter and let us know how it goes.

      I think death is preferable to being Woke

      1. In line with the modern trend to rename the familiar perhaps death should be renamed ‘dewoke’?

    3. Alternatively, my friend and ex-partner’s 2nd husband died a week past Sunday. On the rare occasions that I met him, I thought he was an utter ‘see you next Tuesday’. He made her divorce extremely difficult and was basically a bully. However, he went down with Covid early in the new year, was quickly moved to a ventilator, stayed on it for around six weeks. Complete with tracheostomy. They struggled to wean him off the ventilator. His chances of leading a normal life drained away. Imagine waking up, and finding yourself intubated, and unable to speak. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

      I’ll take dying in my sleep, thanks…

    4. There are billions on Earth who sincerely believe that when Ye Olde Grim Reaper comes a’knocking one will receive either very good or very bad news….

    5. Paul.

      you have to ask yourself now while you are still breathing air in to your lungs what you would miss if you couldn’t. Go for it.

  96. Take a deep breath – The Moonbat has seen the light…

    Even Remainers now admit that the arrogant EU is a malign force

    Brussels’ vaccine fiasco and its actions in Northern Ireland have prompted even hardcore supporters to reassess their rose-tinted views

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    George Monbiot is a tricky man to cite. When he isn’t prophesying eco-doom he can be found urging on the downfall of capitalism – which would, of course, bring about a not much better variety of doom. Yet even a radical Leftist like Monbiot can sometimes be onto something. This week’s stopped clock award goes to him because on Thursday he took to social media to show that he had been thinking about the EU a bit. As ever he was confused. But within the confusion lay something important.

    Monbiot started by saying that we must try to separate out the questions of whether Britain should be in the EU and whether the EU itself is a good thing. Rather bravely (given his tribe), he stated that he had come to the conclusion that the EU is not a good thing, indeed it is a bad thing. Rather illogically, perhaps because he wishes to retain his position as the Cassandra of the hard-Left, he never the less still managed to maintain that Britain should remain within it.

    Other than pausing to laugh for a moment, I do not want to get stuck on the inconsistencies of the eco-Left, but the first part of this breakthrough still struck me as significant. For Monbiot said that the realisation that the EU is not a good thing had come to him “gradually” and I wonder whether this isn’t something that a large number of people are feeling at the moment. Recent polls suggest so.

    The areas that Monbiot listed as contributing to his awakening included the EU’s environmental, agricultural and biofuels policies among others. These all happen to be among his personal hang-ups, but the conclusion he came to could have applied to the hang-ups any of us might have. He concluded: “The problem seems to be that governments can hide behind the European Council and European Commission.” And indeed, that is one of the arguments that Eurosceptics have made for decades. It may be that Monbiot is especially irate about the ability of governments to hide behind the European Commission to push through environmental policies they would be unable to defend at home. But the same critique has for years been applied from every other political direction in different policy areas.

    For example, over the course of decades people mainly on the Right have pointed out that governments hid behind the European infrastructure to avoid having sensible migration policies. They said that their hands were tied – that nothing could be done – because of decisions that had been made at the Brussels level.

    Similar critiques came on trade policy, tariffs and a whole range of other issues. The point is that few if any of these things could be addressed so long as a national government could claim – rightly or otherwise – that it was Brussels who had the power. The realisation that Brussels had a democratic deficit and that this in turn made national governments as well as the supranational government in Brussels unaccountable should never been a concern solely of the political Left or the political Right. It should have been seen all along as a pan-political problem.

    Mr Monbiot’s concerns are his usual ones, around the ability of corporate lobbyists and other to quietly push through policies at the EU level that they could not get away with at home. But everybody else could perfectly happily apply the same critique to whatever their particular bugbear is.

    For instance, if you are especially concerned about the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to get away with genocides, pandemics and much more, you might be concerned at the EU’s ability to be silent on Chinese atrocities while acting beseechingly towards it at a trade level. If you are concerned about Russia policy you may be dismayed at the EU saying one thing about Vladimir Putin while nodding through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on the other. Closer to home, you might worry about the security of Northern Ireland, but you have to face an EU which simultaneously professes to worry about the issue and violates the sovereignty of the province without democratic recourse or accountability.

    These things and much more rankle with people depending on their own particular interests. But they are all related in the central issue of a dreadful lack of democratic accountability. A deficit which can be seen at any moment, on any issue.

    Over recent months, European publics have been treated to the sight of the EU’s vaccine development and procurement policies. It has been a test which the EU has failed appallingly. Franco-German protectionism delayed both the development and purchases of vaccines. Sheer incompetence at the Commission level exacerbated these and many other issues. And now we see an EU where the best-performing members in vaccine rollouts are those – notably Hungary – who have broken away from the EU scheme.

    People in Brussels should be held to account, but as ever they will not be. Ursula von der Leyen may preside over another tragic farce, but still there will be no alteration in the personnel and no accountability. Because that is how the EU rolls, and it is how it always will roll.

    Europhiles will say that all that is needed is reform at the EU level. But the people who say this cannot have spent any time studying the EU’s form. If the EU were capable of learning lessons it would learn them. But it hasn’t. It never does.

    What lessons has it learnt from Brexit – from losing one of the largest contributors to its budget? Nothing. Guy Verhofstadt and the rest of them have spent five years threatening Britain and insulting British voters. But not once have they bothered to wonder what it was that the British public saw that they did not like. Or whether the British public might have been onto something.

    For their part, the British public have noticed this and much more. One poll this week showed that only 39 per cent of the British public now have any interest in rejoining the EU. That is a decline of 8 per cent in the past few months alone. Perhaps the public can see what Monbiot and others are quietly conceding. Which is that, whatever the EU’s fate, it was never the great moral cause célèbre it was made out to be.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/12/even-remainers-now-admit-arrogant-eu-malign-force/

    1. The EU is hell bent on pursuing its course to become a superstate and is not for being deflected for any reason. EU policies not working? More EU policies is the answer. Member states not happy? Ignore any democratic votes and if necessary change the government for an EU apparatchik is the EU way to go.

  97. Now Meghan Markle makes a formal complaint to Ofcom about Piers Morgan after Good Morning Britain presenter said he ‘didn’t believe a word’ of her Oprah Winfrey interview
    Markle complained to ITV bosses about Morgan, the former co-host of GMB
    Following the Operah interview aired, Morgan said he did not believe Markle
    She reportedly raised concerns with ITV about the effect Morgan’s comments may have on the issue of mental health, and on those suffering with issues
    Morgan quit GMB on Tuesday after an on-air row with a colleague who criticised him for ‘continuing to trash’ Markle, and has since repeated his condemnation
    The couple’s popularity has plummeted in the wake of the explosive broadcast
    Morgan said he quit GMB after refusing to apologise for ‘disbelieving’ Markle

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9356325/Meghan-Markle-makes-formal-complaint-Ofcom-Piers-Morgan.html

    1. So, what you mean is Ginge and Cringe’s words cannot be challenged

      Eleven
      Six
      Four
      Twelve
      Thirty two
      Three
      Nine
      One
      Five
      Two

      Counting From 1 to 10 in Cringerese

      I dare you to challenge it SHE has spoken

    2. So, what you mean is Ginge and Cringe’s words cannot be challenged

      Eleven
      Six
      Four
      Twelve
      Thirty two
      Three
      Nine
      One
      Five
      Two

      Counting to From 1 to 10 in Cringerese

      I dare you to challenge it SHE has spoken

    3. It turns out Meghan Markle is dyslexic. She actually read a note saying I hope that baby isn’t a a ginger

      Erm……

  99. I might quibble with CM about the state of the economy and ‘anti-vaxxers’ but generally a sensible and measured assessment.

    After a year of Covid, we have seen the worst but also celebrated the very best

    Britain has learnt a lot since last March, including where our own strengths and weaknesses lie

    CHARLES MOORE

    ‘Many more families are going to lose loved ones”. That was this paper’s front-page headline a year ago today. The speaker was Boris Johnson, promising lockdown. The strap across the top said: “MARKETS MELTDOWN: WORST DAY SINCE 1987”. Matt’s cartoon depicted a man opening an office door in British Airways to tell a colleague: “Good news. We could be a zero carbon business by next week.” This was almost sober fact.

    (There was some light relief on page three. A hoaxer pretending to be Greta Thunberg had reached Prince Harry on his mobile and duped him into “offering to help rescue imaginary penguins from landlocked Belarus”.)

    At that moment, I was in the West Indies, making a speech. When we left Britain three days earlier, the mood had been humorous, with gags about elbow-bumping. When we got back, it was fearful. Our first task on reaching Gatwick was to help find scarce Cow & Gate First Infant baby milk for our new grandson. My local church recruited me to its swiftly invented system of “phone-buddies” for solitary old people suddenly shielding. In that week, the Government’s chief scientist, Sir Patrick Vallance, declared that 20,000 Covid-19 deaths would be “a good outcome”. Pessimistic, I foolishly thought, but he didn’t know the quarter of it: the total now is 125,000. True, our registration method exaggerates the figures compared with, say, Germany’s, but still…

    What can we learn looking back a year later? Well, as someone recently said, “recollections may vary”. What follows, therefore, are only my personal thoughts.

    First, the bad things – beyond the most serious point that so many people everywhere have suffered and died.

    China. We speak freely of the “Kent”, “Brazilian” and “South African” variants, yet try not to mention the “Chinese” virus that started it all. Yet Chinese it was, though I prefer to focus the blame and call it the Chinese Communist Party virus. We do not know exactly what happened in Wuhan – and the regime will never tell us – but we do know that the CCP did not admit human-to-human transmission of the virus until January 20 2020, too late to contain it. From that suppression of the truth, the world’s subsequent misery has flowed.

    The CCP has not been punished. Indeed, its cruelty has increased its economic and political power. Its absolute lack of concern for human freedom and welfare has given it an advantage over democratic countries.

    The party mouthpiece China Daily reports the National People’s Congress meeting this month – “China seeks to end divisions, work towards a brighter future” – though the congress rubber-stamped the CCP decision to allow only “patriotic” candidates in Hong Kong elections. The Covid era has exposed the grim fact that many Western elite universities and firms believe this stuff, or let it pass because they want Chinese money or fear Chinese reprisal.

    Bureaucracy. We clapped for our NHS at first, and naturally wanted to salute doctors, nurses, paramedics. But it was the NHS, as a lumbering, unresponsive system, which caused the panic about beds and thus the sudden extremities of lockdown. It was also the NHS, instinctively hostile to provision outside its control, which left care homes exposed. Politicians of both parties complacently sidestep such problems by promoting NHS worship.

    Bureaucracy also means the Civil Service itself. Those bloody battles with Boris Johnson’s then chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, often arose because the Whitehall system, especially the Cabinet Office, could not rise fast to the challenge.

    If government in a crisis must, as this Government says, intervene more in citizens’ lives, then it must master delivery. Although it must certainly spend up, it will misdirect resources on a colossal scale if it abandons financial control. Look at Test and Trace. Its call centre was not coordinated with the field workers: 18,000 workers allegedly had a utilisation rate of 1 per cent. This week, the Commons Public Accounts Committee estimated the cost at £37 billion without, it believes, discernible benefit, except to Deloitte.

    Loneliness and mental health. Almost every old person I know has deteriorated in the past year in alertness, spirits or physical vigour. The mental pressure on the young is equally great, because they are missing the chance, vital at that age, to establish a stable identity validated by others.

    Even among people well set up, the strain has shown itself most unexpectedly. Early that March, I saw our dear friend, Rose Paterson, chairman of Aintree Racecourse. In terms of family, popularity and career success, she was one of the most blest people I have known. When we met, she worried that Cheltenham was going ahead and said she would have to cancel the Grand National. Soon afterwards, she contracted Covid. In June, she took her own life.

    No one factor can explain such an act, but Covid – both socially and as an individual infection – weakens people, causing other pressures to push them over the edge. When the Queen said, “We’ll meet again”, I suspect she was particularly trying to save such people.

    The anger generated on social media – magnifying impossibilist, intolerant clamour by Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, and this week by the Duchess of Sussex’s unprovable allegation of royal racism – feels like transferred Covid loneliness. If the reality of your life is sitting in a room looking at a screen all day, Twitter may bestow the illusion of power.

    Much of the above is gloomy, but in fact my conclusion is otherwise.

    Collectively, we have withstood our battering. Politically, the noise has been huge, the reality more stable. Despite numerous foul-ups, the Government has spent and borrowed vastly without any collapse in voter or market confidence. It has also achieved – again, messily – the final bit of Brexit. Boris, last year seriously ill with Covid and politically vulnerable, is in charge.

    At least two astonishing achievements have made a difference. The first is the efficiency by which HMRC, thanks chiefly to Mark Denney, who came from the private sector, made PAYE work backwards and pay out furlough with such speed. The second is the famous work of Kate Bingham’s Vaccine Task Force, which has transformed the prospect of recovery, and shown what an independent nation can do when it concentrates. Across the Channel, the cherished concept of European “solidarity” has proved literally fatal.

    Above all, I would argue that most people have behaved well. Every day, I am impressed by entrepreneurs and businesses who adapt their work habits and technology in adversity. This week, even the sleepy, unionised Royal Mail reverted to 19th-century levels of effort and decided to start delivering parcels on Sunday. I am daily impressed by volunteers who help the unfortunate; by families who share intergenerational burdens and by the general level of politeness. Our own demonstrations by anti-vaxxers or Churchill-haters have been tame and tiny beside the burning barricades in Holland or the US, or vaccine refusal in France or Poland. This is not sheepish deference on our part, but common sense.

    “Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” Edmund Burke’s celebrated words from 1790 are an even better corrective in the age of social media.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/12/year-covid-have-seen-worst-also-celebrated-best/

    1. Even someone as intelligent and well meaning as Charles Moore has failed to grasp the evil motives behind the promotion of vaccinations for all. He should get out more.

    2. What is it about today’s folk? It’s as though they think people are immortal. Of course people will lose loved ones, with or without the panic – sorry, pandemic.

  100. Lord Frost is absolutely right to be getting tough with the bullying EU

    Former British negotiators were naive to think Brussels wanted to be friends with Britain. The EU has played hardball from the word go.

    IAIN DUNCAN SMITH

    It didn’t take long before the usual suspects were out, attacking the appointment of Lord Frost and trying to lay the blame at his door for what they referred to as our deteriorating relations with the EU. Frost, the Remainers claim, is too abrasive, he needs to be more conciliatory, soften his tone.

    Yet we already know where such a hopeless negotiating stance leaves us, for it was that approach to the talks early on that left the UK with the mess of the Northern Ireland protocol in the first place.

    Compare Lord Frost’s performance in the Brexit negotiations with that of Olly Robbins (remember him?). Robins was the exact opposite of Lord Frost, always smiling at Monsieur Barnier and constantly showing, as one attendee of the meetings put it, as though he was desperate to be friends. Perhaps even worse, I have been told that these meetings often descended into a farce with debates breaking within the UK side over the issues raised. When this happened, the EU sat in disciplined stony silence, smiling to themselves no doubt at the chaotic and unprofessional UK team.

    The reality which Sir Oliver seemed unable to grasp was that the EU, once Britain had voted for Brexit, had no interest in being “friends” with the UK. They knew that the post-Brexit negotiation was all about the end result. Throughout, in contrast to the UK negotiators, they never lost sight of the simple principle that the UK must be taught a lesson pour encourager les autres in the EU who might have the temerity to think of doing the same.

    This, of course, never stops. Just see how the EU has gone out of its way to blame the UK for its own vaccine disaster. First when they realised that they had failed to order them on time, they lashed out and tried to stop European producers from sending any more to the UK. Then, in a fit of pique, they invoked Article 16 of the Northern Irish protocol to close the border in Northern Ireland as well. This was done without any consultation as is required by the treaty.

    Even though the EU backed down, they had exposed their casual disregard of the sensitivities of Northern Ireland. Remember during the negotiations how they endlessly intoned that they were determined to protect the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. Then, without even speaking to the Irish, they trashed it.

    What the Article 16 episode shows above all else is that the EU only ever cynically sought to use the North/South border as a stick with which to beat the UK.

    This EU animus just rolls on. See how Macron and Merkel claimed, disregarding the evidence, that the Astra-Zeneca vaccine didn’t work on over-sixties and even that it was generally ineffective on all ages. To top it all, the president of the European Council has even claimed, absurdly, that the UK had imposed an outright ban on vaccine exports to the EU.

    Lord Frost knows the Protocol, which the EU still hasn’t ratified, was originally not intended to be permanent. It can and must be replaced, for the sake of good relations in the province. He knows he has to insist the EU recognise that the Withdrawal Agreement was very clear that the Protocol would be “superseded” and the Political Declaration even referenced “alternative arrangements” to replace it.

    But Frost has learned something else during his trade agreement negotiations – that we are competitors with the EU now and the EU wont volunteer to change anything unless they have to. That’s why he needs to be tough in the negotiations and if the usual suspects accuse him of upsetting the EU, then he should take it as a badge of honour.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/12/lord-frost-absolutely-right-getting-tough-bullying-eu/

    1. If only Bojo had meant what he said and walked away, we would be trading on WTO terms and we wouldn’t be in this mess.

    2. Wise words from IDS, who has constantly since the referendum seen the EU for what they are. It makes the actions of the buffoon Johnson even worse when he bottled it regarding WTO.
      The Conservative Party, lots of decent members in the constituencies but with a parliamentary group of MPs who would disregard the referendum result in an instant if they thought they could get away with it.
      Anything the country gains now will be despite this rabble in Westminster, not because of them.

    1. Good evening, Sir.

      You will have to forgive my Codeinesque response.

      Everything that Shakespeare wrote is playing out in the Media. All of the Plays that they never read.

      The memes and themes deconstructed for idiots to consume presented by fools.

      1. Good evening, Phizzee. I’ve been on co-codamol myself for the last few days. Hope everything is proceeding well.

        1. Good evening Conway
          They can really constipate. I do try to avoid an use ibuprofen instead aulees and until it it necomes too painful.

          Time to go apparently.

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