Friday 2 April: Patients must be allowed to consult GPs face to face in the future

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/04/01/letterspatients-must-allowed-consult-gps-face-face-future/

688 thoughts on “Friday 2 April: Patients must be allowed to consult GPs face to face in the future”

    1. Morning, G. Spent much of the day raking moss out of the lawn. Half-filled the garden waste wheelie bin. Hate having an empty bin on collection days, having paid for the service…

    2. I have it down as 8th March and we all wish our benefactor well on that day. Perhaps he is like the monarch and celebrates his birthday twice?

      1. Indeed he does, Rastus,
        8th. March as you mention and
        1st. April which is NoTTLer’s
        birthday!

  2. Keir Starmer is acting like a Tory superfan, robbing Britain of a real Opposition. 2 April 2021.

    Rather than expose flaws in Government thinking, Starmer has behaved like a Tory superfan – trying to work out where Boris Johnson will go next, then rushing to get there before anyone else. On the big issues, he has been more factotum than foe. Does the Prime Minister want to extend his emergency powers for another six months? Even when there is no longer an emergency? Very good, sir. Count on my vote. Problems with rebellious Tory backbenchers? Don’t worry, Labour MPs are right behind you.

    Morning everyone. There is no opposition at all. There are individuals of course but when did you last hear of Labour as a Party opposing Government Policy?

    All of them, Tory, Labour, and the other one, such as it is; all agree on the same things. Rule by Fiat. White Evil: Black Good. Batley man wrong: Islam right. The Abolition of Freedom? Just nod your head whatever. There’s better Opposition in North Korea! It’s rule by the faithful.

    It goes on. There is in actuality only One Party in Westminster. The Woke Party. There is no opposition to defence cuts or a deranged Foreign Policy.

    The job of the opposition is to oppose! It doesn’t matter what it is, it is their task to point out the Flaws, Mistakes and Lies. What we have is a collective doormat that Downing Street wipes its feet on.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/01/keir-starmer-acting-like-tory-superfan-robbing-britain-real/

    1. Good morning all.

      Starmer had a go at being an Opposition yesterday when he said vaccine passports were un-British; however, he didn’t fool many Mail readers, who know perfectly well that if he were PM, the only question would be when they are imposed on us.
      It is not enough to mouth opposing platitudes, people have to believe that you actually mean them, and for Starmer, that ship sailed long ago.
      I think it is slowly dawning on a lot of people that Britain is a one party state now.

      1. It’s the state of the one party that troubles me…..

        Good morning bb2 et al.

    2. At least when Maggie was In Office and Labour was in similar disarray, she had some opposition from the still largely Hereditary House of Lords.

      I wonder if that was one of the reasons behind Blair’s Constitutional Vandalism?

      2. Of course it was! The hereditary Lords own far too much of Britain not to have its best interests at heart, ultimately. They would never have gone along with the great reset.

      1. Today’s young graduates don’t even recognise lack of freedom. They only recognise victimhood.
        I know I have quoted this example before, but I am still shocked by Manchester Met students whining about fences around their accommodation blocks “affecting our mental health” instead of bloody well locking them in!

        I thought William and Harry’s mental health initiative was quite harmless when it first appeared, but it’s at the forefront of the woke whinefest now.

        1. How many Nottlers were caned when they were at school?

          I was frequently the recipient of corporal punishment starting with Mr McGregor the headmaster of the small nursery school in Gerrans who broke more rulers on my hands than on any other child. I was also caned by two headmasters, my housemaster and by the house prefects. I cannot say whether or not it ‘made me the man I am today’ but I don’t think I suffered any grave psychological damage from the experiences.

          1. Good morning (yes, I’ve checked my big clock), Rastus.

            “I was frequently the recipient of corporal punishment…”

            I’m not surprised. I always had you down as a ruffian. A real scallywag! 🤣

          2. Hmmm, Richard, not only at school but also at home. It didn’t make you fearful or good, you just learned how to avoid getting caught.

          4. I knew a retired Lt Colonel who used to recommend the birch for juvenile delinquents.
            To be fair, it works in Singapore.

        2. If they called it what it is – mental illness – instead of mental health, there’d be fewer hitching a ride.

    4. Araminta mng, all good I trust. As you know there is no opposition in the true sense, merely a one party State since March last year, as you correctly put [Woke Party], under the guise of different “politcal labels”according to the season. As a collective their priorities have always been: 1 – get elected and 2 – get re-elected, nothing else matters. And they’re all hoping as part of Great Reset, no more elections as they know they won’t survive

      1. 331079+ up ticks,
        Morning Awk,
        You are on the right track but your timing is out.
        They have been a coalition since b liar/major had the shout, brown, the wretch cameron, clegg, may,johnson ALL members of the active treachery club.

        These long term pro eu political rubber stampers did really believe all their eids had come at once on hearing ” we won the referendum leave it to the tories”

        So commenced 5 years of treachery via damage limitations regarding brussels.

        Truth be told many of us wore out numerous pairs of shoes trying to get across the real UKIP message after designing & triggering the referendum, suffered many a sh!testorm of castigation only to watch Brexitexit
        used /abused by the coalition and a cast of gullible fools.

        1. ogga mng. I left UK in 95, permanently in 97 with occasional visit back every few years family visits etc. But it was clear where it was going once Blair wiped his feet in No.10, Major was a walking tea cosy. I’d followed UKIP from inception, albeit from afar and with limited net access here and in south Sudan. It certainly wasn’t worth raising the topic in either Juba or Nbo with expats, they were, in the main, merely topping up their CVs on a gap year or two, citing experience in woke meetings and paper shuffling. what is interesting and a valid point is here in Kenya, the younger and the elder generation have a big interest in events in UK as the common view is while having attained Independence in 63, they;re still under the shackles of economic colonialism, more so given Uhuru’s waffle on covid never held traction from start. People know he’s controlled by Western banks. And with next Presidential election next year, people are gearing up to bin all “old guard” parties and anyone connected with Uhuru, Raila, Ruto. They saw how M7 with US, Israeli intel rigged Uganda elections and they also know the late Magufuli battered the covid argument until being topped. Economic Colonialism, hence the interest in info re UKIP, Brexit etc as they all give people here the pretext of what the old guard will attempt to line up here

          1. Hi Andy,
            many Brits have a soft spot for Kenya (no, I have never been there) and I hope that Brexit might allow better trading links. The EU is xenophobic, eg its tariffs on products as against raw materials.

    5. 331079+ up ticks,
      Morning A,
      I have seen it as a coalition for years, when they are
      running replacement campaigns like DOVER it cannot be denied plus entering french waters to collect more potential troops / felons /welfare dependants is telling the indigenous peoples to
      STFU reset has been triggered.

      See voting units fleeing from a safe country as future
      grateful party numbers.

      We may very well have won the Brexit battle we certainly are NOT winning the ongoing WAR.

    6. Being an effective Opposition requires intelligence and forensic skill but also a love of your country, so you are able to propose positive measures to improve matters.
      (Ooops …. for a moment I thought I’d gone back to my childhood years.)

  3. Good morning from a chilly Derbyshire.
    It was 2°C at 05:00 when I did the tea for the DT before she left for Bursledon to carry on clearing her Mum’s house out.
    She’s gone with the S@H so I’m home alone this weekend!!

    Bugger all from ERNIE this month I’m afraid.

    1. My grandmother bought me £5 worth for my 16th birthday back in 1972. We’d talk for hours about what we would do when my numbers came up. They haven’t yet, but like the Liberation from Lockdown, I am confident I’ve only got a few more weeks to wait.

      1. I’ve not done too badly. five £25 consolation prizes of the past 4 months.

        1. When Premium Bonds were launched in 1956 I was working behind the counter in my Dad’s sub Post Office so I bought a few quids’ worth. No prizes ever! 15 years on my elder son was given a £10 Bond at birth and it paid out a £25 prize two or three months later.

          In May 2007 I bought £100 worth and in July received a single £50 prize – just the one. Seemed to me that the pay-outs (if any) occurred quite soon after purchase and then not much ever after.

          In September 2020 at the urging of a friend I bought £10,000 worth, just a few weeks before National Savings & Investments (Ha Ha!) dropped the prize rates on all their products. So far, zilch, so I wonder how many Bonds BoB and Phizzee hold that enable them to expect a prize every month? Just asking if any other Nottlers have had more than one prize.

    1. Stephanroi mng, Rand Paul’s been battering them for a while now, one of the few sensible ones Stateside. I’m busy tracking Samantha Power now she’s about to be formally “endorsed” as Hd of USAID. She has “previous” neoliberal tendancies making her name on a fake book re Rwanda genocide, thereafter bouncing around top posts, adding more waffle. Rand Paul pinned her as well, or did til the broadcast funnily went for an ad break

  6. Kremlin says the West should ‘not worry’ about Russian troop movements on Ukraine’s border amid fears the conflict between the countries is set to escalate. 2 April 2021.

    This week Ukraine and the United States reported a movement of Russian troops in annexed Crimea and on the Russian-Ukrainian border, near territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

    The war in eastern Ukraine broke out in 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula following a bloody uprising that ousted Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych.

    Also on Wednesday, Mark Milley, chairman the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with his Russian counterpart Valery Gerasimov and Ukraine’s Commander in Chief Ruslan Khomchak.

    Unlike most Ukraine stories there is probably something to this one. Maybe a False Flag operation to draw Russia into a direct clash. The Chiefs of Staff do not usually talk to each other except on matters of substance. The last time that I recall was Syria and Donald Trump’s strike on “Chemical Weapons” installations. There they agreed that it wasn’t worth WW3 and decided that a pantomime would suffice! Let us hope they do the same here. Russia is sick of being vilified by Washington and its lackeys and is primed for trouble

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9427519/Kremlin-says-West-not-worry-Russian-troop-movements-Ukraines-border.html

    1. Araminta – usual DM false flag, the issue is roll out of Nordstream II cheaper and closer than fake US gas. And Biden Jnr’s agenda of convincing Ukraine to buy US gas as exhorbitant prices hit the rails. Economically, Ukraine’s a basket case. The DM would do well to remember the attempted coup in Ukraine [Victoria Nuland etc] was flattened when VVP took control of the naval base in Crimea for the Black Sea fleet and left Ukraine to the septics.

  8. Morning all

    SIR – As a retired GP, I wholeheartedly agree with Philip Johnston (Comment, March 31) that online GP consultations are not a satisfactory replacement for face-to-face ones.

    Among my friends, since lockdown began I am aware of six missed or incorrect diagnoses as a result of remote consultations. All had serious consequences, including an avoidable six-month stay in hospital.

    An image is no substitute for a hand on the tummy. Online consultations have a place but they must be used selectively.

    Dr John Statham

    Chester

    SIR – About five years ago, while speaking to my GP about statins, she suddenly said that my neck seemed swollen on one side. I hadn’t noticed.

    An X-ray revealed a lump in my thyroid, which was surgically removed and found to be benign. If my GP had been less observant, and the lump not been benign, I might not have survived to write this letter. She saw the problem face to face, but could not have done so in a telephone consultation.

    ADVERTISING

    Margaret Chatham

    Coventry, Warwickshire

    SIR – Philip Johnston asks whether “GPs [can] look themselves in the collective eye and say they have been in the vanguard of this fight?”

    My answer: a resounding yes. Not only have general practice teams continued caring for patients throughout the pandemic, while also being at the forefront of looking after those whose health has been directly or indirectly affected by Covid, but they have also been leading the Covid vaccination programme – our main weapon against the virus – with around 75 per cent of vaccinations in England administered in primary care.

    Professor Martin Marshall

    Chair of Council, Royal College of General Practitioners

    London NW1

    SIR – Dental practitioners, hygienists and dental assistants have been seeing patients since June last year. For us, “face to face” means about eight inches from the patient’s oral cavity.

    Aerosol spray, coughing and spluttering notwithstanding, we just get on with it. That is the job – and our patients have shown great appreciation for the fact that we have been open.

    Dr Mervyn Druian

    Past President, Alpha Omega Dental Society

    London NW3

    SIR – I have found that our GP is willing to see patients face to face, but such appointments have been blocked by the receptionists.

    Our surgery operates an online “Ask My GP” service, which appears to be the only way to contact the doctor. We have tried numerous times to access this facility but with no success. And what of those who don’t have a computer?

    Lynne Waldron

    Woolavington, Somerset

    1. “… no substitute for a hand on the tummy. …”

      Watch it, Dr Statham – you could have been struck off for that….

  10. SIR – In the 1960s there were two grammar schools in Batley: Batley Grammar School, an all-boys school, and Batley Girls’ Grammar School.

    As a pupil at the time, I can confirm that there were snakes in Mr Binns’s art department (Letters, April 1). But this was at Batley Girls’, not the school now in the news. Fear not, the snakes were not fed live mice, though we may have spread this story to deter teachers on teaching practice from entering.

    Helen Gatenby

    Halifax, West Yorkshire

  11. Is this a case of two wrongs don’t make a right?…

    Youngsters break the rules by having fun but was this the right response by the police?

    The NWO clearly states that civil unrest unrest is planned for whereby the citizens will be clubbed into submission in the quest for total control.

    Belgian mounted police TRAMPLE revellers with their horses and use water cannons in violent clashes as they try to clear thousands lured to lockdown-breaching ‘festival’ in park by April Fools’ prank

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9428129/Mounted-police-TRAMPLE-people-turning-water-cannons-others.html

      1. I imagine some will say that the kids deserved a good kicking but perhaps cast minds back to when we were young and how we might have reacted to similar situations knowing that our freedom was severely at risk with the new laws being put in place and this iffy lockdown for a flu variant.

        1. Precisely. Particularly those who know that this whole hoohah is a gross over-reaction by the authorities for possibly very murky reasons.

          1. What a lot of “oldies” perhaps don’t realise is that they are the targets of the NWO….

            If you are middle class and relatively financially comfortable then you are a problem for the great reset.

            Single family houses with large gardens are deemed unsustainable. Disposable income to afford large cars and holidays abroad are also unsustainable.

            1,000’s of elderly have been dispensed with in care homes by putting infected people in such locations. Bashing the youngsters over the head is designed to prevent them becoming middle class but in the short term…it’s us they are after.

      2. But they have had their chips.

        The assembly was unlawful. They should not have been there. A friend who is head of a school in Antwerp says that the plague is running riot in Belgium.

          1. Absolutely right. Teach the little buggers discipline. If only we had done that at Pimlico school – and in the parks all over England where brainless people – the same sort of age – left filth and bottles and human waste after “celebrating” illegally the sunshine.

          2. The kids should have been fined for leaving the mess…plenty of pictures of groups sat where the litter was left. But you prefer the punishment to be a broken head?

          3. A number of policemen were injured. From these reports, one simply doesn’t now who started the trouble.

          4. Police in riot gear and batons. Police on horseback. Water cannon deployed. Police with dogs.

            Seems the youngsters were simply reacting to police violence. Still, once the kids have been dealt with…the establishment will come after you because your large house and garden full of cats will be deemed unsustainable. The footprint of your property could be used for a block of flats to house a good few jungle types.

        2. The laws are criminal.
          Getting people out in the sun will boost their Vit D levels and hence their immune systems.

          1. The laws were made by the democratically elected government.

            If Belgians don’t like them, they can change their government. Perhaps yer Belgian in the street will be enraged by these images and take some action. I doubt it very much. No one in England would – as the recent scenes we have had shown on screens and in the press (and online) show. “Outrage” – then apathy.

            Until there is my new “We Have Had Enough Party” – nothing will change. The ban on civil liberty will continue for years to come – and each new year group will get used to it, and after 10 years will regard it as the norm.

          2. The weak spot in your argument is “democratically elected government”.
            I’m not familiar with the Belgian system, but most European countries are drifting towards a system without meaningful opposition or alternatives to vote for, which weakens the moral authority of democratically elected governments.
            Secondly, voting for the government is only one way for citizens to participate in a democracy. There are other legitimate ways that are accepted in democracies including Belgium. For example lobbying government or MPs; taking part in peaceful demonstrations; pressing for and voting in referenda.

            A mass of citizens taking to the streets peacefully and signaling their opposition to a law is valid participation in the democratic rule of a country.

          3. What you say describes the UK to a T.

            Of course mass demonstrations are away to indicate protest.

            But the govt (with the backing of a substantial majority – according to polls – of lunatic lemmings) claims that we are in the middle of a deadly plague.
            which can only be controlled by the tightest of restrictions.

            I don’t believe a word of it – but unless and until SOMEONE takes a stand – the situation will simply continue for the foreseeable and then, as I have said this morning, be regarded as the norm.

    3. re last sentence Honda, when I first sped read [was getting coffee sorted] Belgian mounted police. I thought ok, perhaps he missed the full stop or the DM’s branching out. Then rest of the sentence more as a statement of intent. Not helped by BB2’s subsequent comment which supported your opening comment. then I re-read it, with coffee. More fun than opening the DM link

    4. Having just watched the vids and pics i fail to see any Bames. I wonder if the police reaction would have been any different.

      1. Yet most of the population support the police in whacking white kids over the head.

        Strange world we live in.

  12. Good Moaning.
    Put your hands together for the Jarls Vikings.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/01/inside-denmarks-ghettos-government-clamps-non-western-residents/

    “Inside Denmark’s ‘ghettos’ – where the government is clamping down on non-Western residents

    The Danish government announced a controversial scheme to cut the number of minority-ethnic people in housing estates

    1 April 2021 • 6:00am

    Aman Taidi

    For Aman Taidi, the idea that removing so-called ‘non-Western immigrants’ like her will somehow improve Taastrupgaard is “ridiculous.”

    The slightly run-down estate – which is officially branded a “ghetto” – is where she’s lived all her life. However, the Danish government in March announced a controversial scheme to cut the number of minority-ethnic people in housing estates such as Taastrupgaard.

    “I am very happy to live here and I cannot see myself living anywhere else,” says Ms Taidi, a 25-year-old student, as she makes her way up the stairs out of the estate.

    “I cannot see what’s going be better if ‘we’ are not here, and if 70 per cent of Danish people move here.”

    The estate, which sits between Copenhagen and Roskilde, has been put on Denmark’s ‘ghetto-list’ of troubled areas every year since the controversial category was created in 2010.

    The long strip of prefabricated 1970s concrete barracks, sandwiched between a railway depot and a busy road, is no beauty spot. But it only qualifies as a ghetto because a high proportion of residents have a low level of education, that there’s a low average income, and more than 50 percent of residents are ‘non-Western immigrants’.

    Denmark’s government – led by the anti-immigration Social Democrat party – now aims to reduce the number of non-Western residents in housing areas across the country to 30 per cent or less within ten years.

    The plan is to deny them the right to public housing in some areas, while forcing private landlords to rent to them in other, predominantly ethnic Danish, areas.

    The proposal calls for the replacement of the ‘ghetto’ category, which it describes as “stigmatising”, with the terms “transformation area” and “parallel society”.

    According to Esat Senturk, a politician at the local Taastrup municipality, who grew up on the estate, the area has never suffered serious crime or social problems.

    “It was a wonderful place because Taastrupgaard has a special culture,” he says. “Where I live now doesn’t have the same sense of neighbourliness. People really looked out for one another in Taastrupgaard. I miss it.”

    The housing ministry defended the use of the ‘non-Western’ category, telling the Telegraph it has been used by Statistics Denmark since 2002 to describe first, second and third-generation immigrants from countries outside the EU/EEA, UK, Canada, US, Australia and New Zealand.

    “The non-western tenants criterion is used because the earlier initiatives targeting vulnerable areas suggested that a high concentration of non-western tenants is a challenge to the transformation of social housing estates into mixed resident communities, since it can pose an integration issue in addition to the socio-economic issues,” it said in a statement.

    But for Mr Senturk the focus on ethnicity, in reality, reflects what he calls “immigrant-bashing” in Danish politics, which over the past ten years has spread from the populist Danish People’s Party to the mainstream parties of both Left and Right.

    “As soon as someone wants more votes, they just shout ‘religion’ or ‘ethnicity’. They’re cheap points to chase, instead of solving the real problems,” he said.

    The ghetto plan policies of recent years have if anything led to a “downward spiral” at the estate, he argues.

    “It just frightens people so people don’t dare come and live here, and that makes the people even more isolated. It means that people don’t feel they’re part of Danish society, because they feel that they should quite simply be got rid of.”

    The people in Taastrupgaard and the municipality have worked year after year to lift the estate out of the ghetto list, with detailed plans made in 2016, and then in 2018, only to see the criteria change so that it falls back, he complains.

    A few blocks away from the flat where Mr Senturk grew up, bulldozers are busy flattening the ground where a succession of the barrack blocks have been demolished, part of a plan to move the local school from the edge to the centre of the estate.

    Before this plan is even half complete, the Social Democrats’ new policy will mean the municipality has to come up with a new one.

    “I’m really worried about it, first and foremost, about where people can find places to live,” Mr Senturk says. “If people are going to be forced to move from here, where are they going to go, and how can you force people to live here, people who have a bad view of Taastrupgaard?”

    Even if the 30 per cent target is met, he isn’t sure it will help.

    “Getting more ethnic Danes into Taaastrupsgaard won’t solve the problem, because the problem isn’t ethnicity.”

    Ms Taidi says the plan just makes her feel a little more conscious that even though she has spent her whole life in Denmark, she will always be viewed as an immigrant.

    “We’re used to it, but I think it’s a bad thing, because we’re all people. We shouldn’t put ourselves in categories with ‘Western’ people here and ‘non-Western’ people there.

    “I feel I’m Danish because I’m born and raised here. It’s not like I need a passport to prove that.”

    1. A lot about how she was raised in Denmark, not so much about what she understands by “Danish” and how her daily lifestyle compares to that of a typical Danish person.

        1. It’s the same multi-kulti codswallop that we were fed for years, to hide the rise and rise of ghettos in Britain!

      2. Typical Danish people are simply racist. How dare they want to live in a nice, civilised country where everyone obeys the rules (written and unwritten).

      3. The first thing I learnt about Denmark is that there is no (nor ever has been) such a thing as ‘Danish Bacon’. I got strange looks in every butcher’s shop that I asked for it.

        Apparently it only ever existed in the UK as a marketing strategy which died out around 20 years ago. The pigs may have been bred in Denmark and exported from there, but the stamping on the rinds was done in the UK.

          1. Are you talking about bacon in Denmark, or what used to be called by that name in the UK (it no longer exists as a brand)?

            Bacon from Denmark, i.e. Danish bacon, exists, of course; but the UK brand “Danish Bacon” went out of existence some time ago.

          3. Did you know that Swedes can’t pronounce ‘ch’ or words with it in. They can only pronounce ‘sh’. Chips become ‘ships’, cheap becomes ‘sheep’, etc.

            Chit chat would become ‘shit shat’.

  14. SIR – Am I the only person who is frustrated by no longer being able to purchase shoe polish in Waitrose?

    I contacted its head office, and was advised that shoe polish has been discontinued in all stores to free up space for more popular items.

    Apparently few people buy it today. Are we becoming a nation of scruffs?

    Richard Preston

    Maidenhead, Berkshire

    3. Amazon – though it appears that a lot of their shoe cleaners are Polish…

      I’ll get me hot spoon….

  15. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7992986e1c87c717bb6dbd43fae8e71ada81030280df1651158dd3833508e650.png My thesis on the ever-burgeoning halfwittery of the species carries on apace.

    Does this particular halfwit think that supermarkets are the only places to shop? I buy my shoes (and their necessary polish) from shoe shops. Moreover, Timpson’s has 2,155 outlets all over the UK so hapless Dickie can’t live too far away from one of their shops! Most towns have a branch of Clark’s too.

    I wonder if he tries to buy his shoes from Waitrose too? I really despair of these people.

    1. Grizzly morning. If I had his address, I’d “inform” him that polish was primarily exported to Kenya for the elders to use on their cannister to avoid getting grey hair. which may answer his opening statement. As for the reality of the letter, given its tone of narrative, the impression;s becoming more firmly entrenched as giving collective clowns homework to draft such garbage to test the water re behavioural indoctrination

      2. I assume they avoid the tins labelled “Ox Blood”; or do they puncture them and drink the contents?

        1. anneallen, they certainly drink the blood, cultural instinct. No tins labelled “Ox Blood”, all stuff here primarily is KIWI. As the marketing on the tin says “Quality Shoe Polish”. Which would be good for shoes, but aside Army and Police in boots, most are in trainers, sandals, flip flops. Hence realigning the polish for use on the head

          1. They had real issues selling baby food there. Never put an image of a child on the packaging!

          3. Kiwi is the only brand you can ‘bull’ one’s boots to a mirror shine with. Cherry Blossom is useless for that purpose.

          4. Kenya – Labelling – Copyright don’t exist here. All Kiwi is black polish here [or what passes for polish], merely fyi. Still, elders like putting it on their head

          5. I might try putting some on my head. The salt is now overtaking the pepper in what hair I have left! 😂

          6. fair one, make sure you’re not classified as an albino gollywog or a “white and black minstrel”. It might spark off more letters to the DT! Guarantee, someone, somewhere, will be upset, demanding reparations

          7. I second that. Anyone found with Cherry Blossom polish in their boot kit in kit inspection had it thrown in the bin.

    2. Cripes; there are First World Problems and then there are First World Problems.
      If Mr. Preston patronised his town centre or lowered himself to shop at ASDA, he would find branches of Timpsons available.

    4. Yo Mr Grizzle

      I bet he gets perfume for his farts from Waitrose as well: he would not want to appear common

      1. Yo, Mr Effort.

        I bet when he falls into a manure pile he comes up smelling of … Wait … roses! 🤣

      1. I wear black trainers (Reebok) and I have no street cred whatsoever! I polish them!

    1. another pair Grizzly. Perhaps and A-Z for Mr McCartney pointing out given restrictions, being in Aberdeenshire how would he know the litter levels in Sheffield? Re 2nd one, reality sounds like he wasn’t invited to any park party. Perhaps he’s a new age traveller who wants to be a”wannabee warden” who lives in a skip? DT’s struggling with it’s letters

      1. The DT’s letters’ editor never fails to find space for letters from his groupies. Two of his nepotistic serial returners are featured today: Lord Lexden (who gets one in weekly) and Duncan Rayner. If you suck up to Chrissie Howse: you get published with frequency. If you don’t: tough luck!

        1. thanks for the heads up. Am not familiar with names you posted, they all sound more like the names of gnomes in Greta Thurnberg’s virtual garden. Come to think of it, they probably are, with Greta on a DT retainer

        2. Hey, Beatnik, I’ve had a pop at Rayner up above. My favourite Raynerism was “BT Red” which was once called pillar box, or post office red, Dude. Shows how the Telegraph is circling the drain when it prints such perma-bore crapola, Bro.

          1. Hey, Dean. This new-fangled, super-woke, post-Conrad Black DT is Nilsville, Bro. Rayner’s vermilion verisimilitude is catching, Dude.

          2. Hey, Beatnik, the old Telegraph is breaking the sound barrier in its dive to destruction, Dude. Rayner did not invest sixpence on “I Spy Poo In The Garden” when he was a kid, for sure, Bro. The cosseted kiddywinks at DT Woke Central, ain’t never had sh*t on their shoes, Hombre.

          3. Hey, Dean. We’re now reading “DM-Lite” or “Beezer for Bozos”, Compadre.

          4. Hey, Beatnik, all bozos know they are being hauled up the wise-cracker line by cheap shot versions of genuine time-honoured trash. When it comes to real crapola the Telegraph is just in grade-school, Dude. Those kiddies got a whole lotta learnin’ to do, Man. Time for a song celebrating being trashy, Pal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzjfGF6MiU

          5. Hey Dean. Them lyrics are a bit profundo for me, Hombre. It’s all a bit too Pat Boone and Brylcreem, Bro.

          6. Hey, Beatnik, twangy guitar, it’s all there Bro- cheesy organ too, Dude. Keeping it in the groove for a world of RC Colas and cheeseburgers- plus coffee for a mind-changing substance, Man.

          9. Hey, Dean. This new-fanglend, super-woke, post-Conrad Black DT is Nilsville, Bro. Rayner’s vermilion verisimilitude is catching, Dude.

    2. At the various outdoor meals in Laure Minervois – where perhaps 200 people would gather, my self-appointed task towards the end was to go round with a series of bin bags collecting uneaten food, packaging etc. It was great fun. I had a lot of banter – inviting them to put their children in the bags etc…and the venue was left spotless.

      All these events were organised by volunteers – setting up, tables and chairs arranged, cooking and distribution. I felt it was the least I could do to show appreciation for the gentils organisateurs

    3. At the various outdoor meals in Laure Minervois – where perhaps 200 people would gather, my self-appointed task towards the end was to go round with a series of bin bags collecting uneaten food, packaging etc. It was great fun. I had a lot of banter – inviting them to put their children in the bags etc…and the venue was left spotless.

      All these events were organised by volunteers – setting up, tables and chairs arranged, cooking and distribution. I felt it was the least I could do to show appreciation for the gentils organisateurs

      1. Hey, Dean. It’s a damned renegade, dude. I tried corralling it’ but it’ refused to be pigeonholed, Bro.

      2. Hey, Dean. It’s a damned renegade, dude. I tried corralling it’ but it’ refused to be pigeonholed, Bro.

  17. And now in other news…..

    We were late up – both slept through the alarum. I heard a bang from the kitchen, where G&P sleep.

    They had found the kitchen roll – and completely mollicated it. They must have had such fun – leaving the floor looking as though it had snowed!

    1. Morning Bill. With the dearth of news I’m surprised that Gus and Pickles are not Front Page fodder!

    2. Cats, eh?
      Morning, Bill.
      Our two have an ongoing feud with “Slinky Kat” who lives in the neighbourhood & is trying to muscle in on their territory. That means sudden bursts of yowling, and the occasional full-tilt dash through the catflap, which goes BANG! very loudly – and once actually was torn off and flung into the front room.
      Things like that at 03:00 don’t make for peaceful sleep, and being woken by the sound of someone kicking the door in…

      1. We have a house mark, school colours, University Blue, Degree, a commission, a knighthood and a seat in the H-o-L
        with that situation, but there were three of them

    3. Morning Bill and Nottlers.

      I am amazed that you have and set an alarm. Or is that because the MR works while you lounge around, Er, paint the sheds I mean? We only use an alarm if we’re having to get up early to go on holiday!

      BTW I too started dead heading the hydrangeas. But stop coz it was cold.

      1. The MR continues to work every day – 7 days a week. We set the alarm for 6 50 am. I get up and do the stove while she sorts out the cats. Quick bowl of porridge and she is slaving (to use an appropriately modern word) by 7.45.

        We allow ourselves some relaxation in the garden after lunch – if it is sunny.

        Leave your hydrangeas until the end of next week at the earliest. We had snow here on 26 April in 1986…..

  18. Good morning all! Blessings on this frosty and sunny Good Friday! Good job I didn’t dead head the hydrangeas on Wednesday, eh? 😱

        1. Good morning Sue. The curse of my life, realising too late what I should have done!

    1. The brain is away with the fairies, and the hand is controlled by a string leading back to the WEF.

        2. World Economic Forum, architects of the Great Reset, publishers of the video (now retracted) that starts “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”, funded by George Soros, host of the Davos summits where they summon minnows like Matt Hancock to be smooched by billionaires.

      2. I fear that the brain is not away but that it is going mad, in the manner of dictators past.

  20. Did a bit of amateur surgery yesterday.

    One of my molars, which was expertly patched up by a pretty Polish dentist years ago, finally fell apart, with a vertical split down the root, and causing some discomfort to the gum. Left to the NHS officially-approved level of negligence costing the Magic Fairy hundreds of billions, there would be an abscess and much aggravation. Eventually, I might come up positive for corona, so it could be recognised as a medical condition.

    So, the alternative is to rummage around the shed for ideas. I found a tube of superglue that hadn’t gone hard, and I knew there was a cocktail stick somewhere I brought back from a party. Wiggled the fracture to open up the gap and poked the cocktail stick in there, duly laced with the superglue like an arrow doped with elixir of Amazon poison frog. 30-45 seconds to hold it in place.

    Next off the Miliput epoxy putty I use for everything. If I was being pedantic, I would mix in a bit of yellow-grey with the superfine white to get a better match. A mix of terracotta and black is closer to the colour of the tooth decay, but is not terribly sightly if ever I am to kiss a lady again (is this the correct terminology, or is “male abuse” a better way to keep away the plods?). I settled with the white in the end.

    The trick is not to use too much at once. First time round, to stop it washing all over the mouth, I had to cover it will loo paper, and then a wad of J Cloth to soak up the saliva since it takes about six hours to set. It’s a devil to eat with it though, so the nice chicken dinner I made up from leftovers had to go uneaten back in fridge for Saturday, when I am no longer fasting and abstaining. Supper was Oxo cube, and even that was a bit tricky. It might help to tone down the colour of the superfine epoxy though.

    Sadly, I could feel it coming adrift, so I had to pull everything out and start again. This time poking it more securely into the fracture with a matchstick and little finger, and scraping away the excess. This seemed to hold, and I gave it a second coat in the night, hoping it would set enough by the time I have to get up and face the day.

    Now, I need to find an NHS dentist still taking patients. The one I am registered with is not much good – his fillings have a life of about two months before they drop out, but they have had a turnover of staff to cut costs. There is an Indian fellow in town, but the name is familiar – I wonder if he was the grumpy one that moaned at me once for not taking good enough care of my teeth. What would he make of my emergency repairs?

    1. You would be better off pulling the tooth. Even if you mange to seal it you have left all those harmful bacteria inside. An abscess would be the least of your problems.

      Or is this an April fool?

      1. I forgot to mention I found a bottle of TCP in the cupboard, so a cotton bud washed inside the gap and another wad of loo paper soaked in TCP over the gum until the painful swelling goes down. Had to remember to use a fresh sheet though. I actually found a bit of the very posh recycled bamboo stuff I got from the local organic farmers’ market shop in the next village when the supermarkets ran out of the regular stuff, brushing off the fluff and cobwebs first.

    2. Argh! Any talk of dentistry makes me need to sit down! Let alone DiY dentistry… :->)

      2. 331079+ up ticks,
        Morning H,
        As I was thinking last night shades of the joe mangele clinic.

    2. Utterly appalling and lacking any justification before stage 3 tests have been completed on adults, surely. The virus doesn’t even kill children!

          4. There are no spoofs (spooves?) any more. All spoofs have been supplanted by a new weird reality.

            Truth is stranger than fiction.

      2. 331079+ up ticks,
        BB2,
        Something was needed to trigger reset and the super flu fit the bill.

        Control tags of some description will follow along with the
        button to the chin gray tunics.

        Party before Country the people’s consent is not
        necessary or needed, but cosmetically it looks good on the voting paper.

        My personal view.

          1. 331079+ up ticks,
            Morning SiadC,
            Not the mandatory governance uniform as in china, as of yet.

            But if we keep up the same voting pattern it will surely be the tunic or the burka in the near future.

  22. One of the Telegraph’s “pet” letter writers tells us today, that the cats’ mess on our lawns is probably the work of foxes. As many who have been recipients of these feline donations will know, that cats often mark their territory with their mess. I’m surprised this feline expert does not know this simple fact.

    1. What utter nonsense! When I put prickly branches down on a dry flowerbed that had previously been used as a public lavatory by a neighbour’s cat, the little beast resorted to shamelessly leaving its offerings all round my garden. I never know when they will turn up on the drive or anywhere on the grass. We don’t even have foxes around in our area.

      1. I remember when there used to be dog poo on every pavement. Remember white poo? What was that all about?

        1. Could you buy white turd polish?

          I think white dogshit came from those dogs fed a crap diet of ultra-cheap canned dogfood, such as Chappie, which was 1% meat and 99% ‘fillers’.

          1. I heard it was because most dogs were fed on bones. The children would collect them to mark out the hopscotch squares.

    2. 331079+ up ticks,
      Morning N,
      Even so I still believe that Laurence is worth a vote.

  23. One for the pedants.

    BBC Radio 4 ten minutes ago: “A vertical, straight down drop”. I don’t know what the subject was because the pair of them gabbled continuously, unendingly without stopping. It could have been the quality of broadcasting in general or the BBC in particular. We shall probably never ever, not never know.

    1. It’s funny how you get used to new things and miss them when they aren’t there. I’m so used now to rewinding the TV prog I’m watching if I didn’t catch something or want to replay a section that I get frustrated that I can’t do the same thing when listening to the radio.

      I have also been known to press the button on my car key while approaching my front door carrying bags of shopping.

      1. Pickles stole my office sellotape yesterday… Stashed it downstairs in his box of treasures!

        1. At least if you lose your spectacles you now know the first place to look.

          Good Good Friday, Bill.

  25. Good morning, my friends,

    “There ain’t a lady living in the world as I’d trade for my Dear Old Dutch”

    33 years today Caroline and I have been married – not quite as long as some our Nottler friends.

    (and still 7 years to catch up with the song sung by Peter Sellers who rather ruins the pathos at the end!)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N4xz_VMIaU

    2. 33 years, eh?
      Congratulations to Caroline and you, Richard! A burst of good news in all the gloom!

    6. Congratulations Mr and Mrs Tastey! I hope you have many more happy years! Are you making another cake…?

      1. I shall rest on my laurels and, happy to say, florists are still open for the time being in France!

      1. Thank you, Maggiebelle

        But you and your husband are way ahead of us. How many years have you now notched up?

        1. In a few months time , 53 years . We were in our early 20’s , so didn’t have much wisdom between our ears!
          By our mid twenties we had our own home , and made do by furnishing our home for £100 ..and perhaps a bit extra . No luxuries to make life easier , but many couples were similar . the 1970s interest rates , fuel prices and shortages ravaged many young families .

          1. Caroline was 24 when we met and I was 40 – we married the following year. The difference in our ages has never caused us a moment’s worry and, since our children are now both launched into the world and are standing on their own two feet my paternal obligations are not as great as they used to be.

            Henry (25) and his girlfriend, whom he met at 17 in his first week at UEA, have just bought a flat together and Christo (27) and his fiancée have bought a 3 bedroomed semi with garage and garden which gives him plenty of room to store his hang-glider and its equipment.

          2. When one’s children are able to invest their cash and lives in their own property it feels as if they are over the last hurdle, you and they together. Then you discover it is not the last hurdle at all…..

    9. Félicitations Richard et Caroline. May you enjoy many more years of happiness together

    10. Congratulations to you both.

      In the howling wilderness that is the current political and social climate, it is lovely to be reminded of the oases.

    11. Feliz aniversario!
      A Ruby Wedding beckons, but the Golden will depend on your heart being in good working order, rather than just being in the right place.

    12. You’ve served TWICE the sentence for murder!!
      Many more happy days to both of you {:^))

  26. 331079+ up ticks,
    So the brexitexit door was of the revolving type out / in out / in,

    Dt,
    British taxpayers funded EU factory at heart of vaccine row
    Dutch factory equipped to produce Oxford jab after major investment from UK last April, but Brussels insists doses must stay in Europe

      1. 331079+ up ticks,
        Awk,
        There is many a politico’s pension to be
        honored & via the “deal” many to be earned
        via treachery.

    1. How about loading them into purpose built shipping containers? The ones that were converted into homes – except without any furnishings, electricity, lighting…

      Then, put those containers on a boat and offload them somewhere near Tripoli and leave them there.

      1. 331079+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        Pretty harsh W, I was trapped in tripoli for three days whilst they tried to work out if my visa extension was for one day or thirty days.

  28. British taxpayers funded EU factory at heart of vaccine row
    Dutch factory equipped to produce Oxford jab after major investment from UK last April, but Brussels insists doses must stay in Europe
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/01/british-taxpayers-funded-eu-factory-heart-vaccine-row/

    What more does our pathetic prime minister need?

    If this is not justification for Britain immediately cancelling both the surrender WA and the calamitous *deal” then Britain is truly screwed.

  29. I see that several sources are reporting that Russia is building up forces on the Ukrainian border and may have decided to strike against Ukraine now because of the new Biden administration in Washington.

    Last Thursday’s press conference by Biden was undoubtedly analyzed closely by the Kremlin, and it was clear that Biden has no idea what’s going on. In addition, the world can see that Biden has completely lost control of its southern border.

    Furthermore, the new woke Secretary of Defense is deliberately weakening and emasculating the US military in favour of pregnant women and assorted people who are confused about which of many genders du jour they would like to choose from.

    The Kremlin analysts may have decided that it would take a long time for Biden to do anything, if he did anything, and that therefore they can invade Ukraine with impunity.

    Already the weakest, inept and most ignorant POTUS ever, is causing worldwide repercussions. Not only Russia but China, N. Korea and Iran are looking on with amazement and wide smiles.

    CNN, the BBC and the Guardian will say: “It’s all Trump’s fault!”

    1. When one of the newer Nottlers can write:

      `The biggest murderous regime for the last 50 years is the one Trump led for 4 years.

      What do you think?

          3. What was it Putin said in reply to sleepy Joe?
            “It takes one to know one”

      2. I think we will have to wait for the posters balls to drop before we can have a sensible discussion.

      3. Late last night the twerp Jack put up a post aimed at me giving me the Samaritans number .

        He continued to cross swords with other Nottlers , is that Jack character the old annoying Brian ?

      6. Considering Trump hasn’t started any wars and has actively withdrawn troops from a warzone, the most warlike organisation is the EU for provoking Russia into invading Ukraine.

        If there’s a problem in the world, look Left.

    2. Well they have a point; President Trump won originally as a campaigning outsider, but then he lost from a position of strength because he believed his own rhetoric.

  30. For Airline Passengers And Crew

    Just in case you need a laugh:

    Remember it takes a college degree to fly a plane, but only an apprenticeship to fix one…a reassurance to those who fly routinely in your job.

    After every flight, UPS pilots fill out a form, called a ‘gripe sheet,’ which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.

    Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humour.

    Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS’ pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.

    By the way, UPS is the only major airline that has never, ever had an accident.

    P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
    S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.
    *
    P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
    S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
    *
    P: Something loose in cockpit
    S: Something tightened in cockpit
    *
    P: Dead bugs on windshield.
    S: Live bugs on back-order.
    *
    P: Auto pilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent…
    S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
    *
    P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
    S: Evidence removed.
    *
    P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
    S: DME volume set to more believable level.
    *
    P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
    S: That’s what friction locks are for.
    *
    P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
    S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
    *
    P: Suspected crack in windshield.
    S: Suspect you’re right.
    *
    P: Number 3 engine missing.
    S: Engine found on right wing after brief search
    *
    P: Aircraft handles funny.
    (I love this one!):
    S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right and be serious.
    *
    P: Target radar hums.
    S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
    *
    P: Mouse in cockpit.
    S: Cat installed.
    *
    P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
    S: Took hammer away from midget
    *
    And two I have actually been involved with
    P: Dirty rag in cockpit
    S: Dirty rag removed, washed, ironed and replaced
    *
    P: Bendix radio does not work
    S: PTR 170 radio removed: Bendix radio fitted and functionally tested

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

    Muhammed cartoons

    The teacher at Batley Grammar School who was suspended for showing his religious studies class cartoons depicting Muhammed has gone into hiding with his family under police protection. The angry mob that gathered outside the school has continued to protest, and pupils have been instructed to stay home. The teacher’s identity was revealed by a charity called Purpose of Life in an open letter to the school demanding he be sacked, and he has reportedly received death threats.

    The teacher’s father says his son is “broken” and afraid to return to Batley. Reports of young Asian men looking through windows and trying the door of his house have led to the installation of a CCTV camera at the house. His father said: “The school has thrown my son under a bus. The lesson that he delivered in which the picture of the Prophet Muhammad was shown was part of the curriculum, it had been approved by the school. Other teachers have done exactly the same thing. So why is my son being victimised like this? The school should have come out fighting for him and made it clear to the protestors that if offence was caused, then it was not my son’s fault. It was the school’s policy to show this picture, it wasn’t an individual decision made by him.”

    In support of that claim by the father, MailOnline reported yesterday that two more teachers at the school have been suspended, bringing the total to three.

    In a piece for UnHerd, FSU Advisory Council member Andrew Doyle wrote: “Teachers cannot be in the business of tailoring their pedagogic practices in order to appease the most intolerant elements of society.” That sentiment was echoed by Dr Rakib Ehsan in the Daily Mail who said: “Despite the indignation of the demonstrators, it is not the duty of such a school, in a secular education system, to accommodate every kind of religious sensibility.” Dr Ehsan also pointed out that “demonstrations seem to have been hijacked by the hardliners, many of whom appear to be young men with no real connection to the school. Some Batley parents have spoken privately of feeling intimidated.”

    Dr Alyaa Ebbiary, Islamic studies researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, had a different take, saying: “From the majority Muslim community perspective it’s safe to say that showing images of the Prophet Muhammad would not be considered a ‘right’, but at best disrespectful, and at worst a provocation.”

    Sara Tor of The Times agreed that it was disrespectful to show the cartoons and concluded that “society has an underlying disrespect for Muslims”. On the other hand, Joanna Rossiter insisted that “Islam seems to have been admitted into the magic circle of societal issues that are too taboo to debate”. In her piece in The Spectator, she called out the National Education Union for failing to offer the teacher any support. Incidentally, the Telegraph revealed that the NEU has donated to Purpose of Life, the charity that named the teacher.

    Writing in The Critic Robert Poll attempted to strike a balance: “A small amount of self-censorship has always existed. It’s called good manners. And a certain amount has always existed in professional life too. It’s called professionalism. We defenders of free speech should pick our battles more carefully.”

    A petition launched to urge the school not to fire the teacher has garnered nearly 70,000 signatures.

    You can see the letters the FSU has written to the school, the local Chief Constable, the Charity Commission and the Education Secretary about this episode here and here. The Telegraph reports that the Charity Commission has already followed up the FSU’s complaint about the Purpose of Life.

    Banning teachers

    Alexander Price, a teacher at Denbigh High School in Wales, has been banned from the teaching profession by the Education Workforce Council (EWC), the Welsh government’s disciplinary body. He was sacked after an anonymous blog post in which he made general criticisms about students and staff at his school. The decision sets a dangerous precedent, argued FSU Legal Advisory Council member Professor Andrew Tettenborn in Spiked: “This is a requirement that effectively bars teachers from saying anything in public that may offend someone.” This ruling is limited to Wales, but FSU member Will Knowland, sacked from Eton College last year over a video lecture on masculinity, is preparing to face the English equivalent of the EWC in the independent sector, the Teaching Regulation Authority. Prof Tettenborn is not optimistic: “It remains to be seen what view the regulator will take on the problem of educational wrongthink and identity politics – but don’t hold out too much hope.”

    Twitter Suppression

    Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, one of the world’s most cited infectious disease experts, has been censored by Twitter for tweeting: “Thinking everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.” His tweet now comes with a warning preventing users from liking or retweeting it. One of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Kulldorff also serves on the Covid-19 vaccine safety sub-group which advises the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. He recently gave an interview to Lockdown Sceptics, a blog edited by FSU General Secretary Toby Young, in which he said it was dangerous to suppress dissent during a pandemic.

    Cancellation of Ook and Gluk

    Author of Captain Underpants Dav Pilkey has apologised after his latest book Ook and Gluk was cancelled for perpetuating “passive racism” towards Asian people. The book is about two “cave kids” who travel to the future and learn from a martial arts instructor called Master Wong. Publisher Scholastic has removed the book from its website and is recalling copies from libraries and schools. Pilkey said: “I hope that you, my readers, will forgive me, and learn from my mistake that even unintentional and passive stereotypes and racism are harmful to everyone. I apologize, and I pledge to do better.” He promised to “donate his advance and all royalties to groups dedicated to stopping violence against Asians and focussed on promoting diversity in children’s books and publishing.”

    Lawful Crime

    Nottinghamshire Police have published a page about hate crime on their website which says: “Hate crime can take any shape and isn’t always illegal behaviour.” Commenting on the assertion that legal behaviour can constitute a crime, FSU Director of Research Radomir Tylecote tweeted: “These *actually insane* nonsense words imply any human action could be hate crime. Perhaps we should thank @nottspolice for letting the cat out of the bag…”

    Positive news for Free Speech

    A US judge has ruled against Shawnee State University in Ohio for mandating the use of preferred gender pronouns due to the implications for free speech and freedom of religion. Professor Nicholas Meriwether argued that being compelled to use the preferred gender pronouns of a transgender student was at odds with his religious beliefs. Judge Amur Thapa of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying: “If professors lacked free-speech protections when teaching, a university would wield alarming power to compel ideological conformity.”

    Edinburgh University has emphasised the need to balance “freedom of expression” with efforts to “institutionalise racial equality” after complaints from The University of Edinburgh Race Equality Network (UoE EREN) about an article co-authored by retired professor Brian Charlesworth praising twentieth century scientist Sir Ronald Fisher. Fisher, who died in 1962, is the father of modern statistics, but his legacy is tainted by his endorsement of eugenics. Charlesworth argued that “to deny honour to an individual because they were not perfect, and more importantly were not perfect as assessed from the perspective of hindsight, must be problematic”.

    Jonathan Rauch writes in the new publication Persuasion about a number of pro-free speech groups that have been established to push back against cancel culture. Along with the FSU, which is in the process of opening a US branch, a website has been set up at Princeton University called Princetonians for Free Speech, Counterweight was launched in January by Helen Pluckrose and the Academic Freedom Alliance has been established to help defend professors under fire for breaching speech codes. Alongside his praise for these new initiatives, Rauch gives a warning: “Pluralistic liberals should warmly welcome the new free-speech activism while remaining cautiously aware that… they may be tempted to slip into the same kinds of harrying and bullying tactics that cancelers have perfected. Pressure groups are always at risk of capture by zealous factions and parochial agendas, whatever their founders’ good intentions. Those of us who are pluralists need to watch ourselves as vigilantly as we watch anti-pluralists.”

    Archbishop of Canterbury

    Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that “we have to hold on to freedom of speech” in the UK, describing cancel culture on university campuses as “very, very dangerous because you start with cancelling some views that you dislike and very quickly, you are cancelling everyone who disagrees. It’s a very dangerous process.” On the controversy over the use of cartoons at Batley Grammar School, he urged those upset by the cartoons not to respond with threats and violence, saying: “In other words, exercise your freedom of speech, but don’t prevent other people exercising their freedom of speech.” Despite the Church of England’s planned review into statues at churches, he insisted that history cannot be erased: “We cannot cancel history. We cannot cancel differences of opinion.”

    Free Speech Champions

    Free Speech Champions, the new initiative set up by FSU founding director Inaya Folarin Iman, is hosting an event on artistic freedom next week featuring Andrew Doyle and drag performer Vanity Von Glow. Many high-profile artists – including Sir Kazuo Ishiguro and Nick Cave – have warned that a culture of fear is thwarting the ability of artists, particularly young artists, to express themselves creatively. This event will explore that problem and discuss how to defend artistic freedom. You can register for the free online event here.

    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 several 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.

    Kind regards,

    1. Good Morning Grizzly, and others.
      Thank you for the post.
      I ought to join the FSU, but I don’t want to be labelled (outed) as a Darwinian misanthropist with a sideline in general grumpiness and intolerance of intolerant sky-fairies.

      One of the many irritating aspects of Socialist Distancing is that I can’t easily chat in person with anyone to discuss conspiracy theories, or even the Peter Principle.

      1. Good afternoon, Tim.

        I’ve been (and continue to be) labelled as many things in my time. It’s all water off a wigeon’s back to me.

      2. Sadly his illegitimate children show that his testes are working. Worse luck.

    3. It is a legal requirement for State schools in England to hold a morning Assembly, a collective act of worship that must be predominantly Christian. How does that go at Batley Grammar School?

  32. Seems the virus is coming by rubber boat…

    And still Johnson does FA to stop it.

    Boris Johnson says new French Covid wave is ‘very sad’ and warns the UK has ‘got to be ready’ for it to arrive here within weeks as Macron locks down
    PM was campaigning in Hartlepool today when he made comment
    He warned that when France was affected, the UK usually followed within weeks
    However the UK has a far higher number of people who have been vaccinated

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9427923/Boris-Johnson-says-new-French-Covid-wave-sad-warns-UK-got-ready.html

    1. The three great symbolic demonstrations of the fact that Britain has lost all its self -respect.

      Kneeling before rugby matches in reverence to a racist, communistic, anti-police, anti- family philosophy.

      Allowing – and indeed encouraging – thousands of dangerously infected illegal immigrants to enter Britain and stay.

      Complete capitulation to the EU over British territory in Northern Ireland and fishing waters.

      A good arsonist is required to deal with the Haystack!

      1. 331079+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        ALL given consent via the polling booth upon the altar of “the party before Country” brigade.

      2. 331079+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        ALL given consent via the polling booth upon the altar of “the party before Country” brigade.

      3. Allowing – and indeed encouraging – thousands of dangerously infected illegal immigrants to enter Britain and stay.

      4. Allowing – and indeed encouraging – thousands of dangerously infected illegal immigrants to enter Britain and stay.

    2. 331079+ up ticks,
      H,
      Anne Marie Waters country “no country for treacherous Pms”.

    2. Yeah, right. I’ll believe it when I read lady NoTTLers larfing all the way to the bak.

      1. Well I’m certainly going to get my mother to look into it 🙂
        She’s been wanting a new kitchen…

        1. Go for it. Unlike the detritus washing up in Kent, your mother has worked and paid for that money.

        2. Go for it. Unlike the detritus washing up in Kent, your mother has worked and paid for that money.

    3. Yes. I’m currently pursuing that one.
      Had a slight increase and a year’s back money.
      The rest is still in the pipeline, but I will be sending a reminder to the DSS that I haven’t gone away.

      3. Did you have to contact them or was it sent automatically? I ask because we married in 1979 and so there may have been underpayments.

    4. Yes. I’m currently pursing that one.
      Had a slight increase and a year’s back money.
      The rest is still in the pipeline, but I will be sending a reminder to the DSS that I haven’t gone away.

  34. Good morning all,

    Very chilly morning here , feels like a north wind / Arctic wind .. brr.

    We were late to bed last night after a wonderful evening watching BBC4 Graham Greene films the original ( Orson Welles) The Third Man and a newer version of Brighton Rock ( 2010 ).

    We were absorbed and delighted with what was on offer from the BBC for once.

    1. 2°C up here at 05:00 when I got the milk in for the DT’s breakfast before she legged it to Bursledon to carry on sorting her Mum’s house out.
      More than slightly brisk when I went down for the paper earlier and, after working a bit of a sweat up sorting some logs out for bringing up home, it felt decidedly chilly!

    3. I watched the last hour of the Third Man but I did not want to see Brighton Rock as I did not really enjoy the Richard Attenborough version. The great cop out in this original film was the last scene where Rose takes her copy of the recording Pinkie has made to listen to it – the record is scratched so she does not hear the whole record which is the ‘full horror’ Graham Green has anticipated in which Pinkie described his hatred and contempt and not any love.

      1. I read the book years ago but have not seen the film. I can’t say I enjoyed the book.

        We did watch The Third Man – hard to follow, but very atmospheric and dark. I had a job to follow the dialogue.

    1. I sent that to my French pals this morning! None of whom hold him in high regard…

        1. The goats have not been seen since before Christmas. It is all a bit of a mystery. I gather that there was some tension between the farmer and his son – whose goats they were.

      1. He should be depicted leaning over after getting his backside kicked by Wellington.

      3. Isn’t there some significance about the lion atop the memorial at Waterloo? I remember visiting when I were nobbut a lass and hearing some such

        2. Well if you are quick there are some over here. Until midnight that is, when they boys are trying another lock down in the off chance that it will have more impact than the earlier lock downs.

  37. Good BTL comments…

    James Forsyth
    Why is New Zealand afraid of criticising China?
    1 April 2021, 4:27pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt0af43cd737e7d07b/6065e6521b1e62104270c310/GettyImages-1134210425.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    It is becoming harder and harder to ignore China’s aggressive behaviour. As I say in the magazine this week, China wants to pick off its opponents. Only a unified western response can stop this, but all too often that has been lacking.

    When Beijing turned on Australia for suggesting that there should be an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, there was a shocking lack of solidarity from New Zealand. Wellington’s trade minister, while negotiating an upgrade to its trade deal with China, suggested Australia should ‘show respect’ to China. New Zealand now exports almost half its meat and wool to China. Revealingly, it also dropped out of a statement by the Five Eyes — the intelligence grouping that joins together the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — that was particularly critical of China’s behaviour in Hong Kong.

    New Zealand was also strikingly absent from the statement issued by 14 countries — including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, Japan and South Korea — this week following the World Health Organisation’s work in China. It expressed ‘concerns that the international expert study on the source of the Sars-CoV-2 virus was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples’.

    There need to be structures to ensure a joint response in the face of Chinese intimidation. In a forthcoming paper for the China Research Group, one of the bodies sanctioned by Beijing, the American economist Robert D. Atkinson argues that what is needed is a Nato for trade. This would ensure a collective response to Chinese attempts to intimidate its members. Would China have slapped tariffs on Australian wine if it knew it would have brought a reaction from dozens of other countries?

    The US, UK, EU and Canadian targeted sanctions on Chinese officials for the way the Uighur Muslims are being treated was an important first step in the West’s pushback against Beijing. There now needs to be action taken to prevent free societies from being economically bullied by China. Boris Johnson should use the G7 summit in Cornwall this June to put a plan for collective economic defence on the table.

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

    robertsonjames • 18 hours ago • edited
    Sadly New Zealand is today a far cry from the land of the tough Kiwi soldiers epitomised by the legendary Charles Upham, the only fighting man to win himself two VCs.

    Now it’s a small and very isolated country which prides itself on being at the cutting edge of right-on PC left-liberalism. This has numerous implications, including political pin-up status across the West for its trendy female leader. But salient among them where approaches to Chinese expansionism are concerned are having an air force which for the past two decades has had no combat aircraft at all and which fields a special forces unit that today has to recruit straight off the high street because the remainder of the New Zealand armed services are now too small to provide a viable pool of experienced recruits.

    The contrast with Australia, which is a serious military force in the region and strong enough and confident enough to stand up for itself, could not be starker.

    New Zealand for all their “progressive” posturing has an elite that privately knows it has become acutely vulnerable and if we know one thing about vulnerable countries which face a threatening giant it’s that their default setting is appeasement in the hopes, as Churchill famously said, of not being amongst the first to be eaten by the crocodile.

    DellerboyNZ • 17 hours ago • edited
    Couple of things. Ardern has her sights on a top UN spot and needs China to achieve it. She is courting the General Assembly like mad, hence that was where she first gave her child an ‘airing’. The local NZ women’s mags had been agog for a peep, but Ardern saved her kid for the UN. If she could have breast fed on the podium she would have done so.
    Ardern also needs the Islamic bloc for the UN bid hence her fawning over the Christchurch mosque survivors. NZ has a very generous accident compensation scheme but continual Muslim demands are making even Ardern blanche.
    I knew she was dodgy when immediately after her first election i.e. appointment, she picked up on a comment about NZ becoming a republic. Wasn’t in her manifesto or even a topic during the campaign, but in true Lefty fashion she went for it. Given that her ‘Queenmaker’ Winston Peters is the most overt of Royalists it was a bit rich. But Peters is gagging for a ‘K’ so he won’t make waves on China or anything else.
    Oh yeah I think dairy would lead meat and wool for China exports.
    Our Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon (you guessed it) is clearly taking instructions from Beijing. He was the 5-times darling mayor in a predominantly white provincial centre, but since getting the Commissioner job has been stumping the country declaring NZers are all ‘racists’.

    1. I think that NZ is a very clear example of what will happen in the UK (well, England) with the rise and rise of the woke, green libturds – keen on diversity and kowtowing to tiny minorities of small minority groups.

      1. NZ keeps being held up as a good example of normal life continuing while the rest of the world is locked down – its people are held in a prison island, like we are now as well.
        It is a very small, isolated state and the population numbers no more in total than a large city here.

        When we joined the EU or its predecessor, NZ had to find new markets, so they went for China and the ME for their produce – hence the halal lamb as well.

        1. NZ halal lamb has been mentioned on here a few times. There is a mistaken belief that all NZ lamb is halal. It is not as halal slaughter must be carried out by muslims and not all NZ slaughtermen are muslims.

          Additionally, all animals must be electrically pre-stunned before slaughter, even the animals for the halal markets.

          1. I don’t blame them for finding new markets but I don’t want to buy NZ lamb – on the odd occasion I have done ( not for a number of years) it is nothing like as good as English or Welsh lamb.

    3. “Charles Upham, the only fighting man to win himself two VCs.”

      Ahem – Noel Chavasse – ahem

      1. Captain Arthur Martin-Leake – surgeon
        Captain Noel Chavasse – medical officer
        Captain Charles Upham – New Zealand fighting soldier.

        1. Incredible bravery.

          I have the utmost respect for Lance-Corporal William Harold Coltman VC, DCM & Bar, MM & Bar.

          He volunteered for Army service in January 1915, but requested to serve as a non-combatant stretcher-bearer due to his religious beliefs.

        2. Fighting soldier? Do they mean Infanteer? If so, why they use the term fighting soldier?

          1. I used the words to distinguish them two medical men from a fighting soldier.

  39. Good morning, all

    A morning groan, from The Oldie:

    A man means to take liquid Viagra but swallows some Tipp-Ex by mistake. There are no side-effects – except the next morning he wakes up with a massive correction

    2. The only time I attempted to take Viagra the pill got stuck in my throat and I ended up with a stiff neck!

          1. I hate dunking biscuits mesel’.
            Let dunkers eat all the stale biscuits I say.

        2. Phillip Schofield likes dunking beef, but I thought he was more partial to sausage.

        3. The way MiL makes tea, the spoon would stand up of it’s own accord, no viagra needed.

      3. When I was at boarding school one of my best friends used to send me postcards designed by Donald McGill.

        I remember one in which, in the foreground there are a couple of well-endowed saucy girls gossiping and in the background a uoung man on crutches.

        First girl: My boyfriend’s got a limp.
        Second Girl: Limp what?

        (edit Donald for Douglas)

  40. 331079+ up ticks,
    Courtesy of the well supported governance parties these odious issues are no longer taken as news via the MsM but as the norm.

    breitbart,
    Fake Asylum Seeker Guilty of Murdering and Chopping Up Woman

      1. One of the entry requirement for settling in Britain is that you hate the indigenous population, its laws, its buliding, its customs and infrastructure and you wish to tear them down.

      3. It’s far more ‘You’re all horrible racists! Pay for my existence while I abuse every privilege I haven’t earned but complain about!’

        They’re just abusive, intolerant, fundamentally spoiled children.

        1. The sense of entitlement among them is frightening. It seems to be a common belief that they are entitled to come to Europe and sponge of taxpayers because of unspecified wrongs done to their countries in the past.

          Now, it’s clear that nobody asked the native populations of Africa before the Europeans arrived, but we can remove all the roads, hospitals and schools again if they want. Such nuances are unrecognised by low IQ illegal migrants, and they of course are unaware that they are a weapon.

  42. This anti-protest bill risks making the UK like Putin’s Russia. 2 April 2021

    Protest might be inconvenient for politicians, but it acts as a pressure valve, allowing citizens to express their views and vent frustrations that could otherwise boil over. Irish politicians such as John Finucane MP have drawn on their experience of the Troubles to warn that stifling protest won’t work and risks undermining the belief that each of us has a stake in society. If we suppress protest, we could see more anger towards institutions including the police, the judiciary and parliament. We would lose the civil engagement and sense of celebration that we see at events such as women’s marches or Pride.

    Really? My opposition to it was obviously a mistake. It is not Russia that is a Police State where teachers are sacked for showing cartoons but the UK. Neither is its people, or its culture being erased from the present and the pages of history. The truth, difficult though it is to believe, is that by any measure the Russian Federation is more democratic than the UK. The President of Russia was elected by a majority of which Boris Johnson or any other UK politician can only dream.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/anti-protest-bill-uk-putins-russia

    1. Sense of celebration that we see at events such as women’s marches or Pride.

      It’s only sections that are allowed to march – a collection of non-specific general public is not allowed.

      1. Afternoon Stormy. Nativist or White demonstrations are actively prevented!

      2. If gay people want to be treated the same as everybody else, why do they feel the need to have their own festivals?

      3. I’ve been on quite a few demos for animals – lions, rhino and elephants in particular – calling for an end to ivory trade, trophy hunting, canned hunting and lion farming; and the abuse of elephants in India and Thailand.

        All have been highly enjoyable occasions with like-minded people. There was never any trouble, the police escort was light, the wait outside Downing Street for petitions to be presented was an opportunity to chat with others, and we had some inspiring speeches.

        Afterwards we generally repaired in groups to the pub or somewhere to eat. One time a friend and I went to a rehearsal of the evening concert at St Martin’s.

        Most demos I’m sure are like this – an opportunity for a social occasion, not violence.

    2. Sense of celebration that we see at events such as women’s marches or Pride.

      It’s only sections that are allowed to march – a collection of non-specific general public is not allowed.

    2. Funny you should say that – my dwarf magnolia – Susan – which is a dark pink and just coming out, has thrown up two pale pink flowers just like yours.

      1. I think you’re a little confused, Ndovu. I know Korky’s real name and it isn’t Susan. With regards to odd-coloured camellia flowers, I wouldn’t know just yet, as my own camellia so far has only produced buds.

          2. Na. Assam from Wilkinson’s of Norwich by mail order. Johnny Norfolk also drinks their exceptional tea.

            I have a back-up stash of Yorkshire Gold too.

          3. Excellent. A Colleague, Raj once brought me back from Ceylon some Orange Pekoe tea. It is wonderful.

          4. Broken Orange Pekoe (BOP) is one of my brother’s favourites. He’s a real tea buff and he’s always recommending new teas to me. Another excellent one is Formosa Oolong.

        1. It was warm earlier this week and some of the buds which were very tight then have now opened. I hope this cold north wind doesn’t get them. My n-d-n has a large, old, pale pink one and it is currently glorious. Must take a photo.

      1. Respect! She should be on Gardeners’ Question Time with that level of knowledge!

        1. She is extremely modest about her several great skills. Makes me cross, sometimes.

    7. “Some camellias have this peculiar habit of producing different coloured flowers on different parts of the same plant. This is known as ‘sporting’ and is not that unusual although it can come as a surprise. Sporting is the way in which a plant reveals part of its genetic makeup or parentage. The most obvious sporting occurs where red and white camellias have been crossed to produce a mottled or flecked double flowered hybrid. Such hybrids often also exhibit single white and or single red flowers as well. Camellia ‘Tricolor’ and Camellia ‘Adelina Patti’ are good examples of this trait. Your pink camellia over time is reverting back to its original parentage and may well end up as a white flowered camellia.”

      https://www.edp24.co.uk/lifestyle/camellias-colour-changing-petals-516588

    8. I have a candy striped camellia. I also have a red one, but they are separate bushes. It could be the red flowers are sports (a throw back to one of the original crosses).

  44. Afternoon All

    #CovidClownWorld

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3a37092c6eedb707b74f9dc2b02309be1f1012aae976bd1f698d6cf17dd6877c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4418cc1fa48eb9eee3576d1a57ebc702f7fa22e467b4dfb45622309a1f9b6f79.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1d4111d855b1ee008ad88df57f88da53db5d1421f7cad28d36d609110563788.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff29dde95aa91d20d2debf65cafd0b6a6586f422a49aeb130c8c547b6c384263.jpg

    And finally,the farce of the day………..

    https://twitter.com/DominicFrisby/status/1377672455574159361?s=20

      2. Oh gosh yes. Read that at school and I’ve thought about it many times in the past year. Infantile dependence and cult obedience. Which of us will crawl to the surface and survive when the machine stops.

    2. Do those muzzies not realise that a decent hot cross bun recipe contains pork lard.

    5. TBF, it took a lot less back then to be well educated – there was a lot less stuff to know

      1. But many of the great discoveries were made in 18th and 19th centuries and it would appear they came thick and fast.

        1. The only reason Whities made the fiscoveries, was that all the clever Black people had been turned into slaves,
          and could only do manual work.

          When one of them dod make a startling discovery,, like The Theory of Relativity iw was stolen by the Slave Maste, who was white

    1. The reason why they dropped him like a hot potato. Too off message. Same with Bill Oddie.

    2. Thanks for the link Rik.

      These attempts were, obviously, the precursor of the Coronashambles.

      2. That was what they meant by “like France” presumably. The scale of church attacks in France is largely unreported in other countries.

      3. We’ve given up.

        Might as well convert Westminster Abbey into a mosque and have done.

    4. Reminds me of a verse from Jeremy Taylor’s song:

      Ag Pleez Deddy won’t you take us to the funfair
      We want to have a ride on the bumper cars
      We’ll buy a stick of candyfloss and eat it on the Octopus
      Then we’ll take the rocket ship that goes to Mars.

    5. Reminds me of a verse from Jeremy Taylor’s song:

      Ag Pleez Deddy won’t you take us to the funfair
      We want to have a ride on the bumper cars
      We’ll buy a stick of candyfloss and eat it on the Octopus
      Then we’ll take the rocket ship that goes to Mars.

  50. Nicked
    From Lockdown sceptics :-

    “The Government fears that people who have received the vaccine believe they are safe from Covid.”

    What is the fucking point of the vaccine if it doesn’t make you safe from
    Chinkypox ?. Especially if they now say that you are only allowed to
    visit pubs and restaurants if you have had the vaccine that doesn’t make
    you safe or stop you spreading it. Are they utter imbeciles, evil
    tyrannical bastards or both ?.”
    Both,well they treat us as imbeciles and they are evil

          1. Yes, Alf. Playing Chief Inspector Lockhart, in the days when both uniformed and plain clothes policeman dressed smartly.

          2. Yes and when they were respected, caught criminals and protected the public.
            Pleasant memories.

          3. Am I right in remembering ‘No Hiding Place’ carried on from ‘Murder Bag’ with Chief Inspector Lockhart before he was promoted to Detective Superintendent in the later series? All a long time ago, when tv was something to look forward to, of an evening….

          4. Yes, Jill, I think you are correct. Murder Bag was the first title, then it was changed to No Hiding Place as he was promoted in rank. I think there may have been a further promotion and corresponding series title change. [Was Murder Bag a half-hour series, and No Hiding Place a one-hour series?] One thing I noticed was that the theme tune was virtually identical to that of music regularly used in a children’s TV series called (I think) The Last Of The Mohicans with the hero “Hawkeye” and his Indian sidekick “Chingachkook” (not sure of the spelling).
            It’s amazing how these old TV programmes stick in the memory, whereas at my advanced age where I last put my specs often escapes me!

    2. The greater the number of protests, spread widely, the better.
      There aren’t sufficient Antifa/BLM/ER wild-men to disrupt them all.

      1. That’s what I said last week…

        Plus the longer it goes on the less sleep plod will have.

  52. After watching modern 2010 version of Brighton Rock last night , we were reminded of the chaos caused by gangs of Mods and Rockers .

    They destroyed everything in their path as they fought each other . Easter time and bank holidays seemed to be a nightmare in seaside resorts.

        1. He knows how to succeed in getting taxpayer funded jobs in modern Britain. I’m not sure he actually succeeds in the job itself.

    2. Johnson must have his 30 pieces of silver delivered by Pickfords Removal lorries or a fleet of 20 ton trucks.

    4. 331079+ up ticks,
      Afternoon TB,
      lammy professional truth dodger,he hears but does not acknowledge.

    8. In philosophical terms this is described as the naturalistic fallacy. No truth can be irrefutably garnered from subjective value judgements. As good is dependent upon evil for its meaning it is a matter of opinion as to what is good rather than a matter of truth or fact. Hamlet put it rather succinctly when he said: there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.

    10. No whites without blacks. Who would they complain about if we were all just people..

  56. Can’t linger – the MR has instructed me to get togged up to plant potatoes. Good Friday, and all that.

    When we lived in Laure, our Spanish neighbours (very keen gardeners) were APPALLED that we should even think of planting potatoes on a Friday. In their part of Spain (Valencia) it – apparently – brings terrible luck!

  57. 331079+ up ticks,
    May one ask,
    On actually living daily through the evidence of reset / replacement
    ( Dover ) manipulation /deceit, and outright treachery, what reason would one have to say vote for a lab/lib/con coalition candidate in the
    coming local elections thereby giving power to the head honcho ?

    Even if “your” local Mp is on day release from heaven they still answer to one of the hydra’s heads.

    1. I went to the same school as the director, John Mackenzie. Lots of high achievers went to the school. I’m not one of them… Ho Hum.

    1. So is the story about a soldier who joined the Royal Artillery in 1980 and is now suing the Ministry of Defence for £50,000 compensation claiming his hearing has been damaged irreparably.

      Presumably, he didn’t realise artillery makes a hell of a racket. But no doubt in future, in the interests of elf’n’safety, the Army will have to order squaddies to shout ‘Bang, Two, Three’ instead.

      60 Years too late, mate. We were doing that in the Cold War. and if you were lucky you got some cotton wool to stuff in your ears when we occasionally fired a real one… What was that you said ‽ (it’s an interabang – it could just as well be aterrorbang).

    1. Apparently it’s only a First Court. Government will appeal. Then we’ll see. But good luck to them.

  63. I understand that there are severe travel restriction in the UK and other countries but there are several countries where there seem to be no travel restrictions.

    According to FlightRadar24, there are 15,298 commercial aircraft in the air at this moment (albeit that some of them are freighters).

    However, according to FlightAware BA has 28 in the air right now, Virgin 11, EasyJet UK, 21, TUI 11, Lufthansa 57, Air France 53, Ryanair 46, etc.

    Please could someone explain why there are such foreign travel restrictions in the UK, while countless thousands are travelling around the world with impunity, many of them obviously on holiday? How many British nationals are allowed on BA, Virgin and EasyJet today, for example, or are all the planes flying without passengers?!

    4. Foreign passport holders, at a guess. If you read the regulations on travel to and from the UK, any foreigner can come in (not from a red list country), pay for three covid tests and quarantine, and then they are in the UK.
      Being a foreigner returning home is a valid reason to leave the UK, so they can go home when they want.
      The ban on holidays is only for Britons.

  64. 331079+ up ticks,
    Must be getting crowded under that there bus as we have a three party close shop coalition doing the same to the decent indigenous peoples of these Isles.
    breitbart,
    …FATHER OF TEACHER SUSPENDED OVER MOHAMMED IMAGES SAYS SCHOOL ‘THREW HIM UNDER BUS’

      2. He might be, but given that the RoP regards beheading people as an appropriate response to such things, can you blame him?

        1. He could have asked the police to disperse the mob of towel-head trouble-makers “in the interests of the safety of all our children”….

          Imagine if a similar group of white thugs had rocked up and threatened the teachers. The plod would have arrested the lot – and, in addition, fined them for failing to comply with the (daft) covid rules.

          2. I completely agree.
            But do you honestly believe that the police would have acted?

            I don’t.

          3. Of course not – but he could have asked – and then told the world that the perlice refused to take action.

        3. He completely disowned the teacher in question, giving him no backing at all. He could have been more diplomatic while still giving the teacher some support.

          1. I agree, but again, can you blame him, given that the teacher has had to go into hiding?

            If we had any sense at all, anyone threatening teachers and the like at their homes should be rounded up and chucked into prison or sent back to whichever Islamic country their forebears arrived from.

          2. As it’s Good Friday today, I can see the parallel between the denial of Jesus by Peter and the Headmaster’s craven criticism of the teacher. I don’t suppose the Headmaster heard the cock crow.

          3. As it’s Good Friday, I can see the parallel between those who should protect such teachers and the Headmaster, as Judas taking the silver in exchange for all quiet on the Muslim front.

            It’s easy to say I would have stood firm when I can be confident there will be no consequences for me and mine.

          5. Quite.
            And therein lies the problem.

            Those who should be doing something about it aren’t, and those who get caught up in it become peripheral damage.

            I am happy to stand up to be counted, I just don’t like the idea that those who should be standing alongside then stand aside for me to take the fall.

          6. The government should have known that this type of situation was likely to happen sooner or later, and should have prepared a response. I wouldn’t mind betting that Muslims have been eagerly awaiting it, so as to flex their muscles and show who’s boss. Now they know they can get away with murder.

          7. I agree, but the poor sod in the firing line had to take a seat of the pants decision to try to diffuse a potentially very violent situation. If one looks at the younger Muslim men in the crowds, I don’t think they were there to calm things down!

            Would I have acted differently?

            I like to think so, but if it might have meant my wife and children would then be in danger… who knows?

          8. And that is why Islam will prevail – because Muslims know that they can intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with their foul religion.

          9. I like to believe that although it is expanding, more and more younger people are realising that Islam, like so much religion, is poisonous.

            What I once took for granted has been over-turned by my children’s generation.

            I think the same will happen to Islam, and Islam has bred the seeds of its own destruction in its basic tenets. When those brought up in that faith turn on it, they will be as merciless as big Mo’s hordes were to unbelievers.

            I can only hope!

          10. If he had stood firm, the mob would have stepped up the threats, and the police would have had to get involved.

          11. Indeed, but given how craven the police have been elsewhere do you really think that once the dust had settled that he and his family would not be in danger?

            I like to think that if I found myself in the same position I would stand firm, but I would never call someone who didn’t a craven coward.

            It’s easy to be brave when you don’t have the mob at the door.

          12. You have a point, however, I think we are at the point where such generous thinking is a luxury we can’t afford. People have to stand firm.

          13. I certainly hope that the tipping point is reached, but religious and race wars don’t generally turn out well.

            Marches in support of a career criminal supported by people who really should know better don’t bode well for the UK’s future as we knew it.

          14. I think we have to accept that the most prosperous and privileged existence in the history of the world is about to come to an end.

          16. ?
            For those who own things now, perhaps not. For the masses in Britain – the party’s almost over.

        4. Yes, we should blame him. His moral cowardice – if repeated – will lead to British surrender and cultural downfall.

          Meanwhile, in protecting himself, he has destroyed the lives of the teacher and his family; to survive, they are obliged to ‘disappear’.

          1. Easily said when you know very well that the PTB won’t support you, there will be no protection for you or your family, and that if you are attacked the worst that might happen to the perpetrator is a few months inside while you spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair.

          2. So, as I suggested earlier why don’t we just surrender without any resistance and deconsecrate Westminster Abbey and turn it into a mosque?

          3. I am not suggesting that “we” should surrender at all.

            What I am saying is that it is easy to be brave when someone else is in the firing line.

          4. The guiding principle for all our politicians in recent times – especially B.liar

      3. 331079+ up ticks,
        Evening A,
        My belief is no more so than the knee bendy politico’s and the parties that believe oaths on a foreign instruction manual are the way to go ( granting permission to lie to non believers).
        That is probably why the politico’s accept it so readily.

      4. Why doesn’t somebody in the area organise a mass of separate deliveries of white feather to the foul traitor?

        He needs to be reminded every minute of the day that he is lower than vermin.

      5. The headmaster epitomises the British establishment.

        No one in Parliament, the Church, the Judiciary or the MSM is prepared to recognise the existentialist threat to British freedom, democracy and culture by countless challenges by recently-arrived – mostly ill-educated – radical Islamists.

        At another level, it is no longer clear that ‘our police’ are in tune with the Home Secretary – or the British tradition of policing.

        We cannot ‘slide’ out of this confrontation: it requires vision, guts and a firm hand.

        1. I love his orchestrated songs such as ‘Sure on this Shining Night’, also ‘Must the Winter Come so Soon’ from ‘Vanessa’ Opus 32 and his Opus 24 ‘Knoxville : Summer of 1915’. His ‘Adagio for Strings’ is brilliant.

          Barber was one of the best American composers on a par with Charles Ives and Aaron Copland.

  66. Michel Barnier says ‘au revoir’ to Brussels
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/02/michel-barnier-says-au-revoir-brussels-parting-shot-ursula/

    Michel Barnier has retired in clouds of glory and success. He has achieved his main aim – to damage the UK and to turn the British people against each other.

    His overwhelming triumphs were:

    i) To get UK to agree to a surrender Withdrawal Agreement;
    ii) Causing very deep hatred, in-fighting and treachery amongst the British people as well as the politicians;
    iii) To get Britain to accept a completely catastrophic deal which gives the EU continued rights to British fishing waters;
    iv) A disaster for the UK in Northern Ireland;
    v) No clear roadmap for financial services;
    vi) Malign interference at customs borders.

    What greater successes could a Frenchman possibly have hoped for?

    1. There must have been many Brits that went along with it, Rastus. It wasn’t a solo effort, somebody on the UK side had to agree.

      1. And having kicked perfidious Albion firmly between the pockets he’ll win by a landslide?

        1. Probably not – because he is 150% pro EUSSR. But he could give Toy Boy a very nasty shock.

          1. I’d laugh if that spat let Marine in!

            Even though I suspect that she’s nearer a communist than she is painted as right-winger.

          2. If you look at the NF policies they are very socialist – nationalisation, big state, etc. I could not convince my French friends, however, that she was not “extrême droite”.

    3. It won’t last. A passing victory at best. We will recover. We always do.

  67. Michel Barnier says ‘au revoir’ to Brussels
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/02/michel-barnier-says-au-revoir-brussels-parting-shot-ursula/

    Michel Barnier has retired in clouds of glory and success. He has achieved his main aim – to damage the UK and to turn the British people against each other.

    His overwhelming triumphs were:

    i) To get UK to agree to a surrender Withdrawal Agreement;
    ii) Causing very deep hatred, in-fighting and treachery amongst the British people as well as the politicians;
    iii) To get Britain to accept a completely catastrophic deal which gives the EU continued rights to British fishing waters;
    iv) A disaster for the UK in Northern Ireland;
    v) No clear roadmap for financial services;
    vi) Malign interference at customs borders.

    What greater successes could a Frenchman possibly have hoped for?

  68. That’s me for this bitter, cheerless Good Friday. Planted seven rows of potatoes – Red Duke of York; Charlotte and Rose du Nord.

    Hope that the chilling north wind drops a bit tomorrow. The MR is doing carpark duty at the GP surgery. 1,000 people will be put to death vaccinated.

    I shall continue to paint the sheds – aided and abetted by G & P.

    A demain.

    1. Well done – good to see you’re upholding tradition by planting your spuds on Good Friday.

        1. Maybe I should plant spuds. The ‘lawn’ at the new place has several bare patches which are clearly dried out bits of clay soil. Impenetrable. Since I’m 0.5 km from a former brickworks, perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise. Though, for the first 30 years of my life, I lived within 200 m of a former brickworks clay pit, and the lawn was just fine…

        2. Couldn’t reply to your other comment about my trip to Kenya as the page had closed. I’m hopeful but not at all sure. Kenya has now joined the red list, even though reported deaths on Thursday were 14.
          They certainly are trying their hardest to keep people confined but they can’t do that for ever.

          Still – as viewing wildlife in the wild is my passion in life, I’m not giving up.

          1. Never give up, Jules! If we do, the beggars will have won and we can’t have that.

  69. Sky news reporting that one person has been shot outside the US Capitol Building after a vehicle rammed a group of policemen.

    4. It would seem that the killer who was shot is a chap of colour. Standby for excuses involving inequality and racism and the Beeb to quit the story after 24 hrs.

        1. Let’s give it a try!
          I’ll report back!
          EDIT: If I’m still alive… :-D)

          1. What it is still to be young and willing, as opposed to being old and Billing…

  71. Mind how you go, Calvin…

    There is no excuse for the hypocritical Left’s appalling campaign of abuse

    The ad hominem attacks directed at Tony Sewell and others have highlighted the divisive agenda of many who claim to be ‘anti-racist’

    CALVIN ROBINSON

    The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) report isn’t particularly controversial. The commission has clearly spent a lot of time and effort researching the numerous disparities present in the UK, and have put together some reasonable, practical solutions.

    Racial disparities don’t necessarily mean racial discrimination seems to me straightforward, but that benign idea is causing quite a stir. When we look into the issues faced by disadvantaged Brits, it would be easy to assume racism is the primary cause, but when we look deeper we see there are far more socio-economic factors at play. Where one lives, what class one belongs to, how much money one earns, what culture or religion one is a member of all play a part in one’s outcomes in life. There are many areas for improvement, and this report not only recognises them but offers solutions.

    The commission sets out to promote four straight-forward suggestions: to build better trust between agents of the state and communities and to promote fairness.

    The report also suggests there has to be an element of increased agency. For example, removing the term BAME gives people agency of their own. Most importantly, there’s an aim to achieve inclusivity.

    Unfortunately for some, taking a more evidence-based approach to addressing racial disparities does mean setting aside unhelpful rhetoric. For example, the commission found no evidence of institutional racism in the UK. That’s not to say racism doesn’t exist and isn’t an area that needs improving, but that racism tends to occur at an individual level rather than institutional. There will always be bigoted individuals offering a warped perspective, but we have made incredible progress in the UK and provide an equal opportunities environment to people of all races. That’s something to be celebrated.

    This conclusion seems to have upset a small number of very vocal politicians and activists who would rather we all go along with their anecdotal “lived experiences” than the evidence backed up by data. What’s upsetting is the level of hypocrisy being demonstrated by the so-called anti-racist crowd. The outright racism being directed toward members of the commission is astounding. Clive Lewis MP tweeted a picture of the KKK in response to the report being published, offensive hyperbole that ought to be beneath a parliamentarian. Cambridge professor Priyamvada Gopal drew parallels between the commission’s chairman Dr Tony Sewell and Joseph Goebbels, a disgusting and entirely inappropriate response.

    At a time when we have the most ethnically diverse Government Cabinet in history, it is bonkers to suggest this country is institutionally racist and it’s a shame that activists on the hard-Left can’t seem to get past this sticking point. If they truly wanted to improve race relations they’d be better off supporting the measures in this report and ensuring the Government follows through and implements the recommended changes. Character assassinations and ad hominem attacks on individual commissioners only highlight the toxic, divisive attitudes of people stirring up racial tensions.

    Will there ever be enough to satisfy those who make a living from pushing the perception that our society is divided? They’ve got unconscious bias training courses and white-hating books to sell, after all.

    We’d be better off uniting behind this independent report, championing the progress we’ve made this far and working together on closing the remaining gaps.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/no-excuse-hypocritical-lefts-appalling-campaign-abuse/

    Apart from some of his concerns about the proposed legislation in respect of public demonstrations, most of Clive Lewis’s opinions are exactly as you would expect.

    https://twitter.com/labourlewis/status/1377987516322742273

    1. A charabanc of racists suddenly realising that the horse has bolted and that they might need to get off and walk?

    1. Do you think being up a ladder at this time of night/alcohol (expensive though it will have been) is a good idea?

    2. Is that pamment floor not cold? I had a similarly-tiled floor in the dining room of my Briston cottage and it was always cold underfoot.

      1. Having lived in Narfulk for around ten years – albeit in a 1970’s crappy terrace – it’s only now occurred to me that ‘pamment’ may be related to ‘pavement’. Any thoughts?

        1. Hi, Geoff.

          I’m thinking you might well be right. I’ve never come across them other than in Norfolk, where they are still widespread though rarely made new these days. I remember going to a reclamation yard where they wanted to charge an arm and a leg for them since they are still in big demand. I got a local builder to replace the floor in the dining room of my old brick-and-flint cottage and when he noticed the floor was pamments lying on sand, his eyes lit up and offered me a deal. He said, “Let me have the pamments and I’ll do the job free of charge.” I shook hands on it.

          https://www.pamments.co.uk

          2. That’s right, Geoff. I remember going to a reclamation yard at Attlebridge on the A1067 Fakenham Road out of Norwich. It was a typically scruffy old yard but the price they wanted for each tile was eye-watering.

          3. It was the same with reclaimed granite setts. The extra cost was in cleaning off the asphalt and bitumen beneath which they had been recovered.

            Our cottage has a variety of floor finishes at ground level including modern Dennis Ruabon quarry tiles, pamments and Suffolk White paviour bricks laid herringbone.

            We are selling up this year as the cottage is too much with the straw thatch and high insurance costs. The oak stairs x2 are necessarily steep and we are both creaking at the exertion. Looking for a barn conversion with ground floor bedroom and lots of space for our furniture and possessions. We are looking at Norfolk, Oakham area and Lincolnshire Wolds.

            My home city of Bath is now too expensive.

            Most properties we view are sold, presumably to London flight, after just a few days on the market.

          4. Hi John. My enforced relocation has been a blessing. Much downsizing was needed, and I still – literally – have a shedload of tools to get rid of. Currently in the churchyard shed. But I no longer have stairs to negotiate, and the wet room is prolly easier, though I miss the bath.

            But the thing with stairs – the ex-GF’s new Devon Zero Carbon Eco Home is brilliant in so many ways, but the stairs are a bloody nightmare. This isn’t unusual – the first rental property I looked at in the Parish had stairs which wouldn’t have passed any Building Regs, over three floors.

          5. Hi Geoff and belated congrats on birthday etc., Heart felt.

            We engaged an agent from Ipswich to sell our Chocolate Box home. We also engaged a local builder to sort out the things we had lived with for decades in order to make the place more presentable to London buyers. The builder does a bit but never completes anything so we have to chase him to follow up and complete. All very annoying and extremely costly.

            This process has made us aware that we have accumulated masses of material, some inherited and possibly valuable, loads of stuff we love from memory but have hardly used, stuff we forgot about, and all manner of potentially valuable items we also forgot about.

            Some larger furniture items have been placed in storage in order to clear the most cluttered spaces.

            Thankfully we have a large shed within which we have erected Metro shelving racks on which we are now placing plastic containers with the excess possessions.

            This is the last time that I move house. It is a bloody nightmare.

    4. They look very cosy and peaceful. One of them has its beady eyes on you though, just in case….

  74. There are reports over on ZH of significant troop movements in and adjacent to the Ukraine. Earlier there was a short thread on Nottl on tea. It reminds me of the story I heard about a group of women living in Ceylon who wanted to do their bit for the peace of the World so decided to send a quantity of loose leaf tea to the leaders of the World’s nuclear powers with a simple message along the lines of: If at any time you find yourself contemplating pressing the nuclear weapons button, please pause a make yourself a cup of tea….

  76. Don’t trust a Dem!

    Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, has been using an armoured Suburban to bring a bike within a short distance of his destination. Then he was caught on video unloading the bike and riding in with a security detail in tow, pretending to save energy and to show the good work he is doing to ‘save the planet’!

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1377757687954423808

    2. Forgotten who put this on here recently but………..

      Has anyone got any spare conspiracy theories as all mine keep coming true.

        1. Excellent! I shall pinch that one, with your permission…

          “Conspiracy data scientist” has a nice ring to it as well.

      2. I remain shocked that 30 million plus have fallen for the coercion and the experimental and potentially exponential jabs. I am inclined to agree with Grizz that the lazy bastards are stupid and unwilling to do even a modicum of research.

        You do not vaccinate healthy people just for the sake of it with untested injections. Every single aspect of this saga stinks to high heaven. Bent politicos, jumped up billionaires who consider themselves masters of the universe, the usual suspect bankers, the fake news and servile complicity of the MSM and the sight of the shifty Whitty, Vallance and Hancock on our TV screens resembling ham actors spouting half-remembered lines.

        Sleepy Joe Biden, a demented evil cretin with a history of corruption and base intent, is more convincing than this lot.

      3. I remain shocked that 30 million plus have fallen for the coercion and the experimental and potentially exponential jabs. I am inclined to agree with Grizz that the lazy bastards are stupid and unwilling to do even a modicum of research.

        You do not vaccinate healthy people just for the sake of it with untested injections. Every single aspect of this saga stinks to high heaven. Bent politicos, jumped up billionaires who consider themselves masters of the universe, the usual suspect bankers, the fake news and servile complicity of the MSM and the sight of the shifty Whitty, Vallance and Hancock on our TV screens resembling ham actors spouting half-remembered lines.

        Sleepy Joe Biden, a demented evil cretin with a history of corruption and base intent, is more convincing than this lot.

    1. I’m glad to hear that the mad chalk scheme has been quashed – for now, anyway.

  79. 331079+ up ticks,
    I imagine this will apply to the lab/lib/con coalition overall now that the controlling infrastructure has been set up & proved successful.

    END OF PERPETUAL LOCKDOWN?
    UK WILL TRANSITION TO TREATING COVID LIKE FLU ‘AT SOME POINT’

  80. 331079+ up ticks,
    Dt,
    Green light for vaccinated Britons to take overseas holidays
    Government plans could mean no quarantine and minimal Covid testing for travellers who have had both jabs

    Hook,line & sinker there is I believe one small additive the second jab
    followed by a compulsory knee bendy, forelock touching position
    acknowledging the lab/lib/con coalition leaders, photo taken, negative kept by the state.

    1. Time to roll out the John Bull printing kit. There is a fortune to be made providing the vaccine docs.

      1. If only. The parish* full size colour laser copier/printer came with me to my new abode. It may still have a subversive application. But the much-denied vax passport will be digital. We’re well on the way to China’s ‘Social Credits system’.

        *At the mo, it’s actually mine. I bought it on eBay for not very much, and never got around to claiming it on expenses…

        1. Only if we bow to vaccine passports. It does not follow, even if you have had a vaccination, that you must automatically get the passport. You can still be obstructive!
          If the majority don’t take them out, the government will have to give in. Their China style social credit scheme relies on the sheep obediently flocking into the pen in the first instance.

        2. It’s not yet compulsory to have a smartphone. I have one – but I rarely use it, and I don’t download dodgy apps. I refuse to have the NHS track ‘n trace, and I will resist any digital passport for travel. I don’t mind having a paper one.

      1. Sometimes they don’t even do that because one can’t get past the guard dog known as the receptionist.

        1. Strangely the receptionists at our GPs office are friendly and helpful. They are still a barrier between us and the big guy but there is none of that unpleasantness.

          1. I must stand up for receptionists. If you only knew the type of abuse that gets given to them. Even on a day without rude patients they have to put up with some of the stupidest questions and with saying the same thing a hundred times a day e.g. to people who couldn’t be bothered to read a sign clearly displayed right in front of their eyes.
            I manage a team of receptionist – we have one weird one who is sometimes rude and I’m in the process of trying to manage her out, but the rest are as good as gold. The patients who ake complaints are nine times out of ten, the persons who have been the rude ones.

            I will defend them against all accusations because it is a shtty job. Patients will complain, give them loads of abuse then when they get to see the nurse or doctor, they are as nice as pie.

          2. My daughter did this job in a private convalescent hospital in Germany and an NHS practice, and she found the NHS patients far easier to manage than entitled, elderly, rich Germans. Perhaps the NHS patients were just so grateful to be finally seeing a dentist at all, or perhaps they were rendered non-aggressive by toothache.

          3. I would tend to agree – I’ve a friend who’s a receptionist and I don’t think I could do the job without biting people.

            The thing is, though, that for every ten arseholes who refuse to give their symptoms to a receptionist out of stubbornness or whatever, there’s one who would have been happy to discuss shoulder pain but just can’t bring themselves to mention the rapidly growing lump in their testes/vulva.

            And while I’m sure that most receptionists are sensitive enough to intuit this, some definitely aren’t. So people who really need to see the doctor aren’t getting through.

            My only contact with my current surgery was to report my mother’s death. The receptionist was so appallingly callous that I made a complaint against her. The head doctor called me personally to apologise, and sent her for retraining. I don’t fancy my chances if I am ill and happen to have my call answered by her!

          1. Oh, you can’t get through the door (it’s permanently locked unless you have an appointment). The receptionist guards the phone and prevents unwanted nuisances like patients getting to see their GP.

          2. Quite so, Conners. I have a small issue (in the overall scheme of things), but within a couple of days of the Ox/AZ 1st vaccine, I became aware of a swelling on my left elbow, roughly the size of an egg. No pain, just unsightly. I’m not unduly worried. I think it’s bursitis, but I’m not a medic. Patient Access is a sick joke.

        3. Receptionists act only on the instructions given to them by the clinicians.

          1. Or maybe the practice manager. Our PM is pretty fierce in restricting what the plebs can access.

      2. Our clinic has been running 80% telemed, 20% face to face for the past year. The majority of feedback we have collected indicates that patients prefer it.
        They don’t have to take time off work, they don’t have to drive miles, they don’t have to queue and pay for parking, they don’t have to sit for ages on the waiting room, they have better confidentiality (it’s a sexual health clinic).

        Telephone consultation with clinician, email pictures of any visual symptoms (we have had some rather fruity photos sent in), antibiotics dispensed for collection or STI test kit sent out to do at home. Face to face appointment is arranged if clinician needs to see patient.

        We’re planning to adopt as permanent service model.

        2. Somebody I know said he preferred it for the reasons you give.
          He had a consultation where the doctor looked at a photo of the problem for a few seconds and instantly diagnosed and wrote a prescription for antibiotics, and the call was over.
          The patient did not believe in this diagnosis by photo, and decided to wait and see whether it would get better on its own.
          It didn’t, and he ended up taking the anti-bs in the nick of time.
          The surgery never knew that anything was amiss.
          My point is, that telephone calls, like almost everything else that happens on a computer, are a virtual substitute for the real thing. Some pixels on the screen telling you what to do, don’t carry the same weight as a real person.
          People are so lazy, and town centres are so spiteful towards motorists that patients will probably always choose the easier option if asked.

    1. My pooch is sleeping on the floor beside his bed! He seems happy enough as he’s snoring for England.

  84. About twenty five years ago I found myself Architect to a new Immunology and Signalling laboratory at The Babraham Institute near Cambridge, an animal testing facility run by the BBSRC and previous to that the Farm Institute.

    I had reservations about animal testing but back then was persuaded that animal testing was essential in order to ensure the necessary protections should chemical formulations be given to the exposed human population.

    None of this testing has been carried out with the current Covid – 19 vaccinations.

    It is as though the real expert scientists in immunology have been both sidelined and their submissions discarded and the advice of charlatans such as Neil Ferguson and his troupe preferred.

    Hopefully these Imperial College London liars will eventually be brought to justice.

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