Saturday 3 March: The EU demands British-funded vaccines but won’t make use of them

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/04/02/letters-eu-demands-british-funded-vaccines-wont-make-use/

720 thoughts on “Saturday 3 March: The EU demands British-funded vaccines but won’t make use of them”

  2. Russia using old Putin tactic to justify military presence near the Ukrainian border. 3 April 2021.

    It’s hard to know precisely what Vladimir Putin is up to but the gathering of 25,000 Russian troops so close to Ukrainian border cannot be ignored.

    US Europe Command has escalated its posture to “potential imminent crisis”, the highest level, and USAF surveillance flights have tracked up and down Russia’s border over the past 48 hours.

    Morning everyone. Obviously the Russians gathering at their own border suffer a different criteria to the US flying up and down someone else’s’ border!

    They are blowing more than smoke here. The MSM anti-Putin/Russia Propaganda Machine is in full flow and the Big Guys are talking tough. It looks as if the United States has schmoozed Ukraine (recent tank reinforcements, missiles etc.) into making an attack on the Donbass and the Russians have got wind of this and are responding. Biden has reassured Ukraine that they will support them if there’s trouble. I wouldn’t personally put much faith in Joe’s word but Zelensky might. If the prospect of a direct clash between the US and the forces of the Russian Federation doesn’t alarm you, your nervous system is broke.

    https://news.sky.com/story/russia-using-old-putin-tactic-to-justify-military-presence-near-the-ukrainian-border-12264085

    1. One more country under the globalist progressive control is far worse for us than one under Russian control.

    2. Araminta morning. This is first I;ve looked at anything connected with Sky this year. As soon as I saw Alistair Bunkall, I knew what was coming. Mixed messages making no sense, where did he get the troop number of 25,000 from? He makes a point that Demented Joe managed made a phone call [no evidence or proof] then adds Dominic Raab waffling or wiffling. Presumably Sky need advertising revenue from social media outlets too. Thanks for the post, confirming Alistair Bunkall’s still barking at the moon

    3. From PJ Media (Apparently an american ‘Right Wing’ blog)

      What’s your excuse, American news media?

      Here’s Another Damn Thing We’re Supposed to Be Concerned About

      Okay, who had World War III Starts in Crimea on their 2021 Bingo card?

      Insanity Wrap wishes we were kidding, but apparently both Russia and Ukraine are building up armoured forces along their shared border in the contested Donbass region.

      Michael Snyder runs The Economic Collapse blog, which some might dismiss as being on the overly paranoid side of prepper.

      But this next bit really happened and might precipitate something nasty like WWIII:

      It turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th. The document that he signed is known as Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate media.

      I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it. Original?[edit my question Is it Genuine?] Here: https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/1172021-37533

      The first section of Zelensky’s decree says that Ukraine will “put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council” concerning the “deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”

      Insanity Wrap reads that to mean: “Russia took Crimea from us and now we’re gonna take it back.”

      However you read it, all the players in this most dangerous game are making the usual moves:

      US and NATO meet to discuss ‘Russia’s recent large-scale military activities’ near Ukraine
      Russia warns new Donbass conflict could ‘destroy’ Ukraine, Nato rebukes Moscow
      Russia warns it’ll take ‘extra measures’ if NATO sends men to Ukraine
      It only seems like earlier this week that we were writing about the ways WWIII might start.

      Oh, wait — it was just earlier this week: One of These Hot Spots May Set Off the Next World War.

      How about some thoughts and prayers for deescalation? Because that would be nice.”

    4. I was wondering about all this.It seems that Ukraine is going to default on interest payments of their IMF loans.
      Could this all be a giant squirrel?

      1. A lot of preparation gone into this Harry! Joe and his pals would need something to “squeeze” Zelensky so maybe!

        1. Well the IMF set some conditions regarding anti-corruption laws which haven’t been met so the next tranche of the loan has been withheld.

  3. My Surgery

    When I first noticed that my penis was growing larger and staying erect longer, I was delighted, as was my wife but – after several weeks, my penis had grown fifty centimetres.
    I Became quite concerned. I was having problems dressing, and even walking. So the wife and I went to see a prominent urologist.

    After an initial examination, the doctor explained to us that, though rare, My condition (Donkey Doodle) could be fixed through corrective Surgery.

    “How long will he be on crutches?” my wife asked anxiously.

    “Crutches? Why would he need crutches?” responded the surprised doctor.

    “Well,” Said the wife coldly, “you’re gonna lengthen his legs, aren’t you?

  5. So it appears now that after the recent Islamic attack, the soldiers around the Capitol were not put there to protect politicians against right wing Trump supporters after all

  6. The thought occurred to me this morning that had the science been around in 1918 and they could invent a vaccination for Spanish Flu we might still be receiving Spanish Flu jabs and boosters and be required to carry a Spanish Flu inoculation passport over a hundred years later.
    While constantly living in fear of it through government health warnings.

  7. Macron’s turmoil at home threatens the EU project
    In his bid to silence domestic critics, France’s President is pushing Brussels into major strategic errors

    SHERELLE JACOBS
    DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
    2 April 2021 • 8:28pm

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

    BTL:

    Carpe Jugulum
    2 Apr 2021 8:49PM
    Is any of this a surprise? Brussels employs over 10,000 bureaucrats paid more than the UK PM all overseen by failed national politicians paid even more. Every single one of them recognises the UK as THE threat to their continued access to the trough of public money. A successful UK would be absolute proof that an independent state is more efficient than a group of disparate states ruled by an unaccountable supra-national bureaucracy.

    Are they going to sit back and see their gold plated pensions and salaries evaporate? And what price are they prepared to put onto the shoulders of the EU citizenry?

    Does anyone now seriously think they will not sacrifice lives?

    That they will not jeopardise livelihoods?

    Of course they will blame the UK for both but very obviously regard those lost lives and jobs as a price worth paying to protect The Project.

    We are now in a propaganda war.

    It really is time we started fighting it.

    2. 331114+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      Bearing in mind that the lab/lib/con political hierarchy up until the result on the 24/6/2016 were willing rubber stampers.

      In many respects, still are via IMO the “deal”
      ( bridge) when total severance was the way to go,
      then again maybe total severance would have had
      an unfavourable effect on political eu / UK pension holders.

    3. If the EU were shut down all of its buildings could be converted to house the people in the camps at Sangatte.

  8. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cc230ad02f72a91de8ca3db9c49dc466d814d2a87fa9b2c2c41eb98acca5ca2.png When you breed and create a self-entitled society, aided and abetted by not-fit-for-purpose politicians, inept parents and execrable teachers, you end up with a nation of louts.

    This situation will continue to deteriorate until someone with leadership acumen and massive gonads appears and strict discipline (in every echelon of society) is restored.

    I then woke up!

    1. Good morning, Grizzly (and all NoTTLers). You are absolutely right in your comments.

      1. Good morning, Auntie Elsie, and thank you.

        You are up bright and breezy this morning.

  9. Good morning, all. Another cold, grey and very uninviting morning. My plans for shed painting on hold – I’d lose all feeling in my hands!

    Watched Lady Pamela Mountbatten last night. Old school. Short and sweet comments. cf: Diana Spencer’s wedding. “Ridiculous train. Silly girl.”
    He daughter tended towards the simpering…quite different. Comes from having a painter and decorator as father…{:¬))

  10. Apropos the long thread yesterday about the “poor young Belgians attacked by the Police.” Further enquiries reveal that as the illegal crowds built up, ordinary police urged and pleaded with the youngsters to go home. Many did. A hard core of several hundred refused, attacked the police with bots and lit fires. Finally, the police made a last set of pleas for an orderly dispersal. More bottles. THEN, they sent in the riot squad with horses, water-cannon and tear gas.,

    Not quite how the Wail reported the event.

    1. I didn’t read the reports in the papers – nothing said about demonstrations is likely to be accurate nowadays.

      There are too many factors at play here – the expected consequences of a warm spring following a winter of lockdown, being one of them. Another is the aim of governments to manipulate public opinion so that they can pass more draconian laws, while still of course giving free rein to favoured gatherings like BLM.

      Someone I know was caught in an anti-lockdown protest on the Continent recently. While the protest was already underway, the authorities decided that it should go from being a legal protest to being an illegal protest. They announced this to one end of the protest. The other end was in another street and was completely unaware.
      This is how easy it is for the authorities to create a situation where the crowd refuses to go home.

      The police then kettled the protesters, and some of them, looking for a way out, ran into a courtyard. Police came in, and some people fled into an underground car park, because they were scared, including an elderly lady.
      Just like that the media can report that the anti-lockdown campaigners were dangerous criminals who had broken into buildings in order to loot.
      The elderly lady was among those held overnight in the police station.

      Now, you can criticise their behaviour and say “they shouldn’t have done x” but this shows how easy it is for the authorities to manipulate crowds of people who are confused and who are NOT professional demonstrators.

      1. I neither doubt nor disagree with your comment.

        My purpose was to show that there was another side to the Brussels “riot” that – initially – the media chose not to report; focusing on the dramatic sight of the half naked young woman being knocked down by a police horse.

          2. It’s a shame they dont recognise that 51% of us would like to see pictures of scanty young males.

          3. There’s plenty there, Stormie. Scan down the Wail’s “bar of shame”…. (so I a told, of course; I wouldn’t know…)

  11. Morning all…..vaccines……

    SIR – Even before the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (guided and funded by Britain) had proved effective, the Government found and invested £20 million in a production facility at the Halix plant in Holland. AZ invested further and, as production problems arose, sent a UK team to resolve them. But for that, no jabs would now be available from Halix.

    The Dutch government, invited to invest, did not respond, as the European Commission wasted months haggling over pennies per shot.

    The European Commission now claims those Halix AZ vaccines as “EU production”, while EU nations ignore the overwhelmingly favourable balance of risks and deny AZ jabs to sectors of their people. They distort the view of its benefits, leave stocks in fridges and trash AZ’s reputation.

    The more the European Commission wriggles on a hook of its own making, the more starkly it outlines the foresight of Britain and Oxford-AstraZeneca and its own insipid, bureaucratic machinations.

    Neil Harvey

    London SE8

    SIR – If all medical treatments were delayed because of rare complications it is unlikely that doctors would have anything to do. All drugs have side-effects; all surgery involves risk.

    The slowing of the vaccine programme by the Germans because of an almost one-in-a-million chance of a blood clot is preposterous.

    Let us hope our Government is guided by the science, as it has repeatedly claimed.

    David Nunn FRCS

    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – It is truly amazing that Germany and France are willing to trust Russia’s Sputnik vaccine and to denounce the AstraZeneca one, which has been approved by the EU and UK regulatory authorities as well as the WHO.

    The West has surely learnt time and again that you cannot trust anything that comes out of Russia. If Russia says there are no side-effects to their vaccine, it would appear Germany and France are prepared to take their word. Have they gone completely mad?

    Stuart Moore

    Bramham, West Yorkshire

    SIR – In our present border disputes over vaccines, I am minded of the words of William Pitt the Younger during the Napoleonic wars: “By our exertions we have saved ourselves. By our example we may yet save Europe.”

    Dr Tony Berry

    Northampton

    SIR – You don’t have to be an arch conspiracy theorist to see where Government restrictions are going.

    Christmas becomes Easter. Easter is cancelled. Ending lockdown in June is possible only if we agree to vaccination passports. For all the positive data, the control the Government wants to exercise over our lives is endless.

    Tony Delves

    Wellington, Somerset

    SIR – The Cabinet Office has been preparing a social media campaign to warn of a chance vaccinated people will infect those they love by visiting family and hugging grandchildren. In that case, what is the purpose of a vaccine passport?

    John Castley

    Langtoft, Lincolnshire

    1. Re John Castley’s letter, so they are now going to use Granny’s and Granddad’s vaccination as a way to blackmail younger people into having the experimental treatment during stage 3 tests, even though young, healthy people have a vanishingly small probability of dying of the virus?

      And we trust that what such morally bankrupt people will want to inject into us will always be in our best interests?

      1. From the moment the care homes were seeded with nhs covid-infected patients from the emptying of hospital wards; from the moment the residents in the care homes were denied treatment and issued with DNR notices to sign which they didn’t understand at a time when their relatives were banned from entering the homes; from the moment the nhs callously abandoned its chronically sick and those with newly emerging symptom to their fate and from the moment the government gave an indemnity against adverse vaccination side effects I realised that this government was most certainly not acting in the best interests of its people. Who would trust a vaccine from such an outfit? And worse was to come – experimental, approved (for experimentation – they don’t tell you that bit) but not licensed, a vaccine in name only to hoodwink the people. Who indeed can possibly think that it is in our best interests?

        Edit: Good morning, bb2.

  12. GPs missed symptoms

    SIR – The assertion (Letters, April 2) by Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, that GPs have been in the vanguard in the fight against Covid-19 does not bear close scrutiny.

    By the college’s own figures, there was “a slump in consultation rates” in the early stages of the outbreak. There were numerous deaths due to the refusal of many GPs to do home visits or go into care homes and nursing homes.

    Advertisement

    Had they done so, they would have been able to pick up silent hypoxia, using their pulse oximeters, and get patients admitted to hospital for life-saving oxygen.

    Professor Marshall and the RCGP should be holding their heads in shame at their disgraceful failure of leadership. Silent hypoxia was recognised early in the pandemic as a deadly risk, yet they failed to disseminate information about it to GPs until early in 2021.

    Dr Gregory Tanner

    Middlezoy, Somerset

    1. Disgraceful behaviour by many GP’s whose abandoning of any ethical obligations they might have had killed their patients and ruined their report. Astonishing that the DT published this. No mention of Ivermectin though. Still censoring effective remedies.

      1. Good morning Epi,

        Hence the growth in the sale of Oximeters, which I know that many people acquired near the middle of the pandemic.

        Many doctors have hidden away, frightened of their obligations to their patients .

        1. I’ve reached the stage where owning a BP meter and an oximeter is a small price to pay for avoiding the surgery. (Memo to self; replace knackered thermometer)
          Thanks to technology, measuring BP at home is a doddle.
          Do you remember that magic moment where, after several fruitless attempts, you finally heard the beat of the blood pressure? Like learning to ride a bike, once you’d got it, the skill was there for life.

          1. Goodness me yes Anne

            We have the B/P gadget , not like the old days are they , and the blood sugar prick machine and the wee strips all for Moh.

            It is easier to visit the Dentist and the Vet than see a doctor at the surgery .

  13. Cats’ habits

    SIR – When I was a child, it was pointed out to me that cats (Letters, April 2) would dig a hole in the border for their functions, and tidily cover it over afterwards. They no longer seem to do this.

    Reg W Selfe

    Benfleet, Essex

    SIR – I am in my eighties and have time to watch my bird feeder. The birds would come in and out all day. Then my neighbours bought two kittens. Now they are cats and the birds don’t come anymore.

    Joan Sedgwick

    Reading, Berkshire

    SIR – When I moved from Europe to Canada, I was appalled to find that “indoor cats” were the norm. I have observed, however, that they are extraordinarily contented, are always clean and free of infection and ticks – and don’t bother the neighbours.

    Holly Jeffers

    Bayfield, Ontario, Canada

    1. Dear Reg,

      My theory is that such cats (who fail to cover their shit) have learnt appalling behaviour from the idiotic humans who own them.

  14. Cats’ habits

    SIR – When I was a child, it was pointed out to me that cats (Letters, April 2) would dig a hole in the border for their functions, and tidily cover it over afterwards. They no longer seem to do this.

    Reg W Selfe

    Benfleet, Essex

    SIR – I am in my eighties and have time to watch my bird feeder. The birds would come in and out all day. Then my neighbours bought two kittens. Now they are cats and the birds don’t come anymore.

    Joan Sedgwick

    Reading, Berkshire

    SIR – When I moved from Europe to Canada, I was appalled to find that “indoor cats” were the norm. I have observed, however, that they are extraordinarily contented, are always clean and free of infection and ticks – and don’t bother the neighbours.

    Holly Jeffers

    Bayfield, Ontario, Canada

    1. SIR – I have been most grateful during my career as a dentist that local anaesthetic cartridges displayed the helpful phrase: “Inject into the gums.”

      Simon Elphick

      Trowse, Norfolk

      1. There used to be a wonderful bakery at Trowse, selling the most delicious poppy-seed and sesame-seed loaves.

      2. Like ‘serving suggestion’ on tinned meat. i.e. open tin and dump contents on plate.

      1. Morning, Paul.

        If that hyphen had jumped one word to the right, it would have opened up a new scenario.

    3. I don’t swim in my water butt because the butt aperture is too small for my butt.

        1. That’s all well and good but if you don’t have a well well then the only option is a butt.

  16. SIR – I am at a loss to understand those who believe the United Kingdom to be racist. A nation of 70 million, over 80 per cent of white origin, it has the most ethnically diverse government and a fantastic Health Service dependent upon specialists, doctors and nurses from around the world.

    British media give far more coverage to ethnic minorities than might be expected from their numbers.

    Much of the accusation of “racism” comes from those who wish to disrupt our society, through street protest and the internet.

    If we are racist why is half the world prepared to risk life and limb to join us? Name a more tolerant country.

    Richard English

    Poundbury, Dorset

    1. Oh, it’s that throw-away catch-me-all insult term again. Racism. FFS!

      ‘Racism’ is an empty, meaningless and puerile term. It is a natural condition of all animals, humans included, to be fiercely protective of their own kind. That goes (in descending order) for one’s family, one’s tribe, one’s race and one’s species. It is innate in us all and cannot be bred out of us by political whim. It is natural to fight to protect our home and territory, our country and our beliefs.

      Now, racial hatred is another topic entirely. To show unprovoked hatred towards another member of your own species, for no other reason than they are ‘different’, shows nothing more than pig-ignorance, an utter lack of civility and a complete paucity of intelligence.

      1. My thought, whilst growing up and living in Apartheid South Africa, was that skin colour was just a short-hand signifier of cultural difference rather than pigmentation. I have become more and more certain of this as the years have gone by.

    2. I am remined of this “racism” every time some official bumph is posted to me. It tells me that this info can be received in any number of other languages as well as English….

      1. So am I.

        The word racism is being over used .. how can you use the word racism in the way that it is being projected in a predominately white country .

        If you visit Africa or India , one will be mobbed and shouted at .. sometimes with the words … “Hey European , what have you got for me today “

    3. Maybe the government should organise one way tickets to places where there is real racial discrimination for all those who think that Britain is racist and let them stay there.

  17. Good Moaning. A long, chewy read, I’m afraid. As most of us realised a year ago, the Government’s behaviour makes ‘The Triumph of the Will’ seem like an even handed documentary.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/state-fear-ministers-used-covert-tactics-keep-scared-public/

    State of fear: how ministers ‘used covert tactics’ to keep scared public at home

    Government’s ‘psychological strategies’ to manipulate unwitting public’s behaviour may backfire and lead to long-term damage, experts claim

    2 April 2021 • 8:43pm

    Failures in the UK’s pandemic response are not hard to identify, but on one front the Government’s success is undeniable: persuading a fearful nation to stay locked indoors for much of the past year.

    The daily diet of statistics on deaths, hospitalisations and Covid cases has been so effective that compliance with lockdown has gone far beyond what ministers expected.

    But the problem with fear, as one behavioural scientist said on Friday, is that “you can’t turn it on and off like a tap”.

    As the country prepares for the complete end of lockdown in June, there are far-reaching questions about how many people will return to the workplace, or to normality, and the consequences of that for the economy and for physical and mental health.

    Whether frightening the public was a deliberate – or honest – tactic has become the subject of intense debate, and dozens of psychologists have now accused ministers of using “covert psychological strategies” to manipulate the public’s behaviour.

    They believe the Government, acting on the advice of behavioural experts, has emphasised the threat from Covid without putting the risks in sufficient context, leaving the country in “a state of heightened anxiety”.

    They also claim that “inflated fear levels will be responsible for the ‘collateral’ deaths of many thousands of people with non-Covid illnesses” who are “too frightened to attend hospital”.

    They are so concerned that the British public has been the subject of a mass experiment in the use of strategies that operate “below their level of awareness” that they have made a formal complaint to their professional body, which will now rule on whether government advisers have been guilty of a breach of ethics.

    The Government, and its advisers, deny any such transgression, arguing that they have simply presented the public with the facts about the threat Covid poses, and what they need to do to stay safe.

    One of the key pieces of evidence cited by those who have complained about “covert” tactics comes from a document prepared for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) at the beginning of the pandemic a year ago.

    Dated March 22, the paper written by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) stated: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising … the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

    The same document presented a grid of 14 options for increasing compliance which included “use media to increase sense of personal threat”, a tactic which was seen as having a “high” effectiveness though spill-over effects “could be negative”.

    Some Sage participants now admit to feeling “embarrassed” by such advice.

    One regular Sage attendee said: “The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what’s happening.

    “All of this is about trying to steer behaviour in the direction an elite has decided, rather than deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do.”

    The Sage member said SPI-B reports tended not to be “challenged” by Sage because “the core membership of Sage is not very well equipped to evaluate it – there are not other social scientists at the heart of Sage”.

    They added: “When someone from SPI-B is saying we need to ramp up the fear and keep it ramped up – there wasn’t much questioning of that at the beginning and most of the questioning came from external sources, not from within.”

    Gary Sidley, a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist, said: “It’s as if there is a little industry around pandemic management and it excludes alternative voices.

    “There is growing concern within my field about using fear and shame as a driver of behaviour change.”

    Mr Sidley was so concerned that he and 46 colleagues wrote to the British Psychological Society (BPS) raising “concerns about the activities of government-employed psychologists … in their mission to gain the public’s mass compliance with the ongoing coronavirus restrictions”.

    The letter added: “Our view is that the use of covert psychological strategies – that operate below the level of people’s awareness – to ‘nudge’ citizens to conform to a contentious and unprecedented public health policy raises profound ethical questions.”

    The Telegraph has learnt that the BPS’s ethics committee will discuss the matter at its next meeting on June 21 – coincidentally the same day all lockdown restrictions are due to end.

    The BPS is a membership organisation and can recommend that members are reprimanded, suspended or expelled. In extreme cases it can raise concerns with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, as a fitness to practise issue.

    A spokesman for the BPS said it was “not possible to conclude” from publicly available information “that an intense psychological attack by the Government and orchestrated by Sage has been used to encourage people to comply with government policies regarding Covid-19” but added that the matter would be discussed by the ethics committee and: “It is not appropriate for us to comment on whether the Government’s coronavirus response has used contentious public health policies.”

    SPI-B participant Professor Susan Michie, director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, told The Telegraph that “persuasion” was one of 10 options put forward for increasing adherence to social distancing in the document, and that it involved giving people “an accurate perception of risk and therefore, for some, increasing the personal threat they perceive, along with being empowered to take actions to reduce the threat”.

    Not that the SPI-B paper is by any means the only evidence of what critics describe as “covert” methods.

    Others cite, for example, the fact that the Government tells the public how many people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but does not include the context of whether deaths are above or below the seasonal norm, and also gives daily figures for hospital admissions, but not how many people have recovered.

    Terrifying predictions, which are often presented in such a way that they seem like certainties, have also come from the likes of Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.

    In October, ahead of a parliamentary vote on a national lockdown, Sir Patrick warned in a press conference of up to 4,000 deaths per day in the second wave, only for Prof Whitty to admit days later that 1,000 deaths per day was a more likely peak (the second wave peaked at an average of 1,248 daily deaths).

    Giving evidence to MPs last month, Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick warned of a fresh spike in cases when schools reopened – which has so far failed to materialise – and suggested another 30,000 people could die (deaths are currently averaging fewer than 50 per day and continue to fall).

    A planned relaxation of social restrictions over Christmas was scaled back because of concerns about the emergence of the Kent variant of the virus, which Mr Johnson later said “may be associated with a higher degree of mortality”. He was accused of “science by press release” by Dr Susan Hopkins, of Public Health England, who complained that it was too early to know if it was more deadly, and earlier this week a survey involving Dr Hopkins reported that there was no evidence of higher mortality from the Kent strain.

    Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, said: “The idea that you need to increase people’s personal threat disproportionately to the threat they face is a problem. It sets a very dangerous precedent – weaponising fear is the phrase that people use.

    “Once the fear has been stoked you can’t diminish it. It’s not like turning a tap on and off – you can’t turn the fear off.

    “We have focused narrowly on mortality rates and case rates, but I’m pretty certain that the public would understand placing the deaths in the context of five-year averages.

    “There has been such a missed opportunity for communicating risk. Rather than just saying a hundred people have died today from Covid, the Government could say what proportion of deaths that accounts for, and whether or not that translates to excess deaths.

    “That may be a more sustainable conversation to have with the public, rather than ‘be scared and stay scared’.”

    Senior government sources have admitted that levels of compliance went far beyond what they expected in the first lockdown, forcing Boris Johnson to publicly implore workers to get back to the office last summer.

    One source said: “There were genuine fears a year ago that we were going to see supermarkets running out of food and a run on the banks. We never considered that people would go even further than the stay at home advice.”

    The same source admitted that the curfew brought in last year was designed to “send a clear signal to young people” that the virus was still dangerous, rather than because of any evidence a curfew would cut infections – which, it could be argued, was another example of behavioural science being used in a “covert” way.

    It clearly worked. Last July, a survey carried out by the consultancy firm Kekst CNC found that almost half of respondents, discounting “don’t knows”, thought Covid had killed 1 per cent of the UK population, equating to more than 600,000 people, when the actual figure at the time was 44,000. Almost a third of respondents thought 6 to 10 per cent, or more, of the population had been killed by Covid, which would mean up to 6.6 million deaths.

    While Rishi Sunak has openly discussed his concerns about the effects of lockdown on the economy – effects which will continue beyond June if people remain too afraid to go back to their normal lives – there are other consequences of instilling fear in the public.

    Laura Dodsworth, who has spent the past year researching this subject for a forthcoming book called A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, said: “I have interviewed people who have been undone by fear, people who have had to be talked down from suicide and people who have developed agoraphobia.

    “The problem with fear is that it clouds rational thinking. You become more reliant on government messaging, which makes you more frightened, which makes you even more reliant on their messaging, creating a doom loop. We have forgotten how to analyse risk.”

    Another “doom loop” may also be at play: the Government puts huge effort into tracking public sentiment to help inform policy, but critics say that creates an inevitable circle in which the public, put in fear by government messaging, favours a cautious approach to lifting lockdown, which the Government then uses to justify keeping the country in lockdown for longer, and so on.

    A report by Nottingham University last year suggested that fear could even translate into additional Covid deaths because poor mental health weakens the immune system.

    The report said: “It is well known that when negative mood states persist over time they result in the dysregulation of physiological systems involved in the regulation of the immune system. Thus, there exists significant potential for the psychological harm inflicted by the pandemic to translate into physical harm. This could include an increased susceptibility to the virus, worse outcomes if infected, or indeed poorer responses to vaccinations in the future.”

    Behavioural science is so embedded in government that for the past decade it has taken advice from the Behavioural Insights Team, better known as the “Nudge Unit”, which began as part of the Cabinet Office but is now a limited company. A spokesman for the BIT said that “techniques such as ‘fear inflation’ are not, and have never been, recommended by BIT”.

    Lord O’Donnell, who was Cabinet secretary at the time the BIT was set up, is among those who believe the Government got the balance wrong in its messaging around Covid.

    He said: “Was the messaging subtle enough? We might have concentrated so much on Covid that we have scared people away from going to a hospital.

    “Every night you get deaths, cases, patients in hospital, but you don’t get the economic costs every night or the indirect consequences like missed cancer tests … they present this as an entirely medical thing.

    “I also hate the phrase social distancing, when what they want is physical distancing. We don’t want people to be socially distant, we want social togetherness.”

    A government spokesman denied covert techniques had been used, adding: “Since the start of the pandemic we have followed the advice of our world-leading scientists and medical experts, taking the right measures at the right time to defeat coronavirus.

    “We have set out clear instructions to the British people as our approach and knowledge of the virus has developed, and taken decisive action to delay the spread of the disease, reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment, and ultimately save lives.

    “We are clear we want this lockdown to be the last and are easing restrictions in a way that is cautious and guided by the data.”

    2. “All of this is about trying to steer behaviour in the direction an elite has decided, rather than deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do.”

      Not just Covid but everything else as well!

      1. Worked for COVID. Look at how many demand more lockdown.
        What’s the next thing they try it on? Climate change? Already half-way there.

      2. Morning Minty ,

        I read an article yesterday, but I cannot remember where , about poor uneducated white boys being chucked on the heap, but coloureds and AFRICAN blacks soaring ahead re educational qualifications and salary expectations .

        My point here is that the so called elites have been in charge of education since the 1960’s and political parties courted receptive so called educated elites , and so what do we have now .. diversity in all areas of authority and the broadcasting media .

        Where did I read that article, I have searched my history, perhaps you have also seen it , and maybe I have read everything incorrectly .

        1. Morning Belle. No you haven’t. White Boys are at the bottom of every measure of educational achievement, mostly because they are discriminated against by the PTB!

          1. This was already known when Michelle Obama came over and did her publicity stunt at the majority black and Asian girls’ school in London.

          2. Whereas at my grammar school in the sixties, poor white boys were getting good grades.

        3. I think that the problem literally begins at home with the boys’ parents.

          Most of us here had parents who placed their children’s education at the top of their priorities and considered our own children’s education equally highly.

          I was certainly an idle wastrel, free of charm or sense of direction as an adolescent – as was one of my sons. I shudder to think what would have become of us without the privilege we had in having parents who cared about us.

          1. That wasn’t true of my parents. I passed the eleven plus, but it was my uncle (ex-grammar school boy himself) who paid for my uniform and persuaded my parents I should take up the place. My parents thought I should leave school early and get a job. Thankfully, my teachers persuaded them that I should stay on and go to university.

      1. A few years ago I wrote to the heads of the various Christian denominations suggesting that they should ring the church bells loudly across the land on All Saints Day. Those who replied offered various reasons for not doing it.

        1. Conway.

          The Parish Church bells were ringing this afternoon,
          I was surprised but pleased to hear them, [in normal
          times there is a practise session every Wednesday
          evening.]

          2. To be honest, it was not the normal peal and I
            did wonder if perhaps it signified a death ……
            other than Jesus! but I think the Ringers may have
            been playing in batches rather than in a group,
            [anti] social distancing etc!!

          3. Ours sounded like the full peal this morning. A real treat. The church was beautifully decorated as well and we had eleven in the choir (full complement is twenty-five). The only down side was we, the congregation, weren’t allowed to sing and no wine for communion.

    4. “The Government, and its advisers, deny any such transgression, arguing that they have simply presented the public with the facts about the threat Covid poses, and what they need to do to stay safe.”
      The BBC don’t tell lies, they tend to tell the truth, but not the whole truth. By omitting inconvenient information, you can feel righteous, and, if called out about it you can show that you are telling the truth, but in fact are giving quite a different message.
      Clever, eh?
      My little daily statistics spreadsheet shows me, for example, that the death rate due to COVID in Norway is 1,66 a day, whereas suicides in 2018 ran at 1,84 a day, and the 2018 influenza season killed 1 400 people (3,84 a day over the year, or about 11 a day during the season.
      The reaction to the influenza deaths was, basically, “meh”. Not closure of society.

      1. Finland is similar.Since the start of the Covid scare,approx. 850 people have died with Covid on the death certificate.This from a population of 5.5 million.

      3. If you care to accept the latest statistics on the BBC, it appears that you are more than eight times more likely to be killed or seriously injured on the roads as to die of Covid.

        Soon the BBC will demand a lock down of all cars.

    5. Thanks for copying that out, Anne. A good article; only about a year late, I reckon. I was talking to a couple of my mother’s friends yesterday; they said they were scared of going out in public even though they’d both been fully vaccinated. I said, I don’t blame you, after your own government has used psychological warfare against you for a year. They looked at me in blank incomprehension and changed the subject.

    6. Here is a link to Dr Sidley’s website. It has articles as well as details of letter to BPS etc.
      It is perfectly clear that in one fell swoop we have gone from bearing a slight resemblance ro a democracy to a crowd being totally controlled by an “elite”.

      https://www.coronababble.com

    7. Here is a link to Dr Sidley’s website. It has articles as well as details of letter to BPS etc.
      It is perfectly clear that in one fell swoop we have gone from bearing a slight resemblance ro a democracy to a crowd being totally controlled by an “elite”.

      https://www.coronababble.com

  19. For those who feel the need to regurgitate, George the Poet is on R4 giving his views on the Sewell Report. Yeh maan.

    2. Good morning, Bob.

      Talking about Derbyshire, it was at a night club in Derby, way back in 1974, that I saw at close hand that delightful trio (above) of, L to R: Valerie Holliday, Sheila Ferguson and Fayette Pinkney.

  21. How has our government gotten so many of us to submit to vaccination I ask myself, well apart from all the government project fear propaganda the NHS has been institutionalising us into accepting medication for decades.
    When I was younger you had to jump hurdles to see a doctor and then they just gave you some inappropriate medicine so you ended up going back.
    I got so I never bothered really going for about 20-30 years, lucky to have good health, I suppose.
    I always thought don’t bother the doctor unless in real need.
    But as you get into your fifties and older the doctor and the NHS starts to take a keen interest in you.
    This is the institutionalisation bit.
    Oh we haven’t seen you for years they say, you need to come in and have a blood test, a test for diabetes, we need to test your poo for bowel cancer, we need to test for prostate cancer, come in for your flu jab.
    Some people think oh this is good, I’m getting some attention and free treatment at last, every Winter down the golf club the main topic of conversation starter has been, have you had your flu jab yet, someone will always say well I’ve had mine all cockily.
    I have resisted having any of these, I suppose i could fall victim to any of the diseases that the NHS says that they can prevent if caught early, but I figure the chances of them getting the diagnoses wrong and giving me drugs or surgery that will make my life miserable is far greater than for any benefit if a feel okay.
    But there are millions of people that do go and are convinced they are doing the right thing and hang on every word the doctor says and every test result is perfect, although I wouldn’t try to influence others into doing what I do, some / most must think I’m nuts
    But these are the people that are taking up the jab, they have already been programmed to.

    1. A while back, a study in the USA tracked down old and healthy people to try and understand what was behind their good health into extreme old age. The only significant factor that was found was that these healthy old folk did not visit the doctor. One might ask, were they healthy simply because they avoided the doctor? Today, a doctor looks at you, not as an individual but as part of an amorphous group. Therefore, it is decreed by the ministry, if you are a certain age, you need XYZ medications- statins being a perfect example.

      1. You are right. And the fact that GPs are paid each time they prescribe certain drugs is just wrong.

        1. There is an obvious conflict of interest. In whose best interests is it that one takes, for example, a statin? It seems that it is, in descending order, a) the pharmaceuticals; b) the general practitioner and c) the poor old patient. Good morning, vw.

          1. Morning Pmum. How’s things, are you managing to hold out without fisticuffs with the family? Hope it’s not getting you down too much. Especially as CMO has at last said we have to live with Covid to be able to live a normal life!

          2. Good afternoon, vw. Family are OK, younger son has said he’s fine with our decision (it was his ma-in-law that sent me a pointed, self-righteous email) I have yet to speak to our elder son About Things. Easter card today from friend who said she really does struggle with my views on vaccination – I don’t think she has done any research into any of this. She cited the case of husband of another friend aged 61 who is in Hinchingbrooke (Huntingdon) hospital at the moment with ‘covid’, not expected to live. She and I are at either ends of a continuum regarding this. Well, somebody has to be in the control group…! Poppiesdad does not think our 48 year old friendship will in the end survive this.

    2. A while back, a study in the USA tracked down old and healthy people to try and understand what was behind their good health into extreme old age. The only significant factor that was found was that these healthy old folk did not visit the doctor. One might ask, were they healthy simply because they avoided the doctor? Today, a doctor looks at you, not as an individual but as part of an amorphous group. Therefore, it is decreed by the ministry, if you are a certain age, you need XYZ medications- statins being a perfect example.

    3. I listened to the Delingpod with Mike Yeadon yesterday evening, and he was saying more or less the same as Gert vanden Bossche, that if you are in a high risk group, it’s worth taking the vaccine risk, but not worth it if you’re young(ish) and healthy, because you probably won’t die of the virus even if you get it. This seems like common sense to me.

      What astonishes me is the number of people who simply do not recognise that there is any health risk associated with any vaccine or other treatment.

      1. Here is Robert Kennedy Junior discussing his concerns regarding the Pfizer vaccine. It is worth pointing out he is not an “anti-vaxxer” but he has a good track record of suing government agencies and big corporations for negligence. He has a voice problem- spasmodic dysphonia:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sW0OmzcmL0

      2. It’s not even a vaccine. A vaccine is given from which you gain immunity.
        These injections, it has been admitted, do not give you immunity.
        Despite numerous phone calls NHS ‘Patient Care’ they will not tell me why they called unless I give the first line of my address, post code and date of birth. I refuse to do this unless they tell me the purpose of their call and they refuse to tell me why they called unless I do.
        It’s a good game but I play it according to my rules not theirs.

        2. It’s very off to cold-call people and demand personal details over the phone.

          1. Don’t give! Who knows who they are – really? Not who they say they are?

          3. Does 1471 still work?
            I refuse to answer calls where the callerID is blocked.

          6. Good morning, I’m the same. If I don’t recognise the number, I let it ring out. If it is a genuine call and they leave a message saying so I will happily return the call.
            I’m under the impression that those who answer calls ‘blindly’ are monitored by other scam companies; it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that lists of compliant numbers are bought and sold. After all, the scammers only need to breach your security once to clean you out.

          7. They say I have been referred by my doctor but I haven’t seen a doctor since November. They will not tell me what i have been referred for unless I identify myself according to their rules.
            I have now blocked their number.

          1. I tried that one but they don’t do logic. I did ask her to prove she was from the NHS and was told I could Google it.
            It really is beyond a joke.

      3. Much as I enjoy James Delingpole’s articles I do not watch him much on the screen but I do wish that Clare Balding would have a word with him about his teeth.

      4. When you consider that 99.7% of those who go down with Covid survive why are they advocating injections for the whole population? It is completely unnecessary.

      5. I completed a check form on the odds of catching covid (Oxford University, I think). I am 74. Not overweight. I do not smoke. I have no underlying illness, no asthma, ms, tb, diabetes, high blood pressure etc. Nil. Zilch. Rien. Nothing. The result – I have a 1 in 13,000 chance of catching covid, apparently, and should I be sufficiently unfortunate to do so I have a 3 in 10,000 chance of dying from it.

    4. Morning Bob – A healthy, relatively doctor free live begins early. I shudder to think what young smokers, heavy drinkers. drug addicts and grossly obese will cost the taxpayer as they grow older.
      Then there are those who develop serious injuries and diseases in their work places.
      Such people will require more doctor attention than most others.
      I have the same attitude as you, at 81, rising 82, I get my medical requirements from the nurses in the practice and only rarely see my very competent young doctor when it is absolutely necessary .I spurned the annual flu jab for several years but decided I needed to take the Astra/Zenica jab to get back my freedom . For the first time I heard this morning on the BBC Radio 4 that the rare brain blood clot after the Astra/Zenica jab was fatal. Knowing that wouldn’t have stopped me having it.
      Doctors, especially the surgeons, are essential but we should use them sensibly.

      1. Precisely my attitude. I’ve never had the flu jab; I agreed to the shingles jab because it is a nasty illness and you only need the vaccination once. None of this annual malarkey.

    5. We had the jab as a box ticking exercise, in the faint hope that numbers alone would ‘persuade’ the government would allow our grandchildren something approaching a normal life.
      I avoid the GP (one upside of the current hysteria) because I always feel as if I’m going to the headmaster’s study; whatever I’ve done, it’s either wrong or at least not good enough.

  22. Video showing Alexei Navalny walking around in jail airs online as Kremlin-backed RT channel sends former spy to film him in prison in a bid to expose his ‘lies’ about needing medical attention. 3 april 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3534a80a8c3721ca8be225d67c3e24acd66bb9267b87cdbc3dbb2c6b636d2c94.jpg

    The Kremlin today launched a propaganda offensive against Alexei Navalny as it broadcast footage of him in jail and it emerged a former spy turned RT reporter and been sent to see him in prison to expose his ‘lies.’

    The CCTV footage shows Navalny, his head shaven, walking around with a cup of tea and ‘arguing’ with a guard at Pokrov penitentiary on March 26.
    It comes after the 44-year-old went on hunger strike this week, claiming that guards were depriving him of sleep by waking him during the night and that he had been refused a doctor’s visit for acute back and leg pain.

    Yep! Propaganda so good that it’s true! Here’s Alex on Hunger Strike, strolling around in acute pain, enjoying a cuppa in what looks like the last Youth Hostel I stayed in!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9430649/Footage-showing-Putin-foe-Alexei-Navalny-jail-leaked-strongly-pro-Kremlin-media.html

    1. Yep..the “former spy” was the young student who was jailed in the US for filling in a form incorrectly!

  23. Good moaning all. Have just unfortunately managed to hear some news. Apparently visitors will be allowed to see their Relatives in care homes soon but only if they have a test first . I shouldn’t have listened. Why are they allowed to stipulate this?

    1. This has been the case for the last month, a lateral flow test followed by a 1/2 hour wait for the result, a form to be completed and and masks/gloves to be worn and even after all that you have to keep your distance. I am closer to my beloved by still talking to her through an open window. This is inspite of us both having both jabs and the care home staff being tested every couple of days

      1. It is cruelty in the extreme. I don’t have relatives in a care home and I’d be beside myself if I couldn’t visit without all that paraphernalia.

      2. That’s totally illogical!!
        So sorry to hear that Spikey,all the best to both of you

      3. I’m so sorry Alec, I had no idea that even after having had the jab the rules were so strict. I feel so sorry for you and your beloved. And I say again it is cruelty in the extreme. It is inhuman.

        1. Thanks vw, it’s an NHS/Council run care home and we know what they’re like for sticking to rules religiously. Having said the it’s a brilliant care home and they’ve not had any Covid issues

          1. One hears scare stories about homes so often, that to have a good one without infection must be a kind of relief, Spikey.

          2. It is Paul, only takes 12 residents although there’s only about 8 at the moment and more staff than residents, they’re all very local and there’s a virtually nil rate of turnover of staff – it’s one big family and I couldn’t wish for a better home, I’d go there like a shot if it ever comes to that

        1. Hearing some others tales of woe I guess so, the conversation however is a bit one-way as she’s lost the power of speech. She knows what she’s saying I’m sure but there’s a disconnect between brain and vocal chords

    2. 331114+ up ticks,
      Morning VW,
      Ask for the herd control & manipulation office for any
      queeries, there are queeries ( in abundance) on hand to answer your question.

  24. BBC Breakfast TV

    Doctor says people are finding themselves pregnant after a COVID vaccination.
    That’s understandable when there’s a prick involved.

    1. My nurse when performing my phlebotomy yesterday said they now have to say there is an ‘ouch’ coming.

      Silly really as i don’t feel anything. It is nothing compared to a burn.

      Just checked: I’m not pregnant !

  25. Rowers hit stormy waters as rape allegation hangs over Boat Race
    Annual classic between Oxford and Cambridge plunged into controversy after women’s club member’s claim of assault allegedly brushed aside.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/rowers-hit-stormy-waters-sexual-assault-allegation-hangs-boat/

    Two of my nieces rowed in the Oxford University boat – one in the 1970’s, her sister in the 1980’s – indeed, one of them was the boat captain in her day.

    They are both very attractive, delightful and successful women of strong character and still are very fit and active – and strong. They both have very happy marriages and grown up children. I cannot imagine that either of them would have had any trouble in rebuffing unwanted advances.

    I wonder if young men today are worse than those of my generation and whether they do not have the same level of respect for the ‘fairer sex’. If this is the case then what has influenced them?

      2. And of course No 8 in the boat – the one seated nearest the cox – is the stroke!

  26. Yesterday I told of the establishment targeting the middle classes…

    How they deem house and car owners unsustainable due to global warming. Of course, many of those include the retired and now they are devising ways of removing the oldies off the road with extra medical tests. No doubt they will go about it in the same way they have with covid. “Your glasses are fine but what if they fall off when a gust of wind comes through the window”. You’re banned.

    Drivers may need to have ‘regular examinations’ to continue driving on public roads
    DRIVERS of all ages may soon be required to have “regular medical examinations” to drive their cars under new proposals from safety campaigners.

    https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1418334/new-driving-law-road-restrictions-medical-safety

    1. People must realise that even if they have been vaccinated they don’t automatically have to sign up for the vaccine passport!

      1. But does Johnson know that?

        He’ll just introduce obstacles.

        He might say we can go to France while Macron says we can’t as an example.

      2. Here’s one for you: Those of us living abroad, and vaccinated abroad if necessary, with our Scandi vaccination certificates, will not be able to access anything requiring a certificate because ours will be in Scandiweegian and not compatible.
        You should have seen the email whining when I was asked to prove place of residence last year, providing it in Norwegian was unacceptable, as that was, well, in Norwegian, and nobody could do a Google Translate. Sigh

        1. If i try using my Finnish postcode on any UK forms its rejected because its 5 numbers and no letters.

          1. We have 4 numbers. If you like, you can precede with N-
            In this case, it was to do with pension provider. Apparently, a utility bill is proof of residence (if you still have those, we don’t, it all goes directly to the bank for approval), and these trumped a printout with signature and stamp from the Government population register… all these documents, not surprisingly, in Norwegian! With an address in Norway, surely that’s to be expected.

          2. For both my state pension and private pension i have to prove i’m alive every year.Do you get this?

          5. He ticks the “I’m not a Corpse” test; tick all the pictures that contain a coffin.

          6. I have to go to the local Govt. office with my passport.Get a form signed and stamped and return it.
            Every bloody year!

          7. No, but my death will be logged in the population register, and these organisations have access to that.

        2. If i try using my Finnish postcode on any UK forms its rejected because its 5 numbers and no letters.

        3. Should have asked the Norwegians to do it in Arabic, Urdu, Pushtu or Swahili. The UK has lots of translators for these languages.

    2. Who could believe a Poll nowadays? This is a Police State with a controlled MSM!

      1. Of course…but they always come out slightly in favour of the establishment but also to show division among the public.

      2. Who could believe a poll these days – Those that have fallen for the pandemic scam

        1. They simply ask the same hand-picked group of people who will always give the “right” answer.

          1. As I’ve said before; from my experience of YouGov, once they know the respondent is of a conservative bent, they never ask any question that could be construed as remotely political.
            You are banished to the outer darkness where you are supposed to weigh the value of men’s toiletries and day-glo fruit squashes.

          6. They are OK if you mix them in the right proportions, and add a maraschino cherry on a cocktail stick.

  28. Prince Charles reads poem by Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to ‘show support for Christians across the globe at Easter’
    Prince Charles has recorded a poem by Catholic priest Gerard Manley Hopkins
    Royal, 72, narrated God’s Grandeur which will be played during a virtual service on Sunday at Stonyhurst College, a Catholic boarding school in Lancashire
    Comes after Prince of Wales was spotted with his mother for a socially distanced walk on the grounds of her estate in Windsor.

    Watch him narrating it ..

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9432469/Prince-Charles-reads-poem-Catholic-poet-Gerard-Manley-Hopkins.html?ito=push-notification&ci=116381&si=26738248&ai=9432469#newcomment

    He should have chosen this one instead . Although he might have found it rather difficult.

    The Windhover
    To Christ Our Lord

    I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
    dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
    High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
    In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
    Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

    Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
    Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

    No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
    Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

  29. Notice the BBC full on with the attack on the Capitol yesterday…

    And how their faces dropped when the identity of the perpetrator was revealed.

    Now they include the previous attack alleged to be by Trump supporters in order to balance things in their favour.

    What a disgusting bunch the BBC presenters are.

    2. I remember a completely different song of the same name.It was big in the 50s when i was growing up.

  31. 331114+ up ticks,
    The electorate, sad to say that by twisted reasoning they will continue to
    support their comfort zone party, regardless of party actions, one example being DOVER.

    This will continue up until one town council votes in 51% islamic ideology followers and the political imam stands up and says ” listen up, this is the way it is going to be”

    The ongoing future will add content to his words as the daily numbers multiply.

    https://twitter.com/AgainBraine/status/1378273248815820800

    1. These vacuum-heads require having the facts of science explained to them (though it is doubtful they would assimilate it).

      Black is not a colour: it is a complete absence of light. White is not a colour: it is a complete absence of hue. There are no black or white humans and there never have been.

    4. The Mayan, Incan and Aztec were not black They were South American, so more related to the native american than Africans.

      The Mesopotamians were closer to Indian than African.

      Besides – trying to claim a grand heritage is fine. However, how do you explain your cultural stagnation from that point? Why have you not built? Not created? Why now do you blame others rather than looking at your own culpability?

  34. Just in from half an hour gathering kindling. By golly, it’s cold. No more outdoor work for me today. It’s this damned global warming that gets me…

  35. Capitol attack by black man (though you’d NEVER guess that from the MSM).

    “In a post from mid-March on a now-deleted Facebook page, Green wrote that he had recently left his job, “partly due to afflictions, but ultimately, in search of a spiritual journey”. He added he had been suffering the “side effects of drugs I was intaking unknowingly” and wrote extensively of his interest in the black nationalist religious organisation, Nation of Islam.”

    Poor chap – taking drugs without knowing. If course, we have all done that, haven’t we? Fan of N of I – well, well – just another misguided Methodist. Still, he’s dead now – and all his social meeja stuff has been deleted by the perlice.

    1. Cocaine jumped up into his nose as he walked by? Fentanyl forced itself down his throat? And the heroin didn’t warn him about “just a little prick” as it inserted itself into his veins?

      1. Poor man – how I feel for him. At least he is happy now, in the arms of Allah.

    1. 331114+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      Could Not have achieved even that without the repeated input of the lab/lib/con coalition.

    2. I don’t believe the illegal gimmigrants arriving here by the boatload want t be British. They want what Britain has, but don’t want to earn it or conform to hold the values or present the duty that being so demands.

    2. I’ve said so many a time. When the Russians invade, I’ll be waiting for them in the street with a large pot of borscht, shouting, “Here, Ivan! Come and get yer soup!”

      1. Before the scamdemic they used to rent holiday cottages near the lake here.
        I met loads of them in the pub .Then they’d return at New Year to the local hotel.
        Ringing in the New Year was pandemonium because they celebrated at 23:00 so it carried right through till after our midnight.

        1. Back in the summer of 1964, when I was 13, I went on an educational cruise of the Baltic. When we were en route from Copenhagen to Leningrad, our teacher told us to look out for two islands that we would pass with similar names: Gotland and Gogland.

          For years afterwards, I could find the large Swedish island of Gotland on maps but I couldn’t trace anything of Gogland, Whenever I mentioned this to people they would think I’d been at the cooking sherry. “Gogland? No such place!” is what I would get.

          It wasn’t until decades later and the advent of the internet that I rediscovered, to my glee, the Finnish island of Suursaari (Gogland). This led to a round of triumphant “I told you so” boasts.

          Apparently the territory is still disputed by Russia, who insist on calling it Gogland. (others call it “Hogland”).

          https://corporalfrisk.com/tag/gogland/

  40. Looking back (as some of us here are wont to do!) on it I expected that Boris Johnson planned to put on his normal bluster when he announced that he had secured a ‘brilliant’ deal with the EU. He knew that he would be able to get the MSM largely on side but he expected a far more cynical reaction from the public and he certainly did not expect Nigel Farage to endorse his “deal”.

    Of course the real disasters – Northern Ireland, EU’s continued access to British fishing waters, no clear agreement on financial services, vindictive and duplicitous EU behaviour over Covid and at customs borders – have now come clearly to light and more and more people are seeing that the deal was yet another betrayal by Boris Johnson’s government.

    But at the time Boris Johnson seemed to have got away with it and he was genuinely surprised that he had done so. The great danger is that, buoyed up by this deception, he must now think that if he can get away with disasters like his WA and EU deal he will be able to get away with anything.

    Beware!

    1. 331114+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      To repeat a part post yesterday they thought, the current overseers nigh on 5 years back, all their eids had come at once on hearing “leave it to the tories”

      If we the decent folk of these Isles had the same success as the political treachery purveyors / supporters then as a Nation we would be miles ahead of ALL others on this God’s green earth.

      By the by “deal” IMO = bridge.

    2. He certainly does seem to think he can get away with anything. Another reason not to elect a serial adulterer as PM.

      1. If he can frequently and without any conscience or guilt repeatedly break his word to his spouses and mistresses with whom he is most intimately involved then why should anyone expect Boris Johnson to keep any of his promises to anybody else – least of all the general public.

        I am constantly reminded of the song: How Did You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life?

  41. I saw it stated on Facebook the other day that some insurance companies won’t cover side effects for the experimental jabs but of course a web search produces zero info to back that up.

    It would be ironic to have a vax passport and no travel insurance.

      1. It’s short for, “taking the bins out to the kerbside so that the binmen can empty them”.

        1. Good to see Horace, that unlike Google you know how to spell Kerbside. Google advertise ‘Curbside Takeaways’.

      2. Travel is where you start with a covid test and form filling in, get interrogated at every border by staff who don’t know the rules themselves, spend ten days in quarantine in a foreign country and conclude with two more covid tests and another round of form filling and quarantine in the comfort of your own home.

          3. Good point. A little more courage is required if we are to see off vaccine passports. I shall be proud of my fellow Britons if they pull that one off.

        2. Or instead of your own home at the end of an exhausting trip you have to quarantine in a basic airport hotel for 10 days with grotty food, if any.

    2. There was a tweet showing advice from Bupa stating that they would not cover any ill-effects from the vaccine, as they considered it is still experimental.

    3. There was a tweet showing advice from Bupa stating that they would not cover any ill-effects from the vaccine, as they considered it is still experimental.

  42. Sigh,just FOAD……..

    Companies will be able to bar people who have not been vaccinated from working for them under plans for vaccine passports.

    On Monday Boris Johnson will announce plans for certificates that could be

    used to allow entry to pubs, theatres, nightclubs and sports venues.

    A senior government source said that ministers were “resigned” to the

    fact that they would not legally be able to stop companies from

    demanding them as a condition of employment.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f1b13f0e-93cf-11eb-930d-e9e6e3751f8f?shareToken=abaf1f0684fa3508a35bb4df0f01396e

    1. Actually the government could put a stop to that kind of coercion. The Nuremberg Code is a guideline. That they are now saying that they will not do anything is to give a green light to daft, frightened and controlling businesses, and enterprises, to proceed with this ludicrous, and dangerous proposal. Local authorities will lose no time in introducing similar requirements in their offices and in their services, requiring the public to comply in order to visit libraries, sports centres, museums and council premises on business.

      1. Apparently, the UK is still a member of the Council of Europe, and in 2020 the Council of Europe issued a statement specifically reminding its members that they have signed up to rules that include not forcing people to have or disclose medical procedures.
        I think I heard this on the Delingpod with Mike Yeadon, iirc.
        So it seems Britain’s commitment may be stronger than a signature on the Nuremberg Code, but I am not sure how that translates into British law.

        It would be interesting if the Council of Europe, which has been pushing the UN agenda for years, has split with the great reset program.

        1. Presumably that is why the denizens of the subcontinent can fly here, dripping with TB, with no checks?

          1. Not sure, but if the media and the Opposition were doing their respective jobs, the anomaly of free travel into Britain including tourists, while the natives are forbidden from leaving would have been shouted from the rooftops.

        2. But you won’tbe forced to take the shots. You’ll just find life very difficult without. No coercion, I assure you.

          1. I don’t mind life being difficult. My entire life has been difficult. It will be some consolation to know that I am annoying the Government.

            But to succeed, we need numbers. Millions who are prepared to play the long game.

    2. This is absolute nonsense besides being coercion. I always suspected that the government would “allow” (I mean encourage) companies and businesses to do their dirty work for them. They are bar stewards, every one of them.<bTHIS IS COERCION and a continuation of the psychological warfare.

    4. Remembering the ease which our teenagers and their friends purchased bogus paperwork to get them into pubs, I’m quite sure that

      one will be able to purchase bogus vaccination certificates off the internet.

  44. I see there is a “green light” for vaccinated Britons to take overseas holidays. No quarantine and minimal Covid testing if you’ve had both jabs Why the need for testing if you’ve been jabbed?

    1. In case you’ve got a forged certificate, perhaps.

      Also the jab doesn’t prevent you from being a carrier, in the same way that a gun licence doesn’t prevent you from shooting someone.

      1. And, as has been acknowledged by HMG, the injection does not give you immunity and is, therefore, not a vaccination.
        The official ones will be the forgeries.

    2. So that Boots (and others) can get £150 per person for giving you an ineffective and highly dubious PCR test.

        1. Ah.
          Humour lost in translation (on my screen it’s in yer Weegie).
          :-((

    2. I’ve written down my next trip with pen and paper. I’m a stationery traveller.

      2. Last time we were allowed out i took my dog groomer out for a Pub lunch. A bit of a get to know you session. Katerina is from Greece and doesn’t know anyone but her customers.

        She talked about herself and her family non-stop for two hours.

        I ended up knowing almost everything about her.

        She still doesn’t know anything about me.

  47. Yay..Wolf alert..four have been spotted about 2 Km from the village heading in our direction.

    3. We have wolves north-east of Oslo.
      And wild pigs runing from Sweden. Open season on the latter.

  48. That’s the way to do it…

    Different nations have varied justice systems, but it is agreed unanimously that child rape is one of the most heinous crimes. In Kazakhstan, the punishment is castration – and, this year, 25 prisoners have had the injection.
    Chemical castration works by inserting anaphrodisiac drugs that reduce the libido by blocking testosterone. According to a Kazakh law that came into force in 2018, those sentenced to time in jail for raping a minor can be court-ordered to receive it as a punishment.

    1. Are these the same drugs known as testosterone-blockers in the UK, and taken by M->F trans people?

      1. Is the effect permanent or does it need topping up like the Covid vaccines appear to do?

        1. No, it’s not permanent. The patients need to take oestrogen and testosterone blockers for the rest of their lives. Plus other drugs for any other conditions they might have. Trans women I know suffer from some or all of the following: depression, hoarding, phantom aches and pains, insomnia, PTSD, Vit D deficiency and NPD.

          4. Or of course a pair of bricks, one in each hand, banged sharply together as used by sheep gelders might be more humane.

            (This method only hurts if you leave your thumbs in the way.)

    2. That sound you can hear is a convoy of coaches bringing Guardian reading lawyers eager to use public cash to defend paedophiles human rights. Because that is what will happen.

      1. If only they would b off to Khazakhstan, where there is SO much work for them to do!

  49. After 12 months of telling us to stay in to avoid spreading the virus the latest TV and radio fear campaign is telling us to go out and let the air blow the virus away?

    HMG is consistent with its inconsistency.

    1. That story can be interpreted as drivel. Some fishery association boss is claiming that being independent means we can join international committees in our own right. He also says that getting back some of our own fish is good news. He does not point out that the reality is that the EU have closed their market to all fresh produce from the UK and that EU boats are fishing in our EEZ with no controls.

      1. This is true, but the agreement changes over 5 year. Even I can see the value in that as it gives the European nations time to adapt.

        However: If it does not change and we continue with it beyond that point then it can be pointed as a failure (which it likely will due to a europhile state).

        1. The principal reason why the EU can stop buying British fish is that they still have all the fish they need for their domestic markets from the fish they take from our waters.

          Those who read my posts will remember that before the deal I advocated that the EU should be given a reasonable time to adapt to the fact that Britain would regain complete control of its waters. I suggested that the EU should lose about a fifth of its original quota each year over five years leaving it with nothing at the end of the period. This would have been far fairer than the terms the Traitor Heath accepted when he took us into the Common Market.

          But of course I was wrong and who gives a toss about our views anyway? It is perfectly clear that we should not have budged an inch on fishing from the word “Go” because the EU is a dishonorable and dishonest organisation.

          1. Yes, I gree on the 1/5 over 5 years as that’s plenty of time. However, you’re right, the EU cannot be trusted and so cannot be treated fairly.

            More of a concern is our clearly europhile administration is also desperately wedded to the EU and will continue to do what is in their best interests, not ours.

        2. It is a failure. “Time to adapt” is self-harm. Our fishermen had no “Time to adapt”on the three occasions that UK government gave away more and more of their fish. Their boats were cut up on the shore. Families that had earned their living on the sea for countless generations were stripped overnight of their livelihood by clerks in London smooling up to the bastards in the EU.
          Also, of course, there is no control over the quantities of fish being taken by EU boats. Be certain there will be very few fish left in five years. Maybe you know the UK government has increased the number of patrol boats and surveillance aircraft and spot checks on nets and catches. I do not.
          Our fisherman have lost their market in the EU thanks to the EU’s vicious hindrances at the borders. There has been no support for the fishing industry to build a bigger market in the UK.
          Five years!

          1. OK, for no 4.) above, impose swingeing tariffs on EU motor cars, wine and spirits, cheese and any surplus fish they want to flog off.

      2. It is time everybody woke up to the fact the the EU took Boris Johnson and the British to the cleaners with the “deal”.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Richard, it is also time for somebody (one or many) to give Boris an almighty kick up the jacksie with the admonishment to
          1.) Immediately cancel the WA because of the EU non-ratification and added perfidy
          2.) Signal our immediate withdrawal from both the ECHR and any acknowledgement of the ECJ
          3.) Timetable an imminent debate on repealing the Human Rights Act.
          4.) I’ll think of other things to re-inforce our stand-alone sovereignty.

    1. Someone I know…in their fifties…got a sticker saying “I’ve had my Covid vaccination”…stuck it on their laptop…and posted a photo on Twitter….

      Were they always that crazy, or has all the Covid propaganda turned their brain?

    1. I would imagine all Russian Orthodox Churches will be having Easter services this weekend.

  59. How did a free people become so relaxed about losing their liberty? 3 April 2021.

    Perhaps the greatest irony in all this is that it occurred in the post-Cold War West which was, until very recently, busily congratulating itself on its bloodless victory over the totalitarian system of the East. The triumph of freedom over those forms of tyranny which specialised in the control and surveillance of day-to-day existence and social intercourse was supposed to be the seminal lesson of our times.

    Given a choice, it seemed, people simply walked out from under the Soviet police state and brought about its collapse without a shot being fired. Such was the power of the natural human longing for liberty. Now here we were in the West consenting to a simulacrum of the surveillance and control that we had supposedly vanquished which was arguably more intrusive and limiting than anything the Stasi had contemplated. In the original plan, the post-Cold War discourse was going to be a fairly leisurely business. We would luxuriate in arguments about free market economics and social democratic values, on whether governments should aim for equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.

    We Have Met the Enemy and He Is [Now] Us!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/03/did-free-people-become-relaxed-losing-liberty/

    1. Reminds me of “Talking Vietnam Pot luck Blues” by Tom Paxton. We have met the enemy…and he has been smashed…

        1. Thank you Minty! I hope you don’t think I was being flippant, but I’m guessing Tom Paxton was aware of the quote, as he was fervently anti war (he’s still alive so I imagine he still is!)

        1. They avoided that in the TV series but the women all had mini-dresses on and walked alluringly. The orgy scenes were tastefully done. Erotic without being pornographic.

          Time for a shower me thinks.

    3. 331114+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,

      How did a free people become so relaxed about losing their liberty? 3 April 2021.

      A war within a war indigenous fighting indigenous in the keep in / keep out war whilst an enema force was infiltrating parliament, councils, positions of power within society.

      I truly believe that one would have more success in trying to poke butter up a porcupines bum with a hot knitting needle than convincing a lab/lib/con coalition repeat supporter / voter that they were the ongoing problem.

      Eventually the endgame will result in heads rolling
      ( literally) the prototype has already occured.

  60. This is a bloody disgrace. Why is the Hierarchy of the Church not publicly denouncing this and making the most vehement protest to the Government?

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/04/03/now-the-police-are-breaking-up-good-friday-services/

    “Qui autem scandalizaverit unum de pusillis istis, qui in me credunt, expedit ei ut suspendatur mola asinaria in collo ejus, et demergatur in profundum maris.”
    — Mat. 18:6

    Just shows on whose behalf the Met. Police are working…

    2. https://youtu.be/aqOKm4k2Wcc

      It looks like something out of a tinpot tyranny. The church service was being livestreamed online. Halfway through, two cops appear and arrogantly walk to the sanctuary itself, the area around the altar. They then take over the lectern from the priest and issue a dire warning to the people who had gathered to commemorate the darkest day in the Christian faith – the trial and execution of Christ. ‘You need to go home’, an officer says. ‘Failure to comply with this direction to leave… could lead you to be fined £200 or, if you fail to give your details, to you being arrested.’

      They wouldn’t have said that in a Mosque!

      1. These are, of course, “foreign” Christians – and so nothing to do with any RC hierarchy in England….

      2. Something a bit strange here. The police officer says it is Good Friday, but the date on the youtube entry and on the video says 2nd April – Maundy Thursday (around 18:00 on the stream).
        Edit: got the date wrong – it was Good Friday.

        Church services are not illegal – they have to follow covid-19 rules for social distancing, mask-wearing and track and trace. So what was the precise problem with this service?

          1. I got confused over the date – it was yesterday (Good Friday). I still don’t know precisely why the gathering was illegal, though.

      3. The Police have quite obviously become cowardly bullies. They wouldn’t dare enter a Mosque and say that because they know they would get a violent reaction, angry protests in all our ‘stans and having to make grovelling apologies.

        1. Regardless of the legality of the service, this does not show the Met in a good light.

          1. What does? Punching young women in the face, hitting old ladies with riot shields?

      4. The poliz have been investigating one of their own elite for an alleged ‘murder’ and after several weeks have been unable even to ascertain the cause of death. I reckon the lass died of a lethal mix of incompetence and corruption.

    3. One can only hope and pray that Polish “community leaders” (sarc) and the priest have made an official complaint to Dick Head of the Yard. And told their local (useless, no doubt) MP.

      1. Ah yes, their MP. I don’t expect much help there. The MP is Rosena Allin-Khan MP, a muslim.

        1. Fortunately all mosques remain open under lock down regulations.

          Ms Khan won’t be worried about strange infidel ceremonies.

    4. If I were being a bit outré I might suggest that this was a planned attack by agents of the Adversary. The name of the church is “Christ the King” and it has been cleared by functionaries of the State, exercising their worldly overlordship.

      1. It is obviously a deliberate attack on Christianity. The service could only have lasted a couple of hours at most and they could have stopped it beforehand if they felt it was a health danger!

      2. “Quanto magis putatis deteriora mereri supplicia qui Filium Dei conculcaverit, et sanguinem testamenti pollutum duxerit, in quo sanctificatus est, et spiritui gratiæ contumeliam fecerit?”
        — Heb. 10:29

        Edited to correct reference – mea culpa
        :¬(

          1. I realised that after I’d posted and corrected it but you won’t see that until you refresh the screen.
            ;¬)

          2. This was the sort of thing which made me very pissed off with Peddy.

            I had edited a post immediately after posting it to correct a typo. Peddy then said I had not amended my post immediately because, having not refreshed his own connection, he did not see my amendment and he accused me of lying. I told him that he was not a gentleman and that he ought to mend his manners.

          4. I remember something about that, Rastus, but Aeneas’ comment wasn’t pedantry, for which ‘Peddy’ was notorious.

            My mistake was more than a typo, it was a glaring misattribution of a quote.

    5. Would the craven and disgusting Police have dared do this in a mosque.

      If the government is not prepared to take a firm stand then Britain, its history, its heritage and culture will be lost for ever.

      But this is probably what that pile of stinking excrement Haystack wants.

      1. To get an official response you need to ask that question in a letter to an MP, or the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, Rastus, and not just in a closed internet forum.

        2. Good evening, Grizzly (It is after 6.00 p.m.)

          I do not have a vote in Britain thanks to Mr Blair and I don’t have a vote in France as I am not French.

          I would have been more cheerful about the fact that I lost my vote in Britain if Blair had made sure that British nationals resident in EU countries had been given a vote in lieu – but of course he has never been interested in democracy at ‘ground level’ just as Cameron, having promised a vote to Britons resident in EU countries a vote in the referendum, did not honour his promise.

          Do you have a vote in Sweden or the UK or both? And were you able to vote in the referendum?

          1. Bonsoir, M. Rastus.

            The rules for me, here in Sweden, is that I am permitted to vote in all UK elections and referenda for an arbitrary 15 years after leaving the UK (and I have not failed to do so). This means that (under current rules) I have six years left until I am disenfranchised. I then have the choice to remain a political leper*, or return to the UK. I do not have a vote in Sweden since I have no intention of taking Swedish citizenship.

            *I’ve got me bell at the ready!

  62. Question,
    Would the UK government have treated its citizens in the way that they have if citizens were allowed to possess firearms?

    3. 331114+ up ticks,
      Afternoon HP,
      Yes, they know their electorate, firearms do not enter the aquation.

  63. I am utterly ashamed of the country of my birth and I resolve never to return until those in power are overthrown and common sense returns.

    This, in effect, means never!

    2. Unless the likes of you, with your definititive views,
      join in the ‘push-back’ what chance do the rest of
      us lily-livered individuals have? … all we are fit for
      is verbally complaining, while sitting comfortably!!

      1. Nah! I don’t believe it. You are more than fit for going out into the streets and giving your fourpennorth. The more the merrier.

      1. 331114+ up ticks,
        Afternoon DM,
        They are the genuine ones, unlike the human
        sheep who cannot get anywhere on account of their voting pattern, self inflicted incarceration.

    3. A mate of mine once transported a foal in a Datsun Cherry or similar. It was going for petfood at Southall market, so they rescued it.

  65. I switched on the radio a few minutes into Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions?’. On the subject of that report a listener asked: “Is the UK rigged against minorities?”

    “Yes” says Munira Wilson (Lib Dems), “…the report…has caused a lot of pain and further division…the evidence is there in the lived experience of people of colour…”
    “Yes” says Jenny Jones (Tree Huggers, she of the 6pm curfew for all the nation’s men), “…the report should never have been published…many of the people who were part of the enquiry were hand-picked to say the right things…an authoritarian government committed to a strategy of divide and conquer…”

    I didn’t listen long enough to hear whether or not their disadvantaged minorities included poor white boys or if pandemic panic qualified as authoritarianism. James Cleverley, presumably regarded by the mad bat woman as a token ethnic, put up a half-decent response but he hardly impressed. The presenter was pretty feeble as well.

    I switched off so I don’t know if the programme or its follow-up ‘Any Answers?’ dealt with the raid on the Polish church. Not even ten minutes of listening and it’s cast gloom across the afternoon – but at least the tea-cups were saved.

    1. Forget the pro’s and con’s for a moment….

      Do you see how the government is upsetting each and every part of society?

      Johnson seems hell bent on causing unrest this summer.

  67. It’s going to be hot this summer…whatever the weather.

    Thousands of Kill the Bill activists march through central London and huge crowds gather at Hyde Park as police brace for weekend of chaos with more rallies set to take place in towns and cities across UK
    Protestors, including environmental protest group Red Brigade, have gathered at Hyde Park, London, today
    Close by, anti-lockdown demonstrators staged their own protest, supported by Piers Corbyn
    And a separate group in Parliament Square seen demonstrating with placards carrying anti-sexism slogans
    But the ‘national weekend of action’ has also spread to Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9432715/Thousands-Kill-Bill-activists-march-central-London.html

    Fifth Kill the Bill protest takes place in Bristol – live updates
    Other Kill the Bill protests are taking place today in Bath, Taunton, Glastonbury and Bridgwater

    https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/fifth-kill-bill-protest-takes-5261220

    1. All good. The Police do need to get out and about a bit more rather than being tied to a desk staring a Porn day in day out.

      1. They’ll also become knackered being on their feet all day and if these protests carry on through the weekend they’ll be falling asleep on the job.

        Plus we haven’t mentioned the covid busters partying everywhere that they’ll also have to police.

      2. I think they should wear their rainbow coloured pride kit, it will look lovely on social media, just as long as they are aware of blood splatter from the little old ladies they tend to target.

        1. They keep going on about being inclusive. I would like to see them in their rainbow kit as they go skateboarding with Imaams. Can’t get more diverse than that !

  68. We went to a Muslim wedding reception and I have to admit it was great, the music, the food, the dancing, the clothes and costumes were all bright and fantastic. The only down side was the bride, bit of a miserable bitch to be honest.

    She just stayed in her cot and slept most of the night.

    :@(

  69. Off for afternoon power-nap, making dinner and then watching inane idiocies on the idiot’s lantern.

    Talk later, much later.

  70. Apropos Balham Polish Church.

    “What did you do at work today, Daddy?”
    “Scared the shit out of a lot of old Poles.”
    “Why, Daddy?”
    “They were in church – trying to fool us by doing their stuff on a Friday.”
    “But it is Good Friday, Daddy.”
    “Not good for those old wankers it isn’t”
    “Did you arrest lots of them, Daddy?”
    “No – they buggered off back to their ghettos. Worse luck.”

    1. Yeah, Poles. What are they?

      Only Anglophiles, many of who served in the RAF in WWII with distinction, that’s who!

    2. Excellent !

      Watched a program last night which featured Betty’s of Harrogate. I’m gonna give ‘Fat Rascals’ a go.

      1. I bought some Fat Rascals the last time I was in North Yorkshire (Helmsley, October 2018), from an excellent baker’s shop. They were delicious. I have a few books on Yorkshire recipes if you’re interested in any recipes.

          1. The jury’s out for me on Betty’s. I’ve been to the original shop, in Harrogate, and to a branch in Northallerton. On my last visit I bought a very pretty and posh-looking vanilla slice. It was utterly bland and tasteless! A few day’s later I visited an independent baker’s shop in Knaresborough (surely the prettiest town in England) and bought a rustic-looking vanilla slice. It was sensationally delicious; in fact, the best I’ve ever tasted.

            Get theesen to North Yorkshire, especially the areas of the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales. I guarantee you’ll come back with a different opinion on Yorkshire Posh.

          2. Thanks.

            Being a Southerner these areas are the outer solar system for me.

            Next time i’m on early release, kidnapped and ransomed, hopelessly lost in the area i’ll give it a try.

          3. When I was working on a new shop front for Carluccio’s in Harrogate (now closed and operating as a patisserie called Mama Doreen’s Emporium) I stayed in an excellent Hotel du Vin and occasionally ate at Betty’s opposite. There was always a queue outside.

            There are branches in York and also at the RHS Gardens in Harrogate where you can buy Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.

            I was given a tour of their kitchens, which were immaculate, when designing the Huffkins Cotswold Tea Rooms in Burford, Witney, Stow on the Wold, Cheltenham and Stratford on Avon. The company now has outlets in several John Lewis stores and sell their fruit cake and teas to Historic Royal Palaces, Royal Parks and Fortnum and Mason.

          4. I remember eating in one of Antonio Carluccio’s restaurants in Kensington about 20 years ago. It was a wonderful meal in a lovely atmosphere.

          3. NNUH cheese sandwiches and jacket potatoes were excellent. Their yogurts were FAR too sweet – and it appeared to be assumed that all patients offered hot drinks would take two or three sugars – especially on the Cardiac Ward!

          5. And yet when I asked for a glass of red wine – they went all peculiar. I explained that that was perfectly normal in a French hospital – indeed, if you refused, you were thought a bit odd.

          6. The French hospital food, such as I remember it, was very bland, but wine was perfectly acceptable.

      3. Doesn’t look very healthy to me, Plum.

        Matter of fact, it looks dead – deceased, an ex-fish gone to the Great Sea to join the shoal celestial…

        1. So bad that they’ve put their knife and fork together and hardly eaten a morsel…

        2. Duncan, I missed out on traditional Good Friday fish supper and pigged out on
          sausages with caramelised onion and brocolli…

          1. We eat fish every Friday, Plum, but then we’re old school, the last of the hold-outs – considered eccentric by modernisers…
            ;¬)

          4. I was brought up to eat fish every Friday, Duncan, but I lapsed. I think now is as good a time as any to resurrect that fine tradition.

    5. Bangers and Mash tonight washed down with a nice malbec ph ph ph ph ph ph ph ph ph ph ph

    6. I’ve just finished some sirloin steak but it was only 1/2″ thick, tasty though with egg and chips

  72. Apropos the Balham Polish Church. This is the “guidance” from HMG’s website as at 26 March 2021:

    Celebrating religious festivals at your place of worship
    Communal worship or prayer can be attended by as many people as the place of worship can safely accommodate, in a way which complies with COVID-19 secure guidance and the law. This means that people from different households (or support bubbles) must not mix when participating in communal worship.

    This guidance highlights the key principles for events and acts of worship that take place both indoors, and outdoors within the grounds of a place of worship and should be used alongside the guidance for the safe use of places of worship .

    The key principles for those visiting a place of worship to celebrate a religious festival include:

    Follow the mitigations that places of worship have put in place, for example using booking systems, changes to entrances and exits or staggered arrivals.
    Consider watching any services that are broadcast online to avoid large gatherings, especially for those who need to stay at home or are able to mark the event at home.
    You must not mingle with anyone outside of your household or support bubble.
    Adhere to social distancing, meaning people should be 2 metres apart or more than 1 metre apart as well as taking extra steps to stay safe (such as wearing face coverings) to reduce the risk of transmission.
    Wear a face covering (unless you are exempt) – you must also wear these if you travel on public transport and a range of other places required by law.
    Make sure you provide your contact details to the place of worship to support the NHS Test and Trace service designed to track and help prevent the spread of COVID-19. This can be done through the NHS Test and Trace App.
    Make sure only you touch your belongings, for example shoes if removed.
    Take home any personal items brought in to aid worship, such as a prayer mat, prayer beads, or any ritual items associated with the festival.
    People should leave promptly after prayers/worship and should not mingle with each other following a service.

    That Stasi plod was talking through the back of his neck.

    1. Plod is going to lose the argument this Summer after their kowtowing to ER and BLM.

      As a Church going middle class white male i look forward to it. I have already ordered in extra popcorn.

      1. Compare and contrast with the slammers at Batley Madrassah – where the plod stood and watched slammers making threats – failing to wear masks, not standing 6 ft apart.

        Unspeakable behaviour by the London Stasi.

    2. It seems as though the police were objecting to the number of people inside the church. However, acceptable numbers are not stipulated under the covid-19 law. It would seem that the police used their own judgement as to whether or not the church was overcrowded. I should think there will be complaints.

      1. They were not six feet apart. And there had been a long queue on the pavement. I suspect someone (dare I suggest a slammer) dobbed them in.

        The Stasi bloke could have asked the priest to get the congregation to move apart – and then carry on with the service.

        I DO hope that they complain. But, from my experience of having many Polish clients when I lived in London, they won’t. They remember Warsaw etc etc

        1. In future I would recommend barring/locking the doors, with a doorkeeper on duty for ‘elfinsafedee’, and a video suitably placed to film plod smashing down the church doors.

          1. The helpful thing – from one point of view – is that the service was being streamed live. The unhelpful aspect is that it does show that they were standing close together.

            Whatever the rights and wrongs – it was – yet again – an example of the Perlice Farce choosing an easy target.

          2. They were certainly close together, but if those next to each other were in the same bubble (ridiculous term) would they have been OK?

            I hope that this particular episode might start a ball rolling, although I won’t hold my breath.

          4. What ? white, devote Christians. You mad?

            Imagine if it had been a charismatic born again black church, the BBC would have had 24 hour rolling news about it, but of course plod would have walked on by.

        2. In future I would recommend barring/locking the doors, with a doorkeeper on duty for ‘elfinsafedee’, and a video suitably placed to film plod smashing down the church doors.

        3. I think that the police would have entered the church and broken up the service in the comfortable knowledge that there would be no rioting by the clergy and the congregation. I wonder if they would have adopted the same approach if the worshippers had been of a different persuasion…

        4. The irony. Throughout the Russian occupation, the Poles continued with their religious observances.
          Here is Blighty ….

    4. Trying to intimidate other Churches before Easter. Sadly, a lot of bedwetting lady vicars in the C of E will probably crumble. Suits Canterbury, as then they can say that nobody attended church, so it has to be closed!

      1. Our church will be packed (to Covid limits) tomorrow, I suspect. We’ve all had to book a place.

    7. The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Cressida Dick was appointed to the post in 2017, and assumed office on 10 April. Wikipedia

      Term length: At Her Majesty’s pleasure.

      Perhaps it is time for HM to indicate that its ‘no longer a pleasure’ …

      The Metropolitan police invasion of the Polish Church during Mass on Good Friday was a disgraceful attack on Christianity.

      Heads must roll ..

      1. After they have been put in cages, dropped into a pool of gasoline and then set on fire.

        I’m being nice i am. It is Easter weekend after all.

  73. HAPPY HOUR – for Railway Buffs.

    Set the recorder .Freeview 81 – 5.35pm
    Night Mail – WH. Auden. Mail train to Scotland poem.

    This is the night mail crossing the Border,
    Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

    Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
    The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

    Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
    The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.

    Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
    Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

    Snorting noisily as she passes
    Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

    Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
    Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

    Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
    They slumber on with paws across.

    In the farm she passes no one wakes,
    But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.

    Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
    Down towards Glasgow she descends,
    Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
    Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
    Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
    All Scotland waits for her:
    In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
    Men long for news.

    Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
    Letters of joy from girl and boy,
    Receipted bills and invitations
    To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
    And applications for situations,
    And timid lovers’ declarations,
    And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
    News circumstantial, news financial,
    Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
    Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
    Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
    Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
    Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
    Written on paper of every hue,
    The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
    The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
    The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
    Clever, stupid, short and long,
    The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

    Thousands are still asleep,
    Dreaming of terrifying monsters
    Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Crawford’s:
    (Continues)

    3. Done,thanks Plum!
      If you don’t have Freeview it’s Sky 343 Talking Pictures channel.

    4. Done,thanks Plum!
      If you don’t have Freeview it’s Sky 343 Talking Pictures channel.

    5. Who is in charge of the clattering train?
      The axles creak and the couplings strain,
      and the pace is hot and the points are near,
      and sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear,
      and the signals flash through the night in vain.
      For death is in charge of the clattering train.

      Edwin James Milliken, quoted by Winston Churchill in the debate on the air estimates in the House of Commons, 19 March 1935

  75. OT – can anyone with access to the DT Crossword – possibly send me a copy of today’s Prize Crossword No 29610?

  76. More bleedin’ whingeing: From the bbc (yes, I know, I know…) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-56345712
    Covid and women: Pandemic ‘massive step back’ in equality
    Some selected quotes:
    More needs to be done to help women return to work to curb a “major step back” in gender equality in the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has said. At the end of January, 52% of jobs furloughed in Wales were held by women.
    At the end of January, 92,500 women were furloughed in Wales, the equivalent of 52% of jobs, taking home reduced pay, according to official statistics.
    While redundancy figures in Wales cannot be broken down by sex, 45% of posts made redundant between October and December 2020 were held by women.
    This is higher than the last recession when between 30-35% of those made redundant were women, according to ONS figures.

    So, out from these figues, it looks to me that women have come out of it slightly better than men, with not much in it. You’d not believe it from the headline, though.
    Edit: My bold.

    1. Anything a charity says about anything is, ultimately, a request to be given more money

    2. No mention of the fact that nigh on twice as many men died of Covid-19 than women?

      1. I have officially had it up to here with all the “poor me, poor us, it’s so awful, bastard men/whites/… whatever.” and the support it gets in the press. It’s so boring, it’s so false, it’s so untrue – as is borne out by these two’s effing article! Christ on a crutch!
        GRR!

  77. More bleedin’ whingeing: From the bbc (yes, I know, I know…) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-56345712
    Covid and women: Pandemic ‘massive step back’ in equality
    Some selected quotes:
    More needs to be done to help women return to work to curb a “major step back” in gender equality in the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has said. At the end of January, 52% of jobs furloughed in Wales were held by women.
    At the end of January, 92,500 women were furloughed in Wales, the equivalent of 52% of jobs, taking home reduced pay, according to official statistics.
    While redundancy figures in Wales cannot be broken down by sex, 45% of posts made redundant between October and December 2020 were held by women.
    This is higher than the last recession when between 30-35% of those made redundant were women, according to ONS figures.

    So, out from these figues, it looks to me that women have come out of it slightly better than men, with not much in it. You’d not believe it from the headline, though.
    Edit: My bold.

      2. Pah! it takes a man to mess up as spectacularly as that.
        If it was a woman driver it would just be one of those normal little scratches that men make such a big deal about.

  79. That’s me for the day. I managed to paint one side of one of the sheds before the glacial weather drove me indoors!

    I wish you a jolly evening – thinking of churches you can enter and break up the criminal worshippers.

    A demain.

        2. Just wondering why the conductor is standing at the keyboard – looks unnatural.

    4. Strange how plod never can nail down who has pinched the lead off the roof but can turn up for people worshipping.

      Same with fly tippers, dog napping and tarmac salesmen.

      I could be a second rate detective me and still solve more crimes than that shower of shit.

      I’ll get me Mac…

      2. Plod know full well who stole the lead. It is just that they are scared of them.

        A builder caught a couple of Polish lads stripping the lead sheet from the cupolas of the former Parr’s Bank (Nat Wested) in St Martin’s Leicester. The Police said the lads had been responsible for over forty similar thefts of lead but could not do anything because the lads had no fixed abode.

        We were converting the building for Middleton Steak House.

      2. I learned the hard way that one should never try to save a few quid on the “offer”. We dropped several thousand pounds (each!) on a non-changeable flight which wasn’t covered by the Covid cancellation rules.

        1. I in good faith moved my flights at a cost of £600 and then was unable to take them or claim back any money at all because of continually moving covid goal posts. Fuck Sage and fuck Boris the charlatan.

          That doesn’t include the £3000 i lost on apartments.

          I think i might test the law on squatters rights and move to Chequers. Then shit on the dining table.

          1. Ooo… that’s money! Gee, I feel for you, Phizzee.
            I only lost a few hundred when I decided it wasn’t smart to fly to see my mother a year ago, and was proved right as I’d have been shut out of Norway for quite a period – and been forced to live with Mum… a fate worse than taxes.

          2. The money doesn’t really matter that much to me. It’s being taken for a schmuck.

            Far worse for people such as yourself and Alec trying to see relatives.

          3. At least my mother is in her own home and a great bunch from a charity and the Council are taking care of her. Her parents apparently visit and stay a while, too, when they aren’t in Leicester visiting my Great-Aunt Hilda (the closest I had to a Grandmother).
            My heart goes out to Alec, in his situation. Not only can he not see and hug his wife, but she’s not well too. That’s absolutely awful.

          5. We weren’t even allowed to move ours.
            We also lost several hundred on the booked apartment.

            We refund all deposits paid if people get cancelled because of Covid, we don’t have to do so, but I remember when losing 25% would have meant no holiday anywhere that year.

          6. A good policy. Disappointed people will re-book you because of your generous terms.

            I did go away for Christmas on a package deal. I was lonely in the Hotel and left after a day and a half. The staff did their best but there was no atmosphere at all.

            More money wasted.

          7. We can’t carry on, because although it isn’t a lot, we lose money in fees to our website people.
            Another year like last year and I suspect we’ll stop doing it altogether. Far too much effort for next to no return

            A pity, because we’ve got the Trip Advisor 5 star and people’s choice awards, for whatever that’s worth.

            As it stands, we’re now only doing it so that we can show the cottage as a selling feature and source of income when we finally downsize.

          9. I have noticed that a lot of continental restaurants and business use Facebook to advertise. I know ! But it doesn’t cost anything.

          10. Not trying to be unduly negative, the problem with outlets like facebook is that any troll can arrive and post Gawd knows what about the place. We would need to reply to every enquiry.

            We’re looking at a maximum of 16 weeks lettings and don’t want to be messing about with payments etc. For all its faults TA/Holiday lettings handle the bookings, the calendar, the security deposits etc.

            We can just post the results to the tax authorities and the local Mairie if challenged and it makes for an easier life.

            I’m for a hassle free existence.

  82. 331114+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    How did a free people become so relaxed about losing their liberty?

    They really had to work at it but supporting / voting for the three party political close shop coalition,aided & abetted by the three monkeys, they achieved it and it paid off in spades.

    1. They thought that when the crisis was over, in a few week, things would return to normal. They thought freedom and liberty came with the turf, with the air that they breathe. They didn’t realise they were giving it away, we have been at peace now for so many generations. They took their collective eye off the ball. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Good evening, ogga.

      1. 331114+ up ticks,
        Evening PM,
        Even a fool of my calibre can see the ongoers are going to pay dearly for today’s impaired vision.

        If the people’s decide for once to assess their voting choice with honesty, putting Country before party would be a start, something could be saved from this wreckage of a decent Country.

        Sad affair is that many of the human sheep think that a joint of lamb is reared and dies in tesco’s.

        1. Ogga; however correct you may be,
          your continual insinuations are insulting
          to the wider general public who have no
          other choice; who do you suggest they vote for?

          1. 331114+ up ticks,
            Evening G,
            By the same token I have put up with years of castigation via “the general public” actions resulting from “the general public” voting pattern which has proved over the last few years to be dangerous & treacherous.

            There are alternatives out there, as a last resort mass NOTA should be used and would be effective if given the same support
            that the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration /paedophile
            umbrella coalition receive.

            I have made my personal choices known within my past comments.

          2. I do not fully understand your reasons,
            there is always the choice to spoil one’s
            ballot paper; in all honesty how many
            spoiled ballot papers do you require
            to achieve your aims?
            Your continuing insults to us, and no doubt
            to others, are counter productive, you have
            no idea how many on this blog do spoil their
            papers; who, of us, are going to tell you?
            Do stop insulting us!

          3. I already have told him, little g, but still the ungrammatical rants go on, without any realisation that bad grammar, poor syntax and diabolical sentence construction, marks one out as a poorly educated slob whose views cannot be worth a candle because of their paucity of diction.

          4. I don’t think, Nanners, that his education should be so
            summarily dismissed; Ogga may or may not choose to
            write in such a manner. I am annoyed by his assumption
            that we here are as thick as he claims, ad infinitum!!

          5. 331114+ up ticks,
            G,
            In the nicest possible manner far from insulting anyone I am pointing out facts if you are supporting / voting lab/lib/con/greens you are a major part of the ongoing problems, if you are not supporting / voting lab/lib/con / greens then you have nothing to answer for.
            We are suffering the fallout of continued input of the governance parties supporters / voters, there are many that would have us suffer in silence, won’t happen.

            You do not quench a fire by taking minimum petrol to it.

    1. SWMBO and Firstborn discussing it using music-speak. I understand not.
      Yet another occasion when I wish I was even slightly musical in the tiniest way. Since I developed tinnitus, I can’t even listen to it right, let alone play, or discuss.
      Bah!
      More mooshine. It really does taste like antiseptic handwash…

      1. And, it makes me cross, in a way that gin, vodka, whisk(e)y or any other spirit does… weird…

  85. A refusnik!

    BLT comment from the Slog:

    “Bobby47 on April 2, 2021 at 11:42 pm
    I’m not having any of it. Not one bit of it. I ain’t having their bloody unholy devilish cocktail that they intend to introduce to my body and inject it into my veins. It’s never going to happen. Never I say!
    I know what I’ll have, what I won’t have and what I might be made to have if I’m faced with tyrannical force constructed to ensure that I do have to have it.
    That’s right. They can call an emergency meeting of all the permanent sitting members of the United Nations who unanimously agree that I need bloody injecting and still, even then, with all the major television networks ensconced outside my three bedroom semi detached house, all waiting for the bombing to start, and still, from my soon to be attacked and bombed home, I’ll shout to the designated negotiator, ‘get stuffed. I ain’t having your bloody injection thank you very much’.
    Let them drop their Daisy Cutters and their Smart Bombs upon me and my home and it’ll not change one single thing. I ain’t having their injection. I’d sooner bloody face a full calendar month of listening to Kerry bloody Katona slaughtering that great rock classic Billy Don’t Be A Hero and fathering her next two sets of triplets than consenting to their bloody injection.”

    2. I just hope Bobby47 is being ironic about ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ being a rock classic.

  87. Is this the new status quo?…

    Cos it’s rocking all over the world.

    Kill the Bill protesters clash with police as ‘thousands’ storm Parliament Square

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1418700/kill-the-bill-protest-london-latest-parliament-square-police-clash-road-block-video-vn

    Jeremy Corbyn addresses tens of thousands of London Kill the Bill protesters in defiance of coronavirus rules before scuffles with police break out in Parliament Square after marches across the UK

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9432715/Thousands-Kill-Bill-activists-march-central-London.html

      1. But for once in his life, he’s right about the government’s freedom laws.

      1. I spoke to some protesters today…

        I’ll write a report, perhaps tomorrow.

    3. I bet the crowd will be more difficult to handle than all those bolshie OAP Poles

      1. Yep…

        Wonder if they went round the choir boys and said, “I’ll have hymn, hymn and you my anthem”.

          1. 331114+ up ticks,
            P,
            The overseers will use devious ways to achieve their intended target, in this case ID cards, the governance parties ratchet clicks
            for success on their behalf, never the peoples.

    1. Name them and shame them.

      There was no problem with the Batley teacher, do the same to those police AND those up the chain of command.

    3. As we have suspected, there is something rotten in a Government that allows the police to behave in this manner. If it were yer slammers, a couple of buildings would have been burned down and there would be a shortage of Nikes.

      1. As I posted earlier it seems the President of Ukraine has determined to regain the Dombass & the Russian Black Sea Port of Sevastapol with the help of Uncle Joe and the EU light Brigade….

        1. Sorry , I didn’t catch up with that ..

          I will go back and have a look ..

          No matter what , whilst Europe is distracted with viruses and lockdowns , things always get dirty ..

          1. No worries Belle:

            Here’s a repeat:

            From PJ Media (Apparently an American ‘Right Wing’ blog)

            What’s your excuse, American news media?

            Here’s Another Damn Thing We’re Supposed to Be Concerned About

            Okay, who had World War III Starts in Crimea on their 2021 Bingo card?

            Insanity Wrap wishes we were kidding, but apparently both Russia and Ukraine are building up armoured forces along their shared border in the contested Donbass region.

            Michael Snyder runs The Economic Collapse blog, which some might dismiss as being on the overly paranoid side of prepper.

            But this next bit really happened and might precipitate something nasty like WWIII:

            It turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th. The document that he signed is known as Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate media.

            I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it. Original?[edit my question Is it Genuine?] Here: https://www.president.gov.u…

            The first section of Zelensky’s decree says that Ukraine will “put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council” concerning the “deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”

            Insanity Wrap reads that to mean: “Russia took Crimea from us and now we’re gonna take it back.”

            However you read it, all the players in this most dangerous game are making the usual moves:

            US and NATO meet to discuss ‘Russia’s recent large-scale military activities’ near Ukraine
            Russia warns new Donbass conflict could ‘destroy’ Ukraine, Nato rebukes Moscow
            Russia warns it’ll take ‘extra measures’ if NATO sends men to Ukraine
            It only seems like earlier this week that we were writing about the ways WWIII might start.

            Oh, wait — it was just earlier this week: One of These Hot Spots May Set Off the Next World War.

            How about some thoughts and prayers for deescalation? Because that would be nice.”

      2. When I served in RAF Germany, it was identified that despite our best efforts, the Russians could be in Calais just 48 hours after launching an offensive.

        Bring it on, Putin but please, stop at Calais. You have friends here who are your enemy’s enemy. How clever now Merkel and Fonda lyin’?

        1. Von der Lederhosen’s elite Grenadier Division ‘Besenstiel’ stands ready to defend the European Project.

          Moscow by Christmas!
          :¬)

    6. What “crime” have the congregation/celebrants committed? Him Upstairs should have struck the interlopers down with a thunderbolt!

    9. Anne, may God forgive them,
      I know I should … but I am unable to.
      What have we allowed ourselves to
      become?

  92. Evening, all. Surely even the most dyed-in-the-wool remainer must have seen the light about the EU by now.

  93. Oh my goodness gracious me…………………..

    Look who has a massive financial interest in keeping UK lockdown going as long as possible, Mr Hancock’s friend……

    ”George Soros part of £100m bet on Trainline hitting the buffers”………..

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/04/03/george-soros-part-100m-bet-trainline-hitting-buffers/

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

  95. Yet more WWB:

    DT Headline:

    “Nursery teachers should give lessons on white privilege, says guidance
    Guidance from unions and charities criticised by Tory MPs for turning early learning into a ‘political Soviet indoctrination session’

    1. Ha, Common Purpose was ever thus – it should be outlawed as a terrorist outfit.

    1. You’re not a leftover from the 60s are you! That narrow boat, its all beginning to fall into place

    1. Thanks, Mags, I’m wondering how we can make a countrywide appeal to Plod not to shew fear or favour when it comes to Ramadan Gatherings.

      Make it so that he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. We are on to him, as a citizen of the public, tasked to uphold the law.

        1. I wouldn’t joke about something as serious as this , molamola,

          Are you in favour of this Police action when, we know, they wouldn’t dare enter a mosque under the same circumstance?

  100. The very best of a Good Night to my NoTTLer family – sleep peacefully and let’s hope for a peaceful Sunday.

    Good night, God bless.

  101. Paging Mr Clegg, paging Mr Clegg…..

    “Personal information of over 533 million Facebook users was leaked on a low-level hacking forum, according to Business Insider. Facebook users from 106 countries, including more than 32 million users in the US, 11 million in the UK, and 6 million in India, had their Facebook IDs, full names, phone numbers, locations, birthdates, bios, and in some cases, email addresses, leaked online.

    Insider journalists examined the leaked data and confirmed several Facebook users’ data matched up with the leaked data on the list.

    Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users’ phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook’s password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number. -Insider

    Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, has been one of the first to post about the leak. He tweeted Saturday morning:

    All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free. This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked. I have yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data.

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