Sunday 25 April: Vaccine success should prompt the PM to reconsider his roadmap

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/2021/04/24/letters-vaccine-success-should-prompt-pm-reconsider-roadmap/

616 thoughts on “Sunday 25 April: Vaccine success should prompt the PM to reconsider his roadmap”

  1. Police injured and protesters arrested at anti-lockdown demonstration in London. 25 April 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef96b222e22cb4437f1f523aad65954d222388f84cc125fdf1454344422fa6d3.png

    Small pockets of disorder’ break out at march in Hyde Park with missiles thrown at officer.

    Police in London said on Saturday they arrested five people, and eight officers were injured, after disorder at large-scale protest against England’s remaining coronavirus restrictions, the mandatory use of masks and possible introduction of so-called vaccine passports.

    “Two officers were taken to hospital. Thankfully, they are not believed to be seriously injured.

    Morning everyone. Nottl had its own representative at this march who testifies to its good humour and civility so these were almost certainly the tame agents provocateurs that the PTB keeps handy to discredit protests they don’t like. This article has even dredged up two doctors to provide cover! Needless to say this hostile line is maintained across the MSM!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/25/police-injured-protesters-arrested-anti-lockdown-demonstration/

    1. Araminta mng, thanks for the sensible comment and the DT info re the two officers were not seriously injured after being taken to hospital. Posted in the knowledge this site will be viewed by elements of MSM pushing their agenda https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/efa2f66e32dfa965912b223a19de8782ee4a00092082c2b2caba43bce27bc7d6.jpg as a reminder [to them] like everyone on here, we’ll simply spell it out for them https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f2ba9ec5bccf703b59fb501ad9e3000b72222f646e89eb611e15b310c9f1b48e.jpg

      1. Let me guess – the protestors will be villified in the press as a vioent mob.

        Unlike the ‘mostly peaceful’ black looting mob who smashed up the city, caused endless criminal damage and set fire to everything.

    2. Morning, Araminta.

      …these were almost certainly the tame agents provocateurs that the PTB keeps handy to discredit protests they don’t like.

      Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!😎

    3. With a surname containing the words ‘raw’ and ‘bat’, the good Doctor could possibly have some Chinese ancestry.

    4. I think it was the usual evening handful who rock up at the end of the proceedings.

    5. Dr Bett – yes, I don’t see how throwing things at the police is a good thing either.

      However, you’re missing the point – as an ICU doctor you make decisions based on evidence. We, the public have been continually lied to, misled and… yes, the state is still making plans for a sugar tax to force our way of life. Faced with propaganda, this is the inevitable response.

  2. mng all, seems some of the cast off Clangers are being given an “airing”:

    SIR – On Wednesday we received the excellent news that only 32 of the millions of people vaccinated against Covid-19 have been admitted to hospitals with the disease in the last few months.

    However, Boris Johnson says he will not deviate from his roadmap out of lockdown. Has he taken leave of his senses?

    Barbara Smith
    Stafford

    SIR – Whenever I visit my 99-year-old father in his residential care home, he tells me that it is like being in prison.

    He says the home is good, the food is good, he likes the people, but he wants to go out. He has no understanding of coronavirus (believing it to be the name of a pleasure boat in Bridlington). Every resident and all staff members at his home are fully vaccinated.

    Surely there is no longer a need for such draconian restrictions. Time for people like my father is limited.

    David Moss
    Ilkley, West Yorkshire

    SIR – Given the stunning success of the vaccination programme, the NHS is surely protected.

    Will Britain therefore drop the isolation requirements for fully tested and vaccinated individuals from places with ultra-low infection rates, like Hong Kong? Please don’t keep us on the amber list if we can prove vaccination. We want to come for education, to see relatives, to do business and spend money.

    Jonathan Evans
    Hong Kong

    SIR – Many people who decry those who wish to travel overseas seem to believe that it is just for a “few moments in the sun”.

    As a double-jabbed elderly person, I am very keen to visit much-missed children and grandchildren in Australia. I also want to continue exploring the world and its diverse cultures, cities and landscapes. Apart from the fact that I feel 10 years younger when doing so, I do not relish the prospect of battling with millions of summer “staycationers” for scarce space on roads and railways, in hotels and on beaches.

    We never know how much time we have left, and therefore need to get on and enjoy it now.

    Tony Rigby
    Middleton-on-Sea, West Sussex

    SIR – Most of the people who die of most causes are elderly. These people have all had their jabs, and their children are probably vaccinated too.

    Isn’t it time to relax the rules on funerals, given that people are mingling freely in shops and pubs? When my husband died I was much comforted by the presence of my sons. The Queen should not have had to stand alone at her husband’s funeral; indeed, this should not happen to anyone bereaved by Covid-19 or anything else.

    Funerals should be a priority for the Government: they are more important than shopping or entertainment.

    Anne Hedges
    Woking, Surrey

    Green capitalism

    SIR – I agree with your Leading Article that we must “trust in the market to save the planet”.

    But the fight against madcap green measures must continue. Nobody argues against safeguarding the planet, but setting ludicrous targets and disrupting the economy and people’s lives is not the way to do it. Such measures are another unreasonable demand by the Left, which sees the Earth as a victim of capitalist greed.

    The free market has already contributed to, and will continue to drive, the technological advances that will reduce pollution and protect the environment. The process is urgent but not to the extent stated by some extreme campaigners. Improvements and inventions are arriving, at a promising speed. Boris Johnson would be well-advised to take this message to the forthcoming climate summit.

    John Pritchard
    Ingatestone, Essex

    SIR – Roger Arthur (Letters, April 23) is not the first to highlight the chasm between aspirations to go all-electric and our actual generating capacity.

    The Government should be undertaking a searching assessment of the probable demand on the National Grid, and the capacity – now and into the future – to meet that demand.

    The net-zero case depends on an assumption that electricity is “clean energy.” But this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Currently some 40 per cent of our electricity comes from gas-fired generation, and, even if the proportion falls with the commissioning of new renewables, it seems unlikely that the actual quantity will fall.

    Since the grid will use renewable sources first, we must recognise that the marginal user is always on gas-fired electricity. Given this, and the likelihood that capacity will be stretched for many years, it surely makes sense to use electricity where we need electricity and continue to burn gas, as efficiently as possible, where what we need is heat. It makes no sense to turn heat into electricity, at perhaps 30 or 35 per cent efficiency, then turn the electricity back into heat.

    Mike Keatinge
    Sherborne, Dorset

    Local authority funds

    SIR – With elections due on May 6 it is a disgrace that over half of local authorities do not yet have audited accounts for 2019-20, which were due on November 30 (postponed from September 30 by Covid).

    Michael McGough FCA
    Loughton, Essex

    ‘Bomber’ Harris

    SIR – I am no statue-toppler. Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris’s legacy, discussed by Jeremy Black, must be allowed to speak for itself.

    However, the wholesale destruction of German cities and their inhabitants in the last war remains questionable, both morally and as an effective way of defeating the enemy. Many treasures and beautiful buildings in lovely cities, including ours (Exeter springs to mind), have been lost forever.

    George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, spoke out against Britain’s conduct in the House of Lords in February 1944. He said: “Why is there this inability to reckon with the moral and spiritual facts? Why is there this forgetfulness of the ideals by which our cause is inspired? How can the War Cabinet fail to see that this progressive devastation of cities is threatening the roots of civilisation?”

    Churchill’s failure to rein in Harris raises serious questions over his own conduct of the war.

    Ian Girvan
    Bath, Somerset

    Mercer’s courage

    SIR – David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all spoken highly of Britain’s Armed Forces and veterans at the dispatch box, and mentioned the Armed Forces Covenant. However, on numerous occasions, their words have been shown to be hollow.

    Like his two predecessors, Mr Johnson seems to have forgotten that the Government – rather than just the private sector – has a duty to uphold the covenant safeguards, designed to ensure fair treatment and prevent individuals from being disadvantaged due to military service.

    Johnny Mercer, the sacked defence minister, was courageous both on the battlefield and in Parliament. As a member of the Defence Select Committee, he often raised veterans’ issues and challenged the wisdom of defence cuts.

    Though he is now on the back benches, I suspect we have not heard the last of him.

    Mark Iles
    Newark, Nottinghamshire

    SIR – It pains me to say this but, if Johnny Mercer were to put himself forward to lead the Conservative Party, I might have to rejoin.

    Paul Rutherford
    Alresford, Hampshire

    Microchips for cats

    SIR – I hope that the proposed legislation for microchipping cats is better put together than it was for dogs, and that there is some consultation with the agencies responsible for enforcement.

    The law for dogs contains so many loopholes that it has proved incredibly difficult to uphold, and has often failed to locate and identify owners. A microchip does not prove ownership.

    From a police perspective, it would be even harder to prove a cat theft, since they are essentially free to roam wherever they wish, and often adopt more than one owner.

    Russell Camm
    Whitby, North Yorkshire

    Coastal convention

    SIR – Following Clare Byam-Cook’s objection (Letters, April 18) to the use of “the” before Hurlingham, I feel the time has come to disabuse many people of referring to the Gower Peninsula in South Wales as “the Gower”.

    It’s either Gower or the Gower Peninsula.

    Susan Morris
    Swansea

    A boat trip that takes in the best of Canada

    SIR – I read with interest Nick Redmayne’s article about his boat trip on the Rideau Canal in Ontario. Although a popular waterway for Canadians and tourists from the US, it is little known in Britain.

    I have travelled the whole length of the canal and, by coincidence, live in the English village where Colonel John By is buried. He was the Royal Engineer who designed and built the waterway, Ottawa originally being called Bytown.

    However, I would argue that Mr Redmayne chose to travel in the wrong direction: the route from Smiths Falls to Kingston (on Lake Ontario) is far more interesting than the one he took to Ottawa.

    On my recommended route, you pass through the Upper, Big and Lower Rideau lakes. The trip also takes in the villages of Rideau Ferry, Portland, Westport and Newborough – and, further on, some amazing engineering works, notably at Jones Falls. The Opinicon Hotel is not to be missed, and then you arrive at Kingston, a beautiful town with history and charm.

    It is a wonderful journey.

    Greig Bannerman
    Frant, East Sussex

    SNP’s alternative facts about the Union

    SIR – I completely agree with Daniel Hannan’s excellent article.

    In keeping with the current vogue for claiming victimhood as a virtue, the SNP mostly appeals to Scots by presenting our country as an aggrieved hostage to the malign policies of the “auld enemy”, which tricked Scotland into an unfair Union.

    This is massive historical illiteracy. After the Act of Union was signed in 1707, the Scottish people were able to flourish, freed from the constant wars and insecurities from which their country had previously suffered.

    Far from being an insignificant “hostage” within a lopsided Union, Scotland punched far above its weight and has always taken advantage of and contributed to the global arena to which it gained access. Both its identity and international renown have been greatly enhanced by its membership of the Union.

    That Scotland today is now a shadow of its former self – in terms of its economy, education system, health and general prospects – is a mark of how badly it has been managed under the SNP governent, which tries to claim that every misfortune is England’s fault.

    My fellow Scots must not allow themselves to be seduced by Nicola Sturgeon’s bogus promises of a Scottish El Dorado, which are based on nothing more than a deep and irrational well of Anglophobia – the recruiting sergeant of the SNP.

    Peter Ferguson
    Hertford

    1. Tony Rigby

      If you feel that badly about ‘staycations’ you may always ‘stayhome’ instead.

    2. Ian Girvan, “Churchill’s failure to rein in Harris raises serious questions over his own conduct of the war.”

      If it weren’t Churchill and Harris, it’s probable that you might not be here at all and, if you were born, then today you’d be mouthing off in German, if you weren’t ‘Verboten’.

      How stupid can these virtue-signallers be.

      1. virtue signallers practicing their morse: two dots and a dash would be a good starting point given they’re disappearing down the rabbit hole quicker than they envisage

      3. Ian Girvan doesn’t seem to understand that in 1945 the Red Army had suffered and was continuing to suffer appalling casualties, and that dead Germans could not aim a rifle or throw a grenade.
        I suppose that he regards innocent German frauleins as being superior to dirty Soviet squaddies.

    3. The vast majority of those whinging about capitalism have no idea what it is nor could they survive without it.

      They’re uneducated children who do not realise their insane vision is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths.

    1. 2nd photo.
      SOMEBODY HAS TO LEARN
      HOW TO
      PATCH THEIR TROUSERS
      AFTER SPENDING
      SO MUCH TIME
      KNEELING.

      (perhaps that should be her boyfriend’s task)

    2. I’m perfectly awake, thank you, but the solution I present is not to have the state change it’s policy, it’s to bring the state to heel – to defund it, not the police.

      You’re not looking at the big picture.

  4. The Graun’s coruscating condemnation of yesterday’s march

    Eight officers injured policing anti-lockdown protest in London

    Demonstrators hurled missiles, including bottles at march attended by Laurence Fox and Piers Corbyn

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b29f3a28712436ce70febab643a0eef678dec569/21_0_3217_1931/master/3217.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=9e8ee75bf171ba32d71a912f79da83c3
    London mayoral candidate Piers Corbyn was on the march.

    For those whose gaze might be diverted, Piers is the one holding a megaphone. His choice of pillion rider looks far more enticing than his brother’s.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/24/eight-officers-injured-policing-anti-lockdown-protest-in-london

    1. And for what it’s worth, I can testify that the march was thoroughly peaceful and full of smiling people. Apparently the police laid into a few people later in Hyde Park. The reporting in the MSM is a disgrace.

      1. thank you for your efforts. Let MSM keep reporting their garbage, it’s free ammunition for reality. They’ll figure it out when it’s too late for them

    2. Oddly enough, this is now the narrative in the Mail as well.
      Yesterday evening, nothing was mentioned about this violence, which I have no doubt was carried out or stirred up with the intention of discrediting the protest and scaring people off from joining the next one.

    3. There’s some ‘arresting’ sights in the Mail. So much so I lost track of what the article is about.

  5. Yo All

    Churchill’s failure to rein in Harris raises serious questions over his own conduct of the war.
    Ian Girvan Bath, Somerset

    Get your dictionary out, Girvan, and check what the word ‘Coventrate’ means

    1. CoventrateThe complete and utter destruction of a city by bombing attack with an excessive amount of bombs.

      Coined by Propaganda Minister Goebbels during WW2 after a bombing attack which nearly levelled the entire city of Coventry in central England.

      1. he gets his version of history from Hello magazine. Well, until Buy Large Mansions enter the online property magazine market

    2. Here is one result of Moonlight Sonata, the German raids on Coventry. Arguments have been made that Portal should/could have ordered Harris to concentrate on other strategic targets, but didn’t. Very different times, and it has to be remembered that London remained under indiscriminate attack by V1s and V2s until late in the war. (goodfreephotos.com)

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6bfaeca3367ada56250aa1c8d1932478c3e45a94b7c2cd46e11d3c3449507fb0.jpg

      1. Ironically Coventry City Cuncil did more damage to the city post war, than the Chermans did

        1. That applies to many cities and towns.
          Colchester was bombed once – a clothing factory.
          The real damage was done by the borough council during the 1960s and 70s.

      2. As Harris remarked, the Germans had sowed the tempest,now they were reaping the whirlwind.

  6. From a police perspective, it would be even harder to prove a cattheft, since they are essentially
    free to roam wherever they wish, and often adopt more than one owner.

    Russell Camm Whitby, North Yorkshire

    The Police, if they have any interest in missing pets will have a reasonable profile of the thieves

    Why do we just not microchip those people, with a location transmitter
    If anyone thinks that is the start of a ‘Police State’, your Track and Trace COVID app is doing just that

    2. There’s a location tracker on Mongo’s harness. I saw someone trying to unwind his lead whiile we were in M&S. They claimed he was in sunlight – he wasn’t – that he had no water – he did and that we were mistreating him – we weren’t.

      I’d been literally 5 minutes, in and out specifically to get some cold water so we could drink (as I’d sit with him) while the warqueen and junior shopped. I’ve never taken him with us before or since.

  7. From a police perspective, it would be even harder to prove a cattheft, since they are essentially
    free to roam wherever they wish, and often adopt more than one owner.

    Russell Camm Whitby, North Yorkshire

    The Police, if they have any interest in missing pets will have a reasonable profile of the thieves

    Why do we just not microchip those people, with a location transmitter
    If anyone thinks that is the start of a ‘Police State’, your Track and Trace COVID app is doing just that

  8. Betty Boothroyd, 91, ‘investigated by ethics watchdog for missing sexual harassment training’

    The former Commons Speaker is facing a formal probe despite telling the standards commissioner she had been recovering from heart surgery
    *
    *
    Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, the House of Lords commissioner for standards, asked in her response whether the medical condition meant Lady Boothroyd could not attend the course online. Lady Boothroyd said this was the case.

    The following day, however, Ms Scott-Moncrief announced she would be investigating Lady Boothroyd regardless.
    *
    *
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/24/betty-boothroyd-91-investigated-ethics-watchdog-missing-sexual/

    This 0:33 second video tells you all you need to know about Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, a graduate of Canterbury Poly law school.

    https://youtu.be/X_zAxHr-4Q8

        1. thanks, appreciated. I’ve just finished another reading of Anthony Beevor’s Stalingrad and German soldiers comments stuck in my head. At time of posting, seemed an obvious comparison

    2. What do these woke bastards ever do that actually improves the quality of life for anyone at all?

      Perhaps compulsory courses in recognising how lucky the world was to have seen the rise of the West and how much black people have benefited because of things discovered and created, to balance the diversity garbage.

      1. Nothing. They’re only ability is to tear down, never build. This is because of shame – they want so desperately to avoid it that anything which makes them feel shame has to be destroyed.

    3. Good lord, that’s appalling! How on earth is a 91-year-old woman recovering from heart surgery going to harm anyone by missing such drivel?

      1. Nowt to do with her health, it’s about control. They hate, indiscriminately. Therefore, if someone does not obey them, they have to destroy that person.

        It’s nothing less than a power trip for these demented fascists.

      2. Let’s be honest, most people could miss sessions like that without any harm befalling anyone.

        1. We are in a very bad way when that person is House of Lords Commissioner for Standards.

    7. Maybe it’s not married because nobody (of either sex) in their right mind, would want it.

      Too Fat Polka (I Don’t Want Her, You Can Have Her, She’s Too Fat For Me)
      Arthur Godfrey

      Oh, I don’t want her, you can have her,
      She’s too fat for me.
      She’s too fat for me,
      She’s too fat for me.
      I don’t want her, you can have her,
      Please do that for me.
      She’s too fat, she’s too fat,
      She’s too fat for me.
      I get dizzy, I get numbo
      When I’m dancing
      With my Jum-Jum-Jumbo.
      I don’t want her, you can have her,
      She’s too fat for me.
      She’s too fat for me,
      She’s too fat for me.
      I don’t want her, you can have her,
      She’s too fat for me,
      She’s too fat,
      She’s too fat,
      She’s too fat for me. Oh,

      …and like this monster, there’s more, much, much more.

      https://www.google.com/search?q=i+don%27t+want+her+you+can+have+her+lyrics&rlz=1C1JZAP_enGB911GB911&oq=I+don%27t+want+her&aqs=chrome.8.0i355j46j0l8.14206j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

        1. Thank you BoB and Good morning, I didn’t think YouTube would have it, so I could only find the lyrics.

          I remember my Father singing it, late 40s or early 50s.

    8. That is a woman who has never practiced law outside of a government department.

      She’s a career civil servant, not a lawyer.

    9. Unlike Our Betty, who was once a Tiller Girl, I doubt Lady S-M has ever had to worry about sexual harassment.

    1. mng Bob, obligatory 3rd wave [Kenya power cut here just now] and Google server controlled Kenya weather forecast “mostly cloudy” and it’s been hammering with rain for 2 hours

    1. Gosh! Second piece from the MSM criticising the horror show that is Boris Johnson. Are some members of the MSM, despite their cheerleading for Johnson & Co over the last year, now getting a wee bit concerned about the course Johnson is following?

    2. Good morning

      Interesting to read Hodges last paragraph.

      “Back in 2019, I said the Prime Minister had to choose between his team and Team Carrie. Today the choice is even starker. What does Boris care about most? His fiancee? Or his country “

      2. My parents often said “It is better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave”.
        So CarrieOn coining it.
        I am currently looking for a nonagenarian billionaire with a dodgy heart but I think Jerry Hall has beaten me to it.

        1. I think our parents were that type of generation to say things like that .

          Funny really , I know a lot of couples who have huge age gaps between them .

          I thought at first you meant Jerry Hall v Mick Jagger … then I engaged my weary old brain and laughed out loud !

    4. Not sodding back off – BUGGER OFF!

      She wasn’t elected. She has no business whinging about government policy. The only person Boris should listen to is the public. That means cutting taxes, shredding the state and cutting taxes.

  11. The Observer view on Boris Johnson’s fitness for office. 25 April 2021.

    Johnson’s premiership embodies perfectly what happens when you get government by people who are motivated not by public service or the national interest but who instead see politics as a power trip that will eventually pave the way for lucrative financial gain. The lack of vision, integrity and principle leaves a vacuum that gets filled with petty infighting, briefing and counter-briefing and obsessing about whether the furnishing of official residences caters to personal tastes. The Observer has called for significant tightening of rules around political lobbying and a strengthening of the ministerial code, but the sad truth is no set of rules in the world can inject integrity, selflessness and leadership into the character of a man who has none.

    I am no fan of Johnson who is certainly a Liar and a Peculant but this condemnation should surely apply across the board. Two of his predecessors, Blair and Cameron, are certainly War Criminals while the whole political structure is rotten to its core. Parliament; the House of Lords and Commons, are anti-democratic self-serving organisations, indifferent to the views of the people that they purportedly represent. In a more Vital Society they would have been swept away and something more representative installed!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/25/observer-view-on-boris-johnson-fitness-for-office

    4. Thank you Minty, and to save others rushing to Google (who almost insisted I meant petulant) there is one site that defines Peculant

      Peculation is a word that should be used more as a euphemism but hasn’t really caught on. It’s defined as;

      The appropriation of money or property held in trust for another by a servant, employee, or official; esp. the embezzlement of public funds belonging to a ruler, state, or government.

      https://etyman.wordpress.com/tag/peculant/

      1. Thank you Nan. It’s almost a neologism. I was feeling a little mischievous!

      2. I should have read down:

        peculant | The Etyman™ Language Bloghttps://etyman.wordpress.com › tag › peculant
        30 Jul 2013 — We can trace it back to post-classical Latin peculatio, the embezzlement of money or property, which in turn comes from classical Latin

  13. Good morning all.

    Another bright start up here in Derbyshire with 1°C in the yard.

  14. Good morning all.

    Another bright start up here in Derbyshire with 1°C in the yard.

      1. Be careful here, please. The letter, “a”, amongst others, is considering taking legal action against those who leave the letter out of their communications, and other writings. Together the letters “a” and “u” are to bring actions against people for being discriminatory and vowellist. They are intending to seek substantial damages against the character “*” and its adherents. The letters “i”, “e” and “o”are considering their position.

    3. And they wonder why the Church is dying.

      I think it’s down to shame – specifically a lack of. It infests everything these days.

      If you’re not ashamed of your lack of intelligence, your inability to write, your own behaviour, how you raise your children, how you behave then you can do and say whatever you like. Act how you like. There is no shame to be had. Thus you have to destroy those institutions that make you **feel shame**.

      Nationhood, love of country, merit, effort, faith, integrity, decency, hard work – the Hard Left hates them all (and yes, apologies to All Things Bright and Beautiful). To excuse their behaviour, arrogance, hatred, selfishness, bile and poison the Left set about to destroy those things. If you love it, they want to kill it because it helps them to erase you: the things making them feel shame.

      When you are made ashamed of yourself then the Left have won. You no longer reflect the better person. You are no longer the superior character. No longer the paragon their goblinoid malice so fears.

      They’re just driven by hate. Welby is no different.

      2. The CofE under Welby regards Jesus Christ as a bit of an embarrassment.

        In fact I believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to declare that he has very recently become a homosexual and so his is no longer Just In but Just Out!

  16. Good morning, all. Sunny – no frost – but a cold easterly wind.

    “No 10 rages at ‘nasty, sexist’ Dominic Cummings as he is said to be plotting to accuse Boris Johnson of being so determined to avoid another lockdown he would tolerate big Covid death toll”

    Sounds like Carrion in full rage mode.

    1. When it reaches level of “sensationalised, personalised identity” politics we know they’ve lost control of the point and nothing pertinent to counter with. In other words, nothing to read here

  18. A question for Brett Kavanaugh: who gets a second chance? 25 April 2021.

    Let me tell you a tale of two Bretts. The first is supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh. In 2018 Kavanaugh was credibly accused of committing sexual assault when he was a 17-year-old; a culture war promptly broke out. Liberals largely argued that the accusations should preclude Kavanaugh from a lifetime appointment on the supreme court. The right, meanwhile, cried “cancel culture”. Even if Kavanaugh was guilty of what he was being accused of, they argued, what you did as a teenager shouldn’t ruin the rest of your life.

    This is the first paragraph so fortunately you can stop here and go off and read something moderately truthful. There is nothing remotely credible about the accusations against Kavanaugh. They were fabrications to prevent his appointment to the Supreme Court. His accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, could remember nothing of the alleged attack on her that could be checked. The place, the time, how she got there, how she left, witnesses, all these were absent from her accusations. It was a disgraceful exhibition and destroyed Kavanaugh not only as a member of SCOTUS but as a man.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/24/brett-kavanaugh-week-in-patriarchy-arwa-mahdawi

    1. And all this was cheered on by Biden Harris and Pelosi.

      I would get enormous satisfaction if BLM targetted the mansions and ultra-rich compounds of the hypocritical Democrats and their families and razed them to the ground.

    2. what not overly keen to join the dots is Amy Corey Barrett signed a book deal worth $2 million with a US book publisher. US Supreme Court for hire then

          2. she was bought off post Trump putting her in, accepting he had a very ltd choice. The outcome of Supreme Court non actions over US election make it clearer day by day that the Demented Joe team agenda is against what the majority of US citizens want. It was a stitch up and everybody knows it

          3. Absolute rubbish.

            Are you seriously suggesting that she would be so easily compromised by the Democrats?

            Why on Earth would the Republicans try to stop the legal review of an election they thought was stolen?

          4. ok, go and follow the money and draw your conclusions. Like UK political parties, Dems, Reps are merely labels controlleld by corporate interests.

            Most Americans are adamantly against defunding the police, African Americans included. Against Democrat plans to pack the Supreme Court. Against leaving their border(s) open and rewarding those who choose to come here illegally by giving them free goods and
            services [whenever Harris can work it where they are]. Against the concept and practice of unlimited immigration. At least a slight majority of Americans realize abolishing the oil, gas, and coal industries and enacting the Green New Deal will destroy their nation’s economy and dramatically worsen their lives, and those of their descendants. Do not believe man-caused global warming/climate change is an existential threat to their country or the planet as a whole.

            If she wasn;t compromised she wouldn’t have signed her book deal.

          5. Your spiel has absolutely nothing to do with her appointment, it is a straw man.

            Given the alleged subject matter of the book it would seem to underline her independence rather than compromise it.

          6. it’s all inter linked. Corporate structures either side of Dem/Rep divide claiming their stake. You’ll recall many Reps sloped shoulders for their own vested interests [RINO] re vote counting. ACB appointment was just before election, so why sign book deal immediately afterwards if independent?

          7. You believe what you wish, but I fail to see why the book in question is problematical as it is supposed to be dealing with how judges are not supposed to bring their personal feelings into their rulings. And I certainly fail to see how she can have been so easily “bought”.

            I cannot know, but I also strongly suspect that the book deal was being negotiated before she was even put forward by Trump.

          8. agree totally with your final point. There’s the crux of matter. And the reality will never be exposed as it exposes the whole system and players involved

          9. Those who want to defund the police should have their protection withdrawn. When their number calls, it isn’t answered.

          11. Same for those who attack medical people or damage ambulances.
            And those who start fire to get Fire Engines there to damage them – the water sprayed should be able to have an added dye/Smartwater ( by just opening a lever ) and then spray the crims with it. Then once found by the Police – charge them for the damage to the Fire eqpt. A bill for thousands might open their eyes.

          12. ok, go and follow the money and draw your conclusions. Like UK political parties, Dems, Reps are merely labels controlleld by corporate interests.

            Most Americans are adamantly against defunding the police, African Americans included. Against Democrat plans to pack the Supreme Court. Against leaving their border(s) open and rewarding those who choose to come here illegally by giving them free goods and
            services [whenever Harris can work it where they are]. Against the concept and practice of unlimited immigration. At least a slight majority of Americans realize abolishing the oil, gas, and coal industries and enacting the Green New Deal will destroy their nation’s economy and dramatically worsen their lives, and those of their descendants. Do not believe man-caused global warming/climate change is an existential threat to their country or the planet as a whole.

            If she wasn;t compromised she wouldn’t have signed her book deal.

          13. ok, go and follow the money and draw your conclusions. Like UK political parties, Dems, Reps are merely labels controlleld by corporate interests.

            Most Americans are adamantly against defunding the police, African Americans included. Against Democrat plans to pack the Supreme Court. Against leaving their border(s) open and rewarding those who choose to come here illegally by giving them free goods and
            services [whenever Harris can work it where they are]. Against the concept and practice of unlimited immigration. At least a slight majority of Americans realize abolishing the oil, gas, and coal industries and enacting the Green New Deal will destroy their nation’s economy and dramatically worsen their lives, and those of their descendants. Do not believe man-caused global warming/climate change is an existential threat to their country or the planet as a whole.

            If she wasn;t compromised she wouldn’t have signed her book deal.

          14. she was bought off post Trump putting her in, accepting he had a very ltd choice. The outcome of Supreme Court non actions over US election make it clearer day by day that the Demented Joe team agenda is against what the majority of US citizens want. It was a stitch up and everybody knows it

    3. But – she accused. Evidence and facts are not relevant these days. There is also no considering for time. However, this does mean that in a decade or two Blair will be charged with war crimes and hanged, Mandelson with corruption, fraud and theft and impoverished and thrown in jail and Brown forced to admit his arrogant idiocy in wasting public money.

  19. Emergency Call

    A blonde goes into a world-wide message centre to send a message to her mother in Poland.

    The man tells her it will be $300. She exclaims, “I don’t have any money, but I would do ANYTHING to get a message to my mother in Poland!”

    To that the man asks, “Anything?”

    And the blonde says, “Yes, anything!”

    With that, the man says, “Follow me.”

    He walks into the next room and tells her, “Come in and close the door.” She does.

    He then says, “Get on your knees.” She does.

    He then says, “Take down my zipper.” She does.

    He then says, “Go ahead, take it out.”

    With that she takes it out and takes hold of it with both hands.

    The man then says, “Well, go ahead!”

    She brings her mouth closer to it, and while holding it close to her lips, she says, “Hello…Mom?”

  20. This green revolution will turn Britain into a Third World country. 25 April 2021.

    So far, the main thing we have done is to close perfectly good coal-fired power stations. Well, you might say, so much the better for the atmosphere.

    But China, with vast, newly discovered coalfields in Inner Mongolia, keeps opening such stations. In fact, China’s coal-fired power generation is more than ten times bigger than Britain’s entire electricity output from all sources. It is not just China.

    India is also a greedy consumer of coal to make electricity. Both countries make airy promises that one day they will stop doing this, but as long as they carry on, our efforts make as much difference as trying to empty the Atlantic with a teaspoon.

    Just a little quote from Mr Hitchens.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9507781/PETER-HITCHENS-green-revolution-turn-Britain-World-country.html

        1. And, had they got on and built Hinckley C when first planned, it would be close to decommissioning by now!
          That makes me feel old! I worked on the materials part of the initial safety case back in 1988…

        2. mng, all well yr end? Remember the old adage that was given to the Russians over Chernobyl and how to get round it? Change the name for MSM purposes

          2. fair one. Chinese funding’s still in play, zero MSM coverage of course aside French complaints. Areva or something before it was supposed to have restructured [another adage?]

      2. I find it absolutely dire to watch – so have already stopped. The courses ( some made out of crowd barriers in city centres, others use part of an established track ) always seem to have a ridiculously sharp narrow chicane, designed to cause crashes. The noise is a whirr of the motor changing pitch, not the screaming of the old V10 or V12 engines that got the blood pumping. And the commentators try their best to make it exciting – and fail miserably. No mention seems to be made of speed, only laptime ( more brainwashing? )

        2. I wouldn’t even watch FI, but that seemed shockingly dire, expensive Scalextric.

    3. Common sense matters nothing to the idiot Left.

      I do believe the green nonsense will only end when the state is utterly starved of our money. When it simply has nothing to waste, it cannot waste it on what we do not want.

      A starting point must be for MPs – and all the Lefty greens troughing away on our money – to be served sewage filled water and made to drink it. That is the future they force on us. We’re just bringing it closer to them.

    4. After the disaster of Chernobyl and its nuclear fallout a miraculous thing happened. Lettuces in Switzerland were contaminated but as soon as the atmosphere reached the border and moved into France lettuces were no longer contaminated and could be sold and eaten freely.

      Our green politicians clearly think that pollution from burning coal in China stays in China and will not affect anyone else so it is our responsibility to eradicate the miniscule contribution to the problem that we make even if it means total destruction of our way of life and the collapse of our economy.

      1. I remember reading, shortly after the Chernobyl incident, that sheep in North Wales, Lancashire, Cumbria and SW Scotland were apparently showing levels of radioactivity in tests. No one asked what the levels were in those areas before Chernobyl blew, or if the far closer Sellafield could be to blame for such readings. The Irish have long had doubts about what Sellafield/Windscale was doing to the waters of the Irish Sea.

      2. The accident at Windscale resulted in milk production soaring according to the farmers who were asking for compensation. Non-existent cows and some bulls were producing milk apparently.

    1. I’m waiting to see Neil’s new TV Channel. If this is an example, the flight from the BBC will resemble the Israelites departure from Egypt!

    2. I’m waiting to see Neil’s new TV Channel. If this is an example, the flight from the BBC will resemble the Israelites departure from Egypt!

    3. They don’t care. Government doesn’t have to do anything/ it just appeases the violent and suppresses the decent.

      1. Couldn’t agree more. And they continue to wave in those who want to cause violence and to destroy us.

    4. Is Andrew Neil the only journalist who is prepared to press his questions home and expose the sheer mendacity and hypocrisy of government spoke people who cannot honestly answer questions which are off their script?

      No wonder Andrew Neil is so despised by politicians and the woke.

      1. Those who disliked him went to extraordinary lengths to blacken him for his friendship with young lady some years ago. He simply took the “so what?” approach.

  22. 331978+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Sunday 25 April: Vaccine success should prompt the PM to reconsider his roadmap
    A ?
    Should that NOT really read the manipulation of facts & figures plus
    incarcerating actions taken really brings to a head the question of ” what’s to be done with the philandering treacherous turk / tory ( ino) party” ?

    Also

    In view of the serious state of the Nation what to be done with the lab party
    past recent history mass uncontrolled immigration, mass paedophilia,
    ( JAY ) rotherham plus.

    Both parties plain as day can be seen to be a coalition along with the lib/dems/greens, mass uncontrolled immigration ongoing via DOVER.
    Will the herd ever realise they are supporting / voting for an extinct party name, that in reality they are, and for the last three decades been supporting / voting for a same odious mindset coalition.

    1. 331978+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Put this up late last night, will chance with the repeat being castigated.

      Could it be the pill is a genuine cure for a mainly political motivated placabo covid.

      Revealed: How a single pill home cure for Covid could be available this year

      1. Yep, compulsory birth bill for all woke lefties; we don’t need any further grist to this broken mill.

    2. it’s way past that, one group consisting of any label you like lib/lab/con/dems/green/whatevershadeofgray/lgbt follwing their own myopic rules

      1. 331978+ up ticks,
        Morning AWK,
        I am really fully aware it is well past the time that pro English / GB actions should have been taken and such is the case that a daily reminder is a MUST.

        The electorate are STILL supporting and voting for mass uncontrolled immigration/ paedophilia umbrella parties,ie
        party BEFORE children’s welfare, 1400/1600 rape & abuse
        victims, rotherham ( JAY ) report.

        The main parties ARE an anti United Kingdom coalition that was clearly shown right up until the referendum result.

        The current state of these Isles show me again & again there are NOT many pairs of safe hands among the electorate.

        1. within the existing current system there are no safe hands. Referendum result was the warning light for all main parties given intent was remain and also Clinton beating Trump. People both sides of the pond threw the ultimate spanner in the works. Now they’ve got Demented Joe and Johnston, it’s nothing more than a corporate attempt to force through their agenda. the issue is, aside people on here and a few other sensible sites, the unknown is howmany have been MSM / SM “programmed”? The next elections will give clear pointer when it comes to manipulation with the connivance of MSM

          1. 331979+ up ticks,
            AWK,
            Precisely, the 6th May for starters as I repeatedly post will tell a story.

            Reset has to be voted for along with giving the muslim ideology imams a louder shout ALL has to be condoned via the ballot booth.

            The electorate can achieve this, look at what they have achieved regarding the state of the nation currently.

          2. the legacy of manifestos being nothing more than utopian toilet paper. Post 6th May voters having voted for a green wheelie bin with a turban on the lid only to find out once elected “via illegal manipulation” the real agenda emerging. Nothing’s changes. those on here are familiar with this

          8. May 6th – or whenever they get round to counting the votes. It will probably be on Monday 10th. after the weekend has been spent ‘disinfecting’ the ballot papers – “because of covid …….”

          10. 331979+ up ticks,
            Morning Anne,
            Then if that is the case ( another South Thanet) then we, the
            herd, the peoples, deserve ALL the odious consequences that
            reset will reveal.
            What would worry people some currently is the fact that what time we have ongoing is in the hands of treacherous political idiots, and worst still in many cases unintentional electoral idiots.

          11. No worries there. The ballot papers have already been completed and purified.

          13. Tested how many by the Covid response. People afraid to even breathe… so, they win.

    3. Yep, the state. They’re all part of the same incompetent, abusive amorphous blob of expensive, inefficient, wasteful idiots obsessed with doing what they want and stuff the consequences. It’s solely about big fat state getting fatter.

      1. 331978+ up ticks,
        Morning W,
        The “state ” in my book is the Country, Nation, the political establishment is the governance parties that at this moment in time are the lab/lib/con/greens, & are IMO a coalition.

        As such, an anti independent Britain in NON actions taken and issues such as the DOVER allowed.

        This odious coalition has, can be clearly seen via the polling booth for the past three decades to have the consent of the people’s.

  23. I knew the weather would change when we bought two nice recliner chairs for the garden

  24. Off topic.
    The tweet of the day on radio 4 is the hoopoe. I didn’t realise HG was listening to the radio in another room, so went outside to look for it.
    Ooops.

        1. I like the little squirrels, but there is a cat prowling nearby, so there is no point trying to feed them.

          As for birds, too many magpies. And I dislike the Canada geese that appear at this time of year, but they go eventually.

          1. We get red squirrels, no greys, but they are usually only around first thing in the morning.

            There is sufficient easily accessible food for them that they never attempt to get at the peanuts from the feeders.

            Unfortunately peanuts are very expensive here and I’ve not been able to get to the UK to my usual supplier, so it’s been fairly short commons for the regular feeder visitors.

    2. Upupa epops epops. Can be spotted in the province of Gerona, Spain, and occasionally they reach southern England, IIRC.

          1. We get all those in the garden.
            I recommend Rob Hume’s “Complete Birds of Britain and Europe”, RSPB, it comes with a CD of 99 birdsongs

  25. Breaking News – Latest Climate change research has discovered that the rise in CO2 levels doesn’t in fact cause the climate to change, it is now believed that is is caused by mugs going out and buying garden furniture and patio sets.

      1. If I eat a well done steak (aka shoe leather) will that produce enough carbon to save us?

    2. In yesterdays Times mag there was an article and it stated that eating a large steak was the equivalent of driving 40 miles in a petrol powered car.
      Well,………. as long as you don’t drive 40 miles and 40 home again after the steak eh !!!

  26. Morning all.
    I don’t have much time today but I’ve just been watching Marr and Angela Rayner, Deputy for Labour, ripping into the government and it;s attempts to cover up all it’s dodgy dealings over covid supplies and deals and rates for special mates.
    I quite liked her.

    2. That reminds me, Hat, I must log out of here and go to the local Garden Centre to buy some aubretia. Good morning (and hopefully see you all later), dear NoTTLers.

    2. How many Nottlers learnt this by heart when they were young? We had to learn poems by heart at my prep school and I am very glad we did.

      Sea Fever: by John Masefield

      I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
      And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
      And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
      And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

      I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
      Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
      And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
      And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

      I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
      To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
      And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
      And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

      1. …and, Richard, there is S Milligan’s version:

        I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and sky,
        I left my shoes and socks there, I wonder if they’re dry.

    3. ” Downhill ski resorts have been closed all winter ” – what about the uphill ones?

      1. Cross-country ski-ing was allowed. But the ski lifts – “rémontées mechaniques” – were not allowed to be operated.

        1. People were still skiing I think, but the old way – walk up to the top, ski down.

        1. A grueller..the downhill skiers come down it..
          The cross-country skiers go up it!

          1. Monsterbakken they call it here. A killer of a hill. And these lasses just fly up it!

  31. Betty Boothroyd, 91, ‘investigated by ethics watchdog for missing sexual harassment training’
    The former Commons Speaker is facing a formal probe despite telling the standards commissioner she had been recovering from heart surgery

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/24/betty-boothroyd-91-investigated-ethics-watchdog-missing-sexual/

    Yet more depths plumbed!

    She was probably just about the last politician to have won the affection and support of most of the British people.

    They had to try and punish her for it, didn’t they?

  32. Breaking News – The NHS has found a cure for the midlife crises, it’s called the Covid Vaxx being given to 30 year old’s this week

    1. Wasn’t dying at “Carousel” at 30 yrs old the cure for over population in the 70’s film Logan’s Run?

  33. ‘Morning, all. Listening to the wireless, I heard some politician referred to as a “Blairite” and this got me wondering what exactly is meant by the word, what political philosophy is followed by “Blairites”? It’s a term you often hear applied to so many politicians that I decided to look-up the definition.

    Blairite (ˈblɛəraɪt) – noun – adjective

    1. n. A disciple of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, former UK Prime Minister and war-criminal. A politician without moral compass, an unethical equivocator motivated solely by venality and greed, a psychopath with a grandiose sense of self-worth and an implacable urge to interfere, to regulate and control the lives of others.

    2. adj. pertaining to the Anthony Charles Lynton Blair school of thought

    © W⚓pedia 2010

    Thought you were rid of Blair? Seems to me that the overwhelming majority of MPs – regardless of party – and certainly all Johnson’s Cabinet could be described as “Blairites”. No wonder the country’s screwed.
    :¬(

    2. Well they’re all chomping at the same trough, so I guess that makes them Blairites.

  35. The cynic in me is rarely surprised by whatever woke idiocy is presented these days be it covid,green or historical revisionism but I admit the revelation in the Times yesterday that
    “Shakespear had an African mistress and child” actually made my jaw drop

    1. I thought his Dark Mistress was the Earl of Southampton, so Billy is still with the C21 zeitgeist.

    2. The pinned tweet at the top of Erol Webber’s twitter account is pretty funny too.

    3. Poor bloody thing!
      I must admit, when I first saw the film I had a similar reaction at that scene!

    1. Cue for another little story:

      New Baby

      They had had their sperm mixed together and a surrogate mother was artificially inseminated.

      When the baby was born Elton and David were ushered into a ward where a dozen babies were lying in their cots, eleven of them crying and screaming.

      In the corner, one baby was lying serenely. A nurse came over to both of them and indicated that the happy child was theirs.

      “Isn’t it wonderful?” Elton asked David. “All these crying babies…and yet our baby is so content. This just proves the superiority of gay love!

      The nurse said, “Oh sure, he’s happy now, but just watch what happens when I pull the dummy out of his arse.”

      1. Happy Sunday NTN. That reminds me of the old joke. An elderly Gay man with a walking stick gets on a crowded tube train, a young man sees him & gets up and offers him his seat, naturally he takes it & later on sits down.

  39. Originally published in the Speccie; reprinted in today’s Sunday Mail

    Lloyd Evans
    Theatre’s final taboo: fun

    The stage has become a pleasure-free zone in which snarling dramatists fight over their pet political causes
    From magazine issue: 17 April 2021

    How will the theatre look after lockdown? A clue emerges in a statement made by Guy Jones, the literary associate of the Orange Tree in Richmond. ‘The victims of this year are many. Homelessness is on the rise, loneliness is deadly, the monster of racism lurks in every-day interactions… and many of the inequalities we live with are written into the systems in which we are asked to participate.’

    ‘The victims’. That’s his starting point. It might seem odd that a theatre should prioritise the injured and the aggrieved, as if the stage were a tribunal or a public court where justice is dispensed. But that’s how theatres see themselves. Lockdown and the rise of BLM in 2020 have created a host of new causes to be fought over by snarling dramatists. Meanwhile, words like ‘showbiz’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘fun’ are almost taboo. The boss of the Old Vic, Matthew Warchus, seems to shudder at the thought of giving an audience a good time. ‘Intelligent entertainment is a transformative necessity, not a luxury,’ he says sternly on the theatre’s website. ‘Fiction can change individuals and societies for the better.’ Where’s the evidence for this? Russia in 1900 had, arguably, the greatest fictional back-catalogue in the world but that didn’t change its society ‘for the better’ during the 20th century.

    Warchus is, perhaps, the type of activist who falls for his own half-truths. Large parts of our theatrical culture have been captured by pamphleteers and political dabblers who hate pleasure and want to foment a revolution. Log on to the National Theatre and you’ll find a website that looks like a news channel. ‘National Theatre declares climate emergency,’ it says. Where did it acquire that level of expertise, and why does it consider itself an authority on science? No one else does. The site also features a denunciation by the boss, Rufus Norris, of sexual bullying. Fair enough. But a futile gesture. Sexual harassment is a crime. If staff at the NT are molesting the actresses, the police should be called. Getting the boss to pose for a close-up like a Wild West sheriff chasing the bad guys out of town is an absurdity.

    The Young Vic under Kwame Kwei-Armah has become BLM’s semi-official London headquarters (a description he would probably relish). Forthcoming shows include Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle and a refugee play, Freedom Project: grave, no doubt important subjects more suited to an investigation by a parliamentary committee than a theatre.

    Other playhouses are trilling from the same song-sheet. Hampstead Theatre’s home page announces The Death of a Black Man, written in 1975. Over at Stratford East you can look forward to The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, which is billed as ‘a woman’s quest for justice after the racially motivated murder of her twin brother’. Three other new shows are on offer. Extinct asks why Green activists break the law when tackling climate change. After the End is about two colleagues trapped in a fall-out shelter with no food in the wake of a nuclear attack. (This is billed as a comedy.) And there’s Hysterical! A History of Hysteria (reviewed in these pages last week), which is another woman’s ‘personal quest’. The performer wants to ‘shake off a label that has been placed on women for more than 2,500 years’.

    These three plays encapsulate the theatre’s current obsessions: race-hate, climate panic and psychological meltdown. None of them is remotely conducive to a fun night out. And naturally Matthew Warchus has snapped into line at the Old Vic. He offers a filmed monologue, Burn, about ‘changing attitudes around mental health and addiction’, which includes a scene where a depressed woman of colour has a nightmare and screams, ‘The world’s on fire!’ His theatre also advertises a show called Aisha about ‘the history of Black women’s political power’.

    At Shepherd’s Bush, the local playhouse is so convinced of its moral excellence that it supports prejudice without realising it. The Bush offers bursaries of £7,500 to theatre–makers with ‘Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee’ status. No whites, in other words. So there it is. Systemic racism but with a smiley face. A different sort of systemic racism. Kind, caring, helpful systemic racism. Trying its best. But the result is the same — a colour bar. So if there’s a young Joan Littlewood or a budding Caryl Churchill in Shepherd’s Bush, the local theatre will shut her out. In the end it doesn’t matter to individuals with talent because they’ll always find a way. But it’s sad to see the Bush practising apartheid rather than championing art.

    Most subsidised theatres appear to have copied their manifestos from a single source. They use the same glib boasts about their work: ‘daring… disruptive… open–minded… ground-breaking… fearless… internationalist’. Some of them mention a taste for ‘unintimidating’ drama. This is code for self-censorship, of course. And it’s clear that theatres monitor their output very carefully, and that they work from a narrow and inflexible creed. Here it is, roughly.

    Migrants are saints. Cops are evil. The planet’s dying. The poor are exploited. Human biology is sexist. Refugees are cool. Everyone needs a therapist. Brexiteers are angry xenophobes. Britain is full of white bigots but mysteriously free of prejudice imported from other cultures. All religions are absurd apart from Islam and the Green craze, which are sacrosanct. It’s right to praise the EU, Jeremy Corbyn, trans women and BLM. And anyone who challenges this catechism is a dangerous lunatic who needs re-education or a spell in jail.

    It’s likely that theatre-makers know, at some instinctive level, that they have little chance of reshaping Britain according to this belief system. They’re simply too far from the levers of power. The primary engines of change are parliament and Whitehall. At the next remove are the broadcasters and newspapers. Then the boardrooms of the tech giants and other multinationals. After that, charities, thinktanks and lobby groups. The theatre is perhaps next in line, fifth, but its audiences are small and its voice doesn’t reach beyond its own cosy clubhouse. The fact is that the theatre has as much impact on society as jazz has on gardening.

    And because its interests are so narrow, the number of topics it disregards is vast. Can you imagine a play that looks at Islam’s attitude to homosexuality, or a script that criticises the NHS, or a show that questions the role of migrant charities in facilitating people smugglers? It couldn’t happen. How about a drama set in a village that resists an aggressive traveller camp, or a monologue by a former trans woman who regrets having surgery, or a show that asks if Donald Trump actually won that election, or a drama exposing the fight against climate change as a power-grab by predatory multinationals?

    Such ideas are unthinkable. And yet issues like this are discussed daily up and down the land. Theatres avoid them. And so people avoid theatres. Our subsidised theatre has become an expensive irrelevance, a gilded junk shop full of high-cost, low-value trinkets, reserved for a privileged elite. And all the talk of audacious, radical, pluralist drama should be dismissed. The reality is that our theatres are run by small-minded, ultra-conservative, brain-dead scaredy-cats.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/theatre-s-final-taboo-fun

    2. Let them get on with it, but stop ALL public funding other than that which they can get from the box-office.

    3. If theatres weren’t subsidised by the state they would be closed. Why should taxpayers have to pay for this rubbish – they wouldn’t want to buy a ticket for which they had already paid.

      1. Careful with that argument, Jules.
        It is but a short step from inviting them to tell us we will attend in order to be (re)educated – #Betty Boothroyd – or be sanctioned for racism.

        1. If I go to the theatre I’d want to see something entertaining or uplifting – not crap like the above.

      2. Happy Sunday Jules. The biggest & most costliest theatre for the UK tax payer is Parliament itself with the HOC & HOL theatre of the absurd

    4. And in the push for importance of skin colour in roles – Ore Oduba is playing for a few shows – in the new tour of Rocky Horror Picture Show – as Brad Majors ( All American Lad ).

    5. monologue by a former trans woman who regrets having surgery
      This channet is a bit bitter but here makes a good point, I think. The grass ain’t always greener the other side of the fence…
      https://youtu.be/PBaOeKChJqc

      2. The grass is always greener…
        Edit: – should have read your comment more carefully!

      3. These articles rather undermine the idea that trans people have the brain of their desired sex in the wrong body. These people seem to have no idea what it was like to be a man before they transitioned.

        1. Well, I’m not surprised. You have to be a man or woman to understand what it’s like to live as a man or woman. Nobody understands just by being told, because so much of it is what you grew up with that it’s normal and not different or noteworthy.

          1. The differences that are mentioned are rather superficial ones that I could have guessed though. I think these people’s problem is that they are thinking like women.
            It is surprising that they appeared so very ignorant of how men think and behave.

    6. The Young Vic under Kwame Kwei-Armah has become BLM’s semi-official London headquarters & is it going to remake the classic ” Gone with the Windrush ” starring a cast of all black Confederates with White faces !

    7. The rot set in a long time ago. I recall a theatre trip to the Little Theatre in Bristol to see an appalling play called “Saved” which included a group of yobs stoning a baby to death in it’s pram.

    8. When I go to see a play, I go out to be ENTERTAINED. A quaint notion, I know, but I do.

      1. He is 33 inches from paw to paw! Getting larger by the day. Pickles is not quite as large – but getting there!

  42. 331979+ up ticks,
    The intake is expected to be made up via the HOL / HOC, with biden as a
    role model token leader.

    They will be exempt from having to declare a second job.

    Dt,
    Bomb-sniffing rats to be recruited by British Army

  43. 331979+ up ticks,
    The intake is expected to be made up via the HOL / HOC, with biden as a
    role model token leader.

    They will be exempt from having to declare a second job.

    Dt,
    Bomb-sniffing rats to be recruited by British Army

  44. I see that Biden is going to make his first overseas visit to the UK and Belgium. May we expect to be further infected with a variant of the far-left socialist virus that is eating away at the very fabric of what used to be the ‘United’ States? Obviously he will be accompanied by a plane load of woke minders and prompters who will tell him what to say.

    The adverse consequences of Biden’s actions are being felt far and wide, but rarely mentioned in the press, which is obsessed with wokeness and racialism.

    For example, Biden’s appeasement of Iran is causing ripples throughout the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE are banning the export of fruit and vegetables from Lebanon because Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, is using the exports to smuggle drugs, in an attempt to undermine Iran’s enemies. Also, another of Iran’s proxies, the Houthis in Yemen, were listed as a terrorist organisation by Trump but were de-listed by Biden. Consequently, the Houthis have a new lease of life which includes sending explosive drones into Saudi Arabia every day and the Yemeni army has to waste the country’s scarce resources to continue its battle against the Houthi militia in several diverse governorates.

    Furthermore, the Houthis are not afraid to display what malevolent people they are. Below is a still from a video of them giving the Nazi salute while chanting “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews.” Adolf would have been proud of them, as Biden apparently is!

    In the meantime, Iran is continuing to supply Hezbollah with arms and funding. Lebanon’s top Christian cleric, Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai, criticized Hezbollah in an interview last Monday, hitting out at the “Iranian military force in Lebanon” for deciding wars in Israel, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He said “the issue of arms should be addressed with Iran because Iran is the source.”

    By the way, the word ‘Hezbollah’ (حزب الله) means the ‘Party of God’ in Arabic! I doubt if God is very flattered!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/951217d534ea9848329b400df58c8de80283552fcfdabd261c33a14f22ca8e31.jpg

        1. He’ll be exempt – just like those coming from Calais.
          He’ll be exempt – just like those jihadists coming from Africa & the Mid East .
          there that’s fixed it for you!

    3. Nazi salutes no less…must be dangerous people.If you want to see real nazis go to the US puppet state,Ukraine.
      They’re the real thing!

    4. I would like to see a protest against Biden equalling those against Trump when he visited.

      1. I’m sitting in the kitchen in a gansie and a scarf, wondering whether to light the stove when it’s bright sunlight outside (but I’m cold!). My father would scoff greatly if I admitted to him that I’m heating the house in April!

        1. 8C and sunny here, but we’ve had a north wind blowing a hoolie several days now, and it’s pigging chilly!
          I am SO FED UP with being cold, it’s supposed to be spring, FFS. You know, shorts and bear bare arms, not jumpers and puffer jackets (min’e in the wash…).
          ARGH!

          1. I suppose we shouldn’t complain because we’re having a normal spring after a run of warm springs.

          3. Who’s complaining? Put your heating on. What’s the point in being cold when you have the capability of heating your home? It makes no sense to have heating on only at certain times of the year. We have ours on all year round and merely leave the thermostat at 20 degrees.

        2. Well, Germany is often cold at this time of year. Try England – we have had the stove on 24/7 since last September.

        3. Well, Germany is often cold at this time of year. Try England – we have had the stove on 24/7 since last September.

        4. I haven’t had the heating on for three days now. I think that’s a black round thing with a hole in the middle (i e a record) 🙂

    2. Still bright & sunny here and lovely in the sunshine, but still a nip in the air out of the sun.
      I collected the last of this years van loads of logs from the two collection points this morning whilst picking up the paper and am finishing off carrying the bits of dead elm trunk home, then that will be me for collecting logs until I start refilling the woodstacks, probably in December.

      I’ve got sufficient cut, chopped & stacked to last until December 2022, with a full stack’s worth waiting to be sawn.

  48. We no longer need to fear Covid

    Officialdom’s absurdly cautious approach is now impossible to justify given the success of vaccines

    MATT RIDLEY

    The whole aim of practical politics, said HL Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

    It is hard to avoid the impression that officials are alarmed rather than pleased by the fading of the pandemic in Britain. They had a real hobgoblin to hand, and boy did they make the most of it, but it’s now turning into a pussy cat. So they are back to casting around for imaginary ones to justify their draconian – and deliciously popular – command and control over every detail of our lives. Look, variants!

    And yes, the pandemic is fading fast. The vaccine is working “better than we could possibly have imagined”, according to Calum Semple, of the University of Liverpool, based on a study which found that it reduced hospitalisation by 98 per cent. With deaths from the virus now falling by more than 20 per cent a week and with overall mortality from all causes now below the long-term average, “we’ve moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation”, according to Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator on the ONS’s Covid-19 Infection Survey. The UK’s covid positivity rate at 0.2 per cent is now the fifth lowest in the world and lower than Taiwan and Israel.

    Yet there is still barely a peep of optimism from Boris Johnson or Matt Hancock, with the former wrongly crediting lockdown and not vaccines for the fall in infections and gloomily adding: “As we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infections and, sadly, we will see more hospitalisation and deaths.” In summer? With the vulnerable half of the population almost fully vaccinated? With data showing that vaccine reduces hospitalisation by 98 per cent?

    Sure, he was just being cautious, and is haunted by the memory of being too blasé about the virus last year, but there comes a point where such pessimism is itself irresponsible. It condemns the lonely to more anxiety and isolation; it prolongs the wait for treatment for too many cancer victims, for whom every day counts; it messes up the education of children and students; it drives more businesses to the wall; it deepens the national debt.

    These hobgoblins matter too, but the solution to them is not more state intervention but less: to accelerate, not stick to, the timetable to liberate the country. It is still almost two months before we are due to lift the restrictions, and the virus is already struggling to survive. What happened to data not dates?

    Yet the Government’s caution remains popular. Why is this? Because of the pessimism of officialdom – it is a circular argument. People readily believe in hobgoblins, and they rightly took fright at this horrible virus last year, so when Professors Whitty and Vallance tell them it’s still scary out there without a mask on, of course they believe it and resent their neighbours who do not comply. Yet to take that one example, the evidence that mask wearing has contributed to the decline in the virus is surprisingly thin, and especially among children in school mask wearing has been a grisly price to pay. To say so is to risk a furious response because mask wearing is no longer so much about preventing infection as about signalling that you are being careful.

    As a group of doctors in Boston put it last year, “masks are not only tools, they are also talismans that may help increase health care workers’ ‘perceived’ sense of safety, well-being, and trust in their hospitals. Although such reactions may not be strictly logical, we are all subject to fear and anxiety, especially during times of crisis.”

    But, variants! Yes, the virus is evolving: not just mutating, but changing through the selective survival of those mutants in certain environments. Some settings such as hospitals may well have selected for more virulent variants – because these sent you to hospital where more people came into contact with you – while others, such as outdoor gatherings would probably have promoted less harmful, if more infectious, versions. In short, I worry that lockdowns and the confinement of so much spread to healthcare settings may have delayed the taming of the virus.

    In any case if a new variant appears that can evade the vaccine, then the answer is a new vaccine, not a new lockdown. What good would it do to keep us under house arrest forever in the vain hope that such a variant never got into the country in the first place?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/24/no-longer-need-fear-covid/

  49. I just noticed a snippet in the DT front page: “Betty Boothroyd – Former Speaker investigated by ethics watchdog for missing sexual harassment training”. Do they mean she was investigated or she is being investigated? Can’t read the article due to pay wall.

    1. Apparently she was unable to attend her “reeducation” as she was recovering from open heart surgery. She’s 91.

      1. Can you Adam and Eve it? These petty officials just love their power don’t they. I thought she was a brilliant Speaker.

        3. There’s a photo of the petty official further down this thread. One glance tells you all you need to know.

    2. Here you are:-

      Betty Boothroyd, 91, ‘investigated by ethics watchdog for missing sexual harassment training’
      The former Commons Speaker is facing a formal probe despite telling the standards commissioner she had been recovering from heart surgery

      By
      Jack Hardy

      Baroness Boothroyd, the former Commons Speaker, is facing an investigation by Parliament’s ethics watchdog for failing to attend a sexual harassment course, it was reported on Saturday night.

      The 91-year-old did not attend a training session – which is compulsory for peers, but not MPs – because she was recovering from open-heart surgery.

      But despite informing the standards commissioner of her medical condition, she was told a formal probe would still be opened into her conduct, the Mail on Sunday reported.

      She is one of 60 peers facing investigation over their failure to attend the session, called Valuing Everyone, run by a controversial consultancy which has also overseen Parliament’s unconscious bias training.

      In correspondence shared with the newspaper, Lady Boothroyd told the standards watchdog: “The reason I have not been able to respond to the requirements is due to the fact that early in March 2020, I was advised by two consultants to leave London and isolate at my home in the country.

      “I had [an] aorta valve replacement followed by [a] leak in [the] mitral valve. The respiratory consultant in particular insisted I stay out of London and in the country.”

      Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, the House of Lords commissioner for standards, asked in her response whether the medical condition meant Lady Boothroyd could not attend the course online. Lady Boothroyd said this was the case.

      The following day, however, Ms Scott-Moncrief announced she would be investigating Lady Boothroyd regardless.

      The peer told the Mail on Sunday: “I’m very happy to be trained when this is all over – you’re never too old to learn.”

      Neil O’Brien, the Tory MP, told the newspaper: “The idea that Betty Boothroyd, who is one of the most widely respected parliamentarians of her generation, is some kind of threat because she hasn’t done some online course is beyond laughable.”
      24 April 2021 • 10:32pm

        1. A selection of BTL Comments:-

          Robert Spowart
          25 Apr 2021 8:15AM
          Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, the House of Lords commissioner for standards, seems to be another who would be better and more suitably employed in Holland protecting polders.

          Andy Holmes
          25 Apr 2021 8:12AM
          Ms Scott-Moncrieff is obviously a f*ckwit. There’s a lot of them about.

          Flag25UnlikeReply

          Robert Spowart
          25 Apr 2021 8:17AM
          @Andy Holmes Correction:-

          “Ms Scott-Moncrieff is obviously a POLITICALLY INSPIRED f*ckwit. There’s a lot of them about.

          D Hargrave
          25 Apr 2021 7:59AM
          lucy scott moncreiff..Mental health and human rights lawyer Lucy Scott-Moncrieff is the vice-president of the Law Society and managing partner of Scott-Moncrieff and Associates .
          at which point I went ahh and understood
          Flag14LikeReply

          Steve Lee
          25 Apr 2021 8:17AM
          @D Hargrave

          S-M & A!
          Isn’t that some sort of perversion involving leather and things? If not it ought to be.
          Flag3LikeReply

          Robert Spowart
          25 Apr 2021 8:18AM
          @D Hargrave This will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about her:-

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_zAxHr-4Q8

          David North-Coombes
          25 Apr 2021 8:33AM
          @Robert Spowart @D Hargrave How do these obviously dysfunctional beings get put into positions of authority where they can satisfy their inadequacies by bullying those less dysfunctional?

          1. I’ve bought better clothing in charity shops. The wrist watch was obviously given away with Brilliantine. She is obviously not a person who wastes large sums of money on personal grooming. She has never wanted to be married…
            How can anyone in the House of Lords be compelled to do anything? How far we have fallen that such a person as she presents herself above can be in any position at all? President of the Law Society? Voted in?

          4. Usually lawyers are compared with sharks, but she seems to be having a whale of a time. ‘Evening, Con.

          6. Fair to grim, as a late colleague (ex-RFA) used to say. Hope you’re doing better.

          7. Sorry to hear that. It hasn’t been too great here since I lost Charlie, but things may be moving on the successor front.

          8. Usually lawyers are compared with sharks, but she seems to be having a whale of a time. ‘Evening, Con.

          9. The watch looks to be a solid gold Rolex – like this perhaps: ROLEX 6062 GOLD – $895,000

          10. Golly! I worked beside a sales manager who went to Thailand for a holiday. When he come back he proudly showed off his fake Rolex.
            I have also received emails from that part of the world offering me not just fake Rolexes but, “the best fake Rolexes available”.

          11. Are you suggesting that a lady that dresses as she does and the people she represents and has to answer to, would wear a fake Rolex designed for idiot men?

          12. I would not dare suggest that. She might sue me, or hit me with it, and brass can cause blood poisoning.

          16. The bitch is badly affecting my mental health and trampling over my human rights, can I sue her?

          22. “One can see what is wrong with the left-wing movement by the ugliness of their women.”

            Arthur Koestler (in a 1944 letter to his friend George Orwell)

        1. BLM is currently presenting a proposal for black criminals to be given firearms by the US government while the Police are disarmed and employees in banks and other retail outlets are banned from carrying guns.

          President Biden is seriously considering the case and it is reported that he is in favour of the idea and he is being supported on this matter by the vice-president.

          The question is:

          Is this fake news or is it genuine news?

      3. That face tells you everything you need to know in his mugshot from a previous crime where he was caught.

        Obviously, me as a white person living several thousand miles away am at fault. I apologise.

        Next time i will shoot on sight.

  51. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9507449/Scientists-say-vaccines-cut-deaths-98-call-end-restrictions.html

    Multiple leading scientists call for an end to ALL Covid
    restrictions as they hit out at ‘confused and contradictory directions’
    and note vaccines cut deaths by 98%

    Experts say Covid-19 is being turned into a ‘mild disease’ in Britain, like the flu

    In an open letter they accuse Ministers and advisers of exaggerating the threat

    The scientists called on the Government to remove all Covid restrictions in June

    1. 331979+ up ticks,
      Afternoon N,
      Then the tories ( ino) tucking a lib / lab under each arm
      remove themselves PERMANENTLY from the house.

  52. Police condemn violent anti-lockdown ‘thugs’ after eight officers are injured during Hyde Park demo. 25 April 2021.

    Violent anti-lockdown demonstrators have been described as “thugs” after eight police officers were injured – including two who had to be take to hospital – during disturbances in Hyde Park.

    A spokesman said: “Eight officers were injured as they worked to disperse crowds in Hyde Park this evening,” it said, adding that missiles including bottles were thrown.

    “Two officers were taken to hospital. Thankfully, they are not believed to be seriously injured.

    Eight oppose thousands and no one is seriously hurt? Give me a break. This demonstration is getting the Propaganda Treatment in every MSM outlet!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/25/police-condemn-violent-anti-lockdown-thugs-eight-officers-injured/

    1. Clearly rentamob arrived after the genuine marchers had gone home. The people marching peacefully earlier in the day were not those throwing missiles.

      1. Probably plain clothes police.

        They all wear cameras now. Show us the footage mr plod.

      2. One has to be on the lookout for behaviour designed to get you to do something for which you can be arrested, when at a non-government-sanctioned demonstration.
        I think the thing is to stay calm and stay where you are, preferably with your back to a wall, whatever happens.

    2. Why were the black looting mob not called thugs when they were throwing missiles and ramming police horses?

    3. Could “…Violent anti-lockdown demonstrators...” better be described as …”violent demonstrators at anti-lockdown…” – change in emphasis makes big change in meaning!

      1. Any medic will tell you that headwounds bleed profusely but are not life threatening. Perhaps they should have considered not antagonising a peaceful protest to create the incident.

  54. As we did not wish to stand in a queue in the street outside our village Polling Station while a wind like a knife from Siberia cuts through us the Sultana and I applied for postal votes. We received the papers in due course.
    Interestingly not much time later we received political leaflets addressed to us individually from the Tories. It described how to complete postal voting papers.
    How do the parties know that we have postal votes? Why should they have that information?
    (On a lighter note we received a leaflet from a Lib/Dem candidate standing in the neighbouring constituency. Well, they are Lib/Dems.)

      1. As a Co-op member I look forward to their handling of my burial, although I have not yet decided the format. Hundy-Mundy burials look like good fun. Wonderful views…

    3. We haven’t had any leaflets yet – but I keep getting “top supporter” emails from the Tories!

    4. In the 2017 GE, Royal Mail mistakenly delivered a number of my leaflets in the adjoining constituency.

      1. And when Khan got voted London Mayor all the Jews got no voting papers or leaflets at all.

    5. You can obtain the postal voting register from the elections office. It’s common practice because people who have postal votes tend to be sure to vote and, obviously can vote early.

  55. Alexei Navalny ENDS hunger strike, saying his ‘demand to be examined by doctors had been met’ after prison leaked footage ‘of him doing pull ups’.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6adf9d2d68493c3844cec4ec3b05333bb3d8f69df9fc3961e64a9445a9c9ffa7.jpg

    Alexei Navalny has ended his hunger strike after three weeks of refusing food to protest his conditions in prison.

    The opposition leader ended the strike after his medics claimed he could die at ‘any minute’ despite leaked footage showing him doing pull ups in prison.

    Earlier on Friday, a video, presumably released with official approval, was released showing Navalny exercising, aimed at countering claims of his ill health

    Pro-Kremlin blogger Sergey Kolyasnikov called it ‘a unique video, in which a man with a sore back, twice poisoned with a deadly military-grade poison, with his failing leg and kidneys … pulls himself up on a horizontal bar.

    Indeed a “miracle” of biblical proportions. Lol!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9503375/Alexei-Navalnys-doctors-urge-end-hunger-strike-warning-soon-kill-him.html

      1. Afternoon Ndovu. Not as far as I’m aware but these can of course be fiddled as well. The photograph above and those others in the text show Navalny has lost a serious amount of weight and three pull-ups do imply that he is weak. They also indicate that the photographs were taken very recently so they are probably genuine. This does not mean that he was at deaths door! He’s a faker!

        1. They could have been taken before his hunger strike.

          I presume he didn’t intend to actually die.

          1. In the photo the first image is of Nalvarny before the hunger strike. The second image is of him during and the third of his bones and clothing rags.

            I wonder why he is still alive.

  56. Greetings @breweruk:disqus you went on Discuss Disqus to seek help ( good luck with that ) you describe yourself as ” Journalist, writer, walker, beer drinker ” living in Hertfordshire & have your own blog https://www.hertfordshirewalker.uk/ perhaps you might like to check out Not the Telegraph Letters a pro-Brexit blog for former Daily Telegraph readers full of jovial beer drinkers, walkers, pet lovers, writers ( of letters to the editor ) but probably no journalists, so if you are not a lefty globalist or EUSSR lover come & check out our community & don’t mind me I’m one of the resident clowns on here.

    1. Sorry Hat, but I’m always slightly wary of people with few comments and private profiles.
      Although it is a generalisation, too many turn out to be trolls.
      Given that, his description of himself and his blog is promising. It reminds me slightly of Darkseid,R.I.P.

        1. I knew that area very well, many years ago, and the walks I read looked well described. If he’s anything like Darkseid, who did similarly for the Llangollen canal, he might fit in well here.

      1. Bred from Norwegian Forest cats and known as Maine Coon cats; just your kind of cat I’d have thought!

    2. No need to apologise. But i posted that link four hours ago and you are the second person to repeat it. Harrumph !

      I suppose some people don’t bother reading all my very, very important posts… :@)

          1. There’s no accounting for taste, but then again, her “moh” is a Southampton supporter, which might explain a lot.

      2. So sorry Phizzee , genuinely sorry .

        I had a quick flick through the comments yesterday , had a busy day , visit to the tip after a bit of a tidy up x

  58. This is the only BBC report I’ve found so far on yesterday’s demo. It’s tone is predictable.

    Hyde Park: Police attacks at anti-lockdown protest condemned

    An anti-lockdown protest in which eight police officers were injured will be raised with senior bosses with “utmost urgency”, a policing leader has said.

    Demonstrators hurled bottles at police as they attempted to disperse crowds in Hyde Park on Saturday evening. Photos on social media showed a female officer bleeding from a cut to her head while another suffered a similar wound.

    Home Secretary Priti Patel condemned the “senseless violence” and wished the injured officers “a speedy recovery”.

    The Metropolitan Police said two officers were taken to hospital but their injuries are not believed to be serious.

    The protest, which also took place on Oxford Street, came almost two weeks after Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were eased. Police said five people were arrested for offences including assault on officers and public order offences.

    Ken Marsh, chairman of the Met Police Federation, said: “Peaceful protest may well be the cornerstone of democracy – and police officers have a role in facilitating that – but the scenes we saw in Hyde Park yesterday of brave and sadly bloodied police officers coming under attack from thugs were anything but peaceful. Police officers are human beings who go out every day to keep people safe. Many people seem to have forgotten that right now but we will keep reminding them.”

    On Sunday morning the home secretary tweeted: “Our brave police are the best of us and should not be the target of senseless violence by a criminal minority for just doing their job. I am getting tough on these thugs and will be doubling the sentence for assault of an emergency worker. I wish the officers a speedy recovery.”

    Professor Stephen Reicher, from the University of St Andrews, said anti-lockdown protesters who touch, shout and shun masks are “at the very least a potential risk” to the spread of coronavirus, adding there is some evidence of mass events having an impact.

    Mr Reicher, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (Spi-B), which advises ministers, said: “Moreover, the mass election rallies in India and the permission to bring huge religious festivals forward from 2022 to 2021 (the Kumbh Mela at Haridwar) is one explanation for the huge rise of cases in India.

    “Much depends on how people behave in these events. If they maintain distance and wear masks, there is little danger. If they explicitly ignore restrictions, if they reject masks, stand close together, touch, shout and sing, then – going back to first principles – there is likely to be a risk.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56878486

    Just five arrests but even then no one against restrictions wants anything to do with people like this. I want to hear from the organisers. Also, I hope that the police have a good trawl through the internet activity of the arrested so that we know which side (if any) they were on. I just have this feeling that if they turn out to be pro-lockdown provocateurs or half-cut half-wits who were just looking for a bit of Saturday afternoon action then the BBC will quickly lose interest again.

    As for Professor Reicher…

    1. I mentioned on here a couple of weeks ago, an account that I heard from an anti lockdown march in Vienna, where an elderly lady (inexperienced at marches) was arrested and held overnight in a police cell for breaking into private property after running into an underground garage with some other protesters who were scared. That’s how easy it is to get statistics like “five people were arrested”.
      Going on these marches is an excellent thing to do, but people must be very, very aware of what’s going on and protect themselves.

    2. They were probably Antifa or BLM people – the genuine marchers were anything but violent.

  59. MI6 chief ‘still angry’ over Novichok poisonings in Salisbury. 25 April 2021

    The chief of MI6 has revealed he still gets “angry” over the Novichok attack in Salisbury which, he said, came close to causing “very significant casualties”.
    Two Russian nationals are suspected of carrying out the Novichok poisonings in Wiltshire in March 2018.

    Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy turned double agent for MI6, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, survived the incident, but it later claimed the life of Dawn Sturgess after she came into contact with a perfume bottle believed to have been used in the attack before being discarded.

    This is just cheap attention seeking melodrama. Moore did not become “C” until two years after the Salisbury Scam so why would he be “angry”? Still it does indicate that he is either a fool or a hypocrite. He’s a fool if he believes this story, particularly about the perfume bottle, and a hypocrite without a conscience if he doesn’t. Along with the removal of the evidence the Skripals were certainly murdered on the instructions of his predecessor and this is in effect dancing on their graves.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/mi6-chief-still-angry-over-novichok-poisonings-in-salisbury/ar-BB1g1Z79

    1. …the Skripals were certainly murdered on the instructions of his predecessor…

      Aren’t they still alive?

      1. No. They had to be silenced William. Yulia in particular had nothing to fear from the Russian Intelligence Services and could have gone home at any time. Then of course she might have blown the whole story to pieces destroying the careers of two Prime Ministers, the UK’s Foreign Policy and the reputation of Mi6!

          6. Hello Hatman. It’s certainly full of something though whether its Russian I doubt!

          7. “Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who have spent two years in an MI6 safe house after surviving a novichok poisoning attack – want to start a new life Down Under, according to security insiders.

            Sources previously told The Mail on Sunday that the father and daughter are desperate to leave the UK for either Australia or New Zealand after effectively living under house arrest since the attack.”

            Daily Wail – 4 March 2021 — so MUST be true

          10. Only some. “”Special” people such as Alan Sugar manage to get past the regulations…. So I am sure a couple of spies refugees would be welcome.

          12. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if our security services were briefing to the Daily Mail.

        2. I remember how easy it was for Yulia to sell her flat and her car and all her personal possessions whilst in ‘seclusion’.

          2. Afternoon, Minty.

            I missed/ignored those.

            The fact that our heads of Security are now so public and likely to appear on Strictly Come off it shows they are not the ones in charge.

          3. Yes. Mi6 and its little sister Mi5 are no longer the servants of Her Majesty or the protectors of the British People. They march to the sound of another drum!

    3. Moore is the utter prat who, according to today’s’ Tellegaff, wants MI6 to target countries that aren’t committed to fighting climate change!!

  60. My word that was a decent days work in the garden and on a Sunday. I hope because my fair skin might have very slightly changed colour it wont be thought of as being racist.
    As was suggested in a FB post earlier this morning by channel 4 news. Gardening is racist.
    Not sure you’re right about that Mr Wong, but matey on the 4 news channel thinks it amusing, well he only takes his head out of his backside once a month what does he know ?
    https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/posts/10158730396591939

      2. One irritating consequence of leaving the EU i that French, Spanish and Italian seeds are very difficult to come by. The wonderful haricot vert “Contender” is no longer available in the UK. Maddening.

          1. I have a few – and they ARE available through “Seeds of Italy” in Harrow.

            The rules appear to completely bonkers. As one would expect.

          3. If you go to any Brass Band concert you will find them everywhere after the show. Just help yourself. Yorkshire ones are best.

    2. We have culturally appropriated plants from all over the world. Some to our detriment. But my answer would be…Fuck Off.

      1. Totally agree.
        Rohdo dodo dendmorons both of them.
        When i had a n allotment there was one black lady and i often spoke to her in passing and helped her out with lifting stuff now and again.

      2. I think you mean ‘Fuchsia off!’ The plant was named after the German botanist Leonhard Fuchs, pronounced fúks, (Mr Fox).

        Not many people know that – or pronounce it properly. Can’t think why.

    3. How Wong can you get? Whatever you do don’t show him your prize cucumber He married his boyfriend just because he was handy with his dibber and had developed a carrot that was the envy of all his ‘friends’.

  61. Is anyone subscribing to the Delingpod?
    I’ve been listening to a lot of them recently while painting, and JD really does get an eclectic and interesting mixture of guests.
    https://delingpole.podbean.com/page/2/
    I have already diverted some of my ex tv licence towards Conservative Woman, and am considering getting JD’s ex Spectator columns.
    I wish these publications would form a conservative alliance where one could pay a single subscription for a group of them.

  62. HAPPY HOUR – Love in the Time of Covid.
    apps to Gabriel García Márquez

    Bubble Trouble
    by Julie Sheldon
    I am a single granny
    With daughter, and a son
    I’ve got a newish lover
    And he’s a lot of fun!

    Now I can make a ‘bubble’
    But which house do I choose?
    Someone will be offended
    No matter what I do

    Do I go to my daughter’s?
    And help wipe snotty noses
    Or do I see my lover?
    For candlelight and roses

    Do I go to my son’s house?
    And risk an ear bashing
    Or shall I go to lover boy’s?
    And have some nights of passion

    And then, there’s my friend Maureen
    Who has nobody else
    So shall I spend some time with her?
    And not think of myself

    Am I a granny dutiful?
    On whom they can depend
    Am I a selfish lover?
    Or a dedicated friend?

    This really is a problem
    That I could do without
    In fact, it was much simpler
    When I could NOT go out

    Oh Boris! Why’ve you caused me
    Such a lot of trouble
    I really don’t know what to do
    With this flippin’ ‘social bubble’

    3. Well i spose you could take yer friend Mo round to lover boys ……….i’ll get me coat.

    4. Hubble, bubble toil and trouble
      Her name’s Plum she’s double bubble.

      (bubble in money-broking terms used to be the commission on a deal, you got it twice if the counterparties are from different sectors, e.g bank and commercial)

  63. Gosh – it has been a miserably cold afternoon. Fiddled about in the garden pretending it was Spring. Even the cats called it a day.

    Time to think about a nice glass of mulled wine….(joke). “Dangerous Liaisons” film on TV tonight.

    A demain

    1. Now that Gus has requisitioned yer sofa, Bill; is there a faint chance of recovering yer erstwhile armchair?

          5. Terrible, I know.

            When we lived in Canada, we had a polar bear skin rug.

            As child I loved nestling up against the head and often fell asleep against my friend.

            I’m for Hell, express train!

          6. I have always fancied having either a tiger or bear skin rug, but alas, it’s no longer possible due to wokery. Where I lodged briefly in Hell Hull, they had an upright stuffed grizzly in the hall!

          7. Big buggers, aren’t they?
            Whale steak for dinner, anybody? From the supermarket freezer here…

          8. It was only an ordinary modern house. I was quite surprised they managed to squeeze it in!

          2. OH usually makes our puddings……..he does a nice variation on Delia’s Rum Plum Trifle with whatever we have in the booze cupboard.

          5. Ugh. On both counts! (Not much booze I won’t drink but neither of those appeals. )

          6. Agreed. It’s just what we had in the booze cupboard… the Campari is now empty, I’m afraid :-((

          7. Agreed. It’s just what we had in the booze cupboard… the Campari is now empty, I’m afraid :-((

  64. 331979+ up ticks,
    Why not combine the peoples successful, although under reported march
    in the capital, ( small C until regained as such) to a mass boycotting of the main enemas candidates on the 6th May ?
    A people’s reset, resetting the political staff back in their place of employment , downstairs as servants of the people.

  65. 331979+ up ticks,
    She is playing a nice face of the coalition as in, you will not have it on record that you continued to be in a truthsaying mode, and the far right racist brand will be lifted the same time as the ban on Dunblane.

    Priti Patel Calls for ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’ to be Expunged from Police Databases

    1. I’m guessing I must be a racist, because I believe this man has more perception about what is actually happening than most commentators.

    3. Opens comment and guess what the 2nd one was suggesting!
      My response:-

      Ernest Corby
      25 Apr 2021 9:58PM
      Of course there will be a gard border. We wil have to strenthe Hardian;s Wall – a presient fellow that Hadrian. It will nee machonr gun nests and for land , at least 2 mils to the nth the be ploughed up and a minefield laind diwn, wevwill alsonhave to have sea deebces miles outti sea eieth side againg heavily mined We will have a big job keeping the Scitch blighter out as the try to escape te SSR – Socotish So cialist Republic.
      On tge other hand the SSR might be so concerened at the escaping population that it will build aBerlin type wall

      Flag1LikeReply

      Robert Spowart
      25 Apr 2021 10:03PM
      @Ernest Corby Emm. Thank you VERY much.

      Though I am living in Derbyshire, I deeply resent geographically challenged pillocks like yourself abandoning my home county of Northumberland to the Jocks.

      1. Plus, when the wall was built, the Scots were still living in Ireland and the English hadn’t arrived.

  68. Back from a second sesh at sisters,an excellent steak and kidney pud I note much comment on Betty B and some weird online course
    I am saddened BB’s reply was not “Fluck off and shove your course where the sun don’t shine you impertinent cretin”
    We need harsher pushback against these idiots

    1. 331979+ up ticks,
      Evening Rik,
      You push back to hard and you risk offending a lab/lib/con/green voter / supporter.

    2. She probably did. She’s a feisty Yorkshire lass and would have told them what to do with it. Someone on the Cabinet Office probably fainted and they had to get it translated into BBC wokish.

  70. Reference the gold watch mentioned earlier. I was in Malaya and Singapore in 1970 and I lost my beautiful self winding Swiss watch crossing a fast flowing jungle river. On my next visit to Singapore I went to Bugis Street for a drink and ended up buying a ‘Bugis Special’ for the equivalent price of one pound. Everyone said I would be lucky if it lasted a week. My mates took the píss out of me every time they asked the time. When the ticking stopped it meant the beetle inside had died. A few days later I met an Aussie who was working on the oil rigs in Indonesia. We got round to comparing watches. His was a solid gold Rolex Oyster costing more than £1,000. Nowadays the equivalent of £15,000 or more. Well my watch lasted for years and years and years. The gold paint flaked off but it kept ticking on, never losing a second even. A remarkable thing. Then, one morning when getting out of bed, I knocked the watch off the bedside cabinet and it never ticked again. It would be nice to meet the Aussie again and have a drink together and compare watches.. or just get píssed like we did last time.

    1. Bugis Street, where you went into a record shop. selected your LP(s) and went back a day later
      and they had been transferred onto a cassette tape for you

      Cost: very little

      1. As well as being the night-drinking social centre of Singapore, it was also the centre of the ‘Gay’ community. Having spent months in and out of the jungle, some of my lads couldn’t believe that the beautiful women were really blokes with breasts and bóllócks. It was also the scene of some vicious inter-tribal battles amongst the local gangs. (For those who never saw it, it was a large (mostly) outdoor drinking and dining area frequented by visitors and locals alike).

    2. I bought some replica Rolex for my boys, in New York.
      Lasted years, kept perfect time too.

      1. I think the guarantee was only valid until daybreak. It was a bargain really.

        That reminds me, I bought a second hand car in the wilds of Yorkshire – between Bingley and Halifax- and I asked the garage owner about the guarantee. He said “If you get it off the forecourt you are on your own”. They don’t mess about up there!

    4. I forgot to account for the change in the price of gold since 1970 ,which is 45 fold. The value of the Aussies watch might be in the region of £75,000+ today.

    5. My Baume and Mercier ‘Riviera’ wrist watch bought in 1989 is still going strong. I have it serviced every four or so years when the battery runs low.

      The watch fits my wrist and is the precise opposite of clunky. The watch face is also smaller which makes it comfortable to wear.

  71. Evening, all. I have been out in the sunshine all afternoon buying new plants (I intend to create a carpet of woodland plants in the orchard now I’ve had the drain done and the ground has been cleared) and visiting a superb garden at a local beauty spot. Had a great time, but coming home to a quiet house was a downer. The search for a new canine companion is ongoing.

    1. Creating a garden is one of the most peaceful things one can do – beauty, calm, maybe something edible… a good place for a puppy to grow up in, Conners.
      Wish you luck in your search fur a suitable 4-pawed friend.

      1. Mine is tatty, to be kind about it. The depradations of diggers last autumn have yet to be fixed, but we’re taking the opportunity for improvement. I’m concerned for my garden steam railway, though. With a new fence to be build, the builders will undoubtedy break everything, they always do. Including my hand-laid 32mm garden railway :-((

      2. Thank you, Paul. I am looking to rehome an adult dog. At my age, a puppy could well outlive me! I want to plant bulbs beneath the trees, too, but I’ll have to wait for autumn. What I’ve put in at the moment is anemone blanda, anemone nemorosis and corydalis. I hope to have scilla, chionodoxa and aconites by next spring as well. There are some bluebells there at the moment.

        1. I also bought some tomato plants (although tomatoes are bad for my reflux). It’s hard to beat a home grown tomato for flavour. I bought Shirley (a variety I’ve never tried before), Alicante (tried and trusted) and Gardner’s Delight.

          1. Home-grown tomatoes are best! Tweak a small ripe one off the plant as you walk by, they smell, and God only knows how, taste of tomato! A small one a day shouldn’t upset your reflux, it doesn’t mine.

        2. Love bluebells, daffodils (the traditional long-stem ones, with single colour yellow flower), crocus, snowdeops, pansies and pinks.
          Firstborn’s farmyard extremities, where it drops away towards the stream and we have a stone table for beers and the like, is festooned with wild pansies – like garden centre ones, but tiny flower.
          Just follow Bill’s lead with his kittens – a puppy or two will liven you up (a lot, whether you want to or not) and give great joy.

        3. It sounds beautiful.

          Every year in spring I tell myself I’m going to put in more snowdrops, and every year in autumn I forget…

          2. You buy them in the green, so I don’t think you have to be restricted to autumn for snowdrops.

      1. Coming home to a quiet house is always a downer when you lose a pet, are you thinking of another one, like Conway?

      2. I was thinking of you when I wrote that. No waggy tail, no nuzzling, no “talking”, no sitting on my feet … 🙁

    3. Are you looking for a rescue dog? Hope you find one soon to help fill the empty space.

        1. You are right, Conwy. It took us nearly six months to find kittens that were not diseased, or handicapped or just “not right”.

          How different from the last time – 16 years ago….

          The RSPCA seem to have gone off the idea of ending unwanted dogs to good homes….

          I suggest you look for a black dog, identifying as female.

          Good luck in your search.

          2. I saw a dog that would have been suitable in the East Midlands rescue centre, but it’s RSPCA run and in Leicestershire; they only rehome within a 25 mile radius. That lets me out as I’m much farther away from Leicestershire than that. Seems a bit odd that they would deny a dog a home because it’s more than 25 miles away.

          3. The MR – who has great sympathy with your predicament – suggests that you contact Age Concern and any local “bereavement counsellors” who may know of a dog whose owner recently died and which needs a good home.

          4. That’s a good idea, although I may have found a possible dog. I have yet to see him and discover if he’s the one for us.

          7. PS – have you tried the local vets? It was via that route that we were put in touch with the people from whom G & P came, after months without any success through establish rescue places. Indeed, G & P were ours within an hour of the MR first ringing the vet…..

          8. I told my own vets at the time that I wanted another dog. I haven’t contacted the other local ones.

          9. If you possible doesn’t suit – it’s worth a call to them.

            As I bored on yesterday, after months of trying and being disappointed and driving miles to see wholly unsuitable kittens, within an hour of Carolyn phoning the vet in Holt – G & P were in the car, on the way here!

          10. I am sure that the right dog is out there somewhere, it’s just a matter of connecting with him. I have put lots of feelers out to indicate a good home is waiting.

        2. It it is like over here in Canada, now is a very bad time to look for a new pet. Apparently everyone is looking for a bit of companionship and anything vaguely appropriate is spoken for at birth.

          My big old cat died at least fifteen years ago, there is still a gap where she used to be – not least on the step ladder, I no wonder have to worry about her following me up the ladder and stopping me from getting down.

        3. Try Battersea Dogs Home. I noticed any number of Battersea dog walkers from there when doing work on a Danish restaurant called ‘Mother’ built under the Battersea arches there a few years ago.

          Failing that the Animal Shelter at Wood Green has many dogs up for adoption.

          Edit: ‘Mother’ Battersea (a really good Pizza Joint) is now permanently closed. Yet another casualty of our government’s stupid ill fated lockdown policy. There are many good restaurant businesses destroyed by Johnson, Carrie and their SAGE mob of communist behavioural scientists.

          I hope that natural justice will prevail in the end. May these evil self interested retards rot in hell.

          1. I am too far away from Battersea, corim. Same with Wood Green. I may have found one in Stafford, which is still a distance, but do-able.

    4. Now i’m fully stocked up with logs for the next winter & a half, I might find time to recommence with trying to get my much neglected ¼ acre of Derbyshire hillside under control.
      Not so much “a garden gone wild” as “a garden for stark raving bloody berserk!”

    1. …and I use a Kaspersky internet virus checker to prevent infections arising from my use of Microsoft’s Windows 10! 🤔

      1. Whatever it was that OLT posted, Reuters label everything that doesn’t follow the approved agenda as false, even things that are easily verifiable. Likewise Snopes, who don’t even employ any researchers.

        1. It is not the only web-site which has shown the claim to be false – see my other post.

      1. 33179+ up ticks,
        Evening C,
        Been getting progressively worse since major knocked of a curry, still is seems as if it is what many of the people’s want.

        1. Evening ogga1.

          It is all unraveling by the day. The principal protection the Politicos have enjoyed is a complicit national broadcaster and ‘dead in the water’ British press along with an entirely absent Opposition and Epsilon Semi-Moron section of the populace.

          The lot of them have been recognised for the shit they are and exposed for their blatant lies and deception.

  77. Monday 26th April 2021

    Harry Kobeans

    A Very Happy Birthday

    and as many happy returns as you can handle!

    With best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus

    (incidentally we have a niece called Harriet who was called Haricot Bean when she was a child!)

    1. I second that birthday wish to Harry K., Rastus. And don’t forget to wish your lovely Caroline (Mrs. Rastus C. Tastey) a very Happy Birthday from me.

      1. Good morning, Elsie,

        I hope my beloved Caroline will enjoy her happy unbirthday today – her actual birthday is 26th March not April!

  78. The UK’s Legal Net Zero Looks Bought and Paid For!

    How can there be “growth” without affordable energy?

    Net Zero means back to the Stone Age for the UK, except for those individuals who likely bought Legal Net Zero from Theresa May’s administration..

    Funny how the organization which advised Mr Soros where to invest his billion dollars in the green sector also helped finance the Conservative Party think tank which recommended Legal Net Zero to the Conservative Party!

    Particularly as Powerbase received $100,000,000 from the US Dept of Energy a week after Mr Soros bought it as part of that same recommendation!

    I think that is virtual proof of rinky dink behind the green scenery of the whole thing.

    So the question really should be.. how could UK Legal Net Zero not have been bought?

    I think it looks obvious in the circumstances !

  79. Anyway, the 2020 election audit finally got off the ground in Arizona.

    Democrats are worried. Ballot auditors are running ballots thru infrared light to identify watermarks on the ballots.

    This is how they know which ones are legitimate. Too bad the Dems didn’t know they were set up… printing fake ballots and injecting them into the system with no watermarks won’t work this time.

    Oh dear. Dem worry is palpable and they’re already floating new excuses !

  80. Mng. This may be of interest for those with the time and outside other priorities – Daily live Sunrise and Sunset game drives around game parks of the fringes of the Kruger and Kalahari https://wildearth.tv/live-safaris/ just driver, cameraman, car, animals, scenery. No face masks to be seen, no advertising, politics. Here, when power permits, the only thing worth watching on DSTV.

    For those interested [Ndovu!] the link is for the live stream. I guess outside Africa people have to subscribe then log in. Coverage starts 07.30-10.30 and 16.30-20.30 [Kenya time] so I guess BST, 05.30 and 14.30. Those elsewhere around the planet will work out timezone differences

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