Wednesday 26 May: The public has been bamboozled by the blurring of guidance and law

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/05/25/lettersthe-public-has-bamboozled-blurring-guidance-law/

693 thoughts on “Wednesday 26 May: The public has been bamboozled by the blurring of guidance and law”

  3. Morning, all Y’all.
    F*cking miserable weather today. Gales, rain, dark, cold. Not far from midsummer, it’s 8C, and the lights are on!
    Where’s that global warming when you need it?

    1. The article says that UCL has such clots and strokes more prevalent in people that have Covid. I have read elsewhere that 1 in 5 hospital Covid patients have dangerous blood clots. Thus, as regrettable as any vaccine-induced injury may be, the evidence is that people are better having the vaccine, subject to the caveat that there may be an age-related effect hiding in the averages.

    1. Why, in their efforts to stir up division do so many people ignore the most pertinent question, “What is it about Islam that has led to it, alone of the non-British Religions, having it’s own personal “~ophobia”? Other than Judaism’s problems with the institutionally antisemitic & increasingly Islamised @ukLabour, no other belief has such a suffix or apparent slur added to its name.

      After all, Sikhophobia, Buddhistophobia, Hinduophobia, Jainophobia etc are conspicuous by their absence and generally the followers of those religions have become a part of British Society in a way that Islam has never even tried to emulate.

      Why is that?

      Could it be that individual followers of those religions do not have a tendency to blow themselves up in pop concerts? Nor, generally speaking, do they take part in the gang organised rape, sexual exploitation & trafficking of young girls.

      Those screaming ISLAMOPHOBIA!!! should also take their blinkers off and take a broader, world wide look at the actions of Islam in the wider world.

      The murder and mutilation of concert goers at The Bataclan or the church bombings in Sri Lanka for example.

      Also, why don’t they comment on the the continuing slaughter of Christians by Islamists in many parts of Africa, something largely ignored by Western media.

      It is things like this that create the legitimate fear & distrust you pass of as “Islamophobia.”

      1. IMO it’s primarily an outlet for the Left’s hatred by inventing a stick to attack the people they envy and control everyone. The other significant factors are Muslims’ self-interest and the Left’s grubbing for Muslim votes.

    3. Virtually all the comments agree with my views and the views of most of us here.

      We shall never get a proper examination of why Islam is more feared than Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism? And the question of whether or not people should defend themselves against those who have values that want to destroy the values of the indigenous people.

  6. Good morning folks,

    cloudy here

    A cheeky squirrel is hanging upside down nibbling my fat balls this morning,
    The young starlings are getting quite agitated.

    3. Yo B3

      I hear, that the cheeky squirrel is raising the pitch of your voice

    4. would it not be good etiquette to invite Johnson’s canine companion in for morning tea? It might alleviate the emotional stress of the starlings

      3. That’s the sort of grip Johnson and his government want to have on us.

        I always enjoyed the line from the Down and Out Blues

        If ever I get my hands on a dollar again
        I’m going to squeeze it until the eagle grins.

        Not much to grin about for this poor squirrel

  7. Russia wary to support Belarus amid fallout from plane ‘hijack’. 26 May 2021.

    Viačorka said he believed that the Russian government would have been “consulted” and “agreed” to attempts to ground the plane, particularly as the air defence network in Belarus was integrated with Russia’s military.

    “Let’s separate two issues, Russia and Belarus, two separate topics,” he said. “If I will be speaking about Russia in the context of Belarus, we will never solve the problem … Of course [Russia] was consulted, it was agreed, they were not against. But we don’t have evidence that they organised or planned this provocation. Meanwhile, definitely Lukashenko is the one who was guilty.”

    Morning everyone. This is called, “having your cake and choking on it.” It was agreed but it wasn’t and we don’t have any evidence but it was definitely them.

    What’s the truth here? Well it’s pretty well a certainty that Russia played no part in it. Vlad, who has plenty of problems of his own and an upcoming summit with Biden, does not need any more aggravation at the moment. One imagines that he was incandescent with rage when he heard about this half-witted action. He is however obliged to support this clown for geopolitical reasons. If he doesn’t Belarus may end up in the hands of NATO; a scenario that Russia would probably go to war to avoid.

    It is an oddity of international politics that weak allies may give you more difficulties than serious opponents. During America’s Vietnam Adventure they were plagued by the activities of President Ngô Diệm (a stooge they had installed) who became increasingly independent. They eventually arranged for his assassination. A solution that Lukashenko should bear in mind!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/25/russia-wary-to-support-belarus-to-avoid-fallout-from-plane-hijack

    1. Good morning, Minty. Don’t know whether you have a telly – but there was a prog on BBC on Monday night called “Inside No 9”. It is a series of half hour dramas. All a bit weird. Monday’s will appeal to you – knowing your views on Salisbury, politicians, the security farces etc etc. Worth seeing on catch-up.

  8. 333419+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    There’s a thing,
    https://twitter.com/robinmonotti2/status/1397185267602280452

    These very same governance type politico’s / parties via
    employees were overseeing the cause & mental injury inflicted on children, the rotherham 16 year cover up in one instance.
    They will carry mental damage to the grave are they to be seen as collateral damage a price worth paying, a foundation
    cornerstone of RESET.

      1. Ah yes! The UK is becoming a refuge for the scoundrels! (See Priti for details)

        Morning Minty et al

    2. This was my constant morning companion in the sleepless nights during my divorce all through the 1990s. I used to imagine they changed up the recording of it, which really annoyed me. I wanted something in my life that was constant.

      1. Our lot just torture us in different ways.

        Bugger the restrictions, though – we’re marching on London again this Saturday, and it will be huge! If any Nottlers are considering joining us, please do. Last month’s demonstration was joyous, peaceful and diverse in the true sense of the word. The police who walked with us were amiable, and children and the elderly or disabled felt safe.

        We joked last time that it was too big for the MSM to ignore; that’s precisely what they did (the few mentions leading with “violent protests” that happened long after the march itself had finished). I really hope we can get to absolutely massive numbers this time!

  15. mng all, as for title – No the Public isn’t bamboozled. Is Andrea Bates the sister of the cabin boy in Captain Pugwash? As for the assortment of woke Uni names seeking to absolve themselves of guilt by writing to the DT – wrong:

    SIR – Your recent leader and letters (May 25) drew attention to the multiple nonsenses emanating from Whitehall – particularly the ruling on amateur choirs. Yesterday there was also further confusion over travel rules.

    What the public needs is a guide on which of the Government’s pronouncements are merely advice and which have the force of law.

    I fear that we have become so supine during the pandemic and the lockdowns that we are losing the confidence to trust our own judgment.

    Edward Sharp
    Wareham, Dorset

    SIR – The suggestion that our freedoms will be curtailed beyond June 21 (“Vaccine not enough to avoid self-isolating”, report, May 25) has nothing to do with protection from the virus and everything to do with extending control over us.

    Jane Ward
    Northampton

    SIR – In your report on the potential extension of quarantine rules, you quote a government source as saying that the contact-tracing system should remain in place because it is possible to catch and pass on Covid even if one has been vaccinated.

    It seems more likely that the system needs to remain in place because so much money has already been spent on it, and the Government needs to show that it is still being used.

    Julian Gall
    Godalming, Surrey

    SIR – In one way or another herd immunity has always been the goal in this crisis: that is, after all, what universal vaccination provides.

    Controlled exposure of the population to the virus, at a time before vaccines were on stream, for the purposes of keeping NHS systems within capacity and making a start on the long-term protection of the nation, would have been an entirely reasonable and practical policy option to discuss – even if nothing further came of it. Dominic Cummings’s negative, throwaway use of the term, with its implication of “letting the weak go to the wall” (report, May 24), is as irresponsibly dangerous as repeated headlines terrifying people about the vanishingly small danger of post-vaccination blood clots.

    It adds nothing to public understanding, to the defeat of the virus, or to the lessons to be learnt.

    Victor Launert
    Matlock Bath, Derbyshire

    SIR – Normally, by this time of year, I have been taking hay-fever medication for about four weeks to prevent sneezing, a runny nose and irritable eyes.

    This year, however, I am fully vaccinated against Covid but have taken no hay-fever medication – and do not display any symptoms.

    Is this a beneficial side effect of the vaccination – or just a reflection of the lousy weather we have had in the Manchester area?

    David S Ainsworth
    Manchester

    GPs’ gatekeepers

    SIR – The problem with GPs (Letters, May 24) lies with receptionists, who have become the gatekeepers deciding who is worthy of an appointment.

    Recently my daughter needed her one-year jabs. When I phoned the GP receptionists I was told that all of their nurses had been block-booked for Covid jabs and, because they didn’t know when the vaccine deliveries would be, they couldn’t tell me when any nurse appointments would be available. I was advised to try ringing at random times each day to see if any appointments had been released.

    After doing what I had been advised to do several times, I turned to my health visitor. After a firmly worded reminder to my GP of their duties to carry out childhood immunisations, my daughter was miraculously offered an appointment with a nurse for the jabs within a few days.

    GPs need to be aware that often the way receptionists treat patients reflects badly on them as doctors.

    Anne Thompson
    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    SIR – Dr James Le Fanu’s column (May 24) rather skates over a major factor in the medical manpower issue.

    While a class of, say, 100 male students could reasonably be expected to provide 90 or more “whole-working life equivalents”, a class of 100 females might provide only a third of that.

    Most of the reasons for this are entirely understandable. Marriage, childbirth and childcare, as well as the care of elderly parents later on, will compromise the ability of a female medic (or any female professional) to work full-time – but it reduces the lifetime availability of half or more of an expensively trained workforce. The only non-sexist solution, of creating far more medical school places, is a very expensive way of running to stand still.

    Neither of us has an answer to this, but the problem will get worse as some of the male graduates emulate their female counterparts and opt for a different work-life balance, worsening the vicious circle for those left.

    Dr Mary E Nesbitt
    Dr K Nesbitt
    Ramsey, Isle of Man

    University free speech

    SIR – We are pleased that the University of Cambridge has removed a website that defines racism as something only ever perpetrated by white people
    against non-white people, and that insinuates that students and staff are liable to disciplinary action for “microaggressions” (such as criticising religion, using unapproved pronouns, or raising an eyebrow). It also encourages, and gives anyone the means to make, anonymous accusations in connection with these offences.

    We are pleased to learn from the vice-chancellor that this material was put up in error. We trust that whatever replaces the documentation will be fully compatible with the right to unfettered freedom of speech and expression within the law, as well as with the university’s core commitment to the free and fearless discussion of ideas as enshrined in its Statement on Freedom of Speech, which was approved by university staff last December and to which the vice-chancellor gave his immediate and unequivocal support at the time.

    Arif Ahmed
    Gonville & Caius College

    James Orr
    Faculty of Divinity

    Timothy Less
    Darwin College

    Sylvana Tomaselli
    St John’s College

    John Ellis
    Gonville & Caius College

    Anna Nickerson
    Girton College

    Julius Grower
    Jesus College

    David Abulafia
    Gonville & Caius College

    Robert Tombs
    St John’s College

    David Ibbetson
    Faculty of Law

    Simon Gathercole
    Faculty of Divinity

    David Feldman
    Faculty of Law

    Geoffrey Grimmett
    Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics

    Michael D Hurley
    Faculty of English

    Simon Conway Morris
    St John’s College

    John Marenbon
    Trinity College

    Partha Dasgupta
    St John’s College

    Rachel Polonsky
    Murray Edwards College

    George Reid
    St John’s College

    Howard Hughes
    St John’s College
    Malcolm Smith
    Gonville & Caius College
    Béla Bollobás
    Trinity College

    David Yates
    Robinson College
    Alexander Marr
    Trinity Hall
    Imre Leader
    Trinity College

    In the event of a fire

    SIR – New fire regulations say that the management of a building is responsible for the evacuation of disabled residents.

    I live in a block of 54 flats in Cowes which is owned by the residents. About half are in permanent occupation, mainly by people like myself who are retired. There is only one other similar block on the Isle of Wight, 15 miles away in Shanklin.

    I would be glad to know where we are going to get at least four able-bodied men, per disabled resident, at short notice to evacuate the building – even supposing that we could pay to have these men permanently on call.

    Christopher Stannard
    Cowes, Isle of Wight

    Is the BBC establishment capable of change?

    SIR – Can anyone have confidence that the BBC’s culture has changed?

    Asked on the Today programme why Martin Bashir’s resignation was accepted just days before Lord Dyson’s damning verdict on his conduct, Tim Davie claimed that complex medical needs and the desire to save licence fee payers’ money were factors – Mr Bashir was given a “short” notice period. Pressed by Justin Webb, Mr Davie admitted that Mr Bashir had been given three months’ salary. This is not “short” notice, and “complex medical needs” is an expression open to limitless interpretation.

    Mr Davie has been with the BBC since 2005. He was former director-general Mark Thompson’s first senior external appointment. He has held many senior roles and is part of the BBC establishment. The culture of the BBC remains the same, as do the faces.

    David Lane
    Ludlow, Shropshire

    SIR – If I want to switch on my TV to watch any channel, I have to have paid the licence fee to the BBC. Increasingly, I am turning to other channels for news and entertainment.

    I realise that the TV licence pays for radio – for instance, Radio 3’s Composer of the Week, which I value – and for the orchestras and the Proms. I hope that in any review of the BBC’s editorial policy and its financing these elements can be unbundled, so that licence fee payers know exactly what they are paying for.

    Elizabeth Balsom
    London SW15

    Policing for everyone

    SIR – Nick Timothy (Comment, May 24) discusses “selective law enforcement”.

    I joined the police in 1964. My father, an officer from 1930 to 1945, told me: “Your uniform means that you represent the law and must enforce compliance whenever and wherever you encounter criminal acts. You must always prevail and you must never walk away.” I lived by that during my 30 years’ service, and passed it on to my son. Now my grandson is a PC.

    Weakness encourages offenders. Disciplined enforcement prevails.

    Brian Roebuck
    Alveston, Gloucestershire

    Vintage prizes

    SIR – Greig Bannerman (Letters, May 25), who returns “unpalatable” bottles of wine to guests, has got it wrong.

    The correct protocol is to donate them to a tombola stall at your local fundraising event. They will then develop a personality of their own for years as they circulate around the various good causes. With luck (or misfortune) you may even end up winning one back again.

    Wendy Strathdee
    Burnham, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – I am amazed that Mr Bannerman continues to be invited to parties.

    Joyce Nicholson
    Teignmouth, Devon

    A day in the life of a multi-tasking milkman

    SIR – As a schoolboy I had a job as an assistant milkman (Letters, May 24) during my summer holidays.

    On meeting one customer, she told me she had to go out to work and hoped I could help her out. Sure enough, the next day, there was a note on the side door asking me to put the milk in the fridge.

    The following week, there was a further note asking me to take the dog bowl out of the fridge, put it on the floor, open the hallway door and quickly run out of the side door, closing it sharply behind me because the dogs would bite.

    Mike Forlan
    Hayling Island, Hampshire

    SIR – I still live in the same house on Anglesey as I did in the late 1950s. Back then the milk lady would walk in, check the fridge and decide how many bottles of milk we would need that day. These would be put in the fridge, usually when we were all still in bed. The door was never locked.

    Chris Williams
    Holyhead, Anglesey

    SIR – In the 1950s a Lyme Regis postman would come into the house, make himself a pot of tea, help himself to a slice of cake and sit in the kitchen reading the newspaper. He then washed his cup before continuing his round.

    He even did it when we were not there as he knew where the key was hidden.

    Edward Allhusen
    Moretonhampstead, Devon

    Happier approach

    SIR – Scientists have discovered that happiness is intensified when you play down the anticipation (report, May 25).

    The Germans have a composite word for this: Zweckpessimismus, pessimism with a goal. Or, in modern jargon, if you consider the worst case scenario, things can only get better.

    Andrea Bates
    Enstone, Oxfordshire

    1. Mrs Bates – it is known, in English, as “pessimism”. A pessimist is never disappointed but occasionally pleasantly surprised.

      I know. I have been one for 80 years.

    2. SIR – last week my hard drinking garden Gnome went on strike for higher wages & 2 weeks paid vacation, although I am loathe to do so I was forced to terminate his employment & I was wondering if Social Service could assist in finding him a new home as I can’t have the bugger lounging about my garden all day using it as toilet & shouting insults at the neighbours.
      Elf & Safety
      Knotty Ash https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fbc777d6688850e058076bed225d53035ca4a6ab8c43054e77efa4fca16fd70d.gif

          1. You have high-lighted a cultural gap. Children from the 1950s are divided between those who were brought up with a telly and those who weren’t.
            For one, the idiot box is a necessity like a constant supply of clean water; for the other, it’s possible to amuse yourself without developing square eyeballs.

          2. I moved from the UK as a 10 yo in 1967 having enjoyed the delights of Bill & Ben, Andy Pandy, the Magic Roundabout along with Get Smart, The Avengers, Adam Adamant and the Man From UNCLE, to SA which didn’t get a TV service until the mid 70s. Suddenly I was thrown into the world of radio which I grew to love and enjoy until the BBC extinguished that affection in 2016.

      2. Two weeks?! Crikey. My lot get 6!

        It was funny that when they bought me out they found they couldn’t take a holiday after all!

        Thankfully they kept me on and I immediately took 2 weeks off!

    3. I do appreciate your posting the letters on a regular basis; thanks!

      Particularly like “Zweckpessimismus”; I shall add it to my collection of interesting words.

  17. National Trust Chairman Tim Parker’s resignation was discussed here yesterday evening but, I reckon, is far too good a story for our glee not to continue into today. He gets a real and deserved kicking in all other comments sections I’ve seen.

    Burning question is whether it is a woke ‘one-off’ or start of a domino effect?

    2. Burning question is whether it is a woke ‘one-off’ or start of a domino effect?

      Morning VOM. I have to say that I have noticed some glimmerings of a fight back against this poisonous creed. Let us hope that it continues!

    4. I assume he has got a much better, and even more woke (and much better paid) sinecure….

        1. In my experience – with one or two honourable exceptions – most people don’t “resign” unless and until their next trough-snouting “job” is safely organised.

          2. But the principle remains – “the great and good” – paid or unpaid – don’t stop being great and good just because they have the misfortune to lose one placement. Look at the fragrant “Dido” Harding, for example.

    7. “The director-general has admitted that the timing of the publication of the ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’ was ‘a mistake’.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/25/national-trust-chair-quits-amid-revolt-charitys-woke-agenda/

      National Trust chairman quits amid revolt over charity’s ‘woke’ agenda

      “Tim Parker’s decision to quit was announced just 24 hours after a rebel group of members set out plans to oust him

      By Christopher Hope, Chief Political Correspondent25 May 2021 • 10:04pm

      Tim Parker

      Tim Parker has served two three-year terms and agreed to a ‘third exceptional term’ to provide stability during the Covid-19 crisis Credit: Geoff Pugh

      The chairman of the National Trust has resigned amid a growing revolt among its members over the charity’s “woke” policies.

      Tim Parker’s decision to quit was announced just 24 hours after a rebel group of members set out plans to force him out at this year’s annual general meeting.

      Members, MPs and ministers have grown increasingly concerned over the Trust’s leadership after it published report last September into the links between its properties – including the home of Winston Churchill – and the UK’s colonial and slavery past.

      The highly critical rebel motion at this year’s AGM, which has not yet been submitted – is understood to have been backed by more than 50 members – said the “membership has no confidence in Tim Parker as chairman of the National Trust and asks that he offer his resignation.”

      It added: “It is the task of a chairman to see an organisation through a crisis. The pandemic has presented the National Trust with severe challenges, and meeting these while securing the future well-being of the charity should have been the absolute priority.

      “Instead, the National Trust has been the subject of debates in Parliament and an investigation by the Charity Commission, which found that the charity published a report which generated strongly held and divided views without fully managing the risks to the reputation of the charity.

      “The director-general has admitted that the timing of the publication of the ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’ was ‘a mistake’.”

      Morale at Trust at all-time low

      The motion continued: “The National Trust leadership has frequently been out of step with its members and supporters over recent years.

      “Unnecessary controversies have threatened to undermine the charity’s simple duty to promote public enjoyment of buildings, places and chattels under its protection.

      “As a result, morale among volunteers and members is at an all-time low and the National Trust has suffered, both financially and reputationally.

      “The National Trust needs to regain the nation’s confidence, and will need fresh leadership to achieve this.”

      Following widespread criticism of its report last September into the links between its properties and the UK’s colonial and slavery past, the Charity Commission opened a “regulatory compliance case” and the heritage minister told Parliament that the report was “unfortunate” and the Trust should go back to its “core functions”.

      At last November’s virtual annual meeting, Mr Parker came under fire after he described Black Lives Matter, which in the UK has called on the government to “defund the police”, as a “human rights movement with no party-political affiliations” in a letter to a member.

      Speaking at the meeting he said “we are not members of BLM”, adding that he hoped members would see “that in no way the Trust has become a political organisation that has been taken over by a bunch of woke folk or anything of that nature”.

      There was further controversy in 2017 when it emerged that the Trust had tried to force volunteers at a Norfolk mansion to wear the gay pride rainbow symbol on lanyards and badges. The Trust later dropped the demand.

      Chairman’s position was ‘untenable’

      A spokesman for Restore Trust told The Telegraph: “We are pleased that Mr Parker has decided to resign as National Trust chairman, following the publication of our motion of no confidence in him that would have been put to this year’s Annual Meeting.

      “His position was clearly untenable given everything that has happened and the current crisis of confidence in the National Trust amongst its staff, volunteers and members.”

      “What the National Trust needs now is a chair with a deep understanding and appreciation of our nation’s heritage.

      “We also call on the Board of Trustees to make this an open and accountable process so that their shortlist of potential candidates is published and they present themselves and their proposals for the Trust to members in open events in the coming months.

      In a statement posted on the National Trust’s website last night, the charity said Mr Parker had “informed trustees of his decision the day after the Trust’s houses reopened to the public on 17 May, and will step down in October this year”.

      The chairman of the Trust is an unpaid role and is the most senior of the charity’s 50,000 volunteers.

      Mr Parker had served two three-year terms and agreed to a “third exceptional term” to provide stability during the Covid-19 crisis which hit visitor numbers.

      The charity said: “The search for Tim’s successor had begun before the pandemic arrived, but was halted to provide stability to the organisation. It will now resume.”

      Mr Parker said: “It has been an immense privilege to serve the Trust for seven years as Chair and, as we emerge from the pandemic, the time is now right for the search to begin for my successor.”

      Earlier this year Mr Parker, who is also chairman of the Post Office, said he was “extremely sorry” for “historical failures” which led to the wrongly convictions of 39 sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted because of mistakes made by a flawed computer system.”

      1. It looks like Mr Parker is a kind of “Typhoid Mary” bringing a curse wherever he goes. (The report was not “bad timing” but a sensational, lying, gross distortion of reality.

      2. It’s been going on for quite some time. I remember FONT (Friends Of the National Trust) being formed to try to fight some of their less appealing policies.

    8. “The director-general has admitted that the timing of the publication of the ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’ was ‘a mistake’.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/25/national-trust-chair-quits-amid-revolt-charitys-woke-agenda/

      National Trust chairman quits amid revolt over charity’s ‘woke’ agenda

      “Tim Parker’s decision to quit was announced just 24 hours after a rebel group of members set out plans to oust him

      By Christopher Hope, Chief Political Correspondent25 May 2021 • 10:04pm

      Tim Parker

      Tim Parker has served two three-year terms and agreed to a ‘third exceptional term’ to provide stability during the Covid-19 crisis Credit: Geoff Pugh

      The chairman of the National Trust has resigned amid a growing revolt among its members over the charity’s “woke” policies.

      Tim Parker’s decision to quit was announced just 24 hours after a rebel group of members set out plans to force him out at this year’s annual general meeting.

      Members, MPs and ministers have grown increasingly concerned over the Trust’s leadership after it published report last September into the links between its properties – including the home of Winston Churchill – and the UK’s colonial and slavery past.

      The highly critical rebel motion at this year’s AGM, which has not yet been submitted – is understood to have been backed by more than 50 members – said the “membership has no confidence in Tim Parker as chairman of the National Trust and asks that he offer his resignation.”

      It added: “It is the task of a chairman to see an organisation through a crisis. The pandemic has presented the National Trust with severe challenges, and meeting these while securing the future well-being of the charity should have been the absolute priority.

      “Instead, the National Trust has been the subject of debates in Parliament and an investigation by the Charity Commission, which found that the charity published a report which generated strongly held and divided views without fully managing the risks to the reputation of the charity.

      “The director-general has admitted that the timing of the publication of the ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’ was ‘a mistake’.”

      Morale at Trust at all-time low

      The motion continued: “The National Trust leadership has frequently been out of step with its members and supporters over recent years.

      “Unnecessary controversies have threatened to undermine the charity’s simple duty to promote public enjoyment of buildings, places and chattels under its protection.

      “As a result, morale among volunteers and members is at an all-time low and the National Trust has suffered, both financially and reputationally.

      “The National Trust needs to regain the nation’s confidence, and will need fresh leadership to achieve this.”

      Following widespread criticism of its report last September into the links between its properties and the UK’s colonial and slavery past, the Charity Commission opened a “regulatory compliance case” and the heritage minister told Parliament that the report was “unfortunate” and the Trust should go back to its “core functions”.

      At last November’s virtual annual meeting, Mr Parker came under fire after he described Black Lives Matter, which in the UK has called on the government to “defund the police”, as a “human rights movement with no party-political affiliations” in a letter to a member.

      Speaking at the meeting he said “we are not members of BLM”, adding that he hoped members would see “that in no way the Trust has become a political organisation that has been taken over by a bunch of woke folk or anything of that nature”.

      There was further controversy in 2017 when it emerged that the Trust had tried to force volunteers at a Norfolk mansion to wear the gay pride rainbow symbol on lanyards and badges. The Trust later dropped the demand.

      Chairman’s position was ‘untenable’

      A spokesman for Restore Trust told The Telegraph: “We are pleased that Mr Parker has decided to resign as National Trust chairman, following the publication of our motion of no confidence in him that would have been put to this year’s Annual Meeting.

      “His position was clearly untenable given everything that has happened and the current crisis of confidence in the National Trust amongst its staff, volunteers and members.”

      “What the National Trust needs now is a chair with a deep understanding and appreciation of our nation’s heritage.

      “We also call on the Board of Trustees to make this an open and accountable process so that their shortlist of potential candidates is published and they present themselves and their proposals for the Trust to members in open events in the coming months.

      In a statement posted on the National Trust’s website last night, the charity said Mr Parker had “informed trustees of his decision the day after the Trust’s houses reopened to the public on 17 May, and will step down in October this year”.

      The chairman of the Trust is an unpaid role and is the most senior of the charity’s 50,000 volunteers.

      Mr Parker had served two three-year terms and agreed to a “third exceptional term” to provide stability during the Covid-19 crisis which hit visitor numbers.

      The charity said: “The search for Tim’s successor had begun before the pandemic arrived, but was halted to provide stability to the organisation. It will now resume.”

      Mr Parker said: “It has been an immense privilege to serve the Trust for seven years as Chair and, as we emerge from the pandemic, the time is now right for the search to begin for my successor.”

      Earlier this year Mr Parker, who is also chairman of the Post Office, said he was “extremely sorry” for “historical failures” which led to the wrongly convictions of 39 sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted because of mistakes made by a flawed computer system.”

    9. It’s quite an achievement to take an iconic and much-loved national institution and make it hated by those that once supported it- all in such a short time period.

        1. One minute the guy is touting his “ethnic background” and before you know, he finds his real Pa is just some upper class toff lothario. You could not make it up!

    10. The big danger is that the upper echelons of the NT are all composed of people like him, and they will simply elect another of that ilk who will row back for a few years before making another attack.
      These people are patient.

      1. Didn’t he take over from the multicoloured lanyard bint?
        Like just about every other British institution, the NT needs a through clean out.

        1. Apart from anything else, nobody with a face that irritating should ever have any public facing position, let alone an important one!
          Look at public life these days – it’s just one long row of weak, smug, eminently kickable faces.

    11. He will no doubt reappear in some highly paid sinecure through the revolving door system.

    12. I’d imagine he’s going on to a 2 days a month role on £500,000 a year advising on woke and climate change on a quango somewhere – all at tax payers expense.

  18. Good morning, all. Dry(ish), sunny(ish) windy(ish). Better start than yesterday. Ladderwork awaits…

    No news again, I see.

    1. Morning Oggy. The very earliest photographs from Wuhan of people dropping dead in the streets and being walled up in their apartments leads to grave suspicions about the truth of their version of events!

      1. 333419+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Prototype scenarios, cloud the issue, a selection that the
        political carrion feasting parties lab/lib/con will use to their advantage in controlling / managing the herd.

        May one ask, what DID happen to flu, was a case reported anywhere ?

        1. Flu has recently reappeared in the reports. Here’s my reply to AWK five days ago.

          Morning, AWK.

          …and influenza.

          Surely some mistake, we were told that influenza and the common cold had been eradicated this last Winter.

        2. Flu has recently reappeared in the reports. Here’s my reply to AWK five days ago.

          Morning, AWK.

          …and influenza.

          Surely some mistake, we were told that influenza and the common cold had been eradicated this last Winter.

    2. Government lies to you because more than 70% of the population wouldn’t understand. Of thoe who understood, they would mis-understand. More wouldn’t believe it. The few who do understand and do believe it would find the truth so absolutely hilarious, exposing such incompetence, corruption, fraud and ineptitude that they’d think it a farce, not government.

  20. 333419+ up ticks,

    Seems like the tory ( ino) party has bumped into the kraken.
    A reset upset surely.

    Farce as Government’s plan for new local lockdowns unravels
    Ministers forced into retreat after local authorities threaten to defy guidelines that placed restrictions on travel and socialising

    2. The incompetence, the left hand not knowing what the right is either doing or planning, the mixed messages etc. this government shows all the signs that leadership from the top is non-existent without any hope of change whilst Johnson, Hancock et al. are in residence. No author wishing to sell a book with such a plot could expect to have it published, it is so off the scale of reality, except that we are living the nightmare with no end in sight.

      1. 333419+ up ticks,
        Morning KtK,
        “The incompetence, the left hand not knowing what the right is either doing or planning, the mixed messages etc.”

        IMO it is the same treacherous incompetence used early post referendum as in orchestrated.
        I do not believe you get to that level of operating in politics
        and continue to make “balls ups” and this has been showing out since the major era, ie decades.

      2. The really concerning thing is that with this load of charlatans in charge they still lead in the opinion polls by 18 points.

        Very worrying – cue Ogga.

        1. Posing the right questions to the right people, add in the double failure that is Starmer and his minority issue concerned Labour Party, and there you have it. It is, nevertheless, worrying.

      3. As with the rushed ‘vaccines’ Johnson and young world leader Hancock have rushed the Davos Agenda for the Great Reset.

        By rushing they have made mistakes and are now compounding those mistakes. The hole they have dug for themselves is now too deep for them to escape.

        1. I posited some months ago that those two were in too deep to escape and so would slog on to the bitter end and hope to come out victorious.

          There appears to be the start of an unravelling e.g. the jabs are getting more bad reviews and pressing for children to be jabbed is not a good look; Johnson has admitted that there exists a significant minority of adults that have declined being jabbed; business leaders have stated they will not enforce the jab passport – Johnson could commit political suicide by trying to legislate away the legal rights of people and discrimination law – but IMO hasn’t the balls to go down that road; Israel is ditching its version of the passport and Denmark will not go for it along with some powerful states in the USA.

          Add in the cock-up of the “Indian Variant” and travel between towns, the holiday travel cock-ups and today Cummings is dishing the dirt and trying to bury Hancock. The government look like a bunch of amateurs led by a buffoon who hasn’t the first idea about leadership.

          That this shower hold an eighteen points lead over Labour indicates that Labour are teetering on the edge of the political abyss.

          1. Hi Korky.

            For what it is worth I have just watched the Dan Bongino Show on Rumble. I recommend you too watch it. The man is a genius reporter who worked in the Secret Service, presidential protection, and was before that a policeman.

            He is about the most eloquent and knowledgeable journalist around in the USA. Inspiring stuff and a great delivery.

            The octagonal wheels are falling off the Johnson-Hancock-Whitty-Vallance-Van Tam-Harries bandwagon. Add to those Neil Ferguson and Drosten.

            The adverse effects of their promoted vaccination programme are now very apparent as are the dire and damaging results of their stupid lockdown measures and masking measures.

            A second Nuremberg Court awaits them for crimes against humanity. All that remains is for these despicable cretins to name those they wish to join in the action. In order to facilitate that choice I would suggest Bezos, Gates, Soros, Zuckerberg, and the CEO’s of Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson and all other purveyors of poisonous jabs.

          2. Thanks for that, corimmobile.
            I have one for you; bit technical at the start but from about 20 minutes in Dr Fleming talks about the “vaccine” and why it should not be deployed. I would trust Fleming’s warnings over liar Hancock’s, “…the “vaccine” is safe,” any day of the week. If Fleming, Cahill, Yeadon, Bhakdi et al. have concerns then I have concerns.

            Bitchute – The Highwire with Del Bigtree and Dr R Fleming

  22. Birdie, Birdie

    A farmer is in need of a new rooster, so he goes to the local tack shop and buys a new one by the name of Kenny.

    The farmer takes Kenny home, and as soon as he puts him in the yard, Kenny starts chasing after the chickens. Within a few hours, Kenny had violated every single hen, and was working his way through the ducks!

    On seeing this, the farmer said, “you’d better slow down! You’re gonna shag yourself to death!”

    The next morning, the farmer steps out the back way and finds Kenny screwing the sheep! Once again, the farmer says, “you’d better slow down! You’re gonna shag yourself to death!”

    The next day, the farmer wakes up and sees buzzards circling over his yard, and he knows that his prediction has come true. He rushes out to the yard and finds Kenny sprawled out, tits up in the dirt.

    “See Kenny,” says the farmer, “I told you! You done gone and fucked yourself to death!”

    All of a sudden, one of Kenny’s eyes opens! Kenny points to the buzzards circling in the sky, looks at the farmer and whispers, “Shhh… Pussy!”

    2. My upvote does not imply I agree with your thoroughly dirty joke. It is most poor taste.

      And hilarious!

    1. We’ve just had a year long lock up that hindered the immunisation program. It didn’t help a year ago.

    2. Difficult to get tested here, Professor.

      They closed down the Testing Centre a week ago.

    1. Hey, Dean. Word on the reservation is that this is heap bad wampum, Dude. Letting loose a bioweapon on your own tribe is Lemming City, Bro.

      2. Hey Beatnik, word is that the Chinese people were giving old Winnie the Pooh the Big Finger, Dude. Going with the Big Lockdown stopped the citizenry expressing disdain for the Great Helmsman Mark II, your man Pooh, so they were shut down pronto, Hombre.

    2. Probably, but so is SARS. If it was released by accident, then I imagine those responsible have paid the price.

      It no longer matters.

      What does matter is that now proven incompetent, will the NHS be reformed? Now proven pointless and self serving, with PHE be disbanded – no, not just renamed, we’re used to that tired old trick, actually shut down and those fanatic clinicians who avoided the pandemic in favour of their personal vendetta sacked?

      With SAGE now admit their models were wildly off kilter and designed to give the worst case option? Will people stop using twittwat and farcebork due to their censorship of different opinions?

      Of course not. nothing will change. Nothing ever does.

  25. off down town, Westlands not CBD. Catch up later, hoping to beat the impending forecast rains so as not to get caught in the boating lake

  26. Mr Davie has been with the BBC since 2005. He was former director-general Mark Thompson’s first senior external appointment. He
    has held many senior roles and is part of the BBC establishment. The culture of the BBC remains the same, as do the faces.
    David Lane Ludlow, Shropshire

    Theculture of the BBC remains the same, as do the faces.

    a small amendnent, if I may

    The culture of the BBC remains the same, as do the faeces.

  27. Good morning from a bright but overcast Derbyshire with 5°C on the yard thermometer.
    The DT’s car is in the garage having a probably phantom ABS fault checked so I’m having to run her up to work in a couple of hours time.

    I see the racist Black Lies Matter grifter is still causing comment:-

    The people who dragged Sasha Johnson’s shooting into the culture wars should be ashamed of themselves

    Black Britons are being let down by activists and influencers more interested in American race debates than gang violence

    MUTAZ AHMED
    25 May 2021 • 3:03pm

    The factions were ready for another culture war to explode yesterday, as we woke up to the news that Sasha Johnson, a Black Lives Matter activist, had been shot in the head in London. One could almost hear the tap-tap of indignant tweets being drafted and parked, ready for an announcement that Johnson had in fact been killed by an angry racist white man. Some were anticipating such a moment with an emotion that seemed almost to border on glee. The prospect of television appearances, newspaper articles and self-flagellating statements from white celebrities was one dreadful press conference away.

    Some revealed their hand too early. Just hours after the incident, Diane Abbott tweeted that “nobody should have to potentially pay with their life because they stood up for racial justice”. Asked later why she’d made such a bold presumption on the basis of zero evidence, she retorted: “It is so wrong to accuse people of colour who raise issues in relation to race of somehow inflaming feelings.” Her defensiveness was telling. I may be wrong on this factual issue, but you, white man, mustn’t dare tell me so.

    It now seems highly unlikely that Johnson was the victim of a hate crime. Scotland Yard has said that the key suspects are four black men, and that, contrary to earlier media reports, there is insufficient evidence of Johnson receiving death threats prior to the incident. Some of her friends believe she was caught up in a gangland shooting while attending a house party. A terrible accident. The incident occurred in Peckham where, two years ago, twenty-two year old boxer Oluwafemi Omosuyi was shot in the face with a shotgun.

    At a vigil held for Johnson in Ruskin Park yesterday, one speaker told the crowd: “In every community there are good eggs and bad eggs and we have to make sure those bad eggs are held accountable for their actions.”

    It takes a confident, diverse police force to do that – to protect black people from bad eggs. And so it is regrettably ironic that Johnson’s case is being handled by Trident, a specialist unit set up in 1998 to crack down on gun crime in the black community, which has been at the heart of calls by Black Lives Matter protestors to defund the police.

    Equally regrettable is the fact that many of our black and brown police officers, including my own brother, have in recent months been subjected to abuse at the hands of radical activists. Racially-aggravated assaults on ethnic minority Met Police officers increased threefold during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.

    Beyond the radical activists, we see in moments like this the divide between the priorities of influential “race commentators” and those of ordinary black people. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a black schoolboy in Peckham to imagine that Johnson was caught up in turf wars – these things occur much too regularly. But for the commentator, the politician and the influencer, the mind immediately crossed the pond. These people, so committed to importing American racial debates, have tricked themselves into thinking that this is a country where racist assassinations are common.

    The truth is that we are spared the more violent elements of American racism because our history is not theirs; our white supremacists are not as numerous or as organised; and our policing is not as haphazard. Just as we are spared their extraordinary levels of police violence because we are among the tiny minority of western nations that severely restrict police use of guns. We are fundamentally different; the American analysis of race melts in the face of British reality.

    Yet the media prominence that Johnson’s shooting received yesterday morning, accompanied by pictures of her holding up the Black Panther fist, showed just how influential, and dangerous, such a narrative could be. With a little more ambiguity from the police, Abbott’s presumptions would have been allowed to fester throughout the week, wrongly convincing people before any corroboration that Britain had descended into racial warfare.

    That was thankfully avoided, just, and now it is telling how quickly the story has fallen off the agenda. There isn’t much media appetite for another unfortunate black shooting. There isn’t much time in activist circles, either, for the introspection required to tackle the epidemic of violent crime in black areas. We are left in a doom cycle, where people prefer to debate how racist imperial measurements are than discuss these existential issues.

    There isn’t much hope at the moment for that black schoolboy in Peckham.

    1. Or just say it how it is; nobody is particularly surprised that black people have shot a black person in London, and activists like Sasha Johnson only make the problem worse.

    2. “We are left in a doom cycle, where people prefer to debate how racist imperial measurements are than discuss these existential issues.”
      Indeed.

    3. “…There isn’t much media appetite for another unfortunate black shooting.
      There isn’t much time in activist circles, either, for the introspection
      required to tackle the epidemic of violent crime in black areas…”

      Rather sums up the problem. They kill each other with such regularity it’s not news any more. No more important than showering. Is no one else utterly sickened by this?

      However, I think it’s another reason. I think they keep quiet because it is the rock holding the landslide in place. It’s ok to shout and rant and scream when a drug addled black criminal is arrested and dies in custody (note that the civilised white population didn’t do the same over Epstein) but when a black kid kills another black kid… silence. Because if we start talking about it, we have to admit there’s problem that isn’t solved by massive amounts of money, by talking headds, by social workers and happy clappy free holidays, that can’t be silenced by squeals of ‘waycism’, that eexposes a nasty, unpleasant and obvious problem that Labour’s mass induction of unwanted, unskilled dross caused.

      No. They keep it a foot note because if it’s actually discussed the apple cart doesn’t turn over – the entire 500 acres of orchard burns. It needs to. The media need to make it clear there’s a problem. Labour, Blair, Brown, the scum Mandelson, all those complicit in forcing the millions of illegal immigrants on this country need to be blamed and made accountable.

      Bigoted? If pointing out the truth and wanting to stop kids dying makes me a bigot, then bigot I am. The black community has a problem.

    4. The more this goes on, the more I am convinced that we’d be far better off as a country and a society if all the bleks went back to their homelands (even if they happened to be born here; I’m with the Duke of Wellington on this one).

    1. Truth doesn’t stop them. But it was a great speech, to which you could also add “Where are your Christians? Where are your Yazidi?”

  29. Morning..just 25 minutes until Mr Cummings sets forth to the Science and Technology committee in the HOC.
    Should be fun!

  30. Presidential election in Syria today.
    Western nations have already decried the result claiming that Syrians living in European countries can’t vote.
    Why can’t they vote?…because said Western nations have all closed their Syrian embassies!!!

    1. And I was not allowed to vote in Britain as I am a resident in France and not allowed to vote in France because I am British.

      If I can put up with it then so can they1

        1. Not entirely. In fact I think you miss mine as well!

          It is another case of selective indignation.

          While it was quite acceptable for a white British person working in the EU to lose his vote in Britain why is it not acceptable for Syrians living in Europe to lose their votes in Syria?

          And another point: people living in the EU were promised a vote in Cameron’s 2016 EU referendum but – surprise surprise – Cameron went back on the promise when he was informed that such people were likely to vote the wrong way – i.e. to leave the EU.

  31. A bit of nostalgia for a 1950s child:

    1 9 5 2 – 1 9 6 1 (UK)
    120 x 30 minute episodes

    At a time when young children were enthralled by Andy Pandy, their older siblings were tucking into the adventures of Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School.

    The serial was one of the first successes from the fledgeling BBC Children’s Department at the tiny Lime Grove studios.

    Bunter was also popular with adults – in fact, the show used to go out live twice every Friday – at 5.25 pm for children and two hours later for their parents.

    Written by a scholarly man named Frank Richards (real name Charles Hamilton) who produced a great flow of school stories in the early years of the century, published in weekly magazines like The Magnet, Bunter came to television in 1952 and ran (or rather, waddled) intermittently for ten years.

    billybunter_02

    The rotund Bunter was one of several boys in the class known as ‘The Remove’ year and his round face and horn-rimmed glasses earned him the nickname ‘The Fat Owl of the Remove’.

    Producer Joy Harington had great difficulty in finding someone suitable to play the ‘Fat Owl’.

    She said at the time; “Every fat boy in England came for the part but none was right. Then a friend suggested Gerald Campion. Of course, he isn’t fat enough in the tummy – we’ll have to arrange that. But he’s got the face for it”.

    And so Gerald Campion became Bunter. At 11 stone 12 pounds, he wasn’t really fat; and at 29 years of age, married with two children, he certainly wasn’t a schoolboy! But he did read the Magnet in which the Bunter stories appeared and was confident he could solve his weight problem.

    Bunter’s vocabulary sounds dated now, with phrases like “I say, you fellows” and exclamations such as “Beast!”, “Blimey!” and “Crikey!”, but the use of “Crikey!” got the series into trouble when an Enfield vicar criticised it for bad language. He counted Bunter saying “Crikey!” thirteen times in one episode and pointed out that the dictionary defines the word as ‘vulgar’ . . .

    Bunter’s great adversary was the form-master, Mr Quelch, played in the 50s by Kynaston Reeves and in the 60s by John Melford.

    Bunter’s chums included Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Johnny Bull, Frank Nugent and Hurree Singh (an Indian boy whom the others referred to as ‘Inky’ – an unfortunate sign of the times).

    Among those who appeared as boys were Melvyn Hayes, David Hemmings and Michael Crawford.

    Plots centred around Bunter’s plans to gain extra “tuck” (jam tarts and doughnuts being particular favourites) while the other boys made fun of his greed and size and played a variety of pranks on him. No viewers complained about this comic bullying.

    Gerald Campion retired from television in 1968 to run a succession of restaurants in London’s West End and around the Home Counties. In 1986 he bought the Woodmans Arms at Hastingleigh, near Ashford.

    Campion passed away on 9 July 2002 in Agen, Aquitaine, France. He was 81.

    https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1950s/billy-bunter-greyfriars-school/

    1. C H Chapman, the last illustrator for the Magnet and a Billy Bunter cartoonist, lived up the road from us when I was a kid. I did not know who he was but the vicar told me one day when he was at our house for some function- probably my younger brother’s post-baptism drinks party in 1964.

    2. I remember a cartoon a few years ago where a mother explains that Bunter is a perfectly normal boy at school with some terribly thin boys…

    3. You wouldn’t get away with ‘inky’ now. What the woke don’t understand was that such a term was inclusive and not an insult.

    4. Odd that the Vicar didn’t take issue with ‘God Blind Me’ in ‘Blimey’.

      Oh well.

    5. Bunter was preceded by the ‘fat boy’ Graham Moffatt. He worked with Will Hay and had parts in Chaplin films.

      On retirement Moffatt became a publican running the Englishcombe Arms on Englishcombe Lane in Bath.

  32. Sobering to think that 10 years ago our leaders were David Cameron, PM, and Nick Clegg, Deputy Leader, and Osborne was Chancellor. The tide of PC/Wokeism continued apace. What a sordid trio they have turned out to be – definitely not sincere and admirable members of the “we’re all in this together” club.

    1. GM Lewis, as bad as they were they were just minor blips on the radar compared to the devastation that Blair & Brown inflicted on the UK effectively turning the UK into the 3rd worlders paradise that it is today!

      1. 333419+ up ticks,
        Morning E&S,
        They have been an open coalition since major,joined at the political hip by ONGOING
        mass uncontrolled immigration supported by a great % of the electorate again & again.

        If any profess to be English / Brit. indigenous,
        I truly cannot see a reason to support for so obvious an anti GB political mob as this treacherous coalition.

    2. The rot set in when politics appealed more to sheer greed and vanity than to public service.

      It starts at the bottom – how many young people could expect to receive the same pay, expenses and other benefits in any job requiring no training or skill other than in politics? And by the time they get to the top of the greasy pole people like Cameron, Clegg and Osborne are completely be-slimed in toxic greasy mucus.

    3. Crikey! (@Sue) what a ghastly line-up! We really didn’t think we could get anything worse…

  34. And now for a bit of culture !
    The Hot Sardines – Petite Fleur
    Paintings – Oscar Alvarez Pardo https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/326888
    Lyrics: If the flowers That border the paths All faded tomorrow I would keep in my heart The one that lit up in your eyes When I loved you so much In the wonderful land Of our sixteen springs Little love flower You will always bloom For me When the life At times betrays me You remain my happiness Little flower On my twenties I stop for a moment To breathe This perfume that I loved so much In my heart You will always bloom In the big garden of love Little flower … In my heart You will always bloom In the large garden of love Small flower …
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10AM5-NpMk

  35. Good morning Nottlers

    America has a problem , which is also affecting us , just similar to their weather, don’t you think?
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9615371/Turning-mourning-dancing-Festival-remember-Floyd.html

    Australia has a problem as well with brown things.

    Australia’s unrelenting mouse plague could last for TWO YEARS as farmers abandon their crops and experts warn rodents are starting to swarm Sydney
    Plague will slash value of state’s winter crop by $1million, farmers have warned
    The Mouse Alert website shows how mouse sightings have doubled since March
    Farmers abandoning paddocks and cant defer sowing winter crops any longer
    NSW Farmers called $50million government assistance package ‘impractical’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9618945/Australias-unrelenting-mouse-plague-TWO-YEARS-NSW-farmers-abandon-crops.html

    May we be protected from plagues and pestilence, hmmm , not too sure about that .

    There are quite a few political rats who mean to harm us.

    3. After Australian scientists focused their minds on the problem they unaminously decided “No worries mate, She’ll be right”.

      Also. the man on the Sidney omnibus said “Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS-

      Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.

      After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.

      Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them for his master to clamber free.

      HMM… Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. “DANGEROUS
      MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS,
      CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA, ”
      he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART
      THREE, I SEE.

      He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I
      ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?

      They waited.

      IT WOULD APPEAR THAT-

      “No, wait master. Here it comes.”

      Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air.
      Finally Death reached up an caught the single sheet of paper.

      He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.

      “May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper.

      “‘Some of the sheep, ‘” Albert read aloud. “Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside’d be better, then.”

      WHAT AN INTRIGUING PLACE, said Death. SADDLE UP THE HORSE, ALBERT. I FEEL SURE I’M GOING TO BE NEEDED.

      Terry Pratchett.

    4. I wonder if it’s due to the fires driving wildlife away from the forests?

      1. That would be uncontrolled wildfires caused by the build-up of detritus ever since ‘ecologists’ banned controlled burns; something the aborigines were doing for millennia before Europeans arrived.

    1. That’s ilegal surely? However, we live in a world where a criminal is made a martyr and his family rewarded with monies stolen from those he robbed and the man paid to police him is arrested and jailed for protecting society.

      If a better example exists of how back to front and upside down our world is, I cannot think of one.

          1. Hi Plum,

            It has been taken over by evil, selfish specimens of humanity who are everything that a decent society should eschew. (And that’s just the politicians…).

  37. 333419+ up ticks,
    May one ask,
    Since old George Raft got the NO/NO as an alledged mafia front man,
    what now are the political mafia families operating titles, who is Capo dei Capi within the HOC / HOL ?

  38. Good morning, my friends

    Politics latest news: Dominic Cummings takes aim before MPs at Government’s Covid strategy
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/26/boris-johnson-dominic-cummings-news-covid-lockdown-variant-pmqs/

    BTL Comment

    Boris Johnson needed Cummings to help him with running the country efficiently. He also needed his mistress for sexual gratification.

    Both Cummings and Symonds could not tolerate the presence of each other.

    Unfortunately the slaking of Boris Johnson’s lust proved more urgent and immediate to him than Britain being properly governed.

    We can only pray that the Johnson/Symonds team have not destroyed Britain beyond all repair.

    1. GM Rastus, too late the Blair/Brown team already destroyed Britain beyond repair & the proof of that is Mosque stands on every corner where a pub once stood!

        1. Can’t imagine that any man would be interested in their beavers!

    2. I think it more apt that Symonds thought she should have a say and Cummings knew she didn’t.

      As Symonds had Boris by the balls, she got what she wanted. Which implies Boris doesn’t divide his professional and personal lives.

      If the nonsense legislation popping up is due to Symonds’ influence then that will be a failure we will pay for again and again. As it is, ‘green’ is just a method of moving money form the earner to the wealthy.

      1. The sentient animals bill is a Trojan horse for banning slaughter of animals for meat. Note that it only applies to vertebrates. Eat the bugs, bigot!

    3. Good morning Richard

      Just thinking about Cummings and the eruptions in No 10. He is really full of spite and malice , and doesn’t think twice about washing dirty laundry in public and ambushing anyone who upsets him. He is an absolute dog.

      Re your comment about Boris humping his mistress, I have 2 male spaniels , 13 years old and one nearly eight years old .

      Sometimes the younger one , who is bright , energetic , who knows words and is a ball obsessive, meaning he has a variety of toys and balls he carries around with him . Pip has to be very watchful of the older dog , who is so laid back but who becomes really annoyed by the younger one pestering him when he is trying to rest.

      Imagine the situation , younger one bounces into the kitchen with ball, older dog lays in ambush by the living room door , younger one rushes back in to the room , older dog pounces and there is a tug of war as the older dog snatches the ball . Younger one then squeaks and barks , older one hides away , and the younger one becomes so agitated that he starts to hump Moh’s leg when he tries to placate the pup, so he is walking around the room with one very upset youngster who wants his ball back , but is standing on hind legs almost crying clinging onto Mohs leg !

      Boris seems to be the sort of guy , who by outward appearances seems so confideent , but is shaky and insecure, hence the need for his desire to hump when his stress level rises.

      Along came Carrie who understood his requirements . Touch of the Bill Clinton’s , don’t you think?

      1. Sorry, Mags, but Carrion has done far more damage than Monica Lewinsky ever did.

        Cummings is probably the only one with enough dirt and chutzpah to maybe force a change of government – if not completely, enough to damage and oust the Bumbler and his bint.

        1. Hello Tom ,

          What ever the eruptions are and if Boris is ousted , who do you think is capable of taking the country forward.

          I am very fearful of Tory plans for the way ahead, the plans for 400, 000 new homes smothering our green and pleasant land . Also Tory Green plans that would result in huge fines if we don’t replace our gas boilers, going electric is anappalling plan . The list is endless, and don’t get me started on cronyism and migrants, the Islamification of Britain , schools who are cowering re political correctness.

          Why doesn’t the media investigate what child poverty is , the rearing of children gone wrong, poor mothers who tattoo every inch of their body , drink , paint their nails and gamble and behave like stray bitches dropping puppies ?

          Labour has never felt concern for the working man , they are a party cavilling to immigrants , and Hamas .. they are anti Jew .

          Boris is a pain in tthe neck , but how do we get back to true Tory principles that we admired so much in Maggie Thatchers day?

          1. Their green plans are total rubbish – these metro people have no idea how we live out in the sticks. We have no gas supply here, we have an oil-fired boiler and it’s been working hard this year, it’s been so cold. We also have a woodburner, fuelled for the last couple of years by old pallets.

            I run an old diesel workhorse, and he has a Toyota hybrid – neither of us does much mileage these days. My car is 14 years old and his is 8. There is no way an electric car would be a suitable means of transport round here. The nearest bus stop is a mile away – no problem going downhill but not so good walking back up the hill with shopping. The turnaround time for a bus going into town is either about an hour or much longer to wait if you miss that one. I seldom go into Stroud.

          2. Indeed; the London centric have no idea what life is like out in rural areas. If they miss a bus, there’ll be another along in ten minutes. If we miss one here, we may have to wait until the following day – often we can get somewhere by bus, but we can’t get back! We are lucky inasmuch as we do have access to the railway; many places don’t. Even so, trains are infrequent and you have to be careful not to miss the last one or you’re stuck. If you work, a car is essential. They also forget that it is around 2 degrees C colder in the countryside than it is in town (never crosses their mind that building more housing causes more global warming; it’s called “urban hotspots”).

          3. There’s a train from Stroud to London – direct to Paddington, which is good. First you have to get to Stroud, of course.
            For Bristol by train you have to drive to Cam – half an hour but it’s free parking.
            There’s been a push for years now to get the station in Stonehouse reopened for a direct train to Bristol.
            As regards the “urban heat island” effects – they always quote Heathrow tarmac for the hottest place, not ordinary places. It’s all a farce, isn’t it?

          4. From memory, I recall that Owen Patterson could do a good job.

            As for party, here is the same dilemma as I’ve asked Ogga on several occasions.

            If it’s not Lib/Lab/Con what is a credible alternative.

            At the recent local elections I could only spoil both papers by marking them, “None of the above.”

  40. Arab states accept sham Syria elections as Assad returns to fold. 26 May 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa6aed2004e2b3adb43f0fe1a08e9fe9cbc3925ddcf43ba808450e1c00a600ec.jpg

    Polling stations opened Wednesday for Syrians in government-controlled areas, in an election pre-ordained to hand President Bashar al-Assad a fourth term amid collapsing regional consensus over the need for transition following Syria’s civil war.

    Good luck to Assad and his beautiful wife. They have stood up to everything that the western Intelligence agencies and their proxies could throw at them!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/26/arab-states-accept-sham-syria-elections-assad-returns-fold/

        1. Not in my opinion – the rebels had at one time a pro-western element but Obama made sure that they got no help & so the extremist AQ & ISIS factions took over the rebellion & the result was mass murder of civilians by both sides, Iran calling the shots via its Hezbollah proxy & Russia getting its wish for a base to outflank NATO in the eastern Mediterranean

          1. My view is that the only reason the rebels started off with a “pro Western” slant is that experience told them that that is where money and weapons would come from.

            If they had taken over, as soon as they were in power things would have changed and not for the better, more Islam, more Sharia, more anti Israel.

      4. But is he any worse than the terrorists? Is Iraq better off since the fall of Saddam Hussain? Is Libya better off since the fall of Gaddafi?

    3. Why does the West always choose the wrong side?

      In Syria the West supported left wing terrorists hoping to topple a legitimately elected government.

      Why? Why and thrice Why?

      1. The West never departs from being an extension of US foreign policy. US foreign policy is intended to ensure US world hegemony* as regards oil in particular and trade in general. This was wonderfully clearly illuminated by the row over Chiquita bananas entering the EU. The Senators representing Chiquita were able to bring about a an embargo on Scottish cashmere products being sold to the US as well as a range of other things from the EU.

        *If they can find a way to damage the UK as well, they love it.

      1. I felt like suggesting our church choir (who are only amateur inasmuch as they aren’t paid) should be paid 1p/week to make them professional. At the end of the month, they could donate it and gift aid it – win/win. Then we could have all 25+ singing instead of 6.

    4. Signed. These rules are a blatant attempt to stop people getting together and exchanging opinions face to face. Keep the people isolated and fearful!
      Utterly disgraceful from a British government.

      2. But – an answer to your prayer. “Milk” chocolate covered licorish (ugh) BULLETS. Multi-purposing – milk for the whites – licorish (ugh) and bullets for yer blacks.

    3. Climate change fanatic: water is too clean. Needs more sewage by turning off the energy to clean it.

    1. For about the first 20 years after I settled in Israel I would listen on the radio to the BBC World Service, they always had the Lilliburlero March as their medley before the news & suddenly they ceased broadcasting it altogether. In retrospect I know now it was that the BBC had changed fundamentally from being a British radio channel to a Communist & Pro-Arab propaganda channel & so I quit listening to its poisoned broadcasts
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SISjSXsb1xU

      2. Remember Lillibolero as the opening to Radio Newsreel on BBC Shortwave, with all the atmospherics, from childhood in Nigeria.

        2. Paul it was the signature medley of the BBC world service. Its been decades since I quit listening to their Commie propaganda & so I have no idea if they have a signature medley or just the cry of the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer 5 times a day!

          1. The really odd thing to me about the World Service is that – when I was young – it was white with white people doing the announcing, newsreading etc. The object was to give British news to the waiting world.

            I listened a few years back and it appeared to have been appropriated by blacks whose accents are almost impossible to decipher.

          2. No surprise there! The only UK TV channel I get on my cable TV is Sky News International ( specially formulated for non-UK broadcast, has no adverts -IMO the best part of Skys programming ) and its full of hand picked hard lefties & many of them are Muzzies or Blacks, its the modern day equivalent of Germany’s wartime Lord Haw Haw’s ” Germany Calling, Germany Calling ” propaganda & I call it ” Pakistan Calling, Pakistan Calling “

          3. There is a new bbc channel being pushed over here. It seems to have Hitlers Germany and woke gender recognition as the only two two programming themes, I declined the free trial offer.

          4. The BBC News & Entertainment channels ( old repeats of woke programs ) were removed from my cable TV package a few years ago, can’t say that I miss them & just wish they would remove CNN too !

          5. We now get several hours of bbc world service broadcast on the Canadian cbc. Accents are so strong that most of the time I cannot work out what they are saying, as for recognizing their names – no chance.

            Cbc news coverage is going the same way. It used to be a well spoken man presenting the evening news, white and male seem to disqualify you from a position as a newsreader nowadays.

    2. They have been out of touch for so long now they don’t have a clue regarding public opinion. Running out of sand years ago, Heads firmly planted up their own accommodating back passages.

        1. Yes PT i know, it thinks it’s a bloody political party.
          Keep it up with Dr Sherri 😉😍

  44. Considering all the hype, there don’t appear to be many attending the Cummings sideshow.
    Are numbers strictly limited?

    1. Morning Sos. He’s on about five channels at the moment which is six too many!

      1. Cummings seems to be blaming Hancock for most of the falings.

        I guess the BBC hacks are typing verbatim and autoKreckt takes over the smelling.

  45. Fell off a dinghy? Lost their bus money?
    No doubt Rastus knows something about the tide patterns round that bit of coastline.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/25/cocaine-worth-80-million-washes-sussex-beaches/

    “Cocaine worth £80 million washes up on Sussex beaches

    The Class A drugs are thought to have originated in South America but were bound for the UK market

    25 May 2021 • 6:54pm

    The cocaine that washed up has an estimated street value of £80 million

    The cocaine that washed up has an estimated street value of £80 million

    People visiting the Sussex coast have been urged to contact police immediately if they spot anything suspicious after almost a tonne of cocaine with a street value of £80 million washed up on two beaches.

    The first huge consignment of the drug was spotted floating in the sea just yards offshore at Hastings by members of the public at around 6am yesterday (Tues).

    The cocaine had been wrapped in waterproof packaging and tied to lifejackets in order to keep it afloat.

    The eagle eyed passers-by, who spotted the packages, tipped off Sussex Police officers, who quickly retrieved them and removed them to a safe and secure location.

    Several hours later a second shipment was found by walkers washed up on the beach at Newhaven around 30 miles away.

    Again the police alerted and the drugs were seized and secured.

    A spokesman for Sussex Police said: “In liaison with the coastguard, and East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, the packages were recovered and will be tested to determine what they are.

    “They are suspected to be class A drugs and have been taken to an undisclosed secure location.”

    The combined weight of the two shipments is thought to be around 960 kilos, which if cut and sold on the streets in the UK, would have had an estimated street value of around £80 million.

    The investigation has now been handed over to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

    Police retrieved the drugs with the help of the coastguard

    Police retrieved the drugs with the help of the coastguard

    One policing source said: “This is a huge haul and the fact the shipments were found relatively close to one another within hours would suggest we have got it all, but we cannot be certain there is not more out there floating around.

    “The message to anyone who sees anything suspicious or spots any more of these packages is to contact the police immediately.”

    It is thought the narcotics originated in South America, but were bound for the UK market.

    It is not clear how the cocaine ended up in the sea, but one theory is that the smugglers threw the drugs overboard intending for them to be collected by their criminal associates, but they washed away before they were located.

    Another theory is that the gang responsible ditched the drugs fearing they were about to be intercepted by Border Force or customs officers.

    Martin Grace, NCA branch commander, said the haul amounted to a “significant hit” to the criminal gangs shipping the drugs.

    He added: “This is a significant amount of class A drugs which we think originated in South America, but we are keeping an open mind about how the drugs washed up here and where the end destination might have been.

    “Clearly though losing a consignment of this size this will represent a significant hit to the criminal networks involved.

    “Our investigation is being assisted by both Sussex Police and Border Force, and is also likely to involve international partners.”

    Four years ago a similar haul was discovered when two consignments of cocaine washed up on two beaches in Norfolk.

    Around 360 kilos of the Class A drug was found in holdalls attached to flotation devices near Great Yarmouth.”

    1. They are more careful with weapons smuggling as most of it comes in via the diplomatic mail bags of Arab countries & possibly some corrupt South American countries.

    2. Geeeeeeeze this government and the useless civil service needs a damn good repeated kicking up it’s useless back side.
      More than 15 thousand illegals likely to arrive this year and at smaller ports than Dover.

    5. No honest officer, we are not people smugglers, we are a group of law abiding citizens helping the police find more of the drug packages.

    1. A question for her:

      When ‘the white man’ is a slave for the black man; where will all your future innovations, inventions, technology and means of food production come from?

      3. Morning, Grizz.

        Perhaps she and her anti-white ilk prefer the ‘good old days and good old ways’ of tribal living in mud huts and drinking untreated river water.

      5. You only have to remember what happened in southern Africa when the black man stole the long established farms from the White African farmers.
        After that country called Zimbabwe was on it’s knees, until Mugabe sold the mining rights to the Chinese then the slavery all started over again.
        And most of the people are still poor.

      6. We’ll all leave and build somewhere else. Then they’ll leave to sponge off us again. Makes you wonder if that’s why folk left Africa all those thousands of years ago.

    3. It took 4 Black men to shoot her and between the 4 of them they failed to kill her yet it only took one white man one shot to kill Martin Luther King Jr.

        1. But they might hit & injure a few dozen peaceful drug dealers, pimps or Labour MP’s . Now we wouldn’t want the NHS ( Nigerian Health Services ) tied up for months treating their wounds & the courts tied up for years with their compensation claims.

      2. I do remember my mother telling me years ago that, if one is involved in a fight with a black man (different words were used in those days) don’t try and batter him around the head, as their skulls are very thick; she advised sharp kicks to the shin or maybe a bit higher.

    4. Why was she not arrested under that nonsense hate crime legislation?

      Kid, you are so far from being my equal you’re in another galaxy.

    2. And Now Mr Cummings is washing his hands of the government,…….. in public.

  48. No up-skirting…..we’re British…

    Good Morning Britain – Bill Turnbull.
    A debate over a 26 foot tall Marilyn Monroe statue that some people have branded misogynistic is encouraging up-skirting. However, host Bill hit out claiming there was no evidence to support that.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6dfc3ed5d44a08db8e5abcb5d25299839d1efe6c4266f1b677a5e7762a509631.jpg

    https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1441308/Bill-Turnbull-hits-out-attack-misogynistic-Marilyn-Monroe-statue-GMB-ITV-video

  49. I wonder what the procedure is about who is summoned to appear before select committees.
    Who would make that decision?

    1. The chairman, I guess – in “consultation” with the relevant Dept and its “minister” and snivel serpents.

  50. Ladderwork completed successfully. Eight overhanging branches cut down and sawn into lengths ready for the man with the chain saw. Finished just as the predicted rain began. Rather pleased!!

    1. Just had notification from BT that my landline will have to be connected to the wi-fi router, their new digital upgrade etc . .
      Same note also informs me –

      “Important: if there’s a power cut, you’ll need to use a mobile to make calls”.

      1. I received the same notification. On reading it, if you have a burglar alarm connected to the phone, it is not possible to upgrade. I had to call a number and speak to someone to stop the change.

    2. We have broadband (actually, rather feeble stringband) and our landline is connected via the internet system. If When we have a power cut, which happens two or three times a year, varying from a few hours to several days, our internet, our telephone, our phone chargers, our central heating, our cooker, our TV and radio, are all out of action. The cause of our power cut could be bad weather, being snowed in and lines brought down by the weight of ice, or an accident on a farm a few miles away.
      We have a direct landline to cover this, As it comes from the local switchboard it is virtually immune to power cuts. We also have a coal fire so we can survive for a while. We normally hold tinned and packet food stocks for a month and coal for a fortnight.
      Government plans will make life very much more difficult and dangerous.

      1. We have fallback positions as you describe, Horace.
        Wood for the stove in the hall and sitting room. Can cook in the hall if necessary.
        Landline & mobile phones.
        My sauna has become a food store (sob).
        Lots of jars and cans, also homebrew. Packets, and plenty coffee. Camping gas stove. And plenty woollies…

        1. We are similar; open fire (can cook on it if need be) in dining room and sitting room, Rayburn in kitchen to cook, make drinks, heat the downstairs and provide lots of hot baths (otherwise it will boil the water in the tank without power to the pump), lots of tinned food, jars and packets (my sitting room has become a food store, unfortunately). Camping gaz stoves, hurricane lamp, lanterns with candles/ tea lights, ditto candlesticks, oil lamp and wind-up torch. Needless to say, we have fleeces and woollies as well.

    3. My mother’s land line is frequently disrupted by tress (Openreach can’t be arsed to fix that properly) and just recently, the exchange was out for 2 weeks, before that some cnut dug a trench through the cable a few miles away… it’s crap.
      Meanwhile, there’s a mobile signal, sometimes, at the top of her garden… it’s crap.
      Both examples of half-arsed Britain.

    4. I do have a dedicated landline, but I also have a power bank (a portable battery) that I keep topped up.

  52. Iran’s president has said that Tehran has the upper hand in negotiations with foreign powers in Vienna, as diplomats gather in an attempt to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iranian nuclear ambitions.
    Speaking on Wednesday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said that things had changed since the parties first gathered in 2013 to put constraints on Iran’s nuclear program in what was known as the Geneva interim agreement. “Our negotiations now are different from the ones in 2013. Now, Iran has the upper hand in negotiations,” he stated.
    The president said that the “important and fundamental issues” had been agreed with the P5+1, being the UN Security Council’s five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US; plus Germany.

    Rouhani said it was just the US which was left out of the JCPOA and that they must fulfil their obligations before returning to the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal.

    1. Has Iran ever taken the trouble to explain why they think they actually need nuclear weapons and who they might use them against. It’s bad enough when their type have knives, cars on the streets, bombs, suicide jackets and guns, let alone the recent rocket attacks.

      1. Iran has never said they need nuclear weapons…has anyone asked Israel who they would use them against.
        What exactly is “their type”..being muslim or being shia muslim?

          1. Sunnis are not very sunny as you will know if you live in Britain.The vast majority of muslims and mosques in Britain are sunni.
            But you knew that…yes?

        2. I am only replying to say that it’s pretty obvious that Iran hates Israel and supplies the weapons to Hamas. and if they had a nuclear option they would use it. Every man and his dog can see that everywhere islam is on this planet it cause as much trouble as they possible can and also fight each other. It’s no a religion it’s a massive cult of hatred. It took nearly 400 years to get them out of Spain perhaps the west should have taken heed of that.

        1. But Obs, we all know what happens when the ball is in the wrong court…….game over. And everyone on the planet knows Iran hates Israel and probably supplies all the weapons to Hamas. They along with other arab states supply all the weapons to all the other islamic terrorist groups. It’s certainly been established they are supporting their troublesome brotherhood across Europe. i.e. paying for the building of thousands of mosques. There is no way islam in it’s own right can afford to do this hardly any of them work, let alone pay taxes. It’s the same scenario in all other western cultures. Their predominate aim is to destroy western culture.

    2. By the same token several UK governments have loudly & repeatedly condemned Israel’s border fence with Gaza & the Egyptian border fence & of course the separation wall & fences with the disputed Palestinian Authority areas of control.

    4. Well at least she is finally telling the truth. No weasel words about reducing migration can be believed until the UK pulls out of the UN Migration Pact. Thereson May’s worst crime.

      1. We need to a bit further BB2 in order to stymie the deportation, shyster, legally-aided lawyers:

        1. Remove the UK from the ECHR
        2. Repeal Blair’s awful Human Rights Act
        3. Admit no “Asylum Seekers” who have come here from a ‘safe’ country.
        4. Deport any immigrant who has committed crimes against the person or property.
        5 Re-introduce capital punishment for murder – and include rape, regardless of the victim’s sex.

        There are many other injustices that need righting but those 5 will do for now. I await election.

  54. 333419+ up ticks,
    It has been my belief for a long time that the cause of many of our maladies as a suffering Nation stem from the fact that the electorate has a great many did dy peoples within
    Calling loudly for change whilst supporting & voting for the status quo.

    Did dy men, did dy womans, did dy its,
    = DID, dissociative identity disorder,

    https://twitter.com/MigrationWatch/status/1397458733337305088

  55. Shot black power activist faces prosecution over racial harassment of cop
    30 seconds ago Share

    Sasha Johnson, the prominent black power activist who was shot in the head in the early hours of Sunday morning, faces prosecution over the racial harassment of a cop during a Reparations Day march in Brixton last August.

    Johnson has hit headlines once again after being shot in the head by “four black males” at a garden party, but a report in the Telegraph reveals that she faces trial in April 2022 after facing a charge of causing racially aggravated intentional harassment of a police officer at Lavender Hill Magistrates Court in December.

    The legal controversy raises questions about Johnson’s status as a supposed activist for racial justice, with gaffe-prone former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott yesterday parroting the line of Johnson’s Taking The Initiative political party when she commented on the seemingly gang-related shooting: “Nobody should have to potentially pay with their life because they stood up for racial justice”.

    Johnson’s party have since questioned the Metropolitan Police’s insistence that “there is nothing to suggest that the woman who was shot was the subject of a targeted attack or that she had received any credible threats against her prior to this incident”, taking to their website to say: “We need to highlight the issue here in the narrative and the corruption of the system, whereby an individual gets shot in the head yet continues to receive abuse and even gets blamed for being the victim of targeted hate crime.”

    Johnson’s inflammatory comments over the summer caused public outrage last year. She was filmed calling for a black militia, comparing the police to the Ku Klux Klan, and chanting “black power” in a public speech and she was also filmed using a racial epithet to describe a black man who disagreed with her views on police violence.

    Despite her past comments, she has been described as “a pillar of our community” by Taking The Initiative founding member Charles Gordon.

    https://foxhole.news/2021/05/26/shot-black-power-activist-faces-prosecution-over-racial-harassment-of-cop/

    1. “Johnson has hit headlines once again after being shot in the head by “four black males” at a garden party”
      With luck there’ll be another bullet in this evening.

      2. I’m of the opinion that there is one on the white(r) side of the same idiotic family that might benefit from a head-shot.

    2. Work in progress on the next BLM press release………4 off duty policemen in hoods and wearing heavy make up.

      1. Did her community invent pillars? Or did they copy evil old whitey in an act of cultural appropriation?

  56. 333419+ up ticks,
    Is it a fact that the political powers and employees are trying to come up with a plusably story to satisfy the local dons as to what went amiss
    seeing as all other illegal cargos enter smoothly with no problem,also assuring them that their “talcum powder” is in safe hands.

    Cocaine worth £80 million washes up on Sussex beaches
    The Class A drugs are thought to have originated in South America but were bound for the UK market

  58. Further to my missive to Norwich council the other day concerning the ‘George Floyd Anniversary Lightshow’, received the following terse and unhelpful response:

    ‘Thank you for your comments received in your recent complaint, the council has noted your views. We will not be in further contact with you regarding this matter’.

      1. Yo Fizz

        Ii would send an addendum, well a PS;

        The next local elections will be interesting in the Chinese Way!

        1. Yo OLT.

          I would write back to them and tell them in no uncertain terms that i not only wouldn’t be voting for them at the next local elections, i would also be campaigning loudly about them honouring a lifetime criminal thug.

          In green ink !

          1. I was being subtle….

            Would you remember what the fuss was about, though Fizz?
            Perhaps Carole could remind you

    4. You’re lucky.

      We didn’t ever get a reply, although I suspect that our email was stronger than yours.

  60. What on earth is Cummings playing at? He appears to have lost touch with public opinion, and is jumping on the Labour bandwagon of castigating the government for not enough lockdowns.
    I thought he was supposed to be smart….

      1. I read his blog last year, he struck me as a bit of a fruitcake and lacking actual real world commercial experience. If he’s interested in tech, why did he not put in place someone who would have asked a few normal, run of the mill questions to Prof Neil Ferguson, eg

        – What tools do you use?
        – How do you ensure the quality standards of your work?
        – What security measures do you have in place?

        1. There is a very good piece about him by Danny Finkelstein in The Grimes today. Apparently, Cummings has a history of taking on a job then falling out with the employers, then publicly slagging them off.

          2. I have known people with Aspergers, whose offspring are also ‘on the spectrum’. Given the claims that DC’s son is autistic, why should we expect Dominic to be ‘neurotypical’?

        2. What results have you had so far, and how did they conform to field data?

          1. It beggars belief that nobody in the civil service or the Conservative party asks these questions.

          2. I sent Ferguson an email when his fantasies first were aired, asking similar questions (and got abuse from Cochrane for my pains). Answer came there none.
            I’m no epidemiologist, nor much of a mathematical modeller, but I worked in the nuclear industry a while, validating their fracture model (R6, it’s called) and in the Offshore industry, using similar kinds of models.
            Fundamental is the quality control of the code, testing and updating. If it ain’t validated, then it ain’t worth jack shut. And I couldn’t find any validation of Fergusons model, and he wouldn’t help on taht point.
            The FHI model in Norway was used to predict what would happen in several scenarios, and the actual data plotted daily in the newspaper with the model data, and they matched pretty well. Additionally, the mathematical basis and description of the validation was published in the Weegie version of the Sun (titter ye not…) newspaper.
            Gives one a touch of confidence, so it does.

      1. Yeah, because government is just one big game….(eye roll).
        Most of them have been playing it ever since university, they never grew up!

          1. The eye roll was at the fools in government, not you.
            Pah, because he thinks he is clever. I doubt he would get far trying to build a game.

          2. Because he fell out with Carrie Antoinette, Cummings had to go.

            We all know what is important to Bonking Boris. Fornicating takes prescedence over the good of the country.

            You can eye roll at me. I don’t mind. :@)

        1. Nearer a Corbynite was my understanding; but that didn’t seem to affect his way of approaching problems and advising.

          A very strange man.

  62. I just had a call from my local restaurant. Carole said “Why aren’t you here?”.

    I had a lunchtime booking for 12 noon and i completely forgot. I blame me Meds !

    2. I trust you compensated them handsomely for your senility.

      Perhaps you should compensate them again now, as you probably intended to but forgot.
      Blame giving up smoking, I’m sure they’ll understand.

      1. I asked Carole if i could rebook for tomorrow and she said NO. Then burst out laughing.

        I told her i would make it up to her by drinking twice as much as i usually do.

    3. It’s early dementia, Phizz ….
      I lost my house keys and found them hours later in my
      shopping bag. So how the FK did I get in….?

  63. An excellent article about Cummings in The Grimes today:

    “It would be the perfect ending for a novel or a film. The adviser sits before the legislators and the cameras whirr. It is time. Finally he has had enough. He is going to break his silence and try to bring down the boss whose flaws he has covered up for so long.

    It is the ideal denouement. Save for this. It is too obvious. How on earth could Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have thought that their story was going to end in any other way?

    Cummings is keen on books about prediction. So am I. And a piece of advice common to all of them is that you can learn a lot about what is going to happen from what has happened already. It would be foolish to assume that something that has occurred with great regularity is simply, and for no apparent reason, going to stop happening.

    He might also have read Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball, which tells the story of the successful baseball manager Billy Beane. Reviewing the work of his club’s scouts, Beane realises that they all think that the players they hire are going to change, their flaws being eliminated by a rigorous training programme. Beane understands they are wrong. Players don’t really change. What you see is what you get.

    When Johnson and Cummings got together how could they have failed to appreciate that neither of them would change? That what they both did to everyone else they would eventually do to each other? That what had happened repeatedly in both their lives was going to happen again. And that anticipating this did not require one to get to the end of Philip Tetlock’s book on superforecasting and read his “Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforecasters”.

    When Johnson hired Cummings to be his chief adviser, he must surely have noticed the regularity with which his relationships with his bosses had broken down. Cummings parted company with Iain Duncan Smith, with whom he had accepted a job as head of strategy, declaring his employer “incompetent” and the rest of the party desperately short of talent; he fell out with the Leave campaign and only just resisted an attempt to remove him; called the “overwhelming majority of economists” who backed Brexit “charlatans” who “live in parallel universes”; said that honesty was a rare thing on the Leave campaign, as was hard work; and described some Eurosceptic MPs with whom he had worked as “narcissist-delusional” people who were a “metastasising tumour” that should be “excised from the UK body politic”.

    For those inclined to think these comments merely show good judgment and frankness, he does not reserve them for his Brexit allies. His interrogator today, the Tory MP Greg Clark, will doubtless not have forgotten the telephone call in which Cummings swore at him and promised to purge him. Cummings has attacked as useless the entire Department of Health as well as its secretary of state; the whole of Whitehall as well as the former deputy chief medical officer for England Dr Jenny Harries; everyone involved with our initial Covid judgments, including Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty, and the government’s committee of scientific advisers. He naturally thinks, and says, that every journalist and every pundit is utterly useless. He thinks the same about most of the cabinet. And it was easy to miss that on the way to calling Sir Keir Starmer QC a “gamma politician” he literally described the former director of public prosecutions as a “beta lawyer”.

    Now he has said that the prime minister lacks competence and integrity and is believed to regard him as a “clown”. Of course he does.

    Which brings me to this question: who did Cummings think Johnson was? How could someone write all those blogs about the need for a rigorously organised government machinery run with precision and think, “I know who’d be perfect to bring that about . . . Boris Johnson!”

    What is it in the career of Johnson that made Cummings think that his strengths lay in getting processes right, taking hard decisions and saying no to people?

    Perhaps Cummings thought that the obvious unsuitability of Johnson for the tasks his adviser regarded as most important didn’t matter because he, the adviser, would be in charge. And he might have thought this because Johnson assured him that it would be the case.

    It is, however, hilarious that someone can write thousands of words on decision-making and not reflect that experience suggests that you perhaps shouldn’t bank on a reassurance provided to you by Boris Johnson. If I were writing one of those Cummings blogs I might call someone who did that a “delusional fool”.

    It is, however, more than their personal history which told us that the Cummings-Johnson relationship was doomed. It is also that they represent two simultaneous but incompatible Conservative instincts. One is that this is a joke country with joke leadership, declining as a result of the incompetence of its elites. The other is that this is one of the greatest countries in the world, a beacon to other nations.

    Cummings is very much the advocate of the first view, as obsessed by his country’s corruption and complacency as is the most radical leftwinger. I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed that the statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed, thinking “Rhodes must fall” not as a colonialist but because he was an incompetent whose exploits failed because he didn’t learn the lessons of the moon landing.

    Johnson belongs to the “greatest country in the world” group, a view characterised by an optimism I find more attractive but prone to an overestimation of Britain’s position and its merits.

    He was always fundamentally at variance with the Cummings view. Yoking “this country is going to the dogs” to “just think what this great country can do” was a great political achievement for the Vote Leave campaign but it would always come apart in the end.

    I regard Cummings as a great tragedy. He sees many things clearly, understands problems many have ignored, is obviously very clever, has read widely and understood what he has read, and is often right about processes and issues. People I admire greatly assure me that he can be engaging, courteous and even inspirational.

    Yet for all that I think this government, indeed any government, is better off without him. Respect for others, acceptance of institutional checks and balances, patience and shared responsibility are the minimum requirements of a prime ministerial adviser. Cummings was the most powerful man in No 10 and if he casts everyone else as responsible for No 10’s mistakes rather than himself, it suggests it was a power he wasn’t fit to have.

    I will listen today grateful for his critique as an outsider. Not just because it is a good thing to have an outsider’s view, but also because it is a good thing Cummings is now an outsider.”

    daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

    1. My assessment of Cummings hasn’t changed – I still think he’s a very clever, high-functioning man with Aspergers. He has zero empathy and people skills and only thinks his own point of view is the right one.

      He’s probably right that Matt Hancock should have been sacked though.

      1. The secret of success is to be affable. Those who “go along to get along” often do well, even without any skills, knowledge, understanding, or competencies.
        These who are efficient, intelligent and competent are hired for jobs and then dispensed with as soon as the job is done. They seldom have careers despite being head and shoulders above the others, because they are not liked.

  64. 333419+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    Delingpole: Bojo Is a Disaster but Cummings and Gove Would Be Catastrophic

    The WHOLE political caboodle is treacherously dangerous no less though than their core supporter / voters.

    This is not new this is decades of deceit, lies etc politically working to
    a covert agenda NOW being revealed.

    Treachery being given carte blanche via a keep in / keep out voter, party before Country is the cause of near ALL of our problems.

    There is no current opposition to this so obvious lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration ongoing political group, we see by the support for the close shop is still strong via the hartlepool result and the electorate
    hoying balls of voting sh!te at each other until in this instance the victor
    was the tory (ino) party, a segment of the LLC coalition and in this instant a lighter shade of solid brown sh!te.

    If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s BROWN flush it down, put that into action.

    By the by,
    Check out the gap betwixt the torys (ino) and Anne Marie Waters in the count.

  65. ‼️Donbass can neither be defeated nor broken!
    26 May 2014 is forever ingrained in the memory of every Donetsk resident. It was on this day that Ukraine launched first air attacks on the city seven years ago.
    The first air raids shoked Donbass. Noone expected that Ukraine would wage war against its own citizens.
    On 26 May 2014 the north-west of Donetsk was in flames and smoke. Civilians and militia were killed and wounded right in the streets and their own homes.
    The war has become a terrible reality for the people of Donetsk since then.
    ‼️Back then, seven years ago, Donbass residents persevered against all the odds. Today we continue to live, defend and build our country. We can neither be defeated nor broken!

  66. U.S. spying activity near Crimea costs $1,600,000 a week for American, Ukrainian taxpayers
    Last week alone near the Crimean peninsula there were registered the following aircraft:
    ♦️ RQ-4 Global Hawk, which monitors the Black Sea region, performed three flights and spent 70 hours and 40 minutes in the air from takeoff to landing;
    ♦️ Boeing RC-135W spend almost 35 hours in the air in four flights;
    ♦️ Boeing P-8 Poseidon, an anti-submarine patrol aircraft carried out five flights to the Crimean coast over the past week, spending 37 hours in the air.
    ♦️ Lockheed EP-3E, a Navy patrol aircraft, was flying over the region for nine and a half hours from takeoff to landing.
    If converted into currency, according to the minimum rate price, in just one week this intelligence triumph of the U.S. military near the coast of Crimea would cost nearly $1,600,000. It should be noted that the last week was not the busiest in terms of foreign activity near Russia’s air borders. There are more extensive, and correspondingly more expensive ones.
    Who’s paying for all this? American taxpayers or Russia’s poor neighbours like Ukraine and Georgia,

      1. PS

        The position relating to buried treasure.

        If something has been found buried, is made substantially of gold or silver and its owners or their heirs are unknown, it will be classed as ‘treasure’. In some instances, the pre-1996 requirement that such items had to have been buried with the intention that they would be recovered still remains. Discoveries of treasure must be reported to the local coroner and it is a criminal offence not to report them. It is also necessary to report any finds to the landowner. The coroner will decide on the fate of the treasure and the finder is entitled to a finder’s fee if the find is ruled to be treasure. In such cases, ownership passes to the Crown.

        1. “ownership passes to the Crown.” – as if they didn’t have enough already, the greedy bastards.

          3. There are two types of Edward VI halfpenny,
            1st type 1547 to 1549 has a portrait obverse, with the cross and pellets reverse.
            2nd type 1550 to 1553 has the rose obverse, with a shield reverse.

            The coin above (in the web site) is neither having the rose obverse and cross and pellets reverse, which points to it being not genuine. I too think this looks cast rather than hammered, a picture of the edge may solve the argument.

            https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=85032

            I think the one above is genuine because it has been pared.

          4. There are two types of Edward VI halfpenny,
            1st type 1547 to 1549 has a portrait obverse, with the cross and pellets reverse.
            2nd type 1550 to 1553 has the rose obverse, with a shield reverse.

            The coin above (in the web site) is neither having the rose obverse and cross and pellets reverse, which points to it being not genuine. I too think this looks cast rather than hammered, a picture of the edge may solve the argument.

            https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=85032

            I think the one above is genuine because it has been pared.

          5. I think Carolyn is right. Edward VI was a sickly child and England was in a very poor state; religious and political strife was rampant. Why waste time on low value coins by stamping portraits of a monarch who was not likely to be around for long? The rose covered Tudors of any sort.
            Either death or revolution was likely to cut short his reign.

        2. 333419+ up ticks,
          Afternoon Anne,
          Might not have been one available in then there days.

    3. She could seek a friend with a metal detector and head back there, just in case it’s the tip of an iceberg of treasure!

    7. One side has London (where it was minted) and the other Rosa Sine Spine (Rose without thorns). Can’t make out the CIV or whatever it is. Civitas London (Edited)

      1. The (possible) IDG at the top of the rose could be Iacobus Deo Gratias – James I.

      2. Rose without thorns was what Henry VIII said about Kathryn Howard (until he found out about her past goings-on).

  68. Cummings draws a parallel between sorting the aliens in the film Independence Day and the Government’s handling of the COVID crisis:

    In this clip Dominic Cummings, played by Jeff Goldblum, draws a COVID virus for Boris Johnson, played by Bill Pullman, to explain in simple terms how the pathogens are using our own cells to attack humans on earth:

    https://youtu.be/_QS6NnyMrZg

  69. In case it gets deleted by the DT, I want it on record that vis-a-vis the Cummings revelations, I have given the BTL comment on the subject:

    Having read through 90% of the testimony, I cannot help feeling that the DT is trying to make political capital out of the Cummings testimony by, perhaps deleting certain areas but more so by inviting Gordon Rayner to comment twice within the testimony and then, again, including comments from Madeleine Grant, Lucy Fish and Ben Riley-Smith.

    Are these qualified political journos whose take on this matters to we, the great unwashed, other than to skew our thinking?

  70. Another letter bunged off to the DT which they undoubtedly will not publish:

    Sir,

    Opinions will be divided about Dominic Cummings but I cannot see that many people will think it wise or desirable that a prime minister should allow his unelected fiancée to wield so much influence over affairs of state.

    Richard Tracey

    1. 333419+ up ticks,
      Afternoon R,
      The anti URGE holds a great deal of manipulating
      power useful to the pillow whisperer.

  71. 333419+ up ticks,
    Radio four singing the praises of electric cars, everyone a winner the woman being interviewed very convincing,not one mention of the
    minor miners life expectancy, wonder what life months to miles work out ?

    1. They’ll be a huge success in northern latitudes like Finland where typical Winter overnight temperatures are -20C or lower.
      You have to live here to know what such temperatures do to a battery.

      1. 333419+ up ticks,
        Afternoon HM,
        I worked on a site in Poland it was a struggle in the mornings to get out from under the duvet it was that heavy.

          1. In S Central Norway, we have five definite seasons, and I love all of them except the one from October to the first snow, where it’s chilly, dark and wet.
            and “cold” starts about -12C, when you can feel ice forming in your nostrils… between that and +36C is comfortable, when it’s hot.
            Engine block heaters and battery chargers that just plug in can be very useful!

          3. -34C. 2003, January (iirc).
            My poor car hated it… the grease in the clutch cable froze, so the clutch became difficult, ice on the inside of the windscreen taht the heater couldn’t defrost, and so on.
            This was in a UK-spec Passat that we brought over with us.
            Got ou of the car, and it was so cold it made us cough.
            -20 to -25C is “normal” winter experience.

          4. I drove my Celica GT4 here via Denmark and Sweden…couldn’t part with it.
            It still had the standard thermostat so never warmed up!
            Two 24 pack beer packings(covered in plastic) shoved down the radiator intake solved the problem!

          5. We changed the thermostat- seemed like a good idea. Also bought correct headlamps.

          9. My old Minis handbrake cables would freeze at the thought of rain…

          11. I had one of those; any heavy rain and I was immobilised until I could empty the distributor cap and dry it out.

          13. They apparently tried it behind the engine, but it iced up instead.
            Sigh…

      2. Battery electric vehicles accounted for 54% of new car sales in Norway last year, do they not have cold temperatures?
        I have read that cold temperatures affect the vehicle battery, I can only presume it is not an insurmountable problem

        1. You’ll find they’re for city dwellers who do short journeys.
          I expect Helsinki and Turku will also see a big uptake.
          Outside the cities things will remain as they are.
          There’s a metre of snow and,its minus 10C you have to travel 150 Kms…what would you choose..a big diesel with a full tank or a Tesla?

        2. Pouring a gallon of diesel under the engine and setting fire to it warms up the battery.

          1. Get with the times jm, there is no engine to pour diesel under in electric cars, I fink!

        3. That’s why you leave it plugged in overnight.
          Trickle charge for the traction battery and the electronics battery, and power for the battery heater/cooler.
          Once you’re unplugged, the traction battery heats itself with a heater, it makes things last a bit longer that way.

        4. Just a thought.

          The battery power to create the necessary surge to allow the coil to fire the diesel or to fire the spark plugs and ignite the fuel might be greater than that needed to start an all electric vehicle.

          1. Possibly SOS, my expertise ends when I manage to unlock the car door. 😊

      3. Plenty of electric cars in Canada now, you just have to decide if creature comforts such as heat override the reduced range available in the frozen tundra.

    2. Read that as …”Floydolotry, the worship of any truly worthless idol dolt.”

    1. It is sometimes good business to cut out the middleman, but in this case I suspect not.

    5. Bottle lacks style, Plum, and that’s not you.
      A nice wine glass, a few small cubes, and cream sheyy cold from the fridge. Now that’s style.
      Less ice, and a dust-dry Manzanilla from the fridge… ice & Fino from the fridge…
      Having written that, can I come round & share??

        1. You’re still here.
          You make us smile.

          Hang on in there.

          It could be worse, you might only have shit for company.

          Get yourself a hound.

          1. If only it were that simple, sos. I’m into the sixth week dogless and have now failed to get six I’ve applied for and that’s despite scouring the country and having friends all over looking.

        2. I’m pretty crap at any time, me. When I drink, I fall asleep, as has just happened after a (stiff) G&T… 🙁
          Doesn’t make for good conversation.
          “Have you come far?”
          “Zzzz…. zzz!”

        3. Needs must when the Devil drives, Plum. I have abandoned the drugs (they weren’t killing the pain anyway) in favour of booze today.

    7. Good skills Plum
      Saves on the washing up ergo you’re doing the planet a favour by saving water, saving power to heat said water and not polluting the streams with washing up liquid in the waste water.
      Trebles all round 🙂

  74. Russia turns Syria into part of its system for nuclear deterrence of US https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/50092
    For the first time, A Russian Tu-22 bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons lands at Hmeimim air base in Syria. It means that Syria has become part of Russia’s nuclear deterrence system
    https://www.israeldefense.co.il/sites/default/files/styles/full_article_image/public/_Uploads/dbsArticles/25_05_2021_dimk_tu-22_1200_2_0.jpeg?itok=kngW3fy9

    2. ” It means that Syria has become part of Russia’s nuclear deterrence system”
      And they didn’t even have to invade the country…they were invited.
      Not to worry though…they have a handful of foreign bases whereas the US has about 800 in 70 countries.

      1. Whilst NATO is distracted with Russian troop build ups in the Baltic & near the borders of Ukraine & Poland, along come Putin & makes a chess board move that threatens RAF bases on Cyprus & NATO forces in Greece and Italy

        2. They’ve been operating over Syria for years.They flew from their bases in Russia.
          They’ll stay for 6 months,complete their mission and THEN GO HOME.

        3. Haha..you’re comical sometimes.
          NATO troops distracted by Russian troops in Russia.

  75. A good start to a sketch article in the ES

    Today Dominic Cummings made an epic comeback with a blockbuster all about revenge. Think Kill Bill with Uncle Fester in the starring role

  76. Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t expect that a meeting with his American counterpart Joe Biden next month will trigger a drastic change in the fractured state of relations between the two countries, his spokesman has said.
    Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov cautioned that it would be better “not to indulge in any excessive expectations about the potential outcomes of this meeting.” He added, however, that the in-person meeting in Switzerland on June 16 would still be a “very important event in the context of a specific and applied plan,” even if it can’t be expected that “it will be possible to reach an understanding on issues of deep disagreement.”

    The official went on to say that “we aren’t thinking in terms of a reset here,” referencing the term widely used to describe a thaw in relations between the US and Russia after then-President Dmitry Medvedev met with Biden’s predecessor, Barack Obama, in 2009. Shortly afterwards, the two nations announced a reduction in strategic arms and a shared position on the contentious issues of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.
    Biden put the idea of a meeting to Putin during a call against a backdrop of growing tensions in April. According to the US president, a meeting would help the two sides to “discuss the full range of issues facing the US and Russia.” He set out his goal of achieving “a stable and predictable relationship with Russia, consistent with US interests.”

    The month before, Peskov said that Putin would refuse to allow “America to speak with Russia from a position of strength,” rather than one of mutual respect and consideration.

    1. He [Biden] set out his goal of achieving “a stable and predictable relationship with Russia, consistent with US interests.”

      That’s generous of him!

      One can’t see this going anywhere. One of these men is hardly compos mentis. The other is the smartest politician on the planet! How can they even have a conversation?

      1. We’ll see. He doesn’t have to be very smart when you look around at the opposition.

  78. Belarus dictator Lukashenko threatens to flood Europe with ‘migrants and drugs’ in retaliation for sanctions imposed for Ryanair hijacking. 26 May 2021.

    Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to flood Europe with migrants and drugs in response to western sanctions over the Ryanair flight hijacking.

    So no change then?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9620727/Belarus-threatens-flood-Europe-migrants-drugs-response-sanctions.html

  79. Curiouser and curiouser..
    Belarusian activist Roman Protasevich, who was arrested by police after his Ryanair flight was forced to land in Minsk, once served alongside the neo-Nazi, far-right Azov Battalion during the Donbass war, and was even wounded.
    That’s according to multiple sources, who have revealed that the Belarusian spent a long time with the Ukrainian militia. However, there is some debate about his role with the battalion, with some believing he was just a volunteer journalist, and others suggesting he was involved in fighting.

    According to the first head of the regiment, writing on his Telegram channel on Tuesday, Protasevich “fought against the occupation of Ukraine together with Azov and other military units.”

    1. Nazis were left, not right. Or Right.
      The clue is in the name.
      And yes, I realise you are quoting.
      :-))

      1. Old uncle Joe didn’t care whether they were left or right..his boys saw them off.
        Napoleon tried,Adolf tried….i wonder who will be next?
        They never learn.

        1. The next might be the Chinks, looking for namesakes in Russian armour.
          Be careful what you wish for.

          2. I’m wondering where the flashpoint will be, but when it comes, it won’t be funny.

            I suspect the Chinese will continue in Africa and the China seas/Pacific. When they feel secure and strong, then they will Head West. India.

            Then NE; if it hasn’t blown up elsewhere, eg S. Korea

          3. Well,the only ones to subdue the Russians were the Mongols so you may be correct.

          5. Muslims were first recognized in Russia in the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
            And yet the indigenous population are still in power…strange,when you read the scare stories from western nations.

          6. % ages.

            How many areas within Russia have sufficient Muslims that they can start to make demands which will be accepted?

            And just what do you think would happen if they did?

            See China.

          7. I would have thought that after 450 years those questions have been answered.

        2. And Afghanistan trumped the Russians, Brits, Merkins… does that make them the #1 in war stakes?

          1. They didn’t fare very well although the Finns had to sue for peace in the end.
            Its not generally known that during The Continuation War that followed The Winter War,Finnish troops took part in the siege of Stalingrad.

          2. Allies of the Germans on the simple, but often mistaken, principle of “My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Friend.”

          3. Caught between a rock and a hard place Bob.They didn’t have much choice.
            The Germans were going to cross the Baltic to strike Russia’s western flank whatever happened.

  82. That’s me for this miserable day. A bit of gardening before the heavens opened…again.

    Tomorrow is our wedding anniversary and we are going out to AFTERNOON TEA!! After a guided tour of Walsingham – a village I have lived near for 37 years but only visited once! They say it will be warm and sunny … we’ll see.

    A demain.

      1. It arrived about three minutes ago. We both thank you very much. I am afraid that G & P were (and still are) asleep!

        The gesture is much appreciated.

        1. Have a lovely day tomorrow. Hope the sun shines for you all.

          Note to self…change password so Dolly can’t buy stuff while i’m asleep.

    4. Congratulations on your Wedding anniversary tomorrow, I hope you both have a great day.
      According to the late & great Henny Youngman the secret of a successful marriage is :-
      My wife and I have the secret to making a marriage last. Two times a week, we go to a nice restaurant, a little wine, good food. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.

      2. It takes two to make a successful marriage; one of the partners is always right and the other one is the husband 🙂

      1. My pleasure – always good to give the little woman something to do…!!

    7. Happy anniversary for the 27th, Bill and the MR. Making a pilgrimage to the shrine, are you? 🙂

  83. So if a prominent black woman activist gets shot in the head by young black men and there are no streets riots, does that mean that rioters are institutionally racist?

    1. Nice one. And the answer is…Yes. Almost all racism in the UK comes from the tinted people.

    2. It means her campaign against racism has worked.
      Only blacks now own guns and know how to use them.

  84. Another shooting in the USA at a San Jose California rail yard. Fox News reporting a number of deaths. The killer was shot dead. I read yesterday that Texas is allowing citizens to own unlicensed guns.

    3. So do lotsa places in UK, but the police cannot identify who has them, cus of Guys Dog profiling

  85. There were endless hours of joint HoC Committee meetings today; I have yet to hear anything of interest.

    The unstructured musings, opinions and petty-hatreds of a disloyal ex-advisor are of little interest and a complete waste of time.

    Does his appearance before the joint parliamentary committee entitle Cummings to Parliamentary Privilege?

    IMHO, it shouldn’t.

    2. Ah, but the BBC has been making the most of it. It’s a great distraction from its own problems.

      As for Cummings…well, hindsight’s a wonderful thing but he’s one of so many with different opinions on how it should have been handled.

      1. Halfcock must have something on BPAPM. He wouldn’t still be there otherwise.

          3. Back, in the 1950’s, a planof Portsmouth Harbour, showing where warships were moored long term, had the intials VD, for HMS Vanguard, our last Battleship

            It was the cause of much merriment to the Matelots

        2. I’ve always assumed that Boris looked round for the biggest, greediest mug who could carry the can in due course, and his eye lighted on Hancock.

      2. I’m sure he is right about a lot of things, he got the buffoon down to a tee. The buffoon’s turd of a Brexit deal tells you all you need to know about Johnson.

        1. Boris got us OUT of the EU.

          BREXIT is done!

          As with most negotiations and treaties, there’s a lot of dirty water down the plughole.

          Heath, Blair, Brown, Major, Cameron and May – all – have sold us down the river; none of their hands will ever be clean.

          Boris should – eventually – get the credit.

          1. Only if he does something credit-worthy. Brexit isn’t done – what we’ve got isn’t Brexit by any means. The NI “agreement” is a crock of ordure and our fishermen have been betrayed. If we’d gone for WTO rules we really would have been out of the EU.

          2. Getting out of the EU is equivalent to ‘undoing’ scrambled egg; it can never be achieved without congealed and messy bits left over …

          3. Tell that to those in Northern Ireland, tell that to our fishermen, his deal is a turd of a deal. Being the best out of Heath and the rest you mentioned is no recommendation.

            Boris will eventually be mentioned with the same level of contempt!

      1. McGuigans Shiraz 3.86 a bottle instead of 5.10: When you buy 6 bottles

        1. I prefer Yellow Tail; indeed I bought three bottles at Morrisons today, at £6 / bottle. I note that it’s £7 at all the ‘25% off’ supermarkets. I’m tempted to order a case of the McG regardless, coz I’m a cheapskate…

          1. Yellow Tail is only $12.65 over here, approximately £7.40 in real money.

            If the prices that you pay are close to the tax rip off consumption controlling prices in Ontario, someone is making q big profit!,

          3. We don’t see sale prices, the very name of the booze store says it all – Liquor CONTROL Board of Ontario.

            Which is why we have a lot of brew for you places, they sell us grape juice and then do the work. We picked some up yesterday and received a bulk discount which is probably a bad sign.

    1. In the late ’70s early ’80’s,mum took an afternoons work,wine tasting in a shop in Southall….
      I said I’d return in 4or5 hours.When I went back her eyes were glazed over and she had a
      silly grin on her face….She said the locals dont drink ,so I’m bored an been tasting the wine
      myself….We laughed forever after that…Your post reminded me of that treasured moment.

    2. I thought it was going to be Leeds station. Sadly, many other British stations would fit the bill.

  89. Europa League Final, Villareal v. Manchester United. Guess which team took the knee and which one didn’t?

    1. Ooooh..that’s a difficult one.Any clues?
      I see that some of the locals roughed up the Man U supporters last night.

  90. And on a final note…
    Mandatory vaccination cannot be introduced in Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said, arguing that it was up to citizens themselves to weigh the risks of being infected with Covid-19 without getting a jab.
    “I want to state my position again. I think that mandatory vaccination is inappropriate and can’t be introduced,” Putin said during a video conference on Wednesday.

    1. No wonder our lot hate him and want to blame him for anything that’s going!

  91. Evening, all. If anybody thinks the blurring between guidance and the law wasn’t deliberate, I have a bridge to sell you! I have missed out on yet another dog today – I rang up about him and he’d been reserved. I was supposed to get an email to link to request another, but that hasn’t arrived, either. I feel doomed. MOH has been testing my patience to the limit with loopy behaviour (and ignoring anything that’s said). The only bright spark was 45 minutes riding the Connemara where he did some nice, consistent trot work. The good mood lasted for the journey back, was fading by the time I’d done the shopping for the Nth time and had totally evaporated by the time I got home to find greasy pans in the sink with the tap running and the door wide open – AGAIN 🙁

    1. Just a thought.

      Have you ever taken her to see/meet the Connemara?.
      Animals can sometimes sense and empathise what people can’t.

        1. QED

          Why not try?

          It probably can’t do any harm, it might well do some good.

          1. Lots of reasons: going to the stables is my once a week respite from being a full-time carer – that would be lost if I had to take MOH, the sheer logistics of going anywhere has to be seen to be believed and is certainly stressful for me and then, what would I do with MOH while I was riding? The whole point of my riding lesson is that I have time to myself, time to relax, de-stress and concentrate only on the horse.

          2. For some reason I cannot upvote your response.

            It was a good thought but time for yourself is essential for your own peace of mind.

          4. It’s absolutely essential to get time for you to decouple and do something (or nothing, as the whimsy takes you), and to pace yourself, when subjected to long-term load and stress, or you’ll get broken, and that’s no good to anybody. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

          6. Conners. A few of us are meeting for lunch in leafy Surrey on 1st June. If there’s any possibility of arranging care for YOH, we would love to see you.

          7. That is so kind, Geoff, but I don’t think that’s possible, unfortunately. Never mind arranging for care, I’m not in a good state to drive at the moment. It’s not just the hip problem, it’s the depression. I get wound up with the thought of driving far. I’ll be there in spirit and hope you have a lovely time.

          8. Totally understand. But driving isn’t essential; I haven’t done it since I had my legs trimmed. If you can get to Guildford by train, the pub is but a short taxi / Uber ride away. No pressure, though…

          9. Even taking a train journey (I won’t wear a mask) is stressful. Making sure I don’t miss my train/connection and being able to get home again if I’m delayed (there aren’t that many connections from Crewe) makes me anxious. I have a horse running at Warwick on Friday, but I’m not even going to see him run. I’ve been to Warwick many times in better days, but at the moment, it’s just a step too far. Pathetic, but that’s the way stress takes me, unfortunately.

          10. I do feel for you Conners and hope you can find the respite you need. Are there any friends close by who can give you a lift around and about?

          11. Thanks. I don’t go far, to be honest; just to the stables and back and church on Sundays. I mainly walk if it’s within a couple of miles. I need the exercise, particularly as I’m not getting my daily walkies.

          12. Conway. Please get in touch via Hertslass (or my sub-Bond attempts earlier). I am happy to offer practical help.

          14. I feel your pain. I hate the face nappies, but I tend to go along with them to avoid confrontation. But I have been known to use an exemption lanyard, and suddenly life becomes much easier…

          15. I always use an exemption badge. I couldn’t cope otherwise. It was noticeable today in Aldi (my first ever visit there) that they were telling people repeatedly that if they didn’t wear a mask or have a valid health reason to claim exemption they could be asked to leave. It didn’t make me feel I wanted to repeat my visit.

          16. That’s interesting. Throughout the fauxdemic, Sainsburys have had continual announcements saying that some people are unable to wear masks. Dianne, my ex, genuinely can’t wear them, due to anxiety issues. She lives 200 yards from the Exeter branch of Aldi, and has had no resistance. Indeed, I’ve been there a few times, with her borrowed lanyard, and have had no issues.

            Exemption is self-certified. No-one is allowed to ask you why you are exempt.

            Last year, the landlord of my excellent local pub made the mistake of asking Rik_Redux what the basis of his exemption was. He was firmly put in his place. I doubt whether he’s ever made the same mistake since, but a few of us are meeting there tomorrow. Watch this space…

          17. My dentist wanted to know why I was exempt. I nearly told him where to get lost, but then I’d probably have been struck off. I just told him it makes me wheeze (which is, in fact, true). The state of my mental health is none of his business.

    2. Commiserations, Conners. Since my infrequent local bus goes to Guildford on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Woking on Wednesdays, I decided to do a bit of shopping in Woking. Train to Woking; a spot of lunch at McDonalds (which branch is new to me), then a quick shop at Morrisons. Returned to the nearest bus stop, 15 minutes before my bus was due to arrive. As soon as I saw it, my arm went out, and I headed for the kerb. Did the driver notice? Sadly not. Passengers are apparently an embarrassment to Stagecoach. Came home by train…

      1. At least you managed to get home by train; round here, if you miss a train, you may have to wait until the following day 🙂

          1. Still, console yourself with the thought that if you miss the bus here, you may not be able to get another one the same day. Sometimes you can get to a place, but you can’t get back.

          3. Yo, Stephen. I rather assumed that your vessel had gone to Bath. But – despite having moved, I can get to the Wey. And any associated hostelries…

        2. Half-hourly here, except Sundays, when they’re hourly. Was invited to Hog’s Back Hotel, Farnham, for supper yesterday (by Garlands).

          I decided to leave by 19.30, in order to catch the last bus. But – after the first couple of pints, my resistance was somewhat lowered. So I ordered a taxi…

          Otherwise I’d still be walking here.

    3. Somewhere there exists a hot tap which opens by turning it clockwise; designed to be safe for people with cognitive problems.

      1. This is, fortunately, the cold tap. Perhaps I should see if I can find a couple of clockwise opening taps.

  92. OK,OK i’m going to pull a “Bill Thomas” here…just one more.
    Now you may not agree with this but i simply ask you to read it.
    Today I saw Syrians dancing and celebrating life, and a return to peace – but, of course, the Western media won’t report that
    Its an article by Eva Bartlett,a Canadian journalist who has lived in Syria

    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/524893-syria-war-peace-western/

    1. Crumbs; I thought you were going to announce you were popping up a ladder there! Phew.

  93. The playground is no place for a culture war

    Banning the Palestinian flag from school is reasonable. The hysterical reaction is anything but

    MADELINE GRANT

    It is a symbol of a growing intolerance – and the politicisation of everything – that schools are being thrust onto the frontline in the culture war.

    In Birmingham, scores of parents and activists picketed primary schools in protest at the introduction of sex education which mentioned LGBT relationships. Earlier this year, pupils at Pimlico Academy in London accused their school of racism and burned the Union flag, while a teacher at Batley Grammar in West Yorkshire was forced into hiding, fearing for his life, after showing his pupils an image of the Prophet Mohammed. Here, the problem was not just the intolerance of the threatening mobs picketing the school, but the silence and craven capitulation of both the school – which suspended him – and the broader educational establishment, which was shamefully quiet on the subject.

    Now police have once again been summoned, this time to Allerton Grange School in Leeds, after a clip from a school assembly went viral on social media and provoked fury. It showed headmaster Mike Roper discouraging pupils from bringing Palestinian flags to school, saying that some associated this device with anti-Semitism. As a result, scores of pro-Palestinian activists picketed the school, while online it prompted demands for his immediate sacking.

    One protester called his words the “complete erasure of Palestine and blatant Islamophobia.” Green Party MSP Ross Greer tweeted: “Imagine being a Palestinian kid at this guy’s school, being told your national flag is inherently hateful.”

    Seen in context, however, Mr Roper’s remarks carry little of the toxicity his accusers allege. It’s worth noting his exact words. “For some people,” he said, “they see [the Palestinian flag] and they feel threatened, they feel unsafe and they worry because for other people that flag is seen as a call to arms and seen as a message of support for anti-Semitism, for being anti-Jewish and it was never meant to be like that in the first place.”

    I interpreted this as declaring that some people have, regrettably, hijacked Palestinian suffering – and the Palestinian flag – for their own purposes, and as a result some pupils might feel threatened by their display. His remark that “it was never meant to be like that” explicitly suggests as much and therefore appears to be the exact opposite of the “inherent hatefulness” described by Ross Greer.

    Given recent events, this analysis seems uncontroversial. In the last couple of weeks, legitimate concern about Palestinian suffering has indeed been used as a fig leaf for grotesque anti-Semitism. Images from protests show the Palestinian flag flying proudly alongside slogans questioning Israel’s right to exist, or threatening extreme violence. The flag is often used aggressively, by those who do not distinguish between the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Last weekend it accompanied something much worse than a “call to arms’ – a vile convoy drove through north London, emblazoned with Palestinian flags and broadcasting a call to rape Jewish women through loudspeakers.

    So there is a deeper context to all of this – not just Mr Roper’s actual words but the zeitgeist, namely a frenzied moment in which anti-Semitic incidents are surging. One can easily imagine why a headteacher might wish to discourage children from displaying national insignia before tensions rose further.

    Of course none of that prevented the comments being shared either context-free or entirely distorted by progressives and religious hardliners alike. With its mixture of intolerance and wilful misinterpretation, the incident encapsulates our times. Left-wingers like to accuse the Right of perpetuating culture wars to serve their own interests, but in reality they have major form in stirring up tensions when it suits.

    Just this week, Diane Abbott made damaging inferences that a prominent Black Lives Matter organiser, Sasha Johnson, had been shot due to her political activism, despite the available evidence suggesting nothing of the kind. Abbott – who, remember, came within a handful of seats of becoming Home Secretary not too long ago – has since doubled down on her irresponsible remarks. This sort of innuendo and wanton offence-taking is not cost-free, but actively harmful to community relations, a fact many of those engaging in it understand all too well.

    And where is the condemnation of these methods? Even if you disagree with the headmaster and feel his words were poorly chosen or even idiotic, you should be able to express this without disrupting children’s education with loud demonstrations. Schools should be places of learning, depoliticised spaces where pupils can acquire the tools to navigate controversial, complicated issues with maturity, nuance, good faith and a willingness to listen to others. What’s so wrong with sending a strongly worded letter?

    Across the country, an unholy alliance of the easily offended, the professionally offended and a febrile social media atmosphere has sparked a free speech crisis. The politicisation of the playground is not just bad news for teachers and pupils – it points to a much broader threat to social cohesion and rational thought.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/26/playground-no-place-culture-war/

    1. They get one victory for blasphemy laws, they gain confidence and go for another one. The only way to stop bullying is to stand up to the bullies.

    2. “Imagine being a Palestinian kid at this guy’s school, being told your national flag is inherently hateful.” In the first place, that wasn’t what was said, but why are there any Palestinian children over here anyway? If they’re here they should integrate and therefore the “Palestinian” flag shouldn’t be theirs.

    3. To these people, Freedom of Speech is only acceptable if the view expressed is the same as theirs.

  94. The playground is no place for a culture war

    Banning the Palestinian flag from school is reasonable. The hysterical reaction is anything but

    MADELINE GRANT

    It is a symbol of a growing intolerance – and the politicisation of everything – that schools are being thrust onto the frontline in the culture war.

    In Birmingham, scores of parents and activists picketed primary schools in protest at the introduction of sex education which mentioned LGBT relationships. Earlier this year, pupils at Pimlico Academy in London accused their school of racism and burned the Union flag, while a teacher at Batley Grammar in West Yorkshire was forced into hiding, fearing for his life, after showing his pupils an image of the Prophet Mohammed. Here, the problem was not just the intolerance of the threatening mobs picketing the school, but the silence and craven capitulation of both the school – which suspended him – and the broader educational establishment, which was shamefully quiet on the subject.

    Now police have once again been summoned, this time to Allerton Grange School in Leeds, after a clip from a school assembly went viral on social media and provoked fury. It showed headmaster Mike Roper discouraging pupils from bringing Palestinian flags to school, saying that some associated this device with anti-Semitism. As a result, scores of pro-Palestinian activists picketed the school, while online it prompted demands for his immediate sacking.

    One protester called his words the “complete erasure of Palestine and blatant Islamophobia.” Green Party MSP Ross Greer tweeted: “Imagine being a Palestinian kid at this guy’s school, being told your national flag is inherently hateful.”

    Seen in context, however, Mr Roper’s remarks carry little of the toxicity his accusers allege. It’s worth noting his exact words. “For some people,” he said, “they see [the Palestinian flag] and they feel threatened, they feel unsafe and they worry because for other people that flag is seen as a call to arms and seen as a message of support for anti-Semitism, for being anti-Jewish and it was never meant to be like that in the first place.”

    I interpreted this as declaring that some people have, regrettably, hijacked Palestinian suffering – and the Palestinian flag – for their own purposes, and as a result some pupils might feel threatened by their display. His remark that “it was never meant to be like that” explicitly suggests as much and therefore appears to be the exact opposite of the “inherent hatefulness” described by Ross Greer.

    Given recent events, this analysis seems uncontroversial. In the last couple of weeks, legitimate concern about Palestinian suffering has indeed been used as a fig leaf for grotesque anti-Semitism. Images from protests show the Palestinian flag flying proudly alongside slogans questioning Israel’s right to exist, or threatening extreme violence. The flag is often used aggressively, by those who do not distinguish between the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Last weekend it accompanied something much worse than a “call to arms’ – a vile convoy drove through north London, emblazoned with Palestinian flags and broadcasting a call to rape Jewish women through loudspeakers.

    So there is a deeper context to all of this – not just Mr Roper’s actual words but the zeitgeist, namely a frenzied moment in which anti-Semitic incidents are surging. One can easily imagine why a headteacher might wish to discourage children from displaying national insignia before tensions rose further.

    Of course none of that prevented the comments being shared either context-free or entirely distorted by progressives and religious hardliners alike. With its mixture of intolerance and wilful misinterpretation, the incident encapsulates our times. Left-wingers like to accuse the Right of perpetuating culture wars to serve their own interests, but in reality they have major form in stirring up tensions when it suits.

    Just this week, Diane Abbott made damaging inferences that a prominent Black Lives Matter organiser, Sasha Johnson, had been shot due to her political activism, despite the available evidence suggesting nothing of the kind. Abbott – who, remember, came within a handful of seats of becoming Home Secretary not too long ago – has since doubled down on her irresponsible remarks. This sort of innuendo and wanton offence-taking is not cost-free, but actively harmful to community relations, a fact many of those engaging in it understand all too well.

    And where is the condemnation of these methods? Even if you disagree with the headmaster and feel his words were poorly chosen or even idiotic, you should be able to express this without disrupting children’s education with loud demonstrations. Schools should be places of learning, depoliticised spaces where pupils can acquire the tools to navigate controversial, complicated issues with maturity, nuance, good faith and a willingness to listen to others. What’s so wrong with sending a strongly worded letter?

    Across the country, an unholy alliance of the easily offended, the professionally offended and a febrile social media atmosphere has sparked a free speech crisis. The politicisation of the playground is not just bad news for teachers and pupils – it points to a much broader threat to social cohesion and rational thought.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/26/playground-no-place-culture-war/

  95. Does Dom want Rishi to be PM? Cummings gives the Chancellor (and Michael Gove) an easy ride but denies angling for job in a Sunak No10 as he hurls grenades at Boris and Hancock
    Dominic Cummings today fuelled rumours he wants Chancellor Rishi Sunak to become prime minister
    Ex-No10 adviser claimed Mr Sunak was ‘supportive’ of his drive to lock-down the country in March last year
    He rubbished reports in September that circuit-breaker was delayed over fears Mr Sunak would resign
    But he denied angling for a job in a Sunak administration – while hurling grenades at Boris Johnson

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9622213/Dominic-Cummings-Ex-No10-aide-gives-Rishi-Sunak-easy-ride-swipes-Boris-Hancock.html

      1. As we know whistle-blowers are not appreciated and they are usually sacked even when it turns out that they have told the truth – this does not necessarily mean that they are not needed!

  96. Ross Clark’s assessment of lockdowns is quite different from the BBC view I was hearing this evening. I just can’t decide…

    Cummings’ confession shows why we’re lucky he’s no longer calling the shots

    The former aide’s contempt for democracy was on display for all to see

    ROSS CLARK

    It was billed as a gladiatorial contest, with Dominic Cummings as the lion and Boris Johnson as the Christian. In the event, the lion proved to be rather more humble than his Twitter feed would have suggested – and the Christian has been allowed half a chance to clamber out of the arena and scarper as Cummings sunk his teeth instead into Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, the entire membership of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and, indeed, his own neck. He is not smart, he told us, and it was crazy he was ever hired.

    Cummings is terribly sorry for his failings; he didn’t make any great claim to have seen the pandemic coming, he says doesn’t understand models and relied instead on the Warner Brothers to interpret the data – not the Warner Brothers movie Contagion, but Ben, a data scientist he recruited to Downing Street (possibly as one of his weirdos and misfits), and his brother Mark, who did figures for the NHS.

    Perhaps Cummings’s most significant contribution is to bury the narrative that Boris Johnson ignored or over-rode scientific advice – at least last March. On the contrary, the former aide confirmed what was already clear to anyone who had studied the details: that the Government was indeed, for the first half of March 2020, following a policy which involved the public being infected until they had built up herd immunity. Why the Government has tried to deny this is, as Cummings says, bizarre, given that several members of Sage appeared on television openly advocating it.

    Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for example, told Newsnight on March 12, the day of the first of the daily press briefings: “We’re going to have to generate what we call herd immunity … and the only way of developing that in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected.” Ideally, he added, he would move all vulnerable people to the north of Scotland, where they could be shielded, while everyone else gathered in Kent and infected one another there. On the same day, Sir Patrick Vallance said at the press briefing that it would be impossible to stop everyone getting Covid – the challenge was to control the rate of infection so that the NHS didn’t become overloaded.

    Come the autumn things were different: Sage scientists wanted a two-week “circuit-breaker” lockdown, and the Prime Minister resisted it. But would we really have been in a better position had we had a two-week lockdown in September? What happened in Wales – where the Welsh government implemented such a lockdown a month later – was that infections never fell and just picked up where they had left off. Nor did the month-long lockdown in England in November achieve much – other than to push the peak of the second wave a little later into the winter, where it arguably caused more misery than it would have done in November.

    What the advocates of the two-week “circuit-breaker” never took into account was how the public would have reacted to being ordered to stay at home at a time when infections were still relatively low and hospitals far from overflowing. In March, people locked themselves down because they could see that infections were rising steeply; by the summer they started voluntarily to release themselves from lockdown because they could see the personal threat had receded.

    A lot of the debate over whether and when lockdowns should have been put in place has revolved around the assumption that people will always do what they are told: announce a lockdown and all social mixing will stop; fail to call a lockdown and they will carry on mixing as normal. Yet that is clearly not true in a liberal democracy like Britain: people will generally try to obey the law, but ultimately they will behave in accordance with their own judgment. If a pandemic is raging, most people will not carry on partying. If the threat has subsided, they are not going to obey petty rules telling them what they can and cannot do.

    Cummings says we would have been better off with a dictator in charge of the country during the pandemic – had he been PM he would have ceded charge to the hitherto little-known NHS data man Mark Warner. Boris Johnson’s instincts are diametrically opposed, which is why these two men were always destined to fall out. Johnson naturally trusts individuals to make decisions which are in their interests; Cummings (even though he says he was unfit for his job) would be happier if Britain resembled Communist China and government told us what was good for us. I’m no more a data scientist than is Cummings, but I know under what sort of regime I would rather live – even if it does suffer more deaths during a pandemic.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/26/cummingss-confession-shows-lucky-no-longer-calling-shots/

    2. As I remarked earlier , Cummings is a first class rat.

      He was a salaried advisor for goodness sake , he sat back until November when he left .

      Whether he is right or wrong , he is an utter creep , a modern day Judas .

      1. This may be the opening salvo to bringing down the whole rotten house of cards, Belle. There may be more behind than that which we are seeing. I think he is a cunning manipulator. Let events unfold.

        1. Cummings has certainly nailed Johnson and Hancock if nothing else.

          That alone might be enough to bring this incompetent administration to crash in flames. I hope so.

        2. You’re more optimistic than I am. Definitely a cunning manipulator, but I think he’s there to frame the debate as a choice between lockdown and lockdown earlier. To memory-hole any thought of *not* locking down.

          1. It is interesting – I distinctly recall that in the very first instance that Cummings was pushing for herd immunity, but was overruled by the noise of SAGE with Ferguson who were determined to go for lockdown. Of course, that may well have been Cummings shepherding a frightened public towards acceptance of the lockdown pen. Who knows. I think though that Hancock was being set up for being the fall-guy today, and probably nothing was said that was a surprise for Johnson. All theatre. I’m not really optimistic, just hoping against hope!

      3. Good evening, Maggiebelle

        I suppose that it comes down to whether Johnson would have been better served by Cummings or his paramour?

  97. Just shows how bad politicians are. lazy incompetent liars. We need much less government.

    2. Some interesting comments BTL tonight on the Telegraph letters on Government interference in our lives.

  98. Goodnight all Nottlers, some enjoyable bedtime Jazz from the delectable Heather AKA Hetty of Hetty and the Jazzato Band
    Tu Vuo’ Fa’ L’Americano – Hetty & the Jazzato Band
    Hetty and the Jazzato Band are:

    Heather ‘Hetty’ Loxston – Vocals
    Charlotte Jolly – Clarinet
    Fabrizio Bonacci – Guitar
    Alessandro Cimaschi – Double Bass
    Riccardo Castellani – Percussion

    Hetty and the Jazzato Band are a young and versatile Anglo-Italian Jazz Quintet, bringing you a taste of the ‘Dolce Vita’ with their modern twist on vintage, classic Italian songs, gypsy-jazz, swing and jazz standards.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ogqBcK9ow

    1. Good evening! Trust recent events have calmed down – never know what to believe from the msm.
      AN enjoyable piece to end the day – cheers!

      1. I agree, I think only war, be it ‘civil’ or otherwise, will reset our values. I have thought this for a few years now, we have strayed too far down the road into insanity. Christianity has been pushed out of the door and there are two generations at least who know nothing of hardship or loss.

    1. Goodnight Conners; I hope that things get a wee bit better for you – soon!

        1. Don’t give up, Con. Maybe the right one hasn’t come along yet.

  102. This Covid farce has gone on for too long. Time surely for those of us left with cognitive abilities and not scared shitless by Hancock and his Sages, to say ‘no more’ of this idiocy.

    We are sick of this nonsense. We know they have been lying to us all along. Perhaps the Johnson crew should leave the stage at the soonest and seek to hide somewhere. As sure as hell we are coming after you lot. You would be well advised to take your supposedly expert scientific advisors with you.

    Come in number 10, your time is up!

    4. It’s easy to make a scapegoat of those who lie about the future.
      But then these are the very qualities necessary to become elected to government.
      It’s a scientific fact that can only be proven by establishing that the outcome of one’s decisions are not what one expected.

Comments are closed.