Sunday 30 May: Postponing the end of the roadmap could lead to indefinite restrictions

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/05/29/letters-postponing-end-roadmap-could-lead-indefinite-restrictions/

553 thoughts on “Sunday 30 May: Postponing the end of the roadmap could lead to indefinite restrictions”

  3. Page headline for Letters:

    Postponing the end of the roadmap could lead to indefinite restrictions

    So, you are all beginning to see the light

    There will be no more freedom, unless we fight for it

    1. Needs a haircut.
      Poor child, none of his parents’ shennanigans are his fault.

        1. That’s actually quite a deep image, with the elderly wandering off into the forest like ghosts of Hansel and Gretel, studiously ignored by those in government.
          Who is the bearded man looking out of the car? (I am terrible at recognising people)

          3. yes, Shipman. the point of the car crash image image reverts back to Johnson [the new Mr Symonds] but widens via lack of leadership, woke marriage for tax purposes etc

    2. I normally struggle with these “Where’s Wally?” pictures, Citroen1, but on this occasion I have spotted him. He is just behind the tallest bluebell in the centre of the picture in the foreground.

      :-)) (and a good morning to all NoTTLers.)

  5. SIR – A simple question for Dominic Cummings, following his testimony earlier this week: if the Government’s handling of the Covid 19 crisis
    was the omnishambles he claims it was, why did the Conservatives romp home to so many victories in this month’s local elections, while
    governing parties elsewhere in the world (except for New Zealand) took batterings at the polls in the past 12 months?
    Mark Boyle Johnstone, Renfrewshire

    Piers Algernon Montcrief Rashid helped them

    1. Because as bad as Johnson and his government has been, the alternatives were worse.
      Rephrase the question: why, when opposition parties around the world were gaining ground over Covid, did Starmer, Labour, the Lib Dem’s et al do so badly (except in Wales)? It takes some incompetence and stupidity to be even worse than Kinnock, Foot and Corbyn.

    1. All around you Minty – just like covid apparently (according to government sources)

      Morning -….

      1. Morning Stephen. Boris marries Carrie. Not News. Boris marries Dilyn. News!

        1. I understand one of the complaints against Dilyn is that he’s vigorously hetero.

      1. I trust what the Indian government says about the pandemic more than I trust our government.
        This is a sad state of affairs!

  8. mng all, more woke clown titles aka Simon Dukes – Chief Executive, Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee. Luckily nothing on the nuptials of Mr and Mrs Symonds:

    SIR – I find it extraordinary that the Government is still prevaricating over releasing us from all Covid restrictions on June 21.

    It keeps quoting case numbers, but these numbers are misleading as they simply depend on how many tests are carried out. Most positive tests, moreover, will not result in any serious illness; some will even be false.

    Surely the only significant numbers are those relating to hospitalisations and deaths with Covid as the primary cause. At present the number of people dying for any reason within 28 days of testing positive is very small. Provided that the vaccines work, this will continue to be the case.

    If it is accepted that more variants justify more restrictions, lockdown could go on for ever.

    Mark Stephens
    Hungerford, Berkshire

    SIR – If “freedom day” is postponed, I will not be alone in being very cross.

    It was clear in March last year that lockdown was going to be extremely costly both in terms of money and collateral damage, and that Covid was going to be around for a long time, so we would have to learn to live with it.

    It it high time that industry and commerce were allowed to operate freely and generate some much-needed wealth for the country.

    Michael Fielding
    Winchester, Hampshire

    SIR – Dame Esther Rantzen (Letters, May 28) questions Lord Sumption’s view that lockdowns have not been shown to be effective.

    Given that Covid is a highly contagious respiratory virus, it should respond to social isolation; but the point is that lockdowns are a political intervention, forcing people to comply.

    New cases each day were dropping before the two major lockdowns were imposed, almost certainly because people were aware of the risk and taking their own precautions.

    Lockdowns are a blunt instrument.

    Dr David Walters
    Burton Bradstock, Dorset

    SIR – A simple question for Dominic Cummings, following his testimony earlier this week: if the Government’s handling of the Covid 19 crisis was the omnishambles he claims it was, why did the Conservatives romp home to so many victories in this month’s local elections, while governing parties elsewhere in the world (except for New Zealand) took batterings at the polls in the past 12 months?

    Mark Boyle
    Johnstone, Renfrewshire

    SIR – Why was time put aside for Mr Cummings’s controversial and premature testimony?

    On balance, we owe our lives to the brilliant vaccination rollout – one of the most successful in the world, thanks to Boris Johnson having the quick thinking to give the task to Kate Bingham and her team.

    Let us wait until next year for the full inquiry into the Government’s handling of Covid.

    Mina Bowater
    Blandford Forum, Dorset

    Support for Armenia

    SIR – Azerbaijani forces continue to encroach into the sovereign territory of Armenia.

    On May 12, 400 soldiers invaded the provinces of Gegharkunik and Syunik. On May 25, an Armenian serviceman was fatally wounded. And on May 27, six Armenian servicemen were captured, who are now vulnerable to torture, indefinite imprisonment or even slaughter in Azerbaijan.

    The UK’s policy of “talking” is seriously insufficient. Effective action is needed to end Azerbaijan’s impunity and to prevent further bloodshed.

    Baroness Cox (Crossbench)
    Tim Loughton MP (Con)
    Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)
    Dr Rowan Williams
    Lord Carey of Clifton (Crossbench)
    Lord Darzi of Denham
    Dr Alan Smith
    Lord Bishop of St Albans
    Dr Christopher Cocksworth
    Lord Bishop of Coventry
    Lord Green of Deddington
    Baroness Eaton Lord
    Lord Mendelsohn
    Lord Curry of Kirkharle
    Lord Cormack
    Lord Hylton
    Baroness Hooper
    Andrew Rosindell MP (Con)
    Stephen Pound (MP 1997-2019)

    Heat pump headache

    SIR – I have serious reservations about ground-source heat pumps, which, as things stand, we shall all have to fit in the fullness of time.

    They are expensive to install (no doubt with the consumer footing the bill). They use enormous lengths of oil-derived plastic tubing buried in the ground. They are bulky, easily taking over the domestic garage (if there is one). They use a lot of electricity at a time when we are coping with a growing number of electric cars. They react slowly to changing calls for heat. They cannot produce water hot enough for spot heat or, more seriously, for the domestic hot water system.

    Finally, the property has to be heavily insulated to help make up for the foregoing deficiencies, which isn’t necessarily easy in older residences. All the stuff moved out of the garage to make way for the pump can’t be shifted into the loft because the latter is feet deep in said insulation.

    There are better solutions, although they might take a little longer to implement. The Government really needs to think again on this one.

    Alan Duncalf
    Bampton, Devon

    SIR – At considerable cost I am planning to replace my old sash windows with double glazed units.

    Installation and draught-proofing are deemed to be “energy-saving”, so attract VAT at 5 per cent. However, double glazing itself is not deemed to be so, and VAT is charged at 20 per cent. Where is the logic here?

    Jeremy Parr
    Suckley, Worcestershire

    Pernicious protocol

    SIR – The President of the European Commission has again insisted that the Northern Ireland Protocol must be fully implemented. This gives the EU unaccountable control over many aspects of my part of the UK, and diminishes both the Belfast Agreement and the Act of Union.

    However, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, is persisting with the protocol, and is, in his own words, “committed to working with the EU to resolve issues that are undermining the protocol as a whole.”

    Mr Lewis concludes that the EU needs to listen to and take into account the experience of people in Northern Ireland. In this he is correct. However, he also needs to listen – and if he did he would be left in no doubt of the damage that is being caused by the protocol, both economically and constitutionally, putting our fragile peace at risk.

    We joined the European experiment as a sovereign country and we left as one, on January 31 2020. But thanks to the folly of the protocol, I still find myself in a part of the UK that is controlled by EU laws. Would Mr Lewis accept this situation for any other region of the UK? Would the EU accept a reverse scenario for any EU region? Of course not. So why then is it being foisted upon UK citizens in Northern Ireland?

    There are simple technical solutions to “protect” the EU’s single market from any perceived threat from the UK, and the EU is choosing to ignore them. The Northern Ireland Protocol, however, cannot be permitted to be a part of that solution.

    Jeff Partridge
    Ballywalter, Co Down

    SIR – It was amusing to learn that the EU has added Switzerland to its list 
of treaty “cherry-pickers”(report, 
May 27).

    The world, however, should take note of the EU’s less amusing course of action – which was, once again, to threaten a friendly neighbour with harm to existing agreements on trade, education, research, electricity supply and airlines.

    Dr David Slawson
    Nairn

    BBC groupthink

    SIR – The gap between the BBC and its licence payers, admirably dissected by Janet Daley, was exposed 17 years ago.

    In 2004, the Today programme asked audience members to vote on a law they would like to see on the statute book, with the Labour MP Stephen Pound having already agreed to present it as a private members’ bill.

    To the horror of the presenters and the editors, by a large majority the vote was in favour of a measure to allow homeowners to use any means, including lethal force, to defend their homes from intruders. Having received this shock to its liberal system, the programme has never again allowed such an expression of listeners’ views.

    Francis Bown
    London E3

    SIR – While I appreciate that the BBC has questions to answer about reporting standards and political bias, I fail to understand the constant carping about the licence fee.

    Our national broadcaster produces world-beating documentaries and some excellent drama, all without the infuriating interruption of commercials.

    Add to that the radio services – and all for a fifth of the sum I pay to access my favourite sports from other broadcasters.

    John Chillington
    Wells, Somerset

    The wonder of Mozart will outlive wokeness

    SIR – As an alumna of the Royal Academy of Music, I am appalled that it should even consider sacrificing artefacts connected with Handel and Mozart upon the altar of “wokeness”.

    While it is known that Handel was a glutton and possibly unscrupulous businessman, the scatologically inclined Mozart cannot be held responsible for the “sins of his father”, who scratched a living from his slave-trading patrons and by hawking his child-prodigy offspring around Europe. None of this should detract from the music, which is greater than the flawed composers.

    Incidentally, a former principal of the academy spent much of his life editing the operas of Handel and bringing them back into the public domain. Removing Handel from the curriculum would therefore be an act of destructive self-abasement, as well as a capitulation to the bandwagon of modern thinking.

    Fiona Wild
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    Let pharmacies do more to help struggling GPs

    SIR – As GPs warn that they face a “tsunami” of patients, we should look to community pharmacies for help.

    A recent audit of nearly 6,000 of the pharmacies we represent in

    England found they already undertake 58 million informal consultations with patients every year. Worryingly, almost 9 per cent of visitors were there because they had not been able to access other healthcare providers.

    Pharmacies have been a buffer for the NHS during the pandemic, saving it 24 million GP appointments a year. With the right support they could do even more. It is clear that the NHS needs our help. What is it waiting for?

    Simon Dukes
    Chief Executive, Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee
    London EC1

    SIR – I would be interested to know if the patients finding it hardest to see a GP face-to-face, or even get a telephone appointment, are those registered at larger practices.

    A survey in our area showed that highest patient satisfaction was with smaller practices. The practice rated the highest of all said on its website that phone and email consultations were discouraged, as a doctor can tell so much just by seeing a patient. I know that patients who phone this practice speak to a receptionist within a minute of two and can almost always book an appointment with their GP of choice within 48 hours. Seeing the same doctor every time is also crucial.

    I attended a patient participation group meeting at the largest practice in our area, where I was told there can be a three-week wait even for a phone appointment. Increasingly practices are being centralised – but bigger is clearly not better.

    Frederick Hill
    Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

    1. Effective action is needed to end Azerbaijan’s impunity and to prevent further bloodshed.

      What do the Correspondents suggest? Invasion? Nuclear Strike? It is a sad fact of International Politics that very little can be done in practical terms and that when something is undertaken, it provokes a catastrophe greater than the cause!

      1. they propose “more gum bumping in HoL”. Keeps the expenses gravy train going and their respective names in print

      2. Armenia wanted ‘freedom’ from the Russian shackles (which also cast a protection over the country), Putin recently ‘allowed’ their freedom only for Azerbaijan to take advantage before Armenia could gain the protection they desired from the US or EU.

    2. SIR – As GPs warn that they face a “tsunami” of patients, we should look to traditional medicines such as voodoo, spells & head shrinking for help.
      Prince Odinga Odidingadong
      Professor of charms & spells in residence at Brixton Polytechnic
      Peckham Rye
      London

      2. “My name is John Wellngton Wells, I’m a dealer in magic and spells
        In blessings and curses, and ever filled purses
        In prophecies, witches and knells.

          1. I believe you’ve “but to look in, on the resident Djinn, number 70 Simmery Axe”!

    3. It was James Purnell who cancelled any criticism of the BBC after he personally received over half a million complaints about his New Look “upgrade” to the Home Page, which then had to be deleted an he then got half a million more before getting the BBC to give up on any engagement with the unwashed public.

    4. What Mr Bown omits to mention is Stephen Pound’s reaction: “The people have spoken, the bastards…a ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation”.

    5. What Mr Bown omits to mention is Stephen Pound’s reaction: “The people have spoken, the bastards…a ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation”.

  9. ROD LIDDLE
    I don’t believe maths is racist and I don’t want rainbow cornflakes. Yes, I’m a culture warrior

    Sunday May 30 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Kellogg’s has a new cereal out, which I am sure you are anxious to sample. Together with Pride is little gobbets of compacted corn, salt and sugar dyed in rainbow colours and comes in a box that encourages children to choose their own pronouns and better understand LGBTQ+ issues. Yes, it’s the first breakfast cereal to make you throw up before you’ve even eaten it.

    A spokesman for the company said: “No matter who you are, who you love or what pronouns you use, you are too awesome to fit into a box.” Interestingly, John Harvey Kellogg invented the cornflake in the late 19th century because he believed it was the kind of food that might deter people from masturbating, which he considered a grave and debilitating sin. Clearly, then, the current board do not eat nearly enough of the stuff. Anyway I hope Kellogg’s includes a traditional free gift in its Together with Pride packet for the kiddies — some amyl nitrite, maybe.

    This little story caught my attention because I had just read a rather flawed and shallow study from King’s College, London’s political unit about the “culture war” and how nobody except a few seething journos think it is happening. I say flawed and shallow because all it asked respondents was whether they’d heard of a few buzz phrases, such as “cultural appropriation” and “woke”, and it took ignorance of these terms to signify indifference to the whole shebang.

    Liberal commentators, in the Financial Times and elsewhere, pounced on this study like a herd of cows (have you ever seen a herd of cows pounce? It’s terrifying. Lots of mooing and stamping). The voters don’t really care about this cultural stuff the reactionaries bang on about, was the gist; they care about poverty, a better NHS and so on.

    There’s a half-truth in this, I think — and it brings me back to Kellogg’s. An awful lot of the so-called culture wars stuff is just mildly irritating, or grimly hilarious. Woker-than-thou Kellogg’s pretending it cares about gay people while shovelling the most appalling crap down the mouths of children: irritating. Television adverts that suggest every family in the land is mixed race: irritating and silly. The boss of the National Trust — now gone, thank the risen Lord — asking staff to be “reverse-mentored” by children, who will lecture them on colonialism: irritating and stupid (and demeaning). However, these are not things that directly impinge upon the lives of ordinary people in the same way as a tax hike or being told you have to get rid of your gas boiler and replace it with a £10,000 system powered by unicorn tears, just to meet Boris Johnson’s “net zero” target, which he made up on the hoof, in between shags.

    But beyond this there are two further levels of this culture war, and they sure as hell cut through. The first is electorally significant: support for Brexit (not mentioned in that study) and a belief in the nation state, in the UK’s history and traditions. Concomitant with that are a belief in the traditional family and — overwhelmingly — in freedom of speech, and an objection to the unpleasant notion of “white privilege”. Countless opinion polls bear this out. Just tell the red wall voters that these issues have not “cut through”. They are the principal reason we have such a big Tory majority.

    The third level of the culture war, though, is easily the most serious, even if it may not have much impact electorally — yet. It is what I call the De-Enlightenment: the determined destruction, at the behest of a tiny minority, of almost every appurtenance of western thought and civilisation. The degradation and eventual “cancelling” of science, literature, music and history.

    For example, there are the maniacs who believe that mathematics is inherently racist, and the lunatics in our universities who insist that physics and chemistry must be “decolonised” — that is, become more “intuitive”. Or there is the Royal Academy of Music in London, which has announced that it is to “decolonise” its beautiful and unique collection of musical instruments because many of the most valuable and early ones have connections with slavery or the colonial trade in ivory.

    This is the thing. I am on one side of the culture war. I am opposed to people who think that harpsichords are racist. I am opposed to people who think we might “intuit” the existence of dark matter because that is easier to do than work out exactly what it is. I am opposed to people who choose authors to be studied on account of the colour of their skin rather than their literary worth. That’s the culture war, and it’s serious. Choose your side.

    Jaws mayor’s shock statement

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F927efcdc-c099-11eb-a231-f6d0c28edbc7.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Antichrist reborn as God’s gift to the left
    Delighted to see that Dominic Cummings has become a hero of the left, after his entertaining appearance before MPs.

    A year ago they hated him as a weirdo right-wing goblin thing, and there were constant protests outside his house. Now he’s been reborn as a kind of Julian Assange: a speaker of the truth victimised by the ruthless apparatus of the Tory state.

    Mind you, I’m not sure how sanguine we should be about the apparent fact that all Boris Johnson’s flaws — serial lying, buffoonery, incompetence, shagging anything that moves, inability to grasp detail, financial ineptitude — were “baked in” to our perception of him and we really don’t give a monkey’s.

    His ratings continue to astonish. But then, Saddam Hussein frequently claimed approval ratings — slightly suspect ones, admittedly — of 95 per cent, suggesting that, for Iraqis, bombing the Kurds with nerve gas and murdering opponents was “baked in” to their warm appreciation of him as a top bloke.

    A perfect excuse to visit Barnard Castle
    Perhaps Cummings’s new leftie supporters will pay homage to their hero by driving to Barnard Castle to see if they are blind or not. The inhabitants of this agreeable Co Durham town also rather like him, as his illicit day trip last year occasioned a small tourist boom.

    Incidentally, the term “Barnard Castle” is slang dating back to the 1500s and is included in Eric Partridge’s 1937 book A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. It means “pathetic excuse”.

    Still waiting for a BBC investigation
    I don’t know what is taking up the corporation’s time — it took about eight seconds to sack poor Danny Baker for his alleged “racism”.

    Perhaps it cannot be sure what it was that Tala thinks Hitler was right about, and is asking her at this very moment. His grooming standards, maybe? His vegetarianism?

      1. combine this image with Halfcock’s gesture in pic above, and you have a “one way ticket” to the grave. Everyone [except wokes] knows the earlier precdent

    2. YO AWK

      Have you noticed the products/meat on offer

      Pork Lamb Bacon MAN

      2. It has a number of subtle and not so subtle jabs; Hancock holding a bloody knife, Johnson in the window under protective sausage rings and Licenced to deal in death on the top and no waiting at any time sign, and traditional turkeys, I can’t read the other signs, but I suspect there are more.

    3. Is that Halfcock,himself in the Red Pinny, directing customers into the shop

  12. This is a social democratic government, not a Tory one

    The Johnson administration cannot be called ‘conservative’, as far as free markets, taxes, public finances and the role of the state go

    MARK LITTLEWOOD – 29 May 2021 • 8:00pm

    Never judge a politician by the labels they choose for themselves. Modern Prime Ministers always coin a term to encapsulate their grand narrative. For Tony Blair it was ‘the stakeholder society’, David Cameron ‘the Big Society’. Despite countless column inches devoted to it, their exact definition has remained elusive.

    Occasionally a party will stumble on a jingle that is both intuitive and straightforward. Boris Johnson’s ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan helped the Tories secure an 80-seat majority. But now Brexit has been done, we have a nominally ‘Conservative’ party, whose grand idea is something called ‘levelling up’. Both labels deserve considerable scepticism.

    The Johnson administration cannot reasonably be described as ‘conservative’, if we take this to mean favouring free markets, striving for lower taxes, taking a prudential approach to public finances and displaying scepticism about the role of the state.

    The total tax take as a proportion of national income is at a 70-year high. There is every chance that this government will squeeze out more tax from the private sector than even Clement Attlee’s post-war socialist government. The pandemic has put further pressure on the state’s deteriorating balance sheet and it is near-impossible to find any serious area of spending that the government seems minded to cut – or even freeze. A microscopically modest trim of the foreign aid budget is the best they have come up with.

    The much trumpeted ‘levelling up’ agenda is simply a return to old-fashioned regional development policy. The man in Whitehall knows best and will direct central funding to areas which fit the right criteria on a civil service spreadsheet. This means billions spent on funds to regenerate high streets, improve bus routes or earmarked for infrastructure in electorally vital Red Wall seats. It is not that such efforts will have no positive impact – but there is virtually no plan to liberalise the supply side of the economy. How will this government make it more attractive to set up a business in the North East of England? Which taxes and regulations do they intend to sweep away? The silence is deafening.

    The current government only really fits within the Conservative tradition of the 1950s or 1960s, back when vast swathes of the economy were directed by Whitehall and elections merely decided which managers would be in control. We may have returned to a social democratic consensus, where state intervention is the automatic response to any human ill. Too many obese people in Britain? Ok, let’s make it illegal for marmite and mustard to be advertised online then.

    The best way of understanding this government’s overarching vision is to grasp the philosophy of the departed Mr Cummings. His analysis is less about the state’s role than the bureaucrats’ level of expertise. If only we had better data scientists and strategic managers in Whitehall, central planning would suddenly produce perfect results. But this doesn’t even amount to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. It’s merely fretting about who sits in those deckchairs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/social-democratic-government-not-tory-one/

    1. BTL Comment:-

      Robert Spowart
      30 May 2021 9:15AM
      The Conservative Party leadership is no longer Conservative but, ever since Cameron took control, a Blairite New Labor Lite clique that has little regard for true Conservatism and even less for the party membership.

  13. Lord Botham: Over-75s ‘incandescent’ with BBC in wake of Martin Bashir scandal

    Campaigner says pensioners now regard threats to prosecute them for non-payment of licence fee as ‘just pieces of paper’

    By Patrick Sawer, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER and Robert Mendick, CHIEF REPORTER
    29 May 2021 • 6:00pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/lord-botham-over-75s-incandescent-bbc-wake

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

    BTL:

    richard Bottomley
    29 May 2021 6:32PM

    Bashir wasn’t just Religion editor, he also had the brief for ethics!! that just about sums up the whole pit of sleaze that the licence payers are expected to fund.

    1. Still waiting on the release of the BBC’s 2004 Balen report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balen_Report
      The Balen Report is a 20,000 word document written by the senior broadcasting journalist Malcolm Balen in 2004 after examining thousands of hours of the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The report was commissioned by former BBC Director of News, Richard Sambrook, following persistent complaints from the public and the Israeli government of allegations of anti-Israel bias.

  14. Have we finally passed peak woke?

    The public’s rejection of PC brainwashing at the National Trust suggests common sense is starting to prevail

    By Simon Heffer 29 May 2021 • 5:00pm

    ‘In what we have increasingly anxiously called our free society, genuine freedom may be starting to flourish again’

    Seldom can there have been such a culture clash between the obsessives of the cult called “woke” and the backbone of mainstream British life. The recent history of the National Trust has shown how what was once a valuable institution committed to preserving, to the highest level of expertise, our heritage has become a banal, left-wing front organisation devoted to rewriting history and propagandising about the wickedness of the British past.

    It was bad enough when, at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk, the trust outed as gay the pathologically discreet R W Ketton-Cremer, who had bequeathed this marvellous house to them – as part of their ‘Prejudice & Pride‘ programme which explored the previously hidden lives of lesbian, gay and transgender inhabitants of its properties. But then last year they wasted their members’ money commissioning a report (masterminded by a university professor in something called “post-colonial literature”, and not even a historian) to find links between beneficiaries of the slave trade and Trust properties, never mind the architectural splendour or aesthetic quality of them or their contents. In a manner that Chairman Mao would have saluted, the Trust’s purpose had become the re-education of its clientele.

    The Felbrigg episode was part of a campaign that included forcing elderly volunteers to wear rainbow lanyards, ignoring the point that espousing any cause, in a free society, must remain a matter of personal choice. However, like all warriors of woke, those running the Trust decided that personal choice was an offence. Not only was orthodoxy everything, but that expounding the orthodoxy would be the point of the Trust’s existence.

    The British are slow to wrath, but when roused they fight. Jean-Claude Juncker and others discovered this in 2016. Now, that moment has arrived with the National Trust. Last month a group calling itself Restore Trust was formed with the aim of returning this once-excellent organisation to its original calling, and stripping away the politics. It threatened to table a motion at the Trust’s annual general meeting in the autumn to remove Tim Parker, for seven years the organisation’s chairman. That will now not be necessary: Mr Parker walked within 24 hours, realising the game was up. Restore Trust’s sights are now on Hilary McGrady, the director-general, the main architect of what many members see as the trust’s disturbing shift away from its original aims and towards a political campaigning organisation.

    Restore Trust’s reassertion of common sense is not just a great moment for the National Trust; it is part of a wider reaction to the patronising, self-righteous attempts of a small minority to use either their reputations or the institutions they control to force an outlook of life upon others. While much of this is driven from the grass roots up – as with Restore Trust – there are also welcome signs that many in the elite will no longer tolerate what they discern, quite correctly, as a movement to end freedom of thought and freedom of speech. It is, in short, an indication that we may have passed peak woke.

    Placeholder image for youtube video: 50u0r6Oyhok
    Last December an attempt to impose upon members of Cambridge University a requirement to “respect” the views of others was defeated by a landslide (86.9 per cent to 13.1) by those who wished merely to “tolerate” those views. You shouldn’t need a Cambridge PhD to understand the difference, but it had to be explained to the University’s high priests of woke: reasonable people are quite happy to tolerate the expression of views by those with whom they violently disagree but, in a free society, they cannot be commanded to respect them. That, too, was a turn of the tide, for universities have led the cancel culture: not least with half-educated students screaming blue murder every time somebody expresses an alternative opinion on some aspect of transgenderism and dons too terrified to disagree with them.

    And Cambridge’s archbishop of woke, its increasingly eccentric vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Toope, had to execute a rapid reverse last week after approving a website where students could anonymously report “micro-aggressions” by dons: these included referring to a woman as a “girl”, turning their back on a student or delivering a backhanded compliment. Prof Toope was forced to order the website to be taken down after dons complained Cambridge was becoming a police state. The Free Speech Union threatened to take him to court and it would serve him right if they did. The government is proposing a free speech law to force universities to repudiate the cancel culture; the howls of outrage extremists in those institutions hoped would be provoked have not occurred. Most people have had enough of this dangerous foolishness.

    The murder of George Floyd last year, which triggered an international spasm of woke, was and remains a horrific crime. Sadly, much of the bandwagon-jumping that followed was nauseating in its self-righteousness and cringe-making in its virtue signalling. It was also hijacked by extreme anarchist groups for whom respecting the lives of black people was a lesser consideration than overthrowing international capitalism. The censoriousness of these militants has now provoked a backlash: sportsmen have given up the stunt of “taking the knee”, not because they are happy about the murder of black people but because it became an empty gesture.

    The BBC, which became almost paralysed with adoration for the Black Lives Matter organisation and sought to take a lead role in brainwashing the nation into believing we are all guilty, learned its lesson about overdoing the woke when hit by a tsunami of rage after attempting to “decolonise” the Last Night of the Proms. The perception of woke obsessions in broadcast news – not least since the Murdoch organisation surrendered control of Sky News – has directly led to the creation of a new channel, GB News, due to launch next month. Aware of the enormous popularity of television channels that show unwoke programmes and films from the last half of the 20th century, the recently-installed BBC director-general, Tim Davie, has reminded his senior staff that the Corporation must serve everyone.

    Yet nothing has done more to make people to rise up against this totalitarian attempt at social brainwashing than the incessant posturing and bleating of the Crown Prince and Princess of Woke, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Their titanic self-regard, vacuous and self-pitying pronouncements, and consequent rudeness to the most admired person in Britain, Her Majesty the Queen, have bred ridicule and contempt.

    The Duke, whose public credibility has sunk below that of Donald Duck, dropped another of his pompously so-called “truth bombs” with Oprah Winfrey. The programme aimed to answer the question: “Where do we go from here?” The British public’s reply is increasingly obvious: as far away from us as possible. Whining with self-pity from their Californian parallel universe, the pair have succeeded in driving home to all rational people the sheer irrelevance and presumptuousness of the woke view of life – and the lack of intelligence and character of those who make a career out of trying to manipulate others into obeying its rules.

    The Duke fails to see that the fastest way now for the British public to be turned off anything is for him and his wife to start arguing for it; itself a clear sign that this campaign of bullying and brainwashing has been rumbled and rejected.

    The fight is not, of course, over. There will remain some who just don’t get it and who will have to be challenged as they seek to practise their demagoguery and inflict themselves on the rest of us. But the common sense of our people has, it appears, asserted itself again, whether among the heritage-hungry middle classes, university teachers or those who watch primetime television. And it is rather wonderful; for in what we have increasingly anxiously called our free society, genuine freedom may be starting to flourish again.

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

    No comments

    3. Good sense from Heffer, but he ought not to have given them this: The murder of George Floyd last year, which triggered an international spasm of woke, was and remains a horrific crime.
      While he has been found guilty and no longer benefits from the presumption of innocence, Floyd’s death was probably as much a result of ingesting a lethal quantity of drugs while fighting with police while having a weak heart. The main surprise of his life is that he was not killed by another oaf besides Chauvin.

      1. I very much doubt if Heffer believes any such thing any more than you or I do but any contributor to any publication with be forced to include similar pablum to avoid arson and worse from the woke mob being wreaked on the publisher

      2. Floyd should have been shot earlier. He was a nasty bastard, a danger to society.

  15. Beware of all Catholic converts….most of them tend towards fanatical authoritarianism [viz. my maternal grandmother]…this guy is a real humdinger

    Can the wisdom of the ancients solve 21st-century liberalism’s problems?

    In his provocative new book The Unbroken Thread, US journalist Sohrab Ahmari calls for a new kind of Christian conservatism

    MARC SIDWELL 30 May 2021 • 5:00am

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2021/05/28/TELEMMGLPICT000218217262_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwbsclYKWAODp1FLhIdorrrw.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Ahmari draws on the writings of Saint Augustine (pictured in a 6th century painting)

    The past is a foreign country… no, scrap that. The past is a bad horror movie: a toxic waste dump of -isms and Nazi collaborators. Anything connected to it needs to be decontaminated. Anyone who wants to learn from it is either insane or a fascist, and probably both. Or so the story goes. Statues must fall. Heroes must be contextualised. National flags are an embarrassment. Tradition is just another synonym for oppression.

    But what if our ancestors knew a thing or two about how to live? And what if that wisdom is at odds with unfettered liberty? Enter Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor of the New York Post and one of America’s rising conservative intellectuals. Ahmari’s new book, The Unbroken Thread, is a vital and provocative read, which makes the case for the wisdom of tradition in a world that seems increasingly deaf to the very idea.

    A spirited controversialist, Ahmari’s method here is to ask awkward questions. Should you bill your elderly parents for the time you spend caring for them? If not, why not? And what’s the truth about sex? Is it really just good private fun?

    Seeking to offer a sort of guidebook to moral integrity for his young son Maximilian, Ahmari answers his challenging questions with stories that illuminate the enduring answers offered by human civilisation’s great traditions. The book consists of 12 such questions, and each answer is fleshed out with a relevant moral biography. Ahmari is a Catholic convert, and his choice of heroes reflects his Christian faith. Thomas Aquinas, CS Lewis and Cardinal Newman all feature, alongside less well-known names, such as the anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner, whose study of tribal rituals in Africa gave them new respect for Catholic ceremony. There are some deliberately provocative choices. One chapter champions the feminist Andrea Dworkin, most famous for her assertion that sex is inherently an act of patriarchal aggression. Ahmari applauds Dworkin’s rejection of sex-positivity, and sees parallels to the sexual mores of Christian tradition.

    At times, the emphasis on biographical storytelling can drag, especially in chapters which range over well-trodden territory. It also restricts the space spent actually arguing the author’s controversial case. However, even the more familiar chapters are studded with little gems of historical and philosophical intrigue, such as Ahmari’s exploration of conscience and authority through the life of Cardinal Newman.

    Designed to satisfy the curiosity of those wondering whether there is more to life than rootless independence, The Unbroken Thread is an easy read, while still meaty enough to reward those already sympathetic to tradition’s insights. But it is not cosy, and it never stops challenging its readers, not just with the awkward questions it poses, but in its refusal to offer the expected answers.

    For this is both a book in defence of traditional wisdom, and also a gentle introduction to a new kind of conservatism. That is clearest, perhaps, in the chapter on Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “What is Freedom For?”, which presents Western liberalism and Soviet communism not just as Cold War rivals but intellectual twins, descendants of the same error: a belief in unlimited human autonomy.

    Ahmari himself is a self-described post-liberal, and The Unbroken Thread not only defends the obligations that children owe to their parents, and the benefits of observing the sabbath, but also takes aim against liberalism as a social system. Not liberalism in the American sense of Left-wing politics, but the entire classical liberal – Mr Ahmari would say “powdered wig” – tradition.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2021/05/28/threadcomp_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqeo_i_u9APj8RuoebjoAHt0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA.jpg?imwidth=680
    Sohrab Ahmari, author of The Unbroken Thread CREDIT: Hodder & Stoughton
    For this reason, when Ahmari turns to William Gladstone, the great 19th century Liberal prime minister, it is to excoriate him as a racist and an anti-Catholic. Like the woke – who just succeeded in getting the name Gladstone stripped from a student hall of residence at the University of Liverpool – Ahmari wants the liberal tradition torn down. There are glimpses of this throughout, such as his enthusiasm for the hierarchical rigidities of Confucianism, or his interest in Dworkin’s view of sex. Unlike a liberal, Ahmari believes that what goes on in your bedroom ought to be everyone’s business.

    It’s not just that he sees observing the sabbath as a worthwhile choice: he wants Sunday closing enshrined in law again. Elsewhere in the book, Ahmari expresses his concern for the enforced shift to bodiless, virtual interactions during the pandemic, but it is hard to square this resistance to lockdown restrictions with his own enthusiasm for state power.

    At one point, he draws on Augustine’s City of God to argue that, rather than leaving individuals free to live as they see fit, the state should intervene to assist and encourage its version of the common good. That sounds tempting. But can we really draw a sharp line between the common good and liberalism? As the late Michael Novak, another thoughtful Catholic, argued in Free Persons and the Common Good, to do so misses the very real contributions of the latter to the former, especially liberalism’s creation of institutions that serve human flourishing by constraining political power.

    Britain is, of course, very different to America. Here, liberty is ours by inheritance, not as a post-Enlightenment innovation. As a result, our tradition is more culturally conservative – concerned with preserving and respecting that inheritance – than the kind of prescriptive social conservatism Ahmari is hinting at. We rely on the common sense of free men and women to obtain the common good, before legislative power. Indeed, the long success of Mrs Thatcher rested – as the success of Boris Johnson in the Red Wall seats arguably rests today – on a respect for tradition and national pride, alongside the dynamism and personal liberty of the free society. But in Britain too, with the woke revolution in full swing, the questions at the heart of this book about the nature of freedom and the value of tradition are increasingly urgent.

    Ahmari ends his thought-provoking book with a maxim for his son: “Read old books before new ones.” Like every good rule, this has its exceptions. You don’t have to agree with everything in The Unbroken Thread, but we should all spend more time contemplating its questions.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/can-wisdom-ancients-solve-21st-century-

    1. you asked in your post immediately below “have we passed peak woke”? – This post is a classic example of where wokes have retreated to [media] where they feel more protected

      1. ‘Morning, AWK.

        We don’t all read by ‘Newest First’, AWK and on my thread, his post appears earlier.

      2. I think Rod Liddle’s smell chocker has a different version of ‘woke’.

      1. Mornin Bob, IMO he converted hoping that being a Catholic it would boost his chances of being elected EU President , the precedent being
        the Conversion of Henry IV: who justified his conversion saying “Paris Is Well Worth a Mass” In Blairs case it was Brussels is well worth a mass!

        1. Perhaps he had a lot to leave behind. Does his behaviour when he was an Anglican count against him if he dies as a Catholic?
          Does St. Peter keep several columns totting up transgressions under the sinner’s belief system at the time of the misdeed?

          2. I have vague memories of an NHS spreadsheet running out of space and losing xxx thousand covid ‘cases’ which were then added later in a panic. Up went the figures for that week.
            Just imagine if you had so few sins listed that you went upstairs. There you are wandering around on your cloud, belting out the occasional Hallelujah ….. Then some celestial beancounter discovers a load of sins and uploads them onto your Excel record. Suddenly you are crunching through cinders.

          4. St Pete keeps a tab on everything. In Blair’s case, he has run out of available disc space thus there is only one destination that is allowable.

          5. I might think of a soul as a field. If there are too many weeds, it gets burned.

      4. … citing his friendship with Hans Kung the utterly discredited (with the RC Church) theologian.
        I cannot imagine what Blair found to be seductive in Catholicism nor why he was allowed to enter the church without a comprehensive and public repudiation of his crimes.
        Edit: Elf offers a plausible answer, below.

        1. Nooooo – he didn’t convert to Rome until after he had ‘left office’ and was well into his ‘cashing in’ phase of accumulating ill gotten gains….some cynics have suggested that his conversion was part of his veil of bogus respectability.

    3. Interesting. I might get this book although I probably won’t like everything it says.

      I think there is a very strong case for Sunday closing. When we moved to Germany (where nothing is open on Sundays), at first, it was disorienting to have to rush all the shopping on Saturday.
      But soon, I started to appreciate having one day when there was no pressure to go to the shops or do anything commercial. It was only then that I realised, that we had never relaxed properly in the UK since Sunday opening. We were on a commercial mindset, seven days a week.
      There was no down time any more.
      Campaigners for Sunday opening say “you can just ignore it if you want” – but you can’t. Sooner or later, it sucks you in, usually because of the demands of others. And of course, if you’re one of the poor shop assistants, you have no choice.
      My daughter did a job that was seven days a week in a hospital last year, and it was horrible. She never had a proper weekend, just odd days off here and there. The lack of routine, sometimes working ten days through, sometimes having a day off, then working a day, then another day off, was far more stressful than any of us had realised. It was pure luxury when she got a job in a practice that was closed on Sundays. At least she had one day in the week when she could make long term plans.
      Part of being able to live a much nicer family life in Germany than in the UK was the Sunday closing in the former country.

      1. Morning BB2. After supporting all these measures at the time I have to say that on reflection they went too far. We should have Sunday closing and the daily opening hours should be reduced, or perhaps placed on a rota system! Working hours, for those fortunate enough to be employed, should consist of any five working days and two consecutive ones off!

      2. I do try to avoid doing chores on a Sunday if I can, but sometimes, due to circumstances beyond my control, it isn’t always possible. I do refuse to shop, though.

      3. I do try to avoid doing chores on a Sunday if I can, but sometimes, due to circumstances beyond my control, it isn’t always possible. I do refuse to shop, though.

    4. Here, liberty is ours by inheritance

      That’s because invaders have repeatedly taken the liberty of landing on our beaches.

    5. Here, liberty is ours by inheritance

      That’s because invaders have repeatedly taken the liberty of landing on our beaches.

    6. That is an interesting argument for conservatism. I think Chesterton said that a conservative is someone who would not remove a fence without first discovering why it was erected – so do not jettison any tradition until you know what use it is and what you will lose by getting rid of it.
      But , that also applies to the Enlightenment which is part of the Western Tradition.
      Like other deconstructionists (maybe he’d call himself a reconstructionist) Ahmadi is in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater – and I say this as an orthodox Catholic.
      What the Englightenment did for the Church is wrest temporal control from its grip. Christianity is supposed to be Good News to which we respond with an act of God-given Free Will. I think that dynamic was done terrible harm when those prounouncing the Evangelion were tempted to impose it.
      There is a subtle tension between authority and coercion and while the woke madness currently invading the cultural thought process is practical atheism, and will lead those who espouse it to chaos, it also provides us with the opportunity to seduce with the Announcement.
      Pointing out the benefits of the past, I think, is less effective than announcing the wonder of the present. Maybe the two should be at least simultaneous.

  17. Classic Scholar

    Paddy goes for a job on a building site. The foreman tells him, “I’ll hire you if you can tell me the difference between a joist and a girder.”

    “Certainly,” says Paddy. “Joist wrote Ulysses and Girder wrote Faust!”

  19. I copied the comment below off the instagram account of Jonathan Myles-Lea (@myleslea2)
    Jonathan Myles-Lea is a figurative artist and a conservative. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer some years ago, and is living on borrowed time and having regular treatment. He was on the Delingpod a few months ago.
    He posts a lot of interesting stuff on Instragram about art, architecture and conservative politics. I met him years ago, and he stuck in my memory as the only artist I’ve ever met who is even nerdier about technique than I am myself (Conway might be interested too), and also the most charming man I have ever met.
    His instagram account has been targeted by thieves, so he is posting on a second account at the moment.

    “myleslea2 We are all engaged in a spiritual battle. Light attracts darkness as surely as darkness often seduces the light.

    As I was being rolled into the operating theatre in the city of Bath on Thursday, I was being subjected to threats, intimidation and blackmail by a group of Turkish hackers based in Cyprus. As I lay in hospital waiting for a procedure to safe my liver, and hence – ultimately – my life, money was being demanded from me in order to release my hacked Instagram account. I was told to pay hundreds of pounds via a range of platforms: PayPal, Western Union and ultimately; Bitcoin. The whole scenario had actually been playing out over several weeks, ultimately concluding with the permanent theft of all my data and the transformation of my account into a fake ‘Instagram Help’ profile which bizarrely retains all my content.

    Finally, (brace yourself for this part:) I was asked how long I had left to live. If I converted to Islam my account would be returned to me. I was provided with a text to read out which would enable me to transfer my spiritual devotion from Jesus to Allah. I’ll let you draw you’re own conclusions as to how this made me feel.

    Apart from being given a terminal cancer prognosis, this was certainly one of the most shocking things that has happened in my life. But like all traumas – I will face it in my typical way: I will alchemically transform the experience into gold. I’m determined to become even more loving and appreciative of the glorious truth and beauty in the world. We must not allow ourselves to be conquered by our encounters with evil. We must use them in order to learn how to become stronger and more radiant. Looking into the face of evil strengthens our faith.”

  20. Good Moaning.
    Sunny – again. This is becoming soooo predictable. Boring ….
    Grizzle. Moan. Harumph …….

    1. Don’t worry – Thomas Wm logged on shortly before you did and has already greeted us with his list of moans.

        1. No – the only reason he gets out of bed in the morning is to post something hereon to miserablise our day.

          3. You’re a braver man than I, Gunga Din.
            Spartie was still sparko at 07.00. Still, he did get up with better grace than I did.

  21. 333560+up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    A stat. to ponder,
    https://twitter.com/DavidPoulden/status/1398886679637893123

    The other 57 BRBs are IMO in support.

    BRBs = back room boys.
    May one ask,
    why are they here, is their only purpose to create problems for the governance politico’s to seemingly combat ?

    It does seem to me we are financing a security service
    onshore / offshore that is NOT in its present form necessary, following peoples around, awaiting potential trouble from peoples that should NOT be here to start with, added to that BRINGING more in at DOVER.

    Cons are 18 points in front of lab in the race to the bottom, the future does look bleak all round.

    Their daily strength is being added to daily via DOVER
    and those already in situ are multiplying in positions of power within society.

    Lest we forget a German leader of the past also got married just before the regime
    met its death throes.

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        As with the governance overseers some play the part of opposition, ALL inhouse, insulated, close shop.

        Which then begs the question WHY are the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration, ONGOING main close shop still being given support , why are peoples voting for a name only
        NOT honest content of a party.

        In the case of the tory’s (ino) party DOVER alone lays out their
        agenda regarding the future, reset, replace is very REAL.

      2. Islam is a seamless garment. Jihad is a duty required of all muslims. Infidels are cattle. We are infidels.

    3. The race to the bottom is a reflection of today’s society – there are just too many potholes in the roadmap.

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        AOE,
        Surely the polling booth is the given opportunity for society
        to rectify issues of an odious nature, but the electorate do seem hell bent on the construction of more potholes

        1. I believe there is a vacancy for the leadership of the pothole party but I can’t understand why it is so difficult to fill.🤔

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        Morning A,
        The last leader I had no hesitation in following was Gerard Batten who pointed out the dangers of islamic ideology
        through rhetoric & print back in 2005 he was taken out by treachery & a multitude of fools plus those with more sinister
        ulterior motives casting us and him as far right, knuckle dragging , racist.

        We always called for controlled immigration.

      2. Which maybe is the reason why our anti-democratic politicians are so happy to import them.

      3. If the West were a democracy we wouldn’t have Islamic terrorism here.

        Switzerland doesn’t because it said no to massive, uncontrolled immigration. Politicians keep trying to push it, and the people say no.

    5. Why are they here? Bennies!

      Hell, we give these people money to breed and they do, copiously. Then they get a free house – on us, of course. Then that generation has more childrenat a very young age and they get a free house and so on and so on until, each group breeding and bearding and gettinng free stuff on the tax payer who can’t afford these things for themselves, paying ever higher taxes for ever less.

      The problem isn’t 2% being terrorists. The problem is the 70% living solely on welfare.

  22. Good morning all.
    A dull start in Derbyshire with a slight chill of 6½°C on the yard thermometer.

  23. The weather looks to be set fair in E Wilts for the opening match of Shalbourne Cricket Club (SCC)’s 2021 season. (There was a ‘friendly’ on 2nd May when SCC were ignominiously thumped by Aldbourne CC so that doesn’t count). In the last match of the 2020 season just before lockdown, SCC narrowly beat Ham Cricket Club with a six off the last ball, straight through the (unopen) pavilion window. Ham are returning (at 2:00pm today) to seek their revenge.

    For a panoramic view of SCC’s swanky new pavilion and the playing grounds etc, click on the link below
    https://www.shalbournepavilion.co.uk

      1. Bloody expensive too; despite many of us ‘buying’ a brick for £10 a pop, it came in at about two times budget and there is still a vast overdraft to be paid off. It’s far too glamorous for the cricketing capabilities of SCC but some dosh is raised each year by renting it out for other events.

        1. Get on to the ubiquitous Rashford – just include a couple of bames – and he’d settle all the bills.

    2. The photographs made me feel quite nostalgic for an England that is now gone!

  24. A celebration and a commemoration for the ‘Woken’ people.

    The dark blue tribe beat the light blue tribe in the Wendyball match played in Portugal yesterday and the BBC is currently broadcasting ‘Doing Justice’: A Service of Reflection marking the Anniversary of the wanton murder of George Floyd from the New Testament Church of God Community, Brixton.

    It’s what you pays your money for!

    I thought I’d add part of the introduction on the BBC site:

    Sunday Worship -Doing Justice

    “I can’t breathe”

    Music – Walk with Me – IDMC Gospel Soul Choir
    ‘No longer the same’ The Venerable Rosemarie Mallet, Archdeacon of Croydon
    No longer the same: From the moment of his pain-filled death I knew things could no longer be the same.I thought of He, George Floyd, who died a terrible, racist and deliberately emasculating death, like too many other black fathers, brothers, sons. He is no longer, and his last breathed words have become our rallying cry. I am no longer the same. At that moment part of me also died on that road.. and there is more.

    1. There’s only one word I can think of to describe the introduction on the BBC site – Tripe.

    2. Bookmarked and will send out to friends and family later.
      How are you getting on?

      1. Still waiting for an appointment for the Angio.

        Still can’t walk more than a few yards without having to sit down.

        Not had a cigarette in 9 days.

        Don’t know if it is the Champix or not but i feel really weird.

        Thanks for asking.

        Hope all is well at Allan Towers.

  26. Ministers fear revival of Islamist extremism could be fuelling rise in anti-Semitism. 30 May 2021.

    A resurgence of Islamist extremism could be fuelling the increase in anti-Semitism on Britain’s streets, ministers fear.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, said recent incidents of anti-Jewish hate showed “signs of something more pernicious” than “casual anti-Semitism” and warned of “extremist groups operating in our midst”.

    He pledged that the Government will “redouble its efforts” to deal with extremism, which will include ensuring that bodies such as police forces must “fully understand their responsibilities and [do] everything they can to tackle it”.

    Resurgence? It simply lies dormant awaiting the opportunity to strike. The government cannot “redouble its efforts” since it is the facilitator through immigration of this process!

    Eventually all Jews will have to leave the UK for their own safety!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/29/ministers-fear-revival-islamist-extremism-could-fuelling-rise/

  27. BTL comment in the Tellygraff:

    Michael Geddes

    30 May 2021 7:11AM

    DR. DAVID WALTERS

    “Blunt instrument” they may be, but lockdowns have been remarkably efficient.

    Their many “achievements” include the following. The abandonment of our children’s education. The dismantling of our industrial/retail world of business. Inducing the crumbling ruin of our societal structure. Largely ignoring a variety of serious non virus health issues, particularly cancers/stroke/heart disease/dementia. Blockading the meeting of family and friends, a vital necessity in times of adversity. Separating the population from all joy and entertainment; another source of heartening spirits in difficult times. The banning of travel, to the coast, the countryside and even a bench in the local park. The prohibition of sport, as participant or spectator.

    Given the enormity of their remit, we have to say that lockdowns carried out a remarkably successful campaign of destruction.

    The full extent of increased health (physical and mental) issues and unemployment have yet to reach their peak, but lockdowns may take the credit for those as well. Indeed, it would be difficult to find one area of our lives that they haven’t scarred, often permanently.

        1. Obviously the event did NOT take place. The writer and her “friends” are clearly deluded – they think they marched but in reality they stayed at home doing the housework and making sure that their husbands were properly looked after.

          No such thing could possibly have happened without huge press coverage….

          2. there was a live stream link on youtube [about 7 hrs length], watched a couple of hours, Posted some stills on yday’s thread, couple more here https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0a4e19b0ca85709266bd1013abed9ccd21767126fdfd493e27440f94e8a90e38.jpg mainly of banners https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a9ee599203d94b2f5e0308a0a728e5c6d3213db516d419ffda3eebb45c2dffe.jpg the lad got it about right, which ties in with your closing point https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e4bee226e0b4b7d8d15adb8a81128759c2f4d7bc1b14c2b053b68f2b9218fac7.jpg

    2. Anne, THANK YOU!
      I had no idea about this and was close to despair about conservatism which is no longer represented by the Tories. That article and the comments destroying anyone who dares spout the current line from the Ministry of Truth restores my faith somewhat.
      Now what the hell can we do about taking back control of the Conservative Party?

  29. Sasha Johnson . London shooting . .

    Quote from Telegraph article . .”She (Johnson) was shot in the head by a stray bullet at a south London party”

    Reality . . . She was shot in the head by a black guy who was illegally carrying a gun.

      1. Murdered? Give it time, she is still denying an old age pensioner a place in the hospital ward.

        1. Sorry Ped my mind is playing tricks on me at the moment. I hope she recovers but she is still in a critical condition. I have jumped the [proverbial] gun.

    4. DCI Richard Leonard, leading the investigation, said Sasha was fighting for her life and vowed to hunt down those responsible, adding: “Our investigation continues to make progress but we need the assistance of the community to find out who was responsible for this horrific attack.

      ‘Assistance from the community’ – Good luck with that. I would bet on the BBC telling the truth before that happens.

  31. Good morning my friends,

    What a surprise! So Boris Johnson was lying when only a few days ago he announced that the wedding date was fixed for next year. He’s pulled a fast one in more than one sense of the expression!

    As that Pakistani cricketer’s former father-in law, the late Sir James Goldsmith, said:

    “When you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy.”

    I wonder if there are any job applicants already lined up!

    1. 333560+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Could an anti Franks law come into being as in having detector vans circling properties seeking hidden compartments containing children AND
      illicit TVs ?
      A double created in hades.

      The overseers could then begin a, for want of a better name,the mengele drag & jab campaign.

    2. But the covid threat, if there ever was one will naturally pass in a year or so, will the jabs be compulsory for ever.
      And what happen if they all become seriously ill from as yet unknown side effects, these are experimental vaccines after all.

      1. 333560+up ticks.
        Morning B3,
        What would happen ? I would thing starting with the political class mass culling.

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        Morning C,
        Long ago, things are IMO going to go seriously tits up especially if heavens forbid the third,fourth,fifth tit grows.

  33. Good morning all.

    Here are the final words from this morning’s Sunday Worship on R4 …

    ” We shall remember his name:George Perry Floyd Jr.”.

    1. Good Morning to you, issy

      Taken at face value, that is a substantially valid statement….I expect that the vast majority of NoTTLers will remember that name for many years to come….but not for the reasons that the BBC’s Head of Religious Propaganda intended.

    4. They should remember the old idiom: If you’re a bad boy you’ll get it in the neck. In modern parlance, you’ll get Floyded!

    5. Perhaps they could arrange a pilgrimage to the place he died.

      I would give them 5 minutes before they were mugged.

      1. I believe there are several shrines to him already in London alone – you can get 15 kinds of drugs and access to girls as young as six. Keeping up the tradition!

          3. Won’t be long now. Just deciding which gayboy(s) to be given the commissions. One in every village hall no doubt.

  34. Thoughts as I did my morning walk around block during the most wonderful morning so far:

    “I am never happier than when I am exploring. It was my great passion in my childhood, and has remained with me all my life. It is something I inherited from my father, who is also an explorer at heart.

    When I was six, I had a fascination with road maps, and my bible was an A to Z Atlas of London with a drawing of Tower Bridge on the cover, which I still love. I studied it relentlessly and could navigate my way confidently from Teddington Lock to Tower Bridge at six. I knew the order of the streets along Waldegrave Road and Cross Deep, and were my friends and companions, each with their own aura.

    Many years later, in middle age, I took up garden design and found myself more interested in creating paths than in planting shrubs and flowers. “Desire lines” my tutor Chris Beardshaw called it. A way of getting from one landmark to another in the most interesting way I could imagine.

    My happiest dreams are my exploration dreams. Often I go back to places decades later and remember them as they were in the past, and how they decay and evolve as time passes. Sometimes I regret one particularly beautiful old building that is no longer with us, and vow one day to recreate its spirit using whatever materials and skills I can muster now.

    Exploration is not just physical either. A piece of music has always been a journey, whose path is marked by the modulations and the developments of a theme. I always loved concertos for this reason, and the best music is somewhere I can walk and marvel at the beauty as I go along the way. I cannot bear music that has no reason, no path or way of making one, or just shouts at me.

    When I fell in love, it was the exploration of my beloved’s personality and soul that interested me most, discovering ever fresh beauties the further I went. Change really upsets and disorientates me though. Once the path is familiar to me, it becomes like a dear friend I like to visit again and again, and each time I find something new. It is why, when I eventually find my beautiful soulmate filled with imagination, I will never leave her, and will remain faithful to her forever. I will want for no-one else, other than the progeny of our union.

    The most important virtue in any human being, and above all in one I can love, is imagination. Without it, I lose interest since there is nothing more to see other than what is on the surface. With imagination, there are always fresh views, fresh ideas, fresh explorations without having to go through the trauma of change. I have always felt happiest in the company of artists and musicians, whose stock-in-trade is creating beauty from the imagination. I can think of no more worthy profession.”

  37. Good morning everyone ,
    Fine day, slightly cloudy and of course another excuse to avoid the hordes , and I mean hordes from Slough, Leicester, Luton etc who regard Durdle Door as almost a Bollywood icon .

    Re the comments on DT letters, there is a wonderful COMMENT that deserves a mass of upticks .

    Isabella Maeer
    30 May 2021 9:34AM
    Is it me or is their a feeling ing the air that our lives are being diminished.

    Everything is being curtailed, the young especially are being forced to focus on the what’s wrong with the world instead of dusting their heels to go off to discover what a wonderful planet we live on

    Daily we are fed the next Covid highlight and didn’t the government do well.

    Every corner you turn there seems to be restrictions, restrictions, restrictions all policed by the boring and humdrum civil servants whose aim in their dreary life is to want everyone in their image.

    We are being herded like sheep. Every thought, every desire, every feeling of adventure is being turned into a grudge match at best.

    I am not racist I love the variety of experiencing how others live and think but not at the expense of our country having to change to accommodate those who have moved here….not to make their home in our wonderful country but to insist we change and accept their culture as ours.

    And the government is totally afraid of being seen as racist. This is our home. So many cities and areas have already fallen foul.

    And what has died is what made us great, our sense of adventure, our desire to be the best, our education system is a parody of what it once was. Integration is dead, we are being diminished and unless we waken up and rediscover our roots we will wither in this atmosphere that now pervades our country. And that will be a tragedy.

    Too many cultures are fighting for dominance and we are being sucked in to this disaster.

        2. They have NO intention of letting us have it back. England’s destruction is approved by our own leaders – those with good English names . . .Sunak, Zahawi, Patel, Khan etc.

          1. The problem started with Blair and Brown.

            Where we start is enforcing referism and recall. Eventually, when MPs start getting sacked and forbidden access to parliament for after work non-jobs, they’ll get the message.

            Then we take a shredder to the civil service and cut it to pieces, starting at the top.

            The day a normal person stands in the Scottish parliament and tells that racist berk to shut up and sit down we will have won.

            The problem is clear and easy to identify – a refusal of the state machine to implement the will of the people.

  38. Good morning everyone ,
    Fine day, slightly cloudy and of course another excuse to avoid the hordes , and I mean hordes from Slough, Leicester, Luton etc who regard Durdle Door as almost a Bollywood icon .

    Re the comments on DT letters, there is a wonderful COMMENT that deserves a mass of upticks .

    Isabella Maeer
    30 May 2021 9:34AM
    Is it me or is their a feeling ing the air that our lives are being diminished.

    Everything is being curtailed, the young especially are being forced to focus on the what’s wrong with the world instead of dusting their heels to go off to discover what a wonderful planet we live on

    Daily we are fed the next Covid highlight and didn’t the government do well.

    Every corner you turn there seems to be restrictions, restrictions, restrictions all policed by the boring and humdrum civil servants whose aim in their dreary life is to want everyone in their image.

    We are being herded like sheep. Every thought, every desire, every feeling of adventure is being turned into a grudge match at best.

    I am not racist I love the variety of experiencing how others live and think but not at the expense of our country having to change to accommodate those who have moved here….not to make their home in our wonderful country but to insist we change and accept their culture as ours.

    And the government is totally afraid of being seen as racist. This is our home. So many cities and areas have already fallen foul.

    And what has died is what made us great, our sense of adventure, our desire to be the best, our education system is a parody of what it once was. Integration is dead, we are being diminished and unless we waken up and rediscover our roots we will wither in this atmosphere that now pervades our country. And that will be a tragedy.

    Too many cultures are fighting for dominance and we are being sucked in to this disaster.

  40. Carrion calls the shots. Boris is an even bigger buffoon than I thought. Led by the nose.

    2. He has long been obsessively absorbed by his pursuit of carving out a named niche in Our Island’s Story.. I am quite sure that Carrion means no more to him than either of his (much more respectable and accomplished) previous wives or any of the other bits of totty. However, Carrion has some sort of a grip on him that the rest didn’t; his age and the times. Like many OEs he has an acquired easy charm but is burnt up inside with fear of perceived failure. He has an excruciating narrowness and is so open to being taken for a sucker.

      1. Funny you should say that. Fortunately I didn’t do Biology at O Level (or at all) but – 65 years on – I can still remember the disgusting smell in the Biology lab of the dogfish which others were dissecting…

        1. My crowning achievement was to blow up a test tube while checking the fat content of a biscuit. I still don’t know how I did it.

        2. Human reproduction was chapter 6 in our text book. At the end of the summer term we had reached chapter 5 (reproduction in rabbits). In September, we started chapter 7; we had been told to read chapter 6 over the summer holidays and it was never mentioned again.

      2. What’s this “revisit” nonsense? Biology teechers weren’t invented until long after Uncle Bill had become an articled clerk.

        For my own part, the top rated sex education classes at my skule (Ampleforth Coll) were delivered by Fr Owen who was perfectly oblate no matter what angle he was viewed from; N, S, E, W, above, or below. An entirely delightful rotund and giggly Welshman with an Oxford 1st in Physics, a natural for Friar Tuck in any Pantomime. He recognised the absurdity of his designated mission and knew that we were taking the pee out of him and would exact revenge in very imaginative ways. Definitely one of the ‘good guys’ from those days at Shack (the derogatory term for Ampleforth) .

        1. Is that the one that the LEA, Ofsted and Jim the Fireplace salesman keep closing?

          1. Yes and No. There is much that I could tell you from eons past, some of it even funnier than anything I may have hinted at as being unpublishable about Mr & Mrs Murrell, but not on this blog. What I can tell you is that there is a coterie of virulently lefty civil servants within the Dept of Ed who are hell bent on taking down Ampleforth no matter what the evidence suggests. It is targeted because it is deemed to be the Caaatholic Eton but they daren’t target Eton itself…for the time being.

    4. Er, Led by the ring through his nose, Bill, to great satisfied oinks of pleasure.

  41. Just wondering how the divorced philandering Boris managed to get married in the Catholic head office?

      1. As posted by me on yesterdays page:
        Elf & Safety David Wainwright 15 hours ago
        Thank goodness it wasn’t at the East London Mosque!

    2. Apparently his previous marriages were in a C of E church – and so “not recognised” by the Left footers.

    3. The ‘Church of Rome’ are experts at finding loopholes in previous marriages. They learnt their lesson after Henry VII gave them the boot for not ticking his annulment form. Boris’ first two marriages have been declared ‘irregular’ and are not now an impediment to this union – I kid you not.

      1. Henery VIII.
        The Hapsburg lip was the result of clever cardinals bending the rules.

        1. An’ our ‘Enery ve Eifth’ died a doctrinally authenticated and ‘good’ Caaatholic….which really does take the biscuit plus some cardinal and papal mental gymnastics in its fabrication. What mattered to him was that HVIII’s foundation, Trinity College, Cambridge, kept hold of all their ‘donated’ formerly monastic lands and that, to this very day, the monarch should retain the sole right to appoint the Master of Trinity College, Cantab. (RAB Butler in my day who was a crashing bore but we all adored Molly + her Jack Russell who was declared to be an honorary cat, by order in counsel by the Dons because there was a prohibition against dogs within College but no such prohibition against cats)

      2. Is that area at the stern end of the vessel a battery of solar panels to power this ecological vessel or is is a helipad so that wind-powered helicopters can land on it?

    2. 333560+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      A fleet of English Channel patrolling gun boats
      named Philip & numbering 1/10.
      Number interchangeable according to turn back records, crew bonus paid accordingly.
      This can be done via a NON lab/lib/con vote.

      1. at least they get the geography right – rag heads to E London, remaining indigenous to W Woolwich. Unlike the Channel, as you know, it’s free

    4. Will there still be the same level of enthusiasm for a new royal yacht if the queen is no longer there to enjoy it when it is completed?

      In the catalogue of Blair’s most heinous crimes scrapping Britannia may not have been the greatest but it was certainly one of the cruellest and most spiteful.

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        It is not meant to be enjoyed by the Queen methinks that is booty for the future share out when their current
        supporter / voters get them established as the real bona fide
        overseers and the reset is really established as the way to go…. down,

        The cons ( very apt) are 18 points leading lab, graded political sh!te, that should satisfy the vote for the best of the worst brigade.

  45. For those who can do it – Listen to Jim Davis from this morning’s early show on the R5 live – between 3am and 3.15am. Someone contacted them and as soon as he said people had been recorded as Covid deaths, when they hadn’t died of Covid he was VERY quickly cut off. Then the “presenter” – treat him awfully and effectively called him a liar – with the words basically saying that “if anyone wanted REAL information about Covid etc etc.” . . . . . It really was sickening. Later Mr Davis said if anyone wanted to contact the show – it was an “Open forum” . . . REALLY? . . .Don’t sound like it to me !!!

    1. FFS at the time this happened, which was January to March 2020, the expected need for hospital beds was tragically high, so high we made Nightingale hospitals, there were zero lateral flow tests and very few PCR tests. The PCR results took the best part of a week to come back. It wasn’t until at least April that the private sector became much more invested in doing PCR tests for the NHS. It took Boris that long to spend the cash necessary. We didn’t lock down until late march. It was probably june or july before we were doing enough and fast enough PCR tests to get results back in 48-72 hours. lateral flow tests came around october.

      We can now do 1 million tests per day. On 1/7/20 we reached 100k tests per day. In jan to march it was 10-30k tests per day.

      So knowing that what did you expect?

      1. the money for C-19 was paid in March 2019 during meeting between Billy boy and Halfcock, in 2019 Davos. PCR test, flawed that they are, were intended merely for emergency measures, had the scope widened under the Coronoavius Act merely to boost numbers for big pharma. My honest answer to your Q is I expected everything to pan out as it has done

        1. That’s funny when covid didn’t hit us until Jan 2020.

          PCR tests are the gold standard tests for virology. It’s through PCR that we can map the exact genome of a virus.

          Ramping up testing was entirely necessary, and we took six months too long for that to happen. Six months in and we were only doing 100k tests per day.

          I don’t remember asking a question, I gave a summary of the situation back between Jan and March last year when the NHS was discharging untested patients to care homes.

          1. mng. Your question was clear: “So knowing that what did you expect”? which I responded to.

            Positive test results on the PCR test are dependent on how many ‘cycles’ are run. At 45 cycles it is almost always positive because it amplifies old coronavirus fragments (not exclusively Covid) in your body. The UK initially ran all tests at 45 cycles until warned to stop by the WHO because they were concerned about false positives. Hence increased tests = increased cases – not infected, just numbers.

            Fauci admitted as far back as July 2020 that test cycles higher than 35 were likely picking up viral or dead debris, rendering them useless as diagnostic tools for C-19 – the symptomatic expression of the virus SARS CoV-2. Cycles higher than 25 are widely considered to be useless in determining illness with any accuracy.

            Even the late Kary Mullis, the Nobel prize-winning inventor of the PCR tests, acknowledged: “it doesn’t tell you that you are sick”. It was never designed to be a diagnostic tool for disease or viruses. In fact, the PCR Test is unable to isolate a viral infection or a living virus. The test does not differentiate between live and dead viruses. Mullis previously warned about how PCR testing can be misused.

            This is how UK Govt and others are controlling C-19 case numbers. They can increase or decrease them at will. Mainstream media generates fear & people run to get tested then they over amplify the cycles when they need to jack up the numbers. There are no asymptomatic carriers ONLY false positives. WHO admitted in mid 2020 PCR tests are laughably inconsistent. WHO have also admitted publically there has never been any full mapping done for the C-19 genome.

            It never was about C-19, merely a fear game run by large corporations orignally planned for 2016 until UK voted Brexit and Trumpet hammered HRC. UK govt paid our money to be used in March 2019 [built in was contagion to privatise NHS], waited, then ramped it up at beginning of 2020. They added Nightingale hospitals to the mix which proved as expected, to be redundant, clapping for the NHS who were under order to discharge patients, tested or otherwise into care homes.

            The next phase will start soon – G7 in Cornwall, of which in margins is next phase of C-19 gig, conveniently all before the supposed 21 June lockdown end. And July 9th Cyber Polygon event [WEF, UK, US Governments and others] , another online simulation exercise [as was C-19 Event 201] to run a cyber pandemic model. Based around a cyber attack with COVID-like characteristics would spread faster and farther than any biological virus. the baseline is digitalisation and key risks of digitalisation, best practice for the secure development of digital ecosystems and supply chain attacks. In other words, the intention is to obliterate the Western eceonomy.

            Aside all the above, I do respect your points and posts

      2. I may be confusing you with Cochrane over this matter, but I seem to recall that you were or he was claiming at the time that care homes could refuse to take in elderly patients from hospitals and that there was no element of coercion and that “your” care home had refused patients.

        Clearly there must have been an expectation that the disease would spread rapidly among what was already clear from elsewhere was the most vulnerable group.

        1. Yes care homes can refuse residents although for a small home like ours with the amount of council residents we’ve got, we pretty much can’t. There’s certainly no coercion. The only real problem is if they don’t have the continuing care thing then the council fees are loss making. Councils won’t go above 800 per week for London. Roughly £115 per 24 hours.

          The sad fact is most homes can’t afford to run with empty beds. Profit margins are slim to say the least.

          Between Jan and April 2020 we lost 5 residents, then visitors were banned for about a year and we next lost a resident last week, one we’ve had for six years.

          Visiting is open again. Some sort of sinus bug is rife. My entire family have it now. If I hadn’t have already been paid for tonight and tomorrow I’d have been going sick.

          The problem at the time was testing capacity. If you remember Boris refused to ramp up testing and at the time we were doing only about 10k tests per day ( compared with the 1 million tests per day now) and the results took an age to come back. The NHS couldn’t let itself lose all it’s beds to bedblockers awaiting PCR test results. So these residents were placed with an order that they should be isolated for 14 days but barrier nursing is something that really doesn’t happen in residential homes. We don’t have the staff or equipment.

          1. Exactly, but if the “blessed, Hail Mary, PBUH, NHS” had not shoved patients out , 19 to the dozen, and kept them in low dependency NHS beds I can’t help thinking the whole would have turned out a lot better.

            AND, the science was driven by a team whose track record most certainly did not inspire confidence.

  48. My Court is plastered in signs about masks and social distancing rules,the word “MUST” being prominent,but compliance is breaking down…….
    An impromptu meeting of The Awkward Squad midweek with much booze banter and laffs led to the planning of a BBQ tonight(weather permitting) I’m on sides duty Paprika and Garlic Wedges and Roast Onions for the burgers
    We are trying to encourage some older residents who have been virtually cut off from socialising to escape their cells for the sunshine,laffs and a glass or two
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7730a439f82548bb9e13bb109f288d09337038649ec03046b6d6554930fff94d.jpg

    1. Good for you and the residents, Rik, more power to your elbows and the Barbie.

    2. best of luck with your muzzle free BBQ and wider involvement of elder residents. Off to catch the Giro D’Italia final Time Trial stage with a beer or 3

  49. Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds married, Number 10 confirms.
    I’ll spare you pics….

    They both deserve each other…..

  51. Daughter’s wedding yesterday. Lots of hugging. All dead by Midsummer’s.

      1. TVM, Mr Hat, and others. It’s her second marriage, she already has a cub by the first.

    3. Congratulations Joseph! We are looking forward (3rd time lucky!) to our younger daughters wedding in November!

      1. They won’t be little fuchsias, surely, since it was his daughter that was marrying. Perhaps she married Mr Dahl and will deliver dahlias 🙂

    5. How wonderful, Joseph! So many congratulations! Wedding… Second Niece got married nearly 2 years ago, thank God nobody had dreamt of lockdown…

      1. Not sure yesterday’s celebrations were entirely compliant with current regs, but nobody dobbed us in.

    1. We do know some things about them Sir Peter – they’re illegal, they have absolutely NO intention of ever going back – and will kill/rape to ensure they can claim they’ll be persecuted if sent back ( so won’t be ), They will then claim their “right” to a family life and, not being able to be sent back, will get their family to come here. That done, they spend the rest of their lives on taxpayer funded benefits, in their taxpayer funded house, going to their taxpayer funded NHS, using their taxpayer funded translators, taking up multiple appointment times ( which then, in time terms, denies the taxpayer from seeing a doctor ), sending their kids to taxpayer funded schools etc etc. All in – a damn good reward from the UK govt for committing a crime and probably ending/ruining someone’s life here.

      1. Denmark has the right idea. Asylum requests to be made in country of origin.

  53. Wise Words:

    If you live your life in fear of dying you are already dead.

    Off to buy groceries soon and I won’t be wearing a mask.
    Maybe see you later…or not!

    1. Keep on truckin’, Plum. Like many of us, I have spent a lot of ‘dead time’ over the past 15+ months. Am hoping to find room for a pint or two and see a significant number of people that I haven’t been customarily rude to in ages at this afternoon’s cricket match. I can guarantee you that anyone who shows up at SCC in a mask will be pitied and cast to the Devil.

      1. We were out for a meal Friday evening, with beer!! and friends… it was so good, you have no idea.

      1. Just approved two posts in pending from yesterday’s page – one by your Sugar Babe friend and the other by Willem Buckledefoe – another friend of yours? Don’t know why they disappeared yesterday.

        1. Happy Sunday Paul, thanks I am in relatively good health today, just a minor twinge of back ache & I’m not even bothering to take a pain killer for it.

          1. Hope the armistice is holding, Hat.
            If the towelheads could restrain their hatred for a few moments, they might find that life gets better – food, water, buiding materials, education, health, fewer early deaths… but then, death is their aim.

          2. Swimming is good for backs, Hat. Exercise and movement with minimum loading.

    2. Now, that’s good.
      Caught a tag on my cynical old heart, so it did, and must have snagged a Western Isle gene from way back. Nearly reduced me to tears.

  56. We follow the science they said.

    The Canadian government have just extended the shelf life of the AZ vaccine by a month beyond the manufacturer specified expiry date, miraculously allowing tens of thousand doses of the vaccine to be used after the end of May expiry.

    This is the same government that despite manufacturer concerns, unilaterally extended the time between doses from four weeks to sixteen weeks.

    Oh the reason that the AZ vaccine was so close to expiry was that they had paused its use after the clotting scare. After floundering around about resuming use, they suddenly have cleared up the issue just in time to use those expiry g doses.

    What a pile of lying idiots.

    1. When the vaxx hasn’t been through all its tests anyway, the shelf life is a relatively minor concern I suppose. They really are making it up as they go along, aren’t they.

      1. I don’t suppose it matters much more than the shelf life of food.

        We didn’t have “use by” dates until about 30 years ago. I try to use stuff in order, but I don’t worry if I exceed the “use by” dates. If it smells ok , it is ok.

        Last night I got an ancient packet of smoked salmon out of the freezer – it said “use by end of March 2013”. Also said “freeze on day of purchase and use within one month”.

        The texture was a bit soft, but it was otherwise quite ok. I made omlettes and that was the filling. We’re still alive and well.

        1. My wife accidentally bought a pack of yogurts with an expiry date about two weeks before the purchase. We got a no questions asked refund but the comment of the supermarket owner was we should just eat the yogurt, it is OK.

          So what exactly do they put into a dairy product that gives it a two month shelf life?

          1. Who knows? I bought a pot of yogurt a couple of weeks ago and thought we’d better get on and use it. It doesn’t expire till tomorrow.

          2. Lawyers.

            If you eat it after the dates printed on the label you do so at your own risk.

            An unopened yogurt will keep for quite a long time after the use by date provided it hasn’t been opened.

          3. One can eat yoghurts up to a month past their ‘use-by’ dates but I’ve found that they do start to separate and have a thinner, watery layer on the surface. You can use dried pasta for up to three years past its use-by date – possibly longer, I don’t know because I haven’t tried it any longer than that.

            On the subject of vaccines, 20 south Koreans died in the autumn of 2020 because their ‘flu vaccine had not been stored at the right temperature, It was thought they had been left out overnight or the weekend as they had been used at room temperature.

          4. I’ve eaten yoghurts a month after the use by date with no ill effects.

          5. Dairy products with a long shelf life are usually low/zero fat ones, which ain’t healthy anyway, in my humble opinion.

          6. I had a case of Chateau Latour 1961 with no use-by date on any of the bottles.

            I poured it down the sink.

          7. I am sure that was a very wise move, Grizzly – one can never be too careful. However, before you do that again will you please send me an email so that the infernal liquid can be disposed of in strict accordance with regulations by my friend Pat (Nagsman) Bryant who is an authorised operative at Porton Down. I will selflessly act as her lab assistant….can’t tell you any more than that because of the Official Secrets Act… I’m sure you understand.

          8. I certainly will do that the very next time I have such a similar case to dispose of. How remiss of me not think of Nags and you! 😉👍🏻🍷

      2. Making it up and forgetting what they said earlier in the month. The same health minister had said that she would never authorize use of expired vaccines for use in Canada.

        To further illustrate incompetence, it was not until Thursday that someone bothered to check the refrigeration log and found that these vaccines had not been stored correctly. Don’t worry folks, we have now tested the vaccines, they are good.

        The really scary thing is that despite this incompetence, disregard for the truth and their record of outright corruption, Trudeau and minions are expected to win an election if it was called.

          2. Both.

            The conservatives elected a very uncharismatic leader, absolutely no appeal. His policy statements are equally bland and missing substance. The liberal machine is running rings round him and continually smear him as a racist, anti woman climate denier.
            The media do not help, they were openly bought by multi million dollar grant and are repaying the favour with their biased reporting.

  57. An excellent piece in The Grimes by Matthew Syed:

    “A conjuring trick is taking place before our eyes, an attempt to rewrite history even as it is unfolding. One aspect of this struck me this week after seeing a tweet from Sir Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust. He linked to that famous clip of Yes, Prime Minister where Sir Humphrey is talking about the art of strategic dithering. Above the clip, Farrar posted the words: “Sent to a friend in March 2020!”

    Farrar’s point was not difficult to discern. On the day after the testimony of Dominic Cummings, he was seeking to bolster the narrative that Boris Johnson vacillated in the early days of the pandemic. Boris dithered. Those in government had their minds on other things. They thought the economy was more important than saving lives. Despite the warnings of scientists, politicians failed us.

    Farrar’s tweet was amplified almost one and a half thousand times and, looking at the comments alongside it, scarcely anyone challenged this narrative. Comments included “ToryCovidCatastrophe” and “Boris the bungler”. But there was a problem with this tweet and Farrar knows it. The government was not dithering in March 2020, but acting in accordance with the advice of its scientific committee. In other words, people such as Farrar himself, a leading member of Sage.

    This is not a pro-Boris point, or a pro-Tory point, or pro-right-wing point. Rather, it is a pro-truth point. This can be seen from the published minutes of Sage, which are unequivocal. In February, these endorsed the flu playbook, with the assertion that halting the virus was “a waste of resources”. The minutes of March 13 are even more explicit: “Sage was unanimous that measures seeking to completely suppress spread of Covid-19 will cause a second peak.” Politicians were not dithering; they were following the judgment of people like Farrar.

    This is, however, just one aspect of the smoke and mirrors of recent weeks. Look at the subtle repositioning of the goalposts by Professor Neil Ferguson in interviews. Look at how the narrative is now so entrenched that it is scarcely challenged when people say that Johnson “bottled” lockdown, or when a profile of Sir Patrick Vallance says, “it now seems clear that Johnson was slow to heed Vallance’s early advice”, or when a blog by Laura Kuenssberg says that on March 13 Sage had “concluded the virus was spreading faster than thought”. All categorically untrue.

    I hear from critics, even today, allegations like “Boris got it wrong on masks”. In fact, Nervtag (the advisory group on new and emerging respiratory virus threats) explicitly argued last year that masks were a bad idea. “There is no evidence to support that the wearing of facemasks by the general public reduces transmission.” Or take the idea that Johnson was oblivious to the dangers of mass events. Again, he was following the published advice: “Many outdoor events, particularly, are relatively safe.”

    Or take the idea that testing was a waste of time, a key reason it wasn’t scaled up in January and February 2020, leaving stocks dangerously short. Again, scientists were unequivocal, with Jennie Harries — then the deputy chief medical officer — saying that testing is “not an appropriate mechanism”. Or take scientific advice on border control: “International travel restrictions are highly unlikely to interrupt the spread of an epidemic significantly.”

    I have no problem with scientists making mistakes, by the way. I haven’t whispered a single criticism of Vallance, Whitty or Farrar since the beginning of the pandemic, recognising that everyone learns during a crisis. No, what troubles me is not the making of mistakes, but the systematic attempt to edit them out of history.

    For a particularly telling example, consider the emerging fantasy over the central policy dilemma. We know from published documents that the government plan was to develop herd immunity via natural infection. Vallance said so publicly, as did Whitty and others connected to the Sage groupthink. They were not saying this because they are callous or seeking to “kill your granny”, or any of the other familiar slurs. No, they were acting on sincere beliefs. The documents show they thought that if lockdown was imposed too early, it would lead to a higher winter peak, and therefore more deaths. They were seeking to save your granny.

    The problem wasn’t their motives, but their analysis. They hadn’t noticed (one facet of the groupthink) that Asia had successfully suppressed the virus, thus buying time to learn more about the disease and to develop therapeutics and vaccines, offering the hope of herd immunity via inoculations in the long term while reducing the infection fatality rate in the short term — a position to which the UK belatedly pivoted (albeit with major deviations along the way).

    And yet today, Vallance, Harries and others are looking squarely at TV cameras and in effect saying: “Herd immunity [via infections] was never the strategy.” It is like pointing at a blue sky and saying: “It’s purple.” On this point, Cummings is entirely correct.

    There is, of course, more to say on the overall pandemic, such as the divergence of government decisions from scientific advice in the build-up to the second and third waves (here, it is fair to say that the government dithered) and, coming to the positive side of the story, outstanding action from politicians and scientists alike on vaccine rollout. There is also, as we all know, a long way to go.

    But this brings me to a nagging fear about whether we will have the maturity to learn from this experience. For there is little doubt that the reason scientists are seeking to “get ahead of the story” is anxiety about being scapegoated by a future inquiry. Could Vallance admit to pursuing herd immunity without people accusing him of killing their mothers? When so many politicians have a promiscuous relationship with the truth, it is even more imperative that scientists tell it as it is.

    So, let me finish with the words of Anthony Hidden, the QC who investigated the Clapham Junction rail disaster in 1988: “There is almost no human action or decision that cannot be made to look flawed and less sensible in the misleading light of hindsight.” These words should be pinned to the door of a future inquiry and used in response to anyone who rushes to judgment on frontline professionals making decisions in complex circumstances.

    It is, I think, the only way to get the truth. It is also the only way to subvert the false narratives that are threatening to harden into conventional wisdom.”

    @MatthewSyed

    1. “…Asia had successfully suppressed the virus….”

      Which bits of Asia – and how? Did parts of the SE Asian population have some resistance to the disease because of the 2002-03 SARS outbreak?

      2. Who believes what Asia says? Saving face is their most important goal, so everything is subverted to that.

      3. Many people were found to have good T cell responses 17 years after the SARS outbreak.

    2. The trouble is not that the science was adhered to or not but the use of erroneous models to forecast an apocalypse. Outdated computer programs that had been ‘fiddled about with’ and not by computer analysts. Garbage in garbage out.

      Someone, within the past week, put up ONS figures for total deaths for the last 5 years that were lower last year than any of the preceding 5 years. All that had happened, as far as I can see, is that flu and pneumonia were transferred to the Covid column. This has truly been a scamdemic that in other years the deaths would have been put in the correct column and life, and death, would have continued without interruption. Millions would not have been thrown out of work, wait until September when furlough payments cease, with many more to come. Let’s see what lies come out then or will furlough be extended to stop the appearance of mass unemployment.

      As far as the ‘vaccines’ are concerned we’ll have to wait and see the side effects in the years to come. They do not confer immunity which is what real vaccines do nor do they prevent you from getting the virus. There are now, give or take, about 500,000 variants of the original virus and it will continue to mutate because that’s what viruses do.

      As has been previously said “It is far easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled”. This has been deceit on a grand scale.

      1. The ONS stats for deaths per hundred thousand of the population over the past 30 years show 2020 way down at around number 11. Of course the size of the U.K. population has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 30 years.

    3. Interesting, can I take it then on June 21st if nothing else, the buffoon and his advisers will do away with masks.
      I accept that mistakes will be made during such times as this pandemic, it is harder to accept not correcting what has been now acknowledged as poor decisions. Have I read this correctly, the initial decision not to impose face masks to the general public was in fact correct but the science was ignored?

      In fact, Nervtag (the advisory group on new and emerging respiratory virus threats) explicitly argued last year that masks were a bad idea. “There is no evidence to support that the wearing of facemasks by the general public reduces transmission.”

      1. But……in the words of my very intelligent and highly qualified friend who the other day said in response to my remark that I’d be glad when we can ditch the masks……. ” I won’t – they make me feel safer”.
        It’s all psychological.

        1. No problem from me, if your friend has no underlying medical condition and needs the adult equivalent of a dummy all well and good, I however do not and I do not see the need to impose the result of your friends mental fragility on the rest of us.
          I have a family member with 26% lung capacity due to COPD, I understand her concern to the extent she isolates at home. I do and would continue to wear a mask when I have to visit her, that is not unreasonable.

          1. I have a friend with COPD – she’s hardly been out at all for over a year. It’s a miserable life for anyone with that problem. She’s also now been diagnosed with breast cancer. (that was when she went out)

          2. Such sad news and there are healthy people hiding themselves away in fear.

          3. In my latest Caravan and Motorhome magazine there was a letter from a woman who said that for the first time ever she had clinical anxiety and couldn’t leave the house (‘hmm,’ I thought, ‘that will be due to project fear’). The only way she felt safe was to go caravanning where she had her own space. At least it meant that she could get out and about. The government has a lot to answer for.

        2. When I came out of church this morning, the chap in front of me snatched off his mask as soon as he was in the open air, remarking, “I’m glad to take this off”. There was also a faint sign of rebellion in the congregation this Trinity Sunday – there was singing along with the choir. It was quiet, but it was there.

      1. Yo Jules

        O/T The local swifts were putting on a particularly spectacular display of aeronautical acrobatics last night. Our best guess is that we now have 18 (up from 10 three or four days ago). We are not expecting there to be as many as last year’s (guess) 40 which was a peak that our landlord had never seen before since he took over in 1982.

        I have neither the equipment nor the competence to take adequate photographs but their wheeling and antics are better than the Battle of Britain movie.

        1. Aren’t they wonderful! We’ve had a couple of great displays since the weather perked up a bit. Our birds are spending the day in the box today, in spite of the sunshine – they have an egg! There should be another in a day or two, then begins the long incubation period. There’s a lot of skwarking going on and they are looking out of the entrance hole at the moment. Here’s a photo I took last week.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a6f476846749e9aaf85bfeb5440b7237be35ca5f5ec6fc81ed464b8013e9cea.jpg

          2. Well done them! They’ve both poppped out now for some fresh air so I’ll have to take a photo of the egg while I can.

    3. Surely the government are going to be increasing taxes to pay for their profligate spending, if not now then as soon as reelection is assured.

      I tried bowls last time we were allowed out. I thought that it would just be curling without the cold ice but I was wrong, it surprised me how much accuracy was required in delivering the bowl.

      Here is one of the best ever curling shots from the recent world doubles in Aberdeen.

      https://mobile.twitter.com/worldcurling/status/1396054145329770496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1396054145329770496%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.si.com%2Fcurling%2Fnews%2Fone-of-the-best-shots-at-curlings-world-mixed-doubles

      1. I enjoy watching curling but it’s rarely on TV. Bowls is a fascinating game as the bowls have a bias and you have to find the line to get it to turn in towards the jack.
        Very frustrating at times.
        My rink lost yesterday but only 22 shots were scored after 18 ends. Very low scoring.

  60. The hour has arrived for me to go to the creekit. I may be gone for some time. {^:))

      1. Good – I only sat down for an hour or so and to have some lunch – neighbours coming round for dinner this evening, and I had to do some housework! Sun’s shining and I can see all the dirt which was hidden in the gloom. Will shortly have to finish tidying up and start on some cooking.

        1. You should have seen MB and I opening the French windows for the first time since last summer.
          Good thing you couldn’t hear us!

        2. I never tidy up before guests arrive. I wouldn’t want them to get the wrong impression !

  62. Not that I ever look at the red tops, of course….but I observed this: Carrion’s frock: “£2,870 lace gown by Costarellos”

    Just which “anonymous donor” paid for it…

    1. Costalotto! Still – she needs a nice dress to take the focus away from her teeth……….
      miaou……..

      2. Her teeth are very similar to Princess Beatrice, I think Carrie models herself on the Royals .

        She must have had a very dynamic affect on Boris , and of course , she is young , unscathed , not menopausal , and has trapped a chap with a good pension , who won’t live as long as her .

        By the way , who was Stanley Johnson clutching hands with in those photos , some one equally as young as Carrie?

        2. The lady with the biggest age gap I ever went out with (back in 2005 when I was 49) is only a couple of years older than Carrie, and the same age as the Austrian Chancellor. She is Filipina, and is much much more attractive now in her mid-30s than she was when she was 19. A real beauty now, but alas she went and married an American. I should have taken more note of her auntie, who was 37 at the time and ravishing, and appreciated that sometimes turning into Auntie can work out rather well!

          1. I dont find that Asian ladies age well in looks, thankfully, Mrs Pea does not read this blog.

      3. That is unlike you.

        Though i suspect the only reason Boris wants her is because he can never find the church key.

    2. There was an episode of Star Trek where Troi’s mother got married in her best dress, according to Betazoid custom.

      It is hardwearing, self-repairing, waterproof, lasts a lifetime, very pretty to look at, soft to touch, comfortable to wear, and is thrown in with the head, feet, arms, legs etc., so doesn’t cost a fortune.

      1. How graduates just out of University will not accept ANYTHING unless it’s from a peer reviewed paper.

  65. We jump through hoops to make BBC programmes fair. Don’t let critics claim otherwise. 30 May 2021.

    Martin Bashir was a rogue one-off, says the creator of the Panorama special on the Diana interview

    I speak now as a freelance, so this is not special pleading. BBC journalists are required to submit to a multitude of “safeguarding” courses on trust, BBC values, impartiality, risk assessment and limitations on the use of subterfuge.

    For all the post-Dyson ballyhoo over Bashirgate, there aren’t that many lessons for the BBC to learn – other than the fact that Martin “whatever it takes” Bashir is a one-off: shameless and irrepressible. That and the fact that incuriosity, if that was indeed Lord Hall’s failing, is one of journalism’s biggest sins.

    Safeguarding courses? Who would ever have guessed? It’s difficult to know if this piece is paranoid self-deception, arrogant spoof or job trolling. Whatever; GBTV is coming and I will happily transfer my affections to anything that even remotely resembles truth-telling!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/30/we-jump-through-hoops-to-make-bbc-programmes-fair-martin-bashir

    1. And as a freelance I suspect they will not rock the boat if they want BBC employment, now would they?

    2. Savile, David Kelly, Cliff Richard, Blue Peter, Lord McAlpine, James Dyson.

      I’m sure Nottlanders can think of more.

    3. Tommy Robinson was the result of another rogue one-off, I suppose!
      So many rogue one-offs were involved with Jimmy Saville.

  66. Further to my post yesterday..
    THE RYANAIR STORY IS A HOAX!
    I now believe the Ryanair plane diverted to Minsk because it was DENIED ENTRY into Lithuanian airspace. The reporting in Western media is a total fabrication, created by Roman Protasevich’s handlers at RFE/RL.
    The part that is kept secret in this story is the communication between the Ryanair flight and the air traffic control in Vilnius. Belarus has it on tape, but is not yet ready to embarrass its Western “partners”.

    1. And why wouldn’t O’Leary have created merry Hell, or do you think he’s been bought off.

          1. I only glance at the DM and then ignore everything else until someone raises a point on here.

    2. Perhaps the Belarussians “persuaded” the Lithuanians to refuse entry….

      1. I think their hands are tied slightly by legislation regarding early release, but I would certainly like to see them penalised in some way if such people go on a rampage, like the London Bridge man.

        1. I’d like to know the total amount of crimes – and what they are – committed by the illegals who have been waved into the UK. I fear it is horrendous – and obviously we will NEVER be told the truth. Every single one who has committed a crime after getting here should be deported – no matter what they claim they’ll face, but they aren’t. They are allowed to stay and to be a danger and a vast expense to us, while our taxes are used to allow them to live here.

          1. Yep, including stabbings , slit throats, chopped heads , machete attacks , bombings , nothing but slaughter by barbaric means and of course a terrible fire in a block of flats , where dozens lost their lives, the rape of young girls , slaughter at a concert etc

            How many have been regarded as ranting maniacs with mental problems and have got away with murder , and their Mosque leaders who incite riot and hate crime ?

          2. DIVERSITY STRENGTH all part of living in a big – gimmigrant infested – city.

          3. We are the architects of our own demise.
            I would be very biblical on them, eye for eye tooth for tooth…

    3. Hah! Don’t be silly. The first thing that will happen is a long, expensive apology and the usual tired platititudes about lone wolves and how Islam is a great thing and DIVERSITY STRENGTH tosh.

    3. I looked a bit like that when i was younger. Imagine a bearded Gummidge. I look more like Santa Claus now. I wouldn’t mind a bride like that either. Nice expression, and I can imagine her perfect brown waist-length hair tied in a bun.

  69. Exports of Russian crude to US soared to 12-year high despite ongoing political tensions
    US daily imports of Russian oil have hit new highs, despite tough talk on a wide range of issues, including energy. In March, the nation purchased Russian crude and oil products in volumes not seen since 2009.
    According to the latest data released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US’ daily imports of crude from Russia totaled nearly 23,000 million barrels, nearly doubling compared to the previous month.
    The surge in exports made Russia the country’s second biggest oil supplier after Canada, which shipped 139,869 million barrels per day to its neighbor. Mexico and Saudi Arabia came in third and fourth place, with daily supplies of 17,616 million barrels and 10,868 million barrels respectively.

    According to the report, overall oil imports in March alone increased by 8,288 million barrels per day, or 20%. Meanwhile, the daily exports of oil saw a modest growth of 0.2%, or 7,679 million barrels.

    Russia remains one of the US’ biggest strategic partners in the energy sector, despite long-standing tensions between Moscow and Washington. The White House persistently criticizes the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, warning its European allies against becoming too dependent on Russian energy supplies.

  70. Hilarious.our sparkly new(second hand) gas bbq wont liight,cue my pre-cooked pork loin and wedges going down well,various volunteers busy oven cooking snorkers chops etc
    So much wine and beer already shifted nobody could care less at the delays
    Awkward Squad Rules!!!!

    1. You will think I am an absolute misery guts, but I hate certain meaty BBQs, it is the smell of sizzling stuff, onion and all that .

      During one of the cold lockdown months , son cooked a boned leg of lamb wrapped in foil for about 3 hours , just to experiment on the BBQ that Moh loves to bits , just a simple Weber , and that was very tasty , he wrapped it in herbs , so that was why it was so tasty . I also enjoy BBQ’d fish and huge prawns , sweet corn and a baked potato

      Other people’s BBQ smells have been drifting in the wind this week end and I wanted to scream!

      1. Afternoon Belle. I went to quite a few Barbies when I was living in Oz and have yet to experience its supposed delights. The food was always uniformly dreadful! Undercooked and Stinky!

        1. They sometimes have barbies for Christmas dinner before going down to the beach. It’s all wrong having Christmas in the middle of summer.

        2. I just cannot see the attraction, it is similar to picnicking , flies , wasps , midges , begging dogs , grizzle grizzle grizzle 😎😒

    2. You will think I am an absolute misery guts, but I hate certain meaty BBQs, it is the smell of sizzling stuff, onion and all that .

      During one of the cold lockdown months , son cooked a boned leg of lamb wrapped in foil for about 3 hours , just to experiment on the BBQ that Moh loves to bits , just a simple Weber , and that was very tasty , he wrapped it in herbs , so that was why it was so tasty . I also enjoy BBQ’d fish and huge prawns , sweet corn and a baked potato

      Other people’s BBQ smells have been drifting in the wind this week end and I wanted to scream!

  71. Why I never fly over Russian airspace – and nor should you. Bill Browder. 30 may 2021.

    The situation is a sharp reminder of why I am so careful about my own travel. Like Protasevich, I am a wanted man. My specific enemy is Putin, who had me deported from Moscow in November 2005, declaring me a threat to Russian national security.

    Thanks for the advice Bill but I haven’t embezzled £400M dollars so I think that I am reasonably safe from Vlad’s ire!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/30/bill-browder-never-fly-russian-airspace-nor-should/

    1. It would be fun if Russia was forced to deny its airspace to EU/UK flights.
      I wonder how much a flight to NZ,Australia’Japan,Far East would cost?

      1. In 1991, I managed to get a Britannia Airlines charter flight to Australia for £600 return.

        They used a Boeing 737, and couldn’t fly over the Gulf because there was a war on, and had to keep refuelling on the way. We stopped at Mombasa, Colombo, and Singapore. It took 30 hours to get to Adelaide.

        1. Not to worry.I’m sure the EU/UK have thought it through.
          I notice Moscow have barred flights from Austria and France when they presented flights re-routed around Belarus.

        3. It took me 26 hours to get to Melbourne in 2002. Oddly enough, although we flew over the Gulf, tensions were high and war was brewing. Plus ça change.

    2. It is interesting that if the government is worried about the rise of Islamic extremism they are not a bit worried about Gentiles, Christians and white natives in all of this, oh we must protect Jewish people first.

      3. They can only come close to criticising islam in the framework of supporting another protected group. That’s why we are a failing society, because we have no national identity, no unity, just splintered groups with a pecking order.

    3. 333560+ up ticks,
      Afternoon A,
      Then said ministers / politico’s must identify as far right, knuckle dragging, fruitcake racist.

    4. Surely the first approach should be to stamp on Islamic extremism?

      After all, if you pander and excuse their vicious behaviour, like spoiled children they’ll behave however they want and usually that’s appallingly.

        1. “There is no islamic extremism, there is only islam” – Erdogen, I believe and he should know.

  73. Wasn’t Boris supposed to be getting married in July 2022?
    This doesn’t bode well for going back to normal.

      1. Almost certainly, when one crisis ends, another must be found. How else will they ensure the hysteria and fear continue?

      2. If so don’t bank on the gutter press reporting anything but the official line.
        How much of this have you seen on our MSM, not a lot if any, not what the buffoon and his cabel wants reported.

        https://youtu.be/4QaKFt4q-Ns

    2. Who’s next?

      As I suggested this morning he wanted to start recruiting for a new mistress asap. As his friend Zac Goldsmith’s father said: “When a man marries his mistress it creates a job opportunity.”

  74. Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd or get out of their way in order not to be trampled to death by them.”
    (William Hazlitt, via at myleslea2)

    How very apt for out times!

  75. HAPPY HOUR – Healthy diets are bad for you….

    Whilst in town this morning I called at the chemists to have a word with the pharmacist. Having given up on the NHS regarding my nausea and toilet habits I proceeded to describe my symptoms and diet. Being fairly fit and active most of my life I never took my health for granted and
    followed a healthy diet.
    The pharmacist suggested I should include red meat in my diet….. and white rice, bread and pasta…….
    FFS – Where’s the sherry …?

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3,
        I got a blackbird storking me he is mainlining on mealy worms.
        Twice a day he is there.

  76. It’s a shame Barbara Windsor and Sid James are no longer with us
    They could have made a Carrie On Boris film

    3. They could have moved into Downing Street and improved the quality of government while there. As a bonus they could have made a few more carry on films and helped pay off the debt.

  77. That’s me for another day. One fewer… Gorgeous sun spoiled by a very cold easterly wind which made sitting out a non runner.

    Supposed to be better tomorrow when I am to make the – now to be – permanent trombetti frame and finish the tomato frames.

    So have a stonking evening.

    A demain.

    PS During the week, we watched a Danish war film called “Land of Mine”. Tough stuff (though with an improbable ending). How the Danes (illegally) used German POWs to clear two million mines along the Danish coast. Not a film for the faint hearted (so ideal for NoTTLers!!)

    3. 25C here… been out all day – barbie, beer, wine, prosecco, limoncello… me & my favourite two men, my boys. Couldn’t be better. One for the memory bank!

    4. Saw that on YouTube. Excellent. They made the problem, they clear it up.

    1. I note that the rise of the Indian Restaurant coincided with invention soft toilet roll.

    1. It’s not immigration,it’s invasion!!!!! I thought politicians were supposed to be intelligent?

      2. 333560+ up ticks,
        Evening Dtf,
        It does show up as they are in the main more intelligent than the electorate, do you really think “they” would vote for the likes of themselves after being lied to & treacherously deceived time after time, then some ?

    2. Righto, Ms Elphick. Here’s the bill for their rent, board, food, water and energy use.

      What’s that? You don’t want to pay it? Well, you want them here, we don’t. It’s only fair you pay for what you want, isn’t it?

      1. 333560+ up ticks,
        Evening W,
        In reality this tory (ino) group is I am sure, still an eu asset the
        umbilical cord is via the deal.

  81. 333560+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    MIGRANT WHO RAPED MINOR AVOIDS DEPORTATION BY REFUSING CORONAVIRUS TEST
    Sweden…. has,did will happen here,

    Is it little wonder that the real UKIP was shut down it was totally out of step with the governance parties.

    Seems like the judgement is, pass go paedophile, collect £ 200 / Krona welfare.

    1. Shouldn’t it be Sergeant of Colour?

      Paah! How about everyone in the navy sharing the same rank of Sea Lord, Lady or whatever. Oh sorry, that word Sea excludes anyone who is aquaphobic.

    2. F*** my actual life.
      That had BETTER be a wind up or the Army will revolt

    3. This nonsense has gone too far. I thought the ‘colours’ were those of the regimental flags.

      We live in an age where certain words are taken as literal descriptions and are supplanting normal and familiar language and its associations.

      I have witnessed much the same in Architecture. The fact that some modern architectural confection is hideous to look at is reconciled by some literary description as to why the architect was moved to design facades leaning out and the edifice perched on spindly columns or cantilevered with the air of ‘look no hands’.

      It is much the same with what passes for Modern Art. It is what some self obsessed junkie says it is.

    4. Colours of course, referring to the sodding standard you stupid, stupid gormless Lefty berks!

    6. It’s not bonkers, they know perfectly well what they are doing. It is more deliberate dismantling of the United Kingdom.

  85. What a service ‘Countryfile’ does for the mental health of the nation. In this evening’s edition, its crew of girning simpletons were filmed tramping around the Lleyn peninsula telling us how this little finger of Wales is contributing to the ‘FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE!’.

    Electricity will be generated by tidal turbines and carbon dioxide will be absorbed by sea grass plantations. About the latter, Matt tells us with great seriousness, “It’s thought they capture more carbon than tropical forest”. So there it is. So simple. All that fuss over nothing. Wales will save the world. We can sleep well in our beds tonight!

      2. Back in the late 70s the Australians, CSIRO. said they were going to grow alfalfa in an area the size of Wales to ferment and distill the farmed product and fuel their road transport with it…………

      1. Every episode they spout on about climate change and all it’s effects etc’s but don’t bat an (scus the pun) eye lid when some one wants to destroy a long established wildlife habitat to build an effing housing estate. That nobody needs. Corporate greed will always be behind this. Like this example http://www.save-symondshyde.co.uk/ A beautiful and serene wood land area and surrounding green belt and agricultural land.
        The land is supposed to be owned by the Cecil family who also supposedly own the Hatfield house estate. I doubt if they ever paid a penny for it but were handed it by a king of the past, who stole it in the beginning.
        Not far from there is another piece of land which is called Stockwood Park which has an 18 hole and 9 hole golf course and other sporting facilities. Luton council who i am sure do not (there is doubt they even own the airport land) own it, have sold it to developers. As they claim it was not being used regularly (lock down closed the course) enough by the public in order to be financially viable. I have been told by people who have used it more recently, that when playing they can’t get onto the putting greens to finish a hole because local (noticeably Muslims) families have been picnicking and letting their kids play on the greens. Therefore, for people wanting to play the course numbers have dropped. Hence the claim by the council it’s no longer viable. https://engage.luton.gov.uk/property-and-construction-service/future-of-stockwood-park-golf-cent/ Job done !….. Consultation quickly ended.
        I have written to Country File regarding this and other supposedly ‘green’ organisations they have never bother to even acknowledge.
        A couple of years ago they (Tom Heap) made a claim that ‘packs of domestic dogs’ had attacked and killed sheep. What a grossly ignorant chap he is.
        https://www.forestryengland.uk/article/wild-boar-the-forest-dean on the borders of the forest of Dean. That is how stupid and false some of their claims and reports are.

    4. And I always thought it was the sheep that saved us. Every Equal relationship with a sheep, rather than with a human, means one less Welsh person on this planet by 2030.

      All they need do is to persuade the Chinese, the Africans, the Indians and the South American thugocracy to do likewise, and we’ve got it cracked. Muslims can substitute sheep with halal goats.

      Americans can learn to shoot one another before they breed. It’s legal in Texas now.

    1. Naomi Wolf acknowledged her mistakes. Her interview with James Delingpole is worth watching. Unlikely allies as they both admit but allies now nonetheless.

    2. Polygamy is going to be the next target in the destruction of marriage.
      Benefits for multiple spouses was sneaked through at the height of Cameron’s gay “marriage” furore.

  88. Evening, all. It’s been a glorious day today, weather wise (not so good in other respects, unfortunately). Sat out and had a barbecue.

      1. MOH threw a strop about going to the day centre by their minibus and insisted I drove. I tried to explain how difficult it was with my hip problem, only to be told “you’re against me. I know who my enemies are!” I made the mistake of trying to reason with the demented and things escalated. I ended up going off to the barbecue to let things simmer down, but it left a bad taste in the mouth considering how much I have to do and how hard I have to work.

        2. Conway, sorry to hear that you are having domestic troubles, I am assuming you mean that your OH has dementia. My elderly mother of 96 who I care for at home, has severe Dementia & so I know what you are going through.

          1. Sorry, Hat, I forgot you are recently back; this saga has been running for some time. Yes, vascular dementia, which was considerably worsened by lockdown.

        3. It’s not done on purpose, Conners, it’s just how she is these days. At least, that’s what I tell myself when my mother doesn’t remember who I am…
          KBO! It’s all one can do.

    2. G’donya Conners. We had our dinner out side this evening.
      Now i’m off to bed. #
      Good night.
      I had a lot (20 or more) of tomato plants spare from my green house. I put a note on our local forum and told people in the road help your selves as i was placing the plants on a table on our grass verge. All of the plants were taken which was the aim, it made me quite happy.

        1. I wish that you could grow half plants. We tried water melons and melons but even a single plant yielded so much fruit that we were begging the neighbours to take some.

    3. Hopefully the barbecue helps make up for the earlier problems.

      I spent the weekend relaying about thirty paving stones that had shifted and became uneven. My stiff back is going to be a great excuse for tomorrow’s golf game.

    4. I inadvertently let the sink in the bathroom overflow on Friday morning. Mopped up as best I could. Half of the house electrics are still out as a result.

      Unfortunately these include the power circuits to the Rayburn (hot water, heating and cooking) also critical lighting circuits and the cables to outside including the pond pump.

      Electricians say we need to allow two or three days for drying out. Bloody frustrating and the experience reminds me just how dependent we are on continuous electrical supply.

      On the plus side we found a camping stove bought from Halfords years ago. We fried sausages and tomatoes on it for our evening meal.

      Survival eh?

      2. The trouble with the modern power distribtion box is that a very small current imbalance on the wires will trip all the power.

        Not like the old fuse box which would pass double the rated current before blowing just a single fuse.
        What is more, when the bathroom flooded there would be still enough power to heat the plaster surrounding the now warm electric cabling and dry out the walls.

        In those days, electrical engineers knew that it was advisable in such circumstances to keep one hand in your pocket.

      3. The trouble with the modern power distribtion box is that a very small current imbalance on the wires will trip all the power.

        Not like the old fuse box which would pass double the rated current before blowing just a single fuse.
        What is more, when the bathroom flooded there would be still enough power to heat the plaster surrounding the now warm electric cabling and dry out the walls.

        In those days, electrical engineers knew that it was advisable in such circumstances to keep one hand in your pocket.

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