Saturday 17 July: Pinged for being in a cafe hours before a visit by a coronavirus suspect

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/2021/07/16/letters-pinged-cafe-hours-visit-coronavirus-suspect/

695 thoughts on “Saturday 17 July: Pinged for being in a cafe hours before a visit by a coronavirus suspect”

  3. Holidays to France thrown into chaos as fully vaccinated Britons will need to quarantine. 17 July 2021.

    Rule forcing double jabbed travellers to self-isolate for up to 10 days is reimposed at the last minute, reversing plans for an exemption.

    Morning everyone. I don’t want to wish ill on anyone seeking to enjoy themselves but quite frankly I have little sympathy for these people. It’s quite clear the Government wishes to maintain the Covid restrictions, extend them even, without actually saying so and that goes double for Foreign Travel! This will continue for the foreseeable future!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/16/holidays-france-thrown-chaos-fully-vaccinated-britons-will-need/

    1. Trying to get everyone to double vaxx while dangling the carrot of freedom in front of them and then taking it away at the last second is not an easy trick to perform

      1. Morning Bob. It has some peripheral advantages as well! It gets them used to the idea of serfdom!

      2. 335458+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        One should also ask ” is this the actions of a
        genuine TORY governance party or a tory (ino) ersatz cartel as has been in place for the last three decades.”

      3. Morning Bob3,

        Double vaxxed travellers should be aware of the legal pitfall Cave pendet amet.

    2. The aim of this government is to deny people the security to make any decision with confidence. Holidays being a prime example.

      They are doing it very well.

      We must all burn our masks on ‘freedom day’ or we will be under their control forever.

      Good morning, Minty.

      1. I can’t help but think that’s all part of the plan. Make travel so disrupted and difficult that people don’t. Of course, the effluent politicos who exempted themselves from these moronic laws aren’t affected except that it makes their pointless, nebulous, irrelevant target easier to reach.

        1. I got your link and have downloaded pdf before it was “into thin air”. I see with British Open at Sandwich, no illegal immigrants popping up on the beach. Presume TV didn’t want those teeing off on the 5th being “distracted”

      2. This video from March is extremely worrying and a simple explanation of the degradation of the immune system brought on by the potions is worth seeing. If Geert Vanden Bossche is anywhere near correct then the politicians “following the science” have created something that they will not be able to control.

        Then there’s the possibility of ADE and now reports that micro clotting in the capillaries surrounding the organs, including the brain, has been discovered leading to the eventual failure of those organs, then remaining free from the potions is a must.

        Del Bigtree & Geert Vanden Bossche

    3. Just watched Campbell up to where he describes the symptoms: headache, runny nose, sore throat and sneezing. Before CV-19 that would, I’m sure, have been diagnosed as a cold. I watched a bit further to find out if he would then describe further symptoms that would differentiate this infection from a cold: he doesn’t do that but he does describe this “variant’s” symptoms as akin to a common cold that we are used to dealing with. No sense of irony in his delivery of the latter information.

      So, do we have a common cold infecting people who have been fairly well isolated for months and are therefore more susceptible to a common cold as their immune system has been weakened, or not?

      1. ‘Morning, Korky.

        I suspect that many, who sneeze more than twice in a week, claim thy have Covid 19.

        1. Members of the bed wetting union. Funnily enough I had more one and two day sniffles and sneezes this past Winter than ever before. Didn’t take any remedies but kept the wine and real ale flowing. I’m still standing, as the song goes.

          1. I can’t remember when I last had a cold, but I don’t assume I’m immune.

          2. I’ve suffered with sinus problems all my life and when young it was as if I had a permanent cold all year long. The sniffles/sneezes are likely to be as a result of my sinus problem. I ignore and get on with life.

        2. Morning!
          I sneeze several times a day, every day and have done for decades. If it’s Covid then they’re lying to us about SARS-CoV-2 being a deadly novel virus (which they are of course – it was patented decades ago – but that’s a different story).

      2. 335458+ up ticks,
        Morning KtK,
        Well penned, which leads me to ask going back to the 24/6/2016 result & post political actions ” do we want freedom ,or NOT”

      3. The term Common Cold covers a range of minor illnesses which are usually caused by variants of either Rhinoviruses or Corona viruses.
        The Common Cold corona viruses share several characteristics with the Wuhan virus which probably explains why there are so many false positives with the RT-PCR test.

        1. A change in symptoms was announced a few weeks ago (as was the return of influenza and pneumonia) and prompted many comments on social media that the the ‘new’ symptoms looked very much like hay fever or a common cold. If the “real” covid had disappeared with seasonality or whatever, then a new set of symptoms was required to keep the fear factor going.

          1. If we can see it…why can’t everyone else??
            Mind you, I am getting the impression that more and more people are waking up. If it’s not already too late.

            Have you come across this website?
            https://evidencenotfear.com/
            It looks like a good source of facts. The people don’t want to publish their names, not sure I blame them.

          2. I can’t recall that site but I do visit so many that it’s possible that it’s slipped my memory. Thanks for the link, I’ll bookmark it.

    4. Surely this is simple numbers: more people are vaccinated, because of the spin and lies those people are taking fewer precautions and as a result are more likely to mingle with others, thus get ill.

      Frankly, good. The more people’s own immune systems are kicked into functioning the better.

      1. 335458+ up ticks,
        Morning W,

        Then as with politics we are fighting the tampered with gene brigade same as combating the tampered with lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration brigade.

        Two issues triggered by the coalition close shop politico’s then leaving it to the peoples to do the rest with a regular prod of fear along the way, and to a great extent it has worked.

  6. Here we go with 77 Bde’s Saturday offering: For “Simon Warde” being wounded over choice of names, as pointed out on here – it’s Pikey Moth:

    SIR – I was amazed to discover that is people don’t “sign out” when using the NHS Covid-19 app (or physical signing in) at any establishment, then all those who attended on the day are pinged, or phoned to require them to isolate for 10 days, when a subsequently positive-tested person is notified to the premises owner.

    This is regardless of whether people left before or arrived after the person positively tested. No wonder excessive numbers receive messages to isolate.

    John H Brook
    Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

    SIR – People are being pinged because someone on the other side of a solid wall in a next-door property has tested positive. This shows the Test and Trace system is faulty.

    The correct thing to do with a faulty device causing problems, in this case economic problems, is to switch it off.

    David Johnson
    Upper Poppleton, North Yorkshire

    SIR – One day this week, 60 children aged nine were notified by email at 5pm that they were now in lockdown because they might have come into contact with a possible Covid-19 carrier. This covered the end of term festivities usually held at this time.

    My granddaughter’s main upset was that she could not say goodbye to her teacher. Nor could she see cousins this weekend who are soon leaving Britain.

    She does not have Covid and this lockdown is totally unnecessary. For 840,000 children (report, July 14) not to be in school is scandalous.

    Arnold Bancroft
    Pinner, Middlesex

    SIR – On May 13 2021, Sage warned that by mid-July we would see 1,000 deaths a day from Covid. We actually saw 48.

    On May 15 2021, they warned that we would be seeing 10,000 Covid hospital admissions a day. We saw 548.

    How long can this go on?

    Simon Armstrong
    Bristol

    SIR – Why will the Government not give us information about patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19? Obviously not names or means of identifying individuals, but we really need to know age, underlying medical conditions and vaccination status.

    Without this information how can we make rational decisions? Cynically, one wonders whether details are kept hidden to frighten everyone.

    Richard G Faber FRCS
    Shefford Woodlands, Berkshire

    SIR – I recently returned from an amber country and presumed that Monday would cut short my 10-day quarantine as I’m fully vaccinated.

    Not so fast. Because I entered England before July 19, I will have to complete the full 10 days or pay £85 to be release on day 5.

    My other alternative is to leave the country and return on Monday to reset and get out of quarantine. The laws are illogical, don’t follow the science and are in desperate need of reform.

    Lucy Lean
    Bath, Somerset

    High tax, poor services

    SIR – Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, proposes the introduction of green taxes “to ensure we can continue to fund the first-class public services and infrastructure that people and families across the UK expect” (report, July 15).

    Yes, we do expect first-class services and infrastructure, but what we get from national and local governments are dangerous road and pavement surfaces, expensive and unreliable public transport, and appalling waste collection and road cleaning – for which we pay extortionate taxes.

    Mr Shapps’s impossible dreams will deny liberty to the general public and severely damage their finances.

    Stefan Reszczynski
    Margate, Kent

    SIR – Peter McPherson (Letters, July 16) says that it would be fairer to base road tax on the number of wheel revolutions. Wouldn’t this lead to the roads being full of very large cars and tractors?

    Steven Field
    Wokingham, Berkshire

    No GP appointments

    SIR – Day after day I phone my GP at 8am to get an appointment, only to get told day after day that they have none left. What can I do about this?

    I can’t ring NHS 111, as it’s not (yet) a hospitalisation problem, or go to A&E, as they’ll say it’s not an emergency.

    I could contact a local councillor, but I doubt they have any authority in this matter. I could contact my (Labour) MP, but he will simply add it to his dossier of things to attack the Government with. I could write to Boris Johnson, but he will never see it.

    Perhaps someone in the NHS could suggest a solution.

    Sue Tudor
    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    A breakfast snifter

    SIR – Xanthe Clay (Comment, July 15) praises porridge and her favourite toppings. I make blackberry vodka every year and, after decanting it, I am left with a lot of vodka-flavoured blackberries. A spoonful on my porridge starts the day with a zing.

    Irene Courtenay
    Braughing, Hertfordshire

    SIR – Please don’t spoil oats by cooking them. My family and I have eaten raw porridge oats for breakfast for years, with just milk. Think muesli, but simpler.

    Ginette Whitehead
    East Horsley, Surrey

    Reality of the CofE

    SIR – The puzzlement of William Nye, secretary general of the Archbishops’ Council (Letters, July 16), at Allison Pearson’s article (Features, July 14), exemplifies the reason for the decline of the Church of England.

    He quotes the Archbishop of York’s “vision” and then has the arrogance to invite Ms Pearson to show examples of this “vision” to her.

    I suggest Mr Nye makes a tour of rural parishes with no evidence of this vision. In contrast, they are in constant decline as a result of a lack of ordained priests, an increasing financial burden to support an ever-increasing administration and a lack of support generally from the hierarchy.

    In my parish, we have had no vicar for nearly three years, the diocesan bishop is under a cloud and the latest proposal for survival is a centralisation of 17 parishes, some of which are to become “chapels of ease”.

    Mr Nye says Ms Pearson’s startling claims “would be terrible if accurate’’. By questioning her veracity, he reveals his ignorance of what is really happening in the parishes.

    M Russell
    Tidworth, Hampshire

    SIR – The church official’s smug response to Allison Pearson’s tirade did him no favours. To gloat over what she had wrong and ignore what she had right is not clever.

    Patricia Empsall
    Lichfield, Staffordshire

    SIR – Mr Nye’s response to the excellent and perceptive article by Allison Pearson only shows the frightening extent to which the institutional Church is out of touch with the grass roots of the Church – the clergy and congregations faithfully struggling to live the Christian faith with minimal support or understanding from those at the centre, who appear to know little of management, let alone leadership.

    The recently launched “Vision and Strategy” plan is nothing short of cloud cuckoo land – it just won’t happen.

    The Christian faith needs boots on the ground – people whom God has called to ministry, and who have been trained and authorised to preach the Gospel and to care for their flock.

    We don’t need ever more bishops and administrators with fancy titles.

    At least we’re still free to treat the silly, political and unChristian comments of people like the Rt Rev Joanna Penberthy, Bishop of St Davids, with the contempt they so richly deserve.

    Rev Dr John R H Railton
    Wroughton, Wiltshire

    Gipsy stereotypes

    SIR – It seems that the Gipsy Moth has been renamed as it contains a word considered derogatory to the Romani people. I was never aware that the word Gipsy was held in such contempt. In whose mind? If it had been called the Fly-Tipping Gipsy Moth I could maybe understand.

    Simon Warde
    Bognor Regis, West Sussex

    No more cashback

    SIR – When even Tesco has stopped its cashback facility for customers, it’s obvious we’re being forced into becoming a cashless society.

    Who is dictating that we no longer need cash? Certainly not the chap who sells eggs outside his gate for £1 a box, nor the householder selling seedlings for a few quid.

    Cash rules in rural areas, not credit-card swipe machines.

    Tesco should restore this service to parts of Britain that haven’t seen a bank in years.

    Angela Lawrence
    Hickling, Norfolk

    British pupils say ‘hola’ to the Spanish language

    SIR – Camilla Turner (report, July 8) neatly highlighted the significant shift in GCSE language study over the past 15 years towards Spanish, and away from French and German. Spain is a more popular holiday destination than France and Germany for young Britons.

    More importantly, Spanish is the third most-popular language globally, spoken by half a billion people – more than twice as many as French.

    It is also growing much faster, due to migration, and is forecast shortly to become the most spoken language in California, the fifth-largest economy in the world.

    With the volume of Spanish literature now outweighing that produced in either French or German, Spanish is now the most important second language for British students this century, after the much more complicated Chinese.

    Andrew White
    Alresford, Hampshire

    Prescribing NHS veg will really put children off

    SIR – Expecting the NHS to prescribe vegetables (report, July 15) is certifiable: if anything will put children off cabbage it is treating it like a medicine.

    If vegetables are not being eaten it is for many reasons, such as parents’ lack of time to buy and prepare them. Good eating habits are not passed down or taught at school, and cheap and addictive ready-made meals the availability of.

    Yvonne Kierstan
    Horbling, Lincolnshire

    SIR – It seems extraordinary that the new food tsar is to apply tax to sugary products just as Liz Truss is removing an import tariff on sugar cane (report, July 12), benefiting an American company that processes it into sugar.

    David Ross
    Huntsham, Devon

    SIR – It is more than 50 years since you published a letter from me in which I urged the imposition of a tax on sugar. I also wrote to every chancellor of the exchequer, from Iain Macleod to Gordon Brown (I gave up after that).

    The wheels indeed turn slowly.

    Hew Goldingham
    St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

    SIR – I’m a beekeeper and look after 33 colonies. Trying to support our vital pollinators’ survival is a real challenge. Every year I have to purchase 20 sacks of sugar, each of 25kg, which I turn into a syrup feed for the bees, to ensure they have sufficient stores to survive the winter. The £3 tax per kilo would take my bill from £300 to £1,800.

    Beekeeping is not and never will be a profitable enterprise, and it is a struggle to meet the costs as it is. A sugar tax is as upsetting as it is disheartening, and it will be the end for the bees.

    Simon Mills
    Midsomer Norton, Somerset

    1. Angela Lawrence’s letter over Tesco’s abandonment of Cashback suggests one solution to the problem. After everything has been scanned and before you actually pay, ask for £50 cash and, when it is refused, just make a verbal objection and walk out without paying and leaving everything at the checkout.

      1. Ummm.. there’s usually cash machines outside the big ones. Is it really that big a deal?

        The thing I find strange is that when HMRC want your money they’re hyper efficient. When you need them to serve you, they’re inept, slow and wasteful.

        1. I’ve never asked for cash back when paying by card – there’s a cash machine outside our small Morrisons – not that i’ve used it for over a year.
          It only made sense to get cash back at the till when the machines all charged you for the pleasure of dispensing your own money. They got wise to that and most are now free to use.

          1. …and complete with extra hacking devices to steal your card number and PIN. I won’t use them.

    2. Boris and the sugar/salt tax…

      Boris poor lamb (fat bastard) is in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand he doesn’t want to appear responsible for curtailing people’s choices as it could lose him votes.

      On the other hand he doesn’t want to upset the corporations that produce billions of tons of less than healthy food costing him the chance of another income stream and sinecures. (speeches at $300,000 a pop)

      Well Boris…I have the answer for you.

      Every celebrity that advertises this crud be taxed on those earnings at 250%. You will after all only be upsetting rich gits like Garry lineker and he probably votes for Starmer anyway.

    3. Does the oaf Shappes think taxes are low now? Does he think we don’t *already* have green taxes?

      With this punishing tax take – more than twice – close to THREE TIMES! that of Switzerland – and you compare our appalling infrastructure, public transport, the offensive cost of tickets , unreliability and inefficiency with theirs and you realise the problem is NOT tax. It is incompetent, cretinous government.

  7. Why have the left-wing US media stayed so strangely silent about sensational UK newspaper story? 17 July 2021.

    The Guardian on Thursday published an explosive report based on the purported Kremlin documents, but nearly all US outlets have refrained from covering the story, aside from commentary expressing skepticism about the documents.

    Let me guess. They’ve learned the smell of Horse Manure?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9795943/US-media-remains-strangely-silent-Guardians-report-claiming-Putin-plotted-aid-Trump.html

    1. So challenging the government’s narrative is now officially “spreading hate”?

      1. they all work for the same “Think Tank” corporations and get flicked into the WH, presumably as a career break / gap year gig until moving up the chain

  9. Good morning, all. Cloudy – not a scorcher – yet. Risking shorts!

    Good to see clarity from HMG over visting France….(sarc)

    2. Have Gus & Pickles seen your knees before? Perhaps you should warn them first.

      Good morning.

      1. They are delighted. So delighted that they killed a rabbit, a rat and several mice. Yesterday.

    1. Good morning, Peter.

      Did you have a different Avatar name before? You seem to be a newbie and an oldie at the same time.

      If you are a newbie you have landed on your feet on Nottl.

      Welcome.

          1. that thought just having read Peter’s post, crossed my mind as well. If it was then there won’t be much mourning for May

  11. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c3f04246594a5a911c6164bc6f9bea9ea5a313a304aa059f934a11e8608d3725.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fbf87aae80ec20a163efdd1292f702abb2dd2f2054ac54bae2ccb8d188acda5.png
    You scoff your raw porridge as much as you want down in leafy Surrey, Ms Whitehead. I doubt you get anyone in Caledonia following your new-age example.

    As for hospital food; this is what you get when you entrust the health of the nation to sub-normal imbeciles. Matron!

    2. My most recent hospital stay.

      Breakfast. What i ordered.

      2 Toast
      Butter
      Jam
      Yogurt
      Coffee.

      *note…if you don’t order butter with your toast you don’t get any.

      Breakfast. What i received.

      Two slices of thin cold cardboard.
      One pat of butter. *forgot to order two.
      Jam.

      And they wondered why i wanted to leave.

        1. Smaller populations are often better managed.

          Good morning your worshipfulness.

      2. Morning Phizzee

        Hate to say this but the NHS seem to employ imbeciles in their catering depts, and of course they are hidden away from view .

        I suspect they are recently arrived migrants , rather similar to the catering bods that lurk around in large airports , feeding the masses .

        1. Morning, Belle.

          I don’t believe they are imbeciles though they certainly don’t employ Chefs.

          The staff have to follow all procedures. They are not allowed to deviate.

          At a stay in Hagley Road Hospital in Birmingham i chose baked potato for my supper. As i didn’t tick the box for butter or a topping that is just what i got.

          The food arrived at the same time as the Doctor. I turned the half potato over and the flesh was entirely black.

          The Doctor said nothing of course as there is no-one to report such a thing to.

          The person who prepared the food was not allowed to throw it away and give me another.

          That is how industrial catering for institutions works now.

    3. I alternate between raw oats mixed with plain yoghurt and cooked porridge. The raw oats usually win because of lack of time in the morning.
      The yoghurt makes a satisfyingly creamy texture. Milk would be far too runny.

      1. Warning: Raw oats can cause constipation. Eat prunes with them.

        Good morning, BB2.

        1. Never heard that one before! They’re fibre, how can they be bad for you? I do usually mix in some fruit, whatever is in season.
          Good morning Phizzee.

          1. Though
            raw oats are safe to eat, it’s recommended to soak them in water,
            juice, milk, or a nondairy milk alternative to avoid some unwanted side
            effects. Eating dry raw oats could lead them to build up in your stomach or intestines, resulting in indigestion or constipation.14 Aug 2019

            Is Eating Raw Oats Healthy? Nutrition, Benefits, and Uses

  12. 335458+ up ticks,
    To my mind this pinging is ponging stronger as it progresses I also believe that these political governance overseers have grabbed a super flu ( constructed or annual) by the tail then started to tailor it in a fear inducing, controlling manner with herd obedience their treacherous aim.

    Surely the stench of burning bridges is anti green / global warming.

    Saturday 17 July: Pinged for being in a cafe hours before a visit by a coronavirus suspect

        1. Yet we give hundreds of billions in aid. Most is simply stolen by the state, the next big chunk by the receiving government to buy another Mercedez.

          The small remainder goes to people who, for some reason, don’t do anything to solve their own problems.

          1. With the billions and billions given in aid in the last 50 years – every person in Africa could have a proper house, running water, a sewage system, electricity and a good education system.

            Instead ……

  14. As Seen By A Blonde

    A blonde was sitting by the riverside when she sees a second blonde come walking along the opposite bank.
    “Excuse me!” shouts the second blonde. “Do you know how I can get on the other side of the river?”
    To which the first blonde replies: “But dear, you’re already are on the other side!”

    1. A man who believes he is a woman is escaping into a delusional fantasy rather than confronting and resolving the real reason why.

  17. Good morning all.
    Yet another beautiful start to the day with 12°C in the yard.

    1. I thought there was 36 in the yard, 12 in the foot?
      I’ll get me pith helmet…

        1. ‘Afternoon, Peter, originating from, “Give him an inch and he’ll taken ell.”

          An ‘ell’ being the distance from the tip of one’s nose to the fingertips of the outstretched arm. An old measure of cloth.

  18. 335458+ up ticks,

    Thought for the day,

    Working out well,
    Whom the gods would destroy, self annihilation via the polling booth.

    1. The answer is simple. The only people on the planet who are breeding, today, are those ‘blessed’ with the insanity gene. This gene intensifies each successive generation. Look around you, the evidence is clear and it is growing.

      1. 335458+ up ticks,
        G,
        IYO could this gene be behind the continuance via the polling booth of support / votes for the lab/lab/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella close shop coalition.

        Because that vote could now surely be judged to be cast via the criminally insane.

    3. How? Lefties. Left wing stupidity, an ungrateful, moronic, spoiled, arrogant group of pathetic, weak idiots were given time of day.

      It doesn’t help that a political class are uncontrolled by the public. If they were, we simply wouldn’t have this nonsense.

  20. Gleaning news from Nottle, social media, Twitter and blogs (certainly NOT from MSM) there seems to be concern with the number of people who have taken the potion becoming ill, some very seriously. Is this manifestation the early onset of ADE? A condition much warned about by those many scientists who are independent and have retained their scruples re the CV-19 scare.

    If ADE is happening amongst the jabbed could this be a reason for the government’s desperate tactics to get more and more people jabbed? This desperation appears to be happening also in France, Germany and the USA – hunting down the non-jabbed, knocking on their doors or threatening access to the basics of life is not a good look and definitely smacks of desperation. A non-jabbed control group is the last thing the people running this show want.

    If they isolate us and the jabbed continue to fall ill, then what…

      1. Apologies, OB, this has been bandied about for so long I didn’t think to write it out. ADE – Anti-body Dependent Enhancement – is a condition that many independent scientists, virologists, microbiologists etc. are concerned about re the “vaccine”.
        As I understand it the “vaccinated” person could suffer a reaction to another viral infection whereby the body’s immune system goes into to overdrive: the result is severe illness, possibly death. Observed in animal trials for the SARs-01 vaccine when the “vaccinated” specimens were exposed to the ‘wild virus’.

  21. Government website misleads travellers over true cost of Covid tests
    Some advertised prices appear to be ‘deliberately deceptive’, say researchers, with totals more than doubling once additional charges added

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/16/cheap-covid-tests-sold-tourists-twice-price-government-site/

    BTL

    The one achievement of Boris Johnson which nobody can deny is that he has completely destroyed the trust that those who voted for him had in him. Failure to attend to the examination of BBC funding, the border in the Irish Sea, the lurch towards green politics and no immunity from prosecution yet for Northern Ireland veterans are still open wounds for the electorate and then there is the total confusion over Covid.

    The tragedy is that there are no alternative political parties which are not likely to prove equally bad.

      1. I would have done the same had I not had my vote in general elections stolen by Blair. Cameron then promised me a vote in the EU referendum and – par for the course – he broke his word.

        NOTA must become an option which is counted so that if NOTA gets the most votes then nobody is returned to office.

        1. “NOTA must become an option which is counted so that if NOTA gets the most votes then nobody is returned to office.”
          Dream on, Rastus.

    2. You can trust the EU no more than the scientific predictions of the behaviour of a virus.

  22. Morning all, has any one else been watching the gold highlights in the evening ?
    You may have noticed how ‘hideously white’ it all is, even the balls. 😉
    But bbc to the urgent rescue, it seems they have replaced the pleasant and knowledgeable Scottish lady presenter with a man of colour. Who to my knowledge has never been seen on the TV before. Just another way of driving or ‘tapping the wedge’ home I would guess.
    And despite vowing to stop it before the last election, I did I rad that Boros is considering an amnesty for the illegal migrants he’s allowed to enter the country ?
    Also, Make pensioners pay national insurance ? You have to be Joe King Boros personally I paid in and worked for 53 years. So Get stuffed.

    1. NI for pensioners is coming, that’s fairly certain. The government tends to complicate instead of simplifying.
      The problem is that NI isn’t financially linked to anything, it’s just a parallel income tax with a misleading name, used as a pension cosh.

      1. I remember story a few years ago and old solder a guy from Burnt Oak/Edgeware North London was kicked out of his house by Brent Council and shoved into a ‘care home’ because he was basically getting older. He had already spent best part of 50 k in supporting himself with paying for carers.
        It’s best to be skint, as the government/civil service will steal everything you have ever saved and worked for. As we have seen from all the new arrivals over the past 30 years, they get more money than the pension and everything else free and have made absolutely no contribution whatsoever. It can’t continue as it is now.

        1. Tell me about it! I shall be bankrupt if I have to give in and put MOH in a care home, all because I worked hard and provided for us.

          1. And for me twice I have been ripped off by the tax department and on the pensions. And the small amount I have in my annuity they tax the arse off any withdrawals. I know someone who worked in the marine insurance industry he was offered and of course took ‘early retirement’ about 30 years ago. Full salary pension he’s s grumpy old millionaire now.

  23. There has been a great hoohah about a presenter of GB News ‘taking the knee’ to show ‘solidarity’ with the cause against racism.

    Much as I abominate this reverence for a dead, black, violent, American criminal surely the whole point of GB News is to present different points of view?

    When this chap knelt it was surely up to the guests on the programme to point out in no uncertain terms just what political agenda the BLM movement has and how it is hell bent on destroying the relations between different races in Britain which are probably better that those found in virtually any other country.

    We are right to complain that the MSM presents a unanimous left wing view without giving those who disagree the chance to voice their views. The whole point of GB News is surely to present opposing views?

    1. It was unfortunate that the “kneeler” was a well known self-publicising wanqueur.

      1. You can take the boy out of the BBC, but you can’t take the BBC out of the boy.

        His actions contravened Ofcom regulations and I suspect he well knew that!

          12. That would not surprise me although GBN needs to up its game in all respects to be the success most people want it to be.

      2. Wasn’t he the chap who was sacked by the Gruniad for fabricating a story a few years ago?

      3. Should we? Is this a trick question? The first second a boat pootled over we should have towed it back to france, removed the motor and sunk it.

    3. Good morning everybody.
      Genuflection, lowering oneself, is a traditional form of submission. As it is a visible gesture, rather than verbal, it is open to misinterpretation. I was amazed that the England (soccer) team reached the final of that cup thing recently, because their repeated obeisance was inappropriate. They were expressing shame and inferiority, not spiritual humility, in public.

    1. No BTL support for Hain. One of the more charitable comments starts ‘Misty eyed nostalgic drivel from Hain.’

    2. You cannot put two completely different mentalities together and expect it to work.

    4. No further BTL comments allowed. Of the 23 readable they mostly blame Hain’s attitude to apartheid.

    6. Rainbows would appear to be the badge of failure.
      Think what has been appropriated to show support for ‘our’ NHS.

  26. UK economy set to outperform those of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland both in 2021 and 2022, forecasts Dutch economic analysis thinktank ING Think.

    1. Only because those countries have managed the scamdemic even worse than this country has.

    1. Start of a long painstaking job judging by respective sizes of shackle and hacksaw.

      1. Same as folk ignore the blockade runners during the Irish potato famine. It doesn’t suit them to remember the reality when the fiction gives so much opportunity for self aggrandisement.

    6. Obviously white oppression to assume that the black fellow wanted to be free. How dare he impose his agenda!

    9. They don’t approve of the white saviour motif. If it were left to them, the poor slave would still be in his shackles, waiting for a black rescuer!

  28. Desmond Brooks jailed for stabbing girl, 16, after she refused to give him her number

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-jailed-stabbing-girl-harrow-on-the-hill-number-london-b946137.html?itm_source=Internal&itm_channel=homepage_trending_article_component&itm_campaign=trending_section&itm_content=1

    Report concludes with remark from British Transport Police: “Thankfully incidents like this are extremely rare on the railway network.” Perhaps he should have added ‘… at present’.

    1. Abusive and launched into a racist tirade. Of course he did. Of course he fell back on his victimhood rather than the real problem, himself. So much easier to pretend.

      As for extremely rare – feck off. Stop lying.

      Apologies for the source but couldn’t find it on the Met police site:

      https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15150114/london-stabbings-2021-knife-crime-attacks/

      It’s really time to when the ten people are found with a knife in London just shoot them on the spot. It’ll save lives.

    1. The first comment is very interesting: One thing wokeness lacks is a clear leader. Ultra collectivist societies
      always revolve around a single personality: Hitler, Stalin, Mao …

      Finally, people are starting to realise that the maniacs demanding to control how we speak, think, and do are no different to the demented fascists of the past.

      The Left have not changed. They’re psychotic nutters.

      1. I think that is a tribute to the cleverness of the group of ultra-rich families that have stayed in the shadows since the 1930s. They always let some other mug take the spotlight. Gates, Soros are just branches, not the root.

        1. Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission. Didn’t Hitler warn the Rothschilds to get out of the way and lay low?

    1. I appreciate he has a speech immpediment, but that response is just stupid. Even Hacker would have said better!

    2. “The Unvaccinated Are Killing People”
      Well, I suppose now this winter’s propaganda is out in the open.

  31. From an article in the Telegraph –

    “Jonathan Portes, senior fellow at the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, says hundreds of thousands more EU citizens in the UK are unlikely to burden services nationally”
    Article goes on to say –
    “Around 6million have applied for settled status, well above the 3.5million to 4.1million anticipated by an earlier Home Office analysis.”
    Jonathan Porkies . . . ??

  32. Another article suggests -“There is evidence migration is ticking up again.”

    May I suggest – “There is evidence migration is a ticking time bomb”

    1. The PTB are wilfully blind. They only need to look at what happened in the Med 5 years ago. The trickle becomes a flood. Now we see it happening in the English channel.

      Added to this Traitor May signed us up to the Migration Pact. Anything said by the Home Office about reducing the flood is a blatant falsehood.

  33. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/770aa417f6914f29ce3582b2947525a4a05ea2ed5fc2b331c21e701f19f8f37a.jpg

    A busy bee, unlike me .

    Nice breeze blowing , warm breeze , a few thundery clouds .

    The humidity yesterday was draining . 24c in the house and 28c outside .. The dogs were flaked out and so were we.

    Doubt it will be cooler today.. The strangest thing last night was , the sky was clear, moon pretty , and the stars were amazing , we have no light pollution in our little area… but when I encouraged the dogs out into the garden for their last minute wees, the lawn and patio must have had a legion of snails of all shapes and sizes, where on earth did they come from.. The lawn looked as if it was full of pimples .. and we don’t have many munched plants this morning either..

        1. Been to both, Hat, a long time ago and the only visit I’ve ever made to Mexico.

          I’ve no wish to return.

      1. Yes Anne , lots of shrubs , hedges and a couple of flower beds .. easy stuff , and dog proof..

        Trying to attract lots of insects , in particular bees and butterflies ‘cos we are about 3oo yds away from fields which are farmed !!!

        When we first came here , we were horrified when the Estate crop sprayed the fields with an aircraft !

        We sneezed , had head aches and felt very ill during our first couple of years here.

        Thankfully they don’t do that with an aircraft any longer.

  34. OT. My neighbours are getting married this month after two cancellations.

    A group of their friends have just turned up and are decorating the garden for a

    surprise Hen Party with a pirate theme. They are both ex-RN.

    I just happen to have a pirate outfit.

          2. A pirate was in the pub and fellow drinkers were asking him about his life at sea. How did yer lose yer leg ? Arrghh I was in the Caribbean and tried to rescue a good old mate who fell over board and a shark bit my leg off.
            How ‘dya lose yer hand and end up with the ‘ook ?
            We were attacked by the Spanish and I was protecting the captain and some one chopped me arm off with his sword. What about yer eye black beard what happened ? I was on watch early one morning and looking up at the flags on the mast and a seagull shat in me eye. You wouldn’t have lost yer from seagull shat Blackbeard ! Arrghh I know, but …………. that was the day after I ‘d had me hook fitted .

    2. As our six year old grandson would say……..Whay are Pirates dangerous ?………..’coz they aghrrr !

    3. A pirate walks into a bar with a big ships wheel down his pants. The bartender says, “Excuse me, sir, but do you know you have a ship’s wheel down the front of your pants?

      The pirate replies, “Aaargh, it’s driving me nuts!!”

    4. I have a priest outfit left over from a vicar and tart party. I could officiate for them for a small fee, a glass of Champagne or a pint of ale perhaps.

  35. Gosh, it’s warm out. Just watered the veg – tied the tomatoes and trombetti.

    Time for a spot of crossword – I’ll go and shout at the MR..!!!

        1. Try carrying them one at a time & not all 16 at once ! Seriously though, I remember as a kid, a neighbour used to put a load of watering cans on a wheel barrow & take them down to the end of his garden to water the plants & veggies that he grew down there, I suppose it was too far for a garden hose to reach.

          1. My veg are 60 yards from the well. I have a hose but it is an old-fashioned heavy duty polythene (or similar) one which has a mind of its own and is as heavy as lead. I use it twice a year to fill outlying water-butts.

          2. Get a wheelbarrow, fill up as many watering cans as will fit on it & you will lessen the time it takes & the strain on your body of carrying them to the veggie patch.

          3. I tried that. It was worse! Water kept slopping out of the cans…

            But thanks for the suggestion.

    2. I got the brash from yesterday’s tree felling sorted. Bits big enough for sticks or kindling put to one side and the rest heaped up to go through the mulcher, then gave up because it’s too out up the garden.

        1. A Simplicity 5/14 shredder with a Briggs & Stratton 5hp motor that makes a lot of noise.

          2. Even picked up 2nd hand of e-bay it wasn’t cheap.
            Does the job though. Couldn’t be arsed to do the mulching tonight, so will get it done when it’s cooler tomorrow.

      1. Happy Saturday Belle, I am wary of acupuncture as I had a work colleague who had a bad experience after acupuncture treatment at an alternative medicine clinic.

        1. I would strongly encourage you try it. Your colleague is unusual in as much as I have known plenty of people who have used it, including me, and the results have been wonderful. I used to live in California where it is a common practice. So when I say I have known dozens of people who have used it and not had a bad reaction, I’m not exaggerating. Indeed I can’t figure out how a person would have a negative reaction to acupuncture. It either works on a person or it doesn’t and that is about it.

  37. BTL Top Comment:

    Ethan Pickwick
    16 Jul 2021 6:05PM
    Please check/correct my maths/logic.

    Very approximately 1 million people have been tested positive with covid in the past 28 days (average about 35,000 a day) – that’s just under 2% of the population.

    But on average about 2,000 die each day in Britain of something (heart disease, stroke, cancer, accidents etc).

    So you would expect just under 2% to of those 2,000 who die each day to have tested positive for covid in the past 28 days, IRRESPECTIVE of whether or not they died from it – say about 30-35 deaths each day.

    But that is more of less what we are getting anyway at the moment.

    To explain my point, let’s say that just under 2% of people in this country ate Marmite in the past 28 days.

    Then you would expect on average 30-35 people who have eaten Marmite in that past 28 days to die each day.

    So it’s surely quite feasible to suggest that pretty well NOBODY is dying OF covid at the moment, but about 30-35 people are dying each day WITH covid.

    Flag333Unlike
    Reply

    Andrew Peterson
    16 Jul 2021 6:13PM
    Please don’t try and bamboozle us with truth and logic

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/16/will-boris-ever-defy-doom-gloom-scientists/#comment

    1. Politicians love statistics, because you can make statistics support any story you like.

    2. My God – does Marmite KILL you???

      Good grief, I had a large teaspoon on my baked potato for supper yesterday. How long have got before Marmite-19 kills me.

      I’ve gorn over all queer….

      2. Well it’s as likely to kill you as the common cold symptoms that they are now calling Covid.

  38. The article above the BTL comment:

    Will Boris ever defy the doom and gloom scientists?
    The Prime Minister has shown a dismal lack of resolve in standing up to the Covid fearmongers

    CAMILLA TOMINEY
    ASSOCIATE EDITOR
    16 July 2021 • 6:00pm
    Camilla Tominey
    Theresa May hit the nail on the head a month ago when she questioned why “we’re more restricted than we were last year”, despite over half the population being vaccinated. The former prime minister was talking about the Government’s “incomprehensible” travel policy, but the query also applies to the ludicrous rules on self-isolation that have resulted in many of us more controlled than we were last summer.

    With NHS Test and Trace sending alerts to people who have never come into contact with a positive case – and in some cases “pinging” people through walls – businesses, transport and schools have been brought to a standstill. We were promised freedom from Monday but instead we’ve got FRINO (Freedom In Name Only), a watered-down return to nothing remotely resembling normal. The legal requirement may have been lifted, but our being “encouraged” to continue wearing masks and socially distance means we remain in a perpetual state of lockdown limbo, seemingly with no end in sight.

    Boris Johnson had hoped to leave it to our discretion – but has instead succeeded in devolving the decision-making to the most risk averse members of our post-pandemic United Pingdom: headteachers; council leaders; London’s virtue-signalling mayor Sadiq Khan. So much for the Churchillian spirit of having “the courage to continue”. Instead of a British bulldog, the Prime Minister is starting to resemble one of those preposterous Pomeranians that ladies who lunch carry around in their handbags.

    To make matters worse, his failure to put his foot down in the face of repeated fearmongering means we have no clear idea when we are ever going to get out of this. If it wasn’t bad enough that Mr Johnson has once again been captured by zero Covidists pushing worse-case scenarios, it’s a trap he has repeatedly fallen into over the last 16 months.

    The thing to remember about scientific modellers is they can never really be held accountable. (Prof Neil Ferguson resigning over his lockdown lover, rather than his models, being a case in point.) If they forecast imminent doom and it doesn’t happen, people say: “Thank God for that.” If it does, people say: “Thank God you warned us.”

    Lo and behold, we now learn that the modelling that helped persuade the Government to delay the June 21 reopening was overly pessimistic and the lockdown lifting should “possibly” have gone ahead on time. It turns out Britain was actually in a much better situation than the scientists made out when they suggested third wave deaths could hit 72,000. Not only did they underestimate vaccine effectiveness but they also misjudged how cautious the public would be after earlier restrictions were lifted.

    Yet even with data from the ZOE study showing that the third wave may have peaked already, and the link between infections and hospitalisations and deaths having been significantly weakened, still the Government insists on relying on the most Grim Reaperish of forecasts. Mark my words, when the numbers eventually do come down, which they inevitably will, it won’t be attributed to our vaccinations, antibodies or herd immunity but to mask wearing and other measures.

    We are stuck in this situation not merely because the powers that be have failed to tweak the sensitivity of the app but also because fearful ministers delayed until August new rules for the double-jabbed. And why did they do that? Because balanced thinking once again collapsed in the face of a scientific onslaught that followed that all too familiar pattern.

    Forget the four steps of the Prime Minister’s roadmap. You don’t need a PhD to understand the formula of how every single government U-turn has come about.

    Step 1: Mr Johnson, conscious of the economic calamity being caused by lockdown and mindful of the timebomb of non-Covid conditions waiting to explode, calls for restrictions to be lifted.

    Step 2: Modellers release a worse-case scenario suggesting the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed, if not now, then certainly by winter.

    Step 3: Scientific group thinkers perhaps motivated by a self-interest in lockdown that may have been influenced by socialist tendencies take to the airwaves insisting that the “irresponsible” Prime Minister is unnecessarily putting lives at risk.

    Step 4: The unions and opposition mobilise to suggest the #Toryscum of a Government is getting it wrong, aided by a largely Left-leaning Twitterati of middle-class armchair experts who quite like working from home.

    Step 5: Those with a dissenting view who dare to suggest the modellers may be overegging it are denounced as quacks while a letter, signed by their detractors, is submitted to the BMJ or The Lancet warning against the “dangerous and unethical” ditching of masks and social distancing.

    Step 6: Increasingly concerned by the growing media backlash, and persuaded by polling which unsurprisingly suggests that a terrified public is afraid of being lifted out of lockdown, Mr Johnson backs down.

    Time and again the Prime Minister has fallen down this rabbit hole, only to trap us all in a parallel universe where thousands can watch the Euros at Wembley but parents are banned from sports day, millions are forced to self-isolate without testing positive and card-carrying communist Prof Susan Michie is a mainstay of the BBC.

    Even Alice might be forgiven for wondering whether our nation ruled by nonsensical policies had completely lost the plot. Albert Einstein famously said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. How on earth can we learn to live with coronavirus if we are still being encouraged to live in fear of it – even though 53 per cent of the population is now fully vaccinated?

    Only Mr Johnson can break this cycle, and yet one remains under the disturbing impression that even after the promised changes come in August, we will remain trapped in this unachievable quest for zero Covid, potentially forever.

    I think I’d rather be stuck in Wonderland than this.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/16/will-boris-ever-defy-doom-gloom-scientists/#comment

    1. She can talk. Her diversity and equality nonsense is going to bankrupt the country with it’s idiotic, abusive pedantry.

    2. Jeremy Hunt predicting that there may well be another Lockdown in the Autumn. Johnson will be foolish if he imposes another Lockdown as we now know how to protect ourselves. Johnson must concentrate on the economy, the Irish problem, illegal immigration, the futility and danger of his climate policy and rebuilding UK industry.
      Jeremy Hunt was the Health Minister who failed to prepare the NHS for Pandemics

    1. Boris won’t risk the lovely money that he is due to come into when he leaves office.

    1. Well Hatter at least he hit the target of the gaol and the keeper saved it. It was the other more exalted and more famous footballer who dribbled the ball past the post.
      Describe as like a jig saw………..falls the pieces inside the box.

  44. Remember this?

    “Boris Johnson to urge public to accept ‘one last heave’ to freedom as he prepares to delay June 21″

    I heave every time I see Shitts and BPAPM and Cur Ikea……and Witless and Unbalanced etc etc etc

    1. There is a small, very rural independent school called Shebbear College on the North Devon/Cornwall borders against which I took rugby teams to play against. As the region was renowned for its many sheep farms you can imagine what my players accused their opponent of being!

      Mind you, Shebbear is still going strong while Allhallows, the school in which I used to teach, struggled on for ten years after Caroline and I left it but now, very sadly, it is closed after having been in existence for overt 400 years.

      .

  49. Poland stokes fears of EU exit as court defies bloc over reforms. 17 July 2021.

    Stanisław Piotrowicz, a senior Polish judge, said that interim measures by the EU’s highest court, which ordered Warsaw to suspend the reforms, were “not in line” with the Polish constitution.

    The defiant ruling is the first of two verdicts due to be issued this week by Polish judges which appear to question a fundamental requirement of EU membership: that EU law takes precedence over national laws.

    The ruling prompted Guy Verhofstadt, a prominent MEP and former chief Brexit coordinator, to warn that Poland’s eurosceptic government was trying to drag the country out of the bloc.

    This is just an attempt at power grabbing by the EU. They have chosen one of their weakest members to establish a precedent that they would then apply to the whole. Of course National Law takes precedence over EU edicts! The Poles like the Hungarians should get out of what is an essentially fascist organisation led by unelected, undemocratic, unsackable agents of Globalism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/07/14/polish-court-defies-eu-order-amid-fears-attempted-polexit/

    1. The Visigrad countries have very recent and painful memories of being ruled by inefficient and power hungry blocs.
      Unlike Britons, they recognise the danger.

    2. How worrying to have judges who believe in their country’s constitution. Best replace them with more suitable people.

      1. I have often seen the eccentric George Melly live, in small venues, he was a funny guy and I think the band were called the Foot Stompers, a good night out.
        One of his songs was “My canary’s got circles under his eyes”.
        I have a vinyl album of his some where.

          3. A former keyboard player in the Feetwarmers, Bruce Boardman, is a friend of mine although I haven’t seen him for some time.

    3. During the course of the telephone conversation this afternoon (see previous posts) I mentioned I have having problems putting spacers in my mower – I have arthritic hands and it’s very difficult to get enough grip on a spanner to budge the nut. I said, “I’ve got a problem with tight nuts on my Flymo” – cue lots of laughter at the other end before an offer of help. 🙂

      1. Cripes, not more sub variants of covid. Looks like its ‘Fisherman’ next, could be catching…. I’ll take my plaice.

      3. Before you ask CQR

        Also called a plow anchor. Short for coastal quick release anchor. An anchor that is designed to bury itself into the ground by use of its plow shape.

    2. Was it a lifting experience Bob ?
      Whoops, something went wrong….. reload………….

  52. Interest-free Student Loans
    On Money Box Live just now I listened with alarm to the item on Student Loans and Islamic Finance. Islamic students say that paying interest on their Student loans is against their religion.

    What do they do about credit cards or any sort of borrowing? Do they not use credit at all? Or do they pay off the minimum on their cards, cross their fingers and ignore that they are being ‘forced’ to pay interest like everybody else?

    If they feel so strongly, why don’t they borrow at zero interest from Muslim lenders?

    Surely nowadays, if you refuse to pay interest, don’t go and live or study in a country where interest is the norm and expect to be treated differently.

    1. Perhaps thy pay off their credit card balance in full every month, like I do. No interest.

      1. I do, too, but it has nothing to do with sharia – I’m just averse to paying over the odds 🙂 I only use my credit card if I’m buying off the Internet (for security).

        1. I don’t use mine a lot – but I do for things like airline tickets – Ha! In another life……..

    2. Sharia banking provides loans. Instead of interest payments, the repayments are made through a hire-purchase arrangement (as I understand it). So you still repay the capital and the cost of the credit if you pay in full. Its just a fudge to get around a problem but I suspect that al-ahhh will have noticed.

      1. The theory, as I understand it, is that the lender and the borrower agree how any profit accruing from the transaction (loan) is to be divided up. I would guess that the degree is deemed to have a value (profit) and the initial loan plus a share of the value of the degree get paid back to the lender.

        It’s essentially a fudge.

        1. So why can’t they use a fudge to stop the inhumane way they slaughter animals, i.e. stun them first? After all, as an Iman pointed out the other day, there is nothing in their instruction manual that says they can’t.

          1. They only ever fudge when it benefits them and offends or puts the rest of the world at a disadvantage. One way traffic.

    3. Sharia banking provides loans. Instead of interest payments, the repayments are made through a hire-purchase arrangement (as I understand it). So you still repay the capital and the cost of the credit if you pay in full. Its just a fudge to get around a problem but I suspect that al-ahhh will have noticed.

    4. They certainly have zero interest in integrating and contributing to British society.

    6. Traditionally they would borrow money from you know who and then use the sword of Allan for repayment, or matches.

    8. Cameron the Moron oversaw the introduction of Sharia Banking. He, along with Blair, should be tried for crimes against the Christian population.

  53. Just got off the phone from my GP

    I asked, no begged, for him to burn my eyes out, with cigarette ends and castrate me, using blunt scisssors

    He said

    No, you have to do the gardening. Any like minded Nottlers out there?

      1. I went to table tennis this morning – too hot to run around after a little white ball.

    2. I really enjoy gardening (not that you’d realise it by the fruits of my efforts), but today is just Too Darned Hot.

    3. A political journalist for GB News? His last career change was into the financial arena.

  55. Still quite warm, here. I shall retire to read the new left-wing magazine that arrived an hour ago. It is called “The Spectator” – it makes the New Statesman seem quite centrist….

    1. Quite. It was the reason I cancelled subscription some months ago and was able to cite this when getting telephone calls later from their subscription department offering copies for next-to-nothing.

      1. I have read it since 1954. Likewise the Staggers – which I abandoned over its treatment of Roger Scruton and its interminable campaign against Brexit – and the way it preached hard against Corbinliner – then supported him when was elected “leader” of the Liebour mob.

        Looks as though I’ll do the same with the Spectator.

        The Critic is quite a good replacement…so far.

        1. As a solicitor you might be surprised to know that Mr Scruton was energetically litigious
          and capable of behaving unpleasantly.

          1. But he declined to sue the Staggers.

            I knew him quite well in the 1990s – went to Czechoslovakia and Romania with him to help universities create law departments.

          3. You may mock

            In Communist days, at the beginning of the academic year, the Dean of the Faculty of Law was given, by the local party secretary, a list of the students WHO WERE TO GRADUATE at the end of the course. Of course, only the children of good, party members were allowed to attend the university in the first place.

            It was truly shocking. They had no concept of the presumption of innocence; a “defence” lawyer was assigned to an accused person and merely argued for a shorter sentence than that demanded by the prosecutor. “You wouldn’t be on trial if you hadn’t done it…” was the view.

          6. Should be ditched. The House of Lords should be the Supreme Court. More damned Blair meddling. How are you, Bill? How are G&P? MOH set Oscar back five weeks by antagonising him this afternoon (life has been fraught today due to obsessive behaviour and no hope of contacting anyone for help – why do crises always develop on weekends?). Hey ho! On we go! KBO.

          8. I am trying to keep the two apart. Lots of T touch seems to have calmed him down but it’s two steps forward and one and a half back.

          10. Thanks. Oscar does seem to be back on track now, which is more than I can say of MOH 🙂

          13. Sorry to hear your woes, Conwy. I wish there was something NoTTLers could do to help.

            G & P are bone idle today – they each have places in the garden – unknown to us – where they lie up and sleep. When they are not indoors sleeping. In between – they go killing things – pests. Rabbits, mice, rats and moles. They are ten months old and very substantial…!

      2. I get the daily briefing emails but have no desire to sign up to membership even at the giveaway prices they are offering .

  57. 335458+ up ticks,
    The whole set up of this odious political creation is of the electorates making, the knifing of Maggie triggered it, the electorate supplied the muscle from then on.

    Surely the votes cast continually over the decades in supporting these
    country destroying parties can be reused if another opportunity is granted, in a peoples reset to cast asunder theses same parties.

    Mind theses political demigods have a great deal of pull with the 80%
    wages for NON working that buys a great deal of submission.

    https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1416359345005137920

    1. Freedom of movement is an article of the Treaty of Union. If the Treaty of Union is broken, then Scotland is thereby released from the Union.
      This may mean we will have to pay Window Tax…

  58. Britain risks turning itself into France. 17 July 2021.

    Here in Britain, an instinct for freedom has not evaporated entirely. There has been a surge in entrepreneurship as many smaller businesses have adapted brilliantly to survive lockdown. The superb work of Kate Bingham and her Vaccine Taskforce showed what is possible when the old bureaucracies are circumvented using private sector expertise. There is no good reason why the public cannot be trusted to manage the risk of the virus themselves, without relying on detailed government guidance.

    My views about the Covid Panic have chrystallised in the last few days in response to several posts on Nottl, several of them by Stig, who appear to support ever more restrictions. I am now for abolishing them all and let the chips fall where they may. This is not because of the severity of the infection or lack of it but because if we continue as we are Freedom will be utterly destroyed and it would be better to be Dead than a Slave. Let us take our chances as Free Beings, as our ancestors have done for a thousand years and F*ck Boris and Cobra and the rest of the Cowards and Traitors who reside in Westminster.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/07/17/britain-risks-turning-france/

    1. People have been scared witless by the propaganda surrounding this not very serious virus. I’ve seen it with my own real life friends, not just here and on other forums.

      I was coerced into taking the vaccine because I thought it would be mandated for travel – but travel is still more or less verboten or at least made as difficult as possible.

      I’m done with mask-wearing and the excessive hand washing and wringing.

      Edit: Freudan slip as I meant vaccine but wrote virus.

        1. They let go of your short and curlies only to grab you by the testicles and squeezing even harder.

          If you come back from France today you have to go into self-isolating quarantine because freedom day has not yet arrived; if you come back on Monday you have to go into self-isolating quarantine because it has.

      2. The whole thing is a con to control you. I will not wear a mask or have a jab that has not completed its trails. The jab is a greater risk than Corvid in my opinion. So dissapointed that so many people have just fallen into line over all this.

        1. Ditto.
          A tad p!ssed off with being told what to do. We’re pretty laid back in Kernow re wearing a mask….nobody gives toss!

      3. I listened to the first few minutes of Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions?’ for the first time in a long time. The first question was: “Hundreds of doctors and scientists have attacked the Prime Minister over what they call ‘a criminal plan’ for so-called Freedom Day. Is opening up dangerous and premature?”

        The first to answer was shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah MP: “Absolutely! Freedom Day is reckless. Keep your masks on!” Enthusiastic applause. The others? Business John Elliott had “no problem wearing a mask but vaccinations should set us free”; pensions minister Guy Opperman MP spun around in circles while reading from the No 10 crib sheet “on the one hand, on the other”; and local head teacher Dame Nicola Stephenson said ever so nicely if a little wearily “…if you’re around people who feel uncomfortable about coming out of lockdown, it’s no hardship to keep them on but I wouldn’t wear one on the Metro if it was empty.”

        I switched off.

        2. Telford is telling people by email (I made the mistake of signing up and can’t be bothered to unsubscribe because I like to know how the other half lives) “now is not the time to ditch the mask”. If not now, then when? Never?

          1. I was going to write something like “For how long should a frightened minority effectively dictate to the majority?” but thought it sounded a bit heartless. Yet much of that majority is happy to go along with it. That is frightening.

    2. People have been scared witless by the propaganda surrounding this not very serious virus. I’ve seen it with my own real life friends, not just here and on other forums.

      I was coerced into taking the vaccine because I thought it would be mandated for travel – but travel is still more or less verboten or at least made as difficult as possible.

      I’m done with mask-wearing and the excessive hand washing and wringing.

      Edit: Freudan slip as I meant vaccine but wrote virus.

    4. I must get in touché with our neighbour to see how she got on, she drove back to the Lott region last Sunday.
      We were invited to go and stay ……….no chance at the moment.

  59. Health Minister Sajid Javid has tested positive for Covid 19. Says he has mild symptoms [ Sky News]

      2. I read the Nurse (I think she was Australian) who looked after Boros when he was in hospital, decided to leave the UK.
        She probably got a more than a bit fed up with journo’s asking her questions. She’s in a better place now.

          2. I was talking my old mate Bruce last week, 6 suspects in the whole of Victoria and they are back in the lock down syndrome again. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

          3. Nothing makes sense to me any more….it’s great!
            Just switch off with a sherry, enjoy the simple things , gardening, painting, music, NoTTlers sometimes to keep the brain active and chill out.
            Why fret about the things we can do F all about!

        3. Apparently, there was a lack of respect (in terms of pay). So our noble saviour has uped sticks and got a job in the Caribbean. Pity complaining blicks and slammers don’t do the same instead of moaning endlessly.

    6. I had a pre-procedure swab test yesterday, I suppose i’m okay, I haven’t heard otherwise. But it’s quite a nice weekend for self isolating.

      1. I wonder why they/he have advertised this fact? Is there something I have missed? Is it because although being jabbed the symptoms are in fact only “mild”? (Is the inference they could have been so much worse without the jab?) Is he in fact telling porkies and he’s perfectly ok?

      1. Me too. I have never had the ‘flu jab and I have no intention of having the ‘covid’ jab, ever. Despite the deaths and multitude of adverse side effects this so-called vaccine has caused, I am sure it will be fast-tracked as having passed all its trial stages with flying colours and suitable for general purpose use on newborns upwards.

        1. I never had the flu jab till llast year when I succumbed to the propaganda and had it. Won’t be bothering again.

          1. I normally have the ‘flu jab, but having had the jab in 2019 and then caught ‘flu in 2020, I declined this year!

          3. I am convinced that what I had in February was Covid. It ticked all the boxes, but I had ordinary ‘flu in January!

          4. Well if you were still recoveringg from that you were propably more susceptible to a new virus.

          5. As the viruses are somewhat similar, it probably helped me fight off the dreaded plague with only a week in bed.

      2. Have just heard from our daughter that Lucy, her 2 and a half year old, has killed a slater (wood louse) and given it to Andrew, her 10 month old brother, who ate it! Who needs vaccination for toddlers! Wood lice are obviously the way forward!

          2. Well if I had known that was what it took to bring you out of hiding, I’d have fed a wood louse to one of my children months ago!

          3. Hallo Cheshire Lad! I’ve tried several times to get you to emerge from obscurity! Welcome and let’s hear more from you!

          4. Wow! Cheshire Lad! What a pleasure to see you! 😄 So glad you liked my comment – Lucy has form on this sort of thing. Mummy’s a vet and Daddy’s a farmer, and she has eaten quite a lot of dodgy stuff!

        3. 335458+ up ticks,
          Afternoon SM,

          That one louse that won’t make it to parliament on growing up then.

          2. 335458+up ticks,
            SM,
            What you are saying in point of fact is “there won’t be any loose louse about the house “

      1. I’m not going to have one. The one time I did, at work, I had a pretty bad bout.

        1. I won’t be going anywhere near it. I have never had a ‘flu jab. My last inoculation was for tetanus over 30 years ago. Before that smallpox 50 years ago.

          Good evening HL!

    4. 335458+ up ticks,
      Afternoon N,
      Mass murder, mass paedophile rape & abuse have been introduced to these Isles via the polling booth
      decades ago resulting in many a baby growing into suffering with mental damage following, they are judged as numerical units NOT as children so as to keep the “party” in power every little helps, says the current lab/lib/con member.

  62. 3335458+ up ticks,
    Product of the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / foreign paedophile umbrella.

    The political close shop still finds still finds support & votes how sickening is that ?

    https://youtu.be/Dl8e27va1uo

    2. All of these ugly scumbag Terrorists could quite easily star in a horror film without the need for any sort of make up or special effects to make them look scary and evil !

    3. I don’t want them jailed here. I want them flogged, flayed and left to rot in a lime pit.

  63. I do not know if this has been commented on:

    SIR – I was amazed to discover that is people don’t “sign out” when using the NHS Covid-19 app (or physical signing in) at any
    establishment,     then all those who attended on the day are pinged, or phoned to require them to isolate for 10 days, when a subsequently
    positive-tested person is notified to the premises owner.

    This is regardless of whether people left before or arrived after the person positively tested. No wonder excessive numbers receive messages
    to isolate.

    John H Brook Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

    We do not have the ‘app’, but have been to places where we need to sign in

    Next time, we will ‘Sign Out’ as we leave: I foresee ‘fun and gamec ‘ coming

    1. I did wave my phone at one place ( it was switched off and I don’t have the app) but I just walk past the QR code now and don’t bother. Why do people want this big brother tracker on their phones? It’s madnees.

      1. For some it’s the intent to be a good citizen. For others it is paranoia and the belief they have to. For the remainder, pure terror.

        There’d be no point my having the thing on my telephone. I leave it at home most of the time.

        1. So do I.
          I didn’t have it with me when my gearbox died in January. Fortunately I hadn’t gone very far.

    2. Honestly, what do you expect from an app that costs 35 million.

      We haven’t had a covid case in our area for over a month so I feel quite safe having our version of the app installed, especially since I normally leave the phone in the car.

  64. Afternoon, all. I had a phone call this afternoon from one of my friends checking up on how I (and Oscar) am. She heard from someone she knows in the NHS that we will all by locked down by the end of September due to the “Fourth Wave”. I said they had no intention of ever letting go – they would go out into the hedgerows and turn over stones to find more “cases”. To my surprise (because she was initially very strict about the rules) she agreed.

    1. I have heard that as well, and my dog groomer said she wanted to see the dogs again early September .. her husband is a farmer , huge acreage , her knowledge came from a doctor friend of hers , and she also suggested appointments soon for hair dressers and buying stuff to keep your larder full for a while ..

      1. Good thinking. I have a hair appointment next week, so will book my next one for mid September already…
        I’m trying to get all the stuff like art materials that I need. Buying online won’t cut it – I need to browse, and the expert advice in my local shop.

        1. Yes – I am prepared for early mid-September haircut for me and groomers for dog. Of course that is why they are opening up now in the face of ‘new cases’ so that they have an excuse to lockdown hard end of September, just as ‘Eat out to help out’ (Eat out to spread it about) provided the same excuse last year. Oh cynical me.

          1. Oh cynical me as well .. It also means stocking up on paracetamol and flu type stuff, because last year they were rationing everything .

            Does this make you feel as if we have been here before ..?

          3. And zinc and vit C. Re Peter’s comment below, I did actually buy an extra pack last week, in case clown circus kicks off again and I can’t get any for three weeks, like last time. Still got an emergency quarantining pack in the cellar in case we get the ping (I have to sign in to my customer at the moment, so will get quarantined if anyone there tests positive).
            I’m also gently building up a food stock again – we used most of it during the last bout of quarantining.

          4. Bb
            We are down to our last little tub of vit c and zinc and vit b… and last year March before lock down I bought about 6 bottles of shampoo , toothpaste , tissues , and tins of food which are in the garage , frozen veg , and tins of tomatoes .. a real panic buy, because the village shop has limited supplies of everything … instant whips, and sugar free jellies to make for Moh .

            This fear thing cannot be doing any of us any good!

          5. The government has no excuse to impose another lockdown if the death rates from Covid 19 remain at a low level. I however suggest that the November Climate Change shindig in Glasgow be postponed indefinitely as it will most likely set off another rise in Covid disease.
            Nicola Sturgeon may take it into her hands and stop the Conference. The Japan Olympics is also another potentially dangerous event.

  65. Should you have the chance, well worth watching Andrew Doyle’s ‘Free Speech Nation’ on GB News. Opening remarks – concerning latest woke nonsense – are hilarious.

  66. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “I used to think that communication with a stupid fool would be useful for him. But now I have changed my mind. Nothing would be better for him than to keep his stony silence.”

    Elmar Hussain.

  67. OT – Isn’t Nature wonderful?

    One week ago, I sowed a tray of beetroot for winter eating. This morning, at 7, there were two purple pinheads showing. Now, ten hours on, there are eight, five of which are tiny little plants with two leaves each.

    I marvel at the way things grow and so feed us.

    1. I think that’s why I like growing tomatoes. I find some shop bought ones that I find tasty and sweet, say Piccolo, take some seeds and dry them. Plant them in March and watch the cotyledons appear 7 or 8 days later.

  68. Nigel Farage – his announcement at 5pm. A prime slot on GB News at 7pm on Mondays to Thursday. Well not earth shattering.

      1. Yes I agree but GB News did not announce it on the 5pm slot. I hope he pushes the Reform Party or whatever the new party is called.

        1. 335458+ up ticks,
          Cs,
          O he will, he will, without a doubt right up until the starter’s pistol then straight into Emil Zatopek mode.

          In retrospect a covert ( tory ino)
          coxswain.

    2. How soon before he is cancelled – for speaking the sort of truth the beeboids don’t like?

      1. He won’t be cancelled because he won’t go near any controversial subjects.

        1. I wonder if he is being schooled to take over if Andrew Neil is unable to return full time. AN has the weekly 8pm slot to come back to and NF only had the 10am Sunday 2 hour slot.

          1. Farage is an asset to nobody but Farage.
            Try to draw him out on muslim rape gangs…silence.

          4. He deals with other major problems such as illegal immigrants crossing the Channel. He is not surrounded with bodyguards but I am sure he will take up many controversial subjects that are not a danger to his life. He will never be a politician in the UK so he will need no support from the electorate. It is up to him to win more personal support for his views and activities.

          5. 335458+ up ticks,
            Cs,
            With all due respect to you that chap turned us over as a credible UKIP party, building under the Batten leadership in a year the party was financially sound when Batten asked the members for £100000 he received £ 300000,membership building on a daily basis, then farage / brexit party
            £25 sobs a pop for a NO member status, built it up then at the crucial
            moment stood em down, in a very pro johnson many.

          6. 335458+ up ticks,
            Evening Cs,
            I was one of many who toiled to give him a platform via the UKIP party, his payback on leaving the party to “get his life back.

            Mass kniffing 30000 in one hit
            His input along with the party treacherous nec put paid to Gerard Batten and the real UKIP, then he went pro johnson and stood DOWN a good % of “his” brexit party candidates.

            https://youtu.be/Fc7iuUHk3Yk

      2. Sorry Bill . I inadvertently put BBC News in very briefly before I corrected it. The BBC would never give NF a time slot

        1. How soon before he is cancelled – for speaking the sort of truth GBN doesn’t like?

    1. “Why did your COVID swab turn yellow Bert?”
      “I thought you had to use it in your ears Ada so you could hear properly what the Health Secretary was saying!”

  70. Given his Cabinet job, is the Spamhead Slammer “Lord of the Pings”?

    I’ll get me Hobbit outfit.

    And, on that note, you will be relieved to learn that I am leaving for the day. Just lined up the ladderwork for tomorrow morning before the Sun gets too high.

    Have a jolly evening – however you identify.

    A demain.

    1. One ping to rule them all, fifty thousand consultants to find them, one knobhead to bring them all and in the lockdown bind them.

      1. Usually big fire is a signal that a “development company” has been refused planning permission to demolish a listed building and put up expensive plastic flats.

        2. Mr. Reo Stakis had several unfortunate incendiary incidents in Glasgow, including his casino!

  73. Just woke up from a nap. Covered in sweat my brain in neutral. The Weather Man says it’s going to be 28C overnight. There’s going to be few bad days ahead!

        2. Apparently if you want to sleep, you should take a hot shower, because it makes your body lose more heat after you get out of it, which hopefully cools you down enough to sleep.

          1. A couple of mornings last week I had a cold shower because the hot water was switched off due to the boiler room in my building being flooded in Monday’s storm. I found the cold shower actually generated heat on my skin. After the initial shock, I was quite warm.

          3. I started having cold showers back in January and I discovered the same. Standing in a cool bathroom when it’s minus ten outside and having a glow of warmth is quite exhilarating.

          4. Same approach applies to a hot drink. It raises your body temperature.

            However, if there is no way to cool your body down – no breeze – then all youre doing is heating yourself up.

      2. Problem there is that’d need a bath 7′ long and about 4 wide. The average tub is designed for a 5 year old.

        My nieces, both tall find the bath uncomfortable now.

        2. I can’t remember my last bath, maybe i was about 26 or 27. I just have showers these days. My missus loves a bath but she’s the size of a 12 year old whereas i’m a 6 foot seventeen stone guy.

    2. Apparently this is ‘lovely weather’.

      TGIF for air conditioning. Not on yet, but it will be soon.

  74. Bollocks!
    Catching up with 200 comments and went to respond to one and got bloody Disqussed with a white screen again.

  75. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water….

    Norovirus outbreaks are THREE TIMES higher than usual as top experts warn winter vomiting bug is making a comeback this summer because of the easing of Covid restrictions
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9796063/Health-experts-warn-rise-vomiting-bug-norovirus.html

    Norovirus is a highly infectious virus that causes vomiting and diarrhoea
    Cases were nearly triple the five-year average of 53 in week ending July 5…..

    1. What utter rubbish! “If we ease restrictions, a deadly plague will come down on our heads”
      Let us take risks!

        2. 335458+ up ticks,
          P,
          Are you giving the jab a plug ?

          hold up, now there’s a thought.

      2. Big fat state can’t let you do that though. Risk means informed, informed means their lies get exposed. Informed means responsibility. Nothing terrifies big government more than the idea of a citizen making their own mind up.

    2. 335458+ up ticks,
      Evening P,
      Place of origin westminster, bulk political sh!te purveyors, consequences being the herd in mass trotting mode.

  76. Northern Ireland records its highest ever temperature as UK bakes. 17 July 2021.

    The hottest day of the year so far has been provisionally recorded in all four UK nations, with Northern Ireland reaching the highest temperature ever recorded, the Met Office has said.

    Ballywatticock, in County Down, Northern Ireland, saw a maximum of 31.2C, while 30.7C was recorded at Linton-on-Ouse, North Yorkshire, England, although temperatures could rise further this afternoon.

    But the Met Office said temperatures could rise yet higher in England and south Wales on Sunday as the summer heatwave continues. Tom Morgan, meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “Temperatures are expected to increase even further on Sunday, reaching highs of 33C in the south of the UK.”

    Gonna be hot!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/17/northern-ireland-records-its-highest-ever-temperature

          2. No pics sorry. I took a couple on a smart phone of the lady pirates. Not my phone though.

            I was offered a trip out with the lads to go stagging but my chair would have put a crimp in it for them so i stayed with the heavy drinkers.

            They went off to a place in Oxford to play golf.

            It’s a cross between crazy golf and an assault course played with UV glasses in the dark.

    1. Who cares, frankly?
      The whole testing lark is a scam. People working for the sainted NHS are apparently just putting the cotton bud into the liquid and sending it in without even swabbing their noses, because they don’t want to risk a positive test.
      Personally, I’d rather they just dumped the lot and issued fit to fly certificates, at least that way people won’t be stopped by false positives. If you’re worried about catching covid on the flight – get the magic vaxx!

      1. If you’re worried about covid – don’t fly.
        Anyway there isn’t a specific test for covid but there is for coronavirus which includes the common cold.

        1. The test specifically tests for Sars-Coronavirus-2 the virus which causes the disease covid-19. it is not a test for a common cold virus which is about 60% of cases is a rhinovirus and not a coronavirus.

          2. They will fail. There is no better test for viruses. PCR testing is the Gold Standard of virology tests. Some of the early testing regimes were flawed but it was a novel virus so it always takes a bit of time to work out best testing procedures. Now the wrinkles have been ironed out there’s absolutely no better test. It is far more accurate than the lateral flow tests.

      2. Kind of object to companies being paid and actively sabotaging what they are paid to do.
        Those tests cost the testee a fortune – £85 or something.

        1. I don’t want the stupid test though, I only pay the fee because it is the law. So I don’t care about the result – the only result I want is the bit of paper that says the test is negative.

        2. Most of them are paid by the government. I have 3 tests per week. No cost to me or my employer.

          1. A daft statement.

            If you do not pay, then your taxes are being used to pay. That means they’re not being spent on something else. If your employer wants them, your employer should pay for them. If you want them, you pay for them.

            It’s my money being spent on something I do not want it spent on.

          2. Taxes don’t fund spending so no they are not. The only tax we pay that gets recycled is local taxation. I must have explained the true purpose of tax to you fifty times now and explained to you also exactly how the government spends ( it credits the recipient’s bank’s account at the BoE). The state doesn’t spend our money it spends its own money. We receive state money in our pay packets. If the government spent zero pounds, what do you think your current salary would be? Do you think you’d be paid exactly what you are now?
            You really have a completely backward view of how a modern economy works. We aren’t living in Victorian Britain any more. The education you received about economics in Victorian Britain is all now null and void.

    2. The Government are taking an unacceptable risk in allowing these firms taking advantage of the testing process with the outcomes shown above. Shoukat should be stripped of his contract to test these samples, lose his position as a councillor and be prosecuted for his activities.
      More evidence that we cannot trust the Covid 19 tests.

      1. This sort of thing has gone on at every single employer I’ve had in the private sector for years. Care homes that deliberately run understaffed. Reconditioners that fail to recondition parts properly because replacements are costly. Computer builders that won’t pay for legal operating systems. The list is endless.
        Surely enough of us work for the private sector to have a decent idea what goes on. Why do we fall for the private is always best soundbites?

        1. Care homes are heavily regulated.

          Yes, replacements are expensive. This is why the market exists – to ensure the best work is rewarded.

          I’ve always told customers the cost of their OS – even if this was 0.

          The list is NOT endless. You’re citing narrow experiences in specific areas.

          Change your suppliers. It’s ironic that you complain about things that the public sector cannot, and never would provide because it can’t. It has neither the knowledge, expertise, or competence to. If big fat state had been left to provide an OS we’d be stuck on a BBC Micro – arguably, better than the tripe that is the recycled excrement of windows.

          It’s simple. The dialog goes like this:

          Person 1: Government should…
          Person 2: Nope.

          1. I’ve been in the care home business for 33 years, I am fully aware of all the regulations and how they are avoided.
            We have 16 residents. 12 of them are immobile. 6 require feeding all food and drinks. 12 are doubly incontinent. all 16 are incontinent. 6 of them require hoisting which can’t be used by a single member of staff. during the day between 8 am and 7.30 pm we have 2 carers on duty and overnight between 7.30pm and 8am we have a single carer. These care staff levels were set at the end of the eighties and have never changed despite the average resident going from a fully mobile to bedbound.
            Ideally to cope with the level of need we need 5 daytime staff and 3 staff overnight. obviously that cant happen as most of these residents are council funded and councils refuse to pay more than 800 per week no matter what level of need their clients have.

            How does changing suppliers help? The problem is money. We aren’t paid enough to provide the care people need so they get the care we can afford to provide.

            Yes it’s anecdotal but also true, i have never worked for a well run private sector entity. Every single one of them has cut corners that should not be cut. In fact when i worked in Potters Bar high street i found out that the only people being paid a legitimate wage were those that worked for big chains like sainsburys and boots. Most people were paid around a fiver an hour and they weren’t given holiday. Any complaints and they were sacked and replaced. Almost the entire road was staffed by immigrant labour often living in flats above the shop ( 2 bd) at about 10 souls per flat. It’s endemic in this area and I don’t believe only this area.

          2. I agree with much of what you say.

            We had all sorts of problems with live in carers for my wife’s parents. We dispensed with the services of ‘Bluebird’ after repeated failings. We found ‘Christie’s’ to be more reliable.

            Needless to say that no private care providers are perfect. They are in the business of making money and in our experience exploiting Eastern European and African labour.

            The fact that those with life savings and property are obliged to pay for the care of those who never paid a penny towards their care is a matter of concern.

            The care system is a diabolical mess, not dissimilar to everything else the government touches.

          3. The care system is the system given to you by the Thatcher and Major governments. In essence it hasn’t changed since then. All that’s changed are some regulations and inspection bodies.
            This is the system people of your age demanded.
            You all hated council homes despite the fact they were all purpose built, well equipped and fairly well run, thinking the private sector would give you care hotels with private bars and sports rooms and so on. Well how wrong you were. This is what you wanted and demanded. You didn’t want the government paying for care you wanted it to be a personal responsibility as you believed you were paying for others care when you wouldn’t even need it. You didn’t want the government providing care, the private sector is more efficient. The council homes weren’t sold to the private sector providers, they got sold off to property developers so many private providers bought big old houses to convert. Thin hallways, misshapen rooms, perfect for bedbound people and wheelchair users.
            Domiciliary care is a bit different. Many set that up in portakabins so overheads are very low, then pay staff at or close to minimum wage while charging clients 20-25 quid an hour. lots of profit in that but no profit in running care homes now.

          4. When I researched care homes for my family I found most were owned and operated by Pakistani and Indian immigrants.

            The staff were from overseas and caring, probably underpaid, but mostly very devoted to the old persons in their care.

          5. Care homes fall into two general types. The corporate chains which use big purpose built homes usually built by a different company with the same or very similar board to which the provider company pays rent. Only the property company makes money. Or smaller more family run type homes where the owner generally runs 1-4 care homes, most of which are converted houses. The owners of these tend to be professionals like dentists, doctors, and accountants. Looking at these guys and the cars they drive and the houses they live in the general public has decided they are overpaying for care. The general public is too stupid to realise these are all second-jobbers.
            Barchester one of the biggest chains of care homes last year declared an average profit of 10k per care home. Of course all Barchester homes were built by a company run by the same people but it’s a separate entity which just builds, holds and rents care homes to Barchester. That company recorded very healthy profits. This shows you who is really making money out of care, it’s not the providers, it’s the landowners.
            Something like 35-40% of our turnover goes straight out the door on rent.

      1. Private sector efficiency and cheapness. Cut every corner you can, make loads of dough. No one is retesting samples. Can always claim contamination or machine failure.

        1. Yet… there’s a monolithic health department, NHS trusts and NHS hospitals supposedly overseeing this so… actually, as much as you may not like it, the incompetence is down to the public sector. It’s also a single corrupt individual in the usual demographic.

          Please stop pretending the public secctor is a model. It’s a mess. An expensive, inefficient mess which continually fails the public – as is proven here.

    4. A lot of his constituents are off on the Haj so of course all of them will get a fit-to-fly certificate even if they have covid-19, typhoid, ebola or black plague!

    5. The whole Covid thing has been a fallacy and farce from start to finish. It has been open to massive fraud on all fronts. Thank you NHS.

      What a fucking shambles.

  78. 335458+ up ticks,

    Double-Vaxed British Health Secretary Positive for Covid, Symptoms ‘Very Mild

    Could almost say nearly flu.

    2. That’s the job of the jab. it doesn’t stop you catching or transmitting covid, it stops you most of the time from getting severely ill with it. This is why a two speed economy based on the double jabbed and not doubled jabbed is just a plainly stupid idea. Still Tory MPs come up with so few good ideas, that yet another bad one being implemented is hardly a surprise.

  79. Looking at photos of yer ungrateful, silver medal insulting football players, (and others e.g Chrissie Ronaldo) I have seen that the fashion these days is for them to hitch up their overly long ‘shorts’.
    Could this signal an intention to go back to the short lengths of the seventies and eighties when we could actually see players’ legs?
    They may all be overpaid whingeing petulant yobs but they usually have nice pins so let’s see them.

  80. Looking at photos of yer ungrateful, silver medal insulting football players, (and others e.g Chrissie Ronaldo) I have seen that the fashion these days is for them to hitch up their overly long ‘shorts’.
    Could this signal an intention to go back to the short lengths of the seventies and eighties when we could actually see players’ legs?
    They may all be overpaid whingeing petulant yobs but they usually have nice pins so let’s see them.

  82. A lot of ladies wearing skirts on these hot days. I am not surprised as these tight trousers they wear normally must be uncomfortable in this heat.. I am surprised at the number of schoolchildren who are knock kneed which is very evident in tight trousers. My fashion comment for today.

  85. I’m a bit behind the times, and am just now listening to Right Said Fred on the Delingpod. They’re really good! Especially later on in the podcast – they’re making some really good points about when the government started to encroach on our liberty.
    They’re now laying into the Queen for letting herself be filmed being vaccinated (should have kept it to herself – I agree!), and that the armed forces have been compulsarily jabbed.

  86. GB News should speak for right-of-centre Britain, not culture warrior weirdos on Twitter

    GB News promised local journalism and open debate for the right-wing majority. How did it become a niche channel for wokeness obsessives?

    STEPHEN ARMSTRONG

    Watching GB News is a little like watching England play. Not this England team… Steve McLaren’s England team. The one that failed to qualify for the Euros back in 2007 after consecutive drubbings by Croatia. With all that talent – Beckham, Lampard, Rooney and Cole; or Andrew Neil, Alistair Stewart, Kirsty Gallacher and Colin Brazier – how could they mess things up so badly?

    Zero ratings, woeful tech, executives jumping ship, phone lines failing, wildly vacillating public statements over whether it was OK for presenter Guto Harri to take the knee on air, an eye-watering lack of irony as a station launched to support free and open debate in the face of cancel culture cancelled its own presenter for unacceptable opinions… it’s like Sasha Baron-Cohen set the station up as a vast prank and we’re just waiting for Borat to take over the breakfast show.

    The idea of a right-of-centre, intelligent, Andrew Neil-headed news-based TV station was clearly brilliant. This is a right-of-centre country with a long tradition of informed dissent. We crave smart discussion – election debates often out-perform soap operas as elections loom – and we vote for big ideas. We care about local news, something that’s rapidly disappearing, and we love seeing elites challenged. So a station that offers all that – what’s not to like?

    Except that’s not what we got. GB News pitched itself as the anti-woke/culture war station just as the cabinet faltered on that brand positioning. I spoke to one right-wing stand-up comic who turned the station down again and again because he thought it would hurt his career. “Brexit’s done. We all love the NHS, we’re all united in fighting Covid, the England team’s doing well – why pick that fight? I still want to be working in a year’s time and even the hardcore Tories in my audience are a bit fed up with all the arguing.”

    The figures back him up. In June, IPSOS/Mori polled the British public on the concept of being woke and found 50 per cent of us haven’t heard much about it, including 32 per cent of the country who have never heard of the term. Let’s drill down a little further shall we, IPSOS? 24 per cent of the country think being called woke is an insult. 26 per cent think it’s a compliment. 38 per cent have no idea what it means. For most of the country, therefore, GB News is tilting at windmills.

    Britain doesn’t have a culture war like the US. There is no strong religious right. Gay marriage and abortion are not dividing lines. There is no real “antifa” and barely any anti-vaxxers. You know what the IPSOS/Mori poll found British people really think divides the country? Wealth and class. The same thing we think has divided the country for years. And this is Andrew Neil’s genius – his interview with Rishi Sunak kicked off with one woke question then skewered the chancellor on poor people being shafted and the cost of replacing all our damn gas boilers. Andrew Neil was smart enough to know that what most commentators dismissed as trivial is a big financial deal for an awful lot of people. Andrew Neil was smart enough to disappear from GB News after just two weeks.

    So here’s the problem. 24 hour news stations reach less than 20 per cent of TV viewers. Their potential audience, however, is “anyone who wants to watch the news”. GB News fixed its sights on people who hate wokeness so much they’ll put up with terrible tech calamities to stick with bumbling presenters. That’s not even a niche. It’s a Twitter feed.

    The station kicked things off on day one by actually calling the England team Marxists and attacking the government for backing away from Freedom Day. Now, sure, this may be what you believe. It may even been what the station believed. But when it comes to trying to get an audience, it’s out of touch.

    In July, 71 per cent of the public thought face coverings on public transport should remain in place for longer. We’re more united than we have been for years. So the station was left with the hardcore believers – at around 30,000 viewers, that’s a smaller crowd than the Welsh speaking audience for S4C’s soap opera Pobol y Cwm. With a pool that small you can’t afford to lose people. Hence the Guto/knee catastrophe. Once you deviate from such a tightly focused, highly politicised message, that hardcore will react. And this, students, is how we achieve zero ratings.

    (It’s slightly more complicated than that, obviously. TV audience measurement is as fun to discuss as the rate different paints dry, but it’s basically modelling the population from a statistically relevant sample. Legendarily, if that word can be used to describe BARB data, the representative panel for upmarket viewers in the Scotland region used to be so small that when one of the three posh panel members lost their job in the late 1980s, ABC1 viewing figures tripled. So a zero rating for GB News could mean that a handful of people turned off, rather than a real world mass exodus.)

    But lord knows, the nation needs Andrew Neil TV right now – the station was set up with regional reporters just as local newspapers die off. It chose its own news agenda rather than follow the Westminster bubble. And this isn’t America. If you want to draw in the casual right-of-centre crowd, you need to be really good – offer interesting perspectives, ideas to support people that they’ve not encountered before, do a little reporting. That felt like the original idea. Instead, it’s embarrassing. If you’re a light right-of-centre viewer, you can’t proudly say that mess represents you.

    The best British contrarians are like Orwell and Hitchens – intelligent, articulate and witty. GB News is an awkward fumble, breaking off to shout “you lefties!” every now and then. Mate, the reason your station is terrible is not the fault of the left. There are many things you can blame the left for but this one’s on you. What we need is Orwell, Hitchens and Andrew Neil. What we’ve got is Robert Kilroy Silk. We deserve better.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2021/07/17/gb-news-should-speak-right-of-centre-britain-not-culture-warrior/

    Which Hitchens, I wonder…

    2. The trouble isn’t that the population haven’t heard of wokists, it’s that the fangs of the snake are already slamming their venom in whether they know about it or not.

      Hard Left diatribes, whinging, unfocussed news articles, the constant promotion of green, the gay agenda, the forcing of mental illness (trans) as normal nonsense. Until the Left are stopped – last time it took a war – they will not give up and will keep forcing their putrid agenda on a healthy public. The parasite is killing the host because it doesn’t care. It is never sated, will never stop in it’s abusive agenda.

  87. Ahh, Saturday summer evenings.
    Sitting outside, glass Chianti and Bernstein & Wiener Philharmonica playing Beethoven piano concerto no 5 the “Emperor”.
    Now, that’s music!
    Edit: Pianist is without a score, too! Respect!

    2. If the engineer had read the service bulletin they would have known the PIN code!

      1. If the engineer had read the service bulletin

        In the FAA/RAF there would have been a supervisor, who would ensure that the maintainer put the right ‘fing’ wa s put in the right hole.

      2. If the engineer had read the service bulletin

        In the FAA/RAF there would have been a supervisor, who would ensure that the maintainer put the right ‘fing’ wa s put in the right hole.

    4. Well spotted.

      I, and a few others, had realised that the “little man” accusation would not stand up in court

    1. A very brief appearance from Mehdi Hasan, a man even more obnoxious than Chubby Choudary.

    2. Thanks for sharing. One of his best ever. Some of us could see this theatre as it was unfolding, but judging by the comments in the Mail, many were taken in.

    1. He must have missed out on the testing contract to that other sun tanned charleton we saw today.

  91. Take it from a publican: Wake up to the true cost of vaccine passports, before it’s too late

    I fear for the future of my three kids, if a section of society here in the UK truly believes we need these sorts of controls on our lives

    ADAM BROOKS

    “I don’t see a problem. You just have to flash your phone or show your vaccine certificate to a member of staff when you go in.” Nothing riles me up more than statements like this, pushed by arrogant pundits and peddled by mostly middle class, occasional pub goers.

    Despite previously saying that they had no plans to introduce vaccine passports – or “Covid-status certification” – in the UK, the Government has gone back on its word and endorsed the scheme, saying that businesses have a “responsibility” to only admit those who can prove they’ve had two jabs or a recent negative Covid test. And it isn’t just “large events” that they want to start using the passes. The guidance covers pubs, bars and restaurants too.

    Have these people ever run a pub? For a Covid passport to serve any purpose, no patron without one should step one foot inside that business. To do that you need staff on the doors, open until close, seven days a week. Even for a small pub this could cost between £1,000 and £2,000 per week, making those businesses unviable.

    Then there’s the ethics of the scheme. A parliamentary committee found them to be discriminatory, on the basis of race, religion, socio-economic background and age, because of differing levels of vaccination. And what purpose do they serve? How can a Covid passport be of any use whatsoever, if it’s now obvious that double jabbed individuals can still test positive and pass on an infection?

    The committee also stated that “if a Covid-status certification system is to be introduced, there must be a clear scientific case for its introduction. But while the Government accepted this, we found that the Government failed to make a sufficiently strong scientific case for introducing Covid-status certification in the UK.” Case closed for me.

    The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, said back in April that we must learn to live with Covid, in a similar way as we live with flu. So what happened? I can’t ever remember declaring my flu jab status. Can you?

    Many American states, meanwhile, have passed laws to make implementation of Covid passports illegal. That tells you something. America is 80 per cent open, without restrictions or face masks.

    I fear for the future of my three kids, if a section of society here in the UK truly believes we need these sorts of controls on our lives. Too many have been sucked in by the fear and constant doom and gloom from our scientists and sections of the media.

    They allow the likes of Independent Sage to rattle off apocalyptic predictions with little pushback, when they almost always turn out to be wrong. It seems the only winner in all this is The Fear PR machine and all the trappings of attention and money it generates.

    I’m urging normal people to regain their senses and realise that we are in a fight for our liberties and futures. I stand here as someone with more than most. I’m not super wealthy but I’m able to give my family a good life. Others are not so fortunate and it’s them I fear for.

    Too many self-employed businessmen and women have lost everything and failed to get the help they need. Hospitality supports up to 6 million jobs directly and indirectly and its supply chains support the industry in a big way. These passports, if they were to become anything more than “advice” or a “recommendation”, would destroy the pub industry and much of what is left in hospitality.

    I’m writing this on the back of a morning arguing with apparently educated people over Covid passports. It’s clear that these people don’t understand the implications of them, or they simply don’t care.

    For some it suits them to have the state control their lives, for others, it will maybe make their retirement a more relaxing affair. The rest of us need to wake up before it’s too late.

    Adam Brooks owns The Owl and The Three Colts pubs in Essex

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/17/take-publican-wake-true-cost-vaccine-passports-late/

    https://www.theowlpubhighbeach.com/
    http://www.thethreecolts.com/

    https://twitter.com/TheThreeColts/status/1416352457890975756
    https://twitter.com/TheOwlHighBeach/status/1416353382076489731

  94. Ref: https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/05/03/nonprofit-associated-with-the-cancellation-of-dr-seuss-teams-up-with-google-to-create-anti-racist-book-list-for-k-12-teachers/

    Do they know this si exactly what Hitler did? That restricting what can be read and taught was specifically warned against in the horror dystopia 1984? Do htese absolute *fools* not realise that they are the enemy? That they are categorically the very evil fought against by all decent people?

    1. I presume that each and every year in the UK we have a maximum temperature in each country.

  96. Lacoste

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2bbcbf931ee5b3cb53a38a849d871c3c345db89ef972c668ac82690927f981ca.png

    From this: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b44b0eb8647b4c94f34e4046d729809d1c4804180961f017eaac7e71ddba42e.png to a splendid old croc of 80 on Sunday 18th July https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e281877e66f9640965428cfaf7612b736a56b10f037dc7830d6ff3f7e0f8aba9.png With very best wishes and many joyous returns of the day from Rastus and Caroline

    1. Thank you very much for your good wishes, Rastus and Caroline.

      The ‘splendid old croc’ shall be enjoying a late lunch with his daughter, son, son-in-law and two grandsons at a local hostelry – outdoors: I hope the sun shines in Argyll ….

      3. Wishing you a very happy birthday Lacoste! Have a wonderful time and enjoy every moment! 🍾🎉🎁

  97. A weekend off work for me. I’ve gone sick.

    On wednesday morning i had my first jab. On thursday night I developed a fever which by friday morning felt like all out flu. I am still completely lacking in energy. I’ve soaked my bed in sweat for the last couple of nights. I can’t work like this.

    The good news is as my illness is related to covid im going to be fully paid.

      1. I’d have rather not had AZ poison put into me and worked this weekend but i have to get double jabbed by October or I can’t work in care any more.
        I have been forced into this experimental jab.

        1. You are not forced to do anything. You are being coerced into taking a jab that you do not want.

          Call their bluff. I doubt that many workers in the care sector will willingly submit to these poisonous jabs and many will seek to return to their homelands if they have not already fled the country.

          The social care problems are about to be escalated by our ignorant government.

          1. I agree but the fact is I need an income and after october anyone working in care not double jabbed will be told you had months to get it done now we have to sack you.

  99. I never imagined that in my lifetime I would be forced to witness the bullshit I have endured over the past 18 months. Lie after lie, falsehood after falsehood and so much obvious profiteering by politicians, pseudo/scientific advisors, lawless big pharmaceutical companies and our utterly useless and boughten Medical professionals and NHS.

    1. Agreed. If it’s not covid, it’s climate fraud, and if it’s not climate fraud, it’s a manufactured racism storm. In between are slipped unwelcome news like the Online Safety Bill (safety for the Govt from criticism, naturally) and new legislation to clamp down on protests.

  100. Well that was a bugger. Took my glasses off as I went to bed last night and the bloody hinge broke. Now wearing a pair of prescription safety glasses that are not the most comfortable things in the world!

    Woke up 2h ago feeling hot & sweaty and, after trying to get back to sleep, got up and had a 2nd dip in the cold water I’d left in the bath.

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