Wednesday 27 October: Those who refuse Covid vaccines are irresponsibly burdening the NHS

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

507 thoughts on “Wednesday 27 October: Those who refuse Covid vaccines are irresponsibly burdening the NHS”

  2. The Queen pulls out of Cop26 climate summit following hospital stay. 27 October 2021.

    The Queen will not travel to Glasgow to speak at the Cop26 climate summit, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

    The Queen, who has been unwell and was hospitalised for tests, has “regretfully decided” not to make the journey in person, saying she is “disappointed” not to be able to attend.

    Morning everyone. I think Her Maj. has realised what a catastrophe this Freebie Jamboree is going to be!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2021/10/26/queen-back-royal-duties-hospital-stay/

      1. I must be of Royal blood too – I keep taking to my bed! (Either that or in a former life I was a winter-hibernating bear.) :-))

  3. Those who refuse Covid vaccines are irresponsibly burdening the NHS

    The NHS is irresponsibly burdening healthy people with medication they do not need, more like.

    1. Healthcare shouldn’t be rationed in the first place.
      People have paid, so they should get the service that they have paid for. This “irresponsibly burdening the NHS” is a very creepy argument. Should it also apply to the overweight, or to people who do sports and might injure themselves? Is anyone really virtuous enough to be allowed to use the NHS if we start pointing fingers?

        1. Yes, I’ve just read the comment from Lord Fauntleroy posted by Stephen above. Jaw-dropping incompetence. Lord, please preserve me from ever working in the public sector.

      2. I entirely agree with you, but would also add that part of the problem is the massive influx of people who have not paid anything! For a start perhaps they should “get the service they paid for”!!

        1. Or those who book an appointment with their GP (in pre-Covid days) who then fail to turn up without good reason.

  4. ‘Morning All

    CovidClownWorld

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9125576e7e6d1b9c6d5a564bf1f4cbbb8d890a612e0b5f5c98ac48a3b71ff5f7.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0af4d94f2ea274cb3e308130ce317c8a1ee00c54637f215b30ba77e7298aa296.jpg

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    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/088/673/738/original/feb55be6695d711f.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/518540c594f715b296034df9e89e87287475a4feef614a707e47d06d4d6e149d.jpg

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/088/764/563/original/71f6cad59246b55c.jpg

    Finally,that’s awkward………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b05be8e7ddafc216fcf4b007f227d476aafb9fcd211f72a39ad0d304640940a4.jpg

    1. The Australians are getting pretty wound up with their government by the look of it.

      The third dose is a bit alarming. I don’t want to criticise anyone’s personal decision for their own health, but how many more doses are there going to be, and what guarantee do we have that the third one will work?

      Edit: I would like to say,about the lion/sheep meme, that people got the vaxx for all kinds of reasons, and I do not feel morally superior to anyone who is vaccinated, and I hope that they don’t feel morally superior to me either.

  5. So the Wuhan Covid19 – SARs 2 has been circulating for around 2 years during which time, the number of children affected or becoming seriously ill has been minuscule (as evidence by the lack of any headlines). Despite this “FDA officials back Pfizer jab for children over five in US”.
    The BBC has a Health Editor, Michelle Roberts. I’ve no idea about her professional qualifications, certainly none are cited after her name, but here is her analysisof this policy decision:
    “This is a landmark decision that could influence practice in other countries, not just the US.
    Some nations, like Israel, have already intimated that they plan to follow suit.
    The US regulator has carefully weighed the pros and cons and says there is a case for vaccinating younger children against Covid.
    Although most children are unlikely to get seriously ill if they catch coronavirus, they may still be infectious, even with no symptoms.
    The vaccine could help stop them from spreading the virus to others.
    And some young children can still get sick with Covid. The vaccine would guard against that too.
    The world will be watching how the rollout goes with the Pfizer jab and what impact it has on the pandemic”.

    I am at a loss for words.

    1. Here’s a list of cons, one of many reported on sites like this and The Highwire, that the US regulators do not pay attention to. Clearly there is an ulterior motive for the pushing of these jabs whilst literally ignoring the masses of short-term side-effects that are appearing. The mid to long-term side-effects are in unknown territory.

      USA Healthcare Whistleblower

    2. This is so different from people’s actual experience, let alone scientific studies on spread by children etc. How can people fall for it?

  6. #GreenScamWorld

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b66b784522bff6306f12450baa45285da52e62312c2302c36d54e92b9f0989fd.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9f568e76a3e511d5e108cd81de1268ea91851123efeb89e44f45f330f8091807.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a0f6ba414c9eef7d9b4141cf2ec66bbf02f9e6a5f53639241fc91c8cc18bf558.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3de17ade49afe470245f963fa6118d913e06574ec95002b91759be0a660072b9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/149472e33a872bb0e636f16975f08e11c9e9981f1db6787d498153f0cd2c614e.jpg
    It’s no coincidence many of these are interchangeable with the Covid scam the same people are promoting both……

    1. 340526+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,

      Simply because the political overseers are allowed to get away with causing so much disruption.

    2. Morning Minty et al.

      Thank you for posting this excellent piece by Mr O’Neill. I particularly liked this paragraph:

      “For all the radical, existential pretensions of Extinction Rebellion and its various offshoots, of which Insulate Britain is one, in truth these groups are but a more extreme, unsophisticated expression of an utterly mainstream political view: that the planet is doomed and human hubris is the culprit. They are the militant wing of the ruling class, the enforcers of bourgeois ideology masquerading as protesters. Their ‘protesting’ around COP will be pure pantomime. It won’t be a revolt against the Western powers gathered in Glasgow. It will be a noisy, slavish echo of the political prejudices held by those Western powers. It’s a form of assistance to the elites – ‘Do more, please!’ – not a rebellion against them.”

      1. Morning Stephen. It is some measure of how far the State is separated from the People by the
        Vast Sums that are spent on controlling the population by both State Actors and Private Pressure groups; mostly funded by clandestine means from the same source. There has probably never been in the whole of human history, and this includes the Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Modern China, such a Regime. It will fail since all successful societies are driven by innovation from the bottom. The Elites always sink into self-serving decadence as we can now see for ourselves.

      2. Morning Stephen. It is some measure of how far the State is separated from the People by the
        Vast Sums that are spent on controlling the population by both State Actors and Private Pressure groups; mostly funded by clandestine means from the same source. There has probably never been in the whole of human history, and this includes the Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Modern China, such a Regime. It will fail since all successful societies are driven by innovation from the bottom. The Elites always sink into self-serving decadence as we can now see for ourselves.

      3. He is spot on, and they are using XR as a pretext to sneak in draconian and unnecessary laws against protesting.

        The only way to subvert XR demonstrations is to infiltrate them with banners declaring “Climate Fraud”, “Stop the Invasion”, “No to Vaxx Passports” – and then watch the police clearing the demonstration as fast as they can.

      4. Good morning King Stephen and everybody royal and less royal.
        My satirical streak wonders if the Insul Brita group are secretly just a bunch of white supremacists who saw what happened at a certain tower block in London, and thought, way to go!
        Incidentally, I prefer glass fibre insulation, possibly rockwool if you are unconcerned about radon.

    3. The Bills being read in parliament will be using the example of the horrible urchins from BLM etc to pass through, when the Bills are passed we will be under the control of the authorities for ever more. UK Column gave a scary glimpse of the future on their Monday bulletin.

    4. Interesting. I have done some research into HnH and noted that their funding c0mes from HM government and from Trade Unions. I’ve not looked at the others .

    1. The Test and Trace system has been lambasted by a parliamentary group. They have decided that it was an extremely expensive system with shambolic results. Consultants were poorly selected and overpaid. I am sure this is just the start of more exposures in this vein.

      1. Our generation spent its entire working life paying back through excessive taxes for WWII.
        Our grandchildren will be doing the same for a far less worthy cause.

      2. The CEO (they used to be called “Managing Directors” before we were ordered to run things like Americans) will have an uncomfortable couple of hours grovelling before a Select Committee, before going off home to bank his bonus.

        Considering the dreadful state of British dentistry, it’s as well that this tiger is toothless.

    2. We currently have a student with us who had to have a second jab in order to come to us. He is at one of Britain’s most famous public schools.

      After his jab he ended up in hospital with myocarditis. He then discovered that two other boys at his school had also developed myocarditis after having had the second jab.

      There is no doubt in my mind that the truth about the side effects of the jabs are being deliberately suppressed.

      1. I imagine the fear from the covid death outweighs the statistical probability of risk factors from side effects from the vaccine.

        Sadly, with our population and current level of scientific advancement probability is all we have.

    3. Could it not be that the vaccinated, by virtue of their vaccination are spending more time socialising, going out and thus exposing themselves with a false sense of security?

      However, while they may be infected, are they symptomatic? Are these folk who are infected and vaccinated actually ill? I hope not. If they are – and that’s the reason they were tested it exposes that the vaccine isn’t quite as effective as they think it is.

  11. Morning all

    SIR – Annabel Heseltine’s article (“‘I’m fed up with anti-vaxxers taking up hospital beds’”, Features, October 25) raises some important issues about how well our “free” healthcare system has managed Covid, and the rights and responsibilities of those who have access to it.

    She writes that of the 7,000 patients currently occupying NHS beds with Covid, 40 per cent (2,800) have not been fully vaccinated. We heard last week that 25 per cent of patients in hospital with Covid (1,750) went in for another reason, implying that many acquired the infection in hospital. So that figure of 7,000 should potentially be closer to 2,450.

    We are never told how many patients admitted to intensive care with Covid have been fully vaccinated; we need to know.

    As a retired consultant orthopaedic surgeon, I completely respect the individual’s right to decline medical treatment, even when the risk-benefit ratio is overwhelmingly favourable, but with that right must come some responsibility. It would not be unreasonable for those who decline vaccinations (without good reason) to be denied elective NHS treatment until the Covid pandemic is over.

    Advertisement

    Furthermore, if it transpires that vaccinations prevent ICU admission, and ICU beds have to be rationed (due to flu or the backlog of urgent elective care such as cancer and heart disease), those who have declined vaccinations should have a lower priority for a finite resource.

    Patrick Loxdale FRCS

    Llanilar, Cardiganshire

    SIR – Individual liberty and freedom of choice are essential elements of any liberal democracy, but only up to the point when they threaten the lives of other members of the public. That is why we have mandatory speed limits on our roads and penalties when they are broken.

    The millions of British citizens who have chosen not to receive Covid vaccinations have caused greater levels of infection, increased numbers of hospital admissions and raised the number of avoidable deaths.

    It cannot be right that the irresponsible and selfish behaviour of a small minority can have such a dreadful impact on the rest of society.

    Rear Admiral Philip Mathias (retd)

    Southsea, Hampshire

    SIR – My first Covid jab was a 20-mile round trip, the second was 35 miles, as was my husband’s booster. My booster will be another 35 miles on the clock. None of these journeys would be possible by public transport.

    Sandra Hancock

    Exeter, Devon

    SIR – I was interested to read about the gentleman who travelled from Brixham in Devon to Taunton in Somerset for his booster jab (Letters, October 25). My brother lives in Taunton but was sent to Beaminster in Dorset for his booster. Is there a gentleman in Beaminster who was sent to Brixham for his?

    Jon Yabsley

    Nailsea, Somerset

    1. Worth mentioning that, as far as I am aware, I have exactly the same medical degree as Phil Matthias [ie none]; I don’t agree with him, and I wonder how “millions .. who have chosen not to receive Covid vaccinations” can also be “a small minority”? I do however support his actions on Continuing Healthcare!!

  12. DVLA bottleneck

    SIR – Since October 4, I have been trying to get my 85-year-old mother’s Dutch passport back from the DVLA, which received it on August 17.

    In desperation, we sought an emergency travel document, so that she would not miss her holiday in Portugal. We completed questions on the Netherlands Embassy website, only to discover: “If the Home Office, DVLA or Student Finance has your Dutch passport or ID card, you cannot apply for a new travel or emergency document. You should ask for the return of your passport or ID card.”

    The public are entirely at the mercy of civil servants.

    Juliette Smits

    Epsom, Surrey

    1. Nothing new. In the Blair era, “for security and management reasons”, the British Government insisted I send originals of my passport and bank statements for the last six months through the post to a subcontractor working for the British Embassy in Manila before they would process my Filipina girlfriend’s three-week tourist visa, which I was sponsoring. The fee was a non-returnable £70, a three-month delay and travel expenses while she flew from Cebu to Manila and then waited in the queue for an appointment was extra. She also had to have a signed undertaking from her employer to guarantee her job upon her return, as I had to get an undertaking from mine that my job was permanent. No such problems if your life matters though – jihadis, pickpockets and chancers get in free.

      When I visited the Philippines, I could get a tourist visa by filling in a form on the plane and getting my passport stamped at border control. It cost me a fiver.

    2. Hi folks – it’s me again 🙂

      DVLA – sitting at home being ballotted on strike action and effing Sunak is proposing they get a payrise!!!

      The Tories have truly lost the ability to read the public mood.

    3. An agency once wanted my passport. It wouldn’t accept a photocopy.

      I told them no, I wouldn’t send my passport through the post to them for them to lose and abuse. They said well, they wouldn’t process my request.

      I replied, yes, you will. They didn’t seem to understand that the world did not revolve around them.

  13. Good Moaning.
    Links to a couple of DT items: the articles are rather long, but I will post them if NOTTLers wish to see them.
    In short, our grandchildren will be paying for this fiasco throughout their working lives.

    p.s. DO NOT check your blood pressure after reading these articles.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/eye-watering-waste-money-says-damning-report-nhs-test-trace/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/missed-targets-unused-labs-staff-paid-watch-netflix-nhs-test/

    1. Good morning Anne

      How NHS Test & Trace frittered away £37bn
      Unused labs and workers paid to watch Netflix: MPs release report into a ‘world-beating’ system that lurched from one failure to the next.

      Who has put together the sum of £37bn.

      How was that calculated , I mean , Test and Trace was an IT exercise , wasn’t it .

      How can £37bn just vanish into thin air .

      HS2 costs … another white elephant .. Who has decided to convert millions to billions .. The maths must be wrong.
      “The high-speed rail project is now expected to cost at least £107.7bn, up from £32.7bn in 2012. The cost of HS2 – the planned high-speed railway line linking London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds – has increased by £1.7bn in the past year.”

      1. Creative transfer of anything of value into crony mitts. Having disposed of the family silver, then flogged off the gold and maxed out the credit cards, I suppose the next thing they’ll have to do to get their quarterly remuneration fix is to auction off the kids, The Afghans have set up the process, and there must be eager takers in the Arab world for slaves. No statues are harmed in this process.

      1. Crack open that sherry bottle. You will need it:
        1.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/eye-watering-waste-money-says-damning-report-nhs-test-trace/

        NHS Test and Trace criticised as ‘eyewatering’ waste of cash

        Scheme failed to prevent Covid lockdowns and enable return to normality despite £37bn funding, says damning report

        26 October 2021 • 10:00pm

        Under attack … Baroness Dido Harding will leave her post as chairman of NHS Improvement at the end of this month

        Baroness Harding will leave her post as chairman of NHS Improvement at the end of this month Credit: Andrew Parsons/Shutterstock

        NHS Test and Trace has been an “eye-watering” waste of taxpayers’ money that did not achieve its objectives, despite £37billion of funding, a report has warned.

        The funding – equal to almost a fifth of the entire health service budget – was used to hire more than 2,000 consultants who were employed on rates of more than £1,000 a day, the report by the public accounts committee (PAC) found.

        At certain times, just 11 per cent of contact tracers were working, the PAC found, with the figure never rising beyond 49 per cent.

        MPs said billions had been squandered on a failed promise to “enable people to return towards a more normal way of life”, which instead saw two national lockdowns and a rise in case numbers.

        The excoriating report – published just before the Chancellor sets out details of a £5.9 billion funding boost for the NHS – details a host of missed targets and a lack of control over spending on consultants.

        The report details how the system repeatedly failed to break chains of transmission, with a growing crisis last winter as waiting times for test results grew, yet laboratory capacity remained unused.

        Major blow for the programme – and Prime Minister

        The publication marks a major blow for a programme, which was championed by then health secretary Matt Hancock and hailed by Boris Johnson as “world-beating”.

        When it was launched last May, Mr Hancock said it would enable the Government to replace national lockdowns with “individual isolation” for contacts of Covid-19 cases.

        Dame Meg Hillier, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: “The national Test & Trace programme was allocated eye-watering sums of taxpayers’ money in the midst of a global health and economic crisis.

        “It set out bold ambitions but has failed to achieve them despite the vast sums thrown at it.”

        The report shows how the performance of the system deteriorated just when it was needed most – despite spare capacity in laboratories. Meanwhile, less than half of the contact tracing staff hired were ever in use at any one time.

        While the country was in lockdown in February, just 11 per cent of contact tracers were working.

        ‘Paid to watch Netflix at home’

        Last year, call handlers at NHS Test and Trace told how they were effectively being paid to “watch Netflix” at home, with one describing receiving £4,500 without attending to a single call.

        The report noted: “[NHS Test and Trace] has a 50 per cent target utilisation rate for its contact centre staff, but the highest reached was 49 per cent at the beginning of January 2021 and this had fallen to 11 per cent by the end of February 2021.

        “Over Christmas 2020, when there appeared to be spare laboratory capacity and Covid-19 cases were rising, performance declined and it took longer to provide test results, with only 17 per cent of people receiving test results within 24 hours in December 2020.”

        Between November 2020 and April 2021, the average utilisation of labs was just 45 per cent, the report noted.

        “Most of the testing and contact tracing capacity that [NHS Test and Trace] paid for has not been used,” the report found.

        Almost 700 million lateral flow tests were distributed by NHS Test and Trace.

        The system requires results to be registered online, allowing the spread of the virus to be tracked. But this was achieved in just 14 per cent of cases, the report found.

        “It is not clear what benefit the remaining 595 million tests have secured,” MPs said.

        Government scientists recommended that for a test and trace system to be effective, no more than 48 hours should elapse between identifying an original case and their contacts self-isolating.

        But it took until January of this year before NHS Test and Trace met its own far less stretching target to reach 80 per cent of contacts within 72 hours.

        ‘One of the most expensive health programmes delivered in the pandemic’

        The report concluded: “NHS Test and Trace has been one of the most expensive health programmes delivered in the pandemic with an allocated an eye-watering £37 billion over two years, although it underspent by £8.7 billion in its first year.

        “It has focused on delivering programmes but its outcomes have been muddled and a number of its professed aims have been overstated or not achieved.

        “For the vast sums of money set aside for the programme, equal to nearly 20 per cent of the 2020–21 NHS England budget, we need to see a proper long-term strategy and legacy.”

        The system “failed to deliver on its central promise of averting another lockdown”, and its promise to “help break chains of Covid-19 transmission and enable people to return towards a more normal way of life,” the report noted.

        Despite promises to reduce dependency on management consultants, it employed more in April 2021 than in December 2020, with 2,239 on its books, on average rates of £1,100 a day, and some “undoubtedly” paid more, health officials said.

        The report suggested spending on such consultants had got “out of hand” – with significant discrepancies in accounts of spending levels.

        “[NHS Test and Trace] does not have a firm grip on its overall spending on consultants. It estimates that it will spend a total of £195 million on consultancy in 2021–22, but at the same time, indicated it would be spending £300 million on its top 10 consultancy suppliers alone.”

        The influential committee has called on the UK Health Security Agency – which is now responsible for NHS Test and Trace – to set out a clear plan to deliver its objectives.

        The report is released as official figures show 6.4 million booster jabs have been administered across the UK.

        The Government’s official dashboard will now include booster data for the first time, it was announced on Tuesday, including the percentage of people over 12 that have received a booster jab.

        Third doses given to people over 12 who are severely immunocompromised and booster jabs offered to all over 50s and health and social care workers will be recorded together on the dashboard.

        Baroness Harding, who presided over the system until April this year, will leave her post as chairman of NHS Improvement at the end of this month.

        Dame Meg added: “The continued reliance on the over-priced consultants who ‘delivered’ this state of affairs will by itself cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.

        “For this huge amount of money we need to see a legacy system ready to deliver when needed but it’s just not clear what there will be to show in the long term. This legacy has to be a focus for the Government if we are to see any value for the money spent.

        “Our first report on [NHS Test and Trace] concluded that it was overly reliant on expensive contractors and temporary staff. We found that by October 2020, it had signed 407 contracts worth £7 billion with 217 public and private organisations. By the end of December 2020, this had risen to over 600 contracts.”

        Estimates from NHS Test and Trace this summer suggested that in 2020-21 it would spend £372 million on agency and contractor staff and £195 million on consultancy fees, compared with £52 million on permanent and seconded staff.

        ‘Failure of recruitment campaigns’

        The organisation said these figures were expected to rise in final records. Despite promises to cut spending on consultants, attempts to secure permanent staff have repeatedly failed, the report suggests.

        More than a third of the 523 recruitment campaigns up to the end of May 2021 failed to appoint anyone, it stated.

        A government spokesperson said: “NHS Test and Trace has delivered on what it set out to do – break chains of transmission and save lives. To date, over 323 million tests have been delivered and almost 20 million people contacted who could otherwise have unknowingly transmitted the virus.

        “We have rightly drawn on the extensive expertise of a number of public and private sector partners who have been invaluable in helping us tackle the virus.

        “We’ve built a testing network from scratch that can process millions of tests a day – more than any European country – providing a free LFD or PCR test to anybody who needs one.”

        Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said: “NHS Test and Trace has played an essential role in combating this pandemic. As the Public Accounts Committee acknowledges, there have been improvements in testing capacity, turnaround times and speed and reach of contact tracing – and improved collaboration with local authorities.”

        1. And …. for my second trick …. open the second sherry bottle…

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/missed-targets-unused-labs-staff-paid-watch-netflix-nhs-test/

          Missed targets, unused labs and staff ‘paid to watch Netflix’: How NHS Test & Trace frittered away £37bn

          MPs release damning report into ‘world-beating’ system that was supposed to avert lockdown but instead lurched from one failure to the next

          26 October 2021 • 10:00pm

          The system was presided over by Baroness Dido Harding, who leaves her NHS post this month

          The system was presided over by Baroness Harding, who leaves her NHS post this month Credit: Pippa Fowles/AFP

          NHS Test and Trace was given one fundamental task: to “help break chains of Covid-19 transmission and enable people to return towards a more normal way of life”.

          On this, the £37 billion operation failed, says the most damning of reports by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

          The system, presided over by Baroness Harding, who leaves her NHS post this month, made one broken pledge after another, MPs said on Wednesday.

          Perhaps most critically, it “failed to deliver on its central promise of averting another lockdown”. With targets to deliver test results repeatedly missed, the country was plunged into two more.

          The report, released on Wednesday and published as the Chancellor set out details of a £5.9 billion funding boost for the NHS, could not be a more salutory reminder of the dangers of allocating vast sums of public money without a clear plan.

          NHS Test and Trace was never part of the health service, having been created by the Department of Health and Social Care last May, when Boris Johnson promised a “world-beating” tracing system. The report by MPs on the PAC details a system which is anything but.

          Testing

          In May 2020, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recommended that for a test and trace system to be effective, no more than 48 hours should elapse between identifying an original case and their contacts self-isolating.

          Yet it took until January of this year before NHS Test and Trace met a far easier target – to reach 80 per cent of contacts within 72 hours – the report found.

          As cases rose last autumn, waiting times for test results deteriorated.

          Meanwhile, labs were underused, with swathes of unused capacity, the report showed. “Between November 2020 and April 2021, the average utilisation of its laboratories was 45 per cent.”

          As pressures mounted, performance worsened.

          “Over Christmas 2020, when there appeared to be spare laboratory capacity and Covid-19 cases were rising, performance declined and it took longer to provide test results, with only 17 per cent of people receiving test results within 24 hours in December 2020.”

          Meanwhile, uptake of testing remains dangerously low, with just 18 to 33 per cent of those with Covid-19 symptoms reporting getting a test, the report noted.

          NHS Test and Trace is also responsible for the distribution of lateral flow tests under a programme which is supposed to detect asymptomatic cases of Covid-19, and halt their spread.

          Around 700 million lateral flow tests have been sent out by NHS Test and Trace, with the Government encouraging people to take them twice weekly.

          The system requires results to be registered online, allowing the spread of the virus to be tracked. But this was achieved in just 14 per cent of cases, the report found.

          “It is not clear what benefit the remaining 595 million tests have secured,” MPs said.

          Tracing

          Quick results are crucial to break the chains of transmission, the very purpose of NHS Test and Trace.

          But the failing system saw vast sums frittered on workers who were given little or nothing to do.

          Last year, call handlers at NHS Test and Trace told how they were effectively being paid to “watch Netflix” at home, with one saying they received £4,500 without attending to a single call.

          Shockingly, the report revealed that deployment of contact tracers fell to an all-time low during the last lockdown.

          The report noted: “[NHS Test & Trace] has a 50 per cent target utilisation rate for its contact centre staff, but the highest reached was 49 per cent at the beginning of January 2021 and this had fallen to 11 per cent by the end of February 2021.

          “Most of the testing and contact tracing capacity that [NHS Test & Trace] paid for has not been used,” the report bluntly states.

          Spending

          The sums awarded to NHS Test and Trace were vast, said MPs.

          “NHS Test and Trace has been one of the most expensive health programmes delivered in the pandemic with an allocation of an eye-watering £37 billion over two years, although it underspent by £8.7 billion in its first year.

          “It has focused on delivering programmes but its outcomes have been muddled and a number of its professed aims have been overstated or not achieved.

          “For the vast sums of money set aside for the programme, equal to nearly 20 per cent of the 2020–21 NHS England budget, we need to see a proper long-term strategy and legacy.”

          Much of the funding was spent on consultants, brought in from private firms to advise or provide technical skills.

          Repeated promises by NHS Test and Trace to cut spending on consultants and employ more of their own staff made little difference.

          Despite promises to reduce dependency on management consultants, it employed more in April 2021 than in December 2020, with 2,239 on its books, on average rates of £1,100 a day, and some paid more.

          The report stated spending on consultants appeared to have got “out of hand” – with significant discrepancies in accounts of spending levels.

          “[NHS Test and Trace] does not have a firm grip on its overall spending on consultants. It estimates that it will spend a total of £195 million on consultancy in 2021–22, but at the same time, indicated it would be spending £300m on its top 10 consultancy suppliers alone …

          “Our first report on [NHS Test and Trace] concluded that it was overly reliant on expensive contractors and temporary staff. We found that by October 2020, it had signed 407 contracts worth £7 billion with 217 public and private organisations. By the end of December 2020, this had risen to over 600 contracts.”

          Estimates from NHS Test & Trace this summer suggested that in 2020/21 it would spend £372 million on agency and contractor staff and £195 million on consultancy fees, compared with £52 million on permanent and seconded staff.

          The organisation said these figures were expected to rise in final records.

          Attempts to secure permanent staff have repeatedly failed, the report suggested. More than a third of the 523 recruitment campaigns up to the end of May 2021 failed to appoint anyone.

          Scientists are still more scathing.

          Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology, University of Reading, said: “The Public Accounts Committee report has highlighted a great many shortcomings in the NHS Test & Trace service, which it says has failed in its objective of breaking the chains of Covid-19 transmission.

          “Baroness Harding previously boasted that the operation was the size of Tesco, without conceding that the supermarket chain actually works.”

          What now?

          MPs have urged the UK Health Security Agency – which is now responsible for NHS Test and Trace – to set out a clear plan to deliver its objectives.

          They said: “[NHS Test & Trace] has focused on delivering programmes but its outcomes have been muddled and a number of its professed aims have been overstated or not achieved. For the vast sums of money set aside for the programme, equal to nearly 20 per cent of the 2020-21 NHS England budget, we need to see a proper long-term strategy and legacy.”

          Health officials are now being asked to publish, by the end of this year, a performance management framework setting out how this will be achieved.

          Dame Meg Hillier, the chairman of PAC, said such waste of public funds must never be repeated.

          “For this huge amount of money, we need to see a legacy system ready to deliver when needed but it’s just not clear what there will be to show in the long term.”

          A government spokesperson said: “NHS Test & Trace has delivered on what it set out to do – break chains of transmission and save lives. To date, over 323 million tests have been delivered and almost 20 million people contacted who could otherwise have unknowingly transmitted the virus.

          “We have rightly drawn on the extensive expertise of a number of public and private sector partners who have been invaluable in helping us tackle the virus. We’ve built a testing network from scratch that can process millions of tests a day – more than any European country – providing a free LFD or PCR test to anybody who needs one.

          “The new UK Health Security Agency will consolidate the knowledge that now exists across our health system to help us tackle future pandemics and threats.”

        2. When I charge my day rate on a contract I start at 8 – I’m usually on site by 7 and I finish at 8. Anyone with me on the same rate is expected to do the same and most do. We have a schedule of works and expected outcomes with milestones we define to our employer.

          The idea of buggering around while charging those fees, with no clear outcome, goal or expectation is absurd. Yet this is what happens when the money isn’t yours.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/64970d3556633c6afc181044183cfe5302316fa63d5b70d7f9b6e82083321bfa.png

    1. The “vaccine” isn’t wholly a medical procedure, it clearly has a greater political intent. Sadly, too many people still believe that the government has the people’s best interests at heart.

      1. 340526+ up ticks,
        Morning KtK,
        Sad to say, so bloody true,a majority of the herd are STILL fighting an internal war as in must vote tory (ino) party to keep out lab,
        must vote lab (ino) to keep out tory (ino),
        refusing to acknowledge the fact that all three are an anti United Kingdom coalition.

      2. As the NZ doctor in my posting of yesterday pointed out, it is not a vaccine. It is a “treatment”.

  15. Serving soldiers will not carry Dennis Hutchings’ coffin, says MoD. 27 October 2021.

    The Ministry of Defence has said that serving soldiers will not carry the coffin of Dennis Hutchings, the veteran who died part way through his controversial trial over a fatal shooting during the Troubles.

    The decision has deeply upset the family of Hutchings, whose funeral will now take place according to his final wishes on Armistice Day. Thousands of former soldiers are expected to line the route in tribute.

    One should never underestimate the small-mindedness or the petty resentments of the apparatchiks.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/ministry-defence-says-serving-soldiers-will-not-carry-dennis/

    1. Even by the standards of Snivel Serpents, that is shitty.
      No doubt, they have some obscure clause of a DoE MoD rule to wheel out.

      1. Yes. Spite.

        Only when the MoD and Foreign office is held responsible – every single one of them – for the conflict in Ireland nothing will change.

        If they’re going to let those following orders be punished then those giving them should also be.

  16. 340526+ up ticks,

    Does the herd glean any inner message from this statement ?

    Face masks become mandatory in the Commons – for everyone except MPs
    Authorities do not have the power to force Members of Parliament to wear masks but will now require them for all other staff

    1. Can’t have scrofulous peasants breathing their halitosis over the Wise (Sage?) Ones.
      At all times, they must be reminded of their inferior status.

      1. Why do the minions have to wear masks? Why could they not step to one side when meeting a superior, turn away their faces, and bow their heads? It would work better than masks.

        1. Better still, bury their noses in the carpet pile and present their posteriors to their betters as the exulted float by in majesty.

  17. Fauci is a dog torturer. May God curse him and turn his face from him. Posted on October 25, 2021 by Pat Lang

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cd5750313fa36e99f029479f9b06f6aa563187066b244cca715ce5b86ef8f1f8.jpg

    CANDACE Owens compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to a notorious Nazi doctor in a shocking tweet Monday after outrage over his alleged funding of sick experiments on puppies.

    Candace was referring to recent criticism of Dr. Fauci for allegedly funding experiments where beagle puppies were locked in cages with hungry sandflies that would eat them alive.

    I like dogs but I am not a sentimentalist about them. That said there is something unutterably dreadful about this photograph. It provokes a response not unlike looking into one of the “Shower Rooms” at Auschwitz.

    https://turcopolier.com/fauci-is-a-dog-torturer-may-god-curse-him-and-turn-his-face-from-him/

    1. Good morning Minty

      Fauci has no soul , he is similar to the different races on this earth that commit crimes against humanity and all living creatures.

      The devil walks amongst us all.

      Psychopathic behavior varies greatly from one individual to another. Some are sex offenders and murderers. But others may be successful leaders. It all depends on their traits.

      What Are Common Traits of Psychopathy?
      It’s important to distinguish between psychopaths and individuals with psychopathic traits. It’s possible to exhibit several psychopathic traits without being an actual psychopath.

      Individuals with psychopathic traits don’t necessarily engage in psychopathic behavior. Only individuals with psychopathic traits who also exhibit antisocial behavior are considered to be psychopaths.

      Psychopathic traits commonly include:2

      Antisocial behavior
      Narcissism
      Superficial charm
      Impulsivity
      Callous, unemotional traits
      Lack of guilt
      Lack of empathy
      One study found that about 29% of the general population exhibit one or more psychopathic traits. But just 0.6% of the population is likely to fit the definition of a psychopath.3

      https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-psychopath-5025217

    2. One has to wonder what medical reason there was for committing this abominable act. Fauci’s reputation amongst decent people was at an all-time low before this news was released, it must have reached rock-bottom now. Sadly, creatures like Fauci are from the same mould as Biden and others in the current administration e.g. CDC head Walensky, who appears to be very happy about jabbing 5 – 11 years old children. So many monsters appearing all at one time across the World. They hid their real thoughts and intentions well.

      3. Apparently, now a days, there is no good reason for doing the sort of testing that he subjected the beagles to. Which leads me to assume that he is either a sadist of a psychopath or, perhaps, both. What was actually done to these puppies I am not going to go in to. But someone who does that to animals I could cheerfully shoot.

    4. Watching Fauci in congressional Hearings one has to come to the conclusion that he is dishonest. He rarely answers a question without trying to wiggle his way out of it. He seems to be quite incapable of giving a straightforward answer.

      1. I agree – but unfortunately many of our politicians do this.

        A prime example of this is Boris Johnson who never gives a straight answer. Remember how determined he was not to let us know what was in his surrender to the EU WA and how he avoided being properly interviewed on television about it by Andrew Neil?
        This of course probably lies at the very root of the catastrophe that is the NI Protocol.

  19. A BTL comment on Allison Pearson’s piece.

    “Lord Fauntleroy

    27 Oct 2021 8:16AM

    My experience working in the IT department of Avon and Wiltshire mental health Trust 2003 to 2008, during the Connecting For Health IT project.

    – the first decision made, before a single piece of the back end infrastructure was implemented was to increase the number of computers for staff so they could access the system once it was built (in the end it never worked). For our trust of around 4000 staff we had to deploy an additional 500 desktop computers to meet the centrally set ratios of 1 to 3 staff. Half our clinics didn’t have enough space for them all, we were shoving them on any bit of flat space we could find. Meanwhile the staff on the front line, the real heroes, told us how they couldn’t get basic equipment fixed due to lack of funding

    – half way through we started deploying flat lcd monitors instead of the old crt TV style ones. Suddenly it became a health and safety issue and everyone decided they couldn’t live without one too. Hundreds more had to be bought

    – Meanwhile the latest chief executive decided she couldn’t run such an important job from the old head office so relocated the trust HQ to Chippenham from Bath. Twice the size and decked out at great expense, plus the relocation costs. Also needed twice as many senior staff to run the trust, all with secretaries and support staff. Using of course the best laptops and blackberry phones

    – the trust was in deficit so wards closed and outreach teams merged

    – the pfi scheme built shiny new and incredibly expensive new units. Sadly designed by committee so for example no one thought of the hospital porters (too unimportant to be invited) so no space was allocated for them. We arrived at some design meetings to find that the floor plan had been changed by the medical staff to remove all the comms rooms because they didn’t know what they are and decided they couldn’t be as important as the consultants having a nice big office

    – the director of HR, Finance and IT took us all out for an away day. 100 or so staff. He ran a PowerPoint presentation with his vision. Including the mission statement of the trust. Providing Excellent Patient Care was third on the list. 1 and 2 were the usual bs about governance and probity

    – the glass ceiling between the people doing the work and the management was impenetrable. No one felt they had a future. Management were universally incompetent but group think kept them secure and well paid

    – the IT operations manager was diagnosed with aspergers. Every security risk he read about on The Register was targeted at him personally. Removing the risk was paramount, money no object

    – the head of IT knew literally nothing about IT. Looking at LinkedIn she now runs a jewellery company. She signed off anything the ops manager said was needed

    – the ops manager unilaterally decided to move all our infrastructure to Citrix without first checking if the central Patient system ran on Citrix. Guess what? It didn’t

    I could go on and on

    After five years going home angry I left”

    1. Compared with the £37 billion spent on Testes and Tracy the waste of around £18 billion on Connecting for Health seems an absolute bargain!

    2. Compared with the £37 billion spent on Testes and Tracy the waste of around £18 billion on Connecting for Health seems an absolute bargain!

    3. I left the Severn Trent Water Authority for much the same reasons forty years ago. The present foofaraw about sewage reminds me that one of the main reasons for its creation was to prevent such and clear the Rivers and Streams. What happened?

    5. And that is the organisation that people turned out to clap for! Our problem in Britain is that we confuse doctors, nurses, midwives yes and hospital porters too! – with the NHS.

    6. The PFI Special Measures hospital built in Worcester required the closure and sale of the Victorian Royal Infirmary site in the city centre, the closure and sale of the sprawling 1940s Utility-era site at Ronkswood, the downgrading of general hospitals in Kidderminster and Redditch, with most functions centralised on the new hospital, and the reducing of cottage hospitals in Malvern and Pershore to the status of health clinics.

      As part of the hiving off of Ronkswood to developers, they closed the nurses’ hostel, requiring nurses to commute in. However, there was no room in the car park for them, even by charging nurses patients’ rates to use them, so they had to ration their use to three stops a week, and hitch a lift with a colleague the other days they were on duty. Land earmarked for expansion was better used to be sold off for an exciting out-of-town John Lewis shopping experience.

      Most important to the authorities was an airport-style foyer, with lots of glass and space for retail outlets for the medics, patients and visitors to pay for at airport prices.

      Am I supposed to respect my betters?

          1. It is also very ugly, as well as being on the wrong site (chosen by Kirsty Wark allegedly). I’d have gone for the New Town style, old Royal High kind of thing.

      1. Has her latest piece been shared here, for those of us unable or unwilling to by-pass the paywall?

    8. I’m not remotely surprised.

      We quadruple our billing rate to any NHS contract simply because if we didn’t, we would lose money (and we don’t want them). Once, as an enthusiastic group of fellows 3 years ago we went into a small out of the way Doctor’s surgery – nothing complicated: a leased line, phone system, networking for the comps – no desktop replacements, just infrastructure. We met, we had lots of meetings, lots of planning with everyone, support staff, visitors, healthcare workers, weekend folks for when we would be in, a schedule of works, everyone was lined up, kit was bought and ready to go in – then we got the first few forms.

      Then big wigs visited to ask about the cabling. Then aa wonk arrived with a clipboard to do another site survey. As we were a week behind, the installer has to take on another job, so he goes off. Ditto the electrician. I had 6 boxes of hardware gathering dust.

      Earlier this year as a lock up project that kit went into my house. It’s absurd.

    1. Whenever folk use percentages like the one above I do wish they would quote actual numbers as for example an increase of 1 over 1 is a 100% increase. That’s not to say that the issue raised above isn’t important and to be valid any review should include the same period in say over the past 5-10 years.

      1. Good morning, your majesty

        Politicians bank on the fact that people do not fully understand percentages. Say they want to raise VAT from 20% to 22% they will say they are making a slight increase in the VAT rate of only 2%. But is terms of the actual rise in the tax to be paid it is a rise of 10%

        (£50 taxed at 20 % = Tax of £10; £50 taxed at 22% = Tax of £11. Actual rise of tax from £10 – £11 is a tax rise of 10% not 2%)

    2. I’m not sure of the exact date that 15-19 vaxes started, around end of August I think. In the seven weeks since then, the numbers are 114 for this year and 87 for last year. But comparing the 7 weeks after vaxes to the immediate 7 weeks before vaxes, the numbers are actually down.

      Taking the year-to-date as a whole – ie January to mid-October, the rate is also up, from 553 to 644.

      A bit of context makes a lot of difference.

  21. 340526+ up ticks,

    The peoples that in my mind are going to be still standing after this political orchestrated blitzkrieg of sh!te are the likes of Neil Oliver, Anne Marie Waters, Gerard Batten etc, and followers of their ilk.

    The reckoning MUST come soon as in many cases it is too late already.

    The pikes MUST come together by the rising of the moon rings very , very true on this occasion reinstating a sense of political decency & integrity
    to a peoples reset parliament.

    The lab/lib/con coalition / supporters / voters ARE the continuing problem
    you do NOT give succour to those that wish you ill and are putting that wish into daily action.

  22. Good morning from a very mild Derbyshire. A late start owing to a disturbed night.
    Dry, overcast and 9½°C in the yard.

  24. Funny thing… I thought that we had HAD the Budget – it has been all over the paper for the last week. Now I read that Fishy Rishi has been told off by the Speaker for leaking it weeks in advance.

    Why do they bother with “secrecy” these days?

    2. Its probably the con man’s distraction trick. Whilst you are watching his lips move you are not noticing what is being written into the budget legislation.

    3. Morning all.

      Never mind budget “secrecy”, why do we need a budget at all? We have forests of money trees springing up all over the U.K.

      1. Sorry the forests are being chopped down for bio-fuel to provide our coming paradise of net zero.

          2. Thank you Stephen. That was quite beautiful. My favourite “modern” composer is Richard Strauss. In particular ‘Death & Transfiguration’ and his ‘Four Last Songs’. I have not heard Faure before, or at least, not consciously, but this piece puts me in mind of Strauss. I must listen more to Faure. Thank you again. Got any recommendations?

          4. I found the entire Requiem and will listen later on this afternoon.

            I particularly like a cappella but that is not terribly surprising being an Orthodox Christian. I have no doubt that you are aware that many of the Russian composers wrote sacred music, Tchaikovsky’s Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is well known and if you haven’t heard it you can find that on You Tube too. But musically I’m all over the map. My favourite music is Arabic, to be specific Om Kalsom, an Egyptian singer, now long deceased. Her music would be played from almost every shop in Al Khums, where I lived as a child. It is a symptom of the times that I feel almost apprehensive to admit that I like Arabic music, shows how badly the well has been poisoned by Islam.

          7. Hmmm, listened briefly but I will give it a try this evening.
            This is Om Kalsom singing my favourite piece. In English the title translates as: “The Ruins”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z8LvG5tfOE
            A long musical introduction is typical of this sort of music. She also sings a piece of music which would be very familiar to you as Ravels Bolero but the proper version. She controls the orchestra with her singing.

            I found this as an afterthought. Wonderful thing the internet. The lyrics in English
            https://lyricstranslate.com/en/alatlal-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B7%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%84-ruins.html

    4. What will the budget contain. Higher taxes, the poor made poorer, the rich made richer, the state expanding yet again.

      More borrowed, more waste, yet another turn down the drain. More unemployment – hidden by another fiddle of the figures. More QE, more debt.

      Yet more reckless stupidity from a Left wing, spendaholic government.

  25. A steal from BTL

    SIR – I recently tried “meat-free” bacon (Letters, October 25). It looked and smelt delicious. The taste was horrible.

    If ‘meat free bacon’ can be legal, so should Treasury Free Money, ie forgeries

    Or, is that when the Vegetarians, Vegans, Greens, XR, Insulators, etc say, write or infer something, the Humpty Dumpty Law comes into effect:

    When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,

    ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

    ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

    ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is for me to be master — that’s all.” (a slight fiddle)

      1. Which smells like reesty, sweaty, unwashed feet or alternatively, vomit.

        On that delightful note, I’ll say Good morning, BB2.

        1. Good morning to you too N2N!
          I have quite a selective sense of smell, I have discovered. I could never smell when my children’s nappies needed changing, and to this day, I have no idea what cannabis smells like, though people assure me that the smell is everywhere. I guess there must be some benefits to that!

          2. Once smelled, never forgotten. It drifted through the back streets of Cambridge in the 70s like an early morning mist. I never tried it, it was something that didn’t interest me.

          3. For three years at art school I was oblivious to all the iffy smells but when I went back there a few months after leaving, to clear out my locker, the strong smelly cocktail of legal and illegal substances hit me as soon as I walked in through the main entrance.

          4. Sue you are such a dark horse! What did you study at art school if you don’t mind me asking?

        2. Believe it or not Nanny, the reason that Parmesan has that smell is because it contains a chemical that produces the characteristic smell of a good up chuck.

      2. I have had some similar thought for the future,

        Petrol powered Electric Car
        Diesel Powered Electric Car
        Gas powered Electric Boiler
        Log powered Electric fire

        All as legal as meat free Bacon

    2. The Left have always, first and foremost sought to control language to control thought.

      If you can set who can say what, and what they can say then you’ve got power over them.

  26. Good Morning, all

    I’m back!

    She appeared to be fishy from the moment she hove into view…

    Freddy Gray
    Frances Haugen: a very convenient whistleblower
    Beware of ‘truth tellers’ with political consultants behind them
    26 October 2021, 4:59pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt2cdc29a83d177dac/6178e1d0b895353cf6b82240/GettyImages-1235715401.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Facebook wants to move its business model towards the metaverse, that virtual future in which we will all hang out online through headsets and pretend it isn’t weird.

    The trouble is, we already appear to live in an alternate reality created by communications specialists with highly political agendas. Just look at the clearly PR-orchestrated Online Safety vs Facebook story which the media is playing out before our non-digital eyes.

    This week’s protagonist is Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who appeared yesterday in parliament to give evidence to MPs scrutinising the Online Harms Bill. That is the bill through which the government says it intends to regulate social media companies to stop online hate, bullying, terrorist radicalisation and so on. And here is Frances, telling MPs that Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) is a playground for bullies and puts profits above child safety.

    Outside parliament, a rather expensive looking ‘art installation’ has appeared. It shows Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook owner, surfing his hydrofoil board on a wave of cash and waving a flag with the message: ‘I know we harm kids but I don’t care.’

    Look at the news photographs, scan the reports, and Haugen seems to be exactly what supporters of the Online Harms Bill want her to be: a ‘whistleblower’, a Goodie, a Facebook insider who saw the company’s wickedness up close and decided in good conscience to blow the story wide open. We all lap such stories up, especially when they involve the powerful technology companies which increasingly dominate our lives. It’s Truth Tellers and Righteous Journalists taking down the Vile Tech Overlords.

    Dig just a little deeper and you see something different. Haugen isn’t a whistleblower in the way that term is normally understood. She is the frontwoman of a well-orchestrated PR campaign pushed by the Democratic party in America, which appears to have been exquisitely timed to support a government push to censor and control information.

    There are echoes of Russiagate here, the massive transatlantic story that Russia somehow hacked democracy in 2016. We see again parliamentary committee hearings serving as theatres for far more powerful factions to advance their agendas. Indeed, Facebookgate, the story we media users are today consuming, is in some ways perhaps the next chapter to Russiagate.

    It’s all somewhat mysterious. What helps is to know a bit about Frances Haugen, who worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019.

    According to Ben Smith’s media column in the New York Times, Haugen met Jeff Horwitz, a tech-industry reporter at the Wall Street Journal, in December 2020. She decided to trust him with tens of thousands of highly sensitive Facebook documents. This turned into the Facebook Files, a sensational and well-packaged WSJ investigative series that revealed much of what Haugen described to the British parliament yesterday.

    At some point, the Facebook Files story appears to have been hijacked by a communications group run by Bill Burton, former deputy White House press secretary under Barack Obama. With Haugen, Burton’s firm approached journalists from 17 other media titles to form a network of the most powerful American media companies dedicated to spreading apparently embarrassing news about Facebook.

    This isn’t exactly old-fashioned reportage, then. It is more a group of journos being led by the nose by a highly politicised consultancy that works in tandem with the Democrats. That is rum, to put it mildly, and should make us all pause before we swallow the straightforward ‘whistleblower’ talk coming out of Westminster.

    Haugen claims to be independently wealthy. ‘I’m fine because I did buy crypto at the right time,’ she told Smith. She has moved to Puerto Rico, apparently because of her health, though she also joins lots of other people who have made money in crypto and moved there because of the generous capital gains tax breaks.

    But she has accepted help from Mr Burton, who is funded in no small part by the billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who founded eBay. Omidyar reportedly backs a number of pro-transparency groups, including one called Whistleblower Aid, which is led by a lawyer called Mark Zaid, who funnily enough has called for the imprisonment of rather less establishment-friendly whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

    Omidyar seems to have been a fairly normal enlightened philanthropist, at least until 2016, when he became radicalised in horror at the election of Donald Trump. As Glenn Greenwald, who used to work for him, writes: ‘Omidyar proved himself to be a deeply political and partisan person by devoting himself with unlimited energy to opposing the person who was elected in 2016 by the American public to be president.’ Omidyar put considerable resources behind the Russiagate story, which involved blaming Facebook for allowing Russian disinformation on its platforms. So it seems the latest allegations against Facebook are part of a long campaign to control the flow of information on the company’s various platforms.

    But before we all start feeling sorry for Mark Zuckerberg, let’s remember that Haugen’s point is not to make Facebook less powerful but more. She told the US Senate that she is against breaking up Facebook, as many observers are now calling for. Haugen talks passionately about combating foreign ‘espionage’ and promoting ‘civic integrity’, apparently at Facebook’s expense. What she wants though is for Facebook to work in tandem with the government to monitor speech on its platforms. She actually backs censorship and (the right kind) of spying. She is, in other words, a very convenient whistleblower.

    It’s worth noting that Haugen’s job was at Facebook’s ‘Civic Integrity Unit’, which was heavily involved in supressing dangerous or misleading content in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. A cynic might say that the unit’s mission was far more partisan: it was set up to undo the shame of 2016 by helping to stop President Trump’s re-election and supposedly disbanded soon after Joe Biden won the election. It was the Integrity Unit that reportedly helped suppress the New York Post’s scandalous Hunter Biden laptop story, which might have damaged the Democratic nominee if it hadn’t been so totally hushed up.

    Haugen speaks eloquently and conveys a sense of great urgency. ‘When an oil spill happens, it doesn’t make it harder for us to regulate oil companies,’ she told parliament yesterday. ‘Right now, Facebook is closing the door on us being able to act. We have a slight window of time to regain people control over AI.’ She says the ‘global south is in danger’ — by which she means that gullible people in poor countries are more vulnerable to online disinformation. She suggests ‘someone like me’ to work there.

    To be clear, there is no evidence to suggest Haugen is not sincere in her alarm about the sinister side of Facebook. Everybody knows that Facebook, with its immense power and addictiveness, causes a large amount of social harm. But it does seem odd that it is Facebook — the major tech company that seems most willing to confront the gremlins of its business model — in the crosshairs of governments across the world. Why is there not, say, a more concerted effort from western authorities to tackle TikTok, a social media platform that, unlike Facebook, is increasingly popular? TikTok is still Chinese-owned and its algorithms have almost certainly been tuned to suit the national interests of the Chinese Communist party. Google, meanwhile, is so all-powerful that it seems to just brush aside all talk of its dastardly schemes to monopolise online advertising.

    No, it’s always Facebook, for some reason, in the news, and it’s always highly politicised groups pushing the tech censorship agenda while claiming to act only for the public good. And the agenda doesn’t even seem to threaten Facebook and Big Tech’s bottom line in any meaningful way. Enquiring minds should wonder why exactly that is.

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

    PetaJ • 16 hours ago
    Please correct me if I am wrong, but what you are actually saying is that she thinks that as long as the censorship fits the narrative of whoever is pushing for it, it is OK? Sounds familiar.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/frances-haugen-a-very-convenient-whistleblower

    1. She has been talked about a great deal on Fox U.S and on quite a few alternative news sources on the internet. The upshot is that she is not to be trusted but has base motives, as the story alleges, working for the Democrats. The biggest mafia in the USA.

    2. She has been talked about a great deal on Fox U.S and on quite a few alternative news sources on the internet. The upshot is that she is not to be trusted but has base motives, as the story alleges, working for the Democrats. The biggest mafia in the USA.

    4. Tik tok’ers generally can’t vote being too young or mentally incapable. – or in many cases, both.

      Farcebook has huge scope and reach and is actively Left wing in it’s view, determined to control how people will think.

      Bluntly, government wants to control it because they fear it will either outpace them or not do what they want.

      You don’t control a company by breaking it up. You control it by preventing it censoring it’s critics. Put someone who hates it in charge. Heck, it’s blatantly corrupt. That the vermin Clegg is there, bought specifically to buy favourable EU policy is evidence of that.

    5. I have been uncomfortable with her right from the start because she keeps railing that Facebook and Instagram don’t censor enough.

  28. Good morning all from West Sussex. The sun is trying its best to peek through the gloom but the light is a sort of light lead colour. Utterly charming if you are into an industrial look. A good day for painting a still “life” of dustbins against the weeds.

    2. While bins are pretty hideous, having them be that muddy green is much nicer than the charcoal grey they used to be.

      1. = international normalised ratio, Elsie, a measure of blood viscosity for those taking Warfarin (rat poison) in order to prevent blood clotting and causing thrombosis and aneurisms. If your blood was taken and you didn’t take any blood thinners, your INR would measure 1.0.

        For me, the target is 2.0 to 3.0, ideally 2.5.

        Here endeth the lesson on INRs. But it reminds of a story in 1948:

        When Aneurin Bevan stood behind and founded the National Health Service, he was delighted to hear that they’d named a condition after him.

        He rushed to a medical directory and looked it.

        Imagine his dismay when he found that the definition for Aneurism was, “A Bloody Clot That Ought To Be Removed Immediately.”

  30. A bit of common sense from one of the AstraZeneca team:

    Don’t bash UK over high Covid rates – it’s because we test more, says Oxford vaccine creator

    Prof Sir Andrew Pollard tells MPs Britain does have ‘a lot of transmission’ but ‘we have about 10 times more tests done each day’

    The co-creator of the Oxford Covid vaccine has said it is wrong to “bash the UK” with accusations of high case rates because world-leading testing means more infections are picked up than in other countries.

    Prof Sir Andrew Pollard told the science and technology committee on Tuesday: “If you look across western Europe, we have about 10 times more tests done each day, per head of population.

    “We do have a lot of transmission at the moment, but it’s not right to say that those rates are really telling us something that we can compare internationally.”

    The UK has recently reported around 50,000 cases of Covid a day – the highest raw number and case rate per million people in western Europe.

    However, it tests its population far more than other European countries, with around 13 tests per 10,000 people – twice as many as France and 10 times the rate in Germany.

    Sir Andrew said that, when this was taken into account, the UK was no longer an outlier and was comparable to similar nations.

    Germany has a positivity rate in excess of eight per cent, equivalent to one positive test for every 12 conducted. The UK, in contrast, has a positivity rate of just five per cent – the same as one test in every 20 coming back positive.

    “I think when we look at these data it is really important not to bash the UK with a very high case rate, because actually it’s partly related to a very high testing rate,” Sir Andrew said. “I’m not not trying to deny that there’s plenty of transmission at the moment, because there is – it’s just that the comparisons are problematic.”

    Sir Andrew added that daily hospitalisation and death figures were “misleading” because the real-time data cannot discern between those who are admitted or die “with” Covid and admissions or deaths due to Covid.

    “If you have a lot of transmission in the community, lots of people will die from lots of other causes that are not Covid but will be included in the numbers,” he said.

    “The death rates are quite misleading at a time of high Covid in the community. Secondly, the hospital admission data are also misleading because they’re also generated in real time. So if I’m admitted for appendicitis today and I had a Covid positive test, that will appear in the daily data.

    “It’s important to emphasise that this doesn’t mean there isn’t Covid transmission and people being hospitalised with it – it’s just that the rigour of how we look at the data needs to be addressed.”

    Regular testing of asymptomatic individuals, including schoolchildren, is one major driver of the UK’s high case rate/low test positivity paradox, Sir Andrew said.

    “I think probably we need to move in the pandemic, over this winter, maybe towards the end of the winter, to a completely different system of clinically-driven testing,” he added. “In other words, testing people who are unwell rather than having regular testing of those people who are well.”

    Prof Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and the head of the ZOE symptom tracker app, told The Telegraph he also believes the UK’s school testing system should be updated and asymptomatic testing scrapped, with the extra capacity diverted to swab people with cold-like symptoms.

    “The school policy is crazy, still testing kids at school. Once they’re at school they then get sent home and of course the whole school has been infected,” he said. “[The Government] is still doing masses of asymptomatic testing, more than any other country, which is costing billions. It’s totally inefficient.”

    However, Prof Lucy Chappell, the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care, speaking at the committee hearing, said the Government was committed to its current testing regime until at least January.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/dont-bash-uk-high-covid-rates-test-says-oxford-vaccine-creator/

    1. And there you have it – a government incapable of following the science. The question therefore is it following a latent agenda?

      1. It is interesting that centuries ago the Church held absolute power through controlling who could know what.Science – the englightment – replaced that ignorance, people began to read, to think and thus we grew as a society.

        Now the State seeks to force what science we will believe and to make it the sole controller and provider of that.The State also seeks to be the moral authority to dictate how we will think and what we will believe.

        Both were tyrants intent on keep people ignorant through controlling information.

        I wonder – given the general devolution in intellect, in education, in thinking and the sheer scale and dependence the state has created – if we will ever throw off this latest tyrant.

        1. I think that view is a little simplistic.
          The Protestants had already translated the Bible before the Enlightenment, so nobody was controlling who knew what in Protestant countries. Christianity was never intended to be a gnostic religion.
          Churchill correctly identified that Christianity was sheltered in the strong arms of science, but it is also true that science needs to be sheltered in the strong arms of Christianity, otherwise it descends into the kind of fake religion we’re now seeing.

          1. Tyndale was burnt for his efforts translating the Bible.

            Later martyrs were also burnt for not toeing the accepted line at the time.

            The common people were not allowed to read such heresies.

            It’s really only since universal education that people have been allowed to think for themselves.

            The globalists now want to put an end to that freedom of thought.

          2. Tyndale was murdered in a Catholic country though. The new thought that swept through northern Europe during the Renaissance was very much for the spread of knowledge. Most movements against Catholics were not because they were spreading knowledge, but because people feared a return to Catholic rule.
            I think the English have always loved to discuss ideas. Pamphlets have been in circulation since the invention of the printing press. I’d argue that universal education was the start of the Government trying to control how people thought!

          3. The Wife of Bath’s prologue is full ‘new’ thoughts. She questions orthodoxies.
            And she is a woman in the 1390s, well before the Reformation.

    3. The government is committed to its current regime because it delivers the favoured excuse for what they’re going to do anyway.

    4. So how does he explain the high rates in other countries then? Have they got world-beating testing too?

    1. There’s too bloody many of them – you wander about hearing foreign gabbled all the time. I can’t imagine this would be accepted in other countries, why is ours treated as the doss house of the world?

      1. Our problems are minor compared with the USA. A former chief of the border force said the other day that this year over a million people have entered the USA illegally and disappeared entirely. The Democrats are well on their way to destroying America and thus the free world. If you are young enough, start learning Mandarin Chinese, you are going to need it.

    1. Light Candles when no wind!

      Goodbye Johnson
      Though I never knew* you at all
      You had the chance to hold yourself
      While those around you crawled
      They crawled out of the woodwork
      And they whispered into your brain
      They set you on the treadmill
      And they made you change your game
      And it seems to me you lived your life
      Like a turbine in the wind
      Never knowing who to agree to
      When the rain set in….

      (* a la Bible..)

      1. Apparently EJ was once married to a woman. The question I ask myself is:

        Was he a f*cker before he was a b*gger?

          1. She got all uppety when he disclosed the “marriage” in one of his many memoirs…..

    3. He was and is a Remoaner that lives in the USA I have no doubt that on finding we had voted to leave he contributed exactly zero in terms of standing up for the arts with regard to the government. Instead, like the typical Remoaner he threw paddy’s because he didn’t like it. As if it was any of his business anyway. Crawl back to California, you hypocrite, and play with the other fundament you live with.

  33. “Those who refuse Covid vaccines are irresponsibly burdening the NHS”
    With most people vaccinated by now, those in hospitalhave been vaccinated – are they “Irresponsibly burdening the NHS”? What about the obese, the smokers, the climbers…

    1. We’ve been made clear that we’re a hideous burden and should die.

      As an unvaccinated (due to my blood) fat bugger I think the NHS would just rather have me put down so I am no longer an annoying burden.

      That’s money it could spend on diversity managers, after all.

  34. RT channel loses Court of Appeal challenge over £200,000 fine for biased George Galloway Sputnik broadcasts about Syria and Salisbury poisonings. 27 October 2021.

    Russian state news broadcaster RT has lost its Court of Appeal challenge over a £200,000 fine for ‘sarcastic or ridiculing’ programmes in breaches of impartiality rules over broadcasts on the Salisbury poisoning and the war in Syria.

    Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting watchdog, sanctioned the Kremlin-backed channel over seven news and current affairs programmes between March 17 and April 26, 2018 which breached the requirement for news to be presented with ‘due impartiality’.

    I happened to catch one of Galloways broadcasts and he was more Extracting the Urine out of the Official Account with its ludicrous narrative than making any serious attempt at bias. It’s a pity that Ofcom doesn’t exhibit the same enthusiasm for breaches of impartiality on the Westminster backed BBC!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10133109/RT-loses-Court-Appeal-challenge-200-000-fine-biased-George-Galloway-Sputnik-broadcasts.html#comments

  35. The criminals keep on with the lies. Here is the payback: the compromise to natural immunity – AIDS – conferred by the injectates is starting to bite, and by the spring will be vast. With people dying of conditions that have nothing to do with flu no doubt they will try to lie their way out of that too, but the truth will stand and the evil will fall. This is an alarming piece from the US. but the events described are happening here too, whatever the lies.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/26/1046432435/ers-are-now-swamped-with-seriously-ill-patients-but-most-dont-even-have-covid

    1. Unfree? Why not say it – slaves. Enslaved by the state through taxation. The group who are happy slaves are the ones doing no work, not contributing and still getting fed the same as those who are working.

      1. WE – worked, taxed, contribute etc. WE PAY

        New arrivals – put in hotels, get room, clothed, bed, heat, hot water, tv, power, NHS – – and WEEEEE PAY. – – – again

        The slaves NOW are ???????

      2. 340526+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        There are slaves by consent giving no thought to the kids coming through, the 48 percentres wanna be slaves, no need to think, that capability was lost near four decades ago, prime proof current lab/lib/con fee paying member / voters.

    1. That’s a bit unfair. I called my quacks today to ask for antibiotics to clear up this infection.

      Aside from them being slow to come across they’re ‘en route’.

  40. Quote of the day

    ‘NHS Lanarkshire does not recognise the term “code black”. However… as we are at critical occupancy levels and due to the overall pressure on the whole health system in Lanarkshire we have moved to the highest risk level, which is Black.’

    NHS Lanarkshire after three of its acute hospitals are continuing to face ‘sustained pressure’.

    2. Do they think “Code Black” is a command given to slaves writing software in the pre-civil war US?

  42. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-charter-for-our-liberation-from-tyranny/

    BRITISH society, culture, history and our centuries-old Christian
    traditions (righteous laws, family, marriage, education, health,
    liberty, privacy, freedom of worship) are under a massive unprecedented,
    coordinated assault from our government, the deep state, large
    corporate businesses, the media, Big Tech, academia, the unions,
    charities (eg the National Trust), celebrities and the Church of
    England.

  43. OT Last week I reported a flooded lane in the village to Norfolk CC Highways Dept. There is an online form. I enclosed a photo of the flood AND the sign showing the name of the lane. Also a crystal clear map.

    Eight days later, the Council replies – that they are unable to “locate the position of the flood” – enclosing THEIR map which clearly shows that they went to a spot half a mile away – with no flood and NO named lane.

    Wonderful what one pays all that Council Tax for…

      1. What pissed me off is that they drove past the flood in order to see the place where there wasn’t one…

        2. If they admit there was a flood, they might be liable for something. You can’t be too careful when dealing with solicitors…

    3. You cant expect councils to be able to read maps do you Bill. Those that could have all retired on a gold plated pension.

    4. The street name sign at the end of our street had been missing for a few weeks, I eventually got around to sending the council an email aaking them to fix it.

      I received a reply early the next morning saying that they would look into it. Right I thought, council does not actually fix things. I went out later that morning and found that the new sign had already been installed.

      Naturally I wrote a thank you note to the mayor, he may want to reprimand those responsible for acting out of character.

    5. Next time Bill, say you are doing a favour for your non-English speaking Islamic neighbour whose floor length clothing was getting wet in the flood. The flood will be attended to as a priority.

    6. What Three Words is a useful addition to such reports – I’m not sure if the council ever pay attention but if they claim not to be able to find something that requires only a free app /// …

    1. That’s very interesting, thanks for sharing.
      Particularly sad is the first comment under the blog post, where the commenter says that he is banned by his doctor son from seeing his grandchildren, because he (the grandfather) is not vaccinated.
      This has confused me right from the start. Is this ban supposed to protect the grandparents or the grandchildren? (genuine question).

      1. I found that one a bit of a shocker as well. Vaccines protect nobody but the jabbed and that’s when they actually work.

      1. MPs on both sides of the House are stunned and appear to be scratching their heads thinking HTF is this lot being paid for?

    2. Not watching/listening. Only becomes interesting after the Treasury’s accompanying book has been scrutinised and the fudges & fiddles revealed.

    3. This is reminiscent of Gordon Brown’s activity. I assume we actually don’t have this money to hose?

        1. The Sunday Times claims that there are about 125,000 “asylum seekers” resting in hotels at taxpayers’ expense.

          2. And millions more ( African and Asian ) ALL want a taxpayer funded, do NOTHING, free life. House, NHS, translators, schooling, benefits, etc etc. Country with full infrastructure, built and paid for by us – – and used by everyone who lives here, but contrubutes ZERO. Pay a trafficker – arrive – stick hands out – sit and laugh as whiteyworld is exterminated FOREVER.

            ON THIS PLANET WE ARE

            78 th in area – – – – 21 ST IN POPULATION SIZE

            with our govt waving in THOUSANDS more, uneducated, non English speaking, freeloaders who want what WE pay for !!!!!!!!

            ONLY ONE INEVITABLE RESULT.

          3. Let’s be generous and say the Civil Service have negotiated a best deal of £50 pppnight that’s £6,250,000 per day or £2,281,250,000 per year…..

            (Even if they got a bargain basement deal of £25 pppnight its still £1,140,750,000 per year….)

    4. Yet there are reports that Sunak is at odds with Johnson’s extravagant spending plans.

    5. What he means is borrowing money to give away.

      The Eu was frightened of a Singapore on Thames. Boris continues to enact 90% of their hideous, horrific policies.

  51. Tax reform on alcoholic drinks – pretending it will be fairer and cheaper. Lies, downright lies and Sunak lies!

  52. Lethal flood risk from 3pm TODAY: Met Office warns of ‘unbelievable’ deluge with a MONTH’S worth of rain hitting Wales and the North over next two days. 27 October 2021

    Potentially lethal flooding could hit parts of Briton from 3pm today with an ‘unbelievable’ 250millimetres of rain expected to fall in a matter of hours, weather experts warn.

    An amber alert has been issued for parts of Scotland and the north-west of England ahead of a huge downpour expected this evening.

    3pm? Not ten past then? Or five to? Is it going to snow like the devil at half past seven on Jan 5? What about thunder and lethal lightning on the Gleneagles course at a quarter to eight on Friday?

    No wonder they have no problems with a temperature increase of 3 degrees in 2050!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10135939/Lethal-flood-risk-3pm-TODAY-Met-Office-warns-unbelievable-deluge.html

    1. We do not require emotive words in weather forecasts. Its nothing new for the North and Scotland.

    3. *sigh*

      The mountainous western parts of the UK can get 12-15 feet of rain per year. This was once basic pre-O level knowledge.

      Climate conditioning is working!

        1. you all need to relocate to North Wiltshire and vote for me. I will standing for the Stroppy Old Bat Party.

        2. And there lies the problem. Unless Reform gets its arse in gear pretty soon (not looking likely) then there is no party to vote for.

          I won’t even vote for the Tories in order to keep Labour out because, frankly, there is nothing to choose between them now.

          1. You see here already is vote-splitting – you for ‘Reform’ and Ogga for ‘For Britain’.

            I just wish they’d amalgamate and present a united front worth voting for.

          2. Until we have a party for which it is worth voting for we really do need
            NOTA
            (None Of The Above)
            votes to be counted and when they win more votes than anybody else nobody should be elected to the post.

    3. Maybe he want’s an election before the dystopian 5 year great reset plan starts to really kick in.

      1. That’s what I was thinking. COP26 fools the climate change lobby, the budget fools the red wall, a quick GE where the Tories get in with a halfway decent majority then next stop 2027, by which time the damage will have been done.

        1. We have a five mile round trip to go and spoil our ballot papers. However, women sufferred to allow us females to vote so I do feel it’s my moral duty to use it.

  54. Sunak’s budget speech was a long tirade of spending and reduction of taxes for businesses and low paid workers. Alcohol taxes are changing and it looks as if spirits will be much cheaper tomorrow. No mention on personal taxes such as income tax, thresholds, insurance tax, IHT etc. Interest rates will not rise too high.
    Most changes will take place from 2023 and just before the next election.
    It was a speech which may come back to haunt a boastful Chancellor.

      1. Vodka was freely available in the communist USSR. Alcohol is used as a cheap method of voluntarily rotting the soul of society.

  55. Afternoon all,

    Went back to the Wigmroe Hall yesterday evening for the first time since around Feb 2020. I was thinking that it was time for some secular music since the only live music I’ve heard in the past 18 months has been in church.

    However, I chose the concert purely because it was an early music ensemble playing Monteverdi. Didn’t check which work they’d be performing. Settled down in my seat, looked at the (free) programme notes and smiled. I’d booked to hear the 1610 Vespers!

    Not that I don’t love the 1610 Vespers but I felt He was telling me something! The performance style actually was very secular, which works in the concert hall of course. The Wiggie audience are not going to stand and face the altar for every Glory be to the Father, as we do in church. It was a very lively folksy sort of performance, with the female soloists especially good.

  56. Colin Brazier.

    Insulate Britain applaud while police move on an angry motorist. He played his bagpipes in the face of protestors.
    Moral of the story: direct action is an option available only to those intent on breaking the law. twitter.com/IvorBennett/st…

        1. Put traffic cones and signs at them – – and leave them there especially if its cold and p155ing down.

  57. Ink-ulate Britain: Drivers take revenge as climate protesters block roads into London
    Motorists fight back with dye and bagpipes after eco mob block A40 in west London and roundabout in Dartford
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/27/insulate-britain-protests-back-activists-block-roads-london/

    Lots of good BTL comments – the bagpipes are a very good solution and another lethal Scottish weapon could be utilised – how about reading the poetry of William Topaz McGonagall through a high-powered megaphone within inches of the ears of the protestors who have glued themselves to the road?

    Here’s a BTL comment:

    Water cannon is the obvious answer – but the absurd Mrs May got rid of the ones that Boris had acquired when he was the mayor.

    But of course in those days he hadn’t gone all woke and feeble and under the thumb of his most recent wife and he still had a little testicular strength to go with his banal bluster.

  58. Well, that was interesting (not). As we hope to venture abroad in January, the MR thought it would be handy for me to have evidence of my vaccinations available in a form acceptable to furriners.

    So – I had to apply for an NHS (God Bless it) App. Only took 1½ hours of blood, sweat, tears and swearing. I bet if I just landed in Kent from a rubber boat – a kind chap speaking Bongo-bonga would do it all for me in a trice…..

      1. She did 95% of it…. I would have thrown the PC, Monitor, camera etc out of the unopened window.

    1. A rise in the state pension would be handy, most pensioners on state pensions would be better off if they had arrived in a rubber boat.

      1. 100% TRUE – – free hotel room, heat, power, food, tv, hot water, clothing, broadband, bed etc etc – – contribution ??? – – NOTHING BUT THEIR PERSONAL WASTE.

  61. Serving soldiers will not carry Dennis Hutchings’ coffin, says MoD
    Decision is ‘final kick’, say family ahead of funeral on Armistice Day, with thousands of veterans expected to line the route in tribute
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/ministry-defence-says-serving-soldiers-will-not-carry-dennis/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

    What a bucket full of faeces the British establishment has become!

    (And – surprise, surprise – the DT allows no comments under the article)

    1. In the back ground all the time there will be the constant processes of nagging as in Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, from the Wokey Dopeys in the civil service. Do this, Do that you can’t do this you can’t do that !.

      1. Yes Minister did a very good job of mocking the political avarice and administrative arrogance.

        I think Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay were capable enough not to mock the genuinely disconcerting problems of government – it even hopped around military and Israeli issues by concentrating on the departments rather than the events.

    2. In the back ground all the time there will be the constant processes of nagging as in Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, from the Wokey Dopeys in the civil service. Do this, Do that you can’t do this you can’t do that !.

    1. So that was the big emergency off Harwich. They were probably pushed overboard because they were Christians.

    2. Maybe the state will act now to protect gimmigrants and ending the vermin tide.

      Otherwise: oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

  64. Tory environmental policy owes more to Greta Thunberg than it does to conservatism. 27 October 2021.

    They’ve scarcely finished hanging up the eco-friendly bunting heralding Cop26, but with each passing day, the view from Glasgow looks more and more like a Hieronymous Bosch hellscape. Bins are overflowing, while rats roam the streets – and that’s not just Bonnie the Seal, the summit’s unintentionally terrifying rodentine mascot. As the delegates jet in, they’ll contend with piles of rubbish, Insulate Britain protesters glued to the roads, train chaos and overpriced hotels. Nicola Sturgeon will be frisking about, attempting to greenwash the SNP’s record, so too Greta Thunberg, egging on the bin and rail strikers. The absence of both China and Russia will render much of the exercise pointless.

    There is something symbolic about the spectacle of this extravagant eco talking shop in full swing as the city hosting it goes to the dogs. But in an odd way, it mirrors our Government’s technocratic approach to the environment; a curious mixture of Utopianism and top-down diktat, which, in its lofty focus, neglects pressing problems on our doorstep.

    Lol! This thing looks more and more like dinner with the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/27/tory-environmental-policy-owes-greta-thunberg-does-conservatism/

    1. So what you are saying (© Cathy Newman) is that IB protesters are moving their antics from the London area to Glasgow. That can’t be a bad thing.

      1. I saw his Haywain close up in a museum in Rotterdam a few years ago in th Bosch to Breughel exhibition. Stunning stuff.

  65. By the way – the MR and I have been watching a telly docu on Bliar and Brown. Last night we saw (recorded) Episode 3. Despite our many political differences, each of us was hurling abuse at the egregious Bliar as he sought – yet again – to justify the “WMD” and the “45 minutes” justifications of the illegal invasion, despite the enormous pile of evidence to the contrary. Even when it was pointed out that, after 6 months search there was STILL no evidence he simply said – with as straight a face as the crook can put on – that “We believed it at the time….”

    Throughout he comes across as the shyte we know him to be – and the mastodon Broon as an unspeakable – and unimaginative – idiot.

    Good stuff!!

    2. You have a much stronger constitution than me. I couldn’t have sat through even five minutes of that.

  66. Absolutely fabulous – idea! …………….. Waddya think NoTTlers ?

    JOANNA LUMLEY opened up about bringing food rationing back in a bid to tackle climate change during an interview on BBC Breakfast.
    The 75-year-old believes bringing back food rationing would be a good way to tackle the issue.

    3. Well, there were far fewer obese people during rationing. Could be the way forward.
      Might get people actually appreciating where their food comes from.

      Here’s a plan – ration imported food. Make them eat cake – home grown.

      2. They could ration fizzy drinks, high sugar snacks and all the other rubbish people eat nowadays and didn’t in the 40s & 50s.

          12. For the first time in that long- running 1940s radio series Much Binding in the Marsh, Maurice Denham appeared as himself, instead of virtually everybody else. Best remembered of the many characters he played was Dudley Davenport well-spoken and polite. “Good morning sir, Dudley Davenport at your service, sir!”

            But the catchphrase that brought the audience applause was “Oh, I say, I am a fool”, followed by a curious chuckle, “keogh! keogh! keogh!”

      4. It’s not only that. Since those times, the global corporations have seen to it that everyone is fed a diet containing masses of sugar, refined flour, and the so-called “healthy” oils that are anything but, having been derived from industrial lubricants. If anyone is seriously interested in their health, this feature film may just give them the impetus they need. I found it an eye-opener.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUADs-CK7vI&list=WL&index=31 “Fat Fiction – Full Movie – Free.” [29/07/21]

          1. My old fashioned chip pan runs on pure beef dripping. I shall ditch the vege oil for lard and take my chances.

    4. As I said yesterday, when she was thought to be unbelievably sexy-looking she could get away with saying such things but she now seems vain, pretentious and unaware that her currency has gone down in value and is not what it was.
      Rather like the pound which once stood at €1.752 to £1 and now stands at just € 1.18 to £1.

    5. Giving an example of the voucher scheme, she added: “We will only be allowed X amount of meat.
      “We all know that eating a lot of meat is damaging the planet. We have got to cut down.”

      Joanna went on to chat about activist David Attenborough, as she insisted: “We have got to do what he says”

      2. I’m not convinced by the claim that meat produces more CO2 and methane than plants. Anyway how do you fertilise plants without using chemicals? Human effluent? Now, there’s an idea: use the untreated sewage that is currently spewing into rivers and the sea.

        1. That’s because those that claim meat production is responsible for climate change are talking rubbish.

      3. Joanna Lumley doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
        Or is talking complete bllx, which amounts to the same thing,…

    6. There’s certainly a few who could do with going on strict rations.

      Not me, though. Just other people.

  67. Angela Rayner target of ‘multiple threatening and abusive messages’
    Greater Manchester Police arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of malicious communications
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/27/angela-rayner-victim-death-threat-campaign/

    “The MP said: “It was only a couple of weeks ago someone claiming to be a Jeremy Corbyn supporter was arrested for making threats to rape and murder me on social media. My house has panic buttons fitted.””

    So the hate crime directed at Angela Rayner comes not just from Tory Scum but from Labour Scum and Not Politically Aligned Scum as well.

    2. Oh dear – spot the lies! Economy screwed and a non manifesto, pie in the sky carbon zero lunacy is going to bankrupt us – that’s levelling down, not up. When will the Kommissar who’s trying to shaft Paterson get around to Halfcock and his dodgy contrcats?

    3. Oh dear – spot the lies! Economy screwed and a non manifesto, pie in the sky carbon zero lunacy is going to bankrupt us – that’s levelling down, not up. When will the Kommissar who’s trying to shaft Paterson get around to Halfcock and his dodgy contrcats?

  72. I note that most of Fishi Rishi’s budgetary “changes” don’t start until April 2023

    Loada bollox.

  73. As I have said many times (I hear you yawn) – I do not watch or listen to any news, politics or current affairs programmes. I may see occasional reports about them. Which entitles me to ask: WHY do the meeja take the slightest notice of “Clebs” and their individualistic (and often moronic) views? They may be good thespians or wendyball players or, even, racing car drivers. But their views have the same weight and importance as those of any other drivelling bore in a pub – which, fortunately, are never reported anywhere.

    2. Go flaccidly amid the noise and haste,
      and remember what peace there may be in Morrisons.
      As far as possible without surrender,
      Be on good terms with all persons.
      Show your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others –
      Even the dull and ignorant, they too have their glory.
      Avoid proud and expressive persons – they are vexations to the spirit.
      If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter,
      For always there will be greater and lesser protuberances than yours.

  76. That’s me for this grey day. The MR is at the Electric Theatre watching some film that got unanimously glowing reviews – so is almost certainly pretentious rubbish.

    I can’t go to the pictures any more. The screen is too big and too near and I feel sick – and would be if I stayed more than 5 minutes.

    So I have made a start on this month’s “The Critic” which arrived today. Excellent to see wokery and concomitant silly views given a darned good kicking. I commend it to NoTTLers.

    A demain.

    1. Thanks for the recommendation, I have been looking out for something like that. A breath of fresh air.

    2. I have read and enjoyed it for almost a year now,
      as has the nineteen year old son of a friend; his
      copy is read by many of his friends at University.
      Thank you, very much, for the recommendation.

  77. Long article but worth a read.
    https://brownstone.org/articles/your-booster-life-how-big-pharma-adopted-the-subscription-model-of-profitability/

    f a plumber with a lifetime of experience were to tell you that water
    runs uphill, you would know he is lying and that the lie is not
    accidental. It is a lie with a purpose. If you can also demonstrate that
    the plumber knows in advance that the product he is promoting with that
    lie is snake oil, you have evidence for a deliberate con. And once you
    understand what’s really inside that bottle of snake oil, you will begin
    to understand the purpose of the con.

    1. Thank you for the link.
      I remember reading another good article by this writer, can’t remember what it was about now.

      “From the virus’ point of view, the evolutionary golden mean is reached when it can easily infect as many hosts as possible without reducing their mobility and without triggering long-term immunity in most of their hosts. That’s the ticket to setting up a sustainable cycle of reinfection, forever. ”

      Almost like, having a large pool of bodies vaccinated with a leaky vaccine to reproduce in then…
      The vaccine should only ever have been offered to vulnerable people to protect them.

      1. The more I read about these vaccines the more I wish I hadn’t bothered but I won’t be having the boosters. The only reason I did have the jabs was for travel.

        1. We are learning more about them all the time – and none of it is good. Might be the moment to search how to buy ivermectin legally. (Quercetin?)

          1. We used it as an anti parasitic for the hedgehogs but it we have any left it’s out of date. I’m taking vit D.

          2. I am taking Vit C and Zinc, which is my go-to winter armoury against colds and flu. Vit D is certainly one to watch as well. I think I remember reading a study that said people who take Vit D over years tend to live less long – but cause/correlation – they might also be people who are deficient in it due to health or poor lifestyle. Also, the results from Uttar Pradesh, where they presumably have plenty of daylight – and I think that some prophylactic ivermectin like they had might not be a bad idea.
            At least your hedgehogs won’t get covid!

      2. The more I read about these vaccines the more I wish I hadn’t bothered but I won’t be having the boosters. The only reason I did have the jabs was for travel.

    2. All reading Ndovu’s very long article? And then shooting themselves?
      It is quite a provoking essay!

      1. I’ll have to start it again tomorrow- didn’t finish reading it before I had go & get some dinner ready before we went out.

          1. Three Much Information

            That is just a Bit More Than Two Much Info ( I know : TOO much)

    4. I personally went to Book Club and met the author. (NEEDLESS STREET, by Catriona Ward.) Now just got back and shortly off to bed.

    2. Singapore noodles, cashew chicken and beef in black bean sauce, hot and sour soup.

      1. Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls (by the size of them, it was a hell of a big Cock erel

        Chicken Curry and rice

        Whole bird used apart from its’ feet

    3. “Rogan josh, aloo gobi, saag.” Sorry, Peter, me no speaky Hindu. However, I do speak Italian: “Hey Mango, Mango Italiano…” Bon nuit mon ami.

      1. aloo = potato
        gobi = cauliflower
        saag = spinach
        brinjal = aubergine
        keema = peas
        jeera = cheese
        murg = chicken
        pyaza = onion
        That’s all I can think of at the moment.

        Dobranoc, Elsie.

  80. Just heard from a friend with primary school age children in Germany. She has been pressured into having the vaccine (which she didn’t want), as she can’t go anywhere without a test result that costs 70 euros. She’s divorced, so can’t move out of the country, and is trapped.

      1. If you are divorced and have children, you have to stay in the country where you were at the time of the divorce so that the children stay in contact with both parents.
        Also, the same is happening all over Europe, and will happen in Britain too if we let it. This is not a German problem.
        They installed the app on her phone. She asked whether she would get called for subsequent boosters, and they said “you have to make the appointments yourself”. She didn’t understand that her permissions will expire on the app, and that will tell her that she needs to go and get a booster, and that for the rest of her life.

        1. The only way this will stop is if heath professionals world-wide refuse to participate in an on-going ‘Vaxx / Booster’ programme. Staffing levels in health tend to be precarious at the best of times. As they are finding out in the US they can’t suspend front-line workers for refusing to be mandatory vaccinated. It will take courage on the part of the workers and support from local populations.

          PS. Given the quantities of money being hosed at the pandemic one might speculate that the authorities know this is a bio-engineered disease, are terrified of its potential consequences and of the potential backlash from populations who cannot believe the stupidity of the authorities in allowing such research / weapons development in the first place.

          Morning bb2 et al.

          PPS might we know one’s first name?

          1. Agree. I don’t think the original covid was anything worse than a bad flu year and would have petered out in time like the Spanish flu did.
            The vaccines haven’t fulfilled their promises, and are allowing covid to spread and mutate freely, while not killing its host.
            This will be very dangerous for unvaccinated people, and also means that vaccinated people will need ever more boosters to protect them against the new worst strains that are only able to spread because of the vaccine, just like the Marek chicken study.

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