Wednesday 15 December: It was scaremongering to announce an omicron death with no other data

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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626 thoughts on “Wednesday 15 December: It was scaremongering to announce an omicron death with no other data”

  4. Nothing exciting to report from here in the darkness. Grey Christmas forecast (no snow, but a useful metaphor anyway), bars, restaurants, pubs closed from today, masks required everywhere. Joy. Much skepticism and rumbling about all the anti-covid actions, even in the papers who like to lick Labour arse. Hoping for pushback.

        1. Convivial and people getting together and discussing the affairs of the day… which leads to planning and plotting.

  6. Lower back pain and ‘scratchy’ throat emerge as symptoms of omicron. 15 December 2021.

    Speaking at a briefing Ryan Noach – chief executive of Discovery Health, the country’s largest private health insurer, which was behind the study – said doctors have noted a slightly different set of symptoms among those testing positive.

    The most common early sign was a scratchy throat, he said, followed by nasal congestion, a dry cough and myalgia manifesting in lower back pain.

    Is this what we should fear?

    We have nothing to Fear but Fear itself. Roosevelt.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/lower-back-pain-scratchy-throat-emerge-symptoms-omicron/

      1. The Farage interview with an SA doctor a day or two ago made it very clear that symptoms there are relatively minor. When I mentioned this to a worried friend the response was “There aren’t many old people in South Africa, so it’s effect is minimal”!

        Edit: The same point here…

        SIR – In the pharmaceutical world, the significance of real-world evidence versus laboratory evidence is fully recognised. Medicines are approved based on controlled conditions but then often behave slightly differently depending on how patients actually use them. So why are politicians continually claiming to follow the science in imposing restrictions, then ignoring the real-world experience in a largely unvaccinated population in South Africa?

        We hear that there will be a large wave of hospitalisations due to omicron. That is not what the real-world evidence is currently showing.

        Andrew Holgate
        Derby

          1. Guido Fawkes unreadable even with ad blocker paused – Daily mail the same – the advertisements take so long to load and reload that reading the articles is virtually impossible. I won’t go to either place.

      2. The Farage interview with an SA doctor a day or two ago made it very clear that symptoms there are relatively minor. When I mentioned this to a worried friend the response was “There aren’t many old people in South Africa, so it’s effect is minimal”!

    2. OMG! I have those very same symptoms as I write! The very ones! They started, vaguely, last night! I thought I was brewing a cold! It’s aaagh, COVID !!!

      Covid is a winter cold. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  7. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – On Monday evening the Prime Minister announced the first death of a person in Britain with the omicron Covid variant.

    There was no mention of whether this person had been vaccinated or had any underlying health problems, or of how old they were. This is scaremongering at its worst.

    Nigel Fountain
    Reading, Berkshire

    Well said, Mr Fountain. Furthermore, we should be given, daily, the number in hospital being treated for Covid. On the rare occasion our local news has included a breakdown by hospital there have been some with no Covid patients at all. Where there are any, however, there is no indication as to their vaccinated status and no reference to underlying conditions. I think we all know why.

    1. Yup, odd how we got inundated with the name, age and photograph of the first person to be pumped with the vaccine.

    2. I posted that here almost word for word yesterday.

      And I added that if the person who died was unvaccinated we would have been told immediately just as we would have been told immediately if a person arrested for terrorist offences was a white Christian.

  9. Get The Real Culprit

    Little Tim was in the garden filling in a hole when his neighbour peered over the fence.

    Interested in what the cheeky-faced youngster was up to, he politely asked, “What are you up to there, Tim?”

    “My goldfish died,” replied Tim tearfully, without looking up, and I’ve just buried him.”

    The neighbour was concerned, “That’s an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn’t it?”

    Tim patted down the last heap of earth then replied, “That’s because he’s inside your stupid cat.“

  11. ‘Morning All

    Funny Old World

    How quickly we forget,HCQ available over the counter for decades vanishes from sale as if it had never been,Ivermectin extensively used for treating Sars Covid 1 is rubbished with fake trials.Midazolan,a respiratory depressant is suddenly used in industrial quantities……….

    It’s almost as if waves of death were the desired effect,listen to this doctor (who also mentions Didier Raoult and his trials) all to set up the jabathon and the passports

    https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1470797533878312968

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc1fe19e4fddc2052e015cdf6da75e9ec86fad4b0f9985345c5241f862029b17.jpg
    Now about the Diamond Princess……………..

  12. SIR – I fear that even if the omicron variant causes only mild disease for most people, our death figures will still be seen to rise significantly because we count deaths “with” the virus rather than “of” it. Why do we have to present the figures like this? I do hope that it will not be used as an excuse for further lockdowns.

    P J Heard
    Wraxall, Somerset

    Of course! Transparent data would just undermine the whole thing.

    1. It is a most ridiculous measurement. If Sir David Amess had tested positive, and been asymptomatic, a couple of weeks before he was stabbed to death then he would be in the COVID deaths numbers.

  13. I note scare stories linking Omicron and Delta

    They’re trolling us again,the anagram this time??

    Media Control !!!!!

    #CovidSinisterClownWorld

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/664fa49832afe2f78eae6aa24b15755ad9f3268c6db8e19cdf7cb4a801a7aeaa.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2146a19dcab9c08168bd1490aa00577f7f525ac53262e06fb1b2cab11a8adc7.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/68cca136d4c8a2fdf43304e89bba5225a8899ec76ed2cc4d001c9bf03d99e3ea.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b5a04c015cdec857fd0afe09df4e705073d8eb257ac4f244afaf86c0cbd0e57c.jpg

  15. The new Dark Ages. Spiked 15 December 2021.

    If ignorance is bliss, the Western world should be ecstatic. Even as colleges churn out degrees and collect fees, and technology makes information instantly accessible, the basic level of literacy, as measured by such things as reading books and acquainting oneself with the past, is in a precipitous decline. Rather than building a vital world with our technological culture, we are repeating the memes of feudal times, driven by illiteracy, bias and a rejection of the West’s past.

    Yes a whole civilisation is collapsing around us. It looks as if the real beneficiary from this will be China

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/12/15/the-new-dark-ages/

    1. So what you are saying Minty is that all we’ve got left is a Terrified Cottaging Army?

      Good Morning.

    2. This article starts well but ends badly by implying that anti-immigration worries are little more than simple prejudice. If only all the immigrants were properly absorbed; in Europe and the UK they are encouraged not to be.

      Given the demographic trends not only in Europe but also in North America and Oceania, a xenophobic agenda is likely to be counterproductive, as well as incompatible with a liberal society. Newcomers need to be integrated into the national culture while being free to add their unique characteristics to the host societies.

      Just as diverse peoples found much to emulate in Roman civilisation, the liberal institutions that developed in the West can still appeal to people from radically diverse backgrounds. Chinese, Muslims and Latin Americans migrate mostly to countries that have embraced the liberal values of citizenship, tolerance and the rule of law.

      A future shaped by the best Western values is still possible, if we are willing to embrace it, and teach it to future generations. Such a broad vision will be resisted by the woke, and some nationalists on the right may see inclusivity as too tolerant of change and difference. Books and open discussion are decisive weapons against the rise of post-literate intolerance. This is what helped overwhelm feudalism and could fend off its repeat appearance in our era.

      And then there’s this:

      To date, opposition to the progressive assault on traditional culture has all too often morphed into disdain for minorities who are blamed for undermining national heritage. It’s perhaps a reach to call unpleasant people like Zemmour (an Algerian Jew) ‘a racist’, as the New York Times predictably did, or the current unpleasant rulers in Hungary or Poland fascists in the Mussolini mode. But they exhibit clear authoritarian tendencies. The fact that some on the right see Putin’s Russia, orthodox and socially conservative, as a role model should give some pause.

      A great friend of mine (more than 40 years) recently spoke of developments in parts of ex-communist Europe as reminiscent of the 1930s. His mother is German and so he is obviously a bit sensitive about the subject. It’s not the behaviour of some football fans in that part of the world that worried him but Hungary and Poland. I told him his fears are unfounded. We didn’t fall out over it. Here lies our dilemma: two countries that wish to preserve their cultural identities and look west to see what mass, unabsorbed immigration does to society. The author ignores this point.

      On the increasing ignorance of the modern world: 8/10. On the ‘all hold hands across the oceans’ ideas: 3/10.

  17. The reaction by some students to Rod Liddle’s address leaves me genuinely fearful for where all this snowflakery is going:

    SIR – Today’s students seem unable to take a joke or be brave enough to listen to views they find unpalatable.

    I notice that one of the student leaders demanding the resignation of Professor Tim Luckhurst at Durham is studying law. As a retired lawyer, I recommend he follows another profession. Listening to unpalatable views and progressing them are in the job description.

    John Hanson
    Canterbury, Kent

    SIR – The Durham students protesting against the decision to invite Rod Liddle to speak at a dinner would do well to apply some logic to their predicament. If it were Mr Liddle’s words which caused offence then they would have offended everyone, but it was in fact their reaction to his words.

    To appreciate that one has control over one’s feelings and actions is called emotional maturity.

    Luke Cascarini
    Beckenham, Kent

    SIR – If Durham students are “proud to be pathetic”, as their protest banners claim, then why are they complaining about being called pathetic?

    Keith Reynolds
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    1. Our courses are designed to help students who are studying French at “A” level. Any of the so-called ‘top’ universities demand an A* grade in French for any student who wishes to study Modern Languages.

      The fact that most students who have managed to get into Durham University will have achieved A* grades in all their exams must lead one to doubt whether “A” levels provide any indication of the level of a person’s intelligence or practical common sense.

    1. I can imagine the Christmas Party at Fawlty Towers with John Clees playing the role of Balthasar, Melchior or Caspar, rummaging in his robes and having to say:

      “Myrrh’s off!”

  20. Good morning all. Dark still, but dry with 4½°C in the yard with a fine day forecast.

    A quick glance at the news and I want to go & hibernate.

    1. In the 1980’s virtually all the young female swimmers and sunbathers on the beach went ‘topless’. Some not so young ones did too.

      When did everyone become more puritan and when did the Daily Mail start putting black patches over nipples in the ‘glamour’ photographs they print?

  22. Actions

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8360865a8850dfac298382cd876f8ab941726896a49edacc9c0008ddbe41bfc9.jpg

    Have consequences…………

    In an extraordinary turn of events, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has

    been called before the criminal court after a charge of ‘concealing

    treason’ was successfully filed with the Myrtleford Magistrates’ Court.

    Andrews will appear at 9:30am on Friday, December 17 2021 (although it

    is more likely that an appointed lawyer will stand in on his behalf. –

    Shame!!!)

    https://www.rebelnews.com/victorian_premier_daniel_andrews_called_before_court_on_charges_of_concealing_treason
    It’ll be dismissed of course “not in the public interest” but still a nice marker to lay down!

  23. BTL time:

    Carolyn Bates
    5 HRS AGO
    In response to Andrew Holgate of Derby.
    The Prime Minister’s bizarre statement on Sunday night, much to the surprise of the NHS and GPs, made no sense to anyone who has been following the Omicron variant.
    We have consistently been told by doctors in South Africa that the variant is producing ‘mild flu symptoms’, despite transmission being high, with no deaths. Dr Coetzee, a GP and Chair of the South African Medical Association, stated over the weekend that Britain was overreacting , and confirmed her claims in front of the Health Select Committee just hours before MPs voted in Parliament, providing them with the latest data.
    It is therefore inexplicable why, the Prime Minister is behaving in the way he is, when he is obviously privy to this data and yet, chose to go down a completely different avenue than the data indicated he should.
    Is it little wonder then that 100 of his MPs voted against him. They did this because they are finally having to admit that the Prime Minister is not just totally out of control, but that he cannot be trusted. Worse, he is continually being untruthful and deceitful.
    As only just over 50 letters have to be submitted to the 1922 Committee before a vote of no confidence is triggered, hopefully, those MPs who did the right thing yesterday will do the right thing today.

    Camlock Trelawney
    7 HRS AGO
    100 Tory MPs have seen the writing on the wall. Johnson isn’t going to last until February.
    One of the weakest PMs in history, who was afraid to follow Tory ideals despite having an eighty seat majority, who RAISED taxes despite his manifesto pledge and used Covid to scare the population into forgetting about his shortcomings, is shortly to be deposed. Good riddance.

    * * *

    Fear not; after yesterday’s vote Johnson is probably on his way out now.

    1. 342868+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      Those 100 MPs are as credible as an ashtray on a motorbike, in-house selected opposition, the WHOLE ediface,tory (ino) plus lib/dems / lab
      rotten to the core.

    2. As much as I despair at Johnson, an approval-seeker divorced from reality, I look at the alternatives and weep.

      1. #MeToo

        And similarly I weep to find no alternative party worthy of my vote; the three vote-splitters that could/should amalgamate just continue to be the rag, tag and bobtail on the ballot paper along with a dozen others.

        1. “the three vote-splitters that could/should amalgamate just continue to be” vehicles for their leaders overweening self-admiration.

      2. I wanted Owen Paterson to be prime minister but he lacked the over weening ambition to go for the job.

        In spite of all the hoo hah I suspect that he is more honest and has more integrity than most members of the Conservative Party.

        1. In spite of all the hoo hah I suspect that he is more honest and has more integrity than most members of the Conservative Party MPs of all Parties in Parliament..

  25. A letter & BTL Comments:-

    Russian aggression
    SIR – The Russian threat to Ukraine signals a very real risk of military conflict in the Baltic states.

    Vladimir Putin is concentrating military forces around the borders of Ukraine – a vast country that contains significant numbers of ethnic Russians, particularly in the eastern provinces, where armed skirmishes have been taking place for many months. Putin has accused Ukraine of suppressing the Russian-speaking minorities, and could use this as a reason to invade.

    The resulting situation could then be likened to that faced by Neville Chamberlain in 1938, when he met German and Italian leaders in Munich and ceded the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland, a region populated by many ethnic Germans, to the Nazi regime. If a Russian takeover of eastern Ukraine takes place, Western leaders would be helpless to intervene, and would rush to achieve some kind of accommodation with Putin.

    Such an outcome would no doubt embolden a strident Russia, which would then turn its attention to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – also states with sizeable Russian minorities.

    Roger Sharpe
    Harlaxton, Lincolnshire

    Mark Smith
    7 HRS AGO
    Roger Sharpe
    It’s obvious to most that it’s NATO or rather America and us doing all the trouble making. So much for the assurances we made to Gorbachev all those years ago.
    NATO has been expanding eastwards ever since.
    Before you start threatening war with a superpower be aware we can barely raise a division and the whole of European NATO barely two and a half.

    REPLY1 REPLY 10
    FLAG

    RS Robert Spowart
    JUST NOW
    Reply to Mark Smith – view message
    Message Actions
    Agree 100%, Mark.
    At the collapse of the USSR, NATO & the EU not only began pushing their influence up to Russia’s borders which involved cosying up to some VERY corrupt regimes, but allowed our financial sectors to engage with Russia’s corrupt oligarchs who were asset stripping the struggling country, money laundering those ill-gotten gains to be “invested” in the West.

  27. 342868+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 15 December: It was scaremongering to announce an omicron death with no other data.

    “Scaremongering” the wanna be slave speaketh, call it out for what it was, yet another politically constructed FEAR element.

    The fat turkish controller is flexing his power muscles now openly bringing on board the infamous political paedophile protectors ALL busy preparing to take apart the old saying “every Englishman’s home is his castle”
    by once he ( the Englishman) is inside they will insert a large nail in the drawbridge, withdrawn on a programmed basis as and when the politico’s controlling needs call for.

    I would say in all honesty that carrying a party membership card now is to give them and their actions
    your full consent.

    1. 342869+ up ticks,

      Morning Bob,
      Gettaway, does that mean they, the lab/lib/con are NOT individual party’s but a coalition, do the electorate acknowledge this ?

    1. Vladimir studies history and is determined to be on the right side when the siht hits the fan.
      “I asked you,i requested,i called for….but you wouldn’t listen”
      I haven’t even mentioned the gas supply…………………………………..yet.

    2. He must be mesmerised by what is happening in the west. Some of it is totally unbelievable and must have him rolling the floor in laughter.I think he is just pushing buttons to see what they will do next.

      1. He’s kicked off his shoes, leant back in his recliner and is scoffing caviar flavoured pop corn while watching the west with wise-eyed disbelief.

  35. It was worse than scaremongering. It almost looked as if they were desperate for someone to die to get the ball rolling. Nobody had died anywhere in the world up to that point.

    Deaths from omicron are inevitable though. Most people that die from covid are already that sick that a common cold would finish them off. In fact you don’t even need the cold. Somebody that dies from terminal cancer still gets counted if they have a positive test within 28 days. They really need to scrap that criteria.

    1. The first UK Omicron case death individual is going to be applauded this evening at 7pm in Downing St. The NHS manager who smothered him with a pillow will be inside drinking a glass of fizz.

      1. The other criteria is the one that interests me. That is the counting of mentions on death certificates. They started doing that for flu as well as of last January and it inflated the figures roughly 20 fold. If that is true and it might be in terms of contributing to death then flu becomes much more dangerous and comparable to covid in bad years. I suspect that many, if not most, covid deaths should be considered the same way i.e. contributing rather than as a cause.

        1. If they did that with flu last winter – how come flu numbers were so low? The whole thing is just manipulation and scaremongering.

          3. Interesting………..thankyou. Just a few more weeks to go for the full year. Of course some of these certificates might have both listed.

        2. They might as well attribute the deaths to ‘rising of the lights’. At least that’s believable.

        1. The 146, 627 is for the two years from 2020 -21. The 170,911 was higher possibly from the first wave when people weren’t tested?

  37. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aef845dcbb51698db78d88652e5da322a1012c3ec069cb1e114d24c81a488047.png “Global sea levels to rise by two feet in the next ten years!”

    Beware! Panic! We’ll all be under water!

    Now, please remind me: where, when and how many times have I read this over-excited hyperbole in the past century; only to find out that the sea level has not been elevated by a single millimetre? The low-lying Maldives are still in situ.

    Where’s Al Gore when you need him?

    1. Spending his time with the mountains of dosh he’s made by successfully frightening most of the world’s population with scare stories about global warming perhaps?

    2. Rubbish.
      Without getting too precise and assuming 2/3 of the earth surface is water, and the earth a sphere, then for water to rise by 2 metres over the whole world will require 1×10^14 cubic metres – so, 100,000,000,000,000 cubic metres of water – more of ice. Similar number in tonnes – that’s quite a big number. Effing enormous glacier, is it?

    3. Hi Grizzly, funnily I was sent this information by a colleague a couple of days ago:

      ““The Thwaites glacier is slightly smaller than the total size of the UK, approximately the same size as the state of Washington, and is located in the Amundsen Sea.
      It is up to 4,000 metres (13,100 feet thick) and is considered a key in making projections of global sea level rise.
      The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier would cause an increase of global sea level of between one and two metres (three and six feet), with the potential for more than twice that from the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
      The Thwaites Glacier — which has been called the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ due to its impact on sea level rise — is being hit with heat from the Earth’s crust, as it is only 10 to 15 miles deep below West Antarctica, compared to around 25 miles in East Antarctica.
      This results in a ‘geothermal heat flow of up to 150 milliwatts per square meter,’ the study’s lead author, Dr Ricarda Dziadek, said in a statement.
      Since 1980, it has lost at least 600 billion tons of ice, according to a 2017 analysis done by the New York Times, using data from NASA JPL.”

      So basically it is the geothermal heat flow that is responsible which has sfa to do with Greta Goblin and man made climate change.

  38. ‘HMRC delays mean I will lose my house by the end of the month’
    Taxpayers are waiting months for simple refunds
    DT : Harry Brennan – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/news/hmrc-delays-mean-will-lose-house-end-month/

    BTL

    This poor sod will probably lose his house.

    Big Pharma and HMRC have one thing in common. They are both immune from prosecution and completrely avaricious..

    If this pensioner loses his home then HMRC should be fully accountable just as those who die as a direct result of the injected gene therapy should be able to sue Big Pharma for substantial damages.

    1. I once worked in a County Council legal section, specialising in putting pressure on old ladies to come up with prompt payment for their care packages, or the bailiffs would be round. The lady solicitors loved their work and the sense of empowerment they were paid to enjoy.

      1. When we first came to France we met a rather sad and incompetent English woman who could not speak French and got herself into debt. Caroline went with her to the bailiff’s office to see if she could reason as well as translate for her.

        The woman in the bailiff’s office clearly took great delight in inflicting pain and being inflexible, unreasonable and nasty. The sadistic glint in her eye was impossible to miss.

        It is doubtless the same in Britain. The HMRC clearly also is required to employ the most horrible people it can find to work for them.

      2. I’ve been on the receiving end of that – except, unfortunately for them, they were trying to charge me for a day when the centre was closed and another when MOH didn’t attend and the absence was recorded in advance.

  39. I attach a link to the voting yesterday. Some of the Conservatives on the Spectator list did not vote. Douglas Ross, leader of the Tories in Scotland, did not.
    Looking at these abstentions many, such as that of Mr Ross and others represent Scottish constituencies and abstained because of “good manners”, or the West Lothian Question protocol. That is, Scottish MPs won’t vote on matters that only concern England.
    All of the SNP members abstained, but they may have been in the bar.

    https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1182#noes

    1. They are paid to attend the Palace of Westminster and vote on behalf of their constituents and party; if they can’t decide between two choices, it doesn’t say much for Scottish education.

    2. As I suspected, my “Gizza Job Boris” MP supported Fataturk – no matter about any of her constituents in the hospitality sectors, the small businesses and those waiting for the NHS to treat other problems like cancer!

  40. From today’s DT:

    The Tory grassroots will never forgive Boris
    His parliamentary rebels are far from alone in lamenting the PM’s failure to make the most of a historic opportunity

    MADELINE GRANT
    PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER
    14 December 2021 • 11:01pm

    The other day, Theresa May slunk into the Commons slightly late. I watched as a female MP, who’d made the mistake of sitting in her usual seat, hastily jumped up and scuttled away, mouthing apologies. It echoed that scene in the Devil Wears Prada where the formidable Miranda Priestley turns up at the Runway Magazine offices unannounced andincites panic among her employees.

    Perhaps it was just an example of the aura of deference which usually envelops elder statesmen and ex-PMs in Parliament, but it got me thinking. Since her departure Theresa May has enjoyed a post-No 10 rehabilitation of sorts – from weak, unpopular Calamity Jane to unofficial Queen of the backbenches. On everything from lockdown to Afghanistan, she has been an articulate, effective thorn in the Government’s side, winning The Spectator’s “Backbencher of the Year” award and acquiring a range of unexpected admirers.

    Many compare Mrs May’s backbench opposition to that of Ted Heath, who, after being ousted by Mrs Thatcher in 1975, retreated, fuming, to the green benches for what proved to be the start of an infamous 26-year tantrum. At the 1998 party conference, William Hague’s team had the naff wheeze of seating Tory grandees on the main stage on Ikea armchairs in primary colours – with blue ones reserved for Mrs Thatcher and Heath. Heath, who’d spent the afternoon complaining about them, duly glowered into the middle distance throughout the speeches. Later on in the green room, Mrs Thatcher attempted some small talk with her predecessor about the awful chairs. “Oh I rather like them,” piped up Heath, quick as a flash.

    The Thatcher/Heath comparison isn’t quite fair – Mrs May often succeeds in criticising the Government without descending to Heathian pettiness (while Boris Johnson today enjoys nothing like Mrs Thatcher’s popularity). It’s easy to imagine her in years to come, swanning about future Tory conferences as a grande dâme, her chaotic tenure defined by deadlock and acrimony apparently forgotten.

    When the time comes, will the Tory grassroots be so forgiving of Bozza? Memories are short in politics, and it’s far too soon to start writing this serial survivor’s obituary, but it’s worth asking nevertheless. Recent events leave the overwhelming impression of a rudderless outfit where no one is really in charge; an administration characterised by frenetic U-turns with no underlying strategy, let alone a philosophy; a Government whose authority is vanishing inside and outside of the Commons. Last week Sajid Javid flatly contradicted the PM’s press conference speculations about “a national conversation about mandatory vaccines” within 24 hours – one of several examples of high- ranking Cabinet members moving unilaterally to rein in the PM’s excesses.

    What is notable about the Tories’ Plan B rebels, whose numbers last night sent a chastening message to their party leader, is the lack of any obvious unifying trend to their manoeuvrings. They are drawn from all sides of the Party and oppose the Government for myriad reasons.

    Away from Parliament, the PM’s tax-raising green agenda has alienated many of his most loyal grassroots supporters, and fuelled a cost-of-living crisis which the pandemic can only partly explain. Even Donald Trump broadly kept his base onside while he repulsed large swathes of the American public. By contrast, it is not obvious who, if anyone, would rank as a Boris Johnson “fan” nowadays.

    In the annals of other supposedly “bad” PMs, where would we place ours? Certainly the pandemic dealt the PM a particularly terrible hand. Perhaps one day, like Gordon Brown, future Boris will maintain that the public funds he sprayed around were the result of a once-in-a-generation crisis. (Like Brown, this will be only be half true.)

    Last night’s dramatic vote on Plan B measures left the Government flirting with Ramsay Macdonald territory; relying on political opponents to pass votes. Anthony Eden took considerable flak for Suez, but some historians are beginning to reassess his tenure, concluding that Eden, for all his faults and economy with the truth, was contending with events beyond his control. And unlike our current PM, he at least had well over a decade as an effective foreign secretary under his belt before the crisis hit.

    What, I suspect, will most doom Johnson in the eyes of grassroots Tories is a sense of overwhelming disappointment after the triumph of defeating Corbynism and leading Britain out of the EU. He is arguably the first PM since Thatcher to have a meaningful chance to define his own form of Conservatism, yet “Johnsonism” remains amorphous. No Tory leader in recent memory has enjoyed such a unique opportunity to implement vital reform or make conservatism palatable to future generations – and none has squandered it quite so quickly. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

    Some leading BTLs:

    D Walker
    2 HRS AGO
    In the space of 20 months, Johnson has morphed from a supposed Brexit-supporting, libertarian-Conservative into a man who:
    1. Delivered a marginally better BRINO than Treason May attempted to foist on us. Who betrayed NI and our Fishing Industry and appeases the EU at every opportunity
    2. A left-wing, fiscally-incontinent Eco Loon
    3. An authoritarian “Leader” who ignores the views of his own backbenchers and will rely on the votes of a rabble of Marxists and Anti-Semites to get his Civil Liberty destroying policies through the House
    He’s toast. Burnt toast. He had an 80 seat majority, thanks to Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, and an opportunity to reform the left-wing State Blair foisted on us. And he’s done nothing ….. except expand it.
    He’s even managed to make the wooden plank Starmer more popular.

    Unbelievable.

    Stephen Speakman
    10 HRS AGO
    This young lady is politically an old wise soul who writes so very well.Johnson will not be forgiven indeed..let us quickly view the bleak landscape:
    Immigration..an area littered by disaster including 360,000 annually pouring in,5.4 million offered a home from Hong Kong without asking the British electorate if they agree and open borders where so called asylum seekers can walk in with expectation of tax payer funded support to the tune of 30,000 + annually.
    HS2 environmental and financial disaster.
    Your children being fed a highly inappropriate diet of gender rubbish in schools and Wokery prevailing.
    Green blob disaster potentially ruining our economy and leaving us carless and facing cold winters.
    No support for traditional family what so ever.
    Money printing,debt expansion and ineptitude on an immense scale.
    The Covid stupidity on a scale of madness beyond belief and a total sell out of the liberties of the British people.
    What good news this back bench rebellion was!

    * * *

    May I add to the charge sheet – an unfinished Brexit…

    1. I don’t particularly like Theresa May after the fiasco of her leadership. She did say one thing though which has come back to haunt us. It was a statement made after the election of Boris Johnson. She said that we would regret it. It was a strange statement and everybody tended to put it down as hard cheese. I think she was actually referring to the problems of dealing with a man of such chaotic style.

      1. I recall one or two others giving the same warning(s) but I took them to be based on pique/jealosy/from a rival camp etc.

        1. I remember her total, deliberate duplicity when she declared unequivocally:

          “Brexit means Brexit “

          and

          “No deal is better than a bad deal”

          The messed up, shambolic Brexit that Boris has created was built on the foundations laid by this evil woman.

    2. We must never forget, not for a single moment that Mrs May is not just a bad woman, she is an evil one.

      1. I wonder if we shall ever get to the bottom of the stories about Mrs May’s father and his involvement in a paedophilia scandal?

        We can still find some accounts on the internet but we are told that some crucial things were taken down at Mrs May’s insistence.

  41. A question about love.

    I have always maintained that the only purpose of religion is to enhance one’s capacity to be loved and to be loved. All the scripture, the mythology, the rituals and the iconery are means to this end, no more.

    So here is a quandary. I am building an extension that will one day be my bedroom. It is important therefore that I am happy with it, that I can live with it and sleep with it.

    A few months ago, I searched the internet for the main door that would comply with Building Regs, be available and affordable.

    I know what I should have done, and that was to commission a local carpenter to make one. However, when he did my windows, he must have used green wood, since they warped and now do not close. The factory-made windows have always been reliable and do not let the heat out in winter.

    So I went for a factory one, advertised in oak to match the timber frame and in a simple cottage style.

    What came was one in American white oak veneer, nothing like the European oak of my timber frame. Instead of using boards, 8mm square gaps were routed in, seven vertical and two horizontal top and bottom. It may convince an American, but it looks like a horrid MDF styled corporate version of a cottage door and utterly out of keeping. I saw the same door last night in a hotel.

    How then do I live with it? I cannot love it, because of what it is, not what it does. It is not the sin, but the sinner I despise – which is totally opposed to my religious direction. It does not grace the simple Worcestershire country cottage where I have lived for 27 years. So what do I do about it?

    One option is to put the thing on Ebay and shell out for a proper carpenter-made one. That would be very expensive.

    Another would be to attempt to live with it, even though it depresses me every time I see it, in a gesture of self-denial. That would be very depressing.

    The other approach would be to modify it, through my own ingenuity and artistry to make the unlovable lovable. I could screw three ledges on the nearside and bead in the gaps to resemble ogee tongue and groove, and then stain it a darker colour to be less American.

    I then wonder – is changing something (or someone) beyond recognition to suit my taste a gesture of love, or of control? Pushing my own feelings above that of others. As a pantheist, I recognise that even doors have a spirit that conveys to those around it whether it is loved or hated.

    I have long hated hairdressers who take a lovely natural girl with unspoilt hair to the waist, cut off her hair and make it fussy and high maintenance, cover her in makeup and fashionable clothes and makeover her according to their tastes, which I find intensely ugly. Why could they not let her be herself in her own skin, rather than feeling they must transform her?

    1. Maybe the door would like a makeover. The door was turned out in a factory as a unit of production and not as an act of love. The changes you make will be an act of love. Paint can do wonders, from mere coverage to a trompe l’oeil that will give the door and yourself the look that you both need.

    2. Very philosophical for a Wednesday morning… but here goes.
      My take on religion is that is is a control system – effectively, politics dressed up with nicer buildings and better singing. Just look at what it’s been used for: Crusades, sectarian violence, even Gott mit Uns.
      As to the door… make it as you want, or it’ll irritate every time you look at it. We bought 4″ wall and floor tiles for our bathroom renovation, white for the walls and grey for the floor, and 2″ grey tiles for the shower drain to acommodate the slopes.
      The tiler fitted them all beautifully, except… the vertical grout lines in the walls don’t link with th horizontal grout lines in the floor – anywhere! Neither do any grout lines match at the interface between drain 2″ and floor 4″ tiles. That was the point of the 2″ – 4″ thing.
      Every freaking morning I sit on the dunny and look at these mismatches, and it irritates me even after 18 years. So – unless you want to be regularly irritated, change the door.

      1. Hi Oberst,
        I used to live in a house with a similar setup re tiles in the bathroom. Drove me mad also.

    3. Good morning Jeremy and everyone.
      Either way a real oak door would take time to settle in even if the wood were seasoned. Reason being that the temperature and humidity differs between the inside of your house and the outside. The only way around that problem is a porch or an inner lobby. My humble suggestion would be to hang the door, live with it for a while until the spring, then customise it, or ‘pimp it’ as they say these days.

      1. Seconded. I have some well-seasoned recycled oak doors under a car port and shielded from rain but still subject to outside temperature and humidity. They expand and contract far more than I expected and I had to do a fair amount of ‘pimping’, but I’m now happy with them.

      2. We used to live in an old farmhouse; in the sitting room was a huge central oak beam, that was 400 years old.
        During the summer, a gap opened along it; in the winter, that gap closed.
        The house, which had an oak frame and no modern foundations, remained steady, regardless of the weather.

    4. Go for a conservatory in keeping with an older property….
      Double glazing a tiled/insulated roof and good heating system..perfect!

      I have a garage to turn into a conservatory when time allows.

      PS
      Forget the philosophy

    5. Contact these people https://www.ternex.co.uk/ Oak specialist.
      Fairly local to me I have often used them whilst building extensions etc, i’m a joiner by trade and I could have help out but i’m not very well at the moment.
      Bead and butt oak paneling might look more authentic. Measure the width and height of the door and Ternex might be able to make you some. and send it to you.

    6. Why didn’t you send the door back as it was not what you were wanting and the description didn’t match the product?

    7. The lovely natural girl presumably had the choice of how she looked and her choice was what she got.

  42. Wolfgang Münchau
    Why Omicron may overwhelm the NHS
    15 December 2021, 8:49am
    *
    *
    *
    Wolfgang Münchau is a former co-editor of Financial Times Deutschland and director of Eurointelligence.

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

    Jaypee • 2 hours ago • edited
    Ive done some equally detailed studies as the LSHTM.

    Omicron is so much more infectious than Delta that it can be caught by merely reading about it on your smartphone.

    The variant is particularly attracted to the left leaning middle class.

    Sadly, it is also more aggressive once the host is infected. The host is ravaged with an acute fear of working anywhere other than home, paranoia and pant wetting.

    Perhaps worst of all is their incessant need to talk copious amounts of shiite – which they just can’t help – and speak down and finger wag to those who are not infected. In this way, the variant can spread even further.

  44. Morning all.
    It was scaremongering to announce an omicron death with no other data. It was made quite clear by the South Africans at the outset, it was considered no worse than the common cold or mild flu.
    It certainly was scaremongering, I have just found a route to the NHS ‘service desk’ and have sent my inquiry regarding the ‘Booster’ i’m hoping someone will give me a positive and sensible answer or official immunity, as i am am worried sick if i have this third and possibly subsequent injection it will wipe me out. I’m still in trouble with heart problems after the last two and the Flu jab.

    1. If you have had a stroke or heart problems, I would not dream of taking any of it as the possible side effects are all related to those problems.

      1. I had a minor stroke ten years ago and have been taking blood thinners ever since. My doctor has strongly advised me not to have the vaccine gene therapy but my son is getting married in the summer in Britain and my boat is in the Eastern Mediterranean.

        Are there any Agony Aunts or Uncles in the Nottlers’ Forum?

        Are my son’s wedding and my sailing in the Med things literally ‘to die for’ because, without gene therapy, I won’t be able to travel out of France.

        1. I think I mentioned previously that I showed my apixaban card to the first lady doctor who jabbed me. She didn’t really seem to be bothered. As i have also mentioned recently a friend of ours was rushed to A&E after a heart attack and subsequently died from a massive stroke. I might be wrong but I would assume he had just been boosted.
          You have to get to Calais and jump into a rubber boat Richard, that’s the only way to get into the UK with out any scrutiny these days.
          You and Caroline might have to make a visit to a spay tanning shop just for extra authenticity. 😃

        2. Everything will have changed by summer. If you have the jabs now, they will be out of date by then anyway. I’m just waiting until next year’s revelations until I do anything, I don’t intend to sit at home until I die though.

        3. You might not last until the wedding, Rastus, if you have the jab. And will you have had to have had three (or four?) by then? Nothing lasts forever, come sailing through at the end of all this with your health intact. Don’t take experimental and incompletely tested drugs from criminal organisations and their corrupt pushers. Which is what they are. It is all about the money, mostly.

        4. Could you offer to skipper a boat from France to the E Med and then sail yours to the UK?
          Quite a long journey admittedly.
          Pitch up at a small port/river mooring and dinghy ashore and I doubt anyone would be any the wiser.

        5. If having Covid and recovering is counted as immunity regarding travel restrictions, it might be worth your while going out of your way to catch it, and recover of course.

        6. This Agony Uncle would advise using Schengen as the excuse to travel overland to Greece, then nip into Turkey, board the boat and sail to Dover as a refugee.

      2. My GP in a roundabout way said a few weeks ago that I ‘shouldn’t bother’ having the booster. But i am being pestered daily to have it by the bloody media. With Vaccine passports and other stuff they keep banging on about. Perhaps they might included wavers for many of the public who have had adverse affects from the injections.
        And the first time I had this problem they fixed it almost immediately, I’ve had it since the first jab.

          1. Well that’s one of the possible options we have lots of friends and relations in Oz and haven’t been for over 6 years.

          1. I feel it’s too dangerous to my health Conners it more of a risk than getting covid. My GP will not commit so as he says I have to make my own mind up which I have. No way am i having another jab.

    2. Morning, Eddy.
      I don’t like being negative, but my advice is to completely ignore any ‘official’ information, whether it be on vaccines or any other matter.

    3. They will only give you a govt approved reply, Eddy. It is obvious that Govt ‘advice’ to the nhs has been not to diss the jab in any way at all on pain, I suspect, of being struck off. The person you should be listening to is your own body, it is telling you the best way it can, the only way it knows how. Your symptoms were it saying: “please, please do not do this to me again.” The nhs and govt cares not one whit about us, it is not about our health, only to get jabs into those arms. And this is not the end, there will be a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. Possibly more.

      For me, government indemnity to Pfizer etc regarding liability for side effects said it all. Do not touch with a barge pole.

      1. That’s how I feel about it.
        I’m trying to get some one to confirm my feelings and worries, but they have plenty to say but offer no real or helpful information.

    5. Don’t have any more jabs. If you’re not convinced go to the Steve Kirsch substack account https://stevekirsch.substack.com/archive?utm_source=menu-dropdown and read the numerous articles about the dangers of the ‘vaccine’. If you’ve already had problems from the first 2 injections, then any subsequent boosters can only make things worse. (And I wouldn’t trust anything the NHS told me without triple checking first these days.)

      1. My GP will not commit, so as he says I have to make my own mind up which I have. No way am I having another jab.
        I have tried to contact the NHS on several occasions they never reply. Around 6 months ago the government employed a further 4-6 senior (what sort of business were they in before?) managers into the NHS I believe that they a were put in to slowly bring it to it’s knees and make it pay to use. It’s no longer sustainable in its present form.

      2. We all fall down… But “Ring a Ring o’Roses” is attributed by some as a reference to the Plague, so…

        1. That’s exactly where that rhyme came from. Not sure what the pocket full of posies were but that didn’t work either.

          1. I think they were herbs and flowers that were supposed to ward off/cure the plague.
            The sort of things that visiting doctors (HAH – haven’t we professed in the last 400 years!) used to protect themselves. The beak of their masks contained plague defying herbs.
            I think judges are still presented with a posy before Old Bailey trial; originally it was to ward off the gaol fever that the prisoners brought into court.

          10. The Rev. Dr, Ian Paisley wouldn’t have held with that. “No pot-pourri here!” was his slogan.

    3. I just wish the Media would zip it, they are so irresponsible.
      I saw that leftie idiot VIne on TV this morning suggesting that wrapping paper should be banned.

        1. So does our Lab Lottie. But she never chews or rips it. I thought i’I had trained her to to fetch the mail from the door mat which she does daily, but she brings it to me and I hold out my hand to take it, she drops it on the floor. Bit annoying this time of the year. She’s too old to reteach her.

        2. When I put up the tree in the conservatory Oscar went straight to the mock presents I put under it to hide the stand and started to rip the paper off! Aagghh!! He was NOT keen to let go, either.

  46. Will Lord Geidt pull the trigger and finish Boris Johnson?
    The Hound
    December 14, 2021

    https://3ncridad6ai1jg5mt30vexk1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/elementor/thumbs/Official_portrait_of_Lord_Geidt_crop_2-phi0eshz5mi3y19j4r0kr5rvug1g57vq2v2o20kr8g.jpg
    Lord Geidt

    Lord Geidt is a serious person not to be trifled with. During the Bosnian war in the early 1990s and in the aftermath of that horror, he negotiated with the Bosnian Serb leadership. Later, Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić were indicted for war crimes. After his army and diplomatic career – he had joined the Scots Guards following Trinity Hall, Cambridge and KCL – he worked for the Queen. He was the monarch’s private secretary from 2007-2017.

    Having appointed him as his ethics adviser, or the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, this is someone the Prime Minister should have been extremely careful not to fall out with. But that is what happened when Geidt investigated the bafflingly expensive and unnecessarily plush renovation of the Downing Street flat.

    Boris assured Geidt that he hadn’t been asking around for cash. Geidt published his investigation in good faith on that basis.

    Actually, Johnson had sent Lord Brownlow, a Tory donor, a WhatsApp message in November 2020 seeking additional money from the trust set up to fund the work.

    Yet the Electoral Commission has since established that in May this year, Lord Geidt was assured by Johnson he knew nothing about such payments – “until immediately prior to media reports in February 2021”.

    If Geidt says publicly he has been misled by the current PM, or resigns as he might, then the pressure for Boris Johnson to resign himself will be intense. Geidt has been in talks with Number 10, it has been reported in recent days.

    Geidt is unhappy. But what will he do? If he pulls the trigger it could finish Johnson within days. Or will the row be parked and quietly forgotten until after Christmas?

    There’s an added dimension. The Queen question. The PM who made the monarch mourn alone at the funeral of her husband, an experience replicated in many families across the land, has been caught out misleading her former private secretary.

    With the intense focus this week on Covid restrictions, Tory rebellion and the Omicron wave, the Geidt factor has been somewhat overlooked in recent days.

    “Geidt has Boris by the balls,” says a Tory MP.

    https://reaction.life/will-lord-geidt-pull-the-trigger-and-finish-boris-johnson/

  47. NEW REPORT SLAMS NHS’S WOKE ‘RACE EQUALITY STANDARD’ SCHEME

    A damning new report this week from the Civitas think tank has slammed the NHS for “misdirecting resources and talent” and wasting taxpayers’ money with its ‘Workforce Race Equality Standard’ (WRES) scheme – a programme which attempts to “monitor and control diversity and equality” in the Health Service by setting diversity targets and turning it into “an instrument of social justice”. Yes, as opposed to just an instrument for saving lives…

    The research finds that despite the estimated £50-60 million spent on WRES in the last five years, 8 of the scheme’s 9 diversity indicators have shown no significant improvement, all while ramping up the bureaucratic power of overpaid middle managers and ‘BME leads’. The report doesn’t hold back:

    “WRES is the creation of a cohort of ideologically-minded individuals who benefit from the programme, while the costs are left to patients and the taxpayer. Ultimately, this means money is wasted and not spent on improving health.”

    The paper adds that NHS Chief People Officer Prerana Issar – who’s ultimately responsible for all this – is on £230,000 a year, which is more than CEO who hired her. Worth bearing in mind as Rishi whacks a ‘health and social care levy’ on everyone’s payslips…

    3. Diversity officers, this waste, and she’s not the only one, the NHS is awash with waste. That is why it is so expensive. Money isn’t spent on healthcare. It goes on this nonsense.

      The NHS should not be given more, it should be cut, dramatically until it learns what it is there for.

  48. Rozenburg, the Netherlands

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/74cbb80eee7a138455a368f8c0dc50a72cabf20e/0_0_5418_3648/master/5418.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a97f9b005454cf03cd869c52f2112191

    Farmers gather with tractors near Schiphol airport to offer a buyout contract. In response to government plans to cut nitrogen pollution by buying out farmers and reducing agricultural production, the convoy travelled to Schiphol to deliver a contract to buy out and decommission the airport, equally responsible for pollution, according to the farmers

    2. Can’t be real farmers. Real farmers drive John Deere the size of an apartment block – not a green tractor anywhere visible there.

      1. An old Punch(?) cartoon where a farmer is talking to another:
        “Oi be in two moinds whether to take the Jag or the Merc on that protest march about farming poverty”

      2. JDs are in the second row.

        No agriculture to save co2 emissions, haven’t thought this move through have they?

    3. I once drove around Schipol, towing our Tintent.

      We realised, that we were going in the incorrect direction, for us, and knew that the airport would have the facility for us to ‘about turn’.

      We came off the dual carriage way, went past Arrivals and picked up the road we wanted

      There was much ‘jaw dropping’ by the Dutch

  49. Russia is not the aggressor here. Spiked 15 December 2021.

    From Russia’s perspective, it is NATO that has long been doing all the running here. From the mid-1990s onwards, NATO has been determinedly expanding eastwards, eating into Russia’s sphere of influence. In 1997, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic signed up. Former Soviet satellites Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were admitted in 2004. In 2009, Croatia and Albania joined. And crucially, at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April 2008, NATO agreed that Georgia and Ukraine ‘will become members’, although it did not outline specific plans as to how and when this would happen.

    This promise to incorporate Georgia and especially Ukraine into NATO was always going to appear as a threat to Russia. How could it not? Western powers, never shy of sounding off against the Red Menace, would effectively have extended their own sphere of influence right up to Russian borders. And so, as we saw with the 2014 annexation of Crimea, one of Russia’s principle geopolitical objectives has been to resist NATO’s expansion.

    Yes we know! The countries that invented Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq; Invaded Afghanistan, destroyed Libya and undermined the Syrian Government are now seeking to do the same to Russia! Still it seems a bit of a risk putting this up in Spike Mr Black. You could find yourself joining Julian Assange in a Washington Show trial.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/12/15/russia-is-not-the-aggressor-here/

    1. At the point that the lines cross, there are about 20million of each, 40million total. Up to day thirty, and beyond the end of the graph, the total is 70million. So what happened to the missing 30 million from day 30?

      1. Thanks for pointing out the consequence of a cell constant in my spreadsheet not being carried through in a column of cell formulae replications. This caused a cumulative error in the UK uninfected population values.

        I have now corrected the spreadsheet in Version 4.0

  53. On the one hand…but then on the other…

    NHS could be overwhelmed by Omicron next month, Sage scientist says
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-jenny-harries-sage-omicron-bbc-radio-b972060.html

    Omicron may be no worse than flu, says government adviser
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/14/omicron-less-severe-covid-delta-variant-two-vaccine-jabs-give/

    Dare to express an opinion on the subject in front of the frightened and masked-up and what will you hear? A sarcastic “Oh! You’re an expert are you? I’d rather listen to a real one, thanks very much.” To which the answer is “Take your pick…”

  54. On the one hand…but then on the other…

    NHS could be overwhelmed by Omicron next month, Sage scientist says
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-jenny-harries-sage-omicron-bbc-radio-b972060.html

    Omicron may be no worse than flu, says government adviser
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/14/omicron-less-severe-covid-delta-variant-two-vaccine-jabs-give/

    Dare to express an opinion on the subject in front of the frightened and masked-up and what will you hear? A sarcastic “Oh! You’re an expert are you? I’d rather listen to a real one, thanks very much.” To which the answer is “Take your pick…”

          1. Just getting the magazines ready.

            I bought some salt tabs yesterday 25 KG 8.88 up a little on last time.

  56. Just remember: “Omicron will seek you out...” © the slammer in charge of “edjacashun”

  57. 342869+ up ticks,

    Hard choice for the sh!te graders ( the electorate) they will do it to spite their kids being one reason.

    Liberal Democrats Now Bookies’ Favourites to Win Tory Seat in Special Election: Report

  60. Following on from yesterday’s letter about the ECHR from Gregory Shenkman.

    Britain doesn’t need a foreign court to uphold its ancient liberties

    There is enormous irony in discussing human rights while living under Covid rules, but Raab is right

    PHILIP JOHNSTON

    You’ve got to give ministers top marks for irony for opening a debate about freedom just as our personal liberties are being curtailed. In a foreword to his long-promised proposals for a new Bill of Rights, Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, reasserts the Government’s “enduring commitment to liberty under the rule of law”. Reading those fine words while sitting on a train wearing a mask on the way to an office I have been urged to avoid was an unsettling experience. I don’t feel very free at the moment.

    Then again, we are in the midst of a pandemic and illiberal measures are deemed necessary to hold back the latest wave of Covid. Moreover, notwithstanding the misgivings of many Tory MPs, some of whom voted against the Government last night, they have been passed by parliament, not imposed by state decree – though, who knows, Christmas may yet be cancelled by Prime Ministerial fiat.

    The important thing is that, like them or not, they are domestic laws agreed by our elected representatives who are accountable to the voters. What Mr Raab’s reforms seek to address is the imposition of rules by an extra-territorial judicial body answerable to no-one.

    A few years ago seemingly bonkers judgments emanating from the European Court in Strasbourg dominated political discourse. We couldn’t deport terrorists, the right to family life meant wife beaters could stay in the country after serving a term in jail and parliament was told that it could not restrict prisoners from voting. The matter of enfranchisement was to be decided by a foreign court not by elected representatives.

    Most absurdly, as the then home secretary Theresa May informed an appalled Conservative conference in 2011, an illegal immigrant was allowed to stay in the country because of his pet cat. This was literally incredible, since it turned out not to be true, though the man had been allowed to remain, which was surely the most important point.

    The biggest problem in this debate has been the propensity of both sides to make claims that are excessive. The disdain reserved by some for “so-called ‘umin rights” tends to belittle what is a noble cause. On the other hand, those who say any attempt to reform the way we interpret rulings by the Strasbourg court marks the end of civilisation as we know it are talking tendentious rubbish.

    There should not really be any “sides” at all in this since no-one, so far as I am aware, is proposing removing fundamental rights from anyone. But it has become a proxy casus belli for the same groups who squared up to one another over Brexit, and the question is the same. Should we rule ourselves and make our own laws or should we be subject to extra-territorial political and judicial governance?

    The ECHR was drawn up in 1950 in response to the denial of basic liberties in Europe, such as the right not to be rounded up because of your religion and murdered. Its authors were concerned to ensure that fundamental freedoms that we took for granted were bestowed upon the people of countries who had never known them. One trope beloved of those who favour an internationalist approach – mostly, though not exclusively, on the Left – is that the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) was predominantly written by jurists who were not only British but Conservatives to boot.

    This is the only time that so-called progressives ever acknowledge that Tories have done anything beneficial to mankind, but only because it is a stick with which to beat the current government, particularly Boris Johnson and Mr Raab. They contend that any overhaul of human rights law is a “betrayal” of these founding fathers. By this logic, signatories to the ECHR such as Russia and Turkey would be beacons of freedom whereas Britain, home of Magna Carta, would be on the road to tyranny if we withdrew from the convention.

    In any case, leaving the ECHR is not going to happen and neither was it ever a realistic political option even if some proponents gave the impression it might be. What is proposed in a new Bill of Rights is to rebalance a system that has given too much power to supranational courts to overrule decisions of Parliament. It is to bring credibility back to what most people understand as the liberty of the citizen.

    For Mr Raab this is the culmination of a long-term political ambition. He has been at the forefront of this debate since before he became an MP, writing a book on the subject The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights (2009).

    Mr Raab’s principal concern was how a foreign rights culture, imported from a wholly different legal and judicial tradition, was encroaching on a centuries-old British system that has the institutions – parliament and the courts – capable of defending rights and liberties. The incorporation of the ECHR into British law through the Human Rights Act (HRA) muddied what used to be fairly clear waters, arrogating to the Strasbourg court an authority that was never envisaged.

    As the human rights lobby once again works itself into a lather of indignation over Mr Raab’s proposals it should be noted that criticism of the convention and of the Strasbourg court’s aggrandising tendencies is not an obsession of Right-wing zealots.

    Concern has been voiced by eminent judges like Lord Hoffmann who said the court had “taken upon itself an extraordinary power to micromanage the legal systems of the member states of the Council of Europe”. Or the late Lord McCluskey, vice-chairman of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association, who said of the HRA: “By incorporating into our domestic law vague, imprecise and high-sounding statements of legal rights, we hand what is truly legislative power away from a democratic and accountable Parliament to an appointed, unelected and unaccountable judiciary.”

    Or Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge, who has pointed out that the fundamental issue here is constitutional: how do we make laws for a democracy? He would go even further than proposed and withdraw from the convention itself. Indeed, that may yet return as an option should Mr Raab’s Bill of Rights fail to deliver the reforms that are needed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/14/britain-doesnt-need-foreign-court-uphold-ancient-liberties/

    1. When Russia updated their Constitution last year they inserted a clause where the ECHR has no juristiction over Russian Law.

    2. “…s the right not to be rounded up because of your religion and murdered. Its authors were concerned to ensure that fundamental freedoms that we took for granted were bestowed upon the people of countries who had never known them…”

      And for those countries who have known them, it changed their relationship with the state machine. It defined what the citizen *could* do, not what the state would punish if transgressed. The two perspectives are completely different.

      1. The difference between Common Law (everything is permitted unless there is a law to forbid it) and Corpus Juris (everything is forbidden unless there is a law to allow it). Corpus Juris is the Continental Code Napoleon.

    3. I don’t remember feeling oppressed before 1998.
      Maybe Cherie Blair did when she checked her bank balance.

      1. I didn’t feel oppressed when we still had Habeas Corpus, Common Law, the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta.

  61. Rebels? Those who voted against the Government are the true Conservatives

    Thank God there are people in Parliament who are prepared to take arms against this tsunami of pseudo-scientific scaremongering

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Please don’t call the MPs who voted against vaccine passports ‘Tory rebels’. In my book, those upstanding men and women are the true Conservatives. Rather, it is those who pushed through this repellently un-British measure, with the help of the Labour Party, who are the traitors to our philosophy.

    That stirring creed of liberty that trusts grown-ups to make the best decisions for their own families and does not seek to ostracise people for refusing to provide proof of a medical treatment to go to the theatre or the footie. All I can say is, thank God there are people in Parliament who are prepared to take arms against this sea of senselessness, this tsunami of pseudo-scientific scaremongering.

    From head boy of the old school, Sir Graham Brady, to 28-year-old blonde bombshell of the Red Wall Dehenna Davison, via former Royal Air Force engineer Steve Baker (more sense than the entire Cabinet combined) through that lioness Esther McVey, keenly compassionate Sir Charles Walker and Miriam Cates (both rightly devastated by the collateral damage of lockdown) to fearless, principled Nus Ghani and the swashbuckling Sir Desmond Swayne… These are my heroes – and all the rest who dug in their heels on the slippery slope to authoritarianism.

    As Cates put it: “The new measures threaten to cement a permanent shift in the balance of power between the Government and the British people that has been brought about by two years of ‘hokey-cokey’ restrictions on our freedom. This is a shift that is no doubt being celebrated by those on the Left, but it should chill Conservatives to the core.”

    It certainly chills me. True Conservatives will shudder at the prospect of ministers continuing to impose arbitrary, reliably barmy restrictions at the drop of an Independent Sage beret. Many of us no longer trust our Government, the very same Government whose election we greeted with such relief and elation almost exactly two years ago. (Did we dream that? Must have.) Frankly, we struggle to believe a word that they say. Hardly surprising when they contradict each other every 24 hours.

    Was it Sajid Javid who began his promising tenure as Health Secretary with a vow that the only thing which could interfere with the “cautious but irreversible roadmap” to lifting restrictions was the NHS being overwhelmed? Today, when the NHS is in almost exactly the same position it is in every December, he promises a vaccine passport for 12 to 15-year-olds with a veiled threat that unjabbed children may be denied access to education. Marvel at the speed with which he has travelled from doughty champion of freedom to Mussolini for Beginners.

    And was it really only last week that Dominic Raab assured Radio 4 listeners that Plan B was not required because of the high vaccine rollout, which “puts us in a fundamentally different position compared to the beginning of the pandemic”? Could he perhaps not have mentioned that to the Prime Minister, who swiftly undid his deputy’s soothing work in a broadcast to the nation that placed the omicron variant somewhere between Sodom and Gomorrah and the final 30 seconds of a particularly tense episode of Hollyoaks?

    Last night, I went to London for dinner. Was I worried about omicron swarming through the capital? No, I was worried about the freedom to make my own risk assessment being taken away. I was worried that my children’s hopeful young adult lives are about to be blighted again after a reader, friendly with the wife of a boffin who sits on Sage, emailed to warn me that lockdown is “pencilled in for January 5”, once we get through “this politically sensitive period”. (How unbearably grim if so.)

    I was fretting that yet more children would be murdered or abused in their homes during the Work From Home order. I have been heart-flutteringly, not-sleeping anxious that we would see a repeat of this time last year, with that deadening sadness millions of us experienced when we knew for sure that we would not be reunited with mothers, fathers, grandparents, children and siblings. The season of Ho! Ho! Ho! turns into Oh No! NO!, should hospitals happen to run short of beds. Is this perpetual, sickening uncertainty really how it’s going to be every winter – the Ghost of Christmas Lost rattling its lonely chains?

    Partygate turned out to be useful in one respect. The nation was united in disgust at the news that, while a husband of 60 years was only allowed to wave to his bewildered wife on Christmas Day through the window of a care home, the people who devised such heartless rules had cheerfully been breaking them. After 20 months in hiding, good old British cynicism started to kick in.

    There was much mockery when a spokesman claimed that a Downing Street event when London was in Tier 3 (one of eight in Whitehall and counting), and which featured cheese, wine, games and Secret Santa gifts, was not a party. Don’t be silly! It was merely a “gathering”, or an after-work drinks with nibbles. It was after-work nibbles that did for that hypocrite Hancock, wasn’t it?

    “No rules were broken!” insisted the Prime Minister until someone whispered in his ear that he’d better stop claiming that. “I broke no rules,” is the PM’s latest sophistry. The dictionary defines a sophist as “a fallacious reasoner”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but we know one when we see one, don’t we, Marjorie?

    For more dodgy semantics, look at the PM’s announcement that the first hospital patient had “died with omicron”. Boris, rather too eagerly, argued that this single fatality proved it was time to “set to one side” any nonsense about the new variant being milder. If you got out your fallacious reasoning magnifying glass, however, you might have spotted that the poor person in question didn’t die of omicron. They died with omicron, which means they could have been a 97-year-old with congestive heart failure who just happened to test positive in hospital for the new variant. Although any death is sad, I think we can all agree that is a very different order of magnitude from the dreadful Covid illness we saw back in January, whose terrors our leaders would like us to revisit so we form an orderly queue for the booster.

    Has recent disillusion corroded my faith in authority to the point where I am in danger of making light of a grave new threat? I don’t believe so. You won’t hear this from the Government, but omicron is spreading in a population with extremely high levels of previous exposure to Covid or vaccination. It is highly unlikely to cause severe disease. Most of us will get it, and nearly everyone will be absolutely fine.

    That benign scenario has already played out in South Africa where rapid infection has not been accompanied by high mortality. Thanks to Boris’s bold decision to lift restrictions in July (“If not now, when?”), the British people currently enjoy robust immunity against really bad symptoms and death. We are better protected than almost any other country. And omicron, dear reader, is not ebola. Frankly, it may struggle to be flu.

    Despite what those ‘zero Covid’ fanatics on Sage claim, we will never have long-term immunity against reinfection. In fact, as the epidemiologist Professor Sunetra Gupta explains, people getting reinfected with Covid is how we maintain an “equilibrium of herd immunity” for years to come. By catching and shrugging off the omicron “cold”, we could be minimising the risk to those who will always be vulnerable.

    It is a monstrous and wasteful nonsense to roll out a booster to the entire population when we know that the vaccinated can still pick up and transmit Covid. Hospitals are full of them. Far better to spend that fortune on Covid therapeutic drugs to be delivered to patients at home.

    As I was writing this, there landed a fresh blow to the Government’s campaign of fear. The first major study found that omicron was likely to be 23 per cent less severe than the delta variant, with those of us who are double-jabbed still enjoying good protection. Far fewer people needed intensive care for omicron, with just five per cent of cases admitted to ICU compared with 22 per cent of delta patients.

    Will this fantastic, reassuring news persuade the Government to abort its divisive and wrong-headed plan for vaccine passports? Let me give the last word to an author I know we all admired who was writing about the dangers of unwarranted state intrusion into people’s lives back in 2005. “ID cards are recipes for tyranny and oppression. I urge you all, by your votes at this forthcoming election, to show your displeasure at such a misconceived scheme and to give the government that has conceived it… the kick in the pants they so deserve.”

    Spoken like a true Conservative, Boris Johnson. Kick in the pants, coming right up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/12/14/covid-passports-chilling-betrayal-tory-values/

    1. The terror of a government voting specifically for the control over the public is horrific. The lot of them need to go.

  62. 342869+ up ticks,

    May one ask when this issue hits England what side will the lab/lib/con coalition current supporter / voters be on ?

    French Catholics Threatened with Death by Muslims During Procession.

  63. A lovely day down here, so I’ve knocked up a cement mortar mix and done 3½ hrs work doing a bit more to the terrace wall I’m doing. Have just had some lunch and am enjoying a mug of tea with a Bach Partita on R3..

  64. Well now, weather dull and 13c.

    Moh and his bods not golfing , so no Christmas lunch either , boo hoo.

    Moh in garden planting a few more bulbs .

    I woke up very early this morning feeling terrible , not a hangover, because I rarely ever drink . Fuggy head and aching bones .

    I drank a mug of coffee and ate some Weetabix .. then went back to bed , very unusual for me , slept for a few hours , woke up to find a dog on the bed , and another down by the side of the bed , snoring .

    Bless him, Moh had taken the dogs for a run, returned , and then cleared off to the driving range , so I woke up with two sleeping dogs … very nice .

    Moh back home, just about to watch PMQs.

    So the day has been disrupted some what .

      1. I can’t remember the name of the drugs or chemicals he mentioned often but he was also correct about the cheaper existing versions of what would cure it. As it did during SARS.

    4. It was suggested at the time that some of the animals that had been used in experiments in the labs had been sold for human
      consumption on the market ………….now a lot of people are making an awful lot of money out of this human carnage.

    6. And Dr Fauci’s backers funded it because it was illegal to carry out the research in the US.
      People really need to wake up to the number of US funded labs carrying out biological research throughout the world.
      For example Ukraine,Georgia,Italy.

    7. Talk about stating the b1eeding obvious. Where has this Dr Chan been, or is it that she’s only just been allowed out? Those, like Trump, who called this over a year ago were labelled conspiracy theorists, convid deniers, all sorts of insults by the pschops ‘experts’.

      1. ‘Viral’

        https://www.amazon.co.uk/Viral-Search-Covid-19-Alina-Chan-ebook/dp/B096TCFVYP/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TQAZDPWT3RLC&keywords=alina+chan&qid=1639588932&sprefix=Alina%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-1

        Review
        ‘The result is a viral whodunnit that is sure to appeal to armchair detectives’ Mark Honigsbaum, the Observer
        ‘The book collates a series of circumstantial but damning points in favour of the lab-leak hypothesis. It opens with a cloak-and-dagger scene of a BBC reporter trying to reach a mine in Mojiang, a rural area in southwest China… The book has dozens of tantalising facts … The book, fairly, does not conclude that the lab leak hypothesis is definitely true, merely that it is highly possible, and I agree… I hope the questions that Chan and Ridley raise are answered more fully, one way or another’ Tom Chivers, The Times

        ‘Both journalists and armchair detectives interested in the mystery of the coronavirus were discovering Chan as a kind of Holmes to our Watson. She crunched information at twice our speed, zeroing in on small details we’d overlooked, and became a go-to for anyone looking for spin-free explications of the latest science on Covid-19’ Rowan Jacobsen, Boston Magazine.

        Set in the caves and mineshafts, food markets and wildlife smugglers’ stores, laboratories and databases of China and elsewhere, Viral is a page-turner that reads like a detective novel and goes deeper into the deepest mystery of the day than any other work.

    8. On Sunday, the stand-in vicarette scathingly said “Trump” – surely he was President at the time – “said America shouldn’t let in any more muslims because they would harm us”. Clearly she thought that was a bad thing. She approved Bojo’s saying that he wouldn’t be going to America because Trump was there. I tried to enlighten her about islam afterwards, but I’m not sure it sank in.

  66. Its been in operation for some time for oil and gas trade…Russia uses more € than $.

    Russia and China will develop shared financial structures to enable them to deepen economic ties in a way that foreign states will be unable to influence, the Kremlin has announced following talks between the countries’ leaders.
    The move appears to be a response to a series of warnings that Western nations could push to disconnect Russia from the Brussels-based SWIFT financial system as a form of sanctions.

    The payment platform underpins the vast majority of international transactions. During the talks on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping called for increasing the share of national currencies in mutual settlements and expanding cooperation to provide Russian and Chinese investors with access to stock markets, said Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy advisor.

    https://www.rt.com/russia/543258-moscow-china-create-independent-structure/

    1. Good Idea! Of course, when Colonel Ghaddafi tried it the US bombed his country and killed him.

  68. The Twelve Days Of Christmas
    On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
    A mild case of Covid-19
    On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
    Two latex gloves and a mild case of Covid-19
    (Repeat, adding new line below each time)
    Three bubbled homes
    Four thousand fans
    Five Yule days
    Six isolators
    Seven friends a-Zooming
    Eight Netflix dramas
    Nine neighbours grassing
    Ten testers tracing
    Eleven pubs a-closing
    Twelve shoppers queuing
    Oh dear me!

      1. Not that one, Paul. That is a baker’s shop and tea room. The Rutland Arms (where the original Bakewell Pudding was invented), though, is next door.

        1. Looks like a pub – although, to be fair, my desire for a session with mates in a boozer makes everywhere look like a pub :-((

    3. We drove into Bakewell several times trying to find local pies, obviously we don’t have the same detective qualities that you do.

    1. It is about thirty years since I saw that spire, you would have thought that it would have been straightened by now.

      1. I was watching a walking programme on BBC last night that went through Monsal Dale. I remember going there for a day trip with school and having a picnic next to the River Wye. It must have been around 1963 because steam trains were still running on the Derby to Manchester line over the Headstone Viaduct.

        1. Must be my age – getting mostalgic for places of my youth, although none were particularly noteworthy or beautiful.

      3. 59 years for me, I was a barman in the Punchbowl in Stone Street while serving at RAF Linton-on-Ouse.

    3. True story. When I mentioned to a Doctor friend I’d been to York he told me a friend of his had also recently visited York for Dinner. Afterwards driving home not being a local he got lost in the one way system. Fortunately just ahead was a police van. He thought they are bound to know their way out of the system I’ll follow them. Much to his surprise the van suddenly stopped and a group of policemen piled out and ran off. All but one who approached him and said: “Excuse me sir do you know where you are?” To which he replied: “No. I’m lost in the one way system and I was following you to find a way out”. “Well”, said the policemen., “Let me tell you that you are in a pedestrian precinct. Have you been drinking sir?… Would you please blow into this?”
      Footnote. The police had been called to a disturbance which is why most of them rushed off.

    4. I was stationed in Imphal Barracks York for two years in the mid 80s. As if that wasn’t enough of a treat, I was later stationed in Maastricht, NL. Like a carbon copy of York only with better opening hours and the continental Cafe Culture thrown in

      1. K.P., ex glamour-model, who rolled her BMW in the middle of the night whilst stoned on cocaine.

  75. Comedian Jethro dies aged 73 from Covid despite having had two jabs and a booster two years after he battled cancer
    Jethro, real name Geoffrey Rowe, died yesterday from Covid, management said
    Comic was fully vaccinated and had had his booster jab before contracting virus
    Last year, 73-year-old announced he was retiring from stand-up after 50 years
    Cornish comedian shot to fame in 1980s and appeared on Des O’Connor show

    DM Story

    Steve Tomlin, the father of one of my godsons, was captain of the UEA rugby team when I was at UEA. He introduced the great England No 8 Andy Ripley to the game. Steve used to play for the Pirates in Penzance and Jethro used to play in the front row with Steve and Stack Stevens, the England prop about whom Steve has written a biography. Steve writes biographies about rugby players and I have written to him today suggesting he writes one about Jethro.

    2. Here’s how the BBC is reporting his demise:

      “Cornish comedian Jethro has died at the age of 73 after contracting Covid-19, his family has said.

  76. Comedian Jethro dies aged 73 from Covid despite having had two jabs and a booster two years after he battled cancer
    Jethro, real name Geoffrey Rowe, died yesterday from Covid, management said
    Comic was fully vaccinated and had had his booster jab before contracting virus
    Last year, 73-year-old announced he was retiring from stand-up after 50 years
    Cornish comedian shot to fame in 1980s and appeared on Des O’Connor show

    DM Story

    Steve Tomlin, the father of one of my godsons, was captain of the UEA rugby team when I was at UEA. He introduced the great England No 8 Ripley to the game. Steve used to play for the Pirates in Penzance and Jethro used to play in the front row with Steve and Stack Stevens, the England prop about whom Steve has written a biography. Steve writes biographies about rugby players and I have written to him today suggesting he writes one about Jethro.

    1. Have a care. There’s an Elderly Gentleman that peruses this site, likely to have a heart condition. I doubt he can handle more than one British Standard Handful a day.

        1. It was Paul Newman who said: “Why go out for a hamburger when you can have fillet steak at home!”

  83. Star murderess gets 25 years minimum. No mention of the sentence for the mother, charged with “allowing the murder to take place”. Surely that makes her an accessory?

    1. FS, for allowing the death of your daughter, you get eight years.

      You must serve two-thirds before being considered for release. Your 443 days on remand will be factored in.

      Court transcript!

    3. Looking at the photos of those two bitches, the killers of those two little mites, look at their eyes. Dead, no feeling there. I once taught a boy in CT whose eyes were like that and I mentioned it to the Head of Special Ed. Yes, she said, one day he’ll hurt someone.
      Why, oh why were the concerns of the extended family overlooked in both cases? And how many other little guys are slipping through the cracks because of all these asinine restrictions.

  84. Was there plenty of booing at PMQ when BPAPM deigned to come off paternity leave to lie to Parliament?

        1. I know Bill………but don’t get me started,………. I might get all self consensus. 😏
          I’ve got a litre of damson Gin ‘on the go’ in the garage. But don’t tell Plum.

    1. Apparently – (and I can’t find the stats, natch) – before this plague, foopballers dropped dead like flies (or had health ishoos while playing) all the time. Seriously – it is a known phenomenon.

      There doesn’t appear to be a greater incidence since March 2020. Stig will know. He always has the figures.

      1. I can’t recall so many high profile players keeling over.

        Overweight amateurs in Sunday leagues may well have died, but players at the peak of their profession?
        I don’t think so.

          1. Play with the age lists and look at the injuries down the years, headings/collisions/food poisoning/bowel problems etc
            The more recent top level ones are predominantly heart.
            My money is on the vaccines.

          2. Mine, too. But I was surprised to see how many. And that list didn’t include those who “had a funny turn” aad carried on playing after treatment.

          3. I wonder how many played on after their problems because there were no substitues available, or in the days when they weren’t allowed.

    3. ‘Corona is like your wife. Initially, you tried to control it… then you realise that you can’t. Then you learn to live with it,” Mahfud said.

      I have passed this on to Caroline for comment!

  88. Tearing up Northern Ireland Protocol risks £500m of taxpayers’ money
    Government has spent a huge amount of money in creating a post-Brexit Irish Sea border

    Article by the hyper odious James Crisp : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/15/tearing-northern-ireland-protocol-puts-half-billion-pounds-taxpayers/

    The Brexit ‘deal’ is already proving to be be – along with everything else the bunglingly incompetent buffoon has touched – a surrender to the EU and a sell out of the British people.

    Amongst the BTL Comments

    “Thanks all those remoaners who forced us to remove “no deal” from the negotiating table – this is your fault.”

    But with an 80 seat majority the very first thing that Boris Johnson should have done to get Brexit done was to put “No Deal” firmly back on the table before agreeing to anything with the completely untrustworthy EU.

  89. I see that Doris is already panicking again. …”Boris set to discuss crisis in 5PM press conference as his own experts call for ‘Plan C’ with NHS in ‘peril’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10312029/Omicron-hotspot-London-seeing-Covid-cases-rise-faster-wave.html

    Hospitalisations are not shooting up, and are at less that 1/4 of the ‘peak’ in January. Deaths 38 (all alleged convid deaths, no distinction between WITH and FROM) compared to multiple times that in January (many of which may have been caused by jabs in the frail elderly).
    They are, once again, ignoring evidence and facts that this scariant is far less likely to lead to serious illness or death. ANd the hospitals are NOT near ‘overwhelmed’.
    They are still using the unscientific way of counting convid deaths as being within 28 days of a positive ‘test’ result (from notoriously inaccurate, over-processed samples).
    They are just itching to tighten restrictions. They wouldn’t dare tell us to not have family get-togethers at Christmas again – though SNazi Sturgeon has put a limit of 3 households – but will more than likely announce a lockdown at new Year, blaming us for seeing too many people at Christmas.

    1. Perhaps our rebellious MPs will do what is necessary and resign the whip to force this government to reconsider its actions, nah, just a pipe dream.

      1. Was just opining to an elderly chum who rang up this evening that the “rebels” were just grandstanding. They knew from the numbers voting for that there was no risk of defeat and that there were too many of them to have the whip removed.

        2. Agreed, it was just pure theatre designed to fool their constituents. If they are genuinely concerned about mine, yours and others freedoms I expect them to resign the whip to bring about change.
          Not going to happen is it!

    2. This is the important statement – “Government modelling predicts 400,000 people are catching the mutant virus every day, with the strain spreading faster than testing can keep up.”

      It’s all bullshit and spreadsheet, no real life data.

    3. I had a call this afternoon from the doc’s surgery telling me I hadn’t had the booster and there was an appointment available on Saturday. I told the very nice lady that I’d had the two previous jabs and had developed these red marks on my arm. There was a slight pause and then she said, “Oh dear.” The tone of her voice was very telling and I told her I was not going to have the booster. That was entirely up to me was the response. She asked if MH was of like mind so I gave him the phone and he told her No and said he didn’t trust one word this government said- again she said it was his choice. Neither did she sound surprised. MH reckons a lot of people are saying No.

        1. I was getting daily texts from our health centre for over a week. On Monday, after the scruffy git gave his latest panic-mode address, they posted on their farcebook page about cancelling all ‘routine’ and non-emergency work (no timescale given but they’ll spin it as long as possible, (can’t have patients cluttering up their very spacious – and now chairless – massive waiting room) to ‘concentrate on the booster drive.’ bad luck if a patient finds a suspicious lump or other cancer warning signs – I doubt they would consider that sufficiently urgent, maybe ‘take an over-the-counter pain relief’ at best.

          1. I feel sorry for the practice nurses. At our place, they seem to take the vast majority of face-to-face appointments as well as phone calls.

  91. Contrary to the pleading of Dr Robert Malone* not to use the nRNA Vaxx on Children for clear and serious medical reasons, the G1T in No 10 is urging parents to get 12-15 year olds vaccinated before next term…

    *Dr. Robert Malone
    Chief Medical & Regulatory Officer,
    MD, MS, Northwestern School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School fellow – Global Clinical Research Scholar (2016), original Inventor of the mRNA Vaccine Platform used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines

    https://globalcovidsummit.org/news/live-stream-event-physicians-alerting-parents

    1. 342869+ up ticks,
      Evening S,
      The treatment of 1400 / 1600 children
      in rotherham should be used as a common denominator in regards to
      lab/lib/con / politico’s / employees, lest we WANT to forget for the party’s sake.

        1. Me too. if suggestions as to effects on future fertility have any truth in them, which only time will tell, maybe my son will never become a grandparent.

    1. Ladies, and the few gentleman Nottlers, look away now.

      He would have got away with it except that some rotten cunt split on him

    3. Ada:” if I die of Covid before Christmas what will you do?”
      Bert: “I’ll invite David Fuller to give you a Christmas stuffing”
      Eurgghhh..

  95. That’s me for this quite mild day. Colder tomorrow (Cold in winter – shock).

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  96. Well, after a fairly useful day up the garden, I was absobloobylutely fuming earlier on.

    Walked to Cromford to pick up the van from being serviced and started to drive home.
    Accelerated up the road in first from the garage and as I was beginning to change into second, the engine revs dropped right down and stopped accelerating.
    Limped up the road to an old quarry entrance where I pulled in and tried to rev the engine. VERY sluggish to pick up so turned round and drove back to Cromford and back to the garage.

    No idea of the fault, so left it there and walked back home.

    HOWEVER, just typing up my whinge when the garage called me. The new Mass Airflow Meter that had been fitted a couple of weeks ago, had gone tits up. So they replaced it under warranty and, fingers crossed, the van seems ok now.

    At least I can get to Derby for a 10am meeting with stepson’s new social care person and detour via the Blue Monkey Brewery Shop on the way home!!
    https://bluemonkeybrewery.com/

    Their dark ales are rather palatable.

    1. 342869+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Did you lip read the application after the nibble, ” bloody lovely that was, that was”

  98. I’ve just received an e-mail telling me I’m due a tax rebate.
    It’s a great pity that the scammers concerned can’t be imprisoned for tax fraud.

  99. 342869+ up ticks,

    The andrew kneel chaps says,

    Neil says:

    You have a right not to be vaccinated. But I have a right not have you near me in a restaurant or on a plane.

    Then surely the operative three word reply MUST be
    …. off then, twat is optional.

      1. 342869+ up ticks,
        Evening G,
        Do not let me detain you kneel, if the piss is off get me a pint of lager.

        1. I would never buy anyone any cat’s piss! Only proper, decent, cask-conditioned English ale is bought on my round.

      1. 342869+ up ticks,

        Evening A,
        Fact arriving shortly,
        Funny thing is it is a black, Irish greyhound owner, doing the saying, bejabbers.

  100. Evening, all. Where has the headline letter writer been for the last 18 months or so? It’s ALL been scaremongering, with dodgy data, suspect stats, fudged figures and messy modelling!

  103. Twitter, which dubs itself the arbiter of medical misinformation through its constellation of conflicted ‘fact-checkers,’ will start imposing penalties on users who claim that vaccinated people can spread Covid-19…

    …a claim made by none other than the US CDC Director, the NIH, Facui, and countless other officials.

  105. Omicron mathematical model V4.0

    Version 1.0 – exponential model of Omicron replication at doubling every two days
    Version 2.0 – Pendleton adjustment to include effect on population
    Version 2.1 – replication rate set to double every 1.5 days in line with HoC statement
    Version 3.0 – boundary conditions set for day 37 to stop population going negative. View — uploads.disquscdn.com
    Version 4.0 – cell formula replication error corrected to balance total population (Thanks to Kent) https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef299243a01feda6f5f882f752813f9de016190d047bc7149965eb4e7d552480.jpg

      3. There are no sick people in my model – just 70 million of us who are existing with it.
        The form in which they exist in another matter that I am not yet able to work out.

        1. My comment is aimed at those who believe the huge numbers put out – if it’s 400,000 or whatever a day, there should be an awful lot of ill folk around. Or, if not, maybe it’s not so serious anyhow. One or the other.

          1. My question is why on earth are all these people, or any of these people, taking blasted tests? That’s the only place where “cases” are picked up.

          2. Many are people who work in schools or care homes.

            Others succumb to peer pressure – eg I’ve been invited to coffee with a friend who has recovered from surgery – but she wants us to take a test first. I’ve never done one before but she’s a good friend so on this occasion I’ll do as she asks.

            Others just think they have to if they sneeze.

          3. The spreadsheet model I created was not intended to address illness because it is difficult to define it.
            Indeed in the case of mental illness a person must be persuaded that they are ill before they can be convinced that they need treatment. Even ‘healthy’ people may have to go to a doctor to be told they are ill.
            The sad thing is that there are so many branches of medicine that you are sure to be able to find a practitioner who will say you need treatment for an illness you didn’t think you had.

            This means that most people are probably ill and don’t know it so the huge numbers are true for the people who think they are ill and false for the people who think they are not ill and are none the wiser.

    2. Today’s announcement of a scary increase in the number of Omicron infections would suggest that the UK has passed day 24 of Omicron presence in the UK.

      This is an entry in the V4.0 spreadsheet model which shows 65,536 for day 24 – this doesn’t really change the situation as we knew it yesterday with a virus replication rate of doubling every 1.5 days.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/86b40e66182bbab19cad5ce5839b7b0f9978300b500492487c4c54a17d9cc4b3.jpg

      1. You shold trim the decimal points (what’s 0.3719 of a person?), and format the numbers to show , or gap for thousands. Makes it easier to read.

        1. You’re not supposed to read the numbers on the spreadsheet.
          It’s more important to visualise from the graph how soon the tsunami is going to hit.

  107. 342869+ up ticks,

    The only comparison that can be made by decent peoples is, in the Berlin bunker at a quarter to eight adolf
    calling up phantom battalions.

    The United Kingdom received yet another direct address from the Prime Minister Wednesday evening, with Boris Johnson making a return to wartime metaphors that were so common in the early part of the pandemic, while his top scientist appealed to the public to stop socialising now to enjoy Christmas.

  108. 342869+ up ticks,

    May one ask as an American turk what side was he on in the war ?

    Boris Again Reaches For WW2 Imagery to Push Covid Booster Campaign

      1. 342869+ up ticks,

        Evening ITP,

        The war of Independence of course that commenced on the 24/6/2016,as with a great many lab/lib/con
        pro eu coalition supporters they were NOT for the home side.

    1. Oh my goodness, death rates rise as the older you get, over 90s death rate is high, well lock down the country, destroy the economy, close schools, introduce passes, hold press briefings. PANIC, PANIC, PANIC……

  114. A piece of good sense spoiled only by the use of ‘fantastic’.

    The booster strategy makes little sense

    We must strike a balance. It is not right that support for chronic conditions will be delayed by boosters for people in their 20s

    CLIVE DIX

    The battle over Covid transmission was lost some time ago. The vaccines will not stop the spread of the virus in the short or medium term, but that is not a disaster. Indeed the vaccines were not designed to end transmission. It was evident to me at the time I helped with the procurement of doses, as interim chair of the Vaccine Taskforce, that the intention was to stop people from getting severely ill or dying.

    It is clear that the omicron variant is more transmissible than delta. But what is not clear – indeed, what is utterly unlikely – is that it evades the vaccines’ ability to prevent severe disease and death. Studies may suggest that the two jabs of AstraZeneca are not very good at preventing you from catching Covid, but I am absolutely certain that they would provide excellent protection against severe Covid.

    I’ve been astonished to see the lack of clarity with which some public figures speak of vaccines. The terms “evade” and “resistance” are being used in a misleading way. When politicians talk of vaccine resistance, they should always make clear that it is very, very difficult for any variant to become “resistant” in the medium term to the full spectrum of immunity that these fantastic vaccines offer.

    The booster campaign is still very important. It will be required for years to come. However, we must define its purpose. Boosters ought to be administered for the protection of the elderly and the immuno-compromised, who may struggle to maintain a decent immune response. Thus any campaign should, logically, discriminate. It should start with the elderly and most vulnerable and then work its way down.

    Instead, we have the unseemly sight of 30-year-olds queuing around buildings for vaccines while not all the over-65s are boosted. In theory, a 65-year-old who has waited two weeks for their appointment might be asked to wait in the same line as a 30-year-old who booked a day or two ago. If the purpose is to prevent hospitalisations and deaths from rising, this makes very little sense.

    Such a strategy would only be cogent if we wanted to eliminate transmission, but that is, at the moment at least, an impossible dream. And while it would of course be desirable if we could give a booster to anyone who wanted one, the real world means we face a very real trade-off between boosting the young and caring for the chronically ill.

    Given that young and healthy people not only have a very low chance of suffering severe Covid in the first place, but also already have substantial immunity from severe disease thanks to the first two jabs, I cannot see how boosting them is more valuable for public health than doubling our focus on the most vulnerable and cracking down on the backlog of chronically sick patients, such as those with hypertension, diabetes or even cancer.

    The cat is out of the bag, however. A virtually indiscriminate booster campaign is underway, and that inevitably means sacrificing the care of elderly diabetes for the very marginal benefit of boosting the antibody concentrations of the young and healthy. I fear that we be inadvertently causing a lot of human suffering.

    Dr Clive Dix was Interim Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/14/boosters-strategy-makes-little-sense/

    1. The Dix fellow is deluded if he thinks the vaccines efficacious in any way whatsoever. They kill and maim otherwise healthy people. He is correct in wishing real serious diseases should be a priority in the NHS.

      Covid is a side show, a veritable shit show even.

    2. The Dix fellow is deluded if he thinks the vaccines efficacious in any way whatsoever. They kill and maim otherwise healthy people. He is correct in wishing real serious diseases should be a priority in the NHS.

      Covid is a side show, a veritable shit show even.

  117. Jethro was probably not to everyone’s taste , but he was quite funny , if you closed your ears to his rudeness.

    He was so West country , and well loved , humour could be coarse but he was as rough as a glass of fresh scrumpy .

    His ability to create laughter was a gift . Many people will mourn his death , he died from Covid , he was double jabbed and boostered !!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUopUrwj79Y

      2. I have a Cornish friend who after many pints can recite Jethro’s jokes as if he was him. At the end of a good session he can literally have people falling off their chairs.

    1. Saw a framed cartoon today that made me think of Phizee; dog sitting on a bar stool – One Tequila … Two Tequila … Three Tequila … [empty bar stool] Floor! 🙂

      1. Don’t try and kid on you aren’t a huge fan of the Krankies!! You’re no foolin’ us, pal!

  122. There has been some talk in the media about whether school/church nativity plays should go ahead in these times of terror. Without wishing to sound like Max Bygraves, let me tell you a story….
    In my last year at primary school- I was 11- and was still being made to go to church and Sunday school. The church, a Congregational, was putting on a nativity for the Sunday evening service prior to 25th. With spot on casting, I was to play the Angel Gabriel. My dad painted me a gorgeous pair of wings which were attached to my angel attire and hooked over my little fingers with brass curtain rings.
    Everyone kept telling me to speak up and speak clearly. At this point I should say that I had a very clear speaking voice and could be somewhat loud. However, I took all the advice to heart.
    I was to make my entrance at the back of the church and announce, ” I am the Angel Gabriel and I have glad tidings of great joy.” (Or summat like that.)
    So, the door opened and the Angel bellowed, in a voice that would have caused an avalanche in the Alps, the angel’s words. Half the congregation in the back of the church, were lifted out their seats and several jumped out of their skins.
    Then I had to “fly” down the aisle to the crib scene.
    It was my first and last appearance as Gabriel. Not sure why ;-))

    1. Sounds like my father’s business partner’s daughter, who at the tender age of 7 bellowed “I AM YOUR FAIRY GODMOTHER!” to a quaking Cinderella.

    2. A few years ago, my great neice, then about 5, announced proudly to her parents that she was going to appear in ‘An Acitivity Play’.

      1. It is funny how small children get words almost right. There is a hymn which has the words in it…Pity my simplicity. I asked my mother where “plicity” was and why we had to feel sorry for the mice there.

    3. Sarah Kennedy (Radio 3) told of one mite who decided to ad-lib:

      “Unto you a child will be born,…. but don’t get attached to him – he’ll be dead by easter….”

      1. It’s one of the reasons I loved teaching- you just never knew what the little blighters were going to come out with.

      1. It is a genetic defect. But then whether the cat is born a tabby, a ginger or a black and white is also a genetic defect. I have this on the authority of a German friend who was the director of the Berlin Technological University.

        1. Why a defect? It’s just a variation. Cats come in various colours but the most natural is probably tabby.

          1. Just quoting a German geneticist friend of the family, Monika.

            Her father Franz Gross was the head of research for Brown Boverie Kent, now ABB, a Swiss company and with a research base in Neckargemund near Heidelberg. (sorry about the missing umlaut). Bloody iPhone has certain inadequacies.

            Edit:

            Franz was a pioneer of battery technology and patented early batteries we now take for granted.

            He told me that nuclear fusion was an enigma and unobtainable because the magnetic power required far exceeded the potential generative power.

            On the occasion of the fire at York Minster which partially destroyed a transept of the cathedral, we were staying with him in Neckargemund. At breakfast Franz addressed me and said that there had been a fire at York Minster but that the Five Sisters were intact and unaffected.

            I cannot imagine people of this country having an intimate knowledge of the history of German cathedral architecture, as Franz had of our English Architecture.

            Franz Gross knew that the five sisters were ancient grisaille (green) glass Early English Lancet window survivors from mediaeval times and quite unique.

            I had to explain to my family at the table the meaning of Franz’s words.

            Thankfully as a student of Architecture with an intimate knowledge of our cathedrals our party I imagined escaped embarrassment.

            Why are the English so ignorant of their heritage?

            The Germans have a greater appreciation of our past accomplishments than we do. Many of us admire the accomplishments of Germans.

            We are United in artistic appreciation but disunited by the application of futile and useless politics.

    2. Usually four on the back paws and four or five on the front.

      Our late cat Suzie was a polydactyl – she had extra thumbs on the front and small extra ones on the back paws – but not as many as this one!

  128. I was going to write “Reasons to be grumpy: Christmas postage stamps with QR codes” when I realised that it was even worse – the designer of the 2nd class stamp has mistaken seven swans a-swimming for the seven trumpets of The Revelation…

    It all ends here!

    2. Done. I had already signed petitions 1 and 3. No 1, the referendum petition, is now over the 100,000.

      1. No – got some replies this morning indicating that the decision was made on Tuesday to disregard any other course of action.

  130. Don’t tell Witless or the buffoon but I made it through the day without being one of his forecasted trillions of fatalities.
    They would be devastated to think that the public might consider them to be lying turds.

    1. Dalrymple

      In my studies of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the
      purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to
      inform but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to
      reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they
      are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced
      to repeat lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of
      probity. To assent to obvious lies is …in some small way to become
      evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even
      destroyed. A variety of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think
      if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is
      intended to.

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