Saturday 18 December: A change in leadership is needed if protesting Tory voters are to return to the party

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

654 thoughts on “Saturday 18 December: A change in leadership is needed if protesting Tory voters are to return to the party”

    1. Good morning to you, Minty, and to all NoTTLers. Today is my monthly Mystery Walk with my friend from Potters Bar, so I have no idea where I am going to until we set out from his house, and it will start with a couple of bacon butties and include a pub lunch. We call these excursions SAD days, which stands for Saturday Adventure Days. Occasionally we choose to walk on a Monday, which makes them MAD days, although one could say that all of our walks are a little mad – lots of banter and fun.

        1. Thanks, Minty, it was good fun and consisted of a visit to Wrest Hall including a walk around the grounds.

          EDIT: The name of the venue was Wrest Park.

  2. Morning all.

    This piece reveals the misunderstading by health officials, the Government and the public of the difference between the rate of change of something and the rate of change of the rate of change of the same thing.

    These two things are completely different measures and you can’t compare them because they are quantified in different units.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10323043/Covid-cases-NOT-doubling-two-days.html

    It’s like comparing speed with acceleration – you wouldn’t compare a car that can do 60 mph with one that can do 0 to 60 in 5 seconds.

    Speed is measured in metric as metres per second (m/s) whereas acceleration is measured in metres per second per second (m/s/s).

    1. The differential of distance with time is speed. The differential of speed with time is acceleration.

    2. We saw that with the feeble attempts to “reduce the deficit” when, at best, all that was reduced was the rate of increase of the deficit.
      And even that only lasted a very short time.

    3. The UK Health Security Agency had assumed infections were doubling every 1.9 days but it now says this has become ‘less valid’ due to ‘behaviour change’.But increased mask-wearing and working from home had reduced the rate of spread and altered the forecast, the spokesman added.

      Are these claims provable? Perhaps Covid Mk 37 is simply less dangerous…

    4. The bar chart of hospitalisations is meaningless. If it is a chart of admissions it needs to be qualified by the daily numbers leaving hospital (alive or dead).
      The number of patients in hospital at any one time is the key figure. Arrivals and departure and length of stay are all related when one is looking at “pressure on the NHS”. Another important consideration is what level occupancy is a hospital staffed for? The number of beds is only one aspect, the number of medicos is another. That takes us to planning for the future, how many people were the hospitals intended to cope with? The Continentals have more hospital beds per head of population than we do, are we more efficient, more arrogant, or more penny-pinching with our fingers crossed?

      1. G’day Peter,

        My comment today reveals that there is a lack of understanding between the scientists, the statisticians and Government ministers on the best way to present the COVID virus status to business and the public.

        My graph is my own attempt, with the help of Nottlers, to develop an overall picture of what’s going on so that I can get an idea of the risks that I and my family are facing. I’m at V4.0 of a mathematical model using Google Sheets at the moment .

        I have shown that the graph of an exponential growth factor on a population is completely meaningless until the variables in the graph are precisely defined. (e.g. if a COVID jab kills everyone in the UK it stands to reason that there won’t be anyone left to go and vote Conservative in a polling booth!).

        At the moment I’m trying to add another variable to the graph that I think is highly relevant to the current situation and that is the number of confirmed Omicron cases that can be derived from the national UK network of genomic testing centres. This has a bearing on the confidence levels that can be ascribed to publicly accessible data forecasts which are expected shortly to provide significantly less accurate figures.

        This will be V5.O when I’m satified with the graph which will then be avaiable for Nottler comments.

  3. ‘It is like a prison’ Blind Afghan refugee’s anger over tiny UK home. 18 December 2021.

    And Amer is now unhappy with the way the UK has treated his family since they arrived to the country.

    “It is like a prison. I just can’t take it,” the former soldier said today.

    “I was not expecting this treatment from the UK. I thought the UK was a welcoming place to people like me – I worked alongside the British Army in Afghanistan, risking my life, I had a good relationship with them.”

    Amer was a General overseeing 500 troops in Zabul province, neighbouring Helmand, and spent a decade working alongside British troops to root out terrorists, Birmingham Live says.

    You should try being born here!

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1537593/Afghan-refugee-housing-UK-Walsall-Council

    1. The indigenes have to work hard to pay for their tiny home, and yours, mate, so shut up with the whining.

    2. “Amer oversaw the payroll of 500 troops in Zabul province, neighbouring Helmand, and spent most of it on himself because there were only 50 troops under his command who had to be paid”

    3. Well, you know, being a traitor to your country usually gets you shot, which is what you deserve.

    4. Blood y ungrateful bast.ard. It’s free for him, along with free living expenses, free healthcare (I bet they get to see a GP in person, otherwise he’d play the racism card), free education for his kids, probably a free car too. If it’s that bad, he can go back/elsewhere as he is not welcome here. If he wants a bigger home, then he can darned well work for it, just like British people have to.
      Not to forget that, in taking up this ‘tiny’ home, he is denying a home to a British family.

    5. Off you go, Amer, trot back to Afghanistan and relish the welcome you’ll be given there – you ungrateful bastard.

  4. Morning, all Y’all.
    First day of Christmas off work starts today. With a lie-in. Yaay! Only two tasks: Get (and drink) beer and cut the Christmas tree.

  5. Good Morning Folks,

    Mild start, bit of dampness in the air, birds having a good old chirrup out there.
    Their feeders must be empty.

  6. A change in leadership is needed if protesting Tory voters are to return to the party

    Doesn’t that depend on who the new leader is and if they carry on with the same mad policies.

    1. If and when Johnson goes the prospective “leaders” will have to state what their position is on a range of policies to try and persuade those whose job it is to elect the new “leader” to vote for those policies and hence that person. After all that has gone on, including the lies, the bullying, the wilful attacks on doctors and scientists trying to get to the truth etc. how will anyone be able to believe them? From my perspective all the possible contenders are contaminated by their association with Johnson and are therefore not fit for the role of PM.

    2. As a matter of curiosity I looked through the members of the HoL. Generally a heap of dross or far too old, but one caught my eye. Lord Bamford.
      Persuading them to give up a sinecure might be difficult, but they could always return after doing the job.
      It would be hard now to find him a safe seat, but I suspect he’d make a good PM.

      Stevens of Ludgate, ex UKIP might be another
      An off the wall suggestion might be Lord Botham from the cross benches!

    1. Saving everyone’s blushes.
      Historical note.
      Knickers for women were not introduced for another 50 years, and then they were considered indecent.
      Oh, and they had no crutch.
      They were literally two separate legs held together by a drawstring.

      1. There’s a pair of Queen Vic’s bloomers on display at Osborne House and they are crotch less. The old girl would be horrified to think her drawers were being viewed by the common herd.

        1. Apparently every local museum has a pair of her bloomers.
          The more fortunate have one of her nightdresses which can be hired out as marquee.

    2. The whole point of “The Swing” (and why it’s such an erotic painting) is that the girl on the swing would not have been wearing drawers (and so the swain lying where he is would have got an eyeful).

  9. Environmental hubris has left Britain vulnerable to Putin’s gas blackmail. 18 December 2021.

    The Government’s utopian approach to environmentalism – including the end of coal power, shunning fracking, and demanding we drive electric vehicles powered by renewable energy – has always come at a cost. But seldom has that cost been so painful as that exacted by Russia’s apparent rigging of the price of gas through its supply company Gazprom.

    I can only think that Mr Heffer has written this deeply flawed piece at the behest of a large wodge of cash from the PTB. Not only has Russia not rigged the price of gas in Europe but we do not buy any significant amounts of it anyway.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/18/environmental-hubris-has-left-britain-vulnerable-putins-gas/

    1. Gazprom has rigged the price. The real issue is whether they are taking advantage of favourable conditions just as any reasonable company would or whether there are political forces at work.

    2. Even so, however the comment is true in general. Anything that hits the cost of electricity or other fuels hits the UK very hard. Our governments have made us as vulnerable as a polar bear with no fur.

    2. Our pub was very busy yesterday and we got there at 4pm. A few office type gatherings and families.

      1. I went out with a friend for a pub lunch (delicious food) today. There were other pairs of diners eating and when they left, others replaced them.

  12. Morning all

    A change in leadership is needed if protesting Tory voters are to return to the party

    SIR – At first sight, the Lib Dems have recorded a massive swing in taking the seat of North Shropshire. However, the combined votes of Lib Dems and Labour were approximately 21,500 – roughly 3,500 more than at the 2019 general election. Assuming a certain determination to vote on the part of these supporters, this is not such a significant increase in votes.

    The Conservatives polled about 23,000 fewer votes than in 2019, and this certainly is significant.

    One interpretation of these figures is to say that protesting, stay-at-home Tories are in the majority. This would imply that these people are sending a major message of disapproval to Conservative leadership but are, as yet, unwilling to desert the fundamental Tory philosophy. There are doubtless others in similar “safe seats”.

    Hopefully someone is listening. A change in leadership and direction and a move to serious actions, not words, are urgently needed.

    Robert Barlow

    Little Bookham, Surrey

    SIR – Tory backbenchers have indicated their lack of faith in Boris Johnson as leader. Conservative voters in North Shropshire have registered their disdain for him as Prime Minister.

    The incompetent handling of the economy, insane green policies, and the haphazard management of the pandemic – combined with allegations of sleaze – mean that this is not a government recognised by true Conservatives.

    A two-year rebuilding programme must commence, with Boris Johnson and most of his Cabinet being replaced now.

    Clifford Baxter

    Wareham, Dorset

    SIR – Sir Charles Walker said on the Today programme that a leadership challenge now, while we remain on a pandemic footing, would cause unneeded stress. It would, however, be short-lived. The alternative is several years’ more chaos as Boris Johnson and his incompetent team blunder about.

    The only snag in going for change now is that we cannot rely on the Civil Service to keep the ship steady in the interim.

    Peter Munro

    Wincanton, Somerset

    SIR – The most significant thing about this by-election result is that the voters did not turn to Labour.

    Brian Foster

    Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

    SIR – I note with interest the assumption that North Shropshire has a strong farming sector, so is surely Tory. Why so?

    Brexit has crippled farming, fishing and food processing, with the Food and Drink Federation reporting on Thursday a 24 per cent drop in EU exports, and the National Farmers’ Union reporting greater strains resulting in a 12.5 per cent fall in planned planting for 2022.

    The Tories are responsible for imposing costly red-tape, reducing the supply of labour, and ending access to traditional European fishing zones and EU markets. From January 1 2022, full border controls will be imposed on all UK exports to Europe’s single market, adding to the misery.

    A Lib Dem win was a certainty. We must regain access to the single market if UK plc is to survive.

    Dr Eric Goodyer

    Birsay, Orkney

    SIR – The Prime Minister probably thinks he got Brexit done. He didn’t.

    He failed to end the influence of the European Court of Justice, and has compromised the sovereignty of the United Kingdom by allowing the EU to meddle in Northern Ireland’s affairs. He has not made it clear to France that we have reclaimed our territorial waters, and he is currently bribing President Macron with more fishing licences.

    He has failed to protect our borders against illegal migrants, to the extent that countries such as Russia are now using the mass movement of people in demographic warfare, destabilising our economy and security.

    He has betrayed this country and those loyal to the Conservative Party.

    Philip Incledon

    Mark, Somerset

    SIR – Why can’t the Government be as decisive as the Queen? We will never forget her decision to sit socially distanced at her husband’s funeral. What a heartbreaking sight.

    Her Majesty was surely looking forward to sharing this Christmas with her closest family, but again she has been decisive and cancelled the pre-Christmas lunch with them (report, December 16).

    As always, she is leading by example – a policy the Government needs to adopt, and quickly.

    Nigel Lines

    Ferndown, Dorset

    SIR – Those with long memories will recall the sensational Orpington by-election of March 1962, when Eric Lubbock, a Liberal, overturned a majority of 14,760 to win the safe Conservative seat. The swing was 22 per cent from Conservative to Liberal.

    It was suggested at the time that this would lead to an emphatic Liberal win in the next general election. It didn’t.

    David Tomlinson

    Hopton, Suffolk

    1. “SIR – The most significant thing about this by-election result is that the voters did not turn to Labour.” That’s because Labour allegedly made a pact with the Lib Dems solely to unseat the Tories (Labour has a habit of being beaten in this seat), Brian Foster.

      “Brexit has crippled farming, fishing and food processing, with the Food and Drink Federation reporting on Thursday a 24 per cent drop in EU exports, and the National Farmers’ Union reporting greater strains resulting in a 12.5 per cent fall in planned planting for 2022. The Tories are responsible for imposing costly red-tape, reducing the supply of labour, and ending access to traditional European fishing zones and EU markets. From January 1 2022, full border controls will be imposed on all UK exports to Europe’s single market, adding to the misery.” None of these things is the result of “Brexit” (which we don’t have), they are down to Tory (and civil service) remainer actions and a failure to leave on WTO rules added to an unwillingness to maximise the potential of actually being free. “A Lib Dem win was a certainty. We must regain access to the single market if UK plc is to survive.” A Lib Dem victory was not a “certainty”, although they did throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at it. What helped them was the Tory own goal of selecting a candidate who was a) not local, b) a townie, c) permanently sun-tanned and d) chosen either as a box-ticking diversity exercise or because he had raised “hundreds of thousands of pounds” for the party (or possibly both). Orkney (isn’t that traditional Lib Dem country?) is about as far away from North Shropshire as you can get, Dr Goodyer. They, like you, did not consult those of us who live here.

  15. IR – Your report (December 16) on the Scrooge-like Christmas lunch at Steyning Grammar School in West Sussex reminded me of happy times in Grand Cayman when we would luxuriate over a Christmas Day brunch at a hotel known for sumptuous food.

    On one occasion I asked a waiter whether the staff had been treated to something special. His face fell. Their Christmas lunch had been liver curry.

    Diana Jones

    London N12

    SIR – The Christmas feast at Steyning reminded of when I was at Ellesmere College in the 1950s. A fellow pupil was beaten for trying to post the cooked part of his breakfast home to his family – a quarter round of fried bread with half a tomato on it.

    I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Ellesmere, and was often told how fit I looked.

    John Cox

    Devizes, Wiltshire

  16. Morning again

    Head in the game

    SIR – Catherine Kidson’s letter on school reports (December 15) reminded me of my games mistress, who wrote: “Audrey is inclined to dream when fielding.”

    Audrey Lindsay

    Over Peover, Cheshire

    SIR – Of my cricketing skills, my sports master wrote: “As a batsman hisefforts are more agricultural than useful and in the field he has theair of a disinterested spectator.”

    Patrick White

    London SW20

    SIR – In the mid-1950s, my prep school in Windsor, which is still flourishing, offered my parents the helpful comment: “Penny’s country dancing has improved greatly this term.”

    What more could they have wanted?

    Penny Buckley

    Bournemouth, Dorset

    SIR – The Physical Education section of a school report in the early 1960s stated: “Nigel is the best of the non-swimmers.”

    Nigel Price

    Wilmslow, Cheshire

    SIR – My primary school music report said: “Sings well, but not in tune.”

    John Bryant

    Toddington, Bedfordshire

    SIR – My 1975 report: “Richard sets himself lower and lower standards every term, which he consistently fails to meet.”

    Richard Gibson

    Perth, Western Australia

    SIR – “The recent improvement in his handwriting has only revealed his complete inability to spell.”

    Dennis Graves

    Crowborough, East Sussex

    SIR – My favourite was: “Mottram gives the impression of knowing far more than he actually does.”

    Alan Mottram

    Tarporley, Cheshire

    SIR – My report once said: “When Jane walks across the classroom without creating a disturbance, the entire class will benefit.” I didn’t excel at school.

    Jane R Ludlow

    Bridge, Kent

    1. Good morning all. Thank you so much for giving Alf and me such a wonderful belly laugh 😆 Great start to the day, thanks.

    1. Candace talks a LOT of sense. A pity it’s cut off though, I’d like to listen to the entire speech.

    2. Thanks, Rik. Cut-and-saved.

      Candace Owens should be appointed President-for-life. I would personally love her to be prime minister in the UK. She is one of very few on this planet who possesses both balls and brains.

  19. #CovidClownWorld

    https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1471937157149466635

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a45cd031c015575d5b7f260a87ee5808a29ba6a367f70ff74bbd80ae04003dc9.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57ff68747522a3ce3bb89adf19f351e1389aff49fe5aede47975e5f3f1fd58ef.jpg

    https://twitter.com/diarmuid05/status/1471961259256000514?s=20

    TBF NoTTL has been well ahead of the curve here

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5230492d07f4d58a68c5a59bccc7763576eeac874e21196a2ca4ef98e39cd369.jpg

  22. 342965+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    December: A change in leadership is needed if protesting Tory voters are to return to the party.

    Read that as another plaster over a suppurated political pus party, after a run of suppurated political pus party’s, political party politico’s & leaders.
    Adhering to this political sh!te grading party selection as in voting for the best of the worst over the last three plus decades has certainly nigh on destroyed a decent Nation,seen the wholesale rape & abuse of not only the Nation but the Nations children via imported foreign paedophilia, ongoing.

    The lab/lib/con coalition ARE a very dangerous virus a great many of the electorate carry the LLC tick into the polling booth as super spreaders.

    Well meant advice to the electorate ” shape up or ship out”

  23. Good Moaning.
    The DT’s Michael Deacon is settling nicely into his new post:

    “A Liddle compromise

    For the last fortnight, Durham University has been in uproar, with students demanding Professor Tim Luckhurst be fired for the crime of inviting a Right-wing newspaper columnist to give a speech to them. Thankfully, though, there is now light at the end of the tunnel. Because this week, a student who organised a protest against Prof Luckhurst said: “Either Tim leaves – or we do.”

    What a gracious offer. I urge the university authorities to accept it at once. Keep Prof Luckhurst, and let all the protesters go.

    This outcome should resolve the matter to everyone’s satisfaction. If anything, the greatest beneficiaries would be the protesters. The experience of having to work for a living and converse with people who are not rabidly Left-wing should in time help them overcome their distress at hearing opinions that differ from their own. They can always return to university when they are finally equipped to cope with it – say, in 30 or 40 years’ time.

    Admittedly, I suppose there is a small possibility that I have misunderstood the students’ suggestion, and they in fact have no intention of leaving. If so, Prof Luckhurst should demand that the university authorities have them sent down. After all, they are expressing opinions that he disagrees with – an action which, as the students themselves acknowledge, can have a devastatingly traumatic effect on the listener. He should sue them for all the distress caused.”

  26. To the South-East the pre-dawn sky is a wonderful blue, criss-crossed with the golden streamers of contrails hanging in the still air. These are the contrails of our war planes.

    1. Wonderful images Horace! We’ll be down in your neck of the woods about lunchtime – on grandparenting duties! The farmer and his wife are doing Christmas with their pals! 🎅😜

    1. Powerplant always get cracks. It’s just the whole world is terrified of nuclear, so even if someone farts in a nuclear plant, the hysteria takes over and they shut down. (Where did I see that before recently?)

    2. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/France-Closes-Two-Nuclear-Plants-After-Finding-Cracks-In-The-Infrastructure.html
      It’s not a good time to take reactors out, as the demand is high. No details, but one would have hoped that their maintenance and inspection regime would have been times so that any remedial work could be taken in the summer, when demand is reduced. Unfortunate.
      No details of what the “cracks” and “corrosion” are, but it looks like they are changing the affected piping.

  28. It is glaringly clear to me that the Conservative Party requires a new leader: one who possesses both balls and brains.

    The big problem is that those Conservative MPs with balls do not have brains; and those with brains do not have balls.

    1. And a good number of sensible BTL comments – such as this one: The problem from day one is that Boris has surrounded himself with medical and scientific advisors all from the one perspective rather than encouraging debate and thinking from a continuum of perspectives. Now we have Group Think from a set of elitists who are obsessed with their own self importance and rightness. How Prof Ferguson has the brass neck to predict anything after the gross errors he has made over years costing money and the lives of animals amazes me. Just one example in 2005 he predicted 200,000,000 global deaths from swine flu – the actual global number 74. Anyone listening to him and his SAGE colleagues needs to research how inept and incorrect their predictions have been not only on covid but other public health concerns going back decades.

    1. Caroline tells me that Professor Norman Fenton has been banned by Youtube.

      I am beginning to wonder how anybody at all believes that we are being told the truth and how anybody at all can believe that the vaccines gene therapies are anything other than dangerous duds.

      1. He mentions that he and his team have received flak over their analysis. At the end of his presentation he praises the input of the many clinicians who had an input but who wanted to remain anonymous because of the threat to their livelihoods. That last statement should be a wake-up call to many that all is not quite right with what is happening.

  33. 342965+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    The public needs a reason to vote Tory.

    Surely the old ones are still good enough tarted up a bit,
    Dover expansion on government organised illegal potential troop / patient campaign.

    Topping up foreign paedophilia activist, not forgetting
    one off terrorist seeking a gaggle of virgins.

    Really these types DO need the encouragement they find via the polling booth it makes them feel welcome on arrival.

      1. 🎵 Oh………where did you get that hat? Where did you get that hat? Isn’t it a lovely one, i’d like one just like that.🎵

      2. Many years ago, my husband won a Christmas cake made by the cook at his employer’s canteen. It was a work of art, felt wrong to cut it. It tasted as good as it looked.

  35. ‘Morning again.

    This Letters BTL caught my eye:

    Adrian Salter
    8 HRS AGO
    I’m planning a thriller about the biggest honey-trap in history. A hostile foreign power trains a strikingly pretty agent to entice, seduce and if possible marry a priapic politician identified as a future leader of the Conservative party and the nation. She is recruited from an impeccably middle-class background, but with plausibly wet tendencies to allay suspicion – theatre studies, PR, animal welfare, war on plastic – before being infiltrated into the party itself. The seduction plan works like clockwork. A move to Downing Street, marriage and children follow swiftly. The agent begins her task of destabilising the government from within. Britain is set on a gradual path to bankruptcy by seemingly inexplicable social and economic policies. The besotted target’s capacity for independent thought is finally extinguished when he catches a mysterious illness imported from the east.
    But of course the whole idea would be too absurdly far-fetched even for a novel. Wouldn’t it?

    * * *

    I think he’s onto something folks…

    1. On the other hand, we can always rrly on Carolyn Bates to tell it like it is…here’s today’s broadside:

      Carolyn Bates
      2 HRS AGO
      I am in complete agreement with Clifford Baxter of Dorset.
      I’m sorry, but it’s too late for Johnson to do anything about this now, as he has lost the confidence of those who put him where he is.
      When lifelong Conservatives feel they have been disregarded and disrespected by a Prime Minister they handed an eighty-seat majority to not that long ago, and have had to watch as he uses that majority to go against them and everything they hold dear, nothing will bring them back. The mistake he made from the very beginning, was to treat them as fools.
      The Prime Minister seems to be oblivious to the damage he has done, floundering from one disaster to the next, with sleaze, lies and contempt for the British public who, in his book must live by a completely different set of rules to him and his cronies in Cabinet. His attitude is one of brazen arrogance which is not becoming of the Office he holds.
      The loss of a seat Conservatives have held for the last 200 years, through every type of war and crises imaginable cannot be overstated, and yet he immediately placed the blame for that elsewhere; this is what he does in his typical narcissistic trait every time his actions backfire.
      However the main reason why he will never persuade those he has lost back to the fold, is because of the loss of one main thing and that is trust. When you blatantly lie to people and are found out, trust is lost forever, a fact that will become much clearer to him in the coming weeks and months. No one likes a liar, no matter who they are.
      When that liar is the British Prime Minister, then all is lost. He must be replaced and soon, to gives his replacement enough time to right the wrongs before the next election.

      1. Sound woman that Bates – Boris seems to think that saying he accepts responsibility ands then trying to blame everyone else is a sound move; no wonder so many people utterly despise him!

      2. I am sad that people still think Boris is a floundering buffoon. In fact, he’s steering the country pretty competently and inexorably towards the goal of digital ids and a digital currency.
        People still aren’t getting that that was the goal all along.
        Boris keeps idiots like Ferguson around to deflect attention and catch all the anger.

      1. Or a film of the same title starring an exhumed Sid James playing Boris and Hattie Jacques or Joan Sims playing Carrie?

    3. Have you been watching Vienna Blood, it’s new series on BBC. They had an episode similar to that scenario last night.
      But it might be true Boreus seems to have a weakness ready for exploitation.

    5. It’s a great idea, he shouldn’t forget the sinister boss in the Swiss mountain top lair, and crazy villain who dreams of jabbing the whole world.

        1. I wouldn’t eat even part of one.
          I used to be based at Knightsbridge Fire Station.
          I remember one had tobbe removed from St James’s Park because it had developed a taste for pigeons.
          Very bad for tourism.
          https://youtu.be/0b4TU_R7J3c

          2. There was a pelican on the balcony at the Catalina Restaurant, Rose Bay, Sydney, when I dined there. His manners were impeccable; he didn’t make any attempt to take food.

  37. Morning all no rain forecast, but we have rain ………..
    Senior civil servants resign, or is it step down ? They don’t want to lose their gold plated pensions do they ?

    1. Went from -2 to +8 last night… weird.
      -30 forecast for Christmas weekend… brr! Good sleigh weather, I hope.

      1. I was looking at a CD of photos or our 2013 trip to the Fjords on Ventura yesterday. A wonderful reminder of the lovely scenic country were you live Obs 🤩 And it did snow as well.

        1. We’re on the East of the country, at the top of the Oslofjord and about 1 mile inland.
          I like living here. 20 minutes walk to the fjord for swimming in summer, 20 minutes drive to the skiing in winter, 20 minutes drive to the cpital city centre (not done often due to little parking availability). Not as country-beautiful as Grizz’ place, for that we need to go to Firstborn’s smallholding, where there’s lots of trees, and even more trees.

          3. I’ve seen pictures of the resort and those fantastic white houses with the huge gable ended roofs over looking the resort.

        2. Good morning Paul

          I seem to remember that it was John Cleese’s ex-parrot that was pining for the Norwegian Fjords.

          1. The parrot was dead…..I liked the cheese sketch as well and my favourite was the four Yorkshire Men.
            They made a few changes for their world tour which spoiled it a tad. ‘ho wudda thourrt………….

    1. Quite so, Bill. Knowing that his lot also had a party, why on earth did he accept the task of investigating others??

      2. Didn’t expect to be found out? Never occurred that this might be seen as, at best, hypocritical?

      1. 342965+ up ticks,
        Morning RE,
        Not with my support being UKIP.
        But with the majority support how many times ? then the other two toerag party’s lib / con taking up the road to Countrywide destruction that is now just coming up to completion.

          1. 342965+ up ticks,
            Afternoon RE,
            Over the last near four treacherous decades they have been supported every step of the way, that should not be forgotten.

  40. Just got a message on my phone saying that there is a two week lockdown coming after Christmas

    It is all beginning to look like that we have a lockdown booked in for January but the experts are still hunting around for a plausible reason for having one.

    1. Reported in Aftenposten that a UK study shows the omicrin virus to be worse than the delta version. (utter bollox).
      There’s your reason. (Weegie only. Sorry)
      https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/pL54lE/direktestudio-koronaviruset?pinnedEntry=43894

      The key sentence, is telling:
      Hovedforfatter Neil Ferguson mener funnene betyr at omikron utgjør en stor og umiddelbar trussel mot folkehelsen.
      The main author, Neil Ferguson, believes the findings mean that omicron poses a great and immediate threat to public health.

      So, it’s bollox then.

      1. Our youngest caught corona about ten weeks ago, he had been jabbed but he soon got over it by isolating, but his lady partner didn’t catch it from him. He’s got it again and this time she has caught it. It must be the newly distributed version. But they tell us are no worse off than a common cold and feel fine after just a few days. The media are exaggerating the hell out of this.
        But what is interesting is Matt Le Tissier ex footballer is trying to find out why so many fit people including footballers have suffered from heart problems since the jabbing started. I suspect he’ll be told to wind his neck in.

        1. My beautiful Polish friend got myocarditis – thought to be from the vaccine. She’s mostly better now, after nearly 3 months off work.

          1. I previously mentioned a friend of mine who was rushed to hospital after a heart attack and then had fatal stroke when he was in hospital.
            I’ve got a telephone appointment with the cardio department on Tuesday. That’ll do the trick !

  41. Good morning, my friends

    The two 17 year old girls for whom we somehow managed to organise an extra course to replace the one they should have come on in October have got home safely.

    They travelled from Dol-de-Bretagne Railway Station to Rennes; from Rennes to Montparnasse Station in Paris; across Paris by Metro to the Gare du Nord thence to St Pancras by the Eurostar. One of the girls then had to travel on by train to York.

    We have had a lie in this morning and we expect the girls have had one too! Caroline will now write up the course journal and the detailed individual reports.

    1. Or perhaps a ferry from St Malo or Ouistreham to Portsmouth followed by a taxi to the station and a train to London? Just being helpful.

      1. Several of our students use the ferry to St Malo but at this time of year it is not a daily service. Getting to Ouistreham from here by public transport is not a practical option.

        There used to be RyanAir flights from Dinard to Stansted and East Midlands but Covid has killed off Dinard Airport which is now closed. There used to be flights from Rennes to Southampton and London Southend with Flybe – but Flybe has gone out of business.

        We do transfers in our minibus to and from Le Grand Osier to Rennes Airport (45 minutes), St Malo Ferryport (30 minutes) and Dol-de Bretagne Railway Station (30 minutes) and we used to go to Dinard Airport (25 minutes) but other arrival/departure points are too far off to be practical and taxis in France are more than double the cost in UK.

  42. Boris Johnson’s bid to move on from by-election rout derailed by fresh leaks
    Cabinet Secretary pulled from inquiry into Tory lockdown parties over allegations he breached rules.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/12/17/boris-johnsons-bid-move-by-election-defeat-derailed-fresh-leaks/

    The most upvoted BTL comment under the DT article was by a chap called Michael Staples

    I’m not very interested in Christmas parties. What concerns me are:

    • Imposition of “Lockdown Lite” in the face of a mild virus, Omicron, and stalling of the economy. The now withdrawn quarantine for returning Britons is just one unnecessary and appalling example of panic. Plus the promotion of politics of fear.
    • Failure to reform the NHS despite the money poured in, where difficulties are more to do with the backlog created by Lockdown itself.
    • Failure to complete Brexit, with Northern Ireland Protocol issues dragging on and virtual surrender to French fishermen.
    • Unnecessary “Net Zero” green nonsense, especially on the back of increasing price of energy and thus everything that is transported. Today I read that Welsh coal will be replaced with inferior quality coal from Kazakhstan. Applications to drill for gas and oil in North Sea have been turned down in favour of imports. Long term, these policies are the greatest threat to our economic and personal wellbeing.
    • Tax and spend big state socialism, especially the breaking of promises not to raise CT and NIC.
    • Open door illegal immigration and lack of will to arrest, detain and deport exacerbated by lack of action on so-called “human rights” law. EDITED

    1. “Long term, these policies are the greatest threat to our economic and personal wellbeing.”. Long Term? A week is a long time in politics. We are feeling the pinch now and it will get much, much worse. People will die as result.

    2. If there is someone with a working brain cell in Number 10 they need to read the above 2 articles/comments and then try to get the Cabinet to listen to why we are so fed up with their disastrous performance.

    3. I care about the parties for two simple reasons. First, they were illegal; secondly, hundreds of plebs were heavily fined for doing the same thing.

      1. Yes. My suggestion was that all those fined for having parties last Christmas should have their fines refunded in full with the money coming out of Conservative Party funds.

  43. Defeat in North Shropshire marks a turning point for chaotic Boris Johnson
    In mere weeks, the government has managed to extinguish virtually all public good will

    JANET DALEY
    17 December 2021 • 9:28am

    History is littered with “shock by-elections” which turned out to be harbingers of nothing. The conventional wisdom is that they are simply opportunities for voters to let off a bit of steam. But some government defeats are more shocking than others — and this one is a five star special. Not only was it in what had been a solid Tory seat but the Liberal Democrat victory was not a tenuous scrape, it was a resounding clear win and the turnout was notably high for a by-election.

    Of course, it was accomplished with a good deal of tactical Labour votes. But none of that detracts from the blinding significance of it. In her victory speech, Helen Morgan put it pithily: the electorate was tired of a Boris Johnson government run on “lies and bluster”.

    This was the very constituency which had been held by Owen Paterson whose story had begun the slide of public trust in the Prime Minister: a saga which was quite stunning in its chaotic misjudgement. But what followed that misadventure was much worse because it touched the real lives of so many people: the significance of Partygate is still underestimated by many of Downing Street’s would-be friends who seem not to comprehend its appalling effect. But here we are.

    Somehow, in a matter of a few weeks, the government had managed to extinguish virtually all of the credit for its successful early vaccine rollout. To this day, events are adding to the impression that the Johnson operation is either shambolically out of control or deeply cynical. In the past forty-eight hours, there has been a new chapter. Downing Street is now absorbed in a controversy over the apparent contradiction between the prime minister’s soft tone on the Plan B measures and the more alarming one delivered firmly by Chris Whitty who seems quite uninhibited in his exercise of civic authority. Who exactly is in charge here? Professor Whitty seems to be showing palpable disdain for the calming reassurance of the prime minister — even when he is standing next to him at a press briefing.

    Could this be a tactical political game? Is Boris Johnson deliberately letting his Chief Medical Officer play the hard cop enforcer so that he (Johnson) can retain some credibility as a leader who defends personal freedom? Or is his leadership actually so weak and unprofessional that an unelected official can simply usurp his authority over government policy?Maybe this confusion and ambiguity were all part of a plan. The Prime Minister would be calmly reassuring and lenient, counting on Whitty and the always-available army of “scientific experts” to terrify the population into compliance without the need for legal enforcement.

    Thus the prime minister achieves the effect of a sort-of lockdown without the ignominy — or the need for getting parliamentary approval which has proved to be such an awkward problem. Either the Johnson operation is so chaotic and lax that an unelected official can say what he likes. Or it is so sly and manipulative that it hides behind its bureaucrats. That’s the choice.

    * * *

    Typical of many:

    John Jackson
    20 HRS AGO
    The rot started when Johnson bought into the green claptrap peddled by Nut nut. There is a good and healthy feeling that we are polluting the planet. Nobody disagrees with that view. The problem is the focus on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Trying to reduce this tiny amount of actually beneficial gas (for plant growth) will bankrupt the West while leaving the Chinese to carry on as before. Very soon a majority of the electorate will realise they are being duped when they suddenly feel the cost of it in their pockets. It is only just starting now with rapid electricity and gas price rises. Next will be huge increases in petrol and diesel (oil companies have wound down exploration over the last 4 years in response to shareholder pressure to become more “green”) as existing fields deplete gradually. That is without the “green” taxes and forced uptake of heat pumps etc. Then there will be the power cuts as wind and solar spectacularly fail to provide the base load needed in cold winters.
    Theoretical acceptance of green policies is fine in your warm comfortable kitchen, not so good when you are cold and poor.

    1. “...to terrify the population into compliance without the need for legal enforcement.”
      Yes, certainly. The puppet masters can now cut the strings and we marionettes will continue to dance to their tune.

    2. “In her victory speech, Helen Morgan put it pithily: the electorate was tired of a Boris Johnson government run on “lies and bluster”.” So they elected a Limp Dim whose track record in the Coalition is hardly brilliant? I hold my hand up and say, “I didn’t vote for her”.

      Edit – the LDs in the Coalition, I mean. I don’t think the elected LD was involved in that, just to be clear.

    3. “In her victory speech, Helen Morgan put it pithily: the electorate was tired of a Boris Johnson government run on “lies and bluster”.” So they elected a Limp Dim whose track record in the Coalition is hardly brilliant? I hold my hand up and say, “I didn’t vote for her”.

      Edit – the LDs in the Coalition, I mean. I don’t think the elected LD was involved in that, just to be clear.

    4. “In her victory speech, Helen Morgan put it pithily: the electorate was tired of a Boris Johnson government run on “lies and bluster”.” So they elected a Limp Dim whose track record in the Coalition is hardly brilliant? I hold my hand up and say, “I didn’t vote for her”.

      Edit – the LDs in the Coalition, I mean. I don’t think the elected LD was involved in that, just to be clear.

  45. Never Too Old

    A whorehouse gets busted. The girls are lined up out front, and a cop is going down the line giving them all tickets.

    A little old lady approaches one of the girls at the end of the line and asks, “Why are all of you lovely ladies here in a line like this?”

    The smart-ass whore explains, “Lady, we’re waiting in line for our lollipops.”

    “Oh, that’s nice dear,” says the little old lady. “I haven’t had one of them in so long. I think I’ll get in line too!”

    A few minutes later, the cop is standing in front of the little old lady.
    “Lady, aren’t you a little old for this?”

    She looks him right in the eye and says, “As long as they keep making ’em, I’m gonna keep sucking ’em.”

  46. No, I will not let you know what I thought of my purchase
    Please, no more emails pestering us for customer feedback. Plus: a solution to the Rod Liddle row… and Liz Truss’s startling new look
    Michael Deacon – DT Article : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/12/18/no-will-not-let-know-thought-purchase/

    I think I must be on the DT’s radar for under article posts. I just tried to post this but it was rejected immediately. I wonder why?

    Funny how, even in these days of feminism ambitious women are still prepared to sleep with men in order to get on.

    Liz, ‘Adultera, Truss slept with a senior Tory, Mark Field, in order to advance her career. This destroyed his marriage but hers somehow survived.

    And few people seem to doubt the political ambitions of the young woman who has linked her aspirations and lust for power and influence with the current prime minister whom she will doubtless leave when he is no longer in the position.

    1. Good morning Rastus and everyone.
      Miss Truss happens to use her maiden name. That is the norm for married women in Spanish speaking countries, but it’s a potential warning flag in the UK. Of course that might make sense for certain occupations, and to protect young children from the attentions of the MSM.

    2. I never respond to the requests for feedback, on the basis that they will know very quickly if I receive less than Customer Service.

      I might congratulate if I’m endowed with something that causes ‘Customer Delight’ but they are few and far between.

  47. No, I will not let you know what I thought of my purchase
    Please, no more emails pestering us for customer feedback. Plus: a solution to the Rod Liddle row… and Liz Truss’s startling new look
    Michael Deacon – DT Article : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/12/18/no-will-not-let-know-thought-purchase/

    I think I must be on the DT’s radar for under article posts. I just tried to post this but it was rejected immediately. I wonder why?

    Funny how, even in these days of feminism ambitious women are still prepared to sleep with men in order to get on.

    Liz, ‘Adultera, Truss slept with a senior Tory, Mark Field, in order to advance her career. This destroyed his marriage but hers somehow survived.

    And few people seem to doubt the political ambitions of the young woman who has linked her aspirations and lust for power and influence with the current prime minister whom she will doubtless leave when he is no longer in the position.

  48. I’ve just returned from my shopping trip downtown. All the bus passengers were masked as were all the people in Marks and Spencers. Nevertheless I do seem to detect a difference in attitude. People are much more easy going. Conversations are conducted without reservation. The ones getting off the bus all tore off their masks as soon as they were clear and the M&S people, including the staff, paid absolutely no attention to the distancing rules. I think this thing is dead! People are following the rules because it’s the least trouble but basically the Fear Program has exhausted itself!

    1. When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
      You can always go
      Downtown
      When you’ve got worries all the noise and the hurry
      Seems to help I know
      Downtown

      Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
      Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
      How can you lose?
      The light’s so much brighter there
      You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

      So go downtown
      Things will be great when you’re
      Downtown
      No finer place for sure
      Downtown
      Everything’s waiting for you (downtown, downtown)

    2. I’ve visited numerous shops, a cafe and a large garden centre since the mask was re-instated. I have been the only person unmasked in many but I haven’t received any hard glares and deliberate and exaggerated avoidance of this plague carrier was also absent. One or two in the garden centre were wary but I just stood my ground or walked past.
      Yesterday I had a rather ‘warm’ discussion with my elder sister re covid. An absolute believer, it is going to be a little awkward when I pick her and her husband up today to take them to a family party.. At the latter she said I would be the only non-vaccinated person there and that I could catch the ‘bug’ if anyone else was carrying it. I had to remind her that she was incorrect and that all the “vaccinated” were equally at risk. She holds as truth all the wrong ideas that were spread by the government and its agents and that have been proven to be false. She will not be swayed and refuses offers of information that could enlighten her. I imagine that millions are in the same government induced trance as her. That is also a big part of the battleground that has to be overcome.

      1. I fear that for many full Covidians, only death will be a release from their heretical beliefs.

      2. My Aussie oppo at work was shaken to the core when I said I didn’t trust or believe government. I too was amazed that he clearly did trust & believe…

      3. Only two people in the pub yesterday were masked and I would guess that they were both about 30. We were talking to a couple we know slightly and the old boy has been very sick, in hospital etc but he was not wearing a mask and neither was his partner.

  51. Ban ‘idiot’ anti-vaxxers from flying, says Ryanair boss

    Michael O’Leary says authorities should ‘make life difficult’ for those who refuse vaccines without good cause

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/17/ban-idiot-anti-vaxxers-flying-says-ryanair-boss/

    How many more times.

    Being Vaxxed does not stop you catching Convid

    Being Vaxxed does not stop you passing Convid onto to anyone else

    Being Vaxxed may reduce the severity of Convid on the vaxxee, if infected.

    Being Vaxxed, with a Vaccine not proven safe iaw precepts of Nuremberg Protocol is not wise

    Being Vaxxed with vaccines, whose test and production data will not be made public for 50 years is not wise

    Vaxxing young children with gene therapy vaccines is not only not wise, but criminal

    Having Electronic Vaxx Passports is just people tracking, for ever

    How long before your Vaxx contains a microchip, al la Pets Abroad

    2. O’Leary clearly doesn’t understand that the non-vaccinated are the people who will kill this ‘virus’. With an intact, non-specific but wide spectrum immune system the non-vaccinated will sterilise the ‘virus’, something those inoculated with a leaky “vaccine” do not . Hence the “vaccinated” spreading the ‘virus’ and worse, forcing it to evolve into variants. With many countries banning the non-vaccinated from international flights, who does he think spread the variant? The wind? Birds?

    3. Not to mention that the “vaccines” have used ground up babies in development/testing.

    4. Why doesn’t he mandate a vax certificate for all flying on Ryanair, then?
      Oh, because other airlines will still accept them, and he’ll lose passengers and revenue. Arsehole, he is.

  52. It seems my comment ‘breaches the community spirit’ according to the DT.

    “Given the current debacle over North Shropshire and the total defeat of the Government in a seat held for 200 years by a cohort of the Lib/Lab/Con, one wonders why one of the tiddly parties didn’t cruise home instead of just vote-splitting.

    More effective would be a party that is an amalgam of ‘For Britain’, ‘Reclaim’ and ‘Reform’ in order to stop the current vote-splitting by these tiddly parties, make them a real threat, and give the Electorate a real alternative vote for them, rather than continuing with Lib/Lab/Total Con.”

    These papers are making themselves unreadable

    1. Either the diminutive ‘tranny’ is verboten, or they objected to the phrase ‘other weirdos’.

        1. I had one! Carrying my crystal set and trying to listen on the bus was difficult. The aerial wire had to be trailed across other passengers and the end dropped from a window. A bit awkward at times. Nor did it receive Radio Luxembourg. My little red and gold Philips was smashing. You’ve brought back that memory. Thanks!

        2. I used to listen to Radio Caroline on my tranny under the bed covers at night. Johnnie Walker and the Frinton Flashers;-)

    2. 342965+ up ticks,
      Morning NtN,
      By the same token why has the majority of the electorate still continue over decades supporting / voting for the toxic trio.
      Also taking delight in tactically voting to keep fringe party’s out, in protection of one of the toxic trio.

    3. This makes me ask ‘exactly what is the community spirit, then?’ Good morning (just) NtN.

    5. “For Britain” didn’t stand. We possibly need a Reform the Independent UK and Reclaim our Freedom and Heritage Party.

  53. Stop Press

    Micron has said, that France will relax the Convid Rules for visitors from UK, entering France in the event of a German Invasion

  56. Just watched the 11 O’clock BBC News Bulletin to catch the headlines. Ferguson was on the first segment forecasting Shutdown, Doom and Gloom. This man has been thoroughly exposed as a Fraud and Liar whose every forecast in his lifetime has proved to be catastrophically wrong and yet here he still is!

    1. Out in the open: A climate of dread deliberately manufactured… we’re getting the same scepticism here in Norway now, maybe the wheels are coming off their wagon?

      1. Not a chance – if they think the wheels ARE coming off – they will simply impose new, terrifying, regulations and a lockdown…just as soon as boring Christmas is out of the way…

        You read it here first.

        1. Then it’s up to us bolshie lot to put two fingers up to them and push back. People will, hopefully, be emboldened by seeing others lead the way (it’s what the EU was terrified of when the UK voted to leave).

    2. Why didn’t the disillusioned voters of North Shropshire vote for Richard Tice’s party rather than for the pathetic Illiberal Undemocratics?

      ogga has a point – if the voters continue to vote Lib/Lab/Con even when there is an alternative then we shall never escape.

      1. The Reform candidate had Covid and had to self-isolate. I doubt, also, that they had the money or manpower (other versions of power are available) of the Limp Dims, although I did meet one Reform supporter who had come down from Glasgow.

  59. Off topic.
    Has anyone else seen the video of the fire where those poor boys died?
    Looking at the flames and the charring I can’t help wondering if an accelerant was used.

    1. No, and I have no intention of doing so, either. I don’t need extra shit in my minds eye just now.

    2. I did wonder (uncharitably) when the grieving father grieved noisily to the press – whether, had he not abandoned the mother of his four children, they might still be alive.

      Heigh ho.

      1. Families are meant to have two parents for a reason. Four under five is a logistical nightmare for one parent.

  60. Saw an article over on TCW about Justin Welby, written by Peter Mullen. an Anglican clergyman, who appears to be no fan of his Archbishop.

    Not being of the Anglican persuasion, I knew little of Welby’s background but I’d heard that before his ordination, he had worked in the world of business and that since his elevation to the House of Lords, he sits on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. This made sense, as I’d heard from an unimpeachable Anglican source that Welby was a banker however upon researching his bio, I discovered that, in fact, he’d been a financial executive in the oil industry.

    Seems I must have misheard the word when my source described the Archbishop as a banker…

  61. Well that was depressing. The boss decided that she wanted to do some real shopping, so off we trotted from our little countryside haven to the big city for a overnight stay and her retail therapy.

    Everyone was masked, it would drive many of you crazy but we did not see anyone without a face covering in the two days we were away. My hands have had more alcohol than the rest of me but the obligatory hand sanitiser did not taste good.

    But that is just scratching the surface, it is when you started talking to the workers that you realised how badly people are doing, they have had it with mask mandates and the need to police customers. From hotel receptionist to restaurant waiters to shop assistants, they were all weary and just no longer enjoying their chosen careers.

    As a thank you for complying, the government have just dumped a whole pile of new restrictions on everyone. We shall see, even the government propaganda channel is asking if restrictions are going too far.

    Enough, we are back in our spot in the southern Ontario wilderness where the curling club is still open and we can have dinner at the golf club – well at least for now. Happy ****y Christmas.

    1. Many people are absent from the shops here, and most hotels are now closed again and laying off staff. For some reason, it’s OK to eat out in a restaurant, but not OK to have a beer with your dinner.
      Almost nobody wearing a mask except in car parks… even Aftenposten, who licks Labour party ass, is skeptical. The wheels are coming off the obedience, government has pretty well spent all the accumulated trust. Push-back is beginning.

      1. What ever you do, do not watch the BBC or any other British media they are spreading terror with their invented forecasts charts and misinformation.

        1. We watch the BBC to get a nearer to balanced view of the world than the canadian version of the covid propaganda channel.

        2. I don’t. It’s bad enough here, with gloating newscasters telling us of the vovid statitics every hourly broadcast. Not that they are helpful, these stats, so many more than yesterday, no many more that the same day last week… no mention any more of deaths or hospital entries.
          I look every 2-3 days at the government statistics, and plot them in my own spreadsheet. That helps maintain a sense of proportion.

          2. My Singaporean friend, who is a doctor, emailed me last night to say that since they (in Singapore) decided to go for letting the disease become endemic rather than control it, they had not had any chaos, the hospitals had coped and there had been no spike in deaths. I’m surprised the email didn’t get pulverised!

          3. Similar in Sweden, apparently.
            “Just be sensible” was the advice. I know several who have had the (choose Greek letter of your liking) version, and they say it’s like ‘flu. And, like ‘flu, a number of unfortunates die of it – in 2018, 1 400 dies of ‘flu in Norway, and we didn’t have any of this lockdown crap.

          1. Best way, but it’s hard to avoid Bill. Our media has become toxic. I use to listen to radio 4 every morning it’s also about 4 years now since i gave it up.

      2. Apparently new york requires a mask if just drinking, you are supposed to use a straw. That should make wine tasting an interesting experience.

        Our hotel was full but restaurants were almost empty, which is how we had time for chats with the staff.

        People were queueing outside some of the big name stores – they jest!

        Push back is coming here.

      3. The attitude is wrong to suit specific political need. It knows it is destroying the hospitality industry so makes that exempt. Thus the restrictions are a nonsense. A complete farce driven by ‘them, but not them’ as an attitude.

        I’m tired of it. If they want to create a command economy, so be it, but just stand up and say it.

          1. I would add that there are not many places selling a pint for less than £3, and normally the Ruddles is about £1.80 in Spoons. What possesses them to sell it for £1, when everything here is going up by at least 10%, I really don’t know

        1. They’ll go so far, then dig in their heels. The first set of lockdowns seemed reasonable, and since they are very society-minded, buckled down and got on with it. Now, asked to do the same, they are as fed up as anyone else being prevented from doing things by measures that clearly aren’t working.
          So, pushback has started.

    2. Just went to ASDA in Peckham.
      Yes, many customers are masked. I refuse to so as to encourage those who realise how absurd this all is.
      But most of the ASDA workers were NOT masked.
      They’ve probably realised that all they have to say is “I’m exempt” and it is so.
      So am I. Exempt from stupidity. It makes me angry and that’s bad for my health.

      1. Still at the busy body stage here, claim an exemption and they want to see proof and that is not freely obtainable.

        Twenty years in a business job and the little jobs worth is not going to miss out on a little bit of power.

        1. As the “proof” indicates your medical condition, it is private and need not be shown to anyone at all, including police. I have an “exempt” badge and if anyone does not like it I have another. (© Groucho Marx.)

          1. The difference between the UK and Trudeaus world!

            Exempt badges are theoretically possible, they do not show why you are exempt BUT doctors are supposedly only allowed to issue exemptions in very rare cases. Just saying thatyou are exempt will probably leave you standing out in the cold.

            I thought that Graucho was in charge of government policy – don like this one we have another.

      2. Where is the Asda in Peckham? I worked there in the 70s in Sanders the Jewellers on Rye Lane.

      3. I had to pop into a couple of local shops this afternoon. I didn’t wear a mask and nobody said anything.
        (BTW – no wonder people put on weight over Christmas; I thought I had a good stock of butter, but making pate and Christmas cakes has wiped me out.)
        Tomorrow is pastry and lemon curd day; I plan to do little sets of edibles as presents for several chums.

    3. We have complied with every mad and random rule assigned to us, even when those making the rules did not. We have taken our double-jabs (with apparently endless ‘boosters’ to follow), not always because we feared the virus but because we wanted this to be over. We have taken it and taken it, complied and complied, all so that the government would graciously consent to allow us to have our old way of life back.

      Perhaps continuing to consent to the cruel and pointless rules is no longer the answer?

  62. Lifted from Stew Peters Show.

    Dr. Peter McCullough: A lot of credit to Steve Kirsch who’s has funded the COVID-19 early treatment program, and he’s now funding the Vaccine Injury Program. You know, Steve Kirsch, by the way, has a great offer out there for your listeners. I don’t know if you know about this?

    Joe Rogan: No.

    Dr. Peter McCullough: His offer is anybody from any major academic medical center, or any government agency, who will come to the table and have a fair discussion on vaccine safety and efficacy. He’ll pay him $2 million.

    Joe Rogan: Anybody?

    Dr. Peter McCullough: Anybody.

    Joe Rogan: You mean anybody who’s like a high-level medical researcher or?

    Dr. Peter McCullough: Anybody who can make the case, even try to make the case that the vaccines are safe and effective.

    Joe Rogan: And if they don’t make the case, they still get the money?

    Dr. Peter McCullough: Yeah.

    Joe Rogan: That seems like an easy 2 million bucks.

    Dr. Peter McCullough: No one’s come forward.

    Joe Rogan: Go there and get your ass kicked for 2 million bucks.

    Dr. Peter McCullough: Joe, no one’s come forward.

    Joe Rogan: Really?

    Dr. Peter McCullough: No one’s come forward.

    Joe Rogan: Do they know about it? I just found out about it a few seconds ago.

    Dr. Peter McCullough: It’s pretty well known. People know about it. He’s made a lot of calls and emails. And the point is, people are under a trance with these vaccines. They actually know they’re not safe and effective. They know it. They know when they took the vaccines, they took a risk.

    1. Hang on. If I rock up and say ‘they’re perfecty safe’ even if I don’t believe it – then I get 2m? Even if the entirety of my case is ‘they’re safe?’

      Does he just want the platform?

  63. UK unlikely to send troops if Russia invades Ukraine, says defence secretary. 18 December 2021.

    “The United Kingdom stands shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and will continue its longstanding determination to support them,” the statement added.

    But in an interview with the Spectator, Wallace said Ukraine “is not a member of Nato so it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to send troops into Ukraine to challenge Russia”.

    “We shouldn’t kid people we would. The Ukrainians are aware of that,” he added, in comments carried by the Times before the interview’s publication.

    Actually they encouraged the Ukrainians to believe that they would come to their assistance should Russia react to NATO’s sabre rattling. Now reality has sunk in and everyone realises Vlad is not bluffing! Cue an advance to the rear!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/18/uk-unlikely-to-send-troops-if-russia-invades-ukraine-says-defence-secretary

    1. Yet the EU was warned not to provoke Russia by trying to get Ukraine into the EU.

      Yet the EU continued to provoke.

      When Russia occupied Ukraine the EU’s vaunted ideology that it spouts on about fell apart in no time.

    2. The British army already has soldiers in Ukraine.Allegedly they are there as “instructors”.

  64. Happy Christmas edition of ‘Bargain Hunt’ right now.

    One of the contestants put up stockings for all their pets. The shivering winter mouse got a hungry snake. Ho! Ho! Ho!

    1. I have a stocking for Oscar (filled with Bonio treats and such like). All my dogs have had a Christmas stocking. They are, after all, part of my family.

    1. A predictive Government will be able to publish a manifesto that makes unforeseen events a thing of the past.
      Who could have foreseen that leaving the EU would then enable the UK to make such substantial advanced purchases of NHS saving jabs that would then make the country a more undesirable place to live in.😉

    3. Brings to mind the Labour candidate (a 26 yr old callow youth) who, in response to a question from the UKIP candidate about how he squared Labour’s high tax policies with his plans to “reinvigorate the High Street”, claimed “Labour doesn’t have any high tax policies”! He is, of course, too young to remember Attlee (put bread on ration, something even 5 years of total war didn’t manage), Wilson (devalued “the pound in your pocket”), Callaghan (crisis, what crisis? before going cap in hand to the IMF for a loan to bail us out), Blair (where do I start?) and Brown (fire sale of gold, stealth taxes everywhere and finally, “there is no money left”).

  66. Rugby enthusiasts – Heineken Cup

    Harlequins vs Cardiff on Ch4 – being played with great verve and enthusiasm

  68. Off topic
    I wish it was mine.
    A local auction house has just sold an old lamp. Cloisonne but didn’t look much, estimated at about 40-60 EUR.
    Hammer price, 31,850 !!!

    3. Just wait until the buyer gets it home. gives it a rub, and no genie pops out. He’ll wish he’d kept his hands in his pockets at the auction.
      :¬(

  69. And in other covid news:

    A couple of miles away from here is a village called Thursford – which hosts, every year, a huge Christmas Spectacular for six weeks – song and dance and wurlitzers. Not my cup of tea – but immensely popular. Sold out for months ahead. Tickets from £41 a head…. People come from all over East Anglia.

    https://www.thursford.com/christmas-spectacular/

    It has to cancel performances on Thursday, Friday and today because some of the cast have “tested positive”….

    Knock on effect. Soldier neighbour’s son works at a local restaurant as a sort of under manager. For these nights they had 160 bookings. So far, 120 cancellations. Boy just been phoned and told not to come in as no staff required. Many other hostelries will have suffered similarly.

    On behalf of North Norfolk, may I say THANK YOU, Dr WITLESS.

    1. These doom mongers need shooting.

      I was ironing this morning, with tv on for company, and on came Frankenstein Shitless. He was like a death mask of himself. Reminded me of Dorothea’ husband in a Middlemarch film years ago. “GET YOUR BOOSTER JABS NOW”.

      Why are they still running these adverts? We don’t watch telly now but I was caught out and not quick enough to switch him off. I hate them all.

      ETA: Why on earth do people even test themselves! If they stopped so would the “cases”.

      1. I’ve made the reluctant decision not to visit elderly chum during this coming week. The home tests everyone and I feel fine but no longer trust the testing or the tracking. Quite frankly, our friends and family do not need a healthy person creeping around because some Chinese made carp claims she has a virus.
        I will ring her and hope that the hamper we’ve ordered and the phone call remain in her memory for a few days. (Sadly, she’ll probably think it’s for her mother.)

      2. I used the ‘Chinese made carp’ (c annallen) on Thursday evening before visiting friend for coffee yesterday with two other friends. Hostess friend had recently had surgery and it was the first time she’d felt up to entertaining.

        I found the test most uncomfortable and it drew blood. I only did one nostril as the other tends to be even more sensitive. I was negative of course.

  70. Putin ‘sends suicide squads into Ukraine’. 18 December 2021.

    Russian forces have been fitting separatist fighters with GPS trackers and sending them to probe Ukrainian positions bore starting shelling when they are killed, it has been claimed.

    God! I don’t think even the Express could have come up with something as daft as this! Lol!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10323565/Defence-Secretary-Ben-Wallace-says-British-forces-WONT-come-Ukraines-rescue-Russia-invades.html

      1. Afternoon Horace. From a book by Dennis Wheatley. There’s a name you don’t see often nowadays!

    2. Yep..he’s going to invade Ukraine and then Europe while still supplying them with oil and gas.

      1. A cunning plan by a master of logistics!

        Clearly, Putin intends to maintain the supply of oil to the refineries of Western Europe as he invades, to ensure that his armies do not run out of fuel before they reach the Channel ports.

          1. The reason Rommel was short of supplies in the Desert was due to strikes by aircraft on his tankers.

  71. Any Answers BBC 2
    Anita Anand…

    I’m pissed off with callers who get waylaid by the pro BBC antics of Anita Anand…..
    FFS …………….Wake Up….!

  73. Sky News reporting that Sadiq Khan has declared a state of emergency in London because of a “huge surge” of Omicron cases.

    2. What, exactly, does that mean? Londoners required to stay at home? Shops shut? Tubes on strike (oh, they already are)….

        1. Living in a big city means you have the privilege of dying by being blown to smithereens by a peace loving person.
          Dying of a common cold is so … well … common.

  75. Daily Fail carrying video of big anti-lockdown/passport demo in Parliament Square. Haven’t spotted Our Susan landing a left hook on an unsuspecting rozzer so far.

    3. Hey, we’re not BLM or XR! We don’t riot or destroy property. We’re the well behaved protesters. The riot police in Whitehall were lined up behind barriers as if they were the ones needing protection. Silly buggers. They attracted crowds taking photos.

      1. I know. Katherine (whom Nagsman and I refer to on this blog as ‘Our Mutual Friend’) was there and said it was all very jolly and civilised.

  76. 342965+ up ticks,

    The electorate have more chance of slipping up and putting a credible pro English / United Kingdom party into
    parliament than in stopping a virus spreading.

    Anyone trying to stop the virus in a genuine fashion would be fighting on two fronts, number one, the virus,
    number two the vested interest politico’s.

    Pretty obvious whats being set up is a very long running scam, I mean generational,sons of sons, people power
    activated by the UKIP designed referendum took away the brussels pro lab/lib/cons lucrative mainstay, the eu, & that had to be replaced.

    Oee thing for sure the electorate cannot serve two masters as in holding a lab/lib/con coalition card whilst
    calling for an opposition to be formed, won’t work.

    1. Labour sold off 38% of NHS services when they last in power. And that was on top of the PFI fiasco.

        1. There are 2 humours, one in front of the lens, the other behind it, but I’ve forgotten which is which.

  79. Well you have to hand it to Mayor Khan
    Nostradamus has nothing on him, back on October 13th he knew to cancel the New Years Day firework display because another lockdown was on it’s way.
    Saving Londoners a fortune, no doubt.

    1. I can’t help speculating the the digital currency will be launched with furlough payments in the new lockdown in January.

  80. ECHR again…

    Even under Dominic Raab’s ‘British Bill of Rights’, Strasbourg reigns supreme

    For as long as Britain remains committed to the ECHR, domestic legislation cannot itself change its obligations to the international court

    YUAN YI ZHU • 15 December 2021 • 10:00am

    Three months is a long time in politics. Until September, it looked as if Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland would be responsible for leading the first overhaul of the Human Rights Act (HRA) since it was enacted in 1998. But then he was dropped from Cabinet, and this important task now falls on the shoulders of Dominic Raab, who has just published his proposals for reform, along with the report of a review into the functioning of the Human Rights Act, led by retired judge Sir Peter Gross.

    The Gross Review makes a number of useful recommendations for reforming the HRA. But still it defends the status quo in the main. Raab, who as the responsible minister is not bound by its recommendations, has opted to go further. His proposals for legislative reform contain many good ideas, but the minimalist approach of the package raises some difficult questions.

    Under the announced plans, the HRA will be replaced by a new Bill of Rights, which will include rights not at present covered by the European Convention of Human Rights, as well as modifying how the European Convention is given effect in the UK’s own courts. British courts will no longer be required to consider the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Judges will no longer be able to effectively rewrite legislation to make them compatible with the Convention. And would-be claimants in human rights cases would have to show that they have suffered from “significant disadvantage” before bringing a claim.

    The strengthening of free speech protections and of the right to a trial by jury should be uncontroversial. The same should be true for ending the practice of allowing courts to insert and delete words from Acts of Parliament, a practice which gives judges an expanded law-making role for which they lack democratic legitimacy. Indeed, some of the country’s most senior judges have expressed discomfort about possessing such a power. And the new permissions stage in human rights actions may filter out some frivolous claims, though its impact in practice may be limited.

    But neither are the proposals a panacea for reversing the expansion of judicial power. Freeing British courts from a duty to take into account the European Court’s case law might well be a Pyrrhic move, since British judges have sometimes been willing to go much further in their interpretation of Convention rights than the judges in Strasbourg. And though the UK Supreme Court has been noticeably more restrained in its rulings under the leadership of Lord Reed, counting on the luck of the draw in judicial temperament is hardly a sustainable basis upon which to build a constitution, as the American example should remind us.

    Before his sacking, Robert Buckland had announced ambitious plans to re-examine the UK’s constitutional machinery, notably the current system of judicial appointments – a legacy from New Labour – as well as the role of the Supreme Court, another back-of-the-envelope Blairite invention. Though parliamentary time is scarce, Raab would be well-advised to push ahead on this front simultaneously, so as to ensure the effectiveness of his HRA proposals.

    One might question the wisdom of rebranding the Human Rights Act as a Bill of Rights. The renaming might suggest that human rights have been ‘domesticated’; but domestic legislation cannot itself change the UK’s international legal obligations under the ECHR. So far as international law is concerned, the Strasbourg Court will continue to have the final say over the application of Convention rights over the UK unless the country withdraws from the Convention – a step which both Buckland and Raab have so far ruled out. Parliament has refused to conform to the Strasbourg Court’s case law before, notably in relation to prisoner voting. If the UK is to remain party to the Convention and to uphold its own understanding of human rights, Parliament may have to do so again in the future, which will create further controversy.

    Taken together, this legislative package is a welcome, but limited, first step in the overhaul of the UK’s human rights protection framework. Much will depend on the final shape of the proposals, still subject to a further public consultation. And it may well be that the government will ultimately come to agree with Lord Sumption, who recently argued that Britain’s withdrawal from the ECHR is all but inevitable because of the impossibility of effecting the sort of change desired by a substantial segment of the British public within the strictures imposed by the Convention. This is the stark political choice which the government ultimately cannot avoid.

    Yuan Yi Zhu is a Senior Research Fellow at Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project and teaches Politics at the University of Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/15/even-dominic-raabs-british-bill-rights-strasbourg-reigns-supreme/

  81. Unvaccinated mother-of-two, 38, dies from Covid after ignoring pleas to get vaccinated ‘because of things she had read on social media’
    DM Story : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10323757/Fit-healthy-mother-two-38-dies-Covid.html

    I wonder if the DM would publish this true story with the same enthusiasm :

    Three young men aged 18, all pupils at a famous English public school, go to hospital seriously ill with Myocarditis because they had to take the second dose of the vaccine in order to travel to Europe to see their parents.

    (Myocarditis is a malady which causes damage to the heart muscles. It is still not clear whether it does irreparable damage)

    1. Well – it’s very sad………….. but she appears to have been overweight and also minority ethnic. She had breathing difficulties and her daughters were late getting her to hospital.

      1. Daughters aged 17 and 20, probably not experienced at sending an adult to hospital. No sign of a male parent.

        1. I wouldn’t expect them to be experienced – but they were old enough to see that she was in distress and ill. I’m not blaming them but she probably needed oxygen urgently.

          1. Wasn’t it said right at the start though that corona patients can be in urgent need of oxygen without showing symptoms? I am fairly sure I wouldn’t know when someone needed to go to hospital.

          2. Maybe – but the daughter said she was struggling to breathe, although she said she was fine. I guess she didn’t want to worry them. Sadly they were too late to overrule her. They weren’t to know that – I’m not blaming them.

        1. She’s described as fit and healthy!
          If that was true then you’re chief ladder man for the London Fire Brigade in your spare time.

          1. What is even worse Obs is, people actually seem to believe the media and have trust in what they are saying.

    2. It is appalling that the latter wasn’t headline news.
      I heard of another case today – was talking to a woman who said that her daughter had had the J+J vaxx, and shortly afterwards, went to her GP feeling ill, was referred to a cardiologist, and hospitalised. Is now back home. All doctors flatly saying the vaxx had nothing to do with it, but she never had any heart problems before.

    3. Some that is only known if you search for it. I think I mentioned what my GP said about 6 weeks ago after he advised me not to have the booster ……..the latest was “oh its up to you”.

  85. That’s me for this grey, dreary day. The MR is under the weather as a consequence of the paint fumes.

    No sunshine expected until after Covidmas. The three SAGI are refuelling their camels and making them do PCR tests. The one called Ferguson says that his model shows that there are 10,000 new-born babies in mangers in Nazareth – so the SAGI will have quite a job locating the right premises.

    I hope to join you on the morrow – when it will be less than 72 hours before the days begin to GET LONGER….

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain

    1. Give my best to the Most Recent, Bill, and best wishes to you too. And to all NoTTLers: a very good night, and sleep well.

    1. Boris can go and get stuffed as can his useless cabinet and so-called bloody “advisers”. Not doing any of this shit anymore. (Sorry for language but it makes me furious.)

      2. It’s getting harder and harder to avoid expletives when discussing Boris and his collection of feckwits!

    2. I am arresting you for being a complete tosser

      You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not
      mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.

      Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?

    6. Audience: “There’s a constable behind you with your arrest warrant!”
      Boris: “No there isn’t boys and girls – I can’t see one anywhere!”
      Audience shouts: “HE’S BEHIND YOU!”
      Boris: “Oh no he’s not!”
      Audience screams: “OH YES HE IS!!”

  87. Today was clear and dry from the golden dawn to purple sunset.* It was cold, below zero. There was not a breath of wind, not a whisper at any time during the day. If it was like this elsewhere in Scotland and the UK not a single turbine blade would have turned and not a single watt would’ve been generated. Does one of the technically competent Nottlers have access to the electricity generation figures for today, please?

    *Edited to revise stupidities…

    2. They will have been turning, Horace – if they aren’t rotated (using, of course, electricity) they seize up.

  88. Evening, all. A change in leadership would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; what’s necessary is a change of direction away from the iceberg of wokist greenery towards restoring some conservative policies (law and order, fiscal responsibility, low taxation and trimming the over-bloated state – plus, of course, actually getting us out of the EU’s clutches as people voted for in 2019).

    1. Good evening. All of what you ask takes a very long time. The Ministers are so busy with parties at this time of year i’m not sure it is doable until at least 2035.

      1. Thanks, croc 🙂 I cannot believe the ineptitude of the selection committee for North Shrops Con PCC. Whatever possessed them not only to select according to a diversity tick list, but also announce, with glee, that the bloke was a “good candidate” because he’d raised loadsa dosh for the Con Party!? Do they not have even one brain cell between them?

        1. “Do they not have even one brain cell between them”?

          They don’t, Conners: I claim my 5/~…

          1. I have no idea; I am not privy to Con instructions. He did say when I met him that hustings were “rather fun”. Personally, I thought they were “rather important and serious” as it enabled one to connect with voters. Clearly, I am totally out of touch!

    1. Don’t wear a mask, either. Many of those who died from “Spanish ‘flu” actually died from pneumonia exacerbated by wearing masks.

  91. Had an email today which distressed me. A friend that I used to work with and who still works in the school system I worked in; lives in the same town as I did. School was closed on Friday, not because of weather but because there was a TikTok video that threatened violence in US schools on Friday. Staff were emailed and told to keep monitoring their emails. Patty said at 9.45 last night there was an automated phone call saying that there was a specific threat against the school district and so school would be closed and there would be a heightened police presence. State and town police are investigating.
    You may recall what I said about the Sandy Hook tragedy….it could so easily have been the town and the school that I lived and worked in.
    Picture a quintessential New England town; a town green, a white clapboard church, and old tavern etc. Only four schools- two elementary schools, one middle and one high. And now, this evil, horrible type of threat has raised its head in this town.
    My son grew up there and we lived there for 22 years. It was a safe and happy place; the Head Selectman (mayor) knew everyone’s name and we all knew just about everybody.
    I simply do not understand what has happened to this world.

    1. It is that kind of change in our lives that I think I find the most depressing and distressing.

    3. Ask a silly question, but how hard can it be to hunt down the publisher of that video and all those that they are in contact with?

      2. You can, but that involves tracking the username to the email, then the email to the provider… and then the name provided might not be a real one – and then tracking the name to an address.

        A quicker way is tracking the IP of the loader to an ISP account and the address that way… but then, if the poster is using something like onion browser then that could have the chap next door appearing to come from Germany.

        1. If the “secret services” or whatever you wish to call them, couldn’t do that in under a day, they don’t deserve the billions of funding they are getting.
          I VERY much doubt that those who subscribe to and follow that TIK TOC can’t be tracked quickly and by following all their links back one should be able to hit the original source.
          NONE of these bastards are ever as clever as they are made out to be.

    4. Try looking for a child who did not want to attend school that day, possibly because of a Latin test (or exam). I have never understood why individual States do not try to make firearm ownership, and training, compulsory for everyone who reaches eighteen. (method in my madness)

  93. I caught the end of this on Radio 4 just now:

    Profile – Patrick Vallance
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012pc2

    It makes the claim that Vallance’s credibility suffered when, at the start of the panic, he suggested a herd immunity tactic only to then disown the idea and support lockdown. It’s a short programme but it manages to get in swipes at ‘The Right’ for being critical (Ross Clark is interviewed).

    How curious. Isn’t it supposed to be the case that ‘The Right’ is conservative and reactionary, and doesn’t question ideas whereas ‘The Left’ has the intelligent people who think things through?

    1. The Left haven’t had intelligent people for decades.

      I’d think that the Right minded mind would look at all sides of the issue and consider it all, then act on the facts and risk factors.

  94. BBC4 9.05pm.
    Film: The Lady in the Van – Alan Bennett.

    Starring Maggie Smith …………. Personally I can’t stand her!

      1. Each to their own – this would be a very boring site if we did all agree – personally I am definitely not a fan of Van Morrison and quite like Maggie Smith!

    3. I’m struggling to think of my all time favourite film. I rather like westerns No country for old Men, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid the Big country. And Casablanca.

        1. Mon pleasure 😎
          I think I like westerns because the baddies nearly always end up dead. Now for the G&T. So, it’s Good night from me and good night from………. well him. 🤔

  95. BBC4 9.05pm.
    Film: The Lady in the Van – Alan Bennett.

    Starring Maggie Smith …………. Personally I can’t stand her!

  96. Sadly Mrs Bleau is hooked on Strictly so I’m back at the computer in the bat cave – sad that AJ isn’t dancing, hoping Rose wins and while I think John seems a nice sort of person I can’t stand the gurning Johannes!

      1. It was obvious when the line-up was announced that the gay, the deaf or the blek would have to win.

  97. NoTTlers favourite films – ?

    Whenever I’m asked this question ” Jean de Florette” springs to mind.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V44E_YanQsg

    Jean de Florette is a 1986 period drama film directed by Claude Berri, based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol.
    It is followed by Manon des Sources. The film takes place in rural Provence, where two local farmers plot to trick a newcomer out of his newly inherited property.

    2. Seven Samurai, A Bout de Souffle, Galaxy Quest, the Producers, Belle de Jour, Zulu, Cyrano de Bergerac,

    3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I saw it in London, with the poster outside clearly stating “in Mandarin Chinese with subtitles”; five minutes into the film the two oiks in the row in front of me left, with the immortal phrase “I’m off, it’s all in fookiin Chinese”!!

      1. We had our own version of that in the library when we were pulling books to be deleted. We called it “Crouching Librarian, Hidden Book”.

      1. I saw that film. I’m surprised that I was only twelve at the time. My abiding memory was that the continuity adviser was asleep on the job. Our hero drives to the thatched home of a colleague in his open-top vintage MG (?) sports car. And rings the doorbell – the bell push being a modern white plastic Friedland illuminated variety…

    5. I don’t have a favourite film but I do have favourite lines, one of which comes from 55 days at Peking.

      German Ambassador: You have to admire Sir Arthur; he always manages to give the impression that God must be an Englishman.

      1. From the Battle of Britain: British Ambassador after the German diplomat has left in a huff – “it’s unforgivable; I lost my temper”.

          2. I find it’s surprising how often people like that are much pleasanter than one might expect, generally they are those on the artistic side of life.

            I suspect I expect the worst because I’m such a cynic and because I’ve met too many “so called” important people who are arseholes of the first water.

          3. I’m guessing that the “so called” important people are slebs? I’ve just finished mailing my Christmas cards, and there are two former High Sheriffs, a former Archdeacon and a current High Court judge amongst the recipients. All are utterly normal, when you know them.

          4. Not entirely.
            Captains of industry (ha bloody ha) Lords and senior civil servants.
            I have a similar list and as you say, they are normal, in fact very pleasant company.

          5. It’s a generation thing, he was utterly charming.
            One of the old school and I was young and impressionable.
            They don’t make ’em like that any more……Alas!

        2. Does it contain some Diverse ‘How’s your Father’ – leading to an unexpected Black Swann event?

        1. Quite. Waitrose’s Easy to Cook offerings at £10 for 3, were noticeably sparse in Guildford today. If I’m going to buy six meals’ worth, it would be nice if they would last for as many days. This is not always the case. Today was no exception.

    9. Gone with the Wind
      Great Expectations
      Singin’ in the Rain
      White Christmas
      The Dam Busters
      The Colditz Story
      Casablanca
      The African Queen
      The Manchurian Candidate
      Bridge over the river Kuai
      Zulu
      High Society
      North by Northwest
      The Blue Max (I was in it: Ich bin der Anführer der jungen Piloten in der Friedhofsszene …)

      Dr Zhivago
      The Big Country
      The Graduate
      Pretty Woman
      Out of Africa,

      etcetera …

      1. You listed Blue Max, Bridge over River Kwai (I have swum in the river where it was filmed), Casablanca, Dr Zhivago, High Society, zulu, The Manchurian Candidate, African Queen twice.

    11. That is ( with Manon des Sources ) beyond doubt my most appreciated and admired piece of storytelling and cinematography, my favourite however is a toss up between “The Dish” and “Galaxy Quest” with ” It’s a Wonderful Life”, “Christmas Story”, ‘The Lady Killers” and “Kind Hearts and Coronets” fighting for second place.

  98. No hope, no help, no haircuts – this is an Ashes series that should never have happened

    England have fallen to pieces in the second Test, but their struggles are symptomatic of a tour that was always likely to go badly wrong

    OLIVER BROWN, CHIEF SPORTS WRITER • 18 December 2021 • 7:17pm

    Adisintegrating Ashes tour can feel like the loneliest place in sport. The cruelty of the latest mismatch is that England’s players, boiled in the Adelaide heat as their pace attack misfires and their batting crumbles faster than an overbaked Lamington, still have a month of this to go.

    Players react to the slow torture of series defeat in extreme ways: for Andrew Flintoff, captain 15 years ago, the answer sadly lay in the bottom of a glass, with coach Duncan Fletcher accusing him of turning up to one training session so hungover that he could not even bowl properly.

    For the class of 2021-22, there is no such release valve. No sooner had they trudged back to the Crowne Plaza from the Adelaide Oval, their batsmen’s pitiful collapse auguring a third 5-0 whitewash in five tours of Australia, than they learned of the beefed-up Covid-19 measures by which they would have to abide between thrashings. It is hardly a recipe for wild nights on the road: due to the anxieties unleashed by Pat Cummins’ exposure to a positive case at a local steakhouse, they are banned from mixing in busy restaurants and ordered not even to have their hair cut.

    The stylishly coiffured Chris Woakes, said by former England team-mate James Taylor to book hair appointments every 10 days, is likely to find that last rule a particular torment. None of his team-mates will be much enamoured with such harsh diktats either.

    Since landing in Australia on November 7, they have soaked up every public health demand made of them, including quarantining in Queensland for 14 days – an avoidable hardship given that neither Victoria nor New South Wales were asking the same of overseas arrivals. Now, just as they look forward to relative freedoms in Melbourne and Sydney, the whip is being cracked once more.

    Most touring parties regard the Boxing Day and New Year Tests as cherished rites of passage. And yet for this bedraggled England team, the traditional joys of the southern-hemisphere holiday season will be tempered. After Cummins’ fateful decision to dine out, they have been told not just to steer clear of hairdressers, but to resist any shopping visits or requests for selfies. Where their predecessors could purge a torrid day in the middle with a riotous evening out, these young men risk having little beyond their own regrets for company.

    The worse England’s performances become, the more an impression grows that this tour was doomed from the outset. The warnings were spelt out starkly enough: how could players hope to be Ashes-sharp without any warm-up games, when in Ray Illingworth’s day it was customary to schedule several hard state contests long before the first Test?

    Stuart Broad was joking earlier this month when, with match practice curtailed by Brisbane downpours, he said: “We’ll be a good indoor cricket team.” But there was a grim prescience to his words. Thrust into the full glare of the Australian summer sun, England have looked blinded by the light.

    If the essence of all great sport is intense competition, this series is facing a struggle to provide it. While England’s batting line-up tumbles headlong into the abyss the moment Joe Root falls, the choice to field five seamers in Adelaide appears one-dimensional. Historically, it is spinners who have enjoyed most joy here, with Shane Warne and Nathan Lyon far ahead of their countrymen on the all-time list, with 56 and 54 wickets apiece. England, alas, have no such guile to deploy, save for Root’s gentle off-breaks. With each day that passes, their task seems more forlorn.

    In time, an inquest will be required into the profound structural problems underlying the malaise. The factors are manifold, from the sidelining of county cricket to April and September to the stuffing of the midsummer schedule with The Hundred fixtures. This capitulation in Adelaide serves up ample evidence, whether in Jos Buttler’s 15-ball duck or in Ollie Pope’s failure to read Lyon’s enigmatic variations, that England’s love of the red-ball art is being lost. If Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed constitute the best opening partnership they can find, it is a reflection on how far the county game has fallen.

    But for now, with 3½ Tests and many dark nights of the soul ahead, England’s only option is to make do and mend. It is not as if they can call on reinforcements from the England Lions, who were intended to provide back-up but who have already flown home.

    They can hardly dispute the health protocols either, with Australia’s rising numbers of Omicron cases threatening to trigger tougher crackdowns over the coming weeks. As with the Premier League’s ever-dwindling Christmas schedule, this Ashes series is at the mercy of an endlessly shifting public health picture. But where once the players could find sun-kissed escapes from their on-field turmoil, here they are trapped inside a deepening nightmare. If winning an Ashes in Australia is the most daunting task in cricket, then winning one amid a quasi-lockdown is just about impossible.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/12/18/no-hope-no-help-no-haircuts-ashes-series-should-never-have/

    Tomorrow, Australia will bat until tea and declare 450+ ahead. Their weakened bowling attack will knock over half the England batsmen by the close.

    1. England should smuggle in a tampered ball and get it into Smith’s hands.
      It’s their only chance.

      1. ‘MAIL ON SUNDAY EXCLUSIVE: Brexit minister Lord Frost walks out on Boris: Panic in No10 as PM’s key ally quits, saying he’s ‘disillusioned’ with the Government’s Covid Plan B restrictions, vaccine passports, tax hikes and the cost of Net Zero green agenda
        EXCLUSIVE: Cabinet Minister Lord Frost has resigned from the Government
        The move was triggered by ‘disillusionment’ with the ‘direction’ of Tory policy
        Lord Frost handed his resignation to the Prime Minister a week ago
        His departure was prompted by Plan B measures, tax rises and ‘net zero’ politics
        The revelation is latest blow for Mr Johnson, following rebellion over restriction.’

        Assuming it’s true of course.

        2. I do hope it’s true – Boris will probably claim it’s all the fault of someone else, possibly Lord Frost!?

        3. Frost is staying on as the Brexit negotiator who backed down over Article 16 and ECJ judges…

        1. The political classes are absolutely effing useless. All of them. There is no escape from their reckless and mindless inabilities on every subject on the planet. They wouldn’t hold a job down for a week in the outside world.
          I’m off now for a large G&T not my usual but………….. we have a lot of tonic taking up far too much room in the fridge.

          1. I’m sticking to SE Australian Red Medicine tonight (Yellow Tail Shiraz). The Gordons and the Fever Tree are in the fridge. Besides, I re-subscribed to the Speccie for £12 for as many weeks. The free bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label arrived on Thursday. I prefer single malt (there’s a bottle of 18 yo Ledaig lurking under my Christmas Tree as I write), but the JW is not to be sneezed at, in the circumstances…

          6. It’s not a bad drop as they say in Oz, we use to live near Mclaren Vale but from small family wineries, it has become a huge industrialised wine producing area now.
            The story on Johnnie Walker goes like this……back in the late 60s i was living and working in JHB staying in ‘digs’ with my mate John, one of our mutual friends came over from the UK for a couple of weeks holiday. He bought a Bottle of JW in from Duty free, neither of us were keen, but we did sit and share a few small glasses. I kept it in a cupboard of our shared bedroom. We noticed that the content had been going down even though we hadn’t been drinking it. I discovered that one of the other two residents (both alcoholic’s) was knocking it off. So I peed in the bottle to top it up and it still kept going down……….

          1. Although I now have dual citizenship, some traditions from England remain steadfastly in place!! afternoon tea with G&T before evening dinner, these days only at weekends.

  100. Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die!
    This is so priceless .
    A lady died this past January, and Natwest bank billed her for February
    and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then
    added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance had been
    £0.00, is now £60.00. A family member placed a call to the Natwest Bank
    call centre:
    Family Member:
    ‘I am calling to tell you that she died in January.’
    Natwest
    ‘The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.’
    Family Member:
    ‘Maybe, you should turn it over to collections.’
    Natwest
    ‘Since it is two months past due, it already has been.’
    Family Member:
    So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?’
    Natwest
    ‘Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to The
    credit bureau, maybe both!’
    Family Member:
    ‘Do you think God will be mad at her?’
    Natwest
    ‘Excuse me?’
    Family Member: ‘Did you just get what I was telling you . . . The part
    about her Being dead?’
    Natwest
    ‘Sir, you’ll have to speak to my supervisor.’
    Supervisor gets on the phone:
    Family Member:
    ‘I’m calling to tell you, she died in January.’
    Natwest
    ‘The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.’
    Family Member:
    ‘You mean you want to collect from her estate?’
    Natwest
    (Stammer) ‘Are you her lawyer?’
    Family Member:
    ‘No, I’m her great nephew.’ (Lawyer info given)
    Natwest
    ‘Could you fax us a certificate of death?’
    Family Member:
    ‘Sure.’ ( fax number is given )
    After they get the fax:
    Natwest
    ‘Our system just isn’t set up for death. I don’t know what more I can do
    to help.’
    Family Member:
    ‘Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing
    her. I don’t think she will care.’
    Natwest
    ‘Well, the late fees and charges do still apply.’
    Family Member:
    ‘Would you like her new billing address?’
    Natwest
    ‘That might help.’
    Family Member:
    ‘ West Park Cemetry, 12 West Park Road , London W1 Plot Number 1049.’
    Natwest
    ‘Sir, that’s a cemetery!’
    Family Member:
    ‘Well, what the Hell do you do with dead people on your planet?

    1. You get more sense from the fucking piggy bank than you ever get from NatWest. Deplorable bank.

    2. We know of an instance when the Woolwich Building Society addressed a letter to the deceased:

      “Dear Mr L…..

      Please bring in your Death Certificate so we can arrange to close your account.”

      MoH made the staff read the letter aloud. It only took three goes before the penny dropped!

      1. After my father died, my mother never changed the name on the electricity bills. This caused problems many years later when she died and I was winding up her estate. They sent a cheque for a refund but it was in my father’s name. He’d been dead for 36 years by then.

        1. I had a refund of electricity when MOH (in whose name the account had been) died. Then I got a bill (by this time the account was in my name) for pretty much the same amount!

    3. We know of an instance when the Woolwich Building Society addressed a letter to the deceased:

      “Dear Mr L…..

      Please bring in your Death Certificate so we can arrange to close your account.”

      MoH made the staff read the letter aloud. It only took three goes before the penny dropped!

  102. Frost going and SAGE lockdown; do they really think they can slip all this out while people are watching sickly bums prancing in sign language, hoping nobody notices?

        1. The Carillon, Bournville is wonderful, I grew up listening to the bells every week. Fond memories of Cadbury’s from the day.

    2. A friend and former colleague used to live in Bournville. Sadly, via Dubai and HK, he’s been away, and is now back, and living in Caterham. But I can vouch for the fact that the Carillon is “A Thing”.

      1. I think if the trades Description people were still around they’d probably take issue with the notion of ‘living’ in Caterham…..

    3. Ah – the Rest House. I recall it well from my days failing two A Levels in the college next door.

  104. “It’s the Iliad, but not as we know it, Jim.”
    The mistakes in this Sunday Tellygraff article are so basic, that I had to read these sentences twice to make sure my eyes hadn’t deceived me.

    “Achilles’s fall follows that of his great adversary, the Trojan prince Hector, whose problem is one all too common in modern politics: Hector runs off with Helen, another man’s wife. The lessons are obvious: passions are potentially fatal for statesmen, unless rationally managed.

    One of the most horrific tragedies in the ancient Greek canon befalls the family of Helen´s husband, King Agamemnon. “The dice fall fair for him….”

  106. Top BTL Response to Charles Moore’s rather apologetic piece on Boris after Shropshire-North:

    M EH
    22 HRS AGO
    Answer us this charles, is bozo even a real conservative, because I’m pretty convinced that the vote at the last election was to deliver some form of right wing traditional tory agenda i.e. get Brexit done (properly), reduce taxes, reduce regulation and put money back into the pockets of the people and businesses, who surprisingly can spend it much more wisely than a bunch of government / public sector clowns, reform the national crisis service, fix the never-ending migration issue.
    What we’ve actually got is a pm obsessed with lockdown and draconian health policies, a green agenda no one ever voted for and a bloke that clearly hasn’t got a clue about financial prudence. Add to that all manner of other mishaps made worse by the serial lying and you’ve got your answer. This isn’t public school any more charles. You can’t tell fibs and get away with it. Even today his senior civil servant investigating the christmas party scandals has had to withdraw himself from the investigation, because he attended one himself. This stuff is so stupid and imbecilic now that you can’t even make it up anymore.
    His only chance to save himself is to surround himself by experienced right wing advisors who have some actual experience, maybe the likes of John Redwood would be a good place to start. Ditch the dopey oxbridge kids, stop listening to his wife and sage and perhaps remind himself of what a right wing Tory government should be offering.

    REPLY
    16 REPLIES
    338

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/17/not-end-boris-johnson-stops-kowtowing-interests-blob/#comment

    1. Actually, we did vote for green policies. It was in the 2019 Tory manifesto. Then again, so was ‘not raising taxes’.

      1. As I didn’t vote Conservative (I spoiled my ballot paper), I didn’t vote for green policies at all.

  108. I know what I think of the buZZers who have shown no intention of resigning.

    Lord Frost, Boris Johnson’s Brexit minister and one of his closest allies, has resigned in protest at the ‘direction’ of the government. He has been making his discomfiture clear for a while, most recently in this speech to the Centre for Policy Studies where he said he believed in low tax (Johnson is raising tax) and no vaccine passports (Johnson forced them through with Labour votes last week). Invoking Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech he said – in a clear warning to the Prime Minister – ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the European Union from Britain with Brexit, only to import that European model after all this time’. Here is an extract from the speech:

    We have taken a different road in the UK. Our elections now matter and everything can change as a result of them. That means politicians have to compete in the marketplace of ideas. We have to persuade people that free markets and free institutions are the best way forward. If we can’t – we lose. And that is all the more important because we are on our own now. Our destiny is in our own hands and we have to step up and compete at a global level. It is no longer good enough to be the most attractive economy in the EU.

    We face global competition and we have to benchmark ourselves against the whole of the world. That is a big challenge – for government as well as the private sector. That is why I have the job I have – trying to ensure there is consistency between what’s required by our agreement with the EU, by our FTAs with other countries, and by the programme of domestic reforms that our new freedoms make possible.

    What Brexit means for the future is dependent on whether we can seize these opportunities. Whether we can liberalise, free up, create competition on our own market, create the conditions for innovation and productivity growth. So I can’t share the views of those who think we can treat the private sector as just a convenient way of keeping the public sector running. It isn’t just a source of taxes. Nor is it a bunch of people who will inevitably do bad things unless the Government keeps a very close eye on them.

    We can’t carry on as we were before and if after Brexit all we do is import the European social model we will not succeed. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the European Union from Britain with Brexit, only to import that European model after all this time.

    So we need to reform fast, and those reforms are going to involve doing things differently from the EU. If we stick to EU models, but behind our own tariff wall and with a smaller market, we obviously won’t succeed.

    It is all too easy to get captured by the interest groups and the lobbies. We don’t have time for that. The world is not standing still. No-one owes us a living. Earning one is now fully in our own hands. The formula for success as a country is well known. Low taxes – I agree with the Chancellor, as he said in his Budget speech, our goal must be to reduce taxes.

    Light-touch and proportionate regulation, whatever our policy objectives. Free trade – of course – simultaneously increasing consumer choice while reducing consumer costs. Ensuring competition stops complacency – keeping our economy fit and responsive to innovation and progress abroad.

    And personal freedom and responsibility. Unavoidably, we have had a lot of state direction and control during the pandemic. That cannot and must not last for ever, and I am glad that it is not. I am very happy that free Britain, or at least merry England, is probably now the free-est country in the world as regards covid restrictions. No mask rules, no vaccine passports – and long may it remain so.

    Narrator: it did not remain so and Lord Frost resigned.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/lord-frost-my-britain-is-country-with-no-mask-rules—and-no-vaccine-passports

    2. Gosh – a real conservative politician! Shame he’s gone, but the Johnson government is really only for shills prepared to bow down to the new world order.

    1. The ‘Confrontation’ made the front page of the Sunday Telegraph as ‘Anti -vaxxers clash with police’…..

    1. Hhhmmm………… not really, Ogga – that looks like a pet African Pygmy hog – a hybrid of two African varieties, bred specifically for the pet trade. It doesn’t appear to be enjoying the experience.

      Our remit is to care for wild European hedgehogs, native to this country. Rescue, Rehabilitate and Release.

      1. Yo Nd

        Within a 15 mile radiuus, from home we have

        Seal
        Donkey
        Hedgehog

        Sanctuaries

        The Sallie Army look after the people and I mean that:

        Our local ‘man with tin’, has been in the same spot, every Saturday , for the last 16 years.that we have been here

  113. I am reminded what David Starkey called Boris Johnson in 2005 a ” Jester Despot” How right he was.

  114. Sage seeks ‘immediate’ curtailment of indoor mixing, putting Christmas gatherings at risk

    Let them say the same, starting 02 April 2022

    1. Tell them to go and feck themselves – I have had enough of these halfwits!

      Edit – Quarterwits

    2. Tell them to go and feck themselves – I have had enough of these halfwits!

      Edit – Quarterwits

  115. Inspired by Nut Nuts and with Frost gone I fear that the Bumbling Bonker’s next mantra be :

    LET’S GET BREXIT UNDONE

  118. Aye Right

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1472355116019822596

    Of course you knew you lying sack of excrement,just like Morgan ,Neil and all the other bought and paid for MSM lockdown shills knew

    Getting the whiff of the noose are you??Too late, Nuremberg 2 will see to you all!!

    Loadsa truth bombs dropping tonight,lotsa people scrambling for cover as Sage is exposed

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-twitter-conversation-with-the-chairman-of-the-sage-covid-modelling-committee

    Enemy Front

    Family Behind

    Fix Bayonets

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FG52Z7VWUAc6GVo?format=jpg&name=small

    1. One point from that interview stood out: “We generally model what we are asked to model”, which reminded me of the well-known accountant response when asked by a client to estimate something: “What answer would you like?”

    2. So, the Conspiracy Theorists were right yet again.
      The projections from SAGE have been adjusted to serve the introduction of unnecessary vaccines and all other accoutrements leading towards the Great Reset and Build Back Better.

    3. Anyone with half a brain could have figured that out. In fact it was essentially Cochrane’s defence of Ferguson in an argument on NOTTL last year if I remember rightly.
      Perhaps we should sack all the journalists, civil serpents and MPs who were unware.

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