Sunday 1 March: The lack of a coordinated response to coronavirus is proving costly

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be blacklisted.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/03/01/lettersthe-lack-coordinated-response-coronavirus-proving-costly/

748 thoughts on “Sunday 1 March: The lack of a coordinated response to coronavirus is proving costly”

    1. White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits. As we used to say as children. Why, I don’t know and 3 times?

  2. Be careful what you buy on eBay.

    If you buy stuff on line, check out the seller carefully.

    A friend has just spent £95 plus VAT on a penis enlarger.

    Bastards sent him a magnifying glass.

    The only instruction said, “Do not use in sunlight.”

      1. In truth, Harry, many of them are taken from funnies that circulated in 2011-15 and they (mostly) deserve a new airing so, enjoy and have a Good morning.

        1. I don’t care where they come from it’s good to start the day with a laugh……before it all goes downhill….

  3. Shocking headline from LBC: the purchase of 8,000 additional Tasers has been approved. You can almost taste the vibrancy emanating from our burgeoning population. Additional weapons are only needed when war erupts and this purchase is further evidence that undeclared war exists on our streets. Coming soon to a town near you.

    3. taser great for subduing an individual suspect, but pretty hopeless against a gang. Reloading the cartridges one by one?

  4. Professor John Oxford, a virologist from Queen Mary University of London tells us that Coronaviruses have already been infecting us for over 50 years and the latest one, whilst it may be more transmissible, is just something we’ll just have to live with (or die from) just like all the others that we are used to.

    A registrar working in intensive care of people with respiratory illnesses phoned in to BBC Any Answers programme yesterday. He reckoned COVID-19 was twice as infectious as existing flu viruses and conceded that the consequential morbidity rate was ten times higher.

    However, this means that if everything we do is now done at half speed, our risk of getting COVID-19 viral infection and subsequently dying from it is the same as any other flu risk.

    So folks, just take things easy and things can only remain the same.

    Have a nice day!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-could-become-seasonal-infection-returns-winter-experts/

    1. Whilst I hope it avoids me, if I do catch it, then I catch it and there is not a lot I can do about that. Good if I survive, but if not, then I’ve got to turn my toes up with something.

    1. Leans forward to eat his airline meal …. and … well, not exactly egg on his face.
      Morning, Belle.

        1. It’s a lot of money. Sums can be well into five figures. It has been going on for years.

  7. Morning all

    SIR – Many have suggested that, if there is a slow and steady spread of coronavirus, the NHS will cope. A rapid rise in infections, requiring more intensive-care capacity, is of concern – in Britain and most other countries.

    This is exactly why the widespread failure to follow the example of a few well-led countries a month ago is inexplicable. Entry should have been barred for those who had travelled to China within the incubation period. All residents returning from China should have been a subject to an enforced, supervised quarantine.

    Most countries did not implement this and so the human, social and economic costs of the pending coronavirus pandemic will be greater than they needed to have been.

    Damian Chunilal

    Hong Kong

    1. SIR – If you are tempted to stock up on face masks, please don’t be surprised if hospitals have to start cancelling routine surgery when our supplies run out.

      Dr Sarah A Pape FRSCEd

      Longwitton, Northumberland

      1. Clearly she has little knowledge of supply chains. The NHS will have this on contract and if supplies did get tight the NHS would get priority

        1. During the Cold War, the NHS kept a six-month stock of supplies. Is this not still the case?

          1. I would not think so. They would hold a bit of buffer stock but that would be days rather than months

            In an emergency face masks could probably be reused by the same person of course. Generally they are treated as disposable items but little if any research has been done on this

          2. Face masks cease to be of much use after they’ve been worn for 1/2 hour or so, unless they are re-sterilised.

            So not a very practical idea.

          3. I think most things are on JIT system (Just in time).
            Most government actions work on the JLT system (just too late).

    2. How will the NHS cope? Both General Hospitals in SE Scotland, (in Edinburgh and Melrose) advised that they did not want people turning up as they were at capacity. That was before corona virus was invented. As an aside, the Borders General does not understand quarantine. I knew one person who was in an isolation ward. The tea lady came in every morning and afternoon with tea and a bun.

    3. I dont think in most cases intensive care is needed, It i isolation that is needed and the NHS has little capacity for that. They might need to take over hotels and keep them their if we had significant numbers of cases in the UK

  8. Morning again

    SIR – Inheritance tax (Letters, February 23) is at odds with one of the most powerful and justifiable of human instincts: to protect your children and get them safely launched in the world.

    I was depressed to read that HMRC is investigating the use of family investment companies (FICs) as one means of reducing inheritance tax liability. How much better if HMRC focused on reforming and simplifying this hated tax to a level that would obviate the need for such manoeuvres.

    Under the current, complex regime, it is terribly difficult for middle-income parents to guess at their future spending on care, and balance this with the considerable incentives to give money to their children now. Many don’t have enough money for both courses of action, yet our kids’ needs are immediate and significant.

    Those of us in our seventies don’t want to anguish over this all the time: it certainly doesn’t add to the “joys” of old age. The £325,000 nil rate band is wildly out of date; the housing allowance is complicated and only the super-rich can afford the advice and structures needed to avoid this tax.

    Lauren Groom

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. Under current rules couples are able to pass on £950k tax free without using complex trust structures. That’s plenty to “safely” launch kids into the world especially as most kids won’t inherit until they’re in their 50s.

    2. There is the case of a lady, already in her eighties, whose London garden was threatened by wealthy leaseholders who had bought a flat within her home that was sold off in order to provide a pension. They were using the rules on Collective Enfranchisement (amended by Tony Blair to make it easier for New Labour-approved metropolitan money-makers) to force a sale. The compensation on offer for a large garden in NW3 was £500. It would have added many tens of thousands to the value of their flat.

      Luckily, their lawyers slipped up and put the wrong address on the renewal application to the Land Registry. This was picked up immediately, allowing the old lady to separate the garden from the freehold, and to gift it to her daughter, in her fifties, in the hope that she would live another seven years and put it out of time for Inheritance Tax. Her actual sentiments were that she had worked hard all her life, and was damned if that was going to be pocketed by Blair to pay for his bloody war, and it was only natural that it should provide a pension for her children in difficult times.

      This was ten years ago, and the old lady is still alive. The daughter, once granted possession of the garden, remodelled it, ripping out the flower beds and her mother’s beloved roses and her favourite camillia, and creating an easy-to-maintain lawn. The shed was cleared out and used as storage for the new owner. There was nothing the old lady could do, since under rules about “gifts with reservation” any attempt to control how the garden should be managed would put the gift back into the estate on death.

      The next problem concerns going into care. The old lady is in her nineties now, and might at some time have to call on adult social care, especially having given away her main assets. However, any call on the local authority, allows them under different rules to pry into the family’s affairs as far as they like in order to claw back assets from the family to pay for care. The seven year rule on gifts does not apply, and they have extensive powers under new laws to use the sort of procedures that used only to apply to the police investigating a murder or military intelligence endeavouring to thwart a terrorist attack. Clearly, the old lady must steer clear of any engagement with adult social services, even if this means her incontinence makes her living conditions somewhat unhygienic.

      1. Good morning Jeremy.
        Your example sounds messy. It might have been more sensible for the old lady to have downsized years ago. The garden could still be considered a ‘gift with reservation of benefit’ if the donor still has access to it. Ripping out her rose bushes will not deceive the authorities.
        NB I have no idea really, perhaps someone else knows the answer.

        1. Everything hinges on who gives permission in order to ascertain ownership.

          Adverse possession depends on the paper owners not having given permission for the applicant to use the property over a period (currently ten years with two years grace to evict, whereas it used to be twelve years straight). By putting a lock on the gate to the garden, the daughter effectively claims the sole right to give permission whom to invite in to use it, including the old lady, who is reduced to the status of a guest.

          The new owner is not prohibited to invite in someone who might have been a former owner; otherwise any former owner could claim rights over a property after sale, simply by making a sentimental return visit. I know of a former school, converted into flats in the 1990s where occasionally old girls like to turn up and wander around. They are treated by the flat owners as honoured guests, not as someone staking a claim to revert it to being a school again.

    3. You should pay no IHT on anything below £1M. Even that is low for London here a modest house can be £1M. It will certainly not be £1M

      A big problem I think is the outdated council tax particularly fo place like London where you have multiple earners living in house but only one lot of council tax is paid

      It would I think be better to have a local income tax. It would link it to earnings so would be much fairer and would also mean every on living in a council area would be liable to pay it

      At present the government uses other taxes to try to make up the shortfall from the failing council tax system. Councils as well keep bumping up fees to try to make up the shortfall

      1. All sorts of conditions apply to the £1 million rate, such as the assets being in the primary dwelling and that all the assets were transferred from one spouse to the other.

        I agree with you, and always have done, about Local Income Tax. At the very least, all statutory services decided nationally such as education, social services and the police, should be funded nationally from a central grant. The local authorities should be paid as any contractor should – from the commissioning agents (i.e. the national Government), not from their own sources.

        Until recently, this was always the case, but George Osborne when Chancellor ruled that this grant should be cut by 10% each year to nothing by 2020, in order to show that the Treasury was serious about bringing down its post-bailout deficit following the 2008 Great Fraud (which incidentally resulted in no convictions).

        The Government’s answer today is to allow councils to put up Council Tax as much as they like to pay for nationally-decided statutory services (mostly social care for migrants and their extended families) and use whatever forces to extract money from the poor, who still happen to live in houses, and therefore easy non-moving targets for extortion.

        The breathtaking stupidity of the Conservative Manifesto pledge not to raise Income Tax during a period of crisis (and coronavirus is turning out to be such a crisis, even before we factor in the true costs of Brexit) makes me despair whether we are ever going to be adequately governed.

        1. The council tax is a very unfair tax with very many people paying nothing at all and with multimillionaires paying very little and with the growth of houses i multiple occupation etc the number of people paying council tax is declining. Council ta as well is more of a tax on the lowest earners.whilst very high earner the amount they pay is insignificant

          1. Poll tax tried to address this but it failed. Any tax has to be “easily collected” PAYE, VAT, Council Tax.
            Flat taxes such as VAT, petrol duty are harder on low earners.
            A local Income Tax might be simpler but not easy.

          2. It is not impossible to make individual adjustments to tax codes, to include a variation to rates as well as threshold. Any smartphone should have the computing power to deal with this. Local authorities apply to Revenue & Customs for this to be done, which can then be administered centrally and then distributed to the councils, after taking off the costs of providing this service.

        2. We won’t be. Just look at council tax hikes. You wouldn’t mind if other taxes had been reduced but they’ve all gone up. All of them.

          Those council taxes have also not gone on what they are supposed to but have just spent the money on themselves.

          Increasingly I find people clamouring for ‘fair’ taxes a bit tedious. What they mean is they want those groups they hate to pay more. The only fair tax is one that doesn’t exist. The closest is one that takes the absolute minimum at an equal rate from everyone. However, the left and big tax enthusiasts don’t like that, as it means that someone on 100K a year pays only 20% tax. They want that person punished. That, to the Left is the role of taxation: not to fund necessary shared services, but to redistribute wealth. There is nothing fair about that.

          Considering the appalling state of services in this country tax – currently at 67% of a worker’s gross income – is mostly wasted. With Rutnam we are seeing where it’s going.

          1. There are two separate arguments here.

            One is whether revenue from taxes should match optimum spending on all those things that are in the public or national interest to maintain or create. Going down the easy route of low taxes and high spending, whilst no doubt popular, is a recipe for ruin.

            The other is over waste. Whether you are from right or left, money frittered away on goldplating, corruption, empire building, status symbols and throwing away good things before they have lived out their lives – these are bad, but all too present in the way we do things now. I prefer the approach of deciding what needs to be done, costing and paying for it, getting the cost down as far as possible because that’s the right thing to do, and then working out what taxes must be raised to pay for it.

            Always the question should be – what would happen if we didn’t pay for this?

      2. The problem in some area’s, where I live for instance, is the people who work locally are not paid particularly well as it is a commuter town , 25 minutes from London, and home to a lot of high earners.
        How would you apply a fair local income tax?

        1. Local corporation tax to tap into those that pay the high earners?

          A rule of thumb might be that LIT pays for those local services that benefit residents, and LCT for those that benefit employers, particularly when it comes to lowering their overheads by providing infrastructure. All statutory services should be paid for centrally out of general taxation set by No.11.

          What might be required too is for councils themselves to be assessed for a form of Corporate Income Tax, whereas those with access to large pots of money (in your example through LCT in the big city far outweighing the meagre pickings and heavy social expenses in the outer suburbs) would have to pay a levy towards a fund to redistribute revenue more fairly.

          1. There should be no taxes on companies. Just leave them alone. The people working in them generate wealth and are taxed. Taxing the company just takes money away from the people working in that company.

          3. There should be no taxes on companies. Just leave them alone. The people working in them generate wealth and are taxed. Taxing the company just takes money away from the people working in that company.

      3. Local Income Tax – and where do you firstly get a list of earners? How do you rate their income Tax Return (if they submit one)?

        I’ve said it before, a local sales tax is the only way to ensure everyone pays it and, if the local council sets it too high, people will vote with their feet and shop in an area with a lower sales tax.

    1. Thanks for that Hugh. What a pickle we are in. And, as you say, how can it be countered?

      1. We need a few people who are well known, to turn the tables on them by taking the piss and denigrating every utterance they make. I think Liam Fox may have started such a move

        2. ‘Morning Nanners
          Yet Fox has been bullied into silence by threats to his livelihood and threats of violence against his family
          Individuals are easily picked off by the mob,we need a ccounter mob

    2. How ?

      Here’s an idea..

      Mail every MP and journalist and ask which British policies have been “leveraged” by George Soros’ Open Society as claimed in their mission statement.

      Also, which “officials and politicians” are in a “strong relationship” with Open Society and why.

      1. Ah, so OS means Open Society and not Ordnance Survey. At last you are bringing clarity to your posts, Polly.

  10. SIR – Baroness Randerson has drawn attention in a House of Lords debate to the difficulty of moving electric cars when they break down, as they cannot be towed and so have to be put on a low-loader.

    We often read about motorway jams lasting several hours, and such delays would result in many electric cars running out of power. How are these vehicles to be recharged or removed when stuck in a tailback extending many miles? If all lanes – including the hard shoulder – are full of vehicles, a logistical nightmare arises.

    The more one considers these potential problems, the less likely it seems that the era of battery power will ever come to practical fruition.

    David Bray

    Godalming, Surrey

    1. If you look at all the issues with battery powered cars then they are not really a viable solution other than for short trips and even then you have the charging problem at the end of the day and the problem of breakdowns and running out of charge

      In the religious like drive for battery powered cars none of these issues are being addressed. They just sweep them under the carpet

      1. I agree, hybrids and electric vehicles work well in urban areas (most uber taxis seem to be hybrids) where we should be reducing pollution.

        1. There is still the charging issues once you get significant numbers of battery powered cars and the breakdown and flat battery issues will be there. Mot battery powered cars are new and dont do much millage so it has not been a problem so far. You would not need many breaking down in London though to bring traffic to a halt whilst they waited for a low loader. Getting a low loader to it though a London traffic jam could be a problem. If it is just a front will drive it could be towed by lifting the front up

          1. Hybrids are therefore better. The battery lives will get better and we should not be so dismissive of new technologies, but I do have “range anxiety ” regarding longer journeys.

          2. At a guess, most couples who are battery car owners in the UK still maintain at least one petrol/diesel car.

          4. The household power supply i not designed to charge cars. I can just about cope with slow charging 1 battery powered cars ,, certainly not 2. Slightly faster charging can be done by putting it on separate 40A circuit but that’s really pushing it. You may need to turn off some appliances to prevent it tripping out the supply. The best charging time you would get would be 7 hours on a standard 13A socket and perhaps 5 hour on a 40a circuit but those times are for a new battery they will creep up over time

          5. Battery technology has changed little. The only real way you get a bigger range is to fit more batteries. The battery life is pretty much dictated by the technology. Batteries age whether used or not. Also the number of times you charge and discharge them has a big impact on life. The faster you charge them as well the shorter the life .

          6. I am really hoping that battery technology is changing a great deal for the better over the next decade. Most promising is the use of graphene in the creation of capacitor batteries. Since it is only an atom thick, the surface area of such material is immense, and it is also physically very strong and can be used structurally. Carbon, unlike lithium, is also cheap and plentiful.

            While the technology exists, it still maintains charge for a short time, and economies of scale are yet to kick in, so it is very expensive for now. If they work out a way of 3D-printing the stuff, then it could take off.

            Another technology that’s been around pretty well since the dawn of time is the use of hydrogen, which when burnt with oxygen creates energy and water. Water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen when electrolysed, consuming energy. What this allows is the local storage of energy from intermittent sources such as solar and wind. I am sure the efficiency can be improved.

            Hydrogen-powered electric hybrids topped up by solar panels on the roof of a vehicle might well take the pressure off the grid enough to make it feasible. I am therefore rather surprised that hybrids are included in the ban on the internal combustion engine for personal transport.

        2. They do provided there are only a few of them.

          Otherwise the power system will crash.

          1. Hybrids are less of an issue but remember the government is proposing to phase out hybrids

          2. PP, The Government has already anticipated this by encouraging installation of smart meters. This means that if the nation’s electrical system is overloaded then the PTB can switch off individual, or area, electrical power.
            Areas such as Islington and Primrose Hill will obviously always get continuous power, but the peasantry might well discover that they’ve been unable to recharge their electric cars overnight.

            But smart meters are what the voters wanted!

          3. PP, The Government has already anticipated this by encouraging installation of smart meters. This means that if the nation’s electrical system is overloaded then the PTB can switch off individual, or area, electrical power.
            Areas such as Islington and Primrose Hill will obviously always get continuous power, but the peasantry might well discover that they’ve been unable to recharge their electric cars overnight.

            But smart meters are what the voters wanted!

          4. Are they what the voters wanted, Janet? I reckon it is just the never-ending propaganda which is being pumped out which is attempting to bully home-owners into submission. Initially it was said that smart meters would save you money, then that it would help you focus more on saving money, and now that it is your duty to install the meters in order to “save the planet”. Rather like the constantly changing “reasons” for HS2: save time for travel, enable businessmen to stay in touch with their Northern contacts, free the railway tracks for more local traffic, etc.

          5. Every time I phone through elderly chum’s meter readings, I get a long spiel about ‘smart meters’.
            Morning, Olaf’s Relict.

          7. “We’re installing smart meters in your area.” Again. And again. And again…

          8. With the screeching voice of Maxine Peake. Enough to put you off forever.

          9. Morning, Elsie.

            When the reasons for enabling a policy keep changing it’s pretty much nailed on that reasoning wasn’t much in evidence at the outset.

          11. Even with that it would not cope. The local power network is not designed for those sort of loads. TfL introduced one battery powered route in North London. About 15Kmn of new cable had to be run to the garage and a new sub station installed

            There is no way the local power network could cope with a whole street of cars being plugged in particularly with many houses having two o three cars. It would need a new local substation and new cabling to the substation and new cabling to every home which would need to go 3 phase supply. It is doubtful the generation capacity could cope

            Imagine as well a winters day. Solar will be producing nothing and if as is frequently the case in winter you get a calm day wind will be producing little so at least 50% of the network will be producing nothing for the peak load

            If you get widespread cuts as well you have problems bring the network back up it may need to be done in stage to stop it being crashed out again by the load

          12. I often wonder how many engineers there are on the bodies that come up with these pie-in-the-sky green schemes.

          14. The railways seem to be hitting power problems. I suspect that is down to increased service and longer trains and the power supply has not been beefed up to cope

          15. This means that if the nation’s electrical system is overloaded then the PTB can switch off individual, or area, electrical power.

            Currently, (pun intended) if the grid has a problem with load it’s industry that is shut down to conserve power for homeowners. To remove power to untold numbers of homes due to government incompetence re lack of provision of sufficient generating capacity would be political suicide: better to allow industry take the hit.
            Moving a few years ahead: if the provision of a smart meter is mandated as a condition of being connected to the grid – as is likely to happen as demand outstrips supply – what will that tell us about the government’s plans for generating capacity? As an old cynic I hold to the opinion that the Green agenda is so deeply embedded in the government/establishment hierarchy that this country is going to be forced to depend on unreliable renewable sources and that load problems will become a way of life.
            All the nonsense that Johnson et al. have issued recently i.e. getting rid of gas, coal, petrol, diesel etc all points to dependence on wind and solar. One Hinckley Point C, if it ever comes on line, will be a drop in the ocean of what a modern society requires to function effectively if electricity is to be the only power source available to the population and industry. If diversity, that watchword of the modern politico, is required anywhere, then it’s in power supply.

          16. The first step is normally to drop the voltage a bit

            I find it worrying that no thought has been put into how the grid and local network would cope. The other huge problem is much of the capacity is now generated from sources such as solar and wind, Solar is useless in winter and there are frequently calm days in winter with no wind

            THe other half of the equation is funding. Petrol & diesel cars raise huge amount o taxes, Battery powered cars almost none

          17. Our voltage seems to drop at tea-time. Either that or the cooker is on the blink.

    2. As I have pointed out ad nauseam, the solution is to put the power supply under the roads. All main roads could be supplied and batteries would suffice for back roads. The technology exists and has been used with trams.

        1. Joseph, the answer is I and E. Combine these two with T and X, and you get EXIT. What on earth this means is anybody’s guess. QED.

        2. Are we turning full circle and coming back to the debate between Tesla and Edison i.e. alternating current versus direct current?

        3. I do not know. Of course that is a major consideration. However, if electric cars are ever going to be viable as against becoming a ligature around the throat of the economy, some sensible means of supplying them with electricity needs to be developed.
          Under the road ” induction”, or whatever, could also supply lorries and buses which batteries won’t ever.
          Another option is to go with petrol and diesel.

      2. Some 20 years ago, NTL were ripping up pavements all over the country to install broadband and telly.
        We are still coping with the damage because the technology moved on and NTL went bust.

        1. What I wonder is how much these private enterprises pay for access to public property, i.e roads and pavements?

        2. Not all over the country, only where the population density made it likely that the dig could be economically justified. Which it turned out not to be!

    3. Electric cars are allowed to park for free and that probably includes motorways.

    4. We only need to have a policy for the next 12 years. After that, according to some nutters, we’ll all be toast anyway.

      1. Buongiorno, Elsie.

        Was your rhubarb crumble a success the other day?

        I’m just about to pop a 1/2 shoulder of lamb into the oven to slow-roast for supper.

    3. Good morning and a Happy St. David’s day to one and all.
      Bright & sunny here and bloody cold outside!

  12. Failure of leadership with Corona virus

    There has in my view been a total failure in leadership both by the NHS & the Government in dealing with this. They should have been screening people coming into the country but have failed to do so and are now losing control well if they had control in the first place

    All the cases in the UK bar one have had links back to countries with known cases of Corona Virus. They should be a 100% screening people coming back from these countries. Whther it is to late know is hrd to say. So far it is only one case with no link to abroad

    1. Displacement activity, I fear. To paraphrase a pre-WW II warning, the virus always gets through.

      1. I think the political correctness factor comes in as well. It started in China and the government was scared to just screen the Chinese. Well it would be anyone coming from China but of course 99% would be Chinese. It has now of course spread to Italy and several other countries . including the UK

        1. 316729+ up ticks,
          BJ,
          Submission / PCism / Appeasement as practised by governance parties & others
          seriously maims / kills.

  13. 316729+up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    The purchase of eight thousand tasers for the guardians
    of law from the proposal that 10,000 new devices would be made available.
    One may well ask how did we get into this odious condition as a nation ?
    IMO first the politico’s allow a festering weeping issue to gain strength, nurturing it through it’s juvenile stages, under cover in many cases.
    Then the full blossomed article hits the streets & the decent elements of society as we are witnessing.
    So 8000 plasters in the form of tasers will help for a short space of time but then most likely the taser printer
    will be knocking them out wholesale in opposition & back street war factories.
    Expect little change in the politico campaign learnt over the last four decades, start an odious issue, allow it to get a firm grip, then rhetorically seek the cure while marching on the spot.
    The ballot booth plays a major role in supporting these
    politico’s / parties and the peoples input is necessary
    ongoing.

    Mind the establishment could try something along the lines of mandatory sentencing for knife carrying of five years, full time, fast track court / guilty / jail, same day, call it the Tommy Robinson law.

    1. Ditto here.
      And now, after breakfast, medications and two large mugs of tea, I’m off to chop a load of wood!

  15. I switched briefly to BBC channel late last night for a few moment. Your favourite Owen Jones was on delivering a very nasty anti-Boris rant via Skype or similar. It was not news in any sense, simply a vicious and incoherent attack on the Prime Minister. How low the BBC have sunk.

    1. A prediction.
      This is the same PM who will fail to act decisively and sort the BBC out, despite all the words being spoken at the moment.
      I will have no sympathy for his and his colleagues.

    2. All he wanted was a cuddle from Boris. And he was spurned in favour of a woman…

  17. The looming great budget black hole

    With the governments headlong charge into battery powered cars they have not considered how they will fill the huge budget black hole. VED is zero or reduced for Hybrids and electric cars and there i no duty and only a tiny amount of VAT on the electricity for electric cars. WE also have large numbers of cyclist paying nothing towards the roads. This situation cannot last for long. Even the cars are heavily subsidized

    1. Tax on lekky will rise to 78% to make up the shortfall.
      And it won’t just apply to vehicle charging.
      Kerching!

        2. Now that’s an idea.
          Rig up something similar, with the battery feeding a 240V inverter and the DT can use it use it to charge up the chainsaw batteries for me and work off her excess tummy at the same time!

          1. Do we assume that the DT is either astonishingly T or that she doesn’t read NOTTL?

    1. Let me see.
      Hip replacement on Friday, 13/03/20 – yes, really. The surgeon did ask me if the date bothered me; since my birthday’s also on a 13th. I felt the number had done me no harm so far.
      Say 6 – 12 weeks to become ward efficient again; can you all hang in there until the summer?
      Or I could volunteer MB and he could cheer everyone up.

      1. Hope your hip op goes ahead on time Anne. A friend of ours has had her op put back from last month to this. So far no second postponement.

      2. Oh dear, sorry to hear that Anne , decisions are difficult aren’t they .

        Are surgeons closing their lists now? Moh has a birthday in May.. 13th .. He has always regarded that as his lucky number.

        I also have a long awaited hospital appointment next week.. do I ring up and ask if it is still on?

        1. I had an appointment due last Wednesday that was cancelled at 9 in the morning. The consultant was ill.

        2. No, that would contribute to unnecessary jamming of the hospital switchboard, Just assume it’s on unless you hear otherwise.

        3. I have the 1929 (?) Rent Act to thank.
          My grandparents died in the 1950s, but, thanks to tenant protection, it took over fifty years to settle the estate.
          By then, all their daughters had died so the grandchildren scooped the (much depleted) pool. I had intimations of joint problems and squirrelled the money away for this contingency.

      5. It will only be unlucky if they cancel.
        May you have the op and a speedy recovery.

        If my experience is anything to go by, it will give you a new lease of life.
        Good luck

      6. You’ll soon be running marathons again.

        Best wishes for a speedy (gonzalez) recovery.

        1. Ha ha! I know someone who had both hips replaced then went climbing in the Himalayas. Seriously. I see him most summers, Promming.

          1. My surgeon did mention playing tennis.
            I hadn’t the heart to tell him I loathed the game and preferred hockey; which I haven’t played since I left school.

      9. Good luck Anne. It seems to work well for the people I know who’ve had it done. Fingers crossed.

      10. My late mother’s youngest brother, now in his mid eighties, fell and broke his hip a few weeks before Christmas. The surgeon replaced the joint and when I spoke to my uncle a few weeks ago everything had mended well and he was up and about without problems.
        I hope all goes as well for you, Anne.

        1. I’ve stocked up on books and I’ll be snaffling that week’s Spekkie before MB gets a look in.

      11. Are you going to request a local anæsthetic so that you can supervise the whole operation? 😉

        Best wishes, Nursey. I’ll be thinking about you! :•)

        1. (and don’t forget to play the violin so that they can check th function of your brain at the same time. Isn’t modern medicine wonderful?)

          1. Blimey, since I’ve never played a violin the team would be convinced they’d made a mistake!

        2. I don’t know.
          I quite fancy an afternoon’s zizz but wake up in time for my supper.

      13. Best wishes for your op, anne. I passed my driving test on Friday 13th. I may well be off to Cheltenham this Friday 13th to watch my horse run.

    4. OT.

      Good afternoon, Maggie.

      Sorry about the delay, but I have just replied to your query of yesterday. I have posted your question, and my answer, below:

      Hello Grizz

      Is this the story you were telling us about the other day when you were a Derbyshire bobby years ago?

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk…

      Good (belated) afternoon, Maggie.

      That indeed was the incident I was involved in 43 years ago. As one of the first on the scene, it was I who discovered the body of the elder lady buried in the snow. I was also a friend of the young lady whom Hughes raped in the previous August that accounted for his remand in custody (from which he escaped).

      I have Peter Howse’s book on order and look forward to reading his authoritative account. I have just finished reading another book on the topic written by a journalist. This book is filled with so many errors and fictionalised accounts that I have made a full list of them, with which I intend to confront the author.

      As my sergeant said to me and my young colleagues at the time, “No matter how long you serve you will never again have to experience an incident as horrific as the one you have experienced tonight.” I have never forgotten his words.

  19. Thoughts from the kitchen sink. I may be wrong about Erdogan intending to invade Europe. He may be intending to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, reclaiming those parts of the Middle East that Turkey lost last century.

    1. I refer scholars to The Treaty of Sèvres 1920, never implemented, more’s the pity.

    4. He’s dreaming of it certainly Horace but there is no possibility of it happening!

  20. Faced with the coronavirus, Boris Johnson must stop playing the invisible man. Andrew Rawnsley.

    Those rebuking his vanishing act include the prime minister’s old frenemy George Osborne, who complained: “The British government now needs to go on to a ‘war footing’ with the coronavirus: daily NHS press briefings, regular Cobra meetings chaired by the PM, ministers on all major media shows. The public is fearful, wants information and needs to know their leaders have got a grip.” You know you are in trouble when the former chancellor is giving advice on crisis management..

    I’m not uncritical of Boris. In fact I hold deep suspicions of him but the idea that he should be pontificating daily about the Coronavirus is as ridiculous as his required presence at the scenes of flooding! What is he supposed to contribute to either endeavour? Is he a life saver? A virologist? An Epidemiologist? No? Then he should stay away and just keep an eye on what his minions are doing!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/01/faced-with-coronavirus-covid-19-boris-johnston-must-stop-playing-invisible-man

    1. We have had in the past a lot of government By Media & PR. Boris can do nothing by visiting the floods nor can he do anything on Corona virus

      With Corona virus it is down to the NHS to convey their needs to the government and with flooding it is down to the EA and LA’ to convey their needs to the government. After the events the government need to look s to whether any lessons can be learned . I

      It is interesting that the Somerset levels did not flood this time but area in the West county and South Midlands dis. There may be a lesson to be learned there

      1. To be fair Boris is busy dealing with the EU mafia.
        Visiting flooded areas is not a practical thing to do.
        Perhaps he’ll chivy up the insurance companies and get repairs carried out and the people back into their homes more quickly.
        And get the dredging that was abandoned by the previous government, carried out as soon as possible.

        1. Dredging wouldn’t have prevented the floods on the Severn and Wye and in the East Midlands.

          2. Yes obstructions allow the water to back up and when it finally clears the obstruction a lot more water moves down a lot quicker

          3. Of course not, but the needy media rely on having something to blame.
            Perhaps it’s worth a try before this happens again.
            I’ve seen our local river overgrown in the past 30 years nothing is ever done to clear the vegetation.
            Unfortunately because of the lack of infrastructure in this country all the surface water will end up in the sea. I don’t think a reservoir either above or below ground had been built in more than 50 years.
            Perhaps it’s time to reduce our ever increasing population. And stop building more and more housing.

          4. Abberton reservoir has recently been doubled in size, but the original one goes back to the 1930s.

          5. That’s good Anne, but how many more do we have ?
            Wouldn’t it be a travesty if due to global warming we had another summer of 1976. And a drought.

          9. I think it might have helped the Severn (the only river I have close acquaintance with). It used to be dredged regularly (and while it flooded, it wasn’t so bad), but I haven’t seen a dredger near it for years.

    2. Politicians are damned if they do and damned if they don’t on the whole ‘tragedy tourism’ thing. I remember Theresa May simulaneously being lambasted for trying to make headlines out of Grenfell Tower, but then not emoting enough or spending enough time with the residents. I’m sure most people would prefer politicians kept out of the way and just oversaw the operation from afar than trying to get a few ‘woke’ brownie points by showing how much they care.

    3. Johnson has failed miserably because he didn’t introduce screening at airports.

      So now huge numbers of people look likely to get the virus thanks to his stoopidity.

      1. I doubt if that would have made much difference, especially given the apparent obfuscation of the Chinese Government when the infection first appeared.

        1. This arose weeks ago and other countries have started screening but not Britain.

          Probably because it isn’t PC.

          1. I’m inclined to agree with you.
            If as I have, a metal implants to replace worn joints at airports, one is considered to be carrying a weapon of some sort.
            We have a slack attitude to possible disasters. But except for flooding, our country seriously over reacts to weather interuptions, 2 inches of snow brings the whole nation to a standstill.
            Medically Aproved Masks should be freely available in all public places.
            In reality there has been no official recognised type of mask to use.
            We have silly TV presenters telling people how to wash their own hands. A packet of disposal wipes would be better. And more time spent on cleaning our usually filthy public toilets.

          5. Do you mean we should give up testing as it’s pointless and just let it happen. ?

          6. Send them back to Asymptomia.
            (I thought I’d posted that hours ago, but no, the car keys are in the fridge. It’s the car I can’t find.)

      2. I doubt if that would have made much difference, especially given the apparent obfuscation of the Chinese Government when the infection first appeared.

      3. No way you will stop something like this. I had the 1957 flu and lived, maybe I will this time ( if i catch it). about 3% of those that have it will die.

    4. I disagree entirely with the article. Obviously it wants Boris involved to then complain when he gets in hte way or doesn’t magically make things better.

      Secondly, more practically there is nothing he can do. No amount of effort will make an impact. All he should do is leave it to the Health minister to properly fund the response to it. Government – despite the Left’s dementia – is not the answer to any question.

    1. My mother always warned me against marrying an Indian lady. They may be stunningly beautiful and serene when young, but in time they go fat and bossy like their mothers.

      It’s a novelty to have an Indian-ethnic Secretary of State, and perhaps civil servants there would be wise to take a few lessons from folk such as Sanjeev Bhaskar in how to handle it?

      2. J, plenty of obese men and women distributed amongst all populations.
        did your dearly beloved mother have any other quaint prejudices worth sharing?

        1. A mild version of her mother, whose universal political remedy was “I think we should like them up against a wall and shoot them”. Maybe we are getting soft in our youth?

  25. Good morning all.

    I’m just anticipating another visit from Hertslass and D. They will call here on their way home. It’s been just grand to see them again.

    1. Good morning Issy, that will be a nice treat for you .. they are a lovely couple .

      I hope the sun keeps shining for you all. Enjoy your day .

  26. Eamonn Holmes faces a £250k bill

    Eamonn Holmes could be hit with a bill of up to £250,000 after losing a case against the taxman over how he is paid.

    The host of ITV’s This Morning claimed he was a freelancer, and received payments via his company.

    But HM Revenue and Customs has been cracking down on the practice, which can lead to lower taxes being paid.

    Sources claimed last night that Mr Holmes now owes as much as £250,000 in taxes on top of payments he has already made.

        1. You have had a life working for HMRC which has cushioned you entirely from the realities of being self-employed.

          For example, the coronavirus could shut down our business entirely but, unlike employed people and especially politicians and civil servants, we shall receive no unemployment pay.

          You have a pathological hatred of those who are self-employed and I think it would have done you a great deal of good to have been self-employed and in receipt of no benefits if things beyond your control cut off your income. Half my working life was spent as an employee and the other half as self-employed. I learnt far more about life by being independent and self-sufficient.

          2. I suggested that you tried to set up your own business – it would have been interesting to have seen how you fared.

          4. If self-employed are paid (and taxed) through their company, the company is legally obliged to deduct NI payments for them and make the employer’s contribution as well.

            Speak not of that of which you have little or no knowledge.

          5. Not if it is there company. If paid via an agency yes but then you are deemed to be employed by the agency

          6. I really do think that you should try to see what it is like in the real world.

            Setting up your own business and making a living from it is desperately hard work. Would you have been up to it?

          9. You pay a very low rate of NI mainly to fund your state pension and no employer contribution is made

          10. You must be determined to destroy people trying to go into business on their own account.

            Over tax or penalise the self-employed and you will have far more people who have to go onto benefits.

            What exactly did you do at HMRC?

          11. Judging by the standard of English he probably made the coffee & emptied the WPBs.

          12. I’ve started two new business streams as an employee, and now a whole new business. Man, what an effort! It’s taken a year to get some traction in the market, and we expect the first paying job before summer… I’m not sure, at 58 & one stroke, I could do it again. The learning has been enormous: business development, marketing & materials, how to approach customers and get them to talk to you, what matters to them, what their limitations are… I couldn’t do it alone, so choice of partner was the key to it all – and our decision to rent a small office so we sit & work, brainstorm and most importantly, encourage each other together.

          13. Well done for managing to get through all the red tape, rules and regulations. I wish you, your partner, and your business the best.

          16. Employed people always had a cushy number. Holiday pay,maternity pay, higher state pensions, rarely had to worry where the next job was coming from. They didn’t know they were born.

          17. A tad unfair as the self employed also gain all the rewards of their endeavors.

          18. Strangely as well most only pay themselves a salary at the personal tax allowance level

          19. Yes. That’s exactly what I do. But I work for lots of clients each year.

    2. If it is anything it is Tax Avoidance rather than Tax Evasion. The former is perfectly legal and the loopholes are deliberately left there to allow MPs to also avoid tax.

        1. How so? He was employed as a freelance contractor by the BBC and had his own company that charged the BBC for his services. That company paid him a salary upon which he paid tax.

          It only becomes evasion if he lied about his remuneration from his company.

          1. He did not meet the criteria for being self employed so he was classed as being employed by the BBC

          2. Spot on Bill. The tax avoidance is legal/ evasion is illegal is an over simplistic argument. HMRC have been down on aggressive tax avoidance schemes for a while. They have also got serious about enforcing their own IR35 rules. Quite right too and I say that as someone who works through myself own company.

          3. The rules are being tightened further from April. It will put most of the responsibility onto the company that engages a contractor

            There are still massive levels of fake self employment in the media

          7. “I live in the real world.” but devoid of facts to back up your assertions.

          9. He’s fallen foul of IR35. If the majority of his work was for one company, then he was effectively an employee. It’s case of: “If you go to the same place of work every day, sit at the same desk every day, and do the same job every day, then you are an employee”. Ergo, it’s tax evasion.

          10. Yet it was Inland Revenue, in its previous life that brought in IR35. I know because I have been freelance since 1998 and found other ways of (legal) tax avoidance.

          11. The rules change in April and far fewer people will be able to class themselves s self employed

          12. The rules change in April and far fewer people will be able to class themselves s self employed

          13. Yes and HMRC are now properly enforcing IR35. About time as too many people have avoided / evaded tax in disguised employment situations.

          14. Yes and HMRC are now properly enforcing IR35. About time as too many people have avoided / evaded tax in disguised employment situations.

          15. In some companies people claiming to be self employed were working full time for the one company for several years

          17. Fortunately people and accountants stretched the meaning of being self employed so very many people that were really employed claim to be self employed

            In recent times we have had it the other way with companies claiming people were self employed when they were not. A certain cab company comes to mind as well as courier companies

            Court cases have largely sorted that sand they are no classed as Workers. A sort of halfway house between being self employed or employed

            It could be that many of the media types claiming to be self employed are more Workers than self employed

          18. Actually you’ve just fallen into a trap there because the legal cases you mentioned are about employment law not tax law and two aren’t aligned, so Holmes can’t be a worker for tax purposes.

          19. Another test is did he have any significant control over his work and the answer was no. Did he have any control over his working hours or place of employment ?

          22. IIRC if someone works for one sole institution/company then that is classed as being employed by that institution/company. For instance, we have a gardener for 2 hours each fortnight, he works for several other people. So he is self-employed.

            Edit: Apologies Aberrant Apostrophe – your post below is a much better explanation.

          23. Other factors that come in is how much control does he have over his working hours and place of work etc

      2. They have all be warned for many, many, years. The price of greed if you get caught is quite high.

        1. So do it properly as I have several times since 1973. My most recent period has been continuous since 1998 and, after reaching age 65 in 2009, I’m exempt NI contributions but I continued working (all over the world) until 2017.

          No reason why not to do it, always provided that you do it right. As Rastus says below, you should try it before obliquely criticising others.

  27. March brings breezes, loud and shrill.
    Stirs the dancing daffodil.

    And, for the information of all the idiotic, politically-correct meteorologists out there, IT IS NOT THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING!
    Just be patient, you clowns, you only have 20 more days to wait for the vernal equinox.

    2. It’s Spring according to the climate scientists, who can’t programme computers to recognise the astronomical Spring, so they use March+April+May for Spring, and so on. They often also use 360 days in a year. Go figure.

      1. WTF is a “barnyard”? Why can’t they call it a farmyard like normal people?

        1. Afternoon, Grizz! Now tell me, what do the following words and terms have in common: blizzard, Indian summer, swear-word, escapism, counter-productive, once-over, choreograph and burp?

          2. All are Americanisms which have been assimilated into British English. (No such thing, you say? Is a vest worn over or under the shirt?)

          4. American is a dialect of English, but it is NOT English – which is why all those English (US) options are wrong.

          5. American is a dialect of English, but it is NOT English – which is why all those English (US) options are wrong.

  28. Coal Fired Power Stations in UK

    They are really in full time use usually offline in Summer

    West Burton A 2GW
    Kilroot 0.5GW
    Ratcliffe on Soar 2GW

  29. Britain doesn’t need farmers

    One of the Government’s most senior officials has made the incendiary suggestion that Britain does not need its own farming industry.

    In leaked emails obtained by The Mail on Sunday, powerful Treasury adviser Tim Leunig argues that the food sector is not ‘critically important’ to the economy – and that agriculture and fishery production ‘certainly isn’t’.

    In his astonishing remarks – which comes as the UK prepares to enter crunch post-Brexit trade talks with Donald Trump – Dr Leunig implies that the UK could follow the example of Singapore ‘which is rich without having its own agricultural sector’.

      2. 316729+ up ticks,
        Afternoon AA,
        Seems to me he wants ALL of us to swallow sh!te like a great many do proven by the fact that they are hooked on a steady diet.
        Swallowing the governance parties manifesto’s & via the polling booth looking for more of the same.

      3. Singapore has run out of land and is in trouble as it try to cram more and more people into the space

    2. I rather think that the UK has a tad more arable land than Singapore.

      Fallacious argument that will only ring true when we have built over every inch of such land. Maybe Dr Leunig knows something about Government Policy that is being kept from we, the great unwashed.

    6. I tried to copy and paste the highlighted comparison with the UK and Singapore but it wouldn’t work.
      Bill did you know,………talking to a taxi driver last time we passed through Singapore on the way to Perth, he told us that only Singaporeans were allowed to drive their taxis.
      But the city is often plagued by darkened skies caused by burn off smoke from neighbouring countries, as they destroy rain forests and animal habitat to plant and harvest Palm oil from huge plantations. again corporate greed destroying the planet.
      Where as the UK seems to allow any flotsam and jestsam to drive our cabs. Many who have never taken a driving tests in the UK. And I know for a fact that many MOT tests are fiddled at dodgy garages.

    1. Like i mentioned earlier why on earth doesn’t the goverment through NHS authorise handing out approved face masks ?
      It has to be a step forward in saving innocent lives. A single bus of train journey could easily pass on the virus to someone who has had no previous contact with any one likely to have the virus. And on returning home could pass it on to their whole family…………..and beyond.

      2. Because they don’t work and the NHS has better things to do with itself than waste money on useless gestures.

      3. Speaking of which, I was talking to a chap in the pub yesterday, and he told me he needed some cash to pay for some home improvements..

        He went to see the loan arranger and found him wearing a face mask.

        1. I use to play Sunday morning golf and one of the top barclays bank official’s nick name was ‘the loan arranger’.
          It made my week if drawn against him, my golfing partner and I beat them.

      4. We have 28+ reported cases in the U.K. Why all the panic as hundreds die from influenza each day and nobody bats an eyelid.
        Mass hysteria whipped up by the media.

    2. So much for the wall-to-wall advertising of: “If you think you have Covid-19 call 111. DO NOT go to your GP or A&E”.

      1. A pt came to our clinic yesterday and was coughing heavily at the desk. I dress his attention to all the advice and posters (we all know nobody sees or reads posters) around the hospital asking people to stay away and asked him to leave. He point blank refused.

  32. Migrants flock to Greece as Turkey opens floodgates

    The EU will have to put a stop to this if they dont it will sink the EU sooner rather than later

    Hundreds oft thousand illegal migrants headed through permeable borders to Greece from Turkey on Sunday as thousands more gathered on the Turkish side seeking entry after Ankara relaxed curbs on their movement.

    At least 500 people had arrived by sea on three Greek islands close to the Turkish coast within a few hours on Sunday morning. Seven boatloads reached Lesbos with more than 300 on board, four arrived on Samos with 150 and two on Chios with a combined total of 70-80 people, a police official said.

      1. It is just the forward guard at present much larger numbers are moving up behind

  33. Migrants flock to Greece as Turkey opens floodgates

    The EU will have to put a stop to this if they dont it will sink the EU sooner rather than later

    Hundreds oft thousand illegal migrants headed through permeable borders to Greece from Turkey on Sunday as thousands more gathered on the Turkish side seeking entry after Ankara relaxed curbs on their movement.

    At least 500 people had arrived by sea on three Greek islands close to the Turkish coast within a few hours on Sunday morning. Seven boatloads reached Lesbos with more than 300 on board, four arrived on Samos with 150 and two on Chios with a combined total of 70-80 people, a police official said.

  34. Today, I’m publishing the document that could save us from war. Peter Hitchens. MOS 1 March 2020.

    One day, a lot of other people, in the media and politics, will accept that in the past few months they have failed in their duty to the truth, by staying silent or – worse – joining in a braying attempt to suppress crucial facts.
    But by then it is quite possible that the peoples of the Western world will have been whipped into a warlike frenzy by false information, just as happened in the Iraq disaster 17 years ago. Because if nothing is done about the scandal I have been writing about, such an outcome is highly possible, even likely.

    A few months ago I was told of an attempt by authority to suppress an important truth about an alleged atrocity in Syria. Claims that poison gas had been used by the Syrian state at Douma in April 2018 were not, in fact, confirmed by the scientific evidence.

    Morning everyone. One applauds Mr Hitchens willingness to publish the truth; an exceptionately rare event in present times, but it is a drop in the bucket. The system is now so rotten and corrupt that it is impossible to give credence to any MSM report without extensive research and analysis. This is of course beyond most people’s capability or capacity and Syria itself, which is a monument to western duplicity, is just one small facet of a vast enterprise of lies and disinformation. Ironically the present medium is probably responsible for this state of affairs! The internet provided ordinary people with the means to run their ideas through the mill and discover that others shared them and could indeed provide contributing proofs; these were and are dismissed as “conspiracy theories” a convenient label for disposing of unwelcome truths. When the PTB discovered that their narratives were no longer working they had the opportunity to withdraw and stick to the real, instead they opted to double down. This has led to the poisoning of all the wells of information in the Western World; not one can be relied on to give a neutral account of any event of public importance, worst still they have undermined and penetrated the public bodies; as here with OPCW, that provided scientific evidence. All is grist to the mill! Is it possible to recover from this state of affairs? Probably not without the event that provides Mr Hitchens title. There are already signs that the truth as an objective reality has been discarded and when opinion rules anything is possible!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8060973/PETER-HITCHENS-Today-Im-publishing-document-save-war.html

    1. Who and what has subverted the PTB and the MSM ?

      Is it the GS, the OS and lots of DOSH ?

        1. ..and with a huge house in Chelsea and a multi million dollar “leveraging” organization on Millbank.

        2. ..and with a huge house in Chelsea and a multi million dollar “leveraging” organization on Millbank.

      4. I don’t think the Ordinance Survey (OS) had anything to do with it, Polly.

    2. Mr Hitchens is an apologist for the Nasty regime post 1933. More treacherous than Mr Bliar and his pals.

  35. “Tottenham Court Road tube station on LOCKDOWN: Passengers evacuated”
    That bloody word ” lockdown”
    No, it wasn’t the virus. Just an alarm went off

  36. I have no idea what the truth about Covid-19 might be but I know that frightened people are more easily controlled and manipulated.

    1. It appears to be flu. Not great for the elderly or those with weak immune systems, but ok for the rest. Just like flu, in fact.
      Why the panic & hysteria, I don’t know.

      1. It’s certainly rocked the stock markets. As I said before, it will cost a dim sum.

  37. ‘Only Labour can be trusted to unlock the

    talent of black, Asian and minority ethnic people,’ Jeremy Corbyn

    boasted before the Election. But Priti Patel didn’t want or need his

    help. And that’s something the modern missionaries of the liberal Left

    simply cannot forgive. Because if she can succeed without their

    patronising beneficence, so can anyone else.

    ‘I

    can’t see why you’re laughing,’ Andrew Marr famously taunted Patel,

    before he and the BBC were forced into a grovelling apology. I can.

    Priti Patel will continue to laugh defiantly in the faces of the racists

    and the sexists and the entitled liberals and the usurped Sir

    Humphries. Let’s hope she has the last laugh.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8060925/DAN-HODGES-does-Left-hate-Priti-Patel-much.html

    1. Strangely, I never thought of Priti as an ” asian ” She just seems like one of us.
      There is a big difference between Muslim and Hindu people, and Afro-Caribbeans.
      Many years ago a Muslim shopkeeper of my acquaintance described the Afro/Caribbean community as ” a useless race ”
      He was mostly spot on.

      1. That all the wankerati are against her makes me admire and support her even more. An effective HS! How fantastic is that?

      2. I just thought that she seems to be a very promising politician. Perhaps even a PM in the future if she manages to avoid the knives!

    3. Well done, DH.
      He is a Labour supporter and his mother was a Labour MP (and actress).

  38. For the avoidance of doubt,yes this is me Rik,reinvented,while I was happy to wear my zero with pride(up yours Leftards) it became a pain not being able to comment on other sites like The Participator,Breibart and GP

    So I have gone to the faff of a new profile,I hope it wears as well as the last one

    https://media1.giphy.com/media/SRO0ZwmImic0/giphy.gif

    1. Good on yer, Rik, let’s have a concerted effort to mock all their political correctness their LGBTXYZ homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia and any other phobias they want to dream up.

      Out of that lot, I will admit to being an Islamophobe – they frighten the shit out of me and more so because the PTB will do nothing to castigate all their wrong-doing.

      1. 316729+up ticks
        Afternoon NtN,
        People power puts the the same
        type politically poisonous politico’s in position of power
        again,again & again.

        1. But not frightened enough to do something positive about it.

          It will start with a few indigenous vigilantes but will probably evolve to a full blown civil war.

          1. …but will probably evolve to a full blown civil war.

            That’s the bit that frightens them!

          2. What really frightens them is the decision of which side to take.
            They’ve spent untold billions on their pets and won’t want to see all that money going to waste.

          3. They’ve imported a time-bomb Korky! They all hope it will go off later!

          4. 316729+ up ticks,
            AS,
            Things are escalating
            daily so, if I may an additive is required to your post that reverses their hope’s,
            “which will go of later”
            …………….Today.

          5. The PTB are kidding themselves if they think they can ride the tiger.

            Muslims are the ones deciding who’s on which side, and for them it’s easy – if you’re not muslim, you are the enemy.

          6. Ah, so I’m not alone. I’ve long referred to them as the pet primitives of the political left.

          8. NtN, if the indigenous want to survive, probably doesn’t enter the equation.

    1. Where I worked in 1992, we cheered Soros to the echo for getting us out of the ERM. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that the UK did much less than other members of the ERM to maintain the exchange rate of its currency: we did not, for example,raise short-term interest rates to an annual equivalent of 2500%, exhaust our FX reserves or introduce (probably illegal) banking restrictions.

      Lest we forget, it was John Major who took us into the ERM, the same John Major who made such a horlicks of privatising the railways.

      1. Yes, but given the extraordinary influence of Soros, maybe he was instrumental in setting it up ?

        Peter Schweizer’s research alleges that Soros planned the US fiscal expansion 2009 with Obama, and then Peter alleges Soros invested vast sums in the stocks benefitting from taxpayer largesse.

        So if that’s true, that might be standard behavior through dealing at the top.

        After all why did Soros make a big play of cultivating Blair in April 1996 ?

        1. Blair was the coming man – a blind Albanian on a runaway horse could see that. So anyone with half a brain would cultivate him. But is there more than that to it? Was the rise and rise of St Tony carefully managed from the start? Wouldn’t surprise me.

          1. I think the evidence is a definite yes. Blair’s policies look the same as Soros’ policies, and they were still doing deals after Tony left office.

            I think Dave then fell under Soros’ spell which would explain why he was continuity Tony. I also think the Marriage Act 2013 came from Soros and that Dave was just the facilitator.

            After all, Open Society admits to “leveraging” policy.

      2. Lest we also forget, Major enjoyed strong cross bench support for his ERM plan.

  40. Northern rail: Government takes over after chaos

    The problem is that without regional government you have no real elected body to control Rail in the North. I know there is the Manchester Mayor but he only controls a bit of the North. The other problem with rail of course is the tracks are shared which complicates things

    The other even bigger problem is the passengers get pretty much no say in how the services are run

    The government says it wants to give people in northern England “more powers over their railways” as it starts running services previously operated by Arriva Rail North.

    The takeover was announced in January following widespread commuter chaos.

    Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham will be among a panel of northern political leaders who will advise the government’s operation.

    1. I refer you to my earlier posting about railway privatisation and the man responsible.

      1. Privatization is not the problem. The railways were a mess before privatization. The railways are not really privatized in any case. The railways are still owned by the government and the services run under government contracts and Network Rail is a government owned company

        The government is responsible for investing in the railways but has largely fail to do so and Network Rail is largely responsible for the management of the network

        1. No, the railways were not a mess before privatisation. Thanks to Sectorisation, they were in rude good health. Major was given three models for privatisation by the DTp officials, he chose the worst one.

          It is tempting to blame Yoorup for all this, but a quick glance at the railway systems of the EU will soon dispel that notion.

        2. As JBF states, British Rail, post-sectorisation, was in the best condition it’s ever been in, stations were being reopened and a disused railway tunnel in London was reinstated to create Thameslink.

          Also, punctuality had been greatly improved along with passenger satisfaction leading to BR’s most profitable period, making it the most efficient railway in Europe.

          Then John Major became PM.

          1. Cheers, Bob! But it ought to be mentioned that rail ridership has increase massively – in spite of privatisation.

  41. Sergei and Yulia Skripal are ‘desperate to start a new life in Australia’ following two years in an MI6 safe house after surviving a novichok poisoning attack. 1 March 2020.

    Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who have spent two years in an MI6 safe house after surviving a novichok poisoning attack – want to start a new life Down Under, according to security insiders.

    Just days before the second anniversary of the poisoning in Salisbury, Wiltshire, The Mail on Sunday has been told the father and daughter are desperate to leave the UK for either Australia or New Zealand after effectively living under house arrest since the attack.

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

    The Mail on Sunday has also received unconfirmed reports that Mr Skripal, 68, and his daughter, 35, may have already travelled to Australia and New Zealand to scout possible locations.

    This article has been produced to allay any public concerns about the fate of the Skripals which must certainly arise during the second anniversary of the Novichok debacle next Wednesday. This is only required because both Father and Daughter have certainly been permanently silenced by the Security Services as they constituted a threat to the established order! The piece itself is just whimsy; no names for the source and with the last paragraph denying the first. There will probably be a couple more low key efforts before they are both returned to obscurity.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8060769/Sergei-Yulia-Skripal-desperate-start-new-life-Australia.html

  42. Laff Time

    As Kung Flu spreads around……………………

    An elderly man lay dying in his bed.

    While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favourite scones wafting up the stairs.

    He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed.
    Leaning on the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with
    even greater effort, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled
    downstairs.

    With laboured breath, he leaned against the door-frame, gazing into the
    kitchen. Were it not for death’s agony, he would have thought himself
    already in heaven, for there, spread out upon the kitchen table were
    literally hundreds of his favourite scones.

    Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of love from his devoted Welsh
    wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

    Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table,
    landing on his knees in rumpled posture. His aged and withered hand
    trembled towards a scone at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly
    smacked by his wife with a wooden spoon…

    ‘**** off’ she said, ‘they’re for the funeral.’

    1. In a similar vein and a little early (it’s meant for March 7th) but…

      In a London Nursing home an old priest lay dying.
      For years he had faithfully served the people of the nation’s capital.
      He motioned for his nurse to come near. “Yes, Father?”, said the nurse.
      “I would really like to see Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn before I die”, whispered the priest.
      “I’ll see what I can do, Father”, replied the nurse.
      The nurse sent the request to No 10 and waited for a response.
      Soon the word arrived; Boris and Jeremy would be delighted to visit the priest.
      As they went to the hospital, Boris commented to Jeremy, “I don’t know why the old priest wants to see us, but it certainly will help our images”.
      Jeremy agreed that it was the right thing to do at this time.
      When they arrived at the priest’s room, the priest took Boris’ hand in his right hand and Jeremy’s hand in his left. There was silence and a look of serenity on the old priest’s face.
      The old priest slowly said: “I have always tried to pattern my life after our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ”.
      “Amen”, said Boris
      “Amen”, said Jeremy
      The old priest continued, “Jesus died between two lying thieving bastards; and I would like to do the same…”

      1. And one of my favorites:

        An old Yorkshire man lies on his deathbed, breath laboured, visibly weakening.

        “Is my wife here?” he asks.

        “Yes Bert, I’m here standing next to you.” she answers.

        “Are my children here?” he asks.

        “Yes, dad, we’re here.” they answer.

        “Are my grandchildren here?” he asks.

        “Yes, grandpa, we’re all here.” many small voices answer.

        “Then why is the light still on in the kitchen?”

      2. And one of my favorites:

        An old Yorkshire man lies on his deathbed, breath laboured, visibly weakening.

        “Is my wife here?” he asks.

        “Yes Bert, I’m here standing next to you.” she answers.

        “Are my children here?” he asks.

        “Yes, dad, we’re here.” they answer.

        “Are my grandchildren here?” he asks.

        “Yes, grandpa, we’re all here.” many small voices answer.

        “Then why is the light still on in the kitchen?”

  43. Coronavirus: 12 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in UK. Sunday 1 March 2020 13:54, UK

    Twelve new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in England, the UK’s chief medical officer says.

    It is the biggest jump in cases the UK has seen in one day.

    Three patients caught the virus in the UK – they are known to be contacts of someone who already had it, and were found through contact-tracing.

    That’s it! We’re doomed!

    https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-12-new-cases-of-covid-19-confirmed-in-uk-11947094

    1. The UK government is considering all options from closing schools to
      isolating entire cities if the outbreak of the coronavirus continues to
      escalate, Matt Hancock has said.

      The health secretary confirmed on Sunday that ministers would this
      week publish a plan to explain how they may tackle Covid-19 if it
      becomes a pandemic. This could include banning large gatherings of
      people at sporting events or concerts, he said.

      “Under the worst case scenario we would have to take some quite
      significant actions that would have social and economic disruption,” he
      told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “It may be necessary to close some
      schools and other population distancing measures.”

      Asked if the government might follow the Chinese strategy of
      isolating individual cities with large outbreaks, he said: “There’s
      clearly a huge economic and social downside to that but we don’t take
      anything off the table at this stage because you have got to make sure
      you have all the tools available if necessary.”

    2. When it’s rife in Westminster then it really will be Wuhan Flu over the Cuckoo’s Nest…..

  44. Our toxic gender politics are making a mockery of women’s sport

    Yes they are. If I were younger I would test the equality of these gender politics by identifying as a man and applying for a job on an oil rig or as a coal miner (as far as I’m aware women are still persona non grata here even though the Army is opening up to allowing women in combat roles) or submitting an application to a men only club.

    It would be interesting to see if this works both ways in the eyes of the law.

    Happy St David’s Day btw (just woken up after a 12hr night shift last night)

    1. The Victorian reformers worked tirelessly to save women and children from the worst aspects of the Industrial Revolution. They shouldn’t have bothered!

    2. Plenty women offshore Norway, Bugsie. I know one (Swedish) who is platform boss, a very responsible and technical position.

    2. This gender idiocy has surely gone as far as it can now. Nobody knows where they are any more. These SJWs or ECOwarriors or whatever they like to call themselves these days are well and truly messing up people. It is patently absurd that a man can be changed into a “woman” and patently absurd that a woman can be changed into a “man”.

      Why are our scientists and doctors not screaming these 2 truths at the top of their lungs? I suppose soon we will be having all official forms where our gender is required adding “cis, non, undecided and other such rubbish to choose from. We really have lost the plot – and without a murmur from our so-called “betters”.

      1. “Why are our scientists and doctors not screaming these 2 truths at the top of their lungs?”

        They would lose their jobs if they did and the BBC and media wouldcnot report it. Do not understand how deep the left are in our world. they control so much.

      2. The people pontificating on this rubbish are probably the same ones whom promote the made made climate change nonsense. Proper scientists, it would appear, are now persona non grata in the media.

    3. For goodness sake. have you no concept of personal responsibility?

      The worrying thing is where this is heading. This Mermaids organisation is also lobbying to lower the age of consent which makes me wonder if this isn’t back door paedophilia or worse, legalising such abuses by men in dresses on the underage and getting away with it as women.

      No. This nonsense has to stop. Adults can do whatever they want. If a man wants to call himself Valerie and wear floral print, fine. However, my right to say that he is a man in a dress cannot be violated in favour of the other. If that hurts their feelings – I expect it will – then perhaps they might consider how disturbed I am by their choices.

    4. For goodness sake. have you no concept of personal responsibility?

      The worrying thing is where this is heading. This Mermaids organisation is also lobbying to lower the age of consent which makes me wonder if this isn’t back door paedophilia or worse, legalising such abuses by men in dresses on the underage and getting away with it as women.

      No. This nonsense has to stop. Adults can do whatever they want. If a man wants to call himself Valerie and wear floral print, fine. However, my right to say that he is a man in a dress cannot be violated in favour of the other. If that hurts their feelings – I expect it will – then perhaps they might consider how disturbed I am by their choices.

      1. What strikes ma about these trans “women” is that they seem to adopt very feminine names. I’d be more convinced of their commitment if they called themselves something like Doris or Mildred…

  46. Philip Rutnam: why I am taking the government to court. Philip Rutnam. 29 February 2020.

    One of my duties as Permanent Secretary was to protect the health, safety and well-being of our 35,000 people. This created tension with the Home Secretary, and I have encouraged her to change her behaviours. I have received allegations that her conduct has included shouting and swearing, belittling people, making unreasonable and repeated demands, behaviour that created fear and needed some bravery to call out.

    I have to confess here that when Mr Rutnam appeared on my television my first thought was that his departure would be no loss to anyone. The above quote only confirms my initial prejudice. Had he worked for some of the people that I was obliged to endure he would probably have long since topped himself! Work however much we may wish it is not an escape from reality and when it becomes so it atrophies and loses its ability to carry out those tasks allotted to it. This situation is probably applicable to the entire Civil Service bureaucracy!

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/philip-rutnam-why-i-am-taking-the-government-to-court/

    1. I have a lot of experience in hiring and firing, including being fired* a number of times. This case is not clear cut. In my working life I have normally signed a contract, or letter, that established a servant/master relationship, that is, a normal employer/employee situation. This relationship is governed by a number of laws and I have threaded my way through most of them. I am not sure that this situation obtains in this instance. The Home Secretary may not be the employer. The Permanent Secretary may not be the employee. If so, against whom will Rutnam bring a case?
      If, as an employee, I did not like the attitude of another, perhaps more junior, employee in a different department with a different boss, against whom would I have brought a case?

      I have never been fired legally, usually it was just personal. Everyone I fired was fired legally after all possible alternatives had been explored. No one ever successfully brought a case against my actions.

    3. Dulwich College ought to invite two of its old boys – Nigel Farage and Philip Rutnam – to debate the following motion at the school’s debating society:

      “This house believes that leaving the EU is a grave error.”

      The event could be televised and Rutnam could be seconded by Lord Adonis and Ms Patel could second Nigel Farage.

      I hope the motion would not be carried but it would be interesting and encouraging to see it defeated.

    1. I don’t usually go for this waily stuff, but as you say this is very much worth a listen.

  49. Turkey shoots down two Syrian war planes and destroys 100 tanks as it launches military offensive against Moscow-backed regime after airstrike that killed 34 of its soldiers. Mail. 1 March 2020.

    Turkey has launched a military offensive against the Moscow-backed Syrian regime after an airstrike that killed 34 of its soldiers.
    Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar dubbed the operation ‘Spring Shield’ and said Ankara had destroyed two Assad regime planes, eight helicopters, 100 tanks and six air defence systems in attacks since February 27.

    It comes as president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the country had ‘opened its doors’ on Friday, causing an estimated 76,000 refugees to rush to its border with the EU.

    Coming to the boil nicely! At this rate the Coronavirus will soon be just a fond memory!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8062327/Turkey-shoots-two-Syrian-war-planes-destroys-100-tanks-launches-military-offensive.html

    1. It is difficult to decide who is the biggest bastard, Assad or Erdogan. And I have immense sympathy for the refugees, so long as they don’t come here.

      1. Well Assad is fighting because he has to and Erdogan is fighting because he wants to!

        1. And Putin is around because he got in too deep and can’t work out how to get out.

          1. Mr President! Pompeo wants a US War in Syria! 29 FEBRUARY 2020.

            Mike Pompeo, Jeffrey, his henchman, and all the neocons in and out of the Borg (foreign policy establishment) want the US to become directly involved in this battle by providing Turkish forces in Syria air defense from US manned Patriot missile batteries. The Turks could not man the systems themselves if we provided them. They also want the US to declare a “no-fly zone” over Idlib Governorate. Such a zone would be a declaration that the US and little friends would shoot down any military aircraft flying over this piece of Syrian territory without US permission. This would be an act of war by the United States and would cause a de facto state of war to exist between the US and Russia.

            As Russian minelayers used to remark in the Great Patriotic War: “One f**k up and no more breakfasts.”

            https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

          2. But a bit off-beam. Turkey has anti-aircraft missile systems supplied by Russia, so why would they need the Patriot system? Unless it was being supplied free of charge, of course.
            The only sensible policy for the US and everybody else to follow is to try to rein Turkey in.

  50. French government to force through pension changes, bypassing parliament

    The government argues it is ensuring the long-term health of the pension system, which works by “repartition”, meaning those in work directly fund the pensions of those who have retired. The government has said it will maintain the legal retirement age at 62, but those who wish to claim a full pension will have to work until 64.

    The French government will force through contested pension changes by decree, avoiding a parliamentary vote.

    In a surprise announcement, the French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said the controversial measure would be used to bypass parliament after opposition parties filed more than 41,000 amendments to the law in an attempt to stall its introduction.

    The proposed reforms have sparked widespread protests and strikes since they were announced in December last year.

      1. 62 is with a reduced state pension. 64 with a full pension. Thats lower than most of the rest of the world

        2. French train drivers get full company pension when they retire @ 50 with 30 years service about 70% of their final salary.

  51. “Man vastly overestimates his power…” Naomi Seibt, the sensible German alternative to the Scandinavian ‘autiste’, says about human arrogance and muddled and alarmist thinking on the destructive power of carbon dioxide emissions.

    This is very much what Shakespeare’s point is in the extract from ‘Measure For Measure’: Man proud man … which got the ITV newsreader into trouble. Would it be sexist to suggest that Greta Thunberg has a glassy essence similar to that of an angry female ape?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/meet-19-year-old-anti-greta-warns-thunbergs-alarmism-must-stopped/

    (This article is worth a glance or two – it is not paywalled but, as is the case with many articles in Today’s Telegraph we are not given the space to make our own comments underneath)

      1. That is truly shocking. And look at Millie Milnibrain’s abject look of mindless devotion!

        1. I wonder if they’re all on Soros’ payroll so they have to look interested ?

    2. She’s a bit unrealistic, expecting the eco-mass to start thinking. The death threats are unsurprising. And we’ll forgive her for her teenage use of ‘awesome’.

      Otherwise, she could be one of us…

      Meet the 19-year-old ‘anti-Greta’, who warns Thunberg’s ‘alarmism’ must be stopped

      With her slight frame, long blonde hair and converse trainers, German teenager Naomi Seibt might not seem the most obvious candidate to front the growing climate scepticism movement. But holding court at America’s largest gathering for grassroots Republicans, expounding her controversial views on global warming, she exudes an air of self-belief that belies her 19 years.

      As Greta Thunberg brought her climate awareness campaign to the UK last week – speaking at a rally of some 25,000 striking school children in Bristol – on the other side of the Atlantic, Seibt, dubbed the “anti-Greta”, was propelled onto the world’s stage in Washington, making an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and firmly positioning herself as the new darling of right-wing climate sceptics.

      Thunberg, now the general of a worldwide teen army, was named Time magazine’s ‘person of the year’ after berating world leaders for their inaction at a United Nations summit last year. A video of the Swedish 17-year-old glaring at Donald Trump went viral. Seibt, meanwhile, uses her YouTube channel to challenge what she calls the climate change “alarmism” espoused by Thunberg, and joined speakers including President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in addressing the conference this week.

      When we meet at CPAC, it’s clear there is no love lost between Seibt and Thunberg, nor does the German teen crave the same level of fame Thunberg had garnered. In fact, she says, Greta’s cult-like status is problematic. “I think it’s wrong we let people like Greta Thunberg – who is a young girl, who has no scientific or economic experience – or politicians or celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, talk about a scientific topic,” she says.

      Couldn’t the same criticism be levelled against her?

      “I don’t want people to follow me unconditionally, as many do with Greta,” she says. “My message is: start thinking instead.”

      As it happens, it was the school strikes popularised by Thunberg which first sparked her interest in climate change. Seibt says she spent months researching the issue after watching the youth protests become a weekly fixture in her hometown of Münster, in western Germany. Eventually, she came to the conclusion that “C02 emissions do not have this terrible impact on the climate”.

      She started her YouTube channel last May, and since then her videos warning against climate change “alarmism” have received around 200,000 views. Her argument is that any policies need to be rooted in science, not emotion. She says buzzwords like climate “crisis” spread panic without “really addressing the issue”.

      It was this online success that led the Heartland Institute, a US think tank that rejects scientific consensus on climate change, to recruit Seibt as the face of its campaigns.

      When Thunberg was first propelled into the public eye, critics across the world questioned who was pulling the strings, assuming there must be a team of adult puppeteers behind her. This turned out to be unfounded – by all accounts Thunberg is a law unto herself – but Seibt’s activism is backed up by a free market think tank based in Chicago. The organisation has funded her trip to Washington, where she headlined the CPAC event called “defeating the climate delusion” on Friday.

      “Man vastly overestimates his power if he thinks he can, with CO2 emissions, destroy the climate,” Seibt told the audience at CPAC. Heartland staff handed out black T-shirts with Seibt’s image and her signature catchphrase: “I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.”

      Seibt said she would welcome a “casual conversation” with Thunberg. “I wouldn’t want to debate her on the science,” she added, “because I don’t want to destroy her.”

      But though Greta has been hailed a hero, Seibt’s new-found platform has come at a heavy cost. “In my hometown, even in my extended family, I have lost friends because of this,” she says.

      When she gave a speech in Münster recently, thousands showed up to protest. “It’s very strange to think there are people protesting against me,” she says, “I wish they had just listened to what I had to say, but they don’t want to talk”.

      She says she has also become a target for Antifa, the anti-fascist group, and regularly receives rape and death threats over the phone.

      Her eyes well-up as she recalls how one prankster even dispatched a funeral director to her home. “We can’t really do anything about it,” she says. “We informed the police and they told me, as long as you’re not really harmed, we can’t really do anything”. The abuse has, understandably, also taken a toll on her mother Karoline, a lawyer who works from home, and her 14-year-old sister.

      “My sister doesn’t want us to talk about things like climate change at home when she has friends over, because she fears that their parents might talk negatively about it. She’s scared of the backlash,” she says.

      But Seibt insists she will not be cowed into silence (“That’s more terrifying to me”). After all, she says, she is used to sticking out from the crowd. A gifted student, she was fast-tracked through high school, graduating when she was just 16. She went on to start an economics degree at the University of Mannheim, but dropped out after one semester because she felt she had already done enough reading on the subject.

      She plans to return to her studies one day, but for now has more international events planned as part of her work with the Heartland Institute. The think tank has close ties to the Trump administration, and its senior fellows include Dr William Happer, who was part of the White House National Security Council until last year.

      Seibt doesn’t like being labelled as Right-wing, insisting she’s “independent of any party affiliation”. Instead she describes herself as a libertarian, but names Stefan Molyneux, a Far-Right Canadian YouTuber among her heroes. I ask if she hopes to meet Trump, who also spoke at CPAC yesterday. “I would absolutely love to meet him one day, if that’s possible somehow, I’ll definitely do it”.

      Once back home in Germany, she plans to make more YouTube videos on climate scepticism to appeal to her own generation. “There are so many shows and YouTubers doing videos about the mainstream climate change views,” she says. “I would like to do the same for the other side.”

      Seibt agrees that human activity is a factor in global warming, but believes that impact has been overstated. She rejects the notion that she’s a climate change denier, saying critics use the label as “a way to shut down people on the other side”. She even goes as far as to suggest that many of those promoting fears over climate change are in fact using it as a way to “control our lives”.

      Does she ever worry that she’s on the wrong side of the argument? After all, I point out, the majority of the international scientific community agrees that greenhouse gas emissions are leading to warmer temperatures and rising sea levels.

      “Actually, I think there are very few scientists who agree on the narrative that C02 emissions are so destructive to the planet, but those are the loudest voices,” she says, claiming that any research that does not conform with the international consensus is “pushed under the rug”. She rattles off a list of names, including Canadian zoologist Susan Crockford, who has cast doubt on the claim that climate change is harming polar bear populations.

      “I think we’ll look back in 12 years and either smile or be mortified by how much we’ve spent, on how we destroyed lots of society and dropped people into poverty because of these drastic measures that turned out to be so wrong,” she says.

      Seibt has been feted by the Republicans in contrast to Thunberg’s icy interactions with Mr Trump. While the Swede famously arrived in the US in a carbon neutral yacht, Seibt travelled by plane. But, she dislikes comparisons, she tells me: “I don’t want to be this ‘anti-Greta’ because I don’t want to be a puppet for the other side.” Although she does draw a contrast between her own views and those of Thunberg, saying she “really hates” seeing Greta so fearful about the future. “She says that she wants people to panic, I really don’t want people to panic.”

      Her only agenda, then, is free speech. “I always tell people – please, question me, do your own research. And if you come to a different conclusion? Then that’s awesome.”

    3. Hi Rastus,
      Holier than thou alert!
      As someone who works in education and who has a family, with due respect you (and most of us) should be wary of criticising a child/teenager who has been diagnosed as mentally ill or something similar. When she celebrates her eighteenth birthday in 2021, the game can change.

      1. 316729+ up ticks,
        Morning T, ( & biscuits)
        Currently does that still stand
        regarding many issues ?
        Say as in knife injuries / killings
        among the young & then with establishment employees knowingly covering up mass paedophilia for years.
        I understand where you are coming from and agree caution
        is the order of the day.

      2. I do not agree. It would certainly be a case for “not mocking the afflicted” had she not made herself fair game by seeking prominence for her delusions.

      3. Greta mustn’t worry about her eighteenth birthday in 2021.

        According to her own grim presages, the climate apocalypse will be upon us long before then and it’ll be game over.

    4. Colour me an old curmudgeon but somehow I don’t feel using another teenager as a counter propagandist to the Gretard is helpful
      What are HER scientific credentials??
      Give me a peer reviewed grizzled old scientist anyday……………..

  53. Liquidators step in at The Salutation in Sandwich

    Gogglebox stars Steph and Dom have announced they will reopen gardens at their famous property as they continue their bid to save the B&B.

    The Salutation in Sandwich, which is owned by the Parkers, closed its doors in January after John Fothergill who had a five-year lease to run the business declared bankruptcy.

  54. Talks still going on in Ireland over trying to form a government with not much progress being made

    It appears at present that there will be an attempt to put together a government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Greens and some Independents. A most unlikely bunch. If it happens how long will it last ?

    1. Oh dear – look at that sulky little mouth! I wonder if he’s related to the Doomgoblin?

    2. Finally, a politician who does not back down in the face of a Sir Humphrey.

      And why did he not go to the head of the civil service and ask for a transfer? Wanted to make a political point, it would seem.

    7. He’s not an attractive or realistic victim. He does look as if he is saying, no, I’m not going to do your bidding, so there. My rules. My bat, my ball and my wicket. Boo hoo. And he does look as though he is going to burst into tears because he has been thwarted, full of self-righteous indignation. Boo hoo.

  56. British ski resort visited by 2 million a year buckling due to climate change

    It is a marginal business in the UK with a very short season and it over expanded so no surprise some businesses are failing. They often have to top the snow up artificially

    The white pistes at Cairngorm Mountain ski resort, near Aviemore, are turning to barren slopes. To counter that, resort chiefs invested in a snow maker which spewed out almost 100 tonnes of artificial powder every day for more than a month before the season opened.

    2. When I lived in Aberdeen early 1990s, there was great excitement if there was one day skiing at Cairngorm & the other resorts at a time. So, no useful snow is not new there. Could it be they had a few exceptional years with loadsa snow?
      Anyhow, we use snowmachines in Norway to extend the season. Big effing deal.

  57. Epidemics expert Jonathan Quick: ‘The worst-case scenario for coronavirus is likely’. 1 March 2020.

    Your feeling as to which is more likely, as of today, 27 February?

    The worst-case scenario is looking increasingly likely. We’ve now seen cases on six continents, apparently “silent” – that is, at least partly asymptomatic – chains of human-to-human transmission both inside and outside China, with additional countries reporting cases within the last week – bringing the total to 47 – and new, accelerating outbreaks in Iran, Italy and South Korea. If it becomes a pandemic, the questions are, how bad will it get and how long will it last? The case fatality rate – the proportion of cases that are fatal – has been just over 2%, much less than it was for Sars, but 20 times that of seasonal flu. There are still many unknowns – we may have underestimated the period during which a person is contagious, for instance, and the variety of ways in which the virus spreads.

    Not to be read before you go to bed!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/the-worst-case-scenario-for-coronavirus-dr-jonathan-quick-q-and-a-laura-spinney

    1. Across six continents?
      When I was I school there were five continents and seven seas.

      1. What makes having them the wrong way round funny, Stormy?

        The seven continents are North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. The five oceans are the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean.

  58. Twelve new cases of coronavirus confirmed in UK

    It is the biggest jump in COVID-19 cases the UK has seen in one day.

    Three of the patients caught the coronavirus in the UK – they are known to be contacts of someone who already had it, and were found through contact-tracing, Professor Chris Whitty said.

    Another of the patients, from Essex, has not been abroad and it is not clear where they contracted the virus.

    The eight others caught the virus abroad – six had recently travelled to Italy and two had been to Iran.

    1. Six from Italy and two from Iran.
      And what did you say the population of the United Kingdom is ?

  59. Knife offenders lack male role models, says senior police officer

    A lack of male role models is a key factor behind the increase in knife crime and gang violence, a senior police officer has suggested.

    Bedfordshire Assistant Chief Constable Jackie Sebire said some young people who do not have the “protective factor” of a father figure instead look up to drug dealers and gangsters.

    She said it was “too easy” to blame police cuts, social media and drugs.

    The government said early intervention projects were a focus of its efforts.

    ACC Sebire, who leads on serious violence for the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said an absence of father figures affects children in affluent areas as well as those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    “We don’t talk enough” about the issue, she added.

    1. A lack of male role models is a key factor behind the increase in knife crime and gang violence.

      How does she know and even if it were true what is her solution? Back to the Future and supply more dads? Her job is to catch malefactors not indulge in pointless social speculation!

      1. It is backed up by fact though. What do you do? difficult but it indicated that particular attention should be paid to them at school and by social services

        1. 316729 + up ticks,
          BJ,
          They know instinctively at an early age the difference between right / wrong.
          Societies failure could be rectified by early age incarceration.
          without
          PCism / appeasement
          interference.
          Ex forces staff in charge,
          motto over the entrance will read,
          YOU WILL NOT VISIT
          US TWICE.

      2. Probably true though. The “ghetto” crime here is usually carried out by young males who have grown up in a totally dysfunctional environment. Mother (who may well be on drugs) may or may not be around, father usually not only be missing but often unknown. Some (a few) get lucky and have a determined grandparent to step in. Others end up getting killed in gang warfare – along with passers by, too often. These areas represent a significant percentage of US homicides and gun crime in general.

        But the rest of us know where the bad areas are, and don’t go there.

    2. 316729+ up ticks,
      BJ,
      It would seem quite credible in many respects that they see the governance as role models, and act accordingly.

    3. Knife offenders lack male role models, says senior police officer

      The male role models is/are Knifemen and in Jail.

        1. Yo Peddy

          Still in Spain

          This ‘site’ has changed.

          I do not seem to have anything to say…. that folks want hear

          Wie gehts?

          2. Wotcher OLT,

            Only just catching up – have been in no wi-fi place for the last weekend.

            Why do you think nobody wants to hear what you have to say – I’ve always found your posts good reading. I’ve run out of things to say for the time being, but no doubt I’ll come across some article which I think might benefit from airing. Hope to hear from you!

    4. ” drug dealers and gangsters.”
      What do you think their dads did when they were young ?

  60. Greece blocks 10,000 migrants at Turkey border

    Numbers are building up at the border rapidly Turkey is hosting 3.7 million Syrian refugees, as well as migrants from other countries such as Afghanistan – but had previously stopped them from leaving for Europe under an aid-linked deal with the EU.

    Greece says it has stopped nearly 10,000 migrants crossing over the land border from Turkey.

    Separately, Greek police say at least 500 people on seven boats have reached the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios, where camps for migrants are already severely overcrowded.

    Turkey has vowed to open its doors for migrants to travel to the EU.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says it cannot deal with the amount of people fleeing Syria’s civil war.

    His decision came after at least 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in air strikes in Idlib province in northern Syria this week.

    Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has called a meeting for his country’s national security council later on Sunday.

    The EU’s border protection agency Frontex said it was on “high alert” on Europe’s borders with Turkey.

    1. Close Europe’s borders, with an iron fist, and we will soon see Turkey sending them back to whence they came.

    2. In 1683 Turkey was the invader. In 2004 much of Europe still sees it that way
      As one of the EU’s biggest decisions nears, old prejudices are coming to the fore

      The legacy of the Turkish attempt to take the Hapsburg capital includes the greatest of Viennese institutions, the coffee house, for the Turks brought the bean to Austria, as well as a dread of the Muslim invader that is branded into folk memories across large swaths of central Europe and the Balkans.

      In neighbouring Hungary, which was under the Turks for 150 years, the national gallery near Buda castle is dominated by a giant canvas illustrating the mass slaughter that accompanied the fall of the town of Szigetvar to the Turks in 1556.

      When the Serbian general Ratko Mladic supervised the massacre of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995, he relished the mass murder as Serbian revenge.

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/eu.turkey

      Hindsight is a wondeful thing … this article was wriitten in 2004 .. now see what is happening , over 30,000 Muslims scrambling to reach Europe ..

      What on earth has Liberalism achieved?

      1. What about the croissants? Start with a croissant filled with crispy bacon, then one with apricot jam, all accompanied by coffee freshly brewed in a percolator. Mmm.

  61. UK fisheries left seething by new bureaucratic red tape as they accuse Boris of betrayal

    Seem daft. Any competent fisherman would be able to make a good estimate of the size of the catch. trying to record it whilst at sea is daft. The catch will be properly weighed once ashore. Any trying to play the system could be fined then so it would be in their interest to accurately estimate the catch

    2. Interesting difference. Local branch banks flourish here – they are everywhere. Not Citi or the other big boys but local and regional banks.

  63. Let us spend a sunny Sunday reading about Çur Philip Ratbum:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/29/sir-philip-rutnams-real-agenda-surely-ousting-priti-patel/

    “Sir Philip Rutnam’s real agenda was surely ousting Priti Patel

    This briefing war is just the latest battle in a long history of civil servants v Home Secretaries

    The knives were out for Priti Patel from the moment she was appointed Home Secretary last July. Ms Patel is not one of those ministers who puts her head down, keeps quiet and does what she’s told. She makes waves – and enemies – wherever she goes.

    None of us really knows what transpired between Ms Patel and Sir Philip Rutnam, her now departed permanent secretary. Sir Philip has taken the extraordinary step of making his grievances public. According to him, Ms Patel is an all-round monster, responsible for days of hostile stories about the department. He says he will now sue the government for constructive dismissal. Needless to say, Ms Patel denies these allegations.

    It’s worth considering that, if all Sir Philip was trying to achieve was redress, he would have resigned and quietly instructed employment lawyers. Instead, the BBC’s political editor was informed of his resignation and he then chose to make an unprecedented public statement, timed for maximum exposure in today’s papers, with handy texts ready for journalists.

    It’s clear that he has another agenda: ensuring Ms Patel is no longer Home Secretary. The issue for those who do not know who to believe is whether that agenda only developed this weekend with his resignation, or whether it has been present for months.

    Because one thing we know for certain: someone within the Home Office was briefing against Ms Patel. Sir Philip has insists it wasn’t him, so one should believe him. But someone told journalists that she was so bad a minister that the security services refused to trust her – perhaps the most damning accusation that could be made against the Home Secretary. MI5 took the unusual step of denying this story last week.

    For all the brouhaha this weekend, the history of the Home Office shows that attempts by the department to destroy a Home Secretary are hardly unusual. When a minister seeks to take on the received wisdom, the pattern is always the same.

    In preparing my biography of David Blunkett, I spent months around the Home Office. He may have entered office nearly 20 years ago, but what he told me is just as applicable today. The department’s problems, he said, are in the DNA of its civil servants. “They had a policy of their own. I’ve never experienced anything quite like the first few months here. We were running parallel policies. There were my policies and there was what officials called ‘Home Office policy’, and that was what they worked to. I had to say to them over and over again, ‘There is only one policy and it’s what we say it is.’”

    This has been the story whenever the Home Office’s civil servants realise their boss won’t stick to what they are told to do. And then the stories start to appear about how the Home Secretary is a bully, is out of his or her depth, is unthinking, posturing and – above all – stupid.

    Famously, Sir Michael Howard was anathema to the department. Like Ms Patel, he would not accept that its role was to preside over rising crime and be passive towards criminals. When Sir Michael sacked the director-general of the prison service, Derek Lewis, following the publication of a damning report into a series of breakouts, Mr Lewis and his colleagues went to war with him.

    You might think it reasonable for a Home Secretary to dismiss a man whose management had been described by an independent inquiry as “a chapter of errors at every level and a naivete that defies belief”. But that sort of accountability is not the Home Office way.

    Plus ça change. One of Ms Patel’s predecessors, Amber Rudd, had her own issues with Sir Philip. She filed a complaint against him for being “absent” during the Windrush scandal revelations which forced her resignation in 2018. According to a leak just last week, she told the inquiry into the affair: “I find his absence inappropriate. He was absent through my final few weeks and days. I think a good permanent secretary would lean in to a real difficulty like this rather than sit back from it.”

    Whitehall and the media will be consumed by this latest episode of “The Home Office Versus The Home Secretary” for days. But outside the bubble, few will care. Just as the Lewis affair was an irrelevance compared with Howard’s success in reducing crime, what matters will be Ms Patel’s record in fighting criminals.”

    1. Well Patel want to shake us Westminster and want to drive things though whilst the Civil servants want to push their agenda through and go at there usual very slow speeds

    3. ‘Morning, Anne,

      “Sir Philip has insists (sic) it wasn’t him, so one should believe him.

      So, if it wasn’t him, why didn’t he, as Permanent Secretary and therefore head of the Home Office snivel serpents, find out who it was and discipline accordingly? Leads one to think that even if it wasn’t him, he certainly endorsed, either tacitly or explicitly.

      Gertcha, you cow son!

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

    3. Ada: Are you getting happier and happier as the years go by, Bert?

      Bert: Yes, Ada, the way it’s going, I reckon I’ll be fuffed to chuck when I’m dead.

    4. I’ll go along with that Plum. I will be 84 in July and I am very fit and very happy. I enjoy your ‘happy hours’.

    5. Bert: “The nurse asked me for a stool sample and a urine sample.”

      Ada: ” Did you give her your underwear love ? “

  65. News from yer France.

    And… nearly six hours later… lunch is over.

    It’s the pig feast today. Everything bar the squeak. All delicious, apart from one of the sausages, which, as far as I could guess, was almost entirely made of blood, lips and anal rim with a soupçon of nostril. Absolutely foul.

    Fortunately wine is on the “as much as you can drink” basis, so there was plenty to flush the tonsils. And brother, did they need it.

    These functions are great fun and the locals make us very welcome.
    Always worth attending.

    1. Sounds like somebody tried to make some andouillette. Revolting stuff. Not unlike haggis, I’m told, but having never had haggis myself I can’t judge.

      1. I’ve had both, haggis is much nicer.

        This was the traditional boudin, just a bad ‘un.

        AAA is ghastly beyond belief

      2. Andouillette – absolutely yuuuuuuuk! Alf had that once when we were in France – he loves food, think tripe is the only food he won’t eat but he hated it. I’ve never liked sausages so fortunately didn’t choose the same. But he’s never forgotten it.

      3. Andouillette – absolutely yuuuuuuuk! Alf had that once when we were in France – he loves food, think tripe is the only food he won’t eat but he hated it. I’ve never liked sausages so fortunately didn’t choose the same. But he’s never forgotten it.

      4. ‘Evening, Caroline, Haggis OK but andouillette served with those bluddy awful pulses, yeaaaach!

      5. Andouille sausages are bad enough. Had some in Beaune some years back, presumably the “real thing”. First time ever I did not finish a serving of sausages.

        p.s. Haggis is something else that I tried once – never again.

        But the meal was enlivened when the chef came it with the ceremonial haggis on a platter, followed by pipers, etc., and promptly tripped over the restaurant carpet and dumped it on the floor. All us non Scots were in stitches.

        1. It’s like conducting a post mortem – only you are supposed to eat the findings!

    1. ” Experts wrote about the unusual case of the 32-year-old healthy African
      American man who was admitted to the hospital after complaining about
      persistent erections.”
      I should have guessed. That’s why the white girls like them.

          2. More than 4 hours is dangerous – the blood becomes one big clot – and I imagine, that’s how you’ll feel – it’s called priapism.

  67. Edward Heath may not have been a paedophile with a penchant for young men and boys as people like Tom Watson and “Nick” Carl Beech would have had us believe but he certainly was an imbecile when he betrayed our fishermen and gave away British fishing rights when we first joined the Common Market.

    DM Story

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8062291/French-minister-Amelie-Montchalin-warns-Britain-fishing-row-collapse-post-Brexit-trade-deal.html

    ‘We know how to make it a very nasty battle’: French minister warns Britain that a post-Brexit trade deal could collapse if there is no agreement to allow EU fishermen work in UK waters

    1. What did they do prior to the EEC/EU?

      If British farmers arrived en masse in the Loire Valley and stated that they demanded equal access to the land there would be outcry.

      Tell me.
      What is the difference?

          1. A book, I enjoyed reading on the Metro between Sevres Lecourbet and La Defense and return ce soir.

    3. I think our french political ‘friends’ are just gagging for a bust up with the UK to take their populace’s minds of their own many domestic troubles. It doesn’t matter how benign the uk negotiating position they will try to make a mountain out of a lobster pot!

      1. Boris will give in on fishing. He’ll bluster, then he’ll strongly bluster, then he’ll cave in and then he’ll feed us some bullsh1t about it being the only way to secure a trade deal which won’t come into effect until 2023 so we’ll extend the transition period.

    2. The picture reminds me of what the kids in class used to say when I was at school all those years ago –
      “You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you are poking the fire”

      1. We referred to a coupling like that as a ‘two bag job’. One bag on her head and one bag on his head in case the bag on his head falls off (or vice versa).

        1. You remember mantelpieces and coal fires and pokers ?
          (I don’t think I knew what sex was at that age)

          1. Neither did I know what sex was .. not a clue .. I remember coal fires and gas pokers .. the stink of old fashioned gas !
            Tony, I was talking as a grown up ..

    4. How did a man with no musical talent make a living out of annoying so many people.

    5. What was that old expression? Close your eyes and think of England? He looks old – rather older than me, but in reality I am somewhat older than him.

      Comes of living an innocent life, I suppose…

  69. Five arrested after huge tax fraud sting in Birmingham

    A man from Birmingham has been arrested – alongside four others – after a huge tax fraud sting.

    The 57-year-old man, from Birmingham, was among the quintet apprehended by cops after raids across the West Midlands.

    CoventryLive , our sister title, reports more than 100 HMRC officers raided businesses in Birmingham, and address in Coventry and beyond, seizing computers, digital devices, business and personal records.

    Five people have been arrested on suspicion of fraud in connection with promoting arrangements designed to get around paying the loan charge.

    Those arrested are:

    A 57-year-old man from Birmingham
    A 43-year-old man from Coventry
    A 60-year-old man from Buckinghamshire
    A 54-year-old man from Worcestershire
    A 50-year-old woman from Northumberland
    A sixth person, a woman aged 39 from Birmingham, is to attend a voluntary interview under caution.

    2. 316729+ up ticks,
      BJ,
      If out on bail should be easy to keep track of,is that the police description
      above ?

      1. To b fsair they have just been arrested at present If they are charged and it goes to court heir full names should be released

    3. When I lived in Coventry, havind an indoor toilet was enough to get you arrested

  71. Here’s a conundrum to mull over while we digest our Sunday lunch.

    I note that the European Court of Justice is also known as the “Curia” – their webite is curia.europa.eu .

    Now I always thought that the Curia was the government of the Catholic Church (with the Roman Curia being the bigwig). I can’t find anything online as to why the ECJ calls itself “Curia” – but am I over-reacting when I find this a little sinister?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ac22fe80e2b93fe0053bd419d79ea79e0c4766db6bcc7cd1642c9ef7ec1b000.jpg

    1. Curia just means ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’, Caroline. Don’t know why the ECJ picked a Latin word – perhaps because Latin was once the unifying language in Europe?

      But I shouldn’t worry too much about ‘popish plots’. I doubt if the Curia Romana has anything to do with the exercise of “justice” in the EU, any more than the original Treaty of Rome was brought in at the behest of Pius XII.
      ;¬)

      1. That was not what I meant by “sinister” – the idea of a “popish plot” never even crossed my mind, actually. But if the EU are denying the mention of of Christian heritage (in the European Constitution / Lisbon Treaty) then why is the EJC using a word that has deep religious connotations? Apart from simple but severe delusions of grandeur!

    2. The curia was the word used for the Roman senate house, so they probably see themselves as the successor of the Roman/Holy Roman Empire and believe using curia confers something or other on them in the process.

    3. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b0ae16b220fb2c02d8e8dd09d1c636cea09aae531d40d3ed7e495de92d03f74c.png

      The Court of Justice, informally known as the European Court of Justice, is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union it is tasked with interpreting EU law and ensuring its equal application across all EU member states. WIKIPEDIA.

      Afternoon Caroline. The Curia title seems to have no legal foundation but does appear on their Emblem so perhaps it is one they have appropriated for the purposes of self- inflation!

      1. Ah, yes. Next step: the European Court of Enquiry, or “Inquisition” for short.

        1. The Law is of course always a Prime Mover in the suppression of heretical views both Religious and Political!

          1. Was chatting to our Rector after church this morning. He said that the CofE gave him guidelines, it couldn’t compel him to do anything, but he suspected that if he didn’t obey he’d be subject to an inquiry into his conduct. Then he made the throat-cutting gesture I told him that in Henry VIII’s time if he’d disobeyed it would be literally head-chopping time.

  72. Seems like my Mother has become rapidly confused and mostly incapable of looking after herself. Tomorrow, phone bashing to see what support I can get, ideally for her to stay in her home, but with a part-time attendant to tidy, prepare proper food, and make sure she doesn’t fall downstairs.
    :-((

    1. If she is in the UK I can wholeheartedly recommend Telecare24 as a 24 hour monitoring service helpful if she should sustain a fall etc.

        1. Perhaps some form of internet compatible cctv, eg Nestcam?
          Also, has anyone checked that your mother is taking her medication, has no obvious infection and is eating enough healthy food?

    2. Does she have a urinary infection , OB.. and is she drinking enough liquids. Urinary tract infections can make elderly people very confused ..

      I promise you that sometimes infections like that can make things even worse , and the confusion and dehydration can also be responsible for many accidents in the home like falls.

      You will feel happier if she recieves some extra help .. but liquids keep old engines lubricated!

      1. That was last year… :-(( she’s just waiting for God.
        Somehow, whether help at home or in a home, I gotta fix something pdq.

        1. If you keep your mother in her own home you will need live in carers. These cost about £5000.00 per month and you have to provide the carers with a bedroom and food of their choice.

          We paid out several hundred thousand pounds over a four year period to allow my in-laws to stay in their own home. Fortunately they had amassed sufficient money to cover these costs. Then there was the amount of time my wife and I had to spend organising the shopping and providing attendance on the carers who are allowed two hours time off each day. My wife’s sister and husband were as good as useless.

          On reflection I think we would have arranged a care home simply because the carers were so unpredictable. Most were Eastern European and some of those hopeless but the Africans were by comparison the more considerate.

        3. My father lives with my sister, who works full time. The council provides carers 3 times a day to make sure he is pointed in the correct direction and is fed. There is a maximum charge (in Wales) of £360 a month and the individual can claim Attendance Allowance of about £350 a month. This works if the individual is OK when left in between visits. Obviously, the family are at home overnight and to oversee his care generally. Alternatively, my wife and I care for my mother (who has dementia) full time. She declined rapidly when living on her own, although we could see it developing, so I took her in. Unfortunately she fell down the stairs 2 weeks later whilst wandering around in the middle of the night, apart from a lot of blood, not too much damage and a hospital visit. She now lives downstairs but the whole thing is quite stressful long term but is alleviated by other family members helping.

    3. Sadly that sounds like my Mother in Law, she’s gone dolally and will often phone us early in the morning.
      Luckily my sister-in-law lives just round the corner from her, but it does put a huge stress on her. The DT will be heading down next weekend for 10 days to give SiL a break.

          1. No worries… :-))
            One hopes & puts off these things, and being 4 hours away by plane makes the detailed organisation difficult. Also I’m not familiar with UK systems, and how do you explain to your Mum that she has to leave her home of 40+ years, never to return?
            The last few years we did try to get her into sheltered accommodation, but the change was too great for her so she bottled out at the last minute – several times.

          2. I understand. After MIL passed away after looking after her husband all his life he refused any assistance. Sure that he could do everything. I offered to take him in and he point blank refused.

          4. She refuses to acknowledge she can’t. Whether dementia, pride, or fear I don’t know, but she refuses everything & gets furious.
            Not easy.

          5. Vitamin B tablets can produce seeming miracles. Poor eating habits – bread and jam or cup-a-soups – lead to nutritional depletion. Often they actually forget to eat. We discovered this with elderly chum and now we do ‘dinner lady duties’ as many days of the week as possible to ensure she eats a more balanced diet.

            The other problem is constipation; frequently the elderly don’t drink enough because they are afraid of wetting themselves. Chronic constipation makes them toxic and then they become confused and aggressive. Getting technical, you can get overflow as a real faecal backlog builds up.

          7. I realise that is a pretty gruesome posting, but it is so easy to miss these signs – or misread them.

          8. You have my sympathies.
            I, in company with her nephew and niece, are dealing with the same situation with elderly chum.
            I hope the links I’ve posted above will help you.

          9. Thanks! All help & advice gratefully recrived! Chalk up a drink or several on me.

          10. It may be gently gently catches monkey – suggest respite care for a weekend or a week maybe. It may be so comfortable that she won’t want to leave. Presuming there are funds available of course. Good luck.

          11. Good idea if possible. Sometimes the unknown is a very scary place, so a couple of respite days seems like a good way to help her get used to the idea, if at all possible.

          13. Alf did that with elderly, blind, fairly immobile sister over 4 years ago. Her husband and 2 daughters had died and she was living on the 12th floor of a flat in London, with help each morning and afternoon half an hour at a time. We had no idea what a state she was in, it was a phone call a couple of times a year (we’re in Woking) and she never told us about the death of her husband and younger daughter). When the other daughter was very ill she phoned and we went straight up to see her and were shocked at the state she was in. First thing she said to us was “I’m not going into a home”. Long story cut short – persuaded her to come for a weekend respite care, lengthened into a week, then a month, and in fact after her first week there she said I’m never going back to London and never did. Only visitor was the carer. Really shocking. Give it a try.

          14. It is always difficult when distance is involved, do you have family in UK to help you sort out what is best? Good luck.

          15. We had to do that with Moh’s mum… 60 years in the same house .. he was hearbroken .. he was a young lad when they had the house built ..

            We had five years of sheer anxiety and lots of travel .. eventually had the old dear assesed .. Vascular dementia .. she had had so many falls , living on her own.. she said she wanted to die in her house that her late husband and she had lived in happily… memories .. and familiar objects.

            She didn’t want to live with us, and besides she was hard work.. usual things . She lived in Southampton ..

            We decided to place her somewhere nice and near somewhere where she had fun when she was younger holidaying with her family.. somewhere familiar .. Swanage .. near us here and luckily in a fairly good care home .. We used to visit her frequently, and take her out for ice creams and nice treats …

            Nursing homes are strange places .. some accept clients with dementia and some not .. so you have to pick carefully and do some research .. Care in her own home was hit and miss.. 4 visits a day .. sometimes only 15 mts .. each time.. you have to trust the carers!

            She was there for over 3 years .. died aged 91 and a bit .. 4 years ago .

          17. Yes, GP is a good start , and usually a dementia specialist will be do the real assessment .. Heaven forfend , that may apply to most of us eventually?

          18. Yes, GP is a good start , and usually a dementia specialist will be do the real assessment .. Heaven forfend , that may apply to most of us eventually?

          19. How did you get her into the home? Who paid? My Mum’s money is her house, it would have to be cleared and sold, all of which takes a while.
            Sorry, blunt questions, in project manager mode.

          20. The council usually gives you a £loan to use to fund care home bill .. whilst you are selling her house ….The loan is usually for 6 months .. We sold her house at a loss.. Care home fees are colossal .. we did the usual Power of Attorney stuff , and all the other legal stuff .

            You are well and trully stuffed if you need care and there is a house to be sold . Your mum isn’t your property , Social services / adult care want to know about every financial detail as do care homes!

          21. I understand the Project Manager role, Paul and I’m sure it helps to distance you from the daily tears. You do just what you feel is necessary. Feel free to call if I might help.

          22. My mother did the same, she wanted -and did go – to go to the bottom of the sheltered housing list (twice!) when she got to the top. In the end we had to bring her to live with us for two years, it was too late, she was too far gone for sheltered housing. I didn’t know what to do with her as she was still quite vocal, determined and in charge of her money and accounts but they somehow, all the same, weren’t making sense to her. She lived with us for two years and then we had to find residential accommodation for her – I had a full-time job and two teenage boys and I simply couldn’t cope any more. All the best with it all.

          24. I was informed that I have power of attorney, but I have never seen any papers about it. Will call the lawyer tomorrow & discuss wtf.

          25. Do. It’s not something that happens without your going through the procedure. And that procedure not something you would forget.

          27. I beg to differ. The pre-Gordon-Broon power of attorney could have been created more than 20 years ago, and was simpler and more efficient and cheaper. You might have signed a form and simply forgotten.
            My feeling is that the first stop is a Doctor’s surgery, asap.

          28. Yes – the first power of attorney (pre-Brown) was the Enduring Power of Attorney. The other, more expensive job had two parts (Lasting Power of Attorney), one for jurisdiction over finance, the other for jurisdiction over social care and as you say, more expensive. It is a difficult one too because there is a conflict of interests. At the time one could opt for completing just the financial section, although that may well have changed now.

          29. You would have signed the documents agreeing to this, and someone, I think, would have countersigned confirming your signature.

          30. You have to fill in lots of forms; the donor (the person who is the subject of the LPA), the Attorney(s) and a third party who is not related to anybody else to attest that the donor is capable of making the decisions. Then all the forms (including blank ones) have to be sent with the fee (about £83) to the Office of the Public Guardian. I have done it for MOH.

          31. Ah.
            Crap.
            Sounds like another figment of the imagination… More fun to be had, sorting that out. Sigh…

          32. You will need two versions as well; one for Finance and Property and the other for Health. Twice the fees, unsurprisingly.

      2. How do you know what to plan for? Nursing home FFS……..coronavirus sounds like a blessing!

        1. Put money aside if you are able. Think about what might be coming…

          I saw my FIL obsession coming years before. MIL told me each time i visited that he was worse. And was driving her to distraction. He didn’t have dementia he had ‘I know best syndrome’. You couldn’t tell the fukking old bastard anything until the last minute when he was prepared to accept help. Then it was much too late.

          MIL had a triple bypass and after she was able still waited on him non stop until she died.

          I have just this month been told that my mothers brother and sister died within weeks of each other and i don’t care that much. They had a charmed life and died in their dotage. Mil worked in the cotton mills and i’m ashamed i couldn’t do more for her.

      3. One hopes for the best – and the wishes of the elderly parent have to be taken into account. It is very difficult.

    5. Yo Ol

      Seh wuod be anomg fiernds on hear

      Sorry, Gallows Humour, it does help

      My supportive thoughts are with you

    6. So sorry to hear this, you are such a long way from her. It doesn’t seem two minutes since you were meeting her at Oslo airport two (?) Christmasses ago. Good luck and all the best for the path you are about to travel – I have been down it too although I was only 150 miles away.

    7. Lots of good advice here and good wishes, too. MOH has been diagnosed with vascular dementia so it’s a road I’ll be travelling some time, I expect.

          1. I know you have little help near, Con and we are all too far from each other. I hope you can manage and we all wish you our best.

          2. Thank you. I really feel I have friends here, even though we have never met. I value that, believe me.

          4. Wilco. That’s why I do so much in the way of committees and organisations, fund-raising, etc. It gives me a reason to get out and about, a chance to meet others and forget about my situation.

    8. Good luck, old friend, the worst part is the two deaths you have to face, the first when she doesn’t recognise you anymore and the second when she finally goes.

      Good God, why does such shit happen?

    9. Hello Oberst. Just catching up.

      Sorry to read about your mother. Perhaps a stairlift, and a possibility of moving a shower downstairs in the future would be useful considerations. There are lots of things that can be done to keep someone in their home. D’s aunt lived for a long time at home until finally she went to a care home. The family had been looking for a long time to find the right home for when the time came – it was local to her own home, and she appears to be content there. Ditto for a couple of dear friends of mine, who both sadly died a couple of years ago.

  75. Turkey Announces Military Operation “Spring Shield” Against Syrian Regime

    2. Turkey announces a Military Operation in a puppet political fight against a legitimate Government that won’t play ball. Much like Saddam and Gadaffi.

    1. Is it possible he faked the broken ankle in a bid to get to hospital and then to leg it SASPO into the woods never to be seen again?

      Graudian journalists, as well as being thick, are also very gullible.

  77. FFS, my name and avatar have changed again.
    The Googledoodle for St David’s Day looks more like a Chinese New Year dragon than Y Ddraig Goch.

    1. It must be the first time since Churchill that a politician has received so much support from the man in the street.

      1. May I fiddle

        It must be the first time since Churchill that a politician has received so much support from the man in people in the street.

  82. Evening, all. Has t-p (or whatever incarnation she has adopted recently) been around? I haven’t been a regular visitor just lately.

    1. Drones that do nothing apart from get friendly with Queens, while the Workers get on with the job?

      Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

    1. On the other hand, there seem to have been few cases reported from India or Pakistan, countries not notorious for hygiene.

      1. They say that if you eat dirt you develop resistance to infection. Presumably if you eat rotten mutton and lick your fingers after shitting in the fields you develop a greater resistance.

  87. The corona virus appears to have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. The laboratory is evidently funded by Bill Gates and his wife and is supported by the Clinton Foundation. There are rumours that the virus can remain dormant and then reactivated via 5G. Huawei anyone?

    I would probably never contemplate such conspiracy theories but nowadays anything is possible. Just look at the elevation of a snot-nosed Swedish cretin to some sort of saviour of the world. The photograph taken in Oxford, where else, of this pre-programmed imp sitting next to another pre-programmed recitative money scamming fraud, the girl shot in the head and reanimated by British surgeons (at our expense), just about sums up the situation.

    Jesus wept.

    1. I think Malala’s op. was paid for by her father. But she’s certainly had far too much post-op media exposure.

      1. A seat in the House of Lords beckons, next to Dame Lawrence, or whatever her title is for also being a victim.

      2. I doubt it. If her father was so wealthy why are the family still here buying up properties and building a property empire. Her idiotic speeches about ‘education’ were both repetitive and hollow and scripted by her ever present minders.

        The comparisons with the Thunberg imp are obvious, both speaking from a prepared script, both totally lost when questioned without it.

    2. The trouble is, nobody believes anything we are told, any more. “You can fool all of the people none of the time, when they have had enough”

      1. The car is too big for the property. A VW Polo would sit more comfortably on your drive. I just bought my wife a VW T-Cross R-Line, a ‘Polo on stilts’, in Champagne Silver (pinkish) which would harmonise much better with you lime green render.

        The virus appears to have been man-made according to most opinion. It is most likely weapons grade but in development. Never trust a Chinaman.

        1. I agree on all points that you make.

          I once had a front garden with lovely and well tended shrubs and flowers, a beautiful wrought iron gate and Fareham Brick (Albert Hall) walls. Six months after purchase, double yellow lines outside.

          I still have the gate in storage.

          1. The Albert Hall was built using bricks from Sudbury viz. Ballingdon Reds and Whites.

            These were transported from Sudbury on lighters (small barges coupled together) along the river Stour to the coast and then transferred to larger coastal vessels to London.

            The Ballingdon Reds were used for the exterior walls and the Ballingdon Whites for the internal walls. Many millions of bricks were needed in the construction of the Albert Hall.

            Not a lot of people know this!

          2. I know you know your stuff but i was always told that the bricks that built the Albert Hall were Fareham brick.

            I am not happy. Having been lied to for so long. And also boasting about it over the years and being shown to be an absolute fool.

            BTW. Belle thinks i do have taste in render….. :o)

          3. No fault of yours. The bricks used in the construction of Hampton Court Palace actually came from all over, not just the brick clamps visible in old engravings depicting Sendcourt and Kingston on the horizon but many actually came from Hertfordshire, especially Sawbridgeworth and its locality.

          1. Car ! Foolish woman ! That is not a car it is a work of art. It glides over pot holes as if the do not exist. It does 22 MPG just to annoy Greta and it has heated seats.

        1. Hi Belle,
          Some people did laugh at my my choice….which is a god given right to do so but it has enamoured me with some of the more conservative oldies in the street. My bungalow is now known as ‘The Greenhouse’. :o)

          4. ‘Evening, Phil, the wonders of the internet – I can still see it.

            A pal of my brother’s in Arizona had a Mercedes in a similar colour which was described as ‘Porcupine Green’ Unkindly, my brother told him that the colour was named right, except all the pricks where on the inside!

  88. The corona virus appears to have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. The laboratory is evidently funded by Bill Gates and his wife and is supported by the Clinton Foundation. There are rumours that the virus can remain dormant and then reactivated via 5G. Huawei anyone?

    I would probably never contemplate such conspiracy theories but nowadays anything is possible. Just look at the elevation of a snot-nosed Swedish cretin to some sort of saviour of the world. The photograph taken in Oxford, where else, of this pre-programmed imp sitting next to another pre-programmed recitative money scamming fraud, the girl shot in the head and reanimated by British surgeons (at our expense), just about sums up the situation.

    Jesus wept.

  90. Alan Bennett BBC4 … wonderful, just perfect. He speaks as if he is painting words , colouring conversations that have meaning .

    He is our National treasure .. a rare jewel in our cultural crown .. not a luvvie .. he is us.. and how the British were .. decades ago , and now we are pinpricks of the past!

      1. I hope you are listening to him Tony…

        He is so un-ostentatious .. i can forgive him for his slightly fey lifestyle , but he is solidly a narrator of great eloquence .. and his meliflous voice calms and soothes me beautifully

        1. I thought the actor that played him in ‘The Lady in the van’ did him very well.

  94. Britain’s conformist creatives are the most intolerant of all

    JULIE BURCHILL

    A new survey of Brits in the creative professions reveals a climate hostile to dissenting beliefs

    I can’t say I dropped my ‘Job Done’ commemorative Brexit mug in sheer molten astonishment when I read the results of the Freedom of Expression survey conducted by the publication ArtsProfessional of Brits toiling in the creative professions. Eight out of 10 respondents said that sharing “controversial” opinions could mean being bullied or even “professionally ostracised”, while expressing views sympathetic to Brexit was seen as controversial and isolating.

    I’m not surprised because a couple of years back, a pro-Brexit play I co-wrote – People Like Us – sold out on the morning the box office opened (as well as the venue bar reporting the biggest alcohol sales on record: I love my fans!) Yet no one offered to transfer it to a big theatre or put it on TV while rubbish Remainer plays had money thrown at them.

    Brexit Shorts: Dramas from a divided nation was an online co-production by The Guardian and the Headlong Theatre Company featuring predictable tripe from such professional bed-wetters as David Hare, who described the aftermath of the Brexit result as “the most depressing time in my life.” (He’s obviously never sat through one of his own plays.) In Time to Leave, Kristin Scott Thomas played a Brexiteer who moans that the result “doesn’t seem to have made anyone happy.” Presumably because we’re all drowning in the super-gonorrhoea promised by Project Fear.

    Elsewhere, Carol Ann Duffy staged the perfunctory exercise in Remain doom-mongering My Country: A Work in Progress which the splendidly named Susannah Clapp of The Observer condemned as “old hat… we are in a different, dark condition, the closest to civil war than any time in my life. Old friends cannot bear to be in the same room with those who voted differently. That is the country I’d like to see on stage.” And that was exactly the situation Jane Robins and I portrayed in our play, based on the time she was expelled from her North London book group for being a Brexiteer.

    People sent us stories, usually anonymously, about how they had endured gross intolerance from the professionally tolerant; “I work in festival stage production”, one wrote. “People I’d known as friends for 10 years began referring to me as ‘the token racist Leaver’… I’ve never recovered from laughing at the irony of their ‘all-welcome, inclusivity for everyone’ mantra.”

    On the comedy circuit you were free to tell all the rape jokes you liked, but express support for a democratic mandate and you’d be called a fascist. Radio 4 comedy has recently started inviting Brexiteer comics such as Geoff Norcott and Andrew Doyle (Titania McGrath), but only because their panel shows had become so dismal that even tame audiences struggled to raise a titter as Nish Kumar yelled “Brexit!” for the nth time.

    When a superannuated rebel went rogue, it triggered pearl-clutching overload from the arts establishment. But why should they be surprised that the likes of Morrissey and Lydon might have views on Brexit which differed from Ian McEwan’s? We were merely reverting to our social origins and – pleasingly – proving that a bright prole can’t be bribed out of class loyalty by a cushy job and a pat on the head. We were contrarians and also in tune with what the majority of powerless citizens wanted; personally, I can’t think of a better way for a creative type to be.

    Amanda Parker of ArtsProfessional said “Our survey shines a damning light on the coercion, bullying, intimidation and intolerance that is active among a community that thinks of itself as liberal, open-minded and equitable.” I’ve always maintained that the real cause for Remainers’ unending bitterness wasn’t worthy claptrap about “no more European wars” but an almost parasexual level of wounded vanity.

    While our side (supposedly insular and scared) had the guts to abandon Fortress Europe’s smothering embrace and engage with the wide world, their side (in theory daring and experimental) turned out to be a bunch of status-quo upholding stick-in-the-muds. Inclusivity and diversity have become the “Mom and apple pie” of our culture – but exclusivity and groupthink still control the arts.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/01/britains-conformist-creatives-intolerant/

    1. I own a book entitled “How Britain Really Works” by Stig Abell. I should have been warned by the TLS background of the author. It is relentlessly negative about Brexit (plus I don’t recognise in my part of the world how the version of “Britain” portrayed actually does work!). I started off by writing remarks in the margin in pencil, progressed to putting a line through whole paragraphs and eventually gave up after a couple of chapters!

      1. He is just another leftie who should know better. The TLS is just so to the left I cannot read it.

  95. Strange reporting on MSM/BBC on the hordes of potential invaders massing at the Turkey/Greece border. MSM says it’s due to conflict in Syria . And then goes on to show the (predominantly) young men – NONE of whom seem to be from Syria. No, they are from Iran and Afghanistan and those who give an ultimate destination objective, give London. Have we got a specially generous benefits system or summat?

    1. You betcha, Lewis and the sooner we overhaul the benefits system the better – absolutely basic and, if you refuse to take any job offered, zilch.

        1. Keep ’em where they are and seal off the premises so they have no access to food.

          Wait until they lose enough weight to get through the door on their own, then evict them.

          1. Thank you, Duncan and Good evening – my thoughts exactly. There is far too much mollycoddling going on these days.

            As the Aussies say, “Harden the f**k up.”

          2. You are going soft in your old age.

            When specialist equipment is required in these circumstances they should be bulldozers to insure they don’t have prolonged suffering. Come on Dunc…Woke up !

  96. ” Boris Johnson backs Priti Patel after bullying claim ”
    Instead of backing our Prime Minister, the B.B.C. spends a full page cricising Ms. Patel
    Balanced reporting died a long time ago.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51694413
    I have nearly reached the stage where I will never want to view the BBC or the Guardian again.
    (Looks like the Guardian is preparing to go behind a paywall, anyway)
    I will have to rely on our resident news reporter.

    1. The BBC is now in self destruct mode. It’s persistence with abhorrent shows such as Eastenders and Doctor Who and radio shows such as the preposterous The Archers demonstrates the distance between the BBC and the public. I just switch off, or over, when confronted by this rubbish output as, I am certain, do many others.

      The political coverage of the BBC is so biased as to be incredible. No sentient human being can believe a single word of what they say, a trait observed by Jed Bush most recently.

Comments are closed.