Saturday 11 April: Workers are ‘essential’ in keeping businesses and the economy running

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),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/10/lettersworkers-essential-keeping-businesses-economy-running/

829 thoughts on “Saturday 11 April: Workers are ‘essential’ in keeping businesses and the economy running”

  1. Chinese Donations. 10 April 2020.

    Lockwood, despite his politics, is usually a very well-informed and reliable news source. So, after the broadcast I set out to learn more. It was an interest bit of detective work.

    The main source of the story was the new American darling of conservative American websites—The Western Journal. Forget about Breitbart News. Their user figures are falling through the floor—down from 17.5 million unique monthly visitors to around the 4 million mark. The Western Journal is clocking a staggering 40 million unique users a month.

    Morning everyone. Never having heard of the Western Journal I took a look at it. It may surpass Breitbart in numbers but not in content. Its articles are perfunctory and its users are of the “Let’s Nuke’em” variety.

    https://www.westernjournal.com/

    http://www.thewhatandthewhy.com/chinese-donations/

    1. Ah Breibart,another site that produced a new “revamped” “improved” website that is virtually unusable and their traffic falls off a cliff
      Quelle Surprise
      See the Spectator site for the UK version…………………………
      ‘Morning Minty

        1. The DM asked me to turn off my adblocker to continue. I turned it off. Reloaded the page. Turned adblocker on again. No pop ups.

          2. There are filters you can apply that block those nagging nonsense.

            The Mail is invited to my driveway. It doesn’t get to vomit over it. It is blocked and script halted to the wazoo. No nonsense videos, no popups, no ads, none of that new zit nonsense. The next one I’m breaking is the blasted oath network. I’ve nobbled practically all their sites by forbidding certain scripts.

    2. Comment quality has dropped noticeably on Breitbart London recently. It used to be a refuge for ex Telegraph commenters to discuss things, but now every article is followed by just non-sequiturs and illiterate rants.

      Edit: I just checked out the western journal. It looks like the kind of website where your computer would pick up something nasty.

  2. This guy went to the zoo one day. While he was standing in front of the gorilla’s enclosure, the wind gusted and he got some grit in his eye.
    As he pulled his eyelid down to dislodge the particle, the gorilla went crazy, bent open the bars, and beat the guy senseless.

    When the guy came to, the zookeeper was anxiously bending over him, and as soon as he was able to talk, he explained what had happened. The zookeeper nodded and explained that in gorilla language, pulling down your eyelid means, “Fuck you!”

    This didn’t make the gorilla’s victim feel any better and he vowed revenge. The next day he purchased two large knives, two party hats, two party horns, and a large sausage. Putting the sausage in his pants, he hurried to the zoo and over to the gorilla’s cage.

    He tossed in a party hat, a knife, and a party horn.

    Knowing that the big apes were natural mimics, he put on a party hat. The gorilla looked at him, looked at the hat, and put it on.

    Next he picked up his horn and blew on it. The gorilla picked up his horn and did the same.

    Then the man picked up his knife, whipped the sausage out of his pants, and sliced it neatly in two. The gorilla looked at the knife in his cage, looked at his own crotch…

    …and pulled down his eyelid!

  3. Good morning all. Nice sunny start to the day. Tree man coming in an hour – so must prepare the ground – and then stay out of the way until he goes.

          1. Thirty six years ago, I planted 70 beech trees. Every year since, I have planted half a dozen various hardwood trees. Each year I fell two or three for firewood. These two sycamores – which are, as sycamores so often are, self sown – are in the wrong place and keep light away from my vegetables.

          3. Good for you, Bill. Are you planning to burn the sycamores? If so you may be disappointed.

            We have a neighbour with a monster sycamore. Every year it dumps many hundreds of seeds on my veg patch, all of which require removal in the spring and early summer. Twice she has been told that the tree isn’t sound and should be felled, but she believes that even trimming is cruel to a tree and should therefore be left alone. I have calculated that if it does collapse it will go through the back of her house in a prevailing south west blow, but only the very top of it will mean a new greenhouse for us. Since she has been warned more than once – and in writing – she is on a very big loser if it comes down.

        4. The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
          Sing all a green willow.
          Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
          Sing willow, willow, willow.
          The fresh streams ran by her, and murmured her moans,
          Sing willow, willow, willow.
          Her salt tears fell from her, and softened the stones
          Sing willow, willow, willow—

          Who can identify this (without cheating and using google) and who sang it?

          Desdemona sings the ‘Song of The Willow’ to Emilia shortly before she is smothered to death by Othello.

        5. The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
          Sing all a green willow.
          Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
          Sing willow, willow, willow.
          The fresh streams ran by her, and murmured her moans,
          Sing willow, willow, willow.
          Her salt tears fell from her, and softened the stones
          Sing willow, willow, willow—

          Who can identify this (without cheating and using google) and who sang it?

          Desdemona sings the ‘Song of The Willow’ to Emilia shortly before she is smothered to death by Othello.

          1. Without cheating, do I assume that the first line is not part of the song? Isn’t the sycamore a New World introduction?

          4. Good morning Anne

            The first line is the first line. (Tree rhymes with knee)

            Shakespeare knew about the sycamore.

            I used to offer any member of my “A” level English set a prize if they could choose any line from Shakepeare’s major tragedies that I could not place immediately and give the full context. Quite a lot still remains in my head but I am losing it now.

        7. If the trunks are large enough, you might find a luthier interested in using it for making violins with.

          1. Yet they are feted and elected and smoozed by our slightly less murdererous politicians, MSM, chatterati et al.
            If we believed in democracy anyone who had ever tried to change things by force would be ineligible for election to anything.

  7. ‘Morning All

    NWO??

    PoliticalElite news

    While measures to combat the Wuhan

    COVID-19 virus continue to confine French citizens to their homes,

    President Emmanuel Macron is expected to soon deliver a so-called

    “founding speech” for the post-crisis world.

    “He is quietly preparing a very big speech on the next world,” a government minister told the French newspaper Le Parisien.

    https://www.politicalite.com/europe/new-world-order-macron-to-make-post-crisis-speech-to-herald-new-world/
    There seems to be a coordinated theme in the MSM in many countries that this lockdown must last until a vaccine is available,if they impose this the world as we knew it is over for good.
    Meanwhile Sweden,not locked down,seems to be doing rather well……………….

    1. He thinks he’s Jesus from his mother’s side and Napoleon from his father’s.
      The saviour and conqueror of the world.

      1. Morning, NtN. If I may add my thoughts.

        Bruno questioned the then current dogma of the Church. He was one of those doing the thinking to expand knowledge while the only thinking the Church authorities were doing was how to stop him and others from speaking out. Now, instead of the Church, we have the cult of the Green Blob attempting to destroy free speech with their mantra, “The science is settled.”
        How science really works is explained by James Bullock an astrophysicist: Bullock explains how the idea of star formation has changed with new thinking. The original idea of a great cloud of swirling dust and gas condensing under its own gravitational attraction has been shown to be too simple. The angular momentum of the cloud would have stopped the cloud condensing therefore something had to be slowing down the cloud to allow gravity to take over: electro-magnetism is the culprit. And so human knowledge advances one more step.
        Real science is always under review and real scientists are always thinking and attempting to advance human knowledge. The Green Blob have learnt nothing from the example of Bruno and others, they should be ashamed of themselves.

        1. The Green Blob have learned from their Communist cousins, e.g., Stalin, in how to silence people who question their authority and power.

        2. The Greens aren’t interested in science! Where did you get that daft idea from?

          No. The Greens want to crush the economy and impose some form of barmy socialism on us. That’s the real goal. The green is just a vehicle.

          Which is a shame, as there is much we need to do – and could – to clean up our world. That we don’t is the fault of those demented social engineering fanatics.

          1. The Greens aren’t interested in science! Where did you get that daft idea from?

            Perhaps the tone of my comment passed you by.

            I do, however, agree with your last paragraph.

  11. Morning all

    SIR – We are told to stay at home unless we are essential workers. Many took that to mean only those essential to fighting the virus, and not also those essential to keep businesses running.

    This misunderstanding has led to a far larger part of the economy shutting down than originally envisaged.

    I have found that some suppliers have furloughed all their staff, shut the door and gone home, which means finding alternative sources of supply.

    The longer this level of enforced reduced activity continues, the longer it will take to bounce back.

    Alastair MacMillan

    Port Glasgow, Renfrewshire

    SIR – My nephew usually runs a small company in Faringdon remotely from Matlock, using communications technology. For three days a month he comes down to work in these parts and stays with my wife and me.

    The urgency to supply components for respirators has meant his full-time attendance at his company. The virus means he cannot stay with us. Instead he sleeps on a bed he has bought in a converted garage in Faringdon.

    Advertisement

    His office manager and secretary work from home. His warehouseman, recently married, and with a very young child, is at home on full pay. His other employees are still at work.

    Many people, unnoticed, are making their own particular contributions in these troubled times.

    David McManamon

    Highworth, Wiltshire

    SIR – I would like acknowledgment of the unsung heroes who are keeping us connected in this time of separation.

    We all depend on internet connection, but there seems little regard for the people working round the clock in IT and energy companies.

    Susanne Hollest

    Melksham, Wiltshire

    SIR – Many businesses look to the taxpayer to subsidise their multimillion profits. It seems reasonable to claw back any furlough grants if a business continues to make profit and pay executive bonuses and dividends.

    David Parker

    Leyland, Lancashire

    SIR – Hundreds of businesses in key industries whose operations have been curtailed must continue to keep vital supplies and services going. However, the furlough scheme is an all-or-nothing measure. Staff can either work 100 per cent of the time or have to cease work entirely.

    For many businesses, reducing production isn’t as simple as chopping out half a workforce. Maintaining operations requires a broad range of staff, but for less time.

    My industry, among many others, cannot understand why this simple idea is not getting traction. We would urge the Chancellor to allow a “part furlough” of staff for some, not all, of their working week.

    Nick Allen

    CEO, British Meat Processors Association

    London EC1

    1. ‘Morning, Epi, I cannot understand why so many people want to jump on the band-waggon of using Americanisms like Furlough when ‘on leave’ is the normal English phrase.

        1. ‘Morning, Peddy, yes, I did know that it originated in 17th Century Dutch but its modern use is in the American language – not the English language. Having worked with many Americans during my time in Germany with the Royal Air Force, they took furlough while we went on leave.

          1. Since they like to simplify spellings, so plough became plow, why isn’t it spelled furlow?
            {-((

  12. SIR – It is good news indeed that with the acquittal of Cardinal George Pell “a great miscarriage of justice has been overturned”, as Sir Edward Leigh observed (Letters, April 9).

    The case of Cardinal Pell has remarkable parallels to that of the late Bishop George Bell of Chichester. He was accused posthumously of a single instance of child sexual abuse over 70 years ago. Two independent legal investigations found the allegations were unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, the relevant church authorities have been slow to restore Bell to his place in local and national church history.

    Dr Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

  13. SIR – We oldies (I am 82) remember how to queue (even if now two metres apart), filling in the time with humour and general chit-chat.

    The younger generation seem to spend the time on their mobiles complaining about how long they have to wait to enter the supermarket.

    A good side of present arrangements is that there is no queue at the checkout. It’s fast and efficient.

    Thelma Ramsey

    Rainhill, Lancashire

  14. These policemen are an embarrassment.

    SIR – In the early days of the lockdown, senior police officers urged their colleagues to exercise common sense and to remember the principle of policing by consent.

    Now, Chief Constable Nick Adderley of Northamptonshire (report, April 10) tells us that the three-week grace period is over, and that he is to ramp up enforcement of the regulations.

    What is there to ramp up, if his officers have been doing their job properly? Surely most people are following the regulations, and therefore he knows who to target.

    The Chief Constable’s threat to search shopping trolleys is ridiculous. If a shop is legally open and selling what can legally be sold, how on earth can it be illegal to buy it?

    It is not for the police to decide what is necessary here, as Parliament has already done so by allowing certain shops to open for business.

    Phil Lloyd

    Yarm, North Yorkshire

    1. Apparently the army and the police are now patrolling our beaches to keep people off.
      Perhaps while they are at it they can organise sending back to where they came from, all the septic invaders of our shores.

      1. Any virus that survives the winds blowing off the North Sea deserves to flourish.
        What a trouper.

        1. Ah, yes, Anne, that’s the lazy wind – it doesn’t go round you but rather straight through, chilling one to the bone.

          2. Even inland a bit……… my uncle’s funeral took place in January 1996 at Bradfield Church. That wind was more than chilling. One of my aunt’s favourite eating places was the pier at Harwich.

          4. Shingle Street brings thoughts of POLEX 72.
            It was the shore location of a pipeline pumping station that carried AVTUR from an RFA tanker lying off Orford Ness to RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters for the Yanks to burn in their Phantoms
            I was a young 20yo Sapper at the time.

          5. On a sombre note, a visit to Shingle Street was the last time my mother left the house. She was so weak, my father had to carry her back up the beach.

        1. That’s already crossed my mind.
          Something is not quite right about the virus pandemic.
          I also read that people who have been inoculated against TB as I would guess many elderly people would have been. Are less likely to catch the virus.
          But if that is true why are elderly people who would have been inoculated aged 13 be so susceptible to the virus and resulting death.
          I wonder if their pre prescribed medication is put on hold during treatment, which then causes their demise.

          1. I thought the official explanation is that some prescribed medications make cv symptoms worse.
            Haven’t seen the TB theory – where did that one come from?

          3. Medically this is not TB. Corvid 19 is an influenza variant akin to Sars at one end and flu at the other.

            On the lockdown – I don’t know. As the thread is saying public confidence and happiness with the police is fading at the same rate as common sense.

            Is the lock down necessary? Again, another question better answered by experts. It’s true that we are really reducing strain on the NHS (which has proven unable to cope at the current level). However by proxy we’re protecting each other, as it’s no good falling ill and having to go to hosp. for intubation only to find it’s full of folk needing the same.

          4. Something else someone has made up about thd TB wibbers.
            As was the nonsense about people who use ibuprofen gel being susceptible.

  15. Morning again

    SIR – Our lovely Cornish lanes are lined with an array of spring flowers. One thing is missing though – discarded fast-food wrappings.

    James Goad

    Bodmin, Cornwall

    SIR – The sun is shining and the birds are singing. There is no traffic noise and no contrails overhead. My dog and I are well walked. The sauvignon blanc is cold and refreshing. Tonight the stars will blaze, as there is no pollution to obscure them. I am not working, but may still be paid.

    These are like the halcyon days of my youth, when Harold Macmillan said: “You’ve never had it so good.” Let’s make the most of it.

    Andy Trask

    Liphook, Hampshire

    SIR – While ridding a vegetable garden of its weeds, it occurred to me that this country has not been so quiet since Francis Kilvert wrote his diaries in the 1870s. The air ambulance heading for Musgrove Hospital was the only sound other than birdsong in three hours. Bliss.

    Hamish Grant

    Chard, Somerset

    SIR – In these heartbreaking days, a little ray of sunshine came to my garden on Thursday. My swallows returned to their garage after a journey of thousands of miles, and have raised my spirits enormously.

    Judith Manners

    Stafford

    SIR – My wife and I are both over 70 and have stayed at home for almost three weeks.

    Apart from missing seeing our children and grandchildren, we have realised that our home is the very best place in the world.

    John Davenport

    Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire

      1. No noise? Yes, there is. As the sun is out, the scum have started playing their music at horrific volume in competition with one another. The bloke building a giant shed, with daily arrivals of builders and so on seems to think he needs to shout obscenities with every word to his chum who is 6 feet away. He in turn replies at the same volume. I assume to be heard over their blaring radio – which they are ‘singing’ (and i use the term lightly) along to. At the top of their discordant voices.

  16. SIR – On March 7, you published a letter from me asking whether legalising assisted dying could mean “the elderly would feel almost obliged to take this option to avoid being burdens”.

    We now read (report, April 7) that a GP surgery in Wales sent letters to chronically ill patients inviting them to fill in do-not-resuscitate forms, with the benefit that “scarce ambulance resources can be targeted to the young and fit who have a greater chance”.

    Scientifically the case is unarguable. Yet each recipient of this letter is an individual, feeling human being, with just one chance at life. They may be fathers, daughters, wives or husbands, and some may be the only family that a relative has left, as is sadly likely to be the case for my own wife one day.

    The NHS trust has apologised, but the deed is done. This is how the numbing of our humanity starts.

    Victor Launert

    Matlock Bath, Derbyshire

    2. That they thought such was even moral, ethical let alone legal speaks volumes.

      It makes me wonder increasingly if the state sees it’s continuation as the goal in preference to it’s assigned and expected duty. After all, it’s far easier to treat people if they’re all at home bottled up. Far easier to control the population if you’ve an emergency with sudden and unexpected powers of authority.

      I remember once saying – rather glibly – that the state won’t be happy until we’re all locked up in our state controlled homes, doing our state controlled exercises, eating our state controlled dinners for our state controlled diet, going to work in state controlled vehicles using state controlled fuel putting in our state assigned hours of work in our state assigned job and then coming home again to our state controlled family and praising big state for it’s glorious work.

      At the time it was a critique of Labour’s increasingly authoritarian insanity. Now it just seems par for the course. Worse, people are happy with it!

      1. ‘Morning, Paul.

        Things is fine, thanks. Beautiful sunny morning, just having breakfast of goat’s milk, then back to bed to catch up on zzzzz because Missy kept waking me for a cuddle during the night. Watching lots of history films on youtube during the day.

        E come vanno le cose per ti?

      2. I learnt that at prep school and Caroline still uses it to teach grammar to our “A” level students.ou any other Spooner riddles for us? For example: What was the difference between Paul Daniels’ Show and a line of knickerless girl dancers doing the Can Can at the Folies Bergères?

        Well, the first is a cunning row of stunts and the second is a stunning row of ……………..

        3. A-level students? I distinctly recall learning about the use of commas in primary school….

          1. Yes, so did I.

            But Caroline is teaching today’s students some of whom do not know what a verb or a noun is and have great difficulty with prepositions, pronouns, adverbs and adjectives. When I was teaching over 40 years ago I found the old Common Entrance English paper that I had sat as a 12 year old and I showed it to my Upper Sixth none of whom could do it. The first question asked candidates to identify four subordinate adverbial clauses – one of time, one of place and one of result and a noun clause – in a short passage of prose.

  19. Let us not forget the process of de-industrialisation of the West that was supercharged by the Kyoto Accord (1997; ratified 2005) and its subsequent incarnations which lumbered the UK and other western economies with massive additional costs on primary industries. The advantage was handed to the developing world and China gobbled up the lion’s share of that advantage. Many sub-Saharan countries are even further behind today than they were 20 years ago.

    The Chinese, and to a much lesser extent the Indians, translated that advantage into production of tat but more importantly, the production of components essential to the West’s supply chain. (e.g. making windscreen glass is very energy intensive).

    The majority of virtue signalling western governments were asleep at the wheel and we are all buggered. Thanks greenies.

    1. Maybe this current farrago will open the eyes of many who vaguely went along with the ‘green thing’ because it seemed a nice idea,

      2. Or maybe not. When we eventually get back to the new “normal”, the greenies will be worse than ever as they will be able to compare the current lack of pollution to the usual, and demand that more businesses are shut down for good.

  20. Sign of the times (sighs, deeply).

    The chap who I think of as “the youngster who does the trees” has arrived – and revealed that he will be 60 next birthday. He still looks about 35….

    1. What matters is how old the MR thinks you look……and answer there came none. {:^))

          1. Good…after experiencing endless trouble with new specs a few years ago, including 4 visits for realignment of a pair of vari-focals, I finally rejected them and reverted to my old pair. They then sent them somewhere to be fitted with “a more expensive lens”. Bingo! Cheapo lenses are presumably the way to keep their specs cheaper than those of their competitors. Haven’t been back since, and no repetition of the problem either.

            You get what you pay for.

    4. We had a similar thing happen last Autumn.
      Elderly Chum’s self employed gardener arrived. We looked, he looked; and realised we last saw him as a teenage boy who used to fish in the ‘lake’ beside the old farmhouse where we were living at the time.
      He is now a middle aged man who has done years in the RAF and also worked as a postie.

    2. As long as they keep moving they are safe, but sit down to eat a Mars and they are stuffed. ‘Right sunshine, it’s off to chokey for you’.

  22. When Britain needed them most, why did the churches lock their doors?
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/10/britain-needed-did-churches-lock-doors/

    I think that when David Cameron appointed his fellow Etonian Justin Welby to be Archbishop of Canterbury there was a hidden tacit agenda:

    “Rowan Williams did his best to destroy the Church of England: you must succeed where he failed and destroy it beyond all recovery as quickly as possible.”

    1. I think you are implying a level of intelligence that Cameron doesn’t possess.
      I suspect a nice fluffy desire to give a fellow Etonian a job was the motivation.
      I don’t honestly think Cameron ponders deeply on Christianity. Or is even capable of it.

    2. Further more RT…..is there now an ongoing tacit agenda ?
      I read earlier that the worlds far left along side recognised world dictatorships are attempting to completely take over the running of the UN.

        2. Mr Neuer argued the hard-left allying with ultra-reactionary groups, provided they identify as anti-western, goes a long way beyond the UN.

          He said: “In the past two decades, from around the time of 9/11 and afterwards, you would routinely find in Britain at some kind of stop the war rally radical left-wing activists who’s supposed values and ideals are equality, marching arm in arm with Hamas and Hezbollah supporters who are the most fascist, fundamentalist and racist elements in society today.

          “The Hamas charter is an anti-Semitic text. They don’t hide these things.
          “The fact that the radical left is basically sacrificing all of their main principles – equality of women, gays, anti-racism – to join hands with as Jeremy Corbyn said “my friends” from Hamas, “my friends” from Hezbollah, this is not rational.

          “We have to understand that in life although various political groups proport to have all sorts of principles and rational policies that guide them in truth things in life don’t always work that way and you have to look at outcomes to discern our true motives.

          “If the outcome is that you are marching arm in arm with Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, and your actions empower those who openly seek to murder Jews, who do it and say they want to do it more, then maybe that is your motive.”

    1. ‘Morning, Anne, sad to say it is nature, red in tooth and claw. The human species isn’t much better as evidenced over the last few years, here in Britain and now world-wide.

  24. Apropos the discussion, yesterday, on the failure to have letters pubished in the DT; here is today’s missive that also failed to get past the editor:

    SIR — The abomination of MPs awarding themselves an extra £10,000 apiece to “work from home” is inexcusable avaricious rapacity at its worst.

    The economy is plummeting towards oblivion as countless numbers have lost their means of livelihood yet the power-crazed, self-indulgent, corrupt megalomanics who inhabit the Palace of Westminster are still pigging-out of the public trough.

    The time is ripe, methinks, for a new — much less nefarious — system of governance.

    A Grizzly B
    Sweden

    I note that Victor Launert has his usual letter published on a weekly basis, as do Philip Duly, Mick Ferrie, Lord Lexden and a handful more of Christopher Howse’s personal favourites.

    1. Too many syllables, Grizz. The subbies can’t deal with long words.
      Morning!

    2. The money was awarded by IPSA not MPs. It’s not an extra 10k for working from home it’s an extra 10k on their office expenses budget. Of course at this time usual rules on invoicing and what have you have been suspended so it’s likely that a fair portion of this money will end up in the pockets of MPs but maybe misinformation is the reason you didn’t get published. On the other hand plenty of misinformation does seem to pass the letters page sub-editor.

      1. Cynicism reigns supreme where politicos are concerned.
        Tough on the decent ones, but you can understand how it has happened.

    3. Make them contractors – subject to IR35 of course.

      Pay them £250 a day. From that they have to provide for themselves – same as we do.

      They’d soon reverse their nonsense legislation. These greedy, grasping fools need a taste of the world the rest of us live in. Scrap IPSA, make MPs speak to HMRC – no, not the special MP branch, the normal one. The one that takes 3 weeks to open a letter.

    4. Perhaps it didn’t get published because it’s missing 4 commas. Just a thought.

  25. Mengele thought for the day.

    As yet another example of anti-social produce destruction emerges, where idiots handle and lick and otherwise ruin foodtuffs, these people should be arrested, infected with Covid-19 and then used as human guinea pigs to test experimental drugs.
    If they die, tough, if they live, a tested cure could be found faster.

    Win-win.

  26. 318059+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    “Workers are essential in keeping business & the economy running”
    We the people know that & the governing political elite know that.
    Let us not kid ourselves many of the political elite are still smarting very much so, over the result of the evening of the 24/6/2016.
    Then we have Germany sending us a consignment of much needed ventilators heralding the cry from the pro eu politico, “see they are not bad those old krauts maybe another look at our exit is in order.”
    Tell me I am wrong in thinking was not the finance for ample critical care beds & ventilators heading for outer space via an Indian space program ?

    You can get an awful lot of beds, ventilators & smarties for £98 million.

    1. The days when I was happy to display my naked torso to an unflattering public are long gone but this is a question of personal vanity rather than prudishness. Mind you I have never been particularly phased by nudity and am not shocked by the sight of healthy human bodies.

      Attitudes have changed in the last forty years. Seldom nowadays do you see women ‘topless’ on the beach – in the late 70’s and 80’s pretty young women almost always discarded their bikini tops.

    2. Reminds me of the old man who complained to the police that the woman next door was sunbathing naked in her garden. Plod arrived and looked at the situation and said “Well I can’t see her” The old man replied “Well not from here maybe but if you go up to the attic and look through the fanlight you can”

        3. I’ve never enjoyed sunbathing.
          I just get hot, cross and head achy. And totally bored.

          3. A guy is sunbathing naked, face up, on a beach. He falls asleep and a wind blows up covering him in sand except his willie. 2 old ladies were passing and one said “Would you look at that Ada, I used to dream of those when I was a teenager, I couldn’t get enough of them in my twentys, then I married and had plenty , nowadays I’m not interested in them and the bloody things are growing in the wild.

          4. A guy is sunbathing naked, face up, on a beach. He falls asleep and a wind blows up covering him in sand except his willie. 2 old ladies were passing and one said “Would you look at that Ada, I used to dream of those when I was a teenager, I couldn’t get enough of them in my twentys, then I married and had plenty , nowadays I’m not interested in them and the bloody things are growing in the wild.

      1. Natch. Boys’ toys and a chance to bully the GBP.
        Every unsuccessful chicken farmer’s dream.

    6. ‘Afternoon, Mags, the words in that article that Plod will ignore, “… where the person has no intention to cause alarm or distress …”

      My emphasis on ‘intention’

  29. DT headline and subheading. Joined up thinking? Thought not

    Social distancing measures may need to remain in place ‘indefinitely’, government experts believe 
    Plans being drawn up in Whitehall could see Britain begin to emerge from lockdown next month

    1. There are many people from whom I should be glad to be at least six feet away…

    2. At least we can abandon the wretched imported habit of cheek kissing (a la continentals) upon meeting. Nothing wrong with tipping your hat.

    3. I’m supposed to be going down to Cornwall in mid May, so I hope the last sentence is correct, but not the first.

      1. Was that first picture taken before or after India had built another half dozen coal fired power stations?

  31. As the scumbag MSM seem to think it is the personal responsibility of Ministers to provide PPE equipment to the front line it becomes obvious that every procurement manager and their staffs in the NHS have no roles whatsoever
    Sack the bleeding lot!!
    Edit
    Tipped off by this tweet
    https://twitter.com/OilPaul/status/1248863320150589443
    It appears the MOD are indeed taking over functions from useless bureaucrats
    “They will be used in a range of roles, such as providing medical and logistical support for the NHS; acting as liaison officers; and deploying specialist skills such as engineering and accounting.”
    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-support-force-the-mods-contribution-to-the-coronavirus-response

    1. The procurement managers who earn twice as much as the nursing staff, yes we have heard all that before .

      Morning Rik

      What are the BBC / C4 and the rest trying to prove .. are they saying that nincompoop Labour are more capable of running the NHS, I don’t think so some how .

      1. Morning all 😊
        Ridiculous isn’t it TB.
        And bloody politicians are helping them selves to 10 grand each because they are not at work ???
        All front line medical staff deserve recognition. But the only people who get recognised and are openly presented with Oscars baftas gongs etc for doing what they enjoy and are highly paid for. Akin to TV cooks awarded OBE’s !

    2. Morning, Rik.

      Er, remember that the MoD has a record of shockingly back accounting……

    3. The Military Hospital in Colchester knocked spots off the NHS institutions. Expectant mothers of my generation would practically kill to give birth there rather than in the local Mat. Home.
      We sometimes worked with military trained nurses, and, again, their training and discipline shone through.

      1. You wouldn’t have wanted to give birth in Tidworth Military Hospital, as I did in 1970. the nurses were certainly disciplined – the patients were, too.

    4. It’s not so long since the MOD procurement staff got it in the neck for failing to provide the right equipment for our tropps in Afghanistan & Iraq. Have they suddenly become the experts in medical equipment now?

      1. Big government has always been useless. Once you get to any particular size people spend less time working and more time administrating.

        I remember once long, long ago building a Beowulf parallel computing array for one of the scientists in our lab. It took so long to get the specification he wanted through purchasing that by the time they’d sent him the order back to approve we had already built a 30 device cluster and produced results.

        If the officials making the decisions are so slow to adapt to change then they should be removed.

        But then I once asked a friend why central government gave money to the council, which her team then distributed to schools. Great chunks taken from the budget at each point. She didn’t really know except to think that the idea of monies going directly to the customer was ‘preposterous’. Such is how the statist thinks.

    1. My local paper has an article about a lady whose mother & father died in hospital together within 24 hours of each other. They were in adjoining beds, holding hands.

      2. Good morning, Bill

        Someone posted a week or two ago that Diane Abbott had demanded that those working at Holby City should join the NHS to help. I think that Corbyn then suggested that those who worked in Emergency Ward 10 and Doctor Kildare should come out of retirement and that Doctor Finley should be exhumed.

        1. She wanted to get Dr Feel Good involved as well.
          It sounded like a plan to Diane.

          1. And she wanted to start a campaign for Dr Harold Shipman to be released from prison.

    1. Police men and women have decided that brains are not essential things to have so they have left their own at home.

    2. I read that there is only enough blood in the male body to let only of the following organs can function at any one time, brain or penis.
      I wonder what he was thinking of?

      1. But these days, many women police officers – colloquially known as “Dickless Traceys” – are no better.
        ;¬)

    3. I posted this rather late last night, so many may not have seen it. Maybe it warrants repetition:

      I seem to remember that amongst the other requirements to join our police force (when we had one), such as men had to be at least 5’9″ in height (or was it 5’10”?) and women had to be 5’6″, that they were required to be able to read a page of small text at arm’s length without spectacles.

      They scrapped the height requirements some time ago.

      I’m now beginning to think that not only have they scrapped the ability to see small text at arm’s length, but they’ve scrapped the ability to read at all. The way some of these people have been going on the past week or two, inventing law on the spot defies belief.

      1. Er Its the police service now.
        No force to be used unless a soft target. ie supermarket shopper. ( woman on her own is best)

      2. Used to vary across the country. Met police minimum height was 5’8″ men and 5’4″ women. City of London, who used to call the met the goblins, it was 5’11” and 5’5″. I think it was Nottinghamshire that had a requirement of 6′ for men.

    4. Join the club. Some thirty years ago, I watched a sergeant blatantly lie in court. I then realised that the imperfect organisation that my father had belonged to had become the enemy.

      1. Inward looking, defensive, likes to e told that it’s the best in the world (it isn’t); the Police or the NHS?

        1. If you keep repeating the mantra “It’s the best in the world” then you never have to put any effort into improving things, or
          ever have to change anything.

          Zero effort by management.

    3. Fantastic, Bill, I have the complete one somewhere in my archives. A classic example of several men and their woofers.

      1. As I have not got my reading glasses, I read that as a “fine tart degree” and I thought – well, some people have all the luck!

  37. Good Morning Folks,

    Another glorious morning under lockdown.
    God does work in mysterious ways.

    1. And it hasn’t rained for weeks.
      With all the hand washing we could have a water shortage.

      1. My normally dryish area had lots of thunder at 10pm, followed by a third of an inch of unforecast rain!

      2. My normally dryish area had lots of thunder at 10pm, followed by a third of an inch of unforecast rain!

    3. …and indeed the Association of Chief Police Officers – another seemingly unaccountable organisation that seems to decide, unhindered, which of our laws they propose to observe.

      ‘Morning, JBF.

        1. Same thing, just a name change from the discredited ACPO. Stand by for another soon!

      2. I raise the subject following Priti Pate’s order to the rozzers to reel their necks in. I am sure that she was strongly advised not to do this by her civil servants at the Home Office – not out of any desire to protect the independence of the fuzz from political interference, but because they have a long-standing and not particularly well-hidden agenda. Not for nothing is it sometimes known as the Department for Cracking Down!

    1. In the RN often followed by the comment “I therefore suggest that you follow the rules to the letter!”

      1. My Dolly is only 3 years old. Dotty looks somewhat older given the size of her paws. Though i must say after my experience with the dog sitter that Dolly doesn’t care about gender….she just likes to snuggle.

  41. A BTL Comment and my response with a Tw@ter link.

    Arfur Mo
    11 Apr 2020 8:40AM
    Our local council appears to be in shutdown with recycling centres closed, the planning department not replying to emails and adult social services sitting on their hands and leaving carers with no respite and no useful support. Yet I suspect council employees are still on full pay for doing even less than usual.

    Why exactly should I pay my (recently increased) council tax in these circumstances?

    Flag13Like
    Reply

    Robert Spowart
    11 Apr 2020 8:57AM
    @Arfur Mo I wonder what contingency funding the councils have in place to clear up the inevitable increase in fly-tipping?

    https://twitter.com/CllrAlanG/status/1248626068417699841

    1. Apparently the PTB are surprised that so many people are not going to work because they’re self isolating. Spring, pleasant weather, out in the garden, telly for the evenings, it’s quite unfathomable isn’t it.

      2. Swap 80% of wages for 94 quid a week SSP. Yeah that makes sense, if you only earn about £150 per week maybe.

      3. It reminds me of those patients who, having got leave of absence from work for a dental appointment, failed to keep said appointment & instead went to the beach.

    2. Instead of just photographing it, pick it up, have the tip opened and get rid of it.

      You know, be useful!

    3. Fly-tipping is like the church steeple which appears out of the reservoir in a once in a blue moon drought – always been there but only now becoming visible to most people.

      I’ve enjoyed a few crossed swords with the local council over the dumping of domestic rubbish in the street but only get a head in the sand response.

      A programme on cars I recently saw said that cars are getting bigger because people are getting bigger. At what point are our elite going to wake up and realise that, despite ‘austerity’, an increasing population is buying more and having more stuff to get rid of?

      Incidentally, Cllr Alan Graves (above) can call the dumpers all the names under the sun till the cows come home and then call them some more but it won’t change the situation.

      Like many things, the issue has been swept under the carpet for years rather than having been tackled.

      1. They have a good network of décheteries in France where you can take your rubbish and dump in the appropriate skips dedicated to specific types of rubbish.

        Since this system was introduced there has been very little fly tipping in our part of France.

      2. They have a good network of décheteries in France where you can take your rubbish and dump in the appropriate skips dedicated to specific types of rubbish.

        Since this system was introduced there has been very little fly tipping in our part of France.

        1. We have a good local tip along the lines you mention, Rastus, but, like Bill says, such places are now shut.

          That said, the issue around here goes much further than taking stuff to the tip – even for those who have the transport and the inclination. For whatever reason, people now dump domestic rubbish in the street – usually in black bin bags. That’s in addition to the bulky items such as furniture.

          I won’t ramble on about what I’ve seen on my travels round town over the years but it’s been bad. The current lockdown is making people aware of a long-standing problem which has been getting worse and ignored by the powers that be.

          For me, there needs to be a basic question asked, i.e. why is it happening?

          1. “…why is it happening?”

            Because national and local government see waste as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be grasped.

          2. I agree.

            Our local council responds, in a fire-fighting manner I feel, to reports of fly-tipping, only for the problem to reappear in the same locations a few weeks later. A bit like cutting weeds off at ground level rather than digging the roots out.

          3. There are very few people working in either local or national politics have the remotest idea of how to run a business.

            Most of us lack this ability. I have spent half my working life as an employee and we only started running our own business when I was 43 yeas old and Caroline was 27 and I must say we had to learn a great deal very quickly if we were to survive.

            I think a few years of self-employment with no state benefits should be essential training for politicians and civil servants. Even if they fail in business they will at least learn something about the practical difficulties and hardships that political and administrative decisions can cause.

          4. A lot of local tips have very limited opening hours (usually while everyone else is at work like 10am-3pm and not open every day) and they won’t let anyone in who has to use a works van. My son only has his work van and no other vehicle, so he is unable to take any domestic waste from our home to the tip. Anything we might have has to fit in my Yaris. I imagine there are a lot of people who can’t be bothered to try in the end.

          5. “I imagine there are a lot of people who can’t be bothered to try in the end.”

            I’d argue that there are many who don’t try at all, not to mention those without transport. I’d also argue – till I’m blue in the face – that it’s those people who need addressing, with a view to finding out why their behaviour is as it is and whether things can be changed to help their situations.

            It’s all very well the council saying “it’s people’s behaviour” and making similar comments stating the bleedin’ obvious but it does nothing to tackle the problem.

            It was people’s behaviour which cleared the shelves recently but the supermarkets didn’t shrug their shoulders and accept it – they took action.

            Right across our society things need to change.

          6. Ever since Councils closed tips and charged exorbitant fees for industrial waste, can they wonder about the sharp increase in fly-tipping?

            Another gravy-train for the fat-cat councillors who dare not attend election hustings and are currently breathing sighs of relief over the postponement of the Council Elections for another year of unmitigated troughing.

          7. Industrial stuff and bulky domestic items are only part of the issue around here, although a significant part. My main grouse is the amount of domestic rubbish being dumped in the street.

            Unfortunately, we have a council which seems to think that if it ignores the problem, it’ll go away. Not is it not going away, it’s getting worse.

          8. I live near one of our council tips (Brum). Your first sentence was never more appropriate. Fly-tipping was bad enough before they imposed restriction but now it’s a nightmare. Can’t wait to move.

          10. Despite funding it with my rates, I need a permit to use my local recycling centre (aka the tip). I compost my green waste and get rid of everything else in the grey bin. It helps that I have a Rayburn and open fires. A lot of stuff just gets burned.

          11. Our local tip (in Birmingham) is now closed though weekly bin collections are continuing as normal, plus they were collecting on Good Friday and will do so on Easter Monday. Despite this, fly-tipping is a perpetual problem.

  42. I live on the edge of Hurn forest and 300yds down the road is a holiday park which is supposed to be closed. Lots of cars from London and the Midlands came down yesterday to stay at the park. Cars are not being allowed in the park so they are parked all down the road which my back gate opens onto.

    Where is plod? When I left the bowls club after carrying out essential maintenance I found under my wipers an A4 sheet from plod suggesting my journey was not necessary and I had probably killed lots of people.

    1. Morning DB

      I expect you were really annoyed , probably furious . Plod has been busy turning away caravans and mobile homes and cars with canoes on their roofs. touristy car parks are closed around here , and the police are very busy .

      I wonder how strict the border force are with all the illegals who are coming ashore in their semi rigids.. are they sending them back to France ?

      1. 318059+ up ticks,
        Morning TB,
        No, operation GB abuse continues unhindered,
        nothing would surprise me now if I was told by
        the establishment that the invading incomers
        were given a plastic card access from the nearest hole in the wall, ( map supplied) to tied them over.
        As long as the electorate adhere to the same lab/lib/con voting pattern things will run smoothly
        gaining momentum downhill, until it is compulsory prayer time at the mosque.

      3. Providing the usual taxi service on behalf of the people traffickers. BF are complicit in the trafficking.

    2. Write to the Police Complaint Authority; get on to your MP; the independent press; local radio

      1. Sparkey, you must have heard the definition of the Shackleton – 40,000 rivets flying in close formation!

        1. Sparkey? I haven’t got a magic piano although that has been said about my organ :o)

          2. My mistake – a major brain-fart – of course I meant ‘Spikey’ as was and not the battery boy.

    4. A neighbour of ours is renting out a converted garage, advertised on Airbnb.

      Every few days one lot leaves and another lot arrive. Vehicles parked in the narrow street. No plod in these rural parts.

    2. I wonder if the Chinese used Ferguson, his model and his Imperial team for their projections?

      And if not, why not?

    4. Many institutions have given China free access to our technical expertise. The Chinese students pay triple the normal fees and return to China armed with our advanced technologies.

      It is the same with our manufacturing companies who export industries wholesale in pursuit of profits for the few.

      There is irrefutable evidence that this latest virus was engineered in a Wuhan laboratory as part of a biological weapons programme and designed to disable American military might in any conflict. It seems to have been leaked by a researcher.

      Imperial College London has close ties with several pharmaceutical companies such as GSK. China has similar Pharma with close ties to Imperial College.

      It is fairly obvious where this is going. Massive debilitating costs to India, Japan, Australia, Europe and America. Lawsuits in the tens of trillions, isolation of China and repatriation of our industries. There remains the possibility of military revenge.

      1. I don’t believe the” leak” was accidental, John.

        I think we are watching the first peace-time biological warfare
        deliberately aimed at destroying the West.

        Seems to be working well, so far…

    5. Having watched the video linked above by Stephanroi and also earlier today, I was wondering why so many academic institutions throughout the world were sharing informationso freely with China. I would have thought it was dubious before CV but now it looks positively suicidal of the West.

      1. £££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

  44. NHS says coronavirus volunteer scheme taking time to get up to speed. Fri 10 Apr 2020 17.22 BST

    NHS officials have said it has taken longer than anticipated to get the coronavirus volunteer programme up and running after many of the 750,000 who signed up complained that they had not yet been given jobs.

    Like the collection of aluminium household items for the aircraft industry at the commencement of WWII this publicity gimmick is proving to be a problem of how to get rid of them!

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/10/nhs-coronavirus-volunteer-ionger-than-expected

    1. Yo Minty

      I remember as a lad a seeing a Spitfire, made from Cast Iron, taking to the skies over Coventry.

      It had started its; take off run (on the MI ) from the Watford Gap Service station.

      I understand the noise from the Merlin Engine scared the whippets and blew the scarves eveywhere

        2. Still do.
          Some are still flying, others mounted in tractor-pulling tractors. See youtube for more!

    2. Yo Minty

      I remember as a lad a seeing a Spitfire, made from Cast Iron, taking to the skies over Coventry.

      It had started its; take off run (on the MI ) from the Watford Gap Service station.

      I understand the noise from the Merlin Engine scared the whippets and blew the scarves eveywhere

    3. Vast quantities of cast iron railings were removed from properties in Edinburgh in order to be turned into Spitfires. When it was realised by the authorities (Edinburgh City Council – numpties then and now) that the metal was actually useless the beautiful handcrafted metalwork was stacked in a yard where it remained forever. Allover the nice parts of Edinburgh there are low walls with the stumps of metal still embedded

      1. We have them in Colchester. You probably have to be a sad person like me to spot the signs, but they are still there.

        1. 318059+ up ticks,
          Morning Anne,
          I use to have a meal break in an old house off the quay shared with a mouse.
          Mickey use to come out for a portion of sarnie, it was quite entertaining what with me tooled up with whip & chair.

      2. It happened all over the country. Look on almost any low stone garden wall in these parts and you’ll see the stumps.

    4. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when the ‘scheme’ was first announced…

  45. A tale of empty beds:

    COVID. ‘With’ ‘Of’ or ‘Because of’

    6th April 2020

    Here is a section from the Health Service Journal (HSJ) in the UK, discussing the current fears of NHSE (NHS England). The article is behind a paywall.

    NHS England is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. NHS England oversees the budget, planning, delivery and day-to-day operation of the commissioning side of the NHS in England as set out in the Health and Social Care Act 2012

    Exclusive: NHSE to act over fears covid-19 focus could ‘do more harm than virus’

    ‘NHS England analysts have been tasked with the challenging task of identifying patients who may not have the virus but may be at risk of significant harm or death because they are missing vital appointments or not attending emergency departments, with both the service and public so focused on covid-19.

    A senior NHS source familiar with the programme told HSJ: “There could be some very serious unintended consequences [to all the resource going into fighting coronavirus]. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.

    “What we don’t want to do is take our eye off the ball in terms of all the core business and all the other healthcare issues the NHS normally attends to.

    “People will be developing symptoms of serious but treatable diseases, babies will be born which need immunising, and people will be developing breast lumps and need mammograms.”…

    Nuffield Trust deputy director of research Sarah Scobie said it was “a considerable worry that people are keeping away from routine and urgent health services, and also from emergency departments”.

    She added: “The PHE (public health England) data suggests there could be significant problems already developing for heart disease related conditions patients, for example. Attendances relating to myocardial infarction at emergency departments have dropped right down, whereas ambulance calls in relation to chest pain have gone right [up].’

    I suppose my first response would not be one of great surprise. In fact, it confirms what I have been saying for some time. When the great Swine Flu epidemic (that killed hardly anyone) created the last pandemic crisis in the UK, exactly the same thing happened. If, whatever you were suffering from, wasn’t Swine Flu, it didn’t seem to matter.

    In my small part of the world a small but significant number of people were diagnosed with Swine Flu. This was done over the phone, by poorly trained operatives. These people were then prescribed the (almost entirely useless Tamiflu), they then died. It turned out that they had other conditions that could, and would, have been properly treated had we not been overcome by a massive over-reaction to Swine Flu. They died because of swine flu.

    Last week, in Intermediate Care, we sent two patients into the local hospital who were seriously ill. They were both sent back almost immediately. They both died. Yes, they were ill, and may have died anyway. But I believe they should both have been admitted, and treated, and they could both still be alive. They died because of COVID.

    Ambulance crews are under very heavy pressure not to admit anyone unless absolutely necessary. Some of those, not admitted, will die.

    These people, all these people, are dying ‘because of’ COVID. Because of the fact that almost the entire focus of the NHS is now on COVID – to the virtual exclusion of anything else.

    Our local hospital now has more empty beds than at any time in history. Elective surgery has stopped, to free up resources. There is enormous managerial pressure to clear more and more people out of hospital, out of Intermediate Care beds, back home with little support available. Some of them will die because of this.

    My last blog focussed on the economic costs of the reaction to COVID. My argument was that economics, and health, do not exist in isolate bubbles. Harm to the economy will result in harm to health and vice-versa.

    Equally, if you spend all your healthcare resources trying to treat one thing, everything else will suffer, because resources are not infinite. At present we have virtually shut down the NHS to deal with COVID.

    I saw several patients yesterday while I was working in “out of hours”, who were not critically ill, but they were ill. Two of them, I felt, really needed to be followed up. A girl with weight loss over the last three months, a man with clear signs in his chest that could have been malignant.

    They will not be followed up any time soon. If at all.

    At present there is a lot of discussion about how we are categorising deaths from COVID. Anyone who dies, having been diagnosed with COVID, is considered to have died of COVID. Even if they died of something else. The died with COVID, not of COVID.

    There is, I believe, an even greater immediate problem here. Which is those who are dying because of COVID. This is not just me saying this, this is NHS England:

    “While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”

    For many years, there has been an old medical joke. It will not make you laugh out loud, but it goes like this.

    ‘The operation was a success, unfortunately the patient died.’

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/06/covid-with-of-or-because-of/

    1. A&E activity is apparently very much reduced. This could possibly be because normally A&E has a large contingent who shouldn’t be there in the first place. They should be attending their GP’s surgery but aren’t because:

      1 They are from the enriched section of society and know that no questions are asked in A&E other than strictly medical ones.
      2. Following the insane giveaway by Brown that has never been corrected, GP surgeries are frequently closed outside 9-5 weekdays…

    2. A&E activity is apparently very much reduced. This could possibly be because normally A&E has a large contingent who shouldn’t be there in the first place. They should be attending their GP’s surgery but aren’t because:

      1 They are from the enriched section of society and know that no questions are asked in A&E other than strictly medical ones.
      2. Following the insane giveaway by Brown that has never been corrected, GP surgeries are frequently closed outside 9-5 weekdays…

    3. Well, gosh! One of the questions I asked here a few days ago, was about how many beds in use and how many free compared to last year.
      As half of those who go into intensive care now die because the NHS is only using oxygen and paracetamol and nothing else they will have a case to answer. The anecdotal evidence for hydroxychloroquine is being ignored. This is despite that fact it is known drug that can be administered safely.
      A class action by the relatives of those who die as a result of the brass-necked intransigence could bankrupt the NHS if not the country.
      All we need is to discover that Boris, or some celeb, received hydroxychloroquine.

    4. A&E activity is apparently very much reduced. This could possibly be because normally A&E has a large contingent who shouldn’t be there in the first place. They should be attending their GP’s surgery but aren’t because:

      1 They are from the enriched section of society and know that no questions are asked in A&E other than strictly medical ones.
      2. Following the insane giveaway by Brown that has never been corrected, GP surgeries are frequently closed outside 9-5 weekdays…

      2. … 3. Nobody in their right mind would want to be close to a hospital unless in full bio-hazard suit.

    1. We could do with less government interference and fewer police chiefs making silly statements.

    2. Less if you can’t quantify, fewer if you can e.g. Less sugar but fewer sugar cubes.

        1. I understand that when told but my mind has always been blind to nouns, pronouns etc. But, hey ho, I’ve survived nearly 74 years and it hasn’t caused me any problems.

  47. It’s not just in the UK that the authorities have gone full-authoritarian in their efforts to clamp down on people’s lives and freedoms:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Etl42PThK5U
    Tim Pool (who supported Bernie Sanders in the last election cycle, but now is more sympathetic towards Trump):
    “Fauci Says “Immunity Cards” May Be Coming As Authoritarian Nightmare Expands Exponentially”

    People being thrown off public transport for not wearing a face mask, when face masks are not required to travel on public transport. Whole sections of stores cordoned off because they’re “non essential” goods.

    1. We think that it is an excellent idea to issue Immunity cards.

      Think of the size of the department of civil servants that would be.

      Think of the number of managerial posts available for politicians’ friends and relatives.

      Think of the respect important politicians will get when it is known what top positions are in their gift.

      1. ‘Afternoon, Janet and Mr Rashid’s organisation taking time off from forging Passports and cloning Credit cards, to forge Immunity Cards.

        Opportunities everywhere.

          1. They all live in the same hovel, Anne, so why not do the world a favour and infect each other, including Ahmed, who deserves a good old-fashioned dose of syphilis.

  48. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k79uclfr3T4
    Tucker Carlson: opening monologue where Tucker asks a lot of very relevant questions, and points out the increasing authoritarianism of the authorities. “Requests to stay at home become orders.”
    Funny how so many governments are following the same script, as if it’s coordinated…

    2. From a post I made a month ago:
      Muslim (or any other type) terrorism acts like the Corona virus, in causing chaos and damage to society. This acts as camouflage and opportunity for a take-over by the “elites” to “save” society and restore order. At the same time, freedoms are removed to ensure “safety”.
      Like boiling a frog, by the time society realises, it’s too late.
      Thus, immigration is encouraged & facilitated, virus panic encouraged, all leading to draconian curtailment of freedom to protect society. Nearly there now – look at the discussion of London lockdown.
      Never waste a good crisis.

    3. I got myself into an argument on the Hammersmith & Fulham Council FB site over their diktat that though the river path will remain open, it’s for walkers only. No running is allowed. Now I understand that runners can be extremely irritating but since when did anyone have the right to ban everyone who irritates them and to do it in such a heavy handed fashion.

    1. That chap has a pleasant enough singing voice but if I were him, I’d avoid swimming in the Pacific.

      The Japanese whaling fleet operate in those waters.
      :¬(

      1. Obese maybe but considered a living God by their standards.

        He brought happiness to his people unlike the monstrosities in Walmart that should be slowly rendered down.

        Just tell them it’s a free Spa weekend and then lock the doors.

        I’m normally quite nice……… 🙂

    1. “I didn’t know what matches and necklace referred to” , of course not Ms Shat. It almost caught me out as well? In addition to her own nasty views I think that she has some very interesting family in politics in Pakistan.

  52. The jackdaws are fiddling with their nest ontop of the chimney again , chakking away . My son used his drone outside to examine the chimney yesterday , showing a well constructed advanced nest inside the cowel , they have been busy, large twigs small twigs , strong determination etc.

    Last week one of them flew down the chimney , I was talking on the phone at the time , there was absolute chaos , soot and noise and just a swirling black frantic shape ..

    There are so many trees around, why didn’t they choose a tree, why choose our chimney.

    I am full of admiration for anything that has to use it’s beak to plot and plan a nest .. Isn’t nature wonderful, but it is still a nuisance all the same , how many chicks do they produce ..

    We don’t have a long enough ladder to remove things before they lay . I hope the sweep will be available late summer.

    1. Jackdaws are hole-nesters. Without chimneys, their natural nesting sites would be crevices in cliffs or natural holes in tree trunks. They don’t build the same sort of nest that our other common native corvids, Carrion Crows, Rooks, Magpies and Jays do.

      Their average clutch size is 5, incubation about 18 days and another month or so to fledge.

      1. I think they often under-estimate how effective that form of heating can be! Darwinism in action.

    3. Morning, Belle.
      I do like jackdaws; they are the Jack Russells of the bird world.
      However, our tolerance did stop at blocked chimneys and torrents of twigs and eggs landing in the fireplace.
      We have a grid over the chimney as does everybody round here. Our jackdaws believe in location, location, location, and have chosen a leafy suburb within easy walking distance of the shops , cinemas, restaurants and theatres. But without all that darn mortgage hassle.

      1. Morning Anne

        Love it , location location location..

        This is the first time we have been targetted by them , perhaps we have been slow off the mark by not having a grid fitted like everyone else .

        1. I do recommend it. Your chimney sweep will usually ask, but anyway, just warn him and they know how to handle it.

      2. I love the aerial warfare between our village jackdaws and the visiting flocks. I guess it’s territorial, but they really appear to enjoy themselves. Like 2 gangs of Teds meeting for a punch up.

    4. We had a crow in our sitting room a few weeks ago. What a mess! I have replaced the damper to close off the chimney and have reinforced the defences by making sure the fireguard can’t be moved. I shall have the chimney swept in the summer.

  53. Telegraph letters today:

    SIR – Our lovely Cornish lanes are lined with an array of spring flowers. One thing is missing though – discarded fast-food wrappings.

    James Goad
    Bodmin, Cornwall

    SIR – In these heartbreaking days, a little ray of sunshine came to my garden on Thursday. My swallows returned to their garage after a journey of thousands of miles, and have raised my spirits enormously.

    Judith Manners
    Stafford

  54. Well, last night the MR wanted to watch “Jane Eyre” from the National Theatre of BAMEand Cross-gendering. It was a free podcast (or YouTube) which is available or a week. To call it bollox would be unfair; it was drivel and tripe.

    Even the MR was disappointed at the production – which we turned off after 20 minutes – and watched Mark Gatiss on John Minton instead. Very good prog.

    1. We watched a recording that’s been on our hard disk for some time – a celebration of Jacqueline du Pre. Life affirming!

      1. The defining rendition of Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

        Those who know me will know I am following a young English lady whose time is half a century after Jacqueline du Pre, whose playing on the violin warranted lending her the Bucher Stradivarius for a debut concert of her own music at the Carnegie Hall in December 2019, and whose piano playing is perhaps the most sensitive and lovely I have ever encountered.

        She is currently social distancing in Vienna and whiles away her time issuing on YouTube waltz medleys on a theme of Beethoven, and has in the last week invited a virtual choir to sing her song ‘The Star of Hope’. She is also writing another opera.

        The BBC did a documentary on her a few years ago, when she was rehearsing for the full premiere of her second opera, but it was only shown once late at night, lest it be subversive. I have it on hard disk, so I might watch it again when the police drop by to order me out of the garden.

          1. It is melodic and tuneful (stuffed with ear worms), and explores the theme of love in adversity, reluctant royal duty, official incompetence, symbiotic and equal compatibility between pauper and prince, and sends up modernism.

            A lot of the right-on critics hate it, and they refused to review her Carnegie debut.

            I am hoping to see a fresh production of it in Salzburg in December, if the world has recovered from this virus by then.

    2. I sat down and watched almost 5 hours of Parsifal from the NY Met. Whether it was the warm conditions or the surfeit of wine, I dozed off halfway through the hellish second act but awoke to see Parsifal return to the Holy Ground with his spear in hand and so managed to stay awake for the final hour…

          2. I once spotted a boat named “Morpheus” in the process of being stripped down and prepared ready for its top coat. It was definitely a case of Morpheus in his Under-paints…

          4. ‘Afternoon, Stephen, bearing in mind the sexual preferences of places like San Francisco, I was amused to see a boat there with the name A Friggin’ Queen.

          5. Neat, I saw a rather dilapidated GRP cruiser on the Thames by the name of “Wet Dream”. In view of its sorry state it struck me that it had been over the Viagra Falls far too often….

          7. Wasn’t he one of the first two to climb Mount Everest along with his friend Hillary?

    3. Some years ago, the Mercury Theatre put on a production of Coriolanus with an all-male cast.
      I have never forgotten the mature actor playing Volumnia, camply flicking his head scarf over his sparse locks, and a submissive, weeping Virgilia whose day job must have been as a member of the SAS.
      And the women were bare footed. Really? Roman matriarchs dressed like slaves?

      2. That reminds me of a performance of Troilus and Cressida at Straford – must have been late 60s. Achilles was extremely camp.

        1. From what I remember of the Iliad, Achilles was rather fond of Patroclus, so maybe the actor was all too accurate.

          1. It was normal in ancient Greece to have a male lover (if one was male). I used to enjoy the books of Mary Renault.

    4. When one of your MR’s colleagues at Gresham’s (CV-H) tried to explain Christianne Roseti’s poems from a lesbian perspective she encountered a certain amount of sales resistance from our Christo who had been weaned on more traditional approaches to literature and did not respond as well as he might have done,

      I suspect that your MR, Carolyn, is rather more avant garde than I am and my Caroline is.

    5. MOH and I watched “25 Years of the Foo Fighters,” on a music channel, ie, a 2-hour show of music videos spanning their 25-year career.

      Not to everyone’s taste, but listening to music made a pleasant change, and I haven’t listened to their music for a while.

      Judging by everyone else’s viewing, I’m definitely in the low-brow category

      1. I was once typing a long paragraph of something very important. So absorbed, I forgot to keep pressing “save”.
        Along came Joe, the cat, and “whoosh” it was all gone.

      1. My thoughts exactly, Kaypea. Can anyone on here explain to me what a “poke” is? I know there is a crude meaning to the word, but my laptop is regularly telling me that I have been “poked”. What exactly does that (in computerese) mean?

        1. ‘Afternoon’ Elsie, Apropos “A pig in a poke.” The poke is a sack or bag preventing you seeing the article you are buying. Maybe your ‘pokers’ are all in sacks.

          1. Thanks to NtN. I soon learnt that when I lived in Scotland. In the early months after buying a small number of items in a shop I was often asked “Would you like a poke?” and I turned bright red!

          2. Obviously the Scots had not been introduced to the more tasteful practice of sharing a nice fruit crumble.

        2. Its the equivalent of teenagers affectionately nudging each other when they use to gather in public places. As they do not go out now, or in normal times, the social meeja means of batting your eyes at another, is the poke. Poke back and you might get invited for more than you bargained!

          1. Thanks, Kaypea, what a lot of lost opportunities I’ve missed through ignorance! It’s amazing what you learn on the NoTLe site. (© Annie Allan.)

      2. No idea. A friend shared it on FB. The pics show on there so I copied the source address.

    1. The volcano Krakatoa, surely.

      There seems to be a fashion these days amongst the children pretending to be reporters to get their words in the wrong order.

      They do the same with ships.

    3. Now, If we had taken note of St Greta, none of this would have happened. Oy, you over there in the cheap seats, stop sniggering.

    1. Yes that was linked earlier in the day too – it is well worth watching and thinking about.

  58. The politicians, “experts” and MSM have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8210133/Terrified-public-worried-coronavirus-NOT-want-lockdown-eased-research-shows.html

    Terrified public are ‘very very worried’ about coronavirus and do NOT want the lockdown eased, official research shows
    Nine in ten Britons are complying with lockdown measures imposed on March 23
    Polling data found 62 percent of Britons have adhered to social distancing
    The Sage committee due to meet next week to discuss the lockdown extension

    It will be very intertesting to see what happens re lockdown enforcement on 23/24 April and whether the lockdown will finish on 23 May.

      2. In this instance, and looking at the vigilantes chasing away sunbathers, I will reserve judgement on the source.

      2. There often are, it reassures me that Joe public might not be quite as stupid as I fear.

        BUT, one must always recall that the vast majority of the public hardly read newspapers at all, let alone bother to comment on the articles.

    5. God’s law vs the law of man. I think that we know the answer in our ‘communities’.

      1. It gave me an extreme longing for days of old in the hazy dim and distant past …. I really, really wanted to go out for a lovely pub lunch with every fibre of my being.

        1. Thank you John. On the email they sent they included the recipe which I tried to include. I’m sure there’s a way to do it but it’s beyond me.

    2. The best brownie in the world is the one made by Caroline with walnuts from our garden.

      Of course it has to be gluten free because of her Coeliac Disease but my experience of gluten free cakes is that they are just as good as gluten abundant cakes even though most gluten free bread is inedible.

        2. As a rub across the buttocks is not allowed any more, the lady’s affections have to be gained by more subtle means. It is Saturday night after all!

  60. James Delingpole
    Why I’ve never regretted turning down Have I Got News For You
    11 April 2020, 2:38pm

    They pay you a lot of money to go on Have I Got News for You? Around £5,000, I think, which is a decent whack if you’re a starving hack. But still I turned it down when they asked me on a couple of years ago and I’ve never felt the slightest flicker of regret. Just in case I’m ever tempted, though, I’m going to keep my recording of this week’s episode as a cruel but salutory reminder that HIGNFY is to political satire what Covid-19 is to economic growth.

    Maybe it’s unfair to kick a programme when it’s down: spavined by the ludicrous lockdown rules where instead of appearing in a studio and taking their chances, all the panelists get filmed in their homes (by crews wearing actual PPE suits, apparently) and have to try to be funny when there’s no audience, no atmosphere and no room for quick-fire interjections.

    Then again, maybe they should have thought of that, before they broadcast more than one episode (this was the second) in this dismal format, which future generations – I’m sure – will study as an exemplum of just how dire and desperate things got in the great Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.

    This HIGNFY episode will become like ‘and they ate all the animals in Paris zoo’ anecdote that gets trotted out every time they mention the Franco-Prussian war. The equivalent of when they ate the two elephants – Castor and Pollux – will probably be the moment when Ian Hislop tried to be funny using a copy of John Betjeman’s Guide to English Parish Churches as a bell substitute.

    I’m not sure when it was that Hislop was ever actually funny: possibly once or twice in the early 90s when Angus Deayton was still hosting; possibly never. What I think most of us can agree on is that for some considerable time now, his fuddy-duddy, predictable, wearisomely bien-pensant contributions have been outrageously overindulged by the production team. He’s like a very rich man who is convinced he’s Napoleon: none of his grovelling retainers dares disabuse him because their living depends on it. Deayton was expendable; but not Hislop and Merton who’ve profited handsomely from this sinecure for nearly three decades when at least one of them should have been put out to grass long ago.

    Hislop’s delusional schtick is that he’s a charmingly old fashioned, conservatively-inclined sort of chap – hence the Betjeman – who yet has one or two important things to get off his chest which jolly well need saying and if no one else is up to doing it then he jolly well will. But then he opens his mouth and out comes an editorial column more redolent of Polly Toynbee than Auberon Waugh.

    This week, for example, Hislop riffed disapprovingly on the fact that Somerset Capital, the asset management fund in which Jacob Rees-Mogg has a 15 per cent share, was boasting about the ‘supernormal returns’ that could potentially be made during the crisis. Why – was the gist of Hislop’s ramble – can’t these disgusting plutocrats donate a portion of their filthy profits to the NHS (or similar), a bit like Health Secretary Matt Hancock has urged premier league footballers to do?

    Putting aside the fact Hislop himself is not exactly short of dosh – is he giving 30 percent of his income away? Integrity demands it, surely! – how is this point either funny or satirical? It’s just standard-issue BBC socialism: the kind of lazily conformist bilge which any member of the left-liberal Establishment could have said – and frequently has – in the last five decades. Where’s the daring? Where’s the ‘did he just say that?’ shock with which any half-way decent comic jerks us out of our complacency? Where’s the well-aimed barb – doesn’t Hislop have something to do with some magazine formerly associate with satire? – which will afflict the comfortable of our governing elite?

    OK, there’s no news around at the moment, which is a problem for a topical show called Have I Got News for You? But there’s still plenty of room for comment and barbs – now probably more than ever, in fact. What about the possibility that we’re trashing the entire global economy on the basis of a few dodgy computer modelled projections by epidemiologists with a track record of failure? What about the terrifying personality cult surrounding the parasitical NHS? What about the police overreactions, members of the public snitching on their neighbours for taking too much exercise, the class war now fought between second homeowners and those remote counties like Devon and Cornwall which half the year they do so much to bankroll?

    None of that edgy, interesting, relevant or satirically valuable stuff got a mention on this week’s episode, naturally. Nor will it on next week’s episode, in all likelihood, because HIGFNY wouldn’t even know how. Like most of its guests – this week, a lesbian comic from Brighton and the agreeable but not exactly right wing Radio 4 vicar Richard Coles – it exists in a left-liberal metropolitan bubble where no one thinks to question the status quo because the status quo embodies their own value system all too perfectly.

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

    Demosthenes • an hour ago
    What did it for me was the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo massacre. For all his supposed bravado and bravery, what did Hislop do? Did he publish the images that got his fellow journalists slaughtered? Did he take up the torch of liberty and free-speech that had been dropped? Did he fuck. He slunk away like all the others and meekly submitted to the Islamic supremacists, just at the moment when true bravery was needed most. Proving himself once and for all to be nothing more than yet another coward and hypocrite in the mainstream media. People at the time were saying that Stéphane Charbonnier was Hislop’s equivalent in Paris… I think that is a shameful and appalling comparison to make. Hislop doesn’t possess even a fraction of the courage Charb did. Notice how he’s happy to go after Trump and Boris and the other low hanging fruit but never once dares to speak out against the true evil in our midst. He’s just a typical BBC dhimmi, funny only to other BBC dhimmi’s; the embodiment of all that’s despicable and pathetic about modern Britain.

    Finknottle • an hour ago
    The biggest problem with the current state of British satire is that it has taken sides.

    Pick any comedy panel show – be it HIGNFY, Mock the Week, The Now Show, Last Leg, any terrestrial channel comedy panel show, and try and find any that goes against the ‘liberal’ orthodoxy. There isn’t a single one.

    One or two comedians dare to kick against the traces – but only in stand-up and only once they’ve made an unassailable name for themselves, because they know it comes at the cost of a lucrative TV career. It seems you can only build a successful stand-up career at the moment by establishing your name up on such comedy panel programmes.

    If a guest-booker actually had the balls to book a comedian who came out with a whole anti-EU schtick, or made fun of the infantile XR carnival of no-marks, or possibly mocked any aspect of identity politics or the current accommodations towards “woke” culture wars – they would guarantee firstly that the comedian never got booked again for the show and secondly that the booker would be hauled in front of the commissioning editor the next morning for an interview without coffee.

    Neither the booker, nor the guest – if they value their careers – dares to step outside the liberal consensus. To do so would be to get a flavour of what it would be like to be accused of heresy.

    Another strange thing is that we all still refer to this as the “liberal consensus”. It is, surely, the very antithesis of “liberal” thought. What could possibly be more authoritarian than promoting a narrow worldview and punishing and shaming anyone who dares to think outside it? One of the Left’s favourite insults when castigating the Right is “Orwellian”, do they honestly not see that the tag could be far better applied to this insistence we all adhere to the orthodoxy or face the consequences?

    Geoff Norcott is always wheeled out as the comedian who disproves that all BBC comedy is leftist – but GN, as funny as he is, is essentially playing a character. The audience is invited to laugh at (not with) his observations because he is depicted as an unreconstructed Faragiste, a cartoon Brexit untermensch, a figure of fun because his opinions are SO outrageous (despite them actually being the majority view the last time we asked).

    Even a man like Ian Hislop, who made a career out of having a dig at the establishment, has become – since the referendum – the sneering face of on-air remoanerism. Once a satirist has picked sides and only attacks the ‘Other’ he ceases to be in any way relevant. It has made HIGNFY unwatchable and Private Eye unreadable.

    The satirists of the 1960s, 70s and 80s would hang their heads at the neo-puritanism, the homogeneity of today’s crop of comics. Actually none of those people would even get the gig nowadays. The head of BBC Comedy Commissioning proudly stated that the Python crew would never be hired today, because who wants more Oxbridge educated white men? … Right on! Who cares if they’re funny, just don’t let them be well-educated and white!

    The current panel show regulars who infest our screens may tick all the right boxes, might fulfil all the right quotas, might make fun of all the approved targets and avoid making fun of all the ‘protected victim groups’, but some of these ‘comedians’ (to stretch the definition almost to breaking point) fail in one rather important area – THEY ARE NOT FUNNY. (Has anyone, honestly, ever actually belly-laughed at anything Nish Kumar or Holly Walsh have ever said? Or a hatful of – evidently forgettable – others)

    Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty who are talented, plenty who are funny, but for all their supposed “edginess” there isn’t one who’d dare admit to an unapproved political viewpoint.

    (I posted this some months ago, so apologies for the repetition, but it seemed apposite)

    1. I watched it because there was nowt else on and I fully agree with you. I only buy Private Eye because of the exposure of politicians, councillors and businessmen and their grasping habits

    3. I haven’t watched HIGNFY for years. it so quickly descended from humour to a lefty version of which Extreme, White, Right-Wing Anarchist can we beat up this week. Hislop is just a failure and Merton, whose quick fire wit used to be funny is just trying to out-dumb Hislop – and succeeding.

      Consign it to the bin and find something akin to The Goons, Round The Horne and even Monty Python.

      2. I never once found anything in Goons funny – humour seemed to be based on a “funny” voice. Inlaws wet themdelves at “Ooh, ‘es fallen in the waw-er” whilst I sat there stony faced. Don’t know RTH, but anything with Kenneth Williams has promise. Python – pish. Too much labouring of the punchline.

    4. Last i heard they were paying £20,000 for an appearance.

      Good way of judging someones character.

      1. That is to include the multiple repeats
        ludicrously renamed ‘A Bit More News For You’ whereas stale old news would be nearer the mark.

  62. 318059+ up ticks,
    Yet another department forming, part of the lab/lib/con coalition party, don’t kid yourselves people it is still in place…….waiting.
    Give them credit between them in governance they led the world in
    domination tactics and how to run a Country into the ground using people power, lies, deceit & treachery.
    All the while using cover ups depending on electoral fools voting via the three monkey mode, and at the same time politico sampling paedophilia,
    and known to be doing so by others.( proof = smith / steel )
    Let us not forget the political snorting daisy chain with foreign rent boys
    party provider, most certainly a party goer in no uncertain manner.
    THEY are ALL in it together.

    https://twitter.com/AgainBraine/status/1248893464886026241

    1. I wouldn’t subscribe to it myself but everything here hinges on what she means by greatest!

    2. By the look of her, I would have thought she would have called Mohammed the ‘greatest man in history’.

      1. Much depends on what your frame of reference is.

        If you’re thinking of raising Germany out of economic ruin, may be he was?

        Uniting Europe? Again, he did a great job – united against him, but still united.

  65. The advantages of the solo tv chef…………….
    Mmmm Delicious he says (James Martin)
    The Duck breast wasn’t “nice and pink” James it was so raw there was a real danger of it flapping wings and taking off and the pure thick white line of completely unrendered fat looked revolting Classic barbeque errors,near burnt on the outside and raw within

    Serve that bolleux up in the first round of masterchef and it’s out the door for you matey!!

          1. Don’t think so. They like their meat and fish to still have a pulse when they eat it.

    4. My wife called me in to watch the BBQ duck and at the end I said exactly the same as you.

  66. Priti Patel leading the Corona virus Government update today and making a good job of it. Deaths are close to10000 now.

  67. Experts play totally spurious statistics to paint a completely false picture.
    All numbers are approximate.

    Population of UK ~ 66mn
    Total NHS employees ~ 1.5mn
    UK NHS employees as % of total population ~ 2.25

    Total number of UK deaths since the first CV death ~ 8,950

    Total number of CV NHS deaths 19

    NHS death’s as % of total CV deaths should be ~ 8,950 x 2.25% = ~200.

    Therefore NHS deaths are far lower than they should be and being an NHS worker can be advantageous.

    Now clearly this is a nonsensical set of calculations, but it shows how easily the figures can be manipulated to scare/reassure the public.

    Clearly there are numerous fallacies in my example but with a political spin they can be used to fool the gullible.

  68. Coronavirus has exposed the myth of British exceptionalism. Fintan O’Toole. Sat 11 Apr 2020.

    Being drunk on freedom is one way for the chosen people to “do their own thing”. Adopting a distinctive national approach to a global pandemic is another. The myth of a unique and defining love of personal freedom as a badge of nationhood underpinned a profound reluctance to impose life-saving restrictions on movement and social gatherings. Other people might put up with that sort of thing, but not the English. On the altar of this exceptionalism, lives have been sacrificed.

    Contrary to popular UK opinion where they are regarded as bucolic, good humoured, bon viveurs a large proportion of the Irish population actively hate the British. They mostly conceal it of course but it runs through every fibre of their being and we can see it here with O’Tooles article. It’s not even concerned with Anglo/Irish history but the shortcomings of the “chosen people” the English. I’m surprised it didn’t etch itself onto his computer screen!”

    Anyone who has ever conversed at length with an educated Irishman will be aware that when history arises for discussion reason departs and protective mythology takes its place. This is because the Irish have had the misfortune to live in the shadow of one of the most brilliant and inventive people ever to inhabit the Planet Earth and whose achievements they can never hope to equal. Since they have suffered at these same hands it is impossible for them to acknowledge this without in some way feeling that they are conspiring at their own abasement. Hence as here they have to carp about their conquerors triumphs.

    O’Toole may not like it but the English invented the modern world. Freedom as it is now understood is an English invention. It was born on this island and was given to the rest of the world and like its parent is now fading into the darkness. When both are gone the world will mourn their passing!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/11/coronavirus-exposed-myth-british-exceptionalism

    1. I have always been amazed at the time and effort the Irish can put in to bearing a grudge.

      1. It is a source of wonder how Scotland can have gone from Clark Maxwell, Burns, Watt, Adam Smith, Alexander Bell, Napier (both of them), Stevenson, Dunlop and many others, to an addiction to socialism and being ruled by Nicola Sturgeon.

        1. Sadly, this has often been the case, which must be damn frustrating for Scots with any intelligence.

          “The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!”

          1. Very little has been heard recently of an Independent Scotland – could it be that Sturgeon and her Scottish Nasty Party have realised that if they had been an independent nation when this pandemic started Scotland would be bankrupt by now?

          2. Keeping the powder dry. Independence would get lost in the hysteria that is Corona.

          4. My father-in-law moved to Essex to get work.
            When they were first married, he and his Essex wife remained in Scotland for the first couple of years.

          5. I remember passing the monument to Carlyle in Kelvingrove Park Glasgow when working on the Hunterian Art Gallery and Mackintosh House in the early seventies.

            I would walk from Central Station via Sauchiehall Street and through the park to the university site at Hillhead.

            There is a similar monument to Carlyle on Embankment.

            I visited Carlyle’s house in Cheyne Walk Old Chelsea several times when working in South Kensington. What struck me then was what a joyless, dour and miserable existence he seems to have led.

          6. Yes, I’ve visited the house too and there’s a published collection of his and Jane’s letters which give the same impression.

          7. Jayne was his cousin from memory. She died at the first childbirth. He remarried and had loads of children.

            Edit: I acquired several of his books and poems. All rather depressing.

          8. ‘Afternoon, Anne, somewhat reminiscent of the Irish cry, “Ireland for ever, England for a job!”

      1. Ah! The day the Easter Bunnie arrived!
        We’d been here 7 or so months and it was the Good Friday morning of our first Easter, 1992. T’Lad was nearly 3 and Dr. Daughter only a few weeks old.
        We were using the back bedroom which overlooked part of the garden and T’Lad was wanting his Easter Egg.
        To shut him up, we told him he couldn’t have it until the Easter Bunnie arrived, which would not be until the Sunday.
        Less than a minute and a half later, his excited voice piped up, “He’s here!! The Easter Bunnie is here!” Pointing out of the window as he did so.
        And yes, lo & behold, the Easter Bunnie, in the form of a baby rabbit, probably only a couple of weeks old, had arrived and was up in the garden, level with the window, quietly chewing on a dandelion!
        He got his Easter Egg.

    1. But you can normally tell that a politician is lying because you can see their lips move.

    2. The hairy one at the desk is the chap who believes that the virus is a Jewish plot.

      So naturally Toy Boy would take it seriously….

  73. UK lockdown: police apologise after man threatened with pepper spray. 11 April 2020.

    Greater Manchester police have apologised after a man who said he was delivering food to vulnerable family members was arrested and threatened with pepper spray.

    In video footage of the incident, which took place in Fallowfield, Manchester, on Friday, the man can be seen refusing to give police his details after being accused of “breaking Covid guidelines”.

    The footage, which was filmed by a neighbour, shows the officer repeatedly threatening the man with pepper spray, handcuffing him and telling him to lean against a car.

    I’ll have to upgrade my phone to one that takes video. There’s no doubt its better than shark repellent for saving your ass!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/11/uk-lockdown-police-apologise-after-man-threatened-with-pepper-spray

    1. Peelian Principles
      Policing by Consent
      Farewell old friends,it was nice knowing you………………………….

    2. I should hope so too! (the apology I mean)

      I’ve just seen a group of three women (East European at a guess) and several children walking past on the pavement…some people still aren’t getting this social distancing thing…I won’t be phoning the snitch line.

      1. Perhaps they all live together? What’s the point of distance when you all live in the same house/flat?

        1. It’s theoretically possible, but they are probably seriously overcrowded if so. They were walking from the direction of the flats near our house, and I don’t think any of those flats have more than three bedrooms.

          We had the police helicopter buzzing our town on Thursday, looking for groups, I think. My daughter says she knows teenagers who are still meeting up.

      1. 318059+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3
        The bloke was the salt of the earth doing his delivery with condiments the law has got some bloody sauce.

    4. There’s going to be a lot more apologising going on before they’re done.

      They haven’t a bloody clue.

      1. How about sueing for wrongful arrest? Guidelines aren’t law, or they’d be called “law”.

    6. Why was he issued a fixed penalty notice? The police are doing themselves no favours acting like this.

        1. I presume it was a motor bike as pedal bikes don’t have to have lights, do they? The majority of cyclists seem to ride without them!

          2. Yay! I’m obviously a lot younger than I thought! Hadn’t heard that before Geoff, made a good splash!

    1. Too many Trusts, too many managers doing the same job, BADLY, too much political interferrence and too many people/patients in the areas which really are getting hit badly.

      How difficult can it be to set up a single central resource point so that hospitals with excess capacity/PPE etc etc can tell the centre and those with shortages can also notify the centre?

      Then it’s a simple matter of logistics to get A to B and vice versa.

      I suspect that Amazon could do it with their eyes shut.

      1. Well it used to work the way you suggested and Tories decided it would be better split into local trusts with oodles of ‘modern management techniques’ and competition between trusts for patients who largely couldn’t choose where they wanted to go anyway.

        Amazon is a joined up company with an unbelievably accessible CEO. The NHS is just an overall name for several hundred mini-businesses from hospitals to groups of hospitals to GP surgeries.

        1. Not quite right.

          Blair and Brown set the seeds of destruction, the Tories just followed through and harvested the rotten fruit..

          1. The internal market was designed in the late eighties and implemented by Major. Modern management techniques came from Norman Fowler under Thatcher. I know you hate the toxic twosome but they weren’t responsible for that.

          2. PFI?

            Nothing wrong with management, you just need the right managers.

            I know you love to blame the Tories for everything, but the toxic poxics broke everything.

            It’s like the morons who blame the bankers for 2007/8.

            It wasn’t the bankers, it was the politicians, the regulators (appointed by the politicians)and the central bankers (also appointed by the politicians)

            Little can happen except under the rules set by the politicians.

          3. PFI started under Major. It’s a Tory invention that Blair being a bit of a Tory himself kept on using it. To be fair there wasn’t much choice. The NHS was a mess by 1997.

            I mostly blame ratings agencies for the GFC. It was their ratings of packaged debt that caused most of the problems.

            I don’t like any politicians in my lifetime apart from odd MPs of all parties. No one has had a coherent set of policies that work for the greater good in that time. Probably why most people are wage slaves now working their asses off for nothing like the life their parents had. Meanwhile rent-seekers soak up unearned income from land rents driven by a credit bubble which the BoE allowed to get out of hand.

          4. Brown and Blair, used legislation to wreck everything they could.
            Not disimilar to the way old legislation is being used in the CV crisis, in ways that were never intended when the the legislation was passed.

            I agree re the ratings agencies. Useless.

          5. Sadly, like Don’t Care In The Community, it was a fad; once these ideas take hold, it’s like trying to get rid of ground elder.
            Nothing, least of all, change of government, will eradicate it.

    2. Wish they’d send some our way.

      In the past ten days we’ve lost 25% of our residents. three died in the home, one was taken to hospital where he died. He tested positive for covid-19.

      We have thin aprons. Useless plastic gloves, they stopped buying the latex ones I bought. You can’t put these gloves on without ripping them, and they aren’t powdered so your hands sweat making changing gloves between residents virtually impossible. We have no masks. No respirators.

      Mum took in new residents that hadn’t been tested because of course money comes before staff and resident safety.

      I’m doing two night duties per week there atm. The pay is terrible but I have no choice, where else can i work while most businesses are shut.

      1. Once this virus gets into care homes it rips through the vulnerable residents. Sorry for you, T.

        1. These days there are no other sort of residents. Long gone are the days of someone going into care because they were a bit lonely.

          1. Yes – “residential” homes are all nursing homes these days. I really can’t imagine going into one unless I’m struck down with dementia.

  75. Cancelling Telegraph subscription

    From the BTL@DTletters page, it seems that the DT is experiencing a surge of cancellations. It’s not only NoTTLers who are peeed off with the recent swing to the left (Alastair Campbell, anti-gov’t, drivel, etc.). When cancelling the monthly £8.99 sub, the DT are countering with an offer to reduce it to £4.00 per month. They must be getting desperate.

      2. We usually get the Saturday one free from Waitrose with the cat food, but at the moment OH is buying one from the village shop.

    2. “Recent” swing to the left? I abandoned it when it swung to the left in about 2011!
      An article about this season’s hijabs was the last straw, I think.

    2. Salop has taken advantage of the lockdown to fix the appalling state of the roads. Still a lot to do, though, I suspect.

      1. The Via Gellia is due to be resurfaced towards the end of the month all the way from Cromford to Grangemill. Night time road closures to do the work.
        I’m hoping to have the van back on the road so I can drop a couple of trees that are wiping out HGV wing mirrors whilst they are doing the work and before it gets too dark.

    1. When this is all over I hope a lot of academic work goes into how the statistics were prepared and separately how they were presented.

      I would also like to see the models that were used by the various “experts” taken apart line by line and double checked, because if this type of event should happen again we must be as sure as we can be that the models and actions taken are valid and proportionate.

      1. When this is over, the main goal of all the public bodies involved will be to prove that they were 100% right to do what they did, and that they did it stupendously well!
        Criticism? Nothing to see here, move on now!

        1. It’s why I would like to see some rigorous academic research, preferably by people with no axe to grind.

          1. Call me a cynic, but academia is the last place I would look for people with no axe to grind.

          2. I still like to believe there are honest students who would look for such truth as there is.

        1. The tooth fairy in our house left a note.

          Here’s a shilling.
          Tomorrow night I’ll be back with my pliers”

      3. You must be joking! Great care will be taken to ensure that, whatever happens, stats will justify the extreme measures imposed in the public. Nobody will be criticised and “our wonderful NHS” will be praised to the skies for doing what they’re paid to do.

        The government has a get out by merely stating that “the advice from CMO and scientists was followed” …
        Edit: get out, not get our

    2. “This is a change from previous policy. Until now we have been told we were flattening the curve to ensure that the health service can cope with peak demand and save lives. This did not require moving ‘beyond the peak’ before easing restrictions, just flattening the peak to a manageable level.”
      Twin Peaks will be the next arrival, when it’s all gone titsup.

    3. ‘Afternoon, J, Many a true word…

      “…The government and their advisers act as if they can afford to add extra weeks of lockdown …

      Especially with an extra £10,000 of course they could.

      1. What possible justification do they have for increasing their incomes by 12%, given that ordinary people are having theirs reduced by 20 to 100%? Shades of Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

      2. Anybody who runs his own business and risks losing 80% of his income this year – as we do – should hold politicians in complete contempt.

        Why are the gorgon journalists like Maitlis, Kuenssberg, Newman and Wark not prepared to go for all MPs of all political parties for their sordid avarice?

        1. Because they work for the quasi-governmental institution called the BBC.
          Bread, butter, side.

      3. What possible justification do they have for increasing their incomes by 12%, given that ordinary people are having theirs reduced by 20 to 100%? Shades of Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

  78. Evening, all. I braved the supermarket today because I was running out of stuff (believe me, I wouldn’t have done it if I could have survived without). Queue down part of the car park. Someone I knew was directly in front and asked how I was. I think he was a bit taken aback when I growled, “I’m pissed off; I don’t like shopping and I positively hate queueing!” To make matters worse, the sign on the door read, ‘less people, more safety’. “Fewer!” I snarled as I went past!

    Isolation is turning me into even more of a grouch than I was before! At least I managed to get everything on my list, which means I can put off a repeat until about three weeks’ time.

    When I got back, I fixed the latch on the gate, which had worked loose, then relaxed with a book in the sunshine. Now, having replenished the booze stocks, I have been partaking of the Sarf Effrikan Pinotage again. One has to have some means of surviving the lockdown!

      1. Can’t say; I have flour, so it wasn’t on my list. Unlike most of those roaming the aisles, I do have a plan when I go shopping – in, get items (list is made up in aisle order) and out asap! Stooging around the aisles is not on the agenda.

        2. (list is made up in aisle order)
          Which is why supermarkets change their aisle contents regularly, so that you have to go searching for the items you usually buy. That way, it leads to impulse buying.

          1. I know, but this one doesn’t do it very often, so the chances are it will still be the same. I eschew Tescos for that very reason!

          2. It’s not just Tesco, they all do it. I always make a point of finding a ‘manager’ and giving him/her the benefit of my opinion on the practice.

          4. Another supermarket trick is to place the in-store bakery as far as possible from the entrance, and blow out the extracted air from said bakery at the door. So you pass as many potential impulse buys as possible, as you follow your olfactory organ…

      1. Could possibly be that I don’t have a W/rose within at least 20 miles, peddy 🙂 In fact, I have no idea where the nearest branch would be – Chester, possibly? I’m pretty sure there isn’t one in Shrewsbury.

        1. To make matters worse, the sign on the door read, ‘less people, more safety’. “Fewer!” I snarled as I went past!

          W/rose wouldn’t have made that mistake.

          1. As I have never been able to avail myself of a visit to W/rose, I’m afraid I can’t evaluate the truth of that comment 🙂

        2. We had one in Ashbourne which had been one of the Somerfield’s the Co-op had to get rid of when they took them over, but it closed last year.

          1. Ah, I haven’t been to Shrewsbury centre for years. That would explain why I didn’t know about it.

    3. I thought it was just me.

      My dilemma is where to take my overflowing swear boxes now the banks are shut.

      1. Banks aren’t shut here in the sticks, but offering minimal service. It does include taking money, though.

        2. I must admit, I said that without knowing. I haven’t been into town since lockdown and just assumed they were.

        3. Just paid a cheque into Lloyd’s (HMRC Refund) using App on my iPhone. It was about £700.00 but anything over £999.99 has to be posted or deposited in a branch.

          The limit before this crisis for App cheque deposits was £500.00.

          1. Barclays sent me the final cheque to close an account.
            £0.01
            What is the point? What did it cost them to set it up and prepare and post it?
            What would it cost me to cash it?

            Why not send an e-mail asking what should done with it.
            Give it to charity.
            Prats.

          2. I got a tax rebate from hmrc some years ago, and I asked for a cheque – which they sent.
            3p.
            Still have it in the file!

          3. Which almost certainly means your file isn’t closed.

            Many, many years ago, I had to go through several Abbey National branches’ mortgage accounts.
            By a quirk of their computing an account could not be closed on the system if there was even a penny owing or overpaid.

            The branch staff could not be bothered to chase it up, obviously.

            There were thousands and thousands of such accounts. The usual problem was that the “membership fee”, 5 bob, had not been returned.

            Thus, every year insurance was charged and interest thereon.

            The BSoc was getting commissions on the insurance so they didn’t care.

            I was not exactly flavour of the month when my report resulted in literally 10’s of thousands of accounts being “regularised” and closed.

            I never found out if all the commisions on insurance had been repaid.

        4. I relieved a lot of pressure through lumberjacking all week. Can barely lift a pint to my face, but mentally revived.
          It helped that most of the week was sunny. Snow ‘n rain today.

    4. Walked down to Cromford for the paper and carried a 8′ length of 4″ diameter elm trunk back home with me.
      That log, together with the other logs I’ve accumulated is now sawn, chopped and waiting for Student Son to get stacked.

      We’ve stopped burning wood for now so I think we’ve enough stacked to last until at least December 2021!

  79. Two heart warming stories to end the day.

    First, in Laure about 3 years ago, a delightful lady from Paris moved in. She was cultured, musical, artistic – I assumed she had worked in a museum. Wrong. An air-traffic controller!! Anyway, she was a keen gardener and we used to swap ideas and plants.

    She rented her plot from a well-known village family. This year, she stood as a candidate for the local election. Her “landlord” was on the opposing list and said that she would be expelled from the garden forthwith. Very French. Knowing that we were leaving, she asked me whether it might be possible for her to take over my garden. I explained that it belonged to the Mayor’s wife – but that I was sure she might be happy about it.

    Upshot – the owner agreed; the lady took over and, today, sent me snaps to show that she had transformed the jungle which I was embarrassed to leave into the sort of garden we always kept for 15 years. And she finds the co-potagistes delightful, friendly and helpful (as I knew she would).

    All’s well that ends well.

    Secondly, my younger son would have been 51 today. His daughter, now 13, proposed that all the widely dispersed family should make a cake in his memory. All day e-mails have been arriving with cakes various. Beloved GD’s was the last to arrive and – being completely objective, I promise – was by far the best

    So with a tear in either eye, I bid you all good night and – in advance, a Very Happy Easter.

    1. Such a lovely thing to do. And every mouthful will be a delight, glorious moments of remembrance.

          2. Are you sure?
            I would have suspected that they were lying in wait, to eat the frame.

          3. Thank you John. I took the photo. The folk in the picture are my kind neighbours.

    6. Have a good good Easter Mr BT. And the same to all the others, even the ones that I have blocked!

  80. Seeing the daily virtue-signalling ritual of support for the NHS, gave me an idea. I had thought of organising a ‘Clap for the police’ movement, but then I reconsidered.

    We don’t want our STD clinics overwhelmed in these difficult times.

  81. We had a smashing 40+ minute telephone conversation with our 16 year old grandson last evening. He called to find out how we were but went on to talk about his schooling. He’s in 1st year of A levels.

    His school have provided them all with ‘distance learning’ via the computer and some lessons using Microsoft Team with the teacher presiding. He is delighted that all of his Chemistry/Biology group have done so well and have been praised by the teachers that they have, ahead of time, finished their Year 12 syllabus. After the Easter break they will be starting on year 13 syllabus. He said it’s great because they have all researched their learning on line and been able to pull it all together.

    I feel the future of our country will be in safe hands as long as the current lot of idiots screwing the country up don’t bugger it completely.

    Edit our for your

    1. At least some schools are organized. Most of ours are still whining that some kids do not have access to computers or internet, therefore online education cannot go ahead because some may not be able to take part.
      Schools have finally come up with needed chromebooks for kids in need, but now the cry is that the special needs kids cannot take part.

      A long time ago, our CEOs came up with a rule that we were all free to criticize a plan but we had to have an alternate ready to put forward. Time for our can’t do civil servants to learn that mantra.

      1. I had a boss who said if you have a problem come to me with two alternatives. Invariably you didn’t have to see him as it was self evident.

    2. Our grandson is thoroughly enjoying distance learning. I suppose it’s C21 version of the radio schooling in the Australian outback.

      1. He also said that this may change the way things are done in the future. The school seems to be preparing them for university.

        1. My daughter’s doing it, and yes, it’s essentially university studying. I worry that an awful lot of revision is being done off Wikipedia though!

          1. Good point. Hopefully the school has warned them about that but I think his research takes him to proper scientific sites. If not we’ll warn him.

        2. Well, that would be good; my experience (I last graduated in 2008) is that up until recently, freshers at university had absolutely no idea how to do research or work independently.

          1. The school is well known for its work ethic and right from 1st year that’s what’s expected. The vast majority accept that and knuckle down. Their teachers also treat them more as students in lower 6th and he said it seems to be good prep for university. His mum and dad, as well as us, are delighted with his commitment.
            I had a problem with a toothache a few days ago mentioned the symptoms and he said sounds like any infection and a swollen lymph node. Exactly what the dentist said on the phone. At the moment he wants to be a surgeon but who knows it’s early days yet.

          2. Sounds excellent. When I was at school, we had study periods where we were expected to work independently and use the library. I am not sure that many educational establishments expect that of their pupils (sorry, clients) these days.

          3. I did the 11 plus and that’s the sum total of my school academic achievement.

          4. I passed the 11+ and ended up in the A stream of a grammar school. A prime example of a bright, working class kid getting a leg up through education. I despair of what passes for education these days 🙁

          5. I passed but was not academic and left grammar school aged 15. It did however give me a terrific start to my working life and being the youngest of five the whole family had that same ethic. We were very lucky to have been born in the 40s.

          6. I lapped it up. The more academic pressure the better, as far as I was concerned! O Levels in 4 years? No problem! 🙂 I can honestly say, I was never bored when I was a pupil. As a member of staff, trying to get academic material over to the comprehensive intake, not so much 🙁

          7. I eventually became a sales manager, area, regional and divisional. I did alright.

          8. I went into education. Then, when I retired, I got a proper job (secretary to a racehorse trainer) 🙂

          9. They are still pupils at his school but because of his attitude and work we have elevated him to Student status on merit.

        2. I used to enjoy that series on the radio. “Hang on to your braces Doc, ground floor coming up!”

  82. My husband wandered into the village today and said it was eeriely silent with just the
    sound of the birds in the trees. He felt claustrophobic . It’s all man-made this.
    It’s Spring, tomorrow is Easter Sunday, the time of rebirth not hiding away.
    The world has gone nuts, or the humans of this world, nature carries on as it’s always done.

    1. Belle posted this poem in case you missed it.

      IN THE TIME OF QUIET
      No one’s told the daffodils about the pause to Spring
      And no one’s told the birds to roost and asked them not to sing
      No one’s asked the lazy bee to cease his bumbling round
      And no one’s stopped the bright green shoots emerging through the ground
      No one’s told the sap to rest, deep within the wood
      And stop the sleepy trees from waking, wreathed about in bud
      No one’s told the sky to douse its brightest shades of blue
      And stop the scudding clouds from puffing headlong into view
      No one’s asked the lambs to still the springs beneath their feet,
      To stop their rapid rush and quell each joyful bleat
      No one’s told the stream to halt its gurgle or its flow
      And warned the playful breezes, not to gust and blow
      No one’s asked the raindrops not to fall upon the earth
      And fail to quench the soil in the season of rebirth
      No one’s locked the sun down, or dimmed the shimmer of the moon
      And even in the darkest night, the stars are still immune
      Remember what you value, remember who is dear
      Close the doors to danger and keep your family near
      In the quiet all around us take the time to sit and stare
      And wonder at the glory unfurling everywhere
      Look towards the future, after the ordeal
      And keep faith in Mother Nature’s power and will to heal

      Philippa Atkins

  83. When America has responded either by means of further sanctions and trillion dollar lawsuits or else nuking Chinese facilities such as those in Wuhan and elsewhere, can we please go back to being a truly sovereign country. We were the largest Empire in history and created the Modern world.

    The notion that the British could ever be subservient to ghastly regimes, whether Nazi Germany or China is unthinkable.

    2. 318059+ up ticks.
      Evening C,
      Especially over the last two decades the lab/lib/con coalition leave a great deal to be desired.

      1. You are correct. The main difference between the ‘old days’ and the now is that we have social media and computers able to capture and record information. The stupid Chinese Communist Party still think that they can close down all information critical of its policies. This might apply within their own repulsive country but does not apply to the world at large.

        The scientific papers of the Chinese Wuhan laboratories are captured forever on massive servers around the world and cannot be deleted. These papers expose the Communist Party of China for the killers they are. There will be a brutal retribution in the near future.

        1. 318059+ up ticks,
          C,
          One would think so but to my way of thinking is the three monkeys operate globally and big business would override an odious evil issue.
          it has happened here in the UK look at the treacherous sh!te these governance parties have treacherously year in year out produced, and they still find support.

      2. You are correct. The main difference between the ‘old days’ and the now is that we have social media and computers able to capture and record information. The stupid Chinese Communist Party still think that they can close down all information critical of its policies. This might apply within their own repulsive country but does not apply to the world at large.

        The scientific papers of the Chinese Wuhan laboratories are captured forever on massive servers around the world and cannot be deleted. These papers expose the Communist Party of China for the killers they are. There will be a brutal retribution in the near future.

  84. 🎶From a distance 🎶
    I was speaking to a near neighbour today and we were both wondering why earlier this week large military aircraft were seen flying in our area of North Hertfordshire. Not following the usual flight paths used by the commercial flights. He said they were practicing approach, take off and landings.
    Just another unfathonable thing to be very concerned about…….why is it happening ? What the hell is really going on ?

      1. Strange goings on never witness before.
        There are plenty of military air fields and bases not far away.

    3. Maybe they are taking advantage of the uncommonly empty skies to do some non-routine manoeuvres.

    4. Military helicopters here in North Essex Suffolk border. Not particularly unusual because they train in this area. Noted large Transport planes flying over a month past probably from Mildenhall.

    6. We haven’t seen any military transports for weeks even though we are on the flight path into the main air force base ar Trenton.

      Apparently there was a flight a couple of days ago, some soldiers came back from some prop up the EU mission in Eastern Europe and they were flown here for a two week mandatory quarantine.

    7. Similar to the question I asked the RAF and CAA a month ago. “We know nothing” was the reply from both. Apparently there is uncontrolled air space over the UK.

      1. People have also seen the huge C 17 from Brise Norton flying around Manchester and South End.
        Unfortunately I am not able to forward the link via my mobile phone.

  85. Ah!
    Just out of the bath and enjoying a glass of ale. One more left so I’ll have to grab a few more when I pick up the paper tomorrow.
    Had a glance outside, a lovely mild clear night. were it not for the van being knackered and the lockdown, I’d probably be away camping somewhere.

    1. Good night, Peddy. I did most of my sleeping this afternoon. I think I’ve caught a touch of leathery. (Lethargy, you idiot Auto-correct thingy, you!)

  89. Good evening from the Saxon daughter of Alfred of Wessex ( with longbow in handbag )

    It’s sunny and bright this evening.. ideal for a long walk.. alas !

    Shall do dinner early instead .

    It’s all so very tiring and claustrophobic .

    1. What’s for dinner?

      I’m having the cod fishcakes with a little rice left from yes’day.

      1. That sounds nice, I’ve fish cakes in the freezer to have next week,
        I’ll have rice with them too I think.
        Spanish chicken with Chorizo, peppers, green olives, tomatoes,
        with chicken stock and masala served with rice..

          1. That would have been ideal but we are having roast lamb for
            lunch tomorrow and will have a red with that. Had a glass of
            white burgundy instead .

  90. My email of this instant to Priti Patel

    Dear Priti Patel,

    As one of your constituents I applaud your concise and effective delivery of the government’s message earlier today. This was a most pleasant change from the ham-fisted gibberish projection of Matt Hancock.

    It is now obvious that we are engaged in a war of sorts with China. The Chinese have launched an attack on the West with their laboratory manufactured virus and we appear to be doing nothing whatever about this evident fact.

    Our major universities, in particular Imperial College London, are deeply embedded in China, taking thousands of Chinese students and having strong links also with both Chinese and English big Pharma (GSK). Yet we read that Ferguson of Imperial College is advising our government. Has it not occurred to you that Ferguson is effectively in the pay of the Chinese Communist Party, probably merely reciting their instructions?

    Bristol University have similar close links with the Malaysian regime, another where the sons and daughters of the ruling elite are gifted top jobs in all areas of society, including scientific areas and research laboratories, just as we see in China itself.

    My question is simply this: What measures are being taken to protect us from Chinese interventions and what measures are being put in place for retribution and compensation for the costs of Chinese actions?

    China is no friend of the UK and are deliberately infecting our populace. There is no hiding place for politicians any more. We have had their number for decades now.

    Whilst writing may I register my utter disgust at the fact that whilst half the population are now effectively reliant on savings and food banks for their continuation that MPs are being gifted yet more money in the unaccountable £10.k ‘come and get it’ offer sanctioned by the ineffective idiots supposedly appointed to stop fraudulent claims by MPs which continue apace.

    I await your response with bated breath.

        1. She’s not been any good so far, and has been largely absent apart from a slapdown to the police that actually did nothing at all over the overpolicing which is still going on.

          I thought she’d be a decent home secretary, I was wrong.

        1. Maybe by the tin foil hat wearers.

          ” The Chinese have launched an attack on the West with their laboratory manufactured virus and we appear to be doing nothing whatever about this evident fact.”

          Evident fact? Launched an attack? Laboratory manufactured virus? There’s no evidence of any of that.

          “Our major universities, in particular Imperial College London, are deeply embedded in China, taking thousands of Chinese students and having strong links also with both Chinese and English big Pharma (GSK).”

          They are businesses and like money. The Chinese that come here to our universities have money. They pay more than three times as much as a UK student.

          “Yet we read that Ferguson of Imperial College is advising our government. Has it not occurred to you that Ferguson is effectively in the pay of the Chinese Communist Party, probably merely reciting their instructions?”

          Evidence again?

          “China is no friend of the UK and are deliberately infecting our populace. ”

          We do huge amounts of trade with China and couldn’t survive in the modern world without their cooperation at least for the time being, and probably for a long time to come. Any evidence that they are deliberately infecting our populace?

          You’re an educated and intelligent man. That is not a letter written by a typical intelligent and educated man.

          1. I thank you for the compliment in your last paragraph.

            The rest of what I have stated will either be proven to be correct or else found to be incorrect.

            Time will tell all. It normally does.

          2. Sometimes you just have to jump in at the deep end and go with your gut instinct to get things going, especially when we, the public, are never going to be presented with the true facts.

          3. True facts like Darwinian evolution? Sometimes things evolve which allows them to make the jump to a new type of host.

    3. She had a bit of trouble with her numbers today. Abbopotamus will have had a chuckle.

    4. If you haven’t sent it yet, correct this howler before you do…

      “China is no friend of the UK and are is deliberately infecting our populace. “

  91. Someone just asked me what the queue looks like in ASDA,

    I said there isn’t a Q in ASDA.

  92. Oh Well, as that great (fleetwood mac) guitarist Peter Green once sang.
    Remembering we are only here once and my Highland Park night cap under my belt, I’m orff. 😴

    1. I can’t help about the state I’m in,
      I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin.
      But don’t ask me what I think of you,
      I might not give the answer that you want me to.

      1. From what you’ve been saying lately, I think you’re telling fibs about the thin legs.

        Oh well.

        1. And therein lies the anomaly. No matter how much my body has burgeoned, I’ve retained ‘sparrer’s ankles’ and skinny arms.

      3. That was the one.
        I once stood in front of him (no stage) at a blues club in West Hampstead.
        He played in a band named Peter B’s Looners. Peter Bardens on Hammond, Mick Fleetwood on drums.

    2. I have a Peter Green vinyl album, (In the Skies) in green vinyl. I’ve often wondered if it’s worth anything.

      1. It might be BSK I think there’s a Web site where you can get an idea of values of old vinyl albums.
        I once had the complete collection of the Beatles but I gave them away. Some of theirs are worth a lot of money now.
        I’ve got some American jazz records that are quite valuable.
        And a solo John Lennon. Singing rock ‘n roll, all I need is a record player 😃

  93. Just read in the Express – all of Starmer’s shadow cabinet voted Remain in the referendum!
    What an arrogant fool!

    1. Starmer is just Blair without the charisma. He’s bloody awful. We’re going back to Labour and the Tories offering the same rubbish across 90% of their manifestos.

      1. Gosh, that’s quite out of character for IDS, surely? He must really dislike Starmer – not surprising if he realised what he was up to as DPP.

      1. I did wonder how many of the current Parliamentary Labour Party voted Leave. Still you’d think he could have found just one token Leaver, wouldn’t you!
        Having seen his destructive and power-grabbing decisions as DPP, we now know he is just Blair II.

        – no prosecution for Saville
        – rape gangs ignored
        – no prosecution for a doctor who was caught giving a sex-based abortion.

        1. Starmer is everything that was bad about New Labour personified, another heir to Blair with all the poison strengthened.

          5. They clearly think the people can be conned a second time.
            I suppose some of the circumstances are the same – long period of the Tories in office, smarmy highly educated New Labour leader.
            But we’ve only really had a Conservative government since 2019, so I don’t think conservativism has worn out its welcome yet.

          8. Urghh, what a horrible thought – a political disaster followed by Prime Minister Starmer. Please God no!

            Seriously, I have heard some people saying they take weeks to get over cv – what if Boris is left with some sort of post viral lethargy?

          11. Not conservative enough for my taste. But a closer approximation to the real thing than either of the two dismal governments that came before it!

        2. Judging by the candidate list for Eddisbury – only one of them (the UKIP candidate, natch) voted leave – finding leavers to stand for Parliament was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

    5. They don’t have any intention of trying to reconnect with traditional Labour voters. They have an evangelical belief in their self-righteousness and will convert the deplorable masses to The True Way.

      Fat chance.

      1. Then let’s hope their own egocentric incompetence keeps them out of office for the next decade or two. End the Left. Crush them under the heel of free market economics.

    2. The word from the refugee camps is to learn English.

      That’s where all the soft touches lie.

    5. The first gets you 18 months in clink and put on the sex offender register for life, whilst the other gets you a job in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

    7. 318059+ up ticks,
      Evening PT,
      Realistically the voting pattern says Arabic without a doubt.

  96. Sunday’s letters…
    SIR – For months the police have been telling us that, due to shortages, they are only able to deal with serious crime.
    Since the shutdown, there have been many reports of the police questioning people who were sitting on beaches or in parks.
    Manchester Police reported that last weekend they dealt with 955 lockdown incidents. How were all these police suddenly available?
    Ian Pimblett
    I was thinking earlier this evening driving home to feed the PCs during a break in my sixteen hour shift, that as well as those suffering redundancy and pay cuts, the criminal cohort among us is also suffering, what with people in their houses 24/7 deterring burglars and no pockets on the streets to pick…
    That may be why there is suddenly an abundance of Rozzers

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