Tuesday 19 May How a fearful nation flocked into lockdown and wouldn’t come out

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/18/lettershow-fearful-nation-flocked-lockdown-wouldnt-come/

926 thoughts on “Tuesday 19 May How a fearful nation flocked into lockdown and wouldn’t come out”

        1. What are you and Hertslass getting up to in the mini-van, Peddy? (Good morning to the pair of you and all NoTTLers, btw.)

          2. Quiere decir, mi amigo. (I realised the meaning of min van, but was just making a silly joke.)

  2. Prince William: We must start questioning whether ‘stiff upper lip’ is still relevant. 19 May 2020 • 12:01am

    The Duke, who will appear in the BBC’s “Football, Prince William and our Mental Health” next week, will speak of the importance of men feeling able to express their emotions to build a healthy life.

    Writing in Radio Times magazine, the corporation’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell detailed the Duke’s “belief that too rigid an internalisation of emotions – so often the way in stiff-upper-lip Britain – is damaging to psychological wellbeing”.

    The Duke will say in the programme: “We have to start questioning whether it’s relevant in today’s world.”

    Morning everyone. The “Stiff Upper Lip” is not unique to us; it is merely a British exposition of universal male behaviour to preserve function, both emotional and practical, in adverse circumstances; in many instances extreme ones where life itself is in danger. The idea that we should all break down and start blubbering the moment we are stressed is an absurdity. It would not help either ourselves or those in peril, in fact the very opposite since it carries with it the collapse of the will to deal with difficulties. This is why it has been lauded as a male ideal for the whole of human history.

    It is almost needless to point out that this nonsense is all in line with Cultural Marxist ideology and would be suitable behaviour for a nation of slaves.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2020/05/18/prince-william-must-start-questioning-whether-stiff-upper-lip/

      2. For a man who will be 38 next month, he does usually come across like a teenager, and a simple one at that.

        1. Too much privilege. He gets all guilty and sentimental about the poor, whereas those of us who have (a) had no money and (b) lived alongside other people who have no money, have no illusions.

    2. The traditional military approach to extreme adversity is to swear like a trooper and sort the bloody mess out. If that isn’t getting emotional, I don’t know what is.

      1. Quite right, JM. Once a SNAFU or a FUBAR has been declared we then knew where we were going and set about sorting it…

    3. He’s going to be King one day and I reckon he feels that in order to preserve the monarchy, they have to appeal to the millennial generation of weak-minded, wobbly-lipped, self-obsessed, safe-space demanding poofs, whores and comic singers that sadly seem to be the future of the UK.

        1. I’m sorry Anne, but I don’t think a swingers’ party is the answer here…

    4. The Feminising of men is all part of the process of breaking us down to make us easier to control, invade and make subservient.
      The same process is happening to women in reverse, leading to lower childbirth, broken households, less well brought up offspring.
      The lefties make a good argument for these initiatives but at the end of the day they are doing it for ulterior motives.

    5. The Royal Family gets way too much exposure to the left wing establishment, to the point where they seem to think it represents the people. William should keep his distance from the BBC, it has an agenda to push that the RF shouldn’t get mixed up in.

      1. Unfortunately, they are not too bright. The Queen is very cautious, but the rest…God help us!

      1. If some or all the 6 weeks off is looking under threat then presumably we are in strike territory?

    2. It sounds as though the councils and the teaching unions are thrashing around in their ever more desperate search for reasons not to do something.

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    4. A doctor on BBC Breakfast this morning, asked about children and the virus, said what we already know – if children contract it, it is very mild, and that they do not appear easily to pass it on to other people, and so are unlikely to bring it home with them. Asked whether parents should be worried about children going back to school, she said no, and that there is more danger to a child from crossing the road than from the virus.

      1. Teachers have no need to mark their pupils’ books – just mark their words.

    5. You can see their point: all those exercise books covered in doggy teeth marks and drool.

  4. Good morning all. Cloudy start to the day – which is, apparently, going to become more cloudy.

    1. ‘Morning, Peddy. That’s good news. Charcoal pills doing the trick, eh?
      ;¬)

      1. ‘Morning, DM.

        No, it was last night’s curry – already departed.

        1. How strange, Peddy, that’s exactly what I had for my supper last night. (Curry, not wind.)

          :-))

          2. I’ve just had the second portion of last night’s chicken jalfrezi curry (with rice).

  8. Morning all

    SIR – Future historians of our Covid chapter will marvel at how rapidly a nation of 66 million was obediently locked down, their freedoms and futures curtailed without protest.

    On being conditionally offered release, a majority voted to remain in their safe sheep pen. All this was on the basis of disputed advice from well-qualified, well-intentioned medical professors and on the instruction of a well-intentioned if inexperienced politician deploying a policy driven only by fear.

    Michael Gardner

    Gillingham, Dorset

    SIR – Here in Germany building sites have functioned during lockdown, as have road works (Letters, May 18).

    I get the feeling that my fellow Britons don’t want to work, especially when many are getting 80 per cent of their pay packet for doing nothing.

    David L Whitfield

    Munich, Germany

    SIR – Last year the nation was divided over whether to leave or remain in Europe. Now we are divided over whether to leave or remain at home.

    Pete Aird

    Wellington, Somerset

    SIR – How does Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, think most people in London and other cities can go to work but by public transport?

    For years, drivers were discouraged from entering cities. They are hardly car-friendly, to say nothing of the cost.

    Ministers have lost contact with the real world . The Government gives every impression of following the Micawber school of management, hoping that something will turn up .

    Peter Little

    Herne Bay, Kent

    SIR – I hear a lot of people complaining at the prospect of getting back to work. Many are in the public sector and have been sent home on full pay (not 80 per cent, like a lot of furloughed private-sector people).

    Money to pay people does not come down with the rain – it comes from taxes. That means opening businesses and shops as soon as we safely can.

    Philip Saunders

    Bungay, Suffolk

    SIR – Matthew Lynn (Comment, May 13) is right about the public sector needing some of the private sector’s can-do spirit. I work in the public sector. I asked for help in delivering official notices through the letter-boxes of residential properties. I was told this was not possible as no risk assessment had been done. Laughing only got me into trouble.

    Neil Poucher

    Gainsborough, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Oh, what joy to see fishermen digging for lugworms on the beach and to hear the gentle thwack of balls being hit at the tennis club next door.

    If the teaching unions can start getting children back to school, I’ll feel the world is returning to normality.

    Jennie Naylor

    East Preston, West Sussex

    1. “All this was on the basis of disputed advice from well-qualified, well-intentioned medical professors…” Michael Gardner? Really? You are surely not including Prof Pantsdown, aka the Bonking Boffin??

      ‘Morning, Epi.

  9. SIR – To spot coronavirus early, it seems the Government would rather listen to a dog’s bark than to patients’ symptoms (“Dogs to be trained to sniff out coronavirus,” May 16).

    Most of us who see patients are aware that many – especially in early stages of the illness – don’t just have a high temperature or a continuous cough but a range of other symptoms.

    As a GP for the 111 Covid-19 Clinical Assessment Service, I have had conversations with hundreds of patients in recent weeks. Now, to make a diagnosis of coronavirus, I find it helpful to think of the symptoms in three distinct groups: general viral indicators, such as temperature, aches, tiredness and loss of appetite; viral entry, such as changes in smell or taste and sore throat; and organ-specific ones, such as cough, breathlessness, sickness, diarrhoea and skin rashes.

    A diagnosis of Covid-19 is most likely if a person has four symptoms from at least two of the three groups.

    Dr Nick Summerton

    Brough, East Yorkshire

    1. temperature, aches, tiredness and loss of appetite; viral entry, such as
      changes in smell or taste and sore throat; and organ-specific ones,
      such as cough, breathlessness, sickness, diarrhoea and skin rashes.

      Dr Summerton, you have just described the symptoms of growing old and THAT IS fatal

      1. Really, OLT. You mean we are going to die? That’s quite spoiled my morning.

  10. SIR – If you are experiencing symptoms of Covid-19, the instruction is not to ring the GP or go to hospital, but stay at home and ring 111 only if your symptoms get worse.

    My daughter, son-in-law and grandson have all had the virus. They followed instructions, were never tested, stayed at home and recovered. Their experience, doubtless in common with many thousands of others, is not recorded anywhere.

    In the absence of all this data, surely a declared British infection fatality ratio of 0.5 cannot be right?

    Tom Roberts

    London SW17

  11. Morning again..

    The failure of dentists to behave as medical professionals is shaming.

    SIR – I cannot understand how dentists can be deemed “non essential” (report, May 17). Why do Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and NHS England not think it appropriate for them to return to work when they are being inundated with calls from people in pain?

    With all due precautions, they must be allowed to start work again.

    Mary Brown

    Taynuilt, Argyll

    1. FFS give it a rest. It is not the dentists who are at fault, but the GDC & CQC. How many more times?

    2. Yo Epi

      Hairdressers/Barbers etc are deemed unessential for the masses,

      but are allowed to service

      Politicians,

      TV people (I could not bring myself to use the word personalities

      The Odd (in the literal sense) Head of the Met, when she appears on TV

      etc

      Mr Orwell, with his some people are more equal than others is not All Well, it

  12. SIR – Since being overcharged by £60 for my monthly Sky subscription in April, I have tried to get through to Sky 36 times, and each time have been directed to its website.

    Like Patricia Bateson (Letters, May 18), I found no relevant section there, and I have still not spoken to anyone. Its control over our money and lack of communication are alarming.

    Nigel Lines

    Lymington, Hampshire

    1. Sky is not the only one. I ordered and paid for paint online from Homebase a week after the lockdown, and was given a delivery date of mid-April. By the end of April and still no delivery, I sent an email to Homebase cancelling the order. I received an automated reply. Mid-May I received an email from Homebase saying that my goods were on the way. I got on to their web-site and again cancelled the order (automated reply received again). I tried phoning the contact number, but all that happened was an automated reply telling me to visit the web-site.

      The goods eventually arrived, they are now unwanted, but I can’t get any direct contact with Homebase (the web-site states that stores will not accept returns). They have got my money and there doesn’t seem to be a way of getting it back!

      Needless to say, I shall not be shopping at Homebase again.

    2. Funny Mr Lines, earlier this month I rang their normal number and listened to their message about only dealing with vulnerable customers and the like. Then I had to answer yes or no as to whether or not I was one, I answered YES. Did they expect me to answer NO?
      I came away with money saved and the deal I wanted, show some initiative Mr Lines!

    3. Come on now, Nigel Lines, they are not going to make it easy, are they? It takes skill of the highest order to avoid contact with a human when you want something resolved, and yet to convince the customer that a good service is being provided. Just find the ‘I want to leave/cancel’ button and they will be all over it like a bad rash.

  14. Morning again

    SIR – On April 17 you published a letter from me promoting the local sale of inshore fish to the public.

    The scheme has been a resounding success throughout the country. The public have been introduced to good-quality, fresh fish. (“Never tasted anything like this before,” is a common comment.)

    Selling fish in this way also ticks so many boxes: there are no transport costs, the environmental impact is low and fewer fish are caught, often for better returns. It also has a positive effect on fishermen: those comments from customers give us a feeling of worth. Long may this new relationship continue.

    Paul Gilson

    Executive committee member

    National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations

    Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

          5. Then skip through it. You are not obliged to read every post and can collapse a thread.

          7. May I suggest it is an OPINION, rather than a fact? There could be others for whom it is not boring (and you did make two posts about it, which seems strange if you skip through the thread).

          8. Any discussion started with the faintest hint of fish, fisheries, or even something with the remotest connection in it is immediately derailed and hijacked by repetitive and totally predictable puns, repeated time after time, to the detriment of the discussion, which dies almost before it has been posted. That is the fact.

            I agree that how boring it is is an opinion.

            The fact that threads are hijacked and their meaning wiped out isn’t.

    2. When working, every now and again we used to have an hour PNB at the middle platform at Leigh on Sea to give other services the chance to get past us and I used to make a point of strolling down to the fish shops to buy something for an on-train meal.

        1. Personal Needs Break.
          A chance for the loco driver to go to the toilet and grab a bite to eat.

          1. “A chance for the loco driver to go to the toilet and THEN grab a bite to eat.”

            Just because he drives one does not mean that he is loco.

          3. But I know several similar stories. There was a shipwreck, probably WWII, and the locals salvaged a load of bacon. Unfortunately, the authorities intervened and confiscated the goodies; however, one man had cunningly hidden his flitch in the coal bunker, just before a delivery.
            Perhaps ten years later (or more) the coalman heard the story, helped to uncover the ancient blackened lump, washed it off and then cooked & ate it.
            Apparently very tastey.

    3. West Mersea has a similar arrangement; for 2 hours on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon you can buy fresh fish at a site beside the pontoon (crab fishing central during the school holidays).
      We haven’t been so far this year, but I suspect it’s fallen prey to the current hysteria.

          1. Macfisheries fish was never as fresh as another place a little further down the road, which my mother preferred to use. All gone now of course.

          2. I bought some kippers at a Mac Fisheries and happened to mention I was going to freeze them. I was told not to do that as they had already been frozen and defrosted! No more MF for me.

      2. Morning Anne, we have this facility up here when the boats land their fish

  15. SIR – In March the Government effectively requisitioned private hospitals. This has turned out to be an unnecessary precaution. Why can’t they now be reopened, especially as the Nightingale hospitals remain largely unused?

    Private hospitals are sitting empty, even for outpatient appointments and procedures. Consequently many people, including NHS patients normally handled by private hospitals, are being denied care, sometimes with serious consequences.

    We urgently need to reduce the number of people doing nothing while being paid by the state. This includes the operators of private hospitals.

    John Bushell

    Leatherhead, Surrey

    SIR – The NHS has taken over some private hospitals because they are able to treat urgent cases that cannot be dealt with in hospitals where the virus is present. The private hospitals are virus-free sites: you are tested before being operated on. I have just been released from BMI the Park Hospital in Nottingham, staffed by both NHS and private workers.

    The care was wonderful, and demonstrated that, during times of crisis, the NHS and the private sector can work together in the national interest.

    Gerry O’Neill

    Horncastle, Lincolnshire

    SIR – We are told that “the NHS is open for business” and that patients are being encouraged to attend for other treatments or to visit A&E.

    Yet all the people I know who have died from Covid-19 have entered hospital for reasons other than the virus, showing no symptoms, and have contracted it while in hospital.

    I for one will be doing everything possible to avoid hospital until there are guarantees that whole departments are clear of the virus.

    Andrew Robinson

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    1. Mr Bushell fails to understand that the Government has not the faintest idea how to deal with the plague.

      To do what he suggests would require a leap of imagination and the application of common-sense quit beyond the ability of any one in Government.

    2. Rather immodestly – and because I’m lazy – I will post here my BTL reply; I have known this friend for over 40 years, and, despite suffering the usual slings and arrows of life, that was the only time I’ve ever heard her cry.

      “Well said, john Bushell.

      I have a friend whose hip replacement surgery was due on 27th. March. She lives alone out in the country. After frustrating and increasingly painful year waiting for the NHS to act, she drew on her savings to pay for a private operation.

      A week beforehand, the private hospital was requisitioned by the state and her operation was cancelled with no date given for resumption of service.

      I had to visit the private hospital a fortnight ago; there is a skeleton staff in case any pre-lockdown patient suffers complications. I’ve seen livelier morgues.”

      1. Our younger son’s appendix flared up again yesterday for the second time within a month. Once again he was sent on his way (the same day) after yet another armful of IV antibiotic and a week’s supply of antibiotic tablets. In the intervening time between flare-ups he enquired at several private hospitals. They were not interested, they were treating cases by video only.

        1. I can imagine how worried you and your son must be.
          It’s the feeling of helplessness.

          1. Our younger son is 36, and he simply wants to get on with his life and be an active dad to his young son. As he said drily on completing his last round of antibiotics “I won’t be doing star jumps any time soon.” You have no idea of the effect of seeing nurses doing their dance routines in corridors has had on me (and probably many other people) not to mention a simulation of the Titanic scene by eight of them on a trolley! Ggrrrrrr!!

            Good morning, Anne!

      2. Sometimes no underwear, according to some pics I have …a friend has seen…

    2. Ah Miley Cyrus. The young woman responsible for me finally throwing our TV away. Every time I came home, her stupid little face was in our sitting room in some dim little American teen show and I thought she was a bad influence on my children.

        1. Eldest daughter was a teenager before smartphones really got going. She only ever wanted to go sailing or exploring in those days anyway!
          The boys weren’t really interested in phones, their thing was more buying game consoles and old computers at car boot sales and smuggling them into the house. Their computers got taken apart as often as they got used. Younger son started building his own computers, then posting computer art on the internet, and is currently working as a freelance animator; a business that he trained himself for.
          Youngest daughter got a smartphone herself when she went to secondary school, but seems to have avoided major pitfalls.

          Smartphones are a nightmare. I’d put them back in their box if I could. But I am a smartphone app programmer at the moment (cross-platform enterprise apps), so I’m getting a good living out of them.

          1. If she’s still under sail she might have come across a young lass from up the village who’s currently going for her Master’s Ticket.

          2. Various members of my family are into sailing (seems to have passed me by). Not the posh kind, more the Scottish islands in the rain living off tinned sardines kind.

  18. Morning, Campers.
    A couple of Conservative Woman articles to start the day.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/charging-students-to-stay-at-home-cannot-be-right/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=54d3b84791-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-54d3b84791-559682581

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-science-of-nonsense/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=54d3b84791-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-54d3b84791-559682581

    1. In the long term, the nation would benefit if 2/3rds of ‘Universities’ went bankrupt.

    2. The science of nonsense. May 19, 2020

      THERE is a silver lining to the coronavirus fiasco, which is that the public can now see that there is no such thing as ‘the science is settled’, as the man-made climate change brigade parrot at every opportunity.

      The computer model devised by Professor Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London has been torn to shreds. Other teams who ran it found that identical inputs resulted in different results, and that running the code on different computers changed the results. They warned the Ferguson team, who were not interested. One expert has speculated that they simply averaged the results of multiple runs to cover up the variation. Imperial, we should remember, is ranked ninth best in the world in the 2020 QS World University Rankings and tenth best in the 2020 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

      This was the crack team to which the bewildered government turned for advice, yet their ‘science’ appears to be have been little better than you or I could have managed..

      Seek ye never so hard you will never find anyone as dim as an intellectual!

      Morning Anne.

      https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-science-of-nonsense/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=54d3b84791-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-54d3b84791-559682581

      1. Chester Diocese has a new Bishop (I hope he’s not really as young as he looks). I listened to a podcast from him yesterday. At least he says he’s a Christian (something positive), but he did go on about caring for the environment and waving his arms about a lot. He also seems to be keen on Tw@ter.

  19. 12 die as Malta uses private ships to push migrants back to Libya. Tue 19 May 2020 06.10 BST

    Further evidence of Malta’s strategy to push migrants back to the conflict zone of Libya has been revealed by a woman who survived a Mediterranean crossing in which 12 people died.

    A series of voice messages obtained by the Guardian have provided confirmation of the Maltese government’s strategy to use private vessels, acting at the behest of its armed forces, in order to intercept migrant crossings and return refugees to Libyan detention centres.

    Malta of course can see the danger. With a population of only half a million it wouldn’t take long with unrestricted immigration before they were overwhelmed.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/19/exclusive-12-die-as-malta-uses-private-ships-to-push-migrants-back-to-libya

    1. ‘Morning, Hugh, what really annoys me is that the LGBTXYZ lot, who make up a pretty small minority of the population, are lauded throughout the MSM and, like extinction whatever, Islam and pikies are given free-rein to run loose, act criminally and disrupt the day-to-day running of the country with nary a word of censure.

      1. The minority Normans and their castles spring to mind. However, the Normans had to fight for their control while the PTB have invited the menace of islam here to serve their own ends.

        1. In fairness to William the B’stard, Edward the Confessor had been packing his court with Normans throughout his reign. Showing support for Mummy’s relatives.

    2. It’s all part of the plan.
      Our political classes are in on it.
      50 years down the road and our now young people will all have signed up to ‘the brotherhood’. Or not be here.
      And unfortunately no matter how hard you try to point this out to them. They won’t listen to a word of it. It’s going to be a very uncomfortable bed they are making for themselves.

  22. Patel surfaces with a blast of hype. Meanwhile we continue to import criminals with one or two of them ‘skilled’ in steering a rubber boat towards the big white cliffs that were pointed out to them. In addition, we retain in this Country rapists and child traffickers who have been subject to deportation orders for years. Talk is cheap and action is sadly lacking.
    P.S. Ms Patel, is the family reunion scam being restricted under the Free Movement legislation?

    https://twitter.com/pritipatel/status/1262430422954389504

    1. 319373+ up ticks,
      Morning Ktk,
      Just as Mr Batten & myself were saying early on.

    3. I used to think she was Priti Determined, but I fear that she has turned out to be Priti Useless.

  23. A gorilla is walking through the jungle. He parts the bushes by the watering hole and sees a lion taking a drink of water with his butt sticking up in the air.

    So the gorilla thinks to himself, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I snuck up behind the “King of the jungle” and slipped him the old sausage?”

    So the gorilla sneaks up behind the lion, grabs him by the hips, and starts pumping him in the butt as hard as he can. Then he pulls out and runs away, laughing his ass off.

    The lion, however, doesn’t think it’s so funny. He lets out a mighty roar and takes off after the gorilla.

    Now, the gorilla can’t run very fast and the lion is catching up with him, so he ducks into a campsite, pulls some safari duds off the clothesline, puts them on, picks up a newspaper and sits down by the fire, holding the paper up to hide his face.

    Just then, the lion comes busting through the jungle.

    “HEY, YOU!” he says, “DID YOU JUST SEE A BIG GORILLA COME RUNNING THROUGH HERE?”

    The gorilla starts shaking behind the paper. “Um… d-do you mean the one that just s-screwed you in the a-a-ass?”

    The lion sits up with a start and says, “Jeez! It’s in the fucking newspapers already?”

  24. Common hydroxychloroquine side effects include:

    headache, dizziness;
    nausea, vomiting, stomach pain;
    loss of appetite, weight loss;
    feeling nervous or irritable;
    skin rash or itching; or.
    hair loss.

    Will a skinny, irritable, balding POTUS come up to scratch?

      1. The Patient Information Leaflet probably doesn’t say that to be on the safe side of litigious action.

        1. I’m taking Co-Codamol at the moment and i suffer from loss of appetite and nausea from it. Rather that than agony.

          1. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be many cures for ailments that don’t cause other ailments for which there will also be other cures and so on ad infinitum.

      1. This is what happened to Indonesia. It was once a culture that embraced many religions. Now it predominantly Islamic.
        And strangely enough the muslin Somalian boat people on the way to Australia only stopped to stock up and never stayed on.
        It’s once again, all part of the plan of world domination.
        And so far it’s not put a foot out of place.

        1. Ultimately we shall have to have a Gates of Vienna moment and a Reconquista.

          1. If our useless political classes had any balls Conners we could stop the invasion in its tracks.

          2. Of course they could. They lack the will. We know the answer because it’s worked Down Under.

    2. Providing a central hub and madrassa, together with Regent’s Park and Finsbury, for promulgation of the Caliphate.

      Close all the Mosques until Saudi has the similar number of Christian Churches.

      1. Less than no chance, unfortunately. Alternatively (and better IMO) deport them all. They weren’t asked to come, we did not even agree to it.

    3. 319373+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      They started some time ago,

      ogga1 13 hours ago
      319330+ up ticks,
      What with the oath taking hand book in the Hoc, and the choice of fodder on the canteen menu, the howling within Piccadilly Circus aided by submissive pcism & appeasement, will surely get the political nod.

      breitbart,
      Residents Voice Opposition to 1,000-Capacity Mosque on London’s Iconic Piccadilly Circus

    1. The media is unremittingly doom and gloom. There seems to be not even a hint of things getting slightly better.

      1. This week is Mental Health Week. One of the reasons I gave up having anything to do with the media is I value my mental health!

        1. #wetoo! Purposely don’t watch news or daily update, there redeeming quality to any of it. I think the government has got itself into a right old pickle and can’t see their way out. They even seem to be backtracking on “primary schools will reopen on 1st June.
          Edit: there is no Redeeming …

  28. BREAKING NEWS

    Following the identification of Horseshoe Bats as the reservoir of the Covid-19 virus, the health authorities in Germany suspect that Horseshoe Crabs are responsible for the outbreak of a new type of sexually transmitted infestation which has broken out in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn.

    The leader of the Farriers’ Union, Horst Schumann, has refused to comment.

    2. PETA is trying to get the Lobster and Crab festival to go vegan and have “plant-based seafood” instead. Sadly, that is not a joke 🙁

    2. This guy was on BBC Breakfast this morning. He was allowed to waffle on for several minutes, throwing in meaningless words like ‘stakeholders’. What is boils down to is ‘when will it be safe for children to go back to school?’, to which the reply was ‘when it is safe to do so’.

    3. I gave up after 6 minutes because Mr Tamil (is he a Muslim?) keeps ranting on without realising that he is illustrating just what sort of a blithering idiot he is.

      1. And Julia was loving letting him do it. She gave him the rope and he hung himself.

    4. This is the 21st century. We had clearer and more understandable radio broadcasts 60 years ago!

  31. The bbc are ramping up the blame game. The OBPP opposition broadcast political party. As does all the political opposition, they have all the right answers after the events.

    1. I noticed the other day when the radio news was on for the MR that the newsreader said that a government minister had said X – and that was followed by a lengthy recorded piece by an opposition MP. I waited for the Govt chap to have his say…..and waited…and waited.

      1. Typical BBC news procedure, Bill. When Labour is in power they briefly mention Opposition criticism, followed by a firm and lengthy rebuttal from the Government. When the Tories are in power, it is the Government’s statements that are briefly mentioned, followed by a lengthy rebuttal by the Opposition.

        1. It was the same in SA during the various states of emergency in the 80s. The lead item on the news would be something along the lines of “Moscow-backed ANC terrorists planning to murder all whites in their beds”. Then followed a discussion as to what that might mean and only at the very end was the opening statement reported as being the opinion of a lowly Nat back bencher and not a statement of fact at all. In the meantime, someone just picking up on the headline would be left with the impression that the lead item was in fact true (inasmuch anything the Nats said was ever true). In other words, it was all confected bovine excrement.

          This sort of ‘news’ coupled with the Blair creature’s 45 minutes WMD claim have seen me swear off official news entirely. “Never believe it until it’s been denied officially” is my maxim these days.

          Sorry – rant over.

        2. I noticed that in the run up to the 2010 general election. The BBC would barely mention Tory criticism, if at all, then cover the issue more fully once the Labour rebuttal was ready.

      2. Typical BBC news procedure, Bill. When Labour is in power they briefly mention Opposition criticism, followed by a firm and lengthy rebuttal from the Government. When the Tories are in power, it is the Government’s statements that are briefly mentioned, followed by a lengthy rebuttal by the Opposition.

    2. The BBC are absolutely determined that this will be the last ever Tory government in Britain.

      …and from the weak wimpish attitude of many Tory MPs, the BBC is probably right.

      1. MB, who was brought up in a household that had telly in the days when the Beeb was the only option, is now so fed up that he watches once a day, for a short time and then finds other things to do or watch.
        You have absolutely no idea what a seismic change this is. Like Paul on the road to Damascus but with an extra helping of reality.

        1. Quite right, Anne.

          Both of us are now regularly browsing through Al Jazeera and RT news.

          Amazing what important things going on in the world that the BBC totally ignores.

        2. Quite right, Anne.

          Both of us are now regularly browsing through Al Jazeera and RT news.

          Amazing what important things going on in the world that the BBC totally ignores.

        3. MB is not the one that needs to change so much as the spineless sorry arse draggers who seem petrified of sorting out the BBC.
          Yes, Johnson I’m talking about you, all your party MPs and many many more who came before you,

        4. Quite right, Anne.

          Both of us are now regularly browsing through Al Jazeera and RT news.

          Amazing what important things are going on in the world that the BBC totally ignores.

        5. I haven’t watched the Beeb since about 1997. Their coverage in the run up to the Hunting Bill (never mind their sycophantic approach to Blair and his spin) was so biased and untrue it put me off it completely. I reasoned that if they skewed what I did know about, I couldn’t possibly trust them on things I didn’t have personal experience of. Nothing has happened since to make me change my mind.

      2. I thought the last ever Tory government in Britain ended in about 1992, if I remember rightly.

  32. The EU is not reasonable and certainly not acting in good faith. We should leave any negotiations now, before we waste more time.

    “ECJ finds against UK government in politically-motivated VAT case
    Briefings for Britain POSTED ON MAY 14, 2020

    The European Court of Justice has once again demonstrated its politicised nature, by finding the UK government guilty of a supposed infraction that is DECADES old. The European Commission only brought the case AFTER the UK had voted to leave the EU. Civil servant Caroline Bell explores the consequences of the judgement, which has not even been reported by the British media, and explains why it could blow up the Withdrawal Agreement.

    This is an updated version of an article originally published by Briefings for Britain.

    The European Court of Justice (ECJ) yesterday found against the UK government, in a case brought against it by the European Commission for failing to impose VAT on transactions in the City’s multi-trillion-dollar derivatives markets.

    The background to case C-276/19 dates back to March 2018, when the Commission sent a formal letter to the UK government, warning that it was investigating a misapplication of the Terminal Markets Order 1973, which zero-rates derivatives trades for VAT. The UK’s alleged ‘illegal’ extension of zero-rating, according to the Commission, dates back to 1977 (i.e. before some current derivatives markets were even in existence).

    The timing of this notice of infringement, for a supposed infraction dating back four decades (i.e. giving the Commission plenty of time to request that the UK amend its legislation), and coming after we had voted to leave the EU, could not be more political. All subsequent stages of the proceedings need to be viewed as political moves on the Brexit negotiations chessboard.”

    (edited to shorten and instead provide link to full article)

    https://campaignforanindependentbritain.org.uk/ecj-finds-against-uk-government-in-politically-motivated-vat-case/#comments

    1. Punitive taxation on the casino gambling dens populated by mega-rich self-serving speculators asset-stripping local industry and axeing public services seems a good thing to do.

      1. The city, which you hate so much, provides an awful lot of employment and contributes enormous amounts to the exchequer as well as provide services for businesses.

        Kill the city and all the ancillary services and how are you going to replace that?

        1. I don’t advocate killing the city. My grandfather was a bank manager and well understood the value of good money management when building up communities through productive activity.

          The city does need cleansing though. This bonus culture of trickery and preferential lobbying is corrosive to national morale and the reputations and standing of the institutions we rely on, and deeply unproductive. If it cannot be legislated against, for fear of killing off the good aspects of capitalism I referred to above, then at least the worst aspects should be taxed according to the damage they do, and the cost of putting them right.

          1. Bonus culture is a problem in virtually all parts of commerce.

            Excess taxation seldom changes behaviour for the better.

          2. Legislation it is then. Excess taxation has to be well engineered with ingenuity and understanding of human nature for it to work as it should.

            It should be like a rudder, steering business away from damaging activity and towards that which is beneficial to the public interest. If the public interest is defined by well-connected lobbyists with conflicts of interest, then it will fail the public.

            First task of all therefore is to make damned sure those that define public interest are beyond reproach and have impeccable integrity. This used to be the standard test to enter the Civil Service, but these days they are more concerned with “competence”, meaning a good grasp of “diversity and equality”, good people management skills, self assurance and providing a dynamic quality service (whatever that means!). Civil Service recruitment has little to do with integrity, it seems. As for selecting MPs, who are actually tasked with passing the laws, the democratic process has been a disgrace for as long as I have been voting.

          3. They are all as bad as each other, poisoned by the left. I cannot think of a single sector within the UK where this is not the case.

            If you think any legislation, let alone taxation is going to solve this I suspect you are in for a great deal of disappointment

          4. Since when has any legislation not had unintended consequences, never mind actually improving matters?

    2. I’d actually read the article in full a day or so ago, Hertslass, but your final sentence made me laugh as I mis-read it as “political moves on the Brexit negotiations cheeseboard”!

    3. I read that EU cars will be subject to 10% tariffs unless they get their finger out and give us a trade deal. Maybe the German car manufacturers will make the EU see sense.

      1. If you mean cars imported from the EU, such a tariff could only be imposed by the UK Government, not the EU.

          1. Has the UK government threatened to impose such tariffs in the absence of a free trade deal? I’d be very surprised as it could trigger a trade war.

          2. From today’s Independent:

            “JON STONE MAY 19, 2020
            British consumers will face substantial price hikes for European goods like wine, cheese and cars at the end of the year under plans unveiled by the UK government, unless a trade agreement can be signed with the EU in time.

            Liz Truss, the trade secretary, announced on Tuesday the levels of tariffs the UK would apply to imported goods from countries without a free trade agreement when it leaves the single market.

            Stalled Brexit talks mean Britain could end up trading with Europe on the so-called “WTO” terms – replacing the zero tariff deal it currently enjoys and wants to preserve.

            While it has always been clear that a no-deal Brexit would raise the price of imports from Europe, the precise effect can finally be quantified now that the government has published its tariff list.

            Under the plans, wine from countries like Italy, France and Spain would become around £2 more expensive for British consumers per bottle – a 50 per cent rise for some of the best value bottles of supermarket wine.

            Goods like cheese, too, would become between 63p to 93p more expensive per 500g depending on the type.

            Price rises would be imposed across all European food subject to tariffs, raising the price of, for instance, Italian tinned tomatoes by 14 per cent.

            Staples like pasta would get 6 per cent more expensive, while a litre of olive oil would increase in price by nearly £1.20.

            And the government plans to impose a 10 per cent tariff on cars made in Europe that would add hundreds or even thousands of pounds to the price paid by drivers in the UK.”

          3. That doesn’t make any economic sense as the EU would simply reciprocate with their own tariffs.

            “Stalled Brexit talks mean Britain could end up trading with Europe on the so-called “WTO” terms – replacing the zero tariff deal it currently enjoys and wants to preserve.”

            Under WTO (Section 24 I think) if both parties state that they intend to reach a free trade deal in the long run, then they can continue trading under the current arrangements.

            I note the journalistic “could” – this is the Indie after all 😉

          4. Having said that, it it’s intended to pressure the German manufacturers, as Conway suggests, it’s quite a sneaky and shrewd move on the UK’s part.

          5. ‘it’s quite a sneaky and shrewd move on the UK’s part.’

            Shrewd……….???

          7. I suspect that is the motivation. German auto firms make most of their profits from the UK market. Whether their clout is sufficient to change German and, by extension EU policy remains to be seen.

          9. Indeed – and then there’s the Asian (incl China) auto makers…

        2. I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but it was the UK government that was mooting imposing the tariff (under WTO rules).

          1. No problems. Devonian in Kent posted the article. My first reaction was that it would trigger a tariff war, but after DiK’s posts, on reflection, it seemed like a good tactic by the Government.

  33. I wasted not a few minutes last night looking for data on winter flu deaths in recent years. A number of news reports included a few selected figures (14-15, 28,330; 18-19, 1,692) but I could not find a simple summary table. GOV.UK has its annual flu reports at 40-50 (!) pages but no tables of specific figures, only lots of not very useful graphs.

    Someone on here quoted some recently. Can anyone help?

      1. Those are the annual reports to which I referred. There isn’t enough time in the world!

        1. Deliberate – so they can say the figures WERE published and they didn’t hide them – they just put them in Governmentish so nobody would read them.

          1. Ooh, you cynic.

            There’s a lot more in those reports than rates of infection and death. Vaccination takes up a lot of space and, as with the current virus, there’s the difficulty of determining how much an infection contributes to an individual’s death. Nevertheless, it does lack a few simple summaries for the impatient.

          2. Start from the end tables, not the beginning, there actually are some interesting figures and it’s possible to make Y on Y comparisons.

          3. Puzzlingly, successive reports have different totals for the same years.

          4. I think that may be to do with diagnoses and how the statististics are collated.

            A lot of guess work seems to go into these things. The guesswork is just writ VERY large in this Covid panic, probably to continue the panic and justify the actions taken.

      1. Thanks. That’s probably the one that was quoted by someone on here recently.

      1. There is talk about any ARS being pretty serious particularly if the former emanates from the latter.

  35. Back to the fascinating subject of David Cameron, George Soros and Libya !

    As previously posted…………

    Was David Cameron “leveraged” by George Soros into his sudden disastrous decision to topple Colonel Gaddafi which led to the creation of ISIS ?

    New evidence from Open Society and a link to the British government suggest that might be true.

    Firstly, as previously linked, an article by Professor Frank Furedi in USA Politics Today and the Daily Telegraph tells us about Open Society activists……

    ”Some bragged about their influence in preparing the ground for the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya.”

    From USA Politics Today…

    ”Professor Claims George Soros ”Missionaries” Bragged About Toppling Governments”

    https://www.usapoliticstoday.org/professor-george-soros-toppling-governments/

    The same article appeared in the Daily Telegraph….

    ”My Encounter With Soros’ Bright Eyed Missionaries Left Me Deeply Disturbed”…….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/02/08/encounter-george-soross-bright-eyed-missionaries-left-deeply/

    The new evidence is an update from Open Society reporting on a meeting at the Soros sponsored European Council on Foreign Relations about Libya, featuring Libyan Interim National Council spokesperson Guma al-Gamaty, former Rear Admiral and NATO Commander Christopher Parry, and Donal Brown, Libya team leader for the UK’s Department for International Development.

    https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/what-it-takes-protect-civilians-libya

    In the presence of a British civil servant, an Open Society participant went so far as to instruct NATO and the UN…..

    ”NATO and the UN must revisit what ‘all necessary means’ of protection would entail and decide if they can commit to those means. If they can’t or won’t, Libya’s revolution will be a long and bloody one, and is not likely to favor the hopeful, beleaguered democratic opposition”.

    So did the very influential multi billionaire George Soros in his words privately ”leverage” David Cameron to topple Gaddafi ?

    That question remains open, but now we know that his personal foundation was taking a very close interest in the developing Gaddafi situation and was avowedly anti Gaddafi.

    1. Was he leveraged?
      Do you think Cameron has ever had an independent thought in his life??

      1. Exactly !

        I think it might have been the same with the Marriage Act 2013.

        Dave just doesn’t seem the kind of individual who would suddenly wake up one morning and decide I’ve just got to reverse 2000 years of tradition and teaching no matter how much opposition I receive.

        So what happened ?

        Ummmm……..

        Oh, couldn’t have been that well known multi billionaire who wanted equal marriage who had a multi billion dollar ”leveraging” organization just down the road on Millbank who popped into No 10 …. and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse ?

        Could it ?

        1. I think it was broader than that. It was one of those EU plans, whereby they try to pick off individual countries before imposing it across the board.
          Gay “marriage” was pushed through in Germany a couple of years ago, with relatively little public debate, and the very dishonest slogan “Marriage for All.” Just as in Britain, it was never put to the electorate.

          2. True. I don’t believe that he is the only one though. Problems are not going to go away when he dies.

  36. ‘Morning All

    Oi Laffed

    BBC Breaking News

    ‘Trump announces he is taking unproven daily ‘pick-me up’.

    The drug, which is taken mixed with boiled water, is known to have the
    following side-effects : insomnia, nervousness and restlessness, stomach
    upset, nausea and vomiting, increased heart and breathing rate.
    Consuming large amounts might also cause headache, anxiety, agitation,
    ringing in the ears, and irregular heartbeats.

    ‘Coffee’, as it is
    known, has never been officially approved by the FDA as a pick-me up and
    may be fatal if you drink 20 litres of it.

    1. Don’t worry, exactly 2 months ago today, Prime Minister Johnson’s ”partner” multi billionaire Bill Gates stepped up to apparently lead the UK’s R and D into C-19 treatment and vaccines with all decision making given by Johnson to Gates about globally who receives what, and when.

      Nothing can go wrong for the UK, can it ?

      Maybe Bill Gates should also be asked to run the buses and tube ?

      1. Bill Gates and the Tube.
        “A Subway Named Möbius” by Armin Joseph Deutsch.

      2. Can he (gates) walk and talk at the same time.

        This is a feat beyond the capability of many Merkins who get to a position of power

      3. Just hope that Gates is not as vindictive as Trump when it comes to making vaccines available. Your continued attacks on Gates may be shielded by the occasional could / might word but they are an insult to a man who turned turned his life to charitable endeavours after making gazillions flogging software.

        As the parrot believes that as a mod I have no right to a contradictory opinion, let me point out that it is just my personal opinion that Polly is spouting neurotic gibberish.

        1. I never said you ”have no right to a contradictory opinion”.

          I said….

          ”Still keeping up your anti Polly campaign I see. Maybe as a mod you should be more neutral ?”

          So please don’t make things up.

          Anyway, where specifically is the alleged ”gibberish” in my post ?

          Please go through it line by line and explain your reasoning.

          Also, please go through my post yesterday and point out exactly where you think I am wrong.

    1. If they repace the Typewriter, with a Word Processor, they can record The Sound of Silence

    1. 319373+ up ticks,
      o2o,
      Priti convincing a og? priti convincing my @rse.
      By the by Jack & Harry will be spinning
      as the location will be a bloodbath if proposals get the go ahead in london,
      appeasement rules OK.

      Up to mighty London came
      An Irish man one day
      All the streets were paved with gold
      So everyone was gay!
      Singing songs of Piccadilly
      Strand, and Leicester Square
      ‘Til Paddy got excited and…..

  44. Alcohol-fuelled crime offenders may have to wear ‘sobriety tags’. Tue 19 May 2020 00.01 BST

    Offenders who commit “alcohol-fuelled” crimes can be required to wear “sobriety tags” and banned from drinking under legislation that comes into force in England and Wales on Tuesday.

    Courts will have the power to order those convicted of drink-related crimes to wear an ankle monitor for up to 120 days. It assesses whether there is any alcohol in their sweat.

    The first tags are expected to be fitted this year once probation staff have been trained and the monitoring contract agreed. When up and running, as many as 2,300 are likely to be fitted on offenders every year.

    Hmmm. They’ve kept this little piece of Orwellian surveillance under wraps!

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/19/alcohol-fuelled-offenders-may-have-to-wear-sobriety-tags

      2. Mandatory Drug & Alcohol testing for all MPs, Peers and Senior Snivel Serpents!

    2. Stars on sleeves to follow after sufficient public uptake of other labels ‘for our own good’.

      Howling at the moon on Thursday evenings is to be enshined as compulsory in law, following its recent universal popularity.

      1. 319373+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B,
        Surely the peoples must have realised that continuing the same voting pattern over the decades whilst watching society deteriorate & the Country disintegrate was going to end in tears.
        The legacy they are leaving their kids is being put in place now and the only way their kids will avoid getting on their knees five times a day, is to get on their knees once to the background music of
        🎵
        First cut is the deepest.

    3. I am beginning to empathise with Grizzly’s views on mankind – what a repulsive race the human race has become.

      I always think that behind the humour there was some good sense in some of Benny Hill’s songs. Don’t mock, don’t raise a supercilious eyebrow, suppress your instinctive snobbery and listen to this:

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

      :

      1. Benny Hill was one of the first victims of PC, in his case feminism and as usual misapplied!

      2. Good afternoon, Rastus.

        Don’t you think that humanity’s progressively steady increase in culture and intelligence continued to rise from the time of Chaucer and Giotto; through Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci and JS Bach; and then peaked around Dickens, Tchaikovsky, Kipling, Pissarro and Austen?

        Despite the marvellous technological advance of the 20th and 21st centuries, this is all inversely proportional to the unstoppable rise in mankind’s relentlessly exponential loss of moral fibre.

        Discuss.

        1. Definitely Dylanesque. I’d never heard that one before. Great song especially the last verse.

    4. This shouldn’t bother the new replacement immigrant culture being ferried in. Now can the people who invented these tags adapt one for convicted grooming gang members? Instead of looking for alcohol in the sweat . . . . .
      And will these sobriety tags have reporting trackers in them as well?

      1. Grooming gang members’ members to be tagged by attaching an extremely tight jubilee clip at the base. To relieve the discomfort of being unable to pee, a tube into the bladder would be provided: wouldn’t want to be considered barbaric, would we? As a security measure the tightening device would be constructed in such a way that the only possibility of removal, and a slim one at that, would require the use of a welding torch. That should concentrate a few minds. 😎

      2. Afternoon Walter. I did notice that it omitted a large proportion of the present population though one would have thought that Khat or Grass was just as viable. My real concern about it though, having now given it some thought, is that is not punishment for some committed misdeed but prevention. Freedom as a reality now seems to have been eliminated from all consideration! It is a non state! The more control the better.

        1. Totally agreed. It can only get worse. I feel sorry for the young who will never know freedom without monitoring.

          1. The young love their cyber apron strings.
            They cannot imagine a life where parents can’t check on them every minute of the day.

  45. Oh! dear.

    My brother [who lives a few miles away] has just rung me.

    ” I know you only use your car on Thursdays but I wonder
    if you will do me a favour?”

    ” Of course I will.”

    ” Well, I have had an accident, can you come over today?”

    ” Good grief! What has happened?”

    ” I dropped and smashed a litre bottle of Vodka, any chance
    you can get me a replacement and bring it over to me?”

    ” No problem, see you in a while.”………

    Later!! :-))

  46. The BBC has lost the plot. 19th May 2020.

    If the BBC wants to remain in its current form, it needs to take a long hard look at itself and rediscover its original ideals. In my personal view, its position and status has been untenable and unwarranted for years, and it should already be a subscription service with no greater right to drag people who don’t pay for it before magistrates than Netflix, Amazon or Sky. But for it to have any hope of continuing, it needs to show it provides value to all sections of society, not just those fetishised by the metropolitan sensibilities of the BBC’s out-of-touch top brass.

    This is hopelessly naïve. The BBC has no intention of rediscovering anything. It is fulfilling its function of Cultural Marxist propagandeering to perfection so why would it change? Like a great many publicly funded UK institutions, The Home Office, the Intelligence Services, Etc. it operates independently of Government opinion or policy. It is yet another Tail wagging the Dog!

    Barring a political earthquake this is not going to change; indeed the current CV epidemic is cementing it even more securely in its place.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/19/the-bbc-has-lost-the-plot/

      1. On the face of it yes but it is necessary to remove all obstacles for breath of fresh air BT.💨

          1. Now, write it out 100 times without sellotaping several pens together!

    4. I wonder how many stroppy patients in care homes went out that route and were conveniently certified as Corona Virus.

    2. Not a hope. He’s the fall guy now. More likely a Dr Kelly for him, before he talks.
      Where is Ferguson, BTW?

      1. Dr Kelly will rise from the dead, at the thought of Ferguson mentioned in the same sentence as himself.

    1. If the best girl Harry could pick was Migraine Markle then he should not be trusted to pick fruit and vegetables!

      1. He became senile at a very early age. His slowness of speech, his lugubrious diction, his puerile sense of humour and his almost total lack of genuine wit or common sense are exasperating.

        Can anyone imagine a more tedious experience that spending an evening alone with this sub-humanly dull man?

        1. To be fair to the chap, he is a product of his upbringing. A quiet sensitive lad was bullied by his dad and sent to Gordonstoun where they tried to make a man out of him.

          1. Gordonstoun was quite happy to turn a blind eye to the bullying he received from fellow pupils.

            It’s not the ideal school for someone who has had little or no exposure to other than fawning from lackeys and starts off as a bit of a wimp. It’s one of those places where if a child settles in well they can thrive if not then it can be purgatory.

          2. Not to mention that he had to join the RAF and the RN and learn to speak Welsh. Poor bu99er!

        1. I was surprised to read recently how much Brenda puts away, especially at her age: 4 stiff drinks a day. GOK what her point score is.

          1. If true, it obviously works for her though. A role model perhaps? 🙂

    3. I would imagine that Chuck is heaving a sigh of relief that Ginge the Whinge is several thousand miles away. And Camilla is dancing around singing hallelujahs.

  50. We keep seeing reports that Ferguson’s model has been destroyed time and time again, but where is the outrage? Where are the demands for the
    true picture? Why isn’t the TV news all over this demanding answers?

    Why isn’t it taking prominence over countless and repeated articles about people driving to the beaches for a walk and a rest?

    We are driving the world into penury based on this man’s calculations, yet nobody seems to mind!

    What the hell is going on?

    1. 319373+ up ticks,
      Morning B,
      I mind & a lot more like me mind, we
      actively worked pounding pavements to push for a referendum in a 100%
      patriotic party.
      Consequently this party could NOT be tolerated hence, we are where we are due to governance party rulings, who supports these parties & return them to power time & again ?
      We keep hearing …… sh!te.
      We keep hearing …… sh!te.
      We keep hearing …… sh!te.
      As we all know most times sh!te sticks.
      Many peoples find that the easiest route to take is to believe in the sh!te element and vote accordingly.

    2. The model being poor is one thing, but it only gave input to decisions.
      What prize bozos based their decision-making on an unverified, unvalidated model? Were no other specialists involved in the discussions? Did nobody ask questions about the economy?
      It looks very much to me like Ferguson is finding that life in the limelight isn’t all it’s made up to be, as all the useless brain-dead fools who made the decisions ensure he gets the blame.
      It’s like tales we used to get of people blindly following their satnav directions into a river or across a closed railway crossing. It’s advice, not absolute instruction!

    4. Professor Ferguson was proven wrong in 2005 with his predictions about bird ‘flu.

      He was again badly wrong in 2009 in his predictions about swine ‘flu.

      I’m surprised that the Government didn’t bother to get his figures checked when he made predictions the third time.

      Yes, they turned out wrong again, but remember, one is not allowed to criticize Marxists….ever!

      1. He also messed up royally on foot and mouth, Sars…you name it, he’s cocked it up. In performance terms he must have set some kind of world record.

        1. So very strange that the PTB take him so seriously after all his previous errors

      2. The Government took so long to do anything so they could fit it into the Agenda of Globalism.

        Ferguson was their goto Patsy.

    6. Globalism. They want to start with a level playing field.

      The E.U can’t get something done without bullying or bribing the dissenters.

      It will be the same with Globalism. Expect to see the rise of Tyranny.

          1. No, and up to three times the amount a UK pensioner gets after 50 years at work.

    2. Is that intercept as in ‘here’s the address of a nice house we’ve lined up for you’?

        1. Nah – they take them to the benefits office – and hand them the keys of agreeable accommodation.

          1. Is that before, or after, replacing all the furniture and carpets, rewiring the entire house and making sure the central heating is up to scratch?

    4. May I propose that the Border Force adopts The Carousel Waltz as its theme tune.

    5. I look forward to the headline ‘Border Force torpedoes three small boats of invaders’.

      1. Good morning cynarch

        High time for a kipple:

        If you can dream and not make dreams your master

    6. See the UN Compact on Global Migration. Paragraph 13. My bold.
      This Global Compact recognizes that safe, orderly and regular migration works for all when it
      takes place in a well-informed, planned and consensual manner. Migration should never be an
      act of desperation. When it is, we must cooperate to respond to the needs of migrants in
      situations of vulnerability,       and address the respective challenges. We must work together to
      create conditions that allow communities and individuals to live in safety and dignity in their own
      countries. We must save lives and keep migrants out of harm’s way. We must empower
      migrants to become full members of our societies, highlight their positive contributions, and
      promote inclusion and social cohesion      . We must generate greater predictability and certainty
      for States, communities and migrants alike. To achieve this, we commit to facilitate and ensure
      safe, orderly and regular migration for the benefit of all.

      1. So, migration is to be assisted.
        Clear as a bell.
        No wonder they get brought over the channel.

      2. The UN needs to bring to book the despots who made life impossible for their people, people who will risk life and limb to escape the terrible legacy of constant war, famine and tribal division .
        The UN needs to get heavy .. The secret offshore bank accounts should be plundered and used for the betterment of a decent life for the many , to discourage them using Europe as a crutch .

  52. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/74798a0b261382ea1401a929d1fb266a3d23fe597d1fbd2a38d41f791942a032.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eac5b7f7964ab9ce6330b4baf331954e01a7a0d5fe26d1f3c2478fe8ed1e6ad5.png

    When I were nobbut a nipper, the advice for slimmers was to cut out bread and potatoes (a.k.a. starch, a.k.a. carbohydrates). This article shows that the old advice was the best, despite a couple of generations of clueless fools in between who gave us contrary “advice” based upon flawed logic and unsupportable data. Telling us to drink the abomination known as skimmed milk — which has a far higher sugar content than good old proper milk — was criminal irresponsibility since it is sugar in the diet which is the poison, not fat, which is a nourishing and exceptionally tasty food.

    Since following the old sage advice of eschewing the bread, spuds, flour and sugar; whilst at the same time upping my intake of dairy products and fatty meats; I am shedding weight and feeling much healthier, not to mention far more alert.

    Remember: sugar and carbohydrates (especially in unnatural combinations: ice-cream, cakes etc) will make you fat, give you cancer, strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. They will kill you and make you miserable before doing so.

    Fats from meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products will keep you healthy and give you much pleasure.

    1. 319373+ up ticks,
      G,
      Her indoors has been running your posted healthy options for years ie sugar = poison, wheat products = poison, butter is best etc, untampered milk a must, her home made bread via a selection of nuts is very acceptable.

    2. I am delighted to say that you have just provided me with the motivation to do just that – I have half a stone or so to lose to fit comfortably into my summer clothes. Another motivation (for me) is never to buy clothing in the next size up. I have rather lost my mojo this year for the obvious reason and the need for comfort foods has prevailed.

      2. Hi, Poppiesmum.

        The biggest benefit I have discovered is that it is the consumption of carbs that makes you hungry again very quickly. Since cutting out carbs and sugar I eat one substantial meal a day and then do not get hungry again for 24 hours. No desire to snack either. This OMAD (one meal a day) diet is something I wished I’d embarked upon decades ago!

        I even take a dash of double cream in my tea and coffee. It was a bit weird at first, but now I’m used to it.

        1. I know – a slice of toast and marmalade for breakfast has me wanting another slice very quickly (I do not give in). And it is easier by far to resist the first biscuit, as it were, than those in the rest of the packet! I should add that toast and marmalade are a winter’s treat only.

          1. Once I’ve reached my target weight then marmalade on toast will again feature in my diet. If only one slice, once a week, just for the thrill of eating it.

      3. I’ve put on a bit the last couple of months – mainly from too much wine & chocolate! OH likes making puddings……..

        1. #Me Too. The prospect of being reunited with the Connemara (even if only briefly, although I hope he won’t be too fresh) has made me step up my exercise and cut down on alcohol. Only 10 days to go to D Day! It’s amazing the difference having a goal to aim at makes.

          1. In spite of the lovely day today I’ve still got CBA sysndrome – I managed to write an article for the local paper but that’s about it.

          2. It was a scorcher here; too hot to do anything but laze in the sun during the heat of the day (I even needed to put the parasol up for some shade!). When it cooled down a bit I made a start on clearing out the front border (a task I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but didn’t get around to). With any luck, once it cools down (been even hotter today) I’ll do a bit more.

          3. Very warm here today – much warmer than yesterday. Quite scorching indeed – I did spend an hour or so outside earlier on, then most of the afternoon inside. I went out again whwn it cooled off. Our swifts are back today!

    3. You need some proper stuff, Grizzly, such as that pictured below.

      My cows’ stuff ran out early April and since I have to lug my once-a-week shopping a fair distance, I cut out the weight of milk. Being cheesed off gives me my dairy intake.

      As for ‘healthy’ food, I ignore what the Xperts say and believe variety is the key. I won’t say what goes into my pan for fear of upsetting people (as it does to the people I do tell).

      I faced a stark choice several years ago – get rid of the spare tyre (not excessive) or buy new trousers. Parsimony won the day and I bought the following book. Since it gives a lot of good dietary advice, I can highly recommend it.

      Waist Disposal.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2d291dfdaad7e836d59c1386edf6472474b53bf0c42a8cd56542808a68d02e1.jpg

        1. I tried them on my teeth and it stopped me eating. Lost more weight than from reading the book.

          Incidentally, I watched a documentary on BBC last night about bread and the ‘utility’ stuff they had to eat during the war. One comment was that the wartime diet was the healthiest the UK’s had, before or since.

          1. I am looking forward to seeing that tonight.

            Oddly, when one looks at photos of people during the war, a lot – especially women – seemed “well-rounded”.

          2. Unfortunately, Bill, apart from Sue, there doesn’t seem to be anyone within Broadcasting House with any gumption. Two good documentaries on BBC at the same time last night and neither repeated (I don’t do their streaming service).

            P.S. As for the women you mention, I reckon the pounds, like those in the bank, are a store for their later years.

          3. Unfortunately, Bill, apart from Sue there doesn’t seem to be anyone within Broadcasting House with any gumption. Two good documentaries on BBC at the same time last night and neither repeated (I don’t do their streaming service).

            P.S. As for the women you mention, I reckon the pounds, like those in the bank, are a store for their later years.

          11. That’s largely down to rationing, though. Only limited amounts of meat, eggs, sugar and not being able to use a car if you had one because of petrol rationing.

          12. I know, and cars were a rarity when I was growing up.

            A local baker’s lad had a three-wheeler which needed a push to get it going and me and my pal obliged each Saturday. As a reward, he’d give us a ride about a mile down the road, after which we had to walk back. Despite the walk, we considered it a treat.

      2. We still have our milk delivered twice weekly – in glass bottles. I occasionally buy a top-up plastic one from Morrisons, but the bottled stuff with full cream is much nicer.

        2. Agreed, J, 100% we also have 3 deliveries a week and I get my full-cream while Judy gets her lactose free. Semi-skimmed and all other variants of skimmed milk, are the work of the devil being just tasteless water.

        3. “Full Cream”? We get milk delivered in glass. I am sure that all whole milk is homogenised, so no cream on the top?

          1. No – it’s not homogenised – we have cream on the top in glass bottles. The plastic bottles from the supermarket are all homogenised.

          2. I will check what we get. It’s from McQueen’s Dairies. We decided on glass bottles as the priority.
            Glass is recycled. We are trying to move away from supermarkets now. they failed us when lockdown started. We still cannot get deliveries from Sainsbury’s or from Tesco, both of whom delivered to us previously. So we will be trying to shop local as far as is consistent with reasonable quality. Local shops set up a joint delivery service, stepping into the breach. They had no shortages it seems, possibly because of different logistics systems, that is from central wholesale fruit market and from local farms and not from a Regional Distribution Centre in England, like the supermarkets have.

          4. Yes. We are going to buy local as far as possible. The wee shopkeepers have managed things far better than the supermarkets or the government.

          5. Update. We get milk delivered by McQueen’s Dairies. We get whole milk. It has been homogenised. They don’t offer whole milk unhomogenised.

        4. There’s one item I can only get from Morrisons and I went there last week. Among the few items I did get was some own-brand powdered milk. Blow me if it wasn’t 58% more expensive than the Marvel I bought a few weeks ago. In fact, Morrisons’ prices mean I’ve gone from being a once a week Morrisons man to being once every blue moon.

          Since I only drink milk in my tea, not having the real thing is no big deal.

          2. Coffeemate isn’t that good in coffee either – I’d rather drink it without
            I do use powdered milk for my GF bread when I’ve run out of milk

      3. That book looks to be full of good, sound advice, Eddy. However, all the good advice it contains is readily available — at no charge — all over the internet.

        Since embarking upon my weight-loss campaign I have avidly researched numerous sources, all of which advocate the same advice, and I have to report that it is paying dividends.

        1. Yes, in fact his central theme is that it’s carbohydrates, not fat, which create body fat.

          1. That is a fact that most people are not aware of. And the marketing people play on it to sell their Frankenstein ready-made “food”.

          2. Diabetes Dr Gro gave me a suggested weeks menu some years ago. When you look a it, it was basically a rule: Cut the sugar/carbs.
            Go for the low sugar/carb version of what you like to eat; no problems with fat, as the food has to taste of something and give you energy. Salt is OK in moderation, for taste sake. And don’t be obsessive – a diet ain’t helping if it makes you miserable.
            We buy the lowest carb version of whatever – cereals for breakfast, bread, you name it. Not sugaring the cereal meant that, after a while acclimatising, milk tastes sweet (!); tap water is sweet… and I now have a number of nice tweed jackets that look like hand-me-downs…
            :-((

          3. “And don’t be obsessive…”

            That’s the key. I know people, including a close relation of mine, who look at food through a pair of ‘Health’ glasses. Personally, I don’t think any food is bad for you in moderation and that the body gets rid of the rubbish in its own way.

          4. Some people even weigh out the portions… madness, I tell you, madness!

          5. I am a “Nando’s” virgin: never been in any of their shops. However, I just popped some soaked cherry logs onto the gas BBQ and barbied (hot-smoked) a whole chicken that I had marinated, overnight, in Nando’s own-brand “Peri-Peri” sauce.

            I’ve just eaten half of it, with a mountain of watercress, some steamed cabbage (that I’d seasoned with grated fennel bulb, chopped garlic clove, salt and pepper), and a tomato. It was, indeed, very tasty. A large-ish portion of food but, hey ho, nothing more to eat until this time termorrer!

    4. I’ve never stopped using whole milk – I don’t eat cheese, but never buy the skimmed chalk and water rubbish – it’s disgusting.

        1. Remember when the doorstep pinta was in danger of being tampered with by blue tits keen to get the cream?

          1. WTF is a ‘pinta’? [I thought it was the sister ship of the Nina and the Santa Maria.]

            Is it possible to order a ‘pinta’ of ale in a pub? Or a ‘pinta’ of maggots in the fishing tackle shop? Or a ‘pinta’ of nails in a hardware store?

            Do eight ‘pintas’ make one ‘gallona’? Is an American ‘pinta’ smaller than an imperial ‘pinta’?

          2. So sorry. I was referring to the Milk Marketing Board’s slogan “Drinka Pinta Milka Day”.
            Hence, or otherwise, an attempt at humour.
            Perhaps I should annotate my comments you grumpy bugger?

            Oh, did I say that out loud?

          3. I know, Horace (yes I am a grumpy old bugger). I’m aware of the origin of the silly non-word but its habitual use on adverts, when people are discussing a pint of milk, invariably irritates.

        2. Yes – what’s the point of removing that little bit to make chalk and water?

    1. Out walking with our dog I often see empty discarded bottles.
      Energy drinks. That don’t seem to work in supplying enough energy to the cyclists to get the empty bottle home again.

      1. Good morning

        Everything is so dry , our forests and heathland are vulnerable .. there are so many thoughtless idiots who need to graze and eat BBQs all the time . Why don’t people just engage their brains and if they have to eat , what is wrong with preparing a hard boiled egg sandwich before they leave home !

        The countryside became VERY overcrowded at the week end ..It has become a play ground for millions of people .

        1. I hate to mention it TB but there are people in this country who would actually enjoy a heathland of forest fire or two.

          1. We have them up here regularly and some are started deliberately by misguided land owners who ignore the pollution problem.

          2. ‘Morning, Spikey, as Australia found to their cost, there are certain safety factors involved with the controlled burning of fire-breaks.

        2. And perhaps they might spare a thought for the destruction of rare habitat, amazing wildlife and plants that exist nowhere else in this country…

          No, probably not, because they are thick and feel entitled to do whatever they like.

        3. It’s not as if the cheap burgers and sausages they are part-cooking are even worth the time and effort.

        4. The roads become filled with cyclists, riding two-abreast. This is a working countryside and the speed limit is 60. Cyclists make no allowances for any of this, arrogantly smug in the fact that the law now compels road vehicles to give them a wide berth, of around five feet. This puts the overtaking vehicle well into the field on the other side of the road.

        5. There was an obstreperous nurse in my last dental practice who hated the smell of cooked eggs. I used to delight in taking in egg sarnies or kedgeree for lunch.

  54. Now the government blames SCIENTISTS for Coronavirus failures: Furious finger-pointing breaks out over testing fiasco and failure to protect care homes as Cabinet minister Therese Coffey says blunders were down to ‘wrong’ science advice.

    A furious blame game erupted today as a Cabinet minister claimed government coronavirus blunders were down to ‘wrong’ science advice.

    Therese Coffey insisted the government had just been following the guidance from experts as she fended off damning criticism from MPs over ‘inadequate’ testing.

    Whoops! No mention of Ferguson though who is responsible for this ongoing catastrophe.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8333513/Several-lessons-learnt-handling-Covid-19-MPs-say.html

    1. Are the Swedes also blaming their scientists for the rise in their care home deaths? The Bbc had another report on that issue, which included an interview with a ‘right wing’ doctor. Strange that they never introduce ‘left wing’ doctors.

      1. Left wing is the norm. There is nowhere to the left of it, therefore there can be no ‘left-wing’, only correctly-thinking and right wing..

    2. No, he isn’t. Who took the decisions? Politicians. Who wasn’t educated enough to ask the questions, or understand the answers? Politicians. Who did all this in secret SAGE sessions? Politicians.
      They bustards are quick enough to take all the credit when things go right, now it didn’t go as hoped, they are trying to offload the blame onto others.

      1. Politicians are not experts in everything, and have to take advice. The failure in this instance was not taking advice from different viewpoints, and then making a decision.
        It wouldn’t have taken five minutes to do a bit of research on Ferguson and Imperial College regarding their previous track record in epidemic predictions. That should have been enough to discount his advice completely.

    4. 319373+ up ticks,
      Afternoon As,
      Any mention of closing the bleeding back door as the daily draft coming in is totally unacceptable.
      Do you think this governance party’s political hierarchy knows the door is wide open.

  55. OT – last night the MR and I watched the last of three (repeated) BBC4 Progs about monastery life.

    Now I have no longer any religious belief, but am happy to acknowledge that many do. Each monastery had enormous, well-cared for buildings – including a huge chapel – and spacious grounds. Each only had a handful of chaps – all of whom were, apparently, bound to a vow of silence.

    They didn’t appear to DO anything, except pray a lot, go to eight services a day, keep bees, chop wood, pray a lot. And EAT. Most of them were overweight – several what one would call seriously obese. I always thought that a monkish life of prayer and fasting meant that ascetics were thin and wiry.

    Forgive me if I am missing something, but their whole way of life just seemed self-indulgent.

    And where does all the money come from? Keeping up large buildings doesn’t come cheap.

    One good thing – there was no background muzak; and no driveling, arm-waving presenter.

    3. I’ve always been amazed when I visit the huge cathedrals and churches abroad. The money invested not only in the buildings but the sheer opulence of the ineriors often dripping with gold.
      And the poorest people in the towns cities or even on the planet, kneeling in the pews asking something they percieve is listening, for forgiveness and praying for a good crop of vegetables to feed to their often impoverished families.
      The only time I have been moved was on a cliff top in Rhodes. Inside a tiny white church with a blue roof. I was able to light a candle just after my father died.
      And hopefully still the flame continues.

      1. That’s why I don’t follow organised religion. It’s only when the priesthood are grandly settled in a comfortable lifestyle that the needs of the poor are attended to – as long as the buildings are freshly gold-leafed, of course. It’s just another form of politics, and I won’t have anything of it – even though the architecture is magnificent, there’s more spirituality in a tiny, simple clifftop chapel than all of the Vatican.

        1. 319373+ up ticks,
          O,
          Best for Christians each to hold their own personal council on that subject.

        2. The more opulent churches are often, ahem, RC. Once upon a time they were filthy rich, but after a series of sex scandals they are now only moderately so.

        3. I actually attended a C of E school, but I soon began to hate the religious nonsense bestowed on us each day. And a church service each month.

          3. Full on job, vicar in his kit, chior whole school at St Mary’s Hendon.
            Plus the daily assembly. And prayers in the classroom each home time.

    4. Loads of historical reasons behind monastic and convent life, apart from the spiritual. Food, shelter, education and training, a destination for younger sons and various daughters. As the Church became wealthier, a supposed vocation became a career choice, similar to the public sector today.

      1. Well, last night, there was one nun who was described as a “visitor”…she was shown tucking (silently) into her meal with the blokes – all of whom studiously ignored her.

        3. There was a nun who knew more than all the other nuns, but was not aware of the fact – she was Nun the Wiser.

      2. Talking of nuns; all those deluded people who thought Colchester was still posh, this was forwarded to me today by a local solicitor.

        Two clever nuns

        [][]

        There were two nuns………..

        One of them was known as Sister Mathematical (SM),

        and the other one was known as Sister Logical (SL).

        It is getting dark and they are still far away from the convent.

        SM: Have you noticed that a man has been following us for the past thirty-eight and a half minutes? I wonder what he wants.

        SL: It’s logical. He wants to ****us.

        SM: Oh, no! At this rate he will reach us in 15 minutes at the most! What can we do?

        SL: The only logical thing to do of course is to walk faster. A little while later…

        SM: It’s not working.

        SL: Of course it’s not working. The man did the only logical thing. He started to walk faster, too.

        SM: So, what shall we do? At this rate he will reach us in one minute.

        SL: The only logical thing we can do is split. You go that way and I’ll go this way. He cannot follow us both.

        So the man decided to follow Sister Logical.

        []

        Sister Mathematical arrives at the convent and is worried about what has happened to Sister Logical.

        Then Sister Logicalarrives.

        SM: Sister Logical! Thank God you are here! Tell me what happened!

        SL: The only logical thing happened. The man couldn’t follow us both, so he followed me

        SM: Yes, yes! But what happened then?

        SL: The only logical thing happened. I started to run as fast as I could and he started to run as fast as he could.

        SM: And?

        SL : The only logical thing happened. He reached me.

        SM : Oh, dear! What did you do?

        SL : The only logical thing to do. I lifted my dress up.

        SM : Oh, Sister! What did the man do?

        SL: The only logical thing to do. He pulled down his pants.

        []

        SM: Oh, no! What happened then?

        SL : Isn’t it logical, Sister? A nun with her dress up can run faster than a man with his pants down.

        And for all those of you who thought it would be smutty,

        Say two Hail Marys!

    6. They sound like Trappists, Bill. Other orders are available 🙂 Of course they are doing something; they are praying for our salvation.

        1. Some of us well, you and one or two others here are beyond salvation….

          1. ‘….are beyond salvation….’

            What a crass, senseless and very nasty comment!

  56. I’m trying to post a reply to Julia Hartley-Brewers marvellous conversation with that councillor from Bury, posted by LewisDuckworth.

    ‘Good old Julia. She’s magnificent. I bet she was loving that. :)’

    I get the message that the post I am trying to reply to has been removed. Why? It was brilliant!

    EDIT. I now realise it was posted twice and the duplicate removed.

    1. 319373+ up t9icks,
      Morning B,
      Currently the truth will NOT be tolerated in any shape or form.

    2. I’ve just watched it so it’s still there
      Brilliant as always is our Julia

    3. I gave up listening to the clip after a few minutes. The councillor clearly has no idea what ‘hypocrite’ means, and repeated the same old guff that he was allowed to get away with unchallenged on BBC Breakfast this morning. Not this time, though. JHB would not give him an easy ride like the BBC did. He just confirmed her opinion of Bury councillors as ‘a bunch of idiots’.

      1. His IQ is probably an example of one of the benefits of multi-kulti. The country’s average is plummeting.

  57. I hope that the families of the frail, elderly people who died in Covid care homes hire a clever lawyer who will find out who ordered this slaughter of the innocent:

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/19/how-covid-panic-caused-the-carnage-in-care-homes/?fbclid=IwAR1Yd8TNRr-8B00v7c5juFl6qctMc-VoySm3JFFcS30kp6Ag5-RTmACiuJ4

    In the mad panic to ‘protect the NHS’ we forgot that we should be protecting the elderly. The NHS is a bloodthirsty God and must be appeased with sacrifice of the old.

    1. It’s still not clear just who decided this strategy, i.e. was it at ministerial level, i.e. Hancock, Johnson, Cabinet, or civil servants in the Department of Health, or Public Health England.
      There were plenty of anecdotes about this in comment sections on various websites, and only picked up by the MSM much later. Up until that point it was being ignored.
      Whoever is responsible for this should face criminal investigation on corporate manslaughter charges. They knew who was the most vulnerable, i.e. the elderly, and they sent CV19 patients into care homes anyway.

      1. Add into the mix the agency staff, without PPE, who move around from care-home to care-home and spread the virus around.

      1. That is what gets me. It is one thing for the NHS to ship oldies out to homes but when you hear that some US States have done the same thing, you have to ask what gives.

        I don’t know if Canada did the same and shipped the sick out to homes but certainly care home deaths have been the majority of cases over here. In some homes care workers just left residents to starve or die of dehydration.

    1. Pretty hefty fine for loosing your cellphone or even going outside at night.

      The country might make a profit if the restrictions are enforced.

      1. The restrictions will be enforced. Everyone has to have a government account where fines and tolls are automatically charged and difficult to appeal.

      2. To say nothing about what might happen if they see you holding your girlfriend’s hand in public.

      1. Bradford is still mainly white British, but it also has one of, if not the highest, percentages of people of Pakistani ethnic origin in England at over 20..

        1. ‘Bradford is still mainly white British’……..really? They must have all been away on holiday when I’ve been there.

          1. The city of Bradford is surprisingly large, with pockets where the Pakistani numbers will be nearly 100%. Even 40 yeas ago, when we lived there, you could literally cross the road and think you were in a different country.

    2. safeguarding measures put in place for 26 children, West Yorkshire Police said.

    6. Mr Justice Cocklecarrot (for it is he):

      “You are free to go without a stain on your characters. How anyone could think that honest brown gentlemen, such as you, born, raised and educated in England could possibly understand the ways of the local natives is beyond me.”

  60. Couple of snaps of what pass for reasonable views of our garden with the bonus of my ‘stalker’. This little bird has taken to following me around my garden and demanding food by making an awful din to catch my attention. He’s appeared at the back door of our home and at the door to the top greenhouse when I’ve been working there. His favourite spot is in the wisteria just a few feet from our back door. In the picture where he’s feeding – and by the amount of food he’s been collecting he has a family to feed – he’s tucking into well soaked mealworms.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf953a679d90cb4313a977bb831439602743c88e5ecbcd8540446cdf3f35971f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9037a460b2ddf66281ca422094df1335f9cf1209c73fa9a99beababa9b06ffea.jpg

    1. Nice wisteria, K. Our blue one (like that) is over, The white is half way to full bloom.

      1. I keep it under tight control to stop it taking over the wooden frame. It’s almost as big a menace as bindweed but more attractive, of course.

    2. Love the Robin as well.
      We have a beautiful Weigela at the top of our garden and a wonderful dog rose growing through a Rowen tree.
      Red rose already flowering and pink/orange about to flower with the sweet smelling white climber across a trellis covered in buds.

          2. An appropriate answer the this government’s pathetic reaction to the virus.

        2. Excellent.
          Ours is in full bud as well.
          I took a cutting from a house where a was working around 20 years ago.
          I have problems up loading photos to this site.
          We also have a clematis that fills the air with scent as darkness decends.

    4. My ‘stalker’ when I’m gardening, has four legs and is of the canine variety. His one and only, but unerring, talent is to place himself exactly where I need to step or work.

      1. The UK could try using the Smart Meter – it’s a bit shorter at least on credibility.

        1. Glancing at those others using 2 metres, despite the more stringent lock-downs they’ve imposed their record doesn’t seem to show that the additional distance has made much difference. Italy? Spain?

          The 2 metres is apparently derived from 1930 reasearch that showed that when coughing and sneezing infected droplets could spread 2 metres, according to the article. Since anyone coughing or sneezing in public at the moment would very quickly find everyone around them giving them a very wide berth indeed, and the fact that I’ve not heard anyone coughing or sneezing when I go for my shop in the past two months, maybe IDS has a point.

          1. I recall posting a diagram that showed that airborne spray could go 16 metres (or something – much greater than one would imagine).

          2. But what is the concentration (and therefore potential doseage) at that distance? Also that airborne spray is from coughs and sneezes. Could isnt the same as will. If people are together and they aren’t sneezing, then…

          3. I get an overwhelming urge to cough and sneese as soon as I am anywhere near an occupied space, such as a supemarket. Very inconvenient…

      3. More or Less on BBC World Service this week was dedicated to the 1m topic. Well worth the 10 minute listen on the BBC Sounds app.

      5. Branestorm thinks a mile (or rather 1.6 km – he would never use “Imperial” measures) is about right.

        1. As I said the other day when I posted that same information, just because they are often wrong, it doesn’t follow that they are always wrong. My post from 6 days ago:

          ‘While the media in the pursuit of market share have people quaking with fear if they see someone approaching them on a pavement three metres wide to the extent that one of them steps onto the adjacent road to maximise separation, and airlines are threatened with closure because you can’t sit people 2m apart and still use the toilets or provide a load factor that will make a flight economic, it’s worth contemplating a fact that I heard on the car radio when I went shopping this morning.

          The WHO recommended separation for Covid 19 isn’t 2m. It’s 1m.

          And that 1m makes a hell of a difference to the economic impacts of this outbreak, while it seems not being a significantly greater health risk that the 2m which our gold-platers have given us.

          I’m all for being safe and not catching stuff, but if Russia says a small bear (1.5m) is plenty and the WHO says 1m, shouldn’t we be considering whether we are getting it right?

          (Before someone says the WHO have got stuff wrong, I know, but occasionally they may be right).’

          1. Perhaps we could compromise (that good ole British trait) between Russia and the WHO and settle for 1.25m (4ft 1 1/4 inches approx).

      7. But they’re not trying to cause a big sensation, just talking about s-s-social s-s-segregation.

          2. Since geographical times. We’re Scandinavia, not Europe. Europe starts in Denmark – just look at the architectural style.

          3. It cracks me up when people describe Finland, Denmark and Iceland as “Scandinavian countries”. None of them are part of the Scandinavian peninsula.

            Only Finland has a tenuous claim but, then again, most scholars refer to their inclusion as “Fenno-Scandia”.

          4. Yeah, yeah, of course you’re not on the continent of Europe. Scandinavia is in Asia.

            I must have missed that in Geography.

      2. Switzerland has never been in the EU, but it’s always been in Europe. I’m with Bill on advocating the medlinnii medved measure.

    4. I think I’d find it embarrassing to be standing in a queue with a bear behind.

    5. They could make it 1 metre outdoors where the risk of transmission is low, and 3 metres in enclosed spaces. Oh dear, that means four people per Tube carriage.

  63. Funny Old World
    Front line medics etc are “essential workers” so their children go to school,so has there been a massive outbreak of Chinkyflu amongst their teachers?? Or their children??
    If not,there we have it,keeping the schools closed is a political point scoring nonsense

    2. Essential workers who are potentially exposed to much greater doses that the average Joe, as we are encouraged to acknowledge by baying on our doorsteps on Thursdays.

      Maybe there’s a lesson there.

  64. I was thinking about the social distancing and relaxing the 2m rule,
    What if they reduce it gradually say 1mm a week?

  65. Great excitement. The removal firm e-mailed to say they hoped to bring our stuff on Friday.

    Even greater excitement – tinged with anxiety. Where on earth are we going to put it all?

    By the by, the lady said they were “pretty certain” about Friday – except that the driver is right now in Switzerland. Funny, that, with all this quarantine going on. International removers just keep on, er, moving stuff.

        1. Clear away all the odds and ends in your least used room and stack the furniture in there.

          1. You have been reading “Woman’s Own” again.

            We have no “least used room”. Every room is chockablock. I did mention it to the MR, tactful, like…..

        2. My mother used to say that it didn’t matter how big or small the house, you were always one room short!

          3. Had to explain Picnic to a Romanian colleague today. Problem in Chair not in Computer. Sometimes referred to as a keyboard chair interface problem or even the infamous ID ten T error.

          4. The perpetual male – female argument:
            She – We need more storage
            He – we need less stuff

          5. Not universally true; one of my ex-neighbours (male) was a terrible hoarder. His wife was such a minimalist she once got rid of the spare wheel in the car because she was cleaning out the boot!

          10. Yep! Sons in law are delighted! Hope all your stuff arrives safely. Imagine all those things you haven’t been able to find for months…! It’ll be like Christmas!

          11. It is the 30 boxes of books and CDs that are the main worry. And the 24 paintings….

            There is very little actual furniture; two bookcases, a dining table, kitchen chairs, bedside tables and OUR BED…at last!!

          15. Presumably there will be room for your bed if you’ve been sleeping on the floor and you can put the books in the bookcases 🙂 I suggest you put the paintings on the walls.

    3. Oh, don’t worry, the removal men will get it all in, whether you can get in too is a different problem for you.

  67. This just in – in further easing of restrictions the Welsh Government has announced you can meet one sheep provided it is outdoors but social distancing still applies.

      1. A friend once brought one of those to a party as a joke. It got squeezed so much from the other guests it prolapsed.

          13. Be VERY careful – lots of NoTTLers know rude rhymes
            which start:
            “Mary had a little lamb…”

          14. I’ve seen them! Not as good as my Aunty Mary’s! It involves a canary! We sang it after her funeral in February!

          16. Oh yes! It was a very jolly bun fight! She was 90 and a wonderful woman. Sadly missed.

          17. Nothing like a good wake to lighten the occasion, Sue. I heard tell of one on the island of Scalpaidh na Hearadh, at which everybody was having such a good time they postponed the burial for two days.

          18. Had to google that Duncan! That was the island given back to the islanders by the owner wasn’t it? Great story and the tale sounds very plausible!

  68. From The Grimes this evening. Gosh – hasn’t the Chancellor got his finger on the pulse?

    And do tell, us, Chancellor, who was the brains behind the scheme that led to the catastrophic economic collapse?

    “Britain is facing an unprecedented recession which could permanently “scar” the economy, the chancellor warned today.

    Mr Sunak said that Britain is facing a slowdown “the like of which we haven’t seen” before which could lead to a “double-digit” rise in unemployment.

    He said that it is “not obvious there will be an immediate bounce back”, in comments that cast doubt on modelling by the Office for Budget Responsibility which assumed there would be a V-shaped recovery.

    The chancellor added that the longer the recession goes on, the deeper the economic scarring of the economy will be.

    He said that the resulting unemployment could lead to more than a million people developing chronic health conditions.”

    Make me sick these wazzocks.

    2. So were are going to have a terrible recession says the Chancellor. Gosh, who would have guessed and what level of degree do you need to predict that. So long as the NHS has saved face, it will all be worth it, well, apart from the patients with cancer, heart, kidney, liver……..

    4. He’s setting up an “I told you so”, for when he makes his play to be PM.

      1. He’ll be lucky, after he’s bankrupted the country. This will scupper any ambitions he might have, as when the proverbial hits the fan, there will be a multitude of fingers pointing his way.
        Plus, having found the mythical magic money tree, he and his party won’t be in any position to try and pretend they’re fiscally responsible versus profligate Labour.
        All I can say is: two cheeks, same a***….

        2. I hope we survive his “generosity”, but I fear we won’t.

          Looking around the midden of all the shits there are none who fill me with any confidence.

          If by some miracle we get out of this in a few pieces he’ll take a lot of the credit.

          My money’s on the disaster.

    5. So we’re going to be sacrificing a million to save Ferguson’s alleged half a million.

      Lets’ hope these clowns never go to a casino.

          2. Me neither. It wasn’t very funny, nor terrifically entertaining. But SWMBOs family cawed with laughter at every miserable second of it. Ah, well, it takes all sorts, I suppose.
            They love the Goons and Archers, too. No accounting for folk, I suppose.

          4. Indeed. From Sarf Lunnon and Bexhill… say no more.
            :-((
            SWMBO is nearly an honorary Northern lass. She has the pies off to a T, just need to lose the “arr” from bath and castle and grass and…

    6. Why is he telling us? He is member of the Government. In fact the most important member apart from the PM. Should he not have said all that 3 months ago? Should he not be planning to make good, not just announcing how bad it’s going to be?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRV1a42WYD8

    7. It’s going to cause such a recession that he’s extended the doss-in furlough until Halloween.
      Public employees won’t be affected because they’re on full pay already.

  69. Blimey. Bbc News had a report on the rubber dinghy people, with the focus on the increasing number of poor little kiddies who they fear may be being trafficked for nefarious purposes. The reporter didn’t ask WHY they wanted to come to the UK of course.

    1. Because one “kiddie”, even those 6ft ones with beards, know they can stay? and then magically be contacted by their families who then start packing their suitcases.

    2. Rise in unaccompanied children arriving in Kent. 18 May 2020.

      Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Services Union, said the age of children arriving unaccompanied “does appear to be dropping” and fears the journeys may be the result of human trafficking.

      Smugglers usually charged between £5,000 to £10,000 per head, she said, adding: “Unaccompanied children do not have the financial resources to do this.”

      Ms Moreton fears organised crime groups may be “bringing the children here for the purposes of modern slavery or sexual slavery”.

      Afternoon AA. Your clip was probably a part of this article. Its purpose is of course to distract attention from the true reason for the children’s presence. Their relatives paid for their passage on this the safest and most certain method of entering the UK.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-52680025

      1. may be “bringing the children here for the purposes of modern slavery or sexual slavery”.

        No sh**, Sherlock. Talk about them stating the obvious.
        30% of “families” with children trying to cross the border between Mexico and the U.S. are not related to the children they’re with. Many of those children disappear once they’re in the U.S..

      2. Does, “the age of children arriving unaccompanied does appear to be dropping” mean they don’t have beards?

        1. They probably still have beards, but they haven’t reached a ‘handful in length’ yet.

  70. I am away for the evening. Have a lovely time. Here is supposed to be no lower than 14ºC overnight – so we are leaving the four trombetti plants out to harden off.

    I hope that the Humax recorded the bread prog last night. I knead some light entertainment, when loafing.

    A demain

        1. I always wondered (but not enough to do anything about it) what onion wine would taste like.
          Now we have a still, onion hooch might be interesting… bleagh!

          1. I think I’ll stick with grapes various and whatever fermented barley malt, distilled or flavoured with hops, brings about.

          2. With you on that. Onion hooch sounds horrific. Think of the gas! :-((

          4. SWMBO would be sore if I breathed onion fumes over her all night. Let alone farting onion fumes…

          7. Way back in my teens, a friend and I made wine with various fruits. Then we found a recipe for onion wine. Foul doesn’t begin to describe it.

        1. It looks like there’s more white than red, so I’m gussing (sic) it ain’t the Kat.

          1. I specifically ordered more white because we prefer chilled white during the summer months. I’ve plenty of red in the other 25 or so bottles in the home.

          2. You only store a couple of weeks worth at a time?

            Why are you here? You should be on Notmir or Notgraun
            }:-O

    3. Pineapple sales have soared by 900 per cent in South Africa as the country’s alcohol ban sparks a craze of turning the tropical fruit into a home-brew.

      Bars and off-licences have been closed since March because of the coronavirus pandemic under a strict lockdown imposed by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

      With drinkers desperate for alternatives, a traditional recipe for pineapple beer has spread rapidly online – prompting a surge in demand.

      In Johannesburg alone, daily sales of pineapples have soared from 10,000 to 100,000 and the price per kilogram has doubled.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8277133/Pineapple-sales-soar-900-South-Africa-amid-alcohol-ban.html

      1. There was a report of some deaths for drinking that stuff. If they are turning it into beer or wine or alcohol they need a refractometer. Also it needed to have been heated to the correct temperature to get rid of toxins.

    6. Wot…no Fizz? Try Cremant. Made the same as Champagne but not made in the Champagne region. And a lot cheaper if you shop around.

      1. Fizz can sometimes bring on an asthma attack, so I usually avoid. However, on our anniversary a few weeks ago I found an old bottle of Italian fizz made by a small grower from the Langhe region in Northern Italy. It was old, 2008, but was still pretty fair. Surprisingly I found a second bottle and it’s currently chilling in the fridge and will be opened tomorrow. I have bought Cremant in the past when we spent our holidays in France before we discovered Italy.

        2. Yer Spicks make some fantastic Cava – nothing like the dross one is given in some bars.

          Next time you are flush – try this one

          Cava Raventós i Blanc De Nit 2017

          1. My father-in-law told a story of meeting a black man who owned a bar/restaurant in Paris.

            They were talking about where F-i-L lived and when he explained the bar owner said:
            “Ah the rhubarb triangle, most champagne sold in Paris bars like mine is made from rhubarb.”

            Salutory lesson.

          3. If so, it was done to many other people. It was one of his favourite stories.

            When I was working in Athens I used to be approached by a pimp/bar owner every time I went to my regular restaurant. I used to show my wedding ring and say I wasn’t interested.
            Eventually the owner of the small local restaurant that I used came out and explained to the guy that I was a “regular” and should be left alone.

            After that we used to exchange pleasantries when I went to and from the restaurant. He too explained that I was well out of his establishment as most of what was sold was either watered down or fake.

            We became regular conversants over the years. His wife was a committed Christian who disapproved of what he did, but spparently she was happy to live on the proceeds.

            Strange old world!

          4. I have heard of Champagne rhubarb but not rhubarb Champagne. Perhaps they use it to colour Pink Champagne.

            A my local Spanish restaurant, Antonio the owner is often spinning stories to entertain.

          6. It is not Champagne if it is not made in the Champagne region. I still don’t believe it was made commercially so Parisien Bars and restaurants could buy it. I would suggest he was trying to rubbish the Big Houses so you would think the stuff he was serving was okay.

          7. True, but in the 1950’s I don’t think Champagne had the same protections.

            Pass, it was my F-i-L’s tale, however, the rhubarb triangle produces/ed vast amounts of the stuff and if a sucker can be conned, why not?

      1. No.

        https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5815201/telford-sex-abuse-police-memo-consensual-young-victims/
        Most Telford sex abuse cases said to be ‘consensual’ in vile police memo – despite some victims being as young as 11
        West Mercia Police, who are investigating one of the worst child sex abuse scandals in Britain, have been slammed after the memo was reportedly sent internally

        Holly Christodoulou
        15 Mar 2018, 10:05Updated: 25 Apr 2018, 21:26

        https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-slammed-over-memo-saying-12187882
        Police slammed over memo saying Telford child sex abuse was ‘consensual’
        Officers investigating child sexual exploitation in the town were sent an internal memo telling them “in most cases the sex is consensual”

        1. It’s the spelling which immediately arouses suspicion. The two reports you point to do not include any text from the original circular, and the Sun article says Officers investigating one of Britain’s worst child abuse scandals were reportedly sent an internal message saying: “In most cases the sex is consensual”.

          Note the use of “reportedly”.

        2. It’s the spelling which immediately arouses suspicion. The two reports you point to do not include any text from the original circular, and the Sun article says Officers investigating one of Britain’s worst child abuse scandals were reportedly sent an internal message saying: “In most cases the sex is consensual”.

          Note the use of “reportedly”.

    3. I enjoyed the local BBC news today which featured a “refugee” family whining that they hadn’t been given a IPhone or Tablet to communicate with their friends or family.

      Appeared to be a nice house, but they didn’t give any thanks to the British taxpayer for that.

      1. Well, they will probably ask for, and get, a larger one in year or so.

          1. That’s why they’ll need a larger house. Then a couple of years after that…

    4. Is that genuine? An eleven year-old girl is not able to make an “informed choice” about sexual behaviour, this is why we have an age of consent.

      1. 319373+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Jk,
        Currently there is no need to lie and deceive if one needed to, reality being what it is.

      2. The memo has been mentioned by various police chiefs around the country. The question is where it came from. Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, had been accused, but reading her Twitter exchange with the investigating prosecutor, I’m inclined to think it was someone at the Home Office. I may be wrong.

  73. Testing, testing, testing is currently in the forefront of the news and from the China in focus I posted earlier it appears China is doing lots of it not very well and exporting testing kits worldwide by the plane load.

    But do they adhere to all the stages in this animated Powerpoint explanation of COVID-19 testing and if so how do they do it so cheaply?

    https://youtu.be/ThG_02miq-4

    1. As the virus originated in China, shouldn’t that be wiff-waff pong?

      1. Do we have incontrovertible evidence that the virus did actually originate from China?
        Was Boris right that Whiff! Whaff! originated in Victorian England?
        And why cannot COVID-19 infected people detect a pong when it hits them?
        Surely bats come into the virus equation – but could they have originated in Victorian England?
        Yet could it also be possible that the Venetians were blind to what was going on in the Italian Alps?

        https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/whiff-whaff-the-beautiful-game-may-be-coming-home-2028687.html

          2. Not much! As pensioners we are slightly better off as we’re not spending much.

    2. Perhaps they were using an appropriate bat and not just spitting. Surprised there has been no breakout in Bangkok.

    3. I’ve seen a similar game in Singapore but with a cucumber ejected from an intimate female part and caught on the other side of an arena resembling a boxing ring. Sadly, no spitting involved.

  76. It is fear – not science – that is stopping our children being educated

    Cruel social distancing measures in schools are unnecessary. It’s time the Government stopped playing the Fear Card

    ALLISON PEARSON

    I still can’t get over it. That photograph of little children sitting alone in chalk squares spread out across a playground. Was it a scene from some dystopian film, a creepy vision of life in a world where infants are permitted a simulacrum of togetherness yet cruelly kept apart? I’m sorry to say the picture is not fictional. It shows one French school’s attempt at social distancing for its youngest pupils. Not content with invisible cages in the playground, there are angry stripes of hazard tape around classrooms, segregated desks and “air hugs” instead of the joyous, real, touching kind. This is not the new normal this is the new nightmare.

    Please don’t make the mistake of assuming British children will be spared such alienating horror. The NEU, the largest teaching union, has done its damndest to block the resumption of lessons, instructing members to demand strict social-distancing measures, warning, laughably, that it could be “unsafe” to mark children’s workbooks and insisting on a Cornavirus Workplace Checklist only marginally shorter than the Old Testament.

    Depressing plans are already afoot in our schools. Time slots for toilet breaks – “Sorry, Daniel, you’re not allowed a wee till quarter to eleven!” No help from teachers if youngsters fall over or wet themselves (despicable, frankly). “Triage” entry systems into reception with teachers in face masks, gloves and plastic aprons checking the temperature of every small person returning on June 1st. If, that is, teaching unions can be persuaded that an environment which will be a pullulating petri dish of normal flu by November can somehow clear an impossible bar and be guaranteed 100% Covid compliant.

    What makes all this even more disturbing is that such measures are almost entirely unnecessary. There is little about coronavirus we can be absolutely sure of – this is a brand new disease and our knowledge grows by the day – but most of the available evidence so far strongly suggests that children are neither suffering from coronavirus nor spreading it. Studies in South Korea, Iceland, Italy, Japan, France, China, the Netherlands and Australia all concur that youngsters are “not implicated significantly in transmitting Covid”, not even to parents and siblings.

    Adult paranoia, stoked by over-the-top government messaging, union intransigence and media conniptions, is now being inflicted on the youngest members of our society to whom the virus poses a threat so tiny scientists call it “statistically irrelevant”. Instead of nursery rhymes, mixed infants may soon be invited to sing something called the “two-metre-song” as they stick their arms out to keep their friends at bay.

    Dear God, do we really intend to turn our children and grandchildren into fearful little brainwashed North Koreans? If not, what the hell is going on and what is Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, doing about it?

    Let’s rewind a bit. In its pre-lockdown assessment, SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) found that closing British schools would have a very limited impact on reducing transmission of the virus. In fact, senior scientists concluded that keeping children at home might make infections of elderly people within households and the community worse, leading to more deaths among vulnerable groups. (This chimes with the tragic experience of New York City where Mayor Cuomo admitted recently that 66% of new hospitalizations were people who had stayed at home.) When it came to “potential effectiveness in reducing total number of cases and deaths”, SAGE said shutting schools would have only a “modest impact” compared to other measures.

    Throughout the pandemic, the Government has claimed that it “followed the science”, but the decision to shut schools was quite clearly political. The science said having kids at home could cause more not fewer deaths. It was mounting pressure from a baying chorus of critics which closed classrooms.

    Now, far-left teaching unions, who have shamelessly weaponised Covid19 to get at a Prime Minister they hate, are demanding that schools be made “safe” when they were never unsafe in the first place. “Show us the science,” demands Labour’s Angela Rayner. How about the fact that the EU reported this week that reopening schools in 22 member states had not increased the incidence of the virus significantly among either children, families or staff. Is that enough science for you?

    We are well into Emperor’s New Clothes territory here, dear reader. Mad and distressing things are about to happen to children in the name of protecting them against a monster which preys on the old but not the young.

    Unwittingly, parents are colluding with this delusion. Terrified by misleading public-information films which insisted that everyone was at equal risk from the virus, and by exceptionally rare cases of sick babies and adolescents featured prominently on the news, mums and dads are understandably reluctant to see little Idris or Isla be used as a “guinea pig” when schools reopen.

    The middle-class obsession with safety – Volvoism as a droll teacher friend calls it – is another barrier to people being able to grasp, really grasp, the relative risks which say that their DCs (darling children) are as safe in school as they are at home. Ironically, they’re safer if they get Covid rather than normal flu because mortality in children in England under 15 years of age features about twelve “influenza-attributable” deaths every year.

    Facts, eh? So strong is the prevailing groupthink that any mum who dares admit that, actually, she would rather like her child to go to school, indeed, she is rather worried about the effect on her child of not being in school, risks a public tongue-lashing. Gemma, who has two kiddies under 9 and is struggling to do her work while trying to home-school, told me at the weekend that the Mummies’ WhatsApp group for her son’s class has “gone mental”. The mums have convinced themselves that school is toxic for their DCs and it’s “far too soon” to go back. One mother who dared to challenge this herd conformity attracted vicious comments including, “Sorry your son misses his friends…he’ll miss them a lot more if he’s dead.”

    As it happens, when I spoke to Gemma I had just been sent the comprehensive data for Italy’s 32,007 corona deaths. The average age of fatalities was 80 (85 for women, 79 for men) with the overwhelming majority of the deceased being over 70. Mercifully, so few children were lost to the virus that they didn’t even register on the graph; six deaths in the whole 0 to 19 age group. And only 3.9% of the total did not have pre-existing conditions.

    I sent the data to Gemma. “Unreal,” she texted back immediately. “This needs to go to all the news media so parents know and we can stop the scaremongering.” And a squadron of wild boar will shortly be spotted in the skies over Tuscany.

    You know, I haven’t even mentioned the disastrous effect the lockdown has had on education itself. Since 20th March, two-thirds of children have not taken part in a single online lesson. While privately-educated pupils still have full timetables, many state-school students get no home teaching at all. Missing a third of a year of school could cut a pupil’s lifetime earnings by 4%, according to a new German study. How do Corbynist union leaders, who claim to be on the side of the disadvantaged, reconcile that with playing politics with the poorest children’s lives?

    Here’s the thing. More children are dying of the lockdown than of the virus. Two poor mites succumbed to sepsis after their parents were too frightened to take them to hospital. At least two youngsters have been murdered behind closed doors by a parent. Horrifying. This may come as a shock to the Volvoists, but not everyone is playing Happy Families and baking sourdough.

    Next time you hear Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union, whining that, “If you have 15 four- or five-year-olds in the class it’s impossible to social distance” ask her how many Victoria Climbies she thinks there are, bruised and cowering in some flat, praying for school to reopen and spring them from their abusers?

    Bousted does not speak for all teachers. Far from it. Many have been absolutely brilliant, dedicated professionals who continued to teach the children of keyworkers for the past eight weeks. Here’s a puzzle for you: if it’s OK for teachers to already be working with the kids of NHS staff, who are most likely to be infected with Covid, how can it be a problem teaching the rest. Answer: it really isn’t.

    So why is the Government allowing the teaching unions to shamelessly play the Fear Card and insist on psychologically disturbing social-distancing measures for small children when there is no scientific basis for any of it? Because the Government has played the Fear Card itself and is now a prisoner of its own propaganda.

    At least one group of parents is so shocked and upset that they are refusing to allow their little ones to be enrolled in this dystopian nightmare. Us For Them is a national campaign to raise awareness of the fact that Covid-compliant measures in schools have taken no account of children’s welfare and are “damaging and disproportionate”.

    Gavin Williamson should channel this anger and tell the unions that all the odd years in primary school – Reception, 1,3 and 5 – are starting lessons on June 1st. If they want their members to wear PPE and look ridiculous then he’s happy to oblige. It would deprive the recalcitrant buggers of their excuse for not going back. I bet every school would ditch it as unworkable within a week. They’d only need a week of it before they realised they were getting dressed for Ebola when facing Crayola. Return to school should be voluntary for children; I’m sure any doubts will be overcome once they know their friends are having fun.

    That photo of French children in their isolated chalk squares didn’t just look chilling. It is chilling. Not only is it impossible to get mixed infants to observe social distancing measures, it is unnatural, unnecessary and unconscionable. If adult paranoia is allowed to punish children, to stop them from being children, in the name of protecting them from a virus that can’t harm them what does that say about our society?

    Mad. That’s it. Covid has unhinged us. We’ve gone stark staring mad.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/fear-not-science-stopping-children-educated/

    1. Project an image of this article onto the sides of every tall building in the land.

      Send it far and wide.

    2. Thank God it wasn’t just me that was repulsed by that picture of infants isolated in squares in the playground(?).

    3. Safeguarding. Anyone involved with children must apply it or face eternal disclosure and barring.

  77. CHARLES MOORE

    The coronavirus crisis must not be allowed to delay Brexit

    Germany’s constitutional court’s decision raises many of the questions expressed in the Brexit debate

    Should Covid-19 delay the completion of our post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union? Parliament legislated that the deal must be done by December 31, but the argument is that Britain will be so flat on its face because of the virus that it will need the continuing shelter of European single-market and customs-union rules to survive.

    It is indeed true that our economy is being knocked sideways by the virus. But so is that of the EU. It is important to note that while the economic damage is bad for both, the existential damage is much greater for the EU than it is for Britain.

    This is because we, as a free, independent country, can work out our own economic and monetary response for ourselves. That option is not really open to the EU because it has never resolved whether it is or is not a United States of Europe. As he negotiates with us on behalf of the European Commission, Michel Barnier lays claim to the plenipotentiary power of a supreme body (look at his high-handed stuff about fish), but he does not really have it, because that body is divided against itself.

    The Covid response of the European Central Bank (ECB) has been to announce £2 trillion of bond purchases, chiefly to shore up the weaker member states of the eurozone. The ECB has thus put itself at odds with the German Federal Constitutional Court. The court ruled that the ECB overstepped “their legitimate competence”. Its decisions therefore have “no validity” in Germany. Since Germany is by far the richest member state, this ruling threatens to undermine the ECB’s entire rescue policy.

    One way to put this is that the Germans are now – though in a very different manner from the British – confronting the fundamental contradictions of the European project, many years after the argument became hot here. The constitutional court’s decision raises the classic questions. Who’s really in charge? Is the EU a treaty organisation of member states or a new sort of super-country? What happens to democracy? Who ends up paying?

    Our vote to Leave anticipated this struggle. As it starts to come to a head in the EU, we don’t want to be half-there, bound by the rules, contributing to the bills, unable to vote. And I doubt – though this is a harder question to answer – whether most EU countries will now want to prolong the fight with Britain while battling it out with one another over Covid monetary remedies.

    In the post-Covid struggles, Boris Johnson will need to look to his political base, battered by horrifying prospects of taxes and borrowing. At the weekend, the new Centre for Brexit Studies produced a report and a poll. Sixty-one per cent of Conservatives want no extension to the transition period. Only 24 per cent of the population thinks the transition period is too short.

    A Liberal dilemma

    On a walk at the weekend, I had a frightening new experience. I realised I could not remember who is the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

    Many readers may not understand my sense of disorientation. It is possible they have passed years – even, in some cases, entire adult lives – without retaining this information. Our current Prime Minister, in his days as a leading political commentator, once told me he made it a firm rule never to write a column about the Liberal Democrats. He said he had never had cause to regret it.

    For me, however, it is a different matter. Brought up by parents who were active Liberals, I have known continuously from the age of about seven who, at any one time, was the Liberal leader. (“My” first one was Jo Grimond, perhaps the last to have a real belief in classical liberalism.) Even today, I could give you an almost accurate run-through of the sequel of Grimond, Thorpe, Grimond (very briefly) again, Steel, Ashdown, Kennedy, Campbell, Clegg, Farron, Cable, to Jo Swinson, though I might get a bit muddled up by interims and joint leaderships to do with Liberals and Social Democrats combining. So it was a shock to find my mind a total blank.

    A check with better-informed sources (Wikipedia) reveals that the party has had three leaders since Ms Swinson lost her seat at the general election last December and resigned. Originally it was jointly led Sir Ed Davey and Lady Brinton. (Interesting, by the way, that our two parties of the Left are now led by people with titles.) Today it is still Sir Ed, but joined by Mark Pack, of whom, I am afraid, I have never heard. Mr Pack is also president of his party. And so the pair will continue, thanks to Covid-19, until May 2021.

    The question I cannot decide is – am I negligent in my duties, or is failure to remember who is leader of the Liberal Democrats a perfectly rational response to modern conditions?

    Gone but not forgotten…

    Never before, indeed, has the recent past seemed so distant. Only six months ago, names like John Bercow, Philip Hammond, Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen, Dominic Grieve, Gina Miller, Lady Hale, Rory Stewart, David Gauke, Amber Rudd, the People’s Vote and Ms Swinson herself were on our lips and on our screens. Now they all gone, gone with the wind.

    The absence of Mr Bercow is particularly soothing – like being able to hear birdsong beside a motorway in our Covid-induced silence.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/19/coronavirus-crisis-must-not-allowed-delay-brexit/

    1. Love the last line about Bercow. So true. Except we have unfinished business with that little squirt, who doesn’t deserve to get off scot free for his crimes.

      I don’t think anyone really knows who is the leader of that little party whose name escapes me at the moment. If asked unawares, I’d probably guess Paddy Ashdown. Clegg did such a good fake Tory impression, it was hard to think of him not belonging to the party of Cameron and May.

  78. 319373+ up ticks,
    Restock 2/3 schools with proven patriotic teachers, bypass those that chose to continue to agree to lock-down.
    If failure can work so well as we are witnessing on many fronts then so can success.

    2. I’d better keep my thoughts to myself, TB. BTW, completely off topic, you were asking about fly traps. Here is a picture of the ‘Red Top’ fly catcher I put up in the garden, just 10 days ago. Have a look at the haul, that floating black line is dead flies and by the end of summer the ‘black line’ will fill the bag. The house is fly free. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aba6692e50ce58298bed133a9a51b0e365f8a9934de2185461bbb08b0dea7166.jpg

          2. They struggle in their wintering grounds in Africa through habitat destruction and also in the case of swallows, being netted for food.

            They come here to breed and take advantage of our longer summer days with extended daylight to feed their chicks on insects caught on the wing, but they struggle because the farmers have sprayed the fields into insect-free deserts and then people think it’s a good idea to exterminate what insects there are left. What do they think the swallows are going to eat when the insects are gone? Cucumber sandwiches?

            Despair doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings about how this country treats its wildlife as if it was an inconvenience that too often gets in the way of the pursuit for neatness in their lives. Our ‘pests’ are other species’ food, but these same people will wonder why the birds they profess to love aren’t coming to their gardens as frequently as they once did.

            Then they rightly criticise the southern Europeans for blasting songbirds out of the sky for sport.

            They are just as bad.

          4. ‘Morning Basset, (it’s now 00:19 hours) if the birds did their job, we wouldn’t be plagued by flies and blue-bottles, feasting on our food and spitting out the residue on the self-same food. Hence the Red Tops now ordered.

          5. Bollocks. No predator ever wiped out its food supply.

            The birds don’t have a job, certainly not for us. They owe us bugger all, quite the opposite. They live and die and bring up their young just as we do. They have absolutely no responsibilty towards us, yet we feel we are supposed to enjoy their presence as if they were just there as ornaments for our pleasure, while ignoring the real benefits they provide in moderating insects that might prove to be pests to us. Once you’ve wiped out most of the insects and the birds have starved, what do you think will be controlling the offspring of the survivors of the insects as they flourish?

            What do you expect them to eat once you’ve disposed of the insects? They aren’t just there to do your cleaning and tidying for you. You are killing their essential food, helping a bit at a time towards the decline of our wildlife.

            The idiocy of modern people knows no bounds. Self-centred twats.

          6. In response to your comment, which disqus has only now delivered to my in-box, I have no intention of wiping out the fly-population; it is an impossible task, as exemplified by Chairman Mao’s exhortation in 1958 to his several billion population to each catch at least one fly per day in order to rid China of it’s health threat.

            Also on his list of pests was the tree sparrow that they successfully eradicated, only to be overcome by locusts with no predator to reduce the plague and the resultant famine for some several years afterwards.

        3. I remember the day of the world cup final in JHB 10 years ago.
          We had some friends visitors for a BBQ lunch.
          I went into the kitchen after we had finished eating and I was clearing away. The whole kitchen was full flies.
          I’d never seen so many.
          We found out a day later that a lady who we didnt know, lived about 200 yards from our house had suddenly died. The postman drew attention to the police, because of the flies coming from an open window and the letter box. Subsequently we and other neighbours all felt severly disturbed.

          1. I think, George that here in Flowton, you would be a voice, crying in the wilderness – my bread pudding is universally loved here. each to his own, fella, I can’t stand mushy peas – food of the devil.

          2. Bah, Tom! Mushy peas were first brought to the Danelaw by the Viking invaders (it was a form of their ärtsoppa). We, in the north, improved it by adding mint sauce. Both Johnny Norfolk and me have enjoyed visits to Reggie’s superlative pie and pea stall on Norwich market and enjoyed his hot mushy peas and mint sauce. Sensational!

            [I wouldn’t feed claggy and stodgy bread pudding to the ducks! Ugh! Bread and butter pudding, on the other hand, is delicious.]

          3. Feeding any sort of bread to ducks does them no good but they can certainly have my mushy peas that look as if they’ve already passed it.

        2. It comes with a sachet of powder which you put in the bag with some lukewarm water. Hang the device AWAY from the house and after a couple of days it will start to work and last for 6-8 weeks.

      3. If they’re designed for Bolsonaro’s genocide of the Amazon indigenes to make way for mining, logging and ranching concessions, then why bother with coffins? Why not just toss the bodies in the river for the piranhas? Unless, his chums have already killed the fish with their cyanide.

  81. This may have been published earlier but I have just received an e-mail concerning disqus’ problems:

    Disqus
    Zeta Marketing Platform is experiencing some latency in events processing
    New incident: Resolved
    We have identified a severity level 1 issue that lasted from about 7am PDT – 7:30am PDT today, Event processing was delayed (started around 6:40am PDT). This would have impacted triggered emails, and BI exports which would have been missing new data (gets included in subsequent exports)

    Faulty Service – Event Processing

    Resolution ETA – Issue was resolved quickly, and all processing has caught up.
    Time posted
    May 19, 08:35 PDT

    Whatever all that might mean.

    1. I thought this dusgusting practice has been happening for at least 20 years.
      Then there were the riots in the Midlands, setting alight a petrol station. And the police escorted marches, whilst the marchers demanded the death by beheading of all non believers.
      This government needs to get a grip.

      1. 319373+ up ticks,
        Evening Re,
        But it has been the governance parties especially over the last few years that have got these Isles into such an odious state.
        On the 24/6/2016 we stuck the boot into a political fraternity that had a rubber stamping lifestyle equal to none we are now suffering the consequences.

  83. HAPPY HOUR – Zen – the state of “no-mindness”.

    Have Faith….. Shit happens.

    CHOOSE YOUR OWN SHIT:

    Buddhism If shit happens, it’s not really shit.

    Islam If shit happens, it’s the will of Allah.

    Protestantism Shit happens because you don’t work hard enough.

    Judaism Why does this shit always happen to us?

    Hinduism This shit happened before.

    Catholicism Shit happens because you’re bad.

    Hare Krishna Shit happens rama rama.

    Atheism No shit.

    Jehova’s Witness Knock knock, shit happens.

    Hedonism There’s nothing like a good shit.

    Christian Science Shit happens in your mind.

    Agnosticism Maybe shit happens, maybe it doesn’t.

    Rastafarianism Let’s smoke this shit.

    Existentialism What is shit anyway?

    Stoicism This shit doesn’t bother me.

  84. Prevening, folks. The government was too successful in its “we’re all gonna die” campaign, having created a generation of snowflakes that need safe spaces. It should surprise nobody except the government itself that, cocooned on 80% of their salary for staying at home, people are not willingly going to give it up.

  86. Exponential growth !

    We have just watched people donating laptops and computors to disadvantaged families for their children to home school on , such altruistic gestures need to be applauded .

    The BBC were talking to groups of families in their front gardens .. Each family had more than four children , yes more than four .. What on earth is going on in this day and age , with the tax payer picking up the tab . Do families like that ever climb out of the disadvantaged label.

    Moh suggested we were now witnessing extreme exponential growth.

    1. We see saw that as well Belle! My old mans’ comments are pretty well unprintable! Two differently toned families-13 children! And apparently only 2 mobile phones between them!

      1. We were also very shocked , Sue.

        I often wonder how the BBC select the ones to interview. or are all families like that these days .

        Are families like that similar to puppy breeders .. maximum dosh for each litter?

    2. There were families with six children accepting this largesse last night. Whatever happened to the cut-off point for child benefit at two children? Wy are they having so many? No wonder they are poor. The rest of us could only afford two.

        1. But, what it didn’t do was to stop the large family getting housing upgrades.

          1. I thought there was a limit to benefits which was supposed to encourage them to move to cheaper areas.

          2. I don’t know a great deal about it.

            I do know that the illegal immigrants are supposed to get minimal support financially; nothing like the figures that get bandied about. B&B if lucky, and then less than £40 per person per week to live on, if I’m correct.

            The real trick is to be accepted as a proper asylum seeker and then the money/benefits jump.

            Children are treated entirely differently from adults (rightly so) but that’s why so many bearded young men pretend to be children.

        2. I thought it was a reduction after the first two and not the cut off point. Won’t bother muslims though with so many wives. They will get the full amount for all their children.

        3. Are you sure AA? I thought it got quietly dropped before being implemented. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong!

    4. Some of the children make good if they are not brainwashed that is. A lot of people in the trades did an apprenticeship and became plumbers and electricians after leaving school with no exams.

      Of course you can’t get apprenticeships now.

      1. Oldest son is an electrician .. He didn’t want the pressurised career his father went through .

        Son has had his own pressures to cope with , as has second son . It is their choice but they had the best start in life , we did our best for them .

        1. I thought I was earning well as a freelance software developer with my Oxford degree, until my accountant advised me to put my children into apprenticeships to be electricians and plumbers. So your son’s probably on a good path, especially if he starts his own business.

        2. Firstborn makes his own way in life. Didn’t want university, so took an apprenticeship an motor mechanic. He’s now #2 at the garage, as the chief motor technician (the one with the technology and diagnostics), really happy now he’s working in a rednecked environment, and earning very well.
          Apprenticeships are an excellent way forward.

          1. The idiots go to university and rack up giant debts these days, but then they will go into the taxpayer funded jobs and end up telling our children what to think. 🙁

          2. The idiots go to university and rack up giant debts these days, but then they will go into the taxpayer funded jobs and end up telling our children what to think. 🙁

          3. Apprenticeships are an excellent way forward.

            So, naturally, the UK scraps them…..

          4. Yes, well, as a country, the place has been arse about face for decades.

        3. Our only child was given every opportunity to make something of himself. Bright, smart but not an academic he was good at maths but NOT a mathematician and was very keen on technology. Got a place at one of the much maligned ‘new’ universities, Plymouth – the old Navigation School – on a 4 year course (Computer Systems and Networks) i.e. 3 years at University and one in the business world. Now a senior business and systems analyst for a major financial player and in the top 25% of earners in the Country. Pick your course wisely, work hard and with ambition and drive success will usually follow. His four housemates from Plymouth all have excellent careers in a wide range of disciplines.

  87. Ontario just announced that schools are not going back yet.

    Tick, tick, tick.

    Sure enough Not fair, my little Jonnie needs to go back to school now.

    Can a government ever do something without receiving complaints? I am sure that a decision to restart schools would have received many complaints as well.

    1. Nothing to do with science, nothing to do with letting people know what’s best for the children.

      Everything to do with avoiding bad press and losing votes.

    1. 319373+ up ticks,
      o2o,
      It will not be made available until later this year on account of the coronavirus
      the report is under a team of specialist & is being doctored by professionals.

      1. Released on the day of the emergency budget in the autumn when everyone will be in shock.

        1. 319373+ up ticks,
          Evening Kp,
          At risk of upsetting any submissive pcism & appeasers who might look in I am going to mention HOG as in go the whole hog & release the Dunblane
          atrocity report also.

          1. I didn’t realise there was an unreleased report. Was there a story behind the headlines?

          2. 319373+ up ticks,
            Kp,
            A report was compiled to place the true ethnicity of the paedophiles in the main, instead of spreading the blame via
            labeling them all as Asians.

          4. 319373+ up ticks,
            Evening Dik,
            Everyday use, you are right though, even though a day could take one from one category to the other another.
            By the by what part of Kent ?

          6. 319373+ up ticks,
            Chatham boy me, highest murder rate at the turn of the century
            is it’s claim to fame.
            Walk through town now and you can still hear the ghostly singing echos coming from what was pub doorways, all changed.

          9. There are a lot of reasons to suggest that Thomas Hamilton had friends in very high places. It had also been recommended, prior to the massacre, that he should be nowhere near children or firearms.

          10. Most of the articles in the media on the subject of the Dunblane massacre have been removed from the internet and the report itself has been sealed under the 100 year rule, at the order of T. Bliar.

            Try this link. Make of it what you will, but I’m sure you’ll find it very disturbing reading.

            https://rense.com/general89/brownpd.htm

        1. The redacted Report will probably obscure the word Mohammed 12000 times.

  90. Why is the Euro strengthening against the Pound? I’d have thought that the prediction of a dire economic downturn would have been more relevant to the EU. The Southern European members will surely be devastated? Don’t they have 25% youth unemployment? Don’t they depend on tourism to sustain their economies?

      1. Quantitative Easing – yet again. I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve fired up the printing presses.

      2. It has been, against the (better) judgment of the German populace. I see storms ahead, poppiesmum! Let’s get the air cleared!

        How are you, anyway? All good?

        1. Thank you, everything is good here – we miss France but everything was telling us it was time to leave, it was a call that would not be ignored. We did not expect this, that insistent, internal call to return to the UK. We thought we would be trundling on down through France until we could no longer sit in the car…. we can do it, we told ourselves, even if it takes us five days, a week, just a few hours a day! Sadly it wasn’t to be.

          Yes, the gathering storm is fast approaching and alas, as yet, no latter-day Churchill galloping over the horizon to our rescue. This is a time for battening down those proverbial hatches once again. Thank heavens for the exchange of views and news provided by the platform that is Nttl.blog. All the best.

Comments are closed.