Monday 1 June: Any ‘new normal’ unselfishness should begin with our use of water

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/2020/05/31/lettersany-new-normal-unselfishness-should-begin-use-water/

657 thoughts on “Monday 1 June: Any ‘new normal’ unselfishness should begin with our use of water”

  1. Former deputy Labour leader Tom Watson rejected for peerage. 1 June 2020.

    Tom Watson, the former deputy Labour leader, is one of three people nominated by Jeremy Corbyn to have had their peerages blocked by the independent watchdog, The Independent has learnt.

    John Bercow, the former speaker of the House of Commons, and Karie Murphy, the former director of Mr Corbyn’s office, are also understood to have had their nominations refused.

    Morning everyone. It is difficult to decide here who will gain and who lose from this decision. These three are undoubtedly repellent individuals but it is that which makes them ideal candidates for the House of Lords so it will not be improved by their absence.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tom-watson-peerage-bercow-corbyn-karie-murphy-lords-reject-a9540941.html

    1. ‘Morning, Minty.

      Surely the main thing is that the bastards won’t be getting their daily £300+ for doing fuck all.

      1. And all the perks that a title brings (companies love a lord on their headed notepaper).

  2. Good morning all.
    Sorry if I put anyone off their breakfast, bot a brilliant start to my 68th!
    At 3am I was sat on the white throne clutching my abdomen wondering if my intestines were about to drop through my arse!
    5th day of almost nothing to eat, shitting through the eye of a needle and spluttery farts in not nice. Will give the Dr’s a ring when the surgery is open.

    Still, 1st of the month so ERNIE might send me a birthday present!

      1. Thank you Sir.
        I’m afraid i’m not a birthday person, but it will be even more muted than normal today.

        1. Is this what you have in mind for a more muted day?

          The Ultimate Fart Silencer
          Everyone farts… Whether it be in public, on a date, or during an interview, it happens and we know how embarrassing it can be.

          Luckily, a man named “Big Chicken Mushroom” from WuHan, China, has invented the “Fart Silencer”, a small plastic tube that you… um… put in your anus.

          https://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/12/29/ultimate-fart-silencer/

          It’s amazing what comes out of Wuhan. {:^))

          2. I’m not going to ask how you discovered this wondrous gadget 🙂

    4. You need a red hot curry to flush everything out. I suggest an Andhra Fire from w/rose.

    5. A memorable birthday for all the wrong reasons. Keep hydrated and get well soon.

    7. Happy birthday, youngster. Hope your digestion is soon back on track and you enjoy your pints of tea! 😉

      [I’ve never won a blood bean off Ernie in 67 years!]

    8. Sorry you are feeling bad, what does doctor daughter say?
      Still, you are here in one piece on your 68th birthday … so congratulaions .. you may have got one of these 24 hour bugs . Take care.

      1. thank you, m’Dear!
        She say drink lots of water & take it easy.
        I’ve just opened her Birthday present, a 1L bottle of 14yo Clynish and three miniatures of Talisker, The Singleton and Cardhu.

        1. ‘Afternoon, BoB, are you feeling better? we hope so.

          Clynish is a new one on me. I had to look it up and it’s a very Northern, Sutherland Scotch, neither Speyside nor Western Islands. Does it have that Western peaty, smokiness (which I don’t care for).

          If it doesn’t, and is more like the cleaner taste of Speyside, I might give it a go.

          1. Were it not for the lockdown, the DT & myself would have been up in neighbouring Brora for the week, so very appropriate.

    11. Happy birthday, Bob of Bonsall. Can it really be 3 years already since you left your job checking British Rail lines all over the country?

    12. Try to put it in perspective, Robert.

      Happy birthday. DO keep hydrated – coca cola and crisps REALLY do help with that if you can’t get to the MO or a chemists.

    14. Happy birthday, youngster. Hope your digestion is soon back on track and you enjoy your pints of tea! 😉

      [I’ve never won a blood bean off Ernie in 67 years!]

      1. 1967 was when my sister gave me my 1st, £1 Premium Bond. Then it was the 1980s before I bought any more and have, both regularly when I could afford it, and sporadically increased my holding.
        Because I’ve opted for my winnings to be reinvested, the number I have is still slowly increasing.

        1. Given their age and his age my guess is that he was given some as a birthday present.

    15. Happy Birthday, Bob! Hope you’re feeling better by the end of the day.

    17. A memorable birthday for all the wrong reasons BoB! Hope you are soon shot of it and can celebrate beyond the bog.

      Meanwhile, ‘Bonsall shoppers once again mystified by complete absence of bogroll’.

    18. Happy birthday Bob. Drink plenty of water in these hot conditions and I wish you a quick recovery.

    19. Our doctor prescribed flat Coca-Cola, for similar. surprisingly, it worked.

    21. Happy Birthday, Bob.

      Hope you have some luck this month.

      If you are not eating much you will get more cramps.

      Use a sachet of Fybogel twice a day.

  4. Good Morning Folks,

    Flaming June is upon us
    But lovely weather here though.

    Don’t forget the pinch and a punch with no returns

    1. You just have to see the numbers in the crowd wearing ‘medical’ type face masks…..on their chins to realise they are not the brightest.

      1. MI5 must know but they aren’t telling. It must suit someone’s agenda to allow these people to exist and cause disruption.

        1. 319821+ up ticks,
          Morning Ktk,
          A lot will be from the
          “we are better of in ”
          brigade.

        2. Its a reason for control. “Keep you safe”… Me & family are safe due to the duo Smith & Wesson…

    4. What happened to the law on “Breach of the Peace”? It is a useful catch-all in Scotland. Is there nothing similar in England? Shouting and swearing in the street is surely an offence, forming a menacing mob, wearing masks, is also an offence? Why are the police taking it so lightly? We must surely despair…

    5. …thus proving that a ‘hate crime’ will be ignored if it comes from a bunch of leftie anarchist w*nkers. Note the bearded one in the foreground going out of his way to provoke the police while he records what he hopes will be his arrest and the resulting riot.

      ‘Morning, BoB.

  6. BTL@DTletters

    Stephen Priest

    1 Jun 2020 6:52AM
    No Daily Telegraph, these are not “Anti-racism protesters”. They are violent Far Left rioters. At least one person killed in the riots, more injured, hundreds more businesses ruined, and worst of all no “social distancing”.

    Tell me what race these riots are helping?

  7. SIR – The most lamentable thing about the current Covid-19 epidemic is the world’s surrender to the idea that the only meaning of human life lies in preserving it.

    In the name of “keeping people safe”, the moribund die alone, the dead are buried without proper ceremony, mothers give birth without partners, children – particularly the poorest – cannot learn, the aims of the young are suspended, the achievements of generations are smashed, the talented go undiscovered, the brilliant cannot perform, new friendships are thwarted, potential lovers are denied and the rituals of religious faith and national remembrance are set aside. Yet we are all apparently happy to accede to the state-sponsored notion that we are profoundly heroic simply taking measures to keep ourselves alive.

    Jolyon Fenwick
    Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

    Honorary NoTTLer!

      1. See my reply to sos – I have been in a general strop with a bad back and unable to keep my laptop operating without it dumping me offline when trying to send an email. Several days unable to access internet at all and so I generally gave up and decided to be bolshy instead with cold beer in the garden.

    2. ‘Morning, Citroen. Where have you been?

      It is a very good letter, but he failed to mention the possible destruction of our economy, upon which we all depend…

          1. Many’s the time I’ve sat in the splendid tea room in Fenwick’s Newcastle with my parents to enjoy Afternoon Tea.

          2. I only did that once (with my Mum who was Northumberland born and bred). I was at school with a Fenwick, a distant cousin, who did a short service commission in the Coldstream Guards. Some tyke in NI threw a half-brick at him and he lost an eye. Reassigned as a general factotum on HMY Britannia, he had great fun on a wonderful prolonged booze cruise.

      1. Yo sos

        Got some sort of b*ggerisation inside my laptop a couple of weeks ago which (a) put me in a foul mood, which (b) meant that I was too furious to be able to sort it out myself and all my attempts only made the problem worse and (c) eventually realised it needed the female touch so Naggers came over to sort out the pollution. Aren’t wimmin wonderful?

        2. You’re fortunate.
          I have to pay, and I suspect this one may be on its way out.

          1. Wot??? You have to pay for women and your current one may be on its way out?? Say it ain’t so, sos! (:^))

          3. Perhaps you might buy a reconditioned Chromebook with guarantee for about £150? Quick and no bugs.

    4. I can’t say I’m sad. It’s what happens if a puny little black man takes on a juggernaut.

  9. Good morning all.

    Ah June! A year ago I was enjoying lobster twice a week in Côte.

  11. Any idea what’s become of TCP? I’ve been going through my bottle to treat a bout of conjunctivitis, but everywhere it seems to be out of stock, along with pretty well everything I need which still works.

    1. TCP like other products have suffered from panic buying. Look around the Internet. You might get lucky.

    2. It took me a moment to work out your weren’t referring to Tartan Pimpernel……

      Morning Jeremy et al

    3. Morning. It will have been grabbed as magic potion against the invading virus as have all the other antiseptics. My girlfriend, now my wife , knew of my approach before the door opened when I used it for spots like after shave.

    4. Morning Jeremy. TCP ointment (the best on the market) was withdrawn from sale several years ago.

    5. Yo jM

      TCP The Conservative Party. I think it died with Mrs Thatcher

      All we have now are variuos shades of One World Government

    1. I’ll leave the images to my imagination.
      Pity she didn’t pack heat and blow their sorry asses away.

    2. The link now works – it did not to begin with.

      As I posted yesterday, it is a sign of the decay of the white race in that it not only has given up but it has also ceded the moral highground to barbarians and savages to the extent that even to mention this fact is considered to be a racist hate crime,

  13. OT – I wasted a lot of yesterday afternoon watching events as the NASA rocket capsule joined on to the ISS. Hypnotic stuff!

    As a non-scientist and non-engineer I found the whole thing completely mind-boggling and amazing.

    However, one thing made me smile. NASA wanted to have photographs and a “welcome ceremony” after the many doors between the capsule and the ISS were opened. And the driver of the ISS was seen doing lots of things with cameras, cables, computers etc. For a very long time.

    For much of the time – this trillion dollar venture, with the highest and latest technology one can imagine – they couldn’t get the mike to work! Ever so patient voices shuttled (geddit) between Florida and Space. NASA gently, but purposefully, suggested that Captain Biggles didn’t kno what he was doing … He knew that he did. After over an hour, NASA said that they would check their end…..and bingo!

    It so reminded me of trying to watch a YouTube lecture/play on the sitting room TV screen – via a laptop. Hours we have wasted trying to get the sound to work. It was reassuring that the most skilled cock it up too!

    I did feel a tad sorry for the two Rooshians who had to put on their best overalls and stand for a long time listening to the Yanks congratulating themselves on the first US rocket launch for nine years. You could see one of them thinking, “Nine years? We do this every month or so…!!”

    1. I have had the same experience with pretty well every skype meeting held. Then there’s some prize purple jellyfish that doesn’t mute their mic whilst eating, drinking or having sex / heavy breathing. Or, those who use the inbuilt pc mic, and are typing using sledgehammers so you can hear the boom of every keypress. AAARGH!
      Morning, Bill.

      1. “I can see you but not hear you….” “You sound fine but, er, no picture…”

      2. When I originally worked on MENTOR, the OLE inspection train, we would give a commentary that was recorded onto the video of the wire & pantograph.
        My mate, Craig, had been doing the commentary and during a break went to use the toilet and forgot to remove or switch off the cordless microphone!

      2. 319821+ up ticks,
        Morning M,
        Surely something along the lines of a frozen pea with enough velocity is not beyond our ken, pellets of frozen
        sh!te say, fighting like with like.
        Environmentally friendly recycling natural waste.

  15. Just broke a personal rule by switching onto BBC Breakfast, for the first time in about two years, to see if they were reporting upon the worldwide Lefty rabble destroying their environments. Silly me!

    They decided to show what “all the newspapers” were reporting on their front pages and these were the newspapers chosen:

    The Times
    The Guardian
    “The Metro” (whatever the hell that is?)
    The New York Times.

    They then showed a few cut outs from somewhere in the middle of certain newspapers (but were careful not to show any other reports therein):

    The Daily Express
    The Guardian,
    The Daily Mail
    The Daily Telegraph

    Interestingly they had cut a narrow report of an article about neighbours chatting over fences from the DT but went to great lengths to ensure you couldn’t read anything else on the page.

    Ho hum! Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

    1. Wimbers last year was pretty well dry throughout, if I remember rightly.

  18. Q: What is the US MSM greatest hope with regard to the Covid-19 crisis?

    A; The crisis continues through to November and Donald Trump catches the virus soon.

    Q: When do they hope he’ll recover?

    A: The answer to that is too delicate a matter to discuss openly.

    1. Cv19 has been totally politicised. If there is no flare up now, it could be taken that lockdowns could have been lifted weeks ago. More important though is that this is an election year, it could mean that the left were wrong and horror of horrors, the right were right.

      P.S. I notice that CV19 cases in Georgia have fallen dramatically since restrictions were lifted over a month ago against all advice.

  19. Morning all 😕
    It appears that WW3 has started on our own soil, infiltration by ‘antifa’ has successfully changed the mindset and make up of our social structure and it is now attacking the long established fair minded British culture.
    It’s time to get a grip Boris (before its too late) call in our armed troops get them into the trouble spots and address the problem. PDQ.

    1. Have they stopped stabbing each other , has yardie gangwarfare ceased .. Do these people support corrupt African regimes , and all the countless murders .. Do they all divide themselves into Muslim blacks and Christian blacks .. Everything seems to be getting out of control, I mean they are not even scared of the virus , which has claimed so many BAME lives!

      1. Well TB my opinion is, if as if it appears so many of these people seem to hate where they are at this moment in time. The door is always open. But I suspect most of them already know that if they were to return to the places of their ancestors. They A. Would not be able to earn a living at the bottom of the chain which is where they would have to start.
        And B.
        Might even be shunned by the people who they appear to be dragging into this confrontation. Because of their misconceptions of their much desired ‘native culture’ would a stark reminder of what they don’t have any appreciation for already.
        It’s a limbo land of their own volition. Hopefully there is a limit, there’s only so much established culture will put up with. Surely.

    2. 319821+ up ticks,
      Morning Re,
      I do believe that boris & co realising the big scam is really ending will be rather busy track laying for the next replacement one as in HS2.
      The long established fair minded British culture has been for the last 4
      decades chipped away, given away, trampled on, on a daily basis via the ballot booth, not a lot left doncha know.
      Fact.

  20. 319821+ up ticks,
    🎵
    Catch a falling drip and put it in a reservoir save it for a bone dry day, catch a falling drip and ……..

    ” Build back better” RESERVOIRS would that be boris ?

    1. Our TV news showed looters ransacking a Dollar Store last night. Is Minneapolis so poor that that is the best they had?

      Edit:

      PS. It is alright for you but the person in red does not fit in the tiny circle, that must be sizeist.

    2. Our TV news showed looters ransacking a Dollar Store last night. Is Minneapolis so poor that that is the best they had?

      Edit:

      PS. It is alright for you but the person in red does not fit in the tiny circle, that must be sizeist.

    3. Our TV news showed looters ransacking a Dollar Store last night. Is Minneapolis so poor that that is the best they had?

      Edit:

      PS. It is alright for you but the person in red does not fit in the tiny circle, that must be sizeist.

      1. Do you recall some tedious riot in Croydon (UK) about 8 years ago? Some of the ‘victims’ ransacked Poundland and left with armfuls of stuff. The CEO was philosophical, figuring that they would be so pleased with the bargains that they would return to actually buy things.

  22. MSM is piling into the lack of social distancing on English beaches, but hasn’t said a whisper about much more extreme clustering of “anti-racism” protesters (despite their previous stance re. excess BAME Covid deaths).

    1. One could be forgiven for thinking that the only wish for the MSM is for rioting and looting to take place in Britain so that they can report on events and blame the wicked Tory government for ‘austerity’ and well just being Tory…

      1. 319821+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        Would that be an honest description of the crew currently governing
        these Isles ?

    2. The MSM has a death wish. It seems that it is deliberately asking to be closed down so that it can finally say that it is being closed by a ‘fascist’ state.

      A mass murderer in favour of capital punishment might, by the same peculiar logic, go on committing his murders in order to get popular support for the reintroduction of the death penalty!

      1. The MSM are partly responsible for the creation of the fascist state with their appalling bias and outright lies.

        Good morning, Mr T.

        1. Almost entirely so.

          I think that in the last 30 years or so people in general have become more racist in their views. I wonder why? A tolerant people – who could have tolerated anything other than excessive tolerance being incessantly shoved down their throats..

          1. I certainly have, Richard, I’m proud to be English and will stand against the attempts to undermine us.

  26. Morning all

    SIR – Most people have noticed and welcomed an enhanced sense of community spirit during the coronavirus lockdown. Although furlough, restrictions on movement and social distancing have coincided with record low levels of rain, endless sunshine, blue skies and unseasonably high temperatures, yet the vast majority have complied with Government guidance.

    Yet before we reach a new normal, we find an old normal has come to the fore. Just as a selfish minority chose not to “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives”, there are now some who are wastefully watering their lawns at the risk of forcing others to use standpipes as drought takes hold.

    Michael Young

    River, Kent

    SIR – We hear that after the dry May we are faced with a water shortage (report, May 29), although we had one of the wettest winters on record.

    What on earth have our politicians and town planners been doing these past years? Where are the new reservoir facilities to match the growth in housing? Where is the legislation to make rainwater capture mandatory on all new-build housing and offices?

    Our climate is becoming more extreme, but government will apparently do nothing until the next crisis.

    Terry Lloyd

    Darley Abbey, Derbyshire

    SIR – John Tilsiter (Letters, May 30) suggests piping excess rainwater from the flood-hit areas of the North to alleviate drought in the South.

    I would ask what excess there is, as Yorkshire Water (which covers the recently flooded area of Fishlake) has just announced that reservoirs are already low and has warned against people watering their gardens.

    David Muir

    Bristol

    SIR – John Tilsiter suggests a North-South water transfer under rail tracks. The answer is much simpler. Beside many roads and railway lines is a canal, the perfect method by which to deliver water.

    Cotswold Canals Trust is already in discussion with Thames Water to bring water from Wales to London.

    Jim White

    Chairman and Engineering Director Cotswold Canals Trust

    North Woodchester, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Phil Mobbs (Letters, May 29) asks when the rainy season will start this year. Obviously it will start the day lockdown is lifted sufficiently for us to enjoy a drink in the garden of our local pub and the National Trust finally thinks it is safe for us to go back to its parks.

    Shona Penfold

    Honley, West Yorkshire

    SIR – When will normal English summer weather arrive? Any time now, as I have just taken delivery of a garden dining set.

    Janice R S Sinclare

    London N12

    1. “new reservoir facilities to match the growth in housing” – yeah, right. And increased road capacity, doctor’s surgeries, sewage treatment facilities, electrical generation and transmission capacity, and ….
      Just concreting over the country & building apartment blocks is the easy bit. Infrastructure takes a wee bitty of thought, but isn’t all that difficult really.

    2. Gosh, Michael Young; from severe flooding a few months ago to “standpipes” – in one effortless bound! And why should you worry, when you live in a place called River?

      PS You won’t catch me watering the lawns…the sooner the stuff stops growing, the better.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

      1. When I drove to St Ives on Friday for shopping, I was struck by the fact that the grass verges on the sunny side of the road had been bleached white.

      3. I was quite surprised how dry, brown and sere the grass was when I took my dog a different route this morning. My lawns are still green and they haven’t been watered at all.

    3. “Community Spirit”? The lockdown luvvies are 100% selfish. It’s all about destroying YOUR quality of life for My Safety My Safety My Safety.

    4. Hasn’t Terry Lloyd received the Government’s memo?
      The memo that states clearly that infrastructure improvements will not be carried out either prior to mass house building to accommodate uncontrolled mass immigration or post those events. The Government isn’t even very interested in maintaining the current infrastructure e.g. pot-holes in roads, water leakage etc.
      For information of why reservoirs are not being built Mr Lloyd should read Christopher Booker’s article from 2012:

      Keeping the Country Short of Water is Government and EU Policy

      1. Any chance someone could cut and paste the article for those of us in the cheap seats?

        1. ‘ere y go:-

          Keeping the country short of water is now government – and EU – policy

          Failure to fix leaks and increase reservoir capacity are behind our water problems.

          Cracked: the country’s water problems are derived from the failure to fix leaks and increase reservoir capacity

          By Christopher Booker9:00PM BST 12 May 2012
          When I returned last week to a grey, cold, rainswept Heathrow, after a brief visit to Australia on rather sad family business, I naturally wanted to know what had been going on while I was away. It hardly said much for our democracy that Boris Johnson should have owed his “triumphant” re-election as Mayor to the support of just 16.8 per cent of those Londoners eligible to vote – while Labour owed its “victory” in council elections to just 12 per cent of the potential voters. The Greek and French election results heralded another sharp downward lurch in the slow-motion collapse of the euro. The Environment Agency’s Chris Smith announced that Britain may be hoping for a glut of cheap gas from “fracking” shale, but that this could be allowed to generate electricity only on condition that all the resulting CO₂ is buried in holes in the ground, by a wishful-thinking technology that would double its price and is unlikely ever to work anyway.

          As big a story as any, however, was the ongoing drama of our “wettest-ever drought” as, despite record recent rainfall, we are told that hosepipe bans are still unlikely to be lifted because we don’t have enough water to go round. And here, it turns out, there is a startling twist to the tale.

          The great water shambles, as we know, centres on two major failings of national policy. One is the water companies’ failure to plug the leaks that are costing us nearly as much water every two years as is contained in all our reservoirs. The other is their failure to add to that reservoir capacity, which has barely increased in the 20 years since water was privatised, despite our 10 per cent growth in population.

          What makes this particularly odd, however, is that only a few years back, the last government was gung-ho about the companies’ plans to build five major new reservoirs in the south of England alone, where the shortage is most acute, and to extend three others. So what happened to all those plans? One after another they have all been shelved or turned down altogether by the Government, as when last year our Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, vetoed Thames Water’s plan for a huge £1 billion new reservoir near Abingdon, saying that there was “no immediate need” for new reservoir building. This was only months after she had sent back to the drawing board another well-advanced scheme near Portsmouth.

          Astonishingly, it now emerges, it has become quite deliberate government policy to keep Britain short of water. And the explanation for this baffling volte-face lies in a “Communication” issued in 2007 by the European Commission (COM (2007) 414 Final) “addressing the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union”.

          Related Articles
          Standpipes may be needed despite wet weather, warns minister 02 May 2012
          Drought risks killing off British wildlife 19 Mar 2012
          Fracking backed by Environment Agency head 08 May 2012
          Environment Agency boss backs fracking 08 May 2012
          On extracting gas from rock, or putting it in there, the greens are equally confused 21 Apr 2012
          Energy customers to be told if they are not on best deal 11 Apr 2012
          This document was based on the belief that Europe was facing a water crisis due to global warming. The only way to meet the prospect of severe droughts, it argued, was to encourage us all to use water much more “efficiently”. Not once in this 14-page document is there any mention of the need to improve the storage of water. From now on, the policy of member states must be, by every possible means, to reduce the use of water, not least by making it more expensive. This is the policy that our government has now adopted, as was confirmed last year by Mrs Spelman’s White Paper, Water for Life. In all its 105 pages, there are plenty of mentions of climate change and the need to conserve water in face of the predicted droughts. As Mrs Spelman put it, when rivers start to run dry and cracks appear in those empty reservoirs, “we must recognise these as warning signs of what we might expect to see in a changing climate”. But not once, as in the EU’s paper, is there any mention of a need to build new reservoirs. The only message is that we must learn to conserve this “precious resource”, not least by making us pay more for it.

          Herein, it seems, lies the explanation for our current utterly bizarre plight, wherein Mrs Spelman pronounces that there is “no immediate need” for new reservoirs, and Ofwat tells water companies, as it did last week, that there is no need for them to fix those leaks before 2015.

          If the people of Britain, not least the 20 million in the South East still under a hosepipe ban, were aware that this was being brought about by a quite deliberate policy, backed by the crackpot projections of our climate change-obsessed Met Office, they would be very angry indeed. But so far, Mrs Spelman has been remarkably successful in hiding from us just what a dirty and nonsensical game she is playing.

        2. Sorry Ash – can’t get pasting to work. Repeatedly get ‘Error Message – Internal server error’. Perhaps someone else’s pc can handle it.

    5. Jim, Plaid Cymru won’t like their water being exported. It is Dwr Cymru, you know.

    6. “SIR – John Tilsiter suggests a North-South water transfer under rail tracks. The answer is much simpler. Beside many roads and railway lines is a canal, the perfect method by which to deliver water.

      Cotswold Canals Trust is already in discussion with Thames Water to bring water from Wales to London.

      Jim White”

      Not this old chestnut. Canals are designed to contain water, not transport it. And a little inconvenience called locks. Pumping stations at every lock? Any substantial flow would wash away the canal lining – that’s why canal traffic is limited to low speed.

      And what happens to the water at its destination? They would have to build some form of storage, like err..reservoirs. . Water falls naturally as rain everywhere in the UK. And that’s the key – local capture and storage.

      1. I remember the cliff he covered in plastic in Oz, and I remember thinking WTF for.

      3. Living in Germany a the time the Reichstag was wrapped I was alerted to him & followed his career.

        The R’tag was wrapped in silver fabric, not blue as in the article, but the cords were blue. That was before the glass dome was fitted, of course.

      4. When I was doing my foundation art course, I had an old shed as part of my installation. I came in one morning to find it had been wrapped in grey sheeting (the management didn’t like it being on show). I put a notice on it saying, “Christo waz ‘ere” 🙂

    2. I was impressed that it was allowed at all, to wrap the Reichstag. It changed my opinion of Germans generally, and now I work in a German company, I find that the post-wrap opinion is the more correct one.
      RIP, man. That was some wrap!

  29. SIR – It would be more to their credit if our bishops concerned themselves with the plight of their flocks, who are suffering from a clear lack of shepherding.

    The churches remain closed for services, no matter how small, including funerals, and there has been more evidence of compassionate care among parish clergy than from the episcopacy.

    Could we please have better spiritual direction and less woolly thinking from those who are supposed to be examples of faith and hope in action?

    Ann Robertson

    Tenterden, Kent

    1. I have no reason to revise the opinion which I expressed on this Nottlers’ site a few months ago:

      Welby is anti-Christ.

      He was specially selected by Cameron to destroy the Church of England.

    2. How is it with the Catholics? Are they more resolute than the C of E? And Methodists, do they get to gather for a singalong?

      1. “The Church of England is so constituted that its members can believe almost anything; almost none of them do.” (Alan Bennett)

      2. Catholic priests have been live-streaming mass from inside churches since the start of the lockdown. No congregation allowed inside the church, however.

        1. Good morning, Aeneas.

          We have a Sunday Service each week and
          daily devotions each day, posted to the Church
          Website, but they come from the Reverend’s
          home; other readings, talks etc. come from
          different people’s homes.

          1. Same for us. We get the text of the service via email and a link to the You Tube version. We even had a Tallis motet yesterday.

        2. The Catholic bishops in Scotland insisted that the churches be closed. They are tarred with the brush of secularism and NWO.

  31. SIR – Bob Stebbings (Letters, May 31) suggests that NHS administrators should be held accountable and remunerated according to their results.

    While I agree fully with the sentiment, the overriding expertise of administrators is the manipulation of targets to ensure the maximum reward for themselves, which often does not coincide with the most beneficial clinical outcome for patients.

    Overall budgetary priorities should be set by clinicians and administrators should be left to administrate.

    Steve Black

    Keyworth, Nottinghamshire

    1. I’ve news for Mr Black. It’s been tried several times – it doesn’t work.

    2. Beware the KPI (Key Performance Indicator). They can be easy to manipulate, but the point of them is that “what gets measured, gets done”. Problem is, if the KPI is wrong, that does n’t help the situation, also what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done – and what isn’t being measured might be important, more so than the KPI.

      1. Which is why hospitals can be quite dirty. The cleaning is subcontracted and performed to a contract specification of mind-boggling detail.
        Several hundred pages of things like “walls will be wiped to a height of 37.5 centimetres.”

        1. There is an INSTA standard 800 for cleanliness. Just specify where, to what level.

    3. Nice thought, but unrelated to reality. Clinicians are often just as capable of being administrators as administrators are of carrying out cardiovascular surgery.

  33. Lockdown rules unenforceable and public will ‘do what they want,’ warn police after weekend of breaches. 1 June 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f2ebf1804cd90cb757dcd53ef268c81a37deb05d0e4d9c22202ef5a38986800.jpg

    Lockdown rules are now “unenforceable” and the public will “do what they want to do”, policing leaders have warned.

    Ken Marsh, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said: “I don’t think the public are taking much notice of what is laid down in front of them. They are doing it how they want to do it. In terms of it being enforceable, I don’t think it is.”

    This was pretty obvious from last week. The Government is just waffling; trying to pretend (as it has from the beginning) that it has a handle on this thing. People have voted with their feet and it’s over.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/31/lockdown-rules-unenforceable-public-will-do-want-warn-police/

    1. I don’t like the look of the enormous animal on the left – with its snout in the sea…

      2. It’s the woolly mammoth of Wool.

        [Goes to hide before Trou Ble gets here!] 🤣

    2. We are living in the next village, and the flow of traffic was endless.. People had travelled from Luton , Leicester , Slough , Romford, Reading etc etc

      People had travelled great distances , and had nowhere to go to the lavatory ..yes , nowhere! It was a terrible weekend for everyone . Car passing places, gardens , hedges the countryside were used as loos . The local fire services had a busy time , disposable BBQs should be banned , the countryside is tinder dry.

      Durdle Door is 200foot high. and chaps were jumping off the arch … 77mph and belly flopping .. 3 people sustained terrible injuries !

      1. Durdle Door is 200foot high. and chaps were jumping off the arch … 77mph and belly flopping .. 3 people sustained terrible injuries!

        Morning Belle. Were they demented, stupid or just ignorant. It is after all an activity one can only do once without finding out the consequences!

        2. I have tombstoned in my wild past.

          Up in the hills above Montpellier. A beautiful mountain stream with deep pools. As i was sunbathing i watched some teenagers doing it and thought i would give it a try. I checked out the pool and there was plenty of room between the boulders.

          Getting up the steep rocks wasn’t easy. The launch point was easy to spot as someone had planted a sign saying ’30 metres’.

          You needed to be careful at this point and watch where people were swimming and in what direction because once launched there was no stopping. Didn’t want to kill anyone on impact even if they were French.

          Arms folded tightly across chest. Bended knees. Launch.

          As you go down it is a good idea to cross ankles and close eyes just before you hit.

          Then opens eyes and watch the explosion of bubbles.

        1. I think you mean Wally, Still Bleau. Waldo was the unfortunate nephew of Mr Magoo.

    4. One can only assume that those on the beach are there to watch the latest Darwin Award Contenders…..

  34. Just broke a personal rule by switching onto BBC Breakfast, for the first time in about two years, to see if they were reporting upon the worldwide Lefty rabble destroying their environments. Silly me!

    They decided to show what “all the newspapers” were reporting on their front pages and these were the newspapers chosen:

    The Times
    The Guardian
    “The Metro” (whatever the hell that is?)
    The New York Times.

    They then showed a few cut outs from somewhere in the middle of certain newspapers (but were careful not to show any other reports therein):

    The Daily Express
    The Guardian,
    The Daily Mail
    The Daily Telegraph

    Interestingly they had cut a narrow report of an article about neighbours chatting over fences from the DT but went to great lengths to ensure you couldn’t read anything else on the page.

    Ho hum! Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

    1. I watched a bit of BBC Breakfast. Their lead item was ‘schools to reopen today’. However this is NOT news, it was announced weeks ago.

      1. I use a VPN to get BBC iPlayer on my iMac. I also pay a small fee for another VPN that gives me (directly to my router and then to my television set) ALL the Sky television channels (including all UK terrestrial channels).

          1. Lightning quick, even out in the sticks where I live. I also have a cable system which makes it even quicker.

          2. Daughter on cable has more Mbps than she can count. I have to struggle by with 37.5.

          4. I’ve had mine for 18 months now. Before that it would take a 90-minute feature film around three minutes to download. It now takes around 15 seconds.

          1. Yo,

            I use WatchUKTVAbroad for all terrestrial channels (£5·99/month), and Expat Vision for its Sky service (all Sky channels, including sport and films, for £29/month).

        1. Yeah. Why on earth?

          [Two reasons really:
          1. To watch films, documentaries, dramas and good quiz shows.
          2. You really have to see Swedish TV to believe it. It is beyond dire!]

    3. Do they still hold up the pages to the camera in that oh so amateurish way?

  35. A very successful lawyer parked his brand-new Lexus in front of his office, ready to show it off to his colleagues.

    As he got out, a truck passed too close and completely tore off the door on the driver’s side. The lawyer immediately grabbed his cell phone, dialled 911, and within minutes a policeman pulled up.

    Before the officer had a chance to ask any questions, the lawyer started screaming hysterically. His Lexus, which he had just picked up the day before, was now completely ruined and would never be the same, no matter what the body shop did to it.

    When the lawyer finally wound down from his ranting and raving, the officer shook his head in disgust and disbelief. “I can’t believe how materialistic you lawyers are,” he said. “You are so focused on your possessions that you don’t notice anything else.”

    “How can you say such a thing?” asked the lawyer.

    The cop replied, “Don’t you know that your left arm is missing from the elbow down? It must have been torn off when the truck hit you!”

    “My God!” screamed the lawyer. “Where’s my Rolex?!”

      1. Why do they bury lawyers 12 feet deep? Because deep down they are good guys…

          1. The legal profession certainly need a massive kick up the arsè in home conveyancing.
            Our son and his wife and 4 month old have been holding on for months.

            And our garage and her fathers is filled with their furniture. 😕

    1. Yo DM

      The leftie remainers are slow

      Placards are of hand crayoned cardboard, where are the ultra deluxe mass produced ones.. and where is the bus

  37. I opened my eyes this morning to hear on R4Today Trump being blamed for picking a fight with everyone – media, China, rioters in US cities …. no mention of any problems due to actions from these sources, inc uselessness of Dem Mayors of US cities undermining their police forces riot control efforts.

    Never have I seen a President so permanenetly put in a “damned if he doesn’t, damned if he does” box.

      1. Well, they eventually had to give up Cummings-bashing once it emerged that false information was being given to the MSM by people who made it up “for a joke”, so now it’s time to start Trump-bashing once again. Do give some consideration to the scum hard-working journalists, Hugh.

    2. Trump Derangement Syndrome. There was a “Trump” Ladybird book in one of the shop windows. It had an orange on the front. It won’t have been complimentary, that’s for sure.

  38. “Justice for George Floyd” by all means. The police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck, until he was dead, faces a miserable future that he could not have anticipated when he commenced his tour of duty that day. He has already been sacked and will now, no doubt, be convicted of manslaughter at the very least, giving him a hellish time in whichever prison he serves his sentence.

    Now, what about “Justice for the business owners” who, worldwide now, have lost their livelihoods through the opportunist rioting of every Leftist scumbag on the planet who were just looking for an excuse (however feeble) to wreak revenge. What’s sauce for the goose …

    1. I wonder why the Authorities didn’t activate the TSG in relation to these disturbances. They activated them to harass and intimidate a young lady walking out of a London Park.. Half a dozen of them were needed to get right in close to her to make sure she wasn’t a threat to public life.

      Good morning, George.

      1. Good morning, Philip.

        Same answer as elsewhere: the wrong sort of people are in charge.

        1. No matter what party and their title. The vast majority that pupport to lead us are wet, left and totaly out of touch.

          1. Spot on, John. They are only in it for what they can screw out of the system.

          2. It’s been said that 6% of the population are psychopaths, and when psychopaths are in charge of the world, the world goes mad.

    2. An interesting interview by the Beeb with Pastor Scott, a Trump supporter. The interviewer had it seems already had the autopsy report and trial verdict and it was all the fault of DT. The pastor was having none of it and gave as good as he got. A terrible case, especially as it was over a fake $20 bill, but an excuse for Antifa and the left to fracture society.

      1. The interview on R4 this morning? Dear life it was abusive.

        Nick Robinson had already made his mind up. He was forcing his opinion on us: Trump to blame, US at fault, the police shouldn’t act. It was insulting. Any journalist with a shred of credibility would have presented nuance, facts, data. Nooo, all too difficult when you’ve an agenda to push.

    3. The autopsy apparently showed that Floyd did not die of asphyxiation, but of coronary heart disease, hypertension, exacerbated by lying prone, with his hands behind his back. There were no injuries to his neck.

      https://www.insider.com/george-floyd-non-responsive-before-officer-took-knee-off-neck-2020-5
      The officer who restrained him by kneeling on his neck would have been trained in that technique, but which also included the warning that it could be dangerous.
      That the officer didn’t know about his underlying conditions doesn’t excuse what he did, and was also the reason for the murder in the third degree charge.

      1. “The officer who restrained him by kneeling on his neck would have been trained in that technique …”

        That statement asks more questions than it answers, the most important one being, “If he was trained in that technique, why was he so quickly and summarily dismissed from his job prior to being arrested and charged with murder?” This smacks of him being used as a sacrificial lamb if that is the case.

        1. I wonder if the fact that they knew each other had a bearing on the incident?

    1. Thanks for posting. Politicians of today please noted – the British Admiral commanding donated his share of the prize money to the Widows of his sailors killed in battle.

    2. There is a mnemonic to help you remember Nelson’s battles although not necessarily in the right order they are:

      Copenhagen Ushant, Nile Trafalgar

  40. Patel can have no legitimate excuse for allowing these pieces of excrement to remain in the UK. If it’s policy that the Government are not going to deport however serious the crime(s) then they should openly state that fact and take the consequences at the ballot box. The only fly in the ointment is that the Labour shower are of like mind: without an alternative to vote for we, the decent people, are up the proverbial creek without means of propulsion.

    https://twitter.com/HeartsofOakUK/status/1267085394891296768

    1. I still feel that Deportation is very inferior to having them put down – and this latter procedure will much reduce the future gang-rape problem.

        1. Good morning

          How’s you lovely newly made guitar sounding?

          However well hung a rapist may be he ought to be well hanged!

          1. Hi Richard, our middle son popped in on Saturday afternoon with his wife and their 4 month old son.
            Dan played a few tunes on the new parlour. From where I was sitting it sounded great. I’ve got a a bit of tweaking to do, the ends of some of frets need tidying up. It’s possible that the fret board may have shrunk very slightly.
            The Martin I made from the imported kit nearly 12 years ago. Seems to have come into its own.
            It’s sounding very nice indeed.
            It must be the warm weather. 😊
            I’ll email you a couple of pics later.

      2. Of course you are right but for the PTB the safety of vulnerable white girls is far less important than patting themselves on the back for being a liberal democratic state which abhors the death penalty.

    2. 319821+ up ticks,
      Morning Ktk,
      Under Gerard Batten we had the building of a successful PRO GB party
      that was the reason it had to be suppressed by crook & by crook.
      The current UKIP is an submissive,pcism & appeasement party, same as the lab/lib/con coalition.

  41. OT – NoTTLers may remember the MR’s Loopy Friend and her German pension isshoos (see, NTTL, passim since 2016). Today, after four different courts have dealt with the case over four years…..she looked in her bank account and the pension and arrears were there. At last.

    3. Well done the MR and you for guiding LF and keeping her pointed in the right direction.

    5. No chance of anything like that happening in good old blighted…..whoops blighty. 😕

    6. A snippet of good news amongst the dire goings-on elsewhere. Well done the MR and you.

  42. 319821+ up ticks,
    May one ask why are we allowing an enemy force to build up on a daily basis via the English Channel.
    Anyone who voted for this governance party must know
    surely, why would one vote for uncontrolled immigration
    that is surely the vote of a lunatic.

  43. 319821+ up ticks,
    In comparison / necessity could not the funds
    ( scam wonga) be re-directed from HS2 rail, beneficial to the few occasionally, to building a new reservoir or two beneficial to the many for ever.

    1. Oh come on Ogga, can you imagine how long it would take to build a reservoir? Heathrows third runway will be a doodle in comparison.

      Plans, hearings, protests, environmental impact studies, bleeding heart campaigns to save our beautiful valley . . .

      Far better to just live with the EU restrictions on reservoirs and build a nice solar powered desalination plant on the Mersey. It will not deliver water but hey ho, Saint Greta will give you a gold star.

      1. 319821+ up ticks,
        R,
        Two birds, one stone, ! hospital = 1 week.
        Incoming chinese HK “guest’s” 1 reservoir = 2 1/2 days.

      2. 319821+ up ticks,
        R,
        As for an agreed by all site may one suggest the centre of the reservoir be situated in parliament green, surely a benefit to ALL.

    2. They don’t want reservoirs. They want much higher water charges so that the population uses a lot less. Why would they want to build infrastructure to store something that can sometimes be scarce when they can just bill us more?

    3. ogga1, purleeeeese, this is the modern UK and policy is, where possible, NOT to do things that are beneficial to the many. Booker’s article from May 2012 explains that it is policy, directed by the EU, to have water in short supply and hence cost more. Plans for new reservoirs were dumped even as the population was being massively increased. The fact that we NEED a disaster to wake these people up is an indictment of their uselessness.

      1. Except any disaster will affect the population at large while the politicians will just blame each other.

      2. 319821+up ticks,
        Ktk,
        The way I see it is the peoples themselves have been giving succour to a proven, many times over, disaster, that being the lab/lib/con coalition party.
        Maybe bring in a law making eligible to vote say 30 years of age.
        The real root cause dangers to these Isles are within
        parliament that is a proven fact.
        Edited because this bloody laptop post’s itself.

  44. With all the protesters in the USA and here the lock down has ended. Boris is still telling US what to do and doing NOTHING about the airports, The Chanel crossing criminals. Do your job Boris you do not need to tell us what to do we know what to do. Go and lock up some protesters for breaking the rules.

  47. The hard left in the USA have decided that if they cannot have their man or woman as president they the will burn down the country instead.
    But they are not fascists, they are anti fascists that don’t beleive in democracy.

    1. But fascists don’t believe in democracy, so by definition anti-fascists must believe in it.

      1. Extreme SOCIALIST do not believe in Democracy.
        It matters not what label they wear, Fascist, Communist, National Socialist or Marxist, the ultimate outcome is oppression of freedom.

    2. That’s just a conspiracy theory from Trump aimed at delegimatising the grievances that led to the rioting which is the legacy of historic racial injustices and police brutality aimed at black people in the US. The Ferguson riots, the LA riots and riots in the 1960s had similar motivations and causes. It’s simplistic and wishful thinking to blame it on some shadowy “hard left” plot.

      1. Keep rioting, looting and burning down your own neighbourhoods and blame Trump.

        Yeah, right.

        1. As with the wanqueurs in London yesterday – blaming Johnson….

          Sadly, there were no fires or looting.

          1. Given that “humans” in Africa had possibly a quarter of a million years start on the rest of the planet ,one might have expected Africans to dominate the world.

          2. We did – we migrated out of Africa – according to the Paleo-anthropologists…

          3. Indeed.

            But….

            If that is the case, logically you are suggesting that the remaining black Africans are less evolved.

        2. Blaming Trump is as ridiculous as blaming Antifa. As I said the causes are systemic and historical. Of course Trump is hardly helping matters by quoting Jim Crow era Southern sheriffs and segregationist politicians and evoking imagery of using dogs against civil rights protesters in his Twitter rants as he hides in his bunker.

          1. Your comment:
            ” as he hides in his bunker”

            suggests to me that you have a dose of Trump derangement syndrome.

            He will have been taken there by those in charge of his security.

            The people stirring these riots (they are not protests, they are an opportunity to steal) have no interest whatsoever in civil rights, they are trying to remove Trump. And trying to place the blame on the President is, at the very least, disingenuous.

      4. I would say that the grievance and the response are two different cases.
        To protest the death of yet another black guy at the hands of the police, surely marches, banners, shouting would be an appropriate response? Fill Pennsylvania Avenue with protesters, all chanting. That would show the strength of feeling all right.
        But burn some mom ‘n pop store, steal televisions, burn cars, violently assault people who are no part of the decision-making process? That’s the same as terrorism IMO. In this case, I am with Trump. Call it out. And the violence, by drawing attention to itself and not the original issue of police brutality, delegitimises the case.

    2. Can’t listen to that woman. Buildin’ is right for her. She’s apparently incapable of pronouncing a soft ‘g’.

      1. Take my advice, Our Susan.

        Ignore all radio and TV news and current affairs and politics.

        Makes for a MUCH happier life…!

  50. I hear the school teachers are not ready to got back into the classroom,
    I’m not really surprised 6 weeks lying on a sun bed on the patio would ruin anyone’s back

      1. So I am paying the exorbitant Council Tax for partial bin collections as ever.

        These council employees polishing seats at home (can you polish a sun lounger?) should not be paid their full salaries and pension contributions from the Council Tax.

        They should be compelled to get off their fat arses and polish seats in the council offices. This is the very least we might expect having paid for their indolence for so long.

  51. Berlin in Denial Mode. The scientists fight back.

    Initially, the government tried to dismiss the report as “the work of one employee”, and its contents as “his own opinion” – while the journalists closed ranks, no questions asked, with the politicians.

    But the 93-pages report titled “Analysis of the Crisis Management” has been drafted by a scientific panel appointed by the interior ministry and composed by external medical experts from several German universities.

    The report was the initiative of a department of the interior ministry called Unit KM4 and in charge with the “Protection of critical infrastructures”.

    This is also where the German official turned whistleblower, Stephen Kohn, work(ed), and from where he leaked it to the media.

    The authors of the report issued a joint press release already on May 11th, berating the government for ignoring expert advise, and asking for the interior minister to officially comment upon the experts joint statement:

    Full story here:
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/29/german-official-leaks-report-denouncing-corona-as-global-false-alarm/

    1. Trump seems to have two threads going. Tweets like this sending the right message but then he seems unable to control his feelings and spouts his anti left rhetoric against any Democrat mayor or state governor.

      1. Richard, seems perfectly reasonable given the democrats perversion of truth in the attempt to have him impeached…..

        1. That us vs. them interaction is just what they don’t need at the moment.

          Pelosi has such a hatred for Trump that she has no interest in supporting the government CV19 response, Trump is the same with anything Democrat.

          1. What have the Democrats proposed that Trump turned down because it came from the Democrats?

          2. His impeachment?

            There’s s lots of pork barrel stuff going on where the Dems pad a bill, Trump raves against it and the Senate rejects it.
            The latest covid giveaway follows that trend.

          4. Put out to graze like any other vieja vaca would be more appropriate.

      2. Talking about “control feelings”, how’s the left – Democrats and MSM – been doing on that front for the last 4 years?

      3. There’s a widely held view that there are two sources for Trump’s tweets. The balanced ones come from his staff. The nasty stuff comes from him – usually in the middle of the night. Except that we know he is teetotal, you would think he sends them out having had a few too many.

        His rhetoric has but one purpose, to keep his “base” fired up. After all the guy was a Democratic party supporter until he decided he wanted to be president. Then he announced he would run as an independent. Then when he found out how much that would cost, he became a Republican. More of a modern Vicar of Bray than anything else.

    1. Oh to be sat three hundred yards away, a couple of stories up with an L42A1 for company.

  54. Daily Mail story:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8375101/Britons-lack-sex-lockdown-today-illegal-household.html

    SIX in ten Britons have gone without sex during lockdown – and from today it will be ILLEGAL to romp at home with someone from another household

    New coronavirus guidelines will explicitly ban two people from different households gathering in a private place.

    Has the close season for rosebud gathering been extended indefinitely?

    1. Are they trying to encourage sex in the park or prepping people for going back to no sex before marriage, under sharia rules?

      1. I have had a sense that sharia is lurking beneath this rejigging of our society, of our ‘new normal’. The face masks are symbolic of oppression, and it would take only a slight lateral shift to make them fashionably acceptable to the snowflakes. And imagine how delighted busybody neighbours would be to report next door’s illegal afternoon nookie to the newly formed Respectability department of the police service. Done and dusted before we realise it.

    2. How do they know this on the first and how would they know if you did on the second?

    3. So, what they are saying is that sex between strangers in a public place is OK?

      1. The implication from the Wail headline is that the ban is from today – so that, if only one had known, one could have been as promiscuous as one wished before today…{:¬))

        Had one had the ability, of course…{:¬((

        2. Reminiscent of the old Tom Lehrer song “When you are Old and Grey”

          “….So let’s act with agility
          While we still have facility
          For we’ll soon reach senility
          And lose the ability . . .”

          A typical clever Lehrer piece. Best not to play “Take me back to Dixie” now though…

  55. Some one sent me this yesterday,……… worth a read.

    Re: http://freenations.net/dominic-cummings-press-lies-hypocrisy-and-the-anti-brexit-plot/
    28/5/2020 21:55

    Fwd: A Civil Service insider’s view on corruption – relevant in Covid?

    I found a website called off-guardian.org recommended by Peter Hitchens.

    ————————————————–

    From a reader called B L

    I worked in a Whitehall department for 27 years, retiring in 2016. I saw the rise of the Special Advisers’ influence. Every submission to a Minister went through them; therefore they knew everything going on in the Department. The area I dealt with was very controversial involving a clear conflict between industry profits and public health/environmental pollution.

    During 2015, when this conflict was at a peak, the Special Adviser to the Secretary of State went to work for a massive PR company – the same company that represented the businesses that would most benefit from the safety changes we were proposing. Those changes were blocked and remain blocked. The Special Adviser then returned to work for government.

    ————————————————–

    From N……

    Interesting, B.

    Do you believe corruption connected with corporate interests is so widespread across all of Govt. that it needs banning? When did it go from say occasional corruption to widespread and brazen? 1990s ?

    —————————————————

    Reply from B…It’s definitely widespread; systemic I would say. In my view (and experience) this has come about through a number of factors coalescing in the past 7/8 years. Banning corruption would be extremely difficult however!

    For a start, possibly corrupt people are often good at covering their tracks; therefore we need good investigative reporters to untangle the threads . . . oh, wait a minute; we don’t have them any more, do we? Just one example: Sir Patrick Vallance. He’s Chair of SAGE. Came from GSK, strong links with Gates etc. Companies that make vaccines and other healthcare products share connections with Big Chem via huge PR companies like Burson Marsteller. Imperial College has strong connections, to and fro, with Burson. Imperial College as we all know are behind the modelling that’s shunting us all towards mandatory vaccines. Imperial’s fire science lab gets funding from the flame retardant industry, the big three producers of which are represented by Burson too. Imperial has been a major blocker of the safety changes we tried to bring in to the UK’s domestic fire safety regulations. Why? Probably because those changes would have led to flame retardants eventually disappearing from our sofas/mattresses, and with them around £300m a year profits to the FR industry.

    What’s this got to do with Patrick Vallance (other than the possible connections mentioned above)? Well, Sir Patrick is also Chair of the Scientific Advisory Group to the Grenfell Inquiry. Last December, this group slipped out a paper which in effect advised the Inquiry not to look at the role that flame retardants played in the fire. Which is suspicious, or should be, since it’s almost certain that most of the deaths in that fire were caused by toxic fumes produced by burning flame retardants in furniture and other internal products.

    Answer to second point…

    Yes, it probably started in the 90s. I’m very wary of being too prescriptive about this kind of thing. But let’s just say that when I joined the civil service in the late 80s (reluctantly!), there was still a pretty widespread ethic of existing to support the public. Yes, the Sir Humphreys were up to their necks in political self-serving intrigue but most civil servants wanted to do a good job. Whitehall departments also took in experts in specific fields as full-time civil servants to assist with, as in my case, product safety issues. Overall, things were more accountable too: all Ministerial briefings were in written form, as were meeting notes with industry etc. That’s all changed now: to get round the FOI Act, Ministers mostly now want only oral briefings and their meetings are not minuted.

    This was taken up by civil servants generally, partly by also not recording meetings but also in adopting crap electronic filing systems which in effect made it very difficult to file anything and almost impossible to find it again anyway. In my time, we went from a system in which everything was recorded forever to a situation where virtually nothing was recorded. This lack of transparency is of course a godsend to corruption in its various forms.

    Then the experts were got rid of in Whitehall, leaving civil servants with very little understanding of the subjects they are responsible for. In practical terms, this meant that in my area for example, knowledgeable civil servants disappeared from the standards-making groups. At the same time, budget cuts everywhere meant the enforcement authorities and many NGOs also stopped attending such groups. Meaning that now standards-making groups are almost totally dominated by industry representatives. All of which back-channels into the ineffectiveness of civil servants which in turn makes them more corruptible either through bribery or incompetence or both.

    Believe me, these processes are very much part of what is driving the “science” behind the coronavirus nonsense.

    1. We had a civil servant on the daily Coronavirus podium yesterday admitting that there is no protection from someone getting a fraudulent or malicious command to lockdown following a tracker notification. “I assure you that it is very unlikely” was the handwaving response, followed by an assurance that those manning the official track-and-trace response team were professionally trained.

      When someone answers a question with spin, I know that they know nothing and the system cannot be trusted.

      The correct response would be that the Government would issue a number to call to verify such demands independently.

    2. In the late 90s, I already heard a similar story in London, about hushing up the effects of clingfilm.

  56. Man, 82, killed in attack by herd of cows in Yorkshire dales. 1 June 2020.

    The man, 82, and his wife, 78, from Pendle, in Lancashire, had been walking in Ivescar, near Ingleton, when the incident took place at about 1.45pm on Saturday, North Yorkshire police said.

    Although emergency services were called, he was pronounced dead at the scene. His wife was badly bruised and was taken to Royal Lancashire Infirmary by air ambulance.

    One wonders at the level of detail in this report. Were it to involve current politically sensitive issues it would contain almost nothing.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/01/man-82-killed-in-attack-by-herd-of-cows-in-yorkshire-dales

      1. I think the sub-text is that they were stupid, old,foam-flecked, Leave-voting bigots….

        I expect, too, that the cows were of colour.

        1. There is plenty of information available on the Internet about rambling in the countryside. What to do and what not to do.

          Taking a dog among cows and their calves seems pretty obvious to me. Don’t do it.

          1. Do most people bother to look, I wonder, on the web, before they go for a walk. It may well have just been an impromptu decision. I have noticed on walks with rambling clubs that a field with a herd of cattle grazing is treated with nonchalance, an attitude which may extend to non-group walks. The article implies there may have been a dog involved, but it does not specifically state that, interesting when it is up front in detail about everything else in this incident.

          2. There is also the aspect of “Our right to walk across fields full of cattle…”

          3. If the field is crossed by a public footpath and a detour would be excessive or impracticable, then you do have that right.
            You also have the duty and responsibility to exercise caution which I would include as carrying a stout Hiking Stick, about 4′ long, capable of fetching any stroppy heifer a decent thwack across the nose.

            Suitable sticks, cut from natural wood, elm, ash sycamore or hazel, available from me at a mere £5.00 each!

          4. Of course. But the “rights” mob have long since lost all sense of proportion. The farmer ought to remove the “dangerous” cattle….

            How is your gut?

          8. Probably not. I always research an are i am visiting which i am unfamiliar with. Mostly so i don’t miss anything special but to also find out about local customs and mores. I find Morris Dancing somewhat ridiculous but in a Market Town on a sunny day with a pint of beer, it’s great fun.

          9. Before lockdown I was going to take my dog a walk across a field via a public footpath. When I got to the stile I saw there were cows there. We turned back.

    2. A cow with a new-born calf is very protective and the herd will always help.

      1. I was walking a gas pipeline route in the Derbyshire Dales over 20 years ago. I stopped to record observations in a small dictaphone when a few baby cows came up and one started nuzzling my arm. “How sweet” I thought.

        Then Mama cow appeared, snorting and stomping. I hurried off down the field and she followed me at a distance. I turned and shooed her away. Several times. Every time, she went away a little less until she was about 10 yards behind me. I legged it for the next field boundary and cleared a barbed wire fence like Sally Gunnell on steroids.

        I turned round to see Mama and the babies, in perfect V-formation stopping just short of the fence. From then on, I always checked out an escape route before entering a cow field.

    3. You cannot believe people of that age would go anywhere loose cows. They surround you. you fall over and are trample you to death. It is not an attack but if people believe cows attack you perhaps they will keep away.

    4. Unless you know what you are doing. KEEP AWAY FROM BULLS AND LOOSE COWS.

      1. And if you see a solitary cow in a field, ask yourself why it’s on its own.

  57. I have been listening to this:

    … This was in 1849. I was fourteen years old, then. We were still living in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, in the new “frame” house built by my father five years before. That is, some of us lived in the new part, the rest in the old part back of it—the “L.” In the autumn my sister gave a party, and invited all the marriageable young people of the village. I was too young for this society, and was too bashful to mingle with young ladies, anyway, therefore I was not invited—at least not for the whole evening. Ten minutes of it was to be my whole share. I was to do the part of a bear in a small fairy play. I was to be disguised all over in a close-fitting brown hairy stuff proper for a bear. About half past ten I was told to go to my room and put on this disguise, and be ready in half an hour. I started, but changed my mind; for I wanted to practise a little, and that room was very small. I crossed over to the large unoccupied house on the corner of Main and Hill streets,[4] unaware that a dozen of the young people were also going there to dress for their parts. I took the little black slave boy, Sandy, with me, and we selected a roomy and empty chamber on the second floor. We entered it talking, and this gave a couple of half-dressed young ladies an opportunity to take refuge behind a screen undiscovered. Their gowns and things were hanging on hooks behind the door, but I did not see them; it was Sandy that shut the door, but all his heart was in the theatricals, and he was as unlikely to notice them as I was myself.

    That was a rickety screen, with many holes in it, but as I did[Pg 454] not know there were girls behind it, I was not disturbed by that detail. If I had known, I could not have undressed in the flood of cruel moonlight that was pouring in at the curtainless windows; I should have died of shame. Untroubled by apprehensions, I stripped to the skin and began my practice. I was full of ambition; I was determined to make a hit; I was burning to establish a reputation as a bear and get further engagements; so I threw myself into my work with an abandon that promised great things. I capered back and forth from one end of the room to the other on all fours, Sandy applauding with enthusiasm; I walked upright and growled and snapped and snarled; I stood on my head, I flung handsprings, I danced a lubberly dance with my paws bent and my imaginary snout sniffing from side to side; I did everything a bear could do, and many things which no bear could ever do and no bear with any dignity would want to do, anyway; and of course I never suspected that I was making a spectacle of myself to any one but Sandy. At last, standing on my head, I paused in that attitude to take a minute’s rest. There was a moment’s silence, then Sandy spoke up with excited interest and said—

    “Marse Sam, has you ever seen a smoked herring?”

    “No. What is that?”

    “It’s a fish.”

    “Well, what of it? Anything peculiar about it?”

    “Yes, suh, you bet you dey is. Dey eats ’em guts and all!”

    There was a smothered burst of feminine snickers from behind the screen! All the strength went out of me and I toppled forward like an undermined tower and brought the screen down with my weight, burying the young ladies under it. In their fright they discharged a couple of piercing screams—and possibly others, but I did not wait to count. I snatched my clothes and fled to the dark hall below, Sandy following. I was dressed in half a minute, and out the back way. I swore Sandy to eternal silence, then we went away and hid until the party was over. The ambition was all out of me. I could not have faced that giddy company after my adventure, for there would be two performers there who knew my secret, and would be privately laughing at me all the time. I was searched for but not found, and the bear had to be played by a young gentleman in his civilized clothes. The house was still and everybody asleep when I finally ventured home. I[Pg 455] was very heavy-hearted, and full of a sense of disgrace. Pinned to my pillow I found a slip of paper which bore a line that did not lighten my heart, but only made my face burn. It was written in a laboriously disguised hand, and these were its mocking terms:

    “You probably couldn’t have played bear, but you played bare very well—oh, very very well!”

    We think boys are rude, unsensitive animals, but it is not so in all cases. Each boy has one or two sensitive spots, and if you can find out where they are located you have only to touch them and you can scorch him as with fire. I suffered miserably over that episode. I expected that the facts would be all over the village in the morning, but it was not so. The secret remained confined to the two girls and Sandy and me. That was some appeasement of my pain, but it was far from sufficient—the main trouble remained: I was under four mocking eyes, and it might as well have been a thousand, for I suspected all girls’ eyes of being the ones I so dreaded. During several weeks I could not look any young lady in the face; I dropped my eyes in confusion when any one of them smiled upon me and gave me greeting; and I said to myself, “That is one of them,” and got quickly away. Of course I was meeting the right girls everywhere, but if they ever let slip any betraying sign I was not bright enough to catch it. When I left Hannibal four years later, the secret was still a secret; I had never guessed those girls out, and was no longer expecting to do it. Nor wanting to, either.

    One of the dearest and prettiest girls in the village at the time of my mishap was one whom I will call Mary Wilson, because that was not her name. She was twenty years old; she was dainty and sweet, peach-bloomy and exquisite, gracious and lovely in character, and I stood in awe of her, for she seemed to me to be made out of angel-clay and rightfully unapproachable by an unholy ordinary kind of a boy like me. I probably never suspected her. But—

    The scene changes. To Calcutta—forty-seven years later. It was in 1896. I arrived there on my lecturing trip. As I entered the hotel a divine vision passed out of it, clothed in the glory of the Indian sunshine—the Mary Wilson of my long-vanished boyhood! It was a startling thing. Before I could recover from the bewildering shock and speak to her she was gone. I thought maybe I had seen an apparition, but it was not so, she[Pg 456] was flesh. She was the granddaughter of the other Mary, the original Mary. That Mary, now a widow, was up-stairs, and presently sent for me. She was old and gray-haired, but she looked young and was very handsome. We sat down and talked. We steeped our thirsty souls in the reviving wine of the past, the beautiful past, the dear and lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon our lips for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music; with reverent hands we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories and dragged forth incident after incident, episode after episode, folly after folly, and laughed such good laughs over them, with the tears running down; and finally Mary said suddenly, and without any leading up—

    “Tell me! What is the special peculiarity of smoked herrings?”

    It seemed a strange question at such a hallowed time as this. And so inconsequential, too. I was a little shocked. And yet I was aware of a stir of some kind away back in the deeps of my memory somewhere. It set me to musing—thinking—searching. Smoked herrings. Smoked herrings. The peculiarity of smo…. I glanced up. Her face was grave, but there was a dim and shadowy twinkle in her eye which—All of a sudden I knew! and far away down in the hoary past I heard a remembered voice murmur, “Dey eats ’em guts and all!”

    “At—last! I’ve found one of you, anyway! Who was the other girl?”

    But she drew the line there. She wouldn’t tell me.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19987/19987-h/19987-h.htm

      2. I’m currently re-reading his complete works on the Kindle! The diversity, knowledge and humour of Twains’ writing is fantastic and I love it all! Some of the speeches he delivered are hilarious!

  58. More than half of migrants stopped in English Channel from Iran. 1 June 2020.

    Figures show 266 people claiming to be from Iran were stopped in the Channel along with 119 Iraqis, 47 Syrians and 13 migrants from Afghanistan.

    The UK government has invested €68.6 million (Dh280m) into a series of border security agreements with France that include “investments in improving border infrastructure at the ports of Calais and Dunkirk, the delivery of strategic communications campaigns, co-operation on return charter flights and developing access to French asylum services”.

    While the government has threatened to send back those who make it ashore, figures released in January that the majority, including those from Iran, have strong cases for asylum and are not returned to Europe.

    £61 million! By my reckoning that’s about £35,000 quid for every one that gets across and is never sent back. None of this can be real of course. The migrants are brought across courtesy of the Home Office Travel Agency and they then pocket the cash sent to discourage it! We are living in a Giant Scam where the public treasury is plundered at will by forces too powerful to be checked by any agency or person. A sort of Papa Doc’s Haiti with Central Heating!

    https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/more-than-half-of-migrants-stopped-in-english-channel-from-iran-1.1027362

    1. More than half of migrants stopped in English Channel from Iran. 1 June 2020.

      Minty owzabouty

      More than half of migrants who loitered until they picked up their UK escorts in English Channel came from Iran. 1 June 2020.

      1. They’ve paid their whack. The people who are selling don’t care where they are from!

      2. I wonder if they are loitering or going as fast as they can?

        I am not a boating person but I would have thought that an overloaded dinghy powered by a small outboard motor cannot chug along very quickly, especially when it runs out of fuel.

      3. But, OLT, one wonders how many are from that terrorist-spawning shïthole and use Iran because of it’s known brutality and lack of justice.

        1. But how many will sneak on a neighbour they don’t like because, and I quote, “I did it for a joke, it was a laugh.” but really with malice aforethought?

          1. The Scotsman shot for carrying a chairleg in a plastic shopping bag is one possibly example.
            Allegedly the police were advised of “an armed man” by one of his mates as a joke.

      2. Yo HP

        They are Counter A Terrorist Unit.

        It is essential that the large number of Snack Boys is remained, either for kiddy fiddling or bombing

        Well if we kill some, they must be replaced

  59. In other non-news from my internet and other wanderings, I discovered two things. The long established wine merchant Lay & Wheeler, formerly part of Majestic*, is now owned by a very secretive Chinese company.
    Matalan is now sponsoring some TV programmes. Presumably to boost sales. Perhaps 90% of what Matalan sell is made in China.
    Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

    *Majestic is now owned by an American investment company.

    2. ‘Afternoon, Horace, thank you for the info’. It might be a service to many to know those of Chinese origin, so that we know which goods to boycott.

      I await our Trade and Industry Secretary’s announcement of a 100% tariff on goods of Chinese origin and a healthy start-up bonus for British manufacturers copying the Chinese products at a cheaper price. ‘Twould be the biter bit.

    3. There’s a very long but interesting analysis of China on the Gatestone Institute for any with the time to read it: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16082/china-what-we-must-do

      The writer, who I assume is American of Chinese origin, appears to believe that eventually communism in China will fail and that something better will take its place. But will it? Is Chinese communism really much different to being ruled by the Emperors and will their ever be change from despotic rule. I know very little about China, but my instinctive feeling is that any significant change is unlikely.

        1. The Chinese communist party might fall apart but will what follows be very different to that or the preceding emperors or any better.

  60. Some children returning to school today.
    But is the class half full or half empty for those left at home?

  61. These two obituaries, the first from Marlborough School, the second from the DT, are of a remarkable couple.

    THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2018

    https://www.marlburianclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Angus_Mitchell-1014×487.jpg

    Dr Angus Mitchell CB CVO MC (C2 1938-42) died on 26 February 2018 in Edinburgh, age 93.

    With the Second World War at its height but the prospect of the dreaming spires of Oxford ahead of him, Angus Mitchell could so easily have taken advantage of the option to defer serving his country and embark on his studies instead.

    That he chose to join the war effort was a decision he would never regret, as it led to the “exciting experience” of liberating North-west Europe from Nazi rule – on one occasion, a task he undertook single-handedly on nothing more than a borrowed bicycle.

    He had not long recovered from being wounded, the result of literally sticking his head above the parapet, and would go on to win the Military Cross for yet another example of his daring in the face of danger.

    Having survived the war, he would later have the honour of acting as an usher at the funeral of the man who steered the country through the darkest days of the 20th century, Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

    He was the son of John Mitchell, who worked with the Indian Civil Service, and his wife Sheila who had served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in the Great War and been rescued from the hospital ship Britannic when it was sunk by the enemy in the Aegean Sea in November 1916.

    His parents met early in 1920 and married in April that year before sailing to India where Angus was born in a hill station at Ootacamund. Though he was only four when he left India, he retained some astonishingly vivid memories of the country, including a train trip to see the Ganges and a view of the Himalayas from Darjeeling. Thanks to his ayah and other house servants he was bilingual in English and Hindustani but quickly forgot the latter after arriving in Britain in 1929. His father remained in India where his mother and baby sister Alison returned in 1930, leaving him and his elder sister Les in the care of an aunt in Little Durford, Hampshire.

    Initially educated by a governess, he attended Highfield boarding school and Marlborough College where he enjoyed sports before giving them up to help with farming for the war effort. He was also in the Officers’ Training Corps before serving as a sergeant in the Home Guard.

    In 1942, whilst still at school, two events occurred: he gained a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford and he volunteered for the Royal Armoured Corps in 1942. He made his decision not to take advantage of the option to defer war service for a year and was called up in January 1943, going on to The Royal Military College, Sandhurst and gaining a commission with the Inns of Court Regiment (ICR).

    He sailed to Normandy in the aftermath of D-Day, landing on 1 July 1944, after being made a troop commander in B Squadron. At just 19 he was the youngest of all his men and was wounded a few weeks later when, standing in his usual position head and shoulders above the armoured car turret, he was injured by flying metal from a German shot to the periscope. He spent his 20th birthday in a Canadian Military Hospital near Bayeux where he underwent surgery to remove the shards.

    He continued to serve in France and Belgium as the Allies swept through, liberating the towns and villages from four years of Nazi rule. Much later, he received recognition from the French Government for his role, and was made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur at a ceremony in Edinburgh in 2016.

    By late September 1944, he and his troop were reconnoitring in the Netherlands when they were ordered to halt as any vehicle movements would be attacked by the RAF. He was approached by a young Dutchman from the Resistance demanding to know why they had stopped as the Germans had just left the neighbouring town of Boxmeer.

    Unable to risk moving his vehicles, he borrowed a bike from a nearby inn and cycled into the town to establish that the enemy had indeed left. “As the first British troops into Boxmeer, we were of course enthusiastically welcomed as liberators – a heart-warming experience which we had enjoyed several times before in France and Belgium,” he recalled.

    Promoted to lieutenant that October, during leave in Brussels he spotted, in a shop window, a photograph of himself in an armoured car just after liberation. The shopkeeper promptly gave him the image as a gift. After the war he was decorated as a Ridder – a knight – in the Dutch Order of Oranje-Nassau, and returned to Boxmeer in 1994 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its liberation, laying a wreath from his old regiment at the war memorial and giving a short talk recalling his arrival in the area.

    In the early spring of 1945, after the successful Allied assault on the Rhine, his squadron crossed the river and came under the command of the British 6th Airborne Division. He and his troop led the advance of the division for several days. While personally under heavy enemy fire, he carried out reconnaissance missions to identify enemy positions which were hindering the advance. This fearless action won him the Military Cross.

    He continued across northern Germany to Hanover and on reaching the River Aller, a German officer, proffering a white flag, arranged a short local truce to prevent fighting close to the Belsen concentration camp where inmates were dying of typhus.

    After the Red Army captured Berlin, Mitchell’s division took 70,000 prisoners between May 2 and 4. Whilst the victory in Europe had been won, the Allies were still fighting the Japanese and that summer Mitchell was preparing to leave for a potential assault on Malaya. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that August signalled the Japanese surrender, ending, he observed, “a cruel war”.

    An undemanding job followed, in the East African Military Records office in Nairobi, where in March 1946 he received his Military Cross at an investiture at Government House. After being demobbed, with the rank of captain, in October he began his modern history degree at Brasenose College, meeting his future wife, Ann, the same month. She told him she had worked for the Foreign Office and it was not until 30 years later, when the information was declassified, that he discovered she had worked on decryption at Bletchley Park.

    They wed in December 1948 and began married life in Edinburgh where he was an assistant principal in the Scottish Education Department (SED). He also volunteered for a time with the Territorial Army and was given a commission in the Intelligence Corps.

    He held various posts in the Scottish Office in Edinburgh and London. He was also principal private secretary to the Secretary of State for Scotland, Jack Maclay, and was involved in organising many Royal visits, for which he was made a CVO in 1964. That same year he attended the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill.

    The following year he was transferred to the Department of Agriculture and went on to become Assistant Under Secretary of State, then took charge of the Social Work Services Group before being made Under Secretary in charge of health care at the Scottish Home and Health Department.

    In 1976 he was promoted again and returned to the SED as Secretary with responsibility for schools, further education, arts, museums, sport and social work. His service was recognised with a CB in 1979 – “the usual award for civil servants in my grade who have served for several years without disgracing themselves.”

    Awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws by Dundee University in 1983, he retired from the Civil Service the following year but continued to use his experience in a number of fields. He chaired Stirling University’s Court for eight years and was made an honorary doctor of the university in 1992. His myriad other roles included trustee of the Dementia Services Development Trust, chair of Civil Service Selection Boards, vice-convener of the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations, governor of Edinburgh Academy and voluntary work with the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland.

    He also inherited his parents’ passion for recording gravestone inscriptions and gave illustrated talks on Scottish tombstones, as a result of which he was elected an honorary vice-president of the Scottish Genealogy Society. When a trust was set up to improve Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Kirkyard he served as secretary for 20 years, designing bronze plaques to illustrate the story of the Covenanters’ Prison and the purpose of the mortsafes, constructed to foil bodysnatchers.

    In his 70s he began volunteering for Family Care, now known as Birthlink, an organisation to help those who have been adopted or fostered to search for their biological families. For a decade he spent a day each month on searches at New Register House and another day or so compiling a report, including a short family tree and recent address of a close relative. Common surnames sometimes complicated the search, in one case throwing up 15 potential birth mothers with the same name, six of whom were approached before the right one was found. It was the most satisfying aspect of his voluntary work, often rewarded with news of a happy reunion. He and his wife did the same work, though less frequently, for Barnardo’s in Glasgow, The Child Migrants Trust in Nottingham and the Catholic Child Welfare Council.

    He had also served, many years earlier, with the Edinburgh Marriage Guidance Council and as chairman of the Scottish Marriage Guidance Council.

    In the 1970s he and Ann bought a property in west Fife which included the ruined 17th century Bath Castle. In retirement they had it restored as a two-bedroom home and later marketed it for sale as “perhaps the smallest castle in Scotland”.

    When, after more than 50 years in the same house in Edinburgh’s Regent Terrace, they decided to downsize, he had to find a new home for his collection of more than 4000 Penguin books. They are now a special resource for publishing studies students at Stirling University.

    From long-living stock – his father died at 97, his mother was 103 – in 2012 he put his memoirs down on paper for his family after writing an article for his church magazine, How To Die in Nine Easy Lessons, comprising practical advice on preparing for the inevitable, but declared he had no intention of succumbing just yet.

    He continued for a few more years but although mentally alert – he was interviewed for television about his wartime experiences just a few months before his death – his mobility was severely impaired by myositis, a degenerative muscular condition which caused him to gradually lose control of his limbs.

    He is survived by his devoted wife Ann to whom he was married for 69 years, their four children, Jonathan, Charlotte, Catherine and Andrew, and six grandchildren.

    Alison Shaw (NUJ Freelance Journalist and Obituarist)
    E: alison@alisonshawmedia.com
    https://www.marlburianclub.org/2018/03/dr-angus-mitchell-c2-1938-42/

    Ann Mitchell, Oxford maths graduate recruited as a Bletchley codebreaker – obituary

    Later she worked in marriage guidance counselling and published books on the effect of divorce on children

    By Telegraph Obituaries – 29 May 2020 • 5:59pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2020/05/29/TELEMMGLPICT000232029347_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqkZdGXfzOPVSbO-9sH583RFqaPefEGY05nXXPGqlPqGQ.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Ann Mitchell in Edinburgh at the age of 92 CREDIT: Jane Barlow/Scotsman Publications

    Ann Mitchell, who has died of Covid-19 in a care home aged 97, worked at the heart of the code-breaking nexus in Hut 6 at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.

    The hut was where women with degrees in law, maths and economics converted the “cribs” (pieces of German text that might appear in messages), from cryptanalysts in the next room, into “menus”, or diagrams, to enable Wrens working on Alan Turing’s bombe machine to crack that day’s German army and air force messages. Every night at midnight the German encryption changed and the work started again.

    The hut was staffed entirely by women, owing to Civil Service rules that prevented women from working on night shifts with men, to preserve “decency”.

    In 1940 Ann Williamson, as she then was, had been one of only five women in her year accepted to read Mathematics at Oxford. After graduating, she started in the autumn of 1943 as a “temporary assistant in the Foreign Office” at Bletchley Park, on a salary of £150 per annum.

    “I was terribly pleased when I got the job. I didn’t want to go into the Armed Forces and do drilling and wear a saggy uniform,” she told Tessa Dunlop, author of The Bletchley Girls (2015).

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2020/05/29/TELEMMGLPICT000000149125_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Ann Mitchell tests a German Enigma coding machine at Edinburgh’s Royal Museum in 2001; Bletchley’s machines decrypted its messages CREDIT: David Cheskin/PA

    Fortified by a cup of Oxo and a boiled egg, Ann would cycle 10 miles from her lodgings to her night shift every day: “We all sat at long trestle tables working round the clock in eight-hour shifts. We were given a message to decode, and did so with the help of a machine.” Security was so tight that she never even heard the word Enigma or understood the significance of her work.

    Yet, she recalled, “I absolutely loved it. The mental challenge was very satisfying, the fact that we didn’t know what it was all about was neither here nor there.

    “We would get strings of code, just letters, Morse from the listening station, then next door they decided what it possibly said. We had to make diagrams to link the pairs of letters together.

    “What was enormously helpful was a date or one at 6:30am saying ‘nothing to report’. You could begin to work it out and that gave us what we called the crib for that day.

    “We never really imagined that with every code we cracked we could be saving thousands of British troops from death.” Like thousands of others who worked at Bletchley Park, for years afterwards Ann kept her wartime work a secret, telling family and friends that she had worked as a secretary in the Foreign Office.

    She was shocked when journalists and historians began spilling the beans: “It was the early 1970s, and the first book about Enigma and Bletchley Park came out. I remember shouting: ‘He can’t write about that – we’ve all signed the Official Secrets Act!’ ”

    It was then that she told her husband Angus about her role, but it was only with the release in 2001 of the film Enigma, dramatising the world of Bletchley Park, that Ann Mitchell felt she could talk freely about the work of Hut 6.

    Indeed, as she told The Scotsman, it was the film and the attendant publicity that enabled her to fit the “bits of the jigsaw” into place in her own mind: “All those decades, and I had no idea what part in the great big machine our little cog was playing. Now everyone is talking about it.”

    Ann Katharine Williamson was born in Oxford on November 19 1922, the eldest child of Herbert Williamson, a former commissioner with the Indian Civil Service in Simla, and his wife Winifred (née Kenyon), who helped to run one of Britain’s first family planning clinics.

    A scholarship took her to Headington School, Oxford. Her German teacher reported that “she works hard and often with good results in compositions”, while her maths teacher described her as “quick to grasp new ideas”. But her headmistress sought to prevent her from applying to read Maths at university, judging the subject “unladylike”. Luckily her parents disagreed; she graduated from Lady Margaret Hall in 1943.

    On VE-Day in 1945, she and her colleagues at Bletchley were told that their services were no longer required. She went on to work as a secretary at an Oxford college and in 1948 married Angus Mitchell, who had been studying History at Oxford after wartime service in which he won an MC. The couple moved to Edinburgh, where he got a job in the Scottish Office and they brought up four children.

    Ann became a counsellor for the Marriage Guidance Council in Edinburgh, and began to be increasingly concerned about the effects of divorce on children. She undertook research which led to an MPhil at the University of Edinburgh and prompted changes to Scottish law to ensure that children’s interests are properly taken into account in divorce settlements. She also wrote several books on the subject, notably Children in the Middle (1985).

    Ann Mitchell’s husband died in 2018 and she is survived by their two sons and two daughters.

    Ann Mitchell, born November 19 1922, died May 11 2020

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/05/29/ann-mitchell-oxford-maths-graduate-recruited-bletchley-codebreaker/

    1. 319821+ up ticks,
      Afternoon C,
      Lest we forget, RIP,
      An interesting post, thanks.

      1. I’ve met her. She presented me with a substantial prize won in a national competition.

          1. She’s really down to earth -noted for flicking a V sign in the House of Lords!

    4. “… it was not until 30 years later, when the information was declassified, that he discovered she had worked on decryption at Bletchley Park. – they took secrets seriously back then.
      Respect to the two of them.

    1. The man is odious – but the tragedy is that he will probably prove much more electable than Kinnock, Brown or Corbyn.

      Bleed, bleed, poor country!
      Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
      For goodness dare not check thee.

    3. We must also not forget that if I’m not mistaken Khant was one of the ‘legal team’ defending the 7/7 London bombers.

    1. What’s it got to do with anybody except Floyd’s family? The man didn’t deserve to die, and the policeman will spend the rest of his life in jail. job done. All the rest is noise.

    2. What’s it got to do with anybody except Floyd’s family? The man didn’t deserve to die, and the policeman will spend the rest of his life in jail. job done. All the rest is noise.

    3. He is just another like all luvvies who for whatever reason thinks their opinions matter that much.
      I suppose he feels uncomfortable being in such a white dominated industry, wonder what keeps him there, oh I know, ££££££.
      Why don’t you just fluck off then gobby. Take a few of your celebrity publicity seeker mates with you.

      1. Trouble is, he is shaming people who don’t go in for the very public virtue-signalling which he is indulging in. Some, foolishly, have published compliance with his threats.

        1. If the ghastly white people hadn’t trained him, given him openings and then jobs and THEN vast sums of money he’d be a drug dealer, bringing misery to lotsa young people of color (sic)….

          Classic wazzock/wanqueur

    4. yo js

      He should have said:

      “Not a sign from anybody in my industry, which of course is a white Black -dominated sport”.”

      cus I is Blick an i’m de winner over these honkies

    5. I suppose we whiteys could say to him, where were you when white girls were being raped by Pakistani gangs, we didn’t hear your voice of protest then!

      What’s sauce for the goose …

      1. You’re not quite getting it V,
        What ever happens is always everyone else’s fault. Never the sole perpetrators. Hoomun riaghts tells dem dat hinit. 😉

          1. It’s seems to be something they have been after for a long time.
            But it will always be whiteys fault. As all the terrible mess in Africa has always been.

  64. Big Bill Broonzy

    If you’s white – that’s all right
    If you’s brown – stick around
    But if you’s black – get back get back.

    I think there has been an inversion since Big Bill sang this song. Maybe the new version should be:

    If you’s black – you’re a cool dude, Jack;
    If you’s brown – there’s many mosques in town
    If you’s yellow – you’s an OK fellow
    But if you’s white – You’s a piece of shite!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0c1c0ZsTLA

  65. I am away for the day. Skype with No 1 grandson at 6 pm. Have been busy watering (what a chore) and, latterly, spraying the tomatoes and trombetti with NEEM OIL. Also the climbing beans – their little leaves are riddled with small holes – some bug, no doubt.

    I’ll join you tomorrow, DV. Have a jolly evening deciding which large chain store you will set alight to show your solidarity with the bames…..

        3. There is of course the famous photo of a top-hatted Isambard Kingdom Brunel before the chains of The Great Eastern but apparently that was staged.

          1. Robert Howlett posed the photograph which seems fair enough.
            At leat the didn’t do a Frank Hurley who used composites and photographic manipulation to produce his WW1 photographs

    2. Neem oil is good but you can also use the suds from Fairy Liquid.

      One particular chemical used to treat the larvae on my Bay bushes was banned by the E.U. The main element being nicotine.

      First find yourself a smoker.
      Beg or barter for the contents of their ashtray.
      Soak for 48 hours.
      Put in spray bottle.
      After 3 treatments……no bugs.

      Have a pleasant evening.

      1. My dad would take the Po from under his bed into which he had peed and stubbed out his Wills’ Woodbines, and pour the contents over the runner beans. It worked.

      2. Believe it or not, I do not know anyone who smokes.

        I did, like a chimney, until 23 October 1968.

  66. 319821+ up ticks,
    Caught the tail end of “the police broke up several meetings on Saturday”, and I was wondering if Friday
    had a special dispensation clause in the unwritten
    submissive pcism & appeasement charter on the grounds that head down @rse up was below the line
    of travelling coranavirus.

    1. Muslims have a free pass in our country. They can prosecute the worst abominations and get off Scot free.

      Sooner or later there will have to be a reckoning. We cannot allow any further diminution of our centuries old way of life.

    1. Watch the floodgates open……… this man knew by that time that the virus was spreading so can hardly blame PHE for not telling him.

      1. One might have thought that a member of the medical professions might have been more aware than most.

    1. For those of us who speak no Polish, Google translate says, “The statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko in front of the White House was devastated. It is hard to call them people who fight for their rights when they do not respect THE HERO OF BOTH NATIONS. I stood, I could do nothing 🙁 Drama.”

      1. Kosciuszko left money in his will to free slaves. Ultimately the money went to funding a school for black people.
        They should all be deported to their ancestral homelands.

  71. Donald Trump has emboldened extremist white voices. ~ Lynn Nottage

    https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/trump-has-emboldened-extremist-white-voices-a4456441.html

    The last paragraph reads:

    Acknowledging the problem is not enough. We need the muscle of
    collective action. It is time on a global level to treat White supremacy
    and racism as what it is – a form of terrorism.

    American playwright Lynn Nottage’s Sweat was winner of best play at the 2019 Evening Standard Theatre Awards

    You have been warned.

    2. So let the blacks go their way and be black supremacists in Africa
      Let the whites go their way and be white supremacists in Europe and North America.
      But isn’t that rather like apartheid?

      1. I think that you may be referring to “separate development”? This was an entirely sensible idea that the different races at different stages in evolutionary progression in respect of table manners and civil behaviour should be educated accordingly. It was expected that in the fullness of time, they might possibly catch up with the whites of the West, possibly in a few centuries.

      2. No, because they would be in separate continents & not sharing a community.

      3. In the eventuality that one sees inter-racial violence, the reality is that the white Liberals won’t find themselves spared.

        The other reality is that “brown and yellow” would appear to have even greater disdain towards the black man than do the so-called white supremacists.

  72. 29 BULLET POINTS PROVING THE SUN CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING, NOT CO2: BY A GEOLOGIST, FOR A CHANGE (DR ROGER HIGGS)
    MARCH 11, 2020 CAP ALLON
    Dr Roger Higgs, Geoclastica Ltd, Technical Note 2019-11, 6th April 2019, amended 7th March 2020 on ResearchGate (LINK HERE).

    We urgently need to expose the ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy being forced upon your children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces by schools, universities, governments and mainstream media worldwide, and to denounce it in scrupulously truthful terms easily understood by the public, including those youngsters themselves.

    Here are the 29 bullet points proving CO2’s innocence:

    1) The IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no geologists among the hundreds of authors of its last major report (2013-14) and at most 1 geologist in the next report (due 2022; see my Technical Note 2019-10). Thus IPCC focuses on only the last 150 years (since thermometer records began, ~1850), yet Earth is 30 million (sic) times older, 4.5 billion years! Geologists know that Earth has warmed and cooled throughout this time. Climate change is perfectly normal.

    2) The IPCC’s very existence relies on public belief in man-made- or ‘anthropogenic’ global warming (AGW) by carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. IPCC authors, mostly government and university researchers, are biased by strong vested interests in AGW (publications; continuance of salaries; research grants). Similarly, universities have sacrificed their impartiality by hosting institutes mandated to confirm and act on AGW, e.g. Grantham Institute (Imperial College), Tyndall Centre.

    3) The claimed ‘97% consensus among scientists’ that AGW exists is a deception. It refers in fact to polls of recent publications by ‘climate scientists’, i.e. atmospheric scientists, lacking deep-time perspective (Bullet 1), whose numbers opportunistically exploded in the post-1990 AGW boom, creating a strong incentive for bias (Bullet 2).

    4) No educated person ‘denies’ global warming: it has been measured (Bullet 11). ‘Global-warming denier’ and ‘Climate-change skeptic’ are deceitful terms for man-made-global-warming doubters and deniers (most of the world’s scientists?).

    5) CO2 is a ‘greenhouse gas’. But, as CO2 rises, its theoretical heat-trapping ability sharply declines, already 67% ‘used up’ at 100 parts per million (ppm) CO2, 84% at 300 ppm (NB 275 ppm when industrial CO2 output began; Bullet 8), 87% at 400 ppm (today 415 ppm) and >99% at 1000 ppm. Moreover, Climate Sensitivity (CS), the warming due to doubling CO2, is guesswork. IPCC ‘estimates’ CS from climate models (circular reasoning) as probably between 1.5 and 4.5 (300% contrast!), but models are defective (Bullet 6). In reality CS might be very near zero, perhaps explaining why up to 7,000 ppm in Phanerozoic time (Bullet 7) did not cause ‘runaway’ warming.

    6) Climate models (by climate scientists; Bullet 3) are so full of assumptions as to be useless or highly misleading, e.g. forecast 1995-2015 warming turned out to be 2 to 3 times too high. Bullet 19 gives another drastic failure. Even Wiki (2019) admits: “Each model simulation has a different guess at processes that scientist don’t understand sufficiently well”. Models dismiss the sun’s fluctuations and omit the multi-decade delay between these and resulting warming or cooling. This time-lag, due to ocean thermal inertia (mixing-time), is grossly underestimated by IPCC (Bullets 21, 22).

    7) For ~75% of the last 550 million years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. Evolution flourished, with CO2 enabling plant photosynthesis, the basis of all life. Extinction events due to overheating by CO2 are unknown.

    8) Through the last 12,000 years, our current ‘Holocene’ interglacial epoch, CO2 was a mere 250-290 ppm (compare plant-starvation level ~150 ppm). Ice cores show that the last five interglacials (including the Holocene) all reached a similar 250-300 ppm, i.e. a sort of ‘equilibrium’ value. Since ~1850 when industrial CO2 emissions began, atmospheric CO2 has climbed steeply. CO2 today is 415 ppm, just 0.04% of our atmosphere (i.e. less than half of one-tenth of 1%), far less than in the past (Bullet 7).

    9) Until man began adding industrial CO2 about 1850, warming (determined from ‘proxies’ like tree rings) since the 1700AD Little Ice Age nadir was accompanied by slowly rising CO2 (measured in ice cores). A simple explanation is the well-known release of CO2 by warming ocean water (decreasing its CO2-holding capacity).

    10) Other evidence, besides Bullets 9, that rising CO2 is a consequence, not cause, of global warming is the demonstration by Humlum et al. (2013) that changes in CO2 growth-rate lag behind changes in warming-rate, by ~1 year (see also Bullet 28).

    11) Also, since the start of industrial CO2 additions ~1850 (Bullet 8), thermometer-measured global warming (1.3 centigrade [C] degrees) was interrupted by frequent minor coolings of 1 to 3 years (some attributable to mega-volcano ‘winters’) and two 30-year (1878-1910, 1944-1976) coolings (0.2 C degrees each), plus the 1998-2013 ‘warming pause’ (Wiki). In contrast, CO2’s rise has accelerated, with only a brief pause (1887-97) and a mini-reversal (1940-45), both during the 30-year coolings.

    12) This unsteady ‘sawtooth’-style of Modern Warming resembles the sawtooth rise of the sun’s magnetic output from 1901 toward a rare solar ‘Grand Maximum’ (peak 1991), unmatched since 300AD ! See Bullet 21.

    13) Warming reached a peak in February 2016. Since then, Earth has cooled for more than 3 years (NB no volcanic mega-eruption since 1991).

    14) The ‘Svensmark Theory’ says rising solar-magnetic output, by deflecting more cosmic rays, reduces cloudiness. This allows more of the sun’s warmth to heat the ocean and atmosphere (Bullet 28) instead of being reflected by clouds. In support, a NASA study of satellite data spanning 1979-2011 (during the ‘Modern Warming’; Bullet 12) showed decreasing cloud cover.

    15) Vocal climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf (Wiki) of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research wrongly said in 2008: “there is no viable alternative … [to CO2 as driver of 1940-2005 warming, as] … different authors agree that solar activity did not significantly increase”. Yet in 1999, physicist Dr Michael Lockwood FRS (Wiki) wrote in prestigious Nature journal: “the total magnetic flux leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 1.4 since 1964” and 2.3 since 1901 !

    16) Lockwood showed that averaged solar magnetic flux increased 230% from 1901 to 1995, i.e. more than doubled ! The final peak value was 5 times the starting minimum value ! Bullets 17 and 18 likewise support Svensmark’s theory.

    17) After the ~300AD solar Grand Maximum (Bullet 12), within 100 years Earth warmed to near or above today’s temperature. Then ‘sawtooth’ cooling mimicked the sun’s 1,000-year sawtooth decline into the Little Ice Age.

    18) From 8000 to 2000BC, Earth was sometimes warmer than now for centuries. Then unsteady cooling from 3000BC to the Little Ice Age paralleled unsteady solar decline after the ‘Super-Grand Maximum’ of ~3000BC.

    19) This 4,500-year-long cooling mocks IPCC computer models that instead predict warming by the simultaneous (slow) rise in CO2. This is the ‘The Holocene Temperature Conundrum’ of Liu et al. (2014). See also Bullet 6.

    20) Embarrassingly for IPCC, the 8000-2000BC warm interval (Bullet 18) was already called the ‘Holocene Climatic Optimum’ (Wiki) before IPCC’s ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy induced today’s AGW hysteria and pointless multi-trillion-dollar climate-change industry. The warmth may have benefited human social development.

    21) Since thermometer records began (~1850; Bullet 1), sawtooth global warming (Bullets 11, 12) correlates well with solar-magnetic flux by applying an 85-year lag, attributable to oceanic thermal inertia (vast volume, high heat capacity and slow mixing cause slow response to changes in solar-magnetic flux, hence cloudiness), grossly underestimated by IPCC (Bullet 22). Thus Modern Warming is driven ~100% sun, dwarfing any CO2 effect (Bullets 5, 6).

    22) The IPCC assumes this time-lag (Bullet 21) is much shorter (< 1 year) and therefore it claims that ongoing global warming despite solar weakening (since 1991; Bullet 12) must mean that the warming is driven by CO2 ! 23) The last interglacial period, ~120,000 years ago, was warmer than our Holocene interglacial. Humans and polar bears survived ! CO2 was then about 275 ppm, i.e. lower than now (Bullet 8), at a time of greater warmth ! 24) The joint rise of temperature and CO2 is a ‘spurious correlation’, a fluke. So IPCC demonising CO2 as a ‘pollutant’ is a colossal blunder, costing trillions of dollars in needless and ineffectual efforts to reduce it. Instead, governments need to focus urgently on the imminent metre-scale sun-driven sea level rise. 25) Although the sun is now declining since its 1991 magnetic peak, sawtooth warming will continue until ~2075 due to the 85-year lag (Bullet 21). Rising CO2 will continue to raise global food production. Cooling will begin ~2075 and last at least 28 years (i.e. post-1991 solar decline to date). Our benign Holocene ‘interglacial’ period will eventually end, unfortunately. 26) IPCC says sea level (SL) from 0 to 1800AD varied < 25 centimetres (and <1 metre since 4000BC) and never exceeded today’s SL, therefore the 30-centimetre SL rise since 1800 (average 1.5 millimetres/year) is abnormal (they say), blaming industrial CO2. But this claim ignores dozens of studies of geological and archaeological 3000BC-1000AD SL benchmarks globally, which reveal 3 or 4 rises (and falls) of 1-3 metres in < 200 years each (i.e. > 5 millimetres/year), all reaching higher than today, long before industrial CO2.

    27) If humans were to halt the growth in their fossil-fuel use, CO2 would soon stabilise at a new equilibrium value (nearer the optimum for plants).

    28) By blaming global warming on atmospheric CO2, the IPCC implies that ongoing warming of the ocean (e.g. Cheng et al. 2020) occurs via the atmosphere. But this is backwards. In reality the sun warms the ocean, which in turn warms the air. Humlum et el. (2013) showed that small changes in sea-surface temperature precede corresponding changes in air temperature by 2 months, and precede changes in CO2’s growth rate by 12 months (because warming ocean releases CO2; Bullet 9). Thus Bullet 28 alone destroys IPCC’s argument that global warming is by CO2.

    29) In November 2019, Wikipedia deleted its ‘List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming‘, which named dozens of renowned PhD scientists (with their own Wikipedia entries), from diverse sciences, brave enough to publicly challenge the global CO2 madness. (Tens of thousands of other ‘skeptical’ scientists are too timid to join in.) Thus, your children may never know that many prominent, impartial scientists disagree with the claim by the under-qualified (Bullet 1) IPCC that global warming is due to man-made CO2. This is censorship. Fortunately the list survives, both online (for now) and hard-copy (see my ‘Sources’ pdf in ‘Linked data’ — or click HERE).

    Inescapable conclusion: the IPCC is wrong − the sun, not CO2, drove modern global warming.

    By DR ROGER HIGGS (http://www.geoclastica.com + https://www.researchgate.net)

    Contact: rogerhiggs@hotmail.com for literature sources for any of the aforementioned ‘Inconvenient Facts’

        1. Take a copy. The article may well be deleted as “false news”.
          And, I’m serious.

    2. And, there are reports that the cleaner atmosphere due to quarantine and reduced industry and flying is letting more sun rays arrive on earth, leading to a rise in temperature quicker than before. The atmospheric CO2 cannot have noticeably changed over the period of a week or three. So, “ the sun, not CO2, drove modern global warming.

      1. And without industrial ‘pollutant’ particles in the atmosphere one might expect less precipitation as water vapour needs the presence of hygroscopic particles on which to coalesce and form rain drops. Fewer rain clouds mean even more of the sun’s rays reaching the earth’s surface…

    3. A very useful set of points when needed to refute AGW. I’ve made a copy. Wasn’t sure whether to file it in my e-library under geology or politics.

    1. That song will forever remind me of the halcyon days of the long hot of summer of 1966.

  74. Evening, all. The problem of the water shortage is mainly due to importing so many people and thus increasing usage. That fact is not helped by the failure to create new reservoirs.

    1. The EU has prevented our building them. Water companies have asked to, the Env Agency refuse it.

      1. I know that, wibbles. The EU (formerly the Common Market) has been nothing but an impediment since 1973.

      2. Strangely enough it’s the EU Mafiosi who are shoving thousands more consumers on to our over crowded island.

        1. We are sadly in need of a government who will shove them back and give the a foretaste of how things will be when (if) we leave the E bloody U at the end if the year.

          1. I’m not at all interested in any type of religion Alf, but we hope and pray.

          2. 319821+ up ticks,
            Re,
            That is on par with
            continuing to support & vote lab/lib/con hoping for change.
            Hardly likely when it has taken them 40 plus years to get us to the odious state we are in.

        2. 319821+ up ticks,
          Evening Re,
          In collusion with the
          lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party & all
          supporting / voters.

    2. I’m surprised we have water shortages considering the number of ‘The Great Unwashed’ now residing here

    3. And of course Conners, construction is a massive consumer of water and all other natrual resources and massive amounts of energy.

    4. There’s more money in building affordable housing on them, along with a quota of executive homes, which is where the money is. Bid ratio 50% affordable 50% executive; build ratio 5% affordable 95% executive, but only publicise the bid.

      Are we still going in for fracking? That uses a lot of fresh water, which is then contaminated and unusable to drink.

      1. “Are we still going in for fracking?”

        If it works, we must, if only in the short term.

  77. I’m going in from my favourite spot next to my wild life pond. I’ve had to pick 4 insects from my glass of wine in the last 20 minutes. Where are the bats tonight ?
    It’s twirly for bed.
    Tomorrow is another day.
    Signing off JB.

    1. He’s only going to the Gents. He’ll be back in a couple of shakes…

    4. And as I leave, you can shut the door and make America black African.

      Enjoy…

  80. Day of the Jackal on Sony Movie Classics (304 on Freesat) 10 pm. Set to record.

          2. I still hope The Jackal’s attempt on de Gaulle will be successful each time I see the film!

  81. From my friend in Omaha, Nebraska.

    Today our county attorney just announced that he will not press charges against the bar owner who shot and killed the black kid Saturday night turns out that the kid was part of a mob that attacked the bar owner and he was defending himself in fear of his life as always with the black here there’s more to the story once the facts come out. But they are still marching and all of the businesses downtown are closing in fear of a worse riot tonight due to the recent ruling.
    The reality is the bar owner will now have to live in fear of his life forever. Good chance for more violence tonight

    What a mess.

    1. Meanwhile in UK, Grooming Gangs go free, girls live in terror of the gangs and the ‘Perlice’

    1. Je suis officially sick of this shite

      Did any of our Premiership Football teams kneel* to a tribute to Lee Rigby, or for the twenty-two people murdered at the Manchester Arena? No fuckin’ way.
      Pathetic virtue signalling hypocrites

      1. Me too. Overpaid, under talented louts with frankly ridiculous haircuts and tattoos.

        These arseholes need to be reminded that white lives were sacrificed on a monumental scale to afford them the freedoms they enjoy in our country.

      2. 319821+ up ticks,
        Evening Rik,
        The thin edge of the compulsory 5 times a day, a coming shortly attraction building on a daily basis.

        1. Could be interesting cos yer true slammer is not so keen on the sun tanned ones.

          1. 319821+ up ticks,
            Evening Kp,
            The way I see it is they are not keen up to the point of murder on any non believers.
            No doubt of it UK politico’s have created a perfect storm scenario for a civil war without an indigenous person taking part.
            Could be just awaiting the Chinese intake.

    2. I bet when the penguins turn up they say to each other ‘how on earth do they tell each other apart. They all look the same’

    3. I’ve just been reading today’s Times. Decent article about my local Abbey page three. Horrendous nonsense 4 and 5 beach chaos.
      I reckon by the end of next week there will be a hosepipe ban in parts of central and southern England.
      1976 all over again.
      And seemingly no real lessons learnt.
      I don’t think a reservoir has been built in England in the last 40 years.

        1. I remember speaking to a chap from our local water company. He told me that they had been looking at methods of desalination.
          WHAT ? I said we live miles from the sea how’s that going to work ?
          He didn’t really know the answer.

          1. Desalination was talked about many many years ago I recall, in fact, so long ago I can’t remember when. But came to nothing unfortunately.

          3. Desalination tends to need a LOT of electricity. And somewhere to put the concentrated salty brine that results – and just running it back into the sea is pollution.

      2. Science and technology can only go so far. As with most water issues, the biggest problem is still governance and equity. Farmers will grow what they can to turn a profit, and many have little alternative than to use scarce resources. Without strong govement policy we’re left high and dry…

        Why did water come to mind when looking at nubile women…..?

        1. What does nubile mean ? 😉
          I was reading the news paper. PT. 😊
          I see it’s Ronnie Woods birthday today he’s 73.
          And I reckon I look 20 years younger than he does.
          Maybe he’s consumed a little too much brown sugar.

          7. But she also says:
            “You can hang around as long as you keep two metres away!”☺️

        3. Talking of which……St Albans City (Roman Verulanium) was once fed by the river Ver. Now one of the few remaing chalk streams left in England. It’s probably as dry as a dead dingo’s donger now which is not unusual at this time of the year.
          Abstraction is the word.

    2. And how’s their economy, and how well placed are they for the inevitable second wave?

      Don’t judge it until the dust has settled.

    3. It will never be known until, at the earliest next year, whether Sweden called it right or not. We need complete deaths for 2020, from whatever cause, to compare the “excess deaths” from an average of the previous 10 years to make a proper judgement.

      1. and a real comparison, with the deaths by

        Age
        Sex or Gender
        Ethnicity
        Existing Conditions
        life style
        etc

        2. IMO We don’t need to know all those details, just the number of deaths for 2020 compared to the average of the last 10 years. That’s when we will know the number of excess deaths which will, of course, include all those who had their treatments cancelled, or postponed, referrals likewise.

          3. 2020 is not enough, we should expect the Swedish death rate to be higher in 2020 but if you project forward and use 2021 and 2022 then we will see the long term effect of the Swedish action.

            Edit:
            So in 2023 we might get meaningful numbers, by which time I will have forgotten the question..

  87. Good night, Gentlefolk. I think we’ve all (with a couple of exceptions) done all we can to keep the debate(s) alive that need to be publicised and/or debunked. My love to all my ‘family’ out there and May God bless and keep you.

    Vi ses i morgon

  88. Good night, Gentlefolk. I think we’ve all (with a couple of exceptions) done all we can to keep the debate(s) alive that need to be publicised and/or debunked. My love to all my ‘family’ out there and May God bless and keep you.

    Vi ses i morgon

  89. “Hugh Pennington? What does he know about diseases?”

    Thus spake Wee Krankie…

    There is no evidence to suggest a coronavirus ‘second wave’ is coming

    Misleading models based on the Spanish flu cannot be allowed to dictate our policy on lifting lockdown

    HUGH PENNINGTON

    The functions of a Covid-19 press conference seem to be to transmit information, praise the indefatigable, and brandish a doom-laden cudgel at the public. A common theme is that if virus-control measures are not observed, or are relaxed too soon, there will be a second “wave” or “peak” of infections.

    In the UK, an often-repeated prognostication has been that this second wave might be more virulent than the first and that the NHS would be overwhelmed. The message from Geneva during the World Health Organisation’s press briefing on May 25 was more nuanced, but of the same ilk. The point was made that the decline in cases in many countries has been due to the control measures, rather than to the virus running out of steam of its own accord, and that relaxing them could lead to an immediate second peak for which we should get ready.

    I am a second-wave sceptic. I said so in evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s health and sport committee in April, and was criticised by Nicola Sturgeon for it.

    I started my virological career working on viruses spread by the respiratory route and was mentored at that time by June Almeida, the discoverer of human coronaviruses. I consider that the evidence supporting the notion of a second wave or peak of Covid-19 infections in the UK that would swamp the NHS is very weak. If we get the easing of lockdown wrong, far more likely would be a continuation of infections, many in the form of localised outbreaks, but not waves or peaks.

    The idea of a devastating second wave comes almost entirely from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The first wave occurred in June and July and the second in October and November. The first was mild and the second was lethal. It is yet to be explained why the infections occurred in waves and why the virus faded away after the first and then returned.

    Mathematical modelling textbooks do not discuss it. There was no effective social distancing in 1918 and it had nothing to do with herd immunity. It is possible that the first-wave virus differed genetically from the one that caused the second, but this is an entirely speculative theory because no virus samples from the first are available for scientists to test – influenza virus wasn’t discovered until 1933.

    Subsequent flu pandemics have been much less lethal. The Asian flu second wave was less lethal than the first. Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 caused fewer deaths but had a second wave that killed more in Britain than the first (though the first was more lethal in America). And swine flu in 2009 killed 10 in its first wave and 137 in its second.

    Flu is very different from Covid-19. Although both are commonly spread by the respiratory route, and both have infected prime ministers (David Lloyd George got the Spanish flu), the more we learn about Covid-19, the less its biology and epidemiology resemble that of flu.

    There have been no flu-like second waves (or even peaks) in China, South Korea or New Zealand. There was no second wave with Sars, another coronavirus.

    In the absence of controls, flu has an R rate of seven; Covid-19’s is between two and three. And far more than with flu, Covid-19 cases have very commonly occurred in clusters. In New Zealand (which may well have eradicated the virus), 41 per cent of cases occurred in 16 clusters of 13 or more cases in each. And, sadly, in the UK the virus has taken an enormous toll on residents of care homes, many of which have had multiple cases.

    The only country so far to have made a good start with virus control and then suffered a relapse has been Singapore, when the virus got into the migrant-worker dormitories in which infection control and social distancing was almost impossible (just as in British care homes).

    Defeatist flu models still lurk behind current Covid-19 predictions. That the virus will persist for ages is a flu concept. These predictions should be put to one side. Like Sars, and unlike flu, the virus is eradicable. If China and New Zealand are striving to be free of it, we should be, too.

    Hugh Pennington is emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/01/no-evidence-suggest-coronavirus-second-wave-coming/

  90. EDIT. I merely reposted this article by David Millward from the DT.

    THESE ARE NOT MY WORDS!

    Jay Gee.

    How sad it is, as an American citizen, to see Trump’s hatred of the press infect my home

    It is a tragic indictment that I, as a journalist, can reasonably fear being assaulted or arrested in my own country while doing my job
    David Millward

    Apart from an unfortunate encounter with a police horse in Copenhagen, I had no problems with the forces of law and order while covering riots.

    I spent a reasonable chunk of my career watching England’s football hooligans lay waste to cities across Europe.

    Then there were the other odd riots at home, such as the anti-globalisation ruck in London, and it wasn’t much fun dodging scaffolding bolts in Trafalgar Square after England were knocked out of Euro ’96.

    From memory, I was teargassed in Haiti, but that was a long time ago and things got a tad hairy in Belgrade during the final days of Slobodan Milosevic.

    Throughout, the police regarded the hacks as non-combatants. If we stayed out of their way, they left us alone. At worst, we ran the risk of being collateral damage.

    Things have been different for my colleagues in the US over the past few days.

    Dozens of journalists have been targeted by the police. Press credentials, which normally provided some protection, are now seen as an invitation to be arrested or assaulted.

    One estimate puts the number of journalists who have run into problems with the police at over 30.

    A CNN reporter was arrested on live TV. In Kentucky, a police officer fired pepper bullets at a reporter and her crew.

    In Minneapolis, a Vice News reporter was thrown to the ground and pepper-sprayed and another team of journalists were chased by police who then fired tear gas and bullets at them.

    The list goes on and Donald Trump does not appear to be bothered. If anything, the opposite seems to be the case judging by his tweet over the weekend:

    It is worth unpicking that for a second.

    The “Lamestream Media” is Trumpspeak for long-established news outlets and papers covering a broad political spectrum – it probably includes the Telegraph.

    Suggesting that the media is doing everything in its power to foment hatred and anarchy is simply palpable nonsense.

    Trump’s loathing of the media made covering his rallies rather unpleasant. Some news organisations have even hired security to protect their staff.

    What is worrying is how the president’s hostility has influenced other arms of the US government, notably Customs and Border Protection.

    Last year, for example, a British journalist was subjected to a lengthy diatribe about the “fake news media” by a CBP agent as he entered the country.

    The rant was triggered by the writer, James Dyer, presenting his passport which contained an I-visa – something which is required for any journalist entering the US.

    I am now a US citizen, so I will not be presenting my UK passport with an I-visa to immigration the next time I enter the country.

    But it is a sad indictment of Trump’s America that this is even something I should even have to worry about.

    Looks like the comments are scathing in their contempt of the MSM. THIS IS MY WORDS

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/01/sad-american-citizen-see-trumps-hatred-press-infect-home/#comment

    1. Perhaps you should write a book Jay.
      There seems to be far more buried under the mass of carpet than is on the surface.

    2. I think Trump is totaly correct to complain about the media with all the lies they tell. I cannot support what you say. I do not want the left wing media to ruin our country either.

      2. What do you think I said?
        I reproduced the article By David Millard published in the DT and merely stated that the comments were critical of journalists and the MSM.

    3. Unfortunately JG, the Mostly Shit Media (MSM) have brought it upon themselves and now they are having to contend with the backlash. I’m sorry if you feel victimised but Trump is only responding to the lies that have been spread about him, not only by the Democrats (ha ha) but also the press and TV.

      We have the same problem here which is why the BBC are likely to lose their funding from the licence fee but eventually their Royal Charter.

      1. I don’t feel victimised as I never wrote the article, I only reposted it from the DT.
        My only comment was that the comments to the article are not supportive towards the authors point of view.

  91. Oh dear.
    After a better day yesterday, since trying to go to bed 2½h ago, I’ve been up & down 4 times.
    Sitting downstairs for an hour to let the DT get to sleep.

    And to cap it off, sod all from ERNIE.

    1. Aah, that’s a shame. We only had two consolation prizes.
      I do hope you feel better soon, BoB.

      1. Because I was starting to feel better, I didn’t try phoning the doctors yesterday, but I’m going to have to phone them tomorrow.
        Nearly 120 hours since I started having problems on Thursday.
        Fed up is putting it mildly.

        1. Do it, BoB. There’s something not right about this.
          Let us know.

          1. I’ve had doses of the runs before, usually 48 to 60hrs, but never longer than 72 hrs!
            Interestingly, it’s not affected anyone else in the family.

          2. I have no medical knowledge, but you need to have a doctor’s view.

  92. Dan Snow Historian (spit) BBC4 Rome’s Lost Empire
    20 mins in it’s all about the presenters and I’ve learnt nothing!!
    Edit
    “Why is our guide carrying a gun?”
    It’s not a gun you cretin,it’s a rifle,military historian my arse

    1. Yup. I noticed that. Dan is of course the son of another Beeboid, Peter Snow, and related to the John Snow git on Channel 4 for good measure. Keep it in the family.

  96. What is 200ft long and has 8 teeth?
    The queue at Aldi in Mansfield
    Other towns are available,.

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