Thursday 4 June: The calculated risk of resuming work and the undoubted harm of not

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/2020/06/03/lettersthe-calculated-risk-resuming-work-undoubted-harm-not/

917 thoughts on “Thursday 4 June: The calculated risk of resuming work and the undoubted harm of not”

      1. Um……..There are many more intelligent people on here than little old me.

        Let’s just say……I’m younger and faster. 🙂

    1. Exactly as I predicted to someone above, er below, er earlier yesterday.

    1. Mild breeze here and the sun has just come out from behind the clouds.

      Good morning.

    2. See my comment above – well below if you are reading from the bottom (earliest) up (to latest). I have been advised to write earlier/later, but I am in a quandary: my post is an addition to an earlier post by Bob 3, but it was posted (3 hours) later. Confused Bill? So am I!

      :-))

  5. SIR – The government of Northern Ireland is reopening hotel and tourist accommodation on July 20, in line with the Irish Republic. Why is there no sign of when we may find a room at an inn here in Great Britain?

    Patrick Tracey
    Carlisle, Cumbria

    Cousin Rastus is open for business in Brittany (much nicer than NI) and has lots of spare rooms! {:^))

  6. SIR – If the Government does not end this lockdown, the lockdown will end this Government.

    Mark Macauley
    Warminster, Wiltshire

  7. The black lives matter mob say that things have to change, not sure if they mean here or in the USA.
    After Steven Lawrence’s death and the riots in the 1980’s things did change here, but that still isn’t good enough for some.
    And what benefit has going soft on street crime and drug dealing done for crime rates and murder?
    All it seems to me is that a proportion of the black community wants to live beyond our laws have their own gang culture and expect the white community to accept and tolerate it, which we largely have bent over backwards to do.
    The experiment has failed, mainly because white Left wing politicians, MSM and pressure groups have used race issues for their own purposes to try and bring about change.
    Everyone really needs to take a step back and have a long think about what they are doing, the masses can be led far better than this.

    1. I blame the McPherson report of “institutional racism” and the police authorities’ craven (lack of) response. They should have shouted long and loud the facts of the matter, i.e. when police attended Steve Lawrence they received nothing but abuse from his (black) friends. Another problem with today’s legal bods (I mean McPherson, not our Uncle Bill, Sir).

    2. 319933+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      “we largely have bent over backwards”
      understatement Bob, we most definitely have bent to every point of the compass kowtowing to every toerag in the market place via submissive pcism & appeasement.
      For every negative criminal action instil
      a positive LONG term incarceration reward, justice SEEN in action.
      Think prior to entering the polling booth
      what has these parties done for my country & children’s future, then vote accordingly.

  8. Delingpole: Britain Unleashes a Green New Deal to Kill What’s Left of the Economy

    UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has found an ingenious scheme to ensure that Britain never recovers from the economic damage caused by the lockdown: a ‘green industrial revolution.’

    According to The Times of London:

    Rishi Sunak is planning a ‘green industrial revolution’ to help to create jobs for people who are made redundant because of the pandemic.

    The chancellor is preparing to bolster the government’s investment in clean energy as part of an economic stimulus package next month. There could also be a fund to help to ‘reskill’ workers so they can get green jobs in areas such as insulation upgrades, offshore wind and carbon capture.

    The measures are understood to go significantly beyond the Conservatives’ manifesto commitment to create two million jobs in clean energy within the next decade. The Tories have promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2050.

    A green industrial revolution is a bit like the original industrial revolution, except for one or two crucial differences: instead of boosting prosperity, creating jobs and stimulating economic growth, it does the exact opposite.

    For example, a study by economics professor Dr Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of Madrid’s University of Rey Juan Carlos found that for every ‘green job’ created by the Spanish government, another 2.2 jobs were destroyed in the real economy.

    Another study, this time in the UK, found that for every green job created by government ‘investment’ in the renewables industry, 3.7 jobs were destroyed in the real economy.

    Sunak’s plan to squander yet more taxpayers’ money on green, crony-capitalist boondoggles is depressing but not remotely surprising.

    Dr John Constable, energy editor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), warned that this was going to happen in a short paper published last month ‘The Fatal Attraction of a Post-Covid Green New Deal.’

    Constable says that Net Zero – Britain’s answer to the Green New Deal – was ‘deeply unwise’ even before the economic collapse caused by the government’s response to the Chinese coronavirus.

    But in the post-Covid-19 world we now inhabit – economies in a state of ‘deep contraction’, against a background of ‘highly significant increases in geopolitical tension’ – it is more foolish still.

    ‘One might think that in such a context, those still lobbying for Net Zero would be desperately worried, but this would be a facile error. In fact, the greens and their corporate collaborators see this as a great opportunity, and in my judgement they are correct. Administrations around the world will indeed be very tempted to use tax- and levy-funded public spending badges as ‘low carbon investment’ to provide a stimulus to post-Covid economies. It is perfectly true that this would create a large wealth transfer in an already contracting economy, delivering great absolute and relative wealth to those invested in the green industries, with corresponding transfers of socio-political power, but even if they understood that outcome, the bureaucracy will press on, barely restrained if at all by elected representatives.’

    There is going to be no escaping this looming disaster, caused by a mass outbreak of green groupthink at virtually every level of the Boris Johnson administration – from Prime Ministerial girlfriends (green activist Carrie Symonds) to key members of the quadrumvirate (Greenest Gove ever), from Prime Ministerial advisors (Dom Cummings) to formerly sound Tory MPs who definitely aren’t any more because they’ve been put on the payroll and have to spout whatever eco bilge they are told to spout.
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/03/britain-unleashes-green-new-deal-to-kill-whats-left-of-the-economy/

    Pandemic is chance to reset global economy, says Prince Charles
    Prince of Wales unveils a five-point plan to stimulate sustainable economic growth

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/20163617fb16f0e36e5661cd185cbda688acd4bc/0_93_3500_2101/master/3500.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=f71e1c662c2226b8aaf109258dcaea76
    The Prince of Wales was speaking at the opening of a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/03/pandemic-is-chance-to-reset-global-economy-says-prince-charles

    3. Methinks Dellers isn’t exactly overjoyed at the thought of yet more unaffordable greenie bolleaux…particularly when the country is a whole lot more broke than it was at the start of this disaster. He’s not alone.

      1. Green is only affordable by a rich economy.
        How green are the Indian peasants or Somali villagers?

          1. Is this still snooker, ie yellow first, then green and then brown?

    4. 319933+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      Could rites of passage have a big part to play here as with the boris suffering
      threats of legover withdrawal ?

    5. Offshore wind – there are enough designers for the structures and turbines already, especially since the oil business is crashing. Construction and installation the same. There may be a few jobs in maintenance, but laid-off oil staff can take those.
      There isn’t more than a day’s training involved in insulation upgrades. And, since they are available already, where is the huge demand for people to reinsulate houses?
      Carbon capture to date is a process using typically amine to capture the CO2, then boiling it to drive it off, then compressors to push it down a pipe to a reservoir underground. Hugely consuming energy in the process… this is known, and there are plenty of people who can design, construct and operate these plants, so no training needed.
      Utter bollux, Sunak. E-.

    6. Reset the economy how? To make everybody except the elites poorer and more dependent?

  9. Alex Sharma MP and Minister took ill at the despatch box yesterday and is now self isolating at home. He has been tested for Covid-19. Could be awkward for the Cabinet if Covid-19 confirmed.

        2. One high level infection does not a closure make (I hope).

          ‘Morning, Bill and B3. A welcome drop of overnight rain in yer E Sussex but my half dozen water butts are still extremely thirsty.

  11. Morning

    SIR – You report (June 2) that studies for the World Health Organisation conclude that there is a 3 per cent risk of Covid contagion at one metre, but the risk roughly halves at two metres.

    Advertisement

    I suggest that most people –given the option of a 97 per cent lack of risk of contagion by staying one metre apart, as against a 98.5 per cent lack of risk by staying two metres apart – would willing opt for one metre in order to let the country return to a more normal way of life and have a better chance of reviving our economy.

    As an 80-year-old with children and grandchildren, I know which I would prefer, if only for their future’s sake.

    Trevor Burrage

    Oxted, Surrey

  12. Not much reporting of the craven behaviour of the Metropolitan Perlice Farce yesterday – and the cowardly comments of Dick Head of the Yard. Nor of the vile remarks of Sad Dick, Caliph of Londonistan.

    Funny the way the press chooses what to leave out.

    I shall have my porridge and then go to Fakenham market – at least, I hope there will be a market.

  13. SIR – Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has shown that this Government has not been completely paralysed by Covid-19.

    The British, American, Canadian and Australian governments have all spoken up against the crushing of Hong Kong’s freedoms, but Mr Raab has gone further by offering an escape route for some of the protesters.

    Where is the European Union’s response? Where is Labour’s call to welcome freedom-loving Hong Kong residents under our new, independent immigration rules?

    I have seen how the Chinese authorities treat their own people, and we owe it to Hong Kong to honour our responsibilities.

    Robert Boorman

    Cambridge, Mass, USA

    1. The EUSSR only “welcomes” illegal economic immigrants and slammers.

    2. I don’t think the Left want the Hong Kong refugees, they are too smart to be led by their race card agenda

    3. Then take the HK refugees into Cambridge, Mass. They have more space in the US than in the UK.

  14. Cold call

    SIR – Having just read that there’s no shortage in the reservoirs, I do not need to be rung by Severn Trent at 1.25 am to be told not to water my lawn (Letters, June 3), having just read that there’s no shortage in the reservoirs.

    Betty Willmer

    Solihull

    3. Fished at Siblyback reservoir yesterday. Lowest I’ve ever seen it. Piss-poor fishing too.

  15. Some things the authorities do are beyond comprehension.

    SIR – As a frequent visitor to Westminster Cathedral, I have long thought that it could well have remained open for private contemplation – limited to individuals or two people together.

    The cathedral already has door stewards, and the existing entrances each side of the main door could easily have been designated In and Out.

    Jacqueline Castles

    London W2

    2. Christianity wont exist under the new normal, keep up with stage two of saving the planet

  16. More migrants have crossed the Channel illegally this year than the whole of 2019, as a record 166 arrive on nine boats. 3 June 2020.

    So far this year, 1,929 migrants have reached the UK in this way, compared to 1,890 for the whole of 2019,

    Morning everyone. It’s pretty obvious that the Government is powerless to stop this operation even though it occurs in broad daylight in full view of anyone interested enough to enquire. They make the best of it of course, mumbling about safety and human rights, but the reality is that they are no more able to bring it to an end than myself. This is partly because it is run by the Home Office itself and partly because it enjoys the protection of the Cartel that controls the MSM along with large sections of the UK economy and some executive arms of the State.

    Why would they be interested in immigration? Well they probably get a share of the profits and they don’t want a culturally cohesive patriotic population that would place national interests above everything else and it also serves as a reminder to the Government of its impotence.

    Westminster is largely a Puppet Show, it may pass laws, fulminate, pose as if it were relevant, but the real power lies elsewhere. Once this is understood much of what is incomprehensible becomes clear. The recent reversal of Huawei policy, HS2, Foreign Aid. A defence budget larger than Russia’s, that produces only white elephants that will later be sold on for massive profit; etc. etc, all this is for the benefit of the Kleptocracy that actually runs the modern UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/migrants-have-crossed-channel-illegally-year-whole-2019-record/

    2. UK governments, current and previous] are not powerless to halt this invasion. They ignore their powers to prevent this invasion of illegals and fail to use their powers to repatriate the illegals. Blair, Brown, Cameron , May and Johnson are all culpable. edited to add Gordon Brown – how could I forget him?

  17. The racism that killed George Floyd was built in Britain. Afua Hirsch. Wed 3 Jun 2020.

    The British government could have had the humility to use this moment to acknowledge Britain’s experiences. It could have discussed how Britain helped invent anti-black racism, how today’s US traces its racist heritage to British colonies in America, and how it was Britain that industrialised black enslavement in the Caribbean, initiated systems of apartheid all over the African continent, using the appropriation of black land, resources and labour to fight both world wars and using it again to reconstruct the peace.

    And how, today, black people in Britain are still being dehumanised by the media, disproportionately imprisoned and dying in police custody, and now also dying disproportionately of Covid-19.

    You would never guess from this specious lamentation that Ms. Hirsch has led a life of privilege that would make most white people on here turn green with envy!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/03/racism-george-floyd-britain-america-uk-black-people

    1. Drugs, knifings , muggings, gangs , looting , pidgin English , rapping , and their own culture .. and they don’t even like cricket anymore!

    2. I don’t see any inflatable RIB boats loaded with folk trying to escape to France……..

    3. It may have escaped Afua Hirsch’s attention, but the USA declared its independence from Britain in 1776, and that slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire decades before the USA followed suit (forcibly so in the Southern states).

      Or that the UK is one of the least racist countries in the world. Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. This from a survey published in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/

    4. Has any leftist explained why, if Britain is such a beastly, racist place, more ethnic minorities wish to come and settle here than go to anywhere else in the world?

      Canine Maximilian might like to respond?

      2. Good morning Mr. Tastey! That particular canine exited stage left a couple of hours ago!

    1. I always believed that Robin Gibb had the best voice in that band. I still do.

      1. Good morning, Grizzly

        I remember the song Massachusetts from my teenage years.

        At the time I believe the Bee Gees had never visited the USA and I thought I would respond by writing a country and western song all about the States but admitting (in the song – I was brought up in Cornwall) to have never gone further west than Shepton Mallet.

        (The song is buried deep in my ‘back catalogue’ where it probably deserves to stay!)

  19. 319933+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Would one be right in saying that it is the sign of a caring government regarding lock-down that they will save you the dangers of going out for a Chinese take-away, they are bringing the Chinese to you, how thoughtful.

    1. 319933+ up ticks,
      o2o,
      Og, do you believe that the “nige” is
      of the “pick all the milk chocolate
      smarties out” persuasion ?
      ………………Most definitely.

  21. A snippet from a DT article, triggered by Sir Richard Dearlove’s thoughts that the Bat Flu had a little help from its friends in a nearby laboratory:
    A quote from the spiel, giving the other side of the argument:
    ….”and Imperial College London also dismissed its conclusions, it is understood.”
    So Sir RD is kerekt.

  23. I see that Mayor of London has declared that he wholeheartedly supports the rioting anarchists in the States.

    Does the Mayor of New York tell us what he thinks of Muslim rape gangs in England?

  24. Q1: Was George Floyd a perfectly innocent, peaceful, socially-distancing, who was suddenly set upon by four armed policemen for no reason?

    A1; Dunno, I’ve seen nothing on this.

    Q2: If he wasn’t peaceful etc. and aggressive, and he was high on drugs (confirmed), how would you control a guy this size?

    A2: Gosh …

    1. The question I have not seen asked is – would the policeman have done the same to a white man? The immediate assumption was that his action was deliberately racist. The kneeling on Floyd’s neck is certainly unjustified, and should lead to some sort of legal action, but was it because Floyd was black?

      1. If you watch police programs like the Interceptors you will see the knee is used to good effect in this country on all colours until the criminal is in cuffs and under control. It was the length of time in Floyds case which was wrong – he was under control and cuffed. Having said that if he’d paid for the goods this would never have happened

      2. Apparently a similar case had equally tragic results, but that one failed to make the same impact because the victim was white and, or so the report I read claimed, the Police Officer was black.

    2. He was already handcuffed before the policeman bent the knee on his neck.

      1. Well, that’s the clincher (I avoided watching the incident – so Trump was right when he said it didn’t look good)

  25. SIR – Some teachers have continued to draw their full salaries from public funds while refusing to provide even virtual lessons. They might reflect on the experience of others.

    My occupational medical practice was deemed non-essential by the Scottish government and is shut (with no income) until Phase 3 of the official “route map”. Accordingly I decided to work in the out-of-hours GP service. My risk of catching Covid-19 is higher than if I were sitting at home, but the work provides me with income and the community with care.

    The risk of catching Covid-19 from a child is vanishingly small, especially when reasonable risk mitigation is applied, yet teachers appear not to care what impact their sloth has on children left uneducated and on their parents, who are needed to restart the economy.

    Dr Andy Ashworth
    Bo’ness, West Lothian

    The teechurs’ union leadurs kno best, innit.

    1. Nicely put, Dr A, but given the leftie-wrecker mentality displayed by a significant minority of teachers it was only to be expected, particularly at a time when just about everyone else is doing their best to pull it together. The time for the government to get tough is fast approaching, but I have little confidence that it will do so. A good start would be the scrapping of the summer break; this is an ideal opportunity to start making good the highly damaging loss of education. If there are still any teachers who want to exploit the situation then it has to be unpaid leave thereafter.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

      1. Perhaps everybody should be self-employed, hiring themselves out on a day-rate basis to the employer. So, you no turn up for work, you no get paid. Simples. You also responsible for own pension, and you’ll soon see the true costs of vacation and maternity leave.
        But then, I spent the last 30 ears in an industry mostly manned (other sexes are available) by self-employed contractors, so I’m used to it. Rastus knows all about it, too, as I’m sure do many others on NTTL. But it is scary to those who look to suck off the State’s teat for a living. Being independent.

          1. Advantageous for some.
            And nothing stopping you signing on for a project, fixed period or whatever.

          2. I’m not against them, they work extremely well for large parts of the population. If I do have an issue it’s that they drive down wages at the bottom end of the skill set.

        2. Well said, Oberst. Unfortunately most of them would have to be surgically removed from the public teat before considering self employment. It’s often the very best ideas that are patently non-runners for all the wrong reasons.

    1. So they emphasize “peaceful” but tell people to wear masks and non-identifiable clothing?
      Yeah right.

    3. I expect Dick Head of the Yard (along with ICOTY – I wonder if she is of colour?) will be organising the whole event.

    4. No doubt the Police authorised these on the basis of community cohesion. Another failure. Edit basis instead of argument

  27. Then and Now Period: 1944 to 2014

    This is one of the most incredible forwards I’ve ever received … I kept going back and forth on each picture and was totally mesmerized! Now

    this is an incredible use of technology … Like traveling back in time!

    Directions:

    Just click or click and hold on each photo, and then drag your mouse gently from left to right on the original photograph and it will be become a
    photo of the exact same location and view in 2014. Drag it back to the left and you are back in 1944!

    Scroll down for more of the same.

    Just fascinating !

    http://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/2014/apr/image-opacity-slider-master/index.html?ww2-dday

      1. But I don’t remember it having the now and then option when I looked originally.

        1. It did. I remember comparing Weymouth then and now, as the photo of British landing craft particularly interested me as my father was in one such boat and landed American troops on Omaha beach on 6th June.

  28. The chilling attempt to rewrite lockdown history.

    The UK remains stuck in a culture of denial where nobody will admit mistakes were made.

    Sherelle Jacobs

    Britain’s lockdown nightmare may be far from over, but an attempt to rewrite the history of our greatest political blunder has already begun. With the pandemic now past its peak, the lack of evidence that lockdown served any useful purpose is glaring. And, crucially, thanks to a growing abundance of raw data – from deaths and hospital admissions, to Covid-related 111 calls and mobile tracking intelligence – we now have the power to piece together what Britain’s lockdown achieved (or didn’t) in hideous technicolour.

    Getting at the truth will be an uphill struggle, however: Downing Street has shown no appetite whatsoever for sifting through the evidence, even though it could inform (or, let’s face it, rip apart) its uniquely odd approach to easing lockdown.

    We must also beware the shapeshifting scientific architects of the stay-at-home order; as criticism grows, are they attempting to dress their reconstructed reality in the language of scientific pedantry?

    Take Neil Ferguson. One might wonder whether Professor Lockdown’s generous display of humble pie before the science and technology committee on Tuesday – admitting that Sweden “got a long way to the same effect” as the UK without resorting to lockdown – was in fact a cunning attempt to defend his junk modelling. Despite depicting Sweden as an extremist outlier just weeks ago, accusing it of pursuing an approach most other countries would not tolerate, Ferguson this week not only oozed that he had the “greatest respect” for Swedish scientists, but even suggested that while the Nordic country “came to a different policy conclusion”, this was “based really on quite similar science”.

    The latter assertion, of course, conveniently implies that Sweden’s success doesn’t pose a challenge to Imperial modelling. It is also a snot-nosed insult to the nation – Britons deserve the unvarnished story, not pedagogic half-truths.

    Granted, Sweden’s aim was the same as Britain’s: to flatten the curve. And, like Britain, it embraced measures such as social distancing. But while our entire strategy, by some accounts, hinged on the terrifying projections of a single modelling paper, Sweden rejected working with models due to their limited reliability. This, incidentally, includes two Swedish papers inspired by Ferguson’s model, which wrongly projected that critical care demand in Sweden would peak above 16,000 or even 20,000 a day in May (the reality was nearer 500).

    Other basic differences abound. Sweden assumed a significantly higher rate of compliance with measures such as self-isolation than the likes of Imperial. Not to mention that while Sweden has been optimistic on herd immunity, Britain has been sceptical. And while Britain is hopeful about a vaccine solution, Sweden is hesitant.

    A culture of denial pervades No 10, too. This is in shameful contrast to the open debate taking place in other countries. Having crunched the numbers, and discovered that the R number may have fallen to 1.1 by the time it announced lockdown, the head of Norway’s Public Health Institute has admitted that the country’s stay-athome order in March may have been unnecessary.

    Meanwhile, the architect of Sweden’s strategy, Prof Anders Tegnell, has been frank about the fact that, despite early projections, Stockholm did not reach herd immunity by the end of May, while its politicians have apologised for their “big failure” to protect care homes.

    Contrast this with the narrowness of the discussion in the UK, where the only notable admission so far has been the justice secretary’s suggestion that, with testing resources stretched, the UK had no choice but to sacrifice care homes on the altar of the NHS. Even on that, there remain serious questions about whether decision-makers properly countenanced the risk to care homes in the first place, let alone weighed this up against the needs of the NHS. Care homes were mentioned only twice in five months in Sage reports dating back to January. Nor did the Government publish an action plan for social care until mid-april.

    Pinning down what went wrong matters. No 10’s refusal to grant a post-mortem on the Covid debacle threatens to cripple our economy with permanent rigor mortis. Early economic data shows a terrifying correlation between countries that locked down hard and the severity of their downturns. There has been no notable rise in Covid hospital admissions in countries easing their lockdowns. And yet No 10 refuses to end this reckless pantomime of scientifically risible caution.

    With the Government committed to concealing its mistakes, and those who question “the science” dismissed as cranks, there is no certainty that Britain will be able to have a sensible conversation about lockdown. But try we must. This catastrophe is a textbook case of what happens when people are treated like swing voters, to be polled, prodded and pandered to, rather than thoughtful, responsible citizens.

    And so it goes that, unable to protect us from risk, politicians end up protecting us from truth in this new post-orwellian dystopia.

    On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia Skåne!

    1. Are the broadcast and print media in Sweden and Norway quite so blood-thirstily anti-tory/government as in the UK?

      1. Not so much. Whilst they like a drama, they still try to report the news rather than be the news. At least, in Norway. I don’t hear the Swedish press behaving like the British, either, but I don’t follow them so closely.

      2. To be fair, I don’t know. From what I do know they are very compliant and supportive of their government. I have no desire to become a Swedish speaker so I do not watch their appalling television, listen to their risible radio nor read their excruciating newspapers (these are opinions of native Swedes, by the way).

        I gain all my information about the world from British newspapers, television and, of course, this forum.

        1. Why have you chosen to live in Sweden? How do you survive without speaking Swedish?

          1. So many questions. So few answers.

            I moved to Sweden, in October 2011, to live with my old school penfriend (whom I met for the first time in 2002 after having had no contact for 35 years). We got along very well and decided to live together. I no longer had any familial ties in England so decided to take a huge leap of faith and move to another country at the age of 60.

            My attempts to learn the language were not really successful. I can read written Swedish fairly well but my big problem is in listening to, especially, the local Skånska dialect, which is as impenetrable as an amalgamation of Fife, Scouse, Brummie, Cockney and Geordie! [Swedes from elsewhere in the country also struggle to discern it].

            On top of that, everyone under the age of 50 is more-or-less fluent in English and they delight in the opportunity to practice it. If I ask any questions (in shops, for example) in a practised Swedish, I am invariably answered back in English.

            I miss lots of things about England but the lack of traffic on the roads and general peacefulness of the countryside where I live make up for that in part.

          2. Thanks for the explanation. Yes learning a foreign language is not easy late in life. I have a friend whose mother was Norwegian but had been brought up in England and decided to move to Norway in her twenties. The only way she became fluent in Norwegian was because her in-laws always spoke to her in Norwegian – even though they were fluent in English they understood she really needed to learn to speak the language fluently to settle and work there, which was not easy with everyone else speaking English with her.

          3. Practice makes perfect if you practise, George!
            Bluddy americanizations… 🙂

        2. Doesn’t Sweden have a Press Support Scheme for newspapers to be kept afloat by government subsidies?
          Pay the piper and call the tune, perhaps?

    2. The first failure was to PANIC! because the newspapers might write hurty words, some of them in big typefaces if someone got sick. Panic prevents rational thought. Some careful thinking wouuld have resulted in the questioning of models and their supporters, and reasonable use of these projections.
      The unbelievable idiocy that is the UK government is not to be believed. Only now that the issue is being resolved do they quarantine people coming in over the borders – well, some borders, anyway. Where’s the logic in that? If the population are in quarantine, then so should the visitors be! If the guidance or rule was 1 metre separation, why select 2 metres? Typical British gold-plating? And, if you are 2 metres separated, how is it a problem taht the police need to threaten to taze you for standing in your garden?
      Why was there no open-ness about the decision-making processes – SAGE and all that crap? I posted many times the development of the virus here in Norway as compared with the FHI model used, and it shows the reality in reasonable agreement with the model. The press are a disgrace, going for Gotcha! moments rather than holding governments feet to the fire over what they are doing, and why.
      You are quite right, Grizz: Skåne, or anywhere else in Scandinavia, is better – and that’s why I live here.

      1. The MSM is certainly going for “Gotcha moments”

        There is a grim determination in the MSM that this will be the last ever Tory government, and any and all means must be used to destroy it.

    3. ‘Morning, Grizz. I’m no expert, but our politicians’ cowering in the face of a hysterical meeja may have something to do with their over-reaction?

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh.

        As a naturally extroverted introvert*, I know it’s not a job that I could do.

        [*I kid you not!]

  29. Good moring all

    Strong chilly wind here today , brr factor .. back to wearing something warmer.

    I had a bad sleep, serves me right for viewing the wild tribes who were bombarding Downing Street with detritus and whacking policemen in other parts of London.

    We are being overwhelmed by opinions in the media , and I say that we are now under threat and in danger of being overwhelmed .

    1. Oh dear. Shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops here! And it has cooled down from earlier in the week.

    2. Does the presence of lots of meeja cameras spur on the great unwashed? Discuss…

      ‘Morning, Belle.

      PS My participation in the ‘news’ of the day started at 10pm – and ended less than 30 seconds later. What is left of my sanity comes first.

    3. I wrote to the DT eighteen months ago complaining that it was 90% opinion pieces and 10% reporting.
      I didnt receive a reply.

  30. Morning again

    SIR – In November 2008, following claims that racism had been dealt a fatal blow by the US election hopes of US Senator Barack Obama, you published a letter from me arguing that we will only know that the colour of one’s skin has become unimportant when “everyone stops banging on about it”.

    That of course didn’t happen. Appalling treatment by police of black people in America continued during Obama’s presidency, and the recent shocking death of George Floyd during his arrest by a serving officer – which was filmed and has been seen around the world – suggests that racism is still endemic.

    The riots that have ensued are inexcusable. However, President Donald Trump must not stir up unrest in the opposite direction. He must clearly condemn racism, pledge to rid the police of despicable characters, and make the cause of Mr Floyd’s brother and his supporters his own.

    Tim Coles

    Carlton, Bedfordshire

    1. Is it always the case that when a black man dies at the hands of a white man it is always about racism?

      Perhaps as an upholder of the law he just hated vicious career criminals.

      I make no apology for Derek Chauvin. He behaved despicably and brought shame on the entire Police forces of America.

  31. Morning all. Did anyone see the live interview on the ITV breakfast programme between Piers Morgan and Rudy Giuliani? It was astonishing. Giuliani lost it and showed a side to him not seen before.

    1. ‘Morning, Harry. Watching Moron having his daily rant is not a good start to my morning, so I’m afraid that’s a firm ‘No’.

      1. I’m not his biggest fan either. But this interview was news in itself. Giuliani, for whom I have much respect for what he achieved in NYC, lost the plot, lost his rag and has damaged his reputation with this interview. It will certainly find its way onto YouTube.

  32. Theres a video clip on the letters page labelled “Mother of George Floyd’s Daughter”.

    Coherent family unit then…

  33. SIR – It is great news that charity shops are recruiting thousands of teenage volunteers.
    However, until they are 18, they are not allowed to use the till, the steamer or the tagging guns, so it is difficult to find enough for them to do. Is it not time to treat young people as responsible beings?
    Brenda Hill

    Be my guest, Ms Hill, as long as you can find a teenager with any common sense or sense of responsibility.

    1. Morning, D-cup.

      The younger generation (well, most of them) have had all common sense bred out of them by decades of pathetic parenting, terrible teaching, and gormless government. What hope for the future?

    2. Is it a reflection of how infantile our young people have become, or, at least are viewed?
      When one considers that our fathers & grandfathers would have left school at 14 and immediately joined the workforce of one of several industries with hazards several orders of magnitude higher, one wonders what damage delaying their mental maturity by the enforced massing of young people in school and further/higher education is doing to them?

    3. Our 16 year old grandson has plenty of common sense as do his friends. The majority, I suspect, do but there is always a minority of idiots of all age groups who totally lack any common sense.

      1. I know some incredibly stupid people of my own age. And as for sheer lack of common sense look no further than the mostly middle-aged House of Commons.

        We have students aged 17 or 18 on our courses. The vast majority of them are practical and sensible though some of them have been rather too easily influenced by absurd leftist thinking.

        1. Our grandson has, of his own volition, sorted out a virtual university open days this weekend at a number of universities he’s interested in attending. He is set on becoming a surgeon and knows what results are needed and is working so very hard to achieve them.
          Re the HoL I couldn’t agree more. It’s worth remembering that our freedom was fought for and won by a lot of teenagers who lied about their age to fight for our country. I’m not sure what would happen now but we are in another sort of war at present.

  35. The BBC and the Meghan are giving much time to BAME

    When are they going to talk about crime and rape and absent black fathers, drugs , violence .. and groomers?

    Why are us whites becoming under represented .. dissmissed , and feel disenfranchised ?

    1. Good morning, Maggiebelle

      Isn’t it an update of what they used to call ‘The White Man’s Burden’?

    2. Good morning, Maggiebelle

      Isn’t it an update of what they used to call ‘The White Man’s Burden’?

  36. A huge majority of protesters aren’t black but mixed race. Why dont they identify with their white half?

    1. If Barack Obama had been elected President of Kenya would he have been their first white president? Thought not.

        1. My pleasure. Be interesting if there’s any reaction, perhaps you’ll let me know.

    2. Morning D Cup

      Did you hear the Meghan this morning, I knew she would climb on board .. She doesn’t identify with her white half , and as she hates Trump, I reckon she is being meddlesome and vexatious .

      2. Exploiting the situation for PR, keeping herself on the pages, it is all about her.

    3. Coz their black half ought to get compenshaysun for historical crimes…from their white half?

      1. I have come to the conclusion that, with all this sniping from him, O’Barmy is a very bad loser.

        ‘Moaning, Annie.

        1. He’d done his two stints as Potus.
          I assume he’s snippy on Billary’s behalf.

        1. I agree – the ‘Cringe’ half of ‘Ginge and Cringe’ is utterly irrelevant (just like her old man in fact). If I never heard of either of them again (fat chance) it would still be too soon.

    6. The simplest reason is that it is their black half that gets the prejudice.

  37. Good Moaning. As I catch up with last week’s Spekkie, here is Matthew Parris’s return to proper writing:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-has-all-but-left-london-why-

    Covid has all but left London. Why? | The Spectator

    Matthew Parris

    “My partner, Julian, hovered at my shoulder on Friday as I tapped out my Times Saturday column (about travel quarantine). I’d slipped in a paragraph with my own thoughts about the transmission of Covid-19. ‘Cut the lot,’ he said. ‘You’re not an epidemiologist. Nobody’s interested in your theories.’ This was probably good advice so I put my own thoughts on hold.

    Until now. Because something’s still nagging me. I know I’m not an epidemiologist, but silences speak loud in science, and from those experts put up for media interview I notice a curious silence — a silence on what feels like a most important report and, from their interviewers, a timidity about pressing them.

    The question the experts should be asked is about London. Why has coronavirus fled the capital?

    London is now recording only a handful of new cases every day, while infections across the rest of the country are dropping far more slowly. It’s not as if there’s nobody left in London to infect: from a population of about nine million, two recent estimates of how many Londoners have developed antibodies put the proportion presumed immune at between 17 and 20 per cent.

    I propose that there may exist forms of human resistance to this virus that don’t show up in antibody tests

    That figure, of about one in five, interests me more and more. I first noticed it in reports of the proportion of cruise passengers infected on the Diamond Princess in February. Apparently just under 20 per cent had been infected; and on another cruise ship, the Grand Princess, some 16 per cent had the antibodies. In Stockholm (where restrictions have been lighter than in Britain), Sweden’s chief state epidemiologist believes around 20 per cent will have the antibodies, leaving 80 per cent theoretically vulnerable — but the infection rate there has been falling for more than a month. Governor Andrew Cuomo (headlines the New York Times) ‘says 21 per cent of those tested in NYC had virus antibodies’. Yet the city is beginning to unlock as the infection rate falls fast.

    There are outliers to this cluster of ‘one-in-five infected’ reports but the clustering is hard to ignore. There is no such cluster at the bottom of the scale, where, among regions and nations, the lower infection rates differ wildly and appear best explained by the promptitude, skill and severity of the lockdowns applied. Timelines do determine when cities like London attain that 20 per cent, but once reached, the rate of new infections hits some kind of ceiling, and begins to fall quite rapidly. In London the R number is 0.4, way below the rest of the country.

    Imagine yourself an ambitious Covid-19 virus. The conclusion you’d draw is that a rich harvest of infectables awaits you wherever (a) there is no sharp lockdown; and (b) the proportion of humans with the Covid antibodies — the susceptibles — is still in lowish single figures. But (c) that the going gets tough for you as the percentage testing positive for antibodies moves into double figures, and really tough as it moves above about 20 per cent in conurbations and perhaps lower outside them. Our ambitious virus could be forgiven for concluding that ‘herd immunity’ among its human host is approached at somewhere near that point.

    This needs explaining, because at the outset of this crisis there appeared to be near-consensus among experts that herd immunity is reached around or perhaps above a 60 per cent infected figure. London and New York suggest that cannot be right — unless (and I can’t rule this out) 20 per cent represents herd immunity under lockdown conditions because transmission is then more difficult.

    If so, we should very soon be seeing a surge of new infections as lockdown is loosened, because if the 20 per cent antibody positive figure is right, and all the rest are susceptible, then the remaining 80 per cent (about seven million Londoners) are waiting out there to be infected.

    In short, if you believe herd immunity is only reached at 60 per cent, you should be terrified at any loosening of lockdown. If you don’t, then you must reconcile antibody testing that says 80 per cent are still susceptible with the difficulty the virus seems to encounter in marching very far past 20 percent of the population.

    That is the reconciliation my hypothesis achieves. I propose that there may exist forms of human resistance to this virus that don’t show up in Covid-19 antibody tests.

    I say ‘resistance’ rather than ‘immunity’ because I know no reason to assume the body’s defences to Covid-19 must be all or nothing: a binary division between those who have and those who lack immunity. Should we perhaps be looking at the population as a continuum ranging from the totally immune (those with the Covid-19-specific antibodies) to the totally susceptible?

    Take, for example, the common cold, some variants of which are also Covid-related. So far as I know, there’s nobody who has never had a cold, or anybody who has one all the time. You develop some resistance while you have the cold or you wouldn’t recover but does it later desert you altogether? There may be such a thing as patchy, background, lingering or incomplete resistance. Discussing this, I was directed to recent comments on Twitter by Philipp Koellinger, an economist and behavioural geneticist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Koellinger notes that: ‘A wet lab study from Germany suggests that some degree of limited background immunity against Covid-19 may exist in the population (~1/3 of their healthy donor sample) due to previous infections with other “common cold” coronaviruses.’

    I’m in no position to appraise the research Koellinger cites and will try to be very cautious in what I hypothesise. It’s this. That there could be some varying measure of resistance to Covid-19 among many who may not test positive for the Covid-19–specific antibodies; and in focusing on that Covid antibody test alone as indicating a pass-or-fail immunity, we could be overlooking important ways in which humans may be endowed with, or acquire, other kinds of resistance. If this is true, then ‘herd immunity’ may be a more complicated threshold than we have realised — and easier to reach.

    There you are, Julian. But, as you say, who cares what I think?”

    spectator.co.uk/matthewparris – The argument continues online.

    1. One of our illustrious NoTTLers did posit on here recently that we may have some natural defence to this virus. Through our ancestors we have suffered many colds and similar viruses over the centuries that has built up a sort of immunity to the severity of these infections. Apropos last nights discussion with Max maybe it’s because we is white and bame’s don’t have that immunity.
      I have no specific medical knowledge but sometimes I think many of these ‘experts’ get so close to the problem that they don’t think outside the box.

      1. Crank up your inner Neanderthal: it’s the 2-3 % of Neanderthal genes that are saving you.
        When homo Sapiens Ug fancied that rough gal in the next cave, he was saving whitey from an untimely death.

      2. We know, for example, that west Africans have greater resistance to malaria than Europeans; hardly a surprise, when you think about it. By the same token, they might have less resistance to corona-type infections.

    2. I find Matthew Paris repulsively creepy which makes me incapable of looking at anything he says objectively.

    3. Why has coronavirus fled the capital?

      The simple answer to this is that it is dying out everywhere though at different rates. The Israeli epidemiologist who forecast its natural demise was probably correct!

  38. I loved this DT letter

    SIR – I have noticed that all our runner beans are climbing their poles in an anticlockwise direction.

    Does this accord with the same rule governing bath water’s path down the plug hole and weather depressions in the northern hemisphere?

    Tony Craig
    Mold, Flintshire

    Doesn’t bath water go down clockwise?

      1. Older readers will recall the experiment carried out by Blue Peter: they emptied a bath tub on the equator, and the water didn’t swirl one way or the other. That was in the days when I was proud to pay my licence fee.

        1. When I washed my hands as I flew over the equator, the water went straight down – I like to experiment, me 🙂

    2. Interesting – I’m fairly sure that (the so ubiquitous) Bindweed also climbs anti-clockwise.

    3. Would you please be so kind, Hugh, as to teach me how to post a video (such as this one) from Twitter onto this forum?

      I am one level below that of a technophobe!

      1. You may be asking the wrong person here Grizz…firstly I am not a user of Twatter, but I saw this clip on Biased BBC this morning, so I tap and hold on the video clip and up comes a caption saying something like ‘copy url address’ or something very similar. When you have done this (or right-clicked with mousey) you can then paste it on here by either tap and hold again, or use the mouse to ‘paste’ as before.

        I fully expect someone on here to come up with something far more cunning, but it usually works for me.

      2. It needs to be already uploaded onto a separate system.
        If it’s part of a Tw@ter post like that is, simply copy the URL and post that.
        Ditto with YouTube.

        1. Thanks, Bob. Copying from YouTube is simple and something I do all the time but, for some reason, it doesn’t work for me with Twitter!

      3. You may be asking the wrong person here Grizz…firstly I am not a user of Twatter, but I saw this clip on Biased BBC this morning, so I tap and hold on the video clip and up comes a caption saying something like ‘copy url address’ or something very similar. When you have done this (or right-clicked with mousey) you can then paste it on here by either tap and hold again, or use the mouse to ‘paste’ as before.

        I fully expect someone on here to come up with something far more cunning, but it usually works for me.

  40. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/16de37f9933528f376c4b2e653472d60356892509be772860a0144f45ef369b8.jpg Surely I cannot be the only one on this forum who gnashes his teeth whenever I see a chef on TV trying to separate an egg (invariably by passing the yolk between two half shells, or by catching the yolk in their fingers); or squeeze a lemon [other citrus fruits are available] by squeezing it in their fingers and trying to catch the pips in their other hand, or by using one of those silly wooden ‘reamers’, which are equally as messy.

    Call me old-fashioned, but I have a collection of gadgets from well over 40 years ago (some much older) that do the job much quicker and far more efficiently. The tool on the left is a zester which cuts thin strips of citrus zest much better than a hand-held knife or potato-peeler ever will. In the centre is a citrus juicer which traps the pips and only permits the juice through to the reservoir beneath: it is so easy, clean and efficient to use. The item on the right, an egg-separator (from Tupperware), is indispensable and works a treat.

    I have never seen any of these wonderfully logical gadgets in use on any cookery programme. Why?

    2. Not cool, Grizz. LIke the salt must be thrown in with a wriggle, and olive oil poured through a thumb over the bottle mouth.

    3. I’ve noticed that limes (at least the ones I’ve been buying) appear not to have pips. They are apparently parthenocarpic and can be happily squeezed for juice with the hand alone.

      1. Stenospermocarpic fruits are similar. I’d still rather use my juicer than have to wash lime juice off my hands. Plus, any juice squeezed, and not immediately used, can be kept in the squeezer, in the fridge, until it’s time to make a gin and soda.

    6. Good choices. We have an oldish* glass lemon squeezer of similar design. We also have a larger oldish glass lemon squeezer that we bought in a job lot at an auction. We have an egg separator identical to yours by yellow in colour. I don’t think that we have. reamer, I use the grater to zest lemons.

      *Pressed glass so probably 1950 -1980. I like pressed glass.

        1. Phew! I’d read as far as “…The sugar bowl mum had lost a leg in an accident…” and I thought “poor thing”, but why is Grizzle telling me this?

      2. Good afternoon, Horace.

        I used to collect pressed glass:

        Jelly moulds.
        Lemon squeezers.
        Sugar bowls.
        Milk Jugs.
        Cake stands
        Cake platters
        Various bowls.
        Cheese dishes.
        Butter dishes.

        I ran out of display space and the washing of it is horrendous! 🙂
        I still buy an occassional piece or two, I cannot resist it.

        1. I tried jelly moulds, but I could never get the jellies out once set. The dipping in warm water simply resulted in the jelly melting. (So metal moulds instead.). We have a nice butter dish. We do not buy to display, we buy to use. We believe that things should be useful as well as decorative, or not. (I mean, well, that we don’t really live up to that in practice. Junk abounds!)
          My heart is set on a beetroot dish, like a large jam pot with lid, but I have never been able to find one.

          1. I use most of it but the jelly moulds I don’ t use,
            I do have two dinky quarter pint ones and a bunny
            rabbit mould [Grizz would be horrified! :-)) ]
            You have reminded me, I use two jars with lids, I
            thought they were for pickles, it hadn’t occurred
            to me that they might be beetroot dishes, these
            are bulbous but about the height of a jam jar.

    7. I have those items too. Though not as ancient.

      Because all those gadgets clog up the drawer and when the fish slice gets caught the drawer never opens again.

      1. Fish slice(s) live in (three) earthenware pots next to the stove; along with wooden spoons, spatulae, scissors, ladles and tongs.

        2. I have a galley kitchen so not much room for anything. I do have my fish slice and the other stuff hanging up though.

          1. When I had my galley kitchen (when I lived in my north Norfolk cottage) it was in a dilapidated condition when I bought the place so I tore it all out and fitted a new kitchen. To make more space I fitted a magnetic knife rack inside one of the upper cupboard doors so it couldn’t be seen when the door was shut but was easily accessible when I needed a sharp knife.

          2. Best way to keep good knives. The blades don’t het damaged by rattling around in a drawer.

          4. Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers, a minor goddess on the Discworld.
            When someone rattles a drawer and cries “How can it close on the damned
            thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?”, even
            though the person might be genuinely irritated or even exasperated, it
            is as praise unto Anoia. Faithful Anoians (worshippers of Anoia)
            purposefully rattle their drawers and complain every day. Anoia also
            finds objects that roll under other objects and things stuck in sofa
            cushions, and is considering handling stuck zippers. She eats
            corkscrews.

  42. We have all been there….

    John Ward writing over on The Slog:

    “When call centres, requirement options and classical muzak came in, the French leapt behind this new wall of protection with alacrity. The standard four levels (with five options each) alone could fill up ten minutes, followed by a sales message and some more music. When a voice finally answered, you had made an error in choosing the wrong option, so the girl very sweetly gave you another number to try. After another five minutes of options, a robot would say you had the wrong number for that query, and give you the number used to no avail the first time around.

    The arrival of the Internet and “online service” gave les grands fromages the chance not only to reinforce the castle walls, but also pull up the drawbridge. Speaking to an employee was absolutely out of the question, but the new system “was designed with you the customer in mind”. The support for this obvious lie was that each and every one of us now had our very own Espace Client at the website, but it was up to you to open an account and be given a code number. All communication of every type now became unthinkable if you didn’t have your Numero Espace Client ready to hand. Having typed it in, a robot puzzle then asked you to prove you weren’t also a robot by filling in the ‘Captcha’ space. On doing so, the robot would accuse you of being a robot, and cancel the conversation…..”

    ad infinitum…..

    1. Identifying the squares with crosswalks, Malibu palm trees, or yellow school buses almost completely obscured by trucks, on thumbnails. When done, you start again. Your call is important to us. Have a nice day.

      Oh, and you’ve got to enable all the Google adware scripts several times before it will play, and install the latest official backdoor malware-compliant browsers and operating systems. You cannot get the full exciting user experience if you must use XP.

      1. It’s absolute madness out there JM.
        The stupid plinky plonky piano music on nearly every TV programme which makes it difficult to hear what is being said.
        Yesterday I wanted to find a recipe for Morrocan chicken………I gave up because I would not accept ‘cookies’.
        The food was delecions just what we needed on a chilly evening 😊
        And you forgot the hydrants and the ‘king traffic lights. 😆

        1. Plinky plonky is nothing compared to the Full Action Movie soundscape with full orchestra and massed drums on reverb whilst we ponder Brunel designing a bridge, a cat chasing a mouse, or the latest wokest Doctorina Who running about to pad out a dramatic sequence.

          In the past, at least they made an effort to tailor the music to what was going on, so for your Moroccan chicken, we could have a poultry rendition of the Call to Prayer before being despatched halal style to meet her maker.

          1. We sometimes resort to subtitles on TV and turn the volume down, as the music is often so loud.

          2. We like the Saturday dramas on BBC4 – all foreign with subtitles and much better than anything else on the other channels,

          3. Have you watched the Bridge ?
            There have been so many excellent Scan drams over the years.
            I really enjoy them.
            Wallander was a great series as well.

          4. There are some good foreign dramas on More4 too. We are watching the second series of the Italian detective in Thous Shalt Not Kill (non uccidere.)

          5. One of my favourite dramas was The Killing. It was in believe the fore runner of serial Scan drams. The Americas tried to replicate it. It was horrendous, they wrecked it.

          6. Spot on. The original was truly good, the American one not so much.

    2. Precisely why I changed my car insurance to a local broking company that MB has used for years.
      When the company I was with asked for the reason for my change, I cited a preference for local, personal service.
      (There were other reasons, but I think this is a good time to impress on these behemoths that we are rediscovering our loyalties to the local and personal.)

  43. I watched the director Spike Lee on the BBC droning on about the supressed black comoonidee to an adoring BBC journalist. I find few things more hypocritical than a bigoted, black millionaire lecturing poor white people about their privilege.

  44. Madeleine McCann appeal: British police identify German prime suspect. 4 June 2020.

    Friends of Kate and Gerry McCann say it is biggest development in the case since Madeleine went missing in 2007.

    Boris: We need something to distract from this Coronavirus fiasco Dominic.”

    Dom: “What about Salisbury?”

    Boris: No that’s on telly later this month. I don’t want anything interfering with that and getting them thinking about the Skripals for God’s sake!

    Dom: Russia generally then?

    Boris: No. Trump is already talking about inviting them to the G7.

    Larry: What about the McCann’s? They are due for an airing!

    Boris: I knew there was a reason why we paid for your Whiskas.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/madeleine-mccann-appeal-british-police-identify-german-prime/

  45. This is an absolute delight wandering over who’s had a good/bad/execrable Pandemic, why Churchill so annoys lefties, and despairing at the Conservatives – and even why so many RedWall Tory MPS are indulging in virtuesignalling bollox. Today I will become a subscriber to Delingpole:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCDvN_-V198

  46. A linked thread of tweets – definitely worth a read

    Woke up today really angry and I have some things I’m going to get off my chest. I’ve been withdrawing from Twitter lately because the toxicity of this place is not good for me or probably the country but it’s time to say some things regardless of how people react. 1/
    At the start, let me note that I’ve been writing online about police brutality, lack of police accountability, and racial injustice for over 15 years to a mostly unreceptive and sometimes hostile audience. So I didn’t wake up last week and discover that these things existed. 2/
    So while I condemn the looting, violence, and arson happening right now, I am fully on board with the message of the people who are peacefully protesting, and have been for a long time. Just so we’re on the same page. 3/
    That having been said, I am really fucking pissed off that apparently the life-and-death need to destroy this country was apparently not so life and death. The people who told us and scolded us (including public health experts), who told us there was literally no reason… 4/
    that would justify ignoring them or violating social distancing rules suddenly find that literally no reason means “unless it’s a reason that’s societally important.” They are saying this not figuratively but literally.

    NPR
    ✔
    @NPR
    Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests.

    “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.https://trib.al/iVynMCH

    Protests Over Racism Versus Risk Of COVID: ‘I Wouldn’t Weigh These Crises Separately’
    “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” public health experts say in an open letter as large protests erupt in cities across the United States.

    npr.org
    7,849
    7:47 AM – Jun 2, 2020
    Twitter Ads info and privacy
    9,206 people are talking about this
    5/
    So, having established that I think the fight for police reform is really important, I have to ask: was it not important to prevent tens of thousands of predicted deaths from suicide due to the psychological effects of the lockdown and ensuing depression? 6/

    Is it not important that people, especially small business owners and employees, are able to feed there families? Is it not important that, you know, black people have jobs? Black employment was at historical highs in March, now LESS THAN HALF of black people are employed. 7/
    I’ll tell you one reason I’m especially raw today. One of my closest and dearest friends died last week. I am going to his funeral today. Thank God it’s being held in Arkansas or else it probably couldn’t even exist. 8/
    He’ll be listed on the statistics as a COVID death because he caught COVID LITERALLY WHILE LOCKED DOWN IN THE HIGH RISK AREA OF A HOSPITAL, but what killed him were complications for underlying health conditions that had him hospitalized since late March. 9/
    For the last 8 weeks of his life, he lived totally alone. Even after he had already caught COVID, he was not allowed in person human contact from his friends and family, even if we signed a waiver and promised to not leave the hospital until we ourselves cleared quarantine. 10/
    I’m really mad that my friend had to die feeling not only his body give up on him, but probably also the worst loneliness and isolation he’d ever known in his life. And I’m really mad for all the families of people who were not allowed to say goodbye to loved ones… 11/
    Or even mourn them or say goodbye at burials. Because it seems to me that that shit is also pretty damn important to maintaining who we are as human beings. How many people sat there and suffered this same indignity silently because they were told there was no choice? 12/
    I’ll tell you what conclusion I draw from the lack of tsk-tsking and condemnation of these current protesters (yes, even the peaceful ones), that they are going to kill grandma with their activities. It’s the only conclusion that can be drawn. 13/
    That conclusion is that they didn’t really believe what they were saying all along. Because an infectious disease does not care about the reason you are gathering or how important it is. It has no social conscience, or conscience of any kind. 14/
    Which leads me to believe they were doing it because of politics, or desire to control, or whatever (I don’t really know), but most definitely not because they actually believed we would all die. 15/
    So much loss. So much damage. So much grief. For apparently fucking nothing. God, I hope people are held accountable for this somehow. The end. 16/
    FYI I cannot handle Twitter today so I will not be reading replies to this thread, but feel free to achieve your catharsis by yelling at me if you wish. 17/
    Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1268168284081459201.html

    1. Pandemic Verdicts:

      Most awful: Piers Morgan
      Awful: the MSM
      Let Downs: Raab; Patel; Johnson
      Disappointing: Andrew Neil

      Wobblers: Rod Liddle

      Brilliant: Laura Perrins (Head Girl); Peter Hitchens
      Surprisingly Good: Matthew Parris
      Best Recovery: Allison Pearson

  47. BBC News at One

    Meghan says we just can’t say nothing about who matters.
    I think those over 70 who have been neglected by governments in the COVID-19 crisis matter.

    Grey Matters!

  48. Morning all 😕
    BLM, really, known isis terrorist shot dead in East London. Shooter goes on the rampage in Harlesden north London. Recent Stabbings in Hyde Park. Crowded music raves in other parts of the country.

    Maybe we should let them sort things out for them selves and do a deal, you leave us alone the sane amongst the rest recipricate.

    1. Morning, RE.
      I have assumed that the lunatics really have taken over the asylum and retreated to Allan Towers, punctuated by the occasional visit to Lidl or ALDI if I need extra excitement.
      Sadly, the ground is too hard to dig a moat.

      1. Nice to see you back AA there were some suggestions you were attending ‘a break down’. 😉
        My father and his 5 brothers were brought up in Willesden, he’d would have 105 this November. But I’m sure he’d be horrified at how the once respectable area has declined in its own right.
        After I had been in Hammersmith hospital for 2 days 4 years ago. One of our son’s drove into London to collect me and his mother. I asked him to drive through Willesden and into Ranelagh Road were they all lived in ‘Netley House’. What a tip it is now. Say no more eh.
        He’d be happy his ashes are next to his wife in a peaceful country church yard. With a plaque to remind us.

  49. Today’s letters still not appearing in the Daily Telegraph.
    Have they accidentally ditched the letters’ editor to cut costs, or is he still kneeling in front of the mob trying to storm Downing Street?

    1. 319933+ up ticks,
      Morning Anne,
      This putting more stress on knees is begging for trouble the state of some pavement destroyers I’ve seen if they get down they are going to have a problem on the return trip,ie getting up.
      The only knees I would condone would
      be musical as in
      🎵 Knees up mother brown, knees up,
      knees up, don’t get the breeze up, knees up mother brown.
      Perhaps when sanity returns.

      1. Isn’t bending the knee what recipients of a knighthood have to do before the Queen taps them on the shoulder.

        1. 319933+ up ticks,
          Morning C,
          Yes, I do strongly believe that in most cases when the Queen uses the sword in an up & down motion she should use it in a horizontal motion there by saving us a great deal of future trouble.

        1. 319933+ up ticks,
          Anne,
          An anti submissive pcism & appeasement song.
          “if I catch you bending I’ll saw your legs right off”
          48% of the nation would suffer @rse pavement rash.
          Should be the National Anthem.

      1. Ta ever so. I went through the usual rigmarole when the letters aren’t obviously available, with no luck. Judging by the comments tacked on to yesterday’s BTL, I am not alone.

        1. The Boss provides a link to the DT letters page at the top of each new day’s NoTTL page. Where he gets it from when they don’t appear in the online DT itself, I know knot.

  50. Some nuns ran an orphanage in a rural area. One day, the Mother Superior called in the teenage girls who were about to leave.

    “You are going into a sinful world,” she said. “I must warn you that men will take advantage of you. They’ll buy you drinks and dinner, take you to their apartments, undress you and do terrible things to you. Then they’ll give you $20 or $30 and kick you out.”

    “Excuse me,” said one of the girls. “You mean men will take advantage of us and give us money?”

    “Yes. Why do you ask?”

    “Well, the priests only ever gave us ice-cream!”

      1. 319933+ up ticks,
        Morning Jbf,
        Have you ever exited a chippie
        clutching a newspaper parcel
        on a Saturday night post chuck out time ?

        1. Chips, in such circumstances, should be consumed outside the chippy directly after being bought. Wrapping them to take them home only steams them and makes them soggy .

          1. 319933+ up ticks,
            G,
            Would the change have been, abuse of a fish supper whilst drink taken & under the influence of sanity in your uniform days?

      2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB-X_hIqKd0

        This has been discussed on this forum many times before, Joe. The verb lay is a perfectly acceptable (and dialectic) synonym of lie in respect of lying/laying down.

        If that wasn’t the case then The Strawbs would have been obliged to have sung Lie Down.

    1. 319933+ up ticks,
      o2o,
      Is there any truth that instead of closing the incoming Odessa line
      allowing felons of every hue and moral standing entry the govenance parties are making compulsory weekend working by all the taxpaying fraternity with the proceeds of their toil supporting the invaders sorry
      welcomed guest’s.

  53. Trump’s medical

    An adverse side effect of hydroxychloroquine is QT prolongation which can be observed from an ECG trace.
    The problem arises for people with long QT syndrome and also those who may be to the longer side of normal QT interval.
    For those people hydroxychloroquine may send them into a fatal heart rhythym called Torsades de Pointes.

    It is interesting to note that WHO has decided to resume the off-label trials for the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 infections

    https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/03/who-resuming-hydroxychloroquine-study-for-covid-19/

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/donald-trump-annual-physical/index.html

    https://www.dicardiology.com/article/covid-19-hydroxychloroquine-treatment-brings-prolonged-qt-arrhythmia-issues

      3. The Q and the T are identifiable as points on the QRS complex shown on an Electrocardiogram trace from an ECG machine.
        The time between Q and T points is the known as the QT interval.

  54. An interesting BTL comment in the Tellygraff letters column; probably as we imagined it, but I hope few would have to experience.

    “Wendy McNally

    4 Jun 2020 11:05AM

    Why no comments allowed on the very one-sided article by Alex Wheatley, on living in Brixton at the time of the riots in 1981?

    My family home was in Brixton at that time. I had only recently left, but my mother still lived there.

    He talks of feeling ‘dehumanised’ by an ‘occupying force’ He was referring to the police force, and the ‘stop and Search’ policy. There is another side to this story.

    Living in Brixton in the mid to late seventies, was a very frightening time for indigenous people. It truly was like an ‘occupying force’ had taken over, although it wasn’t the police for us – it was the massive influx of West Indians and ‘Rastafarians’ who completely changed every facet of our lives. It changed a community, who lived in harmony and understanding, into one where the indigenous people felt threatened and intimidated.

    They brought the West Indies to the streets of Britain, and all that that entailed. They seemed to live their lives outside their houses, with armchairs outside and music playing all day and night. There were crowds of men outside every house all day long, and as a young woman walking up and down those streets, it was very intimidating, because they wouldn’t let you pass at any time without loads of sexual propositions being flung at you. Sometimes even blocking your way and laughing. They ruled those streets and there was nothing we could do.

    When the riots came in 1981, I had left, but my mother was still living in our family home in Railton road, at the heart of the fires. Her neighbours house was burnt down. My brother and I had to run the gauntlet of aggressive fighting between black men and the police, to try and get my mother out, before her house was also burnt down. What saved us all in the end, was my Mothers friendship with an elderly West Indian couple in the street, who stepped in and told the rioters to ‘leave her alone’

    Terrible memories, and a stark reminder to Mr Wheatley that, ‘there are two sides to every story'”

    1. We lived in a rented flat near Clapham Common and witnessed the riots in 1981. My wife was mugged at knifepoint on Crescent Lane by black boys and her handbag torn from her shoulder. Her Access card was used later that evening to purchase petrol in Penge. We recovered her handbag buried under food scraps in a waste paladin at the base of a chute on the estate where the boys were seen to run.

      We left London shortly afterwards and commuted from Cambridge.

      I have retained an intense dislike of those West Indians and Rastafarians ever since.

  55. Good morning and thank you for all of your support following my post of yesterday.

  56. Virginia governor to remove state of Confederate general Robert E Lee. 4 June 2020.

    Virginia governor Ralph Northam will announce plans to remove Richmond’s Confederate statue honouring General Robert E. Lee, amid tensions at America’s complicated racial history.

    The statue, which was unveiled in 1890, had been vandalised with slogans such as “stop white supremacy” during demonstrations against police brutality and the police-involved killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis last week.

    Another appeaser! Lee of course was not pro-slavery and only served the South out of a personal sense of honour and obligation to his Home State of Virginia.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/george-floyd-protests-robert-e-lee-statue-virginia-richmond-confederate-monument-a9547996.html

    1. But, but, but… if Virginia governor Ralph Northam plans to remove the state won’t that mean that he is making himself redundant?

    2. Perhaps they should be looking at Abe Lincoln’s statues.
      “In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. What he did believe was that, like all men, blacks had the right to improve their condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor. In this way they were equal to white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust“
      https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation

    3. If the blacks want to wipe all trace of white history from the record we can ignore their history as slaves which the current lot aren’t except to their own minds. If they want reparations we should give them a one way trip back to the village who’s chief sold their ancestors into slavery. Any takers?

      1. They complain about slavery which was abolished around 150 years ago, long before they were even born.

      2. They might once and for all recognise how fortunate they all are if they went back ‘home’ and tried to make a go of it.
        Most of them wouldn’t stay more than two weeks.
        Perhaps that’s the answer.
        Some thing as simple as an airline ticket. It could help to eliminate some of the huge shoulder chips.

  57. When you see the police kneeling before protesters and rioters you know we are ******. I am ashamed of the police for doing this.it shows they are with them and against us.A very sad day. and Boris can **** *** with his rules and regulations.

    1. By missing a space, your post has created a link to an Italian site! However I cannot agree more with your post, I am truly fed up with the leadership of the police force for supporting these idiotic acts, they did not come spontaeously, there must have been some police manager (I decline to use the word leader because the police force nowadays doesn’t know what that word means) to organise such a cretinous display of misplaced showboating.

    2. It’s called submission, or capitulation. It’s what someone does when they’re defeated.
      The police will have lost respect from both sides of the political divide. The Left will despise them for kneeling, and so will the conservative right.

      1. It goes along with islamification (islam = submission) and all the LGBTQWERTYUIOP nonsense.

  58. Apart from stamp duty and more urbanisation, a decent enough offering.

    The Government faces a triple Covid storm that may end in its destruction

    State failure, Tory splits and an economy in freefall could add up to an ‘ERM moment’ for Boris Johnson

    ALLISTER HEATH

    Which governments will the virus destroy? Will Donald Trump be toppled in November, the first domino to fall? Who will survive in Covid-struck France, Italy and Spain, as the crippling fallout, the job losses and the recriminations drag on for years? And what will happen to Boris Johnson, and his plans to remake Brexit Britain in his image?

    It would be idiotic for anybody to write off Johnson: the election is years away, and the Government’s poll ratings remain at Thatcher-era levels. The Dominic Cummings row cut through, and finally ended, the PM’s Covid-bounce, but was no terminal, “poll tax moment”. So far, his 2019 voters remain loyal.

    Yet for the first time, plausible scenarios exist under which a series of events triggered by the virus lead to the Government being annihilated, John Major-style, by a Keir Starmer-led Labour Party that is fast consolidating centre-Left support from the Lib Dems. Johnson and the Tory party must urgently recalibrate to prevent such a nightmare: the world has changed, and they must react more forcibly. The old levelling up and green agendas alone won’t cut it.

    The UK has suffered some 64,000 excess deaths so far, caused by the virus or a side-effect of the lockdown, a number which could end up being one of – or even the worst – in the West, when adjusted for population. But that is merely the backdrop to the looming storm in three acts that is about to engulf the Tories.

    The first is that the failures of the bureaucratic state are catching up with them: the incompetence of Public Health England, of the NHS logistics operation and of many other parts of the state apparatus have been on shocking display.

    The scientific advice was all over the place, relentlessly out of date and ever-shifting, but that was to be expected of a virus the Western establishment still doesn’t understand. The truly unforgivable failures were the “system’s” lack of preparedness for an epidemic other than flu; its inability to react to changing information; its pathetic struggle to source and deliver PPE; its refusal to cooperate effectively with the private sector; its failure to set up testing properly; and, worst of all, that care homes went unprotected and are still suffering huge death rates.

    Johnson rightly hired Baroness Harding and Lord Deighton to shake things up, and tracing will doubtless improve; but he must do a lot more. It isn’t the Johnson Government’s fault that PHE was set up in 2013, that nobody learnt from the SARS epidemics or that the “Blob” was so shockingly dysfunctional that it allowed the virus to spread easily in care homes. But it will certainly be its fault if it doesn’t rectify these flaws urgently, ahead of any potential second wave.

    Johnson should give a televised address to the nation in which he accepts that bad mistakes have been made, where he states that the system he inherited turned out to be catastrophically unfit for purpose and where he vows to change it. He must announce sweeping changes, high-profile sackings, greater accountability, a new policy to cocoon care homes, the abolition of PHE, the creation of British version of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, able and willing to work with the private sector, and an NHS that reports directly to the secretary of state. The longer Johnson waits, the more toxic the errors of the past few months will become for him.

    The second act follows from the first. The Government is unlocking too slowly because it fears that we are still suffering too many infections. It feels obliged to impose crude policies such as travel quarantines because its testing and tracing capacity remains feeble. Its new lockdown rules are in some cases unenforceable or unjust, partly because it is worried about the prospect of a flare-up. Tory MPs are starting to panic, and lashing out in all directions. Here, too, Johnson needs to step in and address concerns head-on in a televised address: he needs to explain his strategy and the rationale behind his actions more clearly. He must do more to keep MPs on side.

    But it is the looming economic storm that poses the gravest risk to the Government’s survival. Growth and employment will bounce back, but not by enough to prevent a surge in unemployment when the furlough and other support schemes are wound down. So far, the solutions that have been mooted have been what the Government wanted to do anyway, such as “green jobs”. The answers are excessively Keynesian: the kind of spending a Starmer or Emmanuel Macron would adopt. Yes, it makes sense to fast-forward infrastructure projects (but HS2 must be scrapped), especially roads and broadband.

    But doing so isn’t commensurate with the scale of the crisis. The Tories must learn again to love economic growth, and remember that allowing the private sector to create wealth still works beautifully. The Government was right to borrow more to cushion Britain from the epidemic; it must also borrow to “invest” in supply-side tax cuts to unleash enterprise. The fiscal rules must be ditched, and there mustn’t be any tax increases.

    Stamp duty should be slashed. Hiring staff in deprived areas should be NIC-free. All business investment should become immediately expensable. Numerous regulations should be axed, and banks allowed to dip into their capital. Freeports should be extended to cover larger, deprived areas. The planning rules should be changed properly, and a large amount of land released for new suburbs and garden cities. Tax cuts should be worth at least 3 per cent of GDP. The Bank of England should target nominal GDP growth, not consumer prices.

    Johnson must at all cost avoid an “ERM moment”, an episode in which confidence in his Government evaporates overnight. A recession met by conventional Treasury policies, combined with a second wave of the virus and an unreformed public health system, would be fatal.

    There is only one way for Johnson to rescue a Government blown off course by the pandemic. As with Brexit, he needs to be bolder and more radical than anybody could possibly imagine, and then sell his vision to a country desperate for the kind of sunlit uplands the PM has always specialised in.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/government-faces-triple-covid-storm-may-end-destruction/

    1. Johnson should give a televised address to the nation in which he accepts that bad mistakes have been made, where he states that the system he inherited turned out to be catastrophically unfit for purpose and where he vows to change it. He must announce sweeping changes, high-profile sackings, greater accountability, a new policy to cocoon care homes, the abolition of PHE, the creation of British version of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, able and willing to work with the private sector, and an NHS that reports directly to the secretary of state. The longer Johnson waits, the more toxic the errors of the past few months will become for him.

      This is admirable stuff, it should in fact have taken place without the Virus, but it is not to be. The British Bureaucratic State cannot be fixed without a revolution. It would need whole departments to be axed. The Ministry of Defence for one. The Home Office for another. It must all bumble on until it collapses into ruins along with the Country itself.

  59. Boy did we plant some bad seeds in the ground for community cohesion and happiness when we allowed Windrush to sail in and groups to migrate from Pakistan and the Punjab.

    BTW, I would support even 3 million coming from Hong Kong as they are very high quality people – I would support it 10 times more if we could export/deport 3 million of the worse-than-useless ones.

    1. 319933+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      Then to continue to cultivate the issue
      even more so through the mass uncontrolled immigration decades was an act of sheer mass insanity via the ballot booth.

    2. The original arrivals were fine; polite, well disciplined and hard working.
      It was the bloody race relations industry that destroyed their descendants.

    3. Sorry, Disqus is playing tricks on me again and I’ve lost my previous (ridiculous) post …

  60. Q: What is the phrase which for you, in the case of Covid-19, would give rise to the most scepticism and suspicion?

    A: Public Inquiry.

    1. Obviously the police holiday fund is looking for a top up as air fares are bound to be pricier now.

  62. There was an interesting exchange of comments last night with Max. It’s worth a look.
    Some say he should be banned but that would be a great pity as we should keep him on here purely for the entertainment value he provides. :-))

    1. I don’t believe he should be banned for his views (as idiotic as they are).

      One has to be really really naughty to get banned from here. I know.

    2. He expressed his opinions politely and provided food for thought. Unfortunately, I think he left the building this morning.

    4. Know your enemy springs to mind, by which although I do not consider him my enemy, I try to fathom their train of thought and reasoning.
      We should be aware of criticism made of the efforts to control free speech by the likes of social media forums, Facebook, Twitter etc, I do not wish to follow their example in any small way.

      1. Most of the people here are fairly towards the right in outlook – it does us no harm to see what others think.

        1. It’s a bit like reading the Mirror or Bildzeitung – to see how the other 1/2 live.

      2. You are all right. He poses interesting questions but you never really get a feel for his real thoughts. As you say a devil, advocate.

        1. Did you meet Cochrane in person you would find him affable, charming and personable; he would respond courteously and take a benign interest in you. On a longer acquaintance he would seek your opinions about current affairs, or other people, their opinions, characters or beliefs. Just in passing you understand; it would be confidences between friends; an intimate exchange, an encouragement to confide, to share your views and prejudices. If you were to enter his magic circle of friends and colleagues, either by chance or circumstance, you might note that the other people in it held opinions of you that did not reflect how you thought of yourself. If you were really perceptive you would also notice the general aura of admiration and respect for him contrasted with the dislike, jealousy and even mutual hatred between its members and which if it manifested itself he would smooth over. Just a really good guy. Of course if you were to even hint at understanding what was going on things would deteriorate rapidly. You would find yourself an outcast, an object of suspicion and derision, people who you thought liked you would cut you dead, say things that you didn’t understand. Stop talking when you approached. At this point it is not a matter of if you part company but when and the sooner the better.

          It is different on NoTTL. Personal charisma is lost in anonymity though the essentials remain. His technique of provocation; of asking for more, a link, an example, further proof, whatever, all this is a poorer version of his skills at personal interaction and manipulation. What he seeks is not an answer but that you should respond to the stimula he supplies. It doesn’t really matter if it is a serious response or simple abuse; it is all just grist to the mill of his vanity. He himself has no beliefs of any kind; he really doesn’t care about anything at all, he knows no difference between truth and lies, right or wrong, good or bad. To him they are all one and the same. He feels neither shame, guilt nor embarrassment and thus he can take any position, advance any idea and lie without limitation

          2. From your exposition it sounds as though I’ve taken the right approach of not interacting with him.

          3. 319933+ up ticks,
            Morning AS,
            Sounds like he could be a follower of an ideology they swear by in parliament.
            Lying seen to be made
            legal.

          5. I rather doubt if he has ‘a magic circle of friends’. As Our Great Leader dubbed him, he’s just yer average bog roll salesman.

          7. Wow. Have you met him or is this your assessment of his psychology. I am impressed with your summary of him. I agree but could not have expressed it as eloquently as you.

    6. Cochrane is a Troll. His influence on here has always been malign as he intended!

        1. Correct. He is very unpleasant to anyone who disagrees with him and whines if a response is unpleasant to him. He stalks those he doesn’t like. e.g. MInty.

    7. ‘Afternoon, Alf, I just blocked his maundering left-wing idiocy, thus removing the temptation to respond and feed him the oxygen of recognition, which he and his ilk, crave.

      1. Hello Tom, I have played him at his own game a couple of times and he gives up quite quickly. Have given links occasionally but he ignores them so I stopped. I quite enjoy baiting him but, as I say, I think he’s give up on me.

    8. He has departed of his own accord, or so he says. See an earlier post this morning.

  63. Sunak has performed well? Umm…

    As errors pile up on every front, it’s time for the smack of firm government

    Competence is hard to see in the quarantine, Parliament’s return and the tracing rollout. Let’s have less gestures, and more conviction

    LEO MCKINSTRY

    The stench of failure is beginning to hang over the Government. Its putrid fumes are spreading across almost every new initiative by ministers as they grapple with the continuing fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic.

    This was supposed to be the week that Downing Street reasserted its authority after the explosive row over Dominic Cummings’ flexible approach to lockdown. We were told that Boris Johnson would “take direct control” of the official response to the crisis, led by a shakeup of the Whitehall machine. There would be new committees, new teams, and new strategists, among them the impressive former aide to the Duke of Cambridge, Simon Case. Referring to the Prime Minister, one cheerleader proclaimed, “You are seeing his reawakening.”

    Yet today, the rhetoric sounds hollow. Far from advancing, the Government remains mired in accusations of ineptitude and poor judgement. Political capital is being wasted on misguided policies. The Tory party is badly divided. As the errors pile up on every front, public disillusion is mounting. One poll yesterday revealed that only 41 per cent of voters approve of the Government’s handling of the crisis, while 55 per cent disapprove.

    It is impossible to avoid the parallels with John Major’s discredited, embattled administration in 1992. Just like Boris Johnson, Major won a fourth, successive Tory electoral triumph with around 14 million votes, apparently banishing Labour to the wilderness. But five months after his victory at the ballot box, Major was engulfed in the storm that led to the humiliation of Black Wednesday, followed by public outrage over the massive pit closure programme.

    The Conservatives’ problems were made all the worse by the election of the new Labour leader John Smith, a clever lawyer who exuded an air of integrity. Major never recovered, as his broken party limped from one catastrophe to another.

    The current Government has not yet plumbed those depths, but it certainly lacks a sense of command, conviction and competence. The mess over the operation of Parliament this week is a classic example of a self-inflicted wound.

    With the lockdown still officially in force, many MPs wanted to stick with the hybrid model which allowed some of them to contribute and vote remotely. But the Government overruled this, insisting on a full return to previous practice, despite concerns about social distancing and the potential exclusion of MPs who still have to shield.

    The result was shambolic scenes, with lengthy queues snaking round the Palace of Westminster. Even worse, having caused such friction, the Government announced a u-turn by accepting remote participation. Now comes the news that the Business Secretary Alok Sharma is unwell and has undergone a coronavirus test.

    The result may not be positive, but this incident has caused real anger on all sides, reflected in the words of senior Labour MP Lisa Nandy last night after the report of Mr Sharma’s illness: “This is just awful. The Government stopped MPs from working from home and asked them to return to a building here social distancing is impossible. MPs are now travelling to every part of the country. Reckless does not even begin to describe it.”

    Further fuel to the flames of anti-Government hostility comes from the ill-conceived, ill-timed plan to impose quarantine on all travellers to Britain, including returning holidaymakers, for 14 days, backed up by the threats of surveillance and £1000 fines.

    Such a measure might have been useful when the outbreak began, but it is far too late now. A huge amount of chaos will be caused for no discernible benefit to public health. It reeks of the worst kind of gesture politics, designed to give the illusion of firmness when in reality it is riddled with contradictions and flaws.

    If the plan, set out by the Home Secretary Priti Patel yesterday, is fully implemented, then it will result in further devastation of the battered economy, especially the vital tourism and travel industries. One estimate is that, for every week of quarantine, Britain will lose £650 million. But if, as is likely, the plan proves unworkable, it will be an expensive, meaningless charade.

    The Government has managed to contort itself into the bizarre position of being both draconian and ineffectual, which is why the revolt in the Tory party is growing. “I cannot get my head around the mental health gymnastics of the policy,” said the former Cabinet Minister Liam Fox yesterday.

    The scientists have been just as scathing. Throughout the Covid-19 crisis, the Government has insisted that it follows the science, but that is obviously not true in this case. At yesterday’s briefing Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Officer, revealed that the experts on SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) had not been asked to provide advice on the quarantine scheme. Openly sceptical of its effectiveness, he said that decisions on such a measure are “something for politicians to make.” Other scientists have been even more dismissive. Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh said that the step “makes no sense as a public health measure” and its timing was “very odd.”

    The quarantine dispute further undermines the credibility of the fraying lockdown. Much of the public is no longer listening as ministers issue ever more complex instructions that go unobserved or unenforced. Indeed yesterday, during the Black Lives Matter protests in central London, the police gave up any pretence of even trying to uphold social distancing rules.

    On every front, the Government has been forced on to the defensive. Only last week, ministers announced the advent of a “world-beating” track and trace system which would exploit expanded testing capacity and new mobile technology to contain the virus. Yet, the start to this initiative has been shambolic, partly because the phone app is not yet fully operable and management of the tracers’ workload seems poor. “I have had absolutely nothing to do. The system was obviously not ready,” said one nurse who was recruited as a tracer.

    The Tories are meant to be the party of strong borders and immigration controls, but here again the Government is losing its grip. The latest official figures show that, in the last year, a record-breaking 677,000 people arrived in Britain, most of them from outside the EU. Meanwhile, the Home Office has shown its habitual feebleness in the face of the growing influx of illegal migrants across the England Channel, with almost 1600 people reaching our shores in this manner since the lockdown began.

    In fact, at times our authorities almost act as if they are a quasi-ferry service for people smugglers. And Government pledges to reduce immigration will be completely blown apart if ministers act on their pledge to give the entire 3.5 million population of Hong Kong the right to settle here.

    Even in the pit of unpopularity, John Major presided over a growing economy but Boris Johnson’s Government does not even have that solace. The post-Covid slump is certain to be painful, as businesses collapse, entire sectors are ravaged, and the public finances take a battering. Once the expensive furlough and self-employment job protection schemes end in the autumn, unemployment is likely to soar.

    The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has shown energy and imagination in propping up the economy with vast sums of borrowed money, but the road back to economic normality is going to be a brutally tough one for him. Still, he has performed better than many others in the cabinet, whose ranks are dominated by inexperienced lightweights. There is a justified sense that too many of them are out of their depth in this unprecedented crisis.

    More that sixty years ago, this newspaper famously wrote in an editorial that Sir Anthony Eden needed to show “the smack of firm government.” Exactly the same is required today.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/04/errors-pile-every-front-time-smack-firm-government/

    1. We are a country out of control. Led by Utopians.

      1 : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a
      utopia especially : having impossibly ideal conditions especially of
      social organization. 2 : proposing or advocating impractically ideal
      social and political schemes utopian idealists.

      1. Utopia = no place. These idiotic policies certainly have no place in the real world.

    2. Further fuel to the flames of anti-Government hostility comes from the ill-conceived, ill-timed plan to impose quarantine on all travellers to Britain, including returning holidaymakers, for 14 days, backed up by the threats of surveillance and £1000 fines.

      Such a measure might have been useful when the outbreak began, but it is far too late now. A huge amount of chaos will be caused for no discernible benefit to public health. It reeks of the worst kind of gesture politics, designed to give the illusion of firmness when in reality it is riddled with contradictions and flaws.

      Out of all the measures the Government have tried quarantine is probably the most stupid!

    3. with lengthy queues snaking round the Palace of Westminster.

      Welcome to our world.
      Having said that, the queue at Morrison’s was negligible. No arrows and barriers everywhere, directing its customers, apart from at the tills, where there was a single queue from one aisle to the tills that were open. Some customers were wearing masks, most were not, and neither were the staff. It was a much more relaxed shopping experience than it’s been elsewhere, much more like normal.

      1. Morrisons is superb. An example to the others. Cheerful staff, no masks, no eggs yesterday but that was all..

        1. As I said earlier, we only used Morrisons in an emergency. Not impressed by range, layout or staff.

          Clearly, they have made the most of the plague by providing a much better service. The MR (who is in charge of food shopping) has been impressed by the range and quality of what is on offer – and by the ease with which one can move around the store.

          The contrast with Tesco this morning was vast. I was shocked at how hidebound Tesco – and its staff – were.

        2. Our Morrisons has been good right from the start of this – one in & one out, so at quiet times there’s no queue. I go late afternoon on a Friday, which is my normal time. The staff have mostly been working there for years and have coped very well and cheerfully.

          1. We don’t have a Morrisons locally. I’d have to drive to Market Drayton or Nantwich.

      2. Exactly the same as our Morrison’s. They’re paying lip service to the rules and the car park is full and nobody is queuing. Every seems happy. Good on ‘em. V said when we were there today that we’re do more shopping there than Waitrose, our preferred supermarket.

    5. I think Sunak knows perfectly well that what he did was very bad for the economy.

        1. The net zero shyte? Yes. I would never have believed that I would see so much insanity passing before my eyes, and be unable to do anything about it, even anything as small as voting.

    6. Further fuel to the flames of anti-Government hostility comes from the ill-conceived, ill-timed plan to impose quarantine on all travellers to Britain, including returning holidaymakers, for 14 days, backed up by the threats of surveillance and £1000 fines.

      Such a measure might have been useful when the outbreak began, but it is far too late now. A huge amount of chaos will be caused for no discernible benefit to public health. It reeks of the worst kind of gesture politics, designed to give the illusion of firmness when in reality it is riddled with contradictions and flaws.

      Out of all the measures the Government have tried quarantine is probably the most stupid!


    7. The current Government has not yet plumbed those depths, but it certainly lacks a sense of command, conviction and competence.

      As for plumbing the depths, I’m not so sure:

      From yesterday:

      https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/03/britain-unleashes-green-new-deal-to-kill-whats-left-of-the-economy/
      Delingpole: Britain Unleashes a Green New Deal to Kill What’s Left of the Economy
      UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has found an ingenious scheme to ensure that Britain never recovers from the economic damage caused by the lockdown: a ‘green industrial revolution.’

      “Rishi Sunak is planning a ‘green industrial revolution’ to help to create jobs for people who are made redundant because of the pandemic.
      The chancellor is preparing to bolster the government’s investment in clean energy as part of an economic stimulus package next month. There could also be a fund to help to ‘reskill’ workers so they can get green jobs in areas such as insulation upgrades, offshore wind and carbon capture.
      The measures are understood to go significantly beyond the Conservatives’ manifesto commitment to create two million jobs in clean energy within the next decade. The Tories have promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2050.”

      A green industrial revolution is a bit like the original industrial revolution, except for one or two crucial differences: instead of boosting prosperity, creating jobs and stimulating economic growth, it does the exact opposite.

      I wouldn’t exactly be praising Sunak. He’s been spraying our money around like it’s going out of fashion, and has now gone full-on Greta Thunberg.
      The only thing that’s left for this administration to do to put the final nail in the coffin is for the cabinet to go out into Downing Street, and kneel before the mob of communist agitators at the gates, begging their forgiveness for being the wrong colour and having white privilege.

  64. George Floyd’s family’s attorney has claimed that there is an ongoing genocide of black Americans:
    “The countless deaths of black men and women is a form of “genocide,” according to Benjamin Crump — a civil rights lawyer who has taken on the cases of Martin, Brown, Rice, Arbery, and Taylor and will now represent Floyd’s family as well — and the killing of Floyd follows the same pattern of systematic racism.”

    From Tucker Carlson’s show last night, here are some statistics that have been kept by the Washington Post on all fatal police killings:

    In 2019 there were 1004 police killings.
    Of those, where the race of the suspects was recorded, i.e. 802:
    371 were white
    236 were black
    The vast majority were armed. African Americans were more likely to be armed, but more white suspects were killed.
    There were 10 cases last year where unarmed African Americans were killed by the police. In all but two, the officers were not charged as body cams showed they acted in self defence. Ten does not count as genocide. Neither does 236.

    In 2013, (single victim, single offender) the murder statistics were:
    3005 whites murdered. Offenders: 2509 white, 409 black
    2491 blacks murdered. Offenders: 189 white, 2245 black

    It’s less genocide, more suicide.

    https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls

    1. If there is genocide of black Americans it is being done mostly by other black Americans

  65. Morning all, I have just had a phone call from the Doctors surgery offering me a pneumococcal vaccine.

    Has anyone here had it and are there any downsides in their experience?

    I must admit this is a new one on me.

    1. It is actually the new name for euthanasia…{:¬))

      Be afraid – be very afraid…!!

      1. We have a friend who was very ill and had to be rushed to hospital as an emergency a day or so after having the pneumococcal vaccine a year ago.

      2. Don’t avoid. It is long established and protects against a number of the pneumococcal bacteria.

          2. I’ll take my chance I think. I’m not an anti-vaxxer by any means, but so far I’ve not bothered with the flu vaccine or the pneumo ones. I haven’t had any of the illnesses listed.

    4. Pneumonia jabs – had it aged 70 – no problem.
      SWMBO had pneumonia, flu & shingles jabs at the same time – shingles has some ” live constituents” – unwell for a few days

      1. I probably should have had the shingles one but I didn’t – got shingles last year instead.

          4. You are being very rude, even by your standards, and deserve everything she hurls at you. I’m going to stand aside and watch. {:^))

          5. Younger brother, one husband and two sons; I can take it!
            Plus a little lite lunatic control.

          8. Er, exercise causes problems with hips and knees…{:¬))

            Just sit still and read the dross enlightened comment on here…

          9. Er, exercise causes problems with hips and knees…{:¬))

            Just sit still and read the dross enlightened comment on here…

          11. Having seen friends and patients with shingles, I would advise the jab.
            And I’m not exactly a vaccine fan, which is why I don’t bother with the flu jab.

          12. I had shingles last year and it was unpleasant to say the least. But can one get it again?

          13. Yes, I think is the answer. And I think it is recommended not to have the jab within a year of having shingles. Shingrix is a newer vaccine without the live element (in short supply and difficult to get hold of and more expensive) Zostavax is the vaccine which is used by the nhs. The reviews scared me stiff (!) but our son did remind me that thousands would be ok and thus not even think to review it. It is difficult to know what to do…..on the one hand…. but on the other hand…… and the word ‘vaccine’ is starting to have very sinister connotations in my head.

          14. We had the typhoid jab before we went to Kenya in February – I’d forgotten the others were all still valid for five years. (DTP) But that’s the only one we’ve had recently. Neither of us so far has bothered with the flu ones, and as they have to decide well in advance what strain is likely to be coming, it’s all a bit hit and miss.

          15. When the pox (chicken is your case) escapes down one of your spinal nerves from its hideaway in the spine it attacks skin cells and an almighty battle produces pain and blisters until retreat is the only option…….until the next time.

          16. Unfortunately, yes J.

            I have had it seven times!
            The vaccination/injection has worked for me!
            Depending on which research you read, it often
            happens if you are susceptible to cold sores, eczema,
            …etc.

            Good afternoon.

          17. Seven times! Cripes! I had chicken pox when I was 12, and shingles last year, but have never suffered from cold sores or eczema.
            If I’m still alive when they offer it again I might say yes this time.

    5. I had it in January, Jay. No downside as far as I can tell.
      GP D-i-L recommended I take up the offer.

  66. From the Telegraph –
    “A Spanish porn star is being investigated on charges of manslaughter
    after a man died at his house due to the effects of inhaling vapour from
    the venom of a toad.”

    WTF ! !

        1. Do you mind? I’m just eating my breakfast; OK – brunch to you early birds.

          1. Good grief, woman; how can you lie in bed when there are fires to be laid, doorsteps to be scrubbed….and all before the milkman comes?

          2. 🙂 I’ve got a reprieve. Today was another clearing out Elderly Chum’s house day, but my partner-in-crime’s aunt popped her clogs, so we’ve postponed until next week.
            So, while dossing around, I will sort out stuff at Allan Towers – again. Boxes here, bags there, but nowhere for them to go.

          4. No, just taking advantage of this interminable national muddle to sort out stuff. Some can be binned, but the charity shop items are just accumulating in my playroom.

          5. We have lots of bubble wrap if you are short. The MR completed the unpacking on Tuesday….. Also boxes….of boxes.

          7. As a kid I heard our neighbour call out………”Milkman have you got half a stork” ?
            No he replied “No Lady, it’s the way the wind catches me apron”.

          9. I was tempted to ask whether that was a normal payment method in Gloucestershire, but my usual, gentlemanly self-restraint prevented me.

          12. Ok – it must have been someone else who clanked the gate at those times. Or maybe the thief who nicked one of our icepacks.

      2. Given the nature of his profession you do have to wonder which hole…..?

  67. Well, there IS a market in Fakenham. Almost all the usual stalls. Some lip-service paid to distancing, but not much. It was all pretty like it ought to be.

    Then we went to Tesco – for just half a dozen things. What a bloody nightmare. Arrows; one-way systems; gauleiters enforcing the arrows; half the tills unmanned. Bossy customers telling one to follow the rules. Fifteen minute wait for a till – only to be that we could have gone straight to the (hateful) self-operated tills.

    The complete opposite to Morrisons – a store which, until the plague, I had only patronised in emergency.

    And it has turned jolly cold. Rain later. For the next few days – apparently.

    3. Popped out for a bit of shopping. Iceland fine: the usual notices and things stuck on the floor, but no cashiers cowering behind plexiglass. Everyone shopping as normal. To my surprise, as they can be a bit prissy, Boots was the same.
      B&M Bargains had a queue, so I gave them a miss.
      The longest queue that was backing up onto the road and causing parking problems, was for McDonalds. May the bloated blobs all get C19.

  68. ‘We will take over’: Australian leader of extremist Islamic group says US riots are an ‘opportunity’ for Muslims to seize global leadership and impose Sharia law. 4 June 2020.

    A controversial Muslim preacher is predicting Islam will replace the United States as the world’s dominant geopolitical force.
    Ismail al-Wahwah, the Australian spiritual leader of hardline Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, has suggested riots across the US would bring down the global superpower.

    He’s just a little previous and he has the wrong continent. Europe will be a part of the Caliphate by 2050 and if there’s further destabilisation, Civil, Economic, as seems likely it could happen even sooner!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8385977/Hizb-ut-Tahrir-leader-Ismail-al-Wahwah-says-riots-cause-downfall-Islam-over.html

      2. Yes I think it will be Muslims and China slogging it out for chief globablist as they both seem to think they have a god-given right to rule the world. One can only hope they destroy each other in the process and leave the rest of us to get one with life in peace.

    3. It is a warning to the west what the Muslims are up to. The extreme Muslims will frighten the moderates to follow them. I hope our politicians take note and be prepared.

    5. 319933+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      I assume that is Pm, as in ten to nine in the evening then we have another first
      because with the current voters help and sticking to the same voting pattern we will be fully converted and down on the knees bike park fashion by
      eight am.

    6. If Islam were to take over the world, you wouldn’t need to die before experiencing Hell.

  69. Ordering Pizza In 2020

    CALLER:

    Is this Gordon’s Pizza?

    GOOGLE:
    No sir, it’s Google Pizza.

    CALLER:
    I must have dialled a wrong number. Sorry.

    GOOGLE:
    No sir, Google bought Gordon’s Pizza last month.

    CALLER:
    OK. I would like to order a pizza.

    GOOGLE:
    Do you want your usual, sir?

    CALLER:

    My usual? You know me?

    GOOGLE:

    According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms
    and meatballs on a thick crust.

    CALLER:
    OK! That’s what I want …

    GOOGLE:

    May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula,sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust?

    CALLER:
    What? I detest vegetable!

    GOOGLE:
    Your cholesterol is not good, sir.

    CALLER:
    How the hell do you know!

    GOOGLE:

    Well,
    we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.

    CALLER:

    Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetable pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.

    GOOGLE:

    Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased only one box of 30 cholesterol tablets once, at Drug RX Network, 4 months ago.

    CALLER:
    I bought more from another drugstore.

    GOOGLE:
    That doesn’t show on your credit card statement.

    CALLER
    I paid in cash.

    GOOGLE:
    But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement.

    CALLER:
    I have other sources of cash.

    GOOGLE:

    That doesn’t show on your last tax return unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law.

    CALLER:
    WHAT THE HELL!

    GOOGLE:
    I’m sorry, sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you.

    CALLER:

    Enough already! I’m sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I’m going to an island without internet, cable TV,
    where there is no cell phone service and no one to watch me or spy on me.

    GOOGLE:
    I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago…

      1. Whenever I order a book from Amazon, the estimated delivery date is always immediately inserted into my Outlook calendar automatically.
        When I lived in Sweden, my passport No, made my Visa card function like a PIN No. would. How the Hell did Visa know my passport No,?

        1. Creepy. I don’t use Outlook but Google’s just as bad. I’ve always turned off location tracking.

    2. Horribly near the truth.
      Wait till you go to your GP (yes, I know) feeling a little tired and breathless. A quick check will reveal you buy butter and cream on a regular basis; according to the latest fad, you are ignoring medical advice, so you can die of heart failure. It’s your own fault and it will teach your family a lesson (apart from your son who has already grassed you up to his teacher).

      1. Since you raised the topic, we notice that your purchases (seasonally adjusted) of Fevertree Mediterranean Tonic Water defy all medically acceptable norms and you are hereby banned from buying any more limes. Both your sons concur with this decision. {:^))

  70. Lots of concerned people very worried about where we can put all those people from Hong Kong
    So how about swapping them for 3 million of our lefty metropolitan elites and remainers.
    They love a bit of communism for the masses
    And our countries productivity would soar once all those dead weight academics were out of the way, especially Ferguson

    2. I’d not be surprised if Ferguson were to be found in the forest somewhere, having “suicided”.
      There’s precedent.

      1. Nay, Ferguson is a good boy who won’t depart from the script! No danger of him committing suicide!

        1. A government spokesman said: “Professor Ferguson accepted he
          made a serious error of judgement and stepped back from his
          involvement in Sage.

          “Prof Ferguson and his group have directly fed into SPI-M
          meetings since the beginning of the Covid outbreak.

          “Since then he has not attended any Sage meetings.

          “His research group at Imperial College is one of the leading
          authorities in the world on epidemics and it is important that
          we continue to have access to their work and that of other
          expert groups.”

          Delighted to see that after all the mad Marxist professor’s past
          errors that the Government still intend to take him seriously!

          1. Seems to me they took absolutely no notice of “other expert groups”, just the wrong one!

  71. Hello, Playmates!

    Rod Liddle has got it (Spectator):

    “The Twitter feed of BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren (remember, I read this stuff so you don’t have to) is full of plaintive whining that no cabinet minister will agree to appear on her benighted programme. The Twitter feed of her chief presenter, Emily Maitlis, is largely a screed of bile and petulance directed at the government, some of which is usefully later recycled into her opening programme monologue.

    Unless Esme has had her brain scooped out with a soup spoon you might expect her to have found a connection between these two facts. Not a bit of it. ‘Cabinet minister, what is it about Newsnight, with its left-wing presenters, left-wing reporters, left-wing agenda and loathing of the government that makes you reluctant to travel across London for a late-night interview?’ It’s a tough one, isn’t it?

    The BBC’s commendably swift decision to upbraid both Maitlis and Wren (rather than forcing the thousands of angry viewers to go through the labyrinthine complaints procedure) just might be a sign that even the corporation has grown tired of its overpaid, grandstanding, virtue-signalling presenters and their inability to tell the difference between fact and their own adolescent opinions, as reflected back to them via their social media groupies.

    I think I detect the hands of Fran Unsworth, director of news and current affairs, and David Jordan, director of editorial policy and standards, in the swiftness of the reprimand, although I cannot be certain. They are both good journalists who I know worry about the impartiality of the BBC and the distance it has moved from the core values of its benefactors, the licence fee payers. But what will come of it all, do you suppose? My guess is nothing, pretty much, in the end.

    In July last year, when I appeared on the programme and was subjected to a tirade of abuse from Maitlis, the complaints piled up. The BBC complaints unit upheld the complaint in its entirety: Maitlis had been ‘sneering and bullying’ and had allowed her personal animosity to colour the interview, such as it was.

    I contacted the programme’s editor after the adjudication and asked what she was going to do about it. A languid couple of weeks later she replied, saying, effectively, ‘Naff all and there’s nothing you can do about it, you bigoted whore.’

    Or kinda words to that effect. To quote directly from Esme’s email: ‘In this particular case the action point was to remind the programme “the need to ensure rigorous questioning of controversial views does not lead to a perceived lack of impartiality”, which has been noted.’

    So just to note it, then. But she didn’t even note it, because Maitlis was quickly back to her same old schtick. Much though she irritates me, the presenter is far from the only one to blame. She may not even be the main person to blame. Esme Wren, as editor, is perhaps more responsible for having let that opening look-at-me-folks monologue go through without alteration, which is sackable in itself and even more so given the previous warning.

    But even she is not wholly to blame. When I emerged from that Newsnight interview last summer (somewhat unwell, having just thrown up in the green room as a consequence of food poisoning), some Newsnight lackey told me that the reason Maitlis had been so ferocious (and indeed slanderous) was because there had been grave objections from within the Newsnight team about having me on at all, me being a fascist and stuff. So she had attempted to compensate by not letting me say anything and not asking questions relating to the reasons I was there, i.e. Brexit. It was enough simply to howl ‘racist’, as it so often is.

    And that’s the real problem: the suffocating monoculture of Newsnight, the lack of diversity of opinion — a problem for all BBC news and current affairs programmes, but Newsnight especially. There was nobody in a programme meeting to offer a counter view: ‘Oh, you know, I don’t think he’s racist at all. I think he’s right.’ Just as during the Brexit debate there was nobody to say: ‘Well, perhaps we should leave — and maybe those predictions of calamity are wide of the mark.’

    And nobody to say: ‘You know, I think Dominic Cummings was justified in going to Durham and I don’t think he should be sacked.’ I will bet you a free dinner for two in Barnard Castle that nobody said that in a Newsnight meeting. Eventually you reach the point where because everybody on the programme thinks the same thing, they think it’s the truth, not opinion at all. And they are buttressed in that epic delusion by their friends, who think the same thing again and by the jabbering mania of Twitter, which they think is representative of the real world.

    By the same token, there was unanimity across the BBC — not just on Newsnight — that the violent protests in the US in support of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a white cop, were entirely justified, no matter how many neighbourhoods got torched, and that the policeman was a murderous racist bigot just like Trump.

    In those editorial meetings at Today and the World at One and the Ten O’Clock News, I will guarantee nobody said: ‘Well, that policeman was brutal. And now he has been charged with murder, which is what’s meant to happen. Is it, then, absolutely necessary to set fire to shops, houses, cars and throw bricks through people’s windows? Shouldn’t we question the rectitude of the rioters — I mean, just a little bit?’ “

    1. “…the lack of diversity of opinion — a problem for all BBC news and current affairs programmes…”

      About 15 years ago a big name in the BBC news setup (a woman) was reported to have said the anyone holding anti-EU opinions must be a bit mad and dangerous and was unlikely to be invited into a BBC studio. Helen Woods is a name that comes to mind but I can’t find a report of the incident.

      1. Which would have meant not inviting that well-known racist/bigot/xenophobe…….err….Tony Benn.

    2. Helen Boaden is almost certainly the name I was looking for. She became director of BBC News in 2004. As long ago as 2005 the BBC was criticised for its less than impartial coverage of the EU†.

      After the Muslim bombings in London of that year she instructed BBC staff not to refer to the bombers as terrorists because the term “can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding”.

      I still haven’t been able to find the specific reference to anti-EU sentiment and insanity. It might have involved Lord Strathclyde.

      † http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4536705.stm
      † http://news-watch.co.uk/category/bbc-bias/page/13/

    3. …….and the killing of a [black] retired police chief by a mob of young blacks.

      1. Douglas Murray
        Why are street protestors exempt from the corona clause?
        From magazine issue: 6 June 2020

        It is nearly four years since Black Lives Matter had their first major protest in London. Emulating their US counterparts, the protestors held up their hands and chanted ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’, a chant popularised after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. By then it had been known for a year that before his death Brown almost certainly said no such thing and had lunged for the arresting officer’s gun before being shot.

        Still the London protestors chanted what they believed Michael Brown had said, as they processed along Oxford Street, accompanied by unarmed British policemen who couldn’t have shot them if they’d wanted to.

        Two weeks later a crowd gathered in Hyde Park chanting ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ and other BLM slogans. By the end of the evening a police officer had been stabbed, four other PCs had been injured and a young man chased into the middle of one of London’s busiest streets and set upon by three men wielding a machete. It isn’t so very far away, this cocktail that is roiling America. But it is one import that we could most definitely do without.

        Scenes in London last weekend were less dramatic than in America, but after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police officer (now under arrest) they simmered in the same atmosphere: that here is a cause so undeniably clear and just that anything — even the law — must bend before it. In the US, protests were swiftly followed by rioting, looting and burning across the nation. The admirably diverse minority of protestors who have already ruined this cause are ransacking and burning an equally diverse range of targets, black homes and shops among them. For their part, the major corporations appear to believe that the looting of their stores is simply a good opportunity to reaffirm their allegiance to BLM, announce the hiring of more diversity officers and otherwise beg the mobs of protestors and Antifa activists to pass them by. Justin Timberlake and Harry Styles were among the celebrities who committed to pay the legal fees of people arrested.

        For days CNN egged things on in similar fashion. Then last Friday evening protestors gathered outside the channel’s headquarters in Atlanta, graffitied the station’s logo, smashed glass front, hurled projectiles inside and tried to storm the building as the police held them back and terrified journalists reported live from the lobby of their own workplace. Had the attackers been Trump supporters the network might have had something to say about it. But over the days that followed, ‘frustration’ and ‘a sense of not being listened to’ continued to be trotted out by CNN as the reasons why America was burning.

        Like America, Britain is still meant to be in corona lockdown. But here, as there, this one cause was granted a mass exemption. On Sunday, thousands of protestors gathered in Trafalgar Square, and from there processed to the US embassy by way of Downing Street where parts of the crowd stopped to shout ‘Fuck the police’ at the men and women on duty.

        Politicians who spent recent weeks shaming people over their lockdown childcare arrangements seemed supremely relaxed about this. Few even dared to notice. One who did attracted the attention of Dawn Butler MP, who just last month was claiming that Boris Johnson’s promise to relax the lockdown was ‘sending people out to catch the virus’. On Sunday, the same Dawn Butler harangued a fellow MP who presumed to worry whether the London protest might lead to a second corona spike. ‘Don’t you dare!’ Butler boomed. ‘Don’t even go there!’

        Our media turned out to share this BLM exemption clause. With thousands of people gathered around her, a reporter from Sky News declared: ‘Of course gatherings of this nature are illegal at the moment, but people are feeling very strongly about what they have seen in the United States.’

        When the matter of the law was raised to a somewhat theatrical young protestor he declared the virus was something ‘we might not all catch’ whereas ‘they’re killing people’ and so he needed to stop people being ‘killed and beaten up and blown up in the streets’. You might say any number of things to that young man if you had a chance. You might ask why the police here are so indistinguishable from the police over there. Whether the police over there are quite what he thinks they are. That while the violent actions of some US police might be motivated by racism, other factors (not least a heavily armed citizenry) also exist. You might even ask why when a white American like Tony Timpa was suffocated by police in 2016 this same rioting and looting did not kick off.

        Yet as with his American counterparts you can predict the list of claims that would be trotted out. Like other protestors on Sunday he might try to pretend that Mark Duggan was an entirely innocent man, incomprehensibly shot by the racist British police. And besides, there is Grenfell Tower, the ‘hostile environment’ and much more. That whole panoply of untruths and half-truths that have been pumped through our society all but unopposed to persuade people to believe that the least racist societies on earth are in fact the most racist.

        If you are a public figure, it is very tempting to go along with this, like Timberlake and Styles. But consequences have a habit of catching up with people as they do with societies. Last Friday the NBA writer Chris Martin Palmer could be found on social media posting a photo of a burning building in Minneapolis. ‘Burn that shit down. Burn it all down,’ he tweeted. A day later he was denouncing calls for peaceful protests. ‘That doesn’t do anything,’ he railed. ‘They don’t pay attention until you start burning shit.’ A day later Palmer’s own neighbourhood was being attacked. ‘They tried to climb the gates,’ he gasped on social media. ‘They had to beat them back. Then destroyed a Starbucks and are now in front of my building. Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood. Go back to where you live.’

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

        baysider • 7 hours ago • edited
        What happened to George Floyd was shocking. The abandonment of basic journalism by a media intent on emoting hysterically has been almost as horrifying.

        You might think that the fact that although Floyd was clearly a victim of police brutality it is still far from being proven that his death was racially motivated would have been worth mentioning. But I don’t think I’ve heard any mainstream media outlet mention it. Apparently the fact that he and his killer were of different races is enough to hurl the basic elements of criminal law out of the window.

        Talking of the elements of criminal law, we have seen journalists demand to know why Chauvin wasn’t charged with first degree homicide, as if the charge ought to be determined by how strongly the mob feels about the crime rather than whether it is provable on the facts. Already we have seen the DA increase the charge from third degree homicide (on which he looked to be bang to rights) to second degree homicide, which requires a strong degree of intent to kill and which may not be provable at trial. This stuff really matters, but there doesn’t appear to have been an iota of coverage of whether this is a good idea. If Chauvin is acquitted because a grandstanding public official caved to hysterical media outrage and charged him with a crime that couldn’t be proven beyond reasonable doubt, the country might well go up in flames again. You wouldn’t think this was any sort of concern from the media coverage, though.

        It might also be worth mentioning that in a country of 330 million people, only nine unarmed black people met their deaths at the hands of law enforcement officials in 2019, and some of them were apparently attempting to attack the police notwithstanding their lack of weapons. Every death is a tragedy for those concerned, but would it not be worth mentioning this fact (which means that an unarmed black person in the US is more likely to die from bee or wasp stings than from police intervention) when some demagogic politician absurdly alleges that black men live in mortal peril from the cops every time they step outside? Or the fact that nineteen unarmed white people perished in confrontations with law enforcement during the same period? When the fact that white people are less likely to be involved with the authorities is taken into account, you’re actually significantly more likely to be meet your death if you encounter the police if you’re unarmed and white than if you’re black and unarmed.

        As Mr Murray suggests, this failure to report basic and relevant facts seems to be motivated by a desire to portray the least racist societies that have ever existed as some of the most prejudiced – in other words to sustain a narrative that is the direct opposite of the truth. The media as we have known it appears utterly moribund, but a hanging man can kicking violently and uncontrollably in his death throes. Let’s just hope this one doesn’t kick the whole house down before it goes.

    5. “…the labyrinthine complaints procedure…”which serves only to drag your complaint over 3 months, including misinterpreting, not replying within timescales and then refraining from sending a “closed” notice so that one can then go to OfCom.

  72. The animals crippled by litter:
    Shocking photos show desperate wildlife caught in rubbish as RSPCA appeals for Britons to pick up their trash
    The RSPCA has revealed it has had over 21,000 reports of animals caught in litter in the past five years
    Plastic, netting, household waste and a variety of other items are increasingly killing off animals
    Greater London saw a total of 1,618 calls made in five years about general and angling litter
    RSPCA are urging people to ensure they take litter home with them – especially those who are going out more since the lockdown
    restrictions…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/edb033cac0fa836bc4cca802fd4e70db8478b5f24ab59b477a77c4375d7554b8.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8388209/Shocking-photos-wildlife-caught-rubbish-RSPCA-appeals-Brits-pick-trash.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed_deskto

    1. People are disgusting and thoughtless. Those piles of ribbish left last weekend are just the latest and the tip of the iceberg.

    2. I feel insulted by the words “anglers’ litter”. The people who do this, I don’t even see it at the venues I go to, don’t deserve the title ‘anglers’, danglers perhaps.

    1. Reminds me of one edition of “I’m sorry I havent a Clue” where the game was to come up with epitaphs for well known people, the one I liked was “Here lies Jeffrey Archer”.

  74. Q: What is the phrase which for you, in the case of Covid-19, would give rise to the most scepticism and suspicion?

    A: Public Inquiry.

          2. Thanks for that response, Dudes.

            Some truly wonderful tracks you gave me there (plus a few I confess to not knowing).

        1. Been a looooong time since I heard that – always thought it one of their best.

        1. Love Thijs van Leer’s yodelling and Jan Akkerman’s superb guitar work on that wonderful track.

          1. and from a rather emotional time in life, also associated with lots of driving through the Grampians from Aberdeen to the Moray Firth through the mountains in 1990… https://youtu.be/0-EF60neguk
            I hope more han one entry is allowed…

        1. I thought Happy was a dwarf person of low stature?
          I’ll get me coat…

      8. Good choice. One of the few singles I ever had – now lost. Strange Band on there too.

          2. Elvis Presley often said that the Big ‘O’ was a better singer than he was.

    1. There are some people you just want to slap. Then slap them again. Hope she goes for a kebab soon.

    2. Full marks to the squaddies (if that is what they are) for ignoring the shouty harridan.

    3. Why are they not charged with defacing public property? They’re an utter disgrace.

  79. Face coverings to be made compulsory on public transport in England. 4 June 2020.

    Face coverings on public transport will be compulsory from 15 June in England to help stop the transmission of coronavirus as more people go back to work, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has said.

    The government will require people to wear face coverings on buses, trains, tubes and other modes of public transport from that date, when non-essential shops are likely to reopen.

    Another useless and stupid move. The time for all these things was eight weeks ago when the Virus was at its height!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/face-masks-to-be-made-compulsory-on-public-transport-in-england

    3. Are face masks to be removed when in range of cameras? It seems that the surveillance society is taking second place.

    5. The arse-about-face government or the late government? It will be the latter if they do not get their act (do they have one?) together.

  80. We sent this to our MP today. We could have written a screenplay for a Carry On film.

    Where to begin?

    What is this (your government) doing to this once great country?

    This is probably the worst Socialist Government in the history of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party could not have dreamt up such a list of draconian and deceitful measures as this one. We thought in December last year that the country had elected a Conservative Government. How wrong could we be.

    We may be leaving the EU but that’s a big IF at the moment. Let’s take a look at what has happened.

    We are still a long way from prosecuting all the predominantly Pakistani Rape gang members. When will the full report be published? Or is it being carefully “tidied up” because the Government expects us all to riot when we see the evidence of what went on? Maybe the Government is afraid that the Pakistanis will riot? What is being done about the policemen and women and the very senior ones like Chief Constables who said that girls from the age of 11 – 15 had sex with Pakistani men that was consensual. Sex with anybody under the age of 16 cannot be consensual. It is against the law. The same goes for the Senior Social Workers who said these girls had made a lifestyle choice. No action against anybody here apart from the whistleblowing social worker who was then hounded out of her job.

    Then we have the case of illegal immigrants. There is a conspiracy between the Home Secretary, the Head of the Border Force and the French Navy, to aid and abet the Human Traffickers bringing illegal immigrants to the territorial waters of this country. We have, we understand, paid France £61 million to stop this happening. It is a National Disgrace and against the law but there will be no prosecutions. Meanwhile the British public has to fund their housing, food and clothing, etc.

    Now we come to the biggest fraud and scandal of this millennium – Covid 19 death figures. The whole thing really took off when a bunch of charlatans from Imperial College came up with some, now debunked, figures of the number of deaths there could be if there wasn’t a lockdown. It turns out the report was not, and still hasn’t been, peer reviewed. The program has been studied and tried and produces different results even though the same figures are input. Besides the program being 13 years old, this group has form with Foot and Mouth disease, Sars, ME Sars, Avian Flu and Swine Flu, in the worst possible way, and yet somehow we ended up following it and still are.

    Look at the way the MSM and certain Tory MPs hounded Dominic Cummings for being responsible for breaking lockdown although nobody else was involved apart from his son and wife. No such hounding of Ian Blackford, SNP leader at Westminster, or Stephen Kinnock who both broke lockdown but it seems to be OK for them.

    Now the biggest scandal currently is the miscounting of deaths FROM Covid19 as opposed to anyone with Covid19 mentioned on the death certificate now being counted as death FROM covid19 rather than a death WITH Covid19. Indeed there was a story in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago saying a 3 day old baby was the youngest person to die from Covid19. It turns out that his brain was starved of oxygen and he did not survive. His death was put down to the virus as his mother tested positive with it after she gave birth. We used to have the most enviable National Statistics in the world now they would be a disgrace to a banana republic. Figures from the ONS warns that some figures are counted twice. We suggest you read this article from an eminent scientist rather than from a Mathematical Epidemiologist. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-way-covid-deaths-are-being-counted-is-a-national-scandal. Will the country be shut down again when the next virus rears its ugly head? In 1968, the year we were married, apparently there were 80,000 deaths from Hong Kong flu. There was very little outcry then or pressure to “shut the country down”. Why has the reaction been so extreme?

    The economy is being trashed, millions will be made unemployed, businesses lost for ever, and God knows how many premature deaths were caused by the NHS stopping treatment for cancer and heart patients. How great will be the number of people with mental health problems, how many deaths from serious injuries from domestic violence with the abuser locked down with his/her prey. There will be fewer employed to pay the tax that will be required to fund the NHS now that it has reached the level of a religion after the PM had the virus. The two metre rule as opposed to the WHO recommended 1 metre “as people wouldn’t understand 1 metre.” If they don’t understand 1 metre why on earth would they understand 2 metres. The mind boggles at the stupidity of those in control. Now we have the Home Secretary saying that quarantine is necessary for people arriving by air. We have had lockdown for 2 months when they weren’t quarantined but now they will be just as the effects of the virus are on the wane. Are the illegal immigrants subjected to this quarantine and are they being detained, all of them, to be deported when the panic is over? Probably not. You couldn’t make up the incompetence that has been visited on the people of this country,

    Last evening we have a demonstration outside Downing Street about a policeman killed in America and pictures of Metropolitan Police going down on one knee. Disgraceful. Please can we have a Police Force back again and dispense with the Police SERVICE. Can you, with hand on heart say that our police constables follow Sir Robert Peel’s Principles of Law Enforcement set in 1829 https://www.durham.police.uk/About-Us/Documents/Peels_Principles_Of_Law_Enforcement.pdf.
    We are certain they do not but they should be reintroduced. One law for all without fear nor favour.

    We are now in a national crisis of this government’s making but we are recklessly going to spend £200 billion on HS2 (I know Boris says £100 billion but you always have to multiply these figures by a factor of at least two), we have the Chinese and French building a new design of Nuclear Power Station that has not been successfully tested and is years behind schedule in France because of problems. We are going to let the Chinese in on our 5G communications system – absolutely crazy, We have exported so many jobs to China because of ridiculous Zero Carbon effrontery to intelligence and they now make most of our medicines and can hold us to ransom at the drop of a hat.

    We think we have ranted long enough and it may be a bit incoherent but not as much as what passes for government policy.

    Time to get the country back to work. We had a General Election in December 2019 to elect a government to represent the will of the people, to ensure Brexit. We did not vote to be ruled by a bunch of left wing scientists. Don’t get me started on the Supreme Court, that should be abolished and the Law Lords should be the final arbiter.

    Apparently the Government was surprised at the number of people who stayed at home because of Covid19. What did they really expect with the incessant doom-laden messages to “Stay home, save the NHS (another phrase that grates, we thought the NHS was there to save us), save lives”.

    This lockdown should be ended right now. People should be asked to use their common sense in “social distancing” if they think it necessary but otherwise all should be returned to normal. The Teachers Unions must be stood up to and those who will not return to work must not be paid. They are being paid to do nothing in the majority of cases, evidently, as are the medical profession, the Nightingale hospitals are empty, all public employees are being paid as usual, including MPs (who moaned about having to queue outside Parliament to vote) – it is just the public’s money down the drain.

    We haven’t mentioned the gross curtailment of our civil liberties. We could go on and on but have probably said more than enough.

    To say that we are deeply disappointed in this Government is such an understatement – as this missive clearly demonstrates.

    1. A thoroughly good letter which sums up how I feel too.
      Of course it will be ignored 🙁

          2. Unfortunately no John but is supportive of much we had to say. I believe him.

    2. A thousand thumbs, gg. I fear that you will get some banal rubbish back (if anything). But at least the MP will know that his constituents are not happy.

      1. He’s already replied personally and it’s not written by an automaton. He’s quite a decent chap.

        1. Lucky you. Did he have anything constructive to say? Like what shyte his Government’s policy is??

    3. A thousand thumbs, gg. I fear that you will get some banal rubbish back (if anything). But at least the MP will know that his constituents are not happy.

    4. Not only the manufacturing economy being trashed, but farming as well.

      Farming in UK, as well as northern France and Belgium, has had a very bad year yet the Government are ignoring all the signs of food shortages this coming winter.

        1. However the good news is that South Africa has spotted this coming, and has banned all food exports.

          1. Russia has had a record grain harvest. They’ve banned exports as well!

        2. Norway has been subtle. The late spring, and so far coldish summer, will ensure a lousy harvest. Again.
          Anyone see horsemen riding through the sky yet?

        3. Floods, fire, plague, drought, famine….you read it here first Belle……………..

        4. There will be a hay shortage as well unless the current spell of rain saves the crop.

    5. Brilliant letter

      Our thoughts as well.

      We feel thoroughly depressed and sadly for me Moh , says he knew Boris would be useless and the rest of the crew , I gave Boris the benefit of my doubt .

      Our country has been devoured by a snake devouring it’s own tail.
      What is happening now is the fear of a second wave.

      1. Boris started off OK, then he got sick and got to see the man with the scythe sharpening the blade. That changes you. Unfortunately, he’s now useless at best.

        1. Oh yes , absolutely ..
          That is what happens sometimes ..He is even losing his hair.. He has lost all joyfulness and looks like a crumbling old man . Mind you the anxiety of lockdown and other things has affected everyone badly.

          2. Um … I reckon I and several others here have had it. I don’t think we’re any less bright 🙂

          1. 319933+ up ticks,
            ATG,
            They are ALL acting chaff covering the main hydra head, ie
            major,clegg. the wretch cameron, mayday & a
            good chance the present capo dei capi
            follows the same line.

    6. Unless you keep your letter to two/three lines at the most it ends up in the bin….

      1. We’ve had a reply but won’t repeat it here as it’s private. Suffice to say he didn’t bin it.

        1. Dear Mr and Mrs Great,

          Thank you for your interest and concerns.

          Look, you ignorant, right-wing, racist bigots; it’s none of your business you nasty little plebs. Leave it to the big boys who understand science and economics.

          Yours, very sincerely,
          The Rt Hon Pyce O’Shite MP

          PS unpleasant letter to follow.

          I hope he didn’t dismiss you out of hand; it deserved a thoughtful reply.

          1. He didn’t dismiss us at all sos. He’s really a good constituency MP but not with much sway at HQ but I think he’ll pass it on.

      2. Couldn’t be done in so short a letter Plum. And it still didn’t say everything we both feel.

      3. 319933+ up ticks,
        Evening PT,
        I believe a missive in cut out
        newsprint with a very sinister shade would be more effective.
        Much the same as they are doing to many of the peoples
        scarring the sh!te out of them.

    7. A very good letter – but will he read, mark, learn and inwardly digest its contents?

      1. He’s replied and acknowledged our remarks. Goes a bit deeper but it’s a private reply.

    8. 319933+ up ticks,
      Evening ATG,
      Good penwork, but for one small point
      big consequences, a lot of us knew that was no tory party in governance
      and very few lessons had been learnt if any.

        1. 319933+ up ticks,
          ATG,
          To late for that more is the pity, good letter but I do believe it’s
          effectiveness will be, sad to say, negligible, they know we know their worth, but they also know they are in a political close shop
          counting on being the best of the worst.
          That they are the best of the worst is proved time after time so some may find satisfaction in that.
          By the by Gerard Batten proved in one short year to be made of 100% leadership material, none of the current crop of leaders come anywhere near.

    9. I would like to say something profound such as did you help vote them in last December and would you do it again? The truth is in all honesty what bloody alternative is there for people, I for one cannot criticise anyone when faced with such a choice at the ballot box.
      On a personal note my choice of candidate was stood down, so I just did not vote.
      Only when we band together and bring the country to a standstill will any notice be taken of us, and we all know that’s not ever going to happen.
      Most days I see what is happening in this country and quietly give thanks I have seen the best of it being the age I am.

      1. No I voted UKIP although we corresponded regularly with our MP and he always answers promptly and personally. A good constituency MP.
        I’m similar to you and am concerned for my teenage grandchildren and their children, and their children and infinitum. This is going to be an exceedingly long haul to overcome this folly.

  81. Seems appropriate:
    Samuel Adams: “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms.Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

  82. Since race is so much to the forefront these days, I attach the following:
    Poème à mon frère blanc (Poem to my white brother) Léopold Sédar SENGHOR
    Dear White brother,

    When I was born, I was black,
    When I grew up, I was black,
    When I’m in the sun, I’m black,
    When I’m sick, I’m black,
    When I die, I’ll be black.
    While you white man,

    When you were born, you were pink,
    When you grew up, you were white,
    When you go to the sun, you are red,
    When you’re cold, you’re blue,
    When you’re scared, you’re green,
    When you’re sick, you’re yellow,
    When you die, you will be grey.

    So, of us two,
    Who is the coloured man?

      1. That’s how it was printed. Don’t ask me to remember any more than where I copied the text to…

        1. I assume it’s a translation from French, perhaps BT or Rastus would know if the colloquialisms are the other way round.

          1. Puking emoticons are usually green.
            The Yanks use the term yellah for one who is afraid.

  83. Familiar??
    “What is a Communist? One who has yearnings
    For equal division of unequal earnings;
    Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing
    To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.

    Ebenezer Elliott, 1781 – 1849

    2. A communist is someone who has nothing and wants to share it with everyone….

    3. SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The state takes one and gives it to someone else.
      COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The State takes both of them and gives you the milk.
      FASCISM: You have two cows. The State takes both of them and sells you the milk.
      MILITARY DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The State takes both of them and shoots you.
      BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. The state takes both of them, accidentally kills one and spills the milk in the sewer.
      CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
      PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

      REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to decide who gets the milk.

      AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.

      ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors kill you and take the cows.

  87. There we are, a politician not telling lies.

    During a press conference Trudeau was asked what he thought of Trumps threat to call in the military.

    Cue twenty three seconds of embarrased silence as his mind tried to wrestle with a way to answer without arousing the wrath of our southern neighbour.

    An absolute joy to watch, the mouth moved a few times but nothing came out.

    1. This was spun on MSN news as “Trump leaves Canadian Premier speechless” as though Trudeau was some kind of hero. They are ridiculously biased.

  88. Whaddayerkno, it’s raining in N Essex. Not getting too excited as dry spots still exist of the patio stones.

    1. It drizzled quite hard between 2 and 4. It is supposed to be longer and better rain during the night and tomorrow.

      1. Packed up now but radar shows an area approaching from the NW that looks promising. Everything crossed – I mowed the straw this morning.

    3. Yesterday, parts of Northamptonshire recorded their first rain in 34 days. All of 0.05″ (1.2 mm).

    4. It has started to rain up here in N Yorks and will be wet for a day or two if the met forecast is correct. Much needed.

  89. DTStory

    Meghan Markle says Black Lives Matter as she tells US students: ‘The only wrong thing to say is nothing’
    Meghan Markle tells students ‘George Floyd’s life mattered’ and ‘when the foundation is broken, so are we’

    I suppose that if she were still a member of the royal family her opinion would be of interest but protocol would have not allowed her to express it. But now that she is no longer a proper member of the royal family she is free to express her opinion but is her opinion as a foreign D list actress even remotely relevant? What is certain is that she wants to hog the limelight (if Muslims will pardon the expression) and stir things up.

    Have Ladbrokes given the most recent odds as to how long her marriage with Prince Harry is likely to last?

    Incidentally she identifies herself in this article as a ‘person of colour’ being 50% so. Is her son, who is only 25% a person of colour, really a person of colour and should we not be told what percentage you have to be to qualify as a bona fide proper person of colour? With black people all seemingly determined to wage a hate campaign against white people should we not all know where we stand?

    2. According to the Democrats it used to be just one drop of blood which was enough to be called black. Even the Nazis thought that was going too far where the Jews were concerned.

    3. According to some anthropologists we originated in Africa and migrated to Europe. So we too are all “people of colour ” (daft expression) and have just faded in the cold light of the Northern sun, whereas our cousins in the heart of darkness stayed as black as the ace of spades.

      1. After days of exposure to sunlight I tend to become quite tanned. A throwback, obviously.

    4. Her mother has quite light coloured skin, so my guess is that she is less than 50% herself.

    5. No dear, the only wrong thing to say is ‘something’. You’re not involved. You live a life of abject luxury and incredible privilege. Be silent, you cretinous whelp, Markle!

  90. That is me gone for the day. A strange day. Tesco nightmare; market pleasure. Then test drove a car – with only 10,000 on the clock and three years old. A lady owner – prolly did her 3,000 miles a year never getting out of second gear…(dons full Turkish PPE)

    We might even go mad and buy it.

    Then in the garden putting fleece (FFS) over the tomatoes and trombetti as it is said to be as low as 6ºC tonight…. What a difference two days make.

    Anyway, will see you tomorrow, I hope.

      1. A Skoda Yeti (I know, I know a daft name – but I have lived with a Kangoo for 20 years…)

        Only negative – no sliding rear doors. They were an absolute boon.

        1. We had a Yeti for 6 years. Totally reliable. It had 4WD and was unbelievable in snowy and icy conditions. A useful feature was being able to remove the rear seats, turning it into a van. Are,you looking at petrol or diesel?

          1. That tosser on the beeboid car prog who slugged his producer rates it… good enough for me!

    6. Do you think she accidentally got into third, before the insurance write-off crash?

  91. Funny things you notice – eventually. I was aware that the DT weekend magazines had gone skinny.
    However, I have just repaired a patchwork quilt and I’ve always used colour supplement pages as they just the right strength for the templates.
    No longer; since I last used them, the inner sheets are of thin, coarse paper with no substance whatsoever. Only the outer covers are made of suitable paper.

        1. My dad had skinny legs, my daughters keep saying that mine are turning into granddads.
          I can’t see it myself.
          My belly is in the way

          1. Normally my legs are more in proportion but my knees and ankles swell up in the heat.

          1. Um…yes. That’s to distract from the fact that i used a permanent marker. 🙁

    4. Have you considered entering the knobbly knees contest in Brighton this year….?

        1. I think we should hold a knobbly knees contest on NoTTlers….over to you Phizz…..

  93. Does anyone know of a single MP that has spoken out against the madness? I was going to write “Masks on public transport is the the last straw” but there’s probably worse still to come.

    The Labour Party ought to making real capital out of this but apart from grumbling a bit about NHS funding and PPE, they’ve provided little real opposition. I doubt very much if they would have adopted different tactics, though they might have been a bit quicker off the mark.

    And there isn’t much opposition in the rest of the world…

    2. Up here in the Northern asylum annex, matron is planning to make masks a legal requirement in shops. (Masks on public transport are a foregone conclusion, as soon a she has made a speech insisting that she is not following England.)

    3. Although I pride myself on my cynicism and imagination, I’ve reached the stage where I know the government will come up with something far beyond my wildest fantasies.

    4. They were quite vocal about freedoms at the start of the lockdown, but they seem to have given up now. Probably because the govt is looking so useless, Cons don’t want to put the boot in by pointing out uncomfortable truths.

    5. It’s sorting out other countries shit that has got the West into shyteholes like Afghanistan, and can’t get out.
      UK is old enough and grown up enough to sort yerselves out – even with the mess of such proportions as you are in at the moment.
      I thought the defining crisis was Brexit – just goes to show what an optimist I am!
      :-((

  94. If as seems to be predicted there is likely to be a further increase (spike) of virus infection.
    I’d really like to know where and how it’s being kept and bubbling away. I’m obviously not a clinical, media or a political insider.
    But how on earth can a virus seem to dissipate and return announced with avengence ?
    If the infection rate has gone down where is it now ?
    Unless it’s being stored somewhere.
    Just askin’ 😟

    1. Stored elsewhere….. for release once again. I feel we are being softened up to the acceptance of this. Just in time for December 31st. If we weren’t told about a ‘second wave’ we might, as a population, just miss seeing it.

      1. It makes me wonder if some of the conspiracy theories might actually have been true. I’ve never believed it could happen, but Contrails for instance.
        But the overall gain would be minimal given the damage done.
        I just can’t get my head around the speed it traved around the world. The rate of actual infection was phenomenonal.
        And travel was banned but still we have had thousands of people arriving in the UK since it all started. Why ?
        None of which makes any particular sense to me.

    2. It will only return when they reopen the hairdressers and when bad, bad white people go on holiday.
      Demonstrating has no effect, as long as the demonstration is for a politically correct cause.

          1. Really Plum

            Wham BangThank you :

            Ma’am

            Man

            Man who was ma’am

            Ma’m who was man

            Non specific ma’am

            Non specific man

            Inbetweenie

            Outbetweenie

            etc

        1. It’s just so much easier ….what is the point of getting angry anymore….?

    4. 319933+ up ticks,
      Evening RE,
      Could those in governance be using Amazon do you think ?

  95. In case you thought everything was lost:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mtuSaRZ6JyA
    SUPER MAJORITY of AMERICANS Want MILITARY to CRUSH RIOTS!!!

    A new POLL shows the vast majority of Americans support his call to deploy the United States military to crush the riots that the leftist mainstream media has championed. In this video, we’re going to look at the results of the poll, how those results completely repudiate the cheerleading from the Marxist media, and why these riots are red pilling more Americans like nothing else; you’re going to absolutely love this!

    I like to watch Steve Turley. He cheers me up and gives me hope when everything looks so depressingly bad.

    2. I remember seeing it in the cinema. It was funny in its day but is now sadly dated.

        1. Best place to be; much better than the present – and infinitely better than the future…

        2. “The past is a foreign country – they do things differently there.”

          (L.P.Hartley)

          Shall we be put in quarantine if we want to go there for a holiday?

          1. The Go-Between……great book…..great film.

            Alan Bates and Julie Christie….winning combination.

          2. Julie Christie – sighs…
            Whatever your difficulty today was, I hope you’re OK.

          4. I would want to stay there forever……maybe someone will invent a time machine….

  98. Is anyone watching ” Anastasia” Film 4 – Exiled Russians claim to have found the Tsar’s daughter alive in 1920’s Paris
    Yul Brenner and Ingrid Bergman…………..great film….great acting….great cast

    I bunked off school to see this at the local Gaumont cinema…

          6. Don’t worry they say the Generation gap is between the ears…

            Pardon?

          15. I think Delboy is the father of our Nottler house at 84 this year.

            I’m a youngster of 73 – very nearly 74 – so Delboy is ten years ahead of me. Who knows, he soon may finally come of age and become a Delman.

          16. I posited that to him yesterday, Richard. Wonder what happened to danielfg – he may, of course, no longer be with us.

    1. OK, I admit it, it is my car

      If you want the Sun to shine tomorrow send £1 miilion to Mr Rashid, via Bill T ……

  103. We have received little news from the MSM for months. Nothing about riots in France, a complete overblown reaction to the death of a black felon in America and now all of a sudden they are all over the ruddy McCanns.

    Thousands of children with blonde hair and blue eyes are trafficked every year and sold into slavery. Yet we only get to hear about the McCanns. Why is this so?

    1. I fear the German chap already in jail may be a handy scapegoat to wrap it all up. Or, more interestingly, to bring it all out into the open, at last. Perhaps.

      1. I think after more than a decade of funding the Portuguese holidays of countless plod we need to draw a line under this farrago. As stated I cannot understand why the McCann family were singled out for this very expensive farce when the kidnap of similar children was and continues to be rife around the World.

        1. Because the parents appealed to the then Home Secretary, one Theresa May.

  104. There’s a fabulous Candace Owens video about George Floyd on her FB page. Does anyone know how to share it here?

      3. Yes, that’s the one! Thanks. (I shared on FB but couldn’t find it on Youtube.)

      4. Wow, that is one brave lady. Thanks for posting, WS, well worth 18 minutes of my time!

    2. Excellent what a wonderful breath of fresh air she is.
      Please Sue repost this in the morning everyone needs to listen to this.
      I’ve watched the video clip.
      The real reason for this guy’s death has not been recognised or related in public.

    3. If I should be so presumptuous as to give her advice it would be to say what she has to in a third of the time.

    3. 319933.+ up ticks,
      Evening LD,
      Surely this is due to the fact that you could lay a wedding breakfast on a lot more @rses on account of the incarceration.

        1. 319933+ up ticks,
          Afternoon SE,
          Thanks for enquiring, yes ok now,new laptop turned up.
          Old one began interspersing my letters when posting with numbers consequently comment shaped up like some sort of sinister code fit for Bletchley park.

    4. Councils taking advantage to widen pavements/cycle lanes all at the expense of them thar darned cars! The greeniacs will be whooping for joy that the evil motorist is being punished.

      1. Many of the older people I know live outside of town and rely upon their cars to get about.

    1. Mary and Matthew? What hideously white privileged names their parents gave them.

    2. I’ve not been silent in my life except by choice. What am I supposed to be making noise about?

      I’m with Morgan Freeman on this. If we want to end racism, stop being bloody racist and making a thing about skin colour.

  107. I’m sure Uncle George is having a great laugh from his control centre inside his Volcano issuing commands to governments around the world.

    Make your people stay indoors for two months
    Make them stand two metres apart
    Make them clap on a Thursday at 8pm and bang pots and pans
    Make them kneel to gangsters
    Make them wear masks on a bus and train.

    Not sure what is coming next but at least he has a sense of humour I suppose

    1. It will be a horrible poetic justice if it’s old fashioned ‘flu and all those in contact with him get it too. And, cruelly, some of them then die of ‘flu.

      1. He’ll be registered as dying from ‘flu; from dementia; from being a tosser; and from c-19 – so that will be four more to the fictional “total”

    2. Beautiful, one of Alan Parson’s best. One of my Desert Island tracks!

      1. I suspect its box mite (sic) be full of ticks, its belfry full of bats and its gob full of shite.

        And that’s on a good day…

      1. Protesters probably couldn’t recognise the accent and thought they were American?

        1. On the other hand they mught have recognized them and decided that Australia is a white only country, therefore the journalists were fair game.

          Or decided to thump them just because.

  113. Last! (Well, I’m only just off to bed so I very much doubt if I can post “First!” tomorrow morning.)

    Sleep well all NoTTLers.

    1. Not a chance, I’m still here and anyway Geoff has to come along yet and post tomorrow’s, sorry today’s, link, so I won’t be either.

      1. Gave you the wrong impression. Had known it for ages and always really liked it. Just happened to hear it on the radio.

    2. There’s a lovely comment on Khan’s Twitter feed that of course thousands of rioters didn’t break the rules ‘cause they only have six brains between them.

  116. Evening, all. It is bucketing down here. I hope it’s dry in Newmarket; my horse is declared to run on Saturday in the Palace House and he needs it firm. It’s sod’s law; it’s been bone dry all the time there’s been no racing 🙁

    1. Still dry in s. Cambs only a stone’s throw away fo Nmkt, except for a shower mid-afternoon for a few minutes.

      2. Two days to go then. Fingers crossed. He was entered in the Abernant over 6f tomorrow, but Julie (the trainer) thought the 5f was a better chance for him. He is at level weights apart from the three fillies who get 3lbs and he’s the top rated horse, so in theory he should have a good chance (he came second in the same race when beaten by Mab’s Cross). The rain would do for his chances, though.

        1. A few showers here this afternoon (Friday) but not enough to make the ground soft – I had to water the geranium in the front garden as it was still very dry (the large leaves would not allow the showers to penetrate) although the hanging baskets were damp and did not need watering. Fingers crossed for you for tomorrow.

          1. The chief problem is that the top of the ground will become slippery with the rain not penetrating. He isn’t allowed to wear running spikes 🙂

    2. Hope it goes well, Conners. Good to be out & racing, whatever the going… some good, competitive exercise. And, after the lack of training, if he loses, you can always plausibly blame the going… ;-))

      2. No owners allowed yet. It’s racing behind closed doors – well, obviously the horses have to be let out of the stables 🙂 Only small fields due to social distancing. It certainly beats them going up the gallops with no end in sight because they have no race to run in. At least he wasn’t balloted out.

    3. Good luck for Saturday. Surely it would take rain of monumental proportions to make the going any different to today.

      1. Get a lot of rain on parched ground and you get it loose and greasy on top. He’s a sprinter (think 0 – 35 mph in a matter of seconds). If it’s loose on top he’ll be wheel spinning 🙁 That happened at Newbury when it had been dry for weeks, suddenly rained hard and he trailed in well down the field because he couldn’t get a grip.

          2. Do you ever get the chance to ride the race-horses yourself?

            I had the chance to be up on a retired racer quite a few times. Much, much more fun than a sports car. 0-scary in about two seconds; absolutely brilliant.

          3. I once rode Aldaniti (1981 Grand National winner when ridden by Bob Champion). I have ridden thoroughbreds and TB crosses.

          8. Lucky man (other genders are available).

            I was asked if I would like to ride out at Newmarket, but didn’t think I was anywhere near skilled enough.
            Wrecking one of those is a lot worse than pranging a car!

          9. Mrs Beryl McCain (Ginger’s wife) once asked me if I’d come and ride out for them. I declined. I was more terrified of Ginger than I was of any racehorse!

          10. How much steering do you actually have? Do you even open your eyes??

        2. Shows how much I know about the turf. My experience was numerous visit to the Grand National as my company sponsored it back on the 80’s.

  117. From today’s DT:

    Authors retract study which led the WHO to suspend a trial into hydroxychloroquine

    Three of the authors of an influential article that found hydroxychloroquine increased the risk of death in Covid-19 patients have retracted the study, citing concerns about the quality of the data behind it. The anti-malarial drug has been controversial in part due to support from US President Donald Trump, as well as implications of the study published in British medical journal the Lancet last month. The study’s authors said Surgisphere, the company that provided the data, would not transfer the full dataset for an independent review and that they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources”.

    Oops…

  118. As if you needed any more gloomy prognostications…

    The limits of Clean Energy

    None of this is to say that we shouldn’t pursue a rapid transition to renewable energy. We absolutely must and urgently. But if we’re after a greener, more sustainable economy, we need to disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that we can carry on growing energy demand at existing rates.

    Of course, we know that poorer countries still need to increase their energy use in order to meet basic needs. But richer countries, fortunately, do not. In high-income nations, the transition to green energy needs to be accompanied by a planned reduction of aggregate energy use.

    How might this be accomplished? Given that the majority of our energy is used to power the extraction and production of material goods, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that high-income nations reduce their material throughput – legislating longer product life spans and rights to repair, banning planned obsolescence and throwaway fashion, shifting from private cars to public transportation, while scaling down socially unnecessary industries and wasteful luxury consumption like the arms trade, SUVs, and McMansions. Reducing energy demand not only enables a faster transition to renewables, but also ensures that the transition doesn’t trigger new waves of destruction.

    The author gives that warning after describing the staggering scale of mining needed to provide the metals for ‘renewable’ technology:

    …we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

    There’s more of that. Read it all here:
    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-limits-of-clean-energy

    Here’s how China does it:
    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-dystopian-lake-filled-by-the-world-s-tech-lust

    1. Back in the day, Buckminster Fuller correlated economic growth with growth in the supply of energy.
      Limit energy and you cripple an economy.

  119. I remain shocked that Boris has gone along with Bill Gates and his worldwide vaccination programme. I read that Gates’ attempts to vaccinate Indian children led to thousands of deaths and his exclusion from that continent.

    We know that certain vaccines work for the protection of several ailments but we also recognise that there is no effective flu vaccine after many years and millions of pounds invested in trying to develop a flu vaccine. There is a high probability that a vaccine for Covid-19 will never be found.

    The single hope for a cure for Covid-19 is that it was created in a wet lab and that if as suspected it is a biological weapon the Chinese know a lot more about any antidote than the rest of the World.

    It is the same with cancer research. Admittedly some cancers can be contained by some pretty aggressive treatments but there remain no cures.

    1. Every time I try to confirm the Gates Indian vaccination deaths, the Facebook posts claiming the “facts” are countered by many fact checking sites screaming false, no more than insane parrot twitterings.

      We have flu shots every year, never claimed to be fully effective but life goes on. Isn’t covid a common cold virus, no vaccines there.

      1. Yes, coronaviruses include the known common cold viruses. There are plenty that affect animals but haven’t crossed over. SARS and MERS came along more recently and were unusual for those affecting humans in that they could be lethal.

    2. “There is a high probability that a vaccine for Covid-19 will ever be found.”

      Typo?

    3. You, can forget about cancer in UK now.

      Those with it are dead…………….. which goes for a lot of non Covid illnesses

      but, the Cancer deaths will be recorded as from Covid, not because they had it , but the hossypitals were closed off to the suffererers everything but Covid

    4. Now, when Bill Gates gets ito bed with Jeff Bezo, we will be in trouble

    5. Professor Dolores Cahill has some interesting stuff to say about coronavirus vaccines. Long Delingpod on Youtube, but worth listening to. What concerns me is that there will be a vaccine for coronavirus, that we will be told passes all the tests.

Comments are closed.