Thursday 2 July: Leicester lockdown points to indecision at the heart of the Government

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/01/lettersleicester-lockdown-points-indecision-heart-government/

666 thoughts on “Thursday 2 July: Leicester lockdown points to indecision at the heart of the Government”

  3. Start Spreading the News, New York City’s Death Rattle. 2 July 2020. SST.

    When the history of New York City’s collapse is written, the star protagonists and executioners are two Italians–Cuomo and DeBlasio. The bulk of the blame is on the failed Marxist, Bill DeBlasio, who has led the charge in eliminating bail requirements for criminals and opened the city to legions of homeless. As result, the city is descending into a grim version of hell not even envisioned by a genuine Italian luminary, Dante Alighieri.

    It is not just the trash. The city is becoming more dangerous by day. Anyone arrested for theft or assault is not going to spend anytime in jail. Laws signed by the idiot Governor Cuomo ensures that no one arrested must post bail before being sprung from the hoosegow. The result should not surprise any sentient being with half a brain–the City is being transformed into a free fire zone.

    Morning everyone. Things don’t look good in the Big Apple.

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/07/start-spreading-the-news-new-york-citys-death-rattle-by-larry-c-johnson.html#more

  4. Did anyone pick up on this rubbish yesterday?

    Alasdair Palmer
    Theresa May is right to be angry – the civil service is now at risk

    Theresa May is back, and this time she’s angry. Not about Brexit or the Ulster Unionists, but about the politicisation of the civil service. This is not a matter that arouses ire in many people or even many politicians – but it should, because it is the main reason why Britain is governed better than Uzbekistan.

    In Britain, we take for granted relatively uncorrupt and effective government, based on at least some degree of rational decision-making. Historically, this has been extremely rare, and even today, in many countries, it does not exist. But as economists often point out, it is – along with the rule of law, which is an aspect of uncorrupt government – the most important component in achieving and maintaining a country’s prosperity. The reason why so many people who live in developing countries want to leave them and move to places such as Britain is simple: the abysmal standards of government in their home countries. Corruption rots almost everything. Political power is the prime way that people get rich: the way to wealth is not by providing a service that others want to buy, but by stealing the country’s resources and extorting money from its citizens.

    Corruption is about more than money: it also ensures that critical positions in a government are taken by people who are not competent to discharge the role they occupy. They are not able to make reasonable judgements and decisions because they do not understand the technicalities of the area they are responsible for. When corruption of that kind is multiplied across a society as a whole, nothing works properly because the officials do not know how to make anything work properly. That is not why they have been appointed. They have been appointed because they are friends of the boss and can be relied on to do his or her bidding. The country’s resources are wasted on enriching the greedy thugs who have managed to get their hands on the levers of power.

    Britain suffered from widespread government corruption in the 18th century. The reforms initiated in the mid-19th century by Northcote and Trevelyan aimed to create an independent civil service in which jobs were distributed strictly on the proven capacity of the candidate to perform the tasks required. Those reforms were an essential part of the long process of removing the cancer of corruption from government in Britain.

    Theresa May is angry because Boris Johnson appears to want to bring that cancer back. Not instantly or all at once, of course. She is concerned that he is starting the insidious process by which proven competence is replaced as the fundamental criterion for office by being a friend of the boss – sharing his view and being willing to do his bidding without raising any form of objection. Civil servants will – or at least they should – raise objections whenever they believe that a policy proposed by the boss is based on error, or on dogma, or just amounts to an unworkable idea. That is their value to us, the governed. It is also why politicians often hate them and wish to see them replaced with more pliable persons.
    Having been Home Secretary for six years and prime minister for three, Theresa May is very well aware of the temptations, and the dangers, of appointing people to senior posts in government on the basis of their willingness to endorse the boss’s opinions. She was rigid with fury when she stood up in the House of Commons on Tuesday to ask Michael Gove, Minister for the Cabinet Office, why the Prime Minister had appointed David Frost to the post of National Security Adviser. Mr Frost is a retired diplomat who has spent most of his time since leaving the Foreign Office working for the Scotch Whisky Association.

    It was a particularly pertinent question because, as Mrs May pointed out, Mr Gove had himself recently insisted that ‘we must be able to promote those with proven expertise’. Mr Frost has no proven expertise at all in the area of national security. But he is a good friend of the boss and can be relied upon to do as he is told. Boris Johnson knows this because when he was Foreign Secretary, he chose Mr Frost as his special adviser. When he became Prime Minister, Boris put David in charge of Brexit negotiations.

    Mrs May’s anger was not assuaged by Gove’s feeble response, which confirmed the belief that Gove had no idea what he was talking about. He got Mr Frost’s name wrong, calling him ‘Sir David Frost’. There was a Sir David Frost, but he has been dead for several years, and he knew even less about security matters than plain David. Mrs May shook her head in emphatic disagreement as Michael Gove tried to persuade her that having been a ‘professional diplomat’ was more than adequate preparation for advising the Prime Minister on global and domestic security matters – matters which are frequently very complicated and very technical. It is not obvious that knowing about whisky, or even about trade policy (Mr Frost’s speciality as a diplomat), confers the ability to determine accurately whether, say, the threat of terrorists obtaining a radiological bomb is more significant than terrorists getting hold of a chemical weapon that would distribute a new and deadly virus across London.

    Mrs May’s anger – admirable, righteous and appropriate though it was – is in vain. Boris will not listen to her admonition, and he will continue to replace civil servants who question his wisdom with friends who do not. Sir Mark Sedwill is hardly an obstreperous or difficult personality. But he is honest and independent and will object when he believes a policy is wrong, misguided or impractical – as Theresa May herself knows. Sir Mark was permanent secretary at the Home Office when Mrs May was Home Secretary (and when I was writing speeches for her). But Sir Mark’s propensity to point out flaws with Boris’s plans was too much for Boris. Hence he has been replaced by David Frost as National Security Adviser. Another friend of Boris’s will no doubt take Sir Mark’s place as cabinet secretary in the autumn.

    Mr Frost’s appointment is not going to turn Britain’s government into a version of Uzbekistan’s, or even into a version of America’s, where President Trump has been busy replacing independent and competent officials with useless cronies. But it is the beginning of a process which could end up spreading the cancer of corruption through British government. Theresa May is absolutely right: we had all better watch out.

    WRITTEN BY
    Alasdair Palmer
    Alasdair Palmer is a former speechwriter for Theresa May and a columnist and leader writer at the Sunday Telegraph

    Bob of Bonsall • 3 minutes ago
    Mr. Palmer, you talk rubbish.
    The Civil Service is already politicised and has been for a very long time.
    Politicisation was started with the obsession of “getting Britain into Europe” of the late ’50s & ’60s where an increasing numbers of entrants were recruited to prepare the country for membership of the then EEC, resulting in the Civil Service becoming a pro-EU echo chamber.

    This was exacerbated during the Student Protest movement of the ’60s/’70s when, realising that the Electorate would never fall for their Marxist claptrap, Student Radicals began their “Long March Through The Institutions” by infiltrating different parts of the Establishment. As time progressed and, as their influence grew as they moved up the feeding chain, began recruiting younger recruits of the same ilk.

    Hence we have strongly Left Leaning, Pro-EU Civil Service doing their best to either hinder the Democratic Mandate of the government or to impose their own policies, often by stealth.

    1. Good morning, Bob.

      The up-vote is for your refutation, not the
      clap-trap in the article!

      ‘Mrs. May’s anger-admirable, righteous and appropriate though it was….’

      What is the ST doing, printing such sycophantic, arse-licking crap?

      1. Morning, G.
        Clickbait? Or a chance for readers to work off bile and frustration?

      2. The Spectator has a history of printing articles counter to the perceptions of it’s readership, thus allowing said readers to understand the opposition and argue against them instead of merely commenting in an echo chamber.

    2. Fuck what May thinks, frankly. She was a fine exponent of politicised CS, with Oily and others.

    3. “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons” applies here.

    5. “That’s not New Labour,, that”s old Home Office”. (Kenneth Clarke)

    6. Thanks to May’s fawning to the CS, we got the Ollie Robbins version of Brexit presented to the country which has so buggerised and delayed the process. The CS’s system of recruitment and promotion has been following the BBC’s metropolitan lefty path for the past two decades and it shows.

    8. I actually burst out laughing at this bit:
      “The reason why so many people who live in developing countries want to leave them and move to places such as Britain is simple: the abysmal standards of government in their home countries.”

      Do as many as 1% of them have such high principles?

      1. If they did would they not do the right thing which is to stay and fix it?

    10. How depressing that Alasdair Palmer is a leader writer at the Sunday Telegraph.

    11. I’m confused. He starts off saying how awful corruption is. I agree with him, yet he forgets Mandelson and how easily he was bought. He forgets the EU, which is utterly, thoroughly corrupt.

      He forgets the cash for honours, the ‘midnight suppers’, the Scottish port building aircraft carriers.

      As for people in post don’t know what they’re doing.. well duh! That’s the reason the state is in a mess. The people running it ARE incompetent. They get promoted based on saying the right things to the right people. Not because of competency. In fact, competency is a sure fire way to stop your career dead in the CS.

      Civil servants are moved around so fast that not one fo them has the slightest clue what they’re doing beyond which meeting room to go to. That’s the whole point: move people fast enough and no one is ever responsible. No one can be blamed. No one accountable just shovelled upwards in a delightful jobs for the boys merry go round.

  5. Fighting evil. Spiked 2 July 2020.

    I will always remember the day that I met Tufan. It was May 2016 and we met by chance on the frontline in the war against the Islamic State. It was 1am and we were both paired up to do guard duty opposite a village called Til Nasri. The population of that occupied village had met a grim fate just a few weeks before. A large force of some 2,000 ISIS fighters had attacked this large Christian community in the middle of the night. Almost the entire village had been dragged kicking and screaming from their homes, loaded on to vans and sent south to Raqqa – most would never be seen again.

    I can remember (it seems like centuries ago) when one used to get reports about things like this in the MSM. People (they were called reporters) used to go out and dig them up and they would appear on World in Action or Panorama, even the pages of the Telegraph and give the Government a frightful kicking. This is the problem with a controlled media. It is not just that it produces propaganda but it also prevents any embarrassing truths permeating through the layers of lies. Well worth a read.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/02/fighting-evil/

    1. Erdogan is now attacking the Kurds who liberated Raqqa and bombing the surviving and traumatised refugees, thanks to a deal he made with Donald Trump.

      This is unlikely to be reported here, since innocent lives don’t matter in the UK these days.

      1. What was Trump on when he agreed that? You could see how that was going to go…

        1. Is this what the U.S. Bible Belt really supports when they vote for Trump’s endorsement of Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman agenda?

    1. 5C and sunny. Some places hadd frost… and snow forecast in the mountains in central Norway.
      Summer??

        1. Back to wearing a jumper – and there were plenty to see, also puffer-jackets, on the bus this morning.
          Brr!

    2. Morning, all. It’s been raining all night here, and it’s not letting up now. No need to water the garden!

  7. Just heard on the radio that Australia has a covid spike in Melbourne, they blame it on the people that have flown in infecting the security guards at the hotels where they have to spend 14 days in isolation, I wonder what they were up to?

    All these spikes around the world where they have the virus under control are being blamed on people flying in with the infection.

    Yet nobody is brave enough to say that the spikes here were caused by tens of thousands that have flown in especially from Pakistan since the lockdown.

    Is this just another case of self harm because the authorities do not want to be called racist.

    1. 320853+ up ticks,
      B3,
      Read this with the other eye malfunction when replying to you initially.

    2. 320853+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      Two flights a day some going straight to hospital according to a doctor.

    2. And a surprise! 🙂
      All joking aside, Russia does have a preference for Tsarist rule.
      And, sadly, many of the world’s current travails are thanks to the Americans believing that democracy is suitable for everywhere on the planet.

  10. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Just caught up with this from Littlejohn. Apologies if previously posted but I’m a slow reader:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8472975/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Dumping-Sir-Humphrey-gets-Bojos-mojo-back.html

    I note that Sedders was one of the architects of Project Fear. Strangely, I didn’t hear this mentioned in MayNot’s rant about politicization of the Snivel
    Service. From that moment I imagine that he was a marked man, although he seems to have done rather well in the process. Once again, the consolation prize seems to be reward for past failures – not an outcome that BoJo could have been comfortable with, but needs must and all that…

  11. UK offers British citizenship to nearly 3m people living in Hong Kong after China’s security crackdown . 2 July 2020.

    Dominic Raab said the UK would honour its “historic responsibility” to the people of Hong Kong after Beijing imposed a new security law to crack down on free speech that contravenes the Joint Declaration signed by the two countries at the time of the 1997 handover.

    Mr Raab told the House of Commons: “We will not look the other way on Hong Kong, and we will not duck our historic responsibilities to its people.”

    There is no hint here of the governments “historic responsibility” to the indigenous population. They have ceased to exist in the UK Elites World View. Nor does there seem to be any appreciation of how three million people could be accommodated in an already overcrowded island with a failing educational, physical and political infrastructure. Al this with a collapsing economy tells us that soon Malthusian realities will intervene and violence will rule.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/01/british-citizenship-offered-nearly-3-million-people-living-hong/

    2. China are saying they can’t leave and it’s a bloody long walk to Calais.

  12. Morning all

    SIR – When it takes weeks for civil servants to provide Covid-19 data to local health officials, and then the Department of Health and Social Care takes 12 days to react before imposing a local lockdown in Leicester (report, July 1), we have all the evidence we need to conclude that our Government is not prepared for any second wave of the virus.

    With no tracing app and a wholly inadequate flow of information, any “whack-a-mole” strategy is going to come long after the event – even if, by sheer luck, it occurs in the right area. Public Health England has not just been sluggish: it has not even been at the races.

    Kim Potter

    Lambourn, Berkshire

    SIR – While I sympathise with residents and businesses in Leicester, it isn’t the Government and local authorities who should be blamed, but those who continue to ignore the regulations and congregate in large numbers. If people carry on behaving selfishly, there will surely be more lockdowns, causing even more upset.

    Fiona Macfarlane

    Bath, Somerset

    SIR – On the day Leicester was put into lockdown, Leicester Racecourse held an evening meeting. On Saturday Leicester City football club is due to stage a home match in the city centre.

    The events are held behind closed doors but, even if these sports have robust Covid-19 measures in place, what sort of example do they set? Both events involve a significant number of people travelling to and from the city.

    Beverley Carr

    Rothley, Leicestershire

    SIR – My wife being secretary of our church council, I have just read the Government’s newly issued guidance on the safe use of places of worship from July 4.

    This consists of page upon page of self-evident, patronising guff, all in the name of regulating a small section of the community who are organising weekly gatherings of a few responsible adults in spacious buildings, usually for a period of less than one hour.

    If the civil servants preparing the equivalent documents for the reopening of schools are of the same mindset, it is little wonder that the teaching unions are having a field day.

    Edward Mason

    Lancaster

    SIR – Like Ray Ramsay (Letters, July 1), I have cancer in both lungs, but I do not seek advice from the Government on whether I should continue shielding.

    I fail to see why the Government should tell me how to conduct my life. I intend to go out and about as I see fit.

    D M Retallack

    Dorchester

    SIR – Four relatively small countries, all making their own laws and doing their own thing. Whatever happened to the U in UK?

    John Maddison

    Lincoln

  13. SIR – Why does the media persist in describing the allegation in Maxine Peake’s interview (report, June 26), shared by Rebecca Long-Bailey, as “an alleged anti-Semitic trope”?

    It read: “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learned from seminars with Israeli secret services.” The implication being that Israel developed the methods, taught them to US police, and further used them against Palestinians – so was ultimately responsible for Mr Floyd’s death.

    The media (and, belatedly, Ms Peake) know these allegations to be false, invented to slander the state of Israel and, by inference, those who speak up for it. They are the very definition of an anti-Semitic trope; there is nothing “alleged” about them.

    That Black Lives Matter should seek to conflate these issues with the debate as to whether it is right for Israel to apply its civil law to citizens living in communities in Judea and Samaria is unfortunate, as it drives a wedge between BLM – and its laudable aims – and the broader Jewish community.

    Brian Gedalla

    Deputy, Finchley Synagogue

    London N3

    1. An excellent letter, Deputy Gedalla, only spoilt by the last paragraph.

      What are those “laudable aims” of BLM? Apart from its stated Marxist intention of bringing down capitalism, abolishing the police and causing widespread havoc.

    3. What’s so insulting about this particular concocted legend about police restraint techniques is that the Israelis would be far cleverer than simply throttling a suspect with a fat bloke’s knee. It’s far more in keeping with America’s home-grown police training methods.

  14. SIR – In 2012 the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, appointed, for the first time ever, a National Policing Adviser (Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary) who had no previous policing experience whatsoever.

    Is this the same Theresa May who this week criticised the appointment of a National Security Adviser on the grounds of lack of relevant experience (report, July 1)?

    Sir Keith Povey

    HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary 2002-05

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    1. I watched Treason May’s rant in the HoC t’other day. Supermarionation at its worst!

      You could see the strings being pulled!

        1. Always good for a snigger over Saturday breakfast.
          And we thought our parents didn’t know.
          Pee po belly bum and drawers.

        1. Perhaps she is labouring under the misaprehension that people want to listen to her, when in fact surely nothing could be further from the truth amongst proper Conservatives.

          ‘Morning, Belle.

          1. Morning Hugh

            The Maiden Remainer from Maidenhead is probably reminding her fan club how good she is compared to Boris’s bluster!

          2. BoJo hasn’t yet lost an election, or a majority, so far, and his 2019 campaign wasn’t run by a couple of rank amateurs. On that basis I reckon he’s ahead of the Maybot on points.

          3. Good Morning Lovely Veracity

            Virgin on the ridiculous!

            To die: to sleep
            No more; and by a sleep to say we end
            The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
            That flesh is heir to; ‘tis a consummation
            Devoutly to be wished.

            I should imagine that Philip May on his wedding night decided, as did the Prince of Denmark, that the metaphorical sleep of death is ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’ as the last thing he had any appetite for was the actual consummation of his marriage.

          4. Slightly O/T.

            Has anyone else noticed the wild staring eyes of Tony Blair on last week’s Sunday Times supplement. Frightening!

          5. Cosmetic surgery? After all, the Grinning Chimp is sufficiently vain. I was about to put up THE ‘demon eyes’ poster but, you will be relieved to know, my phone is very sensibly refusing to oblige.

      4. Good morning, Grizzly

        I wonder if anyone on this site has a good word to say about this evil woman and would leap to her defence?

  15. SIR – Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal included numerous life-enhancing arts projects such as the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and the producer John Houseman. The Prime Minister has offered only further employment prospects for the largely unaffected civil engineering sector.

    How can his unimaginative Government ignore a multibillion-pound, profit-making arts industry?

    Stephen Brickley

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

  16. After the Right has successfully completed its revolution and supplanted all Common Purpose-trained stooges, within every echelon of British society, with Common Sense-trained replacements (and made Common Purpose an illegal organisation and outlawed any espousal of its venomous and damaging creed); this following YouTube video should be made compulsory viewing (and listening) for every school pupil and university student.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-VZUzLd7LU&list=WL&index=44

    3. Accusation of ‘inappropriate behaviour’.

      Such as the Left keep trying to demand?

      The hard Left have no concept of what communism is. They exist and are tolerated only because they live in a rich, free, incredibly generous tolerant world. A world they proclaim to hate, but never seem to want to leave.

  17. Man, 18, is charged with murder of sisters who were found stabbed to death in London park

    Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were killed in knife attack on June 6
    They had spent the evening celebrating Ms Henry’s birthday in Wembley, London
    Danyal Hussein, 18, was arrested at his home in south London in the early hours
    Officers have recovered 1,000 exhibits and gone to hundreds of homes in probe

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8482355/Man-18-charged-murder-sisters-stabbed-death-London-park.html?ito=push-notification&ci=21042&si=7271111

          1. I’ve been using it for anything relating to BLM for a couple of weeks now.

      2. Good onya Bob, post the recent video By James David Manning on twatter, they wont be able to handle the truth.

          1. Not that one Bob, he’s wearing a light coloured jacket i posted it a few days ago.

    3. Morning TB.
      What a terrible state of affairs we now have in this country. Bloody politicians never get anything right do they.

  18. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/274585e8d39975999e0a07de7ec9ff3487a410faf0ebf60a407c0c931b999f63.png
    Another sad example of the lax, tabloidesque, journalism that has now become a hallmark of the Barclay Brothers’ invidious dumbing down of the Daily Telegraph.

    Routinely describing casks as “barrels” [a barrel is a specific size of cask: i.e. 36 gallons] is puerile as well as incorrect. I would estimate that the cask in the photograph as being no larger than a standard kilderkin (18 gallons).

    As a by-the-by, The Fat Cat real ale pub in Norwich is a marvellous paradise for lovers of cask-conditioned beer. The owner named it after the equally wonderful Fat Cat in Sheffield, which was one of the first of its kind in the country. I have been fortunate enough to have supped and enjoyed exquisite ale in both revered establishments.

          2. But it does scan better in the song.
            And yes, I do sing it and having 20+ voices join in with the chorus is fantastic!

      2. A song by the late Keith Marsden of Cockersdale, apparently one of the first he wrote:-
        BRING US A BARREL
        No man that’s a drinker takes ale from a pin
        For there is too little good stuff there within
        Four and a half is it’s measure in full
        Too small for a sup, not enough for a pull…

        Chorus
        Then bring us a barrel and set it up right
        Bring us a barrel, to last out the night
        Bring us a barrel, no matter how high
        We’ll drink it up Lads, we’ll drink it dry.

        The poor little firkin’s nine gallons in all
        Though the beer it is good, the size is too small
        For lads that are drinkers like you and like I
        That firkin small barrel too quickly runs dry.

        And when that I’m dying and on me death bed
        By me bedside leave a fine full hogshead
        That if down below I mun go when I die
        Me and old Nick we will both drink it dry.

        *The Kilderkin’s Next and although rather small
        At least it is better than nothing at all
        Its eighteen full gallons will just about do
        Provided, of course, there’s another for you.

        Then bring forth the Puncheon and roll out the butt
        Them’s the best measures before me to put
        Our pots will go round and good ale it will flow
        And we’ll be contented for an hour or so.

          1. Hogshead is there Grizz, Verse 3:-

            By me bedside leave a fine full hogshead

      3. Nine gallons? That’s only four-and-a-half buckets, Paul. I’m not firkin sure it is.

        1. Been a whiiiiiiiiile since I handled a firkin – Sam Smith’s, it was, for a barbeque. Set up on a stillage 3 days in advance and allowed to rest after its journey, temperature controlled using wet teatowels draped over it, tapped and served – now that was BEER! The taste (back in 198?) still awakes memories of how a beer should be!

          1. I’m guessing that was Sam’s Old Brewery Bitter, a formidable pint as you say.

            For a short while they produced an even better pint known as Museum Ale. I had a delicious pint-or-three of that at The Wig & Mitre pub on Steep Hill in Lincoln.

          2. Had Museum Ale at the Sam Smiths Brewery tap – don’t recall the name properly, something like The Angel? That was a gutload of magnificent beer!
            I always wonder why it’s preferred to be pretentious about wine, but sneered at to be as particular about beer? The volumes are greater, but the skill in devising a good recipe, sourcing the right ingredients of the right quality, brewing, storing and handling the beer is equal or exceeds that to make a good wine, IMHO. It should be accorded the same status, and the beer treated with respect – not just slopped in a mug where most of the stuff is on the outside as opposed to the inside.

          3. I’m in full agreement with you there.

            On holiday, in Brittany, my brother was discussing wine with a local. The Breton told him, “You English come here on holiday for our good wine. Me? I go to the UK for your excellent ale.”

          4. Always thought that the French had their heads screwed on right. Here’s the evidence.
            They do rather mince about with cider, though, drinking it from fancy wee wine glasses. Cider is a long drink that should be drunk in pint volumes, from a big glass or a beer mug, even if it is 11% (as was Firstborn’s last year). Just drunk slowly, at that strength…!

          5. It goes beyond even that, Paul. A wine will vary from year to year depending on the quality/quantity of grape yield. This change is expected and it differentiates between a good vintage and a not so good one. A decent ale is expected to be the same, year in year out.

      4. It’s certainly a firkin. There can’t be many strong enough to lift a full kil at almost 200lbs onto a waist-high stillage.

      1. Have you ever drunk Black Sheep bitter, Paul?

        The Black Sheep brewery was opened at Masham in 1991 by Paul Theakstone (the ‘black sheep’ of the family) after he fell out with his dad. It’s a gradely pint, tha’ knows!

        1. Not just his dad, but the rest of the drone shareholders in the family.

        3. Pretty well the only thing I miss about not living in the UK is a good, dark pub with no music, excellent ales and ciders, and roast food.

      2. Theakstone’s was lucky to survive it’s Scottish Newcastle takeover long enough to be bought back by the family.

    3. I have been to two real ale pubs in the last 12 months. On both occasions i drank Gin. But then, i’m a Southerner.

      Morning, Northerner.

        1. True. One pint of real ale and i’m asleep under the table.

          One pint of Gin and i’m dancing on the table.

    4. They are firkins, Grizz. And there’s only one ‘e’ in Theakston!

    5. Also in Pedants’ Corner…

      SIR – Lists of user-friendly bars (Letters, July 1) will always lead with Maurice’s Peacock Inn in Nottingham, during the swinging Seventies.

      Bells on the wall would bring pints of Shipstone’s in a jiffy, delivered with banter from another era.

      Roger Steer
      Beauvoir-sur-Mer, Vendée, France

      You didn’t drink Shipstone’s there, Mr Steer, because it was a Home Ales pub.

      Harry K beat me to the other: there’s no ‘stone’ in Masham…

  23. Another day another unsung dark skinned person from the past that needs a statue

  25. Notice Telegraph’s scarcely critical piece ‘Premier League’s naivety about Black Lives Matter has left good intentions mired in politics’ concerning PL’s ‘How the hell do we get off this bandwagon we so stupidly got on’, is not allowing comments.

    Could it be that one or two comments, maybe, might not be totally favourable?

    1. Thank goodness the Premier League saw the error of its ways before paying customers were allowed through the turnstiles.
      I am sure that is just sheer co-incidence.
      (Good heavens, Sister; is it really time for my tablets?)

    2. The DT never allowed comments yesterday on a similar article so it comes as no surprise they do not allow any today.
      Proof if needed that they and their readership are not singing from the same hymn sheet any more.

      1. I’ m so pleased I haven’t signed up to the DT requests for money, I enjoyed commenting on there, but why have the DT become so coy about comments. What happened to free speech ?

      2. Maybe they are content with cardboard cutouts and canned atmosphere as adequate substitutes for readership, for as long as they are assured corporate sponsorship paid for out of our savings.

      3. The comments section under articles in the DT has virtually ceased to exist.

        I have often found that I have not been enabled to comment on every single article I have read in the paper.

        Has the DT become yet another mere instrument of the left – or is it just sh*t scared?

        1. If it has become yet another leftie publication then it should be scared, just imagine sharing the Guardian readership between them both, because that is all they are likely to attract.

        2. There has been a huge increase in comments under the letters.
          Many are there because the posters can’t comment under the relevant article: and they make no bones about that fact.

        3. The Telegraph – like all the mainstream press – is losing readers at an incredible rate.

    1. Conditional discharge – “Anger entirely understandable ” “Statue was a provocation”… etc etc (yawns and drops off).

    2. Could have sworn it wasn’t just one person acting alone, but perhaps the very many videos were deceptive.

    4. And pull him out days later!

      I notice the man arrested is not the same man who appeared on BBC Points West who admitted he was one of them who pulled on the ropes!

      2. The whole mob are not going to be arrested, any more than is the Chief Constable who colluded with the crime. In this case the maximum for racial-aggravated criminal damage is 14 years and a fine. However, there is as much chance of the “racially-aggravated” supplement being added as I have of flying Concorde. While it is blatantly obvious it is a race hatred crime, to convict would meant defining BLM as a racist organisation.

    2. We get emails from our police department never see any of them but they keep banging on about localish testing centres.
      There is no way I’m going to drive to one of those transformed carparks and sit in my car while someone i have never seen in my life
      puts a tick in my mouth to take a swab.

      1. So if you suspect that you have buggy, how should the testing be done?

        I would start with accurate testing kits that were not imported from China but after that do you expect the minimally trained stick poker come to you or should the hallowed NHS let you cross the threshold of A&E so you can be tested there?

        I doubt that most here could get tested anyway, if it is like our test centres, mask wearing is mandatory.

        1. Having had the test done by a doctor, I can imagine that a DIY test would be useless. You have to shove the thing right to the back of the gullet – so that one gags. Twice. And the nose one goes up so far that one fears for the eyeball.

          1. My nose test took a scraping from the inside of my skull, at the back. That was not nice.

          3. That is with a doctor doing it. I can imagine these tests are even less pleasant when carried out by some poorly trained medical assistant.

            Some of our test sites have been staffed by the military so the test might be performed by a soldier who did not join up for the chance to shove test poles up people’s noses.

    3. That depends if the results are normalised relative to the number of tests or are expressed in absolute terms.

  32. Story in the Wail:

    “Police have arrested 746 criminal kingpins after smashing an international secret phone network in the ‘deepest ever UK operation into serious organised crime’. Raids were carried out across the country in a major move in the battle against drugs, guns and illegal activity. “

    Be very interesting to see the breakdown by nationality…..and how, if there is a ten year backlog fr trials, any of them will ever come before a court.

      1. I imagine 98% will be released on bail – so that they can carry on their trade.

    2. Bulgarians, Solvenians, Turks. All that ‘diversity’ we’re being told is so good.

      Have them dig a hole then kick them in to it. Line up a concrete lorry and pour away. Yes, it’s a waste of concrete but the stuff’s fairly cheap.

    3. I rather fear that after a year or less the vacuum left ( should these vermin get their just rewards ) will soon be filled by another set of equally loathsome and evil entities. It must be time to educate the end users in the appalling blood, misery and corpse strewn path their little white lines take so they can corrode their septum and addle their brains and if they cannot be educated then massive fines and/or imprisonment.

  33. Stirring stuff…

    I hoped Boris’ victory would save us from the land of the Superwoke, but we’re back there again

    The Marxist revolutionaries are back to their old tricks of making fashionable stereotypes and emotion prevail over facts

    LEE ROTHERHAM – 2 July 2020 • 1:00pm

    Before the last general election, I wrote a tourist guidebook to what the country would look like if Corbynistas came into power. I called it the Land of the Superwoke.

    Welcome to the Britain of the future. In this fictional landscape, cultural Maoism is the bodyguard to economic Marxism. Identity and language are both being moulded to re-educate the masses, through schools and broadcast media and into public spaces. The public has been numbed to massive state spending, couched in the happy talk of donations and investment and welfare. Any discussion of hallowed institutions that desperately need reform, like the NHS, is out of bounds.

    Like nonpersons loitering in awkward team pictures with Joe Stalin, the past can always be photoshopped. Met some terrorists? It was in the cause of peace. Attended an embarrassing funeral? Was just there loitering with the wreaths. Bent a knee to people wanting to shut down the police? A case now of simply tying the old shoelaces. Comrade, do keep up with the truth.

    We gaze upon a land of empty plinths, monuments to man’s inhumanity to man – sorry, person’s impersonability to person. Legoland has been nationalised and is now a juche ChunkyBricksland (the trademark law suit is still ongoing). The Greenham Common Peace Camp is a home of performance theatre. Neobrutalism and Superbrutalism are the architectural trends of the new future, and not merely because there is no money for making things look beautiful either. Just don’t bother going up the M1 to Socialist World – the place is overpriced, the queues are massive, and many of the attractions in practice just don’t work.

    In this dystopia, those Sun headlines you grew up with, about the latest from ‘Barmy Bernie’ or ‘Red Ken’ and some GLA-funded feminist collective, have finally come true. Britain has become a country so politically correct, it is a hate crime to call it a nation any more. History – sorry, Herstory – has been rewritten. Anyone challenging the new facts risks being expunged as a non-person, even as supercliques devour the innards of campaign groups and turn the new establishment in on itself. LGBT? You’re missing over a dozen extra letters, generated from someone banging their head repeatedly against a keyboard.

    In 2019 though, Corbyn thank goodness lost the election. And at a stroke the book became irrelevant. Or so I naively thought. But of course, as the book itself explains, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries don’t go on holiday. They seize any opportunity as it presents itself, and destructively lever open any promising crack. So I have latterly been tweaking the text to produce a second edition ebook.

    Sadly, it did not require a considerable amount of work, other than to put a couple of names in the past tense. The list of demands made by the anarcho-campers in Seattle’s ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’ rather betrays the principle. Its ‘representatives’ not only want to defund the police, but vengefully to strip them of their pensions. They demand that all “People in Color” (but only they) convicted for “violent crime” be retried by a special court made up of their peers. Even that demand hardly seems worth the effort as they also want to shut down every prison.

    Islingtonian Cava Socialists might become more concerned if they learned that this Seattle Set wants to “degentrify” the city and allow squatting. North London journalists too might not be too chuffed at having to go on anti-bias re-education, along with all teachers and healthcare workers.

    Embarrassingly, the revolutionaries have also now clocked that they have themselves colonially occupied territory once owned by the Duwamish indigenous people: it is just a matter of time now before a spiralling plug hole of irreconcilable fundamental rights swallows up the final brain waves of the movement.

    But why march in the UK? The Left is blinkered. China’s officials suppressed the truth behind Covid, allowing it to spread globally. It permits wet markets. It has threatened to invade Taiwan. It continues to occupy Tibet. It props up North Korea. It is operating trinket colonialism in Africa. It moves to suppress Hong Kong democracy, denying the standing of an international treaty. It sends troops to kill Indian soldiers with clubs spiked with nails. It launches cyber attacks against Australia for making public criticism, and raids the NHS databases. It is building coal-fired stations and pumping out carbon gases at a rate that renders Western efforts pointless (and also, of course, less competitive). It ruins ecosystems by turning atolls into military bases. It allows its scrap salvagers to plunder ships that are Commonwealth war graves. It forces abortions on Uighurs (those it hasn’t put in camps).

    These lives so affected matter too, but that doesn’t fit the Left’s narrative. Doing anything about China is too hard. Greta’s Eco-marchers couldn’t find its embassy on Google maps if they tried. Protesting against something in the US though is easy. It’s cheap. It’s vacuous. It’s fashionably woke.

    But it’s perceptions and emotion, and not facts, that will count in the land and the times of the Superwoke. It takes a brave man or woman to fight the Gutmensch current. The price in reputation can be immense. Get used, dear traveller of the future, to the principle of the ostentatiously bended knee.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/02/hoped-boris-victory-would-save-us-land-superwoke-back/

  34. Aftrnoon all. Sorry about this one …

    ARMED ROBBER IN GUEYDAN, LA….

    An armed hooded robber bursts into the Bank of Gueydan, in Gueydan,
    Louisiana and forces the tellers to load a sack full of cash. On his way
    out the door with the loot one brave Cajun customer grabs the hood and
    pulls it off revealing the robber’s face.

    The robber shoots the guy without hesitation! He then looks around the bank to see if anyone else has seen him.

    One of the tellers is looking straight at him and the robber walks over
    and calmly shoots him also. Everyone by now is very scared and looking
    down at the floor.

    ‘Did anyone else see my face?’ calls the robber.

    There are a few moments of silence….then Boudreaux looking down,
    tentatively raises his hand and says:
    ‘I think my wife Marie peeked’…

    1. Took me a long time to get the joke, because I couldn’t understand who on earth was this Boudreaux character.

    1. Whether we “knew” this or not, and it is a theoretical construct, no one with half a brain ever viewed “what happened in the past as inevitable”.

      1. It’s well known that the shorter naval watch, the dog watch, is curtailed. (© Patrick O’Brian)

    2. “They simply have to times it’s [the dog’s] age by seven.” These days journalists struggle with polysyllabic words such as “multiply”.

    4. One of life’s observations, to re-read a well loved book, you end up with dog-eared pages. To read The Guardian (and perhaps the DT as well) and you end up with a dog of a publication. Age doesn’t seem to matter to the DT.

  37. I never realised that Reading Lists were within the scope of an NHS CEO’s job description…

    Douglas Murray
    Don’t play a game you can’t win
    From magazine issue: 4 July 2020

    Of all the people who have made cash in the past month, few can have raked it in like Robin DiAngelo. Since the death of George Floyd, the white American academic and author of White Fragility has been absolutely milking it. A term I probably shouldn’t use, since Peta last week declared milk a symbol of white supremacy. I might say she is absolutely creaming it, though by the time you read this ‘cream’ might be racist too. In which case it will join the British countryside, which was designated as racist by the BBC’s Country-file last week. A fact that I learned after opening Google’s homepage, where I was educated about the late black American drag queen Marsha Johnson.

    Anyhow, I mention DiAngelo because even before her recent rush of fame, anyone wishing to employ her to correct their opinions had to shell out $6,000 an hour. Or $12,000 for two hours. That is what DiAngelo charged the University of Kentucky last year for a two-hour session on racial injustice. I imagine that she charges more for all those CEOs now queuing up to hire the Miss Whiplash of anti-racism to come up to their offices and spend an afternoon telling them how bad and worthless they are.

    Then there are the book sales. Ever since a Minnesota cop killed Mr Floyd, endless companies and individuals have sent out ‘reading lists’ instructing us all of what to read. Each time DiAngelo’s 2018 work tops the list.

    Consider a document I’ve just been leaked from the office of the chief executive of the Birmingham and Solihull NHS Mental Health Trust. Dated 5 June and titled ‘Inequalities and Racial Discrimination’ it starts by claiming that recent events in America ‘have highlighted once again the discrimination and inequality experienced by people of BAME heritage every day’. The three-page letter goes on: ‘It is not up to our BAME colleagues to make this right. They are quite honestly and understandably fed up of repeatedly telling their stories and not being understood.’

    The author of this letter is one Roisin Fallon-Williams, who in these anti–racist times I ought to point out is white. She knows what to do. ‘I write this to us all from what I now know and understand to be an ignorant and incompetent stance,’ she says. ‘Whilst I remain ignorant and incompetent I do now better understand that I am culpable, I have been complicit.’ She goes on to urge her equally incompetent and ignorant colleagues to take time to go up to BAME colleagues and say ‘How are you?’ and ‘Are you OK?’ and to ‘really listen’ to what they say. All of which raises the question — as such ‘anti-racists’ always do — of what precisely they got up to until the day before yesterday.

    On the third page of self-flagellation, Ms Fallon-Williams suggests four works that her ignorant and incompetent colleagues should read. It is the usual list, though Fallon–Williams may be unaware that half of her suggested texts are by white authors. One is a work by Peggy McIntosh, of Wellesley College. ‘Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack’ has been so often cited over the three decades since it was written that, until reading it a while back, I had assumed that there was something there.

    I was wrong. The entire ‘work’ simply consists of a few pages of assertions intended to demonstrate the daily effects of ‘white privilege’. The first is: ‘I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.’ Assertion number 33 is: ‘I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odour will be taken as a reflection on my race.’ An assertion that only tempts me to make a whole set of reflections on the shape, bearing and body odour of white female academics from Wellesley.

    But top of Fallon-Williams’s reading list is that work which, while longer than Mc-Intosh’s, is in many ways still flimsier. The central assertion of White Fragility is that all white people are racist. White people who are aggrieved at being told that they are racist are said by DiAngelo to be demonstrating ‘white fragility’. Which is further demonstration of racism. All of which leaves white people in their entirety in that conundrum faced by witches facing a dunking in the village pond. It is a game of DiAngelo’s creation, which once engaged in cannot be won. Except by her, obvs.

    Of course some good people are getting carried along by all of this — people of every skin colour who believe our society is intrinsically racist and that as a result everything must be understood through the lens of skin colour. Others of us, also of every skin colour, beg to differ. Not because we are racists, or think our societies can’t be better, but because we think that what is being demanded of us by the ‘anti-racism’ professors and others is a racialist hell of a fresh kind.

    Like the Black Lives Matter movement itself, the ‘social justice’ typified by the works of McIntosh and DiAngelo is set up to be all but unopposable. Like those ‘Peace Studies’ departments that mysteriously cropped up during the Cold War, the apparently impossible-to-oppose front has deep, destructive and, yes, Marxist aims all the way behind it.

    Today this is presented as though it is eminently simple to download. We must simply absorb the right books, correct our language, follow the instructions and otherwise run the program.

    Well you can do. Or you can refuse. And I would strongly recommend the latter approach. For what the race hucksters are offering is not an upgrade of our societal software. Rather, theirs is a program intended to distort and destroy the whole system: a system that may have its faults but does not deserve the introduction of such societal malware. From the boardroom to the NHS and everywhere else in society, I suggest people make sure they understand the consequences of what they are agreeing to. Be very, very careful before clicking ‘Accept All’.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/dont-play-a-game-you-cant-win?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020200704%20%20AL+CID_bc5c3edf1fc34b88c35beb29db64ef76

    2. Rather, theirs is a program intended to distort and destroy the whole system: a system that may have its faults but does not deserve the introduction of such societal malware.

      Yes! That’s the intention behind it!

      BLM are simply tools! It is the people behind them that have provided the money and the organisation and who control the MSM and have the power to shut down the internet who are really at work here.

      1. Ssshhhh ….. don’t tell Ikea Sturmer; he’s still scribbling over the golliwogs in Noddy.

  38. Just had an email from Booking.com. “You deserve a holiday” it declares to me, a stranger who once used them to track down the cheapest accommodation in Lucerne – a youth hostel for elderly cheapskates.

    I don’t deserve a holiday; I deserve a bucket of sick, but I’m not going to get it unless I make my own.

  39. Meanwhile, in America, the Marxists are on the same side as the Iranian revolutionaries:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VA221A01TL

    Tucker Carlson Tonight, the highest viewing figures for a cable news show. He’s demolishing the other news shows.
    He’s also castigating the Republican party, who are as spineless and supine as our Tories when faced with this cultural revolution.
    Mark Steyn lets rip on them.
    Bill de Blasio turns NYC into a 3rd world crime ridden hellhole. Cops are demoralised, unsupported, and about to have $1:/ removed from their budget.

    This is not by mistake. This is intentional. They want to make the US ungovernable, and then blame Trump.
    Polls are showing Biden in the clear lead, the same Biden who struggles to finish a sentence. When the Democrats have cheated their way to the Presidency via vote rigging, they’ll just claim that the polls were right all along, nothing to see here, and the country will be destroyed, with them in permanent power.

    We have a Conservative government in charge here in the UK. Not that anyone can tell.

    1. I just so love it when Trump says that Biden cannot finish a sentence, talk about pots and kettles of colour.

      50,000 CV cases in the US yesterday. I suppose the claim is that they are all down to a socialist plot to make the great leader Trump look bad.

      1. Of course. They get deleted during the day after. I don’t know if it’s Fox News that does it or YouTube.

    3. As he noted the other day. This is not about BLM it is about the Presidency.

      There are times when I almost hope that the Democrats reap what they sow.
      My long shot bet is BLM riots and coronavirus causing mayhem, Democrats getting a landslide and China walking straight into Taiwan, while America is resolving internal problems.

      1. When will they wake up? I’m no Trump fan, but he did what he said he would, and all was going well till this crisis. I can’t see him winning now, and Biden is just a puppet, with some very nasty people pulling his strings.

    1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FP2bPmJJvB4
      Five misconceptions people on the political left have about people on the right.
      Karlyn Borysenko, a previous Democrat voter who’s switched sides. She’s a psychologist who specializes in workplace psychology, team building, etc.

      I’ve also looked at some far left Twitter feeds and they live in a mirror world, blaming Trump for everything the Democrats are provably doing.

    2. I’m not sure which video is funnier.
      This one or the Di’ndo shop robber.

    1. What a dick. Was his divot of the brother with him ?
      Handy quote from Desmond T, i wonder has Korbinsky ever had a sane and proportionate thought of his own.

        1. Exactly right T people like them should be used in experimentation.
          Strapped down plugged into the recorder and left in a darkened room.
          What he was doing reminded me of the hapless John Major on his soap box.
          But at least his parents or grad parents were music hall clowns of some sort.

  42. Morning all, got he day off from ‘handymanning’ and decorating, a well earned rest.
    Fed up to the back teeth of the ‘news’ and full of BS bickering presenters.

    1. Yo RE

      It makes a change for them to bicker, normally they are on the same side. the one we Nottlers do not like

      1. Not last night Ellie this morning. It just goes on and on and on and on and on and………….

        1. I never watch telly in the daytime. OH has been watching old Wimbledon replays this week and that’s bad enough. I even missed our Annie on This Morning on Monday.

      2. We go to bed. We don’t watch the news. I’ll just view the headlines on YouTube.

      3. Yo Nd

        Do you use an Oirish alarm clock, set the timer and it sends you to sleep

  43. I suppose that in offering the 3 million people from Hong Kong a life in Britain the government is mindful of the fact they will feel at home leaving the most densely populated place in the world to come to England, the most densely populated country in Europe.

    But, if we take 65 million as the population of Britain then 3 million is an additional 4.6% – where will they go?

    2. Worldometers has the UK population as 67,887,024. And that’s probably out of date.

      Where will they go? Most will join Cinese communities in London and other cities. But there are fewer people migrating here from the EU now.

        1. Yes – it’s a lot. And as the Afro-caribbean population is supposedly only 3%, they will be out-numbered.

          1. If we’re talking about outnumbering – the 2011 Census gives the UK Muslim population as 2,516,000, 4.4% of the total population. And that was 9 years ago, so Allah knows what it is now.

      2. We will have to put ‘English Takeaways’ near them, for our spies to keep track of what they are upto

          1. Well if you’ve found all three in the same place you’ve certainly struck gold.

    4. Morning Richard. i think given all the arrivals since Blair opened the door to any one, the UK population is already over 80. Most hidden away in over crowded terraces, squats, garden sheds etc.
      Where will they go ? Not Wales Scotland of northern Ireland. But millions more houses will have to be built on green belt and our precious agricultural land.
      We already don’t have enough water for the current population, nor power, let alone the rest of the creaking infrastructure.

  44. Good morning, all.

    Best place to put the Hong Kongers is close to slammers. The HKs will soon sort them out.

      3. They’ll be expelled, timed to coincide with the next time Britain offends the Chinese badly enough and the damage will do the greatest harm to the West.

        Possibly along with a few million Taiwanese when China takes it over.

      4. 320853+ up ticks,
        Afternoon RE,
        They are threatening retaliation in a highly dastardly manner ie, numbers 12/14/ 29 & 32 are being withdrawn from all UK takeaway menu’s.

        2. Back in the day, I worked in Hampstead quite a lot, i use to see Allan Clarke taking his two dogs for walks.
          Both on leads, well all three i suppose and not let go.

    2. The area of Hong Kong is 1,108 square kilometres; the area of the Okneys is 990 square kilometres; the area of the Shetlands is 1,466 square kilometres so they are of comparable geographical areas.

      Is Boris capable of dramatic lateral thinking?

      Why not give generous compensation to all the current inhabitants and the give one or the other territories – either the Shetlands or the Orkneys – to the people from Hong Kong?

      We have New York – why not an independent state of New Orkney or New Shetland which would, in a few years rival Honk Kong for profitability?

    3. The area of Hong Kong is 1,108 square kilometres; the area of the Okneys is 990 square kilometres; the area of the Shetlands is 1,466 square kilometres so they are of comparable geographical areas.

      Is Boris capable of dramatic lateral thinking?

      Why not give generous compensation to all the current inhabitants and the give one or the other territories – either the Shetlands or the Orkneys – to the people from Hong Kong?

      We have New York – why not an independent state of New Orkney or New Shetland which would, in a few years rival Honk Kong for profitability?

      1. 320853+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Sort of like give Leicester to the pakistani, london to the bame, rotherham etc to the muslims just a continuation of what is happening
        to the countryside as a whole via the electorate
        via the ballot booth & lab/lib/con.

      2. Not sure they’d be happy going from tropical Hong Kong to the Shetlands and the freezing cold.

        1. 20 or so years ago, a bunch immigrated from Pakistan, and were settled way up North in Norway. Apparently they are happy with it.

  45. I entered one of those Iron Man contests last year, and what a joke that was.

    I was the only one there that even bothered to build a suit, and as soon as it started everyone just went off for a swim !

  46. Up here the Commandant is issuing even more laws.
    As from next week everyone in Scotland who goes into a shop must, by law, wear a face mask. (Even though there is no sensible evidence that they make any difference. Or that there is little evidence that the Covid-19 epidemic is anything other than completely played out.)

    For insanity in detail this surely a contender:

    “Why can hairdressers reopen but nail salons cannot?
    Linsey Hanna, from Bauer, passes on the frustration of a nail salon owner who has face masks and gloves as standard but yet does not have an opening date under the Scottish government’s route map from lockdown.
    First Minister Nicola Sturgeon replies that she has sympathy for businesses that cannot reopen or do not have clarity about when they can.
    She says the difference between a hairdresser and a nail salon is that the former tends to stand behind the client while the latter is more face-to-face.
    Interim chief medical officer Dr Gregor Smith such orientation has to be taken into account, along with time spent with clients, the amount of physical contact and equipment used.    ”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-53179185

    1. We do have three outbreaks of CV in nail salons, none in hairdressers so there may be something in it.
      There again, the salons were breaking all rules, no face masks and obviously sitting within a few feet of each other.

      When people start catching the bug there might be some willingness to accept masks but there again seeing that over 40,000 new cases a day in the US doesn’t convince Republicans that something is going on, maybe it won’t.

      1. Currently the Scottish Government estimate for the total number of people with Covid-19 in Scotland is just over 1000. The pattern up until now would suggest that these cases will be in the major conurbations, especially Glasgow, and in care homes. Elsewhere there are almost no cases.
        There are 4000 beds available for Covid patients, around 400 currently required. There are 700 ICU beds available, around 10 occupied.
        It is more or less all over.

    2. Logically, one would think that hairdressers would be more at risk as their client can’t easily wear a mask, whereas a client at a nail bar can even though they are face-to-face.

      1. My point is that there is no logic in this at all.
        As I note below there are around 1000 people currently infectious with Covid-19 according to Government figures. Unless you live in a city or a care home you have more chance of winning the lottery than meeting an infected person.

        1. 25,000 according to the ONS. Still pretty low numbers, but it depends on how they are geographically distributed, as local spikes will form in urban areas such as Leicester.

    3. Shopkeeper to masked man: “What can I get you?”
      Shopper: “The entire contents of your till”.

  47. https://abc7amarillo.com/news/local/texas-county-confirms-5-covid-19-cases-bringing-total-to-944
    Texas County confirms 5 COVID-19 cases, bringing total to 944
    by Matthew WatkinsThursday, June 4th 2020

    https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/06/30/leicester-has-unusually-high-incidence-of-covid-in-children-minister-says/
    Leicester has ‘unusually high’ incidence of Covid in children, minister says
    Coronavirus | Published: Jun 30, 2020
    The city council said that 944 Covid-19 cases had been reported in the last two weeks.

    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3543604
    Epidemiological and Clinical Characteristics of 944 Cases of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Infection of Non-COVID-19 Exporting City, Zhejiang, China

    https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/33-new-cases-take-bsf-s-covid-19-tally-to-944-death-toll-at-five/story-CgNup1mAELNt8h0PLEvRxI.html
    33 new cases take BSF’s Covid-19 tally to 944; death toll at five
    With 19,906 new cases, the highest single-day spike so far, India’s Covid-19 count touched 5,28,859 including 2,03,051 active cases, 3,09,713 cured/discharged/migrated, according to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.
    INDIA Updated: Jun 28, 2020 15:10 IST

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-tally-global-cases-of-covid-19-944-million-482923-deaths-and-us-new-cases-are-highest-since-april-2020-06-25
    Coronavirus tally: Global cases of COVID-19 9.44 million, 482,923 deaths and U.S. new cases are highest since April
    Published: June 25, 2020 at 6:59 a.m. ET

    Two instances can be a coincidence. All of these reports??? 944 cases each time? Not 941, or 956, but 944 every time, including the 9.44 million cases each year. It’s like someone wants us to know they’re trolling us.

    If anyone has a Telegraph subscription, please feel free to post this in the letters comment section. See how long it stays up.

      1. “When you keep seeing the angel number 944, your guardian angels are telling you that you should strive to be productive every single day, just like with the angel number 949. Engage in activities that will make you grow as a person and broaden your horizons. Do things that will enrich your body, mind, and soul.”

        The people doing this to us are no angels.

  49. Mick is driving along the road and spots Paddy walking along. He stops
    and winds down the window, “Paddy, would you like a lift?”

    “No thanks, Mick. No need ….. I live in a bungalow.”

    1. I thought Paddy might have said “No thanks, Mick, ‘cos where I’m going, I wouldn’t start from here”.

      2. Paddy is sat having a quiet drink in the bar when Murphy walks in
        cradling a lizard. Paddy exclaims “Bejeezus Murph, what the hell have
        you got there, looks like some mad kind of swivel eyed dinosaur type of
        thing?”

        Murphy carefully sets his new pet down on the table and replies “He’s a
        Chameleon.”

        Paddy lowers his head to the table until he’s almost nose to nose with
        the animal and says “Go on then, tell me a joke!”

        1. Years ago, my then girlfriend (now wife) were touring Ireland. We’d been given vague instructions by the landlady of our BnB to a good pub in the next village. Hoeever,, we got lost and stopped to ask a passerby for directions. Suddenly he jumped in the back seat and said, “I’ll direct you.” Ten minutes later, we pulled up outside a pub but it was the wrong pub. When we pointed this out, he replied, “It’s a better pub!’

        3. Aren’t the Clintons trying to find a suitable slot in their diaries. The Democrat Party will keep them fully informed. of when the best time is likely to be.

    2. The Daily Mail story is a tad too accurate, a recent photo is labelled last picture.

      Ah well it should provide a bit of distraction from other happenings.

  51. Modern Life at School

    ‘If Billy oppressed three black people, Michael oppresses seven and
    Sarah oppresses three, how bigoted are white people and how much should
    they pay in reparations?’

    2. If it was genocide it was very unsuccessful because so many black people are still in the world!

      Using the same yardstick Hitler’s genocide was not successful either because he failed to exterminate the Jewish race..

      However the sorts of genocide practised in Africa by people such as Idi Amin were far more successful.

      I am still waiting for a journalist or a politician to point out to Lewis Hamilton that the company which pays him £40 m a year used Jewish slave labour in living memory rather than Britain, spearheaded by Wilberforce, which started the war to stamp it out over 200 years ago.

  55. The answer to the the difficulties of the people of Hong Kong is to relocate them to Northern Ireland. All of them.
    What boost to an economy that has been heavily subsidised for years! A complete answer to the Irish Border question which was so vexatious during Brexit. The hard border/soft border nonsense will disappear as if it had never been, Indeed, it really never was.
    The Republic will have to face the fact that their neighbouring NI will now have population roughly equivalent to Eire, but harder-working and more law-abiding. A population which will have free access to the Republic, in line with Veradkar’s endless whining.
    That’s that sorted.

  56. What is “political correctness”?

    Telegrams between President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur on the day before the actual signing of the WWII Surrender Agreement in September 1945:

    The contents of these four telegrams below are exactly as received at the end of the war – not a word has been added or deleted!

    (1) Tokyo, Japan 0800-September 1,1945
    To: President Harry S Truman
    From: General D A MacArthur
    Tomorrow we meet with those yellow-bellied bastards and sign the Surrender Documents, any last minute instructions?

    (2) Washington, D C 1300-September 1, 1945
    To: D A MacArthur
    From: H S Truman
    Congratulations, job well done, but you must tone down your obvious dislike of the Japanese when discussing the terms of the surrender with the press, because some of your remarks are fundamentally not politically correct!

    (3) Tokyo, Japan 1630-September 1, 1945
    To: H S Truman
    From: D A MacArthur and C H Nimitz
    Wilco Sir, but both Chester and I are somewhat confused, exactly what does the term politically correct mean?

    (4) Washington, D C 2120-September 1, 1945
    To: D A MacArthur/C H Nimitz
    From: H S Truman
    Political Correctness is a doctrine, recently fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and promoted by a sick mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.

      1. Still a good story – and Snopes themselves have been investigated. It was found that they don’t actually employ any researchers and basically just deny or rubber stamp according to, err, political correctness!

    2. Politically Correct. The term first arose in the mid twentieth Century where it was used to describe disparagingly the dogmatic application of Marxist doctrine irrespective of the results it had on its victims.

  57. Gangs of the Golden Triangle: Chilean burglars have terrorised the Home Counties for years but now they are flying into Britain with a new target – Cheshire’s wealthy footballer belt. So why DO we let them in? 2 July 2020.

    So what attracted the convicted criminal to leave his wife and four children at home and travel 7,500 miles across the Atlantic?

    Quite simply, Vera wasn’t here for a spot of sightseeing — he and his gang were what is known as ‘burglary tourists’.

    I know about the Albanian pimps and the Romanian pickpockets and the Vietnamese Marijuana growers but this was a new one on me. The UK thanks to its immigration policies is in effect a huge criminal help yourself society. The reason you are not immediately aware of it is because the vast majority of the offences pass unreported, uninvestigated, unsolved and unprosecuted. These people were actually incredibly unlucky to be caught!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8480977/Gangs-Golden-Triangle-Chilean-burglars-targeting-Cheshires-wealthy-footballer-belt.html

    1. Perhaps the coloured woolly hats and the pan pipes were a bit of a giveaway.

    2. Just as well that you have a strict immigration quarantine system in place, otherwise who knows what riff raff might drop by for a bit of pillaging.

  58. BBC4 Tonight at 9:p.m. Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. With David Olusoga. Who would ever have thought it?

    1. Afternoon Minty ,

      Why haven’t these BBC twerps picked up on the clothes making sweatshops in Leicester , the photos we saw in the Mail yesterday where the owner paid his migrant workers £3 an hour( so it was suggested) and insisted they work in hot airless windowless conditions, the photos looked awful.

      Why don’t they address the Nail studio workers / Carhandwashes and their Eastern European slaves who always look so wan and pathetic, and the landlords who cram dozens of people into small properties, those coloured people who work in Fast food shops, oh and I forgot the sex industry where girls/ women are exploited horribly . Cleaning companies, people are exploited there , as well as agricultural workers from abroad. Many live in horrible substandard accommodation and are exploited by multinational companies.

      2. Well, some of these operations are run by armed gangsters, and all of them might be. Our police are fine for looking at rude comments on Facebook, or harassing old age pensioners out for a walk, but facing crazy Albanians who have submachine guns? They haven’t done so far.
        As for the MSM, the journos start to cry if someone disagrees with them on Twitter.

    2. Afternoon Minty ,

      Why haven’t these BBC twerps picked up on the clothes making sweatshops in Leicester , the photos we saw in the Mail yesterday where the owner paid his migrant workers £3 an hour( so it was suggested) and insisted they work in hot airless windowless conditions, the photos looked awful.

      Why don’t they address the Nail studio workers / Carhandwashes and their Eastern European slaves who always look so wan and pathetic, and the landlords who cram dozens of people into small properties, those coloured people who work in Fast food shops, oh and I forgot the sex industry where girls/ women are exploited horribly . Cleaning companies, people are exploited there , as well as agricultural workers from abroad. Many live in horrible substandard accommodation and are exploited by multinational companies.

    3. I would not mind betting that if anyone delved into his ancestry they would find some of his antecedents both kept slaves and traded slaves.

    4. ‘Who would ever have thought it?’

      I think it it is a racing certainty he would be involved!

      Whoops……! I have just seen your tongue in cheek hanging
      out the side of your mouth!

    1. I’ve only met Stanley. I think Boris looks short because he’s a big man but of average height.

    2. He’s almost exactly the UK male average height according to the ONS.
      He’s almost certainly well over the average weight.

  62. Joke headline of the afternoon – in the Wail:

    “Williamson warns unions”….

    Quaking, they are – just quaking….with laughter.

  63. Prince Harry: Institutional racism is ‘endemic’ in society. 1 July 2020 • 6:15pm

    The Duke of Sussex has apologised to young people for their elders’ lack of progress in making “right the wrongs of the past”, saying institutional racism and unconscious bias must end now.

    The Duke, delivering a video message from California, said institutional racism is “endemic”, and “has no place in our societies”.

    “My wife said recently that our generation and the ones before us haven’t done enough to right the wrongs of the past,” he said. “I too am sorry. Sorry that we haven’t got the world to the place where you deserve it to be.

    “Unconscious bias must be acknowledged without blame to create a better world for you. “I want you to know we are committed to being part of the solution and part of the change that you are all leading.

    God almighty! The Royal Gimp speaks!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2020/07/01/prince-harry-calls-end-institutional-racism-says-generation/

      1. One of these days he will miss his footing and get run over by one.

    5. 320853+ up ticks,
      AS,
      “Sorry that we haven’t got the world to a place where you deserve it to be”
      What he is saying in point of fact is that those thousands that remain on the Somme etc,etc, should really have tried harder,
      Ex royal tw@t.

    7. It isn’t difficult to pass the unconscious bias test by consciously faking it, honestly. The first question in the BBC test was…little Johnny is injured in a road accident in which his daddy is killed. Little Johnny is visited in hospital by his daddy. How can that be? He has two daddies, says I. How would you explain that to someone who doesn’t think like you, says the test. Cue puke.

      1. Say that his biological father is visiting him to find out how he and his adoptive mother are coping after the death of his adoptive father.

      5. Tell the tester that everyone you know who has children lives in a menage a trois?

    9. What an arrogant PoS!
      How dare he presume to talk on my behalf!
      If there’s any apologising to do, I’ll do it myself. I don’t need pampered jerks presuming to talk for me!’
      He can fuck right off, get in a car and fuck off some more!

    10. Sorry Hazzer you’ve turned into more than a bit of a knob mate, Slayders………..

    11. His lips may move. I doubt very much if the words are his!

      Long Love King Soros

    12. Poor Harry suffers from unconscious bias. He believes he is a Prince of the Royal blood.

        1. Losing his mother at such a young age might have something to do with it. The family should have been watching out for controlling women.

      2. Has he actually ever had a DNA test? And if so, was the result hushed up?

  64. Great news for President Trump. Real news not Fake News.

    The US economy continued to roar back to life in June following the
    nationwide Coronavirus shutdown; adding nearly 5 million positions as
    the unemployment rate fell to 11.1%.

    “Our economy is roaring back,” Trump declared Thursday, saying the
    response to the coronavirus pandemic, coordinated with governors, is
    “working out very well.”

      1. Texas, Georgia, Florida are the big problems now.

        Guess what, they are not Democrat states although it is very easy to just blame the dems.

        1. Florida.

          Oh yes, that’s the State that opened for Spring break, where all the highly educated students partied.

          Now, we’re constantly being told that Republicans are red-necked ignoramuses and Democrats are the ones with college degrees, so who came down to Florida and spread the bugs?

          And to go back to my point, what are the actual numbers, not the % increases?

          The really really big numbers of cases are in Democrat controlled areas.

          100% increase on 50 cases is 50 more cases.

          10% increase on 5,000 cases is 500 more cases.

    2. The economy wasn’t exactly coming from a strong position though, any country should be able to record strong growth after most businesses were forced to shut. Even Canada is showing an increase in employment after the wimpy liberals allowed shops to open.

      Burstung your bubble about the CV response working out very well, there have been 170,000 new cases so far this week. It cannot be that infection is spreading, so it must be all of those additional tests being done.

      1. Thats right change the subject when you have no answer to the comment set. It is a great result just like the previous month.

      2. So tell me, where are the cases spreading most rapidly?

        Not in % terms but in real numbers.

        Let me guess, Democrat controlled areas.

  66. ‘Defund the police’ is not nonsense. Here’s what it really means. Thu 2 Jul 2020.

    It seems likely that some critics have misunderstood what defunding really means. Campaigns to defund the police and prison system do not argue that every prison should close tomorrow and every police officer be sacked the day after – they argue that social problems are better addressed through social responses. It may be hard to fathom, but no matter how much policing and prisons have expanded in the last 30 years, there has been no improvement in public safety.

    This is like saying no matter how many sewage farms we have built in the last thirty years people are still shitting. What we are going to do is give them free hygiene lessons and toilet rolls.

    In reality of course, as anyone with any knowledge of Human Nature knows, people will continue to crap when they wish and fuck everybody else.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/02/britain-defund-the-police-black-lives-matter

    1. Recently I think that there have been three cases in Canada of mentally disturbed people being shot after the police were called to a disturbance. I can understand claims that a gun wielding cop is probably not the best person to make contact with someone who is having a big anxiety attack but a social worker going in and offering to share a cup of coffee may not last long when facing your average incoherent knife wielding drugged up methodist.

      Over here, demilitarising the police might help but not while the other guy has just about any weapon imaginable.

    2. But haven’t the Left been complaining that the Conservatives have been defunding the police for ten years?

        1. Making a lot of errors lately, but the mistakes usually make for a funnier post

  67. This is an interesting episode in bullying and racism and stereotyping.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8482905/Star-School-Tried-End-Racism-reveals-classmates-twist-words.html

    In my day this boy would not have been bullied for ballet, would not have been bullied for having non-white friends, would not have been bullied for religion/opinions/being a nerd or any number of other reasons.

    His real problem, back then, would have been being a carrot top.

    How excuses to bully have changed.

    2. Growing up is an inherently cruel experience. It is where you learn or hide from the terrible realities of life. The children in Lord of the Flies were savages before they landed on the island that simply allowed their impulses free reign. Civilisation moderates and controls these urges by systems that punish transgressions and reward obedience.

        2. But your lad’s a very big boy.

          A friend of mine was very, small relative to the year group, and he was bullied by a much bigger boy from another House.

          What the bully didn’t realise was that my friend was a superb boxer and in his weight group probably national standard. He was county champion.

          Pete was always calm, but one day the bully finally broke his temper.

          Ooops, very, very bad move.

          Faster than it could be described the bully boy lost several front teeth, was collapsed in a heap and struggling to breathe, let alone cry.
          A wonder to behold.

  68. BASTARD!!!

    I am in the process of pickling some onions. Yesterday I peeled 50 small pickling onions and salted them on a tray. Today I intended to pickle them. I took out a large saucepan and placed it on the hob (my intention was to boil up some vinegar with spices). As soon as I set the pan down it slid right across the hob!

    WTF?

    The hob was covered in a lake of oil! This oil was dropping from the cupboard above the extractor fan that sits over the hob. I use the cupboard for the storage of cooking oils and my various kitchen scales. I opened the cupboard door and saw carnage! Somehow a mouse has gained access, most probably via the extractor hose, and it chewed all the labels off various bottles of oil (peanut oil, olive oil and avocado oil). Not satisfied with that, it then ate the plastic lids of the oil bottles. Still hungry it chewed through the bottom of a nearly full bottle of sunflower oil, thus causing the leakage. Finally it decide to have a chew at the plastic side of my Salter kitchen scales.

    The bloody oil was everywhere, along with mouse shit and bits of chewed up plastic and paper. The oil had dripped into a lower cupboards and was all over the tiled floor. Thankfully not much was damaged apart from the oil bottles themselves. The biggest problem was the time and mess of the clean up session. I swabbed down the hob and it seems unaffected. An electrician is coming around the first thing in the morning to check up on the electrics and measure up for a completely new extractor fan and (mouseproof) exhaust hose for it. I’ll dispense with the need for a cupboard above it and store the oil elsewhere in future!

    BOLLOCKS!!!!

    1. These things are sent to try us, Grizz….. Be glad it wasn’t a rat.

      (Lies very low)

      1. I said to the boss, “If you catch it don’t kill it. I want to capture it and keep it alive so that I can torture it for a long time.”

        I want to come over all Harry Callahan on the bloody punk rodent!

        2. We have mice. Never did before, untl we got cats. Bring the wretched furry little buggers into the house, so they do! }:-((

          1. Discipline the cats by not feeding them for a few days. They’ll soon come to heel. Or not…{:¬))

    3. Oh, man. That’s a right bugger, Grizz. Hope the mouse slid off this mortal coil!

    4. Italian has grades of bastardo, Grizz.
      This looks like bastardissimo!

    5. Oh bloody hell!
      You’ll spend hours cleaning the mess up and then the next 6 months getting rid of the residual traces and smears of the stuff.

    9. Holy Smoke. (Well, only if you turned on the cooker.)
      I have a small dog who is a demon mouser; but he would go mad during 14 days quarantine.

    11. Unless you seldom look in the store area, I would be surprised if that was a mouse, far too much damage.

      Either a herd of meeces or more likely a rat.

      1. No. It’s a solitary mouse judging by the tiny size and scarcity of its droppings. Moreover, there is no access for a rat.

        1. A rat can get through a hole the equivalent of a 50 pence piece. I had them in our thatched roof a few years ago and one in the house. This is how I learnt how adept rats are at accessing spaces.

          1. An exterminator I once used told me a hold the size of a pencil is sufficient for a mouse to get through.

          2. I could easily believe that, we live in a house that is mainly stone built, with numerous holes and crannies.
            It’s bat central in the summer and we find mice and shrews get in all year round, no matter what preventative measures we take.

            Lucifer traps are our most successful solution.

        2. We’ve been here for more than years and we get mice/shrews and heaven knows what small rodents regularly.

          They have never, ever, managed to chew through plastic bottles.

          Put up a few “Lucifer” mouse traps, baited with marshmallow. bend the “hooks” so the bait can’t be gnawed around. Very very effective..

          If it isn’t a rat or even conceivably a small weasel I would be surprised.

    12. Poor you! What a disaster. Oil is dreadful to clean up and the thought of it mixed up with mouse droppings and mouse pee (did you know they were incontinent?) makes me go a bit weak. Good luck!

    1. BTL comment:-

      BobofBonsal
      16 minutes ago
      About time this bloody scandal was taken seriously.
      Will they be looking into the Kray/Boothby/Driberg links to other London children’s homes?
      Nah! I didn’t think so either.
      Reply Flag Delete

  70. That’s me for today. A nice glass or three of a Italian white (sorry, not of colour) to help me prepare for tomorrow.

    Play nicely.

    A demain

  71. The far left here and in America just want to keep lock downs going to hurt the economy and so harm the election chances of the Conservatives and Repubicans respectively.

    1. I think you may have meant help the election chances of the left/far left and harm the election chances of the Republicans/Conservatives.

      Certainly my own view is they want these crises to last to get Biden elected.

          2. The way that Boris and co keep changing the rules there will be no dining out next week.

          3. Tell Johnny, not me. I have no plans to eat out this side of my birthday, & not even then unless Stagecoach pull their finger out.

    2. So what about the Republican governments in the Southern States, are they trying to harm their own re election prospects?

    1. I don’t think much of their tiaras.

      Oh silly me. Not tiaras but barrettes. Never did understand why bald men wear them though.

  74. Next door’s dog poohed in our garden again this morning. My wife said “Get
    a spade and throw it over their fence”

    I don’t see what that will prove though? Because we’ve still got dog
    shit in our garden and now the neighbours have got our spade

  75. My old school bully still takes my dinner money off me everyday , even now

    I lke to say hello as i drive up in my Bentley and say” big mac meal please mate”

      1. It irritates the crap out of me.
        Sat at the table and the meal is served and before you’ve even picked up your nosh rods, let alone taste the grub, some poncy prat is threatening to cover it in freshly ground pepper!
        The last time it happened to me I said in a not very quiet voice, “Do you mind of I taste it first?”
        Aforesaid poncy prat looked very dischuffed with me!

        2. I was dragged up to believe that adding salt or pepper to ones food was an insult to the chef/cook.

          1. The inedible ‘food’ at my primary school was cooked unseasoned and there was always a cruet set on the table. The idiot cooks didn’t have a clue that food should be properly seasoned as it is cooked, not afterwards.

          5. Our school dinners were great. Well cooked and plenty of it with superb puds. The cheese pie was so good.Never had a better apple charlotte. They used to produce so mant roast potatoes you could go round to the cantten rear door at afternoon break and be given a hot roast potatoe if you wanted one.If the ran out the cry went out NO GRUB NO GRUB………….. great days.

          6. That sounds like the food at my secondary school which was million times better than the pigswill served at my primary school. Potatoes, if boiled in unsalted water are inedible. No amount of salt put on them afterwards will make them taste good.

          7. I prefer to season my food after cooking as I like plenty of pepper and Mrs N does not. I do not like cooks deciding these matters for me. very light seasoning only. one mans meat and all that.

          9. Same here. I never add salt to my cooking. I might sprinkle some on the finished product.

          10. Johnny, you are Jack Spratt, and I claim my five bob postal order. Is it true that Mrs Norfolk will only eat meat with plenty of fat on it?

          11. Both of us like good fat.as did our parents. the flavour is in the fat.

  77. My boss said I should dress for the job I want, not for the job I
    have…. Long story short I’m sat in a disciplinary meeting dressed as
    Batman. 🙁

    2. Right Click on the Faceache link and open in a new tab.
      An absolutely disgusting display of arrogance.

  80. Am I alone in thinking that Covid19 flourishes in the Swamp?:

    The CDC is over counting the number of China coronavirus cases in an apparent effort to keep the country shut down throughout the summer. This fraudulent activity was uncovered by the far-left Atlantic proving even a dead clock is right twice a day.
    On May 21, 2020, the Atlantic reported that the CDC was over counting the number of cases of individuals with the China coronavirus:

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic. We’ve learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government’s disease-fighting agency is overstating the country’s ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19. The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday that it is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests, even though the two tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons.

    This is not merely a technical error. States have set quantitative guidelines for reopening their economies based on these flawed data points.

    Several states—including Pennsylvania, the site of one of the country’s largest outbreaks, as well as Texas, Georgia, and Vermont—are blending the data in the same way. Virginia likewise mixed viral and antibody test results until last week, but it reversed course and the governor apologized for the practice after it was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Atlantic. Maine similarly separated its data on Wednesday; Vermont authorities claimed they didn’t even know they were doing this.

    BY INCLUDING BOTH ACTIVE CASES WITH CASES OF INDIVIDUALS WHO HAD THE CHINA CORONAVIRUS IN THE PAST, THE CDC IS GROSSLY OVERSTATING THE NUMBER OF ACTIVE CASES IN THE US. UNFORTUNATELY, STATES LIKE TEXAS AND FLORIDA HAVE RESET THEIR ECONOMIC REOPENING TIME TABLES BASED ON THIS BOGUS DATA.

    Apparently the CDC is still co-mingling these results. Forbes reported last week:

    A report released Thursday from the Government Accountability Office levied criticism at the CDC for combining active cases of the coronavirus and positive antibody tests, which may give a misleading view of nationwide testing and spread.

    The far-left New York Times also reported last week on the GAO’s report:

    The report also criticized the C.D.C.’s counting of coronavirus tests, which combines tests for an active infection and those that detect antibodies. This practice inflates the percentage of Americans that appear to have been tested and gives an unreliable picture of the way the virus is spreading around the country, according to the new report. After the C.D.C. was criticized last month for combining the two types of tests in its reports, the agency promised to separate them. But as of June 9, it had still not resolved the issue, the office reported.

    The CDC’s method of reporting the number of active cases is totally flawed. It is fraudulent. The CDC counts individuals who show that they had the China coronavirus in their counts of individuals who are identified currently with the virus. This data is then used by states to determine whether to open our shut down their economies.

    Is there anything about this China coronavirus that is valid and accurate?
    Americans are being played by their own politicians, ignorant medical ‘experts’ and government agencies. Who needs enemies when your own government is this corrupt?

    https://www.thegatewaypundi…

    2. Didn’t the UK do the double counting as well? It seems that al screws ups are shared equally.

  81. No mention of Albanians…

    Hundreds of gangsters arrested as police crack criminals’ private messaging network

    The arrests are being heralded by the National Crime Agency as one of the biggest ever blows to serious organised crime

    Hundreds of Britain’s most dangerous drug dealers, gangsters and gun runners have been arrested after EncroChat, a private messaging platform used by criminals to communicate, was secretly penetrated by law enforcement agencies.

    In what is being heralded by the National Crime Agency (NCA) as one of the biggest ever blows to serious organised crime, entire underworld networks have been dismantled and vital evidence gathered against previously untouchable kingpin figures.

    More than 740 suspects have been arrested, millions of pounds in illicit cash, tonnes of class A drugs and vast caches of deadly firearms have been seized, during two months of operations by police forces across the UK.

    Similar operations have also taken place in countries across Europe and further afield.

    (cont)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/02/hundreds-kingpin-gangsters-arrested-police-crack-encrypted-messaging/

        2. Not ever. I am guessing Polish, Ukrainian, Transylvanian, Albanian, Croatian, Serbian and all of the other shits, many of which were given free access into the EU and the automatic right to come here.

  82. No mention of Albanians…

    Hundreds of gangsters arrested as police crack criminals’ private messaging network

    The arrests are being heralded by the National Crime Agency as one of the biggest ever blows to serious organised crime

    Hundreds of Britain’s most dangerous drug dealers, gangsters and gun runners have been arrested after EncroChat, a private messaging platform used by criminals to communicate, was secretly penetrated by law enforcement agencies.

    In what is being heralded by the National Crime Agency (NCA) as one of the biggest ever blows to serious organised crime, entire underworld networks have been dismantled and vital evidence gathered against previously untouchable kingpin figures.

    More than 740 suspects have been arrested, millions of pounds in illicit cash, tonnes of class A drugs and vast caches of deadly firearms have been seized, during two months of operations by police forces across the UK.

    Similar operations have also taken place in countries across Europe and further afield.

    (cont)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/02/hundreds-kingpin-gangsters-arrested-police-crack-encrypted-messaging/

  83. Sorry to laugh.

    Wokingham is one of the top new rising covid hotspots, how woke is that?

    1. We had a Mousaka made of left-over lamb,. aubergine and various bits of left-over veg.

      1. Missy gets all my leftovers; at the moment she’s enjoying offcuts from the rib of beef from the w/e. She’s gone right off her own food, except for her biscuits.

    2. You beat me hands down tonight, Peddy. I had bangers and mash with baked beans.

    1. Supermarkets have stopped selling coconut water and milk from certain companies after it emerged that the products were harvested using ‘monkey slave labour’.

      Waitrose has vowed never to sell items obtained through monkey labour after an investigation showed that popular brands were using the animal. The supermarket will thoroughly check its coconut products to ensure they are not harvested by monkeys.

      Animal rights organisations have spoken out against the Thai farms which use the pigtailed macaques, often snatched from the wild, to scurry up trees and harvest coconuts. They are often forced to carry items larger than their body weight, and kept in tiny cages when not at work.

      The primates are prized for their work, as a male monkey can collect an average of 1,600 coconuts per day and a female can get 600, while a human can only collect around 80 per day.

      “Waitrose & Partners supports Peta’s goal to end the use of monkey labour in the coconut industry. As part of our animal welfare policy we have committed to never knowingly sell any products sourced from monkey labour,” said John Gregson, the communications manager for Health & Agriculture at Waitrose & Partners

      Morrisons has removed the Thai brands from its shelves, and Boots, the Co-op and Ocado vowed they will not sell products that use monkey labour.

      The investigation, by animal rights organisation Peta Asia, found farms training monkeys to pick coconuts from trees. Multiple locations were suppliers of leading international coconut product providers, including two of the largest coconut brands.

      Investigators documented monkeys displaying ‘stereotypic repetitive behaviour’, indicative of extreme stress. Monkeys were also chained to old tires surrounded by rubbish or confined to cages barely larger than their own bodies and left in the pouring rain without shelter.

      To avoid handlers being bitten, the monkeys also often have their teeth pulled out.

      “These curious, highly intelligent animals are denied psychological stimulation, companionship, freedom, and everything else that would make their lives worth living, all so that they can be used to gather coconuts,” says Peta Director Elisa Allen. “Peta is calling on decent people never to support the use of enslaved monkeys by shunning coconut products from Thailand.”

      2. Better stop buying, cheese, butter, milk etc., all harvested from slave cows and goats – even sheep are in the mix but we’ll leave them alone in deference to Welsh proclivities.

      1. Socialist monkeys? You give me that great big coconut, I will give you back this tiny peanut.

        1. All monkeys are socialists. It’s in their nature.

          Just look at the Labour Party, The Democrats in the US of A, those running Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and many more Socialist paradises; not a single one of them in those places are fit to enough to be trusted with the organ-grinders begging bowl.

    1. Bert ” Ada, i think you have put on a little lock down weight”.
      Ada, ” why do you think that, Bert”.
      Bert, ” you are sinking down lower in the chair”.

    2. Bert ” Ada, i think you have put on a little lock down weight”.
      Ada, ” why do you think that, Bert”.
      Bert, ” you are sinking down lower in the chair”.

  87. Looks like Ghislaine is going to plea bargain… and unload everything she knows about Dems who went to the Island..

    3. Best mark it last will and testament, there are some mighty powerful people looking forward to her not testifying.

      Top stories on Fox, way down the page on CNN. Who is being protected already?

    1. G’nite, peddy; you’ve left us in the lurch …

      “The relish is truly amazing.”

      WWT effing relish ???

      1. The ‘relish’ is the honey & walnut sauce in the recipe.

        G’night & now for my German thriller.

        1. Incidentally, honey & walnuts are an old Cretan remedy against hypothermia. I know because I was given that after ascending Mt Gingilos in Crete & it worked.

  91. CNN Reporter Bruna Macedo Mugged at Knifepoint During Live Report. 2 July 2020

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4cd8807ca5896851c28426cbcf382833750edcdf1f1fbeb211f50cefd660a0f0.png

    Live on CNN Brasil, reporter Bruna Macedo was robbed at knifepoint during her report on rising water levels from heavy rain at Bandeiras Bridge in São Paolo on Saturday.

    Macedo greeted the man, who pulled out a knife. As Macedo stepped back, the camera cut to the scene of a rain-soaked street. Macedo then handed the robber two mobile phones.

    Obviously this guy knows CNN are in favour of defunding the police!

    https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/07/02/cnn-reporter-bruna-macedo-mugged-at-knifepoint-during-live-report/

    1. Comment:-

      sapper82
      1 second ago
      Bullshit!
      CNN has Propagandists, not reporters.

    1. In other words, project fear has worked even better for covid than Brexit.

      1. It has certainly had a twisted impact on reality. Crowded bar less risky than a quiet church?

        2. There should be the same same social distancing in both places, and don’t forget there’s a lot of alcohol in those sanitising hand gels, more than in the sacramental wine,

    2. I’m certainly more comfortable about going to a bar than going to church.

      1. If God saw you going into a church he’d probably send a thunderbolt, so I can understand your stance.

        };-O

        1. They have to wear masks in Caroline’s church but Caroline, who plays the organ, has an exemption because when she wears a mask her glasses steam up and she can’t read the music.

          2. Yes – terrible. Did she take her own life, or fall off her horse? The story didn’t make it very clear.

          3. I wondered the same , the article wasn’t very clear at all.

            I assumed she had fallen , but the horse would have returned without a rider , and a search would have been immediate.

            Really so tragic ..

          4. I thought the horse sighting was not immediately before her death. She’d been seen riding, but there is nothing to say she hadn’t returned the horse and then gone out. If you go out on a hack and don’t return, people don’t wait 24 hours before starting to worry!

          5. Round here, we are reading between the lines. Found in woodland near her home and no “suspicious” circumstances; police are not looking for a third party. Doesn’t mean no unexplained circumstances. Inquest has opened in Shrewsbury today.

          6. You would think it was The Black Death the way its being treated. i will not wear a mask.

          7. You would think it was The Black Death the way its being treated. i will not wear a mask.

          8. I may be wrong, but judging by how infrequently the music/hymns change in our church, I suspect she could probably play it blindfold if she needed to.

            I completely sympathyse with the glasses issue.
            I wear varifocals and the bit that steams up is the bit I need to be able to read anything.

          9. I wear varifocals and they make me feel seasick, I have worn them for years , but in the last year or so mine make me feel as if I m on a wobbly deck when I am walking around , not so bad when I am reading or typing .. I have worn a mask and mine also steam up.

          10. I’m told by my optician that there comes a point where it will be better for me to go “reading” and “living” glasses.
            I’m not looking forward to it.

          12. I haven’t tried wearing a mask yet. But I think I will have to make an appointment for an eye test as I have trouble focusing both eyes together, especially in the evenings.

        2. I’d probably be on the roof after the lead (for my catapult and fishing weights), so an easy target.

    3. I take it the grey area is don’t know/don’t care. If so, the church question has 46% don’t know/don’t care, probably indicating that those people wouldn’t go to church anyway.

    1. If she has any sense she will have deposited multiple affidavits with trusted people naming all those who were involved with Epstein. Call it ‘insurance’.

  94. Evening, all. The government, having got it all completely wrong from the beginning, is thrashing around trying to save what face it can and only getting more egg on its visage.

      1. It would have been righter to close down the borders and have health checks on incomers from the start.

  96. I’m surprised that nobody has made the following comparison, a letter to the DT:

    SIR, If those who equate the depiction of St Michael standing upon the neck of Satan as being equal to an American standing upon the neck of George Floyd, are they saying that George Floyd is Satan?
    Regards

    I have yet to see if it’s published

  98. If Twitter were neutral, it would show this hashtag trending:

    #MaxwellDidntKillHerself

  99. Much ado? David Starkey’s little outburst isn’t featured on the main DT news pages. Radio 4’s 6pm news pushed it back almost 20 minutes.

    There is a serious debate to be had about the definition of genocide. Starkey was correct but crass in his expression. The UN definition is wider than some might think but is considered too narrow by others: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11108059

    There is a danger of devaluing the word. If the world carries on as it is at the moment with hate crimes, slum clearance might soon qualify as ‘forced relocation’.

    1. Lots of ado over here by first nations people about the genocide of their people. We are not even supposed to celebrate Canada Day now because reminders of the past may hurt some tender souls feelings.

        1. Or damn well block the roads and railway again, them being protected and not liable to normal laws. .

    1. She won’t get to say anything. As soon as ‘they’ are sure she hasn’t left a little black book of names and dates she’s history.

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