Tuesday 28 July: The British are asked to lose weight to trim a fraction off NHS costs

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/27/lettersthe-british-asked-lose-weight-trim-fraction-nhs-costs/

743 thoughts on “Tuesday 28 July: The British are asked to lose weight to trim a fraction off NHS costs”

  3. I note that the Government is getting twitchy about people not going back to work.

    If the Chancellor hasn’t already done so he should stop furlough payments and also tell all public sector workers “no work no pay.”

      1. I’m starting to believe the Government might be a fifth column.

        Borrow sums that will shackle taxpayers for decades.

        Get people to work from home so that big business can work out which jobs can still easily be off-shored to India. Steal wealth and inheritances from the Boomers and the Millennials.
        Create and stoke social class, age, racial and religious divisions.

        Bankrupt Britain.

        I think they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams

    2. SIR – It is outrageous that MPs have disappeared for a summer recess when major agencies upon which we all depend are in utter chaos and barely functioning. Politicians should not be absent when Britain needs urgent action and attention.

      Sandy Forsyth
      Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

      Might some view the absence of MPs as a welcome relief.

      1. I’ve long held the view that the country would be better off if they were simply paid to take a permanent holiday. In support of my view I cite the sentiments of Prof. Rist above.

        1. Trouble is that if we let the politicians slither back into their holes, we’re left at the mercies of the snivel serpents.

    3. The stupidity of continuing furlough until Halloween is eye popping.
      By the end of May it should have been stopped.
      “Our’ NHS was managing just fine.

      1. When I posted here, weeks if not months ago, that I thought the rate of furlough at up to 80% was ridiculous and that people would be quite happy to be paid to stay at home and do nothing, I was castigated by Nottlers who thought most of those on furlough would be itching to get back to work.

        That’s fine if you love your job, but I still believe that the majority of people would be happy to be paid sufficient to make them better off net, and to entertain themselves at home. The mere fact that so many Brits choose to live on benefits suggested that might be the case.

        This was shown starkly by the daily congregations at the seaside, in parks and gardens and indirectly with BLM protests and other suppoedly high-covid risk activities. If they really wanted to work they would be clamouring at their emploer’s doors.

        So far I have seen nothing that makes me change my mind.

  4. SIR – I was born and brought up in a north-east Lancashire mill town. I enjoyed an excellent state-school education, which enabled me to go to the London College of Music in 1967. Most of us there were state educated, of working-class and middle-class backgrounds from all over the country.

    If anyone had told me then that, within my lifetime, I would see the demise of 600 years of wonderful choral music – including what is encompassed in the church-music tradition – my friends and I would have laughed.

    As a lifelong choral singer – at school and as a college student, with the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus in the Eighties, and now with Chepstow Choral Society – I view with increasing dismay and alarm choral music’s sharp decline in so many communities.

    The active church choir is becoming a rarity, local choral societies are struggling, schools no longer place great emphasis on choirs, and choir schools are closing. Traditional choral music is sidelined, be it for fear of elitism or lack of diversity, dwindling ambition or interest, or a perception that it is irrelevant – even though such music has not stopped progressing for six centuries.

    Sheffield Cathedral’s worrying decision to disband its choir (report, July 25) will not be the last such move.

    Marjorie Duerden
    Chepstow, Monmouthshire

    1. SIR – Lucy Denyer (Comment, July 24) laments the scrapping of the Sheffield Cathedral choir at the behest of the dean, the Very Rev Peter Bradley.

      The thinking behind this decision is sadly typical of those at the top of the Church of England these days. Few clergy understand why cathedral services have grown in popularity with visitors and regular congregants recently. Here’s a clue: it’s not so they can listen to a sermon.

      Edward Jackson
      Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex

        1. I actually sang in the world premiere of this piece, done somewhat illictly. It was the Downs Community Choir in Colwall in the 1990s, if I remember right. The musical director did a concert taking choral music from the oldest piece he could track down ‘Summer is a coming in’ to the newest – a work that had been freshly composed by John Rutter, and which had not yet been performed. It’s official premiere was a few days after we did it.

      3. I belong to four local choirs all of which have suspended singing indefinitely (although one brave village community choir attempts to rehearse via Zoom with flaky broadband, and is an advanced form of torture to any singer with any more musicality than a BBC-approved millionaire street rapper).

        When we were still singing, I noticed over the last ten years a revival of public appetite for choral evensong. Often, those who are not religious and would not go to a church service, except perhaps at a funeral, turn up to hear the music and doze off in the pews. It’s a form of relaxation therapy late on a Sunday afternoon after a good lunch.

        One institution that has sprung up at Worcester Cathedral is that the resident choir go off on the summer holidays, so they arrange cover from the village church choirs and the choral societies over the holiday period. This is considered a big honour, so they work hard to get up to Cathedral standard.

        One of the musical directors of the choirs I sing with actually wrote a complete new setting of the Evensong, which is doing the rounds in the villages, and another is organist and choirmaster at Malvern Priory is a good composer producing new material there. I was also paid to sing at a society wedding at a monastery just outside Hereford, where the couple commissioned a local composer to create an entirely new set of anthems and responses for the event. He was due to produce something for the 40th anniversary of one of my choirs, as part of the Three Choirs Festival to be held at Pershore Abbey, which sadly had to be cancelled.

        Why then does this Sheffield Cathedral bishop insist that there can be no revival in authentic British Christian worship in this century?

          2. That is quite impressive. I don’t know, exactly, my own vocal range but it encapsulates both baritone and tenor.

          3. Very nice. I am a true baritone, without the upper harmonics of the tenor, but with more depth. While I have the bass range, I do not have the tummy-rumbling resonance of a true bass. I think our voice is most useful though – blending reasonably in a choral setting, and with a certain beauty and rich sweetness for chamber music and in church and for lyrical parts in opera.

            You are a retired copper, I believe. An old friend of mine, originally from Dagenham in Essex, once wrote a Magnificat which we multitracked, complete with clapping on the beat. It ended up like the Metropolitan Police Chorus! “He stretches out his mighty arm” to the sound of marching hobnail boots and and Essex accent of massed blokes.

          4. I joined the chapel choir in Camp Bastion. I joined with a captain who lived in the same tent as me – neither of us could sing a note – we were put into the alto section. It was great fun and gave us something to do on Wednesday evenings. On Tuesday evenings we used to go to a quiz in the NAAFI run by the RMs until we cottened on to the fact that coincidentally a team of Marines won every week.

          5. My only Choral experience was at Chepstow in the Chapel Choir of the Army Apprentices College.

    2. We are with you, Marjorie Duerden. The abrupt disbandment of the perfectly good choir of Sheffield Cathedral so that the Dean and Chapter can indulge in a spot of ludicrous virtue-signalling is just appalling. I trust that they will come to regret such a ridiculous course of action. The conduct of some elements of the C of E never ceases to amaze.

      ‘Morning, C1.

      2. They are all taking their cue from the Archbastard who is no more Christian than Mo. Has he opened up churches for services yet?

        1. We were able to celebrate the Eucharist from a couple of Sundays ago. Clearly that was a step too far as the Bishopette of London has sent out a decree that we all have to wear masks in church now. Our rector is clearly not happy about it, but has to comply. I am extremely unhappy about it and don’t have to comply; I’m voting with my feet until they come to their senses.

      3. After 500 years, it would seem that the CoE has run its course.
        Sadly, the current pope appears to be equally demented, so a return to a Catholic Britain would solve nothing.
        Christianity has gradually (very gradually) lead to the development of the modern world. It is not a perfect world as human beings are involved, but it has allowed a longer, healthier and more comfortable life for the vast majority on this planet.
        As the Church of Rome became more corrupt and divorced from reality, Protestantism arose. We have reached the same stage with the Church of England, but I have no idea if another Luther or Wycliffe will arise.

        2. We have a 71-year-old prospective Defender of the Faith that’s been trained up for the job since the 1950s.

          1. Didn’t he say that he wants to be “Defender of Faith” rather than “Defender of the Faith”? It’s a title which was granted by Parliament, anyway, after the Pope removed it from Henry VIII.

        3. “I have no idea if another Luther or Wycliffe will arise.”

          If it happens, it will likely be a Mustafa or a Fatima.

          2. Unlikely to be a Fatima – didn’t the Saudis knock down her mother’s house, turning it into a public convenience for moneyed shoppers, in order to stop it being a place of pilgrimage?

            For the Hajj, supporters of Fatima were put about five layers down on the footpath from the Camp for Lesser Rich Muslims, so they could be trampled underfoot.

      4. The church has been marched through by common purpose. It has nothing to do with diversity and everything to do with the destruction of our heritage and traditions..

  5. SIR – Charles Moore (Comment, July 25) reminds us that Tony Blair was responsible for rights legislation and the prioritising of international law over British common law, which transferred power from Parliament to unelected and unaccountable judges.

    But Mr Blair was also introducing a tradition of increasing the power of the judiciary at the expense of elected representatives, which goes back not only to EU legal innovation but also to the politicised “Warren Court” in Fifties America.

    In effect, Mr Blair attempted to transform our constitutional system into a debased version of the American balance-of-power structure. The result has been that judges have become the arbiters of social policy, especially where perceived “rights” are involved.

    Professor John Rist
    Cambridge

    He debased everything he touched.

      1. Whereas Brown ran a budget surplus (albeit briefly) and kept us out of the euro. Deserves a statue.

        2. As well as inheriting a budget surplus, he also stripped the UK Pension Funds of billions, largely creating inability of the Funds to react to the increased longevity of their members.

          1. Not just the increased longevity Bob, the ability of the funds to grow at all was stunted by his tax raid. Hence the demise of almost all defined benefit pension schemes in the private sector. The man was a complete twat.

          2. It also contributed, in no small way, to the demise of the British ownership of British Industries as the Pension Funds were among the biggest industrial investors.

        3. I think it was more of a case of McBust inheriting a surplus and getting shot of it in record time…or is my memory playing tricks??

          ‘Morning, JBF.

          1. He was told by his Treasury officials on his first day at Great George Street hat he had “inherited a Rolls Royce economy”. In fact, the Major government never ran a budget surplus, but the direction of travel was benign. Let us recall, while we’re here, that it was a conservative government that put sterling into the ERM (although, to be fair, the Labour opposition thought that it was a splendid idea).

          2. My reaction to when Ken Clarke was appointed to replace Norman Lamont back in 1993 was that they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time. Clarke turned out to be one of the finest chancellors we have had in my lifetime.

        2. True but the alternatives at the time weren’t very inspiring either.

  7. SIR – Bossy-boots Hancock and bossy-boots Boris are suggesting if everybody loses five pounds it would save the National Health Service £100 million. I can’t see how this could be measured; the NHS is what it says, a national service.

    If no one smokes, eats chocolate or butter, cheese and bacon, they might live to be 104. Call that living?

    Bossy-boots always want to take the sweet things out of life, and remember that the ultimate bossy-boots is a slave owner.

    The National Health Service will always have to deal with births and deaths, the final cause of death is birth. Love life.

    David Hockney
    Lisieux, Calvados, France

    A big splash.

    1. SIR – Do I have this right? Doctors are to be offered monetary incentives to look after the health of overweight patients better? Isn’t this something they should do as a matter of course?

      Richard Dixon

      Bristol

      1. I would go further – penalize GPs if there are too many fatties registered at their surgery!

    3. In castigating the consumption of fats (chocolate, butter, cheese, bacon et al), Hockney — and the government — are guilty of promulgating the old, failed, science that eating fats makes you fat.

      They don’t!

      Modern, up-to-date science has proved that it is the eating of carbohydrates and refined sugars that is the root case of obesity. The amount of weight that I am continuing to lose by eschewing (instead of chewing) carbs and sugars is ongoing proof that the science is right. I continue to enjoy the eating of deliciously fatty meats (including bacon and ham), butter, cheese, cream and fish (along with salad vegetables); whilst I no longer add sugar to my diet nor do I eat cakes, bread, pasta, pastry, potatoes, root vegetables or rice.

      1. Diabetes Doctor Gro encouraged us to eat fats – you have to get energy from somewhere, she said, and they make the food tastier, too.
        Her diet basically was cut out added sugars, reduce natural sugars – and the weight just fell off. Took a while for the tastebuds to get used to it, though, but after a short while you discover how sweet milk and soft water tastes.

      2. Could be that your diet helps you lose weight but the fat element increases the load on your heart…..

        1. No.

          When you eat fats your body takes the nutrients from them then excretes them: none of it is stored. Body fat comes from the storage of sugars taken from the consumption of carbohydrates, and not from the consumption of fats.

          This is the science that I am following and, by doing so, am getting slimmer (and fitter) every day. Watch the video and it will explain everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKfR6bAXr-c&list=WL&index=55&t=0s

          1. Following the science? Wow – that’s brave, these days.

            I was thinking about cholesterol in your blood, vieux haricot…..

          2. Cholesterol, phew!

            That is another science that is still misunderstood. If you eat a balanced diet (as I’ve suggested) of proteins and fats, whilst cutting well down on carbohydrates (starches) and sugars (including lots of alcohol), and eat far fewer meals, two things will happen.

            1. Your so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol levels will drop (most cholesterols are good and are a vital part of your metabolism).

            2. You will stop feeling hungry and lose the obsession to eat three or four meals a day.

            I only have one meal a day, at 13:00 hrs, and I do not crave food for another 24-hour period. I feel better, am losing weight, and I sleep like a log. I also stopped taking statins four months ago and I’m convinced this has helped.

            Becoming a slave to social mores is what has increased the number of (and nastiness of) many life-threatening (and life-shortening) diseases. I still have a healthy and good social life but I balance it around my diet. On Saturday, for example, I shall not eat until the evening since we are entertaining friends. A well-stocked table will be provided but I shall only choose to eat those items that suit me. I may partake in dessert, but only a small portion.

          4. I commend your restraint. Being naturally thin, I have never had a weight problem. Now – at my advanced age – I eat little twice a day. I am slightly lighter than I was 30 years ago. There was a time when I’d hoover up a four course lunch and then a similar evening meal. I look bac, now, and wonder how on earth I could do it.

            My useless GP has being trying to force statins on me for years. I refuse point blank.

          5. My friend’s family, here in Sweden, are all whippets. They can eat and drink a much as they care to and never put on an ounce.

            I was a slim and wiry 10 stones up to the age of 33 and my weight only started to creep up after giving up smoking. I’ve never been a big drinker (alcohol) or a big eater but a sedentary lifestyle didn’t help. I’m more active now, in retirement and my new dietary régime has come as a boon.

  8. Good morning all. The Telegraph opinion piece says that the Government needs to explain the decision over the quarantine of Spain:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/28/ministers-need-explain-quarantine-decision/

    Why start now? When has there been any discussion or explanation of the increasingly bizarre and tyrannical actions of this government? The true reasons is that they demonstrate that they have the power to give or take away our most basic freedoms on a whim. Don’t bother booking a holiday Mr and Mrs Average, we can decide at any time that what was ok yesterday is verboten today.

    I just wish the government would stop. Stop trying to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. We have given up our most basic freedoms with nary a whimper of protest. This is how tyranny begins.

  9. 321809+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Priorities, priorities,priorities, seemingly police are going to set up sting operations ( nice one) on wild camping, ie waking up to nature.
    Maybe to much freedom regarding the indigenous is being expressed by the suppressed and frowned upon.

    One would have thought an issue of tents of a camouflaged type be given out at the Dover beach head would have been right up the governance alley, the invaders can melt into the scenery until such times as action needs be taken as in “I want” but giving the governance party leeway to say
    “what illegal immigrants”
    The priti ones @rse must surely be pretty sore by now, sitting down at the beach head commanding they go back.

    1. The Scottish Government has expended vast sums of public money via VisitScotland to attract tourists to Skye and the North of Scotland. The Government neglected to provide roads, toilets, parking places and camp sites. Over the last couple of years the people of Skye have seen normal life and work brought to a standstill by traffic congestion on a massive scale.
      Those who live and work in the North of Scotland are also complaining about the appalling problems unwonted tourism has brought, via the North NC500 tourist route:
      https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/inverness/2356148/highland-communities-in-despair-as-dirty-camping-spirals-out-of-control/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Press%20and%20Journal%20weekly%20round%20up%202020-07-26&utm_term=Press%20and%20Journal%20-%20Newsletter

    1. I have been catching up on the documentary about Murdoch and his family. Not only is it a timely reminder of how a malevolent press baron can posess such power, it provides a lot of detail that simply wasn’t available at the time. (I think it is the final episode tonight.) So no, Kathy Gyngell, I doubt very much whether any paper could ever again sink as low as the Screws. That said, the Sunday Times was an editorial disaster this week (free copy, courtesy of Mr Waitrose) so I won’t be making that mistake again.

  11. SIR – With reference to the wartime removal of iron railings (Letters, July 27), I remember that workmen came to our house to take away the railings from around the front garden. We were told that it would help the war effort.

    In the Fifties, as a young engineer, 
I visited an iron foundry and saw piles of railings rusting in the scrapyard. 
I was told that they were from compulsory wartime removal but had not been used due to the poor quality of the iron.

    Derek Rigby

    Coddington, Nottinghamshire

    SIR – I lived in an Edwardian house during the Second World War, which had a beautiful wrought-iron gate at the front. The house owner, a redoubtable lady, saw two council workmen arrive, dismantle the gate and toss it into the back of their lorry. She erupted with rage, confronted the men and demanded that they return it.

    Initially they refused, adding that they would report her to the council. But, quailing at her tirade, they then meekly unloaded the gate and reinstalled it. No official action ensued and the gate is still standing.

    Carole Beesley

    Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire

  12. Morning all. All the queues I see in the street are for banks.

    SIR – It is mystifying that banks have been allowed to reduce their opening hours so drastically.

    This has caused nothing but long queues and bad feeling. I can only imagine that they have furloughed so many employees at the Government’s expense that they are reluctant to bring them back.

    Peter Murray

    Beeston, Nottinghamshire

    SIR – My 87-year-old husband has Parkinson’s disease and needs private care. I visited Lloyds Bank to set up a current account, separate from my private account, through which to pay the carers.

    I was told that, because of Covid, this was not possible “until restrictions are eased”. I could, however, set up an account online.

    As we prefer not to bank online, I was given a customer-service phone number. After a long wait, and having run through several security questions, I was told that Covid prevented my request being granted.

    I do not believe that, with all the technology available to it, the bank cannot carry out this simple operation. Is it heavy-handed management, incompetence, or laziness? Or is Covid being used to bludgeon us into banking online?

    Shirley Lane

    Castle Cary, Somerset

    1. I can understand Shirley Lane’s frustration in her attempts to set up a bank account. If the current crop of bank adverts are any guide, they are here to support their customers, to see them through the difficulties of life, to act like some kind of charitable organisation, to stand by us…

      Of course they are not; such suggestions are preposterous. Bank customers are there to be exploited, legally or otherwise. Banks are there for the banks and no one else. Their adverts are dripping in diversity and cuddly-wuddly bullshit and get short shrift here.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

      1. Since Nigel Lawson, as Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer deregulated the banks back in 1986, the whole ethos and remit has changed.

        My grandfather was a bank manager in the 1930s, a real-life Captain Mainwaring, with complete power of a branch in suburban market town in Surrey. The banks then were a core part of the town, taking money from the savings of depositors and investing it in local businesses that could provide enough of a return to make it worth while for the depositors and to pay the salaries of the bank staff. This was the remit of the banks until Thatcher and Lawson changed it.

        Now, the only remit is to maximise the payout to the directors and executives at whatever cost to the depositors and to those businesses reliant on the banks for cash flow. The more money thus diverted, the bigger the bonus and the jollier the cocaine party in the Trump Tower inspired palaces on the Isle of Dogs. This was Thatcher’s “Economic Miracle” that was then kept going by Blair and Brown, perverting the reason they won a landslide in 1997.

        This is where we are at today. Are we, or are we not, going to attempt to revive the memory and working practices of Capt. Mainwaring and my grandfather?

        1. Are we, or are we not, going to attempt to revive the memory and working practices of Capt. Mainwaring and my grandfather?

          There is one immutable truth about politics Jeremy. You cannot go back!

        2. If it means a glass of sherry every time I discuss business with the manager, I’m all for it, Jeremy.

        1. The BAME abbreviation interests me.
          Black and Asian Minority Effnick – worldwide the first two groups are anything but. Give it fifty years and in the UK the abbreviation needed will be WME.

          1. I relish the Bame acronym, partly because it should be BME; no-one traditionally abbreviated the word ‘and’.
            My sense of humour enjoys the lumping together of all non-european ethnicities, even though many of them have prejudices.
            ‘Bame’ is ideal for Alf Garnett.

      3. She should start her telephone call by saying she wants to close her existing account.

      4. Can’t help but agree. Don’t get me started on trying to set up an executors’ account, when the only banks that still offer them insist on the three of you being present in the same room, in an age when multi-million pound deals are signed off via pdf and we all have checked bank accounts going back decades. Mind you, just got some free money from Virgin as an apology for their totally dreadful service. Silver linings.

    2. Shirley, Shirley, there are other banks. Why do you want to open another account just to pay the carers anyway?

      1. In fairness to Shirley, she has enough on her hands already.
        The sheer grind of doing anything in modern, @rse covering Britain defeats people before they’ve even started.

        1. ‘Morning, Anne.

          I agree. All the more reason for not going through the bother of opening another account.

      2. I currently do my alzheimered cousin’s weekly shop, and pay her bill via an online transfer to my own account. If I had to stop this, I would be wary about providing the daily carers with access to her finances. I could envisage having to give them her debit card to go to shops. At least if there was an account completely separate from her normal one, you could minimise the amount in it and reduce any temptations for poorly paid carers.
        She pays the carers management bill to the council by DD.

        1. Could you create a new joint account with her?
          That way everything would be itemised and you could use the debit card for her purchases. Keeping receipts obviously.

  13. Good morning all.

    “Quarantine confusion” – well, goodness me; who’d a thunk it?

      1. Yes. We had six of the family here and did a BBQ. A certain amount of imbibing took place and a good time was had by all!

      1. The bowls club is open but all national competitions and all local leagues have been cancelled. We are running some club competitions and we open the bar every Saturday 1200 – 1300.

      1. Cocoa Girl magazine has launched. The magazine was created ande designed by Serlina Boyd to empower black girls around the world who are more likely to be insulted by their looks by the age of 8 years old.

        Serlina will also be launching Cocoa Boy in September.

          1. Dennis the Menace acquired a look-alike canine companion called ‘Gnasher’. May we see a doggy friend for Cocoa Boy sometime? Perhaps Guy Gibson could come up with a name?

        6. 321809+ up ticks,
          Morning TB,
          Has it got a horticultural section also catering for coconutters ?

      2. Wait … don’t tell me …. some form of Low Country dialect? Am I getting close?

      1. A good old stalwart from the panto sing-song (while everyone else prepares for the wedding scene/grand finale)

        “Why does the brown cow give white milk,
        When it only eats green grass?
        That’s the burning question,
        Gives you indigestion.
        I don’t know, you don’t know
        Makes me feel an ass …
        Why does the brown cow give white milk,
        When it only eats green grass……”

        1. One of our drivers, a chubby, bespectacled blond haired bloke, was nicknamed Milky Bar!
          Good lad too!

    4. Imagine the outcry if a magazine was produced just for white children. This is just divisive rubbish.

      1. With her usual lack of vigour concerning facts, Onasanya, and/or her researchers, overlooked the fact that “white” Coco Pops also use a monkey mascot.

      2. Never mind the strange misshapen dwarflings on Rice Krispies, then? They have no one speaking up for them, poor things.

    6. Just imagine the woke/bame uproar if a white person had suggested that name……

    7. At long last, with no children in my family since 1998, my niece has done the decent thing with her mixed-race husband and produced two lovely sproglings. One looks just like me, with blond hair and blue eyes, and the other has dark hair and dark skin like her paternal grandmother, and is actually very pretty.

      Would the siblings fight over who has the right to read the magazine?

  16. Bonjour tout le monde.
    Is the parrot some sort of Putinesque troll?
    She also comments on Breitbart, and 98% of what she posts is a) moderately offensive b) completely irrelevant to the discussion and c) misleading.

  17. Just to dd to the confusion…

    Quarantine to be cut to 10 days for arrivals from Spain

    Quarantine for people arriving from Spain and other countries with high levels of Covid-19 will be cut to 10 days under plans being finalised by ministers, The Telegraph has learnt. The Government aims to announce this week a new policy of testing arrivals from high-risk countries eight days after they land. If they test negative they will be allowed to come out of self-isolation two days later, reducing the mandatory quarantine period by four days. It has emerged that the Cabinet’s coronavirus committee decided to reimpose quarantine on all arrivals from Spain after being told 10 Britons had this month tested positive after returning from the country. Prof Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, told the Cabinet’s “Covid-O” committee on Saturday afternoon that doing nothing was not an option. Political Editor Gordon Rayner reconstructs the events that led to the decision to impose a new quarantine.

      1. ‘Mornng, Spikey

        It’s 14 days ATM, but they’re busy stirring the pot.

        Quarantine to be cut to 10 days for people arriving from Spain
        Arrivals will be able to shorten their isolation if they test negative for virus

        By
        Charles Hymas,
        HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR and
        Gordon Rayner,
        POLITICAL EDITOR
        27 July 2020 • 9:39pm
        Passengers arriving to Manchester airport on Monday
        Passengers arriving to Manchester airport on Monday CREDIT: AFP

        Quarantine for people arriving from Spain and other countries with high levels of Covid-19 will be cut to 10 days under plans being finalised by ministers, The Telegraph has learnt.

        The Government hopes to announce this week a new policy of testing arrivals from high-risk countries eight days after they land. If they test negative they will be allowed to come out of self-isolation two days later, reducing the mandatory quarantine period by four days.

        The move will cut almost an entire working week off the self-isolation requirement, and ministers hope it will help salvage the summer holiday season for some of those already booked on flights abroad.

        It has emerged that the Cabinet’s coronavirus committee decided to reimpose quarantine on all arrivals from Spain after being told 10 Britons had this month tested positive for coronavirus after returning from the country.

        Although positive tests are still running at more than 700 per day in the UK, the ministers were told that the imported cases were “statistically significant” and decided they could not risk millions of people going to Spain over the coming weeks.

        The Government is now considering telling everyone who has come into the UK from Spain since July 23, including returning holidaymakers, to take a coronavirus test.

        It came as ministers ignored pleas from Spain and the travel industry to exempt Spain’s islands, including the Canaries and the Balearics, from the quarantine measures because of their lower rates of infection. Instead the Foreign Office changed its travel advice on Monday night to say that “all but essential” travel to the islands should be avoided.

        Previously they had been treated differently from mainland Spain.

        The move was expected to lead to the cancellation of flights and force large numbers of people to postpone or cancel their holidays.

        Following the announcement, Jet2 suspended Spanish flights and told customers not to go to the airport on Tuesday.

        Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has told colleagues he had booked a holiday to Ibiza at the end of this week but will now have to cancel.

        Meanwhile Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, who arrived in Spain on holiday hours before he helped take the decision to reimpose quarantine, will cut short his family break and return to the UK on Tuesday. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, believes quarantine can be shortened using mass testing because of growing confidence in the tests used in the UK.

        A deserted beach in San Antonio in Ibiza on Monday after no new UK tourist arrived and people left after the new quarantine restrictions were imposed
        A deserted beach in San Antonio in Ibiza on Monday after no new UK tourist arrived and people left after the new quarantine restrictions were imposed CREDIT: Bav media
        Coronavirus takes five to seven days to incubate, meaning those who have the disease can be asymptomatic during that period. If people test negative eight days after they have landed, the chances of them having the virus are tiny, ministers now believe.

        Under Mr Hancock’s plan, they will be told to remain in isolation for another two days as a fail-safe, as well as allowing time for their test results to come back, and if no symptoms arise they will be able to end quarantine. It means that someone returning from holiday on a Saturday would be able to return to work on Wednesday week, rather than having to lose a full two working weeks.

        The move is likely to be seen as an attempt to defuse the controversy over the Government’s decision to reimpose the Spanish quarantine, throwing into chaos the holidays of up to 1.8 million either in the country or about to go.

        Employment lawyers have warned that tourists returning from Spain might be forced to take unpaid leave as a result of having to quarantine. They are not eligible for sick pay.

        Danielle Parsons, of the law firm Slater and Gordon, said: “Those returning from Spain who have suddenly discovered they have to quarantine are in a very weak legal position as their bosses don’t have to give them time off if they are unable to work from home.”

        An estimated 600,000 British holidaymakers are already in Spain and face quarantine on their return. It is unclear how quickly the new quarantine regime could be introduced or whether any of them will benefit.

        Baroness Harding, the chairman of the UK’s test and trace programme, said that “over time … I would like to believe that we’ll be able to shorten” the quarantine period.

    2. How do they expect people to get back to work with all these confusing new rules? They should just be told to keep away from old and sick people.

    3. The reports of the behaviour of some of the UK holidaymakers in Spain makes the need to quarantine themselves on return to the UK a wise decision. If not already in place, temperatures should be taken before boarding and those with fever or other COVID-19 symptoms should be quarantined in Spain until they recover.

      1. Depends how long they have been away – it’s asymptomatic for up to eight days or longer.

  18. Sooo…I’ve swapped ‘pooters and for the rest of today I’ll be Stormy again 🙂

          1. Yes. I thoroughly enjoy it.
            My love of that period started with being given “Three Men in a Boat” when I was about nine. Up till then, it hadn’t occurred to me that people in ‘olden days’ had a sense of humour. In fact, I doubt I considered them to be anything more than shadowy figures in history lessons.

          2. Yes me too! My dad had loved Three Men in a Boat and gave me his copy. You’re so right about the humour and it made me laugh when people were referring to Dominic Cummings and goings! Pooter couldn’t believe nobody thought his joke was as funny he did!

    1. I think many think we did the same as America in the treatment of blacks yet the opposite is true.

      1. For a time in the 1950s they were made unwelcome, but that soon changed. I don’t think this is a racist country – just overcrowded.

    2. Morning all. 😉
      White people are a minority in the world population and when do they get their own recognition for ethnic minority rights ? And maybe even a small amount of gratitude and dare i say respect, deserved for the tremendous and ongoing difference they have made to many millions of others lives ?

        1. I like many others are still waiting to hear just one word of thanks let alone praise for all the free help we have supplied for many years, all we get is abuse.
          It all seems a lot rather wasted time money and effort now.

    3. Good morning, Maggiebelle

      But most of us Nottlers have been saying this for years.

  20. 321809+ up ticks,
    Anyone know the latest regarding the priti high standards of treachery shown by the governance party at the Dover beachhead.
    Has the invading forces established a permanent base yet have taken the high ground, is Shakespeare cliff still in English hands ?

    He not only made exceedingly good cakes,

    The Broken Men,
    FOR things we never mention,
    For Art misunderstood —
    For excellent intention
    That did not turn to good;
    From ancient tales’ renewing,
    From clouds we would not clear —
    Beyond the Law’s pursuing
    We fled, and settled here.

    We took no tearful leaving,
    We bade no long good-byes.
    Men talked of crime and thieving,
    Men wrote of fraud and lies.
    To save our injured feelings
    ‘Twas time and time to go —
    Behind was dock and Dartmoor,
    Ahead lay Callao!

    The widow and the orphan
    That pray for ten per cent,
    They clapped their trailers on us
    To spy the road we went.
    They watched the foreign sailings
    (They scan the shipping still),
    And that’s your Christian people
    Returning good for ill!

    God bless the thoughtful islands
    Where never warrants come;
    God bless the just Republics
    That give a man a home,
    That ask no foolish questions,
    But set him on his feet;
    And save his wife and daughters
    From the workhouse and the street!

    On church and square and market
    The noonday silence falls;
    You’ll hear the drowsy mutter
    Of the fountain in our halls.
    Asleep amid the yuccas
    The city takes her ease —
    Till twilight brings the land-wind
    To the clicking jalousies.

    Day long the diamond weather,
    The high, unaltered blue —
    The smell of goats and incense
    And the mule-bells tinkling through.
    Day long the warder ocean
    That keeps us from our kin,
    And once a month our levee
    When the English mail comes in.

    You’ll find us up and waiting
    To treat you at the bar;
    You’ll find us less exclusive
    Than the average English are.
    We’ll meet you with a carriage,
    Too glad to show you round,
    But — we do not lunch on steamers,
    For they are English ground.

    We sail o’ nights to England
    And join our smiling Boards —
    Our wives go in with Viscounts
    And our daughters dance with Lords,
    But behind our princely doings,
    And behind each coup we make,
    We feel there’s Something Waiting,
    And — we meet It when we wake.

    Ah, God! One sniff of England —
    To greet our flesh and blood —
    To hear the traffic slurring
    Once more through London mud!
    Our towns of wasted honour —
    Our streets of lost delight!
    How stands the old Lord Warden?
    Are Dover’s cliffs still white?

    1. He may bake exceeding sweet & sickly cakes, but his poetry is another matter.

  21. I am off – back to the MR’s tax return. See you later – prolly…{:¬))

  23. My mate was telling me he failed his exam in Aboriginal music.

    I said

    ‘Didya re doit?’

    =====================

    Just watched 3 people jogging outside and it’s inspired me to get up and close the blinds.

    1. This exercise business is starting to get overrated.

      Yes, you can make your heart so fit that it has to do so little work when you go to sleep that it is inclined to shut down altogether. Fortunately your baroreflex cuts in and it should wake you up to remind you that you must get your bike out for a night ride just to keep your heart going.

      Ultrafit sporting cyclists are already starting to find this out – just a matter of time until our roads get jammed with midnight riders.

      1. Saw a girl running down the hill this morning – she was wearing knee bandages – I thought “you’ll regret damaging your knees like that……” I may not be very fit but at least most of my body parts are my own and still work.

        1. I found that a couple of the post-op exercises I was given merely made matters worse.
          Even after allowing for the effects of new exercise on the body, it became obvious that they just didn’t suit that stage of my recovery.
          Gave them up; continued with the others and life just trundles along.
          I will try them again in a few weeks time to see if they were introduced too soon after the operation.
          Like all medical procedures, each of us reacts differently and it’s up to the patient to work this out for themself.

          1. J’s just started some new therapy with a chiropractor – his shoulder healed well after surgery but is still painful if he moves it in certain ways. At the initial consultation, he had a ultrasound – of both shoulders – the tendon that was repaired is ok, but one of the others is completely atrophied. He’s completely forgotten an old injury years before. Anyway, we’ll see if the new exercises make any difference.

  24. A BJ Newsflash via the DT:

    More than 14,000 people in South Korea – ten times more than previously thought – may have been killed after inhaling a humidifier sanitiser provided by a British company, according to a new study.

    The humidifier scandal came to light in 2011 after a number of adults died after being diagnosed with conditions such as asthma and interstitial lung diseases. The case came to light after four pregnant women died of unknown lung problems.

    Local authorities then launched a probe into the case, concluding that polyhexamethylene guanidine, an anti-bacterial agent used in the humidifier cleanser that can be fatal when inhaled in the form of droplets, had caused the deaths.

    The number of people who have been registered as victims of the scandal involving Oxy Reckitt Benckiser, the local unit of British hygiene product maker Reckitt Benckiser, is 1,553, but new research suggests the death toll could be far higher.

    A new study, based on a survey of 15,472 adults aged between 19 and 69 and commissioned by South Korea’s Special Commission on Social Disaster Investigation estimated that between 13,000 and 16,000 may have died as a result of the sanitiser.

    “We cautiously estimated the number of deaths at 14,000, but this could actually be bigger,” said Choi Ye-yong, vice chairman of the public commission.

    “A more detailed investigation by the government, potentially one that includes the country’s whole population, is necessary.”

      1. I have great concern about Boris he is sounding more like a dripping wet liberal evey day.

          2. 321809+ up ticks,
            N,
            Goes way back, he was always on the cards for when mayday burnt out, she has been rewarded for what she has rendered unto GB, johnson is the nose cone of the
            semi re-entry rocket.

      2. 321809+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        A retaining remaining tentacle has always been on the cards.
        These pro eu governance parties have always been up for giving the UK pin number to brussels.

      3. Just like the Boris WA (aka Mays’ Surrender WA Mk2) which was kept secret before the election and is still being kept secret now.

    1. I don’t think the lockdown was a hoax – but it was a total overreaction to a virus which is no more damaging to most people than any other we have had in the past. The elderly and frail were obviously at risk, but the rest of us should be allowed to get back to normal. Those who are scared to go out can stay at home.

      1. Up till the end of April to ‘Save Our NHS’. (All comments on PHE to be fit for printing in a family newspaper)
        After that, it has been just drift and arbitrary rule making to save face.

      2. 321809+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        Then maybe we could settle for 50% of the lock down was done for political purposes and unnecessary ?

          1. 321809+ up ticks,
            N,
            I would never give them the courtesy of even the benefit of doubt, far to much well orchestrated treachery has flowed under the bridge for that.
            The way I see it is that the 24/6/2016 verdict upset a great many political lifestyles & seeking revenge is a very strong Human trait.
            The chicken in question has had multiple heads ie
            b liar, brown, major, lo clegg, the wretch cameron,
            may, ALL have been highly efficient in the anti UK treachery department, this efficiency is sadly lacking with regards to GB issues.
            Currently look no further than Dover.

  30. You can’t defeat racism with censorship. 28 July 2020.

    Leaving aside the histrionics of such predictions, they ignore the historical truth. In Weimar Germany, the Nazis and their ideas were censored – regularly, in fact. Leading Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for hate speech before they rose to power – and Streicher was imprisoned twice. The Nazi publication Der Stürmer was regularly confiscated and its editors were taken to court on at least 36 occasions. Anti-Semitic speech was explicitly prohibited by law, leading to more than 200 prosecutions in the 15 years before Hitler came to power. ‘As subsequent history so painfully testifies’, writes civil-liberties campaigner Alan Borovoy in When Freedoms Collide, ‘this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it’.

    Morning everyone. Actually it is worse than that. The prosecutions allowed the Nazi’s to present themselves as victims and thus deserving of Public Sympathy and ultimately votes. The greatest irony of all is that the Weimar legislation against Free Speech, which is what it was, was eventually used by Hitler to shut them up. Lefties can never see this! That what is sauce for the Goose is ambrosia for the Gander! Only in the Battle of Ideas on the Field of Free Speech can evil be defeated!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/28/you-cant-defeat-racism-with-censorship/

    1. There are sharp parallels with the extremists presenting themselves as victims today…even on the same issues (like anti-semitism).

    2. Indeed.
      Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
      People don’t seem to see that it’s easy to turn around and use the weapons oppressing one side against the other, against themselves.
      But then, people are, in general, unbelievably stupid.

  31. Britain is turning into the Eastern Bloc. Spiked 28 July 2020.

    This brings us to the question of how we should respond to the rise of Pravda-truth. In the 1980s, Poles resisted stoically, often resorting to humour. Metaphor and sarcasm were frequently and creatively used as truth-bearers, and jokes were used to expose the ridiculousness of the official narrative.

    In the UK, I think we can expect more and more people to start ridiculing the establishment’s duplicitousness and hypocrisy. When the BBC described protests that left 35 officers injured as being ‘largely peaceful’, many non-ideologues responded with parody and sarcasm. Such humour allows us concisely to signal to each other that we are not alone in our doubts and disbelief.

    The author is somewhat behind the times, everything in this article and a great deal that isn’t is well known to NoTTLers and has been the standard on here for as long as I can remember.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/28/britain-is-turning-into-the-eastern-bloc/

    1. The author is the elected leader of the SDP (Sadly Disappointed with Polling). Wiki suggest Rod Liddle is a member……?

  32. The virus has taken our liberty. Must it take our humanity as well?

    There have been far worse diseases in the world. 
We just have to learn to 
live alongside Covid-19

    JONATHAN SUMPTION – 27 July 2020 • 9:30pm

    All our current debates about lockdowns, social distancing and masks ultimately end up with one uncomfortable dilemma. Do we get on with our lives and put up with Covid-19? Or do we try to hide away from the risk of infection in the hope that one day it will go away?

    Let us remind ourselves of how we got here. The Government was panicked into imposing a lockdown in March by Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College modelling report. The report is notorious for predicting a “reasonable worst-case scenario” of 510,000 deaths. But it made another important point which is often overlooked. A lockdown would only save a significant number of lives if it was kept in place indefinitely, until there was a vaccine, “which could be 18 months or more”. Otherwise, the virus would simply rebound, probably worse than ever, after it was lifted.

    Professor Ferguson’s team had previously put the point like this. Aggressive isolation policies “merely push all transmission to the period after they are lifted, giving a delay but no substantial reduction in either peak incidence or overall attack rate”. The current spikes in countries that have lifted lockdowns, such as Spain, Germany, Japan and Hong Kong, bear this out. Some of them had longer and stricter lockdowns than we did.

    It follows that, as far as the lockdown was concerned, there were only ever three coherent options. Option one was to have no lockdown. Option two was to have an indefinite lockdown, putting our whole national life into cold storage for the duration at unimaginable cost. Option three, which the Government chose, was to have a lockdown for long enough to allow the intensive care capacity of the NHS to catch up. In the event it caught up within a month.

    The Government lifted the lockdown in June, six to eight weeks after it had lost any justification even by its own logic. But let us declare a truce on whether it was imposed too early or lifted too late. The question now is what happens next.

    The Government’s position appears to be that the famous R-number can be kept below 1 without a lockdown but with social distancing. Some epidemiologists agree with this. Others do not. I do not propose to venture into those murky waters. But assuming that the Government is right, there are some awkward issues to be confronted.

    One is that if the R-number can be kept below 1 with social distancing alone, then we could have done it in March instead of locking down. This is not hindsight. It is what Sweden did. It is fashionable to rubbish the Swedish approach. But their deaths per million of population are substantially lower than ours. Their hospitals were never overwhelmed. They never closed their schools. The predicted damage to their economy is about half of ours.

    The most awkward question, however, is about the exit route. Assuming that social distancing can keep transmission of the disease low, it has to be kept in place indefinitely until there is a vaccine. What does this mean for our world?

    Physical proximity to other people is not some sort of optional extra which can be ironed out of our culture. It is fundamental to our humanity. Conversation round a table, friendship, love and tears, children at play, most educational activity, depend on physical proximity. Our whole transport infrastructure, the buildings in which we work, play and eat out, depend on our being close together. With social distancing, physical cooperation becomes impossible. The social dimension of work all but disappears. The House of Commons, a great national forum in the crowded chamber, is reduced to a poor phone-in programme in a half-empty space. With social distancing there is no crowd around the bar, no singing at weddings, no orchestras or choirs, no theatre, no sport, no live audiences – in short, no collective activities, only the dismal solitude of the electronic screen. We have surrendered our liberty to the virus. Are we to surrender our humanity as well?

    Masks, by comparison, are a minor issue. They are uncomfortable and depersonalising. They conflict with a basic instinct of Western society to interact visually, showing our faces. But if they encourage people to come out and live together again or to send their children to school, that can only be good. People will soon tire of them.

    The brutal reality is the same, masks or no masks. We are going to have to live with Covid-19 whether we like it or not, unless and until there is an effective vaccine. And not just with Covid-19.

    Shocking? Perhaps. But only because in Europe we have had a false sense of security for so long. In the last two decades there have been Mers and Sars. Before that there were Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, H1N1, and non-respiratory epidemic diseases like HIV, Ebola and Zika. All of them had higher case mortality than Covid-19. But, apart from HIV, they barely touched Europe.

    This seems likely to change. International movement of people and other organisms is increasing. A major UK pandemic has been top of the National Risk Register since it was first published in 2008. It estimates that a new strain of flu could cause between 50,000 and 750,000 additional deaths in the UK and that emerging diseases, usually originating in animals, are a growing threat whose impact is unpredictable but may be very high.

    Covid-19 is a serious disease, but historically it is at the bottom end of the scale. For any one under 50 the risk of death is tiny, less than for seasonal flu. In the great majority of cases the symptoms are mild or non-existent. Our ancestors lived with far worse epidemic diseases without rushing to put their heads in a bag. In other parts of the world they still do (world-wide, tuberculosis kills many more than Covid-19).

    We all need to make our own personal risk assessments in the light of our age and state of health and the sort of activities in which we engage. For some people, social distancing will remain a sensible precaution. The rest of us should respect their choice but drop it and get on with our lives. We cannot keep running away.

    Jonathan Sumption is a former Justice of the Supreme Court and was BBC Reith Lecturer for 2019

    1. Statistics from Johns Hopkins, reported in Aftenposten daily https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/P9Adkz/alt-om-koronaviruset-spredning-symptomer-siste-saker-spoersmaal-og-s
      Deaths per 100.000 population, to date, expected 2020 GDP growth (https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD)
      Sweden: 57,6 – 6,8%
      UK: 69,8 – 6,5%
      Showing the “advantage” of lockdown.
      How many of the UK numbers are those arising from PHE’s including “from” and “with” statistics together?

        1. I may post garbage and trivia – but I try not to pontificate about things of which I know SFA.

        1. So you would be happy to have Lewis Hamilton’s measured thoughts on this, too?

          1. Why not?

            I look at what is said and written by individuals and make up my mind from the available information.
            The available information on Hamilton suggests he’s not worth listening to.
            Sumption has put forward a reasoned argument, as far as I’m concerned.

            Would you prefer that Branestorm’s argument is the only one we’re allowed to see?

    3. Statistics from Johns Hopkins, reported in Aftenposten daily https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/P9Adkz/alt-om-koronaviruset-spredning-symptomer-siste-saker-spoersmaal-og-s
      Deaths per 100.000 population, to date, expected 2020 GDP growth (https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD)
      Sweden: 57,6 – 6,8%
      UK: 69,8 – 6,5%
      Showing the “advantage” of lockdown.
      How many of the UK numbers are those arising from PHE’s including “from” and “with” statistics together?

      1. If (I know it’s a big IF) the Swedes avoid the anticipated second wave and lockdown countries don’t, and the second wave is worse than the first, as many “experts” anticipate, those figures will change dramatically.

        I lost any confidence in the ability to compare reported Covid statistics across countries months ago.

        As to GDP estimates, can you point me to any producer of the regular guesses whose figures have been consistently accurate?

    4. Is the Bonking Boffin still a Prof? If so, why? With judgement like his there really is no hope.

    5. We could alway stop international travel. Go back to the 17th century in that respect. Quite easy. We have telephones and a postal service. Also video conferencing, and email. So why not? Spanish Holidays and sea cruises are not human rights.

    6. From our memory the death toll from Hong Kong ‘flu in the late sixties was 70,000.

      ..and in a smaller population!

    1. Dearie me. I suppose the software talks? Because all the information the police will ever need is on the streets and in the newspapers, so I’m guessing the police are all blind?

    2. Have the Police posted a guard or are they relying on the innate decency of the travellers?

      2. A few years ago an acquaintance (definition: someone I know but not a close friend) took the family to a nice traditional holiday camp for Christmas. That way they wouldn’t overwhelm granny who lived nearby.
        I asked about the experience.
        Lovely time had by all, except…..
        What exactly?
        Some reluctance to elaborate, cough, ahem. Pause.
        Spit it out!
        Many of the other guests were not particularly the same, um, like us.
        In what way?
        Er, they may have been from a travelling community. Perfectly friendly, and they spent a lot.

        Our conclusion was that asphalt consultants can’t always locate their passports, or indeed any authentic documentation, so they tend to avoid the Costas.

  36. Has anyone else picked up on the National Propaganda Corporation pushing Apartheid (aka “Racial Awareness”) onto the British over the last few days?

    Three stories have emerged –

    The first was a report published by a Think Tank informing us that a disproportionate number of those fined for coronavirus infringement were BAME, and this therefore was evidence of institutional racism. The statistic they used was the number of fines in proportion to the general population being out compared to the number of BAME to “White” (I presume they mean Indigenes, although this racial definition would not apply in America). What they did not report though was the number of BAME that were actually breaking lockdown rules (Asians are known to be reluctant to let go of their extended families, and some African-Caribbeans reluctant to let go of going about their business on the streets, such is their right), when more Indigenes were compliant. Nor did they report whether the courts were more inclined to fine BAME compared to the Indigenes. It seems that these statistics did not fit the agenda.

    Then there was that police raid on a home where a 12-year-old was seen by a neighbour brandishing a toy gun. Somewhere in the report, it was let slip that the family involved and traumatised by US-style policing by the Met were “non-White”, suggesting profiling by the police. Again, the BBC were being disingenuous about their reporting stressing the “he’s only a child” to whip up emotion, without explaining precisely what else in the background cause the police to over-react.

    Finally, they slipped in some Pressure Group with the ear of the BBC telling the UK Government that they were being slipshod about their racial awareness and must up their game to avoid a knock on the door from the Supreme Court.

    Why is it in the national interest to whip up racial conflict in the UK?

    1. Morning Jeremy. The BBC has been taken over by a Marxist Cadre. They dictate its policies and programmes.

      1. ITV’s no better. They’ve been pushing some very overt BLM propaganda fillers before the ir programs at peak time recently. I am watching less and less broadcast TV these days. I’m sick and tired of being hectored and lectured.

        1. I record what I watch. That way, I can fast forward through the social engineering adverts.

        1. Just get a blank page, I’m afraid. Something’s trying to load up a pile of javascripts. I do wish website designers would lay off the third-party javascripts.

          2. It was on Guido Fawkes yesterday if that helps…I’m afraid I wouldn’t know a javascript if it fell on me from a great height.

    3. “Why is it in the national interest to whip up racial conflict in the UK?” – from conflict comes chaos. From chaos, a “strong man” can easily take over, one who would not normally be gives the collective populations steam off their piss. Totalitarianism 101.
      Germany 1914-1918 – conflict. 1920s – Weimar & chaos. 1930s – rise of Hitler & Nazis.

        1. George made a deal with Tony in New York in 1996 and has ruled ever since.

          So your wish has already come true, though obviously you don’t realize it yet…

        2. That is precisely why it has happened before. Britain has no special exemption from normal human behaviour.
          Morning, Willum.

          1. If I could be @rsed there is thesis in why small parochial towns produce charismatic leaders.

    4. When the “news” started last night, Huw Edwards announced that there was to be another in their series of reports about black people in the UK. Sadly I fell asleep and missed it. They are pushing this racist agenda at us all the time now – it’s divisive and unnecessary. This is not a racist country – they should just leave us alone.

  37. Just taking a break from taxing my brain. Walked round the garden. Though the sun is shining, there is a very chilly, strong wind blowing. Most uninviting.

          1. It is, thank you, Mags. But an awful lot of work. Seemed brilliant 37 years ago…..

            Thanks to the MR, it is under control. She is a brilliant plants woman.

          2. We have moderate lengths of hedge around the back garden , cutting them is becoming an arduous task. Birds nest in them . Bonfires are frowned on , so trips to the tip are a necessity .. to Wareham, 6 miles down the road!

        2. I was rather saddened by the fact that we were never told how long the circumference of Tom Moore’s garden is or shown pictures of the garden other than the same shot of the path in front of the house.

  40. Morning (Non Wild) Campers.
    Now, should I go all high minded and discuss the world situation – or should I go down market and mention Ginge and Whinge?
    Sod it: downmarket it is.
    A corker of a paragraph from Harry Mount in the DT. Wonderfully cruel.
    “If they’d stayed quiet, we could still imagine them as the modern embodiment of the beautiful prince and princess with their otherworldly thoughts on a higher plane. The moment they open their mouths, talk to an author or go to court, they reveal themselves as what they are: an actress with thoughts straight out of the Hallmark Greeting Cards School of Emotion; and a not very bright, unemployed man sitting in a McMansion in LA in a bobble hat.”

    2. What surprises me most is his apparent naivety and unworldliness. His military background alone (never mind any other considerations) should have made him a stronger and sharper individual than he now appears to be. Perhaps I’ve underestimated the manipulation…..

      Manners. Good morning Anne.

      1. He inherited his mother’s brain.
        I doubt Sandhurst considered him to be their most promising student.

        1. When I was at Blundell’s we had a General Sixth Form for those who needed to retake an “O” level or two in order to get enough for them to be admitted to Sandhurst.

          The brighter pupils were aiming at Oxbridge, other good universities or the professions

        1. Forgive the vulgarity but I think he’s been seduced by the skills she acquired on the casting couch.

        2. I doubt he was ever sharp. He has his mother’s brain. Thank goodness he was the spare.

      3. I suspect he may have been protected from the normal rough and tumble of a military background.

    4. A third-rate actress at that. Poor Harry – too dim to realise what he was doing.

      I was never a fan of Princess Beatrice – memories of the “ugly sisters” hats at the wedding of William and Kate….. but she had her quiet wedding, in a beautiful dress borrowed from the Queen and she went up in my estimation.

  41. Now Boros says less importance should be attached to exams in the Covid age… which is obviously great news as Britain will now get more doctors..

  42. Tom Cotton — a small, fragile white man who wants your vote in November — thinks slavery was a ‘necessary evil’. Indy 28 July 2020.

    An op-ed run in The New York Times that he penned was so fiercely debated that it caused members of the paper to resign. Now the Senator is in the public eye again, this time for saying, in an interview, that slavery was a “necessary evil.”

    Yes, you read that right. A sitting senator, in 2020, in the wake of months of protests responding to police brutality tied to racial inequality, is defending the premise of slavery in the United States. And we are still giving him attention and allowing him to serve in the hallowed halls of our nation on behalf of our citizenry.

    Needless to say this has been splashed across the MSM but the Senator (unsurprisingly) said nothing of the kind. This is what he actually said:

    We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.

    This is self-explanatory but deliberate misunderstanding and sophistry will always misinterpret where it can. In essence the founding of the United States required that some arrangement had to be come to with the already existing “Peculiar Institution” other-wise there would have been no Union. In defence of the Founding Fathers it has to be said that they framed the constitution in such a fashion, with its emphasis on individual rights, that its end was inevitable.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tom-cotton-slavery-1619-project-necessary-evil-twitter-a9640521.html

    1. Time for another Kipple:

      If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
      Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,”

  43. Plagiarise,
    Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
    Remember why the good lord made your eyes
    So don’t shade your eyes
    Just plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise.

    [Tom Lehrer]

    I am plagiarising what a chap called Carpe Jugulum has posted. he thinks, as I do, that Boris the Clown is ringmaster and his cabinet is a circus of performing idiots. He also thinks they are liars and observes that you do not and cannot ‘follow the science’ when there is NO scientific consensus,. You CHOOSE which science you are following.

    And of course the same goes for man-made climate change. The science is settled – just as it was settled when Copernicus thought that the earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun circled around the earth. And even when Galileo came along many people still preferred to think that Copernicus was right because it suited their agenda!

  44. Case of Belgian woman who thought she was a chicken linked to depression. Tue 28 Jul 2020 12.49 BST

    The case of a Belgian woman who believed that she was a chicken has been cited by psychiatrists as an example of a potentially under-reported mental health disorder linked to depression.

    The 54-year-old woman, who had no history of drug or alcohol abuse, was found by her brother in her garden clucking and blowing her cheeks before crowing like a rooster.

    She should have kept her pecker up!

    – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/28/case-of-belgian-women-who-thought-she-was-a-chicken-linked-to-depression

      1. Got to be fake – why would the mother carry on filming instead of trying to bring the boy under control?

    2. But parents hitting children (and parents hitting each other) has the effect of perpetuating violent behaviour across generations.

      1. Is that a fact, or an opinion? I got ‘smacked’ quite a bit at home and caned once at school and have actually only laid hands once on my two children (two hardish smacks on the bum of my son when he was particularly wicked).

          1. Only three? That was just a quiet term. Beat you by a country mile over my high school career and I was a good boy.:)

          2. I was caned for eating fish and chips. It’s in the record book still at school .

      2. No it doesn’t. We were smacked and even caned and we went on to smack our children occasionally. It’s a natural animal instinct to protect the child and teach a quick lesson. Having said that I would never raise a hand to my wife for I know with a practised certainty that should I do so I would be alone.

        1. It took all the fun out of teaching though. They really struggled with recruitment and had to pay them more.

          One friend, who was a teacher for years and became a deputy head, told us that he was approached by the NSPCC for a donation. “But I am a teacher – I am in favour of cruelty to children” he explained.

        2. 321809+up ticks,
          Morning PTV,
          Spare the rod create a terrorist.
          The cane left no mental scars & worked.

    3. What stupid parents. Mind you I think the child has the right idea of putting a hammer through the TV. Mind you putting a brick through the screen was much more satisfying with the old fashioned kind, which resulted in an exciting ‘boom’. Perhaps they could set the child on demolishing the BBC.

  46. Boris is reported to be creating 40 new Life Peers. Meanwhile Wiki has this informative piece on one particular extinct dinosaur:

    “Elastosaurus was a large marine reptile in the order Plesiosauria. The genus lived about 80.5 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. The first specimen was sent to the American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope after its discovery in 1867 near Fort Wallace, Kansas. Only one incomplete skeleton is definitely known, consisting of a fragmentary skull, the spine, and the pectoral and pelvic girdles, and a single species, E. platyurus, is recognized today. Measuring 10.3 meters (34 ft) long, the genus had a streamlined body with paddle-like limbs or flippers, a short tail, and a small, slender, triangular head. With a neck around 7.1 meters (23 ft) long, Elastosaurus was one of the longest-necked animals to have lived, with the largest number of neck vertebrae known, 72. It probably ate small fish and marine invertebrates, seizing them with long teeth.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8a99480b6c9cecbcf2afc88dfa2cde343be1bf3837af73c8ad7801622a74cdc.png

      1. I think that was to enable it to sit on the towpath and fish in the other side of the canal……

        1. I think that was to enable it to sit on the towpath and fish in the other side of the Manchester Ship canal……

      1. Had it been a French discovery then an “e” would have been stuck on at the end.

    3. You’re stretching the truth there a bit. It’s an Elasmosaurus, although perhaps they hunted in bands.

      1. I wondered how long before someone spotted the “typo” – I think my renaming of the creature does it more justice – all it took was a stretch of the imagination.

  48. So true ;0(

    Won’t let holiday makers back in from Spain?
    But paddle your dingy from France and we’ll
    welcome you, with a home and benefit?

    4. It reminds me of a judge, sentencing a thug for murder by kicking someone to death, saying: “The first five kicks constituted common assault, the next five ABH, the next five GBH and the final five, murder.”

  50. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/28/must-slim-many-nurses-fat/

    From Charles Moore’s article about fatties in the NHS:

    “When the AIDS epidemic began in the 1980s, one chief constable said that AIDS victims were “swirling around in a cesspool of their own making”..

    Of course the royal family today would rather burn a family member at the stake than allow him or her to say what Princes Anne, The Princess Royal, said when AIDS first came to everyone’s attention. I am sure I am not alone in remembering her saying: ‘This is a terrible own-goal for the homosexual community?’

    1. But, before the disease crossed over from infected bisexuals to infect heterosexuals, that is exactly what it was, but the PTB and the MEEJAH have long since wiped that fact from our collective memory.

      I remember one the earliest UK victims reporting that she had been infected by her bisexual Australian boyfriend.

    2. Morning Richard, I’m sure I read somewhere that AIDS originated in apes, gorillas etc which makes you wonder how it was transmitted to humans

    4. Morning Richard. There is a terrible truism about the AIDS epidemic. If at the beginning some of the measures advocated online had been taken, tens of thousands of lives would have been spared much suffering and loss.

  51. Coronavirus: Entire 2020-21 English football season could be played in reduced capacity stadiums

    The whole of the next football season in England could be played in front of reduced capacities and crowd sizes could be further impacted if chanting is proven to heighten transmission risk, a senior government adviser has said.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53556072

    I’ll make no comment…

    1. The US baseball season is in serious trouble already, just one week and games are being cancelled, their football (soccer to them) has troubles fielding teams because of the bug.

      Now you say that chanting could increase the transmission risk? Why not just play in empty an stadium, that will surely be the death knell for many minor league teams

    2. 321809+ up ticks
      Afternoon WS,
      Reduced to zero and bring the whole odious kneeling Blm issue & the kneelers wallets to it’s knees.
      Boycott the matches until some element of sanity returns
      and they bring in reasonable ticket prices.

  52. Q: Why are the riots in so many US cities so violent, persistent and so well-financed by billionaire donors?

    A: Two/four theories: 1. they are to damage Trump in 2020 election; 2. they are to distract and delay/avoid application of justice in Epsteingate, Russiagate or Obamagate

    1. It’s all about the Presidential election.

      Everything is about the election in the year running up to one.

  53. In the middle of the greatest crisis to confront the world since WWII the government has decided we all need to lose weight and get on our bicycles. They change their travel advice from day to day. Schools are closed though there is no need for them to be. Sport, theatre and Cinema are all closed down. The Chancellor dispenses cash as if it were confetti. They seem to have no sense of the coming economic calamity. They appear to be men in a dream. It is as if all the rules of politics have been suspended; as if we are waiting for something to happen.

    Is all this my imagination? Several scenarios have passed through my mind to explain these events and most of them are even more outlandish than what they attempt to explain. Am I the only one who senses this? Please answer and say Yes!

    1. 321809+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      I for one am expecting almost guaranteeing something nasty that has already been agreed & has yet to be revealed to the ovid, approaching the 31.12, 2020. “as if we are waiting for something to happen”

    4. While national economies are being deliberately trashed, the billionaires are getting richer and our “carbon footprint” is diminishing. Worldwide Covid deaths, according to the WHO, are around 600,000. If there are 7.8 billion people in the world, that’s a fatality rate of 0.008%. Literally 5 times as many people die of malaria and tuberculosis each year. None of this is what it seems – it isn’t possible.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/04/27/billionaires-are-getting-richer-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-while-most-americans-suffer/#16f927204804

      1. Who are the useful idiots who are letting the ‘world leaders’ get away with it?

        I wonder if Ladbrokes is yet offering odds as to which conspiracy theories will prove to be true!

      2. Well Sue that is somewhat in support of my observations. I have run through everything from the Second Coming to Alien Invasion and imposed World Government. I suppose I shall have to wait and see!

      3. US COVID death rate continues to plod along at about one thousand a day, on average the US death count is estimated as being about 7,700, so a disease leading to .an additional deaths should not be sneered at . Not quite something that has been described as less serious than a common cold.

        However, that is not the point is it, whole countries are shut down and industry is dying. All the talking heads go on about bringing manufacturing home but the only country that appears to be working is China. Again ignoring conspiracies that would have a few rich people intentionally infecting the world, could it just be the Chinese leaders taking advantage of weak leadership in the west and playing to win?

    5. it is as if they are in standard politician mode and just hanging on until the next election when they can dump the whole mess on the opposition.

      I don’t believe in the great conspiracy espoused so many around here, I believe that it is more total incompetence among the current crop of useless political leaders. Gone are the ex military leaders who had real life experience in difficult times, we now have a faceless mass of PPE type graduates who all went to the same school, they only mix in their select groups of politicians and C level executives that they first met at university.

      They have all been infected by this woke madness, scared of upsetting the noisy lef, in fact scared of taking risks of any kind.

    7. I don’t understand why the UK is killing the economy when the rest of Europe is back to normal, with only a few local lockdowns.

  55. Don’t let them take your temperature on your forehead when you enter a supermarket.

    It erases your memory.

    I went in for bread and milk and came out with two cases of beer and a bucket.

  56. Bonjour tout le monde.
    Is the parrot some sort of Putinesque troll?
    She also comments on Breitbart, and 98% of what she posts is a) moderately offensive b) completely irrelevant to the discussion and c) misleading.

    1. One problem is that, at her very young age, she has still not mastered potty training.

    2. Just think of her as an 8 track tape, a continuous loop with only 4 subject matters.
      Please let me know if you ever find her eject button!

    3. Many theories have been advanced for Polly’s raison d’être but Putinism (unfortunately) has not been one of them!

    1. The last time I took either of those was in Tidworth Military Hospital maternity ward. Not a happy experience.

  58. I saw on the TV. that a magazine called COCOA has been launched by a black family . For the black community . . . ..Just you try a “white “ magazine …. .

      1. No. Unless he’s hiding in MB’s spare clothes cupboard; the one that still has flared jeans lurking on the highest shelf.

        1. Sensible chap. Fashion always comes back. I hear winkle pickers are back. Hope so anyway or i’m lumbered with 400 pairs size 7.

    3. How will they be able to stop white children from reading it – or looking at the pictures?

      I suggested that the family dog was a white Labrador called honky but just as black people may feel offended if they are referred to as n*gg*rs then honkey is only one of many terms – some pejorative others not so much – used by blacks to describe whites. Here is a lsit of terms from googling:

      honkey whitey paleface buckra white bread white boy blank whity milkweed ofay squaw man bogan non white casper trailer trash n.

      opie chickenlips cracker caucasoid pale ice monkey joganosh pigskin pukeskin vomitskin wigger white-trash haole cumskin white ass crackers pale face whiter

      black-and-white grey powdery mildew blanc tea bag target targeted westerner blanca blanche snow

          2. I laughed my head off the first time I heard it. It was during dinner on a skiing holiday.

  59. Somebody posted on the Nottlers earlier today a video of a black American doctor telling us that she had treated literally hundreds of Covid 19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and that all had recovered and none had died.

    How much of what we are being told is the truth and how much is lies? Frankly I don’t believe anyone!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8568579/Twitter-cancels-Don-Jr-s-account-access-posting-claim-hydroxychloroquine-cures-COVID.html

    BREAKING NEWS: Twitter stops Donald Trump Jr. from tweeting after he promoted doctor’s claim hydroxychloroquine ‘cures’ COVID and called it ‘must-watch’ – on eve of big tech bosses being quizzed by Congress
    Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter account was restricted after he posted a video of a doctor claiming hydroxychloroquine ‘cures’ coronavirus
    His pokesperson Andrew Surabian posted the notification of the ban, claiming, ‘Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America’
    Trump also retweeted the video and made posts praising hydroxychloroquine
    Dr. Stella Immanuel’s speech was removed from Facebook, Twitter and Youtube
    She slammed ‘fake doctors’ who doubt the efficacy of the drug in treating coronavirus and said to the public ‘you don’t need a mask’
    Silicon Valley CEOs, excluding Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, are expected on Capitol Hill Wednesday to testify in an anti-trust hearing before the Judiciary Committee

    1. I suspect that if big Tech doesn’t watch its step it is going to find itself as subject of numerous anti-trust hearings and given the second amendment the lawyers might just be looking to find some juicy class action lawsuits from people denied a platform.

    2. This result was proved by a recent study. In the earlier studies that purported to show that this drug didn’t work, the patients were apparently given the drug too late for it to be effective.

    6. Notice on the door of the Gents bog at a place where I once worked.

      From the cleaners:
      We aim to please.
      We’d be more pleased if you could aim!

    1. Oh God that was back in March. If his intuition is so good why has the treatment been continually questioned and rejected.

      Let me guess – the elite have decided to reduce the population and increase fearful compliance by the masses, therefore they have shut down this drug whilst increasing vaccine hysteria.

      1. 321809+ up ticks,
        R,
        As with many issues well padded brown envelopes
        have a great deal of power.
        Same could be said for example of the Brexitexit
        for four years plus why was the result questioned & rejected ?
        I also believe that you weaken your post by bringing God into play.

  63. I think it was Phizzee who posted a link for tracking down premium bond numbers. (To put it another way, I’m too lazy to trawl through hundred of yesterday’s postings.)

    1. I’m very pleased that Stuart Broad got his 500th Test wicket. He’s been a fine player for England.

      A very great shame it wasn’t possible in front of a full house.

    3. It is a great pity that the ECB has endorsed the BLM hypocrisy. Some of the most enduring friendships between Englishmen and West Indians are between cricketers.

      The future series trophy is to be renamed after Ian Botham and Viv Richards, both great cricketers, stalwarts for Somerset and ambassadors for the game.

      Carlos Brathwaite’s commentary on Radio 4 was a delight with no hint of taking sides or animosity, quite the reverse, harmonious and light hearted.

      Edited.

      1. I just wish that SOMEONE would explain to the ECB and the English players exactly what the Marxist trouble makers plan to do….

      2. I tuned in to TMS too at lunch and listening to Carlos, as you say, was a delight.

        I always thoroughly enjoyed listening to the wonderfully lyrical commentary of Donna Symonds and Tony Crozier.

      1. Those particular Stargazers are giants. They are 6 feet high at the moment and still producing buds higher up. My problem this year is i parked them under the Magnolia and they are going through the top. 🙁

        1. We have some in our garden. The wind blew over the pots. Much to our amazement, the flowers were fine.

      1. I had two other lots in huge pots but they didn’t do so well. I kept fining lily bugs on them.

  66. While flipping through TV channels last night I came across a repeat of Jim Bowen’s programme, Bullseye. At the end of the episode the pair going for the big prize failed to score enough points on the darts board so Jim Bowen had to show them

    What You Could Have Won

    I thought of this when I saw in the MSM that Cressida Bonas has married.

    What Harry could have won?

    I wonder if he already deeply regrets the choice he did make!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/efcdf23ace45c174b168804db3750689823c0776639625043b1b5df806d5051b.jpg

        1. I can’t really imagine anyone not brought up close to it wishing to have anything to do with them.

      1. The US ambassador to South Korea has shaved off his highly controversial moustache, saying it felt too hot under a mask in the summer months.

        Harry Harris’ decision was diplomatic as well as practical, because the moustache has caused offence in South Korea for reminding his hosts of the facial hair worn by colonial Japanese governors who ruled the country a century ago.

  68. Presumably the “second wave” will be followed by successive waves to the power of n – so we will be in quarantine for ever…..

    2. The same thought has occurred to me.
      The PTB are enjoying this nonsense far too much.
      When reporting a drop – or improvement in the figures – you can see a thought bubble containing the word “Bugger” hovering over the newsreader’s head.

      1. One thing we can be sure of is that there will be no planned exit strategy. They don’t want one.

  70. Just been out to check the gardening that the MR is doing – seems OK to me…!

    I thought you might like to see two of the pots of Thalia Fuchsia that we grew from cuttings years ago.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fee8f2e9d1447099800b269c57cb98def36a4830018b91df8c2fd99b25346d2.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/edc6dbdaae5b6535a2b3fe779edbc5eb4362a9a79fe3bc974495b0df18eb25f0.jpg

    The bright sun makes them look slightly yellower than they really are – more a deeper red.

  72. Reading about outbreaks in towns which boast of their “diversity” – I assume that slammers and other “welcome new residents” take not the slightest notice of the rules and regulations about the Plague….keeping apart, not forming large groups, wearing masks etc etc.

    So that’s alright.

    2. They tend to have very large extended families, quite often several generations in one house, and it’s in their culture to have regular contact with other family members.

        1. I read on BBC red button news today that COVID rules are provided in something like 60 different languages for UK residents.

          They’re even provided for doctors in illegible handwriting,. 😉

        2. I read on BBC red button news today that COVID rules are provided in something like 60 different languages for UK residents.

          They’re even provided for doctors in illegible handwriting,. 😉

        1. No – just a polite way of saying that they will completely ignore any law placing restrictions on them visiting their relatives. And they’ve got a lot of them – they all seem to be first cousins.

    1. Great bees have little bees
      Upon their back to sting ’em;
      And great bees have greater bees
      And I have run out of rhymes.

    2. Ere, do you mind shutting the door. Me and missus bee were just having a quiet little get together.

      Oops now look what you have made me do, my stinger has stung.

    1. “…the strongest risk management skills, early and preemptive.” Just what we were saying on here, many months ago.

  75. That’s me for this chilly, windy day. Just hope it is better tomorrow. Th damned wind is drying the ground so much.

    We have a problem this year with sub-surface moles. They are obviously afraid of depths. Bloody nuisance….

    Ah well.

    A demain

      1. They are real barstards – they lurk about two inches below the surface – instead of proper moles who go deep.

        Obviously modern moles are woke…

    3. My cat has the measure of them, and most other things as well. He came home with a parrot the other day.

    3. Around 20 per cent of the borough’s population are from Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage compared to the 2.8 per cent average in England and Wales.

      1. The borough’s population is 235,000, the town just under 100,000. A mere 100 ‘infections’ requires another closedown.

        Nothing more to say…

        2. Can’t do that. They would riot. Seeing as they would riot anyway, burn them down as pay back for Notre Dame.

  78. Of course one other interesting point about David Cameron is this……..

    He was negotiating Hinkley Point with China at the same time as Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry was negotiating with China.

    We know what Peter Schweizer discovered about Kerry and Biden’s alleged ”soft on China” kickback deals in relation to ”trade, national security and the South China Sea” from the well known Fox interview which tells us so much about the Obama years in DC.

    John Kerry and David Cameron were very friendly.. and are now writing media articles together.

    So did they exchange ideas about how to do things with China…. and get the best deal for themselves ?

    Is that how, against the advice of so many people, Hinkley Point got approval ?

    1. The more one hears about Cameron the more one realises that he may have been less effective than Blair but that both he and Traita May were just as evil.

      1. Rastus, I don’t admire Mrs May, but it is wrong to describe her & Dave as “evil”.

    2. Have you ever or will you ever consider standing in an election to be a MP.
      I ask because you seem to know an awful lot and could do so much good for the country.
      I can think of no one better qualified to tackle your mate Soros and fight against his influence
      I appreciate that if elected, it would leave little if any time for comments on Nottlers blog, but I’m sure we fellow Nottlers could cope.

      2. Why do people object so much to Pretty Polly? She may bang on a bit about Soros but we all have our pet things to attack. For example I frequently bang on about the evil of the usurious rates of interest charged on student loans and Johnson’s refusal to tell us what is in his ‘brilliant’ EU WA just as Bill Thomas has an obsessions with fishy puns and trombetti.

        I think Polly is all right. Let her be!

        1. She may be right but “bang on a bit” is an understatement.
          I agree with your statement about pet things to attack but the parrot has just one train of thought for week after week.
          Tiresome best sums her up.

        2. She is mostly – except when she upset Bill T by downvoting his posts and caused him to leave this forum for several months.

      3. Awww, that’s so sweet…. but surely you’d miss me just a tiny little bit.. ?

        1. Yes but as I said, I’m sure we would cope.
          It would be a noble sacrifice to see you leave us to go on to greater things and join battle with your nemesis George.

          2. I’m confused, first you indicate I am capable of sweet gestures yet 7 minutes later you seem to suggest I have motives which are less than pure.
            To clarify the situation, I am a pure sweet person with a character beyond approach who thinks you would be happy joined in battle with your nemesis George.
            To further clarify the situation, I have made it known that I would accept the inevitable fact that your comments on this blog would dwindle down to nothing.
            As much as it would pain me (and many others I suspect) to lose your daily contribution here, it would be worthwhile to see you working in an official capacity for the good of the country.

          3. I must ask around to see if anyone knows ol’ George, and perhaps invite him to become a Nottler.

  79. My girlfriend just asked me, “when we go to Egypt, can we go on a camel?”

    I said, as you wish fine, and booked it for her.

    she’s leaving tomorrow ….

    I’m going 2 months later by plane.

    2. Yo Fizz

      On the subject of Holidays:

      We are not going to Hawaii this year because of Covid

      All the other years we never went because we could not afford it

  80. There was a play on beeboid telly last night about a bloke who was killed in a “racial attack”.

    To my amazement the leading character was not played by a white person. Why on earth not? Most plays now have blacks playing whites – often of the opposite sex.

    I’ll get me pointed hat…

    1. It sounds as though they deserved each other – both as bad as each other. No idea why it’s being heard here – is either of them British? I haven’t bothered following it.

      1. I haven’t clicked on any of the articles but the headlines are stomach-churning.

      2. True, but from recent reports you would think it’s a divorce case.

      1. As he appeared not to notice that one of his “advisers” had stolen $280 million – a few bob to lawyers won’t bother him

        1. Winona Ryder and Vanessa Paradis (his last two wives) said they didn’t believe any of the accusations against him.

          Perhaps he didn’t do cocaine binges when he was with either of them.

          Those drugs not only affect the memory but also the personality and temperament.

          2. Yes but coke is quicker. I have lost friends over their excess usage of these evil drugs.

          4. I’m sure. One friend i had in London worked in a customer facing position with B.A and he lost all his teeth to cocaine. He got dentures to replace them but every time he spoke..he clacked.

    4. The Depp trial has received saturation/ unavoidable coverage on BBC and Sky News.

      It is boring, irrelevant and over here.

      We should be spared from this crap …

  84. Evening, all. I have finally managed to mow the meadow that masquerades as my front lawn. A combination of long grass and dampness does not make for happy mowing, Esso sign or no 🙂

    1. Yo Conway

      I solved the problem of the height of the grass in my back lawn

      Hedge Trimmer

      1. Hey no problems over here in eastern Canada, drought conditions all over and the what was once green stuff crunches underfoot when you walk on it.

    2. Yo Conway

      I solved the problem of the height of the grass in my back lawn

      Hedge Trimmer

    3. My “lawn” is still filled with building materials, waiting for the guys to reconstruct our steps. That, and rain, means it’s hopeless to try cutting the grass.

  85. HAPPY HOUR – In praise of our feathered friends…
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ba2fdd3741ae5e795efd2efe4f6b55bb3b6e92772f92c19fe9d2fc4c8d14d99.jpg

    Araminta posted earlier – Belgian woman who thought she was a chicken linked to depression. Tue 28 Jul 2020 .

    When I was a child growing up in suburbia after the war, my dad kept chickens in the back garden.Fresh eggs were plentiful and my dad sold them to neighbours and friends to eke out their meagre food rations.
    I loved collecting the warm eggs from the nest , often having to hot foot it when Cocky arrived to protect his hareem..Sometimes a fresh chicken was procured for a friend and on Sundays we had chicken as a special treat. My father handled the quick execution with expertise causing less suffering to the victim. My mother plucked the chicken and the feathers were saved for stuffing cushions etc.
    However because I had small hands It was my job to gut the chickens, a prospect I didn’t enjoy. I had to carefully remove the liver, neck and giblets later used for soup or stews.
    Although I enjoyed my Sunday lunch the guilt never left me of the price paid.

    1. Nowadays children probably grow up thinking chickens are pale, hairless things grown in supermarkets.

      1. Probably the same 80% of primary schoolchildren who don’t know chips come from potatoes…

      2. KFC have announced that they are now growing chicken bits in a lab somewhere, they expect the product to go on sale later this year.

        There was you thinking that chlorinated chicken was the worst thing to come out of the US.

      3. When we sent our youngest, age 11, to France to stay with a French family, she had to learn about killing chickens for the table.

        1. It came as a rude shock to the schoolchildren I took to France on exchanges that the lovely bunnies in the market were destined for the pot, not for pets.

      4. My mother taught me to gut & descale fish, draw poultry, gut & skin rabbits & hares. All stood me in good stead when I left home as a student. I taught my boys the same.

        1. My mum was no great shakes as a cook. Nor am I, but I don’t buy much pre-packed stuff.

    3. Chicken 1 “Do you think Mathilda’s acting a little strangely?”

      Chicken 2 “Niet echt, waarom vraag je dat?”

    4. I had to kill a chicken once, on expedition in Nepal. Easier than I thought, but I wouldn’t like to do it again.

      1. I have chicken dispatch on my CV. My ex had a few; one in particular had a problem. “I need to take her to the vet”. No-one sane would ask a vet to euthanise a chicken. I asked a member of my choir: “we usually throw them to the dogs”, was the less than helpful reply.

        I’ve done wringing, and chopping. Neither are ideal,and it’s true about the headless variety. I don’t like it, but sometimes, it’s necessary.

        2. Twist and pull (otherwise they just untwist) – my father used to kill the chickens, I plucked them and my mother prepared and cooked them. Division of labour.

    5. I had to kill a chicken once, on expedition in Nepal. Easier than I thought, but I wouldn’t like to do it again.

  88. Gardeners warned not to plant mystery seeds disguised as jewellery
    Unsolicited seed packages are thought to be part of an e-commerce scam

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/28/gardeners-warned-not-plant-mystery-seeds-disguised-jewellery/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1595965437

    Gardeners have been warned not to plant mysterious seeds they receive in the post after reports of packages turning up unsolicited and mislabelled as jewellery.

    Mislabelling means the seeds evade crucial biosecurity checks and pose a potential threat if they are planted, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.

    Officials in 27 US states have issued similar warnings over unsolicited seed packages from China, which are believed to be part of an e-commerce scam.

    Vendors make a purchase so they can pose as legitimate buyers to leave positive reviews, in a practice known as brushing. Addresses could be picked up from databases or other legitimate sales.

    Seeds provide a cheap fake item, and often have a similar weight and feel to jewellery.

    “It is a big biosecurity risk,” said Lisa Ward, a biosecurity expert at the Royal Horticultural Society. “There are a number of pathogens associated with seeds that can come into the country on that pathway.”

          1. Portia gives her suitors a choice of three caskets: one of gold, one of silver and the third of lead. The first suitor chooses the gold casket and learns that all that glisters is not golf; the second sees the picture of a blinking idiot in the silver casket and Bassanio, whom she desires as her husband, chooses the lead casket and wins the fair lady.

    2. They make it sound like it is covid seeds that have been sent to start off yet another pandemonium.

    1. Enjoy the current book at bedtime, Peddy. And then, good night and sleep well.

  92. Well, Spartie is now thinking we are thoroughly mad.
    This afternoon I found a very fat mouse in the bird feeder; it had eaten so much it couldn’t escape through the hole it had entered. (Think Winnie-the-Pooh stuck in the entrance to Rabbit’s burrow.)
    Before we released it, we shut Spartie in the house. I don’t think he understood the logic; kill mice indoors – good boy; kill greedy bird feeder raiding mice in the garden – not a Good Thing.

    1. If you stopped putting food in the bird-feeder, the mouse would get slim enough to escape.

      1. If she stopped putting food in bird-feeder, the mouse would be getting fat eating starving birds …

    2. 321809+ up ticks,
      Evening JN,
      Seems very fishy to me what will the net result amount to
      Methinks the last act of treachery has already been signed, sealed & delivered, all we the UK peoples are in receipt of has been a bloody great shoal of red herrings.

  96. ARROGANT COMPLACENCY (aka The Mass Suicide of the Right).

    As I have warned, repeatedly, over the past decade, the insidious rise in power and influence of the Left has been matched, equally, by the ongoing lethargy of the Right. Warnings have been given from many sources of the dangers of this approach, but still the Right slumbers on in their gin-soaked torpor whilst the Left have incessantly been busy little bees.

    It gets worse. All the time that the Right have been harrumphing over “the good old days”, the Left’s surreptitious and calumnious policy of Critical Theory (aka Cultural Marxism) has been speading its cancerous tendrils, unchallenged, throughout all societies in the Western world.

    A brief guide to ‘Cultural Marxism’.

    The concept that has become known as Cultural Marxism (or Critical Theory) can be traced back to the Frankfurt School of the 1920s. The Frankfurt School refers to a number of Socialist intellectuals who, after realising the Communist revolution in Russia was unlikely to be repeated in other European countries via force, dedicated themselves to developing more imaginative methods of advancing Socialism in the West.

    The master plan they eventually settled upon is now know as Cultural Marxism, a strategy which can be generally defined as:

    ● The gradual process of destroying all notions of tradition, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, the family unit and natural justice; in order to re-assemble society in the future as a Socialist utopia.

    ● A utopia that will have no notion of gender, race, morality, God or individuality; and where all ideas of childhood, fatherhood, motherhood and nationhood are endered obsolete.

    The method used to achieve this outcome is to gradually spread the ideology in a stealthy manner, by infiltrating all existing societal institutions including schools, universities, unions, the film industry, the media, the church, the police, the judiciary, the military, the civil service, and all major political parties. With the ultimate goal of embedding it — largely without being noticed — in the popular mind, in the hope of eventually leading all the masses to abandon their own cultural identity and national heritage, by their own volition, entirely without resistance or objection.

    It is not as though many on the Right aren’t aware of this. The surreptitious infiltration of all Right-wing parties is nearing completion and most — if not all — of those former Right-wing parties have been invaded to such a degree by the Critical Theory mob, that the war has already been won by them without a shot being fired; just as they had planned.

    Unless sufficient Right-minded warriors, from all freedom-loving states, can be mustered and marshalled into revolutionary units dedicated and determined to fight back and remove all those cancerous tendrils from those affected societies — in effect, a worldwide uprising of the Right — then we might just as well put our hands in the air, wave the white flag, and accept the Socialist utopia that we did so very little to protect ourselves against.

    The arrogant complacency, ingrained stupidity and lazy inertia of all freedom-loving, Right-minded people will have led to their suicide.

    3. It is not surprising that most patriots (extreme right wingers) keep their heads down with instant dismissal from your job being the means favoured by the left. The police will hound you and your family (TR) and courts will give you jail time with the attendant criminal record for merely peeing against the wall. Its a big ask to put your individual head up above the parapet and with government in full retreat, I feel the future is bleak. Similar to the methods of islam, cultural marxism has time on their side. Boiling frogs anyone.

        1. With all the press hysteria, it is generally forgotten that he started his campaigning after he saw the vile reactions of Luton muslims to a parade of troops returning from operations. Glad he’s getting out. But what hope is there when leading figures are cancelled from all sorts of events.

    1. Oh please. Next they’ll say it only lives above three feet off the ground and the muzzled sheeple will all be down on all fours.

          1. Of course, and can’t they jump high and of course climb.. so now we have to consider birds..

            When the virus first came to our attention, people SKIING in Italy were going down like flies .. so it survives at altitude!

          2. Mini claude didn’t bother to jump. She just used clothes and eventually bare flesh as a ladder. Shed then sit draped around your neck all day.

    2. Thank God I have lost two inches – thanks to “laddergate” – clearly God inspired…

      1. I’ve lost at least one and a half inches over the years – without falling off a ladder – and I was only five feet four in my prime!

        1. #metoo. One and a half inches seems to be the going rate. But, after nearly two years of pilates I have gained half an inch!! (All that stretching….)

          1. #metoo. I was quite snarky with the nurse at the doctors office when she announced my new shortness.

    4. These ‘studies’ are produced by silly people operating from the New Universities. You might as well ask why some people are taller than others, whether diet or hereditary. I suppose the deliberate link by the ‘studies’ to Covid-19 is merely a device to obtain research funding.

      Years ago we referred crap like this to the PhD awarded for a study into ‘Lesbianism in Lesotho’.

    5. Does that mean the NHS will now refuse to treat tall people? Yes Boris, I get it. Being overweight doesn’t help the NHS.

      Sod the NHS. It’s a service I pay for. If it can’t cope then it should change, not me. No doubt the NHS is very happy that we all stayed locked up – no broken bones, nor torn ligaments, no injuries.. I’m sure they were incredibly efficient.

      It’s almost as if they watched this and thought: what a great idea! No patients!
      https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5v4rhh

      1. And why the Seven Dwarfs weren’t affected, even though they were cooped up with Sneezy.

    9. Yet another reason why I should be immune to the lurgy then; not only am I blood type O (see a previous study a few days ago), I am severely vertically challenged (not helped by having shrunk 1.5 inches over the last few years).

    10. Yes but as with every other factor found, is height causative or just coincidence?
      Height, blood type, ethnicity, sex (actual not perceived), age, weight and the list goes on.

      If they are not already dead, any overweight black six foot men must be very high risk.

  98. The most terrifying thing about Boris Johnson’s complete incompetence is that he has no chance of ever winning another election and we shall then have Keir Starmer or the Lib/Dums instead.

    We desperately need a new political party.

    The system in France may be different but we must not forget that two years before Macron became president his political party, En Marche, did not even exist.

    1. The British system works against it, plus the Conservatives have too many activists that ensure they are a vote-winning machine. That’s why Labour has to resort to “sophisticated postal voting campaigns” to win anything.
      The Conservative sheep would have to realise that getting power for its own sake, and then obeying orders from the Open Borders Society or its representatives in Brussels when you’ve got it, is not a terribly good idea.

  100. Sod all on the telly. My wife is addicted to Salvage Hunters. Is it just me or is Drew Pritchard just about the worst charlatan in the supposed Antiques business or do I dislike him because he is Welsh?

    My old boss who passed away aged 98 left his collection to his civil partner from 2007, an arrogant little shit, who is presently flogging it off for millions. Sir William Whitfield CBE knew his stuff and bought furniture on behalf of wealthy people such as Wafic Said, for whom he designed an enormous pseudo Palladian pile known as Tusmore House.

    Check out the sales particulars of a real collector (Part One). The lockdown seems to have interfered with the sale of the Broadwood piano, made for Chopin, and St Helen Auckland Hall (1715 with a Tudor wing) itself.

    https://www.dreweatts.com/news-insights/the-collection-of-sir-william-whitfield-cbe-spring-2020/

    1. The programmes are barely about antiques, they are about Pritchard – who seems an unpleasant person. Eulogies by his wife & the voiceover, all written and produced by Pritchard.
      The spinoff about The Restorers is much better, IMHO. Some skills shown.

      1. I had the privilege in the early seventies of meeting Sir Robert Abdy and viewing his collection. He had three beautiful wives, the last of whom was one of the most successful Antique dealers in London. Sir Robert himself was a buyer for Gulbenkian and others.

        I love this portrait of Lady Abdy. After marrying they took a cruise to Italy. On the voyage he asked her to bring her suitcases on deck and promptly threw them overboard, promising to buy her proper outfits in Milan.

        My sort of man.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e0a1e4a5cfc623819f14e181581e3cf64431d60957e5b1905815835addc20841.jpg

          3. I believe they divorced but she looked after him in his dotage. She was much younger. Sir Robert was fabulously wealthy and a Baronet.

            Edited.

            Lady Abdy is credited with promoting Atkinson Grimshaw, French painters such as Tissot and other Modern artists. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/74d6bb05b11994d8d1c2a1cc8b51c76f2d5594a3aee99440b0172341434ddf41.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a6a68106c46aa0d320e95f86b82097a8ce25d03e7dee66d8e36c90e736519d4.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/46688b6a661b94fe17b18185ccbed89fd75a9986348f4f6a1d7b46a87552620e.jpg

      1. Oh you know, doctors , lawyers, architects and that sort of thing ..

        Probably spreading Covid, and of course they will take the knee and protest about how RACIST Britain is , when they have been in the UK a week.

    3. It’s appalling what these two young Africans do in an attempt to illegally enter the UK, but I am just as appalled – if not more – so by the language of the entire family. F…’s, C…’s and Tw..’s galore. And what on earth does “Oh my F…ing God” mean?

    4. Only two of them? It must be nice to be able to afford business class travel.

  103. Looks like Boros is trying to build up panic and stampede everyone into vaccinations….

    After all, he’s already bought about 100 million doses of his best friend Bill Gates’ corona cocktail and he doesn’t want to pour it down the drain…… he wants to inject it into you !

    ”Panic over rising Covid-19 case numbers is as irrational as it is dangerous”…..

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/28/panic-rising-covid-19-case-numbers-irrational-dangerous/

  104. This government has a bloody cheek asking us to lose weight.

    Every time I have visited West Suffolk and Addenbrookes I have been struck by the elephantine buttocks of the nurses. Even those on the switchboard(s) seem unable to lift their Bingo wings to answer the incessantly ringing phones. They prefer to file their nails or gossip among themselves, presumably with exchanges over some doctor Kildare type or other.

    I am sick of this nonsense. The NHS and its management has let us all down. It needs urgent reform, not yet more money shovelled down the throats of its useless management and contractors.

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