Friday 11 September: Where is the science to justify this latest theft of basic civil liberties?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/10/letters-science-justify-latest-theft-basic-civil-liberties/

665 thoughts on “Friday 11 September: Where is the science to justify this latest theft of basic civil liberties?”

  3. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Very well said, Jeremy Parr:

    SIR – I am more scared of the Government’s handling of Covid-19 than I am of the virus itself.

    What is the point of imposing random measures to protect the health of the nation if in so doing the nation itself is destroyed both socially and economically?

    Jeremy Parr
    Suckley, Worcestershire

    1. 323600+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      Does not Jeremy question what these governance parties have been doing especially for the last three decades, & doing successfully as we are witnessing.

  4. Ashley Banjo has issued a blanket condemnation of all those complaining about Diversity’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ (‘BGT’) contribution, describing them as ‘racist’ without, presumably, having seen what any of the complainants might have said to justify their complaint.

    My submission asked for ‘balance’ in that if it is acceptable to honour an American career-criminal, who had taken nearly four times the potential lethal dose of
    Fentanyl and had other barbiturates in his system, and died while being arrested, then surely it is proper for BGT to commemorate totally innocent
    people who have died in this country. These would include victims of the Birmingham stabbings, the Reading Three, Manchester Arena bombing, London Bridge attacks and many, many, more.

    However, should this be adopted, and each victim is given the same amount of air time as Floyd, I foresee a problem as there would then be no time on the programme for anything else for the foreseeable future.

  5. Morning all

    SIR – The announcement on Wednesday that households may only meet in numbers of up to six persons must surely and finally explode the myth that the Government’s removal of our liberty is being “led by the science”.

    What scientific evidence is there that six persons is safe, whereas seven persons leads to the NHS becoming overwhelmed – which, after all, was the only rationale for the emergency measures in the first place?

    If this information exists, please let us have it, otherwise we are entitled to assume that this is another off-the-cuff decision taken with the cavalier approach to our diminishing freedom that we have come to associate with this benighted administration.

    Dr Kevin McBride MRCGP

    Warminster, Wiltshire

    1. SIR – Does it really matter if some of us aged over 70 die a few years early? Those who don’t want to take the risk can isolate themselves.

      Personally, at 76, my main concern is that my grandchildren lead normal lives, with a full education, sports, extra-curricular activities and, most importantly, normal socialising with their peers – and grandparents.

      Mary Evans

      Repton, Derbyshire

    2. The First Minister for Wales this morning said that infections in Wales had reached 20 per 100,000 and that was why further restrictions were being put in place. If and when this figure dropped then the restriction might be eased.
      But what is special about the number 20? Why not 19 which is a prime number and so stronger than 20? Or 101 a number that carries some resonance from literature? Or even more appropriately, the number 666, the number of the Beast? Science is one thing and politics another. Numerology is neither. Numerology is fun, and interesting, yet few in the Western world now base their daily decisions regarding life and the Universe on it.

    3. 323600+ up ticks,
      Morning Epi,
      Methinks Doc Kev wants to get his head round the fact that these governance party’s politico’s are ALL round heads & this is NOT a cavalier approach but an organised campaign.

  6. Where is Grizzly this morning .. he could have penned this letter, couldn’t he .

    SIR – When I joined the police 27 years ago I had to memorise the nine principles of policing, which haven’t changed since the time of Robert Peel. None of them refers to enforcing government public health policy.

    One could suggest that it comes under the duty to protect life but, 
by that argument, police officers should therefore also be preventing people from driving cars, riding motorcycles, smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol and eating fatty foods, all of which are more likely to kill you than Covid-19.

    Graham Low
    Malpas, Cheshire

  7. SIR – Lady Hale’s pronouncement that she “finds it quite shocking that so many of my colleagues belong to the Garrick” would be comical were it not so sinister.

    Although I am not a member of the Garrick Club, I can assure her that when men congregate in such clubs they talk of many things – but rarely, in my experience, do these amount to arcane conspiracies against women.

    What is unequivocally sinister is the declared intent to assign the state control over the private arrangements of private persons. The Government’s commitment to civil liberties is not so assured as to preclude a very real fear that the next step will be to acquire statutory powers to prohibit things that occur within our homes. As a historian of the Soviet Union, I do not need to guess how that will transpire.

    Nikolai Tolstoy

    Southmoor, Berkshire

    1. Morning Epi,
      I was about to put Mr Tolstoy’s letter up for comment.

      I would like to know whether The Garrick accepts women who think they are men.
      It seems only fair, if men are now to be allowed into our prisons, our hospital wards, our toilets, our fitting rooms, our changing rooms, that there should be some quid pro quo.

      2. Another question for The Garrick – Does it allow male members who think they are women (despite their male members!)?

      3. I’m not at all clubbable (except in the sense of Shillelagh), so I don’t give a rats what happens to the Garrick, or other similar institutions. I particularly don’t want to be part of the snobbishness of “exclusive”.

        1. Which is the point, ignored by the letter writer, that Lady Hale was making. Not that her colleagues are men, but that they are men from one extremely exclusive section of society. Lady Hale attended a girls high school and was the first from that school to achieve a place at Cambridge.

  8. No longer to be Trusted?

    SIR – At a time when the National Trust (Letters, September 10) is losing income and members, making hundreds of staff – including skilled curators – redundant, and cannot open many of its properties – or offers a very restricted experience in those that it does – it is good to know that it has its priorities in order.

    The “VLearning” team is still functioning and can offer me, as a volunteer, a virtual course in “everyday inclusion” to help “raise awareness of my unintended biases”.

    It clearly knows what members and volunteers find more important than attracting visitors to its properties.

    Alan Rainsley

    Brazacott, Cornwall

      1. All the best to you on this special day, Peddy. I trust that Missy celebrated by bringing you a cuppa to your bedroom this morning!

          1. Happy birthday.

            At least that was after daylight appeared, and she is your cat.

            I’ve recently had a house-breaking cat who comes and jumps on my bed during the hours of darkness – I think I’ve now got it excluded… but time will tell.

  10. SIR – In St Margaret’s church in Westminster there is plaque commemorating Sir Walter Raleigh who, even in his own lifetime, was a controversial character. The last line says: “Reader – should you reflect on his errors, remember his many virtues; and that he was mortal.”

    Perhaps this should be put on every statue in the country, and let that be an end to all this revisionist nonsense.

    Timothy Morgan-Owen

    Melbourne, Derbyshire

  11. Good morning, all.

    It has never been truer. “They wants ter make yer flesh creep”.

    I despair.

  12. Good morning all.

    The sun squinted over the horizon rosy pink to greet me on this auspicious day, then quickly turned to orange as her full disc appeared.

    Just sipping a glass of my favourite fizz – Veuve Cliquot – before tucking in to papaya, followed by smoked salmon & scrambled egg.

    2. Good morning Peddy! Wishing you a very happy birthday! Hope it’s a jolly one! 🎉🍾🎂

      1. Thanks, Bill.

        She looked over my shoulder as I wrote smoked salmon & she’s waiting at my feet now.

    5. My favourite breakfast, I love papaya.. with a squirt of lime juice, Moh sprinkles salt on his half.

      I bought a box of fresh Turkish figs the other day , We will have a couple of those each with our Weetabix.

        1. That sounds delicious Peddy, but Moh is very very fussy with food , and wouldn’t entertain feta or anything other than a traditional cheese.

          I have foody desires , and if I even indulge myself with a small pot of marinaded herring from Waitrose deli counter , all hell is let loose!

          3. Both good, we bake the figs and then grill the cheese; we also use a different wine, but the result is delicious.

          4. That’s very true. A dolcelatte, for instance, but I think Rocquefort would be rather a stretch.

          5. We’ve used Rocquefort and it’s been fine. Possibly because we get very rich ripe figs locally, both dark and green.

          6. If I were to use Rocquefort, I think I would give the figs a boost with a dab of honey. The fresh figs we get here are usually not up to much.
            In Dorset I used to grow my own.

          9. Oddly enough that was what I wrote originally and then changed it to copy pdv’s spelling rather than check my instincts.

          15. Lidl have large tubs of marinated herrings; saves all the hassle of driving to IKEA.
            Morning, Maggie.

      2. I was always upset at being a Virgo, a nice brave Leo seemed much more exciting.

        But now that I see the company that I have as a virgo, well it is an honour.

      1. I’m taking friends to out favourite Turkish restaurant tonight, then it’s Dinner for One with grilled lobster tails & English fizz, followed by chocolate fondant with thick cream tomorrow night, while I take in whatever they’ve made of the Final Night of the Proms.
        Did you catch Beethoven’s 7th last night? Any good?

          3. It’s all I could listen to in lockdown. Kept returning to von Karajan’s interpretation with the Berlin Philharmonic. Hope this version is wonderful.

  13. 323600+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    When one can view the situation from outside of the ” party first & foremost in ALL issues” box then the mud begins to thin as in, the science of war, divide & conquer, feed the ovis with fearful covid fodder
    until suitably subdued and more susceptible to the leadership of those applying the science of war.
    There surely has to be a positive to the overseers negative actions.

    1. If age just shows up, it might at least bring a bottle of something nice to drink – the bastard!

        1. Good morning, Peddy

          Come on old chap : pots and kettles – you are obsessed with giving us each night the details of your evening meal!

          1. But not every night, e.g. not last night, but if you want to know, it was tagliatelle alla puttanesca.

    3. And when you can’t tell the difference is the time it all goes pear shaped.
      I’m another year older Tmz. (Virgo’s, a good time around Christmas.)
      A four ball Nine holes with the boys in the morning, home for family lunch Moroccan chicken.
      No candles on the cake, too much of a fire risk.

      1. You can’t better a Virgo, perfection itself. 😊
        Another year for me next week, Battle of Britain day.

        1. We have three in our immediate family.
          A few years ago we were at a gathering of friends for a lunch time celebration. We were bid to sit where we like liked around the four tables set out. out of the 8 people on our table only one was not a Virgo.
          No prior knowledge given. Some one said, it’s your birthday next week, to one lady and then it all came out. And no other Virgo’s in the room.

          1. I should have had a word with Father when he was alive, perhaps the previous Christmas had very little on the tv!
            That would explain it.

    1. The MR was away. She phoned me and said, “Turn on the TV”. I did – just as the second tower was struck.

      1. Do you remember the third lower building going down quite a long time after the others, it wasn’t struck at all ?????

    2. I have absolutely no doubt that it is being celebrated in certain Muslim communities as we write. And, that if those communities could organise a similar atrocity they would not hesitate to do so.

    3. We sat around the office waiting for news of our workmates from the New York office. We had quite a few clients in the world trade centre and it was quite likely that someone would have been there. It took several hours before we were able to announce that everyone was safe.

      Then came the problem of getting everyone home, we had dozens of consultants and sales reps working over the border or on the other side of the country.

    4. I was working in Ostfriesland. I was all set to take the nurses out for a birthday drink after work, but the news came through at lunchtime. Of course, the celebration fell out.

    5. Saw that, live, on TV. WAs home early (don’t remember why), just collected Firstborn from school and turned on the TV to see that horror. Took a while to comprehend wtf was going on. Still can see some images in my mind – especially the “Falling man” in flight, recently reprised on Nottl a few days ago.

      1. That image has stayed with me also. Wake up in a cold sweat, still. He had no choice but some people were killed on the ground by falling bodies.

    6. I had just returned home with the shopping and tuned into the lunchtime news. The first plane had hit the tower when the second plane came into view and hit the remaining tower.

    7. My wife and i had just been arranging the funeral of her dear lovely father, on our way home we dropped into a local pub restaurant for a bite to eat. Still unaware of the happenings in the world, when we eventually arrived home it was of course all over the news as it was happening.
      Liberty veiled in dust.

  18. Morning all……..talking of civil liberties have you seen this.

    Police State

    Bishop Guy Leven-Torres

    9th September 2020

    The former monarchy of the United Kingdom is now all but gone, replaced instead by a Marxist “Vichy” style government of Occupation. We have not left the Euro Soviet but have instead become an occupied country, under the dogmatic and increasingly vicious regime in Brussels and Berlin. The Yellow Vests in France were crushed by the armed paramilitary Eurogend force and Macron, the supposedly elected President of the French Republic is now reliant upon drafted in EU forces, to ensure he remains in power. The French Generals are furious with him. His own bodyguard, provided by the French State are totally disaffected. None of this news is reported in the BBC or any other “MSM broadcaster. I have my own “intelligence” network from which to gain real news of rapidly declining state of affairs.

    The Royal Family of the former UK, is in my humble opinion under house arrest and Britain is run by a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of a Psychological warfare unit currently spying on every one of us. This formation is known as 77 Brigade and its activities and personnel are normally anathema to traditional British Army’s reluctance to become involved in politics, since its oath is to the Monarch, not Quislings like Johnson and his “adviser” Cummings, a well known member of a Marxist think tank only a short while ago. The reason Cummings disappeared at the beginning of the “Lockdown” was because he went to see his handlers in the North of England to gain advice. I believe Brian Gerrish of UK Column, may know something about all this.

    The above situation and information is what I have managed to extract from the sources and and what I can observe, with a dash of common-sense and familiarity with other historical examples. We are being “played”, in the guise of a mass Covid “Pandemic” in a huge psychological military style operation, designed to transform this country into a Communist entity, so long feared by all of us and long warned of by the likes of Orwell and Aldous Huxley, even Samuel Butler, who wrote of such a dystopia in his work “Erewhon”, where people were imprisoned for having the common cold.

    Wikipedia states….

    “The greater part of the book consists of a description of Erewhon. The nature of this nation is intended to be ambiguous. At first glance, Erewhon appears to be a Utopia, yet it soon becomes clear that this is far from the case. Yet for all the failings of Erewhon, it is also clearly not a dystopia, such as that depicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. As a satirical utopia, Erewhon has sometimes been compared to Gulliver’s Travels (1726), a classic novel by Jonathan Swift; the image of Utopia in this latter case also bears strong parallels with the self-view of the British Empire at the time. It can also be compared to the William Morris novel, News from Nowhere.
    Erewhon satirises various aspects of Victorian society, including criminal punishment, religion and anthropocentrism. For example, according to Erewhonian law, offenders are treated as if they were ill, whereas ill people are looked upon as criminals. Another feature of Erewhon is the absence of machines; this is due to the widely shared perception by the Erewhonians that they are potentially dangerous. This last aspect of Erewhon reveals the influence of Charles Darwin’s evolution theory; Butler had read On the Origin of Species soon after it was published in 1859.”

    We currently exist in “Erewhon” where healthy individuals, for the first time in British history are illegally locked into the homes and their daily activities regulated and spied upon by statisticians and rogue military and Police formations. The traitor and Quisling Johnson, a former student of Classical history like myself, is simply a reprisal of his former predecessor Treason May, playing for time, to take us to a point where we are firmly locked into the awful Police State, that is the actuality of the European Union Soviet.

    In short the appearance of friction and delay over Britain’s Brexit, is simply another scam, now made doubly worse by a massive “psyop” played out before us, as the puppet administration in Westminster wages a war of confusion by imposing a series of conflicting rules that are designed to coax us all into behaving like obedient sheep, with rewards for good behaviour by the compliant and nasty fines for those of a more independent frame of mind, like this writer.

    These new conditions of daily existence are changed daily to further confuse and divide all of us against each other but above all intimidate. The Illegal “lockdown” has murdered 50,000 plus old folk, and last week alone there were 1000 suicides. The imposition of new rules from Monday will have further harmful consequences for all of us. The “Government” are guilty under the laws of tortious liability and offences against the person but also under the Principles of Nuremberg. The Police are now openly attacking and assaulting innocent members of the public who refuse to comply by not donning dangerous face muzzles that lower our immunity and actually make us more open to infection.

    Lack of oxygen in such conditions makes us more compliable and are psychologically dehumanising, as is the ridiculous isolationism of “Social Distancing” that destroys our basic need for human touch and well being. By stifling the emotions, we also become depressed and can die from such impositions. Johnson and his thugs are guilty of the worst crimes once seen in the USSR and former Third Reich. Our economy is also ruined from stats I have.

    This Unit responsible, is known as The Behavioural Insights Team. In reality is a common feature of all former Communist countries, and now in the former United Kingdom.

    It is a shocking abuse of the role of a supposedly elected Executive and reverses entirely the concept of sui juris or individuality, once favoured by our Common Law system, now inverted by this office of state, that is more in keeping with Nazi Germany, than our once proud Monarchy. The “BIT” unit is actually corporate law- anathema to our traditions. In short we are run by an inflated Europeanised left leaning Civil Service that has more loyalty to Berlin and keeping us within the confines of the increasingly nasty tyrannical EU.

    I left this comment on YouTube today…..

    It’ll be guns next. I predict EU troops will be on our streets shortly. Eurogendfor- EU’s paramilitary goon squad. They did this in France against the Yellow Vests. This is going to get very nasty. Boris the Buffoon is just like Treason May- empty promises and scams. We have not left the EU Soviet but signed up to the EU “Defence” force. Our old Army is but a shadow of what we once had, when I was in it. It can barely muster 55, 0000 soldiers now and the RAF and RN are a joke. Cummings his “Advisor” is actually a Marxist and why is a Psychological warfare like 77 Brigade spying on us all? These activities are pure Treason.

    Guy

    The TV play Stockers Copper might have been included.

    1. Having read that, although we already suspected, but seeing it all put together in print, it is unnerving to say the least – it is like waking up from a truly bad dream, the atmosphere of which one cannot shake off. All too plausible under present circumstances around us. Especially as the Queen and entourage have returned to her property for ‘three weeks’ at Sandringham for a vague reason, she could equally as well have returned to Windsor.

          1. “I have my own intelligence network” – yeah, right – like Joan of Arc and her “voices”…..

  21. Radio 4 / World Service catch-phrase of the week reference the EU withdrawal agreement:

    Boris Johnson is flagrantly breaking an international law.

    https://external-preview.redd.it/GrXvYx0biatoTUfYr4vc_0PnYKU07Rq1q0qyATd9qoQ.jpg?s=61718027fdf9686e8b4d77002f942339c822123b

    Whoever persuaded him to introduce 6Max knew exactly what they were doing – undermining his already poorly regarded judgement. Next step – Boris must go (and be replaced by a remainer). The Tory party is still heavily infiltrated by EU lovers and enemies of the people. The opposition is even worse.

    While I’m at it – Remember Twin Towers and the murdering scum who are still ensconced amongst us.

  22. Good morning all. Does anyone know what the Rees-Mogg family will be doing on Monday? Will Jacob have to take three children to the East wing and his wife take three to the West?

      1. How many degrees of consanguinity? Places like Bradford, Blackburn, Rotherham et al can have as many as 200 in one place as they are nearly all interrelated.

      2. That’s a relief then.

        I hope that this ‘Rule of six’ and the proposed Covid marshalls on our streets will be a tipping point and people will start to push back. I’m not particularly hopeful based on the bovine obedience we have seen so far.

        1. I’m not particularly hopefully based…

          What a wonderful expression! Maybe I’ve had a drop too much of the Cliquot?

    2. Morning JK.
      Apparently another ‘expert’ on TV this week stated that children and even babies are included in the maximum 6. This might seriously effect some people with young children at family gathering, our current holiday plans. say for instance a booking for 6 adults made weeks ago and now with one small child on board. What do they do now ? Cancel the trip and lose their money, or leave someone behind ?
      I have even seen people on TV within certain communities with 10 or more children. Most of the time the father has already vanished but that’s another story. I expect our wonderful government might book them into hotels in separate rooms if they can’t cope. But hang on a mo……….

    3. J R-M is among the top Tories keeping very quiet at the moment.
      The current Cabinet of second raters should be worried.

  23. On subject of the theft of civil liberties look at this.
    Further outrage and total distain for the people of this country by the elected government.

    Another day, another migrant hotel exposed by the fearless activists of Britain First.

    This time they visited the Cedar Court Hotel in Wakefield, a huge luxury hotel used completely for housing illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense.

    The Britain First team managed to enter the hotel and film dozens of migrants inside.

    Please watch the report below then share on social media:

    Please share the following link on social media:

    https://www.britainfirst.org/migrant_hotels_britain_first_exposes_the_cedar_court_hotel_in_wakefield

    Yours sincerely,

    1. The Mercure Leeds Parkway Hotel, Otley Road, Leeds is also being used for migrants.
      All rooms booked, no reservations, bookings being taken. All faciities, including swimming pool and gymn reserved for the migrants – rooms at £56.00/night

    2. People will criticise groups like Britain First and castigate them as “Far Right Fascists”, (a contradiction in terms in its self!) but if the Government are refusing to respond to the legitimate concerns of the people, is it surprising that the people’s response is to resort to the help of the more activist groups?

        1. Even if they are, their opinions still need to be taken note of and discussed instead of being shouted down and banned.

    3. Although i had seen this from my original email I tried to look at the clip from this link but it didn’t work for me, have ‘The They’ removed it ?

  24. To brighten my morning, I have just looked up Madman Halfcock. His only medical experience appears to be that he is married to an Osteopath – and has dyslexia.

    And he hoped, once, to lead the Conservative Party. Well, he has achieved that – leading it into oblivion.

      2. I would still want Owen Paterson as PM and Nigel Farage, John Redwood and Richard Drax in the government.

        1. John Redwood would make a good Chancellor. I am also keen on Steve Baker. Another consideration should be giving ministerial positions to MPs from “Red Wall” seats.

      4. I suspect that, once 31/13/20 is past, BJ would be out on his ear.
        I would love to see what sort of correspondence Conservative MPs are getting.

  25. Moonshot testing plan ‘could send 28 million into needless self-isolation’. 10 September 2020 • 7:36pm

    On Wednesday, Mr Johnson committed to carrying out 10 million daily Covid-19 tests – equivalent to testing every resident once a week – under Operation Moonshot.

    The strategy, costing £100 million, was defended by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary (see video below), in the face of guffaws in the Commons over his insistence that the programme – promising to produce results in 20 to 90 minutes and still requiring untested technology – was feasible.

    Morning everyone. We are venturing into the realms of utter barminess here. If they opened every hospital and medical centre in the country for the tests the queues would stretch for miles! It would require an army of samplers, and all this, seven days a week, with no end in sight! And what if the tests returned false positives; which let’s face it, is not beyond the realms of possibility? Are we to shut down everything until we get a perfect response? All this for a virus whose fatality rate is less than the Common Cold? The next stage on from this must be organised mobs running to the coast and hurling themselves into the ocean to drown!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/10/moonshot-testing-plan-could-send-28-million-needless-self-isolation/

    1. 3423600+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      I gotta feeling we are being set up for the ultimate treacherous let down regarding the long farewell.

    2. Lots of false positives in present testing. Just not mentioned very much. Still complete silence on disposition of those tested positive – are any people ill?
      Hospital in Somerset apologises for killing 50 people with Covid-19. Among the possible reasons they include” “the need to move staff between wards to provide safe staffing levels,”. Weasel words. Staff in hospitals, work in various places because it suits the hours that they wish to work. A nurse may work in two or three wards to meet his/her contracted hours. Hospital HR departments are all about work/life balance and being “people friendly” far more than they are about managerial efficiency. This approach is rife.
      The risks of having people working in different wards, surgical, medical and maternity in the course of every week, sometimes on the same day, should be obvious. Wearing the same uniform in a medical ward in the morning then working in a surgical ward after lunch is a sure way to transfer infections. The nurse travels to work in that uniform and travels home in it. Same uniform next day?

      https://uk.yahoo.com/news/hospital-apologises-unreservedly-nearly-50-203523424.html

    4. Imagine the traffic queues and bus queues. Where’s the carparking? Where’s a data system that can cope with that kind of load? Shit, they useless bastards can’t even get an ordinary NHS data system to function.
      What an utter joke.

    5. That’s about 833,000 tests an hour, or 13,888 a minute, or 232 a second, assuming 12 hours a day operation.
      Even the British Army would struggle with logistics like that – and all for 63,5 deaths per 100.000 head of population, so 0,006%. And that’s with dodgy statistics, too, so likely smaller than that – and rate falling.

      1. People do not understand the effects of very large numbers.

        It’s why they are so unconcerned about the national debt, the numbers of immigrants, the costs of the green blob and climate nonsense and the inability to generate sufficient electricty for the country’s green needs etc etc.; what does a million or a billion or a trillion actually mean? They haven’t a clue.

          1. Years ago, they used to “press” people to death under stones, adding a large stone at a time.

            There are times that I would like a few politicians “pressed” under one pound coins, add one at a time and count them out.

            Once one politcian has been squashed to the point that they resign from public life, start on another.

            At over 9 tons for only one million pounds we should get through quite a few politicians.

            Televise it, and it might get through to the general public just how huge the amounts being squandered by politicians actually are.

            To use your time analogy, at one coin a second we could get many 12 hour days of TV.

      2. 63.5 in 100,000 is 0.063% (to 3 decimals) not 0.006% [To put it in values that one can grasp: 63.5 in 100 = 63.5%, 63.5 in 1,000 = 6.35%, 63.5 in 10,000 = 0.635%, 63.5 in 100,000 = 0.0635% and 63.5 in 1,000,000 = 0.00635%] It’s still a small proportion, but higher by a factor of 10. Even if you allow that the figures are (inevitably) something short of 100% accurate we are, certainly, looking at 0.03 – 0.05% of population and that’s quite high for one disease outbreak.

        1. All those zeroes… need to get the specs off and face close to the screen to check the fat finger problem.
          :-((

  26. It seems that AntiFa are as thick as two short planks on a number of levels.
    https://twitter.com/tjerubbaal/status/1304344965498142720

    You have to wonder about the mentality of both of these children.
    First one spits at the officer, then the other posts the entire video, including the incriminating section on Soshul Meejah as if assault by spitting is normal behaviour, but is more concerned about having her friend detained by a female police officer.

    A pity the second child was not arrested for attempted obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty.

    1. ‘No, dear. I didn’t “assume your gender”. I know full well that you are an “it”. As are all weirdos — and members of the uneducated — who have never been in touch with reality.’

          1. I had attempted another abortive attempt at misogynist but the spelling abuser decided otherwise.

            One good thing about the approaching winter is that midges, mosquitos, horse flies, deer flies and other sundry pests will disappear.

      2. The other problem is Griz, that due to peer pressure the uneducated have been brainwashed by the educated far left.
        They are such easy targets.

  27. It seems that the National Trust remains a hotbed of LGBTQWERTY. Didn’t they learn anything from the lanyard and badge fiasco at Felbrigg Hall in 2017?

    Myopic National Trust

    SIR – At a time when the National Trust (Letters, September 10) is losing income and members, making hundreds of staff – including skilled curators – redundant, and cannot open many of its properties – or offers a very restricted experience in those that it does – it is good to know that it has its priorities in order.

    The “VLearning” team is still functioning and can offer me, as a volunteer, a virtual course in “everyday inclusion” to help “raise awareness of my unintended biases”.

    It clearly knows what members and volunteers find more important than attracting visitors to its properties.

    Alan Rainsley
    Brazacott, Cornwall

    1. I was very disappointed when I watched a video of the VJ Day service from church; the rector who, I always thought, was a level headed chap started off by saying how diverse the FE army was, how many languages they spoke and now they and their descendants were living in multi-cultural areas here. It’s an infection worse than Covid for killing off our culture.

  28. 323600+ up ticks,
    All this wave / fear business these governance politico’s are racking up
    in pursuit of bringing down the Nation via covid 19 is taking the eye from a very real major fear, that being the crest of every wave daily we have an invasion barge followed by a succession of daily barges on never ending waves,

    If continued we as a Country will ALL be in the wave business, and that is waving good by to a Nation.

    WHY ARE THESE POLITICAL OVERSEERS IMPORTING POTENTIAL
    ANTI UK FIGHTERS / CRIMINALS under the umbrella of decent illegal
    immigrants guilty of trespassing.

  29. ‘Morning again,

    I get the impression that Allison Pearson isn’t awfully keen on the government’s handling of Covid, nor the latest diktat from Handycock:

    I despair I really do. The powers of the wretched Coronabeast are waning fast. “It has burnt through the dry grass, mainly those who would have died anyway in the next few months, and now it is infecting younger age groups but not harming them,” says a scientist friend. Admissions are only a fraction of the level compared to peak of the pandemic despite warnings of a second wave rolling across Europe. “Covid has gone from our wards, has been for weeks” reports the head nurse at one of the UK’s largest hospitals, “I can’t understand what the Government are going on about.”

    Boy, are they going on. And on. England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam – a Chieftain tank in human form – was deployed this week to warn that the public has “relaxed too much”. Relaxed? How much generalised anxiety, cyclists wearing masks, children instructed not to turn around in classrooms, empty trains, cancelled holidays, people solemnly washing groceries in Covid-free areas and all the other pointless pantomime of panic would be sufficient for the Professor? The nation’s a complete basket case and he wants us to keep weaving.

    And then there’s Matt Hancock. Like Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, our Secretary of State for Health has a lip-smacking relish for doom. As children settle back in the classroom after almost six months without friends or lessons and young people prepare for university, Matt had a few uplifting words to give them the confidence they so desperately need: “Don’t kill your gran!”

    I can’t believe he actually said that. Either Hancock doesn’t understand the science or he is wilfully misinterpreting the data to keep the population as terrified as possible. Yes, there were almost 3,000 new “cases” on two successive days this week. But PCR tests, like all medical tests, are not perfect and can be unreliable. Covid “cases” sound alarming, but a case can be anyone with a few remnants of virus on a swab test who presents zero risk. ICUs are still, in the main, eerie ghost towns. Corona deaths are down to a handful a day out of a population of 66 million. Basically, I have more chance of marrying Brad Pitt than you have of dying from Covid19.

    As Dr Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, protests, “The norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PRC test does not equal Covid19, but in some definitions it does.” The Office for National Statistics has resorted to paying people a staggering £450 to have a series of nasal swabs. Those volunteers were never ill. They are among the silent millions who probably had corona without noticing and have boosted community immunity, making us all safer.

    This news should be a cause for cautious celebration. Just a small glass of Harvey’s Bristol, Marjorie. Yet the remorseless campaign of fear to which the British people have been subjected since March refuses to let up. However infectious Covid19 may be, it is a mere amateur compared to the contagion of dread which has insinuated its way into our lives like a noxious gas. According to a recent poll, the British public believes the death toll from the virus is 100 times higher than it actually is. Forget Keep Calm and Carry On. That defiantly bloody-minded, worse-things-happen-at-sea, cheer-up-love-it-may-never-happen nation we all felt glad to belong to is now an unrecognisable land of paranoia and paralysis.

    I asked my followers on Twitter a question: “How many people do you know who have been so scared by government behavioural psychologists that they are unlikely to resume a normal life even as Covid recedes?” The replies came thick and furious:

    Sebastian: “My mother-in-law – 70, ex mayor of her town, strong woman, will hardly leave the house now. Her friends are the same and all their social groups have disbanded.”

    Lisa: “My sister still requires her husband to strip off at the door after work and get straight in the shower.”

    Sara: “I know someone whose mother even sleeps with her mask and gloves on. Her blood pressure went to 240. She’s killing herself!”

    Valerie: “Friends don’t read the Sunday papers until Wednesday. And all post and parcels are left for 3 days before opening.”

    Elsa: “My neighbour goes to her own shed in her own garden with mask and gloves on. I wish I were joking.”

    Danny: “My mother is panic-stricken. So much so my father has bought a treadmill for the house so she can have some kind of walk.”

    Hannah: “I’ve not seen my mum in over six months. She only leaves the house at night.”

    Jason: “My in-laws won’t come out of their house. My boys have all but given up on ever seeing them again. They sit and await a vaccine that is never coming.”

    Barrie: “I know people in their twenties who haven’t left their house since March.”

    Alex: “My mum is still washing everything, not hugged my daughter since the end of February until Thursday when I made her. She may have held her breath for the entire 5 seconds non-face-to-face hug.”

    What the hell have Hancock and the shroud-wavers on SAGE done to us? I really identified with Josiah who joked, “I spent the first month of lockdown persuading my parents to take Covid seriously. And the last 3 months trying to persuade them not to take it seriously!”

    That’s it, exactly. Fear, like a coffee stain on a cream sofa, is a bugger to get out. Those of us who try to do what Matt Hancock should be doing – offering encouraging facts, persuading needlessly timid people it’s OK to venture out, are often met with incomprehension, even hostility. So successful is the psychological warfare that victims don’t even realise they’ve been brainwashed. Yet was this horrifying obsessive behaviour planned deliberately?

    On the 22nd of March, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) produced a paper for the Government which must rank as one of the most successful and most damaging documents in our history. Options for Increasing Adherence to Social Distancing Measures laid out ways of bringing about behavioural change in the public to get us to comply with Covid19 restrictions.

    The Number 1 recommendation was “Provide clear, precise, credible guidance about specific behaviours’’. You can’t argue with that. It was at Number 2 that things began to take a darker turn. “Use media to increase sense of personal threat,” it said. When I first read that sentence I reeled back. It felt entirely un-English, more akin to Stalinism.

    But that’s exactly what those behavioural experts did. Instead of relying on people’s good sense and altruism (which proved to be remarkably strong) SAGE said: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”

    Scaremongering headlines of a notably apocalyptic nature duly began to appear. “Coronavirus: I’m digging graves for people who are still living,” ran the ghoulish caption under a photograph of parallel muddy trenches in a field in east London. On TV, Government adverts thundered “everyone is equally at risk”. (Yet, we already knew that the average age of the fatalities in Italy was 82.5).

    Tactics that a nation would use against its enemies were turned against our own families and friends. In a hard-hitting interview for this week’s Planet Normal podcast, the former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption told me that some members of SAGE have since admitted “this was perhaps overdone” but the use of fear was deliberate policy.

    “What you have to remember is that when societies lose their liberty it is not because liberty has been crushed under the boot of some tyrant, it’s usually because they’ve been frightened into giving it up voluntarily. And that is what happened. Fear is the number one instrument of every despot. I dare say the intentions of this Government are benign. But their methods have not been.”

    Who can doubt the good lord’s judgment in this case? Or the malign effect of Matt “We’re doomed!” Hancock, our very own tinpot dictator who accentuates the negative to keep people in mortal fear and achieve what exactly? What’s the strategy, Matt? The destruction of our economy is pretty much guaranteed if you continue to lock down entire regions at the first Atchoo! Other countries are not in the grip of this existential madness. They view the hysterical spasms of our previously phlegmatic nation with amused disbelief.

    Once upon a time we were Blighty not Frighty. We have to get a grip and summon that spirit again or there will be damage without end. If you know someone who is still really scared please let me know. People are going to need help to be unafraid. A lot of help. The Government’s behavioural scientists must put into reverse the disproportionate campaign with which they stole the people’s reason. Here’s one idea: “Use the media to increase the sense of personal safety.”

    I’ll go first. The contagion of fear now poses a far bigger threat to our national health than Covid-19. You probably won’t kill your gran if you see her, but not seeing her might just kill her. In my view, you are safe to resume your life. While it is reasonable to be scared of the dark; it’s a tragedy to be afraid of the light.

  30. Moria migrants: Germany, France will take in 400 children from Greece’s refugee camp. 11 September 2020.

    Berlin and Paris said they plan to move 400 minors from the Greek migrant camp destroyed in a blaze. Angela Merkel said she hoped other EU nations would assume a “shared responsibility” and accept some of the minors.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to a deal that would allow 400 unaccompanied minors from the Greek migrant camp to move to other parts of the European Union, Merkel confirmed on Thursday.

    The migrants actually burned down this camp themselves to precipitate this reaction. The “unaccompanied minors” is a ploy. Human Rights legislation will ensure that their parents follow as night follows day.

    https://www.dw.com/en/moria-migrants-germany-france-will-take-in-400-children-from-greeces-refugee-camp/a-54882965

    1. Leave the buggers out there in the cold. If they don’t like it, then they shouldn’t have burned the place down.

  31. Seems Wee Krankie has once again proved she is a far shrewder political operator than the hapless BoJo, by exempting children under the age of twelve from the farcical “group-of-six” rules being introduced from Monday in England and Wales. Let me be clear, I don’t believe this move on her part is motivated by anything other than political opportunism – she has attempted to introduce far more intrusive and restrictive legislation on a variety of matters. But, whatever her motives, it works out well for families here in Scotland, who will at least be able to spend some time together over the Festive Season, and will without doubt increase support for the SNP in the minds of the Scottish electorate.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8720105/Cabinet-war-rule-six-minister-committee-argued-against-stringent-ban.html

  32. oris Johnson has led a fascist coup against the United Kingdom.

    If that sounds like an exaggeration, just ask yourself how you’d have felt a year ago — or even six months ago — if you’d been told a British government was planning to institute a 10pm curfew, ban gatherings of more than six people, impose daily immunity tests before you were allowed to go about your business, employ Stasi-like volunteer ‘marshals’ to ensure public compliance and warning that it might even have to cancel Christmas?

    Your first reaction would have been: “Impossible. This is the kind of thing that excitable foreigners engage in. Never the phlegmatic, rational British – and certainly, never, ever, EVER so long as there’s a Conservative government in power.”

    Your second reaction would have been: “Oh, I get it. It’s a joke, right? You’re telling me the plotline of some new dystopian graphic novel on the lines of Watchmen currently being adapted for Amazon Prime or Netflix, yeah?”

    I still can’t quite believe it myself. ……………………

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/09/10/boris-johnson-has-led-a-fascist-coup-against-the-united-kingdom/

  34. How a rush for Mediterranean gas threatens to push Greece and Turkey into war. 11 September 2020.

    An increasingly fractious standoff over access to gas reserves has transformed a dispute between Turkey and Greece that was once primarily over Cyprus into one that now ensnares Libya, Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and feeds into other political issues in the Mediterranean and has raised fears of a naval conflict between the two Nato allies in the Aegean Sea.

    The crisis has been deepening in recent months with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, leading those inside the EU opposing Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying Turkey can no longer be seen as partner in the Mediterranean. He has offered French military support to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets.

    Erdogan is looking for a War and those who seek it usually eventually find it. This is all the world needs; just a little nudge to set things off and everyone will jump on the bandwagon. There is a whole raft of unresolved issues left over from 70 years of American Hegemony that those who feel they’ve been cheated or slighted would like to set straight. Assuming the big guys decide not to play this one will probably draw down the Curtain on Europe as a centre of World Power and relegate it to the fringes of Political and Religious barbarism.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/11/mediterranean-gas-greece-turkey-dispute-nato

    1. The Middle East doing what it does best; beating the crap out of each other.
      Throw in a spot of Byronic romanticism over Greece, French arrogance ….. deja vu all over again.

    3. It is also reported that Turkey has been delivering arms to Tripoli in North Lebanon. Furthermore, it’s increasing its presence in western Libya having delivered thousands of mercenaries, some of them associated with ISIS. Today it is reported that Turkey has arrested five journalists for naming people in Libya who are Turkish intelligence agents.

      Turkey is trying to establish an exclusive maritime zone between Libya and Turkey.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5683847bfea44a2d71d866b5a29fb4729f8cede4acce69fa97b1ba7241cb004.jpg

      In slightly better news, that terrorist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Erdogan is one of the principal proponents, is in turmoil because Egypt has found and arrested its leader (although the MB is banned in Egypt). Turkey hosts many criminals from the MB and Hamas. It also hosts TV stations which broadcast subversion to other countries in the Middle East, especially Egypt.

      But what does Erdogan care? He has neutered the opposition in Turkey and sits happily in his new palace which is 30 times bigger than the White House. When asked why he needs such a big palace he said that it will increase the prestige of Turkey! To most normal people it reduces Turkey to a dangerous laughingstock!

    1. Morning Sue – Steve Baker MP got a rare interview on BBC Radio 4 News this morning. He is against the newest lockdown rules but supports the prospect of a No Deal Brexit.

        1. Boris Johnson and Jacob Grease Smog voted for May’s surrender WA. Richard Drax did too but he then apologised vehemently for having done so.

          But I thought that Steve Baker and Mark Francois had not voted for the May Surrender WA. However, Baker seems to have gone very rotten since the election which infuriated and disappointed me as I had once rated him highly.

    2. Which brings us back, once again to the basic problem; the very people who stand for public office are the very people who should be prevented from doing so.
      Wishing to do so is a sign of egotistical madness.

          1. Thanks, Sue.

            Just had a breakfast that would have had Lucullus drooling, with perfect scrambled egg. For tonight & tomorrow night, please see my opening post.

  36. ‘It’s unbearable’: Lesbos refugees sleep on streets after devastating fire, 11 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/130411f3cadd789635811c9cb3b9b6548b0fd36b9bd699acd7d53aff55c1a6a1.jpg

    Plumes of smoke rise above the ashes and twisted metal. In many parts this is all that remains of Europe’s largest refugee camp.

    Just a few days ago, the Moria camp in Lesbos was home to thousands of children and their families. Now all that is left are the smoldering ruins and jagged outlines of scorched tents.

    Lol! This report is fantasy by omission. No mention here that they set fire to the camp themselves in an attempt to be moved to the mainland where they can hike to Germany or the UK. That they escaped with all their stuff because they packed before they torched the living accommodation. This is only the latest and the worst of these fires. They have been a regular occurrence during its existence. The lives of the indigenous inhabitants of the island must be a living hell!

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/11/its-unbearable-lesbos-refugees-sleep-on-streets-after-devastating-fire

    1. “Now dear, could you put your phone down out of sight, please? Now bow your head and spread your hand over your face, and act like you have just been told your grannie has died. Oh, that’s good! Hold it there!”

      1. “Cameras over there …. ☛ …. hold up that baby …. make it cry … camera, lights, action ……

    2. Bit like the chap who murdered both his parents then asked for clemency because he was an orphan.

    1. Remarkably talented musicians. Worth checking their versions of ‘Sgt Pepper’ and ‘White’ albums.

  38. Most of the morning, both our planes have been practicing low level attacks on a civil population – in readiness for the “War of Halfcock’s Virus” when England rises….

    1. Are you sure it’s not practice to put up a token resistance to the Chinese – a sort of Halfcock’s Han Hour?

      1. Definitely not – they are back again – clearly looking out for places where trouble-makers live….

  39. We (I mean MOH) look after the wellbeing of a bed-bound elderly lady with no relatives. We live a considerable distance away. Yesterday evening around 10:00 pm we received a call from her to say that the bed-time carer had not called and her patio doors were wide open. It transpires the carer scheduled for 9:00 pm turned up at 6:00 pm. Did not close the patio door. Left the phone out of reach ( she managed to hook the BT cable and drag the phone to her bedside) and left her without a blanket. The care company could not provide a carer to go to her home and settle the woman for the night. Eventually the police responded at around 12:30 a.m and secured the premises. Her next carer was due at 9:00 am this morning. Formal complaints have been made to the company with a copy to the Care Quality Commission. An appointment is being sought with an alternative provider.

    1. That’s really bad. Was it the carer’s bingo night?

      When I was in 3 different hospitals 2 years ago, my call button was frequently left out of reach.

    2. Respect to YOH, Stephen.
      It’s compassionate people like her care for my mother, as volunteers, doing the dull stuff like shopping, taking out the rubbish, and so on. Good on her.

  40. It seems to have finally dawned on the EU and the UK “negotiators” that the EU needs our products, that is financial services, more than we need anything that they produce. Previous UK Governments have driven manufacturing overseas, to China and elsewhere. The EU, run by agricultural France and industrial Germany, have worked the system, created rules, regulations, taxes and tariffs that favour France and Germany. No need to to bend the rules when you can change them, and French and German businesses have been enormously helped by this arrangement. However, this only continues to work if you have a market for whatever you produce. We can buy agricultural products from many countries, From the Americas and from the countries of the Commonwealth.
    Farewell, President butter, camembert cheese, and French plonk generally. The setting up of a trade deal with Japan means that we will easily be able to import even more cars, TVs, electronic bobbins and other stuff. So if that does not cause the EU negotiators sleepless nights, nothing will. Farewell German cars…and other stuff. The Germans have moved a lot of manufacturing abroad (China) and items labelled Braun and Bosch are no longer made in Germany. We can buy Chinese copies if we choose.
    I have banged on about this since early 2016. We hold the cards and can walk, or skip, away as we please. The EU are bound by their own treaties to protect the EU members (well, to protect France and Germany, the others not so much) which greatly restricts their options. We are looking to expand and build, whereas the EU are going to be desperate to avoid a recession.
    I’ve left Covid-19 out of this as it is political and so instantly reversible.

    3. We don’t buy EU wine. There are plenty of other countries producing stuff as good and often better.
      Today, I was treated to Cotswold Brie.
      British first. Commonwealth second. Rest of the world, third. EU fourth. China firmly last.

    4. The UK needs to get more heavy industry such as steel production and less determination to get emissions down to zero.

  41. This loss of wildlife is a disaster of our own making.

    Judith Woods. DT, 11/09/20

    What is the most dangerous animal on the planet? Any child reared on the inimitable Steve Backshall’s Deadly 60 series on CBBC will come up with any number of candidates: the black mamba, the hippopotamus, the great white shark.

    Then, when they’re told the most destructive creature alive is humanity, you can see the emotions – confusion, indignation, realisation – flicker across their wide-eyed faces, and it’s impossible not to feel humbled and saddened at the damage inflicted by mankind on the world they will inherit.

    Unlike the wolf eel or the polar bear, our species doesn’t honour its apical position in the food chain, killing to eat and no more.

    Humans recklessly destroy habitats for agriculture, pollute the overfished seas, poach endangered animals for medicine or pelts and commodify wild creatures as pets, to be traded for pleasure or slaughtered as a delicacy.

    Adults know this. Yet it still came as a terrible blow to learn that global wildlife is in “freefall”, according to a damning report published by the World Wildlife Fund.

    From elephants in Africa to Arctic skuas in Orkney, populations of wild mammals, birds and fish have plunged by two thirds over the past 50 years.

    This isn’t about worthy if niche conservation projects to protect snow leopards or persuade the last few pandas to breed – this decline affects all living things.

    We urgently need to alter the wasteful way we consume the earth’s resources. But first we need a new mindset. Enter the nearest we have to an ecological guardian, Sir David Attenborough, who has sounded a clarion call for a new consensus.

    “Above all, it will require a change in perspective,” he says. “A change from viewing nature as something that’s optional or ‘nice to have’ to the single greatest ally we have in restoring balance to our world.”

    His message is clear: all is not lost. Yet. But without dramatic intervention, the consequences will be catastrophic for us and generations to come.

    1. We do need to take action. I could write a prescription. Working out what to do is not the problem. The problem is about taking action. Big Business does not want to, as it is working for them, so why change*. The billions of the poor will not stop insisting that they must get what we have.

      *Well Pringles are going to make some slight changes to their tube. Our recycling bins have notices forbidding Pringles from being disposed of therein.

    2. I don’t believe anything from WWF. They and Attenborough are fully signed up to the global warming scam.

      1. That may well be true; however, the rest of Judith Woods’ excellent report is bang on the money and verifiable.

        All manner of wildlife that is necessary for the balance of nature is being destroyed, randomly, by man’s arrogance. No other form of wildlife pollutes its own environment like mankind does.

        It’s time we woke up!

        1. I’m afraid this is yet another subject over which I (and most others) have no control. It is not I who is deforesting here, there and everywhere, not I discarding plastic into the sea, not I killing animals for fun (although I do eat meat and fish). I wear leather shoes sometimes, I drive a car sometimes, I do not cycle on the roads as I’d be too dangerous, and I enjoy my standard of living. On the other hand I do not join in ER with their destructive cult activities nor riot like BLM supporters, also destroyers of property So I can’t do anything about what’s going on. The only thing I can do is write to my MP, which I have done many times, to the point where he has not answered my last couple of missives.

    3. I read somewhere, cannot remember where, that since the creation of Earth as we know it 99.7% of all living things have become extinct.

      The sobering thought the author gleaned from that was that by being alive we have a direct line back to the beginning of the universe l

    4. 323600+ up ticks,
      G,
      “What is the most dangerous animal on the planet”
      Any child reared on the SB, deadly 60 series & living within the rotherham area would surely come up with the great big policeman.
      Point of fact being especially over the last 20 years and what has been revealed I would much rather entrust children to the Tommy Robinsons of this Country rather than the forces of law, would you not agree ?

  42. Apols if this has already been posted:

    “On Friday morning, American traders awoke to some surprisingly positive trade news out of Great Britain. A trade deal with Japan had been agreed to in principle, which would – if finally ratified by both countries – allow 99% of the UK’s exports to Japan to cross the border tariff-free.

    What’s more, the deal even gave Johnson the opportunity to gloat, as Reuters reported the digital and data provisions in the agreement went “far beyond” those in the EU’s trade deal with Japan.”

      2. Me neither! A revolting, remaining whinger who clearly believes his own bu*****t! Nothing original has ever crossed this creeps lips.

  44. Morning all!

    The sponsored ads I’m seeing above the comments today seem to have big boobs as their theme! I still receive the weekly e-mailed newsletter from the church I no longer attend and the latest one contains this gem.

    “Fifteen women are released from Bronzefield Prison every week, so we’d like to give them home-sewn facemasks so that they can travel on public transport. These take only an hour or so to make from ready cut kits.
    We have already managed to make up 60 masks (and we are thankful for all who have made them!) but more are always welcome”.

    2. There are more big boobs, daily, in the modern version of The Daily Telegraph than there ever were on page 3 of The Sun.

      Just read any report in the paper for clarification.

          1. The champagne glass is said to represent the perfect tit – I’m more of a pint mug man myself

  46. I was listening to Talk Radio this morning: Julia Hartley Brewer had a guest who made the point that Boris Johnson knew that the WA was a disaster as far as Northern Ireland was concerned and that he should have acted immediately to rectify the situation.

    He had over a month to act and, said the guest, the time to have done this was between the general election on 12th December when he had acquired his large parliamentary majority and 23rd January when the treaty was sugned. But the consequence of Johnson not doing so is that the whole thing has blown up in his face and, except for Ian Duncan Smith, all the craven former nominally still alive leaders of the Non-Conservative Party: May, Cameron, Howard, Hague and Major, are united against him.

    The problem of course goes back to the fact which many of us here were fuming about before the election i.e. that Boris Johnson did not give any serious details about what was in the WA and avoided being grilled on the matter by Andrew Neil. The MSM – being largely pro-remain – failed completely in its duty to inform by drawing the attention to the WA’s serious flaws.

  47. From the DT just now:-

    ‘A further 9 people, who tested positive for Covid-19 have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 29,648.

    Patients were aged between 79 and 88 years old and all had known underlying health conditions.

    Date of death ranges from September 8 to 10 2020.’

    So, let’s get this straight. 9 people, over a space of 3 days, all of whom had underlying health conditions, the youngest of whom was just 2 years below average UK life expectancy and the oldest was 7 years beyond it, have died.

    And for this I am forced to wear a mask in public enclosed spaces, if I holiday abroad there is every possibility I will have to go into quarantine for a fortnight on my return and there is every possibility that Christmas is going to be cancelled?

    I think someone has lost all sense of proportion.

      1. And when one reads the article it is clear that in reality the key figures of hospitalisations, transfers to ICU and deaths are hardly changing, because if they were then that fact would have been mentioned.

        1. “They” have decided to (try to) frighten us with infection rates. All we should be concerned about are the deaths from Covid19 but we will never know because “they” have muddled all the figures up.

      2. Just as Dr John Lee says the the R number is irrelevant and it’s all to do with T-cells, whatever they are.

    1. “Slovakia is the last member state of the European Union without a mosque. In 2000, a dispute about the building of an Islamic center in Bratislava erupted: the capital’s mayor refused such attempts of the Slovak Islamic Waqfs Foundation.
      On 30 November 2016, Slovakia passed legislation to effectively block Islam from gaining official status as a religion in the country. Slovakia is the only country within the European Union without any mosque.”
      Brilliant.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Slovakia#:~:text=Slovakia%20is%20the%20last%20member,the%20Slovak%20Islamic%20Waqfs%20Foundation.

      2. We should destroy all the mosques in Britain until we have reached the position where there are no more mosques in Britain than there are churches in the Middle East.

        1. Qatar has, “granted legal status to Catholic, Anglican, Greek and other Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, and Indian Christian churches”. Israel is the great Middle East exception of course.

  50. One to record…
    Tonight 8pm BBC 4 – Proms:
    Sheku and Isata Kenneh-Mason.
    Barber, Bridge and Rachmaninov
    plus Beethoven’s cello sonata.

    Hope peddy has set the recorder before engaging in
    birthday celebrations….

  51. Dozens of exhausted migrants including families and young children wait for Border Force officers on side of road in Kent as around 200 people cross English Channel in a day taking yearly total above 6,000
    At least 73 suspected migrants landed on Kent shores and 40 migrants were picked up by Border Force today
    Large Iraqi family of five including two children aged six and seven dodged Border Force to reach Kingsdown
    Another group of Asian migrants also made it to shore at Folkestone this morning after Channel crossing
    Staggering 826 migrants have arrived over six days in September, and 6,000 have crossed into UK this year
    By JACK WRIGHT FOR MAILONLINE

    PUBLISHED: 12:13, 11 September 2020 | UPDATED: 15:16, 11 September 2020

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8722239/Dozens-migrants-inflatable-dinghies-land-beaches-Kent-40-arrive-Dover.html?ito=social-facebook&fbclid=IwAR2aBcL5eECJzLiF9xeFvCEYugpENTZu9G2EScF553zY_I8Pq6EZXQOxC3c

    2. We will now be the ‘exhausted’ ones, working to keep this lot in luxury for the rest of their lives.

  52. I had a visit from another ‘tradesman’ offering to trim my front shrubs. He just happened to be doing a neighbour’s garden in the next few days. I told him I liked my shrubs as they are, many have vicious thorns to keep people at bay. He didn’t argue (like most do). He switched tactic: “What about the back garden? Is there any trimming to do there?” Actually there is, quite a lot in fact, but I said no. His last try: “I’m a tree surgeon as well, you know.” He made as if to show m photos on his phone. Me, “Oh really? I’m a dental surgeon.” End of the discussion.

    1. My brother bought a chain saw and started with tree surgery when he was made redundant some 15 years ago. Knew nowt about it. Fell out of a tree, and gave up. Daft bugger.

      1. My father bought me an electric chainsaw one Christmas. I don’t know why; I never asked for one. After I had unwrapped the present he told me a cautionary tale about a bloke whose throat was slashed when the chain snapped. I never took the thing out of its box & several years later gave it to a neighbour.

        1. Erk!
          :-((
          Like any tool, maintain it and treat it with respect, and it won’t bite.
          Beer after cutting, not before.

    1. And the Australian and English cricket teams are being criticised by Michael Holding for not kneeling in reverence to Black Lives Matter before their cricket match.

      How much longer before decent people who never dreamt of becoming racists do become racists?

      If BLM want apartheid why not let them have it? And if Lewis Hamilton would prefer to drive a car built and designed by black engineers and manufacturers and serviced by exclusively black people in the Pit Stops then let us encourage him to resign from his position with the hideously white Mercedes Team?

      1. If the black wheel changers took the wheels of his car he’d be left high and dry and out of the race. Bring it on Lewis you dimwit.

    1. This is a confusion over genuine Conservativism and the farce we’re lumbered with now.

      The state agrees, totally on top down, high tax, hard Left ‘green’ energy, massive uncontrolled gimmigration, appeasement of the weirdo, the disruptive and the mentally ill and the silencing of the law abiding, honest, the fleecing of the worker, the rewarding of the shirker, paying people to breed and hunting down the wealth creators. The state refuses to cut taxes or reduce it’s scale nor say to the layabout with 5 kids – pay for yourself.

      Now, thanks to 20 years of oppression, big state control and the utter removal of responsibility and integrity people have become lazy, arrogant and feckless. After all, if you’re rewarded for failure why would you bother trying?

      This is why people – the massive majority – have chosen slavery. They like it. It’s less for them to bother with and someone else to blame.

  60. Never thought I’d say this, but Mrs Murrell seems to have a better grip on what s going on in her country than anyone in Westminster does about England.

    1. Whatever your opinion of Mrs. Murrell, DO NOT EVER refer to my country as a “poxy country” again.

      2. It was comments such as those referring to Scots as “sw*****s” that prompted my departure from the DT.

      4. In the last couple of years we have had several students from Scotland – mostly from Glenalmond College – on our French courses and I must say we have found them amongst the most pleasant young people you could ever hope to meet.

    3. Sorry Uncle Bill, but until you have to deal with her cretinous stupidity and bovine intractability on a daily basis please don’t tell me that she has her finger on the pulse. She is a Marxist moron.

      1. I only suggested by comparison.

        Johnson is all those things, too – but has no grip on the Cabinet, the Party or the country.

  61. Watching Tipping Point.
    Question: Until 1974 King Constantine ll was king of which European country.
    Contestant 1 – France
    Contestant 2 – Germany
    *£$/#@&&@**

    From which fossil fuel is petrol obtained from
    1. Gas
    2. Coal

    Heaven preserve us and I guess they’re in their 40/50’s.

      1. God knows where I picked it up from, but I’ve a report from a South African university on the use of “Producer Gas” for driving motor vehicles dating back to WW2.

  62. DTStory

    Michael Holding criticises England and Australia’s ‘lame’ and ‘flimsy’ reasons for not taking a knee
    Australia captain Aaron Finch said players would not take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter because cricket is a game for everyone

    Why should they?

    3. Good for Finch and the rest of the Aussies. Thought the England players showed submission last match, but maybe not this time? If so, about time too. Would like to think footballers will see sense also – we’ll find out tomorrow – but it has gone on far too long and very likely wouldn’t have happened at all had fans been present to voice their disapproval.

      1. Every time BLM demand that people ‘take the knee’ people should unfurl graphic pictures of the victims of black crime.

    4. Why don’t they all declare themselves white then they can realise how hard they have to work to become privileged.

    5. It would be nice if their response were more robust, e.g. “all f******g n*****s can f**k off”

  63. Back from the horsepiddle – breathing test completed. The technician said that I did “very well”, though in this day and age I don’t imagine they would be allowed to say, “Well, that was a waste of my time and yours”…!!

    About to try a new find – a rosé from Bordeaux – thanks to the Spectator wine club.

    A demain.

  64. Completely and utterly off topic, but extraordinarily pertinent to today.

    For some reason, known only to itself, my Nottle page suddenly transferred me to dictionary.com

    The word of the day, appropriately, is “ineffable.”

    https://www.dictionary.com/

      1. It also translates to a word used to describe a UK citizen who doesn’t wear a mask or ignores social distancing measures: ‘fineable’.

  66. News from France – Today’s prime ministerial address.

    The french government has decided that they will follow the science and the advice given by scientists. This means that the self-isolation period for Covid 19 should be no more than seven days.

    I think Boris ought to change his scientists.

    1. We’ve known almost from the start that Boris dies not employ scientists in the sense that we think of them. The motley crew he listens to are mathematicians and statisticians. The real scientists are those with medical and research experience.

      Ferguson and his ilk use ‘modelling’ like climate change wonks do and come up with all the wrong answers. If you feed cr*p into a computer it can only churn out cr*p as we all know.

  67. One of the important things I’ve learnt today is that a Dubonnet stopper fits a Cliquot bottle perfectly. The contents have remained tip-top fizzy all day.

      1. I couldn’t drink it all this morning because I had to go shopping later, & I didn’t want to let it go flat.

        1. Us neither. Even taps on wine boxes are close to redundant.
          And I’m the only one that drinks… :-((

          1. No, I’ve been driving, but I’m home now & about to have some more to finish the bottle. I’m taking a taxi tonight.

            What we must ask ourselves, Sue, is what would be on the back of that jacket otherwise?

          2. Hope you have a fantastic night! It could be any old hi-viz jacket. Thousands around the place. Any old company from Asda to Zoopla. They all wear them.

          3. Thanks. I hope it’s not too wild; I have to take the car in for service & MOT tomorrow morning.

    2. £30k a pop, no qualifications needed but being built like a HW boxer or an enjoyment of being punched in the face will be a desired quality.

  73. Our democratic procedures cannot be tossed aside in the same way as our liberties seem to have been

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    To be fair to Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary has hardly been shy about appearing in the Commons during the pandemic. He has answered questions at length and on many occasions about Government policies, albeit before a somewhat desultory chamber where numbers have been restricted by social distancing. But many of his appearances and those of other ministers often take place after announcements have been made somewhere else. The Commons, supposedly the bastion of our liberties, has become a secondary forum to the news conference.

    On Wednesday, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, upbraided Mr Hancock for having made a statement to MPs the previous day that made no mention of the restrictions on family gatherings announced by Boris Johnson at a No 10 news conference. Sir Lindsay said: “It is really not good enough for the Government to make decisions of this kind in a way that shows insufficient regard to the importance of major policy announcements being made first to this House and to Members of this House wherever possible. The total disregard for this Chamber is not acceptable.”

    We agree. This is not Mr Hancock’s responsibility alone, however, but that of the Prime Minister. The Commons has given the executive extensive emergency powers to take decisions in a fast-moving situation. But that was not the case here because the so-called Rule of Six restrictions announced by Mr Johnson do not take effect until next Monday. It is extraordinary that a legally enforceable ban on families meeting in their own homes – an egregious imposition on personal freedoms justified only in the most extreme circumstance – should be foist upon the nation by diktat without being debated in the Commons.

    But MPs are also to blame. In his statement on Monday, Mr Hancock did allude to the new powers, saying that the Government “will urgently introduce further measures that put the current guidance – that people cannot socialise outside their household – into law.” While he did not spell out the details, not one MP asked him to.

    Mr Hancock was back in the Commons yesterday where several Conservatives made their unhappiness clear. Doubtless parliament will back the Government’s action if there is a debate and vote but that is not the point. The democratic procedures cannot just be tossed aside along with the nation’s liberties they are there to uphold.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/10/democratic-procedures-cannot-tossed-aside-way-liberties-seem/

    2. Hancock is a hancunt but the reality is that the HoC is a gathering of jumped up popinjays who add absolutely nothing to the debate because none of them have the scientific or numerical skills to cross examine the Minister, and challenge what is being put out.

    3. Hancock is a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle viz. the pent up anger of the citizenry.

      Hancock is rooted to the spot and merely recites the garbage he has been fed by medicos whose financial interests align with pharmaceutical companies which firms manufacture vaccines as their principal source of income.

      This entire lockdown nonsense is a cover up for the incompetence and poor decision making of this faux Tory government of spineless idiots.

  74. Johnson fudged this badly but May is the author of the folly.

    A solution to the Northern Ireland conundrum may yet be found

    There is no escaping the fact that amending the NI protocol would leave the Government in breach of its international legal obligations

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    The Northern Ireland Protocol has become the Schleswig-Holstein question of our time, so abstruse that hardly anyone understands it.

    It was being alleged yesterday that one of those ignorant of its implications was the Prime Minister, who signed an international treaty with the EU last year to implement it but now is having second thoughts. Legislation to be published today will effectively renege on part of the agreement in the event of the UK failing to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU. The aim is to prevent a border for goods in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the very concern that Unionists voiced when it was being negotiated.

    Since Mr Johnson has promised to uphold the integrity of the UK, he was always going to face this conundrum in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Now that this is becoming a strong possibility, his choice is between sticking with the agreed protocol or avoiding tariffs on goods between Britain and Northern Ireland.

    The measure will ensure that if there is no free trade agreement by the end of the year, no order can be made by way of “direct effect” EU legislation to separate the two parts of the UK for trading purposes.

    But there is no escaping the fact that the Government would be in breach of its international legal obligations, as Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, conceded in the Commons. Theresa May warned that this could have serious implications for the UK’s reputation for fair dealing. Domestically it has provoked the resignation of the Government’s senior legal adviser Sir Jonathan Jones QC. There is a way to avoid all of this and that is to agree a trade deal.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/09/solution-northern-ireland-conundrum-may-yet-found/

    1. Of course Eire could become part of the UK with its own devolved pretendy parliament.

      Problem solved.

      };-O

      1. The other solution is for the EU to implode, either because other member states leave or the Euro blows up.

    2. As I suggested this morning the time for Boris to have sorted out the Northern Ireland problem was between 12th December, the date of the general election in which he won a substantial majority, and 23rd January on which he signed the treaty. Boris Johnson knew that the WA was a disaster as far as Northern Ireland was concerned and he should have acted immediately to rectify the situation.

      He had over a month to act – but he didn’t do so and the consequence is that the whole thing has blown up in his face and, except for Ian Duncan Smith, all the craven former leaders of the Non-Conservative Party who are still alive: May, Cameron, Howard, Hague and Major, are united against him.

      It would also have been useful if Johnson had been more ruthless in deselecting remainer Conservative MPs before the election. This abject failure may well cost him and the country dear.

  75. SIR – I used to meet my friends in the pub on Friday night. Now I haven’t seen them for six months.

    I went to meetings of three societies, which have not met for the same length of time. I am awaiting treatment for medical conditions, which is on hold until the Covid panic is over.

    I am 86. I used to think that losing the will to live was just a figure of speech, but now I know how it feels.

    Alan Shaw
    Halifax, West Yorkshire

    1. That silly little shit Mayor Khan has as ever missed the point. Our history goes back five thousand years and more. Our capital city is London.

      The notion that we should allow our monuments and parks and street names to be altered to reflect the disaster which was the Windrush generation which brought drugs and knife crime to our country, the Muslim invasion with its silent killing machine and the countless mafiosi style criminals from Eastern Europe and Africa is risible.

      Khan is a racist and totally unfit to represent Londoners. Even with London flight I reckon the indigenous still outnumber the scum he represents.

        1. The French are a nation of peasants led by a Metropolitan elite based in Paris and its wealthier suburbs. The peasantry are inefficient farmers and winemakers making good stuff. They have benefited greatly from the Common Agricultural Policy in much the same way as the Germans have benefited from the quid pro quo of the EU Internal Market.

          Without UK contributions this ‘natural’ order of things is closed. The EU have a large budget hole to fill and will apparently resort to the most base tactics and bribery to keep the UK on the hook for their self interest and profligacy.

          We expect Boris Johnson to stick to his promises and get us out of the corrupt EU. No half measures but a simple ‘get lost’ to the bastards whose dictates have enslaved us for decades.

    3. They’ve got some way to go to beat the Guinness Book of Records figure of 338,226 personnel reaching Britain from France in just nine days in 1940

        1. Well there were a lot more of them and the new border force in France was actively trying to stop them with lethal force I might add!

      1. 323600+ up ticks,
        Evening GG,
        It did not need Deli to enlighten me to what was coming down the line, leaving us now with the overseers cramming in whatever they can before the sh!te really does hit the fan.
        Two samples are HS2 & the Dover campaign.

    2. Shocking – none is wearing a mask and they are too close together. £100 fine twice for each person.

  82. “Scientists Have Discovered a New Form of Matter Called “Excitonium” – No it isn’t composed of an assortment of humans in a rubber dinghy….

    2. The makers of that bilge had a Studio in Victoria Street in Cambridge where I lived for ten years, twenty six years ago.

      It is all very well painting politicians as figures of fun. In truth, as we have witnessed over several decades, politicians are mostly venal and utterly joyless individuals. Their exploits and corruption should be unremittingly exposed with searching documentaries, not trivialised with grotesque puppets.

    4. H’mmm …. laugh a minute – not. Think of all those hurtie feelings, especially amongst those sporting a deep tan.

  85. Evening, all. My condolences to LotL on the loss of her uncle. I only caught her parting comment and I haven’t had time to read the early ones yet, but I send her all good thoughts.

  86. Good night all.

    Thanks for all the birthday greetings; it has been a most enjoyable day & evening.

  88. Who will save Victor?

    Last V-bomber to see active duty in the sky to be scrapped

    There is an opportunity for ‘a small number of people’ to see the Victor for the last time on October 10

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8df0252b2cb5b96e6747f00bf244e890e99009f11d5913cf574727c4e235e3f9.jpg
    The last V-bomber plane to see active service with the RAF will be scrapped despite it being offered for free to anyone who could restore it.

    The V-bomber, which was part of the UK’s nuclear deterrent before being used as a tanker aircraft, has been standing for many years as a “gate guardian” welcoming visitors to RAF Marham, Norfolk.

    But surveys found that the plane – believed to have last flown in 1993 – is now in need of urgent restoration and in January, it was offered to anyone who could pay to carry out the work.

    The base said the cost of the repairs was greater than its budget for gate guardian maintenance.

    In a statement on its website, RAF Marham has now said no one has come forward “who has the capability to remove and restore her so the difficult decision has been made to dispose of her”.

    “Whilst RAF Marham will be sad to dispose of an aircraft that played an important role in the heritage of the station, we are reassured that there is a Victor in the skilled and professional care of the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford and the Imperial War Museum collection at Duxford.

    “We are reassured that the story of the Victor fleet and those who flew and supported it is preserved for perpetuity for the nation and the national collection.”

    The base is offering the opportunity for “a small number of people” to see the Victor for the last time on October 10 and is running an application process for places.

    It said preference would be given to people with a link to the Victor, including those who worked on Victors or were relatives of a previous crew.

    V-bombers – Victors, Valiants and Vulcans – were part of the UK’s nuclear deterrent until 1969.

    Some became aerial refuelling tankers, and this was the last one to be operated by the RAF.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/11/last-v-bomber-see-active-duty-sky-scrapped

  90. That twat Lineker is on TV boasting about “his” refugee.

    I will be delighted if Linekunt Towers suffers a coonflagration.

      1. Indeed.

        It might wipe the smirk from his gob if the refugee he accepts has an extended family of 50+ all of whom then get foisted upon him and as he volunteered, naturally he can pay for their upkeep.

    2. If he wants to take on one of these gimmigrants then he should take on a hundred. After all, he wants unlimited immigration for us, but limits what he will accept. He restricts what he will pay out, but forces the rest of us to pay for an unlimited amount.

      Therefore, we should set what he will take in – that’s what he wants for us.

    3. It will have been very carefully vetted. Probably a brain surgeon, or one of those engineers….

      1. Certainly very carefully vetted.

        My money is on a pretty young girl saved from sex-slavery.

        Or a young lad who just happened to be a fairly talented footballer in Syria.

  91. Max Hastings tells us at the end of a long dissertation about Boros Johnson………….

    ”If the Johnson family had stuck to showbusiness like the Osmonds, Marx Brothers or von Trapp family, the world would be a better place. Yet the Tories, in their terror, have elevated a cavorting charlatan to the steps of Downing Street, and they should expect to pay a full forfeit when voters get the message. If the price of Johnson proves to be Corbyn, blame will rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the British people – who will not find it funny for long.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/boris-johnson-prime-minister-tory-party-britain

    ”Who will not find it funny for long”… great forecast Max…. you got it !

    2. 323600 + up ticks,
      Evening PP,
      They are interchangeable on account they are a coalition and have been for years.
      We need the Non voters to participate if we have another GE because the current electorate sure as sh!te help get us to where we find ourselves today.
      There were many calling for johnson for PM on account he makes people laugh

  93. Just been quoted £3000 for a tooth implant. My Denplan insurance doesn’t cover any of it.

    They can whistle.

    Now apparently for the first time….so can I.

    1. That’s similar to what I paid. Worth it though, as I have nice front teeth for the first time in my life.

      1. This one is on the side not in front. I shall just eat softer food.

        Glad you got your smile back. 🙂

    2. I’m having a second attempt at a front tooth implant. The first failed due to a bone infection – ‘one in a thousand chance’ the dentist said. Still, the second attempt is free…

    3. Quarantine notwithstanding, consider Portugal. A friend had an implant there, combined with a holiday, for considerably less than she would have paid in Blighty.

    4. In 2006 my dentist in Marmaris Turkey did the following work for me:

      6 crowns
      2 Bridges
      An extraction
      A deep filling.

      Total cost 1,200 €

      It still looks as if I have a full head of good teeth and all the work he did is still in place.

    5. Phizzee, my sympathy to you .

      That is what I paid last year , it broke me completely and Denplan treated me like the insurance companies treat aged pets ..

      2 of my back molars still ache despite the expensive treatment.

      I can’t understand why teeth treatment costs so much.. I can get my car fixed and up and running for peanuts !

      1. The training and skill level to fix a car is somewhat less, and if it goes wrong, you aren’t left in crippling pain. Also, the sale of new cars subsidises the workshops.

    6. I paid £1850 a few year ago.
      My D-in-L is having hers done in Budapest; they are cheaper and the clinic has a special arrangement with a nearby hotel. She has had rather longer than usual for the ‘roots’ to grow in because Covid has interrupted the course of treatment. She hopes to go in October.

      1. I had three gold crowns replaced with the white ones. I got about £130 from a jeweller in Hatton Garden for the dental gold.

  95. For anyone who enjoys singe malt Speyside whisky, Lidl’s are currently offering Ben Bracken at £16.49 per bottle…then again it might not be everyone’s cup of tea……

      1. There are three Ben Bracken labels, including Highland, Speyside and Islay….

        From whisky.com:

        “Maybe you already got to know a release that is called Ben Bracken. It is specially bottled for supermarkets and it is – a Tamnavulin!”

    2. No thanks. I’ve rather been spoiled by 18 y.o. Ledaig, from Tobermory. I can make a bottle last a year or so. Would that were true of Yellow Tail Shiraz…

  96. In Brexit, we are fighting for legitimate authority – no wonder it’s not pretty

    No independence struggle can be conducted with perfect decorum, and the EU is happy to play dirty

    CHARLES MOORE

    The Government, in the form of Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, says it proposes “to break international law in a very specific and limited way”. This relates to the Northern Ireland Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Agreement.

    “Specific and limited” it may be, but it feels like a big step. In the early Eighties, Margaret Thatcher, no friend to Brussels, fought to reduce our European budget contribution. But even she baulked at the idea that Britain should refuse to hand over the money unless its demands were met, because to do so would have been to break the law.

    There is an important difference, however, between Mrs Thatcher’s government and our present one. Hers was trying to stay in Europe. Ours is trying to leave. After being pushed out of office, Mrs Thatcher came to think that Britain would be better off out; but when in power, she was always trying to make us better off in. Boris Johnson’s Government, by contrast, was founded – and then elected – on the proposition that we must leave, both in name and in fact.

    The history of the past four and a half years has shown that this is easier said than done. Parliament legislated for a referendum and promised to abide by the result, but when the majority voted to Leave, many MPs tried to block it, or nullify its meaning. As Prime Minister, Theresa May, pursued a content-free Leave, and so eventually lost power. Over prorogation, the Supreme Court did its best to outlaw Boris Johnson’s successor Government.

    Contrary to most predictions Mr Johnson then got an agreement from Brussels and won the ensuing snap election with an 80-seat majority. Britain left the EU on January 31.

    That was a political triumph, but the joy on the Brexit side was not unconfined. Our departure came at a cost. In order to get a quick Brexit, Boris ditched assurances given to Northern Ireland, and settled for the semi-impossibility that the province would remain part of the United Kingdom and its customs territory, yet have a de facto customs border not between it and the Republic, but down the Irish Sea. This is unstable, not only for Northern Ireland, but also for the rest of United Kingdom.

    The Government now rightly states that, in the event of a breakdown by December 31, it cannot allow a state of affairs in which, by the famous EU principle of “direct effect”, EU decrees automatically become our law. The EU could then, if it chose, decide to classify all goods crossing from the mainland to Northern Ireland as “at risk” of ending up in the Republic of Ireland, and therefore slap tariffs on them. Then the United Kingdom would no longer be a united kingdom, and the principle of consent in the Good Friday Agreement would have been violated. Hence next week’s legislation that empowers ministers to prevent this, in defiance of the Protocol.

    The Government should have seen this problem coming, people say. Actually, it did see it coming, but was in too desperate a position to act at that moment: it needed Brexit fast. Politically, that was understandable – even essential – but it is extremely awkward now.

    One feels this is not being well presented. No offence to Mr Lewis, but he is not possessed of a rapier-like jurisprudential mind. Despite his job title, he is not in charge of these matters. It would have been better if the first government minister to deal publicly with this issue had been more senior and/or more legally qualified.

    Such a person could have put it differently. “Yes,” he or she could have said, “the legislation we propose will conflict with Article 4 of the Protocol, but we fully intend to negotiate with the EU in good faith to achieve agreement. All we are trying to do is protect our positions.” Then that alarming phrase about breaking international law would have stayed in the mouths of others. Instead, it now gleefully leads every BBC news bulletin.

    The context could also be better presented. The breaking of international law is a sport at which the EU itself often excels. Whether failing to implement WTO obligations, or state aid rules, or to punish member-state breaches of its own pact about debt ratios and budget deficits (remember that EU treaties are themselves international treaties), or to comply with laws about migrants and refugees, the EU has, as they used to say in police circles, a record as long as your arm. Yet it suffers much less finger-wagging than Britain.

    It is also strongly arguable that the EU’s sequencing of the whole negotiating process from 2017 was in breach of Article 50, and that the sequencing of fishing and state aid as levers in Withdrawal Agreement negotiations lacks good faith. These examples illustrate that international law is usually tangled up with issues of politics and diplomacy. The EU often plays rough, always plays politically, and usually gets away with it.

    Britain is not being wicked if it tries some of the same. When David Cameron refused, contrary to international law, to comply with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights which gave prisoners the right to vote, the sky did not fall in. Besides, Parliament is sovereign, a fact reiterated in Section 38 of the Withdrawal Agreement Act itself. Our domestic law does not just track international law. It is an important principle of our constitution that Government and Parliament can decide what the law is.

    The Government’s opponents need to understand something. Mr Lewis’s controversial announcement this week was deliberate (though its timing was rushed forward by a newspaper leak). The Government is determined not to repeat Mrs May’s fatal mistake of making vaguely tough-sounding noises and then giving in. By announcing its proposed breach of international law, it intended to cross the Rubicon with the EU and make it clear where it stands on the other side. It believes this will bring clarity, even respect.

    The truth is that no independence struggle can be conducted with perfect decorum. All such battles necessarily involve a dispute about legitimate authority. When they get going, the ruling power starts with the advantage that the legal order is skewed in its favour. Before the United States of America existed, its leaders were “rebel colonists”. Even before Britain existed, England experienced this problem. When Henry VIII wished to break with the Pope, he asserted in the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome that “this realm of England is an Empire”. In speaking thus, he did not mean our modern concept of a colonial power. He was simply asserting that England was sovereign, and so the Pope had no authority over him. Out of this dispute grew the English Reformation, and the rise of what eventually became the United Kingdom and the doctrine of the Crown in Parliament. Henry’s motives were largely base and the process was not pretty, but it helped create an independent nation which we came to prize.

    The current process of recapturing that independence is not pretty either, but that is unavoidable. The EU itself is still fighting to retain control in all but name. In Britain, its allies in significant sections of the Civil Service, the legal profession, the BBC, etc, are mutinously determined to assist it. From its earliest days, “Europe” has used its system of courts and of law as the key to advancing a political project which has always lacked a full democratic mandate. Britain today has the full democratic mandate to overcome this, but not yet the right people in the right places.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/11/brexit-fighting-legitimate-authority-no-wonder-not-pretty/

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