Thursday 17 September: The centralised CofE banned clergy from entering their own churches

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/16/lettersthe-centralised-cofe-banned-clergy-entering-churches/

807 thoughts on “Thursday 17 September: The centralised CofE banned clergy from entering their own churches”

  1. DT Letters: sub-editor anyone?

    “SIR – I have been a Brian (Letters, September 10) for 89 years, named, on the insistence of an Irish grandfather, (I was told) after the high Irish king Brian Boru. Yet, although my father occasionally called me Bernie. OIt was only when I contacted ing the Catholic church in whereich I had been baptised did that I fifound that the my birth certificate indeed said Bernard.”

    1. SIR – The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, writing with the Rt Rev Sarah Mullaly, the Bishop of London (Comment, September 16), criticises the Government for its centralised approach to Covid-19.

      This is the same Archbishop who, in March, instructed all clergy in England not to enter their own churches.

      The House of Bishops, chaired by the Bishop of London, continues to issue instructions centrally instead of allowing local decision-making.

      Dr Penelope Upton
      Lighthorne, Warwickshire

      1. Indeed. Having feminised the church of England, the liberals in charge found it an easy matter to enforce the ban, since there are very few bolshy male vicars left who don’t mind being unpopular.
        Our tiny church had ten bossy notices at various different points telling people to keep out or wash their hands.

    3. That drawing is inaccurate in that Welby is assiduously working for the destruction of Britain and the Church of England, not doing nothing.

  4. North-east of England faces new restrictions amid Covid-19 spike. 17 September 2020.

    New restrictions on social contact between households and a 10pm curfew on pubs are expected to be introduced in parts of north-east England in an attempt to curb rising coronavirus cases.

    Nick Forbes, the leader of Newcastle city council, confirmed that “additional, temporary restrictions” were being planned to prevent another full lockdown for the region.

    Multiple sources confirmed that the measures, due to be announced on Thursday morning, will include a 10pm curfew on pubs and bars and a ban on mixing between households. They will come into effect from midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning.

    Morning everyone. These measures, like the Rule of Six, and the mooted Work from Home order are designed to prevent opposition forming on the streets against the forthcoming coup! The general air of manufactured crisis with advancing virus infections and the failures of management and organisations to carry out their functions is being maintained to provide an excuse for this. It looks as though Blair has been chosen to be the leader of the Committee for Public Safety or whatever title they decide to give it. When the time comes the internet will be cut and there will be an Important Announcement on TV; here Blair flanked by the Great and the Good (Four former Prime Ministers no less) will tell you it’s all in aid of Equality, Freedom and Democracy. There will of course be some minor variations to this program but it will not be far amiss!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/north-east-of-england-faces-new-restrictions-amid-covid-19-spike

  5. North-east of England faces new restrictions amid Covid-19 spike. 17 September 2020.

    New restrictions on social contact between households and a 10pm curfew on pubs are expected to be introduced in parts of north-east England in an attempt to curb rising coronavirus cases.

    Nick Forbes, the leader of Newcastle city council, confirmed that “additional, temporary restrictions” were being planned to prevent another full lockdown for the region.

    Multiple sources confirmed that the measures, due to be announced on Thursday morning, will include a 10pm curfew on pubs and bars and a ban on mixing between households. They will come into effect from midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning.

    Morning everyone. These measures, like the Rule of Six, and the mooted Work from Home order are designed to prevent opposition forming on the streets against the forthcoming coup! The general air of manufactured crisis with advancing virus infections and the failures of management and organisations to carry out their functions is being maintained to provide an excuse for this. It looks as though Blair has been chosen to be the leader of the Committee for Public Safety or whatever title they decide to give it. When the time comes the internet will be cut and there will be an Important Announcement on TV; here Blair flanked by the Great and the Good (Four former Prime Ministers no less) will tell you it’s all in aid of Equality, Freedom and Democracy. There will of course be some minor variations to this program but it will not be far amiss!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/north-east-of-england-faces-new-restrictions-amid-covid-19-spike

  6. I see the Democrats in the USA are kicking off again even before the election in November.
    At least Obama only wanted to put us at the back of the queue, Biden will ban us from the queue.

    1. Does it matter. If we trade with the entire world excluding the EU, China, and the USA we can get along fine.

        1. The US are extremely high-handed and arrogant in trade matters. They put woollen mills in Scotland out of business as a result of an embargo on cashmere products. This is because the Senator from Chiquita became very annoyed with the EU in a row over dollar bananas.

  7. Good morning all
    Cool breeze blowing here .

    I managed to view the letters.

    The rodent faced Welby was not a welcome sight , nor were the idiots who were photographed inhaling laughing gas.

  8. ‘Morning, Peeps. Low blood pressure? No problem!

    Exclusive: French Navy seen shepherding migrants into UK waters, and abandoning them.
    I saw the French patrol boat approach the migrant dinghy, then simply usher it towards Britain

    By
    Jamie Johnson
    IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
    16 September 2020 • 10:03pm

    Sixteen migrants on board a dinghy seen heading for the UK on Wednesday
    It was shortly after 7am that the French Navy’s 105-ton patrol boat came into view.

    As the P726 Aramis sat quietly on the horizon across the English Channel, we spotted, in front of her, a small shape bobbing in the choppy water.

    Sixteen Afghan migrants, including four women and two children, were struggling against the wind in their dangerously overloaded inflatable, and in need of assistance a mile inside French territorial waters.

    However, instead of bringing the wet and shivering group on board and returning them to France, the French vessel shepherded the boat towards British waters, where they promptly abandoned it: a practice the French have long been accused of doing, but which has never been independently witnessed by a journalist, until now.

    Over the course of 90 minutes, as the sun began to cut through the clouds, I watched as the French Navy sent out a small boat of their own, initially offering the migrants bottled water and life jackets, before motoring towards Britain and asking the migrants to follow.

    Sandwiched between France’s largest Navy patrol boat, and a Zodiac not much bigger than their own, crewed by two Gendarmerie in facemasks, the group bailed out water furiously as they approached British waters.

    And then, in the middle of the world’s busiest shipping lane, without as much as a wave goodbye, they were left to fend for themselves.

    Despite repeated promises by the French President, Interior Minister and other top ranking officials, there was no evidence of any cooperation with British authorities.

    Less than ten days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to “step up” cooperation with the UK “against migrant smugglers”, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson “set out that the UK’s aim is to stop the smuggling operations and prevent boats arriving on our shores.”

    The pair “agreed to work together in a spirit of cooperation to address the issue.”

    However, on Wednesday morning, the French boats simply peeled off with no sign of British Border Force in the area, and the exhausted group continued on their way, their boat being battered by increasing swells.

    A bearded man in a dark t-shirt straddled the inflatable hull and dragged his leg in the water as he bailed it out with a modified milk carton.

    A teenage girl in a hijab shrieked as a wave washed over her back.

    One man in a Lungee (a traditional Afghan headwrap) shouted out and asked which way the UK was.

    And then, a small boy peered out from beneath a grey hoodie with a beaming smile, giving us the thumbs up.

    They were in British waters. But we could see they were clearly not out of danger.

    The Home Office says that the local coastguard had been made aware of the small craft, but this is contested. The captain of the small fishing boat which hosted the Telegraph radioed in and was told they hadn’t heard anything.

    Our boat was the only one within a mile of the group, and was asked to stay with the stricken vessel, a white Aquapax inflatable with a £2,000 Suzuki outboard engine. Then the wind started picking up.

    For 40 minutes, they sheltered on the lee side of our boat, protected from the worst of the swell. Behind passed the 143.5m Dutch trawler, Willem Van Der Zwan. Alongside passed a P&O ferry. In front passed a Grimaldi lines container ship.

    The small craft chugged low in the water, with no captain, no map and with no idea how far they had to go before they hit land. Until a Border Force Coastal Patrol Vessel appeared in the distance, it was looking like we would have to rescue them ourselves.

    A man at the rear, holding the tiller looked as if he was being sick in the foot well.

    Despite the UK spending millions of pounds on spotter planes, drones and enhanced surveillance, it seemed to take a small fishing vessel to alert the British authorities to the deteriorating situation out at sea.

    By the time ‘Hunter’ came charging towards the scene, winds were gusting as high as 28 knots, and with the swell of the waves lapping over the boat, the migrants were in danger of falling overboard or sinking.

    There was no option but to bring them aboard, and in less than ten minutes, the group was plucked one by one from the white inflatable by officials in full PPE suits and face masks.
    In the sky, a drone, launched from Lydd airport, buzzed overhead.

    One person ditched a small leather shoulder bag before he got on. Inside, it contained a toothbrush and a Samsung phone charger.

    And then they were taken to shore. Wrapped in foil blankets, the sodden group trudged up the gangway at Dover Harbour. A man on the shoreline tweeted in all capitals that another ’16 ILLEGAL MIGRANTS’ had arrived.

    “They would have gone under if we hadn’t have been there,” said our captain, who does not want to be identified.

    “What the French did was a disgrace.”

    The first rule of the sea is to protect lives. Yesterday, they could well have been lost.

    In response, the French authorities told the Telegraph: “The actions of the maritime authorities are centered on safeguarding human life and safe navigation in the Channel.

    “The priority is to assist and rescue each of the boats.

    “However, in view of the number of boats attempting to cross the Channel, state resources must assess the level of distress of each of the boats and prioritise according to the needs and risks in which each of the boats are found.”

    They added that they had returned 24 people in two vessels to France.

    September is now the busiest month on record for Channel crossings by migrants, with 1,487 people reaching the UK already.

    Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, who was on board the same boat as the Telegraph, said: “We have Priti Patel saying what a fantastic job the French are doing, but what I saw today was the French escorting a boat out of French waters and then just dumping the boat in what were rapidly deteriorating conditions.

    “I am pretty certain that if we hadn’t been there, that boat would have gone down, because the wind was getting up and the French didn’t even tell the British authorities it was there.

    “I’m completely opposed to this cross channel trade in illegal migrants, but at the end of the day, there were 16 Afghans in that boat and they’re still people. Today was a pretty poor show.”

    By 10:30 am the group had made it, joining more than 6,300 others who have arrived in this way in 2020 (see another small craft arriving earlier this week, below), three times as many as last year.

    In Westminster, Maddy Allen from Help Refugees told MP’s at the Home Affairs Select Committee that there is “minimal” evidence that the French authorities are actively encouraging people to apply for asylum in France and migrants are being pushed towards boat crossings.

    “In terms of the adult population, there is no presence of French authorities, there are no leaders teams on the ground, there is no kind of widely available legal information or legal advice that is available to people to explain the French asylum system.”

    “We’re about to head into another dark difficult winter, it leaves people again open to be able to make those crossings, people become more desperate and will attempt to make those crossings to the UK in the absence of protection in France.”

    A Home Office spokesperson said: “Border Force was alerted to this crossing by the Coastguard, who had received a call from the French that morning. This is part of the standard approach for intercepting boats which come across the Channel.

    “Our cutting edge aerial assets captured footage of this migrant boat, and the accompanying vessel, and allowed us to monitor the incident as it progressed and gather intelligence and evidence of criminality.”

    British patrol boats can be seen in the Channel in early August, below:

    Meanwhile, a source added: “These are over-crowded, unseaworthy boats in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and we continue to speak with our French counterparts to find ways of returning migrant boats at sea back to France – but the preservation of life must come first and it can be hard to take action against the will of those on the boat without putting lives at risk.”

      1. Sadly, the same now applies to the Brits.
        Look at the masked sheep, leaping off the pavement into the road to avoid their fellow human beings.

    4. This has cost us several thousand pound up to the point where these criminals were landed on the English shore. These 16 will cost us – the UK taxpayers -around £200,000 a year for the next fifty or more years, with nothing in return, if we are lucky. If we are unlucky one or more of them will carry out a massacre of British citizens.
      A source added,”…but the preservation of life must come first…”. Who says? If criminals deliberately set out to commit a crime, and put their lives, and the lives of their children, at risk in the commission of that crime, why is it our responsiblity to save them? It is not.
      Keep in mind that for the money that these criminals pay the smugglers, they could obtain passports and fly here as tourists directly from their own country. They could then legally apply for asylum. If, of course they are the ones paying the smugglers. Do they pay in kind perhaps, handing over a couple of children to the smugglers?
      And so, back to my perennial question, who pays their phone bills and who pays the smugglers.

  9. Any wisdom about how to tackle the epidemic of men-children among the younger generation?
    Am off to work, so can’t expand much, but several of my contemporaries have grown up sons who still seem to see themselves as children (eg berating parents for not looking after them), and appear to have mental disorders, but refuse any treatment, or to get a job. There’s no common factor, some have fathers, some don’t. Some of the men-children have normal brothers, others don’t. Is this a western thing? product of feminist society? hormones in the plastics?
    Is kicking them out of the home the only way forward?

    1. This is a largely female oriented society. There’s not much place for men in it, and barring War even less in the future!

      2. Am I really the only person who knows several man-children who can’t get a job or move out of their parents’ houses, or it a taboo that nobody wants to talk about?
        I think our young men are in crisis.

        1. I think they are, although fortunately not our two sons. White males have, oh so slowly, been deliberately airbrushed out of Western life. Our sons have survived this process as we have maintained traditional roles within our family.

          1. One of the men-children that I know comes from a traditional family with a very successful father.
            I think the change is from outside the family – it’s a generational one that individuals can’t do a lot to fight.
            What can be done to put a spine into them? this is the big question.

    2. The most crucial part in any man’s life is when his wife is bearing their first child. This is when he must prove himself as a provider. What Western society does is to rob him of this by undermining him in the workplace in order to push the careers of ambitious women, and belittle him in women’s groups up and down the land instead of building him up.

      1. I agree; the constant denigration of men is appalling. Women’s magazines and columns have been doing this for the better part of 50 years. Even advertisers got in on the act, though it’s noticeable that the paterfamilias of the now obligatory mixed race family is never depicted in that way.
        The constant drip, drip of insults can only result in the situation we are now witnessing.

        1. It would be very interesting to see an accurate comparison of % figures for BM/WF partnership break-up post breeding and the equivalents for WM/BF, BM/BF and WM/WF. By “B” I mean African/Afro-caribbean/Afro-British etc.

          My own limited and statistically unreliable observation, from family, friends and acquaintances, suggests the abandonment of the off-spring bythe BM in a BM/WF partnership far, far exceeds the other groups

          2. Doubtless because some offence-seeking guru suggests that such a partnership has connotations of slavery.

      2. The men of whom I’m speaking don’t even get to that point!

        It’s routine for feminists to sneer at the situation you describe, and say that it proves men are less strong than women, because they can’t handle not having the upper hand. Unsurprisingly, I rather agree with you.

    1. But if you speak to them you’ll be adding another person to the group and you’d be arrested as well.

      I think Boris is suffering from an overdose of Covid propaganda.

  11. I see that many people in various health authorities are going to be asked to ring NHS 111 to make an appointment before they access A+E!

    Hang on a second , can that be really true?

    2. Perhaps if we all rang in and booked a slot for Saturday at 12 noon saying we think we’re going to have an emergency it might show up the total absurdity the whole idea is.

    3. Right ….. when I’m hit by a number 9 bus, I must make sure my mobile phone isn’t damaged.
      Must remember to find my mobile phone and actually carry it around.
      Morning, Maggie.
      BTW – as a fellow retired bed pan carrier, you’ll appreciate this medical bulletin. Spartie is now feeling better. He was very fidgety last night and has regurgitated something obscure this morning, possibly a combination of dead mouse and dried leaves. Wednesday, 16th. September really wasn’t his day.

    4. Of course. Probably best to book in if you are going out of the house. You may be in a car crash or similar accident, such as arguing with a large and bad-tempered Covid Warden, and it will be a comfort to know that there is a place in A&E already reserved for you.

  12. Morning all

    SIR – If we ran school tests in the same manner as the Covid testing system, we would all be closed down by Ofsted

    Tom Bunbury

    Headmaster, Papplewick School

    Ascot, Berkshire

  13. It is one of life’s paradoxes that for all my beard-and-sandals appearance and that I feel far happier around artistic people, I actually enjoyed administration and adored working in the civil service making order out of chaos, even though I did not enjoy the office politics.
    They got rid of me though, because of my failure to conform to department norms, my lack of “competence” skills, such as the ability to be self-confident and go-getting, sociable in the pub, suck up to the boss and knife colleagues in the back.

    Above all I did not conform to the correct form of diversity.

    I could have sorted out this mess over testing.

    1. ……. adored working in the civil service making order out of chaos…
      The ethos has changed, Jeremy, it’s now about making chaos out of order.

      1. I remember all too well when I was backfilling a Government agency being privatised in the 1990s that one of the Establishment jumping ship was an EO with the ability to bring chaos wherever he went. He was a menace, and whenever I encountered anything he touched, I gave up hope and handed the case over to a colleague pleading ignorance.

        It was with great pleasure when I learnt that his new post was with the Child Support Agency in Dudley. Within a couple of years of him working on the inside and discarded-father experienced civil servants as hapless, but not entirely defenceless victims, there were reports of half a million pending files piled up in a cupboard over the ladies’ toilets, which came to light when they spilled out over an inspector.

    2. The principium of John Milton’s Paradise Lost sets out to explain how, in the beginning, the world rose out of Chaos.

    3. I could have sorted out this mess over testing.

      Morning Jeremy. By abolishing it for everyone except those in a hospital bed one hopes.

  15. Breaking News warning from Biden – If the UK messes with the Good Friday Agreement I will put them at the back of the Autocue

  16. Lionel Shriver
    The Covid hysteria is getting worse
    From magazine issue

    Readers may recall a column last month that laid out powerful evidence for the proposition that the ethnic and racial disparities for dire Covid outcomes are overwhelmingly due to obesity. While I also read the piece aloud for posting online, fewer of you will have listened to the audio rendition. That’s because YouTube took it down.

    The explanation was pro forma: the column violated the site’s opaque ‘community guidelines’. An appeal produced the further explanation: ‘YouTube does not allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts the World Health Organisation or local health authorities’ medical information about Covid-19, including on methods to prevent, treat, or diagnose Covid-19 and means of transmission of Covid-19. Learn more.’ Thus if I were to ‘learn more’ from YouTube, I would only be allowed to absorb information in lockstep with the government line.

    You may also recall that my loony, irresponsible text, imperilling the lives of grandparents everywhere, was based on a large study conducted by researchers at Columbia University, whose results were published in the New York Times. Gosh, the sicko anti-vaxxer tin-hatters now lurk in the most alarmingly legitimate boltholes.

    Scads of people now use YouTube and Facebook as their primary sources of news, so the platforms’ increasingly heavy-handed censorship is alone a concern. Yet with the UK circling the toilet bowl in the name of public health, our restricted access to diverse viewpoints on the pandemic is an even graver threat than the ‘mere’ curtailment of free speech.

    Outside rare contrary voices like mine, silenced in August, we continue to be fed a steady diet of Covid hysteria, which amounts to government-sponsored terrorism. After all, what is terrorism? The instillation of pervasive social fear to achieve political ends. Sounds like this administration’s Covid strategy in a nutshell. Good gracious, and I thought governments were meant to protect us from terrorism.

    For months now, Boris and his Sage henchmen have warned frenetically about the likelihood of a second wave. The sudden backtracking on opening up the economy — Monday’s arbitrary, scientifically baseless ‘rule of six’, limiting all gatherings to half a dozen; the threat of a nationwide curfew — gives every indication that the UK government is preparing for a second wave. These folks could profit politically from a second wave, if only because they’ve predicted it for so long, and another full lockdown would seem to justify the first one. The most expedient way to cover up a mistake is to keep making it.

    I’m not a natural conspiracy theorist. I instinctively trace the source of human catastrophe to incompetence, a quality in which our species is far more awash than malign intent. Nevertheless, it’s within this government’s power to make out that there is a second wave. Indeed, the perverse project may already be under way.

    Let’s start with the definition. We should rightly worry about a second wave of deaths. Covid fatalities have been rumpling along the X-axis at barely above zero for two months. But Boris has brought down the hammer on treacherous convocations of seven people, even outside, because of a rise in cases. Ergo, a ‘second wave’ will be defined as a surge in cases, even if deaths remain negligible and admissions to hospitals presently half-empty barely rise.

    This escalation of cases for the last month has a host of explanations, one being that lockdowns only delay infections so long as the virus is still circulating at all. Lockdowns do not save lives, unless we lock down for ever, in which case I suggest we all procure a mercifully deadly dose of cyanide. The other obvious cause is vastly ramped-up testing, which identifies the asymptomatic.

    Testing also turns up false positives, estimated at roughly 2 per cent. When you account for the fact that PCR tests are wildly oversensitive, and thus systematically stigmatise loads of people who merely carry a kind of viral flotsam and are not infectious, the real false positivity rate is much higher. With widespread testing that produces a high percentage of false positives, we will always appear to be amid a raging epidemic. This nightmare will never be over. And the authorities’ suffocating restrictions for our ‘own good’ won’t ever be over, either.

    That’s why the ‘moonshot’ proposal to get us to test ourselves every day as automatically as we brush our teeth has activated the few dormant cells in my brain that are vulnerable to conspiracy theories. Daily testing of 67 million people would, if nothing else, produce a bumper crop of false positives. It would have the happy side benefit of inducing permanently heightened anxiety in us serfs: more terrorism. It’s a formula for maintaining a state of emergency until the end of time. At an eye-popping cost of £100 billion, it would also, by the by, help ensure sovereign bankruptcy.

    On encountering Chris Whitty’s baleful announcement that the UK is ‘on the edge of losing control’ of the virus, I can’t have been alone in spewing coffee all over a new iPad. Our betters have never controlled the virus. They’ve just controlled us.

    They’re not planning to stop controlling us. This government is starting to behave as if it wants a second wave, ideally even worse than the first, and a second lockdown, ideally even worse than the first as well. Otherwise, we wake up one day and realise: oh, excess deaths for 2020 weren’t all that high compared to previous years with especially bad flu. Most of us are still here. And the country is in shambles. The finger-pointing could grow unpleasant.

    Pay less attention to case numbers. Primarily attend to deaths, and secondarily to hospital admissions (also paltry for the last two months). Only the lethality of this disease has justified the wholesale destruction of our social lives, our work lives, our livelihoods, and our civil rights — including freedom of speech, apparently. If draconian measures are triggered by an uptick in mere ‘cases’, which for the most part do not represent people gravely or terminally ill, the country could be plunged into repeated lockdowns to suppress the head cold.

    3. Has anyone else noticed how the so-called 2nd wave shares many similarities with the so-called far-right backlash?

  17. These baffling laws are a threat to liberty. Spiked. 17 September 2020.

    The regulations are ludicrous and impossible to enforce properly. But it is clear that no one in the government is really concerned about them being enforced properly. Providing clarity would only give the feckless public a means of circumventing the rules. Bewildering phrases like ‘mingling’ and ‘linked households’ create the kind of confusion that is capable of scaring a population into submission.

    No one is suggesting that these regulations are a power grab by a totalitarian government. But these laws are being passed with little care about how the public can conduct their lives with certainty about the legality of their own behaviour.

    I am! In fact I already have. In fairness to the author I have to say he’s probably retracted to prevent Spiked being shut down!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/17/these-baffling-laws-are-a-threat-to-liberty/

  18. Morning, Campers.
    Snorter of a BTL comment under the Tellygraff letter:

    “In the US that behavior translates to thirteen percent of the population (blacks)

    * committing fifty two percent of all murders (Whites are seventy one percent of the population and only commit twenty six percent of the murders – hispanics are twelve percent of the population and commit over twenty one percent of the murders)

    * committing around thirty seven percent of all violent crimes against people (armed robbery, rape with violence etc)

    having OVER seventy seven percent of all black births be to single mothers (as compared to twenty nine percent of white births and less than nine percent of eastern asian births -meaning those of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent) Single mother is the fastest way to get poor

    * dropping out of high school at over twice the rate of whites and five times the rate of eastern asians

    * getting twenty three percent FEWER college degrees than whites and thirty seven percent fewer college degrees than eastern asians – despite over 50 years of special college financial aid and programs just for blacks

    (Biden’s insistence upon a black female running mate with a post-grad degree is a joke – he narrowed the possible pool of candidate to around one half of one percent of the US – that is the number who have the correct physiology, skin color and an undergrad and post-grad degree)

    All that goes to explain why blacks use welfare more than whites – thirteen percent of blacks are on housing benefits versus two percent of whites; twenty eight percent of blacks are on food assistance versus just over five percent of whites; and thirty eight percent are on Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) versus twelve percent of whites.

    (BTW, all these numbers come from annual US government reports)

    Does a community that thinks violent crimes, blowing off education and dropping out and irresponsibly breeding are perfectly okay really matter? After all whites didn’t make them commit crimes, drop out of school or pop out kids — they are choosing to do so. The answer is NO – that community isn’t worth the time or trouble until it changes.”

    2. My experience of US education circles tells me that that “post-grad degree” is barely the equivalent of a British A-level.

    3. I put all of this to my BLM worshiping friend when we rowed the other night and guess what she said…the US government fake the stats because they hate blacks.

    1. Toby Young
      I admit it: I was wrong to back Boris
      From magazine issue

      Afriend emailed me earlier this week in despair about the Prime Minister. ‘Boris reminds me of a hereditary king — Edward II or Henry VI — who is so staggeringly incompetent that he must be removed before doing too much damage,’ he wrote. ‘I felt the same way about May but Boris is worse.’

      He is not the only person feeling like this. It pains me to say it, but I too have given up on Boris. The final straw was hearing him talk about his plans to create an army of ‘Covid marshals’ last week — Britain’s very own, curtain-twitching version of the Stasi.

      What on earth happened to the freedom-loving, twinkly-eyed, Rabelaisian character I voted for? Oliver Hardy has left the stage, replaced by Oliver Cromwell. His government has even said it wants to lower the speed limit on motorways to 60 mph. Didn’t Boris once say that voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3? Where did that guy go?

      Some people think it’s all to do with his bout of coronavirus. As one person put it to me, surviving a near-death experience can affect people in one of two ways. Either you become more devil-may-care, thinking it could all end at any moment so
      why not live life to the full; or you become super-cautious, having been left feeling vulnerable by your brush with mortality. According to that armchair psychologist, Boris has gone through door number two. A less generous theory is that the disease actually damaged his brain in some way — and there is some evidence that cognitive decline can lower your appetite for risk. Whether the damage was psychological or physiological, the implication is clear: he’s no longer fit to be prime minister and should step down as soon as he’s got Brexit done.

      This explanation is attractive to former Boris enthusiasts like me because it lets us off the hook. It’s not that we overestimated him; rather that he’s changed in a way we couldn’t have anticipated. But the difficulty with those theories is that his mishandling of the crisis predates his battle with Covid-19.

      Few would dispute that he failed to give the pandemic the attention he should have done in January and February, time he could have spent devising an effective containment strategy. Come March, he was just buffeted by events, one minute saying we should ‘take it on the chin’, the next imposing a full lockdown. His lack of engagement with the detail, both before and after his spell in intensive care, means the government’s response has been led by others around the cabinet table, like Matt Hancock, who seem to be wholly captured by a small coterie of scientific advisors who decided early on that Sars-CoV-2 was ‘the big one’ and have been unwilling to abandon that hypothesis in the light of all the evidence to the contrary.

      Boris’s supporters cannot claim they were unaware of this risk. His inability to focus on anything for very long was constantly flagged up by those who’d worked closely with him, most recently at the Foreign Office. My response when this was put to me by his detractors was that he had been preparing for the role of prime minister all his life, had a heroic conception of himself as a world-historical individual and wanted to be installed in the pantheon of immortals as one of Britain’s greats. So even if it was only for vainglorious reasons, he would apply himself in No. 10 in a way he never had before. Hal would become Henry V, not Henry VI.

      Unfortunately, Boris’s critics have been proved correct. Funnily enough, one of the most prominent, Michael Gove, is now de facto deputy prime minister. Four years ago, when justifying his decision to knife Boris in the Tory leadership contest, Gove said it was because, having seen him operate up close, he’d concluded he lacked the character for the top job. Not lazy exactly, but not serious enough. At the time I took this with a pinch of salt, thinking Gove was exaggerating to make it sound as if he was motivated by public–spiritedness rather than personal ambition. Now I think he was right.

      Hope followed by disappointment is a familiar story in politics, a cycle as old as history itself. I should have been better prepared. In future, I will not be so naive.

      3. I feel exactly the same as Toby’s friend – exasperation, disbelief, incredulity and despair at this government led by Boris. I did think it unfortunate that he’d contracted the virus but thought he would bounce back to his former ebullient self. But no, that hasn’t happened.

        Unfortunately there seems to be complete inertia on the part of the Cabinet regarding the virus and nobody seems willing to say “for goodness sake scrap all these idiotic rules and regulations and get the country back to normal”. It makes me think there is something else far more sinister behind all this civil liberty curtailment.

        1. There are other factors to be considered: possible vegan diet (Vit B deficiency?) combined with woke fiancee’s influence in matters other than food intake.

          1. Yes, it’s a pity that the fiancee is a greenie eco warrior, not particularly good influence IMO. He should have been more careful in the trouser department!

          2. 30 + years too late.
            I suspect Wife No.2 kept him relatively on the straight and narrow as far as politics were concerned.

          3. You can have my affection but don’t ask for something more
            Or you’ll get my rejection and end up outside my door.
            For I don’t know what words like ‘love’ mean
            And I don’t think its really my scene
            For I’m only a Jack or a Knave so don’t try to be Queen
            Though I do want you near me I don’t want you under my skin
            So don’t try not to hear me and don’t try to take yourself in
            For I want you to know where we stand
            And I don’t want to be underhand
            I just don’t want you finding I’ve shattered the dreams that you’ve planned.

            I don’t know why you want to be bothered
            When you’ve heard the hopeless terms I have decreed.
            I cannot understand why you should place your dreams upon me
            I can’t see that I’ve anything you need.
            If you think,that given time, that I shall change my feelings for you
            Then please, I beg you, think again
            For I cannot give you what I know I haven’t got to give you
            And I really do not want to cause you pain.

            (Repeat -You can have my affection etc…)


            (RCT 1970)

            Rather different from my normal satirical song lyrics.

          4. Spot on, Anne! I see Carrie Symonds as playing Grima Wormtongue to Boris’s Theoden King, whispering poison into his ear and sapping his spirit.

            Where’s a Gandalf when you need one?

          5. I wonder how true, deep and committed Carrie is to Boris? Is she profoundly in love with him?

            If he shambles out of being prime minister as a failure with everything he touched having gone wrong, will she stand by him or will she bugger off?

            I wonder what odds Ladbrookes would offer.

            Will Migraine leave Harry before Carrie leaves Boris?

            .

      4. To all intents and purposes the government’s advisors (SAGE) gave them a binary choice:

        “Take our advice or you will kill millions.”

        It would have taken a brave man to have said,
        “I will risk killing millions, because I think you are wrong.”

        Sweden did it, and early results suggested that they had made a dreadful mistake. Now it looks as though they took the correct decision.

        The time has come to tell the membership of SAGE that they are ignoring most evidence to the contrary, just pursuing their discredited approach, and that they are no longer on the committee.

        Replace them with “front-line” professionals and practioners and certainly not academic theoreticians who have been totally discredited.

        1. That’s because our politicians aren’t used to making decisions- they are only used to carrying out orders resulting from EU decisions

      5. Boris Johnson achieved a massive parliamentary majority on December 12th 2019

        On January 24th 2020 he signed Britain up to the most disastrous Withdrawal From the EU Agreement.

        You might explain that he hid what was in the WA before the election because he feared if the electorate had known they might not have voted for him but for the Brexit Party instead.

        But he knew what was in it.

        He had six weeks in which to put things right.

        Why didn’t he do so?

      6. If only he were Old Noll – at least he knew what he was doing, even if he was a killjoy, and he built up the navy to protect these shores. Boris hasn’t got a clue and seems happy to surrender the UK.

    2. This reminds me of a little joke.

      A guy walks into a bar with a paper bag. He sits down and places the bag on the counter.

      The bartender walks up and asks what’s in the bag.

      The man reaches into the bag and pulls out a little man, about 9 inches high and sets him on the counter. He reaches back into the bag and pulls out a small piano, setting it on the counter as well. He reaches into the bag once again and pulls out a tiny piano bench, which he places in front of the piano.

      The little man sits down at the piano, and starts playing a beautiful piece by Mozart!

      ‘Where on earth did you get that?’ says the bartender.

      The man responds by reaching into the paper bag. This time he pulls out a magic lamp. He hands it to the bartender and says: ‘Here, rub it.’

      So the bartender rubs the lamp, and suddenly there’s a gust of smoke and a beautiful genie is standing before him.

      ‘I will grant you one wish. Just one wish… each person is only allowed one!’

      The bartender gets real excited. Without hesitating he says, ‘I want a million bucks!’

      A few moments later, a duck walks into the bar. It is soon followed by another duck, then another.

      Pretty soon, the entire bar is filled with ducks and they just keep coming, duck after duck after duck!

      The bartender turns to the man and says, ‘Y’know, I think your Genie’s’ a little deaf. I asked for a million bucks, not a million ducks.’

      ‘No shit!!’ says the man, ‘do you really think I asked for a 9 inch pianist?’

  21. Why don’t the British use a ferry to bring the illegals over, the Border Force is an expensive luxury and have proved themselves to be ineffective and useless. These illegals won’t be stopped, we could charge them money, the money they pay their traffickers!!

    2. Don’t encourage them TB.
      It looks as if old MOD bases all over the UK will be used to house them.
      Until of course they are burnt down by the occupants.
      But the big question that needs an answer is, why are they here at all ?

      2. Exactly, but as I commented yestrday , cheap labour for the B####y HS2 project.

        So many will be homeless after the Covid furlough finishes , alot of people are in the dwang , one would have assumed old army bases could be used as emergency shelter for those who become homeless?

      3. Because someone wants them here. It is part of a plan for whites to be subsumed into a larger coffee-coloured non-Christian demographic.
        It ‘s all going very well.

        1. I think we have all taken this on board HP, but this invasion and undermining of our social structure and the breakup of our established culture is not what the people of the UK voted for.

    3. These people are occupying troops. Their task is to intimidate the indigenous population. They will very probably be billeted on individuals or particular areas!

  22. Re ‘flu vaccines this winter.

    What are the odds that quite a few won’t be for ‘flu, but will in fact be experimental covid ones?

    How would anyone getting jabbed know?

    1. I have thought that too. It is all on trust. How do we know what they put in these things. And all flu deaths will be covid deaths.

      I have never had the flu jab, I have not had any jabs for many tears, and I intend to keep it that way. I have no trust in these people at all. They are working to an agenda, not for our benefit. They do not care about the population at all.

      1. I had a flu jab in 1965. The company for whom I worked arranged it with Crookes Laboratories for all staff who wished it. The vaccine was delivered by aerosol injection, no needles were involved. The device closely resembled a metered paint spray. It may have helped as I did not contract flu until a couple of years ago, and it was pretty devastating.

      2. No, neither have I.
        Because the jabs are developed 18 months in advance, it is a very hit and miss treatment, depending on how the virus mutates.

    2. First they destroy your trust.

      The they tell you to trust them.

      And when you don’t you are punished.

  23. I had an uncanny sense this morning of the future ahead. I no longer saw the virus in the headlines, as it were, it seemed to have disappeared. It has morphed into complete control, ‘Curfew at 10 pm. Lockdown in the north-east starts in two days.’ This is what will happen. There will be less and less heard about the virus, and more about the controls, until mention of the virus disappears completely and ‘we’ accept the controls without question.

    2. Then the troops appear – then the tanks (well, the tank). Then people start to “disappear”.

        2. 323778+ up ticks,
          Morning PT,
          To be known in ALL future history books as,
          The beginning, AKA the era of the great re-set.

      2. Animal Farm………
        “They had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
        Such as ‘one’ meeting with 6 friends or family.

        1. It’s alive and well and lurking in my computer – every so often the screen goes blue, it does a memory dump and I have to start again 🙁

    5. 323778+ up ticks,
      Morning PM,
      You are quoting from the lab/lib/con coalition party next manifesto I presume ?

  24. I had a strange dream last night. I saw a hooded rider, dressed all in black and carrying a fiery sword, riding towards me on a coal-black steed. “Woe …… Woe!” he shrieked in a voice that froze my blood.

    … and just like that, his horse stopped.

    1. Good one, Duncan. Today’s morning NoTTL session has been most enjoyable, thank you all. Now I must leave you and get back to some “chores” indoors and outside in the garden.

  25. It would seem that yesterday’s Dover problems were caused because a terror suspect removed his ankle tag and disappeared.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/port-of-dover-traffic-police-terror-suspect-kent-a4549306.html

    How many more such creatures are roaming around with tags that can apparently be removed easily? And they if can be removed, what is to stop the terrorist from putting it on a willing accomplice while he sets about organising an atrocity?

  27. Dear Sherelle

    Botched Britain or psychosomatic nation? As the broken testing system damns the country to a de facto lockdown, with runny-nosed children banned from school and sniffy Londoners pretending they live in Aberdeen to get a test, you’d be forgiven for thinking incompetence is the story of the day. But if a scandal is unfolding, it’s not that we are failing to implement the right strategy but that we have the wrong one altogether.

    An alliance of blue-sky politicians and blinkered epidemiologists is determined to will a perfect universe into existence. One where we can suppress Covid-19 through aggressive nationwide testing, until a vaccine materialises. In this computer-modelled nirvana, basic obstacles are mere illusions based on negative or selfish thinking – from the slowness of medical innovation, to the need to factor in that pesky little thing known as an economy.

    Such a rigidly theoretical approach to the UK’s crisis threatens to plunge us into a downward spiral of government deception, mass hypochondria and bankruptcy. It also risks a repeat of the fatal mistake we made with the first wave: failure to protect the vulnerable.

    The experts are correct. Routine mass testing is the ideal way to prevent a second wave while keeping the economy going. But it is reckless to pretend that, as things stand, it is realistic. In a perfect world, the Government would have stimulated the market for Covid detection right at the start of this crisis, allowing firms to stay open provided they rapidly identified cases. At the same time, ministers would have provided juicy subsidies to private testing companies. This could have triggered huge investment followed by huge innovation, with tests becoming faster and more accurate. We may then have been much closer to that sweet spot of routinely mass testing the entire population every five days to keep the R number stable.

    Except we don’t live in that perfect world. We live in a Red Tory state that doesn’t have enough lab technicians to process results. The PM’s Operation Moonshot is a dud. It will crowd out entrepreneurs in favour of a few mega-firms and send false positives soaring.

    The latter point is crucial. Covid tests are flawed. Many are likely overdiagnosing cases as they pick up dead viral load. As testing is ramped up, so are false positives. Therefore, although hospital admissions in places like Bolton are undoubtedly on the up, the uptick of positive cases that has sent the country into fresh spasms of hysteria may be wildly overstating the true situation.

    Covid testing is riddled with other complications: it does not tell us whether the viral load detected is actually infectious, for example. This means thousands of people may already be self-isolating unnecessarily. Routine testing systems that do not include second confirmatory tests for those who test positive compound the errors. Put simply we are heading for a winter of endless false alarms and institutionalised hypochondria.

    Eminently sensible Prof Chris Whitty is correct in his push to prioritise testing for NHS workers. But the Government needs to go further, and ditch its disastrous population testing strategy.

    Instead No 10 should put all its energies into a routine testing system for care homes and the NHS. It needs to focus the minds of its modellers on transmission among the elderly rather than among children, ignoring the Imperial College trendsetters who this week announced yet another study into how kids spread Covid-19. Ministers need to perfect infection control measures in hospitals, from PPE and Covid-friendly ventilation to techniques preventing superspreading through routine procedures like intubation. And we need better hospital and primary care surveillance systems that can tell us what is actually going on in the NHS compared with the community.

    Crucially, local lockdowns also need to be urgently needs to be reassessed. If the virus is endemic then such hyper-caution may prove a deadly mistake, pushing the virus deeper into winter, with catastrophic consequences for vulnerable groups.

    Perhaps No 10’s reluctance to boldly shift from a suppress to a protect strategy strikes at the Western health establishment’s most fatal mistake in the pandemic. Everyone from the EU and the British Government to Bill Gates assumed the next big pandemic would be influenza.

    When Covid struck, we went with the only plan we had – a flu gameplan that overlooked the most simple lesson of previous coronavirus outbreaks, not least SARS, which ripped through Asian care homes and super spread in hospitals: protect the vulnerable. Unsurprisingly, up to a quarter of British Covid victims have caught coronavirus in hospital. Care homes account for more than half of Covid-related UK deaths. That the virus is again spiralling in nursing homes (detected in 43 and counting this month) is a scandal.

    Perhaps the failure is so breathtakingly basic that the politicians can’t quite face it. Or perhaps the experts just hate to be wrong. Take Prof Neil Ferguson – who has over the last 15 years found a nice little niche modelling pandemics with data collected from historical flu outbreaks. His notorious Report 9 was based on a modified flu simulation that failed to incorporate insights from previous coronavirus pandemics. But far from recanting his doom-mongering modelling, he merely insists lockdown didn’t come quickly enough. Such stupendous self-delusion at the top table doesn’t bode well for the future.

    1. 323778+ up ticks,
      Morning S,
      “Doesn’t bode well for the future” should have been realised back in the mid 70s & especially these past 3 decades & double especially more so, since the 24/6/2016.
      ALL to be confirmed by the mayday 9 month delay.
      Treachery by the truckload.
      And still the political toxic trio coalition party found supporter / voters as the Country went into free fall.

    2. We need to be looking very carefully at Sweden.

      When it has sorted out its problems with immigration will Sweden become the top economic force in the EU when all the other countries have destroyed their economies with lockdowns?

    3. I have to disagree with you about the testing. What is its Purpose? If a person is ill whatever their age they will, i am sure, stay at home until they are better. what does it matter what they are ill with? This virus will be around now probably for ever in one form or another, it will, and probably already has mutated and is most certainly on the wane, I.e., number of deaths way down. Testing is an utter shambles with some driving miles away from their homes and they are quite likely less than 60% Covid19 specific (as advised by two doctor friends in the health service across the road from us).

      This whole lockdown, local and national, 6 only people gatherings, wear a mask when shopping/travelling, rise in infections is just to scare and control the populace and it’s done too good a job. People even walk along on their own wearing a mask and drive their cars with nobody else in it wearing one. Extraordinary.

        1. The thing that really pees me off is the fact that the Government is shovelling millions at testing which is of extremely dubious benefit. I sometimes wonder if the present administration wishes to lose the next General Election so our dearly beloved ‘opposition’ really finds out the meaning of “Sorry, there’s no money left”….

          1. Interesting your comment about the next GE. I wrote to my MP (again!) recently and asked him if the government was hoping someone would call for a vote of “ no confidence” in the hopes it would bring on a GE to get them out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. No reply.

          2. How any sane individual could vote that they have confidence in this omnishambles government of zero talent is unfathomable.
            If there was such a no confidence vote it should get an overwhelming majorty of people who say:
            “In the name of God, go.”
            As relevant now as it was then.

            20 April 1653, London, England
            It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
            Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
            Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
            Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
            Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
            Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
            Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
            Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
            I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
            Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
            In the name of God, go!

          6. I suppose it depends what you mean by lasting long; he “served” a little under 5 years as Lord Protector.

            Of the 54 people who have served as PM since 1900 only 25 served longer than Cromwell did as LP.

            BJ is still in situ, 55 if you include him.

          7. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have politicians with that level of commitment to their country – let alone his rhetorical powers.
            When I was a child, Old Noll was a baddie. Nowadays, he’s becoming my hero. Let’s face it, life in general and Christmas in particular is now being ruined by people without an ounce of his honesty or style.
            They are doing it to us out of cowardice; whatever you think of Cromwell he was no coward.

      2. When I went down with the plague in February, there was no way I could have gone anywhere! It takes a lot to stop me walking my dog, but that did.

        1. Hope you recovered well Conway, your dog too if not able to go out for walkies. (Do you remember Barbara was it Woodhouse who used to be on TV training dogs? She was brilliant). I had some kind of lurgy mid January and took to bed for 3/4 days, not like me at all. Affected me for some weeks with tiredness and lethargy so could well have been”the” virus.

          1. Yes, thanks. I do remember Barbara Woodhouse. She thought there were only problem owners 🙂 I think the plague was out and about months before it was admitted. Friends of mine were ill with all the symptoms before and over Christmas. Another friend was ill with the same symptoms just before me.

    4. Am I missing something? Surely flu and coronavirus are equally nasty if you are frail.
      Basic good manners mean you stay away from elderly or sick friends and family.

    1. The BBC have kicked the whities’ off the programme.
      Another reason to make the BBC pay to view.
      The problem might be, that if you didn’t watch such programmes you might be arrested.

      1. Maybe the BBC should be entirely funded by BAMES?

        I mentioned this a couple of days ago.

        That’s another programme i shall not bother to watch – not because the presenters will be BAME but because I enjoyed the badinage between Tuffers, Sue and Matt.

        1. I loved every version of the programme, from David Vine, Cliff Morgan and Henry Cooper to David Coleman, Gareth Edwards and Emlyn Hughes, but I stopped watching it when the bland Barker, the unfunny Dawson, and the terminally irritating Tufnel moved in.

    2. I usually record it so that when I watch it I can FF over Matt ‘Look At Me’ Dawson.

      I wonder if either of the new captains will be a woman – if so, she would be the first in fifty years.

  33. So how is Sweden getting on, as I understand it their schools never closed and I don’t suppose they have all this testing malarkey

  34. Ofcom ‘whitewash’ (so to speak) concerning Britain’s Got Talent’ Diversity BLM routine as matter is not to be pursued.

    Fairly typical extract from their report: ‘In Ofcom’s view, this subject matter and the way it was portrayed in the programme was suitable for a family audience. We took into account that the performance, which was an artistic and symbolic
    response to significant contemporary events, did not include graphic images and offensive language.
    We considered any references to violence in the routine were inexplicit and highly stylised.’

    1. I’ve just had some “guidelines” about Remembrance Sunday ceremonies for the 8th November. It was said that if people want to lay BLM wreaths they should be allowed in the interests of diversity! So if the BNP wanted to lay a wreath, that would be okay because they offer an alternative to Left wing, sell out views, then? Thought not.

    1. “… more and more local lock-downs are on the way”

      But only in areas were there was a high Leave vote.*
      Followed by Boris selling us out 🙁
      Maybe it’s just me.

      ETA: *Today’s announcement of a lock-down in the Leave voting North East.

  39. Good morning my friends

    I expect many of us who have signed the petition about illegal immigration/refugee rubber boats in the English Channel have received an e-mail – from which I quote:

    When will this petition be debated?

    Petition debates were cancelled in March because of Covid-19 and social distancing measures. The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs that looks at e-petitions submitted on petition.parliament.uk) are waiting to be able to schedule this petition for a debate as soon as these debates are resumed in the Autumn. We will let you know as soon as this petition is scheduled for a debate in Parliament.

    Last night Nigel Farage was again speaking on video from the Channnel where the French navy was still escorting the illegals into English territorial waters and then leaving them for the Border Farce to take to Britain.

    Nigel Farage’s conclusion is that Priti Patel and the government have given up completely and the MSM is no longer interested. Nothing will be done until January 1st and even then it will be difficult with zero cooperation from the French.

    1. ‘Morning, Rastus.

      IOW that petition, like many others, will be lost in the back of a filing cabinet.

      1. Good morning, Peddy

        These petitions were meant to give the impression that the government were interested in what the electorate thinks. The truth of the matter is it was a meaningless gesture to offer petitions because the politicians do not give a toss about what the indigenous population thinks and won’t respond any way.

        I am sure that we all remember Chemistry lessons at school where one liquid in a pipette was added drop by drop into a jar with another liquid in it. Nothing happened until a final drip set in motion a violent reaction.

        How many more drips of immigration before everything explodes?

        1. That procedure was titration, aka tit-ration.

          It’s not the drips of immigration we have to worry about, but the tits in the Govt.

        3. And, as I have said before, they are never debated in Parliament, but in a separate small room when half a dozen MPs speak for and half a dozen against. At the end of this meeting, the Chairman concludes “This matter has been debated”. Nothing further is done about the petition, except to email the signatories to tell them that “The matter has been debated”.

        1. It all sounds so stereotypical and a bit one-eyed. My sister does exactly the same and she’s lived In Greece for 40 years!

          1. Well yes. I can see that there is another side – but in this instance the govt. of the country (in fact parliament, quangos and all) couldn’t organise the shag mentioned!

      3. Yes. One becomes outraged at how useless the place is, because, although living elsewhere, the UK was home and one wants the best for the place.

    2. “…much as I loathe pretty much everything Johnson’s stand-in adversary Angela Rayner stands for, it was impossible to ignore the fact that every accusation she made was justified.”

      I bet she didn’t call for the nonsense to be stopped and a return to normal.

  41. Hello again, my Nottler Friends,.

    Any errors in the list below? Anyone else want to be added to it?

    (Please let me know if there are any errors and I shall correct them)

    2nd January………..Poppiesmum (1947)
    7th January ………..Lady of the Lake
    8th January………….Rough Common
    16th January……….Legal Beagle (1941)
    18th January……….BugSpattered Knees
    23rd January ………Damask Rose
    27th January……….Citroen 1
    11th February ……..Phizzee (1964)
    22nd February……..Grizzly (1951)
    28th February……..Jeremy Morfey
    29th February………Ped
    5th March……………Sue Macfarlane
    8th March……………Geoff Graham
    26th March………….Caroline (1962)
    27th March………….Maggiebelle
    27th March………….Fallick Alec
    19th April…………….Devonian in Kent
    9th June……………..Johnny Norfolk (1947)
    9th June …………….Horace Pendleton
    23rd June………….. Oberlieutenant
    25th June …………..corimmoblie
    1st July……………….Rastus (1946)
    12th July……………..David Wainwright
    18th July……………..lacoste
    19th July……………..Ndovu
    26th July……………..Delboy (1936)
    29th July……………..Lewis Duckworth (1944)
    3rd August…………..Molamola
    10th August………….ourmaninmunich (1967)
    7th September……..Araminta Smade
    11th September….. Peddy
    12th September …..Ready Eddy
    13th September……Anne
    15th September……Ververyveryoldfella
    26th September……Feargal the Cat
    7th October………….Bob 3 (1960)
    11th October ……….Hardcastle Craggs (1944)
    .25th October………..Sue Edison (1955)
    1st December……….Sean Stanley-Adams (1956)
    6th December………Duncan Mac (1943)
    21st December……..Elsie Bloodaxe (1945)
    E&OE

        1. You flatterer, you. (It’s all done with make-up, hair dye, mascara and vanishing cream, Peddy. A woman’s charms, and all that.)

          :-))

          1. You missed all that year’s excitements.
            I hope Father Christmas could get fodder for his reindeer without using up his points.

          2. I may have missed some of the excitements in 1945, Annie, but I am responsible for several of them. You see, my parents enjoyed a bit of hanky-panky in March of that year and in April Mum’s GP confirmed that I was on the way. When news of my impending arrival reached Mr Hitler’s bunker it was the last straw for him and he committed suicide!

            :-))

      2. You never will be the youngest, Bob3, because Ped was born on February 29, so only has a birthday every four years!

      3. Do you remember when the infuriated Kent attacks the Oswald, the effete servant of Regan and the Duke of Cornwall part of his abuse is:

        Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!—My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the wall of a jakes with him.—Spare my gray beard, you wagtail?

        1. Not anywhere as well read as you, Rastus.

          My avatar name was bestowed upon me by Stig. A portmanteau of my name Phil and Gizzee.

    10. Hi Rastus: 8th January…….RoughCommon (same as Elvis Presley, Shirley Bassey, Stephen Hawking…)

        1. Hi G,
          Nothing’s come through 🙁
          Can you say what address you have for me then delete it again from here?

      2. We have 650 in Wetmonster.
        Almost 800 in the other place.
        And over 5million uk civil servants.
        Not including various city mayors committees and local councillors.
        And between them all they eff up everything they come into contact with.

          2. Well aware of this Elsie, but the funds are rabidly diminishing. And due to so much recent unemployment the coffers will be drained in no time at all.
            I wonder if the BBC might take a few on………….oh yes now i remember I’ve notice they already have………..
            fasands of ’em

      1. No. Market research indicates it drives pedants nuts so those that don the Ladybird cloak tend to get extra kicks by avoiding using them where appropriate and misusing them when not…

          1. I once saw a huge sign outside a pick-your-own strawberry farm in Germany: Erdbären!

            Strawberries are Erdbeeren (lit. earth-berries [because they grow on the ground])
            Erdbären is a non-word, but could be construed as earth-bears (aardvark?)

            The pronunciation is very similar, but not exactly the same.

            I’ve often wondered whether that was a mistake or a very rare German attempt at a pun.

          2. The first joke/pun I cracked in German was during a school exchange to Dulmen, Westphalia, in the early 1960s. Playing with my exchange pal in an old white-washed barn dressed in my school uniform I brushed against the wall and smudged my blazer. In English my German friend exclaimed “Oh, your jacket!” In German, I replied “Ich weiss!”

          3. Das ist unheimlich lustig, Elsie. What did your friend say?

            I used to crack one about Weisswurst to my patients.

          4. My WEISS joke may have been a corny one, Peddy, but yours was WURST (worse). To answer your question, I have no recollection of my friend’s reply.

          6. Yes, I know, from the Dutch. The point I was making is that if you presented a German with the expression Erdbär, after thinking about it he would think that you meant an aardvark. The beauty of German is that if you don’t know the real word for something, you can construct a meaning out of smaller words & get your message across.

          7. My favourite German compound word I learned at O Level was Strassenbahnhaltestelle. Street-railway-halting-position: Tram stop!

            Our teacher also quoted the classic: “Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft”.

            Mercifully, we were not compelled to memorise this one.

    3. Morning all.
      That reminds me of myself and my old mate who i am still i touch with almost daily.
      We had a string line and cans across our back gardens from his bedroom window to our bathroom window.

  43. Coronavirus major incident declared in North Yorkshire. 17 September 2020.

    A major incident has been declared by officials in North Yorkshire following “a surge” in coronavirus cases in the past fortnight.

    North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum (NYLRF) said it was reinstating “full emergency mode”.

    The body, which is made up of representatives from the police and local authorities, said Harrogate and Selby were of particular concern. Parts of Craven and Scarborough have also seen a sharp rise in cases.

    These local clampdowns are multiplying; there is even one for London being mooted. This of course implies that the takeover is now close. My guess is Sunday but they will probably issue a countrywide standstill order before the final move.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/17/coronavirus-major-incident-declared-north-yorkshire/

    3. It was bound to happen. North Yorkshire’s southern boundary is a festering conglomeration of Covid, TB, Typhus and STD hotspots. Places of diversity such as Leeds, Bradford, Burnley, Keighley, Blackburn etc. with their third world hygiene and social habits. I’m surprised it wasn’t infested sooner.

    1. The only column in your table that is missing is Brain Fog.
      The entries for this would be Common No No
      As you mental capacity is obviously 100% you can eliminate COVD-19 from your self diagnosis.
      However in view of the other symptoms that you can clearly recall, your treatment regime involving alcohol will help you to forget that might possibly have had a cold or flu.

      Cheers!

      🥂🍻

      1. I think you meant “The only column line in your table that is missing…”, Angie. It totally confused me for a while.

  45. Donald Trump accused of sexual assault by former model Amy Dorris. 17 September 2020.

    A former model has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament more than two decades ago, in an alleged incident that left her feeling “sick” and “violated”.

    In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997.

    She has just recalled this incident after twenty years due to a traumatic deposit into her bank account!

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/donald-trump-accused-of-sexual-assault-by-former-model-amy-dorris

      2. Big man mouthing off to his buddies while being recorded without his knowledge.

        Doesn’t everyone moderate their language in the circumstance they find themselves in?

        I know Charlotte Church had the voice of an angel but she had a foul mouth on her.

      2. If the vote goes the same way as the 2016 vote then the American electoral system may prevent a Democrat win.
        Once again, it’s fingers crossed both sides of the pond.
        16 years of Clinton & Obama is worrying 🙁

    7. They all deserve what they get. Does anyone believe this latest, conveniently timed allegation?

      I see that Trump is now trying to correct repudiate the CDC chairmans comment about a vaccine not being widely available until mid to late 2021. Deeper and deeper into the depths they go in their invented

      Does anyone else remember elections where the parties presented a manifesto describing what they would do?

  46. Had a message from an ex usher friend. One other the solicitors we know is giving up the law as it’s “a bloody mess”.

    He says people are now waiting up to 3 years for a trial.

    The farce continues to grow unabated.

      1. He’s big enough and ugly enough to make his own decisions I think. If not he’ll soon find out. :-)). I think mummy will look after him anyway.

  49. Well, my day has been well and truly made! We’ve just had a Spitfire fly over the house on its way from Inverness to Glasgow via Stirling and Cumbernauld! I’ve never seen one in flight before nor heard one! Absolutely fantastic and a glorious sunny day!

      3. The Vulcan was quite noisy! A few years ago, one of the last flying Vulcans did a display at Kemble. You couldn’t miss that sound!

        1. A Vulcan went over us when we were sailing near Jura and the noise was incredible! It flew so low we actually ducked!

          3. ‘Evening Sue – many years ago Concorde flew over our home to land at Duxford. We heard the roar long before it came into sight, we were in the garden at the time, and and it flew directly over our roof – it almost blocked out the entire sky. It was the most amazing sight. The noise was deafening, but the whole experience was so uplifting, exhilarating. I do love spitfires, by the way, but very, very occasionally one can gave too much of a good thing!

          5. I know what you mean about blotting out the sun! And yes, it was exhilarating, despite being a bit frightening. A 14 foot Enterprise dinghy in the Sound of Jura, with the tide race and this huge, noisy triangle looming above us! Truly spectacular!

        2. My son Dan (Long Newnton) says that the now aborted 747s fly low over their house en route to Kemble. He and Di are worried that they might actually touch the roof!!

          4. Davis-Monthan AFB just south of Tucson – USAF graveyard.
            Impressive, even on Google Earth. It’s where they break up B-52s etc.

          5. In the 70s Central Flying School was at Little Rissington (now it’s at Cranwell) and Kemble was the satellite airfield where the Red Arrows (under Ray Hanna) were based.

        3. Aged ten, I was at the Battle of Britain airshow at Syerston, Notts when a prototype of the Vulcan crashed. Can still visualise it today.

        4. I was training at RAF St Athan in ’72 and we shared the base with a Vulcan Squadron. Everything stopped when one took off, you could hear nothing else and the ground fair trembled.

        5. On it’s last flight round GB the Vulcan flew low over the NW.
          Vulcan or BoB flight a few years earlier, tough call which sounded best.

    3. Amazing. Once a long time ago I saw one in action at a Biggin Hill air show. In action as in flying of course, not bombing, though it was obvious why they were so useful for that.

          3. When they are looping the loop over our home, and the engines cut out, and then rev up with a cough-tick-tick roar so they can accelerate skywards for the next loop, it is a bit nerve-wracking hoping that the engines will start and that they won’t drop through our roof!

        1. Quite often two, William.

          Practice for two is allowed
          Wed/Fri…..in Summer.
          Winter ….only one is allowed.

          2. I don’t know how true the following is but:

            In the days of spend, spend, spend our
            local Council….part of the County governing
            body, was determined to rid the County of its
            £87 million surplus…ASAP……..boy! did they
            succeed!
            Back to details…..allegedly NCC wanted to
            charge Duxford for the overflying of the two
            ‘Spits’…….
            allegedly NCC was told to FO……with bells on!

      1. I missed the chance to see them years ago at Leuchars! Don’t remember why I couldn’t go!

        1. The UK only has one flying example, it belongs to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF). They have a website which lists their flying display schedule each summer season, 2021 may bring them your way.

          2. Only two flying examples worldwide, I believe (the other is Vera in Canada). Just Jane does taxi runs at East Kirkby. I was there one day when they were running the engines up for a test. Fantastic!

      2. Spot on, Harry. Unbelievable.

        In 1944, I was taken out to see an outbound 1,000 bomber raid flying over Stanmore.- most of which were Lancs. The noise was terrific.

        1. RAF Stanmore is now housing, although I appreciate that raid wouldn’t have originated there. The Leefe Robinson is still there.

      3. I was sitting at Stowe Corner at Silverstone in 1987 — at the British Grand Prix —when a Lancaster, accompanied by a Hurricane and a Spitfire, flew over. The sound of those Merlin engines was memorable.

        1. In the odds & sods folder on the old laptop I have a video clip of the BoB flight at Oshkosk.
          Ignoring the American nonsense, the commentator got it right…
          “Sit back and listen to some Merlin music!”
          The sound and the video more than made up for the setting.

      1. Yes! Did it come down your way? We have had reason to thank the health service this year for the safe delivery of our very premature twin grandsons, the care of their mother and the speed of my diagnosis, treatment and follow up for breast cancer. The covid disaster – not so much!

        1. No! Or if it did I did not see, or hear it. There was some blurb in the paper but no itinerary. Even then I saw the newspaper blurb 2 days late.

    9. We see and hear Spitfires quite often. A few months ago a B17B Flying Fortress flew over our house. It too has a very distinctive engine note, in its case Pratt & Witney Twin Wasp engines.

    10. “I’ve never seen one in flight before nor heard one!”

      Unlucky. It’s commonplace in my neck of the woods. [“As you continually remind us!” they cried.]

      1. The sound fills me with nostalgia,
        William……for those times when we
        believed in ourselves, our abilities
        and our capabilities!

    11. When I was sitting in MJ772 waiting to take off at Biggin Hill, it was a thrill to hear the ATC say to another aircraft, “you are cleared after the Spitfire” 🙂

  52. “A lorry driver who left a woman with a broken spine after crashing into her car as he checked his phone has avoided jail despite previously killing a motorist through careless driving.

    Cary Gordon, 58, hit the stranded Mercedes on the A34 in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, on August 5 last year as he looked at Google Maps while driving an HGV.

    The female victim in her 50s is still recovering after suffering a spinal fracture and cuts and bruises on her arms and one of her legs.

    Gordon, from West Sussex, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving at Oxford crown court. The crash also caused thousands of pounds of damage to the roadside barrier.

    He was sentenced to 14 months suspended for two years and 150 hours of community service on September 8.”

    From the Grimes – guess the hue of the lorry driver.

      1. “disqualified from driving for two years, had his licence endorsed and will have to take an extended re-test”

          3. An “extended” re-test means he would have to sit his HGV test again too – having first shelled out for the mandatory training (you cannot just roll up and take an HGV test nowadays).

            Then there is the question of whether any company would wish to employ him. One fatality would make most employers think hard, two would probably be an immediate “no”.

          4. Indeed.
            But why even give that maniac the opportunity? This man has killed and could easily have killed again, he is clearly an irresponsible halfwit who
            should never again be allowed behind the wheel of a large truck. Bad enough that he could be driving a car in a few years time.

            I knew that bit about the extended test, my son drives HGV’s and he has to be extremely careful over all sorts of legal requirements particularly regarding safety. At times he’s a bit of a pain to drive, because one gets a running commentary about violations!

          5. Yes, never drive a professional driver – or you will get nothing but criticism!

            I wouldn’t want to be giving him back his licence after two fatalities either. On the other hand I’m not sure whether – having given someone a driving licence – there is any option to say that they can’t retake their HGV test; the only usual reasons for revoking the HGV part of the licence are medical. The extended re-test is clearly intended to deter. And although I’ve heard of driving bans of up to 5 years (and I would have thought that this case merited it) I’m not sure if a lifetime ban is on the statute book… maybe it should be.

            In view of his age, his conviction, the cost of re-qualifying and the dislike of haulage companies for drivers with fatal accidents in their history (apart from anything else insurers have a morbid horror of fatal accidents so they do terrible things to the premiums) I think it is unlikely that he will ever get behind the wheel of a truck again…. I would certainly hope not.

          6. I hope you’re right.

            I also hope he can’t buy/get hold of a lorry. I would not trust him not to carry on driving, even without a licence.

          7. It’s very difficult to prevent an individual from driving illegally – because vehicles are checked but it’s not always easy to know who drives them and you don’t need a driving licence to own, tax, MOT or insure a car – though for insurance you do need at least one named driver with a licence. The number of underage drivers involved in incidents shows just how hard they are to track down. But they are not all young, check out this story: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/driver-car-no-driving-licence-police-devon-uffculme-a9198896.html

            But it would be a lot more difficult with a truck. Quite apart from the capital cost of purchase and the ongoing cost of keeping it on the road (and those bills stack up, you need regular work to keep a truck running); a truck needs to be attached to an operator’s licence and that needs a certificate of competence, a place to park the truck (not in a street), a maintenance capability (and they will inspect the workshop) or agreement with a bona-fide maintenance provider (not Joe Bloggs in a back street) and an HGV licence – a clean one if it is your first ops licence application. You also need the ops licence to book an MOT for a truck. VOSA check trucks against ops licences and they check trucks with pull-over inspections as well as cameras on a very frequent basis. There are two place within 10 miles of here (on different trunk routes) that are used by VOSA, usually for a whole day once, or sometimes twice, a month, waving in every HGV passing. Drivers hate them, but they do keep the worst of the cowboys off the road. You can’t make a living with a truck if you have to stick to byways.

            I fear that this guy may very well get back behind the wheel of a car, but it should be possible to keep him away from trucks.

          8. I certainly hope so.

            I have my doubts that the dumper trucks that I see on traveller sites comply with all the requirements, I hope that the checks you mention get them taken of the roads.

            On a positive note, the chances of the travelling community taking him on as a driver must be somewhat remote.

            }:-))

          9. Vehicles used exclusively in construction, in quarries and in road repairs, (like vehicles used on farms) are not always licensed for use on roads. [They are also permitted to use duty-reduced (it isn’t duty free and hasn’t been for years) – red – diesel; it is a little known fact that more red diesel is used by non-farming businesses than by farming, but that’s a red herring.] Checks on these are less frequent, but then again they are not likely to kill random road users and fellow workers tend to take a dim view of anyone who uses sub-standard kit. If an accident does happen on a site it will be HSE rather than VOSA who are involved but of the two I think I would rather tangle with VOSA – and I’d rather not take on either. Also it is not easy to get involved in that sort of work unless you are well known to those who are there already. Likewise with the travelling community, they don’t exactly welcome strangers.

            Yes VOSA do pick up travellers’ vehicles from time to time and slap prohibition notices on them or impound them as required – but mostly they are surprisingly well-maintained and usually legal (according to a VOSA inspector I used to know when I worked in road haulage). Apparently keeping their vehicles legal is a priority – as without them they are unable to get around and they also have a surprising amount of interest in the safety of their children. Of course there are exceptions – but then there are plenty of apparently respectable people who don’t abide by the rules either.

            I spent 10 years working in international road haulage; one of the guys I knew had grown up in a travelling fairground family. He wasn’t only a competent and careful truck driver, he could mend just about anything too and took pride in doing it well.

          10. Very well explained, Jen. One minor nitpick (time passes, eh?) is that VOSA no longer exists, having been subsumed by DVSA some years back.

          11. 2014, some years after I left the industry. On the other hand the last time I saw the guys at the A5 site their hi-vis jackets still had VOSA, printed on them!

            You may have noticed that the attack dogs were out last night. And the people who should know better (and some who should be policing their comments) were upvoting them. I may not be around for much longer. Because I really can’t take accusations about sleeping with clients as being acceptable. Nor can I accept that people no part in discussion but simply pile in to do nothing but abuse – and are patted on the back for doing so.

      1. My thoughts are that a black judge wouldn’t be so lenient against a black defendant. Provided the judge isn’t a Marxist.

        Good afternoon, Flower. Hot as blazes here !

      2. Absurd. The druggie should be cut into pieces and buried on concrete. The father left alone.

        This is why no one trusts the police. They go for the easy subjects.

    7. Colour of the lorry driver doesn’t matter. The sentence is paltry.

      The injured woman has suffered horrible injuries that may affect her ability to walk, let alone work. Her property is a write off and the insurer will never return the actual value, always the lowest possible, so you cannot replace like for like.

      Her life is disrupted for months. His suffers no consequences. He should be made to pay for her vehicle and the barrier in it’s entirety, banned from driving – he’ll have to find another job

  54. Headline in the DT:
    “Swathes of public to be refused coronavirus tests under rationing plans”

    Should be corrected to:

    “Swathes of public refuse coronavirus tests because of irrational plans”

  56. I think this one slipped by the forum earlier in the week. The authors (Brexit Party) think BJ should have gone nuclear at Christmas, as does our Rastus.

    Now Boris has the moral high ground, he must ditch his wholly wretched Brexit deal

    The PM insists his deal is only marred by the EU’s “extreme interpretation”, yet even a plain reading shows what a liability it is for us

    BEN HABIB, JONATHAN SAXTY

    Lest we forget, when it comes to Brexit, the EU has not negotiated in good faith. Under Article 50, the UK had the right to leave the EU pursuant to its own constitutional requirements. Both in its collusion with anti-Brexit forces and its attempt to partition the UK with a border down the Irish Sea, Brussels has acted in fundamental breach of its obligation to allow us to do so.

    Notwithstanding its grandstanding about the rule of law, it has repeatedly made clear the UK must pay a hefty price for its democratically-determined decision to leave the EU. Its treatment of the UK has been contemptuous. That it should now get on a high horse about Britain “breaking international law” is risible.

    Writing in the Telegraph over the weekend, the Prime Minister is still in denial about the Withdrawal Agreement (WA), describing it to be an extremely good one. He claimed that it is Brussels that is causing trouble by threatening to use an “extreme interpretation” of the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) to impose “a full-scale border down the Irish sea” which could “carve up our country”.

    The truth is an extreme interpretation is not required to reach this conclusion. It is all there to be read, in plain English. If that were not in itself sufficient, the Government was warned in January, by the civil service, that the WA would enable the EU to claim jurisdiction over “large amounts” of UK state aid policy once transition ended. It warned the agreement would not only impact subsidy decisions related to Northern Ireland but “reach back” into the rest of the UK.

    Perhaps Boris Johnson could be forgiven for championing his WA during last year’s election. He had few choices and many in Parliament, including in his own Party, were working to defeat Brexit. But he had a golden opportunity after his landslide victory, before the WA was signed, to ditch it. He did not.

    There is not a single thing in the 572-page WA which is to the UK’s advantage. Some claim at least Article 184 requires the EU to negotiate a free trade agreement in good faith. This is inaccurate. The obligation is linked to a set of terms in a political declaration which – if adopted – would bind the UK into EU state aid, employment, competition, environmental and tax laws; committed to fixed fishing quotas; and leave the Court of Justice of the European Union with significant ongoing sway over the UK.

    The fact is that the provenance of the WA prohibited it from being anything other than a liability for the UK. Much has been made about the Prime Minister’s apparent attempt to breach international law by undermining this abomination of an agreement. Those who are criticising him are missing the point. The EU’s behaviour over the last four years has rendered any obligations it may claim the UK has as null and void.

    The biggest and most important contractual obligation the Prime Minister has is to the British people to deliver his manifesto pledges on Brexit. These are to take back control of our laws, our borders, our cash and our fishing. A failure to do so would be a betrayal of democracy itself. A plain reading of the WA reveals that it does not deliver these promises, it undermines them.

    The Internal Market Bill, if passed, would be a big step in the right direction but it does not go far enough. It is time for the Prime Minister to admit the entire WA is wretched and to ditch it. He has the moral high ground. All he now needs is the political will.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/14/now-boris-has-moral-high-ground-must-ditch-wholly-wretched-brexit/

  57. While noodling through the DT over a cuppa, this item caught my eye: “Police ask Extinction Rebellion protesters to stop going floppy when they are arrested”
    Too right, that’s Plod’s job. The Fuzz don’t need the competition.

  58. While noodling through the DT over a cuppa, this item caught my eye: “Police ask Extinction Rebellion protesters to stop going floppy when they are arrested”
    Too right, that’s Plod’s job. The Fuzz don’t need the competition.

      1. Exactly, that’s just the ones who have been put in the hotels. Lots of others creating a shithole near you.

    4. Why are we accommodating them?

      What about we have them stay in a naval camp? One on the big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in. On the French side.

    5. I’m sure they’re giving soldiers (and airmen) their P45s as we write to make room for more. Can’t have us able to defend ourselves, can we?

  60. Slowly, slowly…

    Edward Colston statue: Cases sent to Crown Prosecution Service

    The cases of four people suspected of criminal damage over the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston have been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

    Five others have been offered ‘restorative justice’. The force suggested this could entail a fine and some form of community service.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-54191039

    2. “…community service…” = pulling down statues as demanded by the bames – but under perlice supervision…

      1. Ever thought of moving to a more normal part of the UK TB?
        Might do your blood pressure a world of good.

          1. I haven’t upvoted any of your comments over on Breitbart if that’s what you mean TB.
            Much as I normally agree with you, sort of.

          3. This disqus account goes back to the days of the BT/DW forums.
            Last time I posted on here Middleland banned me after my first two comments.
            When disqus switched from channels to blogs seems my ID banned slipped through.

          9. Indeed.
            Keeping things civil can sometimes be difficult, but without dissenting view what’s the point?

          10. I miss the days of the BT/DW (English) fora.
            The days when left and right interacted.
            Before “Divide & Conquer” replaced them with polarised Left & Right fora.

          11. There’s your confusion though. There is no Left and right, not really. There’s the common sense normal people, like as are here and there are the control freakery fascist oppressors trying to dictate to the normals.

          12. Brexit changed the playing field, the Extinction rebellion/ Greens ploughed that field and then the BLM people sowed salt in the ground.

            Polarisation +++

          17. Pushing my luck is what livens up an otherwise quiet afternoon on the Further/Far Right forums GG.
            Unless my memory is playing tricks, Baggie caused Ndovu more problems than I ever would.

          22. Yet this is not a far right forum. Your desperation to label shows you as a Lefty. A nasty one. Stop labelling, stop insulting, you’re in the minority amongst decent civil people.

          23. Usual Further right/Far right ad homs w.
            Check out election results, GE and EU and get back to we Centre right.

          25. Your very civil reply gave me the option of being more respectful of Kippers or being banned.
            My equally civil reply resulted in my immediate banning 🙂
            No complaint here, it was back to Breitbart.

          31. I don’t have a problem with being upset by other Nottlers, as long as it’s done with some humour and their opposing viewpoint is reasonably argued and the upsetters are not surprised if I bite back.

            I can be fairly sure I’ve rubbed most Nottlers up the wrong way at some point since, GG started the forum.

          4. True – but, at least, for months, yer French have had a consistent line. And the plonk is £1.40 a LITRE… Which helps.

          6. We did, but it only lasted a short while.

            As far as I can see the French are handling this much, much better than the UK.
            For example

            HG is a member of a UTL group.

            She was required to register and pay on-line.
            She got an immediate acknowledgement and was told she would be contacted with a date and time to confirm and collect paperwork.
            Her appointment time was given in good time to change the appointment if needed. She was in and out in under 5 minutes of the time of appointment. The official electronic stuff had arrived before we got home.

            We have had to change our GP because the old one moved away from the area. We telephoned to register. First appointment offered next day, we were busy so accepted the following day.

            Double over-lapped appointments and full medical history review plus general check-ups plus necessary presciptions.

            NHS envy of the world? Hardly.

          8. When the NHS is good, eg for emergencies, it is outstanding, but having experienced both, 99 times out of 100 I think i would opt for France, even with the language difficulties.

          11. Similar to the University of the Third Age U3A in the UK, I think it stands for Université de Temps Libre. All volunteer teachers/facilitators.

          12. To be fair to my GP, I telephoned this morning to ask if I could make an appointment, was phoned back about an hour later and got an appointment for this afternoon. I was the only person in the waiting room. The most annoying thing was having to answer the same set of questions (do you have a temperature, do you have a new, persistent cough, have you or anyone in your household had a Covid 19 test or been in contact with someone with C19 in the last five days, etc, etc) THREE times! First the receptionist when I requested an appointment, secondly the doctor when I spoke to her on the phone and finally when I turned up for my appointment before I was allowed in. When asked if I had a temperature, I replied “only 98.4” – that didn’t go down well! Despite pointing out I’d already answered these questions on more than one occasion TODAY, I had to go through the rigmarole again (including the question about temperature because I hadn’t given the “right” answer the first time) before the door was unlocked. I said I had a mask with me and would put it on before I came in. I was told to PUT IT ON NOW! So I did and when the harridan receptionist looked through the window to check I pointed to it – I may have used more than one finger to do so!

          18. In the odds & sods folder I have a good “hedgehog carnage” video clip if I ever get round to posting it.

    2. The vast majority of cases have mild symptoms. Tell us how many hospital admissions and deaths from Covid.

  63. I am off – the MR has completed the concise cryptic in ten minutes – she’s getting the drift of crosswords.

    A nice glass in hand – pork (filet mignon), new potatoes and trombetti coming up shortly when Cook gets back to work.

    A very good day, today. Weather and health wise

    A demain.

    1. How many voted for Batten back in December’s GE ogga ?
      Fewer than voted for the Monster Raving Loony Party?

          1. He was a perfectly good UKIP leader. Most people don’t have the courage to support publicly what they know to be true though.

          3. Why would they be passing judgement on him as UKIP leader?
            See my second sentence above.

            It’s really not clever to try and needle people with every post. Your jibes are small in every sense of the word and I’m sure you think they are harmless, but I come here to relax, not have some fool needling me about politics after I’ve worked a long day. If I felt like defending my politics, I’d be posting somewhere else. Just eff off, please.

          7. He was good as a figurehead, but a leader? Not really. He wasn’t a team player and failed to nurture a successor. Like all empires, when the emperor left, it fell apart (not helped by infiltration by those who wanted to destroy it).

          8. To be fair, leading UKIP is like herding cats. A lot of people like myself weren’t happy with everything Batten did, but we kept quiet. Others just couldn’t help shooting their mouths off. Same with Farage, and your post is even more relevant to him.

      2. 323778+ up ticks,
        Gerard Batten in 18 months constructed a credible party ongoing as seen and recorded, that triggered farage / bent neC
        all on record.
        So which of the three toxic failures you been supporting or would you rather not say ?

        1. Reluctant Conservative voter last three GE. Who should I have voted for and why?
          If there was a GE tomorrow, who should I vote for?

          1. Don’t vote. It only encourages them. I joined UKIP, voted for them in EUParl and general elections. I even stood for them, in a career threatening move – in the Borough Council elections. I didn’t expect to win, but at least I beat the LibDem candidate. That’s going on my headstone. UKIP was infiltrated by the forces of darkness. I admire ogga1’s staying power, but one needs to know when to let go.

            Last year I would have voted BXP had there been a candidate, despite by then being a member of the Conservative Party. I joined purely to vote for Old Boris as leader. What on earth happened to him? I don’t think he survived the virus. The current PM is actually George Soros in a Boris suit.

          2. Back in 2014/’15 many of us thought UKIP could be contenders. Millions voted for and elected 24 UKIP MEPs, hundreds of councillors, and the only elected MP in their history.
            Those millions, and the rest of us, looked on as Kippers rid themselves of every last one of their elected representatives. Lesson learnt. A vote for Nigel’s party was a vote wasted.

            ETA: “Don’t vote. It only encourages them”
            If you can persuade the Left to do the same I might accept that GG.

          3. Can’t argue with that. But I reiterate that they were infiltrated. For all of Nigel’s good points, he’s a crap judge of character. I don’t think he’s likely to be our saviour. Ever.

          4. Nigel is a good campaigner, nothing more than that.
            If there is a Reform Party, Richard Tice might be a better leader.

          9. I thought Richard Tice showed up well in the run up to the election.

            I wonder if he would have caved in to Boris Johnson by removing TBP candidates in seats where remainer Conservative MPs were standing as Farage did. Farage would at least have got a quid pro quo if Boris had deselected all remainers.

          10. I would like Nigel Farage to be in government but NOT as prime minister.

            Nigel Farage is the best orator we have and it would be splendid if he could work with Owen Paterson, John Redwood and other untainted Conservatives in a new political party but I am probably being unrealistic.

            The fact that Johnson was so eager to be prime minister is probably one of the main reasons why he is failing.

            John Milton’s description of Satan’s arguments in Paradise Lost could well be applied to Boris Johnson: Semblance of worth, not substance.

          11. 323778+ up ticks,
            You have the gall to decry UKIP, after supporting the” in name only” proven ersatz tory party with past leaders / assoc. as
            snappy dresser ( shirt in underpants), major, leg over clegg, the wretch cameron whos approach to animal husbandry left a lot to be desired, mayday who took anti UK treachery to a new high & now johnson the turkish delight / amnesties R me, you have more front than brighton.

          14. I agree with ogga on many points but I find his views on how one should vote when there are no acceptable candidates are not very coherent.

          15. You can vote Labour, but that’s like admitting mental illness.

            You could vote Green, but that’s just laughable.

            You could vote Lib Dem, but as they’re not liberal nor democrats how could you trust *anything* they say if their very name is hypocritical?

            After Brown’s reign of terror ended, Cameron, because he had a weak majority and was a political weathervane did everything wrong for this country. Then May got in and continued this Left wing idiocy.

            Now Boris has a thumping majority based around a solid core issue the country agrees with, then this bonkers virus arrived because of a failure of the WHO to force China to behave.

            What started off well has collapsed to absurdity.

  67. 17 September 2020

    Defund the dons: why we need a new approach to higher education
    By Sam Ashworth-Hayes

    * One in five undergraduates see a negative return on their degree
    * As access has widened, standards in our universities have fallen. The sector is selling students short
    * If universities wish to be political, then they are legitimate objects of political struggle

    In 1999, Tony Blair set the country a target: 50% of the nation’s young people would go to university. Britain would unlock “the genius of the many” rather than relying “on the talents of the few”, and build a society ready for the oncoming technological revolution. Last year, we learned that the target had been met and exceeded. Now that the business of expanding higher education has been completed, we can take a step back and ask whether it’s worked out quite as it was supposed to. And when we find that it hasn’t, we can get on with undoing it.

    Let’s start with the money. While the average returns to a degree are positive – British graduates see an increase in net lifetime earnings of about 20% compared to similar non-graduates – they do not tell the full story. Between fees, taxes, and lost earnings from three years spent on a combination of drinking, partying, and occasionally attending a lecture for a lark, roughly one in five undergraduates see a negative return on their degree.

    Students who don’t benefit from their studies pop up everywhere, but a quick look at average outcomes suggest that they’re likely to be concentrated in certain categories. If you look at the return to a degree, philosophy, English, and sociology all fall well below average. It is probably not a coincidence that American students majoring in philosophy, English, and sociology are among the most favourably disposed towards socialism.

    Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that a society could produce “a very polished, but a very dangerous” group of citizens by giving them “a sense of wants which their education would never teach them to supply”. In Britain today it’s no longer the case that talented people are locked out by the rigid structure of a feudal economy, whatever our graduates tell themselves. Instead we have an overproduction of credentials. The bell curve of talent is the same as it ever was, if not shifted down slightly.

    This is not immediately apparent from the grades graduates receive. If you expand higher education significantly, from the best of the best to the merely ok, you lower the quality of the average student. We would expect the numbers of graduates with lower second degrees to swell. Instead, the proportion of students awarded firsts doubled from 2006 to 2018, while the share getting a 2:2 or below fell 40%.

    It doesn’t take more than basic cynicism to spot the incentives at play. University income is a function of fees and student numbers. Charging lower fees signals lower quality education. Competition on institutional reputation is already fierce. Marking a little less harshly, though? That can be done. So performance goes up as access widens; academic standards are lowered to accommodate the new average.

    The case for defunding academia is not just that the sector sells its students short, piling debt onto them as they pursue the illusion of security. It’s that academia is fundamentally failing to fulfil its mission.

    Universities received a mandate: to educate the nation’s youth, to act as a rite of passage, and an induction into British culture. They then rejected it for one they preferred: upholding and promoting the values of a small elite rather than those of the civilisation that produced them – a civilisation which they are at pains to emphasise their desire to dismantle.

    The idea behind a hands-off approach is to allow free enquiry to thrive, producing academics who will pursue the truth without fear of reprisals. What has happened in practice is that state intervention has been rejected only to be replaced by an internal framework for the policing of research, admissions, speech, and hiring in line with a left of centre consensus, funded by the taxpayer.

    There is no obligation on the right to accept this as somehow inevitable. If universities wish to be political, then they are legitimate objects of political struggle. Academia’s status as funded largely without ideological strings attached is not an immutable feature of the world. If we don’t want universities to become the subject of back-and-forth battles between left and right governments then the cleanest way forward is to remove them from the government’s sphere of influence.

    Defunding academia means removing to the greatest extent possible public subsidies towards the operation and maintenance of universities. If the state wishes to fund basic research in science, or the development of new technologies, then it is at perfect liberty to issue tenders open to private consortia and universities. If it wants to commission an author to write a history explaining why Britain is a uniquely guilty country, then it can do that as well – openly. The matter of actual day-to-day finance can be resolved through alumni donations, bequests, fees, and investments.

    Without the temptations of low interest loans, fewer people would attend university. In particular, we would hope that those students who make a net loss would be directed onto a happier path. The absence of lower ability students would enable universities to restore their standards. And when those universities realise that they’re relying on the future earnings and largesse of those students to survive, they would acquire a sudden and deep interest in their wellbeing.

    But the greatest benefit would be to the universities themselves. When you are not receiving government money, you are not beholden to it. Universities would be free in the sense of being beyond the state, rather than constantly keeping one eye on the need to maintain their funding structure.

    What form the university would take in such a world is uncertain. They might choose to become corporate behemoths churning out low quality degrees – although the disdain of American employers for ‘for profit’ universities suggests that the market would at least provide some discipline. They might choose to remain hotbeds of political activism, a far more palatable outcome when we are not actively subsidising it. The important thing is that they would be totally free to define their own aims and goals, rather than taking those handed down by governments. And that is a worthwhile end in its own right.

    https://capx.co/defund-the-dons-why-we-need-a-new-approach-to-higher-education/

    1. “One in five undergraduates see a negative return on their degree…”

      On the plus side, it keeps them off the unemployment figures for 4-5 years.
      Maggie started that scam back in ’81/’82.

      1. Raising the school leaving age was the start.
        Now they’re trapped in education factories until 18.

        1. Maggie reducing the retirement age for men from 65yo to 60yo was another scam.
          Hiding the true levels of unemployment was what Maggie was all about aa.

          1. Blaming Lady T for anything is comical compared to the malignant, disgusting assault on pensions that Brown carried out.

            He stole from savers to give their carefully saved money to be wasted on public sector pensions.

    2. Universities were used by the Labour party to firstly normalise debt. The massive increase in utterly unfair tuition fees sent millions of students instantly into debt, shifting the cost from the government on to the individual – usually parents, which was the intent.

      Secondly it took a huge number of people off the unemployment register which under Labour was climbing horrifically.

      Now we have a situation where grostesquely overpaid chancellors pontificate about ‘green’ nonsense and woke prattle at massive cost.

  68. Look what has being going on near us!

    Army’s top tank base is hit by coronavirus outbreak after army wives dubbed ‘the Covid queens’ held illegal Botox party
    A group of military wives held a botox party at the Bovington Garrison in Dorset
    Five women tested positive and forced 30 soldiers into isolation for two weeks
    Group had invited a beauty therapist from covid-hit Preston for the treatment

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8739861/Armys-tank-base-hit-coronavirus-outbreak-wives-held-botox-party.html

    1. Sounds grim down there TB. Still no sign of you southerners putting down your keyboards and taking to your feet
      .
      Which is probably why the Left are winning. 🙁

  69. OFCOM has ignored the 23,000 complaints about the recent BGT propaganda programme for BLT and sided with those whose advocate killing whites.

    Ofcom’s key personnel are:

    Chief Executive, Melanie Dawes. She is a Trustee of the Patchwork Foundation, founded by Harris Bokhari, a charity that aims to “promote and encourage the positive integration of disadvantaged and minority communities into British democracy and civil society.

    Board members:
    Maggie Carver, Deputy Chair.
    Jonathan Oxley.
    Graham Mather.
    Ben Verwaayen.
    Tim Suter.
    Bob Downes.
    Angela Dean.
    David Jones.

    A demonstration of taking the knee was justified because no white babies died during the performance.

    At least the Nazis pretended to be doing it for the good of the country.

    3. No pretence with the Nazis. The people voted them in. Hitler loved the German people. The German people loved him. They were sincere.

    4. Initially I rebelled against this nonsense.

      Then I thought: what is ‘wrong’ with it? Their findings were that it was culturally relative. Absolutely fine.

      However, that sets a precedent. Would they agree if we made a dance about blacks selling drugs then stabbing one another? Or blacks killing police officers? Or blacks vandalising a statue? Or a black throwing a bicycle into a horse?

      Something tells me they wouldn’t like that. Then that exposes their double standards and another quango can go.

  70. Children with a runny nose do not have coronavirus, expert insists, as demand for tests soars by 150%. 17 September 2020.

    Children with a runny nose do not have coronavirus and should not be getting tested, an expert has warned, as demand soared by 150 per cent.

    Prof Tim Spector, who developed the Covid-19 symptom tracker app, revealed that children under 18 displayed a completely different array of symptoms to adults and that if they had a cough or congestion were almost certainly suffering from the common cold that is sweeping through schools.

    As the testing system buckles under the strain, Prof Spector said that parents should be aware of the symptoms specifically attributed to children before they take them out of school and tear up and down the country in search of a test.
    “Kids really don’t seem to lose that sense of smell and they also don’t seem to get the cough and shortness of breath as much either,” he said.

    “So it’s a different picture at different age groups, presumably because the immune systems are behaving differently.”
    Asked whether he was suggesting that parents of children with a cough and a sniffle should not be burdening the NHS, he said: “Certainly for the next few weeks, while the whole system is stretched and this major school cold outbreak goes, I think that’s the sensible advice.

    Prof Spector’s guidance contradicts that from the Department for Health, which continues to state that if a child has a new continuous cough, a high temperature or a change or loss to their sense of taste or smell they should be tested for coronavirus.

    A letter circulated to all schools at the beginning of term outlined the same set of symptoms as the basis for getting a test.
    The symptom tracker, which is used by four million people, has revealed that the majority of children who test positive for Covid-19 suffer from fatigue and a headache. Around half have a fever, while more than a third have a sore throat and a loss of appetite.
    One in six children have an unusual skin rash while a third have none of the 20 potential symptoms listed on the app, suggesting they are asymptomatic.

    By comparison, almost 90 per cent of adults have the virus report fatigue, while nearly three quarters have a headache and around half, a persistent cough and a sore throat.

    Prof Spector wrote on Twitter that the Government appeared reluctant to widen the “meagre” list of symptoms in case it increased demand for testing, even though it was “inappropriate for children.”

    It comes as official Government figures revealed that the number of tests booked for children aged between ten and 14 had increased by 150 per cent in the month to September 1.

    In the same period, the number of children aged between five and nine who were tested soared by 138 per cent.
    Tests booked for teenagers aged between 15 and 19 increased by 70 per cent and for those aged up to four by 56 per cent.
    Matt Hancock, the health secretary, warned this week that people suffering from colds, as well as those who were not eligible for a test at all, were clogging up the system.

    Prof Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that people over the age of 65 also displayed different symptoms to those of the rest of the adult population, and did not tend to lose their sense of smell.

    He said that 80 per cent of people who tested positive in all age groups reported severe headaches and tiredness or fatigue in the first week of illness, suggesting that those symptoms should be prioritised.

    “We have 6,500 new cases every day, which on a countrywide basis is still very small, so the chances are most people don’t have Covid-19,” he said.

    “We have to realise that perhaps 98 per cent of the tests being done at the moment are actually wrong.”

    He said that as the system had proved unable to cope with demand, it was important to start thinking about ways to exclude Covid-19 rather than relying on standard criteria.

    “We’ve also shown some negative signs in our app so if you have a runny nose or congestion, or sneezing, that’s really a sign that you absolutely do not have Covid,” he added.

    Practical observations instead of hysterical babblings!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/17/children-runny-nose-do-not-have-coronavirus-expert-insists-demand/

    2. Just a thought – if the common cold is sweeping through schools, despite ‘bubbles’, social distancing, masks etc., how on earth are people catching it? It’s almost as if all these measures are ineffective against coronaviruses…

      2. The little dears have been kept apart for the last seven months so of course they’re going to catch colds now……. maybe from the air? From blowing in their own masks?

      3. The measures weren’t, but like any virus in proximity you become immune but it doesn’t go away but incubates.

        Because you’re not exposed to other virai your immune system becomes accustomed to it’s environment. Sudden interaction with others attacks your now compromised immune system triggering a massive immune response and lo! You get ill.

  71. Here’s a lady with her finger on the pulse:

    “Dido Harding claims demand for Covid swabs is THREE to FOUR TIMES system’s capacity – but says ‘no-one saw it coming‘: Testing tsar blames SAGE for wrong predictions and the public for getting tested with NO symptoms”

    2. I’m surprised she’s actually allowed to ride a horse with eyesight as bad as that! Guide horses for the blind?

    3. Cretinous woman.

      An idiot could see massive demand coming if you’re scaring people into thinking they’ve got a mysterious virus.

      As for SAGE – yes, yet another quango fouled up.

      For goodness sake. She’s a moron.

    4. That bloody public, again. They just will not do what their betters want.
      Whatever that might be.

    6. I was at university at the same time as her and a few other politicos. Never liked Harding – she had a very high opinion of herself, which others seemed to take at face value; hence her brilliant career, I suppose.
      Schadenfreude is a terrible thing 🙁

    1. I note that ‘cases’ are now being used to justify lockdowns on a worldwide basis. For ‘cases’, read test results of dubious veracity. I despise our government’s handling of the ‘plandemic’, but they are clearly singing from a WHO/CCP hymn sheet. Would that I could actually sing from any hymn sheet at the moment…

      2. It’s the uniformity of the WW approach that makes me think that either we are being totally conned (my bet) or that there really is something dreadful about this virus that we are not being told.

          1. Possibly, it depends how one looks at “conned”, although in this case I think the two are mutually exclusive.

          2. Fairy nuff. I think we’re being played. Either the Great Reset is taking advantage of a random virus, or – worse – it was engineered to bring about the reset. I have an open mind.

  75. Exclusive: Hospitals told to clear beds for coronavirus spike in two weeks

    Isolation units in which Covid-19 patients can recover being created as space made on wards for those needing most care

    By Tony Diver; Lizzie Roberts; Gordon Rayner, POLITICAL EDITOR and Harry Yorke, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    17 September 2020 • 9:30pm

    Hospitals and councils have been told to find extra beds for coronavirus patients within two weeks as the NHS braces for a second spike in cases.

    With hospital admissions beginning to increase following a steep rise in virus infections, isolation units in which Covid-19 patients can recover are being set up, freeing space on wards for those needing the most care.

    More than 10 million people will soon be living in local lockdown areas after the North East became the latest region to impose curfews, with Liverpool and parts of the West Midlands expected to follow within days.

    Chaos at testing centres continued on Thursday as Baroness Harding, the head of NHS Test and Trace, admitted that up to one million people a day are applying for 230,000 available tests.

    It also emerged that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, is planning to adopt a national “traffic light” system for putting regions into lockdown, with local action being triggered when infection rates reach a set level.

    A template for the so-called “escalation framework”, seen by The Telegraph, includes provision for “mandatory masks” at the amber level, suggesting face coverings will be legally required in even more settings than they are now.

    The Telegraph understands that ministers will on Friday confirm that family visits to care homes will be paused in areas in which infections are highest.

    While the proposals were still being finalised on Thursday night, they are expected to be included in the winter care plan aimed at reducing the spread of the virus among elderly residents.

    Another 3,395 people tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday, with a further 21 deaths, as infection rates soared in much of northern England.

    With cases reaching the highest levels since May (use the graphic below to find out about cases in your area) and the current trajectory pointing towards a second peak in the next two weeks, hospitals are preparing for a possible influx of patients after admissions tripled in a fortnight.

    The numbers of people in hospital remain low compared with the first peak of the virus, however.

    Bolton, the coronavirus hotspot of England, has only two Covid-19 patients on hospital wards, according to the most recent NHS data. Across all 18 “intervention” areas listed on Public Health England’s watchlist, 141 people out of a population of more than five million are in hospital with the disease – one hospital case for every 38,000 people.

    MPs in London were told last week of plans to increase the number of “step down” beds in which coronavirus patients in the capital who no longer need hospital treatment can recover in isolation.

    One MP briefed on the plans during a conference call with health bosses told The Telegraph: “The rate of infection is going up, and I was told hospitals have reserved beds for people coming out of hospital who need somewhere to recover.

    “At the start of lockdown they were having to send people back to care homes or back to other facilities, with dire consequences, so they’ve booked places in respite care or empty care homes. People will go out of hospital, but they won’t return to their normal place of living. They just need care before they go back home so that they empty the hospital wards.”

    A former minister added: “The effort is being made to step up capacity so that if there is a second spike the NHS doesn’t fall so far behind with other types of care.

    “Different parts of London are looking at different ways to handle that, but everyone has learnt that terrible lesson that you cannot discharge people into care homes if there is any danger whatsoever that they might be Covid positive, so there is a big effort to find extra beds.

    “Brent rented an entire care home and they discharged their people into another care home. I think other places will be doing that as part of their efforts to get ready for a second spike.”

    Another source who was on the call said councils had been given the job of finding extra beds and that disused care homes were likely to be used.

    The isolation wards would be in addition to the NHS Nightingale Hospitals, which provide extra capacity for treating people with coronavirus rather than space for them to recover.

    Channel 4 News claimed on Thursday night that care home providers in Greater Manchester are being told they must accept Covid-positive patients from hospitals.

    A leaked contract from Trafford Council outlines how eligible care homes will receive Covid-positive patients within just two hours of them being identified by the hospital as ready for discharge. It states that “some of these patients may have Covid-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic”.

    Lockdown measures were being imposed on Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Sunderland and County Durham at midnight on Thursday night, forcing pubs and restaurants to close at 10pm and banning two households from mixing.

    Almost two million people will be affected by the latest lockdown – bringing the nationwide total under local measures to around nine million – with a further million likely to join them if, as expected, Liverpool and parts of the West Midlands are added to the list.

    Senior Cabinet ministers were called to a meeting of the “XO” coronavirus operational subcommittee on Thursday afternoon to discuss more local lockdowns.

    In Liverpool, the rate has jumped sharply from 67.5 cases per 100,000 people to 107.8 in the past week, a higher rate than many parts of the North East which are already in lockdown.

    Last week Mr Hancock (seen announcing the latest restrictions in the video below) and Baroness Harding attended a virtual “London Covid-19 summit” at which they discussed an “epidemic response escalation framework” that would give greater transparency to decisions on putting areas into lockdown.

    Areas with infection rates at the lowest level would be subject to national restrictions such as the “rule of six”, while areas above a certain rate of infection would be subject to more stringent measures. Those with the highest rates of infection would face the tightest restrictions.

    The infection rates for each category would be made public, enabling people to prepare for the possibility of local lockdowns by monitoring published data on their area.

    According to a draft document seen by the Telegraph, areas in the middle band would have “mandatory masks” and “restrict religious gatherings”, although the document gives no further detail about what that would involve. Areas with the highest rates would go into local lockdown.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/17/exclusive-hospitals-told-clear-beds-coronavirus-spike-two-weeks/

    I’m finding it increasingly difficult to understand why London has escaped spikes in infection rates and local lockdowns, given the density of its population and concentrations of vulnerable ethnic minorities.

    The rise in hospital admissions is most unwelcome but it seems to be following a pattern found in hotspots of Spain and France.

    I most certainly approve of creating capacity for Covid-19 sufferers in recovery, although I don’t really understand why the Nightingale hospitals cannot be put to that use instead of keeping them in reserve for treating Covid-19 patients needing more intensive care.

    Overall, though, prospects for this coming autumn and winter do not look good.

  76. Evening, all. The CofE is intent on eliminating Christianity from these islands; where are St Cuthbert and St Augustine when you need them?

    1. I think the fact that Cameron appointed Welby – who is, I am sure, an atheist is most sinister.

      Eton – the school that seems to think it is the best in the world has produced two of the most incompetent ever prime ministers and the very worst ever Archbishop of Canterbury.

  80. Article in the DT:

    Bearskin caps worn by Queen’s Guard threatened by proposed fur sales ban
    Environment Secretary confirms Government plans to launch consultation on prohibiting sale of fur in post-Brexit Britain

    Most people would agree that killing animals cruelly and causing them a painful death is inhumane.

    But to ban fur or leather from animals that have been reared and treated humanely seems totally hypocritical when we allow halal slaughter.

    I would be more impressed with the arguments of the animals’ rights activists and people like Carrie Symonds if they demonstrated vehemently against halal slaughter. Indeed , I wonder why they do not do so.

    1. The line that I draw is fur or leather from animals that haven’t been eaten. Wasting food is a crime.
      Agree about halal – we urgently need certification of non halal products, but have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it.

    2. A few years back, a morris dancer got into trouble for putting a fox’s brush on the back of his hat. In the end, he got round it by dyeing the red/brown bits black so it was clearly no longer from a fox. He said now it comes from a border collie,

    3. A few years back, a morris dancer got into trouble for putting a fox’s brush on the back of his hat. In the end, he got round it by dyeing the red/brown bits black so it was clearly no longer from a fox. He said now it comes from a border collie,

    4. The experience of five winters in Winnipeg, Manitoba, revised my attitude towards wearing fur as clothing. Winnipeg enjoys winter temperatures of Minus 40 (same in Fahrenheit and Centigrade) – and below. I didn’t wear fur, but valued my ankle-length leather coat – especially in wind-chill conditions.

      On the bright side, Winnipeg winters are mostly bright and sunny !

      Daily commuting two miles from my Assiniboine riverside townhouse to the city centre, I had a choice of skis or skates …

      1. I’m reminded of the friend who when it was suggest that she should read the book “See Naples and Die” remarked that she’d rather not get even that close to a cholera outbreak.

        1. I’ve seen Naples. Including the underground version. Which is arguably more interesting than the above ground version. The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli is worth a visit, also.

      2. Very vaguely related to my last comment. Have you read any of Axel Munthe’s books? I read The Story of San Michele and much more recently acquired a copy of his “Letters from a Mourning City” written from Naples during the 1880’s cholera outbreak there.

        1. The Story of San Michele was on our reading list at Technical School. Axel Munthe lived in Wimbledon and I believe his house has a blue plaque (unless I imagined it which is quite possible).

          I remember the issue about his blue eyes and the strong sun but not much else. I shall read it again as I have a copy somewhere.

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