Sunday 20 September: How the Government can turn its conflicted Covid strategy around

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/19/letters-government-can-turn-conflicted-covid-strategy-around/

802 thoughts on “Sunday 20 September: How the Government can turn its conflicted Covid strategy around”

  6. Morning all

    SIR – This week you published a series of important articles on the poor handling of the Covid-19 crisis. I am sure we all agree that we desperately need more transparency.

    In the meantime, some facts might be helpful. For example, many Covid-19 sufferers are asymptomatic, so will never be tested under the current regime. But they will still be infectious.

    Meanwhile, those who do get symptoms will have had the virus for several days before the onset of symptoms, so will be infectious during that prodromal phase.

    Finally, the groups most likely to die are the elderly and those with severe co-morbidities. Clearly they should be sheltered.

    Surely the Government can convene a cross-party team, perhaps chaired by Lord Darzi, to handle this and stop the constant scaremongering and changes of direction.

    Tony Narula FRCS

    Wargrave, Berkshire

    SIR – Covid-19 restrictions are like extreme diets: they never work in the long run.

    It looks as though the virus is here to stay, so we need to find a moderate approach that will allow us to live and not just exist.

    Intrinsic to human existence are the enjoyment and nourishment gained from social interaction.

    Samantha McGill

    Crowle, Worcestershire

    SIR – A second lockdown of two weeks has been suggested.

    This could solve a number of problems if done sensibly. It would give the Government an exit strategy – something that was sadly missing from the first lockdown – and in so doing it would give people a sense of light at the end of the tunnel.

    After two weeks, or whatever period is deemed appropriate, everyone should go back to work, and the old normal should resume. The uncoordinated approach that we have at the moment is likely to see the current situation continue for two years or more, with disastrous results.

    David Lane

    Birmingham

    SIR – Here’s a thought. Instead of trying to turn England into a nation of sheep and snitches, why doesn’t Boris Johnson take a “glass half full” approach and look at the present situation as a reason for celebration?

    After all, the initial lockdown objectives were achieved, the NHS was protected, and hospitalisation and death rates have continued to fall since April, despite large beach gatherings, protests, pub trips and holidays.

    By stressing successes rather than fears, Mr Johnson can open up the road to normality while ending concerns about the abuse of state power that is now threatening the health and livelihoods of millions. The public would welcome some positivity and political courage after months of pessimism and risk avoidance.

    Howard Gray

    Malmesbury, Wiltshire

  7. SIR – It was with sadness that I read Dr Pamela Taor’s letter (September 13) about “barely functioning” GPs.

    My practice has been running a near-full service since lockdown began. We cancelled leave, and many of the partners worked extra sessions to make time to think about how to change the way we provide care.

    We run a full triage service. When an email comes through, we triage its content, either issuing what is requested, making a referral, phoning the patient or, for those who need it, arranging an appointment for that day. Prescriptions are turned around within 48 hours, and we have started running a drive-through flu jab clinic.

    Housebound patients are seen by a specialist frailty team, and we have recruited a physiotherapy organisation to deal with patients through video consultations, only referring them if imaging is needed.

    We do not provide ear syringing (Letters, September 13) or minor operations that are not immediately necessary. But do we really want to use hospitals for ear syringing, when other providers offer it?

    Of course, we are not perfect, and to those who feel let down, I apologise. But, looking back, I am confident that we did all we humanly could.

    Dr Donal Collins

    Senior partner, The Highlands Practice

    Fareham, Hampshire

    1. Well that is all perfectly wonderful. This is my Practice and you can’t get past the Dragon. Dr Collins may be offering it but not many are receiving it.

  8. Morning again

    SIR – What is surprising about Gary Lineker’s new BBC contract is not that he took a £400,000 pay cut, but that the BBC thought it acceptable to offer him £1.35 million in the first place.

    If the BBC were serious about its public-service ethos and offering value for money, it would tell “stars” that the rate for their work was capped at, say, £350,000. With that kind of money on offer, there would still be a queue of willing and able presenters.

    The BBC’s claims of hardship ring false. It needs to be brought to heel, and quickly.

    Brian Peel

    Sutton Coldfield

  9. Travel torments

    SIR – Last Sunday, we cancelled our holiday in Madeira, due to begin the next day, because nobody – here or in Madeira – would take responsibility for giving us information.

    We could not get a Covid test in the UK as we didn’t meet any of the criteria – so, we reasoned, most or all of the other passengers would be untested. The Madeirans would have tested us on arrival, but nobody would say whether we would be quarantined if we had merely sat next to a passenger who tested positive.

    The location, duration and terms under which we might have been held were not specified; nor were the terms under which we might have been repatriated. With so many vague arrangements, we preferred to lose well over £1,000 than risk this fate.

    Dorian Wood

    Castle Cary, Somerset

    1. Same here. I had already cancelled the Spring holiday and i should be in Malta right now. I lost over £1100.

      1. Double whammy. What a bugger.
        We aren’t planning any travels at all, despite signifucant birthdays and Xmas. Not because of covid itself, but the irrational and erratic response of the authorities.

      2. We have vague notions of a week somewhere in England in 2021.
        Given the arbitrary way this government is behaving, we will see.

        1. I’m not going anywhere (even in the UK) unless I can actually DO something when I get there; I want to go racing (we’ll see what happens after Newmarket and Warwick, but I’m not holding my breath because the government hasn’t a clue). I want to be able to go to a museum or art gallery without having to make an appointment and wear a mask while I’m there.

  12. Good morning, all. Cloudy and breezy.

    If I were DG of the beeboids, I make damn sure that no one appearing would be paid more than I was.

    1. When I was a manager, I didn’t mind people earning more than me, if they had specialist skills and followed my instructions. If they did as Lineker and other BBC wazzocks do, I soon got them removed.

      1. lol from the other side of the fence, I am a software developer, and I don’t mind managers telling me what to do as long as I’m paid more than them, and their instructions are sensible.

        You were probably a really good manager!

        1. One of my definitions of an expert was someone who could explain a complex topic to me in a way that I could understand it sufficiently to make a decision on which way to jump .

          Fortunately, in my line of work, there were few areas where the complexities and choices, once options were clearly explained, were excessive.

          As I carried the can for my decisions, I wanted to be sure I had and understood the facts before making them.

          1. Definitely a good manager. Most of them never bother to ask.
            Explaining stuff to managers in words of one syllable is my speciality!

  13. ‘Morning, Peeps. Telegraph leader for you:

    The semi-freedom of summer is over. With Covid limited to small numbers of containable outbreaks, the country enjoyed a brief, if delusional, period of comparative normality. Now “local” lockdowns have become regional incarcerations, the scandalous collapse of the testing system has exposed the limits of officials’ preparedness for winter, and ministers are in crisis talks to devise measures to stave off an explosive return of the virus. A country that, just a few weeks ago, appeared to be regaining its confidence, is staring into the abyss.

    The total lockdown of March can never be repeated. The ruinous cost for the economy, the hopelessness of the NHS in providing treatment to non-Covid patients, the appalling impact on children, and the threat to the nation’s social fabric should make that obvious. Anyone denouncing ministers for not having already locked up the whole country are wilfully ignoring the trade-offs, or confusing short-termist measures for a solution to a disease that now appears to be endemic.

    This will remain the case even if the rise in positive test results does translate into a significant increase in Covid hospitalisations and deaths. It is useless to deny that the virus is back. It is true that it is currently spreading predominantly among groups for whom it poses little to no threat, and case numbers today cannot be compared directly with case numbers earlier in the year because of the expansion in testing. Advances in treatment, more knowledge of the virus, and greater awareness of who is at risk should also have made Covid less deadly. However, it would be naive to discount the chance that many more people could tragically die from it in the months to come.

    But we cannot remain stuck in this cycle of despair either, where every uptick in infections brings with it increasingly authoritarian and repressive measures. Even the least draconian restrictions now being considered by the Government entail enormous sacrifices from the population, with consequences that epidemiological models are incapable of capturing.

    The threat to family life already posed by the rule of six would be compounded by total bans on households mixing, inviting a plague of loneliness and misery, denying hundreds of thousands more grandparents the chance to spend time with their relatives, and threatening the most innocent interactions with criminal punishment and fines. The vital importance of family is systematically devalued by approaches to the virus that treat social contact as a dangerous luxury rather than a necessary condition for human happiness.

    The importance of a healthy, dynamic economy is ignored, too, by measures that leave firms under a permanent cloud of uncertainty, unable or unwilling to plan for a future in which a single disease threatens to provoke ministers into illiberal restrictions on their ability to operate. How many entrepreneurs have not started companies, how many business ideas have been disregarded, how much talent has gone to waste? Curfews, enforced closures, and a constant narrative of fear will undermine the embryonic recovery and renew calls for rescue schemes that the country cannot afford.

    The Government itself acknowledges that there are trade-offs to be made, rightly committing to keeping schools open to avoid creating a lost generation of children who will carry the burden of the past few months with them for decades to come. But other things also have value, not least the freedom that once defined this country. We are no longer in a period of acute national emergency. The NHS has had months to prepare for a second wave. It is not acceptable to treat individual liberty as an indefinite and inevitable casualty of the pandemic.

    It is understandable that ministers and their advisers are nervous about what lies ahead, but we need a grown-up national conversation about the implications of treating a vibrant economy, family life, and society itself as disposable and of little value. We need to see a proper cost-benefit analysis that takes account of the full consequences of creeping authoritarianism.

    Ideally, we should be shifting towards a more liberal Swedish model, focusing resources and attention on protecting the most vulnerable while allowing everyone else to resume something approaching a normal life. Fixing the testing system is clearly essential, too, as is building up capacity so that millions of tests can be conducted each week. But even if that proves impossible, we cannot go on as we are. We need a new approach to managing the virus, one that does not destroy the society it is meant to protect.

    And a couple of BTL comments:

    Kate Ellison
    20 Sep 2020 6:54AM
    Why is there no coverage in the DT of the antilockdown protest in trafalger square yesterday, that was more heavily policed and more people arrested than at any XR or BLM protest, even though there was no statue toppling or bikes thrown at mounted police?

    Hopefully next weeks, on the 26th will be much bigger and more difficult for the media.

    And before all the righteous respond with ‘well they were breaking the rule of six’ absolutely they were, why do you think it was brought in?

    Carpe Jugulum
    20 Sep 2020 6:59AM
    Lockdowns are what you get when you, unwittingly, elect THE most scientifically illiterate government in UK history.

    I voted for Brexit Boris and got a cowardly liar stumbling from one baseless ‘policy’ to the next, aided and abetted by political opportunists like Hancock and Patel. If that trio of inept liars were an Amazon parcel they would have been sent back in April.

    Have they released the supposed evidence behind the necessity for and efficacy of lockdown? No.

    Patel’s industry destroying quarantine? No.

    Hancock’s maskerade? No.

    How odd? The most savage attack on basic liberties and they have refused to explain why we are suddenly treated as criminals. We are supposed to accept puerile slogans and, astonishingly, a British public of dumbed down scientific illiterates has rolled over and accepted this.

    And for what? SARS-cov-2 is a mediocre virus that is no significant threat whatsoever to the overwhelming majority of people. Italian research found most victims would have died within the year anyway. Our own experience shows the average age of victims is above the UK life expectancy and the commonest comorbidity is dementia. Each victim, on that basis, loses 1 ‘life year’.

    Now consider lives lost in consequence of lockdown. In one group alone, cancer victims dying resultant from delayed diagnoses and treatments, that figure is estimated at 20,000. Assume ONE of those victims is a twelve year old. They lose at least sixty life years. THAT figure is a far greater loss than that suffered by FORTY ‘typical’ Covid19 victims.

    Does lockdown now make sense?

    Boris and his clowns have destroyed livelihoods and the economy for nothing. They have not saved Life Years, they have taken them.

    They need to go. Now.

    2. 323826+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      Old Carpi is dead on, this whole issue has been on the cards for years only needing a trigger, then along came
      covid 19.

      The accumulation, especially over the last three decades
      of input from the close shop lab/lib/con coalition party has been building & begging for such a trigger.

      On reflection would major,clegg,the wretch cameron, may,
      have handled it any different, may for certain would have been on the horn to brussels for EXTRA peoples suppression support early doors.
      The biggest threat to these Isles in proven fact is the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / pro eu / paedophile umbrella coalition party, without a doubt.

    3. In Norway:
      267 have died
      16 in hospital now, no change for days.
      Nearly 1 million tested.
      Total cases 12.769 to date.
      More lockdown on the cards because more tests reveal more infections, yet hospital occupancy is stable at 16. So, not so serious that people need much hospitalisation.
      Average over the 5 years to 2018: deaths with flu = 902 per year. So, 3 times that of covid in twice the period.
      How much lockdown was there 2 years ago due to flu, which carried off more people? How many drive-in flu test centres were there? How many newspapers and tv news were filled with reports of flu deaths? Hmm.
      It’s hysteria.

      1. For the UK, when one looks at the death rates 2000-2018, and the shape of the graph, if the “normal” figure is 10 it is very clear that there was a huge amount of very dry tinder just waiting for a conflagration to burn through it.

        It’s interesting that deaths per 1,000 resident population just happens to have dropped as we received a huge influx of young immigrants, courtesy of Blair opening the flood-gates and then nobody slowing the flow.

        My guess is that there were many people surviving over the last 20 years who had underlying health issues that a dose of ‘flu would equally have killed.

        https://www.statista.com/statistics/281478/death-rate-united-kingdom-uk/

        1. Mild flu winters are followed by bad ones.
          Winter flu deaths from GOV.UK annual reports:
          14-15 – 28,330
          15-16 – 7,371
          16-17 – 15,047
          17-18 – 22,087
          18-19 – 3,966
          19-20 – 7,990 to mid April

        2. Same here. A lot of decrepit folk fell off their perch early on, and thats not repeated now. Likewise hospital admissions.
          Apparently, Sweden now has a death rate noticeably lower than normal for the timd of the year, after a wave of croaking.

      2. Yup. I’ve put together figures from the Scottish Government via BBC and Herald that tells the same story. Just not a story put together by the Government, the BBC or the newspapers.

    4. Given relative World population numbers it seems there are an awful lot of folk who can’t see that the autochthonous peoples of our Islands are heading for a similar fate to the North American Indians. (Only I suspect alcoholism won’t be tolerated….)

  14. Pilgrim Fathers: harsh truths amid the Mayflower myths of nationhood. 20 September 2020.

    Although there were periods of good relations between the English and Wampanoag, there were also violent conflicts, culminating in King Philip’s War of 1675, which ended with the head of Metacom, the Wampanoag leader, being put on a spike and the survivors sold into slavery. It was a far cry from the scenes of a harvest celebration.

    “These were people who came here for their religious freedom because they couldn’t worship as they pleased in their own country, and yet when they came to this country they did not seem to have that same tolerance for the people that they met here, despite all that the Wampanoag did to help them,” said Paula Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Nation and of the advisory council to the exhibition. “You can’t have a colony without someone being colonised.”

    These are universal truths about immigration and settlement. There are no friendly invasions. At the very best you must expect unresolved Balkanisation and Social and Religious Apartheid. If you are exceptionally lucky you may get someone like Alfred The Great but the greater certainty is the Genocide of the original inhabitants.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/20/pilgrim-fathers-harsh-truths-amid-the-mayflower-myths-of-nationhood

    1. Yeah, yeah, they all lived in peace and harmony until evil whitey colonised their country and sold them all into slavery.

    2. The immigrants gaze got narrower and narrower until they turned on their own.
      Going all literary, think of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘The Crucible’, both set in that period.

      2. Good morning, Sue

        I loathed ‘Brucie’ when, as a child I first saw him on the TV but I grew rather to like him as the years went by. In what way was he a ‘perv’ – I did not think there was anything bizarre about his sexual orientation?

        Here’s a song to cheer you up!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPulEz0gVj8

        1. Perhaps sleazy would have been a better word! I just picture him with the very young Anthea and doing a twirl! Makes yer flesh crawl @ Bill Thomas

    1. Under new equal opportunities policing, there will be no discrimination against officers with larger waist sizes. Any criminals who exercise thin privilege to run away faster than police officers will be prosecuted and punished severely for breaking the Equality Act.

    2. 323826+ up ticks,
      Morning Anne,
      A telling passing out test now at Hendon would be the ability to kneel in a convincing manner.

      Now it seems that it is the only thing a budding policeman woman / thing has to show, three times straight off, IS taking up a kneeling position before a responsible member of the establishment, as Hendon is closing it’s doors.

      Seems like there is no place for policemen / women / things once the re-set campaign is in full swing.

  19. Owen Jones: ‘A lot of people in the parliamentary Labour party are horrible’ 20 September 2020.

    Yes. Politics is a brutal business, but the last few years have been like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I certainly learned in great detail what we were up against. The parliamentary Labour party meetings were just brutal and gruesome. A lot of those people in the parliamentary Labour party – I’m just going to say it – are jumped-up thugs. Vicious, horrible people. They would sanctimoniously stand up and talk about the authoritarianism of Corbynism as they screeched like disturbed teenagers, spraying spittle at anyone with the temerity to support the elected leadership of the party of which they were members. I really don’t know what they are driven by.

    Wow! And he’s only a member!

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/19/owen-jones-a-lot-of-people-in-the-parliamentary-labour-party-are-horrible

    1. That sounds very like a journalist also called Owen Jones, if anyone has the temerity to challenge his beliefs and lifestyle.

    3. I think it boils down to the fact that he thinks that anybody who disagrees with him is repulsive, homopobe, fascist, violent, brutal, bigoted etc.

    4. Just for clarification purposes Minty are you using the term member in this instance as a polite version of Prick?

  20. Just heard the latest stats for covid deaths are 27
    Except they are not saying that, they are saying that 27 people have died within 4 weeks of having a positive covid test.
    No doubt to get a test they were already vulnerable with some other serious illness.

    1. I notice that they don’t give us the figure for how many people have died within four weeks of a negative covid test

    2. I’ve just looked at figures for Scotland, as we are being warned of a “second wave” and a need for further lockdown.
      The Government figures presented tell us that 70 people were admitted to hospital in one month. That is an average of just over two people a day. According to other figures there are 350 new “cases” a day. That is, thousands are being tested daily, resulting in 350 new “cases” being found and less than three of the “cases” are admitted to hospital.
      2505 people have died of Covid-19 in Scotland, an average of 14 per day. On an average day in Scotland one would expect 230* deaths so Covid-19 accounts for 6% of normal deaths. When one considers that Covid-19 was apparently written on every death certificate for months, and that many of those who actually died as a result of Covid-19 were already of an age where death is just round the corner, these figures seem pretty unremarkable.
      So why have our Governments destroyed the economy, wrecked small businesses, wiped out our social lives, and turned us all into prisoners, for what is statistically nothing worse than a bad flu season? Moreover one that has all but disappeared even where no excessive response was applied.

      * My approximation. Other figures are as reported from Scottish Government, via BBC and Herald. This is the first time I’ve been able to compare “cases” with hospital admissions.

      1. Very similar stats from Norway – repeated here.
        In Norway:
        267 have died
        16 in hospital now, no change for days.
        Nearly 1 million tested.
        Total cases 12.769 to date.
        More lockdown on the cards because more tests reveal more infections, yet hospital occupancy is stable at 16. So, not so serious that people need much hospitalisation.
        Average over the 5 years to 2018: deaths with flu = 902 per year. So, 3 times that of covid in twice the period.
        How much lockdown was there 2 years ago due to flu, which carried off more people? How many drive-in flu test centres were there? How many newspapers and tv news were filled with reports of flu deaths?

    1. Just caught the BBC headlines. They found two diverse docile dobbers to endorse the £10,000 fine.

  25. Popped into Biggeleswade M&S for light refreshment on our way to Wansford yesterday. There was a bit of a queue at the cafe, mainly people of the Nottler generation, obediently wearing masks. Then a shrill M&S employee started screaming at us to socially distance. “Two metres!” she cried, evidently unaware of one meter plus.. We decided to take our custom elsewhere, as did many others. At Wansford, we found a humble diner, whose cheerful customers were behaving responsibly without any encouragement from the staff.

    1. Years ago, when travelling between London and Sheffield via the A1, I would stop off in the evening and enjoy a meal in The Haycock at Wansford.

      The Haycock offered several rooms with lighted fires in the stone hearths and comfortable country furniture. The food was good English fare.

      The last time I chanced to stop there the old Inn had been ruined and I was met by some suited manager wearing a green carnation. My heart sank.

  26. Moring all….no time for chit chat today, another family birthday and another one Tomorrow. That’s three this month, very tidy Virgo’s
    They want to feel our presents, as Darth Vader might have said 😎😍

    1. So was my ex-husband. Very tidy, when it came to what I should be doing. Not so tidy himself. Happily for me, we divorced! :o)

    2. So was my ex-husband. Very tidy, when it came to what I should be doing. Not so tidy himself. Happily for me, we divorced! :o)

        1. Their mother was a Capricorn, otherwise the 3 of us would have driven her crazy.

          Oh, wait a minute…

    5. I was talking to a stall holder this afternoon and he mentioned it was his wife’s birthday today – and then he reeled off about half a dozen members of his family (including himself) who all had birthdays this month. Celebrating at Christmas has a lot to answer for.

  27. £10,000 fines warning for failing to self-isolate as Covid infections soar. t 19 Sep 2020 21.04 BST.

    People in England who refuse to self-isolate when required to do so will face fines of up to £10,000 under an emergency “carrot and stick” plan to control the second wave of Covid-19 sweeping the country.

    With infections rising at rates last seen before the full lockdown in March, around four million people on low incomes and in receipt of benefits, who cannot work from home, will also be given special “stay home” payments of £500 to compensate for lost earnings over their two-week isolation periods.

    Morning everyone. £10,000 quid! What’s next? Confiscation of all assets and exile for life? All this for a virus that is a minor inconvenience to 90% of its victims and fatal to less than 1%? It’s a good thing it’s not serious like the last Flu epidemic!

    I of course hold to the theory that this is much more sinister than dangerous which is something of a relief to me since if this were a true response the only conclusion would be that the entire leadership of the UK are too stupid to know what day it is!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/19/10000-fines-warning-for-failing-to-self-isolate-as-covid-infections-soar

    4. You yourself write “The Labour leader is expected to speak of his “pride in Britain, of
      its values and for what it has achieved” when he addresses Labour
      Connected, an online event which replaces the party’s conference due to
      Covid-19 restrictions.”

      All is well then?

      BLM, which we must kneel down to or face the consequences, argues that the disgustingly white should have their assets confiscated, and presumably sent into exile slave camps run by Boko Haram.

  28. This vexes me. My school used to own DT’s boathouse – we used to use it as a base for sixth form ecology field trips.
    I don’t know if it is still in its hands – I shall have to try to find out.

    SIR – Last week my husband and I, on holiday in west Wales, visited the Boathouse at Laugharne, where Dylan Thomas briefly lived.
    The route there was clearly signposted from the main road and through the village. We arrived early to find a crowd of visitors already gathered.
    However, we were shocked at the state of the site: it looked abandoned. Some of the steep steps down to it were chipped, plants and weeds were overgrown, and the house itself looked forlorn. There wasn’t an explanation, nor a telephone number to ring to report the situation.
    Dylan Thomas died almost 70 years ago, yet people still travel from far and wide to see his home. Who is responsible for its upkeep? Should the National Trust take over?
    Finally, we walked back to the village to visit the poet’s favourite watering hole – and it was closed.
    Carol Partridge

    1. I visited Laugharne several times in the early 80s and it looked dilapidated then. I never got round to visiting the house itself – the pubs were always open.

    2. Not the National Trust, anything but the National Trust. (No, I’m not Br’er Rabbit, although the NTS might well be described as a “briar patch”.

    4. Not the National Trust, anything but the National Trust. (No, I’m not Br’er Rabbit, although the NTS might well be described as a “briar patch”.

      2. Do not go gentle into those dark no good whites
        Old clothes should burn, not go on display
        Rage, rage against the bleaching of the whites

  29. Prof Carl Heneghan & Tom Jefferson
    Boris’s ‘whack-a-mole’ Covid strategy is failing
    20 September 2020, 10:11am

    Will the current cycle – lockdown; open up; eat out; restrictions; lockdown – go on forever? In their handling of coronavirus, Boris Johnson and his colleagues have become increasingly media-responsive, fear-bound, model-sensitive, sound-byte producing, u-turn prone and, quite frankly, embarrassing to all who believed the UK to be a beacon of rational thought. Has the Government lost the plot? We are not sure if it ever had one.

    This week at its annual meeting, the British Medical Association lamented the Government’s lack of grip on the public health during the current pandemic and proposed a ‘near-elimination’ strategy. Put simply, this involves what the BMA called ‘sacrifice in the short-term to ensure that we can avoid a large-scale prolonged lockdown that would be ultimately much more detrimental to the health of our society.’

    To achieve this, the BMA proposed a number of measures. These included better messaging, targets for the daily and weekly number of new cases, hunting out cases rather than waiting for symptomatic outbreaks, and trigger points for the implementation of specific additional measures both locally and nationally.

    All of them have been tried in one form or another as part of the PM’s whack-a-mole strategy, and yet cases are increasing. So is ‘near-elimination’ really a viable strategy if it involves doing many of the things the government is doing already?

    It’s worth remembering that our options in the fight against Covid-19 are limited; one alternative – eradicating the disease entirely – is impossible. The WHO has declared only two diseases officially eradicated: one in humans (smallpox) and one in cattle (rinderpest). Trying to eliminate Covid-19 any time soon is not a viable option.

    If it proves impossible to rid our planet altogether of Covid-19, could it still be eliminated from specific countries or regions? This would require what we are lacking in Britain at the moment: a coherent governmental response. Yet if one is forthcoming, there is hope: viral disease such as polio has been eliminated in many countries across the world (it is not eradicated as it is still endemic in some countries such as Nigeria). The elimination of polio also required an effective vaccine and was possible because humans are the single hosts for the virus. There is bad news here: coronaviruses are zoonotic and, therefore, spread between animals and people, which makes it harder to tackle.

    We also know comparatively little about coronaviruses compared to other viruses. There are hundreds of different viral respiratory agents, some known and some unknown like SARS CoV-2 was. The important thing to bear in mind about all these respiratory viruses is that they do not have clinically distinctive features so that you cannot distinguish one from the other. This would be a pointless exercise for two reasons.

    First, there are no licensed specific treatments (antivirals) or preventive measures (vaccines) for any of them with the exception of influenza.

    Second, the respiratory viruses cause respiratory problems with a wide spectrum of severity from mild (sniffles, common cold) to severe (respiratory failure and death). Thankfully apart from the severe cases, the vast majority are self limiting and by the time you get to see your GP you are probably on the mend.

    For decades, most of these agents have been either ignored or tolerated. Only occasionally have people taken notice of their impact. Coronoviridae have been systematically understudied and names like ‘parainfluenza’ and ‘respiratory syncytial virus’ are unknown to most. We still know next to nothing about their ecology and modes of transmission.

    Covid-19 may have inadvertently given us a hand, however. We can turn this crisis to our advantage with a little organisation and clarity of purpose. Although we have not had an open and far-ranging debate on the issue of acute respiratory infections, there is clear appetite for one. We now see all too clearly how acute respiratory infections have the potential to disrupt our lives, inflict damage in just about any field we can think of and take our elderly loved ones away.

    We cannot eradicate or eliminate them because we do not know enough about them. And our ignorance about these viruses could exacerbate the problem: our uninformed actions may actually accelerate their spread.

    So if we cannot beat them we have to learn to live with them in the hope that one day humanity will be free of their scourge.

    In the meantime, we must do our best to follow the evidence and plug the well-known enormous gaps in our knowledge. We can then put in place interim measures based on a minimum of credible scientific evidence to protect the vulnerable this coming winter and every future winter. We can also invest in sensible community surveillance and better tests. Here is the bonus: these measures may protect us against Covid-19 and all the other pathogens you have never heard of in future winters.

    But what is clear is that the current approach isn’t working and isn’t sustainable. If we want to try and defeat Covid-19, we urgently need to accept our ignorance, learn more about this virus and use this evidence on what works when, how and in whom to control the viral impact for what happens next.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-s-whack-a-mole-covid-strategy-is-failing

    3. It’s funny how this kind of opinion is so very rarely heard! The saboteurs have never ceased working behind the scenes and, as others have said on Nottl, I have my doubts even now. The Internal Market Bill ought to have been passed unanimously but we know there are many Bliars in the HOC as in yes, we know the country support Brexit and we do too. I understand Boris has offered some amendments/changes to the bill to persuade people to support it but what are they?

      1. The lack of support for Britain’s best interests by so many of our politicians staggers belief.

        One of the gravest mistakes that Boris Johnson made was not deselecting sitting remainer MPs before the general election.

          1. And Nigel Farage’s fatal error was not demanding that all remainer Conservatives MPs were deselected before he agreed not to field his Brexit Party candidates in Conservative held seats.

            Much as I admire Nigel Farage I am not blind to his faults. He would go up several notches in my estimation if he were to admit that not getting a quid pro quo from Johnson was a very serious blunder that he sorely regrets and for which he wants to apologise to true Brexiters.

          2. I’d like to know the reasoning behind it, after all, he had no way of knowing how the vote would go. Heady days when we thought “we’ve won”. Little did we know.

  31. Labour must discover its patriotism to win back disaffected working class voters, Keir Starmer to say. 20 September 2020.

    Labour must discover its patriotism and pride in Britain to win back disaffected working class voters, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to say in his first conference speech as leader this week.

    The Labour leader is expected to speak of his “pride in Britain, of its values and for what it has achieved” when he addresses Labour Connected, an online event which replaces the party’s conference due to Covid-19 restrictions.

    Wow, Labour discover Patriotism; that really is terra incognita isn’t it? These people absolutely loathe the English indigenous working class and everything they believe in. Still it will all be fake. They won’t actually have to believe in anything!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/19/labour-must-discover-patriotism-win-back-disaffected-working/

  32. ‘Morning All

    I am suffering from severe Media envy…………

    A devestating attack on the politicians,bureaucrats and would be censors,every single word can be applied to our own muppets

    A must watch,if only to see what they have in store for us………………

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJdwCVUNG2Q&ab_channel=SkyNewsAustralia
    Indefinite detention without due process……………….
    Edit
    Masktapo in full cry take down dangerous rebel………..
    https://twitter.com/OzraeliAvi/status/1307544250414850048?s=20

  34. No goats. Still in gaol – they ate their way through an electric fence and a four foot thick hawthorn and briar hedge….

    No kittens, either. Had a look at two this morning. Petrified feral ones. NBG. We are keeping looking.

          1. I wouldn’t want to – but they eat thistles, brambles, hawthorn, and electric cable…(as well as T-shirts and leather shoes) – so I’d have thought nettles would be a doddle!

          1. ♫Pot Cat!
            The indisputable leader of the gang.
            She’s the boss, she’s a VIP, she’s a championship.
            She’s the most tip top,
            Pot Cat !♫

          2. They are not pedigrees – just mongrel kittens from a British Blue mother.

            Missus – you can’t get moggies for love nor money. We have been all over Norfolk looking.

            I blame the bloody internet. Once, you put up a card in a newsagent or vet surgery – “Kittens free to good home”. Now people use the internet. They have discovered Gumtree and other sites – where they find mugs will pay huge sums to have a bog standard kitten. And other – vile – people are now using females to produce litter after litter.

          3. Your local rescue should have some.

            Ours is 5 Valley Cat Rescue at Minchinhampton. They take in any that need a new home, not just kittens. Lily’s people could no longer look after her as the old man died and the old lady went into care, She is a sweetie, very loving and doesn’t kill the wildlife because she’s past all that.

            Think about taking in an older cat.

          5. They don’t have what we want.. We have been everywhere. The RSPCA has two ferrets…..

            We want two young cats to see us out. We had great luck with ginger brothers Bob and Thompson who came from the RSPCA in 1993 – Thompson lived to be 15. When Bob died aged 10 – Thompson went into a steep decline. We we lucky to be given a domesticated kitten, Mousie, who rejuvenated him. She is still living with the friend who took her when we moved to for the MR to teach in Monaco.

            We will persevere.

          6. When our last two died, at 15 & 17, I realised kittens would outlive us, so we decided to go for an older cat.

  36. Does anyone know if it is possible to have Covid and ‘flu simultaneously and if one dies is it recorded as a Covid death or a ‘flu death?

    3. Wouldn’t surprise me to know I’ve just had them both. Worst ‘cold’ in more than ten, or perhaps 20, years. Tried to self isolate but there were too many in the bar every night.

  38. Home Office plans to evict thousands of refused asylum seekers. 20 September 2020.

    Thousands of asylum seekers currently accommodated in hotels are facing removal from the UK, the Home Office has announced.

    A letter from the Home Office, seen by the Independent, states that evictions of refused asylum seekers will take place “with immediate effect” and charities have reported an increase in people being held in immigration detention centres.

    Asylum seekers whose cases have been refused and who do not have an outstanding appeal will begin receiving notices to leave the UK within 21 days from this week. This group generally have no recourse to public funds.

    You have my solemn assurance as a NoTTLer that none of these people are going anywhere outside the UK!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/19/home-office-plans-to-evict-thousands-of-refused-asylum-seekers

    1. If I was the Insurer of the hotels, hostels and detention centres I would be refusing to extend or renew cover for fire risks.

    3. Where is she planning to send them? The French are not eager to have them back, and any attempts to send them somewhere sensible like Libya will immediately set up an application to a settler-friendly Supreme Court, paid for by the Magic Fairy.

    4. Good morning Minty

      Are the Home Office checking up to see whether we are importing wide boys, criminals and people who are intent on doing us all harm?

    5. Morning A-S – I suspect that those people who are to be evicted will leave their hotels and vanish into the general UK public. I hope they have been finger printed, photographed and DNA sampled – all on a database

      1. That would be a breach of their right to a family life, of the DPA, of anything else that their overpaid by us lawyers could bring up in appeal after appeal. We should deport then hear appeals.

    6. Good morning, Minty

      You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you cannot fool a Nottler!

    8. They wont find a tone in the hotels in twenty one days’ time, now that they’ve announced that. They should have just done it.

    1. Whatever else happens, the test used in Pillar 2 must be immediately withdrawn as it provides no useful information. In the absence of vastly inflated case numbers arising from this test, the pandemic would be seen and felt to be almost over.

      Common sense also tells us this!

    2. Good!

      While following up on the content – PCR – test I entered this website and got this message:
      “Welcome to our ad-free, tracking-free version of Healthline
      We detect that you are in one of the member countries of the EU/EEA, which is now subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Unfortunately, a tracking-free version of our full website is currently unavailable in these countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market.”

      Is there not more than little irony in the GDPR compelling us to accept tracking?

      https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-testing

      1. I didn’t try that link. But there is quite a lot on the https://www.cebm.net/oxford-covid-19-evidence-service/ website which is well worth reading. Some of it is a bit scientific for me but mainly it is understandable.
        I’ve just read the “PCR positive-what do they mean” a pdf which goes into some detail on the current rise in “cases” in Spain and concludes that there is no correlation with deaths.

        1. Yes. Polymerase Chain Reaction identifies coronavirus genetic material, even if the virus is dead and even if it is only a cousin of Covid-19.

          2. Yes, pretty much so. definitely for live and dead Covid-19 and possibly for other coronaviruses. This is why the figures cannot be trusted. Posts below provide links to analysis by real scientists.

    3. Basically, the author is saying that we are regularly being presented with the ORIGINAL graph below when we should be seeing the MODIFIED one – just to make us panic and believe that the Government is in control.

      I have explained how a hopelessly-performing diagnostic test has been, and continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease but, it seems, solely to create fear.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f81787e4b56e4c9f9918027d045a89d95e8a03bc21f9c51ff3004b1f8758053c.png

      1. The question the politicians never seem to be asked is “why?” Clearly, if the PCR test is so unreliable and useless, we are spending millions on propagating fear. What is the reason for this?

        1. Either the government (and the ruling class) is made up of congenital idiots – or there is some sinister, global plot to terrify people into submission (to what I know not).

          1. The coordinated global response to a virus that we now know is no more lethal than normal flu should tell us something – is it the “Great reset”? the Green agenda? Why the trashing of economies worldwide?

          2. Or perhaps it’s just in the UK?

            There is a census next March, imagine the reaction of yer natives when they discover that Bames are no longer the minority in England.

        2. 323826+ up tick,
          Afternoon N,
          Political payback for the 24/6/2016 and the damage done to political lifestyles.

          2. 323826+ up ticks,
            N,
            From political & business point of view queues at the factory gate
            were never a bad thing.

        3. It’s the only thing the Government has got that will produce frightening graphs that will stop us arguing about Brexit for which there are no graphs at all.

          Before COVID we used to argue about spending £40bn to argue with the EU on trade agreements until Christmas 2020.

    4. Well worth reading. A must I would say. Essentially it explains how important the false positive rate is for the test they use. If it were the best it would still be 0.8% which means, wait for it, that for every 10,000 tested we would pick up 10 genuine cases and,wait for it again, 80…… yes 80 false positives!

      This is of monumental importance and will rank with the Carbon dioxide fraud as another example of mass hysteria and delusion.

      1. Absolutely! I’m useless at maths and at first I could not believe those figures, but I read that part several times, and it tallies with the data from CEBM. We’ve been the victims of a massive con.

  42. Good Morning, my Friends

    Here, once again, is the Nottlers’ Birthday List. Please let me know if you spot any errors of if you would like me to make any additions under this post.

    2nd January………..Poppiesmum (1947)
    7th January ………..Lady of the Lake
    8th January………….Rough Common
    10th January………..hopon (1960)
    16th January……….Legal Beagle (1941)
    18th January……….BugSpattered Knees
    23rd January ………Damask Rose (1951)
    27th January……….Citroen 1 (1948)
    11th February ……..Phizzee (1964)
    22nd February……..Grizzly (1951)
    28th February……..Jeremy Morfey (1956)
    29th February………Ped
    5th March……………Sue Macfarlane (1957)
    8th March……………Geoff Graham
    26th March………….Caroline (1962)
    27th March………….Maggiebelle (1947)
    27th March………….Fallick Alec
    19th April…………….Devonian in Kent
    26th April…………….Harry Kobeans
    8th June………………Still Bleau
    9th June……………..Johnny Norfolk (1947)
    9th June …………….Horace (The Horse) Pendleton (1947)
    23rd June………….. Oberstleutenant (1961)
    25th June …………..corimmoblie (1952)
    1st July……………….Rastus (1946)
    12th July……………..David Wainwright
    18th July……………..lacoste
    19th July……………..Ndovu
    26th July……………..Delboy (1936)
    29th July……………..Lewis Duckworth (1944)
    30thJuly………………Alf the Great (1946)
    1st August…………..Datz (1950)
    3rd August…………..Molamola (1954)
    10th August…………ourmaninmunich (1967)
    18th August…………ashesanddust
    4th September……..Joseph B. Fox (1948)
    7th September……..Araminta Smade
    11th September….. Peddy
    12th September …..Ready Eddy (1946)
    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

  43. The Lady’s Death is the last of a series of six oil-on-canvas paintings by English painter and pictorial satirist William Hogarth, created around 1743. The series, entitled Marriage A-la-Mode, depicts an arranged marriage and its disastrous consequences in a satire of 18th-century society, and is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

    In this painting, the countess has poisoned herself in her grief and poverty-stricken widowhood after her lover is hanged at Tyburn for murdering her husband. An old woman carrying the countess’s infant daughter allows her to give her mother a kiss, but the mark on the child’s cheek and the caliper on her leg suggest that syphilis has been passed on to the next generation. The countess’s father, whose miserly lifestyle is evident in the bare house, removes the wedding ring from her finger.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Marriage_A-la-Mode_6%2C_The_Lady%27s_Death_-_William_Hogarth.jpg

    Eastenders has been going longer than I thought.

    2. And the dog gets the dinner while they’re not looking.

      My mother had a book of Hogarth’s drawings and paintings (I have it now) and some of them I found very scary as a child. In particular one where a giant has a person on his fork and is about to eat him.

      The Rake’s Progress was in Sir John Soane’s Museum, but I read recently that it has been moved.

      1. I knew he was a great satirist and this picture has inspired me to find more of his work. We could do with him in Parliament.

    3. There has never been an original story line in Eastenders. They just pillage from other previous works.

      5. BoB Memorial Flight is really RAF WW2 memorial. After all it includes a Lancaster bomber, a type which didn’t even exist in 1940 and the Dakota (transport) as well.

        Only the left hand Spitfire and the Hurricane even look like BoB aircraft. The other two Spitfires, one with the D-Day stripes is not a 1940 model and nor is the clipped wing model.

      6. Because it’s there; it flew over Cosford for the BoB celebrations. My immediate reaction was “why that one?” There’s a Mk Vb with clipped wings in the formation as well (1941).

    1. This is scary. Bernard Jenkin making a bugle call for the onset of Martial Law.

      It’s time for the PM to take back control from incompetent advisers – and bring in the Armed Forces

      The predicament facing the Government in its response to Covid is not fundamentally one of policy; it is one of logistics and implementation

      BERNARD JENKIN – 20 September 1:00 pm

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/20/time-pm-take-back-control-incompetent-advisers-bring-armed/

        1. In a real emergency without an agenda government would be doing its utmost to quell the panic.

          Good evening, N. I spend a day offline, as yesterday I was travelling to Devon. I discover that the government has finally flipped when I access the papers this morning; it has gone collectively mad. £10.000 for a breach of lockdown and the threat of a national lockdown.

          2. Exactly – on waking it felt like we had already slid further down the rabbit hole into complete mutinous, treasonous madness. They have all gone stark, staring bonkers.

            We are here on the s. coast of Devon for the week. Will lockdown see us home sooner? Hancock has to go.

          4. Axmouth. Very pretty, lovely estuary filled with curlew, greenshank, oyster catchers, grebe, egret and the usual assortment of gulls, ducks and swans. Oh, and a little owl perched on a fence alongside, waiting patiently for an evening’s marauding. So far we have had lovely weather although I prefer it with a bit of a chill in the air.

          6. The Harbour? The Ship Inn? There are two of them here; we dined at the Ship on Saturday evening, it was very good but the service was slow. I eventually had to accost a waitress for a pudding menu (‘pudding’ is one of my favourite words, taught very decisively to our little grandson!). The Harbour is more of a pubby restaurant, the Ship is more of a restaurant. We are on the main road through the village which rather startled us somewhat, it is v. busy, opposite the church car park.

          7. ‘Morning, pm. Must have been the Ship. Of course he’s not there, probably no longer with us. I was thinking back to the 70s.
            Have you ridden the Seaton/Colyton tram?

          8. Good evening, D in K. We did for more than quite a few years take our two small boys on holiday to the Oakdown Caravan Park with our touring caravan, just outside Sidmouth and very near Branscombe. I recall riding on the tram along the estuary to Colyton. We may give it another whirl, we will see things with different eyes, but the weather is not looking so good for the rest of the week. Very dull today. We have just returned from Castle Drogo to discover that Boris is bringing in the army to assist his ‘endeavours’. I fear a coup has taken place.

      2. ” Bernard Jenkin making a bugle call for the onset of Martial Law.”

        Pardon me, C, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He’s merely suggesting that the army be used as it was by Blair for a previous panic – foot and mouth. Of course, some of the culling then was as gross an overreaction as is the testing shambles is now (and Ferguson was partly responsible).

        If we are to be critical of Jenkin, who wrote sensibly on the Internal Market Bill fuss, it would be for this:

        “Always at his best in a crisis, this was Blair demonstrating his strengths as a leader: recognising the limits of his own time and resources, giving responsibilities to those with abilities that made them up to the task, and admitting failure by changing course.”

      3. Boris should outsource COVID-19 handling to the Swedes and concentrate on ‘getting Brexit done’.

      4. I don’t expect them to use our soldiery. After all, we only have 55 thousand. Nowhere near enough. I expect them to bring in some sort of armed Militia from Europe like they did against the Catalans.

        Old Lady with a dog on a lead being swung around and thrown to the ground. Local Police and Firemen trying to stand off against the bastards who were going to beat up the locals.

        Coming to a town near you, soon.

        Arm yourselves.

      5. ” Bernard Jenkin making a bugle call for the onset of Martial Law.”

        Pardon me, C, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He’s merely suggesting that the army be used as it was by Blair for a previous panic – foot and mouth. Of course, some of the culling then was as gross an overreaction as is the testing shambles is now (and Ferguson was partly responsible).

        If we are to be critical of Jenkin, who wrote sensibly on the Internal Market Bill fuss, it would be for this:

        “Always at his best in a crisis, this was Blair demonstrating his strengths as a leader: recognising the limits of his own time and resources, giving responsibilities to those with abilities that made them up to the task, and admitting failure by changing course.”

      7. Good job they ran the armed forces down so they won’t be able to cope, then. Oh, wait a minute; they’ll be calling in the EU army.

    2. DT reports Hancock making more threatening noises:

      Matt Hancock has warned Britain is at a “tipping point” as he refused to rule out a second national coronavirus lockdown if the public fails to follow social distancing rules.

      “The nation faces a tipping point,” he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.

      “We have a choice. Either everybody follows the rules – the rule of six and the need to self-isolate if you have a positive test or if you are contacted by NHS Test and Trace – or we will have to take more measures. I don’t want to see more measures, more restrictive measures, but if people don’t follow the rules that is how the virus spreads.”

      The Health Secretary went on to say that meetings are happening today to discuss new coronavirus restrictions in London.

      “I’ve had discussions this week with the Mayor of London and the teams are meeting today to discuss further what might be needed,” he told Sky News.

      His comments came as the Government announced people in England will face fines of up to £10,000 if they refuse an order to self-isolate.

      Mr Hancock said: “We will support people who do the right thing and we will come down hard on people who do the wrong thing.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-second-national-lockdown-cases-lancashire/

      It then goes on to raise fears of more panic-buying simply because home delivery services face increased demand:

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/20/signs-supermarket-delivery-slot-shortage-amid-fears-return-panic/

      1. “I’ve had discussions this week with the Mayor of London

        The only discussion one should have with Sadiq Khan should be limited to two words.

      2. “I will do such things – what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the very terror of the earth.”

        1. We should all do it together. It should not be too hard to frighten our politicians, for starters.

      3. I see that if we don’t self isolate Bojo is going to find us £1,000. He’s got to find us first. I am getting thoroughly p1$$ed off with it all. I went to an outdoor event this afternoon and spoke with one of the stall holders; he was a total sceptic. Another one, a woman, said a dear friend of hers had died of covid – and then went on to say he’d had a tumour and been admitted to hospital where he died! No, he didn’t die OF covid, woman, he died of the tumour (he wasn’t strong enough for the operation, she said).

  46. Note that our idiot Chancellor of the Exchequer is finally waking up to something Nottle observed months and months ago.

    the Chancellor has told fellow Ministers that he is deeply concerned about the long-term damage to the Treasury’s balance sheet.

    Dear God, please may these people, the Government, Sage, the civil service etc be held to account for the damage that they have wrought.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8751245/Dishy-Rishi-gets-tough-Chancellor-plans-FREEZE-benefits-state-pay.html

    And while about it stop calling him “dishy”, everything about him is fishy.

    2. I think Sunak realised right from the start what he was doing, as he made several comments about it. He seemed to be in the grip of ministerial paralysis globalis, the inability to resist the globalist agenda whilst in office though.

      1. I don’t think he had a clue how people would react to free money and lower expences. Nor how many companies would play the system and how much fraud there would be.
        These people in governmnent and the civil service seem to be totally lacking in an ability to think things through and they have very little experience of the real world and average lifestyles.
        It’s similar to the benefits system, why work a 40 hour week to be only a few quid better off?

        1. Exactly, Same thought as the “migrants”. Why come here legally and work? Just get here, end up with a roof over your head, free cash, free NHS, free schooling – everything paid for by someone else – for NO contribution whatsoever. And STILL complain and want it changed to the ****hole they came from in the first place.

  47. You’ll be pleased to know that the government is to give assistance to those who have served the British Army in its fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Afghanistan nationals whose lives are threatened because they helped the British forces will be fast-tracked in their application for refuge in the United Kingdom. At present there are several thousand but the figure is expected to rise.

    Like the French resistance in WW2 , the number of active partisans is probably greatly underestimated. The current population of Afghanistan is 39,076,681. At least six of them actively assisted the Taliban so they will not be eligible for residence in the UK. The rest … who knows?

    All joking aside, there hasn’t been much in the news about this generous British Government offer. I wonder why not.

      1. They were all forbidden from leaving HK, that’s why. A development which the British govt was probably aware was on the cards when it made its generous gesture.
        A democracy activist was arrested in a small boat trying to escape from HK a few weeks ago. Poor chap.

  49. Shovel-unready
    SIR – I was delighted to read Bunny Guinness’s article about avoiding digging in order to protect important aerobic bacteria higher up in the soil.

    I have been gardening organically, without digging, for the past 50 years. At last, I am no longer an oddity. Thank you, Bunny.

    Eva Lipman
    Maidenhead, Berkshire

    I am being a bit thick here, but how can you maintaina garden if you don’t dig?

    1. The same way that Nature does. It’s a method that has been advocated since the 1930s. I use it on vegetable beds, but it does need a lot of mulched material to keep weeds at bay.

    3. I haven’t done any digging during the last 10 years.

      ‘Morning, Belle.

      What did your old man think about mulching the roses?

        1. ‘Morning, Paul.

          I have a beautiful Lady Hillingdon opening right outside the landing window. Yesterday a pristine peacock butterfly was feeding on the buddleia next to the same window.

          3. While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
            With old Khayyam the Ruby Vintage drink:
            And when the Angel with his darker Draught
            Draws up to thee–take that, and do not shrink.

  50. 323826+ up ticks,
    As James Cagney would have so eloquently put it,
    Whats it to be,
    ………………Heel or kneel copper.

  51. Andrew Marr has just asked Matt Hancock if he would dob on his neighbour during the more stringent COVID measures.

    Hid answer was an immediate “yes”!

    But how would Matt have known that his neighbour had been told by an authorised COVID operative that his neighbour had been legally bound at the dob time to be in self isolation as a result of their health status?

    Does this now mean that the doctor’s code of patient confidentiality is required to be breached by a medically naive untrained group of vigilante volunteers?

    1. Dob in – Phrasal verb

      (dob someone in) to tell someone in authority about something bad that another person has done. English

      Never heard it used that way before. Slang English/Aussie, probably from Australia. To me, to dob someone would be to punch them in the face or forehead. Either would be suitable for the twisted mouthed Marr.

      3. As I have pointed out before the Animal Rights brigade take a very dim view of people who go dobbin’ the donkey or muffin’ the mule!

      1. A great new word that is unlikely to be the politically correct Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year 2020!
        However, if you don’t mind, I shall use it as often as possible to try and get it into general circulation!

    3. I think medical confidentiality went out of the window years ago.
      I wonder if the secrets of the confessional are being maintained?

  52. I am ‘doing a Grizzly’ and giving a copy of the letter sent to the DT:

    Sir,

    For the attention of Mr Johnson

    We have been running our residential French courses in France for Sixth Formers for over 30 years and we are now always fully booked. We usually publish the dates for these in September. We run these courses during the February and October half-terms and during school holidays in March, April, July, and August.

    Is it worth publishing our dates for 2021 now and sending out our mailshot or should we just meekly accept that our business has been financially destroyed without compensation?

    Richard Tracey

    1. You are not alone. A lady on a radio phone-in said she hadn’t been able to earn a penny in 6 months. She worked from home, self employed and had her 80 yr old mother who had cancer, there as well, She had had absolutely zero help from the govt. Meanwhile, in hotels all over the country, foreigners sit and laugh as OUR govt treats THEM better than us.

    2. Silly suggestion perhaps, but could you do residential English courses for the equivalent French students?

      1. The main selling point of our courses is that we run French courses in a country where French is spoken. Caroline also gives the children of our friends with their school work but not on a commercial basis.

        2. I can see the strategy but if you need the income it must be a possible alternative, given your track record the other way.

    1. I don’t know if you have noticed, but after the latest Freeview channel list changes, Sky Arts is now on Channel 11. A scan over the next weeks progs show from Rock to Rattle – and Puccini to Pink Floyd. Something for everyone.

    2. She’s a pork pie taster.

      As I said before, that dress shows a lot of taste, unfortunately it’s all bad.

      1. You got it! This is her new slender look. Apparently she has something to do with Dancing on Ice – that could explain the diminishing Arctic ice shelf and the increased number of icebergs endangering shipping in the North Atlantic.

  57. Patrick O’Flynn
    Could Boris quit?
    20 September 2020, 7:03am

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt21bbf3322f565793/5f64e3e9a4d7b56a238666b2/boris-johnson-prime-minister.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Could Boris do a Harold Wilson? Over the years there has been much speculation about the sudden resignation of Wilson as prime minister less than a year after he had settled, apparently for good, the momentous question of Britain’s future in Europe via the 1975 referendum. Was he forced out by MI5? Had he already got wind of his early-onset Alzheimer’s? Was there some other hidden personal scandal that would have emerged had he not stood down?

    The truth was rather more bland: it seems more likely that Wilson had just lost his appetite for the grind of the job. In a resignation minute circulated to all cabinet ministers he observed: ‘It is a full-time calling. These are not the easy, spacious, socially-orientated days of some of my predecessors… I have had to work seven days a week, at least 12 to 14 hours a day.’

    Few would suggest that Boris Johnson, for all his gifts, ever had a Wilsonian concentration span or a Stakhanovite work ethic. So it requires no great leap of imagination to suppose that the not easy, not spacious, not socially-orientated days he is enduring right now are not what he had in mind for his premiership.

    Throw in divorce, fatherhood again at 56, an impending further marriage and a touch-and-go spell in intensive care that may have left its mark on his own capacity and it’s easy to see why the gossip has been building that Johnson may do a Wilson early in 2021, once the main loose ends of Brexit have been tied up.

    As someone who knows him well told me this week: ‘He is hating it. He can’t make his mind up on stuff. His rupture with his family occupies his thoughts a lot. Dominic Cummings has mainly gone over to work with Michael Gove on Brexit and he knows that a lot of the other people around him are second-raters.’

    While his success in electoral politics cannot be declared over — as the continuing Tory poll lead attests — his failure in governmental politics, following a tenure as Foreign Secretary that was decidedly ropey, is close to becoming an acknowledged fact of life in Westminster.

    A natural flippancy, an overwhelming desire to be liked and a tendency to think he can get away with not doing his homework are the three traits most often cited as his undoing.

    This week all three were on display, as when he was blind-sided in front of the Commons liaison committee over Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis’s assessment that the EU was, in fact, negotiating in good faith compared to his own assessment that it wasn’t.

    Making it up as he went along, Johnson theatrically declared that it was always possible his own assessment would be proved wrong by virtue of the EU behaving more reasonably, smirking and looking around the room for signs of approval, amusement or admiration as he did so.

    And then there was that interview in the Sun where he said that people should not dob in neighbours for breaking the rule of six — adjudged by his own administration as essential to public health — unless they were having a rumbustious, US frat-house style, full-on party — ‘hot tubs and so forth’. That completely cut the ground from under ministers and MPs who had through gritted teeth told interviewers that yes, of course, the right thing to do was to let the authorities know when this law was being broken.

    With an extremely tough autumn on the Covid front now the central expectation of ministers and officials, this style of leadership really does seem singularly ill-suited to the times.

    No wonder then that the name of Michael Gove is once more on the lips of the Tory tribe, with the influential columnist Paul Goodman floating the idea of him being made Deputy PM in January, once the Brexit saga is concluded.

    One is struck by the degree of admiration for Gove’s brainpower, strategic nous and sheer skill at government that is felt across the political spectrum. Nigel Farage is but one unlikely admirer. At times each of the three most recent Tory PMs have viewed Gove as untrustworthy, but equally all three have also at times found him indispensable.

    That is how he is seen right now and it may be that bolstering someone good at being electable but bad at governing with someone good at governing but bad at being electable will bring a belated sense of coherence and grip to the Johnson premiership.

    Equally, even that may simply lead to more Tory MPs wondering whether it mightn’t be an idea to install someone who is good at both. It would not be the very greatest shock — certainly not a shock on the scale of Wilson’s resignation — were Johnson himself to reach that view.

    As he said once before when defining the mission facing the UK Prime Minister: ‘Having consulted colleagues… I have concluded that person cannot be me.’

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

    Top comment BTL:

    Bob3 • 3 hours ago
    Could Boris quit being Prime Minister?
    I thought he already had

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-boris-quit-

    1. I dislike Gove intensely, but perhaps he actually is what is needed now, an utterly ruthless bastard who wil not hesitate to slash and burn.
      He could start with the Cabinet, move on to the Advisory committees, SAGE and the like, and then set about the Civil DisService and the BBC.

      1. He’s too left wing. He’d be fully signed up to the globalist agenda.
        Plus, he only identified the Blob at education. He never actually tackled them. We were meant to believe that he was moved on against his will. Yeah right.

        2. TBF, he was getting to grips with the EdBlob, when Cameron took fright and removed him. He was replaced by the bumps at the front promotion Morgan.

          1. How do we know that Cameron took fright and removed him? That’s certainly the tale that was spun in public.

        3. Few gentlemen to choose from but I would go for Owen Paterson. His principal recommendation is that he does not want the job.

          2. I knew Gove slightly at university, and have disliked him for rather more than thirty years! Paterson I don’t know, but he seems alright.

    2. If anyone had suggested during the Tory leadership campaign that divorcing one’s second wife and setting up home with a much younger girlfriend who wants to start a family should disqualify Boris from becoming Prime Minister, they would have been shouted down as an old fogey or a religious fundamentalist.
      However, the truth is that these factors cannot be denied or brushed under the carpet, and they have influenced Boris a lot.

      1. Also his brush with covid and intensive care have left him fearful and he has definitely lost his bounce.

          2. From The Graun

            Faceplant, Namibia

            ‘This elephant calf in Namibia was slow to notice when his mother started to move away. When he tried to hurry and catch up, he tripped over his front feet and faceplanted. His mother heard the commotion and immediately came back to help him up, and the calf continued on his way with no damage except to his dignity’
            Photograph: Tim Hearn/CWPAs 2020

    3. Cameron, May and Johnson have all “viewed Gove as untrustworthy”. High praise indeed. He must surely be well fitted for the job of PM.

      2. 323826+ up ticks,
        Afternoon HP,
        If you do NOT want to break the line of treacherous leaders by all means make him leader.

        1. Good afternoon ogga.

          Given the fact that it is most unlikely that Gerard Batten would be called on to step into the breach, whom would you suggest should be given the role?

          2. 323826+ up ticks,
            Afternoon R,
            Personally I would re-instate UKIP under Richard Braine the
            infrastructure has been dismantled but can be reassembled again
            with little problem.
            Get shot in total ALL current Nec members Braine was elected
            leader with a massive majority, all on record.

            The treachery that overtook real UKIP courtesy of the Nec/ farage input, is a microcosm, a segment of what is happening Nationwide,common sense, integrity, one’s self respect WILL be
            suppressed & erased ongoing.

            Some peoples are awakening to what is happening now via the
            Dover campaign and the fact that every one that lands displaces an indigenous person in places of education, medication, accommodation, and even incarceration.
            Finance currently would be a problem.

    4. I hope more than a willingness to snitch on your neighbours and dob in friends and family are not the only talents required to become PM
      I’m not expecting anything unrealistic e.g. loving your country, understanding the people living in it or a respect for western culture: but possibly, even in C21 Blighty, turning the country into an English speaking GDR might be viewed as a step too far.

  59. Back from today’s cycle. Two miles away, a freshly harvested field was made available to some Norfolk Detectorists.

    Among lots of “ordinary” stuff – they have, today, discovered a coin from the time of the Emperor Trajan; one from King John’s reign; a Saxon cross – and a Venetian soldi.

    When one holds a coin that is 1800 years old, one wonders what the bloke felt when he got back to barracks and discovered that a coin was missing….

    It was fascinating to see. All details are sent to the local authority. I must say that the chaps (and chapesses) did look they had walked straight off the set of “The Detectorists”!!

    1. What always intrigues me is how so many fields seem to throw up such things. People must have been moving all over the place and been very careless of their possessions. Either that or running away from other people.

      1. The MR found a 14th century coin on a path in the garrigue near Laure. It was a track that pre-dated the Romans. We imagined the chap reached for something and dropped his purse – and thought he had picked up all the coins…

        2. If I took a MD around this plot I suspect I would get lots of finds, none particularly interesting.

          It is staggering what rubbish gets rooted up by the wild boar, old leather boots, bottles, car parts, wagon wheel rims, old agricultural implements, minus handles which will have rotted away.

          I sometimes think people must just drive things into the forest and abandon them. We had four old cars just left behind, probably during and just after the war.

      2. Lots of things have a way of working to the top. Have you ever dug over a piece of garden, got all the stones out, only to find one on the surface a few weeks later.

    2. I loved that series , it was safe , kind , and had some sweet humour.

      I had a metal detector , but I loaned it to a dog rescue charity so that they could find missing dogs.. the sort of dogs who investigate badger setts and rabbit burrows.. a metal detector might just find a metal tag on a collar and that sort of thing.

      2. I had a metal detector (I won it in a raffle – unusual for me, as I normally don’t win anything). I gave it to a friend so he could find screws he’d dropped on his workshop floor.

  60. Every pussyfooting politician, policeman, sportsman and so called celebrity who kneels to the Black Lynching Mob should see this film of true heroes and patriots who fought for their country and freedom of speech. 12 Minutes of history every schoolchild should see and remember.

    https://youtu.be/nANtaZ6sWd8

      1. It isn’t mine, It was posted on Facebook and elsewhere. I can’t see anyone objecting – other than the BBC, the BAME, the MSM, the Civil Serpants, the educationalists, the Labour Party, The Scotch Nationalists, the Church of England, the Police Farce UK Ltd., the ambulance chasing lawyers, the immigrants and islamists, the actors union, the…

      1. From today’s Grimes:

        “Tens of thousands of Britons who live in Europe are to be stripped of their UK bank accounts and credit cards within weeks, because the government has failed to negotiate post-Brexit rules.

        A number of the biggest British banks, including Lloyds, Barclays and the Queen’s bank, Coutts, have started writing to expatriates to say they will stop serving them when the withdrawal agreement ends at 11pm on December 31.

        Without a continuation of crucial pan-European banking rules, known as passporting, it will become illegal for UK banks to provide for British customers in the EU without applying for new banking licences.

        As each of the 27 member states has a hotchpotch of different rules, it is a bureaucratic nightmare for institutions, and some are deciding simply to ditch certain countries.

        A source at one leading British bank said: “In some cases, continuing to serve customers would be incredibly complex, extremely expensive and very time-consuming, and simply would not make economic sense. This is passporting — this is the reality of Brexit.”

        In the past few weeks, banks have begun contacting customers who live in countries where the regulatory demands are considered too costly to tell them their accounts are being cancelled. Banks are making different decisions about where to apply for permission to continue operating — and which countries to abandon.

        Lloyds, which is Britain’s biggest banking group and includes Halifax and Bank of Scotland, started writing to customers in August, telling them that their bank accounts would be shut on December 31.

        So far, the bank has confirmed this applies to 13,000 customers, including those with current accounts in Holland, Slovakia, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. The bank would not reveal whether more countries will follow.

        Lloyds said: “If customers have regular deposits into, or payments out of, their account, they will need to make other arrangements before their account is closed.””

          1. More likely, they were just hoping for something to turn up and now it hasn’t they are doing something about the problem.

            I wonder if a class action lawsuit demanding enormous compensation for all ex-pat customers might make them re-think. I’m sure reminding them of the aftermath of PPI etc might concentrate their minds.

        2. The buggeration factor will be enormous for us, if true.

          I still think it’s a scare story and that the banks are using it as an excuse to get rid of small customers.

          I also think it is being pushed by people who still think that they can halt Brexit.

          1. In anticipation of this I moved my UK gbp paperless current account to my son’s UK address a couple of months ago. Credit cards might be a different problem.

  62. The Independent publishers an article about a Hunt going ahead and how awful.
    My comment, ” Excellent, ignoring Government baloney etc..” has been removed. Most comments were about rich white privilege, one law for them etc.

      1. The first time I heard that piece, in 1954, the chap whose records they were (78s) said, of the 117 bar rest in the 1st Movement, “Imagine the soloist having a cigarette while counting, then at bar 112, putting the ciggie on the edge of the piano top…”

        Ever since, I have always had that image! But it is a fave concerto – among many others…..

          2. Ashkenazy playing Rach’s 3rd piano concerto was the first classical record I bought, followed a couple weeks later by the 2nd.

          6. He had Rachmaninov playing his own Nos 2 and 4 – but they were nearly worn away. I still have the Ashkenazy recordings I bought to “replace” them – but I haven’t been brave enough to play them for a long time.

          1. Gloom, followed by Louis Armstrong.
            Together wirh Paavarotti, finest male voices ever heard.

  69. Evening, all. The government doesn’t want to turn its Covid strategy around; people are cowed just as they intended.

          5. Hello officer Crabtree. Just boiling some whale blubber for me tallow.

            Well, don’t make a minkey out of it.

    2. How about they get on with what we elected them to do – get us out of the clutches of the EU and get the country back to work! Enough of this covid fearmongering! And all the Wokery!

    3. Top comment BTL@DTletters

      John Langdale
      20 Sep 2020 7:03AM

      There’s no way to comment on the news article so I’ll have to put this here. I had read somewhere that Parliamentary staff were going to be obliged to undergo some anti-racism training in the wake of the George Floyd hysteria but was still shocked to read in this morning’s paper about what this actually entails.

      It appears they’ve gone the whole nine yards in implementing the kind of confrontational self criticism methods, akin to those used in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, that are laid out in Robin D’Angelo’s utterly toxic ( and racist) book,“White Fragility”. These include a social media confessional “Wall” on which they’re supposed to give details of their guilt and apologise for their so called “White Privilege”.

      Screw Covid, this should be the lead article today. It is outrageous that our very highest institutions of Democracy should be indoctrinated with the poison of Critical Race Theory.

      Donald Trump has banned this “training” from Federal Government Bodies and Boris needs to wake from his slumbers and do the same here without delay.

      Colin Thomasson
      20 Sep 2020 7:30AM

      @John Langdale “Officials have been issued an “inclusivity toolkit” by senior figures that states the need for white workers to acknowledge their ethnic advantages and “internalised racism”.

      A digital “solidarity and support” wall was set up for staff to admit their privilege, pen poetry, and “pledge their support” for BAME colleagues following the death of George Floyd in May.”

      What ‘ Officials ‘ by whose authority, in whose name and by what right ?

      No doubt exactly the same faceless Westminster ‘ officials ‘ who prevented Big Ben from heralding our escape from the rule of faceless EU unofficialdom last January by lying through their teeth, and then went on illegally to prevent the cash raised for the Big Ben Brexit Bong being used to ring it.
      Why are these faceless cowards allowed to rule parliament like so many woke Stalins ?
      Boris has much to answer for if this rule of woke terrorism is allowed to continue as if they are the only legitimate power in the kingdom and voters, Westminster and parliament their serfs.

      Drag them out and make them answer those questions posed above, or resign, Boris

    5. I’ve done a haiku, it’s good to contribute.

      You don’t belong here,

      Airport is that way sunshine.

      Pleasesodoffski

  72. Covid scepticism behind high Bolton infection rate, says local MP. 20 September 2020.

    Covid scepticism in Bolton has led to it having the highest infection rate of coronavirus in the country, a local MP has said, as a #thinkingforyourself social media trend gains traction.

    With 169 cases for every 100,000 people, the Greater Manchester town has the highest rate in England and has featured among the worst-hit areas in Europe. Health officials said infections had been doubling every four days.

    Yasmin Qureshi, Labour MP for Bolton South East, said many people in the area believed the virus was a fake, government-constructed concept and as a result were refusing to adhere to social distancing guidelines. “There is a lot of confusion about the virus in the area and there are a lot of people now who do not believe it is true,” she said.

    Qureshi added: “They genuinely believe it’s some kind of conspiracy. A lot of them don’t understand the rules either and so there are many who just aren’t following them – they think it is a way of controlling them somehow. It is very dangerous.”

    Hmmmm. It’s quite possible that this is simply the leading edge of a Sceptical Hurricane that is going to destroy the Governments program. I don’t see how anyone with an ounce of sense can believe what is essentially drivel. They can threaten and fine of course but when faith collapses, as the Russians could tell you, that is pretty much it!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/20/covid-scepticism-behind-high-bolton-infection-rate-says-local-mp

    2. Some community bleeder on the beeb the other day blaming the government for not communicating in the correct languages. So, how could the community possibly know what the rules were! In reality, its all up to allah anyway .

      1. I know the government puts out gobbledegook at times, but the “correct” language for the UK is English (with Welsh and Gaelic on the fringes).

  73. Feeling a bit lazy tonight, so I opened a pack of gorgeously sweet crevettes. All I had to do was toast the baguette in the oven for 5 minutes to restore its crispness, & there was enough herb butter left over from last night. I made the mistake of tossing a piece of crevette to Missy, who mampfed with enjoyment, but looked so reproachful when there was no more. Next time I’ll buy 2 packs. …& eat them both. 😉

        1. 24, but dropping like a stone, it was 28 just a couple of days ago.
          The forecast is dire.

          Too chilly for HG, her last swim was yesterday

          I’m hoping for a few more, but as I get older I become less tolerant of cold water and I can’t be bothered to dig out my wetsuit just for one or two more.

          Another consideration is that running the pumps and keeping the chemicals balanced costs a small fortune and it’s not worth it just for me, much as I enjoy it.

          2. Bergerac is surprisingly well placed for public pools. That one is very new.

            I sometimes wonder if I should investigate “masters” swimming, the times aren’t difficult compared with being in with a medal chance, but I can still hit world qualifying for my age group in crawl all the way to 800 back to 200 and ‘fly to 50. Perhaps I could get selected for France in the short relay and they’d grant me honorary citizenship.
            }:-))

          3. Henri is like you – lengths – a few km – then home for lunch.

            I’d give it a whirl – the one near Laure had special times for serious swimmers. You have nothing to lose apart from a few euro – and you only drown once.

          4. I’m certainly tempted.

            I did it for a very short while in the UK after a redundancy but a new job meant I had to give up.
            Just after I had paid the non-refundable year’s subscription!

            I was amused to be placed with people many years younger than I, when we were doing backstoke. The coach wondered if I had swum competitively, I don’t think that he realised that I was almost certainly older than he was.

          5. Late joining in but here goes. Two of my cousins swam for England at least 50 years ago. The elder one put in the equivalent of swimming the English Channel every week in training. Some years later she applied to become a Lifeguard on Bondi Beach but was told they only employed men. She told them they were being ridiculous and that she could outswim any of the men.

          8. Sorry for the delay in a reply.

            It doesn’t necessarily follow that a good swimmer makes a good lifeguard.

            I could get out to a person in trouble quite quickly but I would not be much use. I can’t float and I’m not a “strong” swimmer as such. Although they have floats which they tow they still need to give support.

      4. Me too. The ground temperature is dropping and the solar panels can’t keep up, particularly on days like today. Had 26C yesterday and 25C today.

    3. Your flowers are lovely! Tell them to grow over the arch next year!

      I love autumn – best time of year of clothes too, in my opinion. I’ve never been much of a beach bunny.
      Autumn is quite beautiful in Bavaria, far more so than in Britain in my opinion – you really do see mists and mellow fruitfulness. It’s the only time of the year when the light in Bavaria is more beautiful than the light in England – you get gentle sunshine and bars of mist, with muted greens, duck egg blue, yellow and mauve skies.

      2. I used to do a regular week’s Vertretung in Gangkofen in September. in my spare time I would go for long walks in the countryside. The Gasthof in the market square served up excellent fish for supper. Oh, but the cockroaches were prize-winners.

          2. There is, in fact, lots of rural. Despite the number of people in England there are still swathes of “green and pleasant land” in lots of counties. Shropshire is very green, as one example, but there are lots of bits if you know where to look for them. England packs people very densely into its urban areas – which leaves a lot of room for green elsewhere.

        2. All I can say is that it’s far more colourful than in Britain – not sure why. Usually I prefer the softer light in Britain.

    4. I’m now suffering from golfers knee and tennis ankle, or was it tennis knee and golfers ankle.
      Serves me right I suppose for playing too much

        3. In Germany if a young patient came in with a leg in plaster, I would ask after the cause. It was usually playing football or similar.
          “Ha!” I would say. “Sport macht fit.” Wry smiles all round.

          6. I am the world’s worst coward, and refuse most red runs. I think you have to understand the snow and the local conditions to go off piste. The part where Michael Schumacher had his accident looks deceptively innocent, though he was probably unlucky.

      2. Soft weather, earthy smells, amazing colours, a feeling off slowing down and reflection before the trials of winter.

          1. Applies every year.
            Good evening to you too, Garlands.
            I hope life is treating you better than you could hope!

    6. We need Autumn, it’s part of the cycle. But no, it isn’t exactly enjoyable.

      The fruitfulness (if it’s a real harvest) is frantic rather than mellow – and nerve-wracking to boot (it your year’s income depends on three to six weeks of getting the harvest in there’s no real rest at all) – and the mist just delays the day’s work. I never fell for the romantic when it came to harvest – you don’t when you’ve lived in a turmoil of grain dust for the duration; not even years afterwards.

      Bits of Autumn can be lovely, but it is the season of death and decay before the frost comes to clean everything up for a fresh start in the spring.

      1. I like all the seasons. Each one has its merits. Right now the rose hips on my ramblers are ripening, as are the elderberries. The birds will be feasting on them for the next couple of months.

        1. It’s what I love about living in S Norway. The seasons, each distinct, and you can tell the change to the day.

          3. 5 seasons, so we beat ya Norfukk.
            Spring
            Summer
            Autumn
            Period between autumn and winter, where it’s dark, wet & miserable, and we’re waiting for snow to lighten the mood. Typically October & November.
            Winter

          4. A foreign princess who married into the Swedish royal family described Sweden as having only2 seasons: the Green Winter & the White Winter.

        2. Too much personal sorrow around harvest and autumn. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the changing year… just that it comes with baggage.

        3. I enjoy the sense of the year rounding off, nature’s purpose complete. I enjoy all days that are typical of their season, especially cold, clear, high pressure winter days that end in brilliant sunsets. For some reason I always feel really well under those sort of atmospheric conditions.

      3. We were down to 38degrees this morning, and frost warnings are out for over night. But I do enjoy the crisp, clear blue skies we have had the past couple of days. Supposed to warm up a little, mid-week. Colours are beginning to change, although a sad time of the year, I do enjoy the change of seasons here in West Virginia!

        1. I think you enjoy some of the best autumn colours anywhere.

          It’s good here, but not a patch on your part of the world

          1. Can’t argue with that! In my view, everywhere has something special to boast about, where would we be without French wine and cheese….

          3. ‘where would we be without French
            wine and cheese…..’

            right here, Jill.

            British wines and cheeses have become
            world beaters!

          4. British wines have not yet crossed the pond but Stilton is mostly available along with Cheshire and red Leicester cheese, particularly at Christmas times.

          6. Ever the pedant, Peddy! I should have said at ‘Christmas holiday times’ meaning to include the New Year.

          7. Not British wines (which are undrinkable) but English Wines which are as good as a lot of French wines. English sparkling wines have been voted superior to champagne in recent years.

          8. “British” wines are usually made up from imported grapes. We have some excellent vineyards in England. At Viriconium (Wroxeter) the Romans made wine and now the vineyards are up and running again and producing good stuff.

        1. It can start as early as July…. and yes, your nose, eyes, touch, will tell you.

          Of course the idea that the seasons will start and end on the same day all the way from the Scilly Isles to Muckle Flugga is, and always has been, madness.

    10. It’s been a lovely day today; warm, sunny and very pleasant. Mind you, I did manage to escape with a friend for a couple of hours this afternoon and then I worked in the garden for a bit, tidying up, when I got back.

    1. He is pretending to be breathless because of Covid in order to avoid debating Trump. His handlers know he is useless and a stalking horse for Michael Obama or similar.

          3. The only evidence that I’ve seen online for this theory is that her ring finger is longer than her index finger, and that she’s very tall. This is not convincing.
            I am tall, and work in an industry with a lot of trans women – do you think it’s nice for me and other women to have people speculating about whether we’re trans or not?

            Trans is a whole lot more than men dressing as women – it goes together with a bundle of other psychological conditions. Trans people I have met have been diagnosed with NPD, depression, PTSD, insomnia, hoarding disorder. A huge iceberg that has not yet hit the press is trans people abusing their families.
            Saying someone is trans when they’re not is far worse than saying they’re stupid or ugly or anything else you want to throw at them, because you’re attacking their fundamental identity as a man or a woman. It’s not fair or kind to say it about a famous person unless you have real evidence.

    2. He is pretending to be breathless because of Covid in order to avoid debating Trump. His handlers know he is useless and a stalking horse for Michael Obama or similar.

  76. The Independent published an article about a Hunt going ahead and how awful.
    My comment, ” Excellent, ignoring Government baloney etc..” has been removed. Most comments were about rich white privilege, one law for them etc.

      1. It made me laugh (but it wasn’t supposed to). It was Giulio Cesar in Egitto, Oper von G F Händel, sung in Italian with German subtitles – good job I’m a linguist 🙂 It was in modern dress. Singing was superb; Andreas Scholl as Caesar, Celia Bartholi (I hadn’t realised just quite how well she was endowed until I saw her as Cleopatra), Philippe Jaroussky as Sesto and Anne Sophie von Otter as his mother (possibly the best “son nata a lagrimar/son nato a sospira” I’ve heard). Caesar was portrayed in a blue suit and his statue (which was toppled and destroyed) had him in the same blue suit with a chain of stars – EU to a T. Even the despatch box in which he kept his papers had the sphincter of stars on it. The set was a bit weird, to say the least and Sextus got very dirty during the course of the opera (not as dirty as Ptolemy was, though, with acts of masterbation and simulated sex). What did the Romans ever do for us? It was an eye-opener, shall we say 🙂 If I watch l’incoronazione di Poppea, I expect I’ll have my eyes even more opened.

        1. Heh – sounds like fun. And WHAT a cast!!

          Thank you – I shall now have “Son nata a lagrimar” going round my head, and it’s a while since I’ve run through that one.

    1. I’ll be your new bedtime reader, Peddy. Now close your eyes and listen to me:

      “Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived…”

    3. Sort of.
      HG started watching it and gave up.
      Again.

      I’ve never managed to get beyond the theme tune…

      3. I saw it for the first time in 1969 – six weeks after my father died from a heart attack in the centre of Leeds.

          1. Yes – I was not expecting that ending to the film. I did not know the ‘story’ – I had heard only the theme music!

  81. Unsurprisingly, Hancock has joined Patel in calling for snitching. He calls it taking responsibility. Another consequence of the viral panic is that there is such a backlog in the courts caused that the police are using out-of-court disposals for thousands of criminals.

    Elsewhere, the EU has voted all but en bloc against Liam Fox for the WTO role. Only Hungary broke ranks and voted for him. I doubt that considerations of his competence affected either decision.

    Just to cheer you up, tomorrow Tuesday is the last warm day for now. The second half of the week looks grim.

      1. Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not,
        Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot,
        We’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather,
        Whether we like it or not.

    2. William the Press love to persecute politicians by asking them if they would report to the police people they see ignoring Government guidelines. If the politicians reply “Yes I would” they are labelled “snitches”; if they say “No” they are labelled hypocrites. They just can’t win, can they? It is the Press that I despise.

    3. I mentioned a few days ago that trials are being booked 3 years ahead now. The country has really gone to pot.

      1. I wonder just how many criminals are still roaming our streets on parole or on bail whilst the rest of us are at our most vulnerable, owing to the lockdown nonsense.

        I now know for sure that our rotten government do not give a toss about our plight.

    4. Any politician advocating that people should snitch on their neighbours are unfit for public office.

      Boris, you fat bastard, need to be shot of Priti Patel and Matt Hancock otherwise you will be deposed by the backbench Tories who seem to have clearer vision than you and your useless cabinet of amateurs and incompetents.

      If this farce continues your party will never receive my own vote again.

          2. For using up those long boring moments when nothing happens for a very long time.

            Ediit. I have never been without a book since I discovered them. I do prefer books to my kindle, though. But a Kindle is so handy when I’m travelling.

          3. Joke – play on kindling. I included books in my emergency bag. I can’t live without them (and the pages can come in handy if there’s a bog roll shortage – Kindle won’t be the same).

  83. I am afraid to say that I switch off from this forum when I see Jennifer SP resurrected as some sort of expert in farming matters with her supportive sidekick.

    So bye bye for now. I have other interests.

    3. Good morning, Corim.
      I hope this is only temporary;
      your posts about architecture
      are always interesting.
      I hope Sinbad is improving.

      1. And then bring over both sets of grandparents and demand to live in a mansion. Which they will get.

        1. And the grandparents will demand that all their other children should be reunified and all their children…

    2. I see he got to Northern Ireland and settled in Belfast. That haven of peace and tranquillity for 50 years minutes or more.

    3. Expect the locals are thrilled at the prospect of moving down the housing list and paying out for them evermore.

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