Thursday 24 September: Responsible citizens despair at unfair Covid-19 restrictions suddenly imposed by diktat

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/2020/09/23/letters-responsible-citizens-despair-unfair-covid-19-restrictions/

732 thoughts on “Thursday 24 September: Responsible citizens despair at unfair Covid-19 restrictions suddenly imposed by diktat”

    1. SIR – It makes sense to shut pubs at 
10pm. For years, oldies like me have been going out early and then heading home from the pub as the youngsters start coming out. This means we don’t mix much.

      But now the young spreaders are being forced by the Government to go out early and mix with us oldies, thus passing the virus on.

      This will kill off us old ’uns, saving millions in pensions and care costs.

      Bryan Green
      Dunstable, Bedfordshire

        1. The oldies who have estates large enough to run into Inheritance tax don’t, on the whole, drink in pubs. They have their own wine cellars.

          Fewer than 5% of UK estates pay inheritance tax.

      3. Morning Citroen1 – we old ‘uns should have the sense to stay out of pubs until this epidemic is over. Drink sensibly at home.

      4. To use an overworked cliché Boris Johnson is between a rock and a hard place.

        On the one hand he would welcome the economies to the state caused by old people dying off more quickly of Covid 19; on the other he has to try and give the impression that he is doing his best to stop them getting it.

  2. SIR – So, apparently the French may apply due diligence to the inspection of British lorries crossing the Channel while, at the same time, failing to monitor illegals crossing in small boats going the other way.

    John Ley-Morgan
    Weston-super-Mare, Somerset

  3. Good Moaning:
    An article by Allister Heath in the Tellygraf.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/23/three-taboos-heart-ofjohnsons-coronavirus-fiasco/

    “The three taboos at the heart of Johnson’s coronavirus fiasco

    Our national failure to engage in rational debate is driving a response that is dangerously one-sided

    23 September 2020 • 9:30pm

    What is wrong with Britain? We used to be known for our sangfroid, and yet we have now fallen prey to a national panic, with fear and emotion overwhelming our ability to think logically. We are being asked to accept the greatest restraints on our freedom since the Second World War, even though the Government hasn’t bothered to justify properly its actions.

    Where are the rigorous analyses, the calculations, the evidence, the data, the philosophy, the ethics? And no, I’m not just referring to arbitrary models or scenarios.

    We cannot scrutinise the Government’s actions because of three debilitating taboos. The Government is far too scared to conduct, let alone even discuss, any proper cost-benefit analysis of its measures; there is a general social prohibition on acknowledging the utter, terminal inadequacy of our health system; and, most weirdly, we are all meant to pretend that everybody is at equal risk. The greatest taboo relates to a shocking unwillingness – from the Tories, but also the Opposition – to engage in an honest conversation about trade-offs.

    To assess lockdown measures rationally, we must conduct a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, quantifying the upsides as well as the downsides of restricting behaviour. The most controversial aspect of this is to put a value on human life, or, more precisely, on the additional years saved (or lost) as a result of lockdowns. But the Government and the private sector do this all the time. The Treasury Green Book values each life year at £60,000. The Department of Health and Social Care assumes that a “quality-adjusted life year” is also worth £60,000 at 2009 prices.

    So what would a generous estimate of the benefits of locking down be worth? Sam Bowman, of the International Centre for Law and Economics, who believes Johnson’s most recent policies don’t go far enough, previously calculated that a lockdown which saved 230,000 lives (based on one version of the Imperial calculations) would yield £124 billion in benefits.

    His sums, in The Critic magazine, were based on the assumption that the average victim was 79.5 years old, and that 2,070,000 life years would be saved. My own guess is that the likely death toll of the virus will be substantially lower than that – especially with advances in treatment and progress on vaccines – and that in any case, the Government’s ability to save lives is lower than usually understood. Crucially, what counts now is the incremental life years saved, starting today.

    I suspect, therefore, that the future benefit of continued shutdowns is probably no higher than £20 billion, and certainly no more than £50 billion – between 1-2.5 per cent of GDP. Is it really worth wrecking our society for that? If we want to answer rationally, we must address two more questions: what are the costs of locking down? And what is the cheapest way to obtain the maximum gain?

    First, lockdown costs: these must include not just GDP but every other reduction in happiness and welfare, tangible and intangible, as well as any cultural, political or social impacts. How many life years are we losing as a direct consequence of restrictions and lockdowns? What is the monetary value of the tens of thousands of possible additional cancer deaths or, in time, those from despair?

    We are going to be permanently poorer to the tune of some 2 per cent of GDP – a bill that goes up disproportionately the longer restrictions are maintained. The massive increase in the national debt will mean higher taxes and less growth. Unemployment will shoot up, social mobility will crater, and tens of thousands more businesses will fold. What about the renationalisation of the railways, the wiping out of city centres, the collapse of industries such as the arts, the war on entrepreneurs?

    It’s not just about GDP. What is the value of foregone birthday parties, of memories that never happened, of dashed dreams? Some of us really value seeing our relatives and friends. What is that worth? What is the cost of assaulting family and religious life, of atomising society? The destruction of school sports, the ruined weddings, the extra divorces, a mental health crisis? The fact that some of these losses are hard to measure doesn’t mean that they should be ignored.

    Some losses are metaphysical. Removing freedom and liberty has a cost. Our reaction to the virus has probably accelerated the break-up of the UK. We are shifting towards a more socialist and collectivist society. One should account for all of these in any calculus – and accept that different people with opposed ideologies will have contradictory answers. I cannot see, on any plausible estimate of the potential death toll, how the benefits of our current policies can be greater than the costs. That is even before we look at those measures that deliver the best bang for buck: Swedish-style measures surely come with the best trade-off.

    All of this takes us to our next taboo. After being in denial since the Forties, the British ought to have finally understood that the NHS isn’t the right vehicle to deliver quality, universal healthcare. Its failures, and the closely related ones of Public Health England and the social care system, are a central reason for our elevated death toll.

    We should also finally be seeking to reverse the authoritarian drift of the medical-bureaucratic establishment: their job is to advise, ours is to choose how we lead our lives, what food we eat. Medical professionals shouldn’t be in charge of minimising deaths at any cost: freedom and happiness also matter. Yet instead of a healthcare revolution, we are going to get more of the same nightmare, from an NHS- worshipping government that was supposedly sceptical of technocrats and meant to be pro-liberty.

    The final taboo is our refusal to accept that this virus isn’t an equal-opportunity killer. Virtually all of its victims are old or already very unwell. It would make more sense to protect and shield those at risk, and allow the rest to get on with life. This should at least be modelled, but that takes us back to our first taboo. This is a horrible, dreadful virus that continues to kill and devastate. Yet I fear that our response has ceased to be commensurate or appropriate: we are sacrificing too much for too little gain.”

    1. Not sure why intelligent people are spending so much time and effort trying to scrutinise the benefits of the lockdown and all the increased loss of freedom when it must be so obvious to even the most gullible academic that none of it is to do with the fake virus.
      Maybe they work XR or something and are trying to control the direction of the argument

      1. Yup. We are way beyond controlling a nasty cold.
        The question is whether it’s due to stupidity and hubris or a deliberate attempt to irrevocably change the world.

        1. “Build Back Better”
          At heart it’s the Greeniacs putsh for power that they could never win at the ballot box
          ‘Morning Anne

  4. SIR – Chartwell was bought for the nation by Lord Camrose. The National Trust has merely been trusted to keep the house and contents available for members of the public to see and visit.

    I am now 85 and, as a child of the war years, I am forever grateful that Sir Winston Churchill led our country to victory in 1945. We all have faults, but it is no business of the National Trust to sit in judgment or try to besmirch Churchill’s name, particularly at this time of national emergency.

    John Arthur
    Halstead, Essex

    Defund the National Trust and make them stick to their charter.

    1. ‘Morning, C1. I’m not sure that John Arthur is correct in stating that “…Chartwell was bought for the nation by Lord Camrose”. There is a circular plaque on a wall by a door that lists half a dozen familiar names who, between them, stumped up the purchase price. It is a while since I lasted visited and unfortunately I cannot now recall them. The Wiki entry for Chartwell states:

      “In 1946, when financial constraints forced Churchill to consider selling Chartwell, it was acquired by the National Trust with funds raised by a consortium of Churchill’s friends led by Lord Camrose, on condition that the Churchills retained a life-tenancy.” I’m not sure that even this version is accurate, but having cut up and returned our cards to the NT in 2017 I am not likely to revisit the place to refresh my memory. It is a marvellous place and shows Churchill’s many talents, including his writing, artistic and wall-building skills amongst many. In fact, one wonders how he ever found time to fit in so much to one life. For me, he was undoubtedly a very great Englishman, possibly the greatest, and I can still recall visiting his lying in state in Westminster Hall. We did things properly in those days.

      1. I was particularly moved by the cranes dipping as the barge made its stately way along the Thames. I doubt there’s a crane anywhere along the banks these days.

    2. The Woke Heritage Elimination Group would be a more accurate name as the NT no longer is remotely National – i.e. concerned by people’s love and pride in their country’s monuments – nor should it be trusted.

  5. SIR – Chartwell was bought for the nation by Lord Camrose. The National Trust has merely been trusted to keep the house and contents available for members of the public to see and visit.

    I am now 85 and, as a child of the war years, I am forever grateful that Sir Winston Churchill led our country to victory in 1945. We all have faults, but it is no business of the National Trust to sit in judgment or try to besmirch Churchill’s name, particularly at this time of national emergency.

    John Arthur
    Halstead, Essex

    Defund the National Trust and make them stick to their charter.

  6. Ben Wallace describes conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘illegal wars’. 24 September 2020.

    The Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has described the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “illegal wars”.

    Mr Wallace made the remarks in the Commons during the second reading of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill.

    In a heated exchange with John Healey, shadow defence secretary, Mr Wallace saidB your events in the past and the way you have run the safety of our forces.”

    Morning everyone. A cheap shot; after all the Tories did support them and they are responsible for the Libyan debacle.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/23/ben-wallace-describes-conflicts-iraq-afghanistan-illegal-wars/

    1. Fantastic:
      informal = extremely good

      fantastic adjective (NOT REAL)

      strange and imaginary, or not reasonable:

      very unusual, strange, or unexpected:

  13. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    A whip-round to provide a new front door for Mr Trollope, anyone?

    SIR – Did those on the National Trust committee reviewing links to slavery and colonialism have ancestors who, before 1865, smoked, had sugar in their tea, wore cotton or drank rum? If so, why are they not publicly declaring their family’s involvement in slavery?

    The British Empire, Pax Britannica, may not have been perfect, but it was greatly responsible for reducing slavery and bringing peace to large parts of the world. Just look at the slaughter when we withdrew from India.

    Charles Trollope
    Fingringhoe, Essex

  15. Good morning, my Friends

    DT Headline Story

    Trump takes on Sussexes President says he’s ‘not a fan’ of Meghan: ‘I wish Harry luck, he’s going to need it’

    Whatever our views are on President Trump I think that many of us her would agree with him about the Duchess of Sussex.

    The woman is a disgrace – she is systematically flouting all the protocol expected of a member of the royal family and the Quessn should strip her and her silly little dimwit husband of their titles straightaway.

  16. Buck the Terrible. SST. 24 September 2020.

    I heard this fellow [Congressman Ken Buck] being interviewed this AM on Varney & Company. He seems quite reasonable (to me). He is now famous for wearing a T-shirt, gifted by his son, that bore the sentiment “Kill ’em all. God will sort ’em out.” This thought was first expressed by the papal legate in the Albigensian Crusade at the the capture of Bezier. That is in France Escarlata. About 7,000 men, women and children were then rendered into used people for God’s perusal.

    Silly man. Nevertheless, Ken Buck has occasioned an enquiry by the DoJ into the sources of funding of Antifa’, BLM, and all the other bits and pieces of the Marxist scumworld that now infests the US and hopefully soon … As Buck points out, the agitprop cadres are being transported in style from hot spot to hot spot, put up in hotels, paid a daily stipend, and supplied with fighting gear and palletized loads of bricks, frozen water bottles, commercial fireworks, wire cutters, etc. The Buckster’s questions to DoJ have to do with “agency” as people here like to call it and funding in support of sedition and revolt.

    I have long postulated, based on Smileyesque reverse azimuths, that there are one or more Lefty operations rooms, manned by callow Lefty Utes that do the donkey work of devising all the different propo memes in support of the “coming revolution.” Is some of that just “a woman scorned?” Probably. But some of the rest deals with logistics and financing. That is what Buck the Terrible is after.

    It is very important for a lot of people that the Democrats win in November. Pat Lang.

    The view from the United States.

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

  17. Good morning all nottlers and, hopefully, Covid19 sceptics. Brilliant link attached although it’s fairly long but I think we’ll worth a listen. Our son sent us this video which is interesting cos his wife is vehemently of the complete opposite opinion to Alf and me We made the mistake of voicing our opinions when over at theirs a couple of weeks ago and had to end the conversation because she didn’t want to hear it – literally. We’re wondering if she’s listened to this – possibly as the narrator is Irish, as she is too.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac&feature=youtu.be

    Hooray, we’ve had rain at last, sorely needed.

  18. From the DT

    Oops…good old ‘editorial guidelines’.
    The BBC sure knows how to win friends in government just when they need them. You would think that, with all those fancy salaries, someone with even half a brain should have seen this one coming:

    The BBC has sparked a row with the Government by giving Sir Keir Starmer a “right of reply” to the Prime Minister’s televised address on the new covid restrictions.

    The Labour leader made his own primetime address to the nation on BBC One, 24 hours after Boris Johnson. It was his second appearance of the night, coming an hour after he appeared on the same channel in a Labour party political broadcast.

    According to the BBC, it is standard practice for a Leader of the Opposition to be offered a platform after a major Prime Ministerial statement.

    But a Whitehall source said: “It’s a strange move for the BBC to allow a political statement as a counterpoint to the Prime Minister making a public information address during a time of crisis.

    “It raises questions for the BBC on why they are allowing Sir Keir Starmer a primetime slot to give a political rebuttal.”

    When Boris Johnson made his historic address on March 23 announcing that Britain was going into lockdown, Jeremy Corbyn was still in place as Labour leader. He was not offered a right of reply.

    However, after Mr Johnson appeared in a second broadcast on May 10 to set out his “road map” for reopening the country, Sir Keir was invited to give a response.

    The BBC pointed to a section of its editorial guidelines covering ministerial broadcasts and Government information. The guidelines read: “In exceptional circumstances, such as a decision to go to war, the BBC may be required to provide time for a broadcast by a UK government minister.

    “In such circumstances, it may also be necessary for the BBC to consider whether responses from other political parties are appropriate. The BBC, as broadcaster, has the final say on the broadcast’s acceptability in terms of its compliance with appropriate legal and other standards.”

    The BBC said the current pandemic constituted “exceptional circumstances” and pointed to previous instances when the Leader of the Opposition was allowed to give a televised response: Tony Blair on the Docklands bombing in 1996, William Hague on military action in Kosovo in 1999 and Iain Duncan Smith on the Iraq War in 2003.

    A BBC spokesman said: “Under the BBC Charter and Agreement, the Government can require the BBC to transmit a ministerial broadcast. In those circumstances, under its Editorial Guidelines, the BBC has to consider whether to offer other parties the opportunity to respond. There has been a response on every occasion since the Suez crisis, bar one, most recently with Keir Starmer’s response to the Prime Minister’s last broadcast in May.”

  23. Morning all.
    Bang On topic………..

    —— Original Message ——
    From: Jane Birkby
    To: Christopher Whitty UCLH; Patrick Vallance; Neil Ferguson Imperial College
    Cc: Prime Minister Boris Johnson; Priti Patel MP Private External HO; Suella Braverman; Mr Matt Hancock Health & Social Care Sec; Civil Service Cabinet Office
    Sent: Tuesday, 22 Sep, 2020 At 03:17
    Subject: Breaking the Common Laws of England

    Dear Christopher Whitty, Neil Ferguson and Patrick Vallance,

    I don’t know how or why you three were chosen to advise the Cabinet on this plandemic, but your hubris is showing and revealing your lack of knowledge about our ancient laws, which you have broken, ignored, and run a coach and horses through. Nobody voted for you or gave their consent to being effectively ruled by you.

    Like many university bred ‘experts’ your knowledge is so focussed, you are unable or unwilling to see the whole picture, especially when you have had carrots dangled in front of you, promising great rewards and advances in position for forcing things through in true Orwellian style, for your masters outside this country.

    Your advice has been used to terrorise the public, making you no better than common terrorists, for which you should have been arrested, not withstanding the treason laws you have broken by acting against the best interests, and adhering to the enemies of the sovereign people of this country.

    Given all the information which has entered the public domain, it seems that you have not told the truth, manipulated information, prolonged the imprisoning of the public, trashed the economy, ruined businesses, caused more deaths than necessary, and all to continue the charade to sell questionable vaccines without proper licencing and preventing civil claims for damages.

    Given that the public cannot believe anything you say, I demand that you all step down immediately, and leave the illness to resolve itself via herd immunity, which is what should have been done in the first place, like they did in Sweden.

    Yours sincerely

    Mrs Jane Birkby
    http://englishconstitutionalconvention.org/english-law/the-treason-allegations/ (Funny that, page not available) Perhaps some one fiddled with the treason laws and it’s not to be made public. One of an ex PMs many ‘D’ Notices’ ?
    http://englishconstitutionalconvention.org/english-parliament/the-origins-rights-and-authority-of-parliament/

    The Supreme court ruling which was finalised on 12th February 2020, where it was held that any instruction restricting a man’s freedom by requiring him to remain in his home during fixed times amounted to false imprisonment.
    Supreme Court Regina (Jalloh (formerly Jollah)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
    [2020] UKSC 4 B 2019 Nov 12; 2020 Feb 12

    2. “…page not available…”

      The last entry on the site was in March 2017 so I wouldn’t read much into that.

    3. 323943+ up ticks,
      Morning RE,
      The likes of kim philby would put these treacherous politico’s well in the shade as old kimmy was a top notch treachery merchant, if medals were given out for treachery old kim would have had more than my bruvver Sylvest.

  24. Just had an idea for a TV channel. How about the “Brand-new content” channel. Never seen before content, absolutely no repeats (they are all on iPlayer, Youtube, Netflix etc), aimed at people who want to see SOMETHING THAT ISN’T A REPEAT!

      2. And with no background “musak” – and no frantic, arm-waving, “look at me” presenters who cannot read an autocue…

        1. Time they stopped having someone doing the sign language thing when some politician or other is giving an important announcement –
          I sympathise with those who need the signing but, dear me – the wild gesticulations and hand gestures some of them use makes me wonder just what they are trying to say?
          Have you seen any of the Sturgeon’s presentations ??

          1. I never watch any progamme of news, politics o current affairs. And not much else, either.

            But I agree about the signing. I’d have thought that subtitles would be less intrusive and of greater use to the deaf.

          4. The gesticulating woman behind her means I hear nothing of Sturgeon’s words. Not that she is worth listening to.

        2. All I want is that simple thing – something I haven’t seen before! Once I have that, then I can get picky about wokery, music, arms, whatever – lets start with new first!

    2. It was coming straight down when I eventually got out of bed this morning with scarcely a breath of wind.
      Now it’s stopped and considerably brightened up.

  26. From the Wail:

    “EXCLUSIVE: In the week Boris told a battered Britain it was in for another six months of Covid winter misery, his partner Carrie Symonds enjoys five-star Italian holiday at £600-a-night Lake Como hotel with son Wilfred and three friends”

    No wonder Johnson is hard up…

    1. “We’re all in this together”. Oh goody. Boris, can you book me into the hotel and pay for my flight, please?

  29. Ben Wallace describes conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘illegal wars’. 24 September 2020.

    The Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has described the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “illegal wars”.

    Mr Wallace made the remarks in the Commons during the second reading of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill.

    In a heated exchange with John Healey, shadow defence secretary, Mr Wallace saidB your events in the past and the way you have run the safety of our forces.”

    Morning everyone. A cheap shot; after all the Tories did support them and they are responsible for the Libyan debacle.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/23/ben-wallace-describes-conflicts-iraq-afghanistan-illegal-wars/

  30. Meet Dr Carina Tyrrell, the former Miss England who just might save the world. 24 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c9eb282f29835d54f5dfbb5cc036a30c0f0183aa6c56f1bde23ac3df946ddf1.jpg

    Cavorting on a boat in a skimpy white bikini, showing off her long legs in a flowing black gown, posing with a glittering tiara on her head… Google Carina Tyrrell’s name and you’ll find thousands of glamorous photographs of the former Miss England.

    What you won’t find so easily is that, six years after being crowned in her first ever pageant – which paved her way to the Miss World finals, where she came fourth – Dr Carina Tyrrell MA MB BChir MPH is one of the brightest young minds in the country. With a first-class medical degree from Cambridge University, front-line hospital experience as a junior doctor, cutting-edge research with the World Health Organisation and a Master’s degree in public health, she is now at the forefront of the most vital public health crisis of all – the hunt for a vaccine against Covid-19.

    Are there no depths to which they will not sink to sell this poisonous concoction?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/meet-dr-carina-tyrrell-former-miss-england-just-might-save-world/

    1. At last a Beauty Contest Winner, who really is going to ‘save the World!’

      Morning Minty et al…

  31. Has anyone else noticed how the media are bringing more and more emphasise on alcohol consumption. Not only has the government closed down pubs and bars at 10 pm, and also suggested that less alcohol is available through high street outlets. Due to economic circumstances, many licenced premises will also be closing their doors for good. Also aimed for the time being at persistent offenders, there is now a none removable bracelet that monitors the amount of alcohol consumed for such people as those who are aggressive toward others after frequently over consuming. . I couldn’t help but notice the person who demonstrated this on BBC tv this morning might have been from a certain religious leaning.

      1. I’ve tried to explain to my family what is shaping for them in the future, they think I’m nuts.
        I’m going to leave a few “I TOLD YOU SO” notes for them.

    2. Someone remarked on that to me today. We concluded that if anything was going to push the English into open rebellion, it was cutting off our alcohol supplies 🙂

  32. SIR – Here in Scotland I cannot visit my lonely, widowed friend for an hour or so of embroidery, sitting at either end of her room.

    Yet if we were to go to the crowded local bar (not a natural habitat for either of us) we could sit and sew until 10pm perfectly legally. At that point, 
of course, the slumbering virus 
awakes and is transformed into a ravening beast.

    And all these diktats are enforced without a hint of discussion. I despair.

    Elizabeth Ross
    Isle of Arran

    SIR – Within two weeks we have gone from Covid marshals to the threat of martial law, all without parliamentary scrutiny. We must return to rule by Parliament, not by diktat.

    Michael McGough
    Loughton, Essex

    SIR – How ironic that a Conservative prime minister should goad his “freedom-loving country” to the point of revolt by an assault on civil liberties not seen since Cromwell. Parliamentary debate on Covid measures is insufficient, votes must be taken – perhaps with the merciful result of removing this misguided, disreputable leader from office.

    John McEwen
    London SW1

      1. 323943+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        Bob I get castigated for saying think “outside the box” current times call for just that, I for one would put nothing past them as is being displayed.
        The boris plan is part of the overall plan triggered on the 24/6/2016 but active since the political knife entered Mrs Thatchers back.

  33. “The number of people catching and then dying of Covid at some of the worst-reputed hospitals in the country for superbugs is mysteriously on the rise. The NHS has launched a probe after an unknown number of patients died of Covid-19 having caught it at Tameside general hospital in Greater Manchester. Tameside, incidentally, currently has the joint worst MRSA record in the North West England.” Sherelle Jacobs in the DT.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/24/scaremongering-no-10-risks-repeating-deadly-covid-mistake/

    “Blinkered No 10 risks repeating its most deadly Covid mistake

    The Government’s refusal to follow the evidence once again threatens to trigger a calamitous lockdown and cost countless lives

    24 September 2020 • 6:00am

    The PM’s grim prognosis this week was intended as a wake-up call to the nation. In truth, it has only sucked the public deeper into a hallucination. Having bungled their response to the first wave, terrified politicians and tetchy career scientists are determined to choreograph a robust response to the second. Such a performance could prove deadly, dragging us into another lockdown and whipping the public into a delirium over community transmission while Covid rips again through hospitals and care homes.

    Sadly, reality remains no match for the captivating vaudeville of “following the science”. As the press salivates over email exchanges between Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty regarding the herd-immunity backlash in the first wave, the helplessly exposed duo are unsurprisingly keen to prove they are ahead of the curve on the second wave.

    Empirical evidence was strangely absent from their stark Monday warning that cases could rocket to 50,000 a day by October, and we are just weeks behind France and Spain, where deaths are rising as cases explode.

    Stranger still was the pseudo-scientific version of a legal disclaimer, as Vallance explained that the 50,000 prediction wasn’t a prediction at all. To be precise, it was an extrapolation of what would happen in a parallel universe that overrides both present reality and the facts of the past – their graph assumed a current doubling rate of seven days, despite the latest upper-end estimates suggesting it could be 11-12 days, and a continuous exponential growth of cases even though sub-exponential growth was observable after just two weeks in the first wave.

    The theory that cases are spiralling across the country due to community transmission, and that this explains a sudden hike in Covid deaths, doesn’t fully account for some crucial questions that have been raised by other research. For a start, we simply cannot accurately say how many people in the community have Covid due to the problem of false positives.

    Nor do we know many Covid-positive people are actually spreading the disease, as the generic PCR test is not sophisticated enough to detect infectiousness. And, according to analysis of surveillance data published by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine on September 16, “the current community transmission of Covid is low and not at epidemic levels”.

    We can’t even be sure to what extent an increase in community cases may be linked to an increase in Covid deaths. After a summer of rising cases amid falling hospitalisations and deaths across Europe, one fresh cross-country study has found no correlation between positive tests and future deaths, and asks whether Spain’s spike in fatalities may be down to a late heat wave.

    Such a supposition may turn out to be wrong, but it is a disgrace that Western governments are failing to calmly grasp and explain multiple possible scenarios . In the case of Britain, Sage downright refuses to acknowledge the alternative theory that Covid deaths are rising not simply because community transmission is growing – but because we are repeating the mistake of the first wave and allowing the virus to gain ground in hospitals and care homes.

    The number of people catching and then dying of Covid at some of the worst-reputed hospitals in the country for superbugs is mysteriously on the rise. The NHS has launched a probe after an unknown number of patients died of Covid-19 having caught it at Tameside general hospital in Greater Manchester. Tameside, incidentally, currently has the joint worst MRSA record in the North West England.

    Meanwhile, our care homes winter plan is already a shambles, with some institutions waiting up to 15 days for test results as rumours swirl that, once again, bosses are being warned they must prepare to take bed-blockers. Little wonder their Covid deaths have already crept up to 10 a week.

    The problem is infuriatingly simple. Britain needs to confront the real mistake of the first wave – failing to protect the vulnerable. Instead our government-by-focus-group has gone down the rabbit hole of correcting the imaginary one peddled by its critics – hesitating over lockdown.

    The latter criticism is as blinkered as it is baseless. Lockdowns are like trying to cure a cancer by throwing oneself into a chemical vat. There is a dearth of compelling evidence that the last one worked. If No  10 made a mistake it was to stick too rigidly to state protocol for an influenza emergency. This perhaps led it to overlook clues as to Covid-19’s most deadly characteristics – from Sars’ legacy of ripping through Hong Kong care homes, to January reports from China that, like previous coronaviruses, Covid-19 was quickly breaking out in hospitals.

    While Sage flu experts such as Professor Neil Ferguson chewed the fat on their pet subject of transmission in schools (children are superspreaders of influenza), up to one in five Covid inpatients caught the virus in hospital, and as of May, nearly a quarter of first-wave Covid deaths in Britain were from care homes. It is a scandal that the establishment is committing the same sin of ignoring the evidence, as it sticks gormlessly to a pre-agreed script. There is now only one way out of this nightmare, as politicians fail 
us a second time; the public needs to wake up.”

    1. The fact that Sage and the Government is ignoring these immutable facts indicates that they have another agenda.

    3. “…e-mail exchanges between Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty regarding herd-immunity…”

      It seems that Vallance suggested letting it run while protecting hospitals and care homes then recanted. Dr David Halpern, a member of SAGE, was one of the first to mention it and Vallance agreed before changing his mind, apparently after a multi-signatory letter to the government warning against it.

      There’ll be plenty more covering of tracks and finger-pointing before the year’s out.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54252272

    2. That is why all the huffing that “the Army will only be doing paper shuffling’ is such a bloody lie.
      In 2020 we have seen mission creep with knobs on.
      “3 weeks to flatten the sombrero” …
      Good Moaning.

  35. Good day, all.

    I’ve been thinking on Boris Johnson’s appalling record as Prime Minister since he won the last election. His bold words, which secured him a breakthrough in the legendary Labour “Red Wall” constituencies and got him his landslide majority, ring hollow now.

    On immigration, he’s failed spectacularly to halt the Muslim/African invasion of England’s South coast, indeed the number of invaders allowed to enter the UK has dramatically increased – more in first three weeks of this month than in the whole of last year. This invasion is being facilitated by our own Border Force, and by the police who actively attempt to conceal the number of the invading hordes from a concerned British public.

    His gross mismanagement of the Corona Virus so-called pandemic, with the never-ending rules and regulations, U-turns, changing slogans, Government Ministers contradicting each other, all done on the basis of faux-science, beggars belief, and yet he carries on regardless, waffling semi-coherently at the despatch box as if nothing was amiss, despite his having trashed the economy, endangered the livelihoods of millions and driven small businesses,to the edge of bankruptcy, created a National Debt that will take generations to pay off and caused the needless deaths of thousands by turning the NHS into a one-trick “Covid pony”, neglecting all else. Was there ever a Prime Minister, elected on such a tidal wave of goodwill, who squandered that goodwill and went from hero to zero so rapidly?

    I’m not even convinced that despite all his huffing and puffing, he will achieve any real Brexit, the Brexit for which the people voted in 2016.

    Doesn’t he care that, barring miracles, his party will be toast at the next election? It all seems very odd, especially since he has always given the impression of being a man who values personal popularity above all else.

    1. I reckon that the rot set in when Carrie chewed him out after he spilled a glass of red wine on the sofa in her Camberwell flat. He’s been a whimpering mess ever since.

      2. A minor amendment if I may:

        I reckon that the rot set in when Carrie chewed him out after he spilled a of load of seed, on the sofa in her Camberwell flat. He’s been a whimpering mess ever since.

    2. I did try to warn people when I campaigned in the last election, but I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

  39. Good morning ,all. Bright red sky earlier – now, predictably, raining.

    What inspiring news to learn that Whitty has £600,000 worth of shares in Glaxo Smith Klyne. That, on top of Rik’s revelation yesterday, that the other one (Vallance?) is on the board of another vaccine manufacturer is so reassuring.

    1. I would be interested to know how he got them.

      That is an awful lot of moolah and one would assume that he has a diversified portfolio of investments as well.
      This is a seriously weathly man, and thus almost totally insulated from the devastation that the rest of the country faces as a result of his policies.

          2. I read it is £600,000 worth, not that many shares.

            BIG difference, but he’s still badly conflicted in my view.

    2. Morning Bill. Do you really think they would compromise their high moral principles for a measly £600,000 of shares the price of which might go through the roof if they find a winner vaccine that 6 billion people can’t wait to receive?

      1. Just delighted that they are aware of the world of finance. It means tht even they will spot the destruction of the economy…

  40. Coronavirus: fifth of people likely to refuse Covid vaccine, UK survey finds. 24 September 2020.

    A fifth of people are likely to refuse a Covid vaccine when one becomes available, according to the largest survey of UK attitudes and behaviour during the pandemic.

    The survey by University College London of 70,000 people, which was launched before lockdown, found that only half (49%) considered themselves “very likely” to get vaccinated once there is a Covid vaccine and 10% said they were “very unlikely”

    No one in their right mind would willingly take any Covid vaccine manufactured in the West!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/a-fifth-of-people-likely-to-refuse-covid-vaccine-uk-survey-finds

    3. Last heard that the govt had a total of 340m doses of 5 ( unproven ) different sorts. If people have a jab of No1 and that doesn’t work, are they given a jab of No2 vaccine, then 3/4/5 if none work? 5 different ones should be enough to kill someone off.

  41. 323943+ up ticks,
    May one ask,
    Just heard that they are seeking immunity for those pretending to be crooks,sort of in an under a burka say guise, will this also be extended to our exTommy Atkins or is it strictly for the political elite
    & friends / employees.

    Will paedophilia find shelter under the submissive pcism & appeasement umbrella ?

        1. You would get two BT’s out of the little guy and four out of the bigger one.

          Dreadful thought, four BT’s.

  43. ‘Morning again.

    SIR – I wonder what the Government has in mind for November 8.

    Cancelling Remembrance Sunday, would probably be its last throw of the dice.

    Colin Cummings
    Yelvertoft, Northamptonshire

    They can cancel what they like (they are sufficiently stupid to do so) but they will struggle to control all those who may be near a war memorial at 11am and who will pause for a couple of minutes to remember the monumental sacrifice of past generations…generations who would be stunned by the fact that so many just take it all for granted.

    1. All those marching veterans.
      Can’t have that can we?
      We must protect those vulnerable elderly men and women, for their own good.

      1. Quite so, Sos. Compared with the dangers so many experienced in the service of their country, meeting up old chums to remember those who didn’t come home carries insignificant ‘risk’. Handycock and his incompetent, spineless colleagues had better watch out.

        1. If it is cancelled, it won’t be out of care for their well-being, it will be out of fear that they will carry on marching and storm Westminster.

  44. Late on parade this morning.
    Dull, not a breath of wind this morning and the rain coming straight down.
    I feel another CBBA day coming on.

  45. Good morning, everyone. Last night went out for dinner with friends. Apart from taking temperature from forehead, everything was normal.

  49. So, after six months of paying people not to work, the government will now pay two-thirds of people’s wages to do one-third of the work. Hmm, what could possibly go wrong:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/24/boris-johnson-lockdown-rishi-sunak-furlough-update-brexit-news/

    Is this a step towards Universal Basic Income? Everyone’s wages will be paid by the State, soon we will all receive our 1000 Social Credits per month (as long as we take our daily ‘Moonshot’ tests and have our contact-tracing app enabled at all times).

    All Hail Dear Leader Johnson!

    1. 323943+ up ticks,
      Afternoon JK,
      Not all the time you have real UKIP members still on the loose, awaiting.

  53. Another distinguished flyer has taken his last flight. I recall meeting AVM Newton at the International Festival of the Sea (IFOS) at Portsmouth in 2001 and was impressed by his knowledge of the Royal Air Force Reserves, and his genuine interest in our presence there:

    Air Vice-Marshal Barry Newton, did airborne ‘sampling’ of Britain’s first atomic bombs – obituary
    Newton and his crew of ‘sniffers’ captured particles of radioactive cloud from explosions in pods attached to the wings

    Air Vice-Marshal Barry Newton, who has died aged 88, flew a Canberra bomber during the British nuclear and hydrogen bomb test programme in the 1950s. He later filled senior posts with Britain’s reserve forces.

    Newton was a pilot on No 76 Squadron when the unit deployed to RAAF Base Edinburgh near Adelaide, Australia, in the summer of 1956 to participate in Operation Buffalo, the testing of the first four British low-yield atomic weapons.

    He flew one of the five Canberras that were positioned at Maralinga airfield, 500 miles north-west of Adelaide, to gather data from the tests carried out in the Woomera weapon’s range. Flying at high level, the aircraft were tasked with meteorological reconnaissance, cloud sampling and cloud tracking after the explosion: the pilots used the call-sign “sniffer”.

    The first test was carried out on September 27 1956 when Newton and his crew monitored the atomic blast and captured air samples, in pods attached to the wings, from the radioactive cloud caused by the explosion.

    Three more tests were carried out, including the first to be dropped from an aircraft, a Vickers Valiant of No 49 Squadron. Newton flew in support of these test flights, which concluded on October 22. The aircraft were fitted with Geiger counters to monitor radiation levels in the cockpit.

    He remained with the squadron, which later deployed to Christmas Island for Operation Grapple, a series of four tests of Britain’s first hydrogen bomb. The first drop, from a Valiant, took place on May 14 1957 when Newton and his colleagues, flying their Canberras, monitored the tests.

    At the end of 1957 he left 76 Squadron and was awarded a Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air for his part in the nuclear testing programme.

    Barry Hamilton Newton was born on April 1 1932 in Hornsey, Middlesex and was educated at Highgate School. He was awarded a cadetship to the RAF College Cranwell, where he trained as a pilot and was commissioned in July 1953.

    He converted to the Canberra jet bomber, and for 18 months served on No 109 Squadron based in Lincolnshire before transferring to No 76 Squadron, equipped with the more advanced version of the bomber, which was preparing to deploy to Australia.

    After completing a course at the Central Flying School, Newton returned to RAF Cranwell in October 1959 to serve as a flying instructor. In addition to his formal duties, he took a keen interest in the activities of the flight cadets.

    He regularly drove to the sport’s field in his immaculate red Aston Martin DB2, the envy of his fellow officers and the cadets, dressed in his Crombie overcoat and trilby hat, to stand on the touchline to support the College rugby teams.

    Newton had a series of appointments in the flying training arena, which included commanding a squadron at No 6 Flying Training School equipped with the Jet Provost, and a period on the staff at HQ Flying Training Command.

    After attending the RAF Staff College in 1966, Newton was appointed the personal staff officer to the Commander Second Allied Tactical Air Force and Commander-in-Chief RAF Germany, Air Marshal Sir Denis Spotswood, a man renowned as a hard task master.

    Newton’s relaxed style, ability, excellent staff work and social skills served him well. Whenever possible, he drove to his home to take afternoon tea with his family before returning to his desk.

    Newton returned to flying in June 1969 when he commanded the flying wing at RAF Cottesmore, home to three Canberra squadrons. After attending the Air Warfare Course, he began a series of appointments in the MoD policy branch and in the Cabinet Office, which included support of the Joint Intelligence Committee. In 1975 he was appointed OBE.

    On promotion to air commodore in 1982, he completed a refresher flying course before moving to HQ RAF Support Command where he was responsible for all flying training in the RAF.

    A year later he was appointed an ADC to the Queen and for following two years was the RAF senior director at the Royal College of Defence Studies. In 1986 he took up the post of commandant of the Joint Services Defence College at Greenwich. Shortly before retiring he was appointed CB.

    On completion of his regular service in the RAF in the summer of 1989, Newton became a Gentleman Usher to the Queen, a position he held until 2002 when he became an Extra Gentleman Usher. For his services he was appointed CVO.

    In retirement, Newton retained close links with the services. He was vice chairman of the council of the TA & VR Association for 10 years, and in 1997 was appointed the Honorary Air Commodore of No 606 (Chiltern) Auxiliary Squadron, part of the Joint Helicopter Force based at Benson near Oxford.

    In 2000 he became the Honorary Inspector of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and later was made President of the UK Reserve Forces Association. In all these appointments he remained well informed, travelling widely to meet people and to attend events, parades and reunions. His visits included one to meet the RAF auxiliaries manning the Rapier air-defence missile system in the Falkland Islands.

    His memory for faces – his wife immediately provided the names – was a huge asset and everyone he met immediately felt at ease in his company. Well respected and much admired, he remained in contact with those who had worked for him, and was quick to recognise their later achievements with personal letters and greetings.

    Keen on early aviation history, he was instrumental in the refurbishment, and eventual re-siting, of the Grade II listed memorial “The Airmen’s Cross” near Stonehenge. The Cross was erected in memory of the two pioneer airmen, Captain Eustace Lorraine and Staff Sergeant Richard Wilson, who were killed in a flying accident in July 1912.

    Newton believed in the importance of the memorial and in 1995 arranged to have it refurbished. In 2012, major roadworks in the area would have isolated the Cross, so Newton arranged for it to be moved to a new Stonehenge Visitor Centre. A year later, the Earl and Countess of Wessex rededicated the Memorial Cross in its new location.

    In 2002 Newton was made an Honorary Freeman of the Company of Lightmongers. In addition to his interest in military history, he also listed walking and philately among his interests.

    Always immaculately turned out, and with faultless manners and courtesy, he was described by a colleague as “a gentleman of the old school”. Barry Newton married in September 1959, Lavinia, daughter of Colonel J J Aitken CMG, DSO, OBE. She died in 2016 and their son and daughter survive him.

    Air Vice-Marshal Barry Newton, born April 1 1932, died August 25 2020.

  54. Good morning, my Friends

    DT Headline Story

    Trump takes on Sussexes President says he’s ‘not a fan’ of Meghan: ‘I wish Harry luck, he’s going to need it’

    Whatever our views are on President Trump I think that many of us here would agree with him about the Duchess of Sussex.

    The woman is a disgrace – she is systematically flouting all the protocol expected of a member of the royal family and the Queen should strip her and her silly little dimwit husband of their titles straightaway.

          2. Haven’t recently been around much Bill. Janus Towers sold and our hunt for the next JT has been somewhat frantic, given the stamp duty relief. (Thanks, Chncellor, and all taxpayers – several £000s saved!) Fingers crossed that our next hovel happens.

          4. As much as we love yer Norfuk, nearest family is in Bexhill, so we hope to see out our dotage about 20 mins from the sea…

    4. Good morning all.

      Corey Lewandowski, President Trump’s former campaign manager, said:
      “They made Britain great again by leaving, I hope they do the same for
      us.”

      To Africa next ?

  55. Defunding the BBC cannot come soon enough. 24 September 2020.

    As an MP, I am aware of when issues strike the public attention as a flash in the pan or become a genuine wellspring of concern. How do I know? I receive a large volume of correspondence on various issues but it is the BBC that has increasingly dominated the thoughts and concerns of my constituents. These messages mostly convey frustrations with both the expansion of the licence fee as well as concerns over the substance, quality, and tone of the BBC’s content.

    I wrote to my MP about the BBC and received some anodyne acknowledgement. Defunding is not actually sufficient since it has extensive contacts within the establishment that would see it funded surreptitiously. It needs to be shut down and its staff sacked!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/24/defunding-bbc-cannot-come-soon-enough/

    1. Defunding is part of current planning within the BBC. They sell TV programmes. They have divided up the BBC into divisions each suitable for privatisation.. They are going further. Britbox is a pay to view service partly owned by the BBC. It has in its assets many programmes paid for by BBC licence payers and, of course , by the UK Government. If the BBC is defunded, sold off or whatever, it is likely that it will spring to life, like dragons teeth, as a number of separate enterprises employing and lavishly remunerating the same people as now.

      1. It would be BBC Public Service (yes, I know!) that is defunded, though BBC Studios Productions – already commercial – would be reduced in size, since it still relies quite heavily on BBC commissions, as well as being a production house for hire. Remember there’s also UKTV (Drama, Yesterday etc), which carries advertising and is now wholly owned by BBC Studios Distribution.

  56. Funny this global similarity in pol-speak.

    UK pubs to close at 10 pm. France and Spain – bars to close at, er, 10 pm
    “Cases” rising “exponentially.
    “Follow the science”

    All these are appearing at the same time.

    Who is writing the script that these waqueurs are following?

    1. Terry Nation, that’s WHO, which in turn is in thrall to the Gates Foundations and big Pharma, who in turn are part of the NWO coming out of Davos.

      Davos+Soros = Davros.

      In case you don’t recall, Davros was the creator of the Daleks; Exterminate, exterminate.

      Now do you see?

        1. The Daleks were defeated by staircases.
          The Triffids were defeated by rain.
          Politicians are defeated by Common Sense.

          3. The Daleks learned how to fly.

            Triffids were defeated by salt water.

            Politicians have stopped thinking for themselves by a higher order interfering.

          6. A P*ki in a kilt.
            We Ulster-Scots disowned you after that.
            You still have a lot of back-tracking to do. That’s a small step.

          9. …and is there a clan MacPaki?
            Is that their tartan?
            I would have thought crescent moons and stars would have been appropriate.

          10. There was a rumour that he’d approached the Court of the Lord Lyon, asking for official recognition of Clan MacYousaf of Glen Peshawar.
            ;¬)

          12. No more it should be ….. if he wanted to take the Oath in his own language and on his Paki “Holy” book, the bastard should’ve worn a shalwar kameez instead of appropriating our national dress

          13. Does the shalwar kameez include (as I’ve been corrected) the little sheet on his head. We’ve been asked not to call them ragheads but they’ll accept little sheet heads.

          14. Does the shalwar kameez include (as I’ve been corrected) the little sheet on his head. We’ve been asked not to call them ragheads but they’ll accept little sheet heads.

          15. “After all those years I spent defending you lot from the wrath of the PIRA?”
            Give you that one D. Thankless job countering urban terrorism.
            The IRA et al would have won without you.

            Not enough mind bleach to cope with the photo.
            Singapore Police Band Women Pipers are the only Asians fit to wear the kilt.

          17. 323943+ up ticks,
            Afternoon DM,
            Has Holyrood replicated the westminster
            canteen menu as in halal haggis ?

    3. We haven’t reached the pubs close at 10PM stage yet but everything else is lock step with your lot. Even the words are the same, you would have thought that they could have changed something with all of those spin artists involved.

      Trudeau may have jumped the gun with his latest – interest rates are so low that we can afford to borrow a lot more.

        1. in the making.

          One of the pledges in yesterdays throne speech is to plant two million trees as away to help greening the the economy.

          Since about 200 million seedlings were planted in BC in a single year, this is hardly useful – but I guess that money trees are harder to grow than normal trees.

    4. Why didn’t Sweden get the memo? Is it because they are sufficiently far enough down the road to socialism à la NWO?

  57. Good morning all.

    Boris Johnson walks into a bank to cash a cheque. As he approaches the cashier he says, “Good morning Miss, could you please cash this cheque for me?”

    Cashier: “It would be my pleasure. Could you please show me your ID?”

    Johnson: “Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think there was any need to. I am Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister.

    Cashier: “Yes, I know who you are, but with all the regulations and monitoring of the banks because of impostors and forgers and requirements of the legislation, etc I must insist on seeing ID.”

    Johnson: “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am.”

    Cashier: “I am sorry, Mr Johnson, but these are the bank rules and I must follow them.”

    Johnson, “Come on please, I am begging you, please cash this cheque.”

    Cashier: “Look sir, here is an example of what we can do. One day, Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putter and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his cheque.”
    “Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racket and made a fabulous shot where the tennis ball landed in my cup. With that shot we cashed his cheque. So, Sir, what can you do to prove that it is you and only you?”

    Johnson stands there thinking and thinking and finally says, “Honestly, my mind is a total blank…there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can’t think of a single thing. I have absolutely no idea what to do. I don’t have a clue.”

    Cashier: “Will that be large or small notes , Mr Johnson. ?…

    1. I wrongly guessed the punchline would have beeen about a dishevelled cashier, with some precious bodily fluid in her cup.

  58. Last Monday was a nice, sunny day. It was warm and we went out in the car. The first nice day for a couple of weeks. Also the last nice day this year. the weather here has been miserable. Last week when it rained here it was bright and sunny in Edinburgh. Our daughter sent us pictures. She was on brief break from work. She left Lowestoft by train with a ticket for Edinburgh. After arriving at Norwich the train journey to Peterborough was substituted by a bus. So much for our super train franchises.
    On the domestic scene, my National Trust Scotland membership has expired. However, the plastic card is very useful. I’ve reglued the veneer on an old table and the card makes a perfect spatula for applying white glue into the space between the table and the veneer which has separated at the edge.

      2. So did we. In fact, it was still pouring this morning. Good rain that will sink in, rather than running off.

    2. Rail replacement bus is usually because the track is not available to run trains on. Track is infrastructure, not franchise.

      1. Whoops, of course! Let me amend my complaint. Everything about the railways in the UK is third rate (when at its best).

    3. I sympathise with your weather woes. My base in East Yorkshire appears to have its own microclimate, and has been foul all summer – grey and overcast at best, while most of the country basked.

      I have run away, but it has caught me up with a vengeance. High winds and rain forecast today. The borrowed hound and I are heading for the moors and wild woods in hope of getting some fabulously moody shots.

    2. Having encountered a large share of emotional blackmail in recent months in the form of spurious claims of unnamed young previously fit now scarred for life Covid sufferers, there would be some justification in returning the compliment by squarely blaming the Covid-compliant luvvies for the rise in cancer deaths and suicides.

  61. Morning all! According to the Television Centre temperature checker I definitely have hypothermia. 34.7 this morning. Cobblers like the rest of this stuff. It’s likely to fall below 21C indoors at home in the next week though and my central heating will probably not come on till 5 Oct. Theoretically it’s 1 Oct but more likely the first Monday. The joys of communal systems in apartment blocks.

    2. Morning SE………..our CH comes on on Christmas day whether we need it or not.😉
      Oh and plans to avoid being arrested for a family gathering this Christmas are…..
      Paying respect for the death of a turkey and a gathering of up to 30 allowed.
      Mind you you better have a spare one, the first one will have to be buried or cremated for an authentic effect. Just in case the neighbours are snitches.

    3. Good heavens. If it drops below 70’c the war queen complains it’s cold. I’ll admit when my fingers turned blue even I thought … hmm, tad chilly.

      1. (In three portions. Too long for the server.)
        The myth of the ‘stolen country’

        What should the Europeans have done with the New World?

        From magazine issue: 26 September 2020

        Text settingsCommentsShare

        Last
        month, in the middle of the Covid panic, a group of first-year
        university students at the University of Connecticut were welcomed to
        their campus via a series of online ‘events’. At one event, students
        were directed to download an app for their phones. The app allowed
        students to input their home address, and it would piously inform them
        from which group of Native Americans their home had been ‘stolen’.

        ​We
        all know the interpretation of history on which this app is based. The
        United States was founded by a monumental act of genocide, accompanied
        by larceny on the grandest scale. Animated by racism and a sense of
        civilisational superiority, Columbus and his ilk sailed to the New
        World. They exterminated whomever they could, enslaved the rest, and
        intentionally spread smallpox in hopes of solving the ‘native question’.
        Soon afterwards, they began importing slave labour from Africa. They
        then built the world’s richest country out of a combination of stolen
        land, wanton environmental destruction and African slave labour. To
        crown it all, they have the audacity to call themselves a great country
        and pretend to moral superiority.

        ​This
        ‘stolen country’ paradigm has spread like wildfire throughout the
        British diaspora in recent years. The BBC recently ran a piece on the
        400th anniversary of the Plymouth landings, whose author took
        obvious delight in portraying the Pilgrim Fathers as native-mutilating
        slave drivers. In Canada, in the greater Toronto school district,
        students are read a statement of apology, acknowledging European guilt
        for the appropriation of First Nations lands, before the national anthem
        is played over the PA system every morning.

        ​As
        a professional historian, I am keenly aware of the need to challenge
        smug, feelgood interpretations of history. I understand that nationalism
        and civilisational pride carry obvious dangers which were made manifest
        by the world wars of the 20th century. And I understand that these
        things can serve as subtle tools not only of racism but of exploitation
        of many stripes, and as justification for a status quo which gets in the
        way of meritocracy and fairness.

        ​But
        I also know that if the pendulum of interpretation swings too far in
        any one direction, things can go from bad to worse with lightning speed.
        It is times like these that we realise the stories we tell ourselves —
        about our history in particular — are of fundamental importance to the
        direction our societies take. The shift from Weimar Republic to Nazi
        Germany was accomplished, first and foremost, by a shift in who
        controlled the national narrative. Ditto with the shift to Communism in
        eastern Europe, as so movingly chronicled by the late Tony Judt in his
        book Postwar.

        ​So
        what can be the harm in acknowledging every morning that Canadians live
        on stolen First Nations land? The problem is this: if you begin the day
        by acknowledging that your country, your society, and people of your
        ancestry are particularly egregious, this is a sure route to self-doubt,
        impotence and societal failure.

        ​What’s
        true at the personal level is true at the national. What well-meaning
        liberals do not seem to realise these days is that democracies thrive or
        fail on the basis of national stories. This is doubly so in republics
        like the US, where there is no apolitical figurehead to unite people in
        place of a monarch. In the end, stories are all we’ve got as a glue to
        cement us together as a society. If that story says that our democracy
        is rotten to the core, then how do we expect anyone to retain enthusiasm
        for democracy itself? As history shows time and again, as soon as a
        republic does not believe in itself and its ideals — that it is better
        than the tyrannies and autocracies surrounding it — that republic
        succumbs very quickly to autocracy itself. The riots that have recently
        erupted across the United States, the new and unaccustomed boldness that
        characterises dictators around the globe, attest to the breakdown of
        the Western democratic order which is being accelerated by these
        self-inflicted wounds.

        ​This
        is not an abstract fear. By many measures, support for democracy among
        younger people is plummeting around the globe. Many in the US seem to
        have no clue just how much of a ‘city on a hill’ the US is still
        perceived to be, and how important that American beacon is to millions
        of people living under autocratic regimes. The mere thought of Obama’s
        motorcade passing through my European province electrified
        schoolchildren across the region. For them, he was as close as you get
        to a real-life superhero. Such universal support for a politician is
        virtually unheard of. Even though republican regimes are historically
        less popular internationally, for billions of people around the globe
        the US still equates with democracy — it is ‘the good place’. If the
        image of US is fundamentally delegitimised, if it’s entire raison d’être
        is tainted, then increasing numbers of people wonder whether democracy
        itself is worth the trouble. So we have to be very careful what we wish
        for.

        ​Again,
        my criticism of the current excesses of the left is absolutely not a
        call to embrace the worst aspects of the right. This is no code or
        excuse for jingoism, racism or any other ism. I fully support the
        lessons of the world wars that excessive nationalism, that
        unilateralism, are ugly and a bad idea. It is rather a caution: a sense
        that we have to be careful how far we go, and how quickly, in our rush
        to signal our support for the historically downtrodden. On a personal
        note, I add that it gives me zero pleasure to have to write this piece.
        Fifteen years ago, I would have been the one at the barricades helping
        Native Americans rally against an oil company or some such. Writing
        this, I incur considerable personal and professional cost in order to
        come out of the closet as a (shock, horror) centrist, who believes that
        the left is currently rampaging out of control and must be stopped
        before it’s too late. One arena in which I can best help is the
        interpretation of history, upon which much of the current leftist
        hysteria is based.

        The
        narrative of the ‘stolen country’ or ‘Native American genocide’ does
        not stand up to scrutiny by any honest and clear-sighted historian. It
        is a dangerously myopic and one-sided interpretation of history. It has
        only gained currency because most practising historians and history
        teachers are either susceptible to groupthink, or else have been cowed
        into silence by fear of losing their jobs. Reduced to its puerile form
        of ‘statement of guilt’, this myth puts 100 per cent of the burden on
        Europeans who are held responsible for all historical evil, while the
        First Nations people are mere victims; martyrs even, whose saintlike
        innocence presumes that their civilisation and society were practically
        perfect in every way. This is no way to honour or respect the realities
        of First Nation lives and their agency. And it helps perpetuate the idea
        that the US and Canada are fundamentally illegitimate societies, and
        that by implication, every other country on Earth is legitimate. If we
        were to be honest, there is not a single country on Earth which did not
        displace natives, or which did not engage in nasty wars or ethnic
        cleansings at many points during its history. The current fad for
        holding up the US and Canada to special scrutiny and particular
        opprobrium is therefore distorting at best.

        Was the land stolen?

        As
        an economic historian, allow me to point out some of the most obvious
        structural problems with the ‘stolen country’ paradigm.

        ​First,
        no matter who ‘discovered’ the New World, it is inevitable that a large
        proportion of New World inhabitants would have died within the first
        few decades after first contact. This is universally acknowledged by
        specialists in the field. The New World population was smaller and more
        homogenous than the Old World population. Thus, its people had less
        immunity to disease than the people of the Old World, where disease
        communities from Africa, Asia and Europe had been intermingling for
        millennia. Even though some European captains did try and spread
        smallpox around a few forts and villages from time to time, the effect
        of their efforts was almost negligible compared with the natural spread
        of disease. So the claims of genocide by disease have almost nothing to
        do with European actions, apart from their simply reaching the New
        World. And of course, Europeans of the time had no way of envisioning
        the continent-wide epidemic repercussions of their actions. Verdict: not
        guilty.

        ​Let
        us also acknowledge that Native American society was just as warlike as
        any other in human history. The anthropologists’ vision of Native
        Americans as peace-pipe-smoking environmentalists which gained purchase
        in the 1970s has long since given way to a more Hobbesian portrait of
        pre-Columbian reality. In North America, most Natives were primitive
        farmers. This means that (with some exceptions) they had no permanent
        settlements: they farmed in an area for a few decades until the soil got
        tired, before moving on to greener pastures where the hunting was
        better and the lands more fertile. This meant that tribes were in
        constant conflict with other tribes. It also meant that chiefs were
        continually vying for power, creating confederations under themselves,
        and that the question of who owned the land was in a more or less
        constant state of flux. In most of North America, the idea that any one
        piece of land belonged to any one tribe, for more than 50 or 100 years,
        is therefore highly questionable. In short, if you looked at a map of
        Native Canada 200 years before Europeans arrived, it would have been
        entirely different. In the meantime, some groups of natives would have
        slaughtered, bullied or enslaved others. Should we not be grieving for
        those Native Canadians whose land was stolen by other Native Canadians?
        Or is that somehow OK? I don’t suppose there is an app for that.

        ​The
        idea that the Europeans stole some land which had belonged in
        perpetuity to any one tribe is therefore ludicrous. The situation in
        most of North America was similar to northern Europe on the eve of the
        Germanic migrations, or western Europe as the Celts were moving across
        the landscape. Precisely to whom the land belonged in any given century
        at these periods in history was anyone’s guess. The very notion of
        property is a Graeco-Roman invention which most cultures found foreign
        until quite recently. But Europeans of the time had little chance of
        grasping this difference. What the Europeans did in the New World was
        insert themselves into a fluid power struggle which had been ongoing for
        millennia. Many Native American chiefs were ready to pledge allegiance
        to the Great ‘Chief of the English’, as a political expedient, just as
        various English colonies sided with this or that Native American ‘Great
        Chief’. Despite a few sensational cases of duplicity, most of the time,
        Europeans tried to buy land from Indians, just like they would buy an
        acre of land in England. If the local chief assented to this and liked
        the price, where then was the crime? Many individual Europeans believed
        that according to the norms of both parties, they had legal usufruct to
        the land they were working. To judge this as theft is therefore
        anachronistic. As Europeans set up farming communities, and introduced
        guns to North America, Native American communities were forced to move
        further away from European lands as game retreated. The areas around
        white settlements were often empty for this reason, making the land seem
        all the more abandoned. Musket use by natives probably depleted animal
        stocks at a higher rate than previously, meaning that the very
        introduction of firearms might have spelled the doom of hunting and
        gathering in North America in the long run, even if the Europeans had
        otherwise left the country alone.

        1. Part two – the server dislikes the length?

          ​Another

          major structural issue is this: what precisely would our pious

          anthropology professors have had Europeans do with the New World once

          they found it?

          ​This

          is not a joke. Political reality has a way of crashing in on the pipe

          dreams of liberal academics. The reality is, if the English had not

          colonised, then the French or the Dutch would have. If the Spanish had

          not colonised, the Portuguese would have. This would have shifted the

          balance of power at home, and any European country which had not

          colonised, would have been relegated to secondary status. And it is

          easy to overestimate the amount of control that European governments

          actually had. As soon as the New World was discovered, many fisherman

          and traders sailed across the Atlantic on their own, in hopes of

          circumventing tax authorities and scoring a fortune. Long before

          colonies were established in most regions, the New World was crawling

          with Europeans whose superior technology gave them an edge in combat.

          Nonetheless, it was extremely dangerous for Europeans to provoke fights

          with Native Americans, and most of them tried to avoid this when

          possible. In retrospect, one could in theory be impressed that so many

          European governments showed a genuine concern to rein in the worst

          excesses of their subjects, with an express eye to protecting the

          Indians from depredation. The logic was simple: they attempted to

          protect their subjects at home, in order to secure good order and a

          better tax base. So they would do the same to their subjects in the New

          World. For a long time, few Europeans harboured any master plan of

          pushing the Native Americans out of their own lands. In more densely

          populated regions such as Mexico, such an idea must have seemed an

          absurdity. Reality tends to occur ad hoc. Boundaries often took

          generations to move, and would have seemed fixed at the time. For

          several centuries, many Europeans assumed that they would long be a

          minority on the North American continent. In Mexico and Peru, they

          always have been.

          ​​Population

          density mattered, a lot, when it came to pre-modern global migrations.

          China and India were ‘safe’ from excessive European colonisation because

          they had the densest populations in the world, and they were likewise

          largely immune to any diseases brought by Europeans. Sub-Saharan Africa

          had a lower population density depleted by slave raiding, but they still

          outnumbered European colonists by a large margin throughout the

          colonial era — again because European contact did not decimate their

          numbers through disease the way it did in the Americas. It is worth

          noting that no one claims that Europeans committed genocide in India,

          Asia or even Africa, although their technological advantages gave them

          every opportunity had they actually been of a genocidal mindset (as were

          for example the Mongols). In fact, the European track record shows them

          to be almost shockingly un-genocidal, given their clear technological

          advantages over the rest of the world for a period of several centuries.

          Few other civilisations, given similar power over so much of the

          world’s people, would have behaved in a less reprehensible manner. This

          is not to give Europeans a pat on the back. Rather it is to point out

          that Europeans are regularly painted as the very worst society on Earth,

          when in fact they had the power to do far, far more evil than they

          actually did. Let us at least acknowledge this fact.

          ​The

          mixed farming/gathering economy of most Native Americans, coupled with

          their vulnerability to Old World diseases, therefore meant that North

          America was sparsely populated by the time Jamestown was founded in

          1607, and unable to replace missing population at a very high rate. At

          this time, the New World was more sparsely populated than anywhere in

          the Old World apart from its subarctic regions and the Sahara.

          Furthermore, a great deal of North American land was located in the

          temperate zones — traditionally the ones most suited to agriculture, and

          therefore to growing large civilisations. Primitive farming and

          hunter-gathering can only support a tiny population at the best of

          times. But Old World rice and wheat agriculture — the farming regimes

          which supported the great civilisations of the Old World — can support a

          far greater population density per hectare. The huge disparity in

          population density between the Old World and the New — especially after

          the first contact epidemics had wiped out so many New World peoples —

          therefore made it likely that excess population was going to flow from

          the Old World to the New. Furthermore, as soon as Old World colonists

          began to set up the farming and city-dwelling regimes which they

          imported from home, population growth in the colonies was going to

          outstrip Native American groups in terms of population growth, even

          without further in-migration.

          ​This

          brings us to the question of how cultural adaptation works. Many people

          have been told by their friends on social media that Europeans

          destroyed Native Culture. The problem is this: whenever a good idea

          comes along, which clearly increases one’s living standards, one tends

          to adopt it. And who is to say that this adaptation is bad, especially

          if it results in higher living standards? Even as they discovered

          America, the Europeans were in the process of adopting dozens of

          superior Chinese inventions and ideas: paper money, gunpowder, pasta and

          fine porcelain are only the most famous. Should we accuse China of

          ‘cultural imperialism’ when they ruined ‘native’ Italian cuisine by

          introducing Marco Polo to spaghetti? Similarly, Native Americans were

          quick to adapt the many useful Old World ideas which Europeans happened

          to carry with them. To reiterate, most of these had not even been

          invented by Europeans, but had been adopted by Europeans from other Old

          World cultures. Why grind corn laboriously by hand for several hours a

          day, when one can use millstones instead? Why hunt with bow and arrow,

          when one can use a rifle? Why refuse to domesticate cattle, when they

          provide huge boosts in caloric intake for your family? Why refuse to

          adopt the wheel, for goodness sake?

          ​By

          the time Columbus set sail, then, the Old World had dozens of clear

          technological and institutional advantages, which for the most part, New

          World populations were eager to adopt as soon as they saw them. Rather

          than jealously guard their technological superiority, many Europeans

          were ready to trade anything that Native Americans might want, including

          firearms. This made it inevitable that New World society would be

          changed beyond recognition, once sustained contact was initiated.

          ​What

          about Columbus himself? Try as they might (and they have tried

          mightily), historians have been unable to find any evidence that

          Columbus was genocidal, or had any particular ill-will towards the

          Native Americans that he encountered. The guy lived in 1492. We could

          have forgiven him for literally ‘going medieval’ on any natives that he

          encountered. This was the same century in which the Mongols were

          exterminating every Russian, Muslim and Chinese person that they could

          get their hands on, sometimes slaughtering over 100,000 men, women and

          children at a go in some of history’s worst blood orgies. Instead, we

          find in Columbus’s journals a general sense of curiosity, of wonder

          even, and a genuine desire at many points to communicate and trade with

          natives, whose help Columbus realised he would need if his little

          expeditions were going to be successful. Let’s remember that Columbus

          was first and foremost a merchant. His main purpose was to open a trade

          route to China. Europeans realised that China had better stuff. Like

          expert businessmen everywhere, Genoese merchants had long since realised

          that attacking the people you want to trade with is counterproductive.

          ​From

          the get-go, Isabella of Spain expressly forbade the enslavement of her

          New World subjects. Instead, she showed a genuine desire to bring them

          into what for her constituted the folds of civilisation, as Christian

          equals. So historians must grudgingly concede that the Spanish Crown,

          for its part, was likewise not nearly as bloodthirsty, genocidal or

          racist as they clearly hope to find.

          ​The

          priest Bartholomé de las Casas wrote an eloquent plea to the monarchs

          of Spain as early as the 1540s, chronicling in detail how wonton

          adventurers had taken advantage of the lawless situation in New Spain to

          exploit and slaughter natives against the express will of the Spanish

          Crown. A few things are worth noting about this: A) at least some

          Spanish people already had a genuine sense of compassion for, and desire

          to save, the Indians. B) Las Casas assumed that there was enough

          sympathy for his story at the Spanish court that he presented his book

          to the crown. Las Casas believed, therefore, that compassion for the

          Native Americans was, or at least could become, the dominant mood at

          court.

          ​Likewise,

          the relationship between English colonists in North America and Native

          Americans was never one-sided. To borrow a phrase from Facebook, the

          real historical relationship between these peoples is best described as

          ‘complicated’. The very first Native American chief who encountered the

          English, Powhatan, almost immediately expressed an interest to live in

          an English-style house. He considered it to be superior to the types of

          houses that his own people built, and he was ready to adopt whatever

          European ways made his life more comfortable. John Smith is supposed to

          have built him such a house in his capital of Werowocomoco, and to this

          day a monument called ‘Powhatan’s Chimney’ purports to be the remains of

          this house. Whether this is actually true or not, the fact is that many

          such acts of cultural borrowing were at work in English North America.

          We will say nothing of the many Native American habits that English

          settlers gratefully adopted, since this would be angrily dismissed as

          ‘cultural appropriation’ or some other such bad-faith nonsense.

          ​The

          story of Powhatan is outshined by the biography of his daughter

          Pocahontas. Of course there is much legend attached to this and there

          will be a ‘whitewashing’ of the legend. However, we have eye-witness

          accounts attesting that Pocahontas and other native children were in the

          habit of turning cartwheels around the Jamestown fort and playing with

          the boys there. Pocahontas and her friends are credited at one point

          with bringing provisions into the fort when the colonists were starving.

          Like any other neighbours, the settlers of Jamestown and the natives of

          the region had individual personal relationships that lasted for many

          years. But frontier relations were often capricious, and friendly games

          could turn to war, and back again, in a matter of months. At one point,

          John Smith was captured and brought to Powhatan; it is believed that

          Powhatan thereby hoped to bring Jamestown into his own dominions as

          Great Chief. He also sent an agent to England with a mission to spy out

          the population of that country — thus quite resourcefully attempting to

          size up the competition. He might even have imagined conquering England

          itself. Should we call Powhatan a ‘cultural imperialist’? At a later

          date, Pocahontas was captured in war, kept under house arrest, and

          eventually freed. In 1613, she converted to Christianity and took the

          rather less interesting name of ‘Rebecca’. She was given away by her

          father Powhatan to the successful Jamestown planter John Rolfe, and the

          two of them were given an estate totalling thousands of acres by

          Powhatan himself. Was this land ‘stolen’ from the Native Americans?

          Sources relate that the marriage helped foster several years of peace

          between the Native Americans and the Jamestown colony. In 1616

          Pocahontas accompanied her husband to England, where she was treated as a

          celebrity, and an example of how the natives could be ‘civilised’. One

          can read this suspiciously, as any good Liberal critic is now taught to

          do, as an act of ‘white superiority.’ Or one could accept it at face

          value, as proof that many English people believed Native Americans to

          have the same innate human abilities as Europeans. Arguably, this is the

          exact opposite of racism. (Notice we don’t even have a word for this.)

          1. Part three.

            ​There

            is therefore little real mystery of what happened to the Native

            Americans as a culture. They were certainly not exterminated at the

            behest of any concerted ideology of hatred or European superiority.

            After the initial disease-caused die-offs, and in spite of a few

            sensational wars and small-scale massacres, remaining Native Americans

            adopted so many Old World ‘life hacks’ that most of them were gradually

            assimilated into European culture. Only a minority stayed ‘wild’ enough

            to be placed on reservations. Even after that, many enterprising people

            left the reservation for a better life elsewhere. This was done on an

            individual basis, for the most part peacefully and willingly, leaving no

            fuss or much trace in the historical record. The stories of Powhatan

            and Pocahontas attest to the presence of this pattern at the dawn of

            English-Native American relations, and it continues to the present day.

            Now, such a statement would cause an uproar in almost any academic

            conference room these days. But the majority of the evidence and

            experience all points in this direction.

            ​A

            visit to my hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania a few years ago

            provided some striking evidence for just how much long-term peaceful

            cohabitation was occurring between Natives and Europeans on the

            Pennsylvania frontier around the time of the American Revolution. (This

            is even after relations took a turn for the worse in the 1750s.) Plaques

            attest to schoolrooms full of Native American children who were being

            taught to read and write German by the Moravian settlers. While

            modern-day anthropologists might recoil in horror at this act of

            ‘cultural imperialism’, it is likely that the parents of these children

            were grateful for the opportunities afforded to them (and the calories

            given to them) by the Moravian schoolteachers. It is also very likely

            that these children would grow up to marry and live on a farm, in

            European style. Who in their right mind would live in the woods, if they

            could live a far more secure life on a farm? This was the 18th

            century we are talking about, when life was hard enough for the great

            majority of Europeans. The Native Americans therefore showed common

            sense by gravitating towards habits which enabled them individually to

            survive and thrive. Accordingly, the colonial-era graveyard in Bethlehem

            contains a significant percentage of native people who, like Pocahontas

            150 years before, had converted to Christianity and adopted a new name.

            There is no evidence that the egalitarian-minded settlers thought any

            less of these new converts to the faith. I was lucky enough to be a part

            of this history, first-hand. One of my two best friends growing up had a

            mother who went to the Moravian church; he was very charismatic and

            everyone who knew him thought it was cool that he had Indian ancestors.

            As we ran around in the woods looking for arrowheads, I was sometimes a

            little jealous that I had none.

            ​Let’s

            take a moment to look at the Moravians, whom our Liberal friends will

            glibly dump into the bucket of ‘European cultural imperialists’. First,

            the Moravians were, quite literally, communists; I will let that settle

            without further comment on the irony that entails in this context. In

            the lands bordering Moravia, ‘white privilege’ meant the privilege of

            sending an annual tribute of children to be slaves of the Ottoman

            Sultan: a practice which went on for 500 years, and was not discontinued

            until 1918. For centuries, Moravians therefore lived under threat of

            their homeland being invaded, and their people slaughtered or carried

            into Islamic slavery. (And though it is meant tongue-in-cheek, even

            pretending to use the lens of ‘race’ here is wholly distorting: in the

            Mediterranean context, religion and ethnicity mattered far more than

            ‘race’.) My point is that the Moravians and many neighbouring peoples

            hardly came from a position of cultural dominance.

            ​But

            it gets much worse. Moravia itself was originally Slavic-speaking, but

            it was also in the process of being taken over by culturally dominant

            Germans. So the very people teaching Native Americans to learn German in

            Pennsylvania were themselves victims of ongoing cultural imperialism

            which threatened the extermination of their ancestral language. And

            within a few generations, German itself would be all but eradicated from

            Pennsylvania by the majority English-speaking population. To this day, a

            few Amish still speak Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a version of German.

            They still refer to non-Amish as ‘the English’ and think of them as

            foreigners. To pretend therefore that Native Americans were the only

            ones in 17th- and 18th-century America whose culture was being ‘erased’

            is highly naive. It is pernicious even — and racist in itself. This is

            to say nothing about religion. The Moravians were only in Pennsylvania

            in the first place because they faced a threat of extermination for

            their religious beliefs at home. They were, quite literally, refugees

            seeking asylum from the most horrific conditions. They found refuge in

            the tolerant state of Pennsylvania, set up by the religious refugee

            William Penn.

            Conclusions

            ​As this piece was going to press, an article was published by the BBC on the occasion of the 400th

            anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower. After pretending

            neutrality at the beginning of the piece, the author launched with

            relish into all the worst possible assertions that can be levied against

            the Plymouth colonists. He implied that they were slave owners, when in

            fact, only a single Plymouth colonist is documented as having owned a

            slave. He implied that Plymouth ran on dirty money from the African

            slave trade, which is likewise almost entirely false. He mentioned every

            instance that can be found of colonists murdering Indians, and the

            image accompanying the article showed a representation of a native who

            was mutilated by colonists.

            ​The

            article steadfastly refuses to mention any mitigating factors. It says

            nothing about massacres perpetrated by Native Americans on colonists, or

            on each other. It says nothing about generations of realpolitik which

            saw alliances between any and all groups at various times. It says

            nothing about opportunism on both sides, let alone friendship, or love.

            It perniciously implies that any such friendships and/or sexual

            relationships must have been tainted by violence or some sort of racist

            original sin, in which Native Americans were always victims or dupes. It

            does not mention that the colonists usually attempted to purchase land

            from local chiefs. Nor does our BBC article mention the disease which

            had wiped out over 90 per cent of the Native Americans who lived on the

            site of the Plymouth colony in the year before

            the Mayflower landed (the disease had been brought by fishermen, who

            had been sailing off Massachusetts for generations). Or the fact that

            the Plymouth colonists’ main economic plan was to trade peacefully with

            the Native Americans for furs, until this was disrupted by the bad

            behaviour of English colonists at a neighbouring site. It does not

            mention that the Plymouth colonists had indentured themselves to the

            Merchant Adventurers, merely to pay for their own passage. They were,

            quite literally, economic slaves themselves, and desperately in debt.

            The article in question says nothing about how Plymouth authorities

            sometimes hanged Englishmen, or hunted down English fugitives, in order

            to demonstrate to their Native American allies that they took crimes

            against them seriously. Nor would the author dare to address the fact

            that the protestant dissenters of Massachusetts were intellectual

            ancestors of the global abolitionist movement which he and most of his

            fellows now take for granted, and give European culture zero credit for.

            ​The

            question becomes, what good purpose does this calumny against the

            Pilgrims and other European colonists really serve? I ask this question

            in good faith. What myth about the Pilgrims needs tearing down with such

            one-sided ferocity? During the Cold War and the Gulf Wars, liberal

            historians called out excessive nationalism and jingoism, based on the

            legitimate fear that military types might start a war for no good

            reason. (In the case of Gulf War II, they apparently did.) So there is

            always a place for liberal critique within history. But on this issue,

            it’s more difficult to see the value of Pilgrim-bashing to today’s

            Native Americans, apart from making them bitter and resentful, and

            everyone else feel guilty and ashamed. There are after all very few

            Native Americans who identify as such; they are generally not subject to

            racism in the way that, say, African-Americans are, most are mixed race

            anyway, and most of them do not live on reservations. Many who do, are

            better off than many other Americans. So what grievances are pieces like

            the BBC story really addressing? In Canada, I am aware that there are

            serious social grievances on some reservations, particularly in the far

            north, but it seems as though the Canadian government has gone a long

            way in recent decades to address these in a reasonable manner, by

            allowing Native American representatives to guide and execute policy as

            much as possible. Should this not be applauded and supported?

            ​And

            whenever there are real grievances such as these, do we need to rewrite

            the entire history of European-Native relations in the most negative

            possible light in order to address them? Peel back the veneer, and we

            often find well-meaning white middle-class writers, whose cries of

            victimisation bespeak an essentialising racialism that they don’t even

            recognise themselves. Would it not be more productive to be more

            nuanced, to acknowledge that there have been points of goodwill,

            friendship, positive communication and — shudder the thought — even

            mutual benefit, since the very beginning?

            ​The

            real reason to perpetuate such a disastrously one-sided view, it seems,

            is if one is in a tiny minority of activists who has ‘drunk the

            kool-aid’ of Cultural Marxism — an ideology bent on bringing maximum

            embarrassment to Capitalism, Democracy, Western Civilisation and

            Europeans in general, in the vain hope that this will somehow bring

            about a sort of… what? Revolution? Really? Let’s not be naive. The only

            reason to be this consistently, this unreasonably angry about things

            which happened centuries ago, is if one sees the entirety of experience

            through the lens of perpetual racism and victimisation, and crucially,

            if one does not believe in the power of democracy to correct these

            wrongs.

            ​At

            base, such people do not believe in the democratic process. Marxists

            have always believed that a handful of self-appointed intellectuals are

            better suited to creating a ‘good society’ than the rough-and-tumble of

            real-world parliamentary debate. Has history taught them nothing? The

            ones who will really lose out if Anglophone democracy is further

            discredited are surely those people in the world who are most vulnerable

            and in need of protection. Do you wish to provoke an even wilder

            right-wing reaction to your irrational hate-mongering than we have

            already seen? Do you think that the autocrats you are emboldening will

            treat minorities and homosexuals better than the United States, Canada,

            and Britain? The Cultural Marxist’s finger, once again, is pointed in

            precisely the wrong direction.

            ​It

            is high time that historians spoke out against the dangerous misuse of

            history which supports the zealotry and iconoclasm currently emanating

            from our educational systems. This has become far too culturally

            dominant, far too damaging to global society, for us to ignore it any

            further. In the name of science, fairness, level-headedness, humanity,

            and democracy itself.

            Jeff Fynn-Paul is associate professor in history at Leiden UniversityWritten byJeff Fynn-Paul

    1. Theresa May, Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, the fishwife etc.
      Still think Godfrey Bloom had it right.

    2. Oh dear. I learned a new word “incel”. Lonely blokes gathering on the internet, or something. But the general thrust of the article was rather lost on me. Mostly because I have never considered female persons as other than equals. My opinion needs to be qualified by my not being a proper man. I have no interest in football. ( I am happy to watch pretty well any sporting contest, if the contestants are good at it.). I do not spend time in the pub or the club with the “lads”. I stopped that when I got married – because I chose to. While I was still at school I had to be careful, as girls were the sole property of their boyfriends, and I tried to avoid fights. (I gave up fighting when I was 16.). I accepted my oddness. Now I see feminists who are even more stridently wrong than male chauvinist pigs.
      Two wars contributed greatly to the notion that women, even mothers, should go out to work. This has been of little benefit to society, as it has become essential rather than a choice. Far from freeing women from defined pigeonholes society has only re-arranged those pigeonholes.

      1. The reason we now have Incels is because they spent far too much time in their rooms masturbating over PornHub and not getting out and meeting people.

      2. I was pleasantly surprised to read her allusions to sex differences rather than gender (the modern literary gaffe) but she spoils it with her title, “How we all became prisoners of a grammatical construct.”

        Maybe that’s what she meant.

    3. That piece was under-researched.

      Being the eldest sibling of five (son, son, son, daughter, son) I received the most discipline, a commodity that was watered down with each new sibling birth.

      My ‘chores’ (no arguments permitted upon pain of a slapped arse) were: dry the dishes after each meal; fetch in the coal; go to the shops for groceries. These three duties were set in stone, Others came and went, depending upon parental whim, but the ‘big three’ were omnipresent.

      The second son did some of the same but to a lesser degree. The third son did the odd chore, here and there, but his objections received a far more sympathetic ear than mine ever did. The daughter was never given any chores; nor was the final son, who received no form of discipline whatsoever!

      Even though expectations of chores (and discipline for non-compliance) diminished over time, being a male did not give me leave to treat women as lesser beings.

        1. Cheers s. First time I opened it in a new tab and “Subscribe…” appeared.
          Opened it in this page and it’s there in full.
          I need to figure that one out for future reference.

    5. “Girls . . . were allowed to play in the house . . . and boys were sent outdoors. . . . Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and roleplaying. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess?”

      Garrison keillor.

      1. I used to line up my dolls and play schools.
        Can’t think why as I didn’t even like school.
        Maybe it was the power kick.

  64. Great excitement – we are GOING OUT – to an art exhibition. In a tent. In a field. Glass of fizz to be offered. Not sure how one drinks that in a mask… Will report later..{:¬))

  65. Well as we are orf tmz, I’ve been picking the tomatoes and made soup from the small sweet split ones with Rosemary and Garlic.
    Taken the doggo for a long walk, getting to practice for the golf on holiday.
    Filled up the windscreen washer reservoir for tail gate-ers.
    Yesterday I picked our first aubergine and made moussaka with it and or course some of the tommie’s.
    And set up the green house with my irrigation system.
    I’ll bid you farewell folks.
    Copyalayder.

    1. Hope you have a great time.

      When making tomato soup it’s a good idea to roast the toms first. Also, don’t use cream as it masks the flavour. Use some bread before liquidising and it will thicken nicely.

  67. I enjoyed reading the letter this morning about migrating Brent geese. What a change from Boris!

    I was reminded of the absolutely extraordinary migratory habits of the bar-tailed Godwit.

    One of them which had a satellite antenna attached to it in New Zealand was tracked for a total of 29,280 km. It first flew north to the Yellow Sea in China and then to its breeding grounds in Alaska. But on its return journey it flew non-stop across the Pacific back to its original place in New Zealand. The distance is 11,690 km and it flew for 8.1 days. And this bird can’t glide, it has to flap its wings all the way, night and day.

    Incroyable!

    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Round-trip-migrations-of-individual-bar-tailed-godwits-of-the-L-l-baueri-and-L-l_fig5_263574008

      1. I recently finished reading “Gorleston” on your reco. May I reco “The fortnight in September” by R.C. Sherriff? Finished it last night & thoroughly enjoyed it.

  70. 323943+ up ticks,
    Do I need this from one who at a crucial moment proved to be the Zatopek
    of exitbrexit.
    breitbart,
    ARAGE: BRITONS MUST FIGHT AGAINST CORONAVIRUS GOVERNMENT ‘TYRANNY’

  73. Of the 100 or so exhibits at the Art Show – about 80 looked as though they had been done by untrained primary school children, being asked to “express themselves.”

    The rest were of interest – three or four very good.

    As for the fizz – the bottle of prosecco had clearly been open for some time and was warm to the touch, so we didn’t bother. Of the 30 people there only four ostentatiously wore masks and moved away from us as we neared them…!

          1. A splendid film. It was apposite – and very edgy, considering the power of the unions – and still is.

          2. I’m All Right, Jack

            It was on the TV the other night. Peter Sellers, Ian Carmichael and Liz Fraser were also in it.

      3. Can it wait till tomorrow? I’m just laying out my new tapestry canvas ….. oh, you meant THAT Anne.

  77. Off topic
    It is blowing an absolute hooley here.

    Because we’ve had weeks of hot dry weather, leaves and pine needles are everywhere and trees are shedding like a stripper at a Phizzee party.

    2. The good thing about strong gales is that they blow all the detritus into convenient heaps – which your outdoor staff can manage easily when the gales abate..

    1. Apart from the attractive ring through the daft bint’s nose – so that her man can lead her, I imagine – I don’t get this article at all. Put it down to old age.

      2. “… the attractive ring through the daft bint’s nose …”

        Revolting: rings should be exclusively for pig’s noses …

        1. Thanks, A – that makes me feel so much better.

          So, in future, the lickle babees that all these determinedly single wimmin want will be born by….?

          2. The MR and I visited that in April 2019. The (excellent) hotel had a roof top restaurant from which we were able to enjoy a gorgeous view of the Acropolis.

    2. “What about all the times you’ve thought… maybe? You think that man might be staring at you but you couldn’t say for certain.”

      Perceived harassment crime? No way normal people can beat that one.

      1. We are descended from cave men/women. A relaxed non-expression face can be perceived as aggressive.

          3. A monkey on your back

            “If you have a monkey on your back, you have a problem, often an emotional problem, that makes your life difficult for a long period. They haven’t beaten United in three years and it’s a monkey on their backs that they are desperate to shake off. Note: You can also say that you get the monkey off your back, meaning that you manage to end the problem. I’m just delighted to win and get the monkey off our back with a home victory at last. Note: `To have a monkey on your back’ originally meant to be angry. Later it came to be used to say that someone was addicted to drugs; it is still used in this way today”.

            Nothing to do with the colour of ones skin… Honky !

          4. I know that the people in question can’t be monkeys.
            As far as I’m aware they don’t have tails.

  79. That’s me for this exciting day. A trip to a field to see lots of hideous “paintings”. I feel sorry for the crapulous ones – because the two best in the show were by a chum of ours who is a brilliant, professional painter.

    Her greatest love is painting silver and glass. Here is an example:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6fc00fe32198ba1fb79012eedbeb8bd2935ed8a88fa65143366ef1c96adf06c.jpg

    I’ll leave you with that image.

    A demain (when we are going panic buying…!!)

    PS The MR did the concise cryptic in 15 minutes..her best time.

      1. Of course I may be wrong here; her being a friend of the Thomas’s it’s probably gold not brass…

  80. Most NOTTLers know how low is my opinion of BBC Look East. However.
    This evening, MB and I sat there in tears as a woman explained how her husband of 50 years, now in a care home suffering from Alzheimers and and Parkinsons, is rapidly deteriorating because she is only allowed to visit him for half an hour once a week; she has to sit 6 feet away from him and is not allowed to even given him a hug. And both have to wear those space face covers.
    He sat there hunched in his chair, unable to even summon the ability to look at her.
    Of course, all this it is part of government policy to keep him alive. Existing or living. You decide.
    I am just too angry to comment any further.
    F*cking bureaucrats and their s0dding inhuman rules.

    2. What gets me is that we are too cowed to say sod it, and just do what we know is the right thing and hug your sick husband/wife.

      1. If it should be HG, and God forbid it were, I would physically attack anyone who tried to stop me hugging her.

          3. Enough numbers and even our police farce would struggle.
            Admittedly, enough numbers is unlikely to happen.

          9. If it is Antifa or XR or Greenies they will hand out food and water. If it is normal law abiding taxpayers they will use tear gas.

          13. The late Marlon Brando had a story about his housemaid. They were busy searching for a small brass screw on the floor and an opportunity presented itself.

          22. Households in Hong Kong.

            From Wikipedia

            Comprising five percent of Hong Kong’s
            population, about 98.5% of them are women. In 2019, there were 400,000
            foreign domestic helpers in the territory; of these, 48 percent were
            from the Philippines, 49.4 percent from Indonesia and 1.3 percent from
            Thailand.

          24. They don’t know whether to kneel down as an apology for the death of a serial criminal, pray towards mecca or be fucked in the arse. I can see why there is so much sick leave being claimed.

          26. Can you imagine a scenario where the Military forcibly separate two people in these circumstances? I can, now.

          27. And that is the greatest indictment of what the government is doing; the fact that normal (ho ho) people like us can even start to imagine such a thing.

    3. It’s no wonder the care home residents are dying off – covid or no covid – they need family visits and stimulation.

      1. Care homes also need families to keep an eye on things .

        Abandoned elderlies are more vulnerable than most .. if families don’t care , well maybe the same applies to the staff.

        We are all on our own.

        1. We are – and long may we stay out of “care” homes. I’m not sure that most families wish to abandon their elderly, though – but as things are, when they are unable to visit, apart from waving through the window – then the poor old dears must feel as though they have been. Those with dementia must deteriorate very rapidly when thay are not visited, and have no outside activities.

          Our last care home visit for the hedgehogs was last February – we were made very welcome – it was clear that most of the residents hadn’t a clue why we were there, but they seemed to enjoy the talk. One old dear was quite agressive, and turned her back – said J knew nothing of what he was talking about…… another was completely out of it, but had a loving wife by his side, who probably visited most days. How are they coping now? Most homes have someone to arrange activities and visits from outsiders like us – that must all have stopped now.

          These poor old people are collateral damage.

    4. Agree.. with tears in my eyes.

      She should hug him, and damn the consequences, a hug , a long warm hug means so much .. I mean, does protocol in those circumstances really matter anymore .

        1. Sue,

          My muddled view on all of this inhumanity is .. We have taken on the insensitivity of foreigners , we have allowed things like FGM, the rape of young girls , child molestation, porn , indifference to our elderly and infirm , ALLOWED the export of live animals, allowed the disgraceful slaughter of animals for Halal purposes, murder of innocents, slaughter of concert goers , given blackies and brownies the freedom to stab, bomb, maim and cause absolute mayhem . We have allowed murderers to have the last word and given them access to the best human rights lawyers .

          The fair minded British are losing their soul, our good soul was the difference between good and evil , we had a combined strength , a mind meld , we all virtually held the same values ..

          We are a shattered country aren’t we, in pieces , and disintergrating into nothing very quickly. Our church bells who were the reminder of who we once were are silent now.

          Sorry for the rant .

          1. Many on here will agree with most of what you say. Take my advice, Belle. Take a break. Get away from it all. Go and do something that gives you pleasure and relaxation.

          2. I have been relaxed , my no 2 son and his partner have been staying with us for a few days , we have had a glorious meet up .

            They live in Sussex , both on furlough at the moment .

            Discussions always lead on to certain subjects!

          5. “…the rape of young girls…”

            Some of the remarks about this elsewhere on the forum are despicable. I share your anger.

          9. We will never lose Belle. We have our innate goodness, our history( which no one is going to take away) and we are British! And if we have to rant, then we will do it!

          11. Don’t apologise for telling the truth.
            That’s the most eloquent summation of how infelicities.

            Edit should have said how I feel.

    5. All this reminds me of that experiment where they persuaded normal people to torture other people out of some greater good, I think it involved electric shocks.

    7. Hi Anne, it’s almost irrelevant, but the man with a mixture of dementia and Parki may have been misdiagnosed. I forget the name of the illness, but it presents similarly, and requires brain tissue (etc) analysis in order to identify it.

      1. Possibly; we could only go by report.
        But, as you realised, if he’d only had an ingrowing toenail, it’s the sheer inhumanity that is so distressing.

      2. Lewy Body dementia is effectively Parkinsons with dementia. They were thought of as different conditions but recent thinking puts them on a ‘scale’. The symptoms are quite clear, shuffling, tremor and the head being pushed forward with a stiffness in the joints, and confusion. I have my mother living with me who has the condition and she turns 87 tomorrow. Sadly, She doesn’t know who I am.

          1. We are fortunate that there is plenty of help on offer and lucky that she is not difficult to look after as she was a placid character before the dementia. The 2 two of us at home share the load and my sister has her to stay most weekends. My difficulty is in not being able to converse with her as any response is not generally related to what has just been said.

          2. I understand the problem. Sometimes they get an idée fixe and it’s very difficult to get a rational response, I find.

      3. Lewy Body dementia is effectively Parkinsons with dementia. They were thought of as different conditions but recent thinking puts them on a ‘scale’. The symptoms are quite clear, shuffling, tremor and the head being pushed forward with a stiffness in the joints, and confusion. I have my mother living with me who has the condition and she turns 87 tomorrow. Sadly, She doesn’t know who I am.

      4. Lewy Body dementia is effectively Parkinsons with dementia. They were thought of as different conditions but recent thinking puts them on a ‘scale’. The symptoms are quite clear, shuffling, tremor and the head being pushed forward with a stiffness in the joints, and confusion. I have my mother living with me who has the condition and she turns 87 tomorrow. Sadly, She doesn’t know who I am.

      5. Sadly, Robin Williams took his own life where they could only confirm his illness after his death. He had been misdiagnosed.

        We really should not put too much trust in people that learn their trade from what others have written. Without doing their own research.

        1. Or, Phizzee, when those who do decide life is no longer worth living, have their
          appointments cancelled by these so called professionals……I spit on them
          all!

    1. I’ve never been able to delete on the iPad so I just edit, delete the post and type “deleted”

          1. We need to fire up the last remaining flying Lanc (over here) and drop a Grand Slam on their tunnel, then.

    5. It’s pointless. Too many people stand to make too much money from it. They’ll build it whatever people want. The cost will easily head toward half a trillion quid.

    7. The case for HS2 has been weakened by the Corvid 18 Epidemic; there will be more ‘working at home’ in future – and somewhat fewer London commuters.

      The case for ‘trans-Northern’ rail is far stronger than for HS2.

      1. There never was an economic case for HS2 – it was, from the very first, a vanity project to fit in with TEN-T.

    3. IPhone8 has Bluetooth 5 which has a specified maximum range of 1000 metres.

      Is it therefore possible that you may get a message:

      Your phone has been within 1000 metres of another phone whose user has tested positive for COVID-19.
      It is suggested that you isolate yourself for 14 days.

  86. Daily Mail Story

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8769101/Student-hit-face-wearing-skirt-Strasbourg-France.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

    A girl student of 22 in Strasburg was attacked by three men. She was held by one and hit in the face by another and then the men called her a whore for wearing a short skirt before they ran off. Of course there was no description of the men and when I tried to post a a question as to why there was no physical description or mention of the ethnicity of the attackers this message appeared on my screen:

    An error (400 Bad Request) has occurred in response to this request.

    To be honest one cannot know for sure what the ethnicity of the attackers was but the very fact that it is not mentioned in the article and that my innocent post was not accepted leads one to draw certain conclusions.

      1. “A woman is never hit because she wears a skirt. A woman is hit because
        there are people who are misogynistic, sexist, violent, and who free
        themselves from any law and any rule of civility by striking them.”

        Muslims then.

          1. Get real.
            How often do men in Europe act like that, striking a woman for wearing a short skirt?

            Perverts might harass a woman, attempt to touch her, but grab her and punch her?

          2. Get real.

            Lots of men attack women, in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of places, for all sorts of twisted reasons…
            they are not all Muslim.

            White men are not all nice men – some of them are violent, abusive, sexist – just like some Muslim men, black men and any other sort of man you want to think about. Most Muslim men don’t grab and punch women either.

            Some women (of all colours and religions) are violent too.

          7. Estimated 30,000 plus young white girls being interfered with by Paki Muslim men since 1970 and she tries to suggest that white man are as bad at abuse.

          8. Yes, they are.

            And not everyone is nice.

            However, there is a clear demographic where this sort of behvaiour has become normalised and protected by the state, almost accepted in a disgusting sense.

        2. Charlene Downes? Not many examples as well documented as that one.
          Her life was ruined long before the Muslims got their turn at her.

          1. Ah, righto. That’s ok then. Let’s not bother to investigate and punish the perpetrators and chalk up another problem with that demographic.

            How about we just ignore Muslim rape entirely? After all, the girls were clearly asking for it, what with those drugs and booze – which were forced on them but they drank them, so obviously their fault.

            In fact, you should probably extend this to every crime – after all, they were no doubt ‘asking for it’.

            Cripes you’re a prat.

          2. Those youngsters lives were ruined long before the P*kis got to them.
            Social Services involvement was just one clue w.

          3. I’m not sure what your point is.

            She had a bad childhood, are you saying she was groomed and abused by non-muslim gangs prior to her disappearance and presumed murder?

          4. She was a product of the feral breeders and sperm donors who populate the sink estates across the UK. Social Services involvement in most of the cases so far is one clue.

          6. Those youngsters lives on the sink estates were ruined long before they skipped school and headed for the town centres. Looking for any man who would provide them with cigarettes and alcohol. By then, they weren’t bothered what colour the men were.

          7. Just a moment here.

            How many of the men offering them booze ,drugs, fags and “love” were not Asians, and of those who were not Asians, how many then passed the girls around dozens of their mates?

          9. “She had a bad childhood,…”

            Raped and abused from an early age by her “father” and his mates.
            Social Services were too late to save her.

      2. Does avoiding the truth do any good? Do the politicians and the MSM seriously think that we shall become more racially tolerant if they give us lies of omission about stories in the news.

        2. I think that they just do not care. We used to suck in our breath when Willie Gallacher, the Communist MP, got to his feet, but whatever else, he cared.

    3. No description always means foreigners and usually Muslims.

      Sad, but for some reason the state thinks that by not being honest people won’t know. The state keeps trying this ignorance by obscurity effort but the problem is obvious the state just endorses, protects and covers for them for some reason.

    4. “Nit kein entfer ist oich ein entfer”. Yiddish saying (spelling likely wrong).
      No answer is also an answer.

    5. Slammers without a doubt.

      I think the telling thing is that NO ONE attempted to help the girl or intervene. Though I expect several will have bloody filmed it on their sickening little phones.

    2. The Conservatives didn’t. Labour did.

      As it is, the solution is simple. Sack 95% of councillors, town clerks and scrap all their portfolio nonsense. Sack anyone within 6 degrees of chakrabalti, including her.

      That’s the quangos gone, local government saved a fortune and return the money to the homeless.

      While sacking councillors punch a few of the greedy ones in the gut

      1. There is going to be a bonfire of quangos, Dave promised me, and who am I to doubt his word.

        Sarc meter overload.

        1. He also said he was the most euro-sceptic PM ever!

          The slimy toad was incapable of telling the truth.

  89. I’ve just listened to R4’s ‘The Briefing Room’. The subject was the Swedish ‘experiment’. In one of those performances that the BBC does so well, it gave the impression of balance while coming down on one side, gently damning it. It’s true that Sweden’s per capita death rate is very much higher than most other European countries, especially the Nordic ones, but there was only the sketchiest attempt to make a meaningful comparison (a reference to tourism).

    One of the contributors, Marcus Buggert (no, really, he’s an assistant professor at the Centre for Infectious Medicine at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm) was quite clear that there is no firm evidence of herd immunity. Where was the opposing view?

    Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was certain that we’re all in it for the long run and opening up the pubs and restaurants (anywhere) was a bad idea.

    It wasn’t that I felt depressed so much as cheated but then half an hour isn’t long enough to do justice to the subject.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mqpv

    1. “I’ve just listened to R4…” Why WS?

      “The masses spend their days being brainwashed by the BBC!”
      Further/Far Right standard excuse for their lack of support at elections.

      1. The statement is true – a huge number of people do listen to radio 4 and the BBC. It dominates radio consumption.

        Now, you give yourself away with this nonsense ‘far Right’. You need to label because it’s the only way you feel you can control the narrative. You need to do that because you’re frightened. What of I don’t know. I never do with you Lefties. You live your lives terrified of different opinions.

        As for lack of support at elections – 80 seat majority kiddiwinks. 80 seats. A complete and total rejection of the idiotic Left wingery of Corbyn.

        The facts of life are conservative. All we need now is a Conservative government.

        1. “Now, you give yourself away with this nonsense ‘far Right'”

          Describing we Centre-Right as “Socialists/Cultural Marxists” is different?

      2. Why are you here? What is your purpose? Your sly digs at people give a thoroughly bad impression of you.

        Whatever faults BBC news broadcasting has, R4’s evening schedules still include programmes worth listening to. This one failed to deliver what it promised.

        1. “This one failed to deliver what it promised.”

          Tell me about it WS. It was the Beebs 5Live in the run-up to December’s GE which finished me and a few others with the BBC. The Beeb at it’s worst, Arrogant, Dishonest & Shameless.

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