Saturday 10 October: Living in suspended animation waiting for a vaccine to break the spell

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/2020/10/09/lettersliving-suspended-animation-waiting-vaccine-break-spell/

680 thoughts on “Saturday 10 October: Living in suspended animation waiting for a vaccine to break the spell”

    1. Here too, Bob3. And a very good morning to all NoTTLers. This week I hope to re-build the raised vegetable plots in my garden. And (maybe) get my water pipe leak fixed. So I shall be very, very busy. Please excuse me if I don’t read/post for the next 10 days.

  5. SIR – Dominic Raab is to be congratulated for suggesting that Britain boycott the Winter Olympics in 2022 because of China’s gross treatment of Uighur people (report, October 8). But our concern over China should go beyond its cruelty to people within its borders.

    China recently announced that anyone, anywhere in the world, who speaks against Chinese interests (as I am doing here) is now guilty of a crime under Chinese law.

    As China has increasing influence in boardrooms across the world, this gives it power to threaten foreign CEOs with withdrawal of funding or prosecution if they fail to sack employees who speak against China.

    Currently, British nuclear energy development is dependent on just two foreign firms – EDF and a Chinese, state-sanctioned conglomerate. British universities rely heavily on Chinese money, and capitulate to demands to suppress debate on China. Whereas we scarcely think beyond the end of our noses, China plans 60 and more years ahead. Its clear aim is to shackle the world.

    It is morally right to withdraw from the Beijing Olympics in 2022, but it is also essential for Britain to remove Chinese influence from our nuclear projects and education establishments.

    Philip Hodson
    Newmarket, Suffolk

    Filthy Chinese lucre is everywhere, buying up Pacific island nations, burrowing into our electric power network, owning sub-Sahara Africa, and Jesus College, Cambridge. No one seems to have the balls to call them out …apart from President Trump.

    1. There was a similar theme yesterday about boycotting Olympic Games.

      For many of the participants there is only one chance in their lives to compete in a games. What gives governments or individuals the right to deprive someone who will have given up a substantial part of their life that chance?

      How would those who call for the boycotts feel if they themselves had worked for many years with one goal in mind, only to be told that they cannot have their reward because someone who has nothing whatsover to do with them has decided to deprive them of their goal to virtue signal.

      Given the way that the vast majority of sports are essentially professional and have regular, if not annual, world championships I think the Olympics is now an anachronism and should be scrapped apart from amateur sport.

      Of course it would them lose much of its revenue, but that’s a slightly different matter.

      I agree re Chinese influence, but doing something like boycott a games isn’t going to change them one jot.

      1. “How would those who call for the boycotts feel if they themselves had worked for many years with one goal in mind…”

        It would depend on whether that goal had any knock on benefit for anyone else or whether it was a desire for competition for personal satisfaction and glory.

          1. I get fed up with sporting prima donnas who are paid (and, let’s face it, most are even when ostensibly under the amateur banner) to do a ‘job’ that benefits no-one else.

          2. I get fed up with sporting prima donnas who are paid (and, let’s face it, most are even when ostensibly under the amateur banner) to do a ‘job’ that benefits no-one else.

          3. I get equally fed up with people who are very happy to sacrifice other people’s ambitions or destroy their careers just so that they can feel good about themselves.

            Even sporting prima donnas are providing entertainment to those who enjoy watching them compete. They also indirectly provide employment for those creating the facilities, selling services, memorabilia, TV and radio, the Press etc etc.

            Where do you draw the line? Exactly the same can be said of artists, actors, musicians and God alone knows how many people in the public sector doing what I regard as non-jobs, but I wouldn’t wish to destroy their livelihoods just to make a point. And a point that will actually have zero effect on the prepetrators of whatever it is I object to.

      2. It doesn’t matter how many boycotts there are, as long as you have to buy essentials from Communist China. you are under their control.

        …And never forget it!

  6. SIR – Sentenced to lose his livelihood, Shylock says: “You take my life, / When you do take the means whereby I live.” The number of lives taken as a result of the Government’s strategy do not appear in the daily statistics.

    Giles Slaughter
    Woodbridge, Suffolk    #

    Too true, Mr Slaughter

  8. 324435+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Living life in a state of suspended animation awaiting a vaccine is precisely
    where these governance party’s want you, malleable, material to be hammered down and reshaped as into a NEW re-set citizen.

    To me it is coming across as the “vague plague” all one sided political rhetoric spread by the MsM / BBc, I have yet to see a daily tally of those that have died of covid 19 & no other medical side issues.

    What is to me a much more serious issue is to enforce the governing party’s incarceration campaign they are using heavy fines & descending
    truncheons, this to my mind is NO WAY for a governing body to act but more of a group with a future agenda they know will be unacceptable to the peoples.

    1. Morning Oggy. Of course. Boris has already established the principle of Rule by Fiat and there’s a case pending of someone being interrogated for Hate Crime by the Police. Welcome to the Future!

      1. 324435+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        In a decent Country this would be seen as political
        bridge burning, I cannot see a return of ANY of the close shop coalition it is coming across as endgame politics.
        Mind the frightener is there is a multitude of party
        before Country, regardless of consequence voters out there.

    2. Last week the BBC pointed out that one person in twenty five over 75 has died of Coronavirus this year.

      MOH and I are both over 75, and neither of us know anyone who has contracted Coronavirus, let alone died of it.

      1. 324435+ up ticks,
        Morning J,
        What they will NOT say or show is an estimate of how many have died through neglection of treatment regarding other maladies.
        May this find you plus, in the pink for many a year yet.

        1. Hi Peddy, you would have been proud of my evening meal last night: Cheggs (scrambled eggs with cheese) topped with tomato slices, followed by fresh (from the supermarket) figs washed down with a nice glass of Rosie Lee (Chateau Builder, vintage 2020).

          2. I still remember my attempt to bake a loaf of bread following your instructions, Grizzly, and ending up with a very serviceable door-stop!

            :-))

  10. Morning all

    SIR – Aged over 60, I work in an office where several people under the age of 25 also work.

    The other day I asked them if they approved of the current restriction of their lives by the Government. There was a collective shrug and comments along the lines of: “We need to do this until the vaccine is available.”

    Their jobs for now are reasonably secure. However, they seem to live in a universe where everything is about saving lives, with no understanding that the provision of public services is linked to the taxes paid by people serving them in the pubs and fast-food venues they choose to frequent.

    They genuinely believe a vaccine will be available within months and administered to the entire population overnight, like an automatic update of their phone software while they sleep.

    In a way I envy them as I fret daily about the consequences for our country of the current restrictions. I suspect their innocence will allow them to accept whatever the final effects of current policies are. I just hope they are not a reflection of an entire generation.

    Ian Mackenzie

    Broughton, Lancashire

    SIR – I live in Bradford metropolitan district, where we have endured a second lockdown for over two months.

    Advertisement

    I am retired, so by definition I do not go out to work. Lockdown demands that I do not go out to meet friends or relatives in their houses or gardens. My activities are limited to walking, gardening and eating out.

    With winter approaching, outdoor activities become difficult. The only light in the gloom is eating out. There are several pubs in our area which, like Wetherspoon’s, stoically implement all the regulations that the Government advises. I feel safe in them. I need them to save my sanity.

    Prime Minister, please be kind. Close establishments that flout the rules but leave alone those that are beating the virus.

    E S Brown

    Keighley, West Yorkshire

    SIR – In April, the NHS banned leave for October unless already booked. The authorities knew that, with people returning from holiday and students to universities and with the weather changing, a new wave was inevitable.

    It is time to bite the bullet. Protect the vulnerable, and let the young and healthy gain immunity.

    Paul Caruana

    Truro, Cornwall

    1. Mr Caruana’s suggestion would, presumably, let shops, pubs, restaurants, cinemas and clubs operate near normally so that the young and healthy gain immunity. It sounds fine but how are the vulnerable going to be prevented from using the same facilities? Will us oldies have to carry an ID card to show that we are younger than 70 years old?

    2. I’m not quite sure what Mr Mackenzie thinks. Of course those children have no idea how the economy works. The idea of explaining to them the basics of tax and jobs, of earnings and investment is like talking to a tree.

      Hell, the tree probably understands more.

  11. It’s headlines like the one below that I realise just how out of touch I am without the daily BJ Multi-briefings:

    “London homicides reach 100 for sixth consecutive year”

    Good morning folked.

    PS ‘Folked’ is a neologism – a synthesis of two well known words one of which is folk, the other I’m sure you can work out for yourselves….

  12. SIR – Many of the non-Covid sick will not come for treatment, because they are frightened, not of Covid itself, but because under the present inhuman rules, their “loved ones” will not be able to accompany and support them. If hospitalised, they will be unable to receive visits when most needed.

    Only one visitor, if any, is permitted, and only for a pre-booked hour slot, during which no physical contact is allowed. Any neglect in care (yes, it does happen) goes unchallenged.

    The present NHS has many things to answer for, but one is the scandalously high non-Covid death statistics.

    Erica Barrett

    Hastings, East Sussex

  15. Dimbleby exhibiting his total lack of self-awareness. He was always part of the problem, never part of the solution. Closed mind if ever there was one and out of touch with the GBP.

    Veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby considers bid to become next BBC chairman to thwart No.10’s plan to potentially install an arch-critic at the corporation

    He was ‘horrified’ after reports No 10 wanted to give the job to Charles Moore
    Ex-Question Time host says role should go to ‘someone with a more open mind’
    David Clementi, the current BBC chairman, is to step down in February 2021

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8825427/David-Dimbleby-considers-bid-BBC-chairman-thwart-No-10.html

    2. I remember his face in the early hours of the 24th June 2016 very well, it looked like he’d overeaten the lamprey pudding.

      2. I thought he looked as though the maiden aunt he’d been carefully cultivating for decades had died and left him nothing in her will.

  16. David Attenborough’s ‘racist’ gong is given a makeover after complaints it shows a white angel crushing a black man in chains (even though the horned figure actually represents the DEVIL)
    Medal awarded to Sir David Attenborough has been changed after complaints
    Sir David, 94, will be appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, a Commonwealth honour made by the Queen
    Recipients are given insignia featuring Archangel Michael trampling on the neck of a prone, dark-skinned man – representing St Michael’s victory over the Devil
    New version of medal shows the Devil with paler skin, to avoid embarrassment.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8825781/David-Attenboroughs-racist-gong-given-makeover.html

    2. An insignia altogether more fitting for our time might perhaps depict the Archangel Michael as a dark-skinned man, with negroid features, trampling on the neck of a white Devil, while relieving him of his wallet.

      (‘Morning, Maggie, BTW)

      1. Or an image of Canute on the beach failing to hold off the waves (of little boats).

        It is so sadly Ironic that the little boats were our saviours nary eighty years ago.

  17. David Dimbleby may apply to become the BBC’S next chairman if the Prime Minister attempts to appoint one of the corporation’s critics to the role.

    The former Question Time host said he was “horrified” by the news that Charles Moore (Lord Moore of Etchingham), the former Daily Telegraph editor, was being considered for the job.

    Oh dear; how rapidly the ivory towers of that socialist edifice are showing signs of crumbling.

    1. Would he listen to the rest of us if we were to tell him we’d be horrified by another Leftie?

    2. St Michael’s sprouted a fine pair of titties too. Must have been at the new-improved US-raised beef.

  19. My reading of the runes tells me to go forth and harvest for a 2nd batch of Estate Bottled sloe gin and damson vodka. Slayders.

  20. To all of you who might be sniffling and coughing , with a runny nose, son felt terrible on Sunday , sneezed coughed , runny nose etc, but no high temperature , he took Lemsip probably every 6 hours. Moh had a game of golf on Wednesday, and had to abandon because he felt dreadful, and for the past three days has coughed , spluttered sneezed and has felt really awful.

    They are both on the up now , Moh has had 3 bad nights, but what has helped is being propped up in bed with 3 pillows , has been taking the same medication as son, neither of them lost their appetite , although smaller meals were preferred, and they have been feeling really thirsty, not a bad thing either .

    I hope they improve quickly , though I dread the thought of me going down with the same .

    1. The whole of our immediate family and some of the the In laws caught a terrible cold at the end of August. Some were tested and found to be safe. We all lost taste and smell for a couple of days sneezing was an Olympic event. I think i won the gold medal, i used a box of man size tissues in a day. As Jonesy suggested. We didn’t panic !

    2. Me too, Belle! How on earth would two men with man-flu cope without you? I can imagine the chaos!

    3. The sort of bugs that have been around for our whole lives but now affect a bit more as we get older.
      Glad they’re getting over it quickly as, indeed, you would if you caught it.
      Please do NOT worry yourself and lower your resistance.

      Edit added not. Thanks peddy.

    4. It’s a bad cold, Belle – they will live. Isolation from other people weakens our immune systems.

  21. Social media must clean up their algorithms – for the sake of our kids – and of our health. 9 October 2020.

    Now is the time for the Government to combat online harms and to protect the most vulnerable online.

    Morning everyone. Yes and it is the Government and its friends which are the most vulnerable. The Online Harms Bill is the last nail in the coffin of the Free Internet which will see it so hobbled that criticism of the members, actions or policies of Westminster and the Powerful will become impossible. Needless to say there is much here about protecting children, which is simply camouflage; what has to be remembered is that these are the same people who espouse the teaching of sexual perversion in schools!

    Attendance on the Internet is not compulsory. Those who do not wish to view its content should look elsewhere!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/09/social-media-must-clean-algorithms-sake-kids-health/

    1. Subject to a duty of care.

      A duty of care. Which will be designed and enforced by the Left. A campaign of suppression of dissent, of difference and of alternative opinions. There are already laws controlling communications. That the government is utterly inept at enforcing them, far preferring the nonsense of patrolling twitter for speech the state line disapproves of.

  22. Right. Enough of this. My feet are cold – I’m off to do…something. Not sure what but blood needs to circulate.

    A tout a l’heure.

        1. When i go to bed Dolly jumps up and down making squeaky yelps until i pick her up. She curls up and goes to sleep on her side of the bed. She doesn’t move all night. My own living hot water bottle.

          1. That works with a Newfie… until you wake unable to breathe.

            However he is a good draft excluder.

    2. Just given Spartie a bracing walk before it tips down.
      Filing paperwork and then tapestry calls.

      1. No need to embroider your comment!

        Good day, young lady, if it is a good day, which I doubt. Tipping down here.

  23. If Mr Mouawad-Paul looked around York, Canada, he might get some clues as to why he is such a useless berk

    Delingpole: Another Conservative Prof Cancelled; Blames Black Lives Matter ‘Moral Panic’

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2020/10/book-burning-640×480.png

    A conservative professor has been “cancelled” for the second time in three years after a race-baiting communist academic raised objections to the “pro-colonial” narrative in his latest book about a British imperial administrator.

    According to the Times of London:

    Bruce Gilley’s book The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns’ Epic Defense of the British Empire was due to be the first volume in a planned ‘Problems of Anti-Colonialism’ series. That has now been scrapped after allegations that the avowed ‘pro-colonial’ Professor Gilley endorsed a ‘white nationalist perspective’.

    The series was cancelled without explanation after a petition led by Joshua Mouawad-Paul, a Maoist philosopher, of York University in Canada managed not even 1,000 signatures on the website Change.org.

    Mouawad-Paul claimed that Professor Gilley, professor of political science at Portland State University, had shown a “pig-headed refusal to deal with the rigorous historical analyses’ that debunked his view of European colonialism as beneficial.

    Gilley — described as a “scourge of the academic left” — has said that the “ease and suddenness” of his latest “cancellation” reflects “this year’s Black Lives Matter moral panic” which has “taken cultural totalitarianism to new levels.”

    He has written in the Wall Street Journal:

    “The Last Imperialist is the culmination of five years of intensive primary source research and passed peer review with Lexington Books last December, and it carried endorsements from two giants in the field of colonial history Jeremy Black, and Tirthankar Roy.”

    According to the Times of London:

    Tirthankar Roy, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, said in a letter to Lexington Books: “I take only one kind of historical scholarship seriously, one based on evidence and explaining a process of change — the manuscript passed that test, not only for me, but also the referees. That it could be an apology for empires, whatever that idiotic expression means, never crossed my mind, I do not think this book was one.”

    Mr Roy said that their decision meant that a group of “phoney academics” based in privileged Western universities “should decide what is published on Asian and African history” and this represented “real colonialism.”

    This is Gilley’s second cancellation by woke academe. In 2017, his paper The Case for Colonialism — which argued that colonial rule was beneficial and that rapid decolonisation had led to a “cesspool of human suffering” — was retracted by its publisher, Third World Quarterly, after “threats of personal violence” against the journal’s editor.

    And last year, Breitbart News reported that Portland State University had rejected Gilley’s proposed class on ‘Conservative Political Thought’ on the grounds that it did not “support the University commitment to access and inclusion.”

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

    https://strugglesessions.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/maoismfrombelow2txt.png?w=820

    1. Joshua Moufawad-Paul
      Education: York (Canada) University Phd. Philosophy
      Era: 21st-century philosophy
      School: Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
      Institutions: York University
      Main interests: Dialectics, Maoism, antagonistic contradictions
      Notable ideas: Continuity and rupture

      Joshua Moufawad-Paul is a Canadian academic and writer from Toronto, Canada. He is a professor of philosophy at York University. A Maoist philosopher, Moufawad-Paul has written several works on the topic and regularly posts on his blog M-L-M Mayhem which focuses on the philosophy of Maoism.

      Moufawad-Paul has been accused of seeking to suppress the work of Professor Bruce Gilley, after starting an online petition which persuaded Rowman & Littlefield to withdraw Gilley’s book The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns’ Epic Defense of the British Empire . This prompted a vehement condemnation of Moufawad-Paul as a member of a group of ‘phoney academics’ by Professor Tirthankar Roy of the London School of Economics. Roy further accused Moufawad-Paul of attempting to “decide what is published on Asian and African history”, suggesting that Moufawad-Paul and others in this group were guilty of “real colonialism.” Wiki

      The man’s thing’s a ****.

      https://0.academia-photos.com/2799966/916333/30695365/s200_joshua.moufawad-paul.jpg

      1. I am probably wrong but wasn’t it Mao who sent all the philosophers into the fields to do real work rather than sitting on their collective arses casting aspersions?

        1. It was he who, after encouraging them to expound their theories with the “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom; Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” campaign, then purged those whose ideas he disagreed with during the Cultural Revolution.

  24. Morning again

    Denied cancer surgery

    SIR – In April, after coughing blood, I contacted my GP. After many weeks and two X-rays, a CT scan indicated that, despite being a non-smoker, I had lung cancer. Surgery was agreed.

    The surgeon’s estimate of a four-week wait became seven. After a final two-week isolation and a Covid test I was due to be admitted last Tuesday. That morning I had a call from the hospital telling me that my operation would be delayed by three weeks. No explanation was offered as the caller knew nothing of my situation.

    You can imagine my anxiety over the past five months. The distress at having life-saving surgery delayed is hardly bearable. Can I believe the new date any more than the first?

    Do not believe the propaganda that the NHS is open for business. It is not.

    J E Smart
    Coventry, Warwickshire

    1. This is a disgrace. An appalling abandoning of the duties of a doctor. Every day delayed could mean death. What has happened to us?

      2. What has happened to the legal obligation of the nhs ‘Duty of Care’? Was it repealed under ‘Covid Rules’ or did it just happen as a by-the-way, and dropped by the wayside?

        I heard of a truly terrible occurrence in an nhs hospital in the south-west from a very reliable source. Diabetic lady given insulin, but not food.

      3. Divide the financing and management of healthcare between the government and various large multinationals, then then staff it with people from basket case countries. Canonise the resulting mess and make it beyond criticism.

        What could possibly go wrong when the above formula is applied?

          1. “then” is duplicated. It’s an NHS eye test.
            I have a headache and I can’t be bothered to fix it……

          3. No offence. I don’t mind pedantry because I am one myself – if the above text were a computer program, it wouldn’t compile, for example. I am heartily sick of headaches – in the last 7 days, I have only had one headache free day. It is weather related.

    2. Forwarded that to my elder son who spent 2019 not feeling his most perky. This is his reply:

      “If I had been diagnosed with hairy cell leukaemia this March instead of March 2019 I would be dead now.”

  25. With you all the way, Mr Gill:

    Post-Brexit freedom
    SIR – As a result of fundamental differences on the vexed question of the European Union, I ceased to be a member of the Conservative Party in 2001, while still a Conservative MP.

    For 20 years I have harboured thoughts of rejoining, but not if it transpires that, after Brexit, British subjects will still live under the sword of Damocles of the iniquitous European Arrest Warrant, which can be served on any of us without any necessity for a shred of evidence that we have indeed committed an offence.

    As for the European Convention on Human Rights, nowhere does it have an equivalent to the British law of habeas corpus, our guarantee of individual freedom since 1679.

    Christopher Gill
    Aberdovey, Merionethshire

    2. Just posted this below Hugh but it merits headlines. The General Medical Council should be notified and it’s time lawyers moved in. I am ashamed of my profession.

  26. Blimey, that’s all we need. Dimbers isn’t the only one to be “horrified”:

    From the Tellygraff…

    David Dimbleby may throw his hat into the ring to become the BBC’s next chairman if the Prime Minister attempts to appoint one of the corporation’s critics to the role.

    The former Question Time host said he was “horrified” by the news that Lord Moore, the former Daily Telegraph editor, was being considered for the job.

    Dimbleby said he was going to make a rival application and promote himself as a defender of the BBC, until Lord Moore ruled himself out of the running earlier this week.

    However, Dimbleby said: “I still might, depending on who comes forward.”

    “We’ll see who the candidates are. Boris Johnson, we know, wants to bring the BBC to heel. We don’t want a chairman who connives in that ambition,” Dimbleby told the BBC’s Newscast podcast.

    “You want somebody in charge of the BBC who is sympathetic not to the BBC as an institution, but to the idea of the BBC, to the concept of the BBC as reflecting the whole sort of richness of British life.”

    The current chairman, Sir David Clementi, stands down in February. The position is appointed by the Government and the job will be advertised publicly in the next few days.

    Dimbleby said the appointment of Lord Moore would have been “a malign intervention” and “you need someone with a more open mind”.

    “I thought that for Johnson to put in post somebody who hates the BBC was very dangerous for the BBC. We know no politicians have ever liked the BBC. Harold Wilson was against us, John Major was, Margaret Thatcher certainly was, Boris Johnson is.

    “The BBC is a thorn in the side of government and that’s its job. And therefore it is disliked by government.”

    Dimbleby said the chairman role is “to be a kind of constantly-aware listening post, because everybody pays for it and it belongs to everybody. And I thought the idea of the Prime Minister putting in somebody who actually didn’t take that view and had his own clear, personal vision of what the BBC should be like, was dangerous.”

    A Government spokesperson said: “We will launch the application process for the new chair of the BBC shortly. It is an open recruitment process and all public appointments are subject to a robust and fair selection criteria.”

    1. And Dimbleby doesn’t have his own ‘clear, personal vision’ of what the BBC should be like? Unfortunately his vision coincides with that of far too many others.

      1. “Dimbleby said the chairman role is “to be a kind of constantly-aware listening post, because everybody pays for it and it belongs to everybody.”

        I haven’t paid for over 15 years, David. There are increasingly more people like me who are legally licence free.

        1. I’m hopeful that this government will at least decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee, even if they don’t have the stomach to take things any further.

    2. Exacto David. You have said it yourself….“

      You want somebody in charge of the BBC who is sympathetic not to the BBC as an institution, but to the idea of the BBC, to the concept of the BBC as reflecting the whole sort of richness of British life

      1. Ah, yes, “richness”. The richness of the BBC transformed into a social media slop bucket. The richness of programmes, dramas, comedies (sic), historical representations, documentaries, and fabrications all now presented through black-tinted spectacles, regardless of truth, reality or rationality.

        1. The thing I would point out is that ‘division’ – diversity – always makes things smaller. It never adds or multiplies. It takes a value and makes it smaller.

    3. “…Boris Johnson, we know, wants to bring the BBC to heel. We don’t want a chairman who connives in that ambition…”

      But you do want a BBC which stands against the overwhelming majority of the public, that does whatever it wants regardless?

      Silly man.

        2. I noticed this morning that W/rose are still selling begonia plants. They’ll fold at the first frost.

          3. A friend of mine bought some begonia plants last week (not at Waitrose, and at a very low price). She says that they will flower happily on the window sills of her conservatory, which are now bare of a host of summer flowering things, and give her a bit of much needed colour for the next 4 or 5 months.

          5. Mum usually has some in a tub near her back door from early summer. They usually last till Christmas but either the cold wind whistling round the corner of the house, or the frost, gets them in the New Year.

            My friend grows summer flowering things and a couple of tomato plants in her conservatory (she doesn’t have a greenhouse and Wales is not the best spot for outdoor ripening) so she has empty space in the winter. She’ll have some bulbs there in the spring, but the begonias give her a bright splash through till then. She’s up the hill a bit from here and the rainfall is a bit higher (and it can be wet enough here) and the winter rain isn’t kind to flowers – so out of doors probably wouldn’t be a good idea and she wouldn’t have their cheerfulness so close at hand. She’s older than I am, and not very well, so her outdoor gardening is limited now but she makes the most of her indoor space.

  28. We were watching Doc Martin last night and he was presented with everybody at PC Penhale’s party suddenly getting an ongoing fit of coughing.

    The medical advisers had given the actor, Martin Clunes, the diagnosis of Bornholm disease.
    At the time of shooting of course COVID-19 was not in circulation but the symptoms of this highly infectious Coxsackie B virus infection today could well be confused with COVID-19.

    Doc Martin would naturally be able to spot the difference and prescribe the appropriate treatment without even having to order any lab tests.

    https://patient.info/signs-symptoms/chest-pain-leaflet/bornholm-disease

  29. Good morning all – late on parade, but as it is about to rain, who cares?

    Missed out on my BLM, I see…. Any NoTTLers get a gong?

    2. I think you did, Uncle Bill. Although they mis-labelled the photo of you and the MR – it should have read “The Legal Beagle (pictured here with Lady Mary Berry (aka The MR), who is now a Knight of the Dog Pound”.

      :-))

  30. I have lotsa work to do (sitting on my fat arse at my desk, George Grizz) to do with the Bramford Solar Farm, cheekily renamed Flowton Against Rural Technology. So I too may be absent for a few days.

    1. Tom,

      Don’t vanish , please think about this!

      They are probably doing the same to land that had maize crops this year , down the road from here.

      The locals have suggested that a solar farm is far preferable to having nearly 700 homes built , and the sterility of having maize growing in the fields for a decade or more , a solar farm would be better for wild life , birds, insects and wild flowers and perhaps sheep grazing underneath.

      1. Sorry, Mags, you’re being sucked into the Enso and Green idea of renewable energy and not about the loss – for 40 years – of 98 hectares (242 acres) of good arable land, where 1 hectare can produce 80 tons of wheat every year. Multiply that by 98 x 40 and that comes to a loss of 313,600 tons of wheat – which will have to be sourced from outside the UK. What does that do to the savings on carbon footprints?

        Deer fences will also be erected around the site which will force the large population of muntjac deer in this area, to use the single track roads (with passing places) and increase the likelihood of road traffic accidents, which currently run at about 700,000 per year across the UK.

        Small wonder we (probably all of the 117 residents) will oppose it most vigourously because, apart from the above, it will lay waste to parts of a singularly beautiful part of rural England.

        Oh, by the way, we are not a sheep-raising part of the country – if it’s not arable, it’s other use is grazing cattle and occasionally pigs. Kent may be the Garden of England, but we are the fields and farmland. Do NOT wish to lose it.

        2. Call me NIMBY if you must but I just wish to preserve something of our English way of life.

        3. Hi Tom.

          Don’t get me wrong , I don’t like the idea of solar farms , wind farms or any wild idea for farm land .

          I think Boris is as mad as a box of frogs wanting to smother rural England in housing .. Why have rural housing if there are no jobs, public transport and infrastructure to cope .. Masses of rural housing is unecessary .. Villages are destroyed , and close happy communities are virtually ruined .

          1. Apologies, Mags, it seems that I was given a misleading figure of wheat yield per hectare by a factor of 10 but it still means that even with 8 tons/hectare, over 40 years, 32,000 tons or thereabouts will be needed to make up the shortfall.

            According to latest government figures (2018), the UK is 61% self-sufficient for food. This means that the country needs to import 39% of its food from abroad. This government article here:

            https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/food-security-what-is-it-and-how-is-it-measured/

            It should also be noted that, according to latest government figures, the UK’s capacity for electricity generation was 42% greater than the maximum demand in 2018/2019. Page 17 of this document:

            https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/85702
            7/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2019.pdf

        4. Whoa! If you want to make a coherent argument you need to get your figures right and you’re out by a factor of 10 with your wheat yields. Average yield of feed wheat in England is 8.5 tonnes – milling wheat yields less so the overall average is about 8 tonnes (nothing like 80). 10 tonne crops have been achieved on the very best land, with very high inputs but are less economically viable than a good 8 – 9 tonne crop (because the return on each increment of fertiliser is smaller so the extra tonnage costs more than it brings in). I’m very sure that if 80 tonnes per hectare were possible there would be no suggestion to “plant” solar panels.

          Having looked up Bramford Solar, I see that you are in Suffolk. A county which is such a “not sheep raising part of the country” that it has one of Britain’s best known breeds of sheep named for it. Sheep may not be prevalent in modern Suffolk, but they were certainly once an integral part of the landscape so that is probably not a very good argument.

          Small solar developments which can very well be grazed by sheep have their place for local energy provision, but I’m in full agreement with you that almost 100 hectares is far too large an area and will, entirely, change the characteristics of the landscapes, even with the suggested tree-planting. It would seem that the plan is to surround your village almost entirely.

          I wish you luck in your opposition – but please use accurate figures if you want to be seen as credible.

    2. Good luck. What a bloody waste of farmland.
      (unless you go back to the original meaning of farming i.e. tax gathering)

      1. Our surname is such. Poppiesdad (also known as Topdog) is always putting people right about the meaning of the name.

    1. “The police are now political police. Their priority is controlling what people say & think. They are no longer interested in preventing & investigating crimes against the citizen.”

      You’ve only just worked that out? Wake up, dozy Gerry! I’ve been telling everyone those facts since dim-Jim Callaghan’s government way back in 1978.

      1. 324435+ up ticks,
        You talkin ta me ? the only coppers I ever trusted were
        PC 49 / Dixon.
        I do believe that many find one
        Gerard Batten to be a very wide awake & decent person, the very reasons he was castigated and not to be tolerated as he was.

        1. Sounds weird, but it was when he was PM that the recommendations of the Lord Edmund-Davies report were implemented giving the police a decent pay rise and improvement in working conditions for the first time since 1919.

          To be fair, it was an all-party committee that ratified it but, still, Dim JIm was PM in 1978.

          The downside was the commencement of more political control of the police and the introduction of the accursed graduate-entry scheme, but that has been covered ad nauseam.

      1. 324435+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        Then in today’s political climate of outlawing truth & castigating truthsayers he will be listened to as he carries the “castigated by the
        establishments brand”.

  32. “Biden is a doorway, not a destination.” The People’s Charter. SST. 09 OCTOBER 2020.

    “We’ve always said that electing Joe Biden was a doorway, not a destination,” said Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell in a statement. “The People’s Charter is that destination: a nation that cares for all of us, no matter what we look like, where we come from, or how much money is in our pockets.

    “We’re going to beat Donald Trump on Nov. 3, and then we’re going to organize to make the vision outlined in the People’s Charter a reality,” he added.

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People who have never run any substantial organization, have never made any money that was not given to them and who think that all that is needed for creation of a utopia is fervor and enthusiasm are preparing to run Old Joe around by the nose. The street fighter cadres of hard core Marxists will inevitably seize control of the process and behind them will be the leftist plutocrats who see their opportunity to run all – ALL! Pat Lang.

    The view from the United States.

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/10/biden-is-a-doorway-not-a-destination.html

    1. This shows the mindset of the Left. “is that destination: a nation that cares for all of us”

      He means, of course, a state that does, not a nation. He wants someone else to provide for his entire life. I find that offensive. The purpose of government must be to provide the means to succeed and then to leave the individual alone to provide for themselves.

  33. Good morning all.
    Bloke drives to his local Yellow Beryl testing centre.
    Massive queues, can’t drive through the gates, turns around and goes home.
    A couple of hours later, he receives a msg (or app alert) that he has tested positive.

    1. Over a pint last night, my nephew told me of a friend of his who has been working in Poland with eight British colleagues for a few weeks. They have to submit Covid self-swabbing tests every two days.

      One day, the friend was getting so fed up, he self-swabbed himself nine times and submitted the swabs.

      The result? Six negative and three positive…

      1. Hi John, please excuse late reply; I nottle mainly when I stop for a hot beverage or a snack. The irony is that I heard the tale above from a Believer who was exceedingly anxious lest someone else had received a Negative result by mistake. I had to explain that the geolocation on the man’s mobile would simply have recorded him physically present at the testing centre (he had no appointment). In Spain I know of a lady (colleague of a friend, not a pub story) who has been waiting for an operation. She has had several negative & positive results which contradict each other, and so the surgeon has been unable to proceed.

    2. Now that I do not believe. In fact, it’s preposterous.

      The NHS never, ever returns results in 2 hours. 2 weeks perhaps. 2 hours? Nonsense.

      1. But, but …. the story demonstrates that when they get their Magic App working, they can cause chaos.

  34. Another year nearly over and, yet again, no mention in the latest honours list. I was a tad more than hopeful of at least a Knight Commander of the Bath (or, maybe, a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Venerable Order of the British Empire) for services to tomfoolery and jiggerypokery.

    Alas, no.

    2. Sorry to hear you’ve been overlooked again, Grizz.

      However, you may console yourself with the thought that those who have made it to the list of appointments to the Order of the Bath are an absolute shower.

    3. How about Knight Grand Cross of the Most Venerable Order of the Sourdough Loaf? Much more worthy of respect!

    4. If you had been a vastly overpaid multi-millionaire “bag of air” kicker telling the govt to spend other people’s cash you would have got one. Why doesn’t he donate 50% of his worth to the cost of what he wants. Can’t he live on the other millions for the rest of his life?

    6. I blew my chances of an MBE with my email to my parish clerk saying what I thought of the climate change emergency bovine excrement from county.

  35. Morning all! I see Cheshire Lad is here! Come and join us – speak up! I can’t hear you……….

    1. Click on the “462 people ar” just below the video, then when open scroll down to see what a young burglar got for breaking into a 73 yr old’s house. – – In the UK the old chap would be arrested and jailed.

      1. Is that maybe the greatest contribution to science ever to come out of Black Africa?

        President Magufuli “followed the science”.

  39. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76ac59490f4e49f0cf2d3880cf914fd8cd438d93cbfb32b8306ef87a0c79a520.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c531b9ddef94e804ce0c0c159fb605a17f69a32ee4c90d8eb839479542b9a16.png WTF has this got to do with work?

    Work: the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. Activity involving physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

    Spending a good proportion of daylight hours inside an air-conditioned and centrally-heated building in an “office”, with your arse in a comfortable padded “chair”, sitting in front of a “desk”, playing with your computer and sending silly emails to each other …

    … does not constitute WORK!

    4. Agreed. One of the many real-life Police tv programs showed them taking delivery of new Traffic cars – and smiling because it had heated seats. BMWs ( cars and X5s ) Mitsubishis, Subarus etc. Offices on wheels.

      1. My ‘office on wheels’ was a push-bike*. My central heating was a cape.

        [*For the benefit of southerners: the term ‘push-bike’ is northern vernacular for a pedal cycle.]

      1. There was a ‘report’ by a ukipper on FB earlier today it was a chap talking about how the government has stopped Doctors form seeing patients and how they are not allowed to talk about it, with the threat of losing their jobs. He also mentioned that when the panic set in hospitals were emptied of the elderly with no check on how and how many were infected at that stage. Hence the rise in the infections in care homes.
        The clip was soon removed by Facebook or maybe you tube.
        I found it but i can’t seem to copy the link………………… Former MEP & UKIP spokesman, Bill Etheridge says there has been a “massive overreaction” by hospitals and the Government over COVID which has led to even more deaths and the destruction of our economy.

        1. ” talking about how the government has stopped Doctors form seeing patients ” – -And I always thought that was the receptionist’s job.

    2. How very convenient to combine the two. The Lord is not the only one to work in mysterious ways!

      Afternoon all. Just in from pruning out of control escallonia and now Alf has nipped off to the top to get rid. He’ll be back in a couple of hours I expect! Queues everywhere.

        1. Oops!

          Back sooner than expected, queue far too long to wait, tip would have been closed before he got to the front! So all cuttings under cover until … who knows when. What is it they say about gratification delayed?

          2. Not on your life you rebel! Wouldn’t dream of burning freshly cut green stuff. It makes me cross when people have bonfires on a lovely sunny day.

    1. Quite a lot of relevance with certain ways of living eh.

      Go home, go home, to your father’s garden
      Go home and weep your fill,
      And think upon your own misfortune
      Which you bought with your wanton will.

      There’s not one girl in this whole town
      As easily led as I,
      And when the sky does fall and the seas will run dry,
      Why, it’s then you’ll marry I.

    2. Why do people insist on saying they suffer from mental health? It’s ‘mental illness’ they suffer from.

  45. Two of the ISIS ‘Beatles’ have been flown to the U.S from Iraq and have appeared in Court. They pleaded not guilty.

    No virgins for them !

    I read recently about a top security prison in the U.S where they are holding Captain Abu Hook the Mad Mullah of Finsbury Park.

    The conditions are humane and surgically clean. I would be happy to board my Dolly there.

    Totally sound proofed and controlled TV is a privilege provided you don’t smear the walls with excrement.

    No phones. No visitors.

    1 hour of exercise per day where your cell is opened remotely. You travel a corridor to a box not meeting a living being on the way.

    Priti get your arse in gear.

    GOD BLESS AMERICA !

        1. Agreed, Iffy, hanging for murder and rape and public birching for the juvenile offences – humiliate the little shits.

    2. Humane? Isolation for the rest of your life in a sterile concrete cell.

      Not that hook and friends deserve humane accommodations but I would imagine that after a few years of that land existence, death might be preferable.

      Keep suffering.

      1. My version of humane differs from their version of humane. Quite obviously i’m a racist. Anyway, time to go…..have some heads to lop off. Don’t care if they are black or white…any infidel will do.

  46. Premier league on Sky TV…

    “That spirit has now been completely ignored even though coronavirus cases are rising, the country is locking down and the mental and financial hardship is growing for so many people. And here they are being asked to pay £14.95 to watch their team play; to pursue what is for many their greatest passion.”

    I haven’t got Sky TV and I have only twice been to a live soccer match. I do feel though that the writer of the article doth protest too much. £14.95 is a lot less than the cost of a stadium ticket, let alone that plus the travel fare for non-local supporters. A family can watch for one payment whereas mother, father, son and daughter going to a game at one of the Big Six could easily set them back £500.

      1. The Manchester Arena bomber’s mother was getting over £2k a month in benefits . . .So YES – -most English working families? . . . NO

    3. If we assume Gareth Bale is on a 40 hour week, then £14.95 would pay his wages for 8.6 seconds.

      They need the money.

    1. I view the official Covid strategy with mounting alarm. As our nation stares into the abyss of unprecedented recession and social dislocation, the supposed cure is indeed turning out to be far worse than the disease.

      Yes!

      1. But – as I said yesterday – no one does anything positive to attack this bunch of clowns posing as a government. We don’t take to the streets en masse. We are supine and deserve all we get.

        2. There was a demonstration against this nonsense. After weeks of standing by while statues were trashed and demonstrators mingled freely, the police suddenly got antsy about the Rule of Six.

    2. “We now have the worst of all words: authoritarianism accompanied by amateurism. The sense of national breakdown has been exacerbated by the Government’s lengthening catalogue of spectacular incompetence.

      It is epitomised by the scandal over the supply of PPE, on which an incredible £15billion has been spent, and the serial failures of the £12billion test and trace regime, presided over by disaster-prone peer Dido Harding, who appears to owe her appointment more to political favouritism than executive competence.

      More money was wasted in the NHS on boosting supplies of intensive-care ventilators, which turned out to be almost as dangerous as the virus itself, and on the vast Nightingale hospitals, which remained largely unused”.

      How this ‘Government’ are still in post is beyond me….

  48. Silent march in Berlin (with face nappies) against the State railroading human right with a fear campaign over Corona.
    Familiar?

  49. The news yesterday evening included a story that a number of patients in the cancer wards of the Western General hospital in Edinburgh have died as a result of Covid-19 infection. The total number was not given, but “at least two”. The reason given by the hospital for refusing to give the full total, was for reasons of “patient confidentiality”.
    Patient confidentiality is, of course, a nonsense. When someone famous is in hospital the doctors involved are giving public updates to TV news teams every day. (When I phoned a hospital to check if a friend was still there they refused to tell me.). I have commented recently that this law was introduced to protect politicians and the guilty.
    No one in hospital is safe. For decades the NHS personnel management regime have put “family friendly” and “work/life balance” above efficiency, cost-effectiveness and hygiene. For years patient safety has been compromised in most hospitals as a result. It is very common for a nurse to work a number of shifts in a week in different wards, sometimes in a single day. A nurse will get up in the morning, put on her uniform, take the dog for a walk, feed the kids, take them to school and drive to the hospital to start a shift in a medical ward with infectious diseases. After lunch in the canteen with colleagues from different wards the nurse will carry out a shift in a surgical ward. The nurse will then drive to her parent home, collect the kids and go home. Next same routine, same uniform. No need to ask how infections can spread in hospitals.
    As for the Western General, the article contains sufficient information and quotes to demonstrate that their procedures and processes are inadequate to prevent cross-contamination and the spread of disease.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-54485272

    Notes. The use of the term “she” in reference to “nurse” should not be taken as any kind of sexual bias. Some nurses are men.
    The idiocy of having every patient for every complaint from pregnancy to cancer, smallpox and TB on the same site is amply illustrated. The new Sick Kids in Edinburgh is on the same site as the Royal Infirmary. This will allow even greater flexibility in staff sharing, and disease sharing, if the Sick Kids ever opens. It failed a “fit for purpose” pre-opening survey.

    2. Students in some universities who are tested COVID-19 positive are isolating in their rooms in hall and then mixing with COVID-free students in the refrectory when they are allowed out to eat in their designated daily meal break.

  50. Message for our MPs

    Enjoy your pay rise you repulsive pieces of excrement.

    Every single person booked onto our October course has had to cancel. The income from our courses in 2020 is 32% of what we earned in 2019 a drop of nearly 70%.

    What possible incentive is there for young people to try and set up new businesses when the public sector is given pay rises and the private sector is left to wither on the vine?

    32 years ago we threw caution to the wind, resigned from our jobs which brought a monthly pay cheque and an assured pension and moved to another EU country to set up our business which, until this year has flourished. It was a brave thing to do then: to do so now would be insanity.

    How many MPs have set up their own businesses from scratch – it is particularly shameful that so few Conservative MPs have done so.

    1. It’s a vicious circle that we, the electorate, do FA to stop.

      They make you promises and beg your votes
      You vote them into power.
      They renege on their promises, award themselves huge pay and expenses rises.
      They make laws to make your lives miserable and cause you financial losses.
      They make you promises and beg your votes
      You vote them into power.
      They renege on their promises, award themselves huge pay and expenses rises.
      They make laws to make your lives miserable and cause you financial losses.
      They make you promises and beg your votes.
      You vote them into power.
      They renege on their promises, award themselves huge pay and expenses rises.
      They make laws to make your lives miserable and cause you financial losses.
      They make you promises and beg your votes.
      You vote them into power.
      They renege on their promises, award themselves huge pay and expenses rises.
      They make laws to make your lives miserable and cause you financial losses.
      They make you promises and beg your votes.
      You vote them into power…

      1. An MP gets the job because they convince us they will do what they say. Then they don’t. But they cannot be instantly sacked ( like everyone else ) and lose their income. If they could be, they might change their attitude.

        1. This is how the Swiss system works. Disobey and the MP is sacked. After all, their job is to represent the people. Our MPs forget that.

          1. The Swiss are different to the rest of Europe. The Swiss have both balls and brains. The rest of Europe don’t have either.

      2. It’s part of the problem of representative democacy, Oce they get elected they cease to represent us and favour their own interests.

        Direct democracy would see the MP simply doing our will without their own interests being considered.

      3. They don’t bother with the making promises and begging for votes now. Can you remember being asked about any of the big decisions?
        Mass immigration?
        Gay “marriage”?
        Sex-based abortions?
        “Hate” crime?

    3. How many MPs have set up their own businesses from scratch
      How many of our political classes have ever carried out an honest days work ?

        1. And Oh how easy it has become to hate the lot of them.
          At three general elections since 1979 the SNP has had the largest
          proportion of new Members of Parliament. 88% or 49 the total 59
          SNP MPs elected at the 2015 General Election were new to Parliament.
          This is the highest proportion of new MPs recorded by any party since
          1979.
          It’s perfectly obvious they don’t have an effing clue between them and the it’s the hate filled civil service that runs the country.
          God only knows how many billions of pounds of tax payers money is wasted on these slime bags.

    4. I feel for both of you, Rastus. All that hard work, and the pols have it easy – just open your wallet and help themselves! Barstewards.

        1. Reminds me of another Nip – Mitsuko Uchida – who can play the joanna like a dream but whose body action and extravagant facial expressions are too ghastly to watch.

    2. That leaves me stone cold. Expect it’s technically wonderful but … how could you actually tell? Or even if the right notes are being played? 😹

      1. i admire her virtuosity rather than her musicality. I love the contrast between the effect she has on the staid Proms orchestra (mainly blank incomprehension) and the audience (lovin’ it!) Jazz improvisation is a marmite sort of thing, you either get it or you don’t. A lot of her stuff, when she’s not showing off, is much more lyrical.

          1. Understood, I’m on my second bottle already. I’ll find something better tomorrow- promise!

    4. What a coincidence. I have just this minute thrown out an open cereal box of porridge dated 2013. It would probably still be edible but all my cereals now taste of curry because that is the cupboard where i keep my spices.

    1. ” You won’t believe it, but the wretched little thing that did this is called ‘Dolly’ “

  54. That’s me for today – which turned out rather nicer after lunch. Sunshine. Stacked the rest of the logs. Gathered kindling. Dug up the tomatoes ready for burning when we have a north-easterly wind.

    Now about to enjoy a very palatable rosé from Bordeaux – Domaine du Grand Mayne, discovered through the Spectator Wine Club. £ 7.50 a bottle (while stocks last). So satisfied was the MR, that I have ordered a dozen more and six of their merlot cabernet red. Also extremely efficient and pleasant to deal with.

    Chilly night ahead, apparently. Stay warm – stay safe – boo an MP.

    A demain.

  56. From Lockdown Sceptics – an interview with a nurse –

    Today’s newsletter is a special edition featuring an exclusive interview

    with a nurse who worked in an NHS hospital throughout the pandemic and

    says she has never had so little to do. Now she feels compelled to speak

    out against the “most wilful of lies” she has witnessed, in the hope

    that “such a grave miscarriage of justice for health can never be

    allowed to happen again”.

    https://lockdownsceptics.org/

      1. There are plenty of nurses with the opposite tale to tell too. A friend’s daughter works in ICU in one of the big Glasgow hospitals – they were run off their feet. She was skinny 12 months ago, she looks like a wraith at the moment.

        Because of the way things were managed or, I should probably say, mismanaged, it became a “feast or famine” situation with very few patients in some places – and far too many in others.

        1. That doesn’t change the question.

          However, anecdote is seldom the best determinant either way.

          1. Not all the time, not everywhere. And, to some degree, not even in this – a lot of what happened was piled down on them from the politicos.

            But too much, and too often, certainly.

    2. Interesting that patients were automatically treated as “Do Not Rescusitate”. Everyone over 60? Goes some way to providing a logical, if unpalatable, reason for packing the elderly off to care homes whether they wished it or not.

  57. This crisis is tearing apart the underpinnings of Western democracy. 10 October 2020

    Here is an example of how not to do this: when Professor Chris Whitty appeared before MPs and local political leaders last week, he was presented with the fact that in a majority of those areas which had been under strict lockdown measures, case numbers had continued to soar. His response to this was to say that without the lockdown, it could have been so much worse.

    Of course, the Whitty proposition might be correct. But as he has framed it, it cannot be disproved or even criticised. And that is the real, substantial threat to our politics. What has happened to the intellectual confidence of the Western idea that we are (or should be) robust enough to take on an opponent and defend a position with thoroughness and verifiable information? Where is the tacit assumption that if we are not so robust, we should not be entitled to hold a position of power? That the most important qualification for public authority is that we accept the need to make a case for a decision that is plausible enough to stand up to challenge?

    Daley’s title is of course in the wrong tense. Western Democracy is already defunct. The reasons for it are not intellectual but criminal. The state and its institutions have been deliberately and systematically undermined and trashed in the cause of globalist ambitions. The present crisis with the coronavirus is due to the incompetence of a Political and Bureaucratic elite that are simply incapable of rational thought. Cultural Marxism has deprived them of this ability since it relies not on reasoned argument or debate but the unquestioning acceptance of untruths. Witness the government who are incapable (literally) of accepting that their policies are wrong.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/10/crisis-tearing-apart-underpinnings-western-democracy/

    1. 324435+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      “Witness the government who are incapable ( literally) of accepting their policies are wrong”
      Thinking outside the box,

      The government working to it’s own anti UK agenda ?

      Witness the electorate who are incapable ( literally) of accepting their party’s policies / actions are wrong once again,again,again.

      Conspiracy theory,
      Lest we forget, mayday.

    2. Hi Minty. I think that the government is wilfully ignoring that their policies are wrong all in the name of NWO, the great reset, and globalism.

    3. Witless is a state employee; unsackable without an humungous payoff and a gold-plated pension.

  60. The sun is shining and I’m about to spend a pleasant afternoon effing and blinding over setting the outline of my tapestry (strewth, have I chosen a shocker!). But, before I go, a couple of DM articles to give my inner Eeyore a canter round the block; next Spring will bring a helluva reckoning.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8824905/NHS-faces-lawsuits-cancer-patients-scans-tests-operations-cancelled-lockdown.html

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8824833/Lockdown-despair-drove-two-Professors-lives.html

    1. I took up tapestry after losing my son. I found the gentle
      rhythm of stitching therapeutic….alas I have more needlepoint cushions than I know what to do with….

      1. There’s a definite dearth of gentle in the world these days.
        Sorry about your lad, Plum. I have no words.

      2. Painful voids are so difficult to fill, stitching can be helpful and time consuming and the photos of your lovely garden are beautiful .

        I suspect your eyesight is nicely sharp and accurate , I am hopeless at detail these days .

        1. Hi Belle, thankfully my eyesight is pretty good. I’m still hoping to return to tennis if injury permits. Meanwhile what to do during the long winter days…

        2. Hi Belle, thankfully my eyesight is pretty good. I’m still hoping to return to tennis if injury permits. Meanwhile what to do during the long winter days…

          1. I am so disorganised , and we still haven’t sorted stuff out in the spare room , old photos , model cars , paperwork that just goes on and on , and masses of my books which need redistributing! Some said years ago that there is a point in time when you have to tidy your lives up, but what do people do with stuff that others don’t want .

          2. I began to clear the spare room of books, clothes, bedding and useless items no longer required during lockdown. After filling several sacks the local charity shops were not interested in taking them!

          3. Same here.

            Even specialist 2nd hand book shops are saying no thanks !

            No one wants tea sets, jam spoons , butter knives, and all the fiddly bits that are no longer used .

          8. Maud might not approve of that. But I expect that Maud likes a cuddle now and again too.

      1. Good afternoon, Mum.

        ‘This will bankrupt the nhs,’

        No, it will bankrupt us by
        forcing us to pay more money
        towards maintaining a very
        inefficient ‘National Treasure.’

    3. Any reasonable person must know by now that there’s something going on other than trying to “protect everyone” from disease. And there is no hint that the ludicrous laws and regulations are to be dropped any time soon. I hope there will be hell to pay by the government but presumably all concerned will bleat on about “we were following the science”. ( I thought that excuse was dismissed at Nuremberg). However the bigger the crime the less the punishment it seems and if anybody or institution is prosecuted over this I shall be mightily surprised.

    4. Hmf.
      The new soil we had laid yesterday beside the new garden path is now washed down by the front door.
      Bugger, what a mess :-(( And it’s still raining like a firehose…

        2. Norwegian front doors open outwards – there’s so much soil out there, no chance of opening until I’ve been out there with a spade.

          1. So, I believe, do Swedish ones. I have often wondered why that is in countries which tend to have heavy snow falls.

          3. But then, when it builds up against the door you’re not going to be able to open it, surely. I remember, back in the day when we had proper winters and lots of snow, a huge amount of snow falling off the roof (something that was a regular occurrence without lots of loft insulation) so that when we opened the back door (which opened inwards), all we could see was a wall of snow! If it had opened outwards, there is no way we could have pushed it open. As it was, we had to dig a passage to get out. Fortunately, being a practical man, my father had thought to bring a shovel indoors for just such a purpose!

    6. Forgive my curiosity, but what are you stitching? My long-term cross stitch project is a whole strip of illustrations from The Tale of Tailor of Gloucester”. The designs are not difficult, but I’m doing it on linen with 36 threads to the inch – so it requires plenty of concentration.

        2. Firefox does security updates and i rely on Malwarebytes to check overall but no windows updates

    2. Only when I am forced to using a modern OS that is pre-8.

      My preferred choice of Windows is XP, but I do most things on OS X Snow Leopard. That was the last of the Mac OSs that had a decent Mail interface. I cannot find any decent Mail app made now that doesn’t hog the screen with bits of the message and lots of stylish empty space, rather than putting 25 headers on one page, when I don’t have to scroll.

      1. I share your annoyance. User interfaces reached a peak of usability some fifteen years ago, it’s all been downhill since!

        1. That would be Windows XP SP3. Website design was also much better then. I was able to do with Yahoo! Messenger in 2005 (which I was actually running on Win98 then) far more than I could ever do with social networking apps today. For one-to-one, it was better than Zoom, even with more primitive hardware.

      1. I have W10 too (mistake) with a Windows Classic Shell so it looks (at least) like older versions.

    4. I WISH I was. – got Win 10 – against my wishes. I do have a genuine Win 7 installation cd and might install it on a new hard drive.

  63. Just watched JFK (the film). Thank heavens things like that don’t happen these days!

        1. Nah, the Obama clan will have it stitched up.

          Unless, of course, the Clintons use their superior experience to beat the Obamas at the Not OK Corral.

    2. You should try reading The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. It’s an audacious novel about JFK’s killing and cover up, and lots more. Well worth a read.

        1. Ellroy’s book is a novel, and a brutal one. He often uses real people as characters and I’ve no idea how he gets away with the libel laws. Always violent and profane, but very enjoyable if you can handle his odd, but effective, writing technique.

  64. Off topic, slightly, re masks.

    We went to the market this morning.

    I do not think I saw one person wearing glasses whose spectacles were not steamed up.

    Please don’t try to tell me that the bloody masks keep the virus in, let alone that they can keep it out.

  65. John Ward:

    “The Covid19 hysteria has caused the biggest UK economic contraction since 1979 – and we’re still only five months into the saga. Over that period, our gdp plunged 11.7%….in round figures, £286 billion. Assuming the same (big assumption) over a full 12 months (without cancelling Christmas) the cost to the Exchequer would be £684 billion.

    That’s a smidgen under five NHS budgets at current levels.

    But that does not, of course, include the £100 billion of money (we don’t have) being spent on trace and test. Or indeed the cash thrown to those who couldn’t do business (or work) over the period – 2.8 million people, at a total estimated cost of £7.3 billion.

    That’s over 5.5 NHS budgets. Kind of easy to see why Rishi Sunak and the Cabinet hawks are somewhat perplexed. But the central points are that:

    We’ve spent five and a half years’ Health budget defending the NHS, and
    I have previously pointed out the appalling damage Covid disaster thinking à la Ferguson has done to those with far more serious illnesses than Coronavirus because – despite that vast splurge of spending – C19 bias in NHS thinking has made it more, not less inefficient.
    How much more healthy (sorry, unintended pun) Britain’s economic and fiscal picture would now look if we had cordoned Covid19 off into pop-up hospitals.

    As regards the inherent divisiveness of Coronavirus hype, Mask-wearing and lockdown rules have caused deeper social fractures than Brexit, according to a 10,000 strong UK-wide study which suggests that the solidarityof the early weeks of the pandemic has given way to distrust. Nearly 60% of mask-wearers have ‘negative attitudes’ towards those who do not wear a mask, and 70% of lockdown obeyers have ‘strong negative views’ about lockdown rule-breakers.

    But don’t imagine that Brexit’s gone away as a running sore: 33.5% of Remainers ‘hate’ or consider those who did the opposite to be ‘bad people’…..almost twice as many Leavers making the opposite comparison. Sound familiar?

    Similarly, while almost half of Conservative party members believe Islam to be “a threat to the British way of life”, younger and Labour voters tend to see the problem as one of “Islamophobia” rather than any real threat. Significantly, while about 20% of all Brits see Islamics as a genuine ‘threat to tolerance’, only 3% of us think that about any other immigrant group. Interesting.”

    1. I’m quite surprised that only 20% see Islamics as a genuine threat to tolerance. Especially with the marches in the heart of London when celebrating religious festivals.

    3. …younger and Labour voters tend to see the problem as one of “Islamophobia”…

      The same types who, according to one letter-writer, are happy to carry on living in this half-world until a vaccine is found.

    1. If the order on the ballot paper was:
      “None of the below.”
      it would be an even bigger landslide!

  68. “Big Tech Has Become A Tool Of Totalitarian Fascism” – Google Has ‘Memory-Holed’ The Great Barrington Declaration

    It’s true type ‘Great Barrington Declaration’ into Google and you draw a blank….

          1. Surely the point is that Google have deliberately omitted to list the actual Great Barrington Declaration as the number 1 search result. Sinister beyond belief!

          2. I agree, but I suspect that the manipulation isn’t Google itself, it is being done by people who know how to “fix” google.
            Do you recall the way they “Killed” Rick Santorum’s run at the Presidency by making any search lead to a foul series of sites and definitions?

    3. Isabel Oakeshott. Twitter..@IsabelOakeshott
      ·
      9 Oct. 2020
      So the Great Barrington Declaration – an open letter/petition signed by thousands of medics and scientists who oppose the lockdown – has been hijacked by pro lockdown fanatics who are signing it with fake names in a frantic attempt to discredit it. Desperate stuff!

      It is probably 77 Brigade! It’s about their intellectual level!

    4. They are a bit more subtle on my computer….

      Type “Great Barrington Declaration” into DuckDuckGo, and the second result is gbdeclaration.org. First result is wikipedia.

      Type the same into Google, and you get a page full of commentaries, many of which are critical (eg Second result says it’s funded by a Climate Science Denial Network!) The website itself comes half way down the third page, where almost nobody goes.

      Google really is a nasty piece of work.

        1. They are a good company for privacy, I think, but you still get the Google bias on your search results.

    5. Isabel Oakeshott. Twitter..@IsabelOakeshott
      ·
      9 Oct. 2020
      So the Great Barrington Declaration – an open letter/petition signed by thousands of medics and scientists who oppose the lockdown – has been hijacked by pro lockdown fanatics who are signing it with fake names in a frantic attempt to discredit it. Desperate stuff!

      It’s probably 77 Brigade! It’s about their intellectual level!

  69. Completely and utterly off topic.

    Great pleasures in life, after initial worries.

    When something about 50 years old ceases to work.
    {:-(

    and one takes it apart and it is very clear that it can’t be repaired.

    {:-((

    You take the bits to the hardware shop and lo and behold there is something very similar available and it appears it should fit.

    }:-)

    You buy it, take it home and it fits easily and works even better than the old bit, even though aesthetically it’s not quite as good.

    }:-))

    BUT a lick of paint solves even that problem.
    }:-)))

    Oh happy man!

    4. Here’s hoping they’ve gone. The ‘cure’ is to interrupt your input output, or, as you could call it, drinking enough water until you feel you’re drowning, gag, then vomit it out.

    5. 10 little sips from a glass of water – without removing it from your mouth. Guaranteed to work – every time!

    1. This is an odd article. It is deliberately provocative with no comments allowed. I suspect distraction!

    2. It’s fine you won’t notice the Nelson Revised gallery given the Blair era galleries dedicated to the wicked British Slavery Trade and the wicked British heroin trade to China – copper bottomed stuff!

        1. Beautiful historic buildings saddled with a skyline produced by charlatans pretending to Architecture.

          Most of the floor space in those towers is already past its sell by date. Nobody is impressed by skyscrapers. We prefer buildings of a human scale built in durable materials and adaptable.

          What a mess. Indigo Jones, John Webb and Vanbrugh would turn in their graves to see this debacle.

          1. As a child this was my local park. However, those wonderful buildings in the foreground had been blackened by a couple of centuries of soot from London’s ubiquitous coal fires. It is a salutary thought that through a combination of Harrison’s timepieces and the employment of copper sheathing on Royal Navy vessels that Britannia did indeed rule the waves and protected the commerce that made the City of London the World’s financial capitol. In so doing it created the wealth that funded those glass towers which pale into insignificance with the plans of an Hong Kong Billionaire to build 15,000 units of accommodation in several 42 storey blocks on the Greenwich peninsular.

          2. There has been huge investment in apartment blocks in the area. The last time I visited Canary Wharf was to refurbish a Japanese chargrill restaurant viz. Roka.

            I found the place alienating and inhuman. I had also done a refurb on the Carluccio’s nearby a few years ago.

            There are many unoccupied blocks of flats presumably purchased with Chinese money for investments.

            I doubt that many in the UK have yet understood the extent of Chinese investment in our country both in property and infrastructure projects.

            We should be very afraid. Our useless ineffective government remains asleep at the wheel and offers no resistance to this of several invasions and offers no remedy.

          3. Indeed. The extent of Chinese ‘investment’ in Australian resources and infrastructure is equally worrying. I suspect that in the not too distant future the UK may be called upon to help to defend that country (as they helped to defend us in WW2), but by that time we will barely be able to defend ourselves, let alone our friends and cousins 12,000 miles away.

          4. I have never quite fathomed our Australian cousins. Wen we see the reported draconian shut down in Victoria and the aggressive police tactics against ordinary law abiding folk you have to wonder what their politicians are actually playing for.

          5. I agree. Knowing the Aussies I would have thought they’d be the last people to put up with such grossly disproportionate restrictions, but so many things I would have dismissed as fantasy or tinfoil hattery just a few months ago now seem entirely believable. We are truly sailing in uncharted waters.

          7. In my life experience Australia was rich in mineral resources such as coal and bauxite for aluminium. The Broken Hill Company was a leading supplier of Direct Method lead sheet to the construction industry worldwide.

            Our lead sheet producers used a milling process similar to the production of sheet steel where the lead ingot is fed through a series of rollers compressing it to a sheet by stages. Lead sheet thicknesses were and still are related to the sheet weight. So we have Code 4 or 4lb lead sheet and Code 6 or 6lb lead sheet and a range either side.

            The specialist lead producers would cast lead on a sand bed but this expensive process was reserved for recasting old lead from churches and cathedrals and never saw the light of day on modern construction projects.

            Direct Method Lead was produced by a rotating cylinder picking up lead by its rotations from a vat of molten lead. The faster the rotation, the thinner the lead sheet. Milled lead sheet by comparison was found to be defective because the milling process caused the copper element of the lead material to segregate with a subsequent loss of ductility.

            At the turn of the last century the principal Australian export was Emu oil, believe it or not. You could rub it on the skin or drink the stuff.

          9. I worked in a skyscraper a few years ago.
            The rooms had light from three sides, and had a sort of rhomboid shape, with a pointy end, which was where the boss sat.
            The glass was the walls, and the small solid parts were the “windows”, which could be opened to reveal a small metal grille, via the electronic control panel.
            Individual choices on the control panel would always be reversed within a few minutes by the building’s central control (I don’t know how they are ventilating it now, to stop people from breathing each other’s corona breath).
            The stairs were locked, but we were assured that in the event of fire, the locks would automatically open so that we could flee.

            I didn’t like it. It reduced its human inhabitants to insects.

    2. If the cheese and onion quiche is shop bought then i would suggest adding cheese and onion.

        1. We had some last night for supper. Gorgeous. You don’t know what you are missing.

          Looking at the Trombetti Tower this afternoon – we have more than we know what to do with. It has been a remarkable season for a plant which normally likes look hot summers in Liguria.

    6. Slice a tomato thinly , very thinly , put it on top of the quiche , sprinkle some basil on top , and some grated parmesan cheese , pop it in the microwave , and heat full power for over a minute+

      Eat.. .. yum yum and if you have some watercress as well , all the better.

      1. Better in a hot oven. Pastry goes soggy in the micro. Depends how much time or hungryness i suppose.

          1. I know, Belle. My electric fan oven heats up in 10 mins. Still expensive for a quiche….but…

          2. MY AEG goes from 0 to 220 in 5 minutes. Swedish (Electrolux) ovens have a reputation for a speedy warm-up.

          3. I almost never pre-heat either of my Miele ovens. Usually to temperature in 5/6 minutes.

          7. I guess it’s “horses for courses”, Con – a metaphor I’ve not trotted out before…

          8. But which happens to be very true – we had a mare who was a Brighton specialist. She won most of her races there and loved it when the surface was like a road.

    7. I’d add a fillet steak with some peppercorn sauce, garlic mushrooms and some lightly sauted potatoes. 🙂

    8. I’d add a fillet steak with some peppercorn sauce, garlic mushrooms and some lightly sauted potatoes. 🙂

  76. Don’t know if mentioned earlier – just seen on BBC text – – Over 1000 migrants from West Africa have reached Canary Islands in last 48 hours.

    2. Why don’t the Leftards concentrate on the places that they want to leave rather than encouraging them to come to places which are already full?

      1. Totally agreed. The money we are pouring into these places in Foreign Aid only seems to increase the population, then even more want to come here. They have no intention of building their own country up when they can just arrive here, live off our taxes and drag this ( once ) beautiful island backward to become exactly what they came from.

  79. Evening, all. Given that the current ‘flu jabs aren’t reliable, waiting for a Covid19 jab will be like waiting for Godot.

    1. I don’t think it will be a Covid-19 immunisation that will be on offer, but that is what it will be called…. it will be a Gates Special Digital DNA-Altering Mix – probably sitting in a ‘fridge ready and waiting as I write until we are judged sufficiently compliant to line up with our sleeves rolled up.

          1. Hi John. The move is a process, rather than an event. I’m downsizing from 3 beds and 2 reception rooms to 1 bed and 1 reception room. I’ve moved most of my stuff, apart from furniture. The existing carpets are.. tired, to say the least. So I’m getting quotes before I shift the furniture.

          2. Good luck with the move. Henry (our second son) and his girlfriend Jessica have just bought a flat in Lancaster and so, what with working from home, studying for his M.Sc. and equipping the flat he is very busy. They were hoping to come sand see us this month but the visit, like our October courses, has had to be cancelled.

          5. Presumably one of peddy’s recipes? I hope you used Mabel Pearson’s Burford Browns!
            🙂

          8. You had two spares and you never invited me and Dolly to stay! It’s not as if we aren’t house trained !(erm…well she is). 🙁

      2. I remember that ghastly Windows 95 message. ‘Your computer has performed a fatal exception and will be shut down.’

        It is not as if we already knew what a swine Bill Gates was along with his monstrous and vulnerable Windows Programmes.

        The ghastly man was always and remains the embodiment of evil.

          1. There was an early Windows 10 update that produced a few BSODs too if I remember rightly!

        2. I used to use Locoscript PC as my word processing programme and it was vastly superior to Word in my opinion.

          Gates of course then arranged things on Microsoft Windows which made it impossible to use Locoscript and many other programmes which then became obsolete and redundant.

  83. 11th October

    Hardcastle Craggs

    We hope you have A Marvellous Birthday

    and

    Very Many Happy Returns

    Best Wishes from Caroline and Rastus

    (and a good number of trombones leading your parade!)

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