Friday 15 January: Even a care home with a Covid outbreak cannot get hold of vaccines

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/2021/01/15/letterseven-care-home-covid-outbreak-cannot-get-hold-vaccines/

1,080 thoughts on “Friday 15 January: Even a care home with a Covid outbreak cannot get hold of vaccines”

  1. First! Shamelessly nicked from Speccie comments:

    The Highways Agency found over 200 dead crows on the M42 near Birmingham recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu.
    A Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone’s relief, confirmed the problem was NOT Avian Flu.
    The cause of death appeared to be from vehicular impacts. However, during analysis it was noted that varying colours of paints appeared on the bird’s beaks and claws.
    By analysing these paint residues it was found that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with motorbikes, while only 2% were killed by cars.
    The Agency then hired an Ornithological Behaviourist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of motorbike kills versus car kills.
    The Ornithological Behaviourist quickly concluded that when crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow to warn of danger.
    They discovered that while all the lookout crows could shout “Cah”, not a single one could shout “motorcycle”

    2. Excellent start to the day! Thanks, Geoff – and good morning.
      BTW, don’t you have an unfair advantage to be first? }:-(

      1. Morning, Paul. Technically, I’m always first, but I’m always happy to let the runner-up take the glory. Today, however, I came back to the page more than an hour after posting (I was early), and there were still no comments. Since I’d just seen that tale over at the Speccie, I thought I might as well set the ball rolling…

        1. Good morning, Geoff

          May I ask a favour?

          I always try to post birthday wishes after midnight to wish Birthday boys and girls a good day – and I try to add something suitable/appropriate to the birthday wishes. (e.g. 76 trombones, 77 sunset strip, etc.) and I repost my birthday wishes the following morning so that more people can see that it is a friend’s birthday.

          Although I am up late at night I am not an early riser and my re-posting is sometimes later than I would like.

          Would it be possible for you to add my reposting of birthday wishes when you open the new day’s site? I shall be posting good wishes to a Nottler tonight at about midnight!

          2. I would like to say that on a very gloomy 2 January with nothing interesting on the horizon because of our lockdown circumstances, that the birthday wishes I received from so many really did make a difference to the day; by the end of the day it had felt like a party. Thank you, Rastus, for organising this, it could make all the difference to someone living alone and/or in difficult circumstances.

    4. It’s an excellently funny joke, Geoff.

      Joking aside has anyone ever seen a dead rook or crow at the side of the road? I haven’t. They are far too clever to be hit by any vehicle.

        1. Grå kråka Corvus cornix attackerar Havsörn Haliaeetus albicilla.

          [Hooded crow ‘buzzing’ a white-tailed eagle]

      2. Quite frequently at the time of year when they are fairly newly independent and tend to be pecking at carrion on the road, and much less wary than the old birds. Never at this season. The sillier/slower ones have all gone by now.

    2. When the winter peak of illness has naturally fallen, they will justify these techniques by saying they made the numbers of sick people go down, and the peak would have been ten times higher if they hadn’t taken away freedoms. It’s all so predictable!

  6. Why is it I wonder that when they put up pictures of substandard food hampers provided for the starving children up on social media that everyone believes it is true and it gets on all the MSM news and yet when someone posts evidence of election fraud on social media it all declared fake news and ignored by the mainstream media?

    1. The physics of melting ice show that the heat energy is used to change the phase of the ice (to water) and as such does not raise the temperature until the ice has melted. Then the temperature continues to rise, after a pause during the melt.
      So, the headline is correct, but says nothing about global warming/cooling.

  9. Ministers will be sent to boot camp as part of Boris Johnson’s radical plans to shake up Whitehall. 15 January 2021.

    Ministers will be sent to boot camp as part of Boris Johnson’s radical plans to shake up Whitehall.

    As of Friday an overhaul of Civil Service training will begin in order to equip civil servants with the skills and knowledge to deliver better public services and see them become less reliant on expensive external consultants.

    The new Curriculum and Campus for Government Skills aims to transform training and development for civil servants from the core knowledge needed at the beginning of their career through to specialist training in areas such as economics, data usage, the physical sciences, and constitutional issues.

    It would be a toss up here who is the more stupid. Those who wrote this drivel or those who believe it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/15/ministers-will-sent-boot-camp-part-boris-johnsons-radical-plans/

    1. The fact that they are “reliant on expensive external consultants” speaks volumes of the Civil Service being unfit for purpose.

      1. There are over 50 incredibly (£1000+ per day) contractors working for the police on software deployment.

        Now, I don’t expect the police to have the expertise to deploy software or manage it. Perhaps even to run the roll out of training on new technology.

        But the Home Office employs more people than Hewlett Packard. A multinational, multi billion profit company. If the entire home office lacks these skills – or won’t even offer the training and opportunity to learn – then it is simply not fit for purpose. The management teams are incompetent.

        We hired contractors for a project. You buy them in, then they go off to do other things. The Home Office consultants have been there for years.

      2. It speaks volumes of government policies to “save” by removing the most competent senior civil servants, mostly those who did their job properly by pointing out to ministers the errors in their plans.

    3. Words fail me.

      The civil servants are failing in their roles. The state’s response is to create and spend more government money on training these officials .. by other officials.

      If they can’t do their jobs, if they’re not doing well then… they need to go!

          2. Ok, George, I’ve just worked it out – think Barney Flintstone ‘driving’ his stone car.

  11. BBC culture must be rebuilt to avoid liberal ‘groupthink’, says new chairman. 15 January 2021.

    Richard Sharp told MPs that the corporation must ensure diversity of political thought within its ranks because “if the BBC doesn’t mean anything to somebody in Sunderland, then it’s failing”.

    And in his first comments since being named as the Government’s pick as chairman, Mr Sharp disappointed BBC critics by backing the licence fee and opposing decriminalisation.

    Mr Sharp, a former banker who until recently was acting as an unpaid adviser to Rishi Sunak, said that the £157.70 fee represented “terrific value”.

    He reserved his strongest criticism for the management culture that had allowed gender pay inequalities to go unchecked for so long and caused trust in the BBC’s leadership to erode.

    No change here! A profane version of the Archbishop of Canterbury!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/14/bbc-culture-must-rebuilt-avoid-liberal-groupthink-says-new-chairman/

    2. This morning, I was hoping to hear an authoritative report into the succession of Angela Merkel as German Chancellor. The BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ flagship declared in a disparaging woman’s voice that they were all straight, white, middle-aged men. Therefore that was all we need to know that that Germany is in crisis.

      Is this the limit to British political analysis post-Brexit?

    4. Has anybody got a good word to say on behalf of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury?

      (I am not expecting a scramble of Nottlers tapping out favourable endorsements – but is there even one who thinks he is doing a good job? )

    6. “terrific value”. If most households in the country are paying the TV tax, then, yes, you get a lot for your money, but “value” is entirely subjective.

  14. Fixing The Dog

    My neighbour found out that her dog (a Schnauzer) could hardly hear, so she took it to the vet.

    The vet found that the problem was hair in the dog’s ears. He cleaned both ears, and the dog could then hear fine. The vet then proceeded to tell the lady that, if she wanted to keep this from recurring, she should go to the chemist and get some “Nair” hair remover and rub it in the dog’s ears once a month.

    The lady went to the chemist and bought some “Nair” hair remover. At the till, the pharmacist told her, “If you’re going to use this under your arms, don’t use deodorant for a few days.”

    The lady said, “I’m not using it under my arms.” The pharmacist said, “If you’re using it on your legs, don’t shave for a couple of days.”

    The lady replied, “I’m not using it on my legs either. If you must know, I’m using it on my Schnauzer.”

    The pharmacist said, “Well apply the minimum amount and don’t ride a bicycle for about a week.”

      1. ‘Morning, Jeremy.

        It’s one German word for a moustache. “Schnauzer!” is also one way of saying “Shut up!” in German.

        2. For what it’s worth, Peddy, Google translate gives “Schnurrbart” and having worn one for over 50 years (RAF handle-bar) I seem to remember, when in Germany, my facial hair was described as ein schnauber.

          Is that why you said Schnauzer is one word in German?

    2. “Mom, may I take the dog for a walk around the block?” a little girl asked. “No, I don’t think so. Fifi is in heat,” replied the mother. “What does that mean?” asked the child. Embarrassed and not wanting to get into a biological discussion with her young daughter, the Mother said, “Oh, just go ask your father. I think he is in the garage.”

      The little girl goes to the garage and says, “Dad, may I take Fifi for a walk around the block? I asked Mom, but she said that Fifi was in heat, and that I had to come to talk to you.” Not wanting to have the biological discussion either, the father said, “Bring Fifi over here.” He took a rag, soaked it with petrol, and scrubbed the dog’s rear end with it. “Okay, now you can go for a walk but keep Fifi on the leash and you can only go around the block once.”

      The little girl left, and returned a few minutes later with no Fifi. “Where is Fifi?” her father asked. “She should be here in a minute,” advised the daughter. “She ran out of petrol about halfway down the block and another dog is pushing her home.”

  15. Well, colour me surprised!

    You recently signed the petition “We the British People Request a Public Inquiry into Grooming Gangs”:
    https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/327566

    On Wednesday 13 January 2021 the House of Commons agreed to suspend sittings in Westminster Hall, where petitions debates take place, as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. This means that petitions debates that were due to take place in the coming weeks are unable to go ahead, and have been postponed.

    Mustn’t upset the slammers.

  17. They are giving out the covid jab at my local McDonalds now.
    You just go in and ask for a Big Vaxx and Chips, comes with a free shake

  18. They are giving out the covid jab at my local MacDonalds now.
    You just go in and ask for a Big Vaxx and Chips, comes with a free shake

  19. Morning all

    SIR – My 94-year-old mother is in a nursing home in Cheshire. Up until Christmas, the matron and staff had done a wonderful job of protecting the residents. However, currently, the staff are exhausted and feel abandoned because many residents and staff have tested positive for Covid and there have been a number of deaths.

    Since Christmas, the matron and relatives of residents have been contacting relevant people, including the local MP, trying to obtain a batch of vaccines, but to no avail.

    I am in my 70s but I would happily give my vaccine to someone at that home. It makes no sense that all care homes are not prioritised.

    Edwina McIlmoyle

    Ferndown, Dorset

    SIR – Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for vaccine deployment, has said that a tenth is expected to be wasted.

    This is inherent in the decision to use vials. Pharmaceutical regulations stipulate that an extra 10 per cent in liquid “overage” must be put into vials, as they cannot be completely emptied. No “overage” is required when preparing pre-filled syringes like those used for the flu vaccine. Future batches of the AstraZeneca jab should use these.

    Dr David Whitaker

    Manchester

    SIR – Why is the Government still planning the vaccination rollout five weeks after it started and not five weeks or more before?

    Hugh Ellwood

    Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

    SIR – My wife, 79 with no health problems, has an appointment for vaccination. I am rising 85 with COPD, and am still waiting. My surgery tells me it is “being dealt with from a central base”. Surely GP surgeries with knowledge of their patients would be the better way to administer vaccine.

    John Birkbeck

    King’s Lynn, Norfolk

    SIR – Derek Morton (Letters, January 14) and other eligible couples who have only received a letter calling one of them for vaccination could ring 119 for an appointment for the one with the letter. Then, with the other’s NHS number and details to hand, ask for an appointment at the same time. It took me a while to get through on the phone, but it was arranged without difficulty.

    Anthea Bird

    Royston, Hertfordshire

    SIR – I have just had my over-85 vaccination at a local, easily reached health centre. I was most impressed.

    Organised to the second, with understanding clinicians and friendly, alert staff, open from 8am to 6.30pm, it would administer 1,100 vaccines a day. Ten out of 10 to those wonderful people, and to Boris Johnson.

    Commander Alan York, RN (retd)

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    SIR – A ham sandwich seems a small price to vaccinate millions while EU countries can only manage thousands.

    Derek Heys

    Hampton, Middlesex

    1. Couldn’t people in nursing homes be set free once they have had the vaccine? And what about the rest of us when we have had the vaccine – shall we then free to get on with our lives as we used to do?

      If we are still at risk of catching Covid after having had the vaccine and are still potentially carriers of the virus then isn’t the vaccine a bit of a waste of time?

    2. Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for vaccine deployment – not going well is it?
      Priti Patel – Immigration control – not going well either.
      Sadiq Khan – Mayor of London – not going well.
      Good English names doing a great job (sarc ).

  20. Morning again

    Liberty in lockdown

    SIR – I congratulate Lord Sumption for his defence of our common-law liberties. Britain and my own nation, Australia, share a common law built over centuries by an independent judiciary mindful of protecting the individual against a capricious executive.

    As Lord Sumption writes, it is that rule of law which most distinguishes us from inhabitants of police states. Judging by reported police actions in Derbyshire and the Australian state of Victoria, his is a timely reminder.

    That said, one has confidence that, despite the pandemic, our courts will confirm another common-law attitude – that our freedoms are restricted only by clearly defined law, augmented by the non-legal principle of consideration for others.

    John Kidd

    Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    SIR – Hannah Hunt (Letters, January 13) says that “at least we have the freedom to criticise” the Government. But that freedom is rapidly being curtailed.

    Toby Young, founder of the website Lockdown Sceptics, was condemned on Newsnight, and TalkRadio, which seems the only channel asking tough questions, was temporarily taken down by YouTube.

    Many do not express disagreement with government policy for fear of the consequences.

    Tim Coles

    Carlton, Bedfordshire

  21. A dreadful tax

    SIR – I vividly recall the damage caused to the property market by the decision in 1988 to announce in advance the cessation of tax relief on mortgages. The subsequent boom and inevitable crash almost ruined my solicitor’s practice.

    The Government’s intention to end the stamp duty holiday in March, is causing similar chaos. Stamp duty is a dreadful tax, preventing mobility of labour and penalising aspiration.

    Please, Chancellor, think again.

    Ron Butcher

    Great Dunmow, Essex

      1. “My solicitor’s practice..”

        Was it nearly the ruin of the practice of the solicitor whom Mr Butcher employed or was nearly the ruin of Mr Butcher’s own legal practice?

          1. I made the same assumption as you did i.e. Mr. Butcher had his own solicitor’s practice. Poorly-worded letter.

    2. But… but… how will big government get back our money it has spent on us?

      The concept of simply ‘not spending it’ is lost on them. It’s as if restrain and financial discipline are entirely new concepts.

  22. SIR – I have just received my first box of lateral flow tests, which are made in China – as were the gloves and face masks I used at work today.

    Dr Zoe Salmon

    Northleach, Gloucestershire

      1. Which reminds us……

        Usually mutations to viruses emanate from China, but on this occasion all the nasty variants of Covid

        have come from other parts of the world, such as South Africa and Brazil, and NO mutations from China.

        Lucky, lucky Chinese!

  23. Trump trial will only exacerbate US divisions

    SIR – It will be a grave error if the US Senate proceeds with the trial of Donald Trump. Such a process would undermine any efforts by the new administration to introduce a much-needed period of reconciliation.

    A guilty verdict would exacerbate divisions between the coastal, liberal, mainly Democratic elite on one side and, on the other, the “left-behinds”, who form the basis of Mr Trump’s support, and the rest of the Republican Party.

    Recent presidential elections have been disputed to various degrees, eroding faith in the constitution. A bitter 10-month nomination process is followed by the election, then 79 days before the winner’s inauguration. This leaves plenty of time for suspicion.

    Joe Biden would be better off initiating an inquiry into the electoral process, with the aim of shortening it. Increasing confidence in democracy is far more important than carrying out what will be see by many, rightly or wrongly, as an act of political revenge.

    Robert Hickman

    Andover, Hampshire

  24. There are going to be some red faces in the US when the truth comes out about the storming of the Capitol and the allegations of electoral fraud.

    An eloquent young man at the Capitol said on video “If we don’t get in, we’re going to burn this sh*t down, Let’s go! This sh*t’s ours. F*ck yeah.” After getting into the Capitol, he said:”I can’t believe this is reality. We accomplished this sh*t. We did this sh*t together. I didn’t know I hit [the window] that hard. No one got that on camera… F*ck the blue! F*ck the blue!”

    He has been caught on video wearing a pro-Trump cap but admitting that he is from Antifa. He was previously recorded, with his usual eloquence as saying ““We got to f*cking rip Trump out of that office right over there. We got to f*cking pull him out that sh*t …we are about to get that motherf**ker.” (The choice of words says all you need to know about the far Left)!

    How did Biden describe Antifa? “Antifa is an idea, not an organization”.

    And a Trump analyst has issued a third report listing detailed allegations of fraud. Even if it is 100% false, I would have thought that it is serious enough to be thoroughly investigated by the authorities.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e4fb4c25168ac8f6baef72e154e462aafcba902338b2b89fa71460ff24ffcb57.jpg

    1. I’ve said many times that I’m not a fan of DT. But any one who can’t see the obvious that is and has been going on in the US must be in total information lockdown.
      I sincerely hope and believe that he will eventually sort this out and fill the jails with these disgusting people.

      1. That has been noted by very many people over here, who also now trust the MSM even less as a result of their cheerleading the Trump character assassination.
        EDIT: Wrong location. Should be a reply to Damask Rose just below.

    2. Good morning Sguest

      “……there are going to be some red faces in the US when the truth comes out.”

      But will it ever – and even if it did would anybody learn of it from the MSM? And if conclusive proof that the election was stolen does emerge again shall we ever be told by the MSM?

      We live in the Post-Truth era.

      1. Good morning Geoffrey

        Would you believe it even if you saw it?

        But you do have a point in that so many lies appear in the MSM that it is hard to know what is true and what is false. It strikes me that the MSM has convinced the majority of people that the election was fair and above board.

        But the MSM has not convinced me even if it has convinced you!

          2. Even if it were true that this person was from Antifa, I can’t for the life of me see what his/its point would have been. ‘Infiltrating’ a predominantly pro-Trump march was/is daft. As it has also been suggested that Black Lives Matter had ‘infiltrated’ a predominantly pro-Trump and almost entirely white march this must have been daft, too. I ask myself, what would either ‘organisation’ possibly gain by being there at all? I can only conclude that myths have been/are being created by/with or for Trump’s people, of which many thousands were present at the Capitol.

          1. The violence, thuggery and destruction of property is very clearly the approach of the Left.

            It is very, very rare that normal people stand up and demand political change. When they do it’s far more a tea party or afternoon out.

    1. And Room for, political classes still sitting pretty, claiming expenses free lunches etc etc.

    2. Decaying public services , worn out roads.
      Local consultation time reduced to a minimum , rabbit hutch houses built here there and everywhere
      Fly tipping
      Lockdown pets bought on impulse now flooding rescue centres.

      1. I read that some tourists had made comments about the terrible state of parts of the uk regarding littering. And the state of our roads.
        Its more than annoying to see how scruffy this country has become.
        It’s always been one of my favourite gripes about how most of the roads in EU countries were in such good condition. Probably at our expense.

          1. I’m going to the funeral next week of a childhood neighbour and good friend. She died of cancer a few days before Christmas. Her treatment had been deferred.

          2. Meanwhile, taxpayer-funded ambulances and crews wait at Dover for every rubber dinghy, full of non-paying new arrivals. Govt Priorities?

        2. I watched the recording of Chatsworth yesterday; they are documenting a year (2020 as it happens) in the life of a great house. It was about summer last year when people flocked to the estate’s grounds to picnic (and pick fights with each other). The amount of litter they left behind was staggering. As one of the volunteers who turned up to help the estate staff pointed out, they’d carried it out there full, when it was heavy, but they couldn’t be bothered to take it back when it was empty. Why?

          1. I can’t believe how many people are so lazy with littering. I can honestly say that I have never purposely left any trace behind me anywhere. When I see around me what some people leave and quite deliberately it makes me angry.

    3. An excellent and truthful overview, Nursey.

      [However I do wish that those who post these graphics would proof-read them before posting. ‘Job loses’ diminishes its effect!]

      1. This looks like a good job for peddy – he can corect correct all the spelling, grammaticle grammatical mistakes and tipos typos wherever they occer occur and give a good wigging to all those whom who make them.

        1. Good morning, Rastus.

          Nature v Nurture.

          Although the young cricketer, from your alma mater, did very well in the Sri Lankan test yesterday (and congratulations to him), according to the match statistics he was outbowled by his team mate, a product of the state school system but from the same county (Somerset).

          Dom Bess [Blundell’s, Tiverton] gained five wickets against (admittedly) a poor batting attack.

          Jack Leach [Bishop Fox’s secondary, Taunton] took just two wickets but by bowling with more skill and guile.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d31f4e93492e0b96d937a3f909d4d49a74314bb7ca16857d20fccbd0cadeee9.png

          This leads me on to ask two questions.

          Would Leach have developed into an even finer cricketer if he has also enjoyed the facilities of a private school; or would he have simply used his innate, inborn, skill to have prospered in any case?

          Conversely, would Bess have been such a skilled bowler if he’d been educated at a state school?

          I find the nature v nurture debate endlessly fascinating, even if perpetually inconclusive.

    4. Thanks, Anne, and Good morning, nicked for Ar5ebook together with George’s comment on the lack of proof-reading.

    5. I think the HMHS Britannic is steaming at full speed towards that with Cap’n Boris on the bridge looking through the wrong end of his binoculars.

  26. Morning all.
    All preparations made for the water company to arrive at 8am to install the long awaited water meter and a phone call, now coming between 10 and 12.
    Oh well I should have expected that. Covid.

      1. We were paying over 400 pounds per year for water. We never have baths, only showers. Our three sons are long gone. When I complained after my neighbour’s told us they pay half that amount on their meter. The company cut the amount for the next year but it returned to the standard rate 420.00, after 12 months. I felt that after two years of haggling over the charges they were holding back as the installation would not have been cost effective.
        We have 5 water butts in our garden which usually last at least a month of watering the veg and greenhouse in the dry weather.

  27. It would have been a waste of valuable resources to plan in advance,surely it was much better to spend all that time and money
    on track and trace…. ;

    With Boris and co, the money would have been better spent at the Track with Betfred, Paddypower

  28. Why is the Government still planning the vaccination rollout
    five weeks after it started and not five weeks or more before?

    Hugh Ellwood

    The words Government and Planning should never ever, ever be used in the same sentence

    The combination of the two is an OxyMoron, with moron being the bigger input.

    1. It takes 6 months to fill in the diversity forms, let alone the health and safety ones. Then there’s the approval committees, the amendments, cross functional meetings to ensure different departments are doing the same thing at the same time…the list of unnecessary and pointless activity is endless.

        1. Oh Belle, don’t be a wallingford! The state loves it! Never before have they had such excuses as to ensure boundless activity and so little achievement!

    2. The way I see it is , remember that ghastly series on the box called “The Thick of it”..

      Well chaos reigns because Cummings has gone , all the advisors are struggling ..

      One requires a cold calculating snake to put policy into place .

      The government are now full of headless chickens .

      Why , because there is no EU to boss them around or tell them what to do!

    3. Are you familiar with the DBS, aka Disclosure and Barring Service? To work with vulnerable patients most retired medical staff would need to re-register at a cost of £40 and it’s a long winded intrusive form that takes between 1 and 28 days to process. Presumably the NHS admin. would submit the paperwork on their behalf, with the corresponding WFH delay.

      In Spain the equivalent Criminal Records check used to take about five minutes and cost approximately six euros. You took your documentation to a local office, queued (or arrive at opening time) and if you passed the check they would issue a certificate.

      guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/careers/your-application/dbs/dbs-faqs.aspx

  30. Civil servants being sent to Sandhurst to have their skills improved by the military in attempt to reduce their need for consultants.
    Boris also considering looking at workers’ rights. Today’s news clips on my i-pad. Our PM seems to favour challenges.

      1. They could go to Penally camp near Tenby and sort out the problems they have knowingly created. As in Thousands of illegal migrants now in Britain.

        1. 328522+ up ticks,
          Morning RE,
          Fairs fair that should have been nipped in the bud decades ago, equal shared blame politico’s / electorate.

          1. We are an island Ogga, we should never have let any one in to this country unless they were able to prove they would be able support themselves and their families.

          2. 328522+ up ticks,
            RE,
            The party I was a long term supporter / member of were forever calling for “controlled immigration”
            in defiance of lab/lib/con coalition party member voters condoning mass uncontrolled immigration
            and consequences as seen by the polling booth.

          3. The rules are already there – but not enforced. I remember a program that showed a family turning up in London, in winter and heading straight for the local housing office. I will give the lady in the office her due in that she told them they had left their house in Eastern Europe of their own accord and do not qualify for housing here. Of course the family kicked off saying they had a small child and were homeless (intentionally of their own doing ) on a cold night. They ended up a few hours later on a train up to the west Mids to a four bedroomed house. They had been told they would be supported for 3 months then if they couldn’t support themselves, they would have to leave. Nothing happened. Months later showed them still here. Benefits and all the other freebies paid for by us.
            I believe I can hear them all laughing at seeing the British going to work, to pay taxes, so they can live here for nothing.

    2. 328522+ up ticks,
      Morning Cs,
      In prep. for when they the politico’,s take on the mantle of the Alamo regarding parliament.

      1. When I said that I spent seven years in Colchester, I hastily added – but not in the Glasshouse! 🙂

  31. 328522+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    UK population ‘in biggest fall since Second World War’
    “Unprecedented exodus” of workers not reflected in official figures, economists warn.

    May one ask is this to give moral or social sanction to our governance overseen porous borders as in the Dover and other potential troop movements areas.

    1. Delightful news.

      There will be lots of accommodation available to young British couples.

      Plus, speculators will stop building on Green Belt land.

      2. 328522+up ticks,
        Morning J,
        Sad to say it will NOT be so, if the intake falls below
        a certain number the lab/lib/con coalition party
        WILL open up a second Dover type front.

        The coalition party are still breathing political oxygen in parliament with NO opposition via the polling booth ALL the time that continues so will the intake / building.

    2. Delightful news.

      There will be lots of accommodation available to young British couples.

      Plus, speculators will stop building on Green Belt land.

  32. You won’t be able to make a COVID-19 vaccine at home
    Vaccine development is a complicated, technical process that can’t be done at home. It involves extensive laboratory testing followed by clinical trials involving thousands of volunteers. Vaccines must be approved in a country by expert doctors and scientists.
    Source: World Health Organization

      1. 5G mobile networks don’t spread COVID-19
        Viruses, including the one that causes COVID-19, cannot travel on radio waves or mobile networks. COVID-19 is spreading in many countries that do not have 5G mobile networks.
        Source: World Health Organization

        1. That doesn’t answer my question, Margaret.

          I don’t need the WHO to ‘explain’ to me that a virus cannot be transmitted by radio waves!

          1. Hi Grizz ,

            I have just been reading a notification from WHO , aimed at twerps who can read English , but who clearly need guidlines and instruction.

            Eating hot peppers won’t cure or prevent COVID-19
            Peppers may be tasty, but they can’t prevent or cure COVID-19. The best way to protect yourself from COVID-19 is to keep a safe distance from others and wash your hands frequently and thoroughly.
            Source: World Health Organization

          2. Morning, Maggie.

            All part of the conditioning from the new world order one presumes. The gormless ‘educating’ the brainless.

          3. Does it mention the difference in using alcohol (possible virus eradicator) for a hand wash and straight forward down the hatch consumption ?
            I often wondered if this is why all the pubs were shut down.

          5. My old barber once told me politician was derived from the Greek for prostitute.
            Not sure, but it sounds very likely.

      2. Given the speed of distribution and use, Mags thinks that maybe Half-cock, witless et al, cooked it up in Boris’ kitchen. She’s probably not wrong.

      3. Facts about COVID-19
        These facts come from the World Health Organization. They correct common, untrue rumours about coronavirus (COVID-19).

    2. 328522+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      Thousands of volunteers is well and good
      The missing element is time as in clinical trials over an acceptable, by the herd, time span.
      And it taint.

  33. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a57c08cdf4346eb40431d66cc9d9a9fb78fdcf28c42eaad0b58995367387900.png Are the brainless cretins who run the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, along with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service now going to mount a massive operation to kill every migrating bird that naturally reaches Australia in case those pesky immigrant, passportless, birds import a “potential biohazard” into their precious country?

    Wankers!

    1. Morning Grizz, having watched Nothing to Declare (or some such program) from OZ I’m not surprised. Customs don’t let anything past which may be a hazard.

      1. Morning, Spikey.

        People (and the things they bring with them) going through Customs is one thing, but a bird flying in on its own accord is something completely different.

        1. Yes the mode of transport is different but not the result. They can stop one but not the other

        2. Yes , and what a brave clever bird.
          There were tears of sorrow when I read abot that.

          I sometimes find stray racing pigeons , many have flown in from Europe or even up north , and local pigeon experts usually hang onto the birds and pass on the info back to their owners .

          1. Those things will try and take anything they think they can get in their mouths. At 10ft long and up to 600 pounds that includes dogs and probably even small children.

      2. I love it when they get ( usually a Chinese surprise surprise ) traveller with all sorts of disgusting things in their suitcases – and then start kicking off.

        1. Yes Walter it amazes me what the Chinese will eat – if it flies, swims or walks they’ll eat it with anything that grows

          1. Apparently when the local bats were dropping out of the sky form a yet to be identified demise, the locals were gathering them and taking them home to cook and eat.

        2. That’s one of the reasons we never buy Chinese takeaways any more.
          I had to visit a friend at his local office it was next to the Chinese restaurant/takeaway, i had to go around to the back entrance and saw a pile of dead ducks on the door step, not a pretty sight i can tell you. They looked as if they had been poached. Not cooked poached, but shot and stolen from the river.

    2. Oz immigration is hysterical, George – I’ve been through it several times and fortunately knew how to do all the right things.

      1. The point is, though, Tom (a point everyone seems to be missing), is that this is nothing more than a bird that chose to migrate. Countless millions of other birds, many of which have come into contact with humans and potential hazardous materials, fly into and out of the country every year without the Customs people being interested in any way.

        It’s called ‘nature’.

        1. Australia as we already know, is full of non indigenous creatures, especially vastly over zealous customs/border control officers.

          1. I’ve been to OZ twice, eddy, and I’ve never had any problems with their immigration of customs people.

            Yankland, however, is a completely different kettle of crawfish! Those twats are awkward for the hell of it.

          2. I was pulled over about my golf shoes apparently the soft spikes showed up on the x-ray but they were in a strong plastic bag and i had already disinfected them before we left home. And is was reprimanded to patting the black Lab sniffer dog But that’s just in my nature, she was the same as ours.
            I remember how awkward the septic’s were when we landed at Boston. But this will be the case (scus the pun) all over the EU from now on. Toy boy has now put a ban on quick covid tests.

          3. I have been to the US about sixty times. Very few problems in The South, but my wife had a hard time when she went through Logan airport at Boston on one occasion. The cops wear jackboots there!

          5. Flying from Spain to Chicago, my flight was set as via Dublin, where there is a US Immigration Channel. Once passed through – quite speedily – one is assumed to have entered the USA and at Chicago O’Hare, I was waved through – no checks.

        2. I’m aware of nature, George, but since they want to chase down one bird and destroy it, despite possibly millions of others ‘illegally’ immigrating into Oz, that is one reason why I call them hysterical.

    3. You can be sentenced to death for taking an apple from Victoria into South Australia, but there was always the honesty bin on the borders.
      A few years ago on our way out of Singapore, the airline had arranged for a cake to be shared on the flight to Melbourne for our fellow traveling companion, my sister, on her birthday. We were informed that as the customs in Australia would not allow the cake into the country, we either had to eat it all or they would have to discard it. Mind you some of the Asian travelers, especially Chinese, do fill their cases with some strange items they call food.

  35. I see that the DT is up in arms about the BBC’s new ‘continuity Chairman”, Richard Sharp. That is because he told the DMCS Cttee in Parliament everything they wanted to wear, but importantly, plus weasel words. Have none of the DT every played that splendid game “Committee” where a group of people sit round a table and try to stop each other from actually doing anything?

    We won’t know what Sharp intends in the BBC until he actually does it. If he flags any changes in advance, any changes whatsoever, the forces of reaction that are so strong in that organization will mass against it. I note that he has a strong background in the arts, so perhaps the BBC will do more of that and less drivel. He is also conservative minded and will very possible tolerate less of the left wing bias. The fact that he thought the Brexit coverage was ‘balanced’ means nothing. Whatever he thinks, Brexit per se is over, and he was telling the cttee what it wanted to hear.

    On the subject of the BBC’s left wing bias, I saw a comment on the Graun pointing out that the BBC is very left wing in social matters and very right wing on economics, which is why the DT thinks it is hopelessly left wing , and the Graun thinks it is hopelessly right wing. Not often you see a good one BTL on the Graun these days.

    1. Mr Sharpe’s new job will be an uphill battle, the woke mob have had their feet under the table for far too long now.

    2. Everything they wanted to wear? BBC Chairman and Fashion Advisor to Select Committees?

      Talented guy…

  36. There isn’t going to be a ”President” Biden….. there’s going to be the inauguration of President Donald J Trump for a second term of office !

        2. Does anyone seriously think that Biden won’t be inaugurated? How could that possibly happen, other than by sudden death?

          1. 328522+ up ticks,
            Morning RtD,
            God willing that would not occur, but would you be surprised in view of past actions that that could be a possibility ?

      2. I expect he will take the role of being POTUS and I suppose we all have our fantasies. You believe the US 2020 presidential election was honest!

      3. Why then, if there was no doubt has Biden not called the vote again?

        Why is it OK to denigrate the brexit referendum but not this one? SAdly Geoffrey, you’re displaying rather typical Lefty hypocrisy.

        I’d like Trump to win simply to scrub the smug, self satisfied arrogance off the Today programme’s excorious, insulting, deeply biased outflow of bilge and spite.

        1. 1. Because he won.

          2. I am neither a ‘Lefty’ nor, I hope, a hypocrite.

          3. Trump has lost and there’s nothing that he can or should do about the BBC’s Today programme.

      2. It sounds funny, but I remember overhearing a chav going on about her new nails, saying they had cost her over £40. She then lamented the annoyance of getting a short term loan from ‘the social’ to pay her gas bill, as if the monies given to her were both not enough and that she had to ask for it.

        I appreciate these are lazy, self interested, fudnamentally stupid people, but really if they can’t make simple decisions they shouldn’t be allowed to make any.

    3. I remember many years ago a Zimbabwean minister in Mugabe’s government appealing for money to help with some shortages from which people were suffering. He insisted that money be sent directly to the government and not to those working on remedying the situation.

      This is not only a common view in Africa as so much money is misappropriated but it seems to me that David Lammy has not completely outgrown his African heritage!

  38. 328522+ up ticks,
    This will be reality, until the abuse of the polling booth by the electorate continuing to give lab/lib/con close shop coalition party carte blanche via the Stockholm syndrome mode of voting.

    It will eventually be compulsory to attend the mask ball sup.

    breitbart,
    Deputy Chief Medical Officer Predicts Brits ‘Choosing’ to Mask Forever, Regular Vaccines.

    2. Ogga – your continual blaming of the public for the lack of decent politicians is as boring as the politicians blaming of the public for their failure to deal with the pandemic. So now you are blaming the people for that failurre as well.

      1. 328522+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        Not atall,atall, If anything I could cry victim with honest conviction after decades of abuse created via the polling booth voters accepting the “party” line decade after decade.

        These “party’s” have been in revealed rapid downhill decline since Thatcher.
        You N may very well find it boring whilst I find it extremely dangerous.

        These “decent” politico’s answer to the lab/lib/con
        hierarchy ( hydra heads) as in major,bliar,cameron, brown,may, starmer, johnson, the consequences of such obedience is rotherham. oxford, sheffield, etc,etc,
        Jay report points it out pretty clearly.

        To me this nasty virus has / is being used as a political tool for control of the peoples, and I do believe that in the very near future more peoples will die from medical neglect because of it than from it.
        Sorry if you find my take and views upsetting but they are, as I in all honesty,see things.

        1. I completely agree with your final paragraph, Ogga – and I know your views are sincerely held, if a little repetitive.

          1. 328522+ up ticks.
            Afternoon N,
            Allow me to say that by rote way of learning is NOT to be sneezed at so no need of a mask of submission.
            There is a negative “by rote” and IMO that is what has brought us to our present odious standing as a Nation.
            A repetitive voting pattern for three party’s of the same anti UK stance, on the grounds that granddad voted that way is currently NOT conducive of a favourable return as witnessed after the last three decades trying.

      1. 328522+ up ticks,
        Morning TB,
        In what way ? truth telling or otherwise ?
        If swallowing waragi/ fanta at 2 bob a shot in Ugandan bush bars qualifies as being a bot you have me down bang to rights.
        I am curious to know.

        1. Ogga – your posts would be more interesting if you told us more about your experiences in Africa and elsewhere, than your usual ones.

          1. He/she/it is nothing more than an irritant that puts me off commenting on this ever-deteriorating forum.

      2. I did post this on a previous day (you may have already seen it), but the propaganda war to coerce the public, with the media’s help, is documented in this comment video by Dave Cullen on his BitChute Channel (it takes a while to load/start because its a p2p system), with the original 2019 Chatham House source video from YouTube:

        https://www.bitchute.com/video/Hmxo720ccw4V/
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZMr7AEL0jQ

        Very chilling, especially that the person given the lecture (Prof Van Tam’s Begain equivalent) and his audience regularly laugh about the issues. I certainly didn’t any of it funny at all. Van Tam makes an appearance in the audience.

  40. If anyone honestly thinks this many troops are needed to transition from Trump to Biden, you haven’t read the EO’s coming straight from the WH last couple days.

    They’re not preparing for a celebration for Biden, they’re preparing for the news that Biden will NOT be president !

  41. I can’t see any upticks other than those I gave. Is this common – can anyone else see upticks?

    1. Sometimes – but if you click on your username (top right) and select ‘profile’ all the ticks will usually be there

    3. I quite often attempt an uptick and it shoves the list of previous up tickers in the way, I have discovered if you click on reply and then again on reply to cancel, you can then uptick.
      I was shut out on this section earlier today, i thought i was going to go through the whole two day process with out success, of trying to log in again.

      1. The list of other upvoters does get in the way – and quite often just hangs there and won’t disappear.

    5. I can see five ticks on your post but I’ve only just just arrived here. I noticed yesterday that they seemed to disappear.

  45. UK population ‘in biggest fall since Second World War’. 15 January 2021.

    The UK population may have fallen by as much as 1.3m – the biggest decline since the Second World War – in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, academics have said.

    A study by the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence highlighted an “unprecedented exodus” of foreign-born workers following the outbreak of the virus as well as shortcomings in official surveys inflating the number of UK workers.

    Every cloud has a silver lining!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/01/14/uk-population-biggest-fall-since-second-world-war/

      1. Meanwhile UK child benefits are merrily making their way into their UK bank accounts on the first stage of their European journey.

        1. Apparently they are going to put a stop to paying ChB for children living in Poland and elsewhere.

      2. Given the choice, I’d rather have the Eastern Europeans (for the most part) than those coming in from Syria/Iraq, North Africa and certain parts of the Muslim subcontinent, given what many get up to after arrival. Most are much more family-orientated and can see through the authoritarian COVID stuff because of what their country of origin was like under Communism.

    4. There are lies.
      There are damned lies.
      There are statistics.
      There is shit.
      There is BBC news.
      There are government departmental utterances.

      Each level down gets more and more fabulous.

    5. Yes but it amongst those who are working. The group you want to be having children. Frankly, the population should be over 20 million fewer. It isn’t because of Labour’s malice and absurdly generous welfare policy.

    6. That’s UK known, legitimate population, no doubt. So comparatively meaningless to our real situation…

    2. Northern Ireland? The English Channel? Fishing?

      Does even Boris Johnson seriously believe a word he says?

    3. Maybe they could redeploy some Police checking up whether we’re ‘being local’ or on picnic/coffee/park bench patrol. Well, I supposed they have to let them in, so we can have all those Amazon goodies delivered by a white van man.

  47. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b9dd30b443ba6c5a6f877ad19bb0cb088a3f242d5ef0dc5c45519a15fa51aee.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ced65f23913eda2d9a7063bad8fb132f4fa0683e25dd5c1c6e6af8a26e82441.jpg
    How many on this forum still possess the proper cloth-bound booklet type of driving licence? I keep mine on me in the hope that I can produce it if stopped by a Swedish cop. If he/she asks what it is I shall reply:

    Grizz: “It’s a proper driving licence, Sven/Ingrid, and it’s in force until my 70th birthday, which just happens to be in six weeks’ time!”
    Cop: “That is no good to me, I want to see a körkort!”
    Grizz: “Korkört? Oh, you mean that pink plastic ‘drive card’ joke. I’ve got one of those too but it doesn’t look or feel real.”

      1. I exchanged my driving licence – first issued in 1963 – for a French one in 1989 when I moved to France – this has now been replaced with a plastic one the size of a credit card.

        I have all my old blue passports in a drawer. They are clipped on the cover to show that they have expired.

        A friend of mine had a motorcycle licence at 16 and went to a disused airport to practise driving a car. He passed the test and got his car driving licence on his 17th birthday

        1. I’ve got my old passports as well – though I didn’t go out of the UK till 1981, and that was as an add-on to my (then) husband’s passport.

        2. My eldest brother repeatedly failed the driving test. He eventually joined the buses as a conductor then trained as a bus driver and obtained a public service vehicle (PSV) licence. He is still driving cars on his PSV licence at 74 years of age.

          1. I gave up learning to drive……… I had another go when it became clear I was going to need to and eventually passed my test aged 40.

        3. I passed mine on my 17th too Richard although everyone said i wouldn’t. Luckily the examiners son was an RAF Apprentice with me :o)

    3. How many here have still got the brown cardboard ID card issued during the war and the 1950s? I still have mine and my parents’.

      2. Soon we’ll all be required to have an ‘all new’ one to meet the criteria of the authoritarians in control.

    4. How many have still got an old fashioned blue/ black British passport?

      PS, renewed our passports last year and we got the new blue ones 🙂

        2. I will have to have a look. I think most of mine, including the current one are red.

          Only one blue/black one (apart from my parents’) and three red. The current red one doesn’t expire till 2026. .

          1. I’ve never seen, nor come across, a UK passport that was blue. I’ve only ever seen black ones.

          5. They were idiotic too. If they think that black is ‘blue’, they will probably call green ‘pink’!

            I would certainly call them for numerous foul shots if I played them at snooker!

      2. I have the passport issued to my maternal grandmother in 1939. Was she expecting something?

      3. I do. I also have a pink cardboard six month temporary one that was issued at the post office and a green card from when I was on a collective passport for a school trip abroad.

    5. Just had a look on Google maps at your old address. 195 in big numbers on the front of the house.

      1. It was a large detached police house when I lived there between 1974 and 1978. Originally a superintendents’ house (I was the only pleb to live in it). After I moved out it was put on the open market by the County Council (it’s owners) and sold privately.

    6. I’ve got my mothers driving licence issued when she was in the WAAF in 1946! She always said she never sat a test!

      1. I found my mother’s some time ago as well – I never knew she could drive – but you didn’t have to pass a test in the 1930s.

    7. Yes, I have one in my collection of driving licences. It came to the surface the other day during a ‘clear out’, naturally I kept it!

    8. Now you’ve made me want to go and root out all these old passports, ID cards and driving licences……….I may be some time! They are all in different places.

    10. I still have my paper (looks like ordinary paper to me) one from when I passed my test, plus the obligatory credit card with me phizog on it after I moved home.

      1. I’ve still got my paper one (had it replaced when I remarried) as I didn’t bother sending it back when I had to renew it three years ago.

      2. Have a Welsh paper one, from when I lived with my parents near Cardiff. Three times the size of the English one.

  48. In communist Soviet Russia, a man saves up enough money to buy a car but
    theres a 10 year waiting list. He pays his money and the man says ‘On
    this day, 10 years from now, come back and you can collect your car,
    Comrade. The buyer says ‘Morning or afternoon?’. ‘Does it matter?’
    replies the official. The buyer says ‘I’d prefer the morning because
    I’ve got a plumber coming in the afternoon’.

    (Ronald Reagan)

    3. That was on the news yesterday Phizz. He can’t got to Oz to play now. I suspect it’s made him quite grumpy……again.
      No mention of where and how he caught it. He doesn’t have many friends does he ?

    4. The sad thing is all those kids parading the hammer and sickle flag have no idea just how many millions were slaughtered for that demented ideology. Worse, their usual reply is ‘how many has capitalism killed’ as if to excuse their psychotic argument.

      Communism does not, cannot and never will work.

      1. Ah yes, wibbling, we know that now, but when you’re 16/17 and full of yourself and your world outlook, communism seems a wonderful concept! Kibbutzes and communal living, sharing everything, all fair and happy!
        Then you grow up! And get rid of the Che Guevara poster!

    2. I boil eggs for exactly six minutes if they are categorised as large and straight from the fridge. They are just right (for me).

          2. I like my eggs really snotty – one of the cooks at an RAF station refused to cook them like that for me. They liked to cook them so they had a plastic coating all over them

          4. It was in the Sgts mess – they let me cook my own.
            Banter from the mess……..”These potatoes look funny” — “Well why aren’t you laughing then?”
            “Who called the cook a c**t?” — “Who called the c**t a cook?”
            “Anyone want seconds?” — “No!” — “No WHAT?” –“No fear!”
            “This fish isn’t cooked” — “How do you know?” –“It’s eaten the chips”

    6. I find it works well for an average of 4 minutes in boiling water only adding the eggs when the water gets to the boil. Then simmer. If the eggs are a bit smaller than usual, 3 mins 45 sec, a bit larger than usual, 4 mins 15 sec. Not a guarantee to work, especially as the best results are when the eggs are freshest.

      From memory, my mum pops them in cold water and heats them on max until the water starts to boil, total time around 5 mins or so, but then she tends to but ‘medium’ sized eggs only.

          8. Love cod, love haddock, you may have my plaice!

            I’m talking about proper home-soaked mushy peas; not that crap you get in tins (or in southern chip shops!).

      2. The Norwegian way is (apparently) the same as your mum’s, Andy. I do them 4 minutes once it’s come to the boil, and they are just how SWMBO likes them.

      1. It’s just ordinary porridge, with a chopped pear on top and some idiot thinks it needs a silly name. You can be a purist about porridge (and even do it the old way with individual bowls of milk) or you can put some fruit with it and get another portion into your kids that way.

    8. How many young mothers have the nous to follow those instructions? Thinking about it, how many actually shop at M&S?

      1. How many of them prick the blunt end of an egg to stop the shell cracking when it enters the boiling water?

    9. It all depends on the size of the egg. For large: 4 minutes, for extra large 6 minutes. I never put my eggs in the fridge.

      1. Now that we’ve all done boiled eggs – how about scrambled? I like them to be the texture of lumpy custard – definitely not so you can pick it up on a fork. It should be pourable as it comes out of the saucepan. I really hate the set stuff you can cut.

          2. No condiments, just a splash of milk, beat & cook. I like the refreshing, plain taste.

          3. Personal preferences again – good job we’re not all the same. I never beat scrambled eggs, just stir as they set. I melt the butter first, then add the milk, then the eggs.

          4. Right that’s scrambled and boiled – what about poached. Use a poacher or just put them in boiling water (and get a watery one.) I put them in the water.

          6. In a cup of water, microwave for one minute

            Make sure the container is covered and do not go longer than the minute

          8. We read it in a magazine and tried it. Two eggs, so we gave them an extra zap – turned the eggs into a fountain of egg white.

            Anything but North American scrambled eggs where they basically fry the eggs on a hot plate and stir them up.

          9. I bring a pan of water to a simmer. While it’s heating up, I make a pouch for each egg out of clingfilm, which I insert into a cup, one for each egg. A drop of olive oil or a smear of butter, followed by the egg minus shell. When the water is ready, I lower the pouch into it, leaving the neck hanging over the side, so that it can be retrieved easily. Timing depends on the size of the egg & you can always take it out of the water to see how far it has got. Then tip the egg out onto the toast or whatever.

          10. Hhmm – sounds like quite a lot of effort. I had some really good ones last time we were allowed to go to our local cafe – I wonder if that’s how they did them.

          11. It’s like fish pie; you put the work in & you get a good result.

            My poached egg technique goes quite quickly once it’s routine.

    11. As I can’t abide sloppy egg white, I boil mine for six minutes; the white is firm, but the yolk is still runny enough to dip soldiers in.

  50. Those who believe in the inauguration of fake ”President” Biden have to explain a few things………

    First, it was POTUS Trump himself who deployed the National Guard in massive numbers, not just in Washington but across the US.

    And second, POTUS Trump has not conceded the 2020 election.

    So why would POTUS Trump help Generalissimo Joe to full military honors who has already said he wants a ”virtual inauguration” and who has declined to go to Washington for a dummy run ?

    Look forward to hearing !

    1. I agree that something is cooking. The electoral fraud was so blatant as was the staged Antifa BLM violence at the Capitol.

      Then we saw Nancy Pelosi running around like a headless chicken desperate to slander President Trump and launch another fake impeachment. The Democrats are scared of President Trump.

      One theory is that President Trump was advised to let the Georgia votes run in order to discover the means by which the presidential votes were manipulated using foreign servers. Those votes were also manipulated and this has led to Italy and other foreign interference in the election.

      If justice is to be served Biden and his family should be arrested along with other state officials.

      As you noted there have been a flurry of Executive Orders in recent days implicating foreign government officials in the fraud and even naming those Ukrainians linked to the Hunter Biden Joe Biden corruption.

      It would be great to see justice served and let us hope that it will occur before the bogus Biden inauguration. It is impossible for Biden and his deep state cronies to promulgate the falsehood that they are legitimate. A lie is a lie and will always be viewed as such and the perpetrators found out and exposed.

      1. It would be wonderful if this all leads to the continuation of President Trump. I have more faith that the Americans will actually do something about it than in this country I’m sorry to say. It seems over here the bigger the crime the less the punishment e.g., grooming gangs.

        1. I agree. We have come to a sorry pass and have a government comprised of the political equivalent of a mafia led by a pompous journalist and with a Health Secretary whose utterances and actions mirror those of Goebbels.

          Both Johnson and Hancock are in the pay of globalists. Hancock has made derogatory remarks about POTUS Trump which demonstrate a feeble mind. Neither are statesmen and both completely out of their depth along with their useless cabinet of placemen.

      2. If that happened, I’d laugh so hard I’d probably fall out of my chair. Especially seeing the faces of those involved and the MSM TV journos, rather like they did when Trump won in 2016.

      3. “The electoral fraud was so blatant…”
        The problem for we realists is, why couldn’t DT’s lawyers provide the evidence of said blatant fraud?

        1. But did they get the chance to put the evidence before the court or did the cases fail on purely procedural grounds?

          2. The cases, in the main, fell because there was no evidence to put before the court. Just none.

        2. That should be “us realists” – accusative case after the preposition ‘for’. Just in case peddy is otherwise engaged 🙂

          4. I watched a Youtube yesterday – British bloke, couldn’t (or didn’t care to) say the “th” sound, called them “booys”. I left a comment.

          5. I once arrested a young thick toe-rag called Smith. The conversation I with him went thus:

            Me” “What’s your name?”
            Him: “Smiff.”
            Me: “Smiff? Is that two Fs or free?”
            Him: “Free I fink.”

      2. No – they are all auditioning for the par of Wee Willie Winkie. They forgot to bring their candlesticks, however.

    2. Erm ………….and where is the plod army ?
      Mind you leaves on the garden shrubs indicate that it wasn’t a recent event.

    1. Just sent that to my daughter! She larfed and larfed as she recieved a 40oz bottle of raspberry Bacardi from Morrisons direct with the security tag on! She phoned them and they refunded the cost! Then she googled how to remove the tag!

  54. Bit under the weather today, chaps. So I’ll not be around. The prostate pills make me very dizzy – LBP, apparently. So going up and downstairs (the office is on the first floor) is a bit of a bind.

    Have a happy day – and avoid old age if you can.

    Toodles.

  55. Earlier on a woman phoning the radio station said she had an appointment yesterday for the jab. With the snow there were NO buses and NO taxis and didn’t trust driving due to the conditions. So her and husband wrapped up warm and set off walking , , the 5 miles to the pharmacy for the jab. Tried to phone the place several times – couldn’t get an answer. Arriving 9o mins after set-off she was told by someone that the people giving the jab hadn’t turned up so all was cancelled. So they set off on the walk back – another 5 miles. Not had an apology or anything. BTW – they are both pensioners. And still the radio station today is broadcasting for people to turn up. No mention if the injection staff have !!!

    1. There is no way they can eliminate this virus now – it’s endemic and will return every winter, just as flu does.

      2. If viruses weaken as they mutate and given that 99.8% of the people diagnosed with Covid-19 have recovered, the pandemic can end when there’s a political will to end it. We already live with far more dangerous diseases.

      3. No, but a complete ban on recreational international travel (holidays, stag parties, skiing trips) would help get us back on track.

        1. It certainly worked in the three Eastern Canadian provinces, they have very few cases. They closed the borders last March, you cannot drive or fly in without going into a mandatory two week quarantine (they check frequently).

          1. We will never be back on track in the 2018 way. Travel for plebs is a vote winner, even it spreads plagues and death, so air travel will be one of the first things to restart.

        3. Haven’t we had enough of complete bans of normal life? It’s everywhere and will not be stopped.

          2. New Zealand and Australia have shut themselves off from the world, but they will have to rejoin it at some stage.

          3. Yes, we have. If we can stop people arriving her with infectious diseases we might get back to something near normal.
            As it stands I see no prospect of ever going back to anything resembling what was normal in 2018.
            For further details please see the film “Brazil”.

            https://youtu.be/4Wh2b1eZFUM

  58. At the bottom of the hill outside, the road makes a turn. A delivery truck came down the hill, and now can’t get back up (cul-de-sac). He’s both polished the ice so that no other vehicle can get up, and is now blocking the way so nobody can go anywhere! Eejit. Legally, he has to have chains, but doesn’t, so he won’t call the breakdown to give him a pull, either. Berk!

    2. He’s now in the “Mercedes trap” outside our garages. It’s a deceptive slope that, when icy, catches rear-wheel drive taxis who back in to turn, but can’t then get traction to get out again. Bit like an elephant trap. Arse.

      1. I had a Mercedes Estate in Germany. Nice car, but it was terrible in ice & snow; traction was lost & it was a lot of weight to brake.

        1. I carry rope with me – not for pulling out but for wrapping round the wheel between the spokes radially

          1. We have tyre socks (dekksokk) – nylon mesh bags you fit over the tyre just to get you out of the jam. Then take them off – similar idea. Also carry chains, but the dekksokk are easy to fit and remove.

    3. Could he possibly turn the vehicle round and with it being then effectively a front wheel drive – reverse up and get up that way?

      1. No, he’s tried both forwards and backing. He need to fit chains, or get a tow. Doesn’t help that he’s polished the ice quite nicely…

      2. No, because most of the weight is still over the front (non-driving) wheels. Depends on the type of lorry, of course.

    5. The Swiss insist on all trucks using the motorways across the Alps having chains. Some drivers were very good at remembering them, others not so much. Periodically we would have to organise a meeting between a northbound truck and a southbound truck so that the guy who had just come back from a trip over the Alps to Italy could hand the chains to the one who was about to head for Italy and had forgotten to take chains with him. They used to be mightily cursed for it – as I expect your chap will be by his boss.

    1. Canada closed the border back in March and the closure stays in effect at least until February. Trump bragged back in Summer that Canada was desperate to re-open the border, boy PM Trudeau popped his head out of his bunker and said NO.

      The Detroit Windsor tunnel traffic cam shows the normal commercial traffic and there is a five minute wait which is normal.

        1. BAME Britons ‘are four times more likely to have had Covid-19’
          Black and Asian Britons are up to four times more likely to have had already fought off the coronavirus, official data suggested in the summer.

          A government-run surveillance scheme, which tested 36,000 people across England, revealed 4.5 per cent of white people had developed antibodies — substances created by the immune system in response to specific pathogens.

          In comparison, the rate was 12.2 per cent for Asian Brits, 7.7 per cent for black people and as high as 16.7 per cent for other ethnic groups, according to the report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

          Results of swab tests — which tell if someone is currently infected and not if they have had it in the past — showed a similar discrepancy between ethnicity, with between 0.64 and 0.69 per cent of black and Asian people ever testing positive for the coronavirus.

          Just 0.30 per cent of white people swabbed between April 26 and June 27 last year tested positive for the disease.

          Statisticians warned the findings do not prove for certain that people of BAME backgrounds are at greater risk of being infected.

          But they add to the mountain of evidence that has found people of BAME backgrounds are more likely to catch Covid-19 and become seriously ill or die from it than white people.

          https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9150489/Doctors-fear-fake-news-causing-BAME-people-reject-Covid-vaccine.html

          1. Perhaps BAME people are 100% more likely to bring COVID into the country – if they come in by dinghy.

          3. There are quite a few “racist” illnesses Anne, though it would be more accurate to call them genetically influenced. Sickle-cell anaemia springs to mind and Type 2 diabetes is another but there are more if you care to look them up.

      2. Much of the false information appears to be targeted at Muslims, who do not drink alcohol or eat pork, and Hindus, who consider cows to be sacred.

        It follows research from last month suggesting that people from minority ethnic backgrounds are significantly less likely to take the Covid vaccine.

        Dr Sood told the BBC: ‘We need to be clear and make people realise there is no meat in the vaccine, there is no pork in the vaccine, it has been accepted and endorsed by all the religious leaders and councils and faith communities.’

        1. Shades of the Indian Mutiny, when cartridges were said to contain either pork or beef fat. Soldiers had to bite the end off the cartridge before loading a rifle.

    2. well vaccinate those ready to try it, come back to this lot later.

      That’s what we used to do when selling new products, just go for the low hanging fruit and go back for the ones that needed a more concerted sales effort later.

      Surely sixty percent of the population will achieve the sacred herd effect.
      What? They don’t mix with other nationalities! Pity.

      1. The reckoning is that it needs 70% of adults (they won’t be offering it to under-18s) to be vaccinated to have the necessary effect on the spread of the virus.

        Asians mix with other nationalities all the time, the idea that they don’t is simply a fallacy. I’ve never seen an Asian corner shop that didn’t have white customers, quite often more white customers than Asian ones since the white British gave up keeping corner shops on the whole since it takes up too many hours in the week and doesn’t leave a great deal of profit, but white British people still like to pop out to the corner shop. The number of Asian doctors, dentists, opticians etc is enormous… seeing patients of whatever colour comes through the door.

        Even out here in the sticks we have a huge number of Asian professionals. We have a Muslim GP in my local practice (he’s been there for 20 years at least), the very, very thorough optician who found my retinal tear is a Muslim, the opthalmology consultant at the Eye clinic and the opthalmologist who lasered my eye are both Sri Lankan in origin, and the dentist who dealt with my lost filling and razor edged tooth is a Hindu and there is also a Sikh dentist in the practice, the audiologist who did my recent hearing test is also of Hindu origin. And they all go home, at least in normal times, to mix with their own close and extended families; though at the moment they probably see more white people (in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire) than they do other Asians.

        There was an early generation of Asian women who came to Britain speaking no English and who hid themselves away in their own communities for the rest of their lives – but that was three, or even four, generations ago and even then their husbands and children were mingling 5 or 6 days a week. Most Asian children go to the same schools and colleges as those of indigenous origin and though they go to university in higher proportion than those of indigenous origin they are still in a small minority – mixing with everyone else.

        1. Wow, that’s a long reply!

          Notice no one else cared to pick up on the stereotype, they see what they want to and that is showing up in a few threads today.

          Around our area we are very much like forty years ago in rural Britain, not that many other nationalities that we would feel threatened so it is still very much a who cares what colour you are.

          At the community Christmas dinner in 2019 we had an Indian family, several west Indian migrant workers and a sprinkling of people from the middle east, maybe more, no one was checking.

          1. I did try to make it shorter but if you abbreviate too much you end up with nonsense and maybe, in the light of what is going on here at the moment, I’m not at my very sharpest.

            There’s a vast amount of “there’s none so blind” on these pages but I really can’t believe that all the people who don’t want to see it don’t come across all the young (and not so young) Asian professionals. One of my best friends from school studied medicine in Aberdeen at the same time that I was there. Now Aberdeen isn’t an area with a lot of immigrants of other hues even now, and in the 1970s there were far fewer. But 10% of the medics in that year were Asian, though only one was Afro-Caribbean. That cohort are now over 60 and retiring, so it isn’t even a new phenomenon.

            Canada has always seemed to be a country which is, in the main, friendly to immigrants – where my brother was in Manitoba there was a largish Ukrainian community, most had been there (as families) for about 100 years, but recent migrants – often distant relatives – had joined them after the fall of the iron curtain. I hope your community continues to be colour blind.

            I don’t know if you read my replies last night before I deleted them. I was feeling battered (I haven’t been near DM since I came back – I blocked him after just a couple of days), and Geoff has rather put the tin hat on things tonight.

          2. Canada has its problems, especially in the big cities.
            We have a problem trying to complain about immigrants, most of us are from away.
            I play golf with some Mohawks from the reserve, there are some very deep problems with the first nations relationship that keep coming up.

          3. No, it isn’t “all quiet” Richard. It’s a concerted attack on me in a way that I have never attacked anyone. Actually I have never attacked anyone, though I’ve been a bit fierce in my response to attacks on a few occasions.

  61. There is a cemetery just at the edge of our wee village and like many villages in Scotland there are more names on the War Memorial than living inhabitants.
    I heard crunching noises in the frozen snow outside the house. Looking out there were half dozen cars and a dozen people talking in groups. This was a bigger crowd than turned up for the Tour of Britain cycle race. None wore a mask. As I was looking a hearse drove through the village towards the cemetery.
    I had expected the people to walk up to the cemetery but they did not. Curious I asked one of the groups why they were there and they confirmed it was for the funeral. They needed to pay their respects. They could not go 100 yards up the road and stand in the cemetery in the same way as they were standing in the middle of the village, because it was forbidden by law.
    This is insanity.

  62. Home Office accidentally DELETES 150,000 fingerprint, DNA and arrest records from national police database.

    It’s nothing to worry about, they were new arrivals who don’t have any convictions that we know of, said a Home Office spokesperson.

    2. Home Office accidentally DELETES 150,000 fingerprint, DNA and arrest records from national police database.

    3. Home Office accidentally DELETES 150,000 fingerprint, DNA and arrest records from national police database.

        1. When I was working in IT databases were backed up on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, either full or incremental.

          1. Every 5 mins is pretty common these days. Even that is too long sometimes. Most databases handle replication. You should still do full and incremental backups too but even on a daily schedule for some things that could be hundreds of thousands of transactions. Think for instance a MMORPG game. To users it’s a game, to the server it’s a database management system. Every item that drops has to be logged, every mob killed, every xp point. For thousands of users 24/7. Servers do crash now and again. If your playerbase starts missing money and rare items they found just before the server went down players desert the game. Virtually all the big MMOs use SQL.

          2. One system for which I developed applications used an Oracle database, which took checkpoints at regular intervals. A database administrator made a change which shut down the database at the end of the day without taking a last checkpoint. Fortunately we discovered the problem quite quickly, as users found within a few days that transactions were missing. Of course, there was no way to restore these missing transactions, as they had never been logged.

            Nowadays most databases are up and running 24/7, so backup arrangements are obviously different, with much more data being stored. But data integrity is what IT people are paid for. If the data has been lost, someone should answer for it.

    5. That’s even worse – now there’s no record of them and they can commit crime willy-nilly and not be traced

  64. Dutch government resigns over childcare subsidies. 15 January 2021.

    The Dutch government collapsed on Friday over an escalating scandal in which thousands of families were driven to financial ruin after being wrongly accused of child benefit fraud.

    “Today the question was about political responsibility,” said Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday. “If the whole system has failed we must take collective responsibility. We have offered the king the resignation of the whole cabinet.”

    Not something you could really see any UK government doing and between them they’ve destroyed the entire country!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/15/dutch-government-resign-childcare-subsidies/

        1. Good afternoon, Rastus.

          Have you not seen my reply to one of your posts this morning yet? [about Dom bess, the cricketer?]

      1. Not so. Monday & Tuesday are wheelie-bin days. Tuesday morning is Swedish on Zoom. Wednesday & Sunday shopping. Once a month on Wednesdays there’s a Zoom lecture on various topics – the next one is on lichens. In an hour’s time I have a Zoom catch-up with old friends, most of whom I’ve not seen for 20 years – this will become a regular fixture twice a month on varying days.

          1. I was reluctant for quite a while about Zoom, but now I find it’s OK. It doesn’t bite.

  66. News from the wild west ….

    Daily abuse’

    Some
    shop workers had told BBC Wales they were facing “daily abuse” for
    challenging rule-breakers, with some threatened and spat at.

    The
    Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) has warned the
    onus on policing customers’ behaviour must not fall on shop workers.

    While
    Sara Jones, head of the Welsh Retail Consortium said trying to enforce
    laws had created “further conflict and flashpoint” with customers,
    leading to workers being abused.

    Solution : arm the shop workers ….

      1. Having guns and using them are two very different things.
        “Pussies with guns are still pussies.”

      1. I shot a pervert, who was exposing himself to females, with a gun like the one in the bottom picture.

        It said on the box, “flash eliminator”.

  68. Not that I’m into conspiracy theories but I had to reset my Disqus password in order to log on today. When I finally managed it, seems I’ve lost a load of upvotes from last time. Wot’s going on?

    3. We all lost all our upvotes a year ago – that’s why I opened a new account, in case they closed it down altogether.

        1. My father, who spoke fluent French, used jokingly to translate that as my old aunt is having a slash.

  69. I’m just back from an eight-mile round trip to the shop in Tomelilla. I drove on roads covered in packed snow and ice at a temperature of -8ºC. I drove at normal speeds (as did every other motorist) and not even a hint of a skid was felt at any stage. There were no signs of any vehicles having left the road or abandoned as a result of “British winter driver syndrome”, a madness that doesn’t exist here.

          2. Just like snow clearing equipment, if the UK spent as much on snowploughs as we do in Canada they would be even more broke.

          3. Most years those snowploughs would be sitting idle r.
            Reminds me of an old Top Gear episode, where they converted a tractor into a snowplough and took it to Norway.

          8. If a county vehicle moves they stick a snowplough on it in winter, there are some nifty lawn tractors with snow blowers as well

            Yes it would be ridiculous to emulate what we do. How do you think mandatory snow tyres would go down?

          5. Don’t be. I love Wales and most Welsh people (a few in the north have ignored me when greeted but in the centre and south I’ve always had a warm reception).

            The topography of Wales is every bit as splendid as Scotland.

          9. We’ve ruled out England, Scotland and Wales. Which part of the UK does that leave?
            Newcastle at the foot of the Mourne mountains is splendid. The Sperrins aren’t bad either.

          10. Shamefully I’m nearly 70 and have not yet crossed the Irish Sea. I wonder if it’s too late?

          14. I’ve spent many a happy day on Anglesey, especially overlooking the Menai Strait, at South Stack Cliffs, and Cemlyn Bay.

            As an amateur field ornithologist.

          16. For Christmas, I was given a bird feeder to hang outside and for the first time ever I have seen a bird (a tit, possibly a blue tit, but it was getting too dark to see properly) feeding from it today.

    2. A good while back after I retired a took a part time job driving out of hours Doctors to their various calls, the company providing the service ( now defunct ) provided Astras for the job which were OK, every year in the winter time with a hint of snow they would panic and hire a pair of Subaru 4×4 Forresters with summer tyres on the basis 4wd good , 2wd bad. Time after time every year I said just put winter tyres on the Astras it’s a lot cheaper and every year they ignored me, ignorant know-all seat polishing numpties.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfuE00qdhLA

      1. Yup. You can’t educate pork!

        I sometimes wonder how any of the “winter tyre denial brigade” numpties would react if they lost loved ones in a collision on a road whilst idiotically driving a car in snow or ice with summer tyres. They would probably blame something else.

      2. It may be utterly irrelevant but the Office staff involved were all women except for the one young male who was the nephew of the office manager, a woman I wouldn’t trust to organise a library of two books.

      3. Tyres all the way. I prefer using TyreReviews.com and they tested that as well. I’ve got some all season tyres – just a shame I keep missing the snowfall (not that we get much in East Anglia), including possibly overnight tonight/tomorrow morning. It’ll likely be gone by early afternoon.

      1. I wouldn’t dream of being on the road without them at any time between Dec 1 and Apr 1.

        Both for safety and reality.

    2. After the ordeal by bank, I gave up the idea of going shopping today. I’ll tackle it tomorrow.

      1. Next time you see him tell him he is on charges for going AWOL and to come back to Nottl immediately to receive his jankers !

  73. Hello NoTTlers!

    MOH has received a letter from Imperial College inviting him to participate in a study of people who might be “immune” to COVID. It is voluntary and he was going to enlist. Apparently they send something for you to test at home.

    My view is that you don’t actually know what they are testing for (whatever they say), and I trust Imperial like I trust the Blond Buffoon. Also, he will then be on a database.

    My own view is that I am not going to have a vaccination or anything else. I don’t trust those gits one inch.

    What do NoTTLers think?

    2. I certainly wouldn’t let any govt. dept. have access to my DNA. I view the vaccine as a box ticking exercise that might free things up a bit (the Govt’s face saving exercise). Certainly, MB and I will wait until we are offered the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine as it seems to be based on a tried and tested technology that has been used for decades.
      A new vaccine – however whizzy and wonderful it may prove to be in the future – that has been developed under hysterical pressure is not one we would trust. It may prove to be a great leap forward, but this is not the time to be mucking around with people’s immune systems.

      1. “The Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine is a viral vector type with a gene added, effectively they are injecting a GMO. Again long term effects are unknown, what will happen if the gene codes for something other than spike protein, or the vector causes issues. Time will tell. Personally I do not fancy having either an mRNA or a GMO vaccine.” Comment from btl on article by Peter Doshi: ‘Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data’ https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/

        Also – (with especial reference to the last paragraph) article from TCW by Andrew J Green https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/more-serious-questions-about-the-pfizer-vaccine/

        It appears that the clinical trials conducted by AZN to ascertain the side-effects of the vaccine do not comply with the standard protocol followed by pharmaceutical companies to verify the efficacy and safety of medicinal products. Instead of using a control group of test subjects injected with a saline solution as a placebo, the AZN clinical trials use injections of the meningitis vaccine Nimenrix (Pfizer).

        ‘Any vaccine may have undesirable side-effects. On what grounds does AZN operate differently from other laboratories and why does it use a meningitis vaccine for its control group? How could the Commission pay AZN while the latter’s clinical trial protocol does not comply with established standards?’ [my emphasis in bold].

        It would be useful for us to have comments on those points from the MHRA, NHS and/or the UK Government, since they have already ordered 100million of doses of this inadequately tested vaccine.

        Nimenrix certainly seems a very odd choice for a placebo, given that the possible ‘very common’ (defined as 10 per cent and upwards) adverse reactions include: drowsiness, headache, fever and fatigue, whilst ‘common’ (defined as between 1 per cent and 10 per cent) adverse effects include diarrhoea, vomiting and nausea.

        So the use of this vaccine as a placebo will conveniently produce an ‘as safe as placebo’ conclusion for a wide range of adverse effects from their Covid-19 vaccine. It seems to me that, for a vaccine which the whole world has been anxiously awaiting for many months, prudence should have dictated the use of a placebo which has been demonstrated to have no such reactions, preferably a simple saline solution?”

        1. I’d be far more worried about side effects over the long term – not necessary the sort you mentioned, but ones that have a big impact on society as well as individuals – infertility, birth defects in subsequently conceived children or causing serious ailment (especially if it means you HAVE to take whatever drugs the big pharm then says we need – dependency), such as naracalepsy as the 2010/11 swine flu vaccines gave NHS workers who were given it.

        1. We will ask for it when we are contacted. If there is any dodging the question, we will know the answer.
          The Oxford one is much cheaper, so I suspect they will be quite happy to treat us on the cheap.
          If not, we will wait.

          1. What if they just lie? Or have all been told that it’s the Oxford vaccine – it’s not beyond the realms of possibility… :o(

        1. “Recipients of the Pfizer jab are dropping like flies.”

          Really? My wife and I have both had Pfizer x 2 and we’re OK. Do you know any of these flies that are dropping?

          1. Maybe they are referring to 23 people from Norway. To be fair, it appears most were elderly or already quite ill (not with COVID), but who knows whether the vaccine killed them or they just would’ve died anyway. I wouldn’t be surprsied if some over here did just by having to wait for hours outside in freezing conditions.

          2. We didn’t wait for hours outside in freezing conditions. We were in and out in no time at all. The sessions were efficiently run and effective. I’m still waiting to hear of ‘recipients of the Pfizer jab who are dropping like flies,’ not some vague reference to ‘maybe’ Norway. With due respect to you, of course, Andy..

          3. I was just referring to what I thought that the other person was talking about. To be fair, the way the vaccinations are being handled seems to vary quite a bit over the country.

            Many letters on the DT Letters Page of late bemoaning having to wait outside in the cold for several hours, some giving up and going home.

            Given I’m sceptical about the government’s figures about COVID generally (the ‘with’ against ‘of COVID deaths, especially as many people haven’t been tested and rely on GPs diagnosing after the fact by ‘evidence’ of other people), we may never know how many people have had adverse side effects and how many have died of them.

            Not helped (as I said before) that at the moment, most of those vaccinated are elderly and/or have significant underlying illnesses.

            I’m likely going to wait (even though I’ll be well down the list anyway) as I have serious concerns about longer term side effects, given normal medicines are tested over several years for such effects before being released to the public. That and Bill Gates is behind GAVI, and I don’t trust the man.

          6. Hearsay, anecdote, gossip and pure fiction… take your pick.

            Of course there are adverse reactions, mostly very mild and transient. All drugs cause adverse reaction, even those which have been on the market for decades. Every time you collect a prescription it has a leaflet in it bearing a whole list of them… but most of them affect a small minority and few of them are severe.

          9. There are a number of non-mainstream sites:

            https://www.naturalnews.com/

            On the American elections you might look at American Thinker and Epoch Times both of which give informed opinions by academics and thinkers.

            I was glad to see your return to this forum. We missed you and the site needs an alternative view for healthy debate.

          10. Thank you again, corimmobile.

            ‘Natural News.’ I noted the Norway report and I go as far as CNN being responsible for the Capitol insurrection and left it at that.

    3. I had something similar a few week ago from the same place, strangely 2 days after I had told the local surgery I DIDN’T want any jabs. Coincidental? Doubt it. I think the same as anneallan – they want the DNA.

    4. The words “Imperial College” at the head of a letter requesting some personal test material would make me very unhappy, Hertslass! Their record on testing things really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. And some of their professors…well, what can I say?

      1. The experts in DNA and genome sequencing are the Sanger Institute at Hinxton near Cambridge. The experts in Immunology in the same locality are based at the Babraham Institute also near Cambridge.

        I have seen no reference to Sanger or Babraham in any of the scientific modelling nor in the testing, whether PCR or Lateral Flow. It would appear that the actual scientists have been bypassed and the advice of known charlatans such as Neil Ferguson preferred.

        It is as though the government went instead to dodgy Chinese funded Imperial College ‘experts’ who supply recruits to GSK snd Astra Zeneca rather than acknowledged experts in the field in order to push the vaccination agenda.

    5. A bit like Dr J Mengele asking if he could take your twin children to the zoo for the afternoon.

    6. Those are precisely my thoughts since the start of this farce. I refuse to take part in any way in this government charade. I can feel my heels digging in ever more firmly as I type. I think also it is important to be as unobtrusive as possible at this time and not to bring oneself to the attention of any authority. This is not a time for putting one’s head over the parapet (at the moment). Especially as we have absolutely no intention whatsoever of having the vaccine.

      1. Thanks, pm,

        I fear my OH would be a bit of a useful idiot, as he is actually very well-meaning and rather naive.

    7. I won’t have the vaccine because it has been insufficiently tested (not enough time to study possible long term side effects) and the fact that the companies have been indemnified makes me very suspicious. Besides which, if I’ve actually had the virus last February, my T cells should already be geared up to fight it.

  75. Due to microsoft’s downloads ( which if not installed by restarting, soon make the laptop operation very erratic ) I had to restart this one a few minutes ago. Half of the posts you lot made in the last hour or so have vanished.

    2. That’s what happens when you rely on Billy Goats a.k.a. “Bill Gates” for your technology. That should serve as a warning not to rely on his “medicine”.

    2. The latter?

      If the Republicans know what’s good for them, they won’t support the impeachment:

      https://tatumreport.com/poll-76-republicans-80-trump-voters-less-likely-vote-lawmaker-back-impeachment/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=tatum-report&utm_campaign=daily&utm_content=firefly

      Poll: 76% of Republicans, 80% of Trump Voters Less Likely To Vote For GOP Candidate If They Back Impeachment

      1. I feel certain that a lots of Republicans are playing games here. I am less certain what the games are. Mitch O’Connell is reasonably straightforward, and ‘having heard the evidence’ and wasted huge amounts of legislative time, he will ‘now be convinced’ to acquit Trump. The BIden team understand this and are not keen on the Impeachment, it is at best a distraction, at worst a disaster and certainly a waste of time that he wants for other things. What plays the other Republicans are running is anyone’s guess.

        1. Hence the term RINO = Republican in name only.
          Too many of the Republicans have been appeasing and siding with the Democrats. They don’t like Trump, never h, and think things can revert back to how it was before he was elected. They’re mistaken.

          The voters are livid with Liz Cheney, for example, who came out publicly in favour of impeaching Trump and is currently the third ranking Republican. She’s not going to remain in that position for long.

          https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/wyoming-republicans-issue-statement-liz-cheneys-decision-impeach-president-trump/

          “Our Telephone Has Not Stopped Ringing” – Wyoming Republicans RIP Liz Cheney After Her Outrageous Vote to Impeach President Trump

          It’s similar in the U.S. as in the UK, i.e. here it’s the LibLabCon party, in the U.S. it’s the Uniparty. But Trump has ripped the mask off them all. It’s now obvious which leaders are on the side of the voters, and which ones are just looking after themselves. Those that don’t support Trump and the voters are going to lose voter support in a very big way.

  77. Just chopped up some chicken thighs and fried them with onion, garlic, chopped potatoes, peas, water, lots of curry powder, garam masala, mango chutney, a Knorr chicken stockpot and salt.

    It’s all cooling down overnight ready to be stuffed into some puff-pastry parcels to make some curried chicken slices (pasties).

    Well, it beats sittin’ in a sleazy snack bar sucking sickly sausage rolls.

    2. Sounds great. I would run some spinach through it too but you probably can’t get it in Sweden.

        1. I keep a bag of frozen cubed spinach in the freezer when not in season. Works well in Saag Aloo.

          2. Our brilliant local Indian (sadly closed, at the moment) makes me a lamb, cauliflower and sag aloo (‘cos they love me!) and the very best naan bread you will find anywhere!

      1. It’s a doddle, Sue. Knock some up in no time and either keep them in the fridge (I prefer them cold, but I’m weird like that) or heat them up for a snack or main meal. They freeze well too.

        1. I make pakora quite often with chopped potatoes, cauliflower, peas and onions in a gram flour batter with cumin, coriander and Garam masala and salt. Deep fry blobs of the batter and serve with a yoghurt, mint and tomato ketchup (authentic Punjabi!) sauce! Yummy!

    4. “‘Cause the Fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine….”
      Lindisfarne is one of my all time favourite groups.

  79. 328522+ up ticks,
    Just to set the record straight NO real UKIPPER got rid of Gerard Batten as the record shows, point of fact the membership fell away fast on his falling foul of treachery.
    Myself & lady travelled to Birmingham on the 17/ 2 /2018 to vote bolton OUT & Batten in.

    I see oberwhetever and G W up ticked this Js misinformation
    without showing as having the true facts.

    “You kippers got rid of Batten. Nowt do do with the rest of the electorate”.

    1. “Myself & lady travelled to Birmingham on the 17/ 2 /2018 to vote bolton OUT …”

      You voted for AMW at that UKIP leadership election numbnut. Her and her re-branded BNP.

      1. Disagree all you like, but you will be civil. I appreciate you seem to be some sort of bizarre troll but if you cannot control yourself, go away.

      2. Your constant sniping and insults are getting a bit tedious.
        Now bring on the “far right” name-calling, as you usually do.

      1. 328522+ up ticks,
        G,
        It is recorded facts, truth hurts, and that jack thingy is hurting, so you are correct with your emoji symbols.

  81. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9218c03b2aa0c438deb37d8c1fbbe3343eaf52b211259be629460f9e38c5ec42.png

    Welcome to the Free Speech Union’s weekly newsletter. This newsletter is a brief round-up of the free speech news of the week sent to our members.

    Online censorship of the President of the United States

    After initially being suspended, President Trump has been banned from various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube until the end of his presidency, and from Twitter permanently. As justification, Twitter cited two of the President’s tweets, which, although they did not incite violence directly, presented a “risk” of incitement, according to the social media platform. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey later defended the decision but admitted it set a dangerous precedent.

    Trump responded in a video message via the White House Twitter account a few days later. He said: “The efforts to censor, cancel and backlist our fellow citizens are wrong and they are dangerous. What is needed now is for us to listen to one another, not to silence one another.”

    An ensuing mass-exodus from Twitter to the more free speech-friendly Parler was met with more suppression from Big Tech as Google and Apple both removed Parler’s app from their app stores. Apple claimed that Parler had failed to “remove harmful or dangerous content encouraging violence and illegal activity”. Amazon followed suit shortly afterwards by banishing Parler from using Amazon Web Services, and, unable to find replacement servers, Parler went dark. Parler CEO John Matze called the move “an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet” and then sued Amazon for breach of contract.

    FSU director Toby Young argued on the BBC that the removal of Trump from social media is a slippery slope, saying: “Big Tech is a monopoly. They have far too much power. They need to be broken up. There needs to be competition.” Big Tech firms are censoring whatever information they’ve deemed harmful, argued FSU Deputy Research Director Emma Webb on Spiked. She explained: “These policies are born of a paternalistic distrust of ordinary people, who are deemed to be incapable of discriminating between lies and truth for themselves, and apparently need companies and governments to protect them from exposure to misinformation.”

    Guido Fawkes thinks the social media companies have made a fatal misstep, as share prices of Twitter and Facebook fell, while new decentralised, open-source social media platforms are emerging, such as Mastodon. In what the BBC describes as an attempt to fight back, Trump promised “a big announcement soon”.

    FSU published FAQs on social media at work

    Our members often contact us with queries about their use of social media. They are concerned that putting political and moral opinions online, negative views about an employer, or even jokes, seem increasingly to be subject to disciplinary measures – and some of them have experienced this first hand. This is clearly an area of much confusion, where the boundaries between working life and personal life – between the public and private domains – are often blurred.

    We have published some FAQs on our website that we hope will provide some helpful guidance about this grey area. Among the questions answered are:

    Are there any sensible precautions I can take to avoid problems?
    Are my deeply held religious or political views protected in any way?
    Can liking or retweeting someone else’s tweet get me into trouble?
    Can I protect myself by including a disclaimer in my profile or in my comment?
    Can comments I made in the past, prior to joining the organisation, still be treated as bringing an employer into disrepute?

    Social media in Uganda and Poland

    The President of Uganda banned all social media after accusing Facebook of taking sides in the forthcoming election. Yoweri Museveni has ruled Uganda for nearly 25 years and is facing a challenge from popular young singer Bobi Wine, whose campaign has relied heavily on Facebook.

    The government of Poland is set to pass a law to protect its citizens from online censorship in a move designed to counter the EU’s Digital Services Act as well as the social media giants’ suppression of legal speech. According to Spiked columnist Tim Black, the proposed legislation is “aimed at protecting citizens from the regulatory aspirations of supra-national actors, from multinational corporations to institutions of globalist governance”.

    Fighting back against cancel culture

    Nick Buckley MBE has written a blog post telling of his experience with the FSU after being sacked from the charity Mancunian Way, which he founded in 2011, merely for expressing an unfavourable opinion of the Black Lives Matter organisation. The charity’s board of trustees capitulated to a petition to have Buckley dismissed which had got just 450 signatories. With the FSU’s help, a counterpetition of more than 18,000 signatures led to his reinstatement and the resignation of the entire board. He has now resigned from his full-time position, becoming Chair of the Board of Trustees, an unpaid, part-time position, in order to devote his efforts and energy to “fighting back against the woke lunacy we seem to have gotten ourselves into”. He is crowdfunding to cover the legal costs of pursuing cancel culture’s worst offenders.

    Academic Freedom and Freedom of the Press

    An open letter concerning academic freedom is circulating in defence of Professor Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor at Sussex University. Her opposition to reforming the UK Gender Recognition Act to make it easier for transgendered people to self-identify as belonging to the gender of their choice – because she worried it would endanger women’s rights – prompted an earlier “Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy” denouncing her. As her defenders argue, the effect of such denunciations “can only be to discourage those whom we employ to research, think, write, and speak about these issues from doing so and to deprive students of a diverse and intellectually rigorous education”. Academics can add their names to the letter as additional signatories.

    FSU member Jonathan Bradley, a fourth-year journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto, was sacked in the summer from the campus newspaper the Eyeopener for past tweets articulating his Catholic beliefs. He has filed an official complaint against the newspaper with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal on grounds of religious discrimination. You can donate to his legal fund here.

    More speech, not less

    After what amounted to a call for more censorship of lockdown sceptics from Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, Toby responded in Conservative Home with a robust defence of free speech, summing up: “O’Brien is perfectly entitled to think [lockdown scepticism] is a dangerous, irrational point of view, just as most of us think his fanatical support for lockdowns is dangerous and irrational. The difference is that we don’t think he should be kicked off Twitter or no-platformed by the mainstream media.”

    Books and free speech

    Protesters outside Powell’s, a bookshop in Portland, Oregon, demanded the removal of a new book by journalist Andy Ngo, called Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. This is just the latest example in a disturbing trend of censoring, boycotting or burning both books and bookstores.

    Free speech and why it matters, the new book by comedian and FSU Advisory Council member Andrew Doyle, is available for pre-order in advance of its release on the 25th of February. Self-described activist, healer, and radical intersectionalist poet Titania McGrath – Doyle’s satirical creation – tweeted: “Please buy a copy of this book and burn it immediately.”

    We’re hiring. The FSU is looking to hire a Website and IT Manager. The hours will initially be four days a week, rising to five, and the salary is £42,000 (pro-rated). If you’re interested, please click here to find out more.

    Kind regards…

    1. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/rush_to_judgment_on_trump_multiple_leftists_arrested_for_capitol_riot.html

      Rush to judgment on Trump? Multiple leftists arrested for Capitol riot

      …as news of the arrests comes out, showing who these branded Trump so-called supporters are, the conventional argument is starting to splinter apart.

      The arrests made in the riots case are starting to show the kind of people who like to riot, which is to say extreme leftists.

      Start with this freak, as reported by Fox News:

      A left-wing activist who told Fox News last week that he’d followed a pro-Trump mob into the Capitol in order to “document” the siege is now the subject of a criminal complaint in connection with his alleged participation, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

      John Sullivan can allegedly be heard egging on protesters in video he provided to the FBI, according to a federal criminal complaint. He has also shared the video to his YouTube and Twitter accounts under the pseudonym Jayden X.

      He was charged Thursday in federal court in Washington after being arrested by the FBI. He remains in custody in Toeele County, in his home state of Utah, on a U.S. Marshals Service hold request.

    2. Part of today’s podcast from The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters (Sargon of Akkad) was covering this today, and recently following on from Tim Pool. Project Veritas secretly recorded Dorsey showing this was a co-ordinated effort, despite him saying it wasn’t, plus it IS the beginning of a wider ‘purge’ of people from the political right. Where will it end? Ben Shapiro talking about this more widely now, including chilling comments from the Left about ‘reprogramming’ people on the Right.

  82. Anyone interested, Duncan Mac is currently posting on Breitbart’s “UK Police Chief thread,

    ETA: Feel free to upvote him.

    1. Pretty soon this is going to turn into a “Where’s Wally? comp” although with his Celtic provenance we should perhaps call it : “Where’s Wallace?”

      1. “…with his Celtic provenance…”

        As an Ulster Protestant, I might need to think about that.

        1. I simply made an assumption given the Gaelic an all. Also poking a stick in the Loch to see if he might bite! 😉

          10. Hello Dunc, and here I was being all reasonable above….doh! Better that you are here for us, than that you are not, though!

          12. ‘Evening, Geoff,

            I was touched by the messages from many NoTTLers urging me not to go, and so I’ve been thinking that my decision to leave was a foolish one, taken when the angry mood was on me. Regretfully, my temper seems to get worse, the older I get.
            :¬(

            I shall attempt to control it, although I can’t guarantee that I shan’t continue to use the heavy sarcasm and piss-taking – for which I’m noted – whenever the occasion demands!
            ;¬)

        2. I’m beginning to wonder if your name might be John S, and a derivation spelling of the head loser.

          3. Give me a minute to run that through Google…

            ETA: Letterkenny Co Donegal. Fond memories of a one street town wrong side of the border.
            Last time we passed through there we were caught up in an Irish wedding celebration. Had to be seen to be believed.

    2. 1. Why would anyone be interested on what is posted on another site.

      2. Why are you?

      Are you stalking him? Desperately looking to take offence at someone else’s opinion? Trolling breitbart? Truly, get a ruddy life!

      2. Well, it’s nice to know that people are not ill. And wibs, my sweet, you don’t have to be trolling to look at Breitbart (I do myself for a minute or two, sometimes).

      3. I think it was more that Duncan wanted to leave this site and people are pleased to see that he’s still posting, even if elsewhere.

  83. That’s better. Fire lit. SWMBO working up to start cooking. New glass red. Cat on lap, interfering with PC. Friday night. Sigh…

          2. Being across the road from the station has advantages. I can leave home, cross to the station, ride to Guildford in around seven minutes, walk down the hill to Tesco Metro, buy wine and more, walk back to the station, and take a seat on the train that brought me there. The entire process from front door to the same takes around 45 minutes, and around three quid.

            Which is good, since there are currently no shops in the village, although there are plans for a community shop next year. It’ll still take me longer to walk there and back, than catching a train.

    1. Other councils allow motorcycles for example in their bus lanes, let’s call them BSA lanes!

    2. “You will own nothing and you will be happy…”

      but I bet old George and Bill will be owning plenty!

    2. I’m beginning to hope that whoever put him up for the HoL is feeling the heat.

      More fuel to his flamethrower.

        4. We bought one of those for my late mother in law. She obtained great relief and stimulation from it as she suffered from Myeloma and became bed bound towards the end of her life.

          She would ignore the 20 minutes rule and use the machine for an hour at time.

          2. Thanks for that info Cori,
            Since my Achilles tendon injury my legs need plenty of stimulation…walking has it’s limitations. I have been tempted to buy a foot massager. I will have another look at the specs….
            Thanks again

          4. We used to have a much-loved Auntie Nan – on the way to see them the boys used to guess whether she’d put the sprouts on yet………… she once gave a carving knife to the ex so he could carve up and dish out the roast chicken………. He said “what’s happened to this – did it get run over?”

          8. Fair enough. I’m not wishful that anyone should eat something they don’t like. I’m happy to eat all the brassicas except kohlrabi.

            My father grew kale in the garden because a very exposed garden in Aberdeenshire has its limitations in the veg spectrum and kale would stand all winter. My mother isn’t very keen on kale – except in bubble and squeak. So she used to use it as a way of eating the kale in a manner she found acceptable. A little spoonful of kale at dinner time – and a big panful of bubble and squeak for tea.

    5. “IAN BOTHAM has blasted the BBC”
      Just needs Allan Lamb to lambast the BBC from the other end and they’d be skewered.

      1. Just for Plum

        Cricket Explained:

        You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
        Each man that’s in the side that’s in the field goes out and when he’s out comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.
        When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
        When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.
        Sometimes there are men still in and not out.
        There are men called umpires who stay out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out.
        Depending on the weather and the light, the umpires can also send everybody in, no matter whether they’re in or out.
        When both sides have been in and all the men are out (including those who are not out), then the game is finished.

          2. […] it must be said there is something incomparably soothing about cricket on the radio. It has much the same virtues as baseball on the radio –an unhurried pace, a comforting devotion to abstruse statistics and thoughtful historical rumination, exhilarating micro-moments of real action – but stretched across many more hours and with a lushness of terminology and restful elegance of expression that even baseball cannot match. Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting in a rowing boat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren’t biting: it’s like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what’s going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.

            ‘So here comes Stovepipe to bowl on this glorious summer’s afternoon at the MCG,’ one of the commentators was saying now. ‘I wonder if he’ll chance an offside drop scone here or go for the quick legover. Stovepipe has an unusual delivery in that he actually leaves the grounds and starts his run just outside the Carlton & United Brewery at Kooyong.’

            ‘That’s right, Clive. I haven’t known anyone start his delivery that far back since Stopcock caught his sleeve on the reversing mirror of a number 11 bus during the third test at Brisbane in 1957 and ended up at Goondiwindi four days later owing to some frightful confusion over a changed timetable at Toowoomba Junction.’

            After a very long silence while they absorbed this thought, and possibly stepped out to transact some small errands, they resumed with a leisurely discussion of the England fielding. Neasden, it appeared, was turning in a solid performance at square bowel, while Packet had been a stalwart in the dribbles, though even these exemplary performances paled when set beside the outstanding play of young Hugh Twain-Buttocks at middle nipple. The commentators were in calm agreement that they had not seen anyone caught behind with such panache since Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiff at Vindaloo in ’61. At last, Stovepipe, having found his way over the railway line at Flinders Street – the footbridge was evidently closed for painting – returned to the stadium and bowled to Hasty, who deftly turned the ball away for a corner. This was repeated four times more over the next two hours and then one of the commentators pronounced: ‘So as we break for second luncheon, and with 11,200 balls remaining, Australia are 962 for two not half and England are four for a duck and hoping for rain.’

            I may not have all the terminology exactly right, but that I believe I have caught the flavour of it.

          3. “Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting in a rowing boat”. not any more it ain’t the commentary box has been invaded by she who must not be named……It just ain’t cricket!

          4. TMS was ruined when they enlisted the ‘services’ of that terminally unfunny clown, Tufnell.

          5. I’m with you there, I think he tries but it doesn’t work for me. Another one that I find even worse is Swann, he thinks he’s a lot lot cleverer than he is.

          10. When I was just a boy early in my career, I had to go to Bath University to attend a switchboard fault. It was a typical wet summers day with rain stopped play conditions and as I parked up Test Match Special was discussing the seagulls on the pitch.
            When I returned 90 mins later, the discussion was still on seagulls, class pure class. Let no one disparage the might of the cricket commentator on BBC R3 Test Match Special.

          11. You’ve left out the pigeons, or seagulls, or the dog which runs onto the pitch. And you’ve complete forgotten to mention Messrs Duckworth and Lewis 😉

          13. I was remembering many hours of actually listening to TMS. Blowers’ word pictures were exceedingly evocative (you could almost smell the mown grass) and stick in the mind.

            Mr Bryson (no blame to you) doesn’t quite capture it.

          14. Bill’s description of cricket in Down Under is a comic masterpiece. Even funnier in the audiobook.

      2. Thirty years ago, Cumberland played Hertfordshire in the final of the (minor counties) Holt Cup. I phoned Lord’s, asking what time the match began. “What time can you get here, Sir”, was the reply. Cumberland won…

    1. Slight snag – they wouldn’t be allowed to pass the notes to the player in case they were contaminated with the bug.

      1. Which is why for the last several months, I’ve been printing ‘single-use’ orders of service, and downloading hymns from Bezos’ site, since singing equates to murder. On Christmas morning, a member of my choir (if it still exists) was thrown out by a churchwarden for humming.

          2. Gratitude is a wonderful thing. Our priestess allows people to hum, and she is a frightful bedwetter and stickler for the Rools.

          3. Gratitude is a wonderful thing. Our priestess allows people to hum, and she is a frightful bedwetter and stickler for the Rools.

  87. Good night all – I hope to be around tomorrow. I wonder when Priti Awful will resign….

        1. Jack, Apropos our earlier discussion about me never having visited the six counties, I do have a kind of connection there.

          Back in the early 1970s, I was part of a team that fabricated part of the two large yellow Harland & Wolff cranes in Belfast dockyard. I’m not sure whether it was ‘Samson’ or ‘Goliath’ that I worked on (possibly ‘Samson’) but the project was built by Krupps Engineering in (West) Germany. They sub-contracted the shear legs (the two tubular A-shaped legs at one end of both cranes) to Markham & Co in Chesterfield, where I was employed in the boiler shop as a plater (fabrication and welding engineering technician).

          I built part of one of those famous cranes, yet I’ve not yet travelled over to see it.

          4. Business – one of the most enjoyable bits was seeing the fabulous countryside from the air….

          5. Approaching either City or Aldergrove airports, that countryside would have included my home town.

          8. I remember a time when London, Bristol and Liverpool docks or even Valletta harbour (before the Chinese took over under Dom Mintoff and Gaddafi) were lined with cranes bearing the name Stothert & Pitt.

            Stothert & Pitt was an engineering firm in Bath based on Lower Bristol Road and a major employer along with nearby Pitman Press. Apart from cranes they engineered pumps for ocean going vessels such as QE2.

            My metalwork teacher, the late Jack Cosnett taught the apprentices plumbing and welding; many apprentices were leavers at age 16 from the Technical School I attended up the road on Brougham Hayes.

      1. I bet the Dutch were surprised today when the government accepted criticism in a report, acknowledged that the blame was theirs and resigned.

    1. Charged with fraud (12 months) and common assault (max six months imprisonment), which would be served concurrently. It’s a shame there isn’t an offence of ‘exploiting the vulnerable’, which would increase the sentences, like ‘hate crime’.

    1. I said fairly recently, it’s a very good time to be an actor or model if you’re not white. I’m not being racist I hope, it just appears to be a fact.

      1. Ted Baker is a firm with a fairly secure footing amongst indigenous white Brits in a certain (a bit above average) income bracket, if they are happy with the goods they won’t abandon the brand regardless of the models, they are secure enough in their own vanity not to need to see the clothes on white models, they see them on their contemporaries anyway.

        Ted Baker now wish to attract those men of other races in the same income bracket to buy their products… so they show them on models who resemble them. It’s a straightforward marketing ploy – and a perfectly sensible one from a business point of view. There are a lot of young Asian professionals (from various parts of Asia) and not a few Afro-Caribbeans in those ranks – they are a market which firms like Ted Baker want to tap into, their current target market to grow their customer base. So yes, for a while at least, there are opportunities for models who fit the picture; not out of sympathy, or kindness, or even diversity – just pure hard-headed business.

          3. Whether or not they are successful will be affected by many things, not least the current pandemic, but companies advertise for one reason only – to make sales. And they use whatever means they think is most likely to increase sales. Which is not to say that they always get their thinking right.

    1. If only DT’s lawyers could provide the evidence to back that up there might yet be hope for the west.

      1. If only a court would bother to hear or look at any of the evidence instead of dismissing the suits on technicalities.

        The legislatures in Arizona is looking very hard at Maricopa county and voting irregularities there, and have issued subpoenas, I believe.
        Everyone else is busily burying, hiding, or shredding the evidence, or refusing to look.

    1. 328522+ up ticks,
      Evening TB,
      I use to watch his army go back and forwards, me in a bush bar,that was more becoming of a field officer in the Ugandan
      parachute regiment via jinja barracks.

      Asians kicked out, juke box ( broke) could only play one record,Cecilia, if you didn’t play it the old lady that came down from the mountains would grate the iron legged table
      back & forwards on the concrete floor, she would do this in between nipping outside to chuck stones at the passing troops.

      Interesting era.

        1. 328522+ up ticks,
          Evening KP,
          I was waiting in Entebbe for a link flight to Kasese
          standing outside the lounge with hands on handrail watching the local males walking hand in hand & thinking allo,allo, when a hand went over mine,quite startling it was I tell you, then a french chap said Pardon, quite startling.
          I was working on a cement plant down at Hima.

  92. Evening, all. I am rapidly losing the will to live! I’ve had some work done on my house and apart from a bit of tidying up, it’s all finished, so I went down to the bank to transfer the funds so I could write a cheque to pay for the work. Now, bearing in mind that a) I had commissioned the work from a builder who had been recommended by a couple of my friends for whom he had previously done satisfactory work, b) I had watched the work being done, c) I had surveyed the completed work and was completely satisfied, you’d have thought that transferring the funds would have been a piece of cake since I took ID with me. Oh, no! What naiveté! I explained why I needed to transfer the cash and handed over my driving licence. In return I got a booklet about fraud. No, this isn’t fraud, I need to pay the people who’ve done the work. That wasn’t enough. Had I read the booklet – yes and none of that applied. In that case I had to be read a long spiel about how people were scammed. Yes, I said, I understand that happens, but that wasn’t enough, either. I had to answer more questions, starting with had anybody told me to keep my mobile phone on so the transaction could be recorded? No, I spoke to the person face to face when I detailed the job that needed doing. There then followed about a dozen more questions before they got to the one I could answer ‘yes’ to – was I paying for work that had been done? YES!!!! You’d have thought the flow chart would have started with that one and if the answer was yes, they could have skipped the rest. Eventually, I was allowed to transfer MY money to MY current account. There is NO WAY I am going to do a bank transfer to pay the bills; I am NOT going through that rigmarole again – three times because there are three separate bills. I did say, when I commissioned the work, that I’d be paying by cheque and that wasn’t a problem. As if that weren’t enough, I did some gardening when I got back (it’s close to freezing, but dry). My phone rang, “this is the vet’s; you’ve got an appointment to see about your dog’s problem with his hind legs”. No, I came to see you with him last week, he had his annual check up and his shots and I got some more steroids; Bill [the vet] said he was “amazing” and he [the dog] has been for a long walk this morning and managed fine. Oh, well if anything happens you will call us, won’t you? Yes, of course I will! I am now beginning to wonder if they did anything last Friday other than hand me a largish bill, given there was no itemised bill, just a receipt for the total, and I had to go back on Monday to get his record card signed. I am back to praying to the Almighty to give me strength, to grant me courage to carry on, but sufficient cowardice not to try to end it all!

    As a last “doh!” item, here is a link to an article in my local rag: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/uk-news/2021/01/15/travel-corridors-scrapped-over-new-coronavirus-strains/

    This prompts the following questions: Isn’t it a bit late now? Who is going to ensure they actually do quarantine and are they still picking up the invaders in the middle of the Channel and dumping them in Dover? The lunatics are in charge of the asylum!

      1. I’m not sure that Saturday is going to be any better, Sue! That bottle of Merlot in the kitchen cupboard looked very attractive! Still, I am halfway now – be a shame to give up when I’m on the downward slope to leaping off the wagon 🙂

          1. Not so much dedication as sheer bloody-mindedness! I’ve started, so I’ll finish! I’ll see this thing through if it kills me!

          2. As my Dad used to say, through gritted teeth” I will not be defeated by an inanimate object!”

    3. PS. The door of my greenhouse managed to come off its rollers when I slid it open and I had the devil’s own job to get it back in place and secure, given that I couldn’t wear gloves (too fiddly) and my fingers were freezing. Today has been a day to forget – MOH hasn’t known what time of day it is and was totally confused when I said not to let the dog in without telling me, or if you do, leave him downstairs so I find him immediately. I thought I’d managed to lose him as he’d been under my feet (particularly when I was grappling with the door) and then disappeared and was nowhere to be seen.

    4. I remember many years ago going into the bank to withdraw some money to pay for a car which I was buying from a friend. Although I had sufficient funds available, the cashier kept trying to make me take out a loan.

      These days I just do it online. I know you don’t do internet banking and it can be frustrating when you have to go through the fraud and scam questions, but believe me, it’s easier than your experience today.

      1. I might even go for Internet banking if my Internet were reliable, but it isn’t. I do have an IB account, but it’s such a faff to access it and I was offline for 8 days a while ago. Trying to pay bills in that scenario would make today’s debacle look like a walk in the park.

        1. Ours isn’t brilliant and I can’t make payments from my laptop any more, but the PC
          downstairs is a bit more up to date. The laptop is going very slow at the moment.

        3. It’s easy.
          I mentioned the other day that since my bank has shut down the three branches we had easy access to, it costs more money to park the car for a visit than we receive in interest.

        4. Don worry, to improve customer service they will soon consolidate branches and take away that personal touch.

          1. I already can’t pay credit cards bills over the telephone as I used to. They removed that facility “to improve customer service”! You couldn’t make it up.

          2. I do that on Barclaycard’s website – it’s easier than doing it from my current account.

      2. I find the Lloyds App on iPhone is painless with face recognition.

        Barclays not so good for transactions but I use them for savings accounts and a business account which are best conducted on main computer.

      3. Everything we hear about banker’s comes true.
        Back in the day I was playing golf one Sunday morning with a senior banker and two other guys.
        It started to ri drizzle but I had left my golf umbrella in my car. The banker had two in his golf trolley and bag.
        I asked if I could borrow one. He reluctantly passed one to me. My playing partner and I were giving the other two ‘a damn good thrashing’.
        I could tell Mr banker was becoming very frustrated with such a couple of lower lifes than himself getting the upper hand. Just after I wacked one down the middle on the last hole. He said “I’ll take the umbrella back now if you don’t mind.” !
        Job done I thought. 😉🌂⛳

          1. I’m still waiting for the cheque, 10 years now. 🧱😏

            His Sunday golf nick name was The Loan arranger.

    5. And I can tell and assure you that you are not alone.
      We recently have had similar nightmares in our bank.
      Our lab had develop a limp. We took her to the local veterinary and they prescribed a medication I had to send away for, it cost a lot of money. After one dose of the liquid, she was sick everywhere and had terrible diarrhoea. I took her back and they gave me a ‘free consultation’ and then suggested she had three separate x-rays on one leg !!! Estimated to cost over 600 pounds. I did some online research and found ,YOU MOVE’. It cured her link within two weeks. Two a day.
      Now one every morning does the job.

      1. You Move is good stuff. My dog’s problem is wear and tear in the discs of his spine due to his advanced age. Occasionally, usually when he’s just got out of bed, he looks as though his back legs don’t belong to him, then once he gets moving it improves.

        1. I think I told you in a reply the other night about ‘Old Nick’, my mother’s dog. His back legs got very bad in his last few months, and when Mum let him out for a wee, some nosy neighbour called the RSPCA. She didn’t deserve that. Eventually, as the vet could do no more for him she had to have him put to sleep. I don’t think medications were as good in the 1950s.

          1. There are always nosy idiots who’ll interfere when not needed. They are like the prats who feed horses grass cuttings because they are grass – yes, but they are chopped short and ball up then cause colic (and a huge vet’s bill if the horse survives) or call the RSPCA when hardy natives are kept on nearly bare paddocks because they are prone to laminitis.

    6. May I respectfully suggest another method: bank on-line. I happened to have a fairly major job done today. I didn’t know the payee’s sort code nor his account number. Having been given both while he was here I entered same into my list of on-line payees and transferred said funds to the payee in minutes.

      1. Yes – it is very easy to do that these days – but I think Conway was trying to transfer his own funds from one account to his current account as he wanted to pay by cheque. He would still have needed to transfer his funds from one account to the other.

        1. That is also easy to do on-line. I did it a few days ago.

          It may seem to some that I’m trying to be a clever d**k. I’m not. It’s just that we have lost our two bank branches in about two years. Needs must, etc.

          1. Fine as long as your Internet is working. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere BTL, I had NO Internet for eight days not long ago. I do actually have an Internet account and can transfer money from my Internet saver to my Internet current account, but it has been proving more trouble than it’s worth with glitches their end meaning I can’t access it, so I keep very little money in it.

          2. If the internet goes down, the country really will come to a standstill. So what are the odds that it goes down fairly soon?

          3. At the start of the pandemic, I was expecting the internet to be so overloaded that outages would be frequent. I am still surprised that it has been so robust but am grateful to the unknown people who kept it going.

          4. Do you have a mobile phone which is reasonably “smart”? I can use my phone to access my on-line bank accounts and also use it as a hotspot so that I can connect to the internet from my computer.

          5. No. My phone sends and receives calls and sends and receives texts. It doesn’t even have a camera!

        2. That is also easy to do on-line. I did it a few days ago.

          It may seem to some that I’m trying to be a clever d**k. I’m not. It’s just that we have lost our two bank branches in about two years. Needs must, etc.

      2. I paid my TV licence by cheque and it didn’t please them. They have asked me to pay electronically but I will have to think about that. I have lots of unused cheques.

    7. Here’s hoping that I don’t get a similar runaround when I go to withdraw cash next week for some work that I am having done.

      It is a small town bank though, I had to collect a new credit card a few months ago so I went armed with the requisite ID to be greeted with “Hi Richard, are you here to pick up your new card – here it is”.

    8. We have been refunded (at long last and a lot of confusion that I won’t go into) quite a bit of money for a cancelled holiday. The money had to be refunded back to the original credit card. Fine. The money finally arrived and has been credited to us. Now we want to get the money sent to our bank account instead of being in considerable credit on the card.
      We need a security code to do that. We don’t have one, so the card company (I won’t mention names, but every little hasn’t helped so far) has said they’d send one in the post.
      Five times.
      That’s five phone calls, and five codes not received. Two were supposed to be by recorded delivery.
      We finally found out that they had our address slightly wrong, but as we receive all the bills ok, we can’t see why this bl**** code hasn’t turned up, as the house number and postcode should ensure it gets to us.
      They could send the code to the mobile phone, but MOH’s phone doesn’t work, and they won’t send it to mine.
      In the meantime, despite being able to answer all the security questions, they can’t transfer the money to our bank.

      Eventually, when it does get sorted, at least we’re theoretically getting £100 compensation.

      I had a similar situation with my John Lewis credit card, and the holiday money that was refunded to that card was sorted out in no time. No problem.

      1. Well that’s one problem Canadians don’t have. The airlines have issued credits and are refusing cash back. The government is telling the airlines no bailout until customers get cash refunds.

        Stale mate. No one is moving, the airlines are closing more and more routes and getting closer to insolvency.

        1. Ditto cruise lines, though some are already sailing in very limited numbers, and others are hoping the US will open up at a soon. I’m not so sure.

        1. The PTB are definitely deadly serious. I was just saying to MOH this evening that I am convinced I had Covid in February because I ticked all the symptoms boxes. “If you did, I’d have got it and I didn’t”. That’s because it can’t be as easily transmissible as they’re making out; I kept washing my hands, following basic hygiene rules and took to my bed for five days.

          1. I had a nasty virus in March (Covid? No idea).
            MOH didn’t catch it, though was sort of off-colour and food for a few days, nothing more.

            I still don’t personally know anyone who’s had it.

          2. I work with a Swede who had it, and I suspect I had it too, end of February 2020. I called it “unflu”, ‘cos it was like flu but misssing a symptom or two.

          3. I was informed that someone I know had had it and was “quite poorly” but has now recovered.

          4. We have a couple of friends – both over 70 – who certainly didn’t enjoy the experience a few weeks ago, but both are now fine.

          5. My ex had “the worst ‘flu ever” over the New Year period. She was at my place over Xmas, and I at hers in mid-January. Early Feb, I had a few fleeting symptoms: shortness of breath for a couple of hours, lack of taste or smell for half a day, and a slightly runny nose. If it was the ‘Rona, my T-cells worked.

          6. I have a covid test on Sunday morning before my op but old man and I are pretty sure we had it back in February. He tested positive for the anti body so I hope I’ll be the same! Otherwise the op is off!

          7. Mrs VVOF and youngest daughter over Christmas. It did look to me as if they suffered from a typical winter cold/bug although certain foods and drinks tasting awful was out of the ordinary.
            I seemed to have escaped it, perhaps my cold last February was Covid and I now have some form of immunity?

          8. We are convinced MB had it last late January into February. Dry, unproductive cough for over a fortnight; general weakness – I’ve never known him to stay in bed so long; breathless and having to stop halfway up the stairs. If it’s so catching, I must have caught it but with no discernible illness. I have absolutely no idea if that was the case.

          9. Hmm, I have those symptoms right now, Anne, and have had them since at least the beginning of Autumn.

            Since I have both COPD and chronic heart disease, I have just put it down to that. Now you make me wonder.

          10. The bug I had last January came with a cough that lasted several weeks – but otherwise I wasn’t particularly ill. Who knows what we had – it probably gave us some immunity during the first wave – but I’m sure keeping us locked up now is bad for our immune systems.

        1. I am sure that’s what they have in mind, Johnny. The saying implies that people joke about things, but underneath they are true.

    3. https://mobile.twitter.com/ZNeveri/status/1349460356595376133

      Zol Neveri: CLIP FROM LAST YEAR IN THE SPRING OF 2020.THIS AGED VERY VERY WELL

      This guy predicted everything, but he’s just a conspiracy theorist I suspect…

        1. Brave words Boss, I hope you have alternatives planned when big tech comes after us for not being “on message”.

          1. 328522+up ticks,
            Evening VVOF,
            Surely better than whispering the truth behind closed doors is it not, if not then it is a well known fact they will come for you, me,
            whoever it suits them.

  94. 328522+ up ticks,
    breitbart,

    UK Police Chief: ‘Now Is Really Not the Time’ for Freedom of Speech, Right to Assembly,

    To me that signals more of a perfect storm material is being prepared on par with the mayday nine month delay.

    2. https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/lockdown-police-constables-perspective

      Lockdown: A police constable’s perspective

    3. The women on the bench in Bournemouth were quite clearly imported trouble makers ..

      Dorset police are probably held in great respect , and they have a heck of a lot to deal with re problems imported from other parts of the country .

  96. One for ogga. Which credible centre-right party should we have voted for back in December 2019 GE?

    1. Nope, no moment, too much ego at stake.

      I am surprised that hasn’t happened more (as far as we know), how many of these 80+ year olds were in decent health?

      1. 328522+up ticks,
        Evening R,
        The gatesee knows that and it is work in progress
        to bring about a change in ownership I would say.

        1. Apparently 5 million acres of farmland under Chinese ownership and you worry about Gates?

    1. Dear Conway,

      I posted my number in case you ever wanted to call a complete stranger – or just for the hell of it. Naturally, you’re out doing something today, so despite it having been rather cryptic, I have now taken it down. I’ll try again tomorrow.

      1. That’s very kind of you. I don’t like to be a bother. I didn’t see it because on Saturday I watch the racing and am often later than usual reaching the site.

    1. Still think you and ogga should start your own channel. You’re as daft as each other.

      ETA: damask_rose downvoted me. There’s a surprise 🙂

  102. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/15/freedom-weary-west-must-not-end-upseeing-chinas-tyranny-safe/

    Under Charles Moore’s article I replied to a comment about the legitimacy of the US election. My comment was immediately withdrawn as was the comment to which I was replying.
    The DT comments section is now a complete waste of time. Either no comments are allowed (as is the case with all articles about the US elections) but, just as Twitter and Facebook and google are doing, all those who even question the MSM line are immediately removed from expressing their views by the DT.
    I wish the Daily Telegraph could at least have the honesty to admit that it is now vehemently against free speech.

    2. Try looking around the US press, it is way beyond gloating at a Trump loss.

      I don’t know if this is a concerted effort to shut down possible violence before Wednesday or something deeper. Having just seen the claim that they thwarted a plot to assassinate Pence, I can see them trying to control communications. It will not work of course, just send the real nut jobs under cover.

    3. The Telegraph has been a busted flush for months. It has deteriorated into an ambivalent left wing rag ever since, ever since Conrad Black was disposed of.

      Hopefully he will eventually be persuaded to return and put matters to rights.

  103. 328522+ up ticks,
    GG, a quite word, I do believe one of the crew has been drinking seawater,the flecks of foam within comments are getting more noticeable, no names no pack….

    1. Which credible centre-right party should we have voted for back in 2019 GE ogga?

      Why will you loons never answer that question?

          1. Damn, I was hoping to see who it was, I certainly need a viable option over here in Canada.

          3. Careful, Trudeau would like nothing more than being invited over to run the UK!

            Well to be honest, I would like him to be invited somewhere.

        2. You are correct, only pretend centre-right party. Events has shown that to be so true. Of course the other options did include voting for the deranged loony left.
          That’s why I never voted.

          2. 328522+ up ticks,
            Evening VVOF,
            Batten was making good headway with UKIP and would have been a credible
            opposition but the UKIp
            nec / farage treachery put that down aiding & abetting johnson, with farage standing down a good % of his candidates.

        3. 328522+ up ticks,
          N,
          If you voted for this tory party as many did then they must look internally and admit to themselves even a great many of our malady’s as a country are due to the
          toxic trio & supporters.
          Also keep in,mind to continue to support a failed
          many times political entity
          is not the answer, but it sure is 99% of the ongoing problem.

          1. Who voted for and elected UKIP’s leaders and NEC members? You braindead numpties, no-one else.
            Sort out your own problems fella before you try telling the rest of us we got it wrong.

          3. I didn’t vote at all. Can’t bring myself to back the Tories until they show signs of recovery from the Blair delusion and the Open Borders moneybags.

          4. 328553+ up ticks,
            Morning N,
            I would never in normal times advise Not to vote
            But thanks to the input of these three party’s over the decades these are far from being normal times.

            IMO the electorate are fighting a more personal war,within a greater war, they want their party in
            power regardless of the fact the three party’s lab/lib/con are the creators of the peoples and the Countries problems, as the party’s have proven to be especially over the last three decades,of the same ilk.

            Unless an opposition party is formed and given serious support the electorate following the present party before Country mode of voting will,
            even unintentionally, bring about the final demise
            of these once decent Isles.

  104. ”Judge Releases Dominion Audit Report; Claims System ‘Designed’ To ‘Create Systemic Fraud’’

    “The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud.”

    https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-releases-dominion-audit-report-report-claims-system-designed-to-create-systemic-fraud

    1. Not that it matters:

      The Michigan Secretary of State’s office also issued a response, which reads in part, “The report is actually another in a long stream of misguided, vague and dubious assertions designed to erode public confidence in the November presidential election.” The statement goes on to say, “The qualifications of those who authored the report are suspect, with no evidence or credentials provided to back up their ‘expertise.’ Authors in the report also make unverified and unsupported claims that ‘fraud,’ ‘intentional errors’ and ’bad faith’ decisions made by election officials led them to their conclusions in the report. Moreover, many of their assertions are unsupported by evidence, with some even constituting hearsay and clearly show that the authors lack first-hand knowledge of events.”

        1. The report is the same Michigan, it is Antrim county which is supposedly strongly republican.

          I only know Detroit and Ann Arbour, I don’t know where Antrim is.
          .

          1. This side of the pond, Antrim is the last refuge of we Brits in NI.

            “He said: “Harris is of mixed race, her father is Jamaican and her mother is from India. Her fourth Great Grandpa, as they say in the US, was a Mr Hamilton Brown. Hamilton was born in Antrim in 1776.”

          2. I had enjoyable times in Detroit and Ann Arbor. I used to work for a company based in Saline.

        2. 328522+ up ticks,
          Evening PP,
          Lit up in neon.
          One in particular is highly suspect with down ticking
          anti paedophile post’s.

        3. Polly, you must accept that a great deal of nonsense is being spread around on the internet.
          The one thing that has not been explained away is the gap followed by the jumps in Biden votes in several states. Everything else has been debunked or is obvious BS.
          In the point that you quote above, the code for the Dominion machines on the day of the election isn’t in the open, and never will be. It is evidence that we don’t have. This report is pure speculation.

          These vote graphs combined with the bellweather counties mostly going for Trump, provide the circumstantial evidence that is hard to explain in any other way than cheating (and as far as I’m aware, nobody has come up with an alternative explanation).
          This
          https://fsociety.substack.com/p/2020-election-could-trumps-claims-have-merit
          and this
          https://www.alipac.us/f9/anomalies-vote-counts-their-effects-election-2020-a-380753/

          The above pages analyse real information, and in my opinion, cast reasonable doubt on the election result.
          Everything else is just suspicion. You have to distinguish between information that has merit, and information that is likely to be false.

          If Biden were really interested in healing, he would understand that an election must be seen to be honest, and would throw out the Dominion machines and return to a manual count, even if it’s more expensive or time-consuming. But we all know that’s not going to happen. I expect they will remember to fix the bellweather counties too next time.

  106. Saturday 16th January, 2021

    The Legal Beagle Bill

    A Very Happy Birthday

    and

    A Multitude of Happy Returns

    with love

    from Caroline and Richard

    Thank you for introducing us to the Nottlers’ forum where we have wasted many happy hours!

    Lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYwYHZou5qs

    1. Rik, sorry to be bossy
      Why are you drinking Bourbon at 3.30am
      A hot chocolate is more soothing .

      Your head will hurt like hell this morning .

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