Friday 17 July: The Government should embrace the transformation of working life

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/16/lettersthe-government-should-embrace-transformation-working/

751 thoughts on “Friday 17 July: The Government should embrace the transformation of working life”

      1. Fourth today! At least I got up earlier than yesterday and seem to be full of energy unlike yesterday. Must be the approaching weekend! Morning to all NoTTLers.

        1. The sun was shining here this morning, after weeks of grey misery. It always energises me! (It’s gone now, but I’m still in the mood for doing.)

    1. Morning Ogga,

      The egalitarian myth is of course in reality a naked lust for power.

      1. Good morning, Our Susan. I don’t know whether you knew him, but Canon Bill Scott (Westminster Abbey, Chaplain to the Queen etc etc) died this morning after a long illness.

        A lovely, self-effacing man and a real priest of the old school.

        1. Morning Bill,

          I didn’t but that’s very sad. I fear there are fewer and fewer of the “old school”. As you might have noticed, now that the churches have reopened, I’ve begun going to St Barts in the City. I don’t agree with everything their rector posts on his Twitter account but he is at least anti-woke and anti-Marxism and the services use 1662 language, with readings from the King James Version. Also, even with just an organist and cantor, the music is superb. The PCC there have committed to continuing to support their professional choir.

          1. He was just 74. I am trying to get The Times interested in doing an obituary for him. One of the Queen’s former ladies in waiting knew him well and was visiting till almost the very end; she is on the case – plus some people from the Abbey.

            Sad to say – well, for others, it is sad – I have completely lost any faith that I had. I listen to Choral Evensong for the music; I play 18th C Masses on CD; I enjoy hearing the proper Bible read. But years of dealing with appalling “priests” – finally drove me out of the church for good.

          2. The ‘church’ is the congregation of people, not the priests or the building, Bill.

          4. Yes Hugh! You’re right! Good job I refrained – I have my reputation to think about!

    1. Yo clyde

      The engine will travel to the Right, at a pace.

      The true state of UK would best be portrayed by both engines being marked PULL. ie motionless stagnation as they go in opposite directions

      1. Of course the push me pull you was an invention of Hugh Lofting’s Dr Doolittle.

        Our government ministers, led by Johnson, certainly do little to improve our lives at the moment.

    4. Even I’m confused now.

      Go back to the office – but social distance

      Go shopping – but wear a mask

      Now, the parents can’t as the schools are closed.

      If I go back into the office it’s to speak to the rest of my gang – but I won’t be able to.

      I don’t want to go shopping wearing a mask. It’s difficult to breathe, crushes communication and is dehumanising.

      There is absolutely no reason for me to go back in to the office (I take my lunch with me anyway), I’m saving a fortune in travel costs and working a shorter day and getting more done. As for shopping as a casual event, flip off. It’ll be once a week unless in extremis.

  5. Good morning all.

    Sunny/cloudy.

    2 yo shredded wheat for brekkers, as fresh as the day it was packed.

    2. Iceland recently opened close to us. Shredded wheat for breakfast whenever I want! Also shreddies, Heinz salad cream and occasionally Branston Pickle available!

    3. I’m surprised after all that time in the box it wasn’t Shrouded wheat….

      Morning Peddy et al.

      1. ‘Morning, Steve.

        I was pleasantly surprised at its condition. I bought a jumbo sized Special K on Wednesday, but that’s still in the car.

    1. Unfortunately the tw@ts are coming to the Highlands too and bringing their litter

  7. PM: Go back to work; use public transport

    “Expert”: Stay at home; avoid public transport

    Is this called “singing from the same songsheet”?

    1. The technical term is not knowing your @rse from your elbow.
      Morning, Willum.

      1. It also means that by giving conflicting advice one of them will always be able to say ” I told you so”.

  8. SIR – Should a Conservative government not trust the people and their employers to use wisely the savings made in time and money by not commuting or maintaining office space? The enormous gains – in my case, two hours and £10.50 a day – should not be ignored just to save the likes of Pret a Manger.

    The future world in which most “office” workers actually work from home most of the time is to be welcomed, not feared, by the Government. The economy will find new jobs for the coffee-shop workers, and new uses for office buildings.

    Just as I have found that coffee made at home using higher quality ingredients tastes better and is cheaper, small gains will be dispersed on a massive scale by this transformation.

    William Fisher

    Theydon Bois, Essex

    SIR – While local shops and businesses have benefitted from people working from home, those near offices and workplaces have seen income decline.

    As home working becomes increasingly popular, the conversion of offices to homes would create new villages in city centres and boost the surrounding economies. The need to commute would decline, as would the associated costs, stress and pollution.

    Bob Stebbings

    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

    SIR – Lampposts in our high street sport posters saying “Welcome back to the high street” and others saying “Please leave the high street as soon as you have finished shopping”. There is also confusion over face masks: first we were told they were ineffective, now we will have to wear them to shop. I will continue to shop online.

    Currently, having a group of socially distanced friends in the garden for a beer is closer to the atmosphere of a pub, where you have to struggle with mobile-phone apps and QR codes.

    Until we have a vaccine, high streets and pubs will suffer.

    Mike Penberth

    Soham, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – I agree with Christine Whittemore (Letters, July 14) about the need to browse in shops. I have to feel clothes before I buy them. When browsing, I often find bargains and buy more than I had anticipated, which ultimately increases the Treasury’s purse.

    Shopping at present, which involves being herded in and out of a shop as quickly as possible, is not conducive to spending and improving the economy.

    Barbara Robinson

    Minehead, Somerset

    SIR – I have been trying for some months now to open a new business account with my bank, Lloyds, but am advised in a recorded message that, due to Covid-19, no new business accounts are being opened online, over the telephone or in person at a branch.

    How can the Government ever hope to see an economic regeneration with such a lack of cooperation from banks?

    Andrew Segal

    Hampton, Middlesex

    1. Would that be her ‘beloved rescue dog’?
      H’mmmm ….. the dog looks distinctly ginger.

    2. Soon it will be Harry’s turn in the dog house.

      This reminds me of a rather flamboyant ex-RAF officer in the village where I was a boy. He had an over exuberant moustache and libido and he ran off with a fancy woman taking the family dog, Harris (named after Bomber), with him

      His wife wrote immediately to the fancy woman saying; “You’re welcome to Denis but please send Harris home.”

  12. Morning, all Y’all. Sunny night, was blinded by it shining in the window at 11 last night… now clouding over. More roof work today – I’m getting the hang of it, although the wagtails are still not pleased.

    1. Good morning , hope your roof is accessible to House and Sand Martin’s
      they like to nest in the rafters.

      2. Yup, lots of external rafters just right for nesting on. Now freshly painted.

          1. These are part of the construction, I doubt they were made for birds – but the happy thing is, they are there for birds… who like it!

  13. British Airways is to scrap its entire fleet of jumbo jets with immediate effect, the Daily Mail can reveal.

    The nation’s flag carrier is the world’s last major operator of the iconic Boeing 747 ‘Queen of the Skies’, which has been in service with the airline since 1971.

    It had 31 jumbo jets in use before the coronavirus crisis forced bosses to park the entire fleet at airports across the country.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8531777/End-BA-jumbo-jets-British-Airways-scraps-ENTIRE-FLEET-iconic-747-planes.html

    1. Air France, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines & a few others are still operating 747s, so BA isn’t the last.

    2. A pity, but that day was going to come eventually.
      I wonder how many will actually be scrapped as opposed to converted to freighters?

      Magnificent bits of machinery though.

  14. Good morning from the Saxon daughter of Alfred of Wessex.
    A bright and sunny morning with lots of butterflies in my bush.
    I’m off to the farm shop now for some hunting and gathering of food supplies
    as Saxon warrior Queens tend to do.

    1. Umm… “lots of butterflies in my bush” – that could be open to interpretation of a non-horticultural variety… as in, “Oo-er missis!”
      Morning, Æthelfled!

      3. I see I’m not the only one who wondered if it was some sort of obscure euphemism I hadn’t come across before.

  16. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Jihadi bride Shamima Begum is coming back… so why DO our judges put the interests of terror suspects ahead of the safety of the rest of us?

    Once jihadi bride Shamima Begum sets foot on British soil again, what do you think the chances are of her ever being deported?

    Less than zero.

    Even if she fails in her legal bid to have her UK citizenship reinstated, she is certain to be granted ‘exceptional leave’ to remain.

    For a start, no country would agree to take her. The Syrians will be glad to see the back of Begum, who has been housed in a refugee camp since the collapse of the Isis caliphate. Bangladesh, her family’s ancestral homeland, don’t want her. Why would they?

    For four years, she was a devoted member of the world’s nastiest terrorist organisation, which raped, murdered, maimed and enslaved tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

    If Izal hadn’t been defeated militarily, does anyone seriously believe she’d be so desperate to return ‘home’ to London?

    After a Times correspondent tracked her down last year, she was unrepentant.

    ‘When I saw my first severed head in a bin, it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on a battlefield, an enemy of Islam.’

    The fact that said head may have once belonged to a selfless British aid worker didn’t seem to bother her. As far as she was concerned, it served him right for being a filthy infidel.

    We still don’t know precisely what role Begum played. She says she joined Izal to marry a jihadi and give birth to the next generation of Islamist terrorists. Apparently, she had three children by her Dutch convert husband, but they all died.

    There are also unconfirmed rumours that she commanded a women’s vigilante brigade, punishing other jihadi brides who strayed from the path of righteousness. We’ll probably never find out the truth.

    What we do know is that, along with two schoolfriends, she left her home in Bethnal Green, renounced her British citizenship and enthusiastically signed up for the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which controlled thousands of square miles of Iraq and Syria with ruthless and indiscriminate force.

    Begum’s apologists ask us to take into account her tender age. She was an impressionable teenager, they insist, who can’t be held responsible for embracing a romantic notion of Islamist rebellion.

    But most girls of 15 rebel by getting a tattoo or dyeing their hair green, not by running off to join a fanatical death cult thousands of miles away.

    It’s said she was ‘radicalised’ after watching videos of hostages being beheaded, men in cages being set on fire and children mutilated.

    As I wrote at the time, who looks at such depraved, sadistic material and concludes: ‘I wouldn’t mind some of that?’

    She may only have been the soppy slip of a girl of her supporters’ imagining, but she wasn’t much older than those children slaughtered savagely at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, a terrorist attack for which her comrades claimed responsibility.

    Last year, she said: ‘I’m not the silly 15-year-old who ran away.’ That’s what has always worried me. She’s a hardened, grown woman with battlefield experience.

    Once she’s back here, we can but hope she will repent and lead a blameless, peaceful life in obscurity.

    But what if she decides to strap on a suicide belt and blow herself up on the Central Line? Would you take the risk?

    Still, we should have seen yesterday’s Court of Appeal decision coming.

    Judges in thrall to the yuman rites racket usually bend over backwards to put the interests of terror suspects ahead of the safety of the population.

    The court ruled that she must be allowed to return to Britain to plead her case. ‘Fairness and justice must . . . outweigh national security concerns.’ Why?

    Here’s yet one more example, as if another was needed after the perverse Brexit judgments in the Supreme Court, that the aloof, elitist legal establishment is hopelessly out of touch with the British people’s sense of fair play.

    More to the point, why is it necessary to fly Begum home, probably within days? Yes, we’re a civilised country and the rule of law should be sacrosanct.

    But during the pandemic, courts have been taking evidence remotely. If Zoom is good enough for the Johnny Depp trial, why isn’t it good enough for Begum?

    Who will stand surety for her? Perhaps Labour’s Pixie Balls-Cooper could offer her a bed, given her legendary generosity towards refugees from Syria.

    We can only hope Ministers are so angry with the ruling they resist the temptation to charter a private jet at our expense to bring Begum back — which they did previously with British ‘residents’ released from Guantanamo Bay.

    She’s probably already pencilled in for the 8.10am interview slot on Radio 4’s Today programme, followed by a sympathetic profile in the Guardian and a song and dance number on Strictly.

    And once Begum wins her case — which is almost inevitable — it will open the floodgates for the repatriation of other ‘British’ jihadis and their brides.

    Alarmingly, an estimated 450 Izal fighters are already back here. Only 40 of them have ever been charged with terror offences.

    Will Begum be arrested by the Funny People immediately she touches down back in Blighty? I wouldn’t hold your breath.

    She has engaged the Left-wing law firm Birnberg Peirce, co-founded by Jean Gareth Peirce, who has been the go-to gal for terror suspects since the heyday of the IRA.

    No doubt legal aid will be picking up the bill and, when Begum is safely ensconced back in East London, the mug British taxpayer will continue to lavish her with benefits ad infinitum.

    The case is scheduled to last well into 2021. Ker-ching!!

    And even if, by some unlikely miracle, she loses, the chances of her ever being kicked out are right up there with the long-term prospects of a snowball in Hell.

    Makes you proud to be British.

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

    Plans to get us out of our cars and onto electric scooters have already run into a series of road blocks.

    Rachel Maclean, who is described as the ‘Future of Transport’ minister, said the Government didn’t want to rush in something ‘we might regret later’.

    Legalised e-scooters could present an attractive alternative for female commuters who don’t want to cycle wearing a dress.

    But they’ve hit inevitable opposition from safety campaigners.

    The Government wants e-scooters to have a top speed of 15.5mph, so they have sufficient power to tackle steep hills and carry ‘heavier users’.

    Presumably, these ‘heavier users’ are all those XXXL punters patriotically packing away double cheeseburgers under Dishi Rishi’s cut-price happy meal deal. The elf’n’safety brigade say 15.5mph is way too fast.

    There are also fears that e-scooter jockeys could drive them on pavements. And for some reason, you will only be allowed to hire, not own, one.

    Is this to prevent mod revivalists customising them with a dozen chrome mirrors, a 10ft whip aerial and an Esso tiger tail, like Sting in Quadrophenia?

    If these scooters ever get the green light, I have visions of convoys heading to Brighton every Bank Holiday, for a punch-up with eco-friendly rockers on electric motorbikes.

    There’ll be porky blokes in World Cup Willie parkas stuffing their faces with drive-thru Big Macs, and Leslie Ash hanging off the back in a Ben Sherman shirt, Tonic mini-skirt and a pair of tasselled loafers.

    And what are elf’n’safety going to do when Phil Daniels drives his electric scooter off Beachy Head?

    Everybody back on the coach!
    ******************************************************************************

    We can offend you. Fact!

    Ricky Gervais wouldn’t get away with his brilliant new Netflix comedy After Life on conventional TV. Some of the jokes are unprintable in a family newspaper.

    They’d give the woke warriors serious conniptions, especially one about making love to a dwarf. (That’s all I’m telling you.)

    Gervais admits he couldn’t make The Office on the BBC these days under the prevailing censorious orthodoxy, which has destroyed freedom of expression.

    But why should the Twitter mob be allowed to tyrannise the rest of us? As Gervais told the Radio Times: ‘Just because you’re offended, it doesn’t mean you’re right.’

    That could have been me speaking. Or as David Brent would say: FACT!

    1. A few things missing, Dolly..

      What has been the influence of Open Society on the judiciary ?

      Who really benefits from the Human Rights Act ?

      Where did the Human Rights Act originate ?

      The 1996 New York meeting between Blair and Soros.

    2. Good morning all.
      Smoke and mirrors. The Begum woman was a child when she evaded airport security at one of the European Union’s largest airports some six years ago.
      London Gatwick Airport: thousands of trained workers, sophisiticated security equipment, armed police strutting around all day and a salary bill amounting to many millions of pounds. Yet it transpires that all that effort and expenditure was useless against the power and might of three unaccompanied London schoolgirls. Incompetence or malice aforethought? Well, what they did would not have been possible if they had been booked on an El Al flight, nor if they had been Spanish citizens.
      I blame years of central government obstinately resisting biometric ID.

    3. Who’s paying all these lawyers fighting for Begum to come here?

      She’s an enemy combatant, a terrorist and a traitor. She won’t have a day of peace to herself unless she is given an entirely new life. At tax payers expense. No doubt also given a free house – again on the tax payer.

      Of course she wants to cmoe here!

  17. Princess Anne blasts her brother Prince Charles’ views on climate change and veganism… and insists GM food is great too
    *The Queen’s daughter gave an interview to mark her 70th birthday next month
    *Conversations with Prince Charles are ‘short’ due to wildly differing opinions
    *Princess Anne also revealed that she wouldn’t live anywhere but in the country

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8531623/Princess-Anne-blasts-brother-Prince-Charles-views-climate-change-veganism.html

    i.e….She’s ‘normal’

    1. An argument for the re-instatement of the Witan, who ‘elected’ the next monarch from the Royal Family? If so, who would be elected – Charles, Anne, Andrew or Edward?

  18. Candace Owens

    “Maybe I live in a box, but I’ve never met a single black American who was a slave or a single white American who was a slave owner.

    I’ve only come across lazy people who believe that those of us who work ought to support them.

    Human parasites. And they come in every race.”

  19. 321427+ up; ticks,
    I can only put it down to the fact that those legal bods of the establishment
    are thinking of the future when deciding a terrorist breeding unit still with child bearing hips be allowed potential nursery facilities within the UNITED KINGDOM.
    Anybody especially of the lab/lib/con coalition supporting / voting ilk notice
    our armed forces are being whittled down in number and castigated via the courts whilst anything even potentially threatening terrorism is given succour, Dover invasion site shows that quite clearly.

  20. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/064cbd40611603c1dfc5d4fcb065b4c35d48c0c2eba8d0f3e059ba9b8657c20f.png
    The only good thing about this story is the fact that Solar Orbiter was made in Stig’s home town and its manufacture no doubt put a lot of money into the local economy.

    The down side is there is no “far side of the sun”. The sun is a warm yellow disc stuck to a blue background. I see it every day when there are no clouds (curtains) hiding it. You cannot fly a spacecraft to the “far side” of something that — like this flat earth we live on — is not a sphere!

    The only Far Side I know of is Gary Larson’s excellent cartoon series.

    Grizzly
    (Founder member: The Flat Sun Society).

    PS If anyone wishes to join the FSS, send me your dosh in a brown envelope and I’ll get back to you.

    2. I understand the Sun rotates

      Solar rotation varies with latitude. The Sun is not a solid body, but is composed of a gaseous plasma. Different latitudes rotate at different periods (differential rotation). The source of this differential rotation is an area of current research in solar astronomy[1]. The rate of surface rotation is observed to be the fastest at the equator (latitude φ = 0°) and to decrease as latitude increases. The solar rotation period is 24.47 days at the equator and almost 38 days at the poles.

        1. Well the Solar Climate Warmists were right all the ice at the poles has long ago melted……

        2. Mr. Rashid gets everywhere.
          Didn’t you know he controlled the Sun? (And possibly the Times and Groaniad, as well.)

          2. Yhey took some lights with them. Ever-Ready torches, actually, and spare batteries.

  21. Morning hall.
    Kevin Myers in the Spec. I like his description of Titter (sic).
    Why
    does the most important writer in English, J.K. Rowling, haunt the
    sewers of the Twittersphere? Why try to deal with the many complexities
    of transgenderism in a medium that has bizarrely reinvented the brevity
    of the telegram, but without its Victorian culture of complexity,
    courtesy and calm? Indeed, Twitter prizes a quite different Victorian
    moral order, namely that of Jack the Ripper, as the baying muezzins of
    social media hourly pronounce the end of someone’s reputation in the
    merciless perpetuity of the internet.
    This
    time three years ago, I was a well-known journalist in Ireland, with a
    modest profile in Britain. On the last weekend of July, on the basis of a
    poorly written column in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times
    about the pay differentials in the BBC, London social media vilified
    me. I was then denounced worldwide as a misogynistic, anti-Semitic
    Holocaust-denier. One of my most successful accusers was J.K. Rowling.

    And now it is her turn, as her entirely justifiable scepticism over the
    dogmas of transgenderism have rendered her into what she is clearly not,
    that mythical beast, a ‘transphobe’. So welcome to the world you helped
    create, J.K.
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/welcome-to-the-world-you-created-j-k-rowling

  22. Mail to a Conservative MP…………………….

    ”Where do the conflicts, contradictions and absurdities relating to so called ”green energy” originate, Holmes ?”

    ”The answer to that question, Watson, is pretty obvious. To the 1996 Blair/ S meeting at the New York Plaza where S set out to ”persuade” Tony Blair to do everything his way if he won in 1997. Just as he did with Obama. Doubtlessly through providing campaign funds, just as he did with Obama, and the promise of more riches to come, just as he did with Obama.

    Hence the Human Rights Act which was first up in 1998, an S favorite and intended, in my opinion, as the foundation of his plan to subvert the UK. This was followed by a range of progressive and destructive legislation and policy, including ”no upper limit” leading to the Climate Change Act 2008.”

    ”Was David Cameron really the heir to Blair, Holmes ?”

    ”It certainly looks like it, Watson, because virtually all Cameron’s policies are copies of S policies, including, imho, the Marriage Act and the removal of Gaddafi.

    You will note, Watson, that certain kind and well meaning individuals dismiss the foregoing as a ”conspiracy theory” but perhaps even they are persuaded by the latest evidence which shows that former Prime Minister Cameron apparently has S money in his pocket……….

    ”In May 2017 the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) granted Cameron’s appointment as a Director of U2 Frontman Bono’s One Foundation which is also supported by Bill Gates and George Soros’s Open Society”

    ”Yes, I see your point, Holmes, no wonder David Cameron apparently accidentally on purpose forgot to put Open Society and S in his autobiography.

    That would have made everything all too obvious !”

    Have a great day….

    Polly

    2. Makes a change from claiming they were traumatised by the death of their pet goldfish…

      1. I still have not got over watching my black molly die before my eyes in 1998. He even waggled his fin at me to say farewell.

        Rest in peace, dear Choco. We will make them pay.

    1. The revised “headstone” (see NoTTL yesterday) doesn’t even mention that the dog was black – in case some coon goes into a swoon about it.

      1. Hmmm. Some scope for a few new expressions:
        coonswoon, coonfit, coonshame, …

    3. Most of these people would not qualify for a job as a slave. There have to be some standards.

    1. Really the MSM are the glove-puppets of the elite, very unhappy about the success of Trump, Johnson, and other populists ,,,, and keen on confronting these governments with lockdowns. Poor Trump is in the hands of ithers here, but Johnson had the power, but not the backbone, to go for herd immunity …. a herd immunity which will make Sweden look very smart 12-18 months down the line.

  28. The prize for the most mendacious headline of the day is won by this contribution: “The right are in power everywhere – but they can’t stop playing the victim”.

    They aren’t even in power in the UK, unfortunately! But what can we expect from a young ‘boy’ who writes in the same paper as Polly of Tuscany?

    1. The champagne socialist – millionaire Italian estate owner….. That Toynbee?

      1. I’m always amazed that someone who failed their 11-plus and passed only one A level, managed to get a scholarship to St Anne’s Oxford. Couldn’t have anything to do with her connection to Arnold Toynbee, could it???

        2. Nepotism and socialism?
          Can’t be: socialists think the family is an evil patriarchal structure designed to oppress women.

      2. I think it must be the Welsh boyo, you know, the only one in the village.
        Note to self; I should read things properly.

    1. It gets worse, Tryers. As posted yesterday, they couldn’t even get Gibson’s decorations right; the Bars to his DFC and DSO are missing. Idiots!

  30. The Iraq war is finally getting some proper scrutiny – from a TV programme. 17 July 2020.

    This documentary (and the associated book) brings home the full enormity of the Iraq war. A phoney freedom cost an estimated quarter of a million Iraqis their lives. It destabilised a region and undoubtedly contributed to the collapse of order in Syria. It did nothing to halt terrorism in Britain or elsewhere, if anything the reverse. As for the financial cost, the fiasco consumed some $3tn. What those trillions might have done for good in the world is unimaginable.

    In sum, the Iraq war deserves to rank with the greatest – and most senseless – war crimes of our age. I am not of a punitive nature, but I find it extraordinary that the errors and horrors illustrated in this documentary should go unpunished. As for those who were “only obeying orders”, 1930s Europe was surely warning enough. War is too awful – and too seductive to a populist leader – for its risks and causes to escape searching democratic scrutiny. It rarely gets it. More than 15 years on, this film will have to do.

    Morning everyone. I am no fan of Jenkins but his summing up here is only at fault in its moderation. This war was a calamity with consequences far beyond its immediate results and not just for Iraq. It set in motion the forces that will see the eventual Islamification of Europe and the extinction of its Christian Civilisation. This process is actually speeding up. The single most powerful and cohesive political force in the UK, though you would never guess it, is the Islamic Community. It sits quietly while its enemies tear themselves to pieces over questionable history and Marxist dialectics. When these are exhausted it will step in and the UK will become a part of the European Caliphate.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/17/iraq-war-tv-programme-bush-blair

    1. 321427+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      It is so plain to see, it’s on the political daily menu whilst
      in the main chamber the instruction manual is in place between the two dispatch boxes.
      The khan is the prototype and the placement of the same nationwide is well into being, via councils etc,etc.
      They have a ready made host installed, plus a ready made army being topped up daily.
      The best of it is, is the fact that the incoming units are not only being monitored by the governance party but being met and assisted financially until they hear the call to arms.

    2. The Dagger of Islam was published in 1979. It highlighted islam as the most important political force. Everything foretold in that book is now coming true. It’s horrific.

    1. My favourite all time Band 😎
      “We may lose or we may win, but well never be here again,………”

  32. 321427+ up ticks,
    You must really feel for the current lab/lib/con supporter / voters torn between voting for a national death be drowning in cheap commodities via
    sweat shops etc,etc,a drawn out campaign ( chinese style )
    Or the more rapid head severance, rear exits being blown off,etc,etc, continuing until 100 % submission is in place ( islamic ideology style)

  33. According to a Bbc report, the definition of a ‘COVID death’ in England is anyone who dies with a positive test at any time before their death – even if their death was non-COVID related, e.g. being run down by a bus. No wonder our COVID death stats are high.

    1. Yoon K Loke & Carl Heneghan
      Why no one can ever recover from Covid-19 in England
      17 July 2020, 9:50am

      People living in England have become increasingly concerned in recent weeks, as Public Health England’s (PHE) figures demonstrate a relentless daily toll of more than a hundred Covid-associated deaths, several days a week.

      This is in stark contrast to the more reassuring recovery in neighbouring regions (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), where there are days with no Covid-associated deaths whatsoever.

      One reason for this is due to a statistical flaw in the way that PHE compiles ‘out of hospital’ deaths data, rather than any genuine difference between the regions of the UK:

      “’Linking data on confirmed positive cases (identified through testing by NHS and PHE laboratories and commercial partners) to the NHS Demographic Batch Service: when a patient dies, the NHS central register of patients is notified (this is not limited to deaths in hospitals). The list of all lab-confirmed cases is checked against the NHS central register each day, to check if any of the patients have died.’

      It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive for Covid, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid-positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.

      By this PHE definition, no one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death, even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.

      This is why the PHE figures vary substantially from day to day. For example, 16 new deaths were announced on 6 July, but the following day, 152 were reported – today’s figure is 66.

      https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltd60fa52f42f75fcb/5f11700a600d867e81bcb94b/17_CEBM2.png?format=jpg&width=720

      PHE data also confirms that more than 125,000 patients have been admitted to NHS hospitals for Covid, the majority being successfully treated and discharged. There are now fewer than 1,900 Covid patients in hospital. So, roughly 80,000 recovered patients in the community will continue being monitored by PHE for the daily death statistics. More and more people (who are mainly in the older age group) are being discharged to the community, but they clearly may die of other illnesses.

      This is why ‘out of hospital setting’ deaths remain constantly high, even though the Office for National Statistics data shows there have been fewer deaths than the five year average in the last three weeks, and NHS England data shows a moving average of 19 deaths per day in hospital.

      It’s time to fix this statistical flaw that leads to an over-exaggeration of Covid-associated deaths. One reasonable approach would be to define community Covid-related deaths as those that occurred within 21 days of a Covid positive test result.

      In summary, PHE’s definition of the daily death figures means that everyone who has ever had Covid at any time must die with Covid too. So, the Covid death toll in Britain up to July 2020 will eventually exceed 290,000, if the follow-up of every test-positive patient is of long enough duration.

      Prof. Yoon K Loke is Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia.

      Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and Director of Studies for the Evidence-Based Health Care Programmes. This article originally appeared on the CEBM website. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-no-one-can-ever-recover-from-covid-19-in-england

      1. Evidence-based medicine? With a data set like that? Joking, surely… please tell me it’s a joke.

        1. They’re the ones criticising the data. It’s Public Health England that’s been putting out the announcements and compiling it.

      2. IIRC, Scotland uses 28 days as the threshold. Whether they still include unrelated deaths within that period is anyone’s guess. Of course the obvious solution would be to determine whether COVID was a causal factor in the death, but that would involve more work by the penpushers.

    2. This whole Chinese Flu episode has been nothing but how to control the population with incessant advertising and daily 2 hour programmes to frighten even more. It is clear that the figures for deaths from it are meaningless as the ONS has stated. The public have been fed a concoction of lies, lies and false scientific and mathematical inaccuracies.

      It’s a farce from start to finish and instead of getting things back to normal immediately we are being exposed the ‘Government’ makes ridiculous statements with more and more bizarre spouting rather than take a one time hit and put and end to all the rubbish being spouted and cancel all these rules and regulations. Those with underlying conditions should decide for themselves what they should do to protect themselves.

      1. Good afternoon, Alf.

        Your response is the perfect antidote to all the slewed
        reporting……..and you kept your response polite!!
        You have more self control than I!!

        1. We went into (ghost) town this morning. Car MOT etc. V went into one shop I went to Sainsbury’s to get some water. Two ‘security’ men said this way please when the entrance was straight ahead. No, I said, the entrance is just there. They said we’re trying to keep you safe sir. I reminded them it was my responsibility to keep myself safe and not their’s. A young kade with a number counter was sitting outside the store and said go in.

          When I came out she said if you come again please come this way. I declined and said what difference would it make. ‘We’d prefer it if you came this way, sir’ I said no as I am fed up being told to do what other people want me to do and I will assess the risk to and nobody else can. I did say I was was not having a go at her but at the whole nonsense that’s going on in this country.

        2. Good afternoon G
          Apologies for my bad manners in not saying so on my earlier response.

      2. This morning, I caught the Beeb announcing billions for the NHS to deal with the second wave. It’s to keep using the private hospitals and to keep the Nightingale hospitals open. The Nightingale hospitals are empty! We’re broke and the economy is completely shot, so let’s throw some more dosh we don’t have at the already inefficient NHS. I had to walk out before my BP went through the roof.

        1. It seems he is intent on destroying our once great country at the speed of sound. Who could have imagined this in December last year. I feel at times I am glad to be in the autumn/twilight of my life. I takes a lot to make me feel depressed .

          1. I often express gratitude that I am old and thus won’t have to deal with the consequences of the balls up the current politicos are making of everything. I don’t have children, either, so I am not worried about their future. I can say I have done my best, having campaigned for alternatives (even if that wasn’t successful).

    3. Hancock is going to look into it, apparently.
      Except, if he was any bl00dy good at his job, he’d have already known. Most of us knew the figure were wrong and overcounted, just from anecdotal evidence, some of it direct.

      Lockdown Sceptics:
      “There’s an excellent post on the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine blog by Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan pointing out that, due to the way statistics are recorded by Public Health England (PHE), it’s impossible for a patient to recover from COVID-19. Here’s the key passage:

      It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.

      By this PHE definition, no one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.

      This is one reason the daily PHE Covid death tolls include so many people who died weeks, sometimes months, ago – they include people who had COVID-19, made a complete recovery, then died of a completely unrelated illness.”

      1. It has been a slow and steady progression from around 1900 but which has started to accelerate this century.

    2. Maybe they are disappointed that their winner thinks for herself and has opinions, as opposed to the usual air-heads appointed for their ‘charity work etc’. Of course, words of support for a marxist organisation would be just A-OK, strewth.

    3. I guess many DM readers would be have been happy if she had just been stripped of her swimsuit.

    5. And how is what her boyfriend said in any way wrong? It is a leftist lie.
      And the majority of black Americans agree that all lives matter. It’s just the small number of BLM activists and their enablers who disagree.

  35. Morning, all Y’all. Sunny night, was blinded by it shining in the window at 11 last night… now clouding over. More roof work today – I’m getting the hang of it, although the wagtails are still not pleased.

  36. Morning all

    SIR – I admire Admiral Lord West’s optimism (Letters, July 15), but Dominic Cummings has a point about our aircraft carriers’ ability to cope in a serious war.

    The Royal Navy has equipped itself with two very large and expensive helicopter carriers, which, apart from helicopters, can embark only the least-capable variant of the new fifth-generation F-35 strike aircraft – the F-35B.

    Without catapults and arresting gear, carriers cannot embark long-range strike aircraft, air-defence fighters, airborne early warning aircraft or air-to-air tankers.

    France’s nuclear-powered carrier, Charles de Gaulle, is an example of what the Royal Navy should have been commissioned.

    James A Cowan

    Squadron Leader Royal Air Force (retd)

    Durham

    1. “an example of what the Royal Navy should have been commissioned.” Perhaps James missed out on Staff College?

  38. More we’re all gonna die:

    Girl, 13, was rushed to hospital in agony after she was stung on the foot by 5ft long weever fish while paddling on beach.

    The article below the headline gets the correct size, 5 inches. One wonders if the headline writers ever read what they are trying to get the reader’s attention to. It’s a nasty sting from a small fish, but I suspect one 5 feet long would be equipped with a dagger, pro rata.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8531659/Girl-13-rushed-hospital-stood-5ft-long-weever-fish-paddling-beach.html

    1. That’s not the only proof reading error – this is the caption to the photo of the weever fish – “Lottie had the spike of a weever fish in her foot. The five-inch creatures fury themselves in sand on the shore and have spines on their backs and gill covers that secrete venom”

    2. That’s not the only proof reading error – this is the caption to the photo of the weever fish – “Lottie had the spike of a weever fish in her foot. The five-inch creatures fury themselves in sand on the shore and have spines on their backs and gill covers that secrete venom”

    3. That’s not the only proof reading error – this is the caption to the photo of the weever fish – “Lottie had the spike of a weever fish in her foot. The five-inch creatures fury themselves in sand on the shore and have spines on their backs and gill covers that secrete venom”

    1. 321427+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Did you watch the foota last night Og ? the house of lords eleven against the house of commons, brilliant, what would we do without them, worth every penny of the £500
      licence fee.
      The near future.

  40. Morning SIR– Like Don Stringer (Letters, July 15), I remember travelling by train from London Waterloo to Exeter in the early Seventies, taking in the passing countryside while enjoying a n excellent three-course dinner served by a waiter in a clean and comfortable restaurant car – all for 18s (about 90p) on top of the price of my ticket. Now one can expect to pay a small fortune for a bad coffee and a bag of crisps.

    It’s easy to blame rail privatisation for thee demise of on-train catering, but the rot set in when we began to see train journeys as unpleasant necessities instead of enjoyable adventures.

    Mike Bussell

    East Chinnock, Somerset

    SIR – In the Seventies I supplied coffee to British Transport Hotels Ltd, which was the hotels and catering business associated with British Rail. It had its own roastery under St Pancras station and bought only the finest quality. The coffee served at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder was the same as that in the buffet cars.

    The unit at St Pancras also produced the famous British Rail sandwiches, which were shipped all over the country daily.

    Duncan Rayner

    Sunningdale, Berkshire

    1. I used to take the train from Leeds to London, King’s Cross – usually in the afternoon.

      Bythe time we reached Doncaster we were being served afternoon tea, orders would be taken for
      dinner by the time we reached Retford – 3 course meal + drinks, then the tables cleared for coffee as
      we left Peterborough –

      Business Class [First in those days] return fare – around £12.00

    2. Yo Epi

      The 1950’s, the days when the four-legged, grey, furry, bob-tailed, burrows living chicken were served in BR Dining Cars

    3. I used to take the train from Leeds to London, King’s Cross – usually in the afternoon.

      Bythe time we reached Doncaster we were being served afternoon tea, orders would be taken for
      dinner by the time we reached Retford – 3 course meal + drinks, then the tables cleared for coffee as
      we left Peterborough –

      Business Class [First in those days] return fare – around £12.00

  41. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – I admire Admiral Lord West’s optimism (Letters, July 15), but Dominic Cummings has a point about our aircraft carriers’ ability to cope in a serious war.

    The Royal Navy has equipped itself with two very large and expensive helicopter carriers, which, apart from helicopters, can embark only the least-capable variant of the new fifth-generation F-35 strike aircraft – the F-35B.

    Without catapults and arresting gear, carriers cannot embark long-range strike aircraft, air-defence fighters, airborne early warning aircraft or air-to-air tankers.

    France’s nuclear-powered carrier, Charles de Gaulle, is an example of what the Royal Navy should have been (sic) commissioned.

    James A Cowan
    Squadron Leader Royal Air Force (retd)
    Durham

    Well now, Sqn Ldr Cowan (retd) you mostly have a point, but getting a KC-135 tanker down onto a carrier, and off again, isn’t possible as a the deck is much too short for an aircraft of that size and weight. So good luck with that, matey! Besides, the need for IFR for carrier-borne aircraft would be very limited.

    Our two new carriers were originally designed without arrester gear. And then someone quite rightly suggested that its inclusion would greatly expand the carriers’ flexibility. But the (then) additional cost of £600m brought on an attack of the vapours, so they reverted to Plan A – no arrester gear. It seems that this country has gained the knack of ballsing up pretty well everything we do…

    1. HMS Ark Royal used Scimitars as tanker aircraft.

      Weapons loaded Phantoms and Buccaneers would launch normally, but with a reduced external fuel load, circuit the ship and have the drop tanks ;topped up by In-Flight Reuelling from the Scimitars

      This external fuel would be used first and the tanks jettisoned as required

      1. Later operations would use other Buccaneers as tankers as happened when the RN gave Guatemala a scare when it was threatening the then British Honduras.

      2. ‘Morning, Tryers. Yes, the predecessor of the Buccaneer, but again this was a modification to a relatively minor tanking role, a stop-gap if you like; the role of the Scimitar was as a Naval strike fighter and a very long way from a conventional tanker.

        1. I know, 736NAS were in the next Hangar to me at Lossie in 1964/5

          Their primary role on the Ark was tanking, the F4-K (Phan)tooms of 892NAS
          I wus there) did the CAP Carrier Air Patrol

    2. Oh dear!
      You ought to read up on the operation to deter Guatemala from invading British Honduras in 1972. 809 squadron sent a couple of Buccaneers on a 3,000 round trip from the old Ark Royal that needed to be refueled at least twice from other Buccaneers of the squadron.

      1. Someone just posted a short version of that a few minutes ago. A bit of nonunderreadery.
        :<)

      2. Fair point BoB, although the Buccaneer refuelling sorties were more special ops than conventional tanking as it is understood, i.e. very big and very heavy with long endurance. Used also as a laser target disignator during Gulf War 1991, again not designed for this task but it was one of the most versatile aircraft ever designed for the Royal Navy, and subsequently inherited by the RAF. British designed and built, and very successful…those were the days! Somewhere I have a photo of a Victor Tanker being replenished by a Buccaneer. Hilarious! It has caused a few double-takes in its time.

        1. My one memory of the Buccaneer was in August ’85, last day of my Pennine Way trek going up The Schill.
          Hearing something from over my left shoulder, I turned in that direction to see a Bucc come over beside Windy Gyle, drop down into the valley, stand on it’s wingtip and do a 180° turn and head back over towards Otterburn.
          Apart from when it climbed to get back over Windy Gyle, I was looking down on it all the time!

    3. No arrester wires? Just have to learn to brake hard, then. Even RN pilots should be able to do that….

      Good morning, Hugh.

      2. ‘Morning, Bill. Braking hard is the last thing they do…as soon as the wheels touch the deck the throttle is banged wide open in case the hook misses or the cable breaks. Ejection at the far end is rather wasteful of an otherwise perfectly good aircraft, and the ejected pilot is likely to be run over by his ship. All rather messy…

        Edit: If you are interested in such things, I can highly recommend ‘Wings On My Sleeve” by Capt Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown RN. He was our most skilled and experienced Naval aviator, and it is a remarkable read. He lived near here and I missed a golden opportunity to shake his hand when Mrs HJ bumped into him. He died in 2016, a truly remarkable and gifted pilot.

        https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Wings_on_My_Sleeve.html?id=MZ5wMQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=

        https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=v08RX-6tC8aU1fAPzpqK8AM&q=captain+winkle+brown+rn&oq=capt+winkle+brown+rn&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAEYADIECB4QClAAWABgvIoOaABwAHgAgAHtAYgB7QGSAQMyLTGYAQA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp

        1. I saw a very long interview with him on a DVD at the Mosquito Museum. Spell-binding.

        2. Thanks for that. I saw a programme about him. He flew more different aeroplane types than any other pilot in history.

          1. You are very welcome, HP. Yes, around 480 different types as I recall, including captured Luftwaffe aircraft at the end of the war, several without access to proper pilot’s notes. How he survived so many test flights on so many types is frankly miraculous.

          2. You mention Luftwaffe and that reminds me that he flew a captured Komet, a rocket propelled fighter that used hydrogen peroxide as fuel. Highly unstable and one of the most dangerous planes ever built.

    5. When they were commissioned the omission of cats and traps was pointed out. It was Gordon Brown and pork barrel politics at its finest.

  42. SIR – Was Rudyard Kipling “the epitome of colonialism” (Comment, July 14)? “Mandalay” is a love letter to Burma, while “Recessional” warns against superiority and triumphalism.

    Stirring as it is, his poetry offers a far more nuanced view of empire than he is generally given credit for.

    John Williams

    Pentyrch, Glamorgan

  43. Vladimir Putin has never stopped fighting the Cold War. 16 July 2020 • 6:00pm.

    But Britain has long been of more interest to Russia as a venue for interference than on simple military grounds. As an integral part of the Western community of democracies, and one of the age-old pillars of the democratic world, Britain’s very existence and willingness to promote those values in opposition to Russian interests has always attracted Putin’s attention.

    Putin dismantled Russia’s nascent democracy with ease in the early 2000s, assisted by the widespread disenchantment with liberalism that had followed from Russian economic weakness in the 1990s. But in order to spread the chaos abroad he has frequently sought in order to distract domestic attention from his failings and prop up his regime at various times, Putin has always been alive to the possibility that it is our democratic societies that he must also infect.

    …our democratic societies… How I wish! The truth is that the UK far more resembles the old Soviet Union than Russia itself does. Britain is a Quasi Marxist Police State where “wrong” opinions will see you visited by the thought police and where you will be forced out of your job for it. A country where dissidents from “correct” opinion are hounded by the conventional forces of the Law and violent mobs are organised to attack opponents. Where the MSM in general and the State Broadcaster in particular spouts propaganda. This was all normal in pre-Putin Russia. By some cruel quirk of fate we have become what we helped destroy!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/16/vladimir-putin-has-never-stopped-fighting-cold-war/

    1. On the plus side, the Russian state seems to have no problem in wiping out dissidents who flee oversees.
      If only the Begum bint were Russian.

    2. If NATO and the EU had had the sense to offer assistance to Russia at the fall of the USSR, instead of pushing their influence right up to their borders, we would not be in this state.

  44. SIR – Alan Billingsley (Letters, July 15) asks why we are not getting figures for hospital admissions for Covid-19. I think I know why: these figures are published by Public Health England, but seem not to be widely reported.

    Every week PHE publishes updated data from Chess (the Covid-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System). The most recent data show that, in the week ending July 5, the number of laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 admissions to hospital per 100,000 of new cases for England as a whole was 1.59 (down from 2.20 in the preceding week). That number has been dropping consistently from a high of about 27 in 100,000 (0.027 per cent) at the beginning of April.

    Neither Mr Billingsley nor I should be complacent, though. Things are about twice as bad in the north-west of England, with about four hospitalisations for every 100,000 cases of Covid-19 (0.004 per cent).

    Simon Platt

    Preston, Lancashire

    1. “Things are about twice as bad in the north-west of England”

      They always were…..

        1. Well, you’ve waited patiently for five hours, Mr Effort.

          All I can say is that I moved down south to soften up.

    2. If everyone in the UK got it, at 0.004%, that would give fewer than 3,000 cases being hospitalised.

      Would that overwhelm the NHS?

      If it was 0.027% that would still be ~18,000. And of those I doubt 1,800 would end up in critical care beds

    3. To date (ie, yesterday), the scores for Norway are:
      Total no of tests carried out: 392 676
      Total no of detected cases: 9 011
      New cases last 24 hours: 1
      Data measured since March 01 2020

      Worst date (peak of the curve) was 01 April, with 325 in hospital and 99 on respirator. Currently, 6 still in hospital, none on respirator.

      Edit: Graphics and other dta are here: https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/P9Adkz/alt-om-koronaviruset-spredning-symptomer-siste-saker-spoersmaal-og-s

  45. Afternoon all.
    This is funny.

    What an interesting turn of events in Pahrump, Nevada:

    Diamond D’s brothel began construction on an expansion of their
    building to increase their ever-growing business.

    In response, the local Baptist Church started a campaign to block the
    business from expanding — with morning, afternoon, and evening prayer
    sessions at their church

    Work on Diamond D’s progressed right up until the week before the
    grand re-opening when lightning struck the whorehouse and burned it to
    the ground!

    After the brothel burned to the ground by the lightning strike, the
    church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about “the
    power of prayer.”

    But late last week ‘Big Jugs’ Jill Diamond, the owner/madam, sued the
    church, the preacher and the entire congregation on the grounds that
    the church…… “was ultimately responsible for the demise of her
    building and her business — either through direct or indirect divine
    actions or means.”

    In its reply to the court, the church vehemently and vociferously
    denied any and all responsibility or any connection to the building’s
    demise.

    The crusty old judge read through the plaintiff’s complaint and the
    defendant’s reply, and at the opening hearing he commented, “I don’t
    know how the hell I’m going to decide this case, but it appears from
    the paperwork, that we now have a whorehouse owner who staunchly
    believes in the power of prayer…. and an entire church congregation
    that thinks it’s all bullshit.”

    1. Or: it was an act of God in response to their prayer, so it’s God’s fault. The whorehouse should use him.

      1. See also, “The Man Who Sued God” a moderately interesting film starring Billy Connolly.

  46. Morning, Campers: and Homeworkers.
    1. Be prepared for new forms from your local council asking if you ‘work from home’.
    a. If yes, up goes your council tax.
    b. Round come H&S to condemn the runner on your hallway floor.
    c. If you are ‘blessed’ with sprogs, every visitor will have to be DBS’d and sign forms to be allowed over the threshold.
    d. Dogs, cats etc…. will be banned in case they’re in the kitchen when you knock up a sandwich during working hours.
    e. Your insurance company will think all its Christmases have arrived at once. Watch premiums go through the roof.
    f. If anyone in the house sneezes, plastic screens will be installed and the family will be banished to the dog kennel.
    g. The slightest graze or paper cut will have to entered in an accident book. You will be required to have at least one designated ‘First Aider’ present at all times.
    h. Everyone in the house will have to sign the fire registration sheet by the front door every time they go in or out – detailing the
    exact times.

    And that’s before HMRC get their claws into you. CGT on the room you use will be calculated if you wish to sell your house.

      1. A wonderful story – except for the poor sod who was sacked, of course.

        This self-entitled git needs putting in his place.

        1. Yesterday’s DM. This luscious luvvie who is editor of Vogue showed up at his office block without ID. The temporary security guard on duty wouldn’t let him in and sent him round to the Tradesman’s Entrance. The luvvie then fired the security guard (I think he was an Agency worker)

          2. One recalls the wartime incident when the late king was challenged by a guard, and commended for it.

          5. From what I recall from seeing it in doctors’ waiting rooms, it’s mainly adverts.

          6. If the security chappie was an agency worker then this twat could not “fire” him, just have him replaced by the agency. The agency would then re-deploy the guard elsewhere.

            The most pertinent question here is: “Why didn’t this editor get hold of some ID (or a work witness) to prove who he was?”

          7. Were I the “fired” operative’s manager, I would redeploy him (to please the Client) and give him formal praise for doing the job right under trying circumstances. The boy done good!

          8. I imagine he felt entitled to just walk in and out.

            The guard did the right thing. An option is to say ‘Would you me to contact someone inside to vouch for you?’

            However, more likely the man just launched into an ‘is it bcoz I is bleck’ rant.

          9. You mean he fired him for doing the job properly?

            At my weekend job a few weeks back a cleaner came to sign out some keys. He was t wearing an ID badge and I had never seen him before. He got in a right old strop when I wouldn’t give the keys to him insisting he had worked at the hospital since February and signed out the keys every day.
            I asked him if he knew me – he said no, and I told him I didnt know him either. I asked him whether I should take anyone’s word for it who asks for keys whether I know them or not and whether he thought there was any point in the signing in/out process in that case.
            He didnt answer and walked off to complain about me. Water off a duck’s back mate.

          10. Quite right, Bugs.
            If they cannot prove the right to entry, however that proof might be, then tough titty, come back later.
            The same with an employee holding the door for someone they don’t know, without visible ID yet looking like they belong. Bad move.

        2. Unconscious bias, see. Didn’t expect the editor of a white woman’s magazine to be a black bald guy. (Neither did I, but they have to hit those diversity targets somehow).

    3. Good morning Anne

      Of course if common sense ruled then your points would be merely things to which we give an ironic and amused shrug.

      But common sense no longer exits and so what you say is terrifyingly likely.

      1. Sadly, from our experience, the aim of the British bureaucrat is to drive any initiative, spontaneity or pleasure out of human existence.

    5. We’re swiftly getting to a collapse of business rate income. Of course, this is entirely the fault of greedy councils.

      If companies keep staff wfh they can hugely scale down their costs and office space. Fewer people in the office means fewer people in town buying lunches and what not. With the enforced mask nonsense I expect that number to collapse to near zero. That means a massive loss of business rates, VAT not to mention massive job losses from – and I don’t mean this harshly – the lower skilled worker.

      if those jobs go they’ll not come back. The entire economy would stand on it’s head.

    6. Then heaven help you if you sell the property.

      How much of the residence was work related? Not your primary residence old chap, we have a tax for that.

  47. I’ve been making bread since early this morning, trying to keep up with demand.

    3. Was the cause of death recorded by a coroner who had previously been eaten by the shark?

    1. What was this court case about?
      My membership has run out, I’ve not been contacted to renew it (which I’m not going to anyway), or received any other emails from them in ages. I have no idea what the party is up to, if anything.

      1. 321427+ up ticks,
        Afternoon IMs2,
        Gerard Batten took the leadership on the 17th Feb 2018
        for a year then stood down to make way for a leadership election.
        In his year in office he first asked for £ 100000 & received £300000
        in reply putting the party in the black financially also he attracted 13000 plus new members.
        On applying to restand as a leadership candidate the NEC
        found him to be “not of good standing ” within the party.
        Richard Braine then took the leadership with a very convincing win and wanted Batten as a deputy, there was so much anti Braine pressure brought about by the nec that
        Braine was unable to continue.
        The nec then brought a court case against Richard Braine which was rubbished by the judge, it is all on record, check it out.
        It was blatant suppression of a decent leadership / party coming to the fore, it was NOT to be allowed.

        .

        1. I do wish that UKIP had not descended into a pit of squabbling cats, dogs and serpents.

          We really do need a decent party to vote for but nobody is going to vote for UKIP unless and until they stop their mission to self-destruct.

          1. Aftrenoon Richard. I’ve always thought that UKIP was sabotaged by Mi5.

          2. My conspiracy theory was that it was infiltrated to destroy it from within, starting with Carswell.

          3. 321427+ up ticks,
            Afternoon R,
            I have tried to explain the current ersatz ukip neC have run a destructive anti Gerard Batten / Richard Braine campaign.
            Started on seeing Battens, for a year leadership success, Batten & the real UKIP had to be reigned in.
            It is ALL on record the deceit,lies & treachery capped by the court case for those that wish to check it out.
            A vote for UKIP now in it’s present state is as bad as a lab/lib/con coalition vote.
            Gerard Batten had to be taken out and the party decimated ask
            “nige” he had odious input, maybe a reminder will help.
            PLus the anti Batten letter he wrote to the ersatz neC.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc7iuUHk3Yk

          4. You’re not the only one who wishes UKIP hadn’t broken out into internal divisions and in-fighting, Rastus. It’s needed more than ever now.

        2. Ah, that, yes. The UKIP letter didn’t make that clear, except its reference to “jailbirds” which I assumed was TR.

          1. 321455+ up ticks,
            Morning Ims2,
            It was a concerted effort inclusive of ” nige”/ NEc to bring down ? suppress a successfully organised under Gerard Batten UKIP party.
            Check out the treatment meted out to Richerd Braine & court case incurring high court cost on the NEc losing the case.

  50. UK ‘95% sure’ Russian hackers tried to steal coronavirus vaccine research. Fri 17 Jul 2020.

    The UK security minister James Brokenshire has said Britain is “more than 95%” sure that Russian state-sponsored hackers targeted UK, US and Canadian organisations involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine.

    Brokenshire said the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and its counterparts in the other countries were confident “Russian intelligence agencies” were responsible for the attacks on drug companies and research groups.

    Well I’m 100% sure that this is horse manure designed to divert attention from the Governments many woes. It is of some moment that when you read the text there is no accusation of anything actually being stolen. This is because it is pretty well impossible. I did a contract twenty years ago in a facility similar to the ones cited here which was engaged in researching artificial albumin. The computers used for controlling the process and recording the results formed a laboratory intranet with no connection to either administration or the Internet itself. This was when computer security was pretty basic. To believe that it is worse now you would have to be a politician!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/russian-hackers-steal-coronavirus-vaccine-uk-minister-cyber-attack

    3. “no connection to either administration or the Internet itself” – that always supposes the laboratories have any form of security nous at all, Minty. One has one’s doubts now & again.

    4. In an ordinary trial would a 5% element of doubt not result in an acquittal?

  51. ‘Rich nations must stop eating so much meat to save Earth’

    Another six planets would be needed if the whole world ate like the most meat-loving G20 countries, a major report on food-related carbon emissions has found.

    Australia and Argentina have the highest per capita carbon footprints of all countries in the G20, largely because of their high levels of red meat consumption.

    If all the world ate like Argentina, an extra 6.4 planets would be needed to accommodate the land use and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study Diets for a Better Future, conducted by Swedish NGO Eat.

    The UK comes sixth in the G20 for the highest per capita carbon footprint, behind France, Canada and Brazil, and just ahead of the US.

    Wealthier countries are eating at the expense of the rest of the world, the report’s author Brent Loken said, with the G20 countries accounting for 75 per cent of the global carbon food budget.

    Of all the diets in the G20, only Turkey is below the threshold for the carbon budget, while Italy has around four times the recommended consumption of red meat and twice the amount of dairy.

    No country is reaching its optimal intake of legumes and nuts, which both have a relatively low carbon footprint.

    Mr Loken says governments should change their official dietary guidelines to take account of climate change.

    The UK Government’s climate change advisers say it should encourage a 20 per cent reduction in the consumption of red meat and dairy, which would still be far above the red meat consumption recommended by the planetary health diet.

    The report warns that developing countries’ diets are in danger of moving in the same direction as unhealthy “Western” diets.

    Mr Loken argued that the speed of shifts in diet proved that the trends were reversible.

    “If you look at many countries, such as China, the move toward an animalbased diet has happened in a generation,” he said. “In the UK, you will find that it wasn’t that many years ago where people weren’t eating like this. Your grandparents had meat once or twice a week because it was a luxury item.”
    Almost everyone in the world would need to adopt a flexitarian diet to stay within the Paris Agreement goals of 2C warming.

    This would mean no more than five servings of animalsourced foods a week and around 2,500 calories a day of mostly plant-based foods, with red meat in particular kept to a minimum.

    This would protect human health and reduce soaring levels of obesity, as well as helping the environment.

    Global food production accounts for approximately 24 per cent of annual greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to global electricity production.

    Nearly half comes from livestock production and rotting food waste, both of which produce potent methane.

    To Brent Loken (author of this idiotic, propaganda-filled report):

    BOLLOCKS!

    Try doing something about halting the third world’s unbridled proclivity for breeding more and more and more brats, you utter cretin, if you really want to “save the Earth”.

    1. Malnutrition diminishes cognitive function but then I guess a breed of gormless drones is the desired aim.

      1. It seems that they are getting their wish since the gormless on this planet are proliferating at an unstoppable rate.

        1. Why wouldn’t they, when idiots are paying them to have children and paying for free healthcare to look after the children?

        2. Yep – the people you want to have children are having fewer. The people who shouldn’t be are breeding uncontrollably – for cash.

          The third world who shouldn’t be surviving are because of our medicine but without our technology and education.

          The Left – the main proponents of this farce – support all these things. It’s doublethink.

    2. The Sami eat historically almost exclusively meat, fat and reindeer milk, as they come from an area where crops don’t grow noticeably. Much of Norway and Sweden are unsuited to arable farming, but animals that roam the mountains and forests can be eaten instead.
      As you wrote, Grizz, the issue is population. If it were not for imported grain, fruit and vegetables, we would not have enough arable land to feed the occupants of Scandinavia. We estimated how many people Firstborn’s farm could feed without animals, and it was precious few – the flat land wouldn’t support much grain or root vegetables growth, and forget beans. Moose from the forest would be essential. So, if we gat a transport halt of any length of time, we’ll be hungry.
      There’s a reason why Scandinavia wasn’t so populated until recently, and that’s it. No imports, few people.

    3. Dear Mr Loken. If you want to do something about climate change, give up anything man made permanently and go live in a cave.

  52. Richard Ekins
    Why Shamima Begum should not have been allowed to return
    16 July 2020, 8:36pm

    It is startling to see the Court of Appeal take over the Home Secretary’s responsibility in deciding who should be allowed to enter the UK – judging for itself the relative importance of national security considerations. But this is what the Court did in its judgment today, by opening the door for Shamima Begum to return to Britain. In doing so, it is undermining the statutory powers that Parliament enacted to enable the government to protect the public from the risk of terrorism.

    In February last year, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid, stripped Begum of her British citizenship, barring her return to Britain. Begum had travelled to Syria four years earlier, aged 15, to join ISIS. The Court of Appeal has undermined the Home Secretary’s decision, not by allowing Begum’s appeal, but by ruling that she has to be granted leave to enter the UK in order to have a fair and effective appeal. For the Court of Appeal, procedural fairness seems to have outweighed the risks of Begum’s return to this country.

    The Home Secretary has a statutory power to deprive a person of their British citizenship if he or she is satisfied that this is conducive to the public good. This is a highly controversial power, for obvious reasons, but it has been affirmed and reaffirmed by Parliament. The person whose citizenship is removed has a right of appeal, which in cases involving national security (as opposed to say fraud in obtaining citizenship) is heard by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

    In February this year, the SIAC addressed some preliminary points arising out of Begum’s appeal. Specifically, the SIAC held that depriving Begum of her British citizenship would not make her stateless, as she was a Bangladeshi citizen by descent. The SIAC also ruled that in the circumstances in which Begum found herself – detained in a camp in Syria – she could not ‘play any meaningful part in her appeal, and that, to that extent, the appeal will not be fair and effective.’

    What follows from this finding? Counsel for Begum urged the SIAC to hold that if a fair and effective appeal could not be held, then the appeal had to be allowed. The SIAC firmly rejected this argument, reasoning that Parliament did not intend that if an effective appeal was impossible the appeal should be allowed. On the contrary, Parliament had clearly foreseen that many of those who might appeal would be doing so from outside the UK in circumstances in which it was difficult or impossible for them to have a fair and effective appeal. The SIAC’s striking example was a murderer who poses a national security risk and is held in solitary confinement in a third country.

    There is no general rule, the SIAC reasoned, that if one cannot have an effective appeal that one is entitled to be treated as if one’s appeal had been allowed. This rule would undermine the statutory scheme, frustrating action to protect the public. It would obviously risk putting national security in peril.

    For the SIAC, the way forward was either for Begum to continue her appeal under difficult circumstances; to stay the appeal until such time as she was better placed to participate effectively in an appeal; or for her appeal to continue and then to be struck out at some point, but perhaps revived later. The choice was for her and her legal team. The Court of Appeal thought the first and third of these options intolerable and the second – indefinite adjournment of appeal proceedings – ‘wrong in principle’ because they rendered her right of appeal ‘meaningless’.

    Like the SIAC, the Court of Appeal was unwilling to accept that if a fair and effective appeal is impossible the appeal should simply be allowed. However, the Court of Appeal took the question to be how the unfairness to Begum should be remedied (the press release accompanying the judgment was even blunter: ‘how should that injustice be remedied?’). But this is fallacious. Neither the government nor the SIAC were treating Begum unfairly, for her circumstances were not their doing.

    The Court of Appeal held that the only way in which Begum could have a fair and effective appeal was if she was granted leave to enter the UK and the Court duly ordered leave be granted. Reaching this conclusion required the Court to discount the security threat posed by Begum, a threat that on its own logic had not yet been properly considered by a court.

    The statutory power to deprive a person of their British citizenship can clearly be exercised when that person is outside the UK. The operational point of doing so may be precisely to minimise their capacity to return freely to the UK and thus to protect the public from the danger they are thought to pose. Parliament has required appeals to be held in the country in some immigration matters, but not in relation to citizenship deprivation.

    The Court of Appeal’s judgment has transformed Begum’s appeal right into a right to return. But she has no such right under our law. It is for the Home Secretary to decide whether to allow a non-citizen to enter the UK and she is entitled to exclude a non-citizen who is thought to be dangerous.

    Worse still, while the judgment does not itself restore Begum’s citizenship, in allowing her to return to the UK the Court makes it almost inevitable she will remain in the UK for life, for removal to another country is likely to prove impossible. The point of depriving Begum of her citizenship while she was outside the UK, as in other cases, was precisely to remove from her the right to enter the UK.

    Legally, Begum is no longer a British citizen. If her appeal succeeds, her citizenship will be restored. Lodging an appeal did not suspend the operation of the Home Secretary’s order. The irony of the Court’s judgment is that if Begum were still a British citizen the Home Secretary would have the legal power to temporarily exclude her from returning to the UK. But because for the time being Begum is not British, the Home Secretary cannot use these powers to stop her return.

    The Court of Appeal has made a bad mistake. It has undermined the scheme Parliament chose to adopt, a scheme that authorises deprivation of citizenship from persons who may be outside the UK and whose circumstances may make it difficult for them to have a fair and effective appeal. The justice of that scheme is an open question, but is not one for judges to decide. The Supreme Court should allow the government’s appeal or corrective legislation should be enacted.

    Richard Ekins is Head of Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project. He is Professor of Law and Constitutional Government in the University of Oxford

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

    BTL:

    Beefy • 12 hours ago
    I love the fact that the lockdown was considered not to be a breach of the right to a family life because we could do video calls, but this woman’s rights would be breached if she had to have a trial by video.

    Marion • 13 hours ago
    Ordinary British people just can’t win, can we? Of course she’ll be allowed to return because they just like to mess with our heads. They know we don’t need such uneducated, fanatical people (we don’t need any immigration, in fact), that this woman hates the U.K. yet will be forever with her hand out for welfare, unable to work because of the headgear she feels she must wear, not to mention the security costs…but hey, never mind, eh, we can afford for everybody in the world to scrounge off us! Can’t we….? Mr Johnson, can we afford this woman? Yes? Oh, ok then….right you are…

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-shamima-begum-should-not-have-been-allowed-to-return

    1. Yo Citoen

      My answer is simple.

      If when Shamima Begum returns, she commits any crime, cliams benefits, tries to use the NHS or is involved with any Terrorist Group, the ‘members of the cCourt of Appeal, who allowed her to return are fiscally and legally responsible for her

      ie any illegal act that she is charged with, so are they

      All moneies required to support her are paid by the Court of Appeal judges

      You CANNOT have authority, without responsibility

      Sorted

      1. That’s a big problem. Parole Boards let killers and rapists out to kill and rape. The Board members are never held responsible, any more than the darling psychiatrists and social workers whose evidence they swallow.
        (Scottish prisons hold at least one triple murderer (kill/in/out, kill/in/out, kill/in) and one triple rapist.)

    2. If her physical return is to be purely decided on points of law why does she need to be involved at all?

      Her trial on terrorism crimes is a separate issue altogther. I believe people get tried and sentenced in absentia, what makes her different/special.

      If she knew that if she would certainly be hanged if she was found guilty of terrorist offences, I very much doubt she would try to return.

    4. She said she wants to come back because she didn’t realise what Islam and Syria are like. If, and it is a big if, she is allowed back, it must be on the condition that she spend the rest of her life preaching in mosques and on snackbar websites that the UK and its western civilisation are what makes the country such a draw for all the immigrants from sandy places and to stop trying to change it into the place they have sought refuge from.

      1. Shame. Obviously the videos of beheadings and live burnings were merely tourist blurbs.
        She should demand a refund.

    5. You can see the reasoning behind Mossad’s “wet operations” when you read his shyte. Quick & simple.

      1. Then he can phone his mother to tell her he’s had a safe journey ……. Kaboom!!!!

    8. Did the judiciary deliberately overturn the decision purely out of spite?

      If they’re that Left wing, that twisted then how can they be trusted to enforce the law?

  53. It’s come on to rain. Roof work postponed until tomorrow – just a coat of paint & we’re done up there. :-))

  54. Suddenly turned hot. Had to change to shorts and T-shirt. Tomorrow the same, apparently – then cold on Sunday

    1. You’ll soon be needing your thermal long-johns, Bill.

      Global warming, doncha know…

      1. I’m into my second IPA – by Aass – English-style, not American, so hoppy without being overpowering.
        Lovely! Hic!

    4. I am sitting here still wearing a T-shirt and shorts. I sat out in the garden with a cappuccino and a book and fell asleep. I should have been mowing the lawns and weeding the borders 🙁

  55. UK may already have enough herd immunity to prevent second coronavirus wave, study says

    Scientists say many people may already be immune to Covid-19 without ever having caught it

    The UK may have already achieved a sufficient level of herd immunity to stop a second wave of coronavirus, an Oxford University study† has suggested.

    Scientists believe the “threshold” of herd immunity may have been lowered because many people may already be immune to the disease without ever having caught it.

    According to a new model produced by an Oxford University team led by Professor Sunetra Gupta, as little as 20 per cent of the population may need to be resistant to the virus in order to prevent a new epidemic spreading.

    “It is widely believed that the herd immunity threshold (HIT) required to prevent a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 is in excess of 50 per cent for any epidemiological setting,” the study says.

    “Here, we demonstrate that HIT may be greatly reduced if a fraction of the population is unable to transmit the virus due to innate resistance or cross-protection from exposure to seasonal coronaviruses.

    “These results help to explain the large degree of regional variation observed in seroprevalence and cumulative deaths, and suggest that sufficient herd immunity may already be in place to substantially mitigate a potential second wave.”

    Leading experts have already suggested that a sizeable number of people may have immunity against coronavirus because of its similarity to viruses including the common cold.

    The Oxford model, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggests that when resistant people mix with non-resistant people, the herd immunity “threshold” drops sharply.

    “Given the mounting evidence that exposure to seasonal coronaviruses offers protection against clinical symptoms, it would be reasonable to assume that exposure to SARS-CoV-2 itself would confer a significant degree of clinical immunity,” the study says.

    “Thus, a second peak may result in far fewer deaths, particularly among those with comorbidities in the younger age classes.”

    Last month, Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, who is working with a team at Oxford to develop a vaccine, said there was likely to be a “background level” of protection for a “significant number of people”.

    “There is probably background T-cell immunity in people before they see the coronavirus, and that may be relevant that many people get a pretty asymptomatic disease,” he said.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/16/uk-may-already-have-enough-herd-immunity-prevent-second-coronavirus/

    † https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20154294v1

    1. Yet one more example of the imagination of scientists. No application of the scientific method, just a bunch of burbles. However, we can definitely expect our Government to pick and choose whatever rubbish suite their intention of permanently controlling us to the level of making laws about what we do at home.

    3. An early BTL comment:-

      Robert Spowart
      16 Jul 2020 9:34PM
      As shewn by Dr. Jenner with Cow Pox, exposure to a mild pathogen is already known to impart partial or even full immunity to other, more dangerous, pathogens of the same group.

      Given that there are many other Corona type viruses, especially the multitudinous strains of the common Cold, it is entirely possible that many people have acquired immunity to the C-19 Wuhan Virus without actually catching the disease.
      Delete 27Like

  56. Exclusive: Arrests made in a major new Rochdale grooming investigation. 17 july 2020

    Good morning. Last weekend we published The Ghosts of Rochdale – a piece examining the prosecution of the town’s grooming gangs. Today we can report a significant new development in the scandal – one that is likely to drag Rochdale and its dark history of sexual abuse back into the national spotlight.

    Greater Manchester Police have arrested multiple men suspected of sexual abuse as part of a major new investigation into grooming gangs in Rochdale, The Mill has learned. Operation Lytton, the existence of which has not been reported in the media before, is focusing on the sexual exploitation of teenagers that took place almost two decades ago.

    The police confirmed the existence of Lytton and said a number of arrests have already taken place. “This is a complex criminal investigation into non-recent abuse committed in Rochdale between 2002 and 2006,” a spokesperson said. They added: “Due to the sensitivities associated with offences of this nature, victims are at the forefront of our investigation and it would be inappropriate to release any further information at this time.”

    Yes we have to watch those sensitivities!

    https://manchestermill.co.uk/p/exclusive-arrests-made-in-a-major

    1. “I’ll show you my sensitivities if you show me yours” is not the most winning opening conversational gambit.

    3. “Sensitivities”……………… I understand that,rough sisal would grate against their skin so hang the pakirapist filth with a silk rope
      Damn the expense,after all,it’s reuseable

  57. Tweet fron Prof. Karol Sikora.

    Just read the paper from the Oxford group, it really has significant implications.

    It’s what I’ve been saying. T cell immunity means there are far less susceptible people than thought.

    It could mean the virus is running out of healthy hosts to infect. It would explain a lotJ.

  58. Oh goody, goody, France has brought forward compulsory masks in all enclosed or confined public spaces to Monday, from 1st August.

    From observation it was clear that the general public is increasingly sceptical over their use yet “medical experts” have again triumphed over economic and other “experts”.

    They might as well close the economy down totally.

    1. The amount of time I spend in ‘enclosed or confined public spaces’ is so little it doesn’t really matter. And if wearing a mask speeds up the time spent in a supermarket (or any shop for that matter) so much the better.

      1. But presumably it means restaurants and bars too. If I’ve got to wear a mask between mouthfuls, then I’m not going.

        I agree re shopping speed and reduction of outings to do so.

        1. At table no mask is necessary, only when moving around restaurant. Generally ignored here.

    2. It’s beginning to look like a co-ordinated World-wide play to soften the general public up to the ‘need for vaccinations’ (when a vaccine becomes available) – No vaccine – no shopping or travelling for you. QED

    3. I cannot stand wearing a mask. I had to go to the supermarket this afternoon and by the time I had finished I was dripping in sweat.

      We also went to look at new minibuses for our courses yesterday and discovered that we would have to pay an additional tax of well over 5,000 € on it so we’ll get the existing one overhauled instead. Instead of a tax bonus the word they use is a tax malus for it.

      1. I agree, but what can we do?

        What really peeves me is that there is so much conflicting information yet the authorites always seem to opt for the worst case scenario and legislate against that, irrespective of the alternative advice.

        I’m getting to the point where I think it would be better for the world if it was allowed to follow its natural course, whatever that might be, and that all we are doing is delaying the inevitable whilst wrecking the economy that might get us out of it all.

        2. After reading yesterday that T-cells from other coronavirus infections can stay in the body for years to protect against new ones, then I think we should all be getting out there and boosting our immune systems instead of hiding away from people.

          2. There was never any need to close schools. Most people should have carried on working. and just the vulnerable been furloughed or shielded. Instead we now have a trashed economy, no holidays, shops closing, and CV19 figures falsified by PHE.

          3. I agree but hey, ho, Ferguson was wheeled out yet again to make the worst of a bad job.

            And he’s still crawling out from under his rock, spreading doom and gloom. He is the epitome of unmitigated gall.

      2. The malus can be very high, I believe it would be a lot more on the new version of my car than mine is worth now.

        I would effectively be paying the State to trade in for a newer “greener” version.

        If the state was serious they would cancel the malus for people trading into a cleaner vehicle.

      1. I had to wear a mask to take MOH to phlebotomy this morning. It felt uncomfortable and I couldn’t wait to remove it the minute I got outside. It isn’t going to improve the shopping experience, that’s for sure.

  59. An unpleasant exchange at the supermarket. The man in front of me in the queue for the self-service tills, evidently unaware of “1 meter+”, told me to “keep my distance”. (If he was really worried, he would have kept his back to me, but no matter.) I asked him why he wasn’t wearing a mask. “It’s not compulsory until next Friday,” came his reply. “But desirable nonetheless,” I countered. At which point he called me a see-you-next-Tuesday. Well I ask you, is someone who only does what this God-forsaken government tells him to do not more worthy of that description?

    2. If he was a real no-mask rebel, distancing wouldn’t bother him. I’ve an elderly doolally neighbour who wears a mask round her neck and comes as close as possible, the better to hear me and be heard. I wouldn’t dream of bullying her. No-one in our building has the lurgy.

      1. He made a funny joke that if he did, he’d not get up again.

        I for one welcome our humble overlords.

        It’s sad. In those two elderly people I see duty, integrity, humility, courage, dignity and generosity.

        You could gather a million black looters are mindless voters and they wouldn’t share a thimble of those characteristics.

      1. Hi Citreon,
        Going stir crazy….however I had a good day yesterday.
        My goal is to make it to the local supermarket. I’m nearly out of sherry, that
        should spur me on..
        Any sympathy from Nottlers most welcome…..

        Thanks for asking x

          4. Save water!

            The bottle and a straw, it saves on the washing up!! :-))

            Hi, Plum…..how is your ankle?

        4. Shame you’re too far away – I have a nice bottle of sherry but don’t like the stuff!

          Keep on buggering on!

  62. Nice one Wandsworth…

    WATCH: WANDSWORTH COUNCILLOR CAUGHT WATCHING DIRTY DANCING DURING BLACK LIVES MATTER DEBATE

    https://youtu.be/HAjmakBSuYI

    A digital Wandsworth Council meeting was disrupted last night when one of the attendees accidentally unmuted themselves, revealing Dirty Dancing to be playing in the background. Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan wasn’t happy:

    “one of the Tory Councillors accidentally unmuted themselves, revealing they were watching Dirty Dancing instead of listening to racist experiences being described.”

    Dr Rosena is yet to respond to Guido’s request to specify the councillor…

    2. It seems to me that the people who talk the most sense about racism are intelligent black people.

      1. I’ve been following a couple of Black American Conservative commentators since the current Black Lies Matter furore kicked off and I often get the impression that, perhaps whilst they may not be the most educated, they are amongst the most intelligent in the country.

    3. The closest that I would ever wish to get to her (or him, for that matter) would be another solar system.

    6. Oh! I get it. He’s saying that just because we’re married doesn’t make her his property.

      For goodness sake. No FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

    4. With cherries it will resemble ‘Black Forest gateau’ !! Are you serving prawn cocktails as well? ;@)

          7. Litre bottles! Squarish shape! Red or white! At college we just stuck candles in the Chianti bottles! What memories. My flatmate and I did a marketing study for Greenall Whitley when they produced a new range of wines and after holding a public tasting at Hollings College we had to get the bus home with at least 15 half full bottles of wine! I remember clanking on to the bus! So long ago!

          9. Had my 18th birthday party at a Berni Inn, The Windmill (next to Micklegate Bar in York) in 1973.

          10. I don’t remember having an 18th birthday party! Had a 21st one though. A grown-up dinner party (I was married by then) with family & a few friends.

          11. Nah , a nice little restaurant tucked some where in the countryside in Cornwall nr the Lizard when Moh was based down there !

            Lobster Nueburg..

          15. When a student and no money, drank that – ater almost freezing away the flavour so it was merely a few % alcohol.

          16. My ex was into homemade wine making so we drank that. Some wasn’t bad others were absolutely bilge.

    6. Very elegant, Grizz!
      Needs some tart fruit, so your menu looks excellent.

        1. My Persian in-laws use skewers that are similar to yours, but they are flattened out so that the minced meat, mainly lamb, that they use can be moulded around the skewer rather than stabbed. Their stabbing skewers are also flat, but a lot thinner..
          They tell me it means they turn once rather than three times and the juices stay in the meat.

          Either way, I have to admit that they do a superb barbeque.

          1. My late friend, Luis, a Spaniard bought the blades (12 in all) from a market in Istanbul and brought them home. He asked me to put handles on them and, if I could, I could have half of them. I obliged by splitting a couple of broom handles (that I’d bought from the local hardware store) on my table saw. I secured the blade in a slot between the handle halves before gluing them together and varnishing them. The blades are 420mm long, 9mm wide and 1·5mm thick, and the handles are 150mm long.

          3. Each one colour-coded on the end of the handle so that guests may make up their own kebabs and know which colour they picked.

    9. You were doing so well until you brought fruit in.

      Do cut me a thin slice off. You can have that, I’ll take the rest.

    10. Looks delicious (chocolate cake is probably my worst weakness). I had the first cherry from my tree today; sweet and juicy. Unfortunately, thanks to the June drop and the ravening birds, it will also be the last 🙁

        1. Mine is a Stella. I did also have a Morello, but unfortunately , it sickened and died. It was probably in the wrong place.

          1. I don’t have a clue what variety it is since it was here years before we moved in. The colour and flavour of the fruit is good, though not quite as delicious as the outstanding Morello.

          1. Oh THAT Bubbles! Apparently he’s now 37 years old and living happily as the alpha male in a chimp sanctuary.

  67. From comments to the DT Letters:
    A Long
    17 Jul 2020 4:16PM
    On the BBC 2 Jeremy Vine show today, one of the topics was if you could send yourself a message in January this year with hindsight of the Covid-19 pandemic what would it be.

    This was mine:
    I wish I’d know 6 months ago that Covid-19 would eventually be:
    ·Less infectious than flu, meningitis or measles
    ·Would cause most people under 70 with no underling health conditions few or no symptoms
    ·Would have a death ratio smaller than seasonal flu
    ·The NHS would stop treating people with other serious illnesses
    ·The cure will end up more costly than the virus
    ·Our economy would collapse
    ·No shops, no pubs, no holidays, no weddings, no funerals, no church, no life
    ·The media and government, after whipping up widespread panic on a scale of a biblical apocalyptic levels, will wonder why no one wants to go back to work!!!!!!!!!

    2. He only became a superhero reluctantly. He’d heard it was a shit job.

      [Or was he a “sewerhero”?]

    1. I thought that that one was a good cartoon, it sums up the way our so-called experts are wiping us out.
      Ferguson’s hand will be in the glove.

      1. Whatever happened to Ferguson? Was his throat slit & his corpse rolled into a ditch? Or… ?

        1. Oh, he keeps appearing; spreading doom and gloom.

          Once his assignations had been overshadowed by Cummings’s he crawled out again.

          One might have thought that by now he would be so thoroughly discredited that he’d have been sacked by all his employers.

    2. Will he ever get his old job back as Bible delivery man for Grand Metropolitan Hotels?

    1. Nicked from yesterday….

      Corbyn a year or so ago: “We demand the return of Shamima Begum to the UK at once, she was only a 16 year old immature child when she decided to join ISIS and cannot be held accountable for her actions at such a young age.

      Corbyn before his recent demise: “We demand that 16 year olds be given the vote in the UK, they are responsible and free-thinking young adults”.

    2. “I told you that that noise going to a constant beep meant stop, not accelerate.”

  75. Afternoon everyone. I’ve just been to Morrison’s to do the weekend shopping and since they had no decent cuts of Cod or Salmon, I’ve bought a large Black Diverse Tilapia. I’ve never had one before. What do they taste like? How do I cook it? Any advice welcome!

        1. “Since they are raised in crowded fish pens, tilapia are more prone to diseases. Farm owners give them antibiotics to prevent them from getting sick. They’re also given pesticides to treat sea lice, a common problem. These chemicals are effective but are nevertheless harmful to people’s health when ingested.”

          1. Thats why we only eat wild fish. Pity is nost people could not care less.

    3. The word ‘Tilapia’ covers a multitude of variations, some of which are quite undesirable. If you bought it in a UK supermarket i.e. Morrisons, it should be ok. It’s worth finding out (1) country of origin, (2) is it wild or farmed and (3) is it fresh or frozen. Armed with this information you can research what variety of ’tilapia’ you have and how to deal with it.

      It is sometimes known as ‘St Peter’s fish’. I have had it before in the UK (from a known and trusted source) and found it to be a fairly tasty white fish with a tough inedible skin.

      2. St Peter’s fish is also an alternative name for John Dory, a marine fish which is absoluto delicious.

        Why is John Dory called St Peter’s fish?
        John Dory are also known as St Peter’s Fish, this is due to the black spot on the side of the fish where it is said to represent the fingerprint of St Peter when he lifted it from the sea.

        John Dory | Direct Seafoodswww.directseafoods.co.uk › fish-glossary › john-dory
        Search for: Why is John Dory called St Peter’s fish?

    6. Is it safe to eat tilapia?
      Is tilapia safe to eat? When farms rear the tilapia in good conditions, the fish are safe to eat. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) list tilapia as one of the best choices for pregnant or breast-feeding women and children over the age of 2 years. This is due to its low mercury and contaminant content.17 Jul 2018

      Tilapia: How is it farmed and is it safe to eat? – Medical News Todaywww.medicalnewstoday.com › articles
      Search for: Is it safe to eat tilapia?

      https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03CEgJ6-At3dixJG1kJhibkZMQLoA%3A1594930066368&source=hp&ei=krMQX7uLFITDlwTqp4KgBg&q=tilapia&oq=tilapia&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIFCAAQsQMyBQgAELEDMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAA6CAgAELEDEIMBOgkIIxAnEEYQ-QE6BAgAEApQ8-KCHViG9oIdYKr6gh1oAHAAeACAAWCIAZMEkgEBN5gBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwi7nK7AydLqAhWE4YUKHeqTAGQQ4dUDCAk&uact=5

      https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03tpUWNfFcgeXnMLlGmTJ9-3pyc5A%3A1594993190401&ei=JqoRX6iMGL-h1fAPgJiHuAU&q=tilapia+recipe&oq=tilapia&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgQIABBHMgQIABBHMgQIABBHMgQIABBHMgQIABBHMgQIABBHMgQIABBHMgQIABBHUABYAGDgsAtoAHABeACAAQCIAQCSAQCYAQCqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab

      I’ve often eaten Victoria Barsch in Germany. It has a firm white flesh & good flavour. It ‘behaves’ itself in the frying pan. Not a Tilapia, but similar.

      1. I have eaten it in the Caribbean and disliked it intensely! It tasted of Germolene!

        1. The fish to go for in the Caribbean are red snapper, Kingfish & barracuda.
          I remember a fabulous lunch of grilled red snapper, washed down with Red Stripe at an open air restaurant in Port Royal.

          1. Love red snapper but my favourite is grilled lobster with lime and butter, on the beach! Not this year…or probably next!

          2. Is lobster a fish? I like it very much; I was eating 2 a week at Côte a year ago, & when I was in Jamaica they were really cheap if you refused to pay the tourist prices. I remember a fantastic lobster lunch at the Negril Sands Club.

          3. Shellfish? Ah well, it comes out of the sea and I love it! I can almost taste it!

        2. Well if you will use Germolene and not butter to saute the fish in what do you expect? 😉

      2. Read that as karsk – Trøndersk (from Trondheim & Trønderlag county) for strong coffee “corrected” with a huge dose of moonshine… Not good if you plan to drive or use dangerous machinery.

      3. Um. My research into tilapia suggested that they are farmed in fresh water lagoons fed with waste. I had bought a packet of frozen tilapia, farmed in Thailand, on impulse from Farm Foods. Subsequent to the research it went into th bin unopened.

    1. Metrication has helped. Shaving off the odd gram or two goes unnoticed. Look at the weights lower down the feature: 54.5, 48.5, 48, 45. Who would be able to remember those? In the past, bars were 2, 4, 8 ounces or a pound. Manufacturers wouldn’t have got away with quarter or half-ounce reductions.

      1. The same sort of thing happened when petrol started to be sold in litres rather than gallons.

        1. Absolutely! When it first happened I said it would be a way to make massive rises slip under the radar. A 1p rise per litre is a 4p rise per gallon (slightly over, but that’s a rough calculation and my maths are dodgy at the best of times).

          2. And before that, the changeover to decimal currency here. It was inevitable as was evident, even to the mathematically challenged like myself; what used to go up a halfpenny, now had to go up one new halfpenny (1.2 old pence). Then, of course, it went up a penny instead because it was easier to deal with (before they scrapped the halfpenny because it was a tiddly, fiddly little thing).

      2. It’s so easily done and to my mind totally dishonest.

        One of my pet gripes is the bargain size that works out more expensive, but the detail vanishes because one is advertised per litre and the other per “wash” and other similar tricks.

        It’s like the old “9d each or three for half a crown”.

        1. W/rose nearly always displays the price per 100gm or 100ml in the ‘small print’ on labels. When not, one just has to fall back on mental arithmetic.

          1. My problem isn’t the mental arithmetic, it’s bending down close enough to read the wretched small print!

            Your example shows how such things can be manipulated.

            10cc of a heavy viscuous product will weigh a lot more than 10 gm of the same product.

          2. Yes, it’s easier for me to reach the top shelves than the bottom shelves.

          3. That’s no surprise, I always had you down as a tit rather than a bottom man.

          6. Even this can lead to some sharp practice e.g. on the cooking oils shelf, with some fancy high-end olive oils, prices shown per 100ml and per 1000ml. Similarly, herbs and spices per 10g and per 100g.

          8. That’s not the point, though, Peddy. The prices for the expensive oils are shown per 100ml, for the cheaper ones per 1000ml (not per litre). They’re in very small print, as Sos points out. It’s a deliberate attempt to mislead.

          9. So you’re dividing ml by ml. Couldn’t be simpler.

            Btw, it was I who mentioned the small print first..

          11. No, I’ve has 1/2 glass of wine with supper, therefore not intoxicated. I paid attention in school.

    2. When I was in selling it was called size inflation i.e. reduced contents same price. Been going for 30+ years I reckon.

    3. No one’s forcing you to buy their nasty down-market confections! I don’t eat anything sugary but am led to believe that the quality of Cadbury stuff has declined since the Mondelez take-over. Usual thing, the bean-counters run the rule over the products to see where cost can be eliminated, regardless of the effect on the product. A plague on them. John Cadbury will be spinning…..

      1. I seldom eat sweets nowadays, but I must admit I buy the 3 for £10 giant Toblerones when we do the crossings.

        They get eaten over the winter, a triangle after lunch.

        I used to eat two king-sized Mars bars and a large cup of instant coffee for breakfast at the desk, when I was money-broking.

  78. Good new about the new weekly spit test for COVID-19, which is much more comfortable and quicker to get the results. Footballers in particular will find it a piece of cake.

  79. There was a great geological upheaval yesterday, in the Ruhr Valley in Germany, when the Mohne and Eder dams returned to their pre May 1943 condition

    The reason, the Dam Busters attack on the dams was unsuccessful. Wing Commander Gibson could not order the transmission of the Codeword to indicate that 617 Sqn had been successful, with Operation Chastise.

    The dams stayed Germany: won the war

    See how BLM changes history

    .. For Peddy, the dropped Umlaut off Mohne

        1. Evening OLT – and the 3rd wave of bombers which set off as the first two waves were returning ,was ordered to proceed to the Sorpe to see if they could cause further damage. It was a suicidal, unnecessary mission and the planes should have been recalled.

  80. That was good. Home-made lasagna, salad, and Sicilian red wine.
    Now I’m stuffed, and close to ready for bed.

    4. Be very careful with that, given your history of stumbles/falls.

      Get Dr. Sensible to check your ears. After your recent illnesses, problems with your inner ear might be affecting your balance.

      1. I felt the same after taking antibiotics. They made me feel sick, dizzy and left a metalic taste in my mouth…
        I know Bill was taking the same and changed to a different brand….

        1. I watched your earlier correspondence on that topic and I wondered whether you too might have had an inner ear problem caused by the medicine. Because you appeared to be recovering i didn’t mention it.

          I’m very conscious of it because I get minor problems myself from swimming if I don’t wear my earplugs.

          1. Clarithromycin. I finished the course and still feel weak, loss of appetite, tired and slightly wobbly……bloody poison. I made a note of the name…never again!

  83. It’s Flying Ant Day and the Met Office have them on their Radar:

    michael gordon
    17 Jul 2020 6:51PM
    At first forecasters thought it was an anty cyclone

    1. I hate flying ant days.
      The wretched things get into the pool in huge numbers, they block the filter and completely screw up the ph of the water. It takes days to get the whole thing re-balanced.
      GrrrH!

      1. Try cycling 4 miles through a swarm – you certainly have to grit your teeth!

          1. Believe me I was tight lipped the entire journey – it felt like I was riding through a blizzard especially as at the time it was completely black apart from my cycle lamp….

    3. We had a sudden influx at 7pm inside of a window. Could not work out where they came from.

  85. British citizen arrested for bomb threat against Ryanair flight to Oslo. Aircraft followed across the North Sea by a flight of Danish F-16s (who caused lots of annoyance by crossing Denmark at supersonic speed). Plane landed at Gardermoen airport, 51-year-old man arrested. The Danes also landed for coffee and refuelling.
    Another Ryanair plane threatened between Krakow & Dublin. RAF escorted it to Stansted.
    https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/9vyOJd/bombetrussel-mot-fly-en-mann-er-paagrepet-og-mistenkt-for-aa-staa-bak

          4. Still painful…everyone tells me it’s a long job! Thanks…
            I’ll post when I achieve my goal…a walk to the local Co-op!
            Not too much to ask is it……thank you god.

          5. Still painful…everyone tells me it’s a long job! Thanks…
            I’ll post when I achieve my goal…a walk to the local Co-op!
            Not too much to ask is it……thank you god.

          6. If you are certain you can do it, wait one more day, and then do it slowly and carefully.

            No point in blowing all your hard work.

          7. I wouldn’t go alone in case I fell over….imagine the complications that would cause for all concerned…I have to use a friggin stick to give me
            confidence..
            I long to go shopping for paper, milk bread essentials instead of relying on kind neighbours……….maybe next week!

          8. Hang on to the stick.

            Not because you need it, but to warn other people that all is not perfect.
            After both my hip and knee operations I carried a walking stick just to make people keep clear.

            Now I use my personality, and if that doesn’t keep them away I use garlic!

          9. I can’t believe it was just weeks ago I was playing tennis, walking and gardening…serves me right….too damned fit!

            My elderly mum used stick when she went out to push people out of her way….

          12. Yeah, I’m told that even icy water doesn’t discourage that lacosteodile chap.

          13. The Achilles is like a piston sliding up and down inside a cylinder, you have to reduce the swelling or you get pain, so I am told, by a tennis buddy

          14. Good analogy.

            HG is a physio, I was a heavy physical contact sports player. You name it, I’ve twisted it, overstretched it, or sometimes broken it

            I tested her skills to the limit and she passed with flying colours every time.

    1. Not sure who is ‘Teflon’. Epstein or Prince Andrew? Didn’t work out well for either, did it?

    2. Donald looks younger every day he gets closer to locking up Hillary and Obama….

    3. Me-yet-again is slagging off Trump; of course he’s going to take a side swipe at the Royal Family’s black sheep.

      1. Black Sheep Matter!

        The fact is the MSM were appraised of Epstein’s Cesspool in 2015 and choose to completely ignore it shades of the Beeb and So Vile….

        2. I wonder why?
          A Clinton was involved, so if questions are asked the questionner has a tendency to self destruct…

          1. It certainly makes you wonder how many folk in power have been utterly compromised by videoed honey traps….

  88. BBC faux pas…
    Too hot to sit in the garden after finishing the crossword and replying to emails, I returned indoors…ah another sherry perhaps.
    Scouting through BBC TV in desperation there was b*gger all to watch.
    Another dollop of ‘Escape to the Country’ repeat ….and ‘Flog it’….repeat.

    FFS BBC if you want viewers to pay £154. to watch total crap…. you need to get your friggin’ act together.
    I seriously don’t I need the hassle…

    1. It’s £157 now, isn’t it? We don’t watch much but I suppose we’ll have to start paying again.

        1. It is. I don’t see why we should be forced to pay the crisp saleman’s exorbitant salary.

          1. I never watch the boring git….
            Enjoy a film or drama which the BBC did so well in the 70’s/ 80’s
            Lark Rise to Candleford, upstairs Downstairs,Shadowlands etc…

          2. Upstairs, Downstairs was on ITV. I don’t know if the Beeb did a copy, but if they did, I doubt it would have been as good as the original.

        1. HM: “May one call you ‘Tom’?”

          Tom: “Only if I may call you ‘Brenda’!”

    3. Blood group O individuals’ risk of being infected by the virus are around 25% lower than someone with a non-group O blood type.

      Meanwhile, blood group A individuals appear to have a higher risk of infection, the ABO Blood Groups and Covid-19 report concludes.

      Bugger. I’m A Negative.

  92. The ‘archive Proms’ are a sanitised let-down – why is the BBC afraid of the past?

    Six weeks of ‘treasures’ could have been a cultural feast, but every Prom before 1987 has been airbrushed out

    IVAN HEWETT- CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC – 17 July 2020 • 11:29am

    The Proms are dead – long live the Proms! Out of the ashes of this summer’s cancelled season, a phoenix has miraculously arisen. The BBC is offering a full eight-week season, beginning tonight, made up of “treasures from the archive and incredible live performances”. “In challenging times,” the Corporation says, “the BBC Proms aim to shine a beacon of hope.”

    It’s certainly wonderful that the Proms season is taking place at all, and the basic conception of six weeks of “treasures from the archive”, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 (plus a smattering on TV), followed by a live two-week concert series broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall, is probably the best we could have hoped for this year.

    And there are some superb things in store. Top of many people’s lists will be the stunning performance from 2013 of Wagner’s Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) with Bryn Terfel in the role of Wotan, conducted by Daniel Barenboim in 2013. There’s also Claudio Abbado’s last Prom from 2007, Riccardo Chailly conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Charles Mackerras and Alfred Brendel performing Mozart.

    All fine concerts, but why does a series calling itself “treasures from the archive” go no further back than 1987? Just consider how much Proms history that misses out. The BBC took over the running of the Proms in 1927, and though surviving recordings from the early decades are sparse, they become more plentiful from the 1950s and 1960s. The Proms team have chosen to ignore a good four decades of recorded material.

    It means there are no Proms from Sir Malcolm Sargent, the man who invented the Last Night, and nothing from John Barbirolli. Not one of Jacqueline du Pré’s seven Proms will be even glanced at, nor any of Janet Baker’s 36. The Manchester Camerata’s Prom of 2005 was thought worthy of inclusion, but not Herbert von Karajan’s solitary Prom with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1973. Not that I wish to disparage the excellent Manchester Camerata, but in terms of historical moments, its Prom is not in the same league.

    As for “seminal moments”, meaning something that sets a new trend, these are notable by their absence. The Proms’ seminal decades were surely the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, when Sir William Glock and Robert Ponsonby were in charge. Who could forget the all-night classical Indian music Prom of 1981, or the first ever rock Prom from the Soft Machine in 1970? Most “seminal” were the concerts that mingled old and new in unprecedented ways, like the stunning occasion in 1969 when 15th-century French songs were performed alongside the vast Turangalîla Symphony by Olivier Messiaen. You won’t be hearing any of these, or anything else from those amazing decades.

    So why are there no Proms from that golden period in this year’s season? The official line is that the BBC’s “decision to focus on archive [material] from the last 40 years was based on a number of factors designed to create a fantasy Proms.

    “These included: availability of recordings, original presentation, recordings that aren’t widely circulating already, and ensuring artists [are only] featured once.”

    The excuse of a shortage of recordings certainly rings true; the BBC has always been lax about maintaining a proper archive. But I can’t see why something from the 1960s can’t serve the ideal of a “fantasy proms” – whatever that means – just as effectively as something from 2010. My guess is that other factors are at work. One is that Pickard and his team think Proms audiences have a low tolerance for old, less-than-perfect recordings and black-and-white TV imagery.

    But I suspect a more insidious reason is that Proms from the era before the 1980s have become politically unacceptable. The BBC is desperate to present a properly “woke” face to the world, and offering broadcasts of Proms from the 1960s and 1970s spoils that impression.

    Those were the days when female composers hardly got a look in, when orchestras and audiences were uniformly white, and when the conductor’s podium was ruled by old-style maestri with silvery hair and – as we now know – roving eyes and hands. The music was, apart from the Soft Machine, determinedly high-brow, and revealed a mindset very alien to the BBC’s current values of diversity and accessibility.

    All this means that the Proms’ early history has become an embarrassment to the current management. By presenting a series that starts in 1987 as an exploration of the “treasures of the archive”, they are in effect rewriting that history. That’s something that should worry us all – not just those of us who care about the Proms.

    **********************************************
    BLT:

    John Wilkinson
    17 Jul 2020 12:11PM

    The BBC is not serving the majority but chooses to pander to the woke brigade because it can. The Guardian panders to the same group and is now virtually bankrupt.

    The BBC must be privatised forthwith, which will force it to serve the majority…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/classical-music/archive-proms-sanitised-let-down-bbc-afraid-past/

  93. Already mentioned on here today but worth another outing. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the MSM deal with this.

    Public Health England’s exaggerated death statistics are a scandal that has fed fear

    Woefully misleading figures have only made it harder to tackle the pandemic and to get the country moving again

    MATTHEW LESH

    Has Public Health England been exaggerating the Covid-19 daily death statistics? It appears that PHE compiles “out of hospital” deaths by searching the NHS database for whether that person ever tested positive. It then apparently fails to consider how long ago that person tested positive or their actual cause of death. “By this PHE definition, no-one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness,” explain Professors Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan, who discovered the statistical flaw.

    It is astonishing: under these terms, a person who tested positive a few months ago but then gets hit by a bus this week would be recorded as a Covid death. In fact, if left unchanged, every single one of the 292,500 people who have tested positive will some day be a Covid-19 death statistic – even if they live for decades and die of completely unrelated causes. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent review.

    This scandal has real consequences. It provides the impression that England is still experiencing over 100 deaths some days, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have near zero. It has played havoc with analysis about who is most at risk from the virus, be it by age or pre-existing condition. It also undermines our understanding of the extent of spread, hotspots and the steps required to combat the virus.

    The PHE death figures have been reported every day in news bulletins and on newspaper front pages. They have fed into existing public anxieties that are holding people back from shopping, dining and drinking. They have also dissuaded people from returning to work.

    Covid-19 is a serious threat and Britain has among the highest death tolls in Europe, as measured most accurately in death certificates and excess mortality. But we need to be clear-eyed about the current risk.

    The latest Office for National Statistics data shows that deaths in England and Wales are now slightly below the five-year average. There are fewer than a few thousand people in hospital with the virus and about 150 on ventilators. In London, there are fewer than 50 new cases most days, in Manchester it is less than a dozen and the entire South West’s case numbers have been in the single digits for the last week.

    This latest scandal is just another example of PHE’s miserable handling of this crisis. PHE’s job is to track and prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases. It failed at the first hurdle. It neglected to ramp up testing earlier this year, rebuffing private sector offers. This led to the ill-fated decision to abandon testing and tracing in March.

    PHE’s future is now very much in doubt. Perhaps it is time to put the quango out of its and our misery.

    Matthew Lesh is the head of research at the Adam Smith Institute

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/17/public-health-englands-exaggerated-death-statistics-scandal/

        1. I don’t think we are particularly clever, (me excepted of course), but it’s a question of common sense combined with a ‘not believing everything we’re told’ sort of cleverness.

          3. Yep.
            Every time you think you’re old, tell yourself that most Nottlers are older, and that even BT is younger than a few here.

          10. As long as your age is less than your IQ it’s OK.

            I’ll be fine for at least another 50 years.

            Pity Max the dog, he passed that milestone, the wrong way, a while back…

    2. Dax the mogger will tell you that all this is incorrect and that PHE and the NHS are totally trustworthy.

      Yeah, right…

  94. Re Covid death statistics and mortality rates.

    I would be very interested to see how many people have been buried or cremated since 01/01/2020.

    I would not be surprised if that figure was a lot lower than the PHE/NS figures for Covid, let alone deaths over all.

    1. Reminds me of a question in The Times’ (?) Notes and Queries section some years back.
      “Sir – Would it be better for the environment if I were buried or cremated when I die?”
      The answer – Yes

  95. My thanks to Plum and to Peddy for the endorsement of BBC 4’s programme (now on iPlayer) on Nigel Kennedy. Wow what an extraordinary exceptional talent. Best programme I’ve seen for a very long time. Highly commended. A complete contrast to the cancel culture lunatics that seem to infest the news headlines. So where are our champions?

  97. Happening in the USA as well. They are trying to make it look far worse than it is. both here and in the U.S.

    BREAKING: Health officials from numerojs states have mistakenly included positive results from antibody tests when reporting new COVID-19 cases to the CDC, grossly inflating new cases. The scientific equivalent to “double dipping.”

    3. Its getting worse. Our government is now allowing gyms to open. Trying to abide by theguidelines rules, our gym has come up with the idea of booking cardio and weight equipment for fifteen minute sessions then insisting that we must adhere to the schedule without changes. Fifteen minutes of bench presses and I would be dead.

      At least the golf club is still serving pinot in pint glasses.

  99. I took my children to a theme park today, I felt they deserved some fun after three months of lockdown. What a dispiriting experience it was. Children wearing masks on rides, long queues due not to the volume of visitors but the incessant cleaning of the rides after each session. And the constant blaring reminders to follow the Covid rules. It felt like a psychological beating. Is this what the world is now? All fun and joy sucked out of every situation?

    I also heard that local councils will be given the power to impose their own lockdowns. Just what we need, a legion of mini Matt Hancocks just waiting to use their new-found powers to keep the populace in line. Lord help us.

      1. I had to wear a mask for the first time, in 27 degree heat or I wouldn’t have been allowed to ride with my children. Dehumanising, hot and hard to breath even for the few minutes of the ride. I felt sorry for the staff who have to wear them all day. This is all so unnecessary, it just needs to stop. It feels like we are descending into tyranny.

    2. We need witness integrity and trust in our politicians , and because this is a new terror, I think the 20-30 year olds believe they are immune to everything , it has certainly terrified many older people.

      The economic effect on the country is terrible . I hate the queues and the grim faces… it will be even worse when we are all forced to wear masks next week whilst shopping .

    3. If you go to Disney in Orlando they will only take your photo if you are wearing a mask.

      So if you want a holiday snap, it can only be if you are incognito behind a barrier.

    4. 321427+ up ticks,
      Evening JK,
      “Lord help us” how about the Lord helps those that help
      themselves, and the continuing support of the lab/lib/con coalition party isn’t doing that exactly.

    1. What ever turned NK – from a privileged and talented background – into a druggie-Marxist thug with a chip on each shoulder ?

    2. Probably not. We are still poised waiting for the supposed legacy that the wretch Coe promised. He and quite a few others got rich and we paid for the mess they created.

      The Olympics was a busted flush years ago. I recall the Athens Olympics which bankrupted the country with the added ‘bonus’ of the destruction of many historic artefacts, swept away when the Olympic site was excavated and cleared. The Olympic buildings remain as ruins and testament to the stupidity of politicians.

      Everyone knows that the athletes are drugged up to the eyeballs. The whole show is a farce.

    3. Probably not. We are still poised waiting for the supposed legacy that the wretch Coe promised. He and quite a few others got rich and we paid for the mess they created.

      The Olympics was a busted flush years ago. I recall the Athens Olympics which bankrupted the country with the added ‘bonus’ of the destruction of many historic artefacts, swept away when the Olympic site was excavated and cleared. The Olympic buildings remain as ruins and testament to the stupidity of politicians.

      Everyone knows that the athletes are drugged up to the eyeballs. The whole show is a farce.

  103. I wonder how the completely useless Nick Clegg landed a $6,000,000 job incl performance bonuses, $656,000 basic, and buy a $9,000,000 home in California… and keep his $2,000,000 home in London ?

    Must have been the gold fairy…… or is it the NWO ?

  104. Treasa is running hard to keep up with Nick and has amassed approx $1,250,000 for just 8 speeches, with loads more to come after C-19…..

    Must be the gold fairy again………. or is it the NWO ?

  106. No wonder this committee thinks it runs the country

    Sage was allowed to take control as politicians shamefully bowed down to ‘the science’

    JULIET SAMUEL

    The sage has spoken! Sir Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Adviser, has declared that he can see “absolutely no reason” why people should be told to go back to work in their offices. Sir Patrick, as we can infer from this statement, neither runs a chain of city-centre hair salons or restaurants, nor works in one, nor runs a Government that relies on tax revenue from such establishments. If he did, he might admit there are some reasons – conceivable, imaginable reasons – why getting a bit more foot traffic into town centres is a good idea.

    Still, if Sir Patrick has somehow picked up the idea that he does, in fact, run the Government, it is surely not his fault. Ever since our senior-most ministers began to claim that they were merely “following the science”, the country has logically concluded that the people really in charge are the scientists, by which we mean the particular scientific committees convened by our bureaucracy to interpret the epidemiological runes. With names like Sage and Nervtag, their branding is a little mixed – Sage sounds alright, but Nervtag brings to mind some sort of laser game at the Trocadero – but this has not detracted from their assumed monopoly on wisdom.

    On the face of it, convening a single committee of all the best boffins to deal with a crisis sounds like a great idea. Surely we’ll reach the best outcome if we lock a group of experts in a room to thrash it out and then do as they say? It has a certain glamour to it, too, like a gathering of philosopher kings or a papal conclave, especially at the start when the list of participants was inexplicably kept secret.

    Alas, the sense of glamour is long gone. Inside government, there is a palpable sense of disappointment – even betrayal – that “the science” and its guardians, “the experts”, seem to have got things so badly wrong. Sage has already been effectively stripped of its dominance in favour of a special unit inside Downing Street, a setup that quite possibly repeats the mistakes of the old, highly centralised arrangement. Yet the argument now emerging does not seem to be one about whether Sage and its fellow committees were fit for purpose or how successful their method was, but whether or not the Government followed their advice slavishly enough. Why, the critics demand furiously, did the Government fail to lock down the country on March 16, when Sage said so, and instead do it on March 23?

    Why? In truth, ministers were shell-shocked. They had, in effect, outsourced all of their critical faculties on the matter to “the science” and were, to their horror, witnessing a screeching scientific U-turn. Just three days before, “the science” had been “unanimous” that “measures seeking to completely suppress spread of Covid-19 will cause a second peak”, according to minutes of Sage’s fifteenth meeting. Yet at the sixteenth meeting, on March 16, as the minutes recall, “the advice [had] changed”. Testing capacity needed to be ramped up “urgently”, Sage advised, and “additional social distancing measures [should] be introduced as soon as possible”. Later in the meeting, discussing the publication of Sage minutes, the committee was extremely keen that they “demonstrate the uncertainties scientists have faced”.

    So if we are going to focus our post-mortem on a week in March, then we could just as well look at the week before March 16 as the week after it. This was the week in which the NHS finally gathered the data showing that its critical care capacity was nowhere near sufficient and when the data was finally obtained showing that the disease was spreading much faster than realised.

    Ultimately, however, we should not be asking about why the lockdown was not imposed sooner, but how the Government could have managed the crisis without needing such a severe lockdown at all? How could we have been more like Germany or Sweden, where normal activity fell by 30-50 per cent, rather than Spain and Italy, where it fell by 60-80 per cent?

    The current setup for scientific advice, especially Sage and Public Health England (PHE), will not survive this interrogation. It is not just that these structures resulted in inordinate amounts of time spent on the wrong questions, like whether China was screening passengers in Wuhan airport or even “when to stop contact tracing” (correct answer: never). It is not just that they spent very little time on contingencies in case their strategy was wrong by, for example, suggesting buying up PPE or testing reagents. It is also that they enabled politicians to pretend that major questions of values and risk were in fact questions of science, to be handled by “experts” – and then blamed on them if they went wrong.

    The experts were clearly under the same impression. For the entire month of February, for example, Sage members talked in terms of “when” the pandemic spread in the UK, rather than “if”. PHE produced a paper in mid-February suggesting that although “in theory ever increasing levels of resource can be allocated” to contact-tracing, it could not continue past “a reasonable limit”. It did not discuss what this limit might be, however, because “opportunity cost, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness are out of scope”. If such essential questions were out of PHE’s scope – and they rightly were – then why exactly were our politicians outsourcing major decisions on how to allocate resources, whether to contain the virus and what risks to take to a small group of scientists and technocrats known as “the science”? Is it any wonder these technocrats panicked when their data was wrong?

    Last week, during a virtual event run by Policy Exchange, the German health minister Jens Spahn explained how his government handles scientific advice. They have a semi-equivalent of Sage, but this forms only part of the picture. From the start, Mr Spahn called in various experts to discuss different topics – vaccines, drugs, a second wave. “It’s very informal,” he said. “Once I see a professor giving an interview that has an interesting approach or a different view, I actually call him immediately.” He does not wait for a centrally compiled document to arrive with a stamp of approval called “the science” on top of it. He weighs up the trade-offs, negotiates with other politicians and agrees a strategy. As he said: “In the end, it’s politicians who decide.” After all, if we wanted a little coterie of sages to run the country, we would elect them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/17/no-wonder-thiscommittee-thinksit-runs-country/

    BTL:
    Graham Barnes 17 Jul 2020 8:31PM
    As a mathematical physicist, I must say this is a great article. At no point were many dissenting scientists brought into the fold to give thier opinions. SAGE was an exercise in groupthink – even if I make the wrong call, if I make the same mistake as everyone else, it is at least explainable. And at the centre was the Imperial team who have a huge amount to answer for, not least their appalling track record. Dissenters (and that is how science works, by debate and argument) were left to shouting from the sidelines, given no time by the main media and BBC…people like the Oxford team, Centre for Evidence Based medicine, Karol Sikora, etc. Many of them can be seen on the outstanding Unherd interviews and I suspect in the long run they will be proven right.

    1. Groupthink is the only acceptable think these days. Debate and argument? You’re havin’ a giraffe. The science is settled, don’t allow contrary opinions. No platforming, safe spaces and taking down are the new normal.

    2. To require people to go back to the office requires a bit more thought than the simple can that person perform equally well at home..

      Nah, too complicated and it might lead to questions about HS2 being needed or not.

  107. Good night all.

    Raie au beurre noir, an excellent Camembert which ran everywhere & summer pudding. ;-b

    1. Good night, Peddy. Bangers and mash with a helping of baked beans for me, washed down with a New Zealand Sauvignon Blance. Dessert was chopped bananas in custard.

      2. Why do people “wash food down” with alcohol? Do you put some Fairy liquid in it first?

        I don’t wash anything “down” after eating. I just do the washing “up”. :•)

  110. Are compulsory masks intended to cow the population into wanting vaccination ?

    Why has Public Health England been massaging the statistics to make C-19 look worse than it is ?

    Is the involvement of Bill Gates a clue ? Boros apparently surrendered virtually all decision making to him.

    Gates wants to vaccinate the entire country and he has apparently been extremely influential behind the scenes with certain senior civil servants and ministers.

    More multi billionaire influence and “persuasion” to get what he wants ?

    Looks like it could be !

    1. Boros cowed to WHO in March 2020 when he followed its global guidelines for isolation instead of herd immunity to tackle COVID-19 as recommended by UK’s CMO.

      WHO cowed to China in January 2020 by accepting its funding to believe that China’s CDC had the COVID-19 virus under local control instead of listening to its medical professionals.

      WHO also cows to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation because a disproportionate amount WHO funding comes from there instead of member states.

      PHE cows to Boros because it sets the health policy for England instead of being guided by the UK’s CMO.

      The NHS cows to Big Pharma by using their vaccinations to keep the UK population healthy for longer instead of letting them die naturally from disease.

      Big Pharma cows to NICE for recommending their medications instead of taking notice of Yellow Cards sent to the MHRA.

      The world population cows to COVID-19 by using computers to buy masks and pharmaceutical products (soon to be followed by vaccinations) on the internet using Microsoft software.

      Here are some more cows:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/20bd22355d05b8fffa901b4c4ea94b7a85a6fedc95e1fcc5f702b3bcab648f2e.gif

        1. I was happy using Windoes 7 and srcupulously avoided downloading Windows 10.
          Then one day I forgot to turn my PC off and Bill Gates had downloaded Windows 10 without my consent.

          Is that what’s going to happen with his vaccine?

Comments are closed.