Friday 18 September: Give the facts about Covid-19 and let citizens take control of their lives

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/17/lettersgive-facts-covid-19-let-citizens-take-control-lives/

776 thoughts on “Friday 18 September: Give the facts about Covid-19 and let citizens take control of their lives”

  1. SIR – Under the new lockdown in my area, my son, who lives with his wife and children, won’t be allowed to visit me from today on, nor I him.

    I have a plumber coming (who is allowed, with a mask, under social-distancing rules) to do some work in my home tomorrow morning.

    The plumber is my son.

    Roy Shute
    Morpeth, Northumberland

  2. ‘Morning All

    Just drop these off…………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca772fc0c0be8799b5593da3ab1de33cdc309a0d6f1291159492eaef5a89a8ab.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13adfcafb4dc303a2360f365405085d9293060a0587290d1267d5784f286e1b5.jpg

    https://media.8kun.top/file_store/e0d17923ddaf5cfbe4a637eb6834c220fa7605233ed05d6107825fa038353aa3.png

    ‘Nuff Said

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/14c4e6daa0cf42ce3064d82f486a668ad8cc9e63886cad8bd1aa65299d37e395.jpg

  4. SIR – As a former holder of the Chair of Moral Philosophy that David Hume (Letters, September 16) was twice denied on religious grounds, I was horrified by Edinburgh University’s decision to rename a building because views he expressed 270 years ago “cause distress”.

    The vice-chancellor is clearly neither a philosopher nor a historian, but he needs to explain his own interpretation of the cited texts, with reference to their classical sources and the complex British and French intellectual contexts in which Hume was writing.

    Members of the Hume Society, which I founded with five others in 1973, will no doubt be willing to help.

    Emeritus Professor Peter Jones
    Edinburgh

    Surely it would be a blessed relief to David Hume to have his name removed from that monstrosity of a building.

  6. MPs blast Home Office over immigration and claim there are ‘major holes’ in their understanding of how many illegals are in the country. 17 september 2020.

    The civil servants who enforce immigration rules have no idea how many illegal migrants are living in Britain, MPs said yesterday.

    The Home Office has not assessed the total number living here without permission for 15 years – a period in which there has been an unprecedented influx.

    It has no grasp of the damage done by illegal immigration or of the criminals associated with it, and it has only a ‘disturbingly weak’ understanding of the effects of its own efforts to stop illegal immigration or deport people with no right to be in the country, MPs said.

    When ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise! All the Home Office apparatchiks have to know is that Migrants are getting in as they wish. Being berated by a toothless committee is no burden to that aim!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8745671/MPs-say-Home-Office-major-holes-understanding-illegal-migrants-country.html

      1. Don’t look to the Home Sec. for an answer; she’s too busy standing on tip toe and peering over her fence checking out the number of people in her neighbour’s garden.

  7. Death knell. Gary Lineker has enthusiastically endorsed Alex Scott’s appointment as the replacement for Sue Barker on QoS.

      1. Objectively, we are the ones out of step. The time is out of joint, we were born too soon to set it right.

    2. He has jumped the gun, which doesn’t surprise me. She hasn’t been officially appointed yet.

      1. Apart from possessing two legs, and presumably not wearing sensible shoes, we can assume she ticks enough boxes for the job to be hers.

      2. I’m sure he will be correct, the BBC has to ask his permission before they do anything, don’tch kno.

      1. I suspect that it might be t’other way round. Drippy ‘new’ DG is massively impressed by Lineker’s following on soshul meejah and, since Ms Scott is part of Lineker’s team on Match of the Day Kickabout, he wouldn’t dare cross him.

      2. Maybe some figures person can enlighten me: would Big Ear’s reduced income equal the tax take on his former income?

  10. A transcript of part of the speech delivered by (but surely not composed by) President Donny 17th September 2020.

    “Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience. No political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress. Yet, as we gather this afternoon, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. We can’t let that happen.

    We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. A perfect example of Critical Race Theory was recently published by the Smithsonian Institution. This document alleged that concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, and the nuclear family, and belief in God were not values that unite all Americans, but we’re instead aspects of whiteness. This is offensive and outrageous to Americans of every ethnicity and it’s especially harmful to children of minority backgrounds who should be uplifted, not disparaged. Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words.

    We embrace the vision of Martin Luther King, where children are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. The Left is attempting to destroy that beautiful vision and divide Americans by race, in the service of political power. By viewing every issue through the lens of race, they want to impose a new segregation and we must not allow that to happen. Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda. Ideological poison, that if not removed will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together, will destroy our country. That is why I recently banned trainings in this prejudiced ideology from the federal government and banned it in the strongest manner possible”

    1. An alternative caption might be:

      “What’s the emergency?”

      “There’s a BLM rave and we are getting the hell out of it.”

    1. Someone in Twitter not reading beyond the first bit.

      I have an Iranian penpal, a lovely lady doctor whom I started corresponding with when she was at medical college. She has dreams of leaving Iran and seeing the world, but she is also deeply patriotic and loves her country very much and would not do anything to dishonour her family or her national culture. When she was talking about travelling to the West, I suggested that she will always return home. She is like a pigeon.

      Well, while we were online messaging each other, she looked up the word in the dictionary, got as far as the first three letters and then exploded in a torrent of curses that those in that part of the world are rather expert at. It took her a fortnight to calm down.

      2. It is rare to find limericks in French.

        Il y avait un jeune homme de Dijon
        Qui se foutait de toute religion.
        Il a dit, “Quant à moi,
        Je déteste les trois:
        Le Père, et le Fils, et le Pigeon.”

        There was a young fellow from Dijon,
        Who gave not a toss for religion
        He said: “Honestly
        I detest all the three
        The Father, The Son and the Pigeon.”

        The challenge is for a Nottler to write a French version of the famous limerick about the Bishop of Birmingham.

    3. Someone ZB? must have complained.
      If you can be bothered, appeal it, just to see what the wazzocks say.

        1. Twatter is a cause of great stress. I was suspended some time ago, and after some mulling, I thought it best if it remained that way. Have not missed it, one bit.

          1. This reminds me of the episode in Only Fools and Horses where Delboy sells some dodgy wine to the vicar and then persuades him to bless the whole lorry full at the same time.

    2. Is he trying to. become the St.Peter of the Peter Principle?

      Morning all. It seems today we are faced with two choices; 1. To join the madness epitomised by Woke or, 2. Remain awake and be driven mad by 1.

    3. I haven’t seen any of the Baba’s or Nostradamuses predictions being published telling us it was going to happen.

      On the other hand, the Book of Revelation four horsemen prediction is looking pretty good.

  14. Politics latest news: ‘Circuit break’ national lockdown being considered, admits Matt Hancock. 18 September 2020.

    The Government is considering a “circuit break” short-term national lockdown, in a bid to bring coronavirus cases down before the pandemic spirals out of control, Matt Hancock has said.

    The Health Secretary said it was a “last resort” but that he was “doing everything we can to prepare, and are absolutely prepared to take whatever action is necessary.”

    He refused to comment on when the circuit breaker might be brought in, although reports suggest it could be over half term in October. It is thought it will not be a full lockdown as before but something akin to what is being brought in through the north of the country, involving curfews and restrictions on socialising, but keeping schools and most workplaces open.

    http://disq.us/p/2bwys41

    Araminta Smade • 19 hours ago. These local clampdowns are multiplying; there is even one for London being mooted. This of course implies that the takeover is now close. My guess is Sunday but they will probably issue a countrywide standstill order before the final move.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/18/brexit-news-internal-market-bill-eu-boris-johnson-deal-latest/

  15. Politics latest news: ‘Circuit break’ national lockdown being considered, admits Matt Hancock. 18 September 2020.

    The Government is considering a “circuit break” short-term national lockdown, in a bid to bring coronavirus cases down before the pandemic spirals out of control, Matt Hancock has said.

    The Health Secretary said it was a “last resort” but that he was “doing everything we can to prepare, and are absolutely prepared to take whatever action is necessary.”

    He refused to comment on when the circuit breaker might be brought in, although reports suggest it could be over half term in October. It is thought it will not be a full lockdown as before but something akin to what is being brought in through the north of the country, involving curfews and restrictions on socialising, but keeping schools and most workplaces open.

    http://disq.us/p/2bwys41

    Araminta Smade • 19 hours ago. These local clampdowns are multiplying; there is even one for London being mooted. This of course implies that the takeover is now close. My guess is Sunday but they will probably issue a countrywide standstill order before the final move.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/18/brexit-news-internal-market-bill-eu-boris-johnson-deal-latest/

    1. Do you MIND? The world is bad enough without having to endure this self-obsessed exhibitionist.

    3. Is that for the soldier to hold the gun to your head while the nurse jabs you with the poison.

  19. As they pump more and more Covid19 information through the tv news I keep seeing a person who is head of a “Local Resilience Forum (LRF)” – they seem to be some sort of QUANGO ? –

    They seem to be full of self-importance, going on about emergencies and lock-down etc?
    Just what is a “LRF? and who appoints them with what powers ?

    1. Having perused the relevant Government document (in PDF), I take it that the LRF will engage with VCS to support the LA in making assessments with the VCSE within the structures of the TCG and SCG, thus enabling issues to be flagged to HMG through MHCLG. The LRF will also liaise with the NHS and the BRC.

      Pity they all don’t just FOAD, IMHO.

    2. These are cadres of politically reliable people and once the Takeover is complete they will assume the functions of Local and Parish councils where they will administer The Revolutionary Councils edicts!

        1. Good point, the document reads as though they are the type of ” good community thing ” tht everyone should support.

          However, cynic that I am, I foresee a problem with petty people over-exercising their powers.

  20. Wonders will never cease! Twitter has unsuspended my account (so they say- I haven’t tried it yet) which has been suspended since April! Whether my followers are still there remains to be seen. I joined Parler, but didn’t really get on with it.

  21. Question. Someone here posted that he (or she) had been at university with the useless Harding woman. I thought it was this morning; but I can’t find it., Can anyone help?

    Maybe I am imagining the whole thing, of course, like the phantom “tests”…..

      1. Thanks, Missus. Unfortunately, he is “private” so I cannot access his posts. As you named him so quickly, do you have an idea of the time and da of his post?

        1. Careful Bill…She may be private but can still bite you. As I recall, her comment was added latish to a posting around the middle of the day.

          1. Well, I did say “he (or she)” in my original question.

            But with people using fake names, how the hell does one know whether a NoTTLer is male or female (or, of course, trans…)??

          2. Here you go…

            blackbox2 Bill Thomas • 15 hours ago
            I was at university at the same time as her and a few other politicos. Never liked Harding – she had a very high opinion of herself, which others seemed to take at face value; hence her brilliant career, I suppose.
            Schadenfreude is a terrible thing 🙁

            3
            •
            Reply
            •
            Share ›
            Avatar
            peddytheviking blackbox2 • 15 hours ago
            Man sagt, dass Schadenfreude die beste Freude wäre.

          4. Look at your name at the top of the posts. It has a little balloon next to it, usually red if someone has upvoted one of your posts or replied, otherwise grey.

            Left click the balloon and a series of posts will appear.

            Left click replies, to isolate those that are not merely up votes.
            Scroll down the replies, it might take a while if the posts was some time ago.

            Then when you’ve found it, left click “view in Discussion” and the relevant bit should appear in a new tab.
            You may need to scroll down to find it, but it will be highlighted with a yellow blockquote line

          10. I know. Thanks. I have been using notifications for years. But you weren’t to know.

            There are times when I wish i hadn’t started a thread….

          11. If you read the posts you can generally work out with most people which they are. How did you know I ‘m female? Because at some time I must have told you.

          14. Nah – I sleuthed the net – found the hedgehog site – then discovered that some people called you my a diminutive of your Christian name – and voilà

      2. What was that doing in the Guardian? Sounds more suitable for Spiked!

        How did this incompetent nonentity become a peer? She should go back to the stables.

  22. An insight into other people’s lives…..

    “SIR – The data captured by my smart meter allows me to produce charts depicting power and gas consumption week-on-week for comparison with previous yearly figures.

    The results are interesting and enlightening conversations with my wife every morning.

    Graeme Williams
    West Malling, Kent”

    3. Self slumps into torpor of dismay. But, seriously? As for Mr Wibbling’s divorce suggestion (from underreadery) it seems likely that Mr and Mrs Williams may be well-suited, otherwise she would have left sometime during the honeymoon.
      If I tried something like detailed analysis of household bills followed by daily conversations on same, I would be liable to sudden onset of violent death, and quite right too.
      Even should I lose what remains of my mind, there is no need for such stuff, as my electricity provider does this for me. with a Quarterly summary of this year and last year figures. While a cause for despondency they are no fit subject for conversation.

    6. OMG. How sad. But have they reduced their usage – bet your life they haven’t! Our lovely next door neighbour (and I mean that) does the same thing every week manually and seems to really enjoy comparing one week with another, month by month, year by year! Bless him. CBA. Compare each year’s cost to previous, sure, it no more than that.

      1. I do have a thing about my weather station, which I like to keep an eye on, but a power meter, how boring?…

        1. He checks his water, leccy and gas consumption. But the thing is I’m not sure he tells his wife”you’re using too much … “. (He’d get short shrift there!)

      2. I take monthly readings of my usage and what my solar panels generate and have been for 6 years. A graph is drawn and the area between the 2 lines shows my ‘profit’ ie the payback on my investment in the panels. Not a smart meter but a smart bloke :o)

    1. Good morning Bob3 (and all NoTTLers). Does Mrs Bob3 know you are planning to play around again?

    2. Good morning Bob3 (and all NoTTLers). Does Mrs Bob3 know you are planning to play around again?

  24. Off topic:- I see that the movie “The Lone Ranger” is on Beeb tonight. Why on Earth was he called The LONE Ranger when he was always accompanied by his faithful Indian companion, Tonto? “faithful Indian” – isn’t that a term to infuriate the wokes?

    1. Not a quote from the film but….LR “look Tonto injuans we are surrounded” ….T “what u mean we kimosabie” ?

  25. Tom Watson takes job as adviser to Paddy Power and Betfair. 18 September 2020.

    Tom Watson, the former Labour MP who was one of parliament’s most virulent campaigners for gambling reform, has joined the world’s largest online betting company as an adviser.

    Flutter Entertainment, which owns Paddy Power, Betfair and SkyBet, said it would pay Watson a retainer, understood to be less than £100,000, to advise it on tackling problem gambling.

    Watson’s appointment comes ahead of the launch later this year of a government review of gambling law, which could result in sweeping changes to the regulation of the industry.

    Morning everyone. Another one bought off in advance! The bribes given to the elites are successful, even if only for their silence, since it compromises them morally and ensures that there is no empathy between themselves and the people. That the cash is usually paid via a third party as here, or by coercion such as the TV licence is irrelevant since it all comes from the same source.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/17/tom-watson-job-adviser-paddy-power-betfair-gambling-former-labour-mp

    1. No, Minty. Keep some perspective, man.

      Not by any stretch of the imagination can the Nonce-hunter’s engagement as a tic-tac man for Paddy Power at under £100,000 be seen as anything other than utter humiliation when he thought he was a shoo-in for the HoL.. It’s not even Ladbrokes! In truth, Watson ought to be prosecuted for his starring role in the Beech matter and his abuse of Parliamentary privilege.

      1. Agreed, how fitting it is that the (self-proclaimed) Nonce-Finder General should have been ‘overlooked’ for a peerage and end up working in a trade that is almost as sleazy as the swamp he departed.
        The small bonus for the taxpayer is that we are not funding his wages but I agree he should be doing time for his scurrilous efforts in condemning innocent men to an early grave through the stress of dealing with accusations this coward made under Parliamentary Privilege.

    2. The gambling industry is a horrible parasite on society,their only rule is “Never give a sucker an even break”
      Those that have the knowlege or skill to commit the cardinal sin of winning promptly find their membership withdrawn or their accounts cancelled
      Online gambling is especially pernicious (and bent*) and advertising it should be banned
      * When investigating gaming site developers I was greeted with “How random do you want your roulette to be” Sheesh

      1. I remember the man who won one million dollars on a casino slot machine. The casino refused to pay and he took them to court.

        Though the slot machine in question had one million prize in big flashing lights they were able to prove the machine incapable of paying out the top prize because of an algorithm.

    1. I have been finding recently that my own trolley targets my ankles, the shallower trolleys are the worst.

  29. Repent, repent…the end of times is nigh

    LIAM FOX THROUGH TO SECOND ROUND OF WTO DIRECTOR-GENERAL SELECTION PROCESS

    https://youtu.be/GZDtN_4fArY

    Liam Fox’s campaign to be the next WTO Director-General received a boost this morning as he made it though to the next round of the selection process, beating the Mexican and Egyptian candidates who have been knocked out. The remaining shortlist is as follows:

    Dr Liam Fox – United Kingdom
    Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – Nigeria
    Ms Yoo Myung-hee – Republic of Korea
    Ms Amina C. Mohamed – Kenya
    Mr Mohammad Maziad Al-Tuwaijri – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
    Guido learns Fox won the support of the Commonwealth, though notiecably the EU en bloc voted for anyone but him. Fox is the last European left…

    https://order-order.com/2020/09/18/breaking-liam-fox-through-to-second-round-of-wto-director-general-selection-process/

    I reckon that the Nigerian woman will win hands down….she has Gordon Brown’s backing.
    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640×360/p08gsxl6.jpg

    1. Expertise, long memory, lacks politics. Sounds good to me.

      What Fox is suggesting is to ignore the expertise, forget the lessons it has learned and promote an agenda.

      How do these incompetent buffoons get into such offices? Theyre incompetent. They don’t seem to understand the very things they espouse are the precise things to avoid.

    4. I liked the quote of the day on the RHS of Guido’s page:

      “Responding to an SNP
      MP complaining that he’d spent the last 40 years “banging on about”
      self-determination for England, Sir Bill Cash quips:
      “Not unsuccessfully if I may say so”

      1. I think the one considered to bethe most corruptible will win.

        All the wealthiest countries and globalists will want someone they think they can influence behind the scenes, they will put pressure on less wealthy countries to vote for their chosen candidate.

  32. An interesting insight to a 19th C London suburb.

    In the early 19th century, Uxbridge had an unsavoury reputation; the jurist William Arabin said of its residents “They will steal the very teeth out of your mouth as you walk through the streets. I know it from experience.

    The world has advanced since then. It applies to all of them now – with knobs on.

  34. Navalny associates say Novichok was found on water bottle in his hotel room. 18 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/27071078ca219379a32025862345d95e92b55daa838b61d27dab74120da450c7.png

    The nerve agent used to poison Alexei Navalny was found on a water bottle in his hotel room shortly after the Russian opposition fell ill on a plane back to Moscow, his associates revealed on Thursday.

    Mr Navalny’s team revealed on Thursday that the poison was found on one of the free water bottles that his colleagues retrieved from his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk shortly after Mr Navalny became unwell on the plane.

    More idiocy. Let us suppose for one moment that this is true; that Vlad’s guys doctored a free hospitality bottle of water with delayed (God help us) action Novichok. How did they know that he would drink it? Were they relying on blind chance? A strange modus operandi for trained killers! Aside from leaving evidence littering the scene, why, since this stuff is supposedly lethal did they not re-enter his room to check that he had actually consumed it and remove the offending bottle if only for the simple reason that if he hadn’t the next guest would succumb instead. This is to say nothing of the hotel’s cleaning ladies. Were they on strike? Every hotel I’ve ever stayed in they were cleaning the room and changing the sheets while I was still packing! Why was the bottle still there? It is to be noted that the “finders” are wearing gloves and carrying all the necessities for removing said evidence. This of course also tells us that; contrary to the impression given by the Germans; that they did not find any Novichok in Navalny himself, but inferred it from another source.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/17/navalny-associates-say-novichok-found-water-bottle-hotel-room/

    1. Another source?
      https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=AwrEzNwChWRfOk8A37iJzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTI0b3VhZTdyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1nBG9pZAMyZTJjZmUyOWU0NmIwYjk4ZTI2MzA2MWFkYThlOGZhMARncG9zAzMxMARpdANiaW5n?back=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dthe%2BBeano%26fr%3Daaplw%26nost%3D1%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D310&w=400&h=605&imgurl=static.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2Fscale_medium%2F8%2F80884%2F1596072-beano1977.jpg&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcomicvine.gamespot.com%2Fthe-beano-annual-1977%2F4000-254105%2F&size=55.6KB&p=the+Beano&oid=2e2cfe29e46b0b98e263061ada8e8fa0&fr2=&fr=aaplw&tt=The+Beano+Annual+%231977+%28Issue%29&b=301&ni=220&no=310&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=Fzj4r60GoQYB&sigb=to1idh7Gwbgl&sigi=1sfW8U4G9lkL&sigt=SoCdi18lqxDz&.crumb=HCzdmskKAN0&fr=aaplw

  35. This is spooky and ominous. Soros must have his fangs into Fox bigly for them to wave off Gingrich. Is he buying Fox News?

    Fox News Cuts Off Newt Gingrich After He Points Out George Soros Role in Electing Prosecutors
    https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/09/17/fox-news-cuts-off-newt-gingrich-after-he-points-out-george-soros-role-in-electing-prosecutors/

    Neither Trump nor Harris/Biden are going to accept the result on Nov 3….who to back in a civil war?

    Soros-Backed Coalition Preparing for Post-Election Day Chaos — ‘We’re Going to Fight Like Hell’
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/17/soros-backed-coalition-preparing-for-post-election-day-chaos-were-going-to-fight-like-hell/

    1. Hi Citroen, I have been following the USA news quite closely since the ‘peaceful protests’ started after Floyd died after he resisted arrest and under the influence of enough drugs to kill himself. The Democrats look as if they are not bothered if they lose the election, they will simply stoke up more violence and forcibly oust Trump.

      They are backing massive introduction of postal voting, even giving themselves an additional three days to count the votes in Pennsylvania – an important swing state that Trump narrowly won in 2016.

      Biden is clearly too unwell to even run for President and his memory is deteriorating day by day – will he even remember his own name by November? His running partner, Krapala, is an out and out racist and Marxist but would end up as President if Biden wins.

      The vested interest of the ‘swamp’ is clear to see with Trump having been viciously attacked every day of his presidency. The majority of the attacks are based on totally fake news or something he said being twisting out of context.

      In the background of all this is Soros, the evil puppet master. He has massively financed Lefty Democrat supporting DA’s in many states and these are releasing rioters without charge. He is also backing different ‘charities’ that fund bail for those arrested (when required), he is a supporter of Antifa and BLM; again often through other groups. The fact that a national news channel will cut off a former Speaker of the House to protect Soros should cause louder calls for an investigation into his actions. It’s not the Russians interfering in elections, it is Soros.

      A landslide for Trump is what is needed, God knows what will happen otherwise but it won’t be good.

      1. Very much agree, hopon. I lived there for 27 years and have a son in Cleveland, OH. He doesn’t see the situation quite as I do but what he tells me is very scary.

      2. On the matter of Floyd, it has been touted that he was a ‘gentle giant’ who had tried to turn his life around. Can anyone explain where he got his drugs from – were they prescribed for him? If not, could he really afford them on modest salary?

  36. Morning SIR – It is clear that Covid-19 is here to stay. How long does the Government plan to keep restrictions in place: one year, five, 10? We have to learn to live with the virus and keep our humanity.

    The public should be briefed regularly (and truthfully) with facts and figures on testing, infection rates, hospital admissions and deaths, broken down by location; and given appropriate recommendations on how to mitigate the spread. However, every citizen must be allowed to take back control of his or her life.

    Diana Devine

    Ascot, Berkshire

    SIR – If the Government wants its guidance on Covid-19 to be taken seriously, it must be simple, clear, easy to enforce and, above all, consistent.

    If it is no longer safe for more than six people to meet socially, even outdoors, there can be no justification for urging people who can work at home to return to their offices.

    Charles Agg

    Haxby, North Yorkshire

    SIR – I fail to understand what is wrong with mingling at a safe distance.

    The government website for test and trace states that if someone develops symptoms they will be asked to give the details of those with whom they’ve had close contact in the previous 48 hours. This is defined as:

    face-to-face contact with someone less than one metre away (this will include times where you have worn a face covering or a face mask) or spending more than 15 minutes within two metres of someone

    So, by this definition, a 10-minute conversation with someone in the street or park even less than two metres apart does not constitute a risk.

    Amanda Hume

    Sutton Coldfield

    SIR – With the “rule of six’, government guidance to village halls and community centres (Letters, September 12) has caused extreme confusion.

    Some assumed that six was the maximum the hall could accommodate, some that visitors had to be arranged in groups of up to six. The WI decided that all future meetings had to be cancelled.

    Normally visitors to village halls don’t arrive in groups, they are either singles or couples. So instead of the pages of complex and sometimes conflicting instructions, would it not have been better to issue a simple statement, namely: “Visitors to village halls from different households must remain socially distant at all times”?

    I believe that to be the case.

    Ken Jones

    Hambledon, Hampshire

  37. SIR – On Wednesday I went into my bank, NatWest, to get coins for the car park ticket machine. I was told the branch didn’t handle coins any more.

    My bank is in a shopping centre, where the parking machines are labelled: “Coins only. No card payments.” What is one to do?

    Christopher Sharp

    Kenilworth, Warwickshire

        1. Morning Hugh
          How long before the Card companies and Supermarkets get fed up with processing payments of one or two pounds and start to impose minimum purchase amounts on a card…

    3. Well, in Hackney, one always keeps a hacksaw in the car. It is used to remove the top of the parking meter. One can then park without payment. Additionally on takes the meter head back to one’s home. There it can be opened and a supply of coins procured.

      (The things one learns in London.)

    4. Before lockdown & I was out & about, I picked up £10 in £1 coins every month from the bank for tips to waiters, hairdressers, taxi drivers, etc. I haven’t done so recently. Maybe I’m in for a surprise.

      1. BBC Radio 4 this morning reporting that the Royal Mint is stopping production of £2 coins and 2p coins[I think] for a few years because they have a massive surplus in store.

    5. BTL Comment:-

      18 Sep 2020 8:36AM
      Is it beyond Christopher Sharp’s wit to retain a parking float of, perhaps, £5 in his car? I keep 3 £1 coins, a couple of 10 bob bits and a quid each of 10s & 20s.

      It also means I’m not scrabbling about for a £1 coin for supermarket trollies.

      1. And the old ones , of which I have too many strewn around the bedroom floor, being the result of trouser removal emanation, still work in trolleys.

      2. And the old ones , of which I have too many strewn around the bedroom floor, being the result of trouser removal emanation, still work in trolleys.

  38. How many will be killed by our hysterical caution over Covid?

    SIR – I am a consultant anaesthetist working in a tertiary hospital in south-east England. We have a massive backlog of children awaiting surgery and other procedures requiring a general anaesthetic. To follow the “green pathway” – the term given to Covid-free areas of hospital – all children must have a negative Covid test within 72 hours of admission in order to proceed with their treatment. Parents are finding it incredibly difficult and time-consuming, if not impossible, to arrange a test.

    Would it not be sensible for the Government to allow patients to attend a testing station without an online appointment if they have evidence of their hospital admission?

    Due to these problems, it is becoming increasingly common for paediatric operating theatres to stand empty. In some cases we are having to proceed without test results, requiring us to follow the less-efficient “amber pathway” and wear level-2 personal protective equipment. This is uncomfortable to wear, and potentially increases the risks to both patients and staff. It is also incredibly wasteful in terms of cost, resources and efficiency.

    Karen Mitchell

    Oakley, Buckinghamshire

    1. It tells you something about the ruthlesness of these people that they are letting countless innocents die while they play the game!

  39. 323791+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Rhetorical question, if there was a General Election shortly would
    “we want our lives back” be a deciding factor when entering the
    polling booth ?
    There must be someone a born / bred Englishman ( my choice) out there to
    order, with the peoples consent, this political westminster mob to either speak out the truth & clam up with the fright sh!te.
    Surely by now even the hardened party before Country, nose grippers realise the end is very close.
    There surely must be a living role model ably to lead a serious political
    re-aliment cause, or can they only be found on plinths & columns.
    Example of elected sh!te in action.

    https://twitter.com/MaidCakey/status/1306713282468810752

    1. 323791+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Tell me Og, brussels went 541 days without a government, could that be tried here, putting ALL politico’s on minimum pay, standing them down on the
      21/9/2020 for 541 days under strict coastal security as we would not want any illegals taking advantage.
      This done of course by consent of the remaining sane peoples, could prove very beneficial for GB.

  40. Wonderful BTL response to a letter about typos:
    “The person that developed spellchecker died last week, if you wish to attend, his funfair is next monkey.”

  41. Blimey; someone’s been feeding the BTL posters meat:

    “(The door flies open and Cardinal Boris of Uxbridge enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Whitty has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Hancock is just Cardinal Hancock)

    Boris: NOBODY expects the National Lockdown! Our chief weapon is testing…testing and local lockdowns!…local lockdowns and testing …. Our two weapons are testing and local lockdowns…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are testing, and local lockdowns, and ruthless efficiency…and rigidly enforced social distancing… Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as testing, local lockdowns…. I’ll come in again. (Exit and exeunt)

    Journalist: I didn’t expect a kind of National Lockdown…

    (JARRING CHORD)

    (The cardinals burst in)

    Boris: NOBODY expects the National Lockdown! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: testing, local lockdowns, ruthlessly enforced social distancing, efficiency, and nice red uniforms – Oh damn! (To Cardinal Hancock) I can’t say it – you’ll have to say it.”

    1. Actually, that was me, Anne. The similarity occurred to me when they were doing those press conferences at the beginning of this nonsense. I finally got round to doing the script edit this morning.

      1. Respect. I gave up on satirising the Bozza regime on the grounds that it was merely giving them ideas.

          6. I was about to make a similar observation. The poor boy was shot in the foot by one of his schoolmasters, kidnapped by the school butler and finally murdered, His mother, Lady Circumference was not too concerned – but hoped her crops were well dug and dunged!

  42. Jacob Rees-Mogg attacks ‘endless carping’ about Covid testing shortages. 18 September 2020.

    The Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has complained about what he called “this endless carping” about shortages of coronavirus tests, prompting Labour to accuse the government of being out of touch with public concerns.

    Responding to a question in the Commons about tests from his Labour shadow, Valerie Vaz, Rees-Mogg said there should be more praise for how well the system was doing.

    “The issue of testing is one where we have gone from a disease that nobody knew about a few months ago to one where nearly a quarter of a million people a day can be tested, and the prime minister is expecting that to go up to half a million people a day by the end of October,” he said.

    It looks as though Moggy, though more from his silence on other matters than what he says here, has been taken to see The Man with the White Cat!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/17/covid-testing-shortages-jacob-rees-mogg

  43. Good morning, my Friends

    (Checked at 0835 BST)

    Any updates? Any errors or omissions? Please let me know under this post.

    2nd January………..Poppiesmum (1947)
    7th January ………..Lady of the Lake
    8th January………….Rough Common
    10th January………..hopon (1960)
    16th January……….Legal Beagle (1941)
    18th January……….BugSpattered Knees
    23rd January ………Damask Rose (1951)
    27th January……….Citroen 1
    11th February ……..Phizzee (1964)
    22nd February……..Grizzly (1951)
    28th February……..Jeremy Morfey (1956)
    29th February………Ped
    5th March……………Sue Macfarlane (1957)
    8th March……………Geoff Graham
    26th March………….Caroline (1962)
    27th March………….Maggiebelle (1947)
    27th March………….Fallick Alec
    19th April…………….Devonian in Kent
    26th April…………….Harry Kobeans
    8th June………………Still Bleau
    9th June……………..Johnny Norfolk (1947)
    9th June …………….Horace (The Horse) Pendleton (1947)
    23rd June………….. Oberlieutenant
    25th June …………..corimmoblie (1952)
    1st July……………….Rastus (1946)
    12th July……………..David Wainwright
    18th July……………..lacoste
    19th July……………..Ndovu
    26th July……………..Delboy (1936)
    29th July……………..Lewis Duckworth (1944)
    30thJuly………………Alf the Great (1946)
    1st August…………..Datz (1950)
    3rd August…………..Molamola
    10th August…………ourmaninmunich (1967)
    18th August…………ashesanddust
    4th September……..Joseph B. Fox (1948)
    7th September……..Araminta Smade
    11th September….. Peddy
    12th September …..Ready Eddy
    13th September……Anne
    15th September……Ververyveryoldfella
    26th September……Feargal the Cat
    7th October………….Bob 3 (1960)
    11th October ……….Hardcastle Craggs (1944)
    .25th October………..Sue Edison (1955)
    1st December……….Sean Stanley-Adams (1956)
    6th December………Duncan Mac (1943)
    21st December……..Elsie Bloodaxe (1945)

    E&OE

      1. Nor had I yesterday, JBF, until Rastus explained to me. And I have not been characterised as youthful for over half a century!

      2. When I worked in a large company a long time ago every costing document used to determine prices and profits that was issued by the accountants was marked E&EO. Even then, I thought it was very strange that they would be permitted to do so, instead of being required to be responsible for their own work.

    12. There is something very concerning about the activities of NoTTLers’ parents in July/August and February of years past. Just what the hell were they up to?

      1. More like donkey, off course. It is “Horace” – typed very carefully for a change. but you knew that.

  44. I recorded a BBC4 Prog on archive programmes about John Constable. Very illuminating – parts fascinating. The only downside was the ghastly woman “presenter” Rose Balston – who did the Nigella Lawson thing of winking at the camera, looking coy, flicking her “luscious” and copious hair and reading her autocue extremely badly.

    Shame, really.

    1. One of my all time favs on TV last Night, Casablanca, you must remember this ……the nasty officious German gets it in the end the Froglé tidies up.
      Also the well meaning couple escape to Portugal.
      Straight after, a Parky interview Circa 1980 with Ingrid Bergman. What a unaffected intelligent and lovely lady she was.
      I recorded it as well so i guess i can play it again.

      2. I have seen that film many times – and, for the life of me, simply cannot understand why everyone raves about it. Wooden acting; creaking sets; improbable story line….

        Still, each to their own…{:¬))

        1. That’s how things were when you were a twenty year old Bill 😎

          It was explained by the lovely Ms Bergman that none of the actors actually knew the ending even as it was being filmed. And a lot of the speech contained therein was ad lib.

  45. Why is the government pushing unprecedented online censorship? 18 September 2020.

    As our new briefing at the Free Speech Union explains, they will lead to sweeping online censorship unprecedented in a democracy. Some of the harms the plans describe are vague, like “unacceptable content” and “disinformation”. The new regulations will prohibit material “that may directly or indirectly cause harm” even if it is “not necessarily illegal”.

    In other words, the regulator will be empowered to censor lawful content, a huge infringement on our freedoms. The White Paper singled out “offensive material”, as if giving offense is a harm the public need protection from by the state. In fact, the White Paper does not properly define “harm” or “hate speech”, but empowers a future regulator to do so. Failure to define harm means the definition may be outsourced to the most vocal activists who see in the new regulator a chance to ban opinions they don’t like.

    It is scarcely possible that someone in the business could be so dim as not to know the answer!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/18/government-pushing-unprecedented-online-censorship/

      1. No, surely not. Interestingly, despite the Polish sounding name and the fact that I bought him in Poland, it’s actually a Swedish brand.

    3. I’ve thought of a new game to keep children quiet while on journeys. Rather than counting red, white, blue cars etc., play ‘spot the discarded face mask’ instead.

  48. 323791+ up ticks,
    Which ever politico has the prefab hospital franchise must be whistling like a nightingale, first up then dismantling, now second incarceration looming.
    Will these incarceration periods depend on how many are tested because if so we can look forward to doing more time inside than Bronson on account of the incoming illegal troop movements overseen by the government via Dover.

  49. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9497a608203520012a74e147f5997662c2a59a4133908b11c6550047d58b29e.jpg
    I fancied some scampi. After all, I’ve not had any for years and I’d heard that my local supermarket in Tomelilla (ICA-Kvantum) had some. So I toddled off there. After searching all the frozen food chests I couldn’t find any, so I asked an assistant.

    “They are over there in Skaldjur!” [“Shell Animals”], she said.

    “Shell Animals?” I gasped, “I don’t want a frozen tortoise; nor a frozen pangolin or armadillo for that matter! I just want some scampi. Where are the shellfish?”

    “In skaldjur, as I said!” she replied.

    I looked among the shell animals cabinet but could only find lobsters and prawns. so I gave up. I bet those Chinese would be happy if they knew that Sweden stocked “shell animals” in its freezer section.

    2. “Shell animals” are not kosher or halal, are they? My dad told me that his father once bought some prawns to try but his good Jewish mother said she wasn’t having them in HER kitchen!

      1. That’s true, Sue. I know that most shellfish are not permitted because they don’t have scales and fins. I cannot speak, however, for pangolins!

        1. The poor pangolins are mammals – the only ones with scales – made of keratin. Whether they are kosher or not I wouldn’t know but they have been decimated for the Chinese dinner and medicine trade.

          2. Nobody really knows whether it came from a pangolin at the wet market or more plausibly perhaps from an escape from the Wuhan lab. The wet markets are vile and should be shut for ever but my suspicions lie with the lab.

      2. Jewish people don’t like prawns because they are scavengers not bottom feeding fish.
        During my working life i often worked in north London Jewish homes, to the extreme some had separate storage for both milk and meat products in case of contamination ??
        Even separate prep areas for some food products., never to be washed up in the same water.

        1. And separate pots, pans and bowls but at least they don’t insist on our compliance or threaten to kill us. Unlike the other lot.

          1. Never been any bother anywhere just get on with their strange lives and traditions.
            Don’t go to countries to make as much trouble as possible either. Like that mendacious and menacing other lot.

        2. Like the Millibands – no matter how I spell that, it doesn’t look right (rather like Ed and his brother, come to think of it).

    3. Perhaps she was refering to Shell Suits that brits wear. ( hope you were not wearing your aubergene one.)

      1. Not at all, John.

        But, I’ll tell you what, Swedes are like Germans: they wear socks with their sandals!

    4. But fish are animals Grizz.

      Reminds me of a game I played with friends years ago where you were given a category and then spun a thingy to get
      the first letter then everyone had to think of something beginning with that letter. If your answer was unique, you bot a point.

      Well, the category was ‘animal’ and the letter was ‘S’ so I put ‘stick insect’ as my answer. The ensuing arguement over whether a stick insect was an insect or an animal nearly ended in blows. (We were the wrong side of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s by then)

        1. Fear not, I have hollow legs when it comes to
          drinking JD. G& T on the other hand will see me senseless after three.

      2. At Christmas i play ‘cards against humanity’ with my Navy neighbours. It’s outrageous. We are laughing too much to come to blows.

    1. In the process of coming to this conclusion the authors, who are some of the UK’s foremost experts, found that between February and March 2020, a total of 1,356 genetically distinct SARS-CoV-2 strains were brought into the UK from abroad.

      More than a third (34 per cent) came from Spain, which was an early epicentre of the outbreak, while 14 per cent came from Italy, another major hotspot in the early days of the pandemic.

      Twenty-nine per cent stemmed from France, while less than one per cent derived from travel between the UK and China.

      My bold.

      That seems to me rather like saying that the vast majority of the rubber-boaters come from France, rather than their real point of origin. They will have picked up minor variations such as a few language skills and diseases, but French they most certainly are not.


    2. “Analysis by experts at the Royal Society also found none of the
      alterations made so far to the coronavirus’s genetic code are making it
      more infectious or severe.”

      I hope that that means that they know this because of analysis/sequencing of variants, and not that some scientists are experimenting with the thing to see if more infectious or severe versions can be artificially created.

    3. In the process of coming to this conclusion the authors, who are some of the UK’s foremost experts, found that between February and March 2020, a total of 1,356 genetically distinct SARS-CoV-2 strains were brought into the UK from abroad.

      More than a third (34 per cent) came from Spain, which was an early epicentre of the outbreak, while 14 per cent came from Italy, another major hotspot in the early days of the pandemic.

      Twenty-nine per cent stemmed from France, while less than one per cent derived from travel between the UK and China.

      My bold.

      That seems to me rather like saying that the vast majority of the rubber-boaters come from France, rather than their real point of origin. They will have picked up minor variations such as a few language skills and diseases, but French they most certainly are not.

  51. This is rather good, but here is a BTL comment I put on under my real name (it may be removed):


    I am a Spectator print subscriber. It is such a privilege to listen to three intellectual giants of the Spectator analyse the shortcomings, emotional and intellectual, of the Donald (Neill speak). Actually, given the number of times Neill and his panel on This Week were predicting the imminent resignation/removal of the Donald in the period 2017-early 2020 his survival through to the 2020 election must itself be something of a shock. Also thank you for not emphasising the wanton violenece and criminality of the “largely peaceful protests” or the fact that they’ve been egged on (at the very least) by the Democratic hierarchy or the already arrived senile decay of Joe Biden.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3xeb6a1JjE

  52. 323791+ up ticks,
    This intended mass needling of the peoples made mandatory could have additives such as a love potion triggered by a General Election making the
    electorate fall in love with only the tory candidates.
    You surely have no love for your arm if you allow this to happen without your consent, plus it should NEVER be applied to kids,period.

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1306862930173014016

  53. Ian Brent-Smith is wrong, a smart meter will not record how much electricity he returns to the grid from solar panels. The meter for solar panels is a separate installation and could even be from a different utility company.

  54. Just back from w/rose where I had the fun of bellowing OI! at a couple of my age who tried to barge into my sd space at the checkout. My shout rang from the rafters & made a lot of heads turn. 2 checkout girls giggled, & I told them that was only 1/2 volume, which made them giggle all the more.

          2. Crack one on the head with the left stick then stab the other with the right stick. That’ll teach ’em.

        2. Childhood queues for the school canteen – if you were near the front of the queue and you wanted your friend to join you, they couldn’t push in to the space behind you, but it was OK if you let them join in front of you and took your place, then you swapped places, that was OK. 🙂

          1. Not with me it wasn’t. Someone tried that on me when I had an arm in plaster – they thought I wouldn’t resist. I simply brought the plaster down on the back of his head &, 1/2 stunned, he went to the back of the dinner queue.

          2. Not with me it wasn’t. Someone tried that on me when I had an arm in plaster – they thought I wouldn’t resist. I simply brought the plaster down on the back of his head &, 1/2 stunned, he went to the back of the dinner queue.

        1. No, I tapped him on the shoulder and said “excuse me, you have pushed in!” in tones of indignation. In the heat of the moment (the very nerve of the man!) I forgot about social distancing!

    1. I cant argue with any of that, but bring to the attention of the people who watch this. It’s too late Mr Bloom. And the ‘civil’ service, principally the home office run this country. And not any form of elected government.

  57. After banging my head against a proverbial brick wall with Spear and Jackson ‘customer (non existent) service’ i am resorting to typing a letter of complaint addressed to the CEO in Sheffield.
    I purchased an electric cable lawn mower in march this year and the grass catcher box now keeps falling off.
    I have tied every email address and even online chat with a box ticking robot but all i get is consult the manual or take it back to Argos.
    I spoke to the telephone receptionist in the head office she gave me email addresses that led me in the same circular patterns back to square one.
    Can any one imagine taking by pushing a used unboxed lawnmower to the Argos store after parking in the underground car park at Sainsbury’s using the customer lift or the travellator up through and over the food hall to the upper floor area of the Argos store.
    I could probably fix the design fault my self with some sika flex (lockdown) adhesive, but apparently the warranty for the mower is valid for 3 years. Which ironically would be voided if the foxed the problem.
    Wish me luck.

    1. Email the CEO and save a stamp – you can get his email address from a dedicated website – Google CEO emails

      1. I imagine all such emails are answered by a secretary, probaby a junior one.

        The difference of their actually having a response is instead of going into a queue, they are answered by a person. No machine makes a decision, a person walks across the building, speaks to so and so and solves the problem.

        I’ve had similar issues when trying to help a police customer chappy. We were sub contractors to a sub contractor, and neither the contractor nor our sub contractor wanted us to talk to the actual customer.

        Therefore, after thirteen emsils, most of which bounced off our sub contractor with ‘don’t ask this, don’t say that’ (such as ‘please explain the actions you were performing at the time and what version of windows/software is it) I accidentally – entirely by accident you know – ran into this chap in a coffee shop – which was a shock, as it was a long way to go for coffee, and a total surprise that I went all the way to Derby for one – and 7 clicks later solved the problem. Crapita didn’t get to send him a massive bill for nothing, My idiot, greedy boss couldn’t bill Crapita and the chap said ‘Thank you, I was getting so annoyed. No one was helping me.’

        That saw me start my own company. We still outsource some of our work, but I watch them like a hawk and the first sign of ‘well, no, I had… or ‘No one wanted to help me…’ I cancel the contract. We’ve around 30 customers on long term support now for our various works from legal services to accounting to comp stuff. You help the customer. If you can’t you make damned sure you’ve exhausted every route possible.

        1. Well, my wife was having problems with the billing on her BT business account and she emailed the CEO. She got an immediate response and a dedicated complaint handler who (eventually) sorted it out. In the meantime she received almost daily calls apprising her of progress (or lack of it).

    2. I very (very) rarely bother with Twitter but one of the few times I used it got very impressive results. Like you, I was having trouble trying to get any sense out of a particular company (Dunelm, since you ask). Eventually, I just tweeted ‘Dunelm Customer Service – now there’s an oxymoron for you!’ and within 20 minutes I’d received a reply to my tweet asking me to ‘like’ them so they could follow up my problem, which they did.

      Big companies don’t like bad press on Twitter – give it a try.

    3. Sorry to hear that Eddy! I had the opposite experience with Spesr & Jackson very recently and even commented on Nottl about how great their service had been. Would you like the name and email of the excellent customer service bod I was in touch with?

          3. My lawn already needs cutting again.
            This is not the only British company that seems to have built a wall of steel around its so called ‘customer service’.

          4. I recently received a parking charge notice from NCP. I disputed this and provided incontrovertible evidence that I had paid for the parking. I subsequently had a curt letter acknowledging that I had paid and that the parking charge notice was withdrawn. It ended with a warning that I must not do this again! I emailed the CEO of NCP and almost immediately got a fulsome apology and statement that they would look at their customer service. Full marks to the CEO of NCP.

            Posted as a reply to Ready Eddy

    6. Morning Eddie – I had a similar problem with my Mountfield petrol mower. I found that the seating on which the grass box hangs was compacted with grass. When I removed that the box stayed on.

      1. Mine is a bad design Clydie, it has a tubular metal frame on the entrance to the box, that is supposed to sit in a plastic half round support on the mower body. I only went electric because i was fed up with trying to start my old Briggs and Stratton. I could have striped it down and repaired it. But now taken to the tip………..

  58. Afternoon all. LoP after another night shift.
    This caught my eye and made me wonder how bad were the letters that didn’t make the cut if this made it to publication.
    I suppose we’ll have to wait for the annual “Am I Alone In Thinking” that comes out every Christmas.

    “SIR – My name (Letters, September 17) falls victim to a slip of the finger. On a Qwerty keyboard, the Y is next to the T, so I have often received letters addressed, “Dear Fat”.
    The G of our son’s name, Angus, is often removed by spell check; similarly, his brother, Alistair, finds he becomes Alligator.
    Fay Pearson”

    1. One of my friends, who is German, has lived in London for more than 30 years. His name is W. Fuchs. Quite often the ‘h’ gets replaced by a ‘k’.

    1. Who, in their right mind, would accept a vaccine from a government that treats its very elderly and chronically sick and ill with such callous abomination?

      1. Meanwhile, back in 2006…..

        “In what became known as the Elephant Man trial, six healthy young men were treated for organ failure after experiencing a serious reaction within hours of taking the drug TGN1412 in a clinical trial.

        After they were all admitted to intensive care, two became critically ill, the worst affected lost his fingers and toes, and all the men were subsequently told they would be likely to develop cancers or auto-immune diseases as a result of their exposure to the drug.

        In follow-up interviews, the men described feeling like their brains were “on fire” and their “eyeballs were going to pop out”.

        Experts queued up to say the outcome of the trial had been unprecedented and exceptional……”

        2. Never volunteer. And, if you wish to protect the public, don’t have the ‘flu vaccine.
          https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/08/11/flu-vaccination-associated-with-increased-viral-shedding.aspx

          I will be adding to this shortly, when I can find it.

          Edit: an addition.
          Fast-Tracked Swine Flu Vaccine Caused Genetic Alterations

          After the H1N1 swine flu of 2009, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (a fast-tracked vaccine used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked9 to childhood narcolepsy, which abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.10,11

          Children and teens in Finland,12 the U.K.13 and Sweden14 were among the hardest hit. Further analyses discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine as well, although the link wasn’t as obvious as that in children and adolescents.15

          A 2019 study16 reported finding a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1” — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.

          They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting “variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.”

          In addition to that, there’s the research17 showing that the H1N1 swine flu vaccine was one of five inactivated vaccines that increased overall mortality, especially among girls. A swine flu article I wrote 11 years ago, in 2009, turned out to have a rather prophetic warning at the end:

          “The swine flu vaccine has not been tested for safety or efficacy, but we DO know it will contain harmful additives. The choice, to me, is obvious. And in the future, anytime a new ‘pandemic’ appears and officials urge you to rush out and get a shot, please remember this article and ask yourself if it’s really you who stands to benefit from their advice.”

          Further edit – link to above article. Everyone should, at least, read this.
          https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/09/12/coronavirus-vaccine-transhumanism.aspx?cid_medium=etaf&cid=share

          1. I received an NHS text a few days ago inviting me to book a flu jab. It suggested that I need to ring them either to confirm or decline but I prefer to ignore.

          3. Ignore at all costs. It is best not to get tangled up with the state agencies in any way whatsoever. When I fractured my ankle last year I was so annoyed at my entanglement thereafter – before I knew where I was I was being sent appts for fracture liaison clinics, dexa scans, blood tests…. Just bin it, as you would do for tv licence demands!

          5. I think because they’re even more concerned than usual of being overwhelmed with flu cases in hospital.

        4. IIRC, they injected each one about an hour apart, giving insufficient time for side effects to manifest.

      2. Read that the care homes have been told to prepare for the next load of Covid patients from hospitals.

        As for injections – we have absolutely NO way of knowing what they are shoving in us.

        1. It is all on trust…. and there us no way I would trust a Gates/Soros funded Blobby and his merry men.

  62. Just been rooting round in the back of Disqus and found this:

    Personalization
    Disqus collects anonymous enormous amounts of data from you in order to deliver better targeted content and advertising.

    It ain’t a patch on the Dreary Fail for targeting advertising – you are bombed from entry to exit with endless sh!te. Adverts descending from the top, videos attacking from the right. Offers of sex and companionship from all sides. Do you all have the same problem?

    1. No. My browser is Opera which has a built-in ad blocker.

      I have tried all the main browsers and I find Opera to be the best. It runs on a Chrome platform and the extensions and add-ons in the Chrome Web Store can be added to Opera (free).

    2. No – I use adblock. It’s easy to circumvent the ads on the Mail by stopping loading the page as soon as the text comes up. You can pause adblock but that’s annoying. I’ve got better at stopping loading at the right moment.

  63. Fox is found drowned in a lake after it got its head stuck in a packet of crisps and fell into the water, 18 September 2020.

    A fox has been found drowned in a lake after it got its head stuck in a crisp packet and fell in a lake.

    Grisly pictures of the wild animal lying on its side in the water have been shared online as a warning against littering.

    The body was discovered at a lake in Apex Leisure and Wildlife Park in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset.

    The lake is often visited by fishermen and children visiting ducks.

    It will be that swine Lineker!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8747755/Fox-drowned-lake-got-head-stuck-packet-crisps-fell-water.html

    1. That is so sad and horrible , poor fox.

      We found a dead rat stuck in a Pringle tube , that was just as bad , and seagulls with fishing line around their paddles.

      1. We do our best with the gulls, Maggie. We have to stop using live bait when they target us on a boat. I remember in foreign warm water locations the (mainly tern species) gulls would attack our lures while they were still airborne.

      2. Too much rubbish everywhere – it’s all dangerous to wildlife. Now we will see piles of discarded blue facemasks.

          2. They aren’t all thrown on the ground; out walking the dog the other day, I saw a mask stretched by its ear pieces between two upright stones in a wall!

    3. Didn’t they introduce a ‘hedgehog flavour’? I know there’s been a spike in hedgehog deaths.
      (Apologies to Ndovu)

    4. What flavour were the crisps we need to know so we can judge whether the fox had good taste…..

  64. Afternoon Nottlers ,

    Have been chewing the cud with a group of neighbours .

    We have been discussing the fiasco relating to the erratic stance of the government on Covid19 lockdowns .

    Boris has one hell of a headache of a job restricting people to 6 in number , safety bubbles , and lockdowns .

    Just examine the amount of freight traffic on the roads , rail travel , air travel , coach travel and cars , we know how far this virus travels.

    My son and his partner have just had 3 days up in Edinburgh, they flew up by Easy Jet, the airline safety protocol was superb, as was their Scottish experience . The pair of them said that England could learn some lessons from Scotland re Covid protection , cleansing and distancing .

    They also thought that the Nicola woman was far better informed , clear and concise compared to Boris and his team .

    Do any of you agree/ disagree, and what and who would be far more preferable to lead us through this mess?

    1. Many of us who used to sail around the coast of Britain, France and Spain before the days of sat nav and GPS used ‘pilot books’ written by experienced sailors who gave pictures and diagrams and text explaining how to get in and out of tricky harbours. The guru of these writers was a chap called Adlard Coles and his pilot books became The Bible and we always had copies of his books on board.

      When I used to sail with my parents we kept the boat at Keyhaven at the Western End of the Solent an anchorage inside Hurst Castle protected by a sand bar which moved a few yards each year. On one occasion we saw a friend of ours’s boat stuck on the bar at low tide because he had strayed from the channel. ” You should have had Adlard Coles on board!” we shouted cheerfully. To which we received a gruff reply: “I am Adlard Coles.” And it was the man himself.

      Boris Johnson certainly needs a pilot as he is very much stuck in the mud right now.

      1. Hello R.

        Boris is a fair weather sailor , he doesn’t read the tide , breeze or the clouds .

        He could be off course , and if he is not careful, he will head for trouble near the Shambles bank , and get caught in the Portland Races, being swept along in a South Westerly surge, and then what… indeed , then what !

    2. Hi Belle! Delighted your son and partner enjoyed their trip to Scotland – it has been great weather as well. However, with regard to wee Sturgeon, she has been a pathological liar since day one. She lied about the Nike conference and the cover-up was put down to “confidentiality” clauses. She lied about forcing care homes to take elderly untested patients back and certainly caused numerous deaths, and she has lied consistently about the time frame of what she and the ghastly health secretary knew about the epidemic. She has turned every daily appearance into a PPB and has gone completely unchallenged by any part of the media. When the Scottish Beeb did ask an awkward question, the editor was made to apologise. So I’m afraid she is a waste of space. She speaks well but that’s easy in an echo chamber.

      1. Afternoon Sue

        I guess it is easy to be deceived when one has f irst impressions . The pair of them feel confused and uncertain , they see Boris as a great mood lifter , a court jester character, and would rather feel more confident with a more serious minded PM.

        The pair of them share Tory values , but feel that Boris has not handled things as confidently as he should do .

        1. Sorry Belle! It was a bit of a rant, but the revolting little Marxist in her white stilettos (sooo classy) makes my blood boil! She is entirely without humour or charm or charisma, and drones on repeating the same dross, day in and day out! Oops! There I go again! She has no clue what to do so copies Boris then denigrates him! OK I’ll stop now!

          1. I enjoy rants Sue , rant away please , I have five minute rants, sometimes stretching to 24 hour rants .

            She is a little thin lipped Marxist.. bobbing her head , and to the left and to the right !

    3. Well, the restrictions are clear, and Mrs Murrell has been on TV regularly to give briefings. However, none of that addresses the main point which is whether any of this does any good. We have seen that the course of the pandemic across the UK has been pretty much like other countries which may have done things different, and Sweden is often cited.
      Moreover the graphs and figures that the BBC posts daily clearly indicate that as a pandemic it is all over. As a virus that may cause some illness in a few people it does yet persist. This is no different to seasonal flu and certainly no worse than the incidence of many other cases of illness and death.

      1. Does Sweden have a HUGE diverse population like ours ? I just get the feeling that other cultures her in the tight communities they live in , have aided the spread of this affliction .

        1. From the Spekkie.

          “Sweden’s new epidemic: clan-based crime

          A summer of violence has left even jaded Swedes reeling

          Paulina Neuding

          ‘We have an obvious problem,’ admitted the Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven recently. He was referring not to the COVID pandemic, but to a summer of crime that has left even jaded Swedes reeling in disbelief. There are regular bombings, hand grenade attacks and shootings. Young men are killing each other at a horrific rate — 10 times that of Germany. The feeling is growing that the government has completely lost control. Yet, while Löfven has finally acknowledged the existence of the problem, he still seems in denial about its true nature.

          Last month in Botkyrka, south of Stockholm, a 12-year-old girl walking her dog was killed by a stray bullet from a gang shooting — and in a TV interview her friends explained that shootings are simply part of daily life in their neighborhood. One child said that she hears gunfire from her bedroom window almost every night. And this is perhaps what’s most shocking for older Swedes: how resigned the children in these areas are; how much they’ve grown used to the violence.

          It is all too much for Mats Löfving, the deputy national police chief, who earlier this month decided to speak plainly about the nature of the criminals he and his colleagues are fighting. There are at least 40 family-based criminal networks — or clans — in Sweden, he confirmed: immigrants who came to the country ‘solely for the purpose of organizing and systematizing crime’. According to Löfving, they make their money through drug-trafficking and extortion and ‘have a great capacity for violence’.

          The interview was a bombshell. The prime minister has always tried to talk about crime as a socioeconomic problem — and he stuck to this line in response to Löfving, saying that ‘I do not want to link crime to ethnicity’. — a government mantra which insinuates that even asking questions about the link between crime and immigration is xenophobic. But the issue, of course, is not skin color. It’s about the problem of an imported type of crime: families from non-Swedish cultures who stay in their own circles and prey on Swedes of all ethnicities. These are people who have set up parallel systems of government that challenge the Swedish state — something that politicians cannot bring themselves to acknowledge.

          Conflicts between rival criminals last month escalated to a point where gangs took an unparalleled move to establish their dominance. Masked and armed men set up roadblocks, and controlled cars entering certain neighborhoods in Gothenburg. Streets were deserted as the gangs ordered residents to stay inside. The headmaster of a local school put it bluntly: ‘Checkpoints controlled by criminal militia are something I last saw in Afghanistan. I never thought it would become a reality in Sweden.’ Meanwhile, home visits from doctors have been suspended in the area for safety reasons; and staff from care services for the elderly and disabled are being escorted on their rounds by security guards.

          The government’s solution to problems like these has long been to deny that they are there. When people began to talk about ‘no-go zones’ a few years ago, the phrase caused so much anxiety in official circles that the crime spots were dubbed ‘go-go zones’ in a PR initiative. For years, the government’s position, as well as the narrative reiterated by large parts of the media, has been that the notion of rising crime is some kind of fake news. Based on this idea, the state has set up a PR budget and employed staff to write ‘fact-checking’ posts to deny international reporting about what’s going on. One of the ‘myths’ busted is that shootings have increased.

          Only weeks ago, Löfven famously claimed that even if there were a crime problem, it was nothing to do with immigration. Annie Lööf, leader of Sweden’s Center party, says that ‘many of these gangs and their families have been in Sweden for decades’ — as if this would contradict the notion that immigration and failed integration is a root cause of the problem. Löfven has even pointed to upper-class youths in a small suburb of Stockholm as an explanation for gang murders, maintaining that rich kids’ consumption of recreational drugs is creating a demand that leads to shootings in poorer areas. Can he really think that drug abuse among a small fraction of the country’s youth explains why there are ten times more gang murders in Sweden than in neighboring countries?

          ***

          But although it is willing to scapegoat affluent teenagers, the government has so far remained silent about the changing nature of the crime, some of it so grotesque that it’s hard to discuss. At the end of August, two teenage boys were abducted, raped and abused for hours at a cemetery outside Stockholm. When police found them they had been stabbed and buried alive in a pit. Somehow they survived.

          These deplorable acts of aggression now have a name in Sweden. So-called ‘humiliation robberies’ are on the rise, and the victims are often children and young people who are not just mugged — mainly by immigrant youths — but also subjected to all kinds of horrifying and degrading treatment.

          Because of the threat to children, Swedish parents are beginning to wake up. They’re beginning to realize that their children are not growing up in the low-crime country they themselves knew — and they feel that the time to talk honestly about it has long since arrived.”

          1. It began in the UK years ago, and seems to be escalating .

            Thanks for posting that article Anne , Boris needs to take heed , as does that useless Home Sec!

          2. Didn’t the Home Sec appoint the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander to take the flak? And he appears to have done NOTHING.

          3. Problem is, not many Swedes know that.

            The Swedish news media is notoriously under the governmental thumb and the TV, radio and newspapers only report news that the government thinks is ‘newsworthy’. All Swedish political parties are complicit. Fredrik Reinfeldt was the cretinous Moderarterna Party PM who opened the floodgates to immigrants. His equally-cretinous successor, Stefan Löfven of the Socialdemokraternas is nobbut a clone, despite the party differences. They are all the same and wield huge control over information.

            To get the facts you have to go elsewhere.

            Meanwhile, Swedes just bumble along in their blissful ignorance and the only thing that worries them is to mull over how much dill to put on their sill!

          4. PS The “12-year old girl” who was shot whilst walking her dog, was doing that dog-walking at 03:30 hrs! This has led to speculation that the ‘victim’ was a member of one of the gangs, based upon her being out on the streets at that unearthly hour.

          5. Yep. While the government lies to the people to promote an agenda of pure insanity that government cannot be allowed to continue.

          7. Ha! Big city, get used to it, diversity strength.

            All the old, tired pathetic lies.

            It’s sodding Muslims. It’s a bunch of foreign gimmigrants who now there are killing, raping and looting. The Left have done this – first to create an weapon, now that weapon is out of their control they’re desperately trying to encourage it and suppress the truth.

            Get them out and the problem will go away. They’re animals. Such savages cannot be permitted in civil society.

        2. I don’t know. As well as tight knit communities (we know who they are) we also have mass movement. We have seen people from the cities pour into the countryside and especially to the seaside. Do places with lots of visitors fare worse than other places? I don’t know. However, I think it unlikely that the Governments of the UK are going to publish any figures that may be accurately analysed, if they can avoid it. They do not want anything, especially factual analysis of reality, to conflict with the narrative that the disease is an unprecedented killer and that a “second wave” is about to engulf us.
          If they were not carrying out any testing at all, would there be ongoing lockdown and “second wave” panic. No positive tests and all good with empty hospitals and few deaths.

          3. Vastly, but if we carry on letting them in, feeding and clothing them then we too will have more violence, rapes, murders and so on.

    4. I’m coming round to the idea that the muddle is intentional. It keeps the public wondering, keeps them afraid (messages still being relayed about the virus, even on our village roadside). Nobody in Government will stand up and scoff at the whole thing because it’s keeping us all under control with very little effort.

  65. Amal Clooney resigns as Britain’s special envoy on media freedom
    The prominent human rights lawyer acted in protest at the Government’s “lamentable” decision to override the Brexit divorce settlement

    By
    Telegraph Reporters
    18 September 2020 • 4:45pm

    Anal by name anal by nature. For some reason she wants to pour excrement on Britain. Perhaps she has been influenced by her bestest friend Migraine?

    1. Well, that was a post I didn’t know existed or that she filled it.
      Ho hum; it’s only taxpayers’ money.

          1. It was in the news at the time she was appointed (April 2019), I remembered having seen it and went for a quick look see. It wasn’t hard to find.

            The twins were conceived naturally and carried by Mrs Clooney too. They just “got lucky” (her words) because that is sometimes how it happens. Not all women are infertile in their thirties. My brother and sister in law were married in their mid/late thirties, she was concerned about her age told my mother that if she wasn’t pregnant within 2 years of the wedding she would give up as she would be too old. Their first was a honeymoon baby and by their second anniversary she was 6 months gone with their second…

        2. It might have been done without pay, but the additional world-wide exposure and entrées will have been worth millions to Clooney Inc.

        3. It was a non-post. The Clooney’s idea of pro bono is designed to exercise their ‘goodly’ pretensions and stoke a positive response to their actions. Publicity is what drives these people, pure and simple.

          These fabulously wealthy hypocrites thrive on publicity and wish to see their faces in the news and their supposed generosity advertised. They are self interested charlatans.

    2. I thought the criminal Anthony Blair clearly guilty of war crimes. A sophisticated Nuremberg type trial would have seen him hanged for crimes against humanity. Instead his culpability was conveniently given three coats of judicial whitewash.

      Blair was supposed to be Middle East Peace Envoy. It is as though the predator was given the chance to oppose those he oppressed. A real let off for a war criminal on a par with Goebbels.

      Who knew that Amal Clooney had been gifted the role from which she has just resigned? Had she any real knowledge of the complexities of our international relationships with Middle Eastern states? I knew nothing of her appointment.

    3. Sadly:

      “Six universities ban sex between lecturers and students, as researchers prepare to publish book on abuse in higher education institutions”

      1. Call me old fashioned, but ANY lecturer having sex (ghastly expression) with one of their students should be summarily dismissed for gross misconduct.

        It is as bad as a doctor having sex with a patient; a complete breach of trust.

        If they want to “do it” fine, but either the student leaves the university or the lecturer resigns their post.

        2. My cousin married her lecturer (from her teacher training college, post-grad) – though the relationship was kept on a fairly casual basis until after she finished the course.

          Despite a 20 year age gap and early onset Parkinson’s they remained married for 44 years and she misses him dreadfully since his death nearly 2 years ago.

          1. And?

            If they were fornicating while she was his student, he was in the wrong.

            I know numerous cases where lecturers and medics eventually married, but the majority did not get involved when there was a potential breach of trust.

            They ceased to have a either a student teacher or medic patient relationship when it became “serious”.

            As to your cousin, good outcome for them both, but I still consider such “active” relationships are wrong.

          2. Blimey, do you have to try hard to be that unpleasant about my family? Do you “fornicate” with your wife…? What a beastly thing to write.

            Frankly I never asked them at what point they went to bed together I didn’t consider it to be my business. Neither is it yours.

          3. I’m pleased that the word “fornicate” hit the bell hard. I chose it very deliberately.

            Because anyone who fornicates with their students or patients is in the wrong.

            OK, I’m old fashioned, and a bit of a prude, but I still believe that doctor/patient, student/teacher, boss/employee relationships should kept on a professional rather than a sexual level.

          4. “OK, I’m old fashioned, and a bit of a prude, but I still believe that doctor/patient, student/teacher, boss/employee relationships should kept on a professional rather than a sexual level.”

            On the contrary you are ill-mannered and more than a bit of dirty old man with your speculation as to what goes on in other people’s relationships.

            Your comment didn’t “hit” anything, it went splashing back into the filth from which you dug it out in the first place.

          5. Oh dear, JSP reverting to type. Insults.

            I admit I’m as you quoted, but as to the rest of your comment, just as you always were.

            It is the principle I object to. Individuals can do as they please, I don’t have to approve just because you do.

            Do you sleep with with your clients on the off chance you might get a better deal?

          6. There was nothing “unpleasant” about Sos’s original comment. It was an honestly held opinion on active sexual relationships between students and teachers, an opinion that many of us share. And you’re the one who brought the subject of your cousin’s relationship into a public forum. Why bring up your damn’ family in the first place if you don’t like it when folk comment on them?

            Of course, that was rhetorical question – we all know why you did it. You were hoping for a reply that, in your twisted mind, would justify a touch of “righteous indignation”, swiftly followed by the insults that are your trademark, as demonstrated by your outburst above.

          7. I agree with you sos. There must be a clear distinction between sexual relationships between staff and students for the simple reason that the staff have power over the marking and grading systems. This in my personal experience is often abused in favour of the student by the lecturer.

            I am not sure what a ‘casual’ relationship means. They are either having sex or not.

          8. You appeared to miss this line:-

            though the relationship was kept on a fairly casual basis until after she finished the course.

          9. I didn’t miss it, it was one of the factors in my reply.

            What makes you think that that “fairly casual basis” did not include the odd bit of copulation?

            Now, I agree I could not know with certainty, but can you say with certainty either?

          11. I find it bizarre that a young woman of 18 or more who is at university can decide to sleep with a drug dealer who is foul if she wants to but not with her tutor who loves her and with whom she is in love.

            If a girl of 16 has reached the age of consent I can see that it is improper for her to have a sexual relationship with one of her schoolteachers but at the age of 18 after she has left school she either is or is not an adult capable of making up her own mind..

            Those who disagree with this should campaign for both the voting age and the age of sexual consent to be raised to 21 or more.

          12. I completely disagree with you on this one.

            ANYONE in a position of authority, who uses it to their advantage, is in the wrong.

            Would you sleep with one of your 18 year old students who comes to “cram” with you, if she ” fell in love” with you on the course?

          13. As ever you are correct. With the lecturer and student relationships we all know of students who were given higher grades and degrees by said tutors they slept with.

          14. I don’t see it as a matter of age, but of ethics. It would compromise the lecturer’s impartiality in assessing and marking work.

          15. By and large lecturers don’t provide marks that have any long term outcome – and if you are going to tell me that teachers/lecturers don’t have favourites (regardless of going to bed) then I’m going to call you a fantasist. Marks, from primary onwards, will always reflect both the work and the teacher’s feelings.

          16. My Father was my Mother’s tutor way back when. They were married to others, divorced, married each other.

          17. Do you sleep with with your clients on the off chance you might get a better deal?

            Is this to be regarded as acceptable here?

          18. “Is this to be regarded as acceptable here?”

            In your case, certainly it is. You insult people and then play the victim when they retaliate. You’re a hypocrite of the first order.

  68. That’s me for the day. Four mile bike ride; four pounds of potatoes gathered from the verge when they had fallen from the trailer. 570 on the lung flow meter.

    Now for a nice glass of something medicinal.

    A demain.

        1. Oddly enough, I would be very tempted if it was something I had killed, such as a pheasant or a deer or a sanglier, and I had the wherewithal to do any necessary veterinary removals, so it didn’t poison me.

          1. I’ve carried home and eaten a roe-deer. The car in front of us hit it and removed part of a fore-leg leaving her stunned in the middle of the road. We did the necessary (fortunately my 3 inch lamb-foot knife was newly sharpened and effective if not ideal) and recovered the carcase. Apart from severe bruising on that quarter there was little damage.

          3. There are a handful of roads where the locals know that they are likely to find deer crossing but holiday makers are less clued up. Quite why the deer tend to choose to cross in the middle of the (very few) straight bits of road, instead of on the bends where everybody is forced to slow down a bit, I really don’t know. Usually the cars manage to avoid them, but there are, inevitably, a few which are not so lucky. Doesn’t tend to do the car a lot of good either.

            The worst carnage I ever came across on a road was in the New Forest. 2 dead ponies and 2 which the Agister was about to shoot – and a completely crunched hot-rod.

          4. Oof! 🙁
            We get cars filled with half-dead moose here, and that’s not much fun. Especially as it comes bursting through your windscreen! Problem is, the moose’s body is at about screen height, on long spindly legs, and the daft buggers don’t know to run away from approaching cars.
            The car, assuming it gets fixed, never smells quite the same again.
            Maybe someone should start training courses for the animals?

          5. There are plenty of warning signs on all of those roads and anyone who visits the New Forest almost certainly knows that the ponies roam free there.

            I’m not at one with the extreme bunny-huggers, but I do think that in these cases it is the drivers who need to be a) better educated and b) paying more attention.

          6. You’ve just reminded me, I still have a very sharp lamb-foot knife which I use as a pruning knife in the garden. I thought I’d lost it.

          7. The irony is that for once in my life I had a sharp knife. Putting an edge on a knife was not, at that stage, one of my skills, polypropylene twine (it’s usual victim) is bad for blades, and more often than not it was as blunt as be-damned.

            I’ve still got the knife though it no longer lives in my pocket. I’ve also got a rather nice Opinel, with a slightly longer and lockable, blade; but that too lives in the drawer nowadays.

          14. I supplemented the larder with road kill when I was a student. I used to travel back to Bristol late at night on Sunday on country roads & I was nearly always sure to get something.

          15. I wasn’t a student at that stage. Didn’t generally carry a knife on campus; even though it was less frowned upon in those days it wasn’t really needed.

          16. Well done.

            Few people could do it.

            A friend drives school buses in the bush in Australia, he carries an iron bar to put the creatures he hts out of their misery.
            Not a great job in front of a bus full of chiledren, but as he says, better they learn the facts of the bush than to leave creature to die over hours of agony

          18. I saw my first (male) pheasant of the season on Wednesday, on the way home from the stables; it strolled across the road. I slowed down, waiting for it to make a kamikaze move back in front of the car, but it just carried on into the hedgerow.

          19. Unlucky.
            I once hit one with the wing of the car. I thought “supper at the weekend”
            It did numerous sommersaults, landed on its feet, and then shot off into a field.

  69. Blimey, there are some right blubbery whales being interviewed about PPE on Look East.
    S0d the masks and gloves – losing about 5 stone each would be more to the point.

    3. Given the blatant threats made by certain people against the families and children of authorities ( shown on the bailiff/ police and high court sheriff programs on tv) with NOTHING done against the threats then I can only make ??? of it.

  71. Apparently the concrete in West Suffolk Hospital is disintegrating after 46 years.
    How did the Romans manage to produce concrete that has lasted 2,000 year – and still going strong?

      1. I seem to recall seeing a programme on TV where they re-created the formula for Roman concrete. Probably lost it again, knowing them!

  73. This e-mail just arrived from Conservative HQ.

    Help us protect our Heroes

    Labour have called on us to pause legislation which will support and protect our soldiers and veterans.

    Our Overseas Operations Bill delivers on our manifesto promise to protect our heroes from the turmoil of vexatious claims and endless investigations.

    But regretfully Labour are attempting to stall this bill. Playing political games with the futures of our brave servicemen and women.

    If you’re as disappointed as I am by this, please add your name to protect our heroes and urge Labour to vote for this bill without delay.

    By signing you’ll be standing with our Armed Forces, helping to protect our heroes for all they do to protect our nation and demanding that Labour change course.

    Because right now Labour’s support of our armed forces is being exposed for what it is – a political facade.

    Their delay would only serve to leave our soldiers continuing to suffer repeated and vexatious claims – something our Party will not stand for.

    So, if Keir Starmer truly wants to put our servicemen and women first, he has to do the right thing and vote for this bill.

    By adding your name today you can help make that happen and protect our heroes.

    Thank you

    Ben Wallace, Defence Secretary

    1. Isn’t there an act that can be repealed or a convention that can be resigned from rather than making up more laws? There’s a very loud bell ringing right now…
    2. How about helping the heroes, currently sleeping in shop doorways and squats or dossing at the homes of their mates, who not so long ago were fighting the criminal filth currently walking into the UK for an all-expenses paid indefinite holiday?

    Teacups were placed out of reach before the writing of this message.

    3. Few of these “vexatious claims” would be heard of it it wasn’t for parasitical lawyers taking up their cause. Perhaps the Government or some of the military charities, some of which are sitting on tens of millions of £, should pay for the top legal brains in the country to defend against such claims and, if they prove unfounded, sue the lawyers for every penny they have. Few lawyers would want to risk being bankrupted.

    4. Help for Heroes is cutting jobs – donations down, Marvelous how our govt has a bottomless pit of cash to house those who want to flood us and enforce THEIR culture on us – – but none for looking after our own soldiers. It shows whose side the govt are on.

    5. How about looking after the ones left rotting on the streets while illegal immigrants are housed in 4* hotels?

      1. The Left don’t care about the homeless though.

        As the concrete over and make the city centre ever more car unfriendly – just what we need at a time we urgently need shoppers in shops – I suggest ed that the incompetent and obviously stupid councillor sack himself – and the other 80 odd other wasters – and his salary be put to better use – like housing some of the hundred or so homeless people in the city.

        My comment was removed by moderators.

    6. I got that one but when I was about to sign it, I noticed it wanted my mobile number so they could bombard me with texts.

    7. There’s endless law. Unwinding it is something the state hates though, so their solution is always *more* law.

    8. (…)So, if Keir Starmer truly wants to put our servicemen and women first, he has to do the right thing and vote for this bill.
      By adding your name today you can help make that happen and protect our heroes.
      Thank you
      Ben Wallace, Defence Secretary

      That would be very generous of Kier Starmer to put all women first…or do you mean ‘servicewomen’ Mr Wallace?

  74. Uncle Joe’s Drive In Show. SST. 18 September 2020.

    We watched this last night, all of it, every dreary, sycophantic, rehearsed moment of it. It was strangely reminiscent of drive in movies back in the 50s. All that was missing was the refreshment stand in the middle. There were perhaps 100 people there plus production assistants. This was an assemblage of hardline Democrats and a couple of what may have been Republicans enticed into this for effect. Joe was well rehearsed and only made a few errors like the claim that if Trump had acted a bit earlier nobody would have died in the US. Nobody. His reversal of position on fracking is just amusing. IMO if he does this well at a real debate with Trumpy, he will come off better than he deserves. The GOPers should be careful in that context to do electronic screening for radio transmitters giving him the answers. Jamming would be appropriate.

    Contrast this with the Trump airport rally from somewhere in deepest, farthest Wisconsin. There were several thousand there, resplendent in their red hats. They roared and cheered for their savior.

    I saw a video the other day of Joe arriving somewhere in Florida in his chartered jet. In the clip he stands at the top of the rolling stairs and waves at the crowd who we are supposed to believe are off to the right. But, the cameraman does not hold the shot and lets his focus drift to the direction toward which Joe is waving. Unfortunately there is no one there. Nobody at all.

    It is going to require a lot of mail in ballots to make Harris/Biden co-presidents. Pat Lang.

    The view from the States.

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

    1. If Biden wins, my bets on early reforms will be:

      1) Mail-in (postal for us Brits) voting for the whole population
      2) Votes at 16
      3) Votes for anyone resident in the USA, irrespective of their citizenship.

      Once that’s done they can get down to the real nitty-gritty of destroying the constitution

      1. “Once that’s done they can get down to the real nitty-gritty of destroying the constitution species!“

        2. Quite
          };-((

          Although I must admit that I know of a chap who would be more than happy if the species was decimated, decimated and decimated again.

          7. 100, after 3 decimations would still be 72.9. I don’t think that certain people think that’s fast enough.

    1. They are not real , are they , the sort who would squeal blue murder if a man so much as flicked their supenders , as men used to do in the year dot!

        1. I was wondering whether wearing all that stuff was worth it especially as it would take ages to remove all that kit , just to PERHAPS enjoy a moments worth of hank panky , sadly men can sometimes be their own worst enemies when they get too excited

          2. Suspender belts and all the rigmarole made life complicated .. but I guess those were different times , we didn’t have kinky stuff like that then… nothing quite so exciting ..

    3. I always go into Victoria’s Secret at Athens airport, on my way home from seeng my sister. Pants or perfume for my daughters and a chat with the most charming staff you could hope to meet! Hope they’re still there when I eventually get back to Greece!

  77. Evening, all. Let citizens (subjects, actually) take charge of their lives – what a novel idea! Those who do not wish to witness a rant should look away now! As I posted yesterday, I went to the doctor, who suggested I rang for an X-ray, which I did. There is a backlog, I was told, and I should ring again in JANUARY 2021! What? When I protested, citing my family history, I was told that I should go to my GP. I’ve just come from my GP and she told me I should ring you! FOAD was the (more politely worded) reply. Don’t expect me to be clapping for the NHS any time soon! As if that weren’t enough, I was supposed to have been rung by the ICS team to show me how to get MOH out of the car (never mind that I’ve been doing it for five years), but they didn’t contact me. Somebody from Age UK left a message on my answerphone to ring her mobile to discuss self help groups – self help? I want someone to take me off the treadmill and give me a break! Then the woman from social services rang me to ask how I was – I don’t think she really wanted to know! Asking me if I’d done X and Y wasn’t really the way to go! I’d spent nearly an hour this morning talking to somebody from a builders who was trying to give me 101 reasons why they couldn’t even give me a quotation to have the house re-pointed, let alone actually do it! All excuses from Covid 19 to Brexit making it impossible to import plaster were offered – we haven’t actually left yet, you know! Walking the dog was an oasis of calm before I tackled the lawns. Should have known! The lawn mower, which is temperamental at best, threw a complete strop and it took about half an hour to cajole it into working. Then, having mowed the front lawn I took it to do the back. It condescended to do half and then downed tools. After much cursing and shaking it, it finally deigned to co-operate and I got the lawn finished, but not until the b@stard machine had spewed more grass into my borders and onto my patio than had gone into the collection box! My back isn’t good at the best of times, but after wrestling the mower and clearing out the borders, I wasn’t a happy bunny. I went into the house to retrieve the cable and MOH swanned into the kitchen, asking, “can we go into town?! What? NO! I took you yesterday. “I didn’t get a new watch” – well, it will have to be next week now, I’m knackered after doing two lawns and clearing up. That didn’t go down well, unfortunately. MOH shows no sign of recognising that other people are anything other than put there for personal service! I worked in the garden until wine o’clock and then got stuck in to a sherry before my meal (the first since breakfast) and a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir with it.
    Why is everything so difficult these days?

      1. IT or I T? I may have made several typos during that rant – I just needed to get it out of my system 🙂

        1. C I was alluding to information Technology having been driven round the bend with a variety of web based services over the past few days. Such as completing all the web pages required to buy a new tumble dryer only for the final page to freeze. Half an hour later following “on line Live Chat -You are currently 10th in the queue” “Try using a different email address that should allow you to proceed” etc etc etc

          1. A friend of mind was telling me he was 20th in the queue for some online medical thing and waited until he got to 3, thinking it wouldn’t be long – then the damned thing cut him off! He was not best pleased!

          2. I had a similar experience with Curry’s website yesterday. The washer dryer and the fridge freezer I wanted were both available for free delivery on Tuesday 22nd. So I added them to my basket. Whereupon Tuesday (when I’ll be at the new place) wasn’t available. Tried again. Same problem. So I bought from AO.com instead. They phoned. Had I used them before? Why had I chosen them this time? The response was a sanitised version of “Because Curry’s website is shite”…

      1. ‘Twas the meal that was the first since breakfast. I may like a tipple (or three), but I haven’t yet been reduced to drinking at breakfast 🙂

    3. I feel your pain, Conners. But any builder who cites a shortage of plaster as an excuse for not repointing is an utter charlatan. Repointing requires mortar, be it cement or lime. No plaster is ever involved…

      1. I did know that – he was someone in the office, not someone who actually got up a ladder. I think it was just a general example of stuff they couldn’t get hold of (and were trying to stockpile in his words). He was going to look at the house on street view. I had to point out that actually I was local and not in Norfolk.

        1. Addendum: I didn’t really fancy commissioning them to do the work anyway, but what I really wanted was a quote (or even an estimate) so I have some idea how much money I’ll have left to get the rest of the work done. I’m not even sure I’ll get that. I usually get three quotes and choose the best. The way things are going, I shall be lucky if I get one.

    5. “Why is everything so difficult these days”?

      Conners:
      You need to ride the Connemara
      You need more dressage
      You need less grass-cutting
      You need fewer exclamation marks. When you’re pissed off, a plethora of exclamation marks does not conceal yer rage …

      Have a large one !

      1. I do need to ride the Connemara – it’s about the only time my BP is within reasonable tolerances these days. The grass-cutting was only undertaken because both of the lawns were beginning to resemble meadows. Fewer !!!? @#$%!!! is all I can say 🙂

    6. Life is difficult – I’m glad you can come here and have a rant and let off some steam! I hope it helps you to calm down. All those bodies are supposed to help and it’s obvious they’re not helping you. All we can do here is listen.

      1. Thanks, Ndovu. I asked for help because I knew I wasn’t coping. It isn’t helpful to be given more things to do! Thankfully, nobody in the NHS or Social Services works on a Saturday, so I’ve had a relatively hassle-free day.

    1. I used to enjoy the midnight to midday shifts offshore. Mainly because in the 90s the communications to head office were non-existent in those days, just the odd Marisat phone.

      1. 323791+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        After one trip of 4 months staring through me dabs out the window viewing the Libyan desert I found myself staring through the same dabs through a porthole at the North sea for the Dutch ( was it NAM) rig.

          1. 323791+m up ticks,
            M,
            Pipefitter / welder on the tools/ foreman / overseas supervisor
            run of the mill industrial tramp, one of the happy breed.

          3. I did one four week stint on a rig in the North Sea as a roustabout when I was a student. The rig was called North Star and was run by the International Drilling Company.

            I greatly enjoyed the experience and met some very interesting people.

          4. 323791+ up ticks,
            M,
            UK, Fawley, Grain, Shellhaven refinerys / Power Stations,etc.
            Lot of Africa, one being the Guinness plant in Nigeria, never got a pint out of it.

          6. 323822+ up ticks,
            A bush bar owner ( Ivory Coast) asked what I drank in the UK I answered Guinness & he got me a bottle to try, couldn’t finish it,
            full of, I am bloody sure, molasses.
            The locals loved it.

    2. Aaaand, here I am. On a different PC which persists in logging me in as Stormy despite everything I have tried to change it to BSK. (I think I might change back to SiaDC)
      It’s fun replying to myself 🙂

  80. One bit of good news to end the week:

    “Amal Clooney QUITS as UK Government envoy on media freedom over Boris Johnson’s ‘lamentable’ plan to break Brexit deal which would breach international law”

  81. Everything i had booked this year has been cancelled. Two Med holidays. So far i have lost £1,200 I have a Christmas break booked which is also £1,200 with a further payment of £900 due in early December. I have had to pay dog sitters at £20 a day even when cancelling at short notice.

    I have a long awaited trip to London to two very nice establishments which for me were box tickers off the to do list.

    There is no fucking way i am going to spend/waste any more money.

    I will be very annoyed if this does not go ahead.

    I might even convert to Islam and then shit on the steps of Westminster.

    1. If you’ve truly converted to the Muslim faith when you defecate on the steps of Westminster, the cops won’t give a shit.

  82. Here is a benign piece of choral music to ensure that everyone slumbers peacefully throughout the night.

    However, the tall man in the choir looks as if he would be more at home in a boxing ring, and he reminds me of the much lamented Bernard Bresslaw of ‘Carry On’ fame.

    The tenor soloist has an unusual voice that I assume is a tenor tessitura, but I am ready to be corrected by the cognoscenti here!

    https://youtu.be/c-WkSRCIlXA

      1. I thought of that but counter-tenors have voices which are quite rare and which are much higher pitched – almost contralto or mezzo-soprano.

        Much as I love classical and religious music, I am no expert, unfortunately!

        1. Neither am I, despite being an organist and choirmaster. Then again, a friend sang Tenor with Voces8 for several years before he decided he wasn’t a Tenor…

          I’m prolly a Baritone. As organist, I tend to sing whatever we’re short of. I draw the line at Soprano. I can manage Bass parts down to E flat. Tenor, pretty much, and I can join the Altos if I use the head voice.

      3. More like an alto. Male altos are not so terribly unusual. There are also women who can, truly, sing the tenor line and be indistinguishable therein.

          1. As with many other physical characteristics (think of height and build) there is a range of male and female voices which meet and mingle in the middle. And even when singing with a classical split the alto line can be lower than the tenor line in places.

            Cathedral choirs include “lay vicars” traditionally all men, who sing the lower parts including the alto. When I used to go to evensong fairly regularly at Lichfield Cathedral there was a young man there who sang alto and had a particularly lovely voice.

            I worked between Burton on Trent and Lichfield for a year and used to go to the mid week market in Lichfield to get fruit and veg after work then pop into the cathedral to enjoy the music. Weekday evensong congregations are generally tiny (I was often the whole congregation) so I was quickly on good terms with verger who was always delighted to have someone coming in to listen. As a novice choral singer I learned a lot just from watching the precentor and the music was lovely, especially if it had been a trying day at work.

          2. That reads as a gentle experience, Jennifer, like watching small children playing in heaps of leaves.

          3. Evensong is, generally, a gentle service. It is never attended by anyone who doesn’t want to be there, or is only there to be seen.

            Wednesday afternoons listening in Lichfield and Sunday evenings singing at St Peter’s, Yoxall were restorative interludes in a year when I was still very much recovering from immediate loss.

            This is my elder great-niece (then aged 6) being a leaf-angel – which is less chilly than being a snow angel.
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7cea5c27c6b119213ccde96cb0bee846d242ec5e94c4256d470105dca9a8a90f.jpg

    3. About 35 years ago, when joining my survey vessel in Den Helder , I fell ill and ended up in the hospital for 2 weeks. None of the staff, apart from one doctor, spoke English. (Surprising I thought). I needed painkillers and sometimes would have to call for the morphine nurse. After a dose or two I started to understand Dutch! Bloody amazing.

    1. Blimey, Maggie, that’s incredible. Sardines ain’t in it, more like a fishy spread of unwanted people.

  84. Just heard on BBC Radio 4 that the UK is the worst country in Europe, barring Portugal, for accepting refugees. Their chief statistician, Mz Abottopotomus, was not mentioned by name but is evident from the rigorous analysis of the statistics. Something must be done to alleviate the cruel neglect of the millions, nay billions, of people desperate to escape poverty and misery of France and similar blight stricken countries.

    Second worst in Europe. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

        1. What we are seeing are fit, healthy young men of fighting age lying about where they came from. A sprinkling of women and children so the MSM can say …oh look…these poor people.

          The number of boats coming over will triple next year as it did when they crossed the Med in the beginning. This is an assisted invasion and there will be civil war or a slaughter.

      1. 10/10.

        Is there any chance you could be Home Secretary?

        Assuming you can spare 10 miniutes a week!

  85. Completely and utterly off topic.

    I had the annual begging telephone appeal from the college just now.
    The poor student who called had drawn the short straw, by getting me on the list.

    Student: “I’m phonimg from…we need to clear some compliance”
    Me ” no you don’t, I know why you’re phoning”
    Student ” this call may be recorded” …Me, immediately, “no need for all that guff, yes I know, I was expecting the call”
    Student, starting to giggle, “Can I talk to you..” Me immediately: ” you already are, why did you get chosen to talk to me?”
    Student, rapidly turning over the script, (it was very audible!) ” I’m studying the same course you did”
    Me ” Oh, sports and social, is that still allowed?”
    Student, deep intake of breath, “err, well there are a lot oarsmen on the course”
    Me ” do you row for the university?”
    Student, “well no, but I do row for the college third eight”
    Me ” Brilliant, people who join in the whole college experience are much more valuable, what do you really love about the college and what do you hope to do?
    Student “It’s so diverse, I would like to do do something really worthwhile, be a lawyer in the City or a civil servant”
    Me, somewhat taken aback, but not totally surprised: “That’s good, I was there with “The Master” and many of my contemporaries are very senior in the CS and the law, you should contact them, they would be very pleased to advise you”
    Student, ls lost for words.
    Me, sensing the surprise and name dropping a herd of senior and very friendly lawyers and civil servants, ” you should contact X,Y, Z , they were all in my year group and would be delighted to help”

    Student ” are you sure?”

    Me, “Certain, but if I were you, I would look at what you really want of life and then ask yourself if that’s the route to take. When I was in your shoes I chose the wrong path”

    We had a discussion about life choices.

    Student: very, very sharp intake of breath and after pleasantries I suggested they move on to the next ex-student.

    Anyway, it was fun talking to a youngster who was trying their best to drum up funds.

    I wished them well, and the constant giggling, because I kept going off piste, made me hope that they enjoyed the begging phone call as much as I did.

    1. Always good to share one’s life experiences in the hope that the young with tread more certain paths…..

  87. Covid is getting less dangerous. Has No 10 noticed?

    Improved treatments may change the debate, but Downing Street is trapped by scientists’ flawed models

    JULIET SAMUEL

    Let’s face it: epidemiology has not had a good epidemic. This field of science deals with the causes and spread of diseases through populations and it tries not only to identify how germs are transmitted, but to predict how they will behave on a large scale, even down to how many people they will kill.

    Unfortunately for them, the epidemiologists getting it wrong. The Government’s advisers began by assuming that Covid was really a lot like flu and that there wasn’t much to be done about it. Then, in mid-March, that changed. Suddenly, they swung towards forecasting doom on an immense scale. The long-predicted pandemic was here, they declared. Be afraid! And we were.

    But as the months rolled by, it became clear that the models generating these predictions, which had so much power over Government policy, were based on too many unknowns to have much predictive power. Was China screening air passengers in Wuhan or not? Did Covid spread through floating droplets or surfaces? Did patients always display symptoms? What proportion of infected people did it kill? The models didn’t know.

    Despite their flaws, however, we keep relying on them. On Thursday, Dido Harding, head of NHS Test & Trace, explained that the reason why there are not enough Covid tests to go around is that she based her estimate of demand on modelling by Sage, the Government’s scientific advice body. Sage had predicted that the peak of any second wave was likely to come in late October, so the planned peak capacity of 500,000 tests a day would not be needed until then. Oops.

    Even as epidemiology has revealed its limitations, however, general medicine has shown its astonishing power to experiment and learn. Early in the year, it was anyone’s guess how deadly Covid-19 would turn out to be. The highest numbers emerging from Wuhan and Italy were well over 10 per cent and pictures were beamed across the world showing healthy, young doctors struck down in their prime.

    We knew the worst figures were an over-estimate, given the lack of testing, but by how much? After a few weeks, the consensus fatality rate settled around 1 per cent, matching the best contained experiment available, the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Still, given the disease’s fantastic capacity to spread, this generated huge estimates of the numbers that it could kill if allowed to run amok.

    Over the summer, however, something happened that was unforeseen by the official models. Without any vaccine, nor evidence of herd immunity, nor any sign that the virus has mutated significantly, the fatality rate across Europe and the US began to fall. More widespread testing was part of the reason – governments began to detect milder cases, statistically increasing the survival rate. The demographics of those infected have also shifted to include younger, less vulnerable people. Social distancing and masks may have reduced the viral dose being passed along by virus carriers. But none of these factors wholly explain the change. There is another dynamic at play: our medical systems have become better at treating people.

    Many of the improvements do not involve formal new treatments, but frontline experience. Hospitals have found that turning oxygen-deprived patients onto their fronts early in the process seems to help. Doctors noticed that ventilators seemed to harm, rather than help, most patients’ recoveries. The changes add up. One study suggested that intensive care fatality rates for Covid have fallen by as much as a third across Europe. An analysis of German data by Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has found that Covid fatality rates have fallen across all age groups but especially among those aged 80 and over.

    Aside from hospital management of the disease, there have now been three large clinical trials confirming the efficacy of three separate drugs in treating Covid. Remdesivir, a general antiviral, reduces recovery times. Dexamethasone, a steroid, cuts death rates among the most severely ill. And, just this week, a large study found that the arthritis drug baricitinib can help to cut Covid hospital stays by blocking a damaging overreaction by the immune system. Like the dexamethasone study, this last one was made possible by a British researcher, Justin Stebbing at Imperial, working with the UK company BenevolentAI to uncover the drug’s antiviral potential. Yet our Prime Minister, who is usually so quick to praise British science, has barely mentioned the latest drug. [And you haven’t mentioned hydroxychloroquine.]

    His silence points to a stranger absence in the current Covid debate. When all of this started, we were told that the point of lockdown was to reduce the burden on our health system while the Government expanded its capacity. Policy was determined by epidemiological models estimating that burden. Thanks to better data and the impressive progress of treatments and drug trials, the inputs to that model should now be quite different. The likely fatality rate for Covid has dropped precipitously, down to around 0.3 per cent or lower. This surely ought to change the debate. Yet we are still being told to fear and suppress a virus in the same terms, even as it has shown itself to be less dangerous and – given the nation’s current capabilities – irrepressible.

    Government scientists would no doubt respond that we cannot know any of this for sure. Who knows what Covid will do during the winter flu season? Perhaps it will get into care homes again? Yes, it’s possible. And the second wave will kill more people before it subsides. But the new clinical evidence suggests that Covid is less fatal than we thought, not more. So rather than taking fright at its own mistakes, the Government’s risk appetite should be going up, not down.

    Instead, it looks as if No 10 is frozen in the headlights, unable to take on board new evidence and simply trying to minimise the political fallout by outsourcing policy to a failed scientific model. Boris Johnson can no longer tell the country what the purpose of his policies is, because he is waiting for a committee to tell him first. But the scientists cannot tell him what the correct trade-off is between deaths and the damage caused by lockdowns. The country elected him to make that judgment. The only thing worse than getting it wrong would be to fail to make any judgment at all.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/18/covid-getting-less-dangerous-has-no-10-noticed/

    1. A Plague?
      A Tosspot?
      A Cesspit?
      A Vomit?
      A Scrobnofulence? (that’s the collective noun for the collective nouns above)

    3. Ah, forgive this lady nottler, nottlers:
      A t*rd
      It was the first thing that came to mind. There it was. I didn’t have to think about it.

    4. 323791+ up ticks,
      A parliament of fouls,
      A Pack of louse ( I’ll drink to that)
      A Colony of vultures.
      A Conspiracy of c ravens.

      1. I like ravens, ogga1. The collective noun for ravens is an ‘unkindness’.
        Otherwise, we should call them as we see them. A cesspit of them.

      2. I like ravens, ogga1. The collective noun for ravens is an ‘unkindness’.
        Otherwise, we should call them as we see them. A cesspit of them.

  89. Poem: “If” by Rudyard Kipling
    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
    If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  90. 323791+ up ticks,
    Lets face it you will have more chance of seeing a ” death by rhino in Oxford Street” than a regular flu death this year, it will ALL be down to
    covid 19.
    I do believe that death by political fright sh!te will play a major part on the causality scene if this madness is to continue.

    1. Now watch some idiot put it down as a Covid-19 related cause of death, and include it in the figures.

        1. It was one of my birthday presents, knowing my kids it was an online order. I will see her Monday and try to remember to ask for the interwebby address.

    2. Now watch some idiot put it down as a Covid-19 related cause of death, and include it in the figures.

    3. I actually remember Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld and vividly recall his death. It is thought that his aircraft was shot down as he was attempting to negotiate a ceasefire in the Congo crisis.

      His summer holiday home, on the south coast near Ystad, is now a museum.

    5. I had never heard of him until he came up in the quiz on Sunday now twice in less than a week – funny old world

  93. Though I’m almost out of outrage on the subject, I can just about be bothered to post this which shows how completely Johnson has been captured.

    Second wave now hitting the UK, says Boris Johnson

    “It’s been inevitable we’d see it in this country.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54212654

    There’ll be a ‘second wave’ (the phrase is misleading) when the death toll climbs to the levels that it did in March and April. Showing a graph of infections (as this report does) is dishonest.

    4. Headline figures for COVID-19 cases are consistently being shown on BBC as a cumulative total for UK which is just reinforcing the fear factor already ingrained in the UK population and fuelling demand for infection testing which is only a transient state anyway.

      This up-to-the-minute pan-global view of COVID-19 cases shows a very different picture when displayed as cases per 1m of population and puts UK at an even lower figure than Sweden if I read it correctly.

      https://news.google.com/covid19/map

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5c68743317405b9da9bfc31389121a9d496522de510cd84c27b63087f21664d1.jpg

    5. They want a ‘second wave’ to justify ruining this country even further.
      Figures will be twisted like a corkscrew.
      There are faces to be saved and @rses to be covered.

  97. I recently received a parking charge notice from NCP. I disputed this and provided incontrovertible evidence that I had paid for the parking. I subsequently had a curt letter acknowledging that I had paid and that the parking charge notice was withdrawn. It ended with a warning that I must not do this again! I emailed the CEO of NCP and almost immediately got a fulsome apology and statement that they would look at their customer service. Full marks to the CEO of NCP.

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