Friday 19 March: The EU has shown its true colours in the scramble for vaccines

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/03/19/letters-eu-has-shown-true-colours-scramble-vaccines/

766 thoughts on “Friday 19 March: The EU has shown its true colours in the scramble for vaccines”

  1. Hunter was “framed” by Putin? (the theater of the absurd). 17 March 2021.

    I suppose that I will be called a Russian stooge for expressing incredulous disbelief over the behavior of President Biden. Pilgrim Turcopoles! Let us remember that the Russian Federation is the world’s second most puissant nuclear power. Translation – They could rip us a new ass if they went crazy even as they breathed their last breath.

    Joe Joe has problems; the border, immigration, the raving left, his problems with enacting his “Animal Farm” agenda, Kamala waiting in the wings, his own feeble condition, the Chinese who threaten to call for payment on what he owes them, his corrupt family, etc.

    He clearly thinks that it was a splendid ploy to have a press toady ask him if Putin is a “killer.” What a great diversion! The public were programmed throughout Trump’s term to think of the Russians as demons. Surely that conditioning will hold. Surely!

    Hunter was framed by Russian Intelligence? My god! The US IC report on foreign interference in 2016 and 2020 does not claim anything like that.

    And now Russia has recalled its ambassador for consultations? What is next? Does he “ask for his passport” as the expression used to be?

    Insanity! Pat Lang.

    Morning everyone. The view from the States.

    It’s worth noting here that Joe has shot himself in the foot again over his “killer” slur against Putin. The two articles about it in the Daily Mail have accrued some 13,000 comments, almost all of them hostile. This of course also explains its absence from the MSM headlines. It is to be forgot!

    https://turcopolier.com/hunter-was-framed-by-putin-the-theater-of-the-absurd/

    1. Yo Minty

      If the present attempt at world ‘democracy ie Sorosland, were put to the vote. who would you preferas President
      Idi Amin

      Biden
      Boros
      Trump
      Putin
      None of the above

      1. Morning OLT. I don’t want “World Government” in any form. It is a recipe for perpetual tyranny!

  3. Boris is having his Oxford vaxx today, so they say on the news, flying the flag for Britian.
    But didn’t Boris have a rather severe bout of Covid about a year ago, what chances are there of him ever catching it again?
    Is he under more risk of the rare but dangerous side effects than catching covid again.
    I remember having some very bad virus about thirty years ago which led to pneumonia and pleurisy, but since then I haven’t had flu again.
    The doctor wasn’t much help back then either i seem to remember.

    1. I had the Asian flu in the 50s it was really bad. never had anything like it again. They should have dealt with this now the same way. We did nothing

      1. Never lose sight of the fact that all this rubbish that we have suffered this last year was never about dealing with a virus. I agree, we should have done nothing, but the fact that they did something rather gives the game away. For when are they interested in our health or well-being unless there is something (a very big something in this case) in it for them?

        Edit: Good morning, Mr Norfolk.

  4. Yesterday’s prediction…

    HONDA 1234 18 hours ago
    Swapping cars for trains…

    Following on from the Agenda 21 rollout to get more cars off the roads and passenger planes out of the sky I predict that many of the local rail lines across the country will soon be reopened as an alternative for commuters.

    Today’s news….

    Budget 2021: Okehampton-Exeter train route receives £40m

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-56278030

    Didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly but will have to happen as an alternative for those who won’t be able to afford to own a car.

    PS. It would cause an Eco disaster to dredge enough lithium from the sea bed to provide enough batteries for everyone to have a car anyway.

    1. Yo H
      Swapping cars for trains…

      I am against it

      I cannot get my Disco into the garage, so there is no chance for a train

    2. This project should make the Coke Plant upt norf, very much more importanterester.

      Railway tracks to each and eveyrones hous will need a lot of steel

      1. Chinese tracks…Chinese trains…Chinese rolling stock…Chinese bicycles.

        Much the same as they are doing across Africa.

    3. Do stop exaggerating, H. Many stations and lines have been reopened since the mid-90s. This is just another in a long list, with more to come.

      The Okehampton case is unusual in that the track remained in place and in good condition after withdrawal of passenger services in 1972 because beyond the station the line continued to Meldon quarry, which supplied stone for ballast. The station building survived in good condition and the line was used for occasional special trains and, for a while, an experimental Sunday service from Exeter.

      This will be one of the easier and cheaper re-openings of recent times.

      1. Do stop exaggerating, H. Many stations and lines have been reopened since the mid-90s.

        Agenda21 was announced at the UN Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 so it makes sense that lines have been opened since then. At the same time many new towns are being built up and down the country and then there’s all the other things that have been happening by stealth. Narrowing roads…more cycle and bus lanes and so on.

        As I already mentioned…these new towns will be serviced by trains as very few people in the future will own cars…electric or otherwise.

          1. OK Bill…come back to me in a year or three but certainly not more than nine and we’ll discuss it again.

  6. UK police chiefs ‘wasted £10m on surveillance planes that can’t work in built-up areas and are unable to land at most airfields’. 18 march 2021.

    Police splashed £10million on four airplanes that proved useless for operations, it has been claimed.

    But the fixed-wing planes are not agile enough for urban areas and cannot even land at most airfields because the runways are too short.

    A source told The Times: ‘Everyone is just really puzzled why they chose those planes when there are much more suitable craft out there.

    ‘A plane can’t slow down enough to stay over a fixed area, they have to fly in a big loop, it’s just physics.’

    They’re puzzled are they? I think I could make a pretty good guess at the reason!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9379005/UK-police-chiefs-wasted-10m-surveillance-planes-work-built-areas.html

      1. Bad cough you’ve got there, Annie. Hope it isn’t a symptom of the pandemic. (Good morning, btw.)

    1. For many of the couriers this is not an argument confined to a few transformative years in modern history but part of an ongoing battle.

      ‘In 1991 we all thought, “That’s it, job done,”’ says Nigel Linacre. ‘But what we see now, particularly in China, is the same thing – this focus on subverting the truth, whatever it needs to be, in order to accomplish other ends.’

      Robbie Gibb agrees. ‘In an age of social media, the mass sharing of disinformation breeds division within society. The Soviet dissidents knew the value of truth and the prize of living in a liberal democracy. We should never lose sight of what they fought so hard to achieve.’

      Morning Anne. While these people deserve enormous respect their efforts have merely transposed the problem from the Soviet Union to the modern UK! Let China look after itself! It is here that Free Speech is being suppressed, Freedom crushed, that the truth cannot be heard in the MSM. Modern Russia owes them a great debt. Us not so much!.

  8. Back to Jimmy Krankie and her misleading an inquiry into Rock Salmon

    I would raise a petition that she be prosecuted for Mallpheesiance in Public Office, but I cannot spell

  10. SIR – I am delighted that students will be able to see exam papers before sitting them (report, March 18). Having failed maths O-level several times, I fancy another crack at it.

    Reading someone else’s anwer always used to help as well

  11. SIR – I sympathise with Ian Skelly and his cavalier treatment by Radio 3

    Time for Uncle Bill to make comments?

  12. A depiction of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space , from Moscow’s Museum of Cosmonau

    Was he: I always viewd him as the first man who CAME BACK from a space launch

  14. Greenie Johnson trialed a future model when mayor of London….

    Remember him introducing free bicycles where people could simply arrive at their destination and leave it for someone else to use?

    With the announcement of reversing Beeching’s railway closures so bicycles will play a roll in the future. With only the rich owning a car the roads will become virtually deserted and safer for cycling. Perhaps everybody will receive a free push bike…all the same colour and no doubt green! Or perhaps free bikes will be parked outside stations so you alight from the train and cycle home. There could be dedicated cycle carriages so you can use your own bike to complete your journey from another station.

    Like the old Soviet Union the future plan is to make everybody equally poor…the term “Working poor class” is how they describe it. New towns springing up around the country…these were called “Satellite towns” which will be self sufficient so reducing the need to travel far. These towns will then be serviced by trains taking the working poor class to work and back.

    Just like the Flying Scotsman class of loco…the loco plans for 2030 are going full steam ahead as we sup our morning coffee.

    1. 330555+ up ticks,
      Morning H,
      The human ovis are playing their part per usual returning to power the very groups that have the instruction manual / oath taker lying between the dispatch boxes & halal fodder on the parliamentary canteen menu.
      It ALL ties in,these free bikes will need bike parking
      which will be on hand five times a day, eventually.

      All courtesy of the lab/lib/con continuing voting pattern.

  15. Morning all

    SIR – European leaders have trashed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from day one, with Emmanuel Macron calling it “quasi-ineffective”. Some even suspended their vaccination rollouts due to fears of a link with thrombosis (now dismissed by a European Medicines Agency review).

    As a result, millions of doses have been lying unused, despite the fact that the EU vaccination programme is lagging badly.

    Meanwhile, however, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has threatened to prevent the export of vaccines produced in the EU to the UK (report, March 18).

    This makes no sense, given the unused vaccines in the EU, and must therefore be attributed to pique and bitterness that the UK – away from the dead hand of Brussels – is succeeding.

    Steve Narancic

    Wantage, Oxfordshire

    SIR – You report that invoking Article 122 would allow the EU to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights and “produce its own version of the AstraZeneca jab”.

    Advertisement

    Having been slow in ordering vaccines and rolling them out, why does the EU imagine that it might be as effective as AstraZeneca in the manufacturing process?

    Roger Gentry

    Weavering, Kent

    SIR – Mrs von der Leyen has sought to blame AstraZeneca for the EU’s slow distribution of the vaccine.

    She could also have mentioned the fact that AstraZeneca has committed itself to worldwide distribution of its vaccine, which will be sold at cost, unlike others.

    Undermining public confidence in this company will cost many lives.

    Richard Butler

    Marlborough, Wiltshire

    SIR – Mrs von der Leyen has been accused of acting like a dictator.

    Actually, she is behaving just like the unelected president of the European Commission that she is: unapologetic about her own incompetence, and arrogant because she is not accountable to voters in free, open elections.

    Gerald Heath

    Corsham, Wiltshire

    SIR – Come back, Jean-Claude Juncker. All is forgiven.

    Rowland Aarons

    London N3

    SIR – I have just received an email from my brother in France, explaining that British citizens there, aged over 70, have been unable to obtain vaccinations.

    Advertisement

    ADVERTISING

    Fortunately, he has had one – but his (younger) wife will have to wait until June to receive hers. Given the astonishing failure of the EU to implement a satisfactory vaccination strategy, is it too much to ask that our own Government might start considering vulnerable British subjects abroad?

    John Seager Green

    Winchester, Hampshire

  16. SIR – In 1957 I was 20 and living with my parents in Gosport, but the Saturday nightlife was in Portsmouth, a ferry journey away. The last bus home meant a 20-minute walk back along dark streets. Several times, I was aware of someone behind me.

    One night, a man jumped out of an alleyway and grabbed my bag. Next day, when I reported it and said I would recognise the man again, the police asked whether I would be prepared to help catch him. So, every Saturday, a plain-clothes policeman caught the same late bus with me.

    We eventually caught the thief, who was arrested, convicted – and fined £15. Plus ça change.

    Helen Tapp

    Stirling

    SIR – Having spent 36 years working for HM Customs & Excise and its successors, I sympathise with Andrew Vaughan, a former community constable (Letters, March 18). He couldn’t tell residents that if he hadn’t been there they would have been mugged and their houses broken into.

    Advertisement

    The problem for the police, as for the Border Force, is that deterrence requires people up front, and its effectiveness is hard to prove as it relies on nothing happening. The patrolling policeman is not “doing nothing”: he is preventing crime.

    Patrick Deller

    Twickenham, Middlesex

  17. Morning again

    SIR – The cross-page Telegraph advertisement (March 16) taken out by Highways England was a waste of taxpayers’ money. It featured two men dressed as flies, and said: “If you break down on the motorway, go left.”

    What vital message was this promoting? If you have broken down you can’t go anywhere, and if you are on a smart motorway there isn’t even a hard shoulder to get to.

    The cost of this promotion could have filled huge numbers of potholes.

    Advertisement

    Allyson Lofts

    Salcombe, Devon

  18. 330555+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    A little weenie carrot being offered up to keep the human ovis having misplaced trust in their local Mp on the 6th May.

    The political hydra heads of the mass uncontrolled immigration / potential paedophile / felon ( ongoing) coalition group of overseers, do
    depend on their local MPs & their local MP misguided followers / voters.

    https://twitter.com/boblister_poole/status/1372459765318742018

  19. Penally asylum seeker camp ‘worst thing since Syria’. 18 March 2021.

    An asylum seeker who was housed at an army camp in Pembrokeshire has said living there was the “worst thing to happen to me” since he left Syria.

    The former Masters student also claimed he was shouted at by some staff.

    He said his health suffered because of “poor conditions” at the camp, including having no heating in his room for more than a fortnight.

    “We couldn’t sleep because we were six in the room, without privacy, without comfort, with a lot of noise,” he said.

    The horror!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56434093

    1. and how long is it since the camp was decommssioned from Army use.

      59 years 6 months ago, I joined the RN. we were billeted 20 to a room.

      Some sailors, later than that, sent a question to a farmers magazine giving room dimensions etc and
      asked how many pigs they could keep in the space. 41, came the reply: The space was their mess
      for 80 matelots on HMS Bulwark

      My heart pumps P155 for the poor Barsteward

      Now let him enjoy ‘Sex and Travel’ and return to Syria

    2. and how long is it since the camp was decommssioned from Army use.

      59 years 6 months ago, I joined the RN. we were billeted 20 to a room.

      Some sailors, later than that, sent a question to a farmers magazine giving room dimensions etc and
      asked how many pigs they could keep in the space. 41, came the reply: The space was their mess
      for 80 matelots on HMS Bulwark

      My heart pumps P155 for the poor Barsteward

      Now let him enjoy ‘Sex and Travel’ and return to Syria

    3. Sounds like boarding school. Dormitories in the attic, no heating, ice inside the windows, up to 20 or so per dormitory. And parents had to pay huge sums for this!
      As OLT wrote, my heart too pumps purple pi$$ for him. Don’t like it, go home.

      1. I always thought that Syria had freezing weather and snow .

        The climate in Syria is dry and hot in summer and cold in winter. The coast and the western mountains have a Mediterranean climate characterized by two seasons, the hot and dry summer between May and October and the relatively cool and wet season between November and April.

        Despite reaching temperatures of up to 45 degree Celsius in some areas during the summer, winter in Syria can be very harsh and include prolonged periods of snow and temperatures below zero.

  20. Indestructible iron

    SIR – My oldest appliance (Letters, March 16) is an electric Hotpoint flat iron, purchased by a great-great aunt in 1928 for 17/6d.

    It lives in its original box with its guarantee card. Though too rusty for ironing sheets, it serves well when I am applying iron-on edging to shelves.

    Geraint Lewis

    Banbury, Oxfordshire

  21. SIR – One day, when I was growing up in Ghana, my mother discovered a new plant in the flower bed.

    It was watched and carefully tended, with much speculation as to whether it was a melon, a cucumber or a marrow. It soon became apparent that it was not the first two, so we all looked forward to a meal of stuffed marrow. Imagine our disappointment when it turned out to be a loofah (Letters, March 17).

    However, it performed excellent service in the bathroom for many years.

    Marion Winter

    Worthing, West Sussex

    1. How very very strange , because the same happened when my husband and I were based in Nigeria , we assumed we had a marrow plant growing in our nice fertile tropical garden , amongst the peanut plants that had been planted by the garden boy.. we were so amazed to see months later that they were loofah..

      Up until then , I had always thought a loofah was a member of the sponge family , a marine plant .

  22. SIR – The official list of military equipment (Letters, March 18) – “ordnance stores” – had its own language; every entry plural, noun first, descriptors following. The entry “stools, sergeants, wooden-headed” may have been more descriptive than intended.

    The vocabulary of Army ordnance stores was also a spoken language. A discussion between two sergeant cooks about a particular implement proceeded as follows: “That isn’t a skims cooks, it’s a slices fish.”

    Mik Shaw

    Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex

    SIR – After being promoted from warrant officer class two to warrant officer class one, I was advised by the camp barrack stores that, due to my promotion, our furniture and equipment entitlement was to be amended to include one jelly mould, four whisky glasses and a bookcase.

    Advertisement

    David Cowley

    Uffculme, Devon

    SIR – When I moved into my first married quarters in 1974, a check of the inventory revealed that we had been supplied with: forks, dinner × 6; forks, dessert × 6, and forks, digging × 1.

    Catherine Templeton

    Hadleigh, Suffolk

    SIR – In the Royal Navy in the Fifties, three types of pillow were issued.

    Those for lower ranks were stuffed with horse hair, and those for petty officers with chicken feathers. Officers had the comfort of duck’s down.

    As a stoker, it took a day’s ration of rum to coax an officer-issue pillow from the stores.

    Albert Craske

    Brampton, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – It is not just the Army that has rigid policies about furnishings.

    When a senior partner in my firm retired in the late Sixties his room was allocated to two senior managers. Maintenance was instructed to take down the curtains and cut around the edges of the wall to wall carpet.

    Michael Godbee

    London W13

    2. There is an actual entry in Queens regulations which states that “…no unauthorised erections are allowed in married quarters” – I wondered whether is related to garden sheds or would I have to fill in a form in triplicate when the urge arose.

      1. Gloom here, yesterday.
        My replacement fence was
        completed, I paid the bill!
        Good morning, Phizzee.

  24. Morning all.
    Can someone e explain Matt’s cartoon?
    Did I miss something at Cheltenham? (Actually I missed everything at Cheltenham)

    1. Yes Stormy. A guy sat on a horse last week that had collapsed! Dead! Huge ructions!

      3. The ructions were OTT. But you do have to wonder about the mental processes of those who thought it was a good subject for a photograph.

        1. Or that one having already done it (Rob James the jockey) a couple of years earlier, a repeat was a good idea.

  25. US warns Nord Stream pipeline is ‘Russian geopolitical project. 19 March 2021.

    The German-backed Nord Stream pipeline is “a Russian geopolitical project intended to divide Europe and weaken European energy security”, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has warned.

    The claim on Thursday is likely to send a chill through US-German relations, as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has repeatedly claimed the near-complete project – a system of offshore natural gas pipelines – should be seen as an economic rather than political project. Merkel has invested huge political capital in defending the project.

    The Nord Stream pipeline is a commercial project to sell Russian Gas to German Consumers. The United States wishes to prevent this so that they can sell American Gas to the German State at vastly inflated prices!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/18/us-warns-nord-stream-pipeline-is-russian-geopolitical-project

    1. Everyone misses the fact that there is also a large pipeline running down The Black Sea (Turkstream) which supplies Turkey and all the surrounding countries with an additional branch due to be built to supply Serbia.

      1. And the pipeline from Azerbaijan to Europe via Turkey… as seen on James Bond!

    2. For clarification…
      The Nord Stream 2 consortium is led by Russian gas major Gazprom. The other partners in this project are BASF’s Wintershall Dea, Germany’s Uniper, Austria’s OMV, Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell, and French energy company Engie.

      1. 330555+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        What strikes me as weird is how the electorate continue to support / vote for “their” proven political torturers.

        It has to be some form of Stockholm syndrome, it surely cannot be belief in the manifesto’s, nobodies that daft… are they ?

          1. 330555+ up ticks,
            B3,
            Then their cast vote is going to reward them with some very nasty eye openers, whilst damaging many innocent peoples.

  27. The discussions on military descriptions reminds me of our weapons instructor at Sandhurst in the 60s, he was a Queens Own Highlander sergeant who had an interesting view of the “woodentop” Guards drill instructors. He used to remark that he smoked Guards as they were thicker than Cadets.

  28. 330555+ up ticks,
    I believe the shift in the westminster covid manipulation & control bunker are working their socks off in making sure everybody has a foreign holiday ( could even be made compulsory) … at a price.

    Live Coronavirus latest news: UK protected from third wave, says chief of MHRA – but EU is at risk

  29. Enemies jam RAF planes’ GPS systems over Cyprus. 19 march 2021.

    As yet, no serious incidents have resulted, but experts warn this type of activity – dangerous, but not serious enough to trigger a conventional military response – is typical of Russia’s recent aggressive approach to international relations.

    The source of the GPS jamming is thought to be from Syrian territory, but could have been conducted by spies on the ground in Cyprus.

    GPS-jamming equipment can be operated by aircraft, including drones, but is usually carried on ground vehicles. Security sources believe Syrian forces would not have the technical capability of conducting such attacks on their own, but may have been trained by Russian military personnel supporting the regime.

    Equally, forces belonging to President Bashar al-Assad could have trained Hizbollah militia members in Lebanon, after guidance from Russia.

    So it was in either Syria or Cyprus and carried out by the Russians/Hezbollah/Syrians? Is there anyone who wasn’t involved?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/19/enemies-jam-raf-planes-gps-systems-cyprus/

    1. I’d look to Turkey as their intention to cause trouble with Greece is probably the most likely conventional war to break out in the near future.

      1. Morning Honda. There’s a lot of tit for tat stuff going on out there. That modern military aircraft would be affected by such piddling measures strikes me as unlikely and that the sources could not be located even more so!

        1. Yes and as you probably know….

          Last year I picked up some info about what was happening on the Greece/Turkey borders…plus Cyprus and the Greek islands off the Turkish coast which were not mentioned by our MSM. I thus monitored the newspaper sites in that part of the world.

          On the mainland border the Turkish soldiers were firing gas cannisters at the Greeks guarding their side of the fence. The Turks were leading the illegals to the fence. The Turkish navy were escorting illegals in boats to the islands (much like Johnson the Turk is allowing the French to do the same in the Channel). Two warships collided near one of the Greek islands.

          There was also a spat on the north/south border of Cyprus. The Greek and Turkish soldiers confronted each other and the United Nations troops tried to intervene. The Turkish soldiers beat the cr@p out of the UN troops and told them to Foxtrot Oscar.

          Things between those countries are very fragile at present.

          1. Yes and last week the Russians destroyed several oil installations and road tankers with missile strikes from their ships. This was almost certainly to show the Americans that they were not the only ones able to do this after Joe’s strike the previous week. Nothing was said by either in the MSM but the message got through!

          2. As you see…without sites like this where people research alternative media..nobody would know anything that’s going on in the world today.

          3. You would learn more truth from one days perusal of this site than a week with the MSM!

          4. You would learn more truth from one days perusal of this site than a week with the MSM!

    2. Am I missing something? These are military aircraft being nobbled, aren’t they? Of course any prospective foe would develop counter-strategies if they have any sense.

      We should either be upgrading our aircraft to deal with GPS-jamming, or find alternative ways to navigate these planes in enemy territory.

      1. ..or find alternative ways to navigate these planes in enemy territory.

        Morning Jeremy. Well they could try looking out of the windows or at the radar screen! This is just propaganda!

    3. Degradation of the GPS signal has been going on for a few years in that area, I saw it every time we operated into Larnica. It might be the US, because if GPS makes your weapons accurate, it gives the same benefit to your enemy.

  30. Depopulation and mass immigration…

    If we stick to the NWO plans then mass immigration is part of the planned redistribution of wealth from the first to the third world. We give £billions in aid and then many come here and take our money as is so very clear.

    Certainly the illegal’s are swarming into rich countries like the US and the UK. But is that only half the story? After all, what’s happening is quite mind boggling and we all sit back and let it continue apace. Perhaps the thought of race replacement was intended to lead us away from something more sinister. A world population of 7 million today is causing grief all over the place and Agenda 21’s end date is just nine years away. It was advanced from 2050 when the expected world population is expected to hit 11 billion. Johnson said on the telly that we need to depopulate the world by 2030 did he not?

    Never mentioned but…is the west being used as a Noah’s Ark for humans? Both in the US…Europe and the UK we have large numbers of every species of human found on the planet. Perhaps they will nuke all the third world countries instead of culling us all with a vaccine.

    Crazy world leads to crazy thoughts!

  31. Yesterday it was noted here that ‘President’ Biden insulted his Russian counterpart by calling him a ‘killer with no soul’, resulting in the withdrawal of the Russian Ambassador to the US. So much for top-level diplomacy!

    But Putin has the measure of Sleepy Joe.

    “I want to propose to President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it basically live, as it’s called, without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion. I don’t want to put this off for long. I want to go the taiga this weekend to relax a little. So we could do it tomorrow or Monday. We are ready at any time convenient for the American side.”

    Putin continued, “it seems to me that would be interesting for the people of Russia and for the people of the United States.”

    The New York Post reported that Joe Biden declined Putin’s challenge to a debate and said Biden is “quite busy.”!!

    As Barack Obama said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up.”

    This would all be very amusing in a comedy video, but it is deadly serious for the US, and other western countries, that POTUS can’t perform his duties and is mocked around the world.

    (He made a speech from a teleprompter yesterday but still made a mistake by saying “President Harris” – missing out the vice bit)!

    1. Morning Sguest. A senile paedophile sits in the White House with his finger on the Nuclear Trigger. The only thing I have ever read to equal this is a horror story from many years ago where Satan himself managed to slip in and was exorcised in the Oval Office.

    2. I’m assuming that Putin could do the whole debate/discussion and answer Press questions using English. He might not be brilliant and would probably use a translator for accuracy, but he would still make Biden look a fool.

      I doubt Biden still has a proper command of unprompted English, let alone much Russian.

        1. I’ve seen reports that his English is better than he admits to.

          Singing a song isn’t necessarily a good indicator. Even a non-linguist like me can learn a song in a foreign language but not understand a word of it.

  32. I can’t sit about here all day enjoying myself. A bonfire is required. Back later….prolly.

    1. What! There are another 190+ countries to name as covid mutations. And then we come to counties, districts, states, departments ……

      1. The biggest Covid mutation is His Boriship. He has mutated from a Conservative who was scathing of all things Green to a total Wokester in no time at all. Indeed, it appears he has embraced everything that is manifestly Doolally.

    1. Suggestion from SWMBO:

      If you receive such a letter, “return to sender: Mx unknown” at your address

    2. Suggestion from SWMBO:

      If you receive such a letter, “return to sender: Mx unknown” at your address

    3. Why not just do away with titles? Oh, hang on – no opportunity to polish halos.

      1. It is a very sad case which looks very much like a dispute between warring parents. The child seems to be under the mother’s influence with the father having very little say. It is a delicate matter as public discussion might be troublesome for the child, especially if it wants some privacy.

        A Canadian man was arrested this week after violating a court order that banned him from speaking publicly about his son’s gender transition.

        The man — whose identity is reportedly under a publication ban by a British Columbia Court of Appeals to protect his child — was found in contempt of court and arrested Tuesday for calling the teen his daughter and publicly referring to him with the pronouns “she” and “her,” according to The Post Millennial.

        The teenager was born as a female and reportedly identifies as transgender and prefers the use of male pronouns.

        The father reportedly began litigation against the teen’s mother after learning of the transition, and the matter was settled by the province’s highest court earlier this year, according to Global News. The parents are separated.

        The high court ordered the dad to not stand in the way of the 15-year-old’s hormone therapy and to try and better understand gender dysphoria, the outlet reported. He was also told to stop speaking to the media about the case and warned that his public attempts to undermine his child’s wishes was a form of family violence, according to the article.

        His son has identified as male since the age of 11, and changed his name at age 12 before pursuing hormone therapy with the support of his mother, a psychologist and an endocrinologist, according to Canadian law firm Torkin Manes.

        https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/man-arrested-for-discussing-childs-gender-in-court-order-violation/

      1. Creeping along the south coast as we speak.
        It’s all about priorities.
        Potholes? Wot potholes?
        Morning, Maggie.

        1. Morning Anne

          This creeping rot , who are those people on the council who are dictating fashionable politically correct Wokisms on the good solid people of Bournemouth and Poole . Are these councillors escapees from Islington or some trendy London borough?

          2. It’s difficult to get candidates for the councils. It’s no longer a post for those who wish to give something back to their – dread word – community. Many people have better things to do with their time. For any councillor who wishes to actually do the job properly, it’s like wading through treacle.
            There used to be a married couple who were, between them, raking in £80 – 100,000 p.a. with their multiple council posts and membership of various local committees.
            A few years back, he bunked off with a younger bit of totty. I doubt their earnings have been too adversely affected.

      2. I think you might write to her and explain that Mx might be thought of as Minx and here is a definition from Urban Dictionary. I wonder how that will go down with the ilLiberal Left.

        Minx

        An alluring, cunning, or boldly flirtatious girl or young woman. Has unusual seductive powers such that she could commit acts that would otherwise be considered inappropriate, while still maintaining an air of class or poise.

  37. And a good morning from a bright & sunny Hampshire!
    Just been for a walk to the shop for the paper and a couple of things for my breakfast toast.

    1. Wonderful memories. Did I ever tell you that I have climbed every Wainwright Anne? Some of them several times!

      1. Respect. We had a fortnight’s holiday with no rain; even Lake Windermere was shrinking.
        Nobody ever believes us.

        1. I had 10 days camping in the Lake District. It was glorious. Rained only once so chose to tour the slate mine. Took shelter in the bothy then crossed Windermere on the steam ship to look at the steam train. Simple pleasures. Very enjoyable.

          I even took the little obelisk tent for the portaloo. The occupants of the neighbouring tent laughed when they saw it. :@(

        2. Morning Anne! I remember Red Point beach near Badachro (close to where Spikey lives) being too hot to walk on with bare feet, in the summer of 1963! Also the year of the Great Train Robbery!

          1. I know it well Sue – I’m forever going there to recover cars with punctures from the bad single-track road. Very popular beach on the NC500

          2. We actually stayed in Badachro with a Miss Dingwall whose brother Archie? lived across the bay. He was a fisherman and if she wanted fish for tea she flapped a tea towel from the window! Wonderful times!

          3. Name’s not familiar but I’m guessing that’s not recent. We used to stay in Lairg at a B&B and Mrs Munro who ran it used to stop the fish lorry from Ullapool for fresh haddock for our breakfast – it was still twitching it was so fresh

          4. It was 1963, and there may have been two Miss Dingwalls who ran the B&B! There were 9 of us (2 families, 5 children) and the adults stayed in the house while we children were annexed in a wooden hut at the top of the drive! It was absolutely brilliant and the Misses Dingwall made legendary porridge, even in August!

          7. Margaret Dingwall was Willie’s sister. He ran the P.O. She and her mum ran a guest house called Hillcrest. She later married Bee Jay the “writer” and moved to Gairloch. I had a book by Bee Jay called Highland Pearls, very good it was too.

          8. Wow! That’s amazing! Just off to email my sister and tell her! I was only 6 at the time but we talked about it for years. At least I got some of it right! When we visited about 4 years ago I found the house but the annexe had gone. I’m guessing none of them survive? Thank you Spikey for bringing back such happy memories! How is your dear lady wife?

          9. I’ve had a few responses to my post in the local FB page and I expect more so will keep you posted.
            Wifey isn’t too bad, now completely immobile so leg muscles have wasted away , I can still get a smile from her thankfully and we are looking forward to the time when I can give her a hug – at the moment can only see her through an open window. Thank you for asking

    2. “Bedding inside with 2 sons perched on top”? I’m surprised at you, Annie. Why didn’t you put your 2 sons inside with the bedding perched on top of the car?

      :-))

    4. I really loved that article , isn’t it funny how memories come flooding back.
      In early 1970’s when Moh was based down at RNAS Culdrose, and we lived in Helston , We being, me and year old son and of course Moh .

      We had a green Mini traveller estate, we visited one of the steep Cornish villages on the Lizard , can’t remember which one , fan belt broke on the car , so I took my nylon stockings off and Moh used them temporarily as a fan belt .

      That old mini served us well, spluttered along nicely , I had a provisional licence , and had a few escapades when Moh was away on tour, most of the wives had provisional licences , we would all have been confined and trapped if we didn’t take a few risks whilst husbands were away. Everywhere was so remote , and shopping was a nightmare , had to drive to Penzance for bits and pieces !!

      1. Back in 1969 on my school CCF camp we visited RNAS Culdrose where we received a lecture from two FAA pilots and a year or so later, I saw that one of them, had received an award for a very dangerous rescue mission flying a helicopter. Time flies!

        1. We used to go on CCF field days to Dartmouth where we sailed in the RN whalers. I also played in a Blundell’s School rugby team which had a match against BRNC – a highlight was that a steward bought a tray onto the pitch at half-time with jugs and tankards of best bitter.

          (I do not have you on the birthday list. Please let me have it if you so wish. I left Blundell’s in 1964 so you must have been born in the early 1950’s. Were you also at a west country school?)

      2. In 1970 we had a Hillman Imp. It was dark green, and a replacement for the red one which had let us down in the Lake District the year before.

        We went on holiday to Cornwall in a borrowed tent – I was about 7 months pregnant and it was pretty unconfortable camping in a field in September with lots of Daddy long legs in there. The tent was a little two man bivvy and a bit cramped as well.

      3. I had an idyllic time in the 60’s and 70’s. I was brought up in St Mawes and when my parents bought a house near Lymington we still used to sail down to Cornwall during the summer holidays. The trip along the South coast between the Solent and St Mawes was one I made many times calling in to many places on the way.

        I posted a picture of Raua’s crew and their wives a couple of days ago. We all hailed from Cornwall.

        Here is a picture of Inca the 22 footer in which I made many trips around Cornwall, Normandy and the Channel Islands

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2b27bd1011954b66db22db5a9e154743a77baa885f5085aded4933e5ec46a892.jpg

      4. The Imp was so piled with tents etc… that its centre of gravity was too high – as I discovered when a lorry swished past us and its wake made the car spin round and up onto the central reservation.
        MB was amazingly calm and the boys thought it rather exciting.

    5. John Betjeman brought the makes of cars into A Subaltern’s Love Song. In fact the interior of a Hillman car was the place of his tryst with Joan Hunter Dunn with Rovers and Austins parked nearby.

      Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
      Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
      What strenuous singles we played after tea,
      We in the tournament – you against me!

      Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
      The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
      With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
      I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

      Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
      How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
      The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
      But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

      Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk,
      And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
      And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
      To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

      The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
      The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
      As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
      For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

      On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
      And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
      And westering, questioning settles the sun,
      On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

      The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall,
      The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
      My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
      And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.

      By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways,
      She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
      Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells
      And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

      Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
      I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
      Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
      Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!

      Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
      Above us the intimate roof of the car,
      And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
      With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

      And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
      And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
      We sat in the car park till twenty to one
      And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

        2. It reminds me of Colchester as it used to be. And also of my godparents who lived in Surrey.

  40. Taxpayer will foot the bill for Post Office IT fiasco as payouts
    over the scandal are predicted to run into ‘hundreds of millions’ of
    pounds
    Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of innocent postmasters were prosecuted
    Accused of taking money that was due to Horizon computer terminal glitches
    In December a number of postmasters finally had their convictions overturned
    Taxpayer is set to foot claims bill that ‘could run into hundreds of millions’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9378827/Taxpayer-foot-bill-Post-Office-fiasco-predicted-run-hundreds-millions.html

    Of course. Heaven forfend the IT company that made the crap system, or
    the numeorus senior managers the courts found had lied for decades
    should pay.

      1. These people float effortlessly from one well paid sinecure to another,one is forced to ask what they have in common(purpose)

        1. It is the nepostic cabal of the revolving doors in Whitehall, nothing to do with capability, all to do with who knows you.

          1. I had to read it twice. I think the capital ‘U’ at the beginning fooled us readers who scan.

    2. Our company laws effectively shield the directors and senior managers of a limited company or limited partnership from any responsibility for the failures of the enterprise, up to and often including criminality. In the US the Sarbanes-Oxley law introduced some responsibility to all the board members, not just the financial director, for financial failings, and companies in the UK with associations within the US, eg US owned companies, tightened up their processes.
      The managers and owners of SMEs struggling to survive, make profits and grow must despair at this kind of thing. They see the “chosen ones” drift from high paid job to high paid job without making any contribution. They move on, and on.

  46. Good morning, my friends

    No 10 is terrified of the revenge of Dominic Cummings. It needn’t be
    There is little Cummings could say that would shock the public any more

    FRASER NELSON
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/18/no-10-terrified-revenge-dominic-cummings-neednt/

    Several comments say that they hope Cummings will expose the malign interference that Johnson’s paramour has been having

    Another BTL comment with which I agree.

    In my opinion Cummings was the one sane voice in the government.

    There is much talk about the abuse of women by men at the moment and indeed sexual abuse is reprehensible. However Carrie Symonds has used her sexual wiles to corrupt the prime minister’s judgement and turn him into a weak and feeble idiot who is incapable of saying “no” to her.

    Had she not bullied Johnson into sacking Cummings we would have either had a much better deal with the EU or we would have had “no deal” which would have been far better than the shambles we have in our fishing waters, in N. Ireland, in financial services and at borders where officious and vindictive people are doing their best to punish Britain.

  47. A lying, untrustworthy, megalomaniacal oaf with totalitarian tendencies and strong family ties to Communist China has expanded his nuclear arsenal.

    Normally this would be grounds for international concern and targeted sanctions. Unfortunately, in this case we may just have to grin and bear it because the burgeoning dictator in question is UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/03/18/crazed-dictator-bojo-gets-more-nukes-what-could-go-wrong/#comment-5308345261

  48. Many of us go straight to the comments and do not read the DT articles very closely. I am certainly guilty of this and I find I often agree with posters who are even more cynical than I am:

    Another BTL comment:

    When the lust has died what will be left of poor weak Harry’s masochistic feelings for his wife?

    1. It’s all becoming clear now. Those so-called ‘blood clots’ that they’re banging on about are not blood clots at all, it’s the lumps in the vaccines that are causing the problem.

      …. I’ll get me blender.

    2. they have pinched the word “lumpy” from the weather forecast, cf “lumpy rain”.

  50. How to install a Redneck Home Security System

    1. Go to the Charity Shop and buy a pair of size 14-16 men’s work boots.
    2. Place them on your front porch, along with a copy of Guns & Ammo Magazine.
    3. Put four giant dog dishes next to the boots and magazines.
    4. Leave a note on your door that reads…

    Bubba,
    Me and Marcel, Donnie Ray and Jimmy Earl went for more ammo and beer. Be back in an hour. Don’t mess with the pit bulls. They got the mailman this morning and messed him up bad. I don’t think Killer took part, but it was hard to tell from all the blood. Anyway, I locked all four of ’em in the house. Better wait outside. Be right back.
    Cooter.

    If you think this is a good idea – translate for English!

  51. A judge rules that excessive punctuation is unnecessarily aggressive.

    WTF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Firstly i would like to apologise for the use of a full stop in my first sentence

    Anyone feeling aggressed by my punctuation please form an orderly queue for a tongue lashing……………………………………………………………………………………..

    1. Bladdy savverners

      They fink they can frettan you wiv their punk2ashun

      Huh

      We norverners do it wiv a STARE 😐

      1. Under that overhanging brow of yours?

        Researches have discovered the largest concentrations of Neanderthal genes are in the Midlands and the North.

        *I made that up but it’s probably true. :@)

        1. I agree.

          Neanderthals in the North and Midlands: Gibbons and Chimps in the south.

          Checkmate in one move!

  52. Just had a wander outside…-8 with a wind-chill of -13.
    Still,could be worse.Someone in the village might start wearing a mask !!!

  53. 330555+ up ticks,

    It is very sad for many to realise that total severance should have been the order of the day early doors post 24/6/2016.

    Add to that following the Gerard Batten “Road to freedom”
    printed in 2014 route, would have been much more ALL round beneficial instead of the “leave it to the tories” ( ino) path of treachery, supporting party before Country will always be a Nation killer.

    https://twitter.com/RogerHelmerMEP/status/1372855161236914177

      1. 330555+ up ticks,
        Morning HM,
        All I know is he no longer is a member of the real UKIP ending under Gerard Batten via treachery input from uKiP party
        nEc / farage, and the mass exodus of loyal to Country / party members.
        The current coalition is lab/lib/con/greens/ukip.
        As yet NO proven opposition
        Ps,
        On 12 October 2011, Helmer announced that he would resign from the European Parliament at the end of the year, citing “increasing disillusion with the attitudes of the Conservative Party” as the main reason, although also stating that his “twelve-and-a-half years banging my head against the same brick wall in Brussels.

        IMO he has re-joined the tories

        .

      2. I suspect he just forgot to change his handle on his Twitter account. Or if he’s a remoaner, didn’t want to because he was sulking.

    2. Hmm… much depends on our government’s ability to make use of the freedoms Brexit gives us.

      If they continue down this big state, high tax, Left wing, greeniac tax and waste road, no, we will never out pace the wretched failed communist idiocy of the EU.

      If government abandons the stupidity of hard Left politics and goes for industry, low tax and individual freedom while keeping out the dross then we’re on to a winner and would leave the failed, backward EU in our dust and draw level with Switzerland.

      My personal opinion is we’re stuffed. There are too many gormless statists infesting whitehall and officialdom. They’ll never grasp the choices open to us and will throw us back to poverty and chaos.

      1. 330555+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        MPO is there are to many proven gormless, politically ignorant, dangerous peoples supporting this
        lab/lib/con/ green pro eu coalition group, keeping us in a
        state of common sense, decency, & self respect deficiency.

  54. Snigger

    Meghan Markle is a vicious, conniving, hypocritical, manipulative,

    unlikable witch. In another life, we’d be the best of friends! But she’s

    just not royal material. And it has nothing to do with the colour of

    her skin. It’s because she’s a tarantula, a succubus, the living

    embodiment of the phrase, ‘It cries out in pain as it strikes you’.

    As she basically admitted to Oprah, Markle thought that by marrying

    into the British royal family, she’d become a celebrity on steroids.

    Marrying Harry, she assumed, would be a passport to a life of

    unimaginable privilege in which she could bask in adoration, never more

    than 24 hours from the next custom Givenchy outfit.

    But it didn’t pan out, because the Duchess of Sussex forgot the

    flip-side of all that pomp and circumstance: You only get to enjoy it as

    part of a lifetime of public service, dedicated to the little people.

    Markle must have been horrified at her first public engagement. After

    all, the sort of people who show up for royal events are exactly the

    gauche, unsophisticated working-class right-wingers whom Markle abhors,

    associating them with Trump voters — and with her own trailer-park

    origins, an early life the Duchess has tried desperately to forget.

    https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/03/meghan-i/

      1. Must be terrible for her having to carry around a full length mirror everywhere she goes.

    3. She’s living a modern fairy tale: the beautiful woman kisses a prince, he turns into a frog and she into a spoiled princess and witch, the old woman is a saint not a witch, and the frog/Prince’s servant (often translated to Harry) gets 3 steel bands and an NDO trapping his heart.

  55. Less than a third of all Russians thinks Russia is a European country – a steep drop from the 52% who held that opinion 13 years ago. At the same time, just 27% of those surveyed said they consider themselves part of Europe.
    That’s according to a new poll from the Levada Center, a Moscow-based pollster and registered foreign agent. The survey revealed that the number of Russians who believe the nation to be European has almost halved in less than a decade and a half, with just 28% of Russians now considering their homeland to part of Europe and 64% responding that it was “non-European.”

    “Overall, since 2008, the number of those who believe that Russia is a European country has dropped by almost half: from 52% to 29%,” the researchers note.

    2. Did they ask the ones on the Eastern side the same questions as the ones in the West?

    3. If native Russians are not aware of the geography of their own country [77% of Russia is in Asia; 23% is in Europe] that makes them nearly as bad at the subject as Americans are.

    1. I stopped donating when i realised a sizeable wodge was being sent abroad. We already give millions upon millions in foreign aid. FFS

      There is a place near me called the Rainbow Centre. They help young and old with severe walking disability. They are in danger of closing next year as funding doesn’t match reality.

  57. Alexei Navalny broke his silence from Russian prison, describing 24/7 surveillance and being woken up every hour. 19 March 2021.

    Navalny had not been heard from until Monday, when he broke his silence on Instagram and described his situation.

    “I must admit that the Russian prison system managed to surprise me. I did not think it was possible to build a concentration camp just 100 kilometers away from Moscow,” he said.

    One remembers all those telegrams from Dachau! Heartbreaking!

    https://www.businessinsider.com/alexei-navalny-describes-russian-prison-surveillance-instagram-post-2021-3?r=US&IR=T

    1. Obviously a very harsh system if he has access to the Internet and Instagram. Must be awful.

        1. He complains of 24hr CCTV. Don’t come to Gulag Britain then, Alexei.

          Afternoon, Minty

          1. The report also says that inmates are forced to ‘name names’ and are not allowed to sit down at all all day. I suspect he’s been allowed to do this ‘episode’ to show ‘how humane’ the conditions are, so anything he does say as regards complaints are dismissed.

          2. There’s one guy in a British prison (Belmarsh) who would love the chance to do a similar “episode”

          5. There’s a whole world of difference between convicted on trumped-up (financial) charges and someone held on remand for murder because he was (rightly) deemed a high risk to the public (given another incident).

            One thing I do agree on is that the media have been way too quick to convict him, and could well prejudice his trial. But that has nowt to do with him being in custody – I mean, how many murder suspects in the UK are allowed to be free after they’ve been charged?

          6. It’s not the fact he’s held in custody that bothers us – but all the publicity and the minute detail about his family life.

          7. It does me as well, but that’s not what Harry was pointing to – he was presumably saying he shouldn’t be behind bars at all. As yet, we don’t know what the evidence against him is – it could be so overwhelming that that was why the Police/CPS said no to him going on bail – which I’d expect for such crimes.

            If it turns out it was all flimsy and he gets off, then hopefully the Police will be rightly heavily criticised for it, but as yet, we don’t know either way, and why I was concenred at why Harry brought it up in the first place.

            If Harry meant Assange, he previously, when accused of rape, agreed with the Police to not leave the home of the person who posted bail for him – he did and ended up in that foreign embassy, hence why he’s now in prison for jumping bail. If the allegations against him were all a ruse to get him extradited to the US, this would’ve come out in court at the hearing, but he chose to ignore that.

            The case would’ve been resolved in a short time, not years and his health being severely degraded down to his own actions. It’s a shame, as I suspect he wasn’t guilty of the rape charges and was all due to the Americans wanting him because of his wikileaks stuff. In the end, neither side came out well in all this.

          9. It’s not so easy to track all responses in the main thread after they go down 3 levels (no further indent!). Besides, I haven’t had my lunch and I’m starting to make spelling nistakes. Ta-ra for now, back later.

          11. It does me as well, but that’s not what Harry was pointing to – he was presumably saying he shouldn’t be behind bars at all. As yet, we don’t know what the evidence against him is – it could be so overwhelming that that was why the Police/CPS said no to him going on bail – which I’d expect for such crimes.

            If it turns out it was all flimsy and he gets off, then hopefully the Police will be rightly heavily criticised for it, but as yet, we don’t know either way, and why I was concenred at why Harry brought it up in the first place.

            If Harry meant Assange, he previously, when accused of rape, agreed with the Police to not leave the home of the person who posted bail for him – he did and ended up in that foreign embassy, hence why he’s now in prison for jumping bail. If the allegations against him were all a ruse to get him extradited to the US, this would’ve come out in court at the hearing, but he chose to ignore that.

            The case would’ve been resolved in a short time, not years and his health being severely degraded down to his own actions. It’s a shame, as I suspect he wasn’t guilty of the rape charges and was all due to the Americans wanting him because of his wikileaks stuff. In the end, neither side came out well in all this.

          12. Lots of them. In Scotland we have seen many instances of a murder accused walking to the Court accompanied by their lawyer.

          14. Given he has full access to the media and has given both interviews in the past, I don’t think that would be a problem.

    2. Only another 2 years 7 months to go Alexei.
      Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.

        1. Like that Solzhenitsyn bloke – he was given a typewriter and unlimited paper to write his gulag stories.

          1. All Russian prisoners are given the chance to earn money,usually making winter clothing for the armed forces.

          2. But how would either of you know that? Hardly common knowledge here in the UK.

          5. Try reading other authors, Ken Follet, The Century Trilogy, gives a good account from 1901 until the Berlin Wall fell.

    3. It’s a prison, not a fecking holiday camp.

      If only our prisons were actual punishment rather than merely considered a ‘tax’ by criminals!

      1. Perhaps, but given his trial appeared to be no more than for show, why is he there? Note also that the Telegraph reported yesterday that many of Navalny’s colleagues in his political party and a good number of other opposition politicians have been arrested and put under house arrest by ‘the authorities’ – conveniently none of them can now stand for election later this year.

        1. You do realise that he broke his parole conditions on 5 occasions BEFORE the Omsk incident.
          You won’t find that little snippet in the Western MSM.

          1. Given he appears to have been charged and convicted based solely on trumped-up charges, to me that sounds like they deliberately did that to make sure they had an excuse to lock him up whatever the case.

            PS. Don’t forget this is a forum essentially about British/Western issues, not Russia! There are other things to talk about.

          6. I can get you the real thing if you’re interested.I live about 80Km from the R****** border.

          7. The only way to eat ‘real’ Caviar’ is with strong ice cold Vodka to wash the taste away.

            Too strong for me.

          8. This forum is about whatever we say it is and we don’t want any Troll saying different!

          9. There you go again with the troll accusation. Sigh.

            Well, it is mainly about what’s in the Telegraph and by that nature, UK news (or at least that affects us). Couldn’t you just post stuff about issues other than Putin and Russia for a while? It’s not as though most them are adding anything new to the issues.

          11. Couldn’t you just post stuff about issues other than Putin and Russia for a while?

            Is Brigade HQ feeling the pressure? I shall not venture into the psychology and nature of someone who sees himself as the overseer of his countryman’s opinions and views and is willing to lie and deceive while doing it. It would not be pretty!

          12. All I’m doing is saying that I disagree with both your continual posting of Russian ‘stories’ and what you’re saying about them, given this is a forum for ex-Telegraph subscribers to discuss issues on that paper and mostly about our country.

            I’m not the one posting the practically the same stuff about very specific article every day, then accusing anyone of disagreeing with them as being some government spook. I post about many issues, including ones that the current government would not approve of, such as not taking the vaccine if you are other wise healthy and under 60.

            When I was a Telegraph subscriber, I saw what many real trolls did – they post about certain issues to stir up trouble, opresenting no useful solutions and to say how brilliant those they represent are. You’ve surely seen me post discussion comments on this forum many times going into detail on issues and how I think they could be moved forward/resolved. I’m not sure you could say the same for yourself. The Telegraph’s BTL comments area was at its best when decent discussions took place, not when thing descended into petty bickering or blatant campaigning by just posting propaganda.

            All I’m asking is that you talk about issues affecting the UK a bit more and be a bit more positive about trying to resolve them. If you don’t want to do that, that’s entirely up to you – I can’t or won’t force you to. I’m just appealling to your conscience.

          13. We have many good discussions here and have never stuck solely to discussing what’s in the Telegraph. Sometimes things get a bit heated in the evenings but there’s been less of that since certain people were evicted.
            Minty has been here since the start and has always had a particular interest in Russian stories.

          14. It just gets so tiresome when they just post the same old stuff, day after day. My other point was that they don’t appear to want to discuss the issues – just state their side and then try to trash anyone with a different opinion, or who asks where they got their information source from. I’ve been frustrated (as you probably know) on more than one occasion where this happened when I asked a question or made a point like that.

            It was a common tactic of trolls on the Telegraph when I was subscribing there. In my view, it does nothing to further a debate, getting to the truth of or a resolution to an issue. It also puts off potential new members because they see the same old same old, day after day and no meaningful discussions. Some of them were (and still are on the DT) around 10 years ago.

            Being a long-time DT online subscriber (but not some government spook as I’m being wrongly accused of) who regularly frequnted the BTL comments areas across the board (not just on the Letters Page), you pick up some skills at spotting those sort of people.

            I’ve seen other forums (many of which were previouslly really good) go that way and die because people weren’t willing to properly discuss issues and it descended into petty bickering (different to playful banter between friends) or just people stating X or Y and nothing being actually discussed, but ignored.

            I don’t want to happen here, given what happened to the Telegraph – it wasn’t just the changing in tone/editorial leaning of the paper or their censorship that put me off, it was also the allowing of people had no interest in improving our lot as Brits and often actively trying to stir up trouble.

          15. I hear what you’re saying – but Minty has every right to post the stuff she’s interested in, just as the rest of us do. If she doesn’t want to engage in discussions when you challenge her, then maybe she takes umbrage at your tone. There’s no compulsion to reply to anyone. Why not just accept it and move on?

          16. The problem is that what they are doing is, in my view, a similar tactic employed by Jen and Cochrane, both of whom were banned as a result. They said X, then got into petty fights with anyone who disagreed or challenged them over their sources and accused that person of being some nasty Y or Z.

            By ‘moving on’, are you saying I shouldn’t ask questions of them or say I disagree (and state why based on substance)? I agree that they are under no obligation to reply, but it appears the only reply is to falsely accuse me (or anyone else who does the same) of being a spook, when patently that isn’t the case.

            It’s essentially giving them licence to say as they please and not be questioned over the voracity of their claims or why they are making them at all.

            I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy Araminta’s claim that this all started because of the Salisbury incident – to be obsessed to that degree about the goings on in a supposedly foreign country and to be so one sided about its leader seems to me at least not to be healthy, and is, to me, dubious to say the least. Especially when Harry M pops up out of nowhere (well, from Finland) just to run wingman for them.

            Surely if they both cared that much about Russian issues that they’d find a Russian-centric discussion forum to properly discuss them – it’s not as though we here are all experts on that front, which is why I was more than surprised that they were continually posted by them.

          17. Cochrane isn’t banned – he comes and goes and also changes his name, but is generally recognisable by his style.
            If you exercise a little self-awareness, you’ll see that you are doing what you accuse Minty and Harry of. None of the regular posters here are trolls, spooks or wingmen.

            JSP upset too many people with her downvoting – and Geoff ran out of patience with her. She had no arguments or tactics, apart from annoying people.

          18. So why is Minty accusing me of being a spook?

            Asking someone for proof, disputing their assertions or saying (and very politely) it would be nice for them to give a particular well-worn topic a rest for a while for their own sanity as well as ours is certainly not trolling or being a spook.

            That’s exactly what we used to do whilst discussing issues on the DT. Only I’m not allowed to ask pertinant questions, because a specific person says that asking them at all is evidence of being a troll/spook.

            Perhaps if you’d care to view some of the Telegraph’s BTL comments areas – particularly those away from the Letters Page (especially those articles relating to defence issues or Russia/Putin) then you might see what trolls actually look like.

            Many of them have a very familar ‘tone’ to their posts, especially the Russian ones. You may then see why I have said what I have.

          19. The problem is that what they are doing is, in my view, a similar tactic employed by Jen and Cochrane, both of whom were banned as a result. They said X, then got into petty fights with anyone who disagreed or challenged them over their sources and accused that person of being some nasty Y or Z.

            By ‘moving on’, are you saying I shouldn’t ask questions of them or say I disagree (and state why based on substance)? I agree that they are under no obligation to reply, but it appears the only reply is to falsely accuse me (or anyone else who does the same) of being a spook, when patently that isn’t the case.

            It’s essentially giving them licence to say as they please and not be questioned over the voracity of their claims or why they are making them at all.

            I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy Araminta’s claim that this all started because of the Salisbury incident – to be obsessed to that degree about the goings on in a supposedly foreign country and to be so one sided about its leader seems to me at least not to be healthy, and is, to me, dubious to say the least. Especially when Harry M pops up out of nowhere (well, from Finland) just to run wingman for them.

            Surely if they both cared that much about Russian issues that they’d find a Russian-centric discussion forum to properly discuss them – it’s not as though we here are all experts on that front, which is why I was more than surprised that they were continually posted by them.

          20. “this is a forum for ex-Telegraph subscribers to discuss issues on that paper and mostly about our country“- really? This is a forum for a wide range of topics [ostensibly based on the wide ranging DT letters], courtesy of Geoff! While I agree with a lot of what you post I don’t think you should presume to dictate what others wish to discuss!

          21. You may just be doing a job carrying out your duties in dealing with nonentities like ourselves. But like those who served; even in the most menial position, the Third Reich or the Soviet Union, you are still an agent of a Great Evil! This thing you serve will eventually consume you too and everything that you love!

          22. It starts off by discussing the letters – kindly posted for us by Epidermoid, as most of us now have no access to them – but always goes on to discuss whatever issues people want to put forth. Not necessarily from the Telegraph.

  59. Did any one here watch the Hairy Bikers on BBC 2 last night .

    I think their tour of Northern Europe and Russia has been terrific . I wonder whether Grizzly would have enjoyed their Swedish tour last night , gourmet heaven . Lucky Grizzly .

    Anyway the pair of them had their DNA tested to see if either of them were Viking , because Simon King , the blue eyed fair hairy guy always thought he was Viking , nope , he was of Germanic heritage, and Dave Myers who always wondered who was , turned out he had Nordic/ Viking ancestry.

    Have any of you had DNA testing .. Moh wants us to be DNA tested because my father always joked he had Viking heritage , and as I have a crooked little finger , blue eyes etc whether it would be worth my while , in a light hearted way to see if that were so, although my mother was from SW Ireland , dark eyed and always joked about the Spanish pirates etc.

    If any of you have, I wonder what company is best to use?

    4. I haven’t – although I’ve been into family history for many years. I’ve no particular objection, just never felt the need. For family historians who want to contact potential relatives, Ancestry is the best bet.

      1. We are just poking around with our DNA , combined birthday presents . Potential relatives are quite numerous , but we are too far down the line now for any further involvement .

        The lockdown seems to have cut the roots out of us , and has been somewhat aging . We will never recover the time lost or our energy again .

        1. Sorry to hear that, Belle. I feel that it’s grounded us far more, and you have to really try to stay in touch as things can change so quickly, as we well know! A year in the life of a child is an aeon, to us older folk it is a short passage of time.

          1. It’s a short passage of time because time goes faster the older you are. It’s speeding up to our demise, like the loo paper unrolls quicker the nearer it gets to the tube.

        2. It’s a large chunk out of what’s left of our lives.

          I scanned a few old photos the other day. Will post a couple here if you’d like to see them.

          5. Wonderful. It is such a shame old pics go so yellowy.

            I have a box full of old pics .. I do wish some one had written names on the back of them .

          6. Most of mine I know who they are – but I should label them as that knowledge may not be passed on. I have acquired a lot more over the years than I started off with – about 10 years ago my third cousin in New Zealand found a family album with some of the photos identified so that was a great find. And my father’s cousin in Devon, who is 95, has some super Victorian albums passed down from her grandparents.

          8. Not quite – Grandma was born in 1878. See the one below – Great grandma was born in 1838 so not far off.

    5. I watched it when it was first aired a few years’ back, Maggie.

      As for DNA tests: I think I’m probably a mongrel mix of Ancient Briton, Celt, Roman, Jute, Angle, Saxon, Viking and Norman.

      Philip thinks I’m simply simian.

      1. Hairy Bikers is one of the progs I always enjoy . They seem such good fun , and when they sample food from different areas is always a Mmmmm nice moment or an ughhh , goodness I wouldn’t eat that feeling .

        Either way , I enjoyed their Nordic experience .

        I think most of us are a muddled mix of old European ancestry !

    6. I’ve just sat down after a morning helping our neighbour fix his fence post that snapped in the wind last week.
      We watched the whole series they present a wholly different approach to cooking and baking. there’s no snobbery or false status attached to other cookery programmes. And for mothers day Erin doors was presented with a bottle of bison grass vodka. Featured in one of the earlier progs.
      We have discussed testing our DNA many times, but now we have decided to present a gift to our middle son who’s birthday is next. We feel his will be more enlightening as it will combine both of ours. We already know MOH has part Scots and Irish genes, mine are a bit different. I suspect Norman on my fathers side and possibly east of England Saxon on my mothers side my Grand mother’s maiden name was Eastman.

        1. Mildly surprised, Mags, ‘cos having trees on both Mother’s Side (530 to date) and Father’s Side (1580 to date) nothing Celtic appears except Edith of Scotland (1080-1118) daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland who married Henry I (1068-1135) on 11th November 1100. so all a long way back. Yet the Norway bit may come from Halfdann Olafsson King of the Opplanders (704 – Unknown) and his descendants through to Øystein ‘The Noisy’ Glumra, Earl of Hedemarken Øystein (c 810 – >872).

          4. Maybe, Mags, along with several million others. I have 8 Kings and 1 Queen (Matilda) in my tree but then, so do a lot of people.

            It’s what makes being British so rare – no gimmegrunt can claim that.

  61. The Independent reporting that Scotrail will be run by a public-owned company next year.

      1. To God belongs the Earth all that it contains, but the Highlands and the Islands belong to D MacBrayne’s.

    2. What private company would want to get involved under the old model where they got fares? As for State-owned, how’s that got on elsewhere, eg Notwork Rail?

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

    Free-speech-crisis denialism

    In an extensive analysis for Spiked, Frank Furedi explores the belief of many on “what passes for the left” that “the very real existence of a free-speech crisis is not only a fantasy, but a product of a right-wing, no doubt Tory conspiracy”. This “free-speech-crisis denialism” is underpinned by a wholesale rejection of free speech “as an inviolable moral good” and reaches its apotheosis with the view that free speech is opposed to life itself, which Furedi describes as “a form of moral blackmail”.

    Noah Carl demolishes the same denialism in Quillette, albeit using more moderate language.

    Misogyny

    The government has accepted an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill that would require all the police forces in England and Wales to keep a record of those crimes that are motivated by hatred of the victim’s sex or gender – widely written up in the press as making misogyny a hate crime, although in reality it is a staging post on the road to that destination. The move is a concession to campaign groups seeking greater protection for women – a campaign given increased urgency by the killing of Sarah Everard. Spiked columnist Ella Whelan argues that women must refuse to live in fear, saying: “Making misogyny a hate crime writes into law that women cannot handle public life without the watchful eye of the state. This is not the politics of freedom; it is the politics of fear.”

    Joanna Williams, founder of the think tank Cieo, questions the idea of relying on the perception of the victim to determine whether an assailant was motivated by hatred of your sex or gender, which is what the police will have to do, there being no objective test of whether a person was motivated by misogyny. It is important, she argues, to hear women’s “lived experiences of sexual harassment”, but the problem of using “entirely subjective responses to create apparently concrete data sets” should not be ignored. Williams says: “There is no formula for determining how many personal truths comprise a universal truth.”

    The FSU tweeted on Thursday: “If last night’s amendment on ‘misogyny’ becomes law, it’ll be taken by police as instruction to record more ‘non-crime hate incidents’ against people’s names in police databases. Perception-based reporting has a chilling effect on free speech and should be scrapped, not expanded.”

    NCHIs

    “Policing tweets is so much easier than policing streets,” former police officer Harry Miller told Talk Radio this week. Miller’s legal challenge to the College of Policing’s practice of recording ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs) at the Court of Appeal was heard last week, and he hopes for a judgement before Easter. He said: “If we win, the consequences are absolutely huge for the police and if we lose the consequences are huge to free speech.” FSU deputy director of research Emma Webb added that the monitoring and recording of NCHIs is “the mass surveillance of people’s opinions on controversial subjects by the police without this being mandated by Parliament”. You can read a report on NCHIs by Radomir Tylecote, the FSU’s research director, here.

    The FSU is supporting Harry Miller’s appeal via its ‘Fighting Fund’ on GoFundMe. If he loses and the Court orders him to pay the College of Policing’s cost, he’ll be out of pocket big time. You can donate to the GoFundMe here. If Harry is successful, we’ll use the money to fight other free speech cases.

    Universities

    The National Catholic Register has published an article examining the difficulties faced by pro-life students on British university campuses. When president of Glasgow University’s Students for Life Grace Deignan first tried to set up a pro-life student group, she says, “We were told we couldn’t become a group on campus because the university didn’t take a stance on abortion. But after discovering there were already three pro-abortion societies active on campus, we knew we were being silenced.”

    Julia Rynkiewicz, a midwifery student at the University of Nottingham, was suspended from her hospital placement when the University learned of her pro-life views. After a four-month investigation, her suspension was overturned, and she eventually got a financial settlement and an apology, but the ordeal set her back a year in her studies.

    FSU General Secretary Toby Young is quoted in the article, saying: “The free-speech crisis at Britain’s universities is very real.” He pointed out that a survey commissioned in 2017 by the UCU, Britain’s largest academic trade union, found that free speech was less well protected in Britain’s universities than in every other EU member state bar one and since then “things have got worse by an order of magnitude”.

    Raquel Rosario Sánchez, president of the University of Bristol’s feminist society has been removed from her post by the Students’ Union after a complaint was made by a trans student over the society’s refusal to admit trans women to women-only meetings about violence against women. The society, called Women Talk Back, has written an open letter to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson objecting to the decision. Ms Rosario Sánchez said: “Women have a right to single-sex spaces when we are talking about sensitive matters.”

    An online conference called “Replatforming Deplatformed Women” held its first meeting this week at Cambridge University, featuring female speakers who have been disinvited from public engagements for alleged transphobia. The University was supportive, saying: “Rigorous debate is fundamental to the pursuit of academic excellence and the university will always be a place where freedom of speech is strongly encouraged.” (Tell that to Jordan Peterson, who was no-platformed by the University in 2019.)

    Rule Britannia

    Student Elizabeth Heverin was given a two-week ban by the Aberdeen University Students’ Association, preventing her from setting foot in the Association’s buildings, for saying “Rule Britannia” during a discussion about military recruitment on campus. The debate concerned the renewal of the students’ union’s commitment to a “demilitarised campus” because some students said “the presence of military personnel on campus would make them feel uncomfortable, due to links with colonialism and the British Empire”. Heverin, who disagreed with the policy, said: “It feels like I’ve been prosecuted for the crime of being patriotic”. Toby commented: “This is a misguided attempt to silence someone based on ignorant guesswork about their political values. Trying to silence people you suspect of harbouring unfashionable views through bans or by no-platforming them should have no place at a university.” The ban on military personnel on campus was eventually overturned.

    Responding to the story in an interview with Nick Ferrari on Talk Radio, Calvin Robinson called it “bonkers” and urged people to “support free speech at all costs”.

    The FSU has written to the President of the Students’ Association asking her to overturn the punishment, apologise to Elizabeth Heverin and assure other students that they won’t face the same fate if they utter the words “Rule Britannia”.

    Cancelling musicians and writers

    Writing in The Critic, Jack Stacey compares Winston Marshall from Mumford & Sons, now taking time away from the band to “examine my blind spots”, with Winston Smith, the central character of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The banjo player’s recent apology for praising journalist Andy Ngo’s book on Antifa on Twitter amounts to a public declaration that he, like his Orwellian counterpart, finally loves “his Big Brothers and Sisters or, in genderqueer-friendly parlance, Siblings”.

    Canadian editor of Quillette Jonathan Kay has written about the predicament of freelance journalist Jesse Singal, who has been the subject of “a malicious and wilfully dishonest propaganda campaign” accusing him of transphobia, sexual exploitation, “slut-shaming” and more, none of which have been backed by a scintilla of evidence. Kay observes that the main victims of cancel culture tend not to be conservatives but rather “heterodox liberals who simply offer a dissenting opinion”. Singal is “a liberal whose words are read by other liberals”, and it is his independent-minded deviations from woke orthodoxy, particularly on the subject of gender dysphoria in children, that make him the target of “those who view the issue of trans rights through the Manichean lens of blessed dogma and wicked heresy”. Their goal “is to excommunicate, silence, and demonetise one of the few journalists who’s actually researched the science that should guide our treatment of dysphoric children”.

    Writers concerned about cancel culture could do worse than read “How to Survive Cancel Culture as a Writer” by Thomas Umstattd Jr. His advice includes: “don’t be a jerk”, “don’t apologize to trolls”, “pick your enemies”, “own your own platform”, and “stand your ground”.

    Offence and division

    The latest Charlie Hebdo cover, which features a cartoon of the Queen kneeling on Meghan Markle’s neck, has caused outrage and criticism for its obvious reference to the death of George Floyd (and its implication that the Queen is racist). But according to Spiked, the attacks on the magazine for making light of George Floyd’s killing are absurd: “Charlie does not discriminate when it comes to causing offence. Quite the opposite: it is an equal-opportunities blasphemer.”

    FSU Director Douglas Murray made on appearance this week on the Telegraph’s podcast Planet Normal, discussing identity politics and the increasing divisions in society. He argues that progressive radicals are playing weird and dangerous games in the name of equality which will ultimately “provoke anger and angst and recognition of difference rather than an erasure of difference”.

    In response to an increasing number of messages expressing concerns about cancel culture and critical race theory, American economist and podcaster Glenn Loury has set up an email address so people worried about the Maoist climate sweeping America can contact him: thework@glennshow.com. “Please do NOT use it if what you have is a general question, a suggestion for an interview, or a note of support,” he said. “Please DO use it to tell us about the ways the zeitgeist is manifesting itself at your place of employment; about the help you might need from us or other members of our community; about the ways you would want to see this initiative to evolve in; or about the contribution you would like to make yourself.”

    Policing speech

    Professor Andrew Tettenborn, a member of the FSU’s Legal Advisory Council, argues that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which passed its second reading this week, will not only give “police worryingly unlimited power to suppress public protests” but could also “criminalise almost any public speech online, in posters or for that matter in newspapers, if enough people are prepared to complain about it”. The implications of this are so horrific, he says, that any progress on free speech made by groups such as the FSU could be rolled back all at once by “this catch-all provision apt to catch any speech where a pressure group can whip up enough of its supporters to say they are seriously distressed by it”.

    Titania McGrath Snapped Up by GB News

    Andrew Doyle, the pro-free speech campaigner and comic genius behind the Twitter character Titania McGrath, has been hired by GB News to be the channel’s wokeness correspondent, monitoring the excesses of woke culture. As a member of the FSU’s Advisory Council, Andrew is the second FSU figure to be snapped up by the new channel, the first being founding director Inaya Folarin Iman. Should it change its name to FSU News? The new channel – which is shaping up to be a refreshing alternative to the BBC News Channel and Sky News – is due to launch later this year.

    Sharing the Newsletter

    We’ve received several requests to make it possible to share these newsletters on social media, so we’ve added the option to post them on various social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. Just click on the buttons below.

    If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    Kind regards,

    1. Sadly, Charlie Hebdo continually shoots themselves (proverbially, of course) in the foot by peeing everyone off. It may well be free speech for them to publish that sort of carp, but they are lies, not satire, and thus their readership continues to reduce. Private Eye (and they aren’t that good any more, given their editorial leaning) they ain’t.

      1. I can’t imagine who would actually want to buy a magazine that seeks to offend everybody.

        1. I think they deliberately do this to generate publicity to stimulate sales ‘from the other side’ of an argument (i.e. the side not peed off and ‘threatening them’. Sales temporarily went up after each of the very controvercial publications befeore and after tah well-publicised attacks.

          To me, they sound like paper-based shock-jocks, rarely of any use to a debate, and far worse than ‘provocateurs’ like Milo Yiannopoulos or suchlike, who often have a moral story behind what they do.

      2. We have taken the Eye since mid 1990s, but cancelled in 2019 as it was neither informative nor funny.

      2. I used to walk to school on my own but I wouldn’t lat a child of that age do so now. Sweet looking little boy.

    1. The PTB have been working on this propaganda for at least fifteen years. The fact that governments around the world are enacting very similar strategies to inject poisons into their populations is an obvious clue as to the maladroitness of the globalist elites.

      Sooner or later someone will join all the dots and realise that most of the shocking world events, the Twin Towers, Lockerbie, Dunblane and Obama bin Laden’s terrorism are all organised and funded by boughten security services. My guess is that shady billionaires such as Bezos are behind a lot of it.

      1. Boris walking out with a massive smile across his face just after this lot started and saying “The Great Reset”. Alarm bells rung straight away.

      2. Re the video…

        Let’s forget about conspiracies and the like for a moment. My first and foremost reason for refusing the jab was that it has not been tested for even short/medium term side effects. I already refuse the annual flu jab as I had a severe bout many years ago and my immune system has coped well since. The flu is a corona virus and they say that covid is a variation of the flu so my immune system should recognize a similar attack.

        Now throw in the fears about the vaccine for other reasons and we have a real conundrum.

        1. I had the AZ vaccine because I have a trip booked and I’m sure it will become a requirement for international travel. I didn’t bother with the flu jab till last October – the last time I had flu was 26 years ago. But the years go by and I’m not as young as I was then.

          1. I’m going to play devil’s advocate here…

            Holiday or your life as Dick Turpin might say. But in reality a growing number of people are having second thoughts if its only for the reasons I refused it.

            The second point is what I believe the lockdown is really all about. It’s simply to control the population ready for the great reset. I’d even have a gentleman’s wager that you won’t fly on holiday this year and depending on your bank balance, may never fly on holiday. Many people haven’t fully understood what the great reset actually entails. One clue is cutting the carbon footprint by at least 85% in just nine years time. How are they going to do that if the sky is full of planes like before the lockdown began?

            I doubt the lockdown will end this year and perhaps much longer than that. This one was to be only of three weeks duration and that was 12 months ago.

          2. We’ll have to see, won’t we? My trip was booked for March and I was forced to postpone it, but no way am I cancelling.

          4. We booked a holiday months before last May with Tripadvisor…

            They cancelled it because we were not allowed to fly. Had we panicked and cancelled ourselves we would have lost our money. After many phone calls and emails we finally got our money back this month. There’s social media group of people who are having to take the company to court to get their money back.

          5. I advise our guests to do the same, the problem is that many other aspects, hotels, ferries, hire cars etc come into play. If cancelled at the last minute, because of Covid, it doesn’t necessarily mean you get everything back.

            We have always returned our guests deposits, but TA still charged them booking fees because the guests cancelled and even if TA had done the cancellation, the guests would have lost the deposit.

            Their choice was cancel and potentially lose one part or leave it and potentially lose even more.

            It’s a scandal.

            We lost our airfare because we booked a non-cancellation flight and we lost 50% of the Air BnB fees over a trip to Australia. Down the wrong side of £6,000.

          6. I can feel for the agents because they have to claw money back from hotels and airlines before they have the amount we paid them. But they kept dragging things out by saying they had not had funds returned to them.

            This lockdown is not only putting people out of business but causing untold aggro also.

          7. I booked this trip last September – it becane clear we couldn’t go in March so we changed the dates. No problem with the safari company but British Airways have been a bit of a nightmare to deal with – left hands never know what the right hands are doing. Not easy to understand what they are saying, either.

          8. When the agents cancelled they offered coupons for a holiday at a later date. My missus who’s not with me on things political wanted to take the coupons and rebook when the time was right. I told her not to do that and get the money back because I knew where this lockdown was going. My advice would be to wait until they cancel again and take the money.

            I don’t want to sound negative but the new world is going to be much different to the one we have just left. The elite advertised it as Utopia (read UN Agenda21 on the UN website).

            Utopia but not for us mere mortals I’m sad to say.

          12. Pessimist!

            Fly this year? The UK is well ahead of other countries with vaccinations, you need to consider how other countries are getting on with their vaccination programs before they think about opening up to outsiders

            Canada is hoping to give first vaccinations by September, no date on second shot yet – it depends on the generosity of other countries selling the vaccine. . So first jab by September, two months before second jab then a month for the antiviruses to do their thing and you are into 2022 before flights can realistically resume

          13. Pessimist or realist?

            35% of passenger planes have already been scrapped since the lockdown began. Many more are virtually mothballed and we all know what happens when planes stay idle for months and years. Try starting a car that’s been sat in the garage for a year.

            The great reset is to prevent all apart from the wealthy from flying. Do people think all the bicycle lanes are springing up just so people can exercise during lockdown and then will be removed?

        2. I think I first read about Gates being hounded out of Africa and India because of the damning effects of his vaccines; death, paralysis, infertility. Then I read about his interests in depopulation, how vaccines could be used…. then I read about his father’s views, and sinisterly Johnson’s father’s view coincided (see Amazon ‘the Virus’ and his depopulation studies if they are still there). Then I discover that Gates funds research at the pharmaceuticals, Imperial College (when will its name be cancelled?) and SAGE. Photographs of Johnson with Gates, Hancock with Gates. There was very much a sense of he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that they are all in it together. Then I learn that the vaccines haven’t been tested fully, they haven’t been tested on the elderly and ageing immune systems, they are a rushed job. There are echoes of 2008/9 and the H1N1 virus and the vaccine that was a rushed job which resulted in hundreds and hundreds of cases of narcolepsy. Then I see that the firms have been given an indemnity against prosecution for side effects.

          Then worse comes along – the care homes are seeded with infected covid patients from the nhs wards, and infect the care home residents. They are all denied treatment. They issue them with DNR notices which they do not understand, at a time when their relatives are banned from visiting. The nhs callously abandons its chronically sick, and new patients with new symptoms by closing its treatment, its wards and hospitals to these patients. It is interested only in covid symptoms.

          Accept a vaccine from these people? I don’t think so. And they have even hi-jacked the definition of the word ‘vaccine’ to suit their purpose. Should an acquaintance be involved and guilty in all the above, and he came along to you and said: “Look, I’ve had this vaccine made up, it will solve all your problems…..!” You wouldn’t remotely entertain the idea, would you?

          1. Phew….

            I’m glad I’m not on my own about all this. There are some very good people on this site and I can imagine some of them at least down at the local Conservative social club. Middle class educated people.

            But there’s a mist that some can’t see through and I can understand why…we are only human after all. We have spent our lives depending on the government to look after us especially in times of crisis. Every man and his dog (and cats) know something is wrong and the government is not looking after our security.

            Fears and expectations need to be stepped up a level because what’s planned for our future is far greater than people realise. To save grace…those of us in our twilight years have the satisfaction of living throughout the best time ever on this planet. Our children will pay an almighty price.

          2. There are many out there who are working on our behalf, unfortunately they don’t get a familiar platform; all the platforms have been bought (Gates, Soros etc) and because the information doesn’t come wrapped in a DM, DT, BBC/ITV label with massive headlines, people either don’t see it or, if they do see it, they don’t really believe it, they don’t digest and process the information. There is no such thing as investigative journalism any more but they cannot see that it has all changed, indeed how it could change. And therein lies your mist. They do not understand that they are being manipulated and being told what to think.

            People who survive these turbulent times in our history are those who keep their wits about them, make the effort to understand what is going on; they act in their own and their families’ best interests and keep their heads below the parapet.

          3. Yes…we are on the same page.

            The elite can afford the best brains in the world to do their PR. They can afford to hire the dumbest politicians on the planet. I’m an odd ball…loose cannon…black sheep who steps outside the box. A deep thinker and have spent years of hours researching and watching.

            I can understand how most people think but they haven’t done the research or feel confident in discussing the unbelievable. I’ve given over twelve years of my life to clear the mist and I’ve lost a lot of friends along the way.

            The only thing left is civil war but that also means we have lost as that’s what the elite are hoping for so I’m afraid that without divine intervention…we are all stuffed.

          4. We will not regain those freedoms that we relinquished so easily, they are not going to be returned to us without struggle. However, there are more of us than there are of them, and the law of unintended consequences may kick in. But one can understand now why we have been sliced and diced in so many ways, our national island unity has been deliberately picked apart… and they are still at it, the vaccinated are being pitched against the unvaccinated now; those cowering behind masks and sofas versus the new word they soon found for the sceptics, the ‘covidiots’. However blood is thicker than water and we may yet come together in the end. There is a sense that the dénouement is fast approaching now.

          5. Sadly there are many who have not just complied, but have become complicit in the removal of freedoms we took for granted for so long – did you see my earlier post from the DM about the lady of 82 who was knocked up late at night by the plod for having a cup of tea in the garden? Somebody tipped them off.

          6. I did, and it is quite unbelievable – not that someone tipped off the police, there have been spiteful people around like that since the dawn of time, but that the police actually acted on it. They flexed their muscles against an elderly lady. And they could have given her a heart attack.

          7. Divide and rule works every time…

            They have big brother so far advanced and they can pick us off with a tiny drone. The only way we might win…it would have to be very dirty…is if the Internet crashed. Almost all surveillance is controlled through apps via the Internet.

            Then we’d have the numbers to take them out. Reminds me of years ago when it was said…if the Chinese marched towards us we’d run out of bullets before they reached us.

    2. The PTB have been working on this propaganda for at least fifteen years. The fact that governments around the world are enacting very similar strategies to inject poisons into their populations is an obvious clue as to the maladroitness of the globalist elites.

      Sooner or later someone will join all the dots and realise that most of the shocking world events, the Twin Towers, Lockerbie, Dunblane and Obama bin Laden’s terrorism are all organised and funded by boughten security services. My guess is that shady billionaires such as Bezos are behind a lot of it.

  65. I am SOOOO pleased that Mrs Murrell is standing firm. That’s what we need. Firm leaders….(sarc)

    1. When the time (eventually) comes, her fall from grace will be all the more spectacular. Hopefully by then, the UK will be back fully open and I might even take a special trip North of the border just to be there when it happens!

          1. I listened to it during its first week. Then stopped because of the maddening adverts and the way they only played part of a musical work.

          2. That soon stopped me listening to Classic FM. I hated the adverts and I prefer to listen to works as they were written, not just snippets.

        2. Sorry Bill, call me thick but I didn’t get the joke there. Please put me out of my misery (not forgetting I’m ‘only’ in my 40s and living Darn Sarf [well, sort of, ‘Artfordshire], in case this was a ‘boomer’ joke)… 🙂

          1. A tumbril is the name of the vehicle in which revolutionary French citizens placed those whom they disapproved of and were about to guillotine.

  66. Excellent bonfire – all burned to a small pile of smoking ash. I shall now have lunch and a beer.

  67. There’s an article on schools reopening showing minuscule Covid rates. Even allowing for a large proportion of kids not doing the tests properly, a 0.05% positive rate is less than expected false positives. Come on, Boris, you promised to follow the data, which is universally better than you predicted when deciding the lockdown easing – open up now.

    That will, unfortunately, come too late for my friend and the son of a woman who collected an item I sold recently. They lost their jobs, weren’t covered by Sunak’s schemes, felt isolated and killed themselves. Let’s have no more of them, please.

    1. No help for them – but always help for rubber dinghy arrivals. Even when they commit arson to get themselves better accommodation.

      1. I stayed in those barracks years ago. They were good enough for Squaddies. The perpetrators should have been made to sort out and live in the mess they made. We’re mugs.

        1. Sort it out, then told they have lost ANY chance of staying here – and WILL be deported . . . .NOT rewarded for their crime.

          2. The daft thing is than many North African migrants (not those from Syria) would likely speak French (at least undesrtand it enough to get by) because so many countries in that region are French-speaking, e.g. Algeria.

    2. I suspect that the recent levelling off of the ‘positive’ COVID tests is primarily due to every school getting their pupils tested daily and with the even-less-accurate ‘lateral flow’ tests. They’ve been back now – two weeks – and yet the death rate (even ‘with’ COVID) has still been declining by the same rate (around 30% per week).

      What WILL be interesting is because of the shortage of incoming vaccines from India and that the remainder of the over 50s and especially over 60s/clinically vulnerable will nnow have their second jabs prioritised, what will happen to the death rate once things start to open up in April.

      I suspect it will show, even if there’s an uptick in infections, that they don’t translate into more deaths (maybe even the opposite), showing us that the otherwise healthy under 60 population has little to fear from COVID – especially children.

      The teaching unions deliberately made this a big issue to try and get them to either not work (preferred) or on limited duties from home and no exams but on full pay, rather like theie even more militant US counterparts. I hope they get shown up for the liars and cowards they are.

    3. Oh, Lord. That’s awful.
      Reported today that suicide is now the biggest killer of young people in Norway.

  68. The Government’s SAGE advisers have issued new advice on how to identify sufferers from the Covid-19 Brazilian variant.

    Speaking at a press briefing, Professor Chris Whitty said that symptoms include a feeling of lightheadedness, a rhythmic shaking of the body and an uncontrollable desire to dance the lambada.

      3. 330555+ up ticks,
        A,
        I does seem to me that these governance groups have selective laws in place that THEY can either use or abuse.

    2. 330555+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      “Who have been in the UK a very long time” surely that statement alone shows the true intentions of this coalition past & going forward.

      That surely clears matters up a great deal
      ( near DOVER) for the mass uncontrolled immigration campaign to continue then a lab/lib/con vote is a MUST.

      SO get out there and do it for….. pakistan, somalia,the eu, etc,etc.

  71. The Cold War’s back with a vengeance..

    Russia was the only nation that refused to send its top UN representative to talks with US President Joe Biden on Thursday, electing instead to dispatch a junior envoy, as a diplomatic row between Moscow and Washington worsens.
    President Biden had invited permanent representatives from the United Nations Security Council, on which Moscow has continuous representation, to discuss his country’s “commitment to values-based global leadership.” In addition, the president called for action on crises in regions across the world, including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen.

    However, Dmitry Polyanskiy, second-in-command to Russia’s permanent representative, Vassily Nebenzia, confirmed on Friday that neither had attended the meeting. Instead, he revealed, Anna Evstigneeva, one of three more junior deputies, had joined the talks with Biden in their place. She reportedly made no remarks.

    1. Good grief. A woman who knows how to remain silent….

      (Take very deep cover wearing full protective gear).

    3. commitment to values-based global leadership

      What values are those then? Those that destroyed Libya, Syria and Iraq? .

    4. commitment to values-based global leadership

      What values are those then? Those that destroyed Libya, Syria and Iraq? .

        1. He’s not really the president – ‘laughing’ Harris is, and even then she’s the puppet of the Dem leadership. Biden’s just the face they are hiding behind whilst they enact policies designed to keep them in power forever and to silence anyone who questions them. Don’t forget that he again referred to ‘President Harris’ during his speech on COVID yesterday.

          2. You have to wonder what drugs they pumped him with to be able to sound remotely plausible during the debates with Trump. Perhaps they have some nasty side effects that are now making his condition worse, or may quickly lead to his demise…

    6. The Biden White House >larf< is starting the spade work for a war in the Ukraine. A war which we could all end paying for.

      1. We will be lucky if the only cost is financial. How can we support our side, when our side’s represented by Dementia Joe and a bunch of power crazy loons?

        1. Yes. You can bet Doris will be signing up our under strength and woefully, um, criminally under armed army to die for President Fraud. And yes we will be lucky if the cost is purely financially.

          I am just amazed at the US.

    2. I’m sure some golfers would have a better way of getting kitty down… FORE! 🙂

  73. Off topic and I suspect few here are interested in biathlon, but it’s hidden just in case someone is interested and wants to see the race later – Norwegian Tiril Eckhoff has just won her 7th consecutive sprint race this season – a new record and one that I suspect will be hard to beat!

      1. Yes, I think they miss her – poor Mari Eder was well down the list today, but so were a number of other well known athletes.

        1. Pity the Ski World Cup is finished.I was enjoying Finn Hagen Krogue and Alexander Bolshunov’s races.

    3. I love biathlon. Two incompatible sports blended together – ski too fast, and you can’t aim straight, then get extra skiing (lost time) penalt, or just a straight time penalty with reloading… lots of tactics, and some very good looking lasses!

      1. It would so much more interesting if they did this in the James Bond style, especially if it involved skiing down the bobsleigh run or the ski jump ramp! A shame that the modern pentathlon is apparently going to be dropped from the olympics, given that’s rather similar. A real test of skill, endurance and adaptation.

        1. A pity, the sport was “invented” by the founder of the modern Olympics and was changed a while ago to be a two day event and simplified.
          It’s probably regarded as too elitist.

          1. They should just make it less elitist. Instead of fencing, why not having at each other with machetes. Drop the horses and use electric scooters, and instead of pistol shooting, sawn off shotguns at 20′. It might bring in more diversity.

          2. Change from a “messenger with a message” to a “muslim with a machete”, kind of thing?

        2. I’d love to see a bathlon with full-bore rifles, not .22LR – 30-06, or 7,62 would be fun!

        1. Clearly – she was called Brian.

          You can tell from the dyed hair, the size of the jaw and the arms cleverly folded across the non-existent bust!!!

  74. 330555+ ticks, up ticks,
    GMP seemingly uncovering more ongoing recurring delights brought to you via the ballot booth & lab/lib/con support & vote.

    AD
    “What I want to make sure of is that we are not intentionally because of our lack of focus making mistakes.”

    The senior officer was referring to the many failures of police forces, social services, and other authorities over decades with respect to so-called “grooming gangs”, comprised predominantly of Muslims of South Asian heritage who targeted mostly non-Muslim and often white working-class victims.

    Meanwhile any paedophile worldwide is heading for DOVER.

    More rhetorical carrot dangling paving the way until the 6th May arrives.

  76. Back from the Eyewright

    My eyes are OK, my glasses are OK…. it is me

    She has put my name down to attend the local Kindergarten, to relurn ow to reed and rite
    (Edit) and type

    1. At least you didn’t have the experience of one of the DT’s columnists who thought they’d lost they glasses on a train, only to realise they were wearing them… 🙂

      1. I spent 15 minutes looking for my reading glasses the other day. They were perched on my nose.

        2. I perform my favourite senior moment party trick three times every day these days.

          Walking into a room to fetch something then having to retrace my steps to jog my memory!

        3. Last week, I achieved a classic: lost my glasses, and eventually found them in the fridge!

          The ‘method in my madness’ was comparing expiry dates on packets of smoked salmon …

  77. Hhmmm:

    “For those who haven’t been following the Greensill scandal, we discussed the details earlier in a post about the fallout at Credit Suisse, which has been stuck with some $10 billion in Greensill product that has become “impossible to value” (i.e. worthless). One reason the scandal has been covered so prominently in the British press is that Cameron has long been linked to the company (he was hired as a senior advisor to the firm shortly after leaving Downing Street). Well, following a series of well-placed FOI requests, the FT finally “has the receipts” as the youth like to say: the paper has obtained proof that Cameron used his extensive connections in government to try and secure more public financing for Greensill, even as media reports raised questions about the firm’s overall health as several of its biggest clients defaulted on loans, or became embroiled in accounting scandals.” ZH report.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/former-pm-cameron-tried-steer-emergency-covid-loans-floundering-greensill-ft

    1. Wasn’t it Cameron’s Government that “loaned” o Batwomam’sjelly company money when it was clearly on a sticky wicket?

  78. Today’s ponder

    When we are no longer forced, on pain of Death,:

    To wear masks,

    To keep 2 yards and 6 inches (approx) distance from each other
    No gathering of people. unless in groups of approved status, numbers,, relationships and locations etc
    Having the vaccine and have proof

    Will we still beconditioned by the above: I think so and it will take years for UK to revert to normal, by
    which time all the incomers who have ignored the rules willl be running the place ie Sad Dick

    I would hate to be young now

    1. I think the older members of Generation Z are quietly getting on with being ‘young’ and probably turning some of the stupidity to their advantage (as kids often do.)

    1. Just a shame he’s not the most charasmatic of speakers, especially with his accent. He certainly talks a lot of sense though. I saw him making that trans health junior secretary of Biden look like a complete idiot during the confirmation hearings.

        1. Probably why (even though he agrees with him a lot) Steven Crowder find him ‘annoying’. He (Paul) knew this but still was more than happy to talk to him live on his recent podcast. To me, Paul is more a ‘behind the scenes’ man developing policy and forensically questioning people. At the moment, my money’s on Ron DeSantis being the next GoP frontrunner for President if Trump decides not to run.

    1. I can just see him falling on the Nuclear Trigger like that! Goodbye Vienna. And everywhere else as well!

    3. If he had had the sense to compose himself after the first slip, instead of trying to bound up the steps immediately, I doubt he would have slipped again. The man’s a fool.
      And as to his boy scout salutes…

      1. That saluting malarkey is thoroughly weird. Never understood why they do it.

        But then I have never understood why the have a little flag “badge” in their lapel – as if the have to be reminded which country they “lead”…

        A stupidity that is spreading around the world. BPAPM does it; Halfcock has an “NHS” one etc etc…(yawns and drops off).

        1. In Biden’s case it’s to remind him which country he’s President of and only to accept offers of posts for Hunter from other places.

          7. Look each of the guards in the eye. Smile and say thank you. The personal touch. People remember and tell their friends.

    4. Was it fair or humane for the Democrats to field Biden as their presidential candidate?

      The party clearly is packed with nasty sadistic people who don’t give a damn about this sad deluded old idiot.

      The MSM are a disgrace in both the US and in Britain. Sadly it looks as if they are completely beyond any rational reform.

      1. Afternoon Richard. He was just a Wooden Horse to get Kamala through the Gates of Troy!

        1. But doesn’t he have to be in office for 2 years before she automatically takes the reins.
          I don’t know much about their rules on it.

          1. Neither do I Harry though I would have thought if the POTUS became incapacitated at any time the Vice President would automatically succeed.

          2. I don’t think its as simple as that.
            And when a local Judge can overrule the President,anything’s possible!

          3. She would.
            The point is to get him just over line when she can take over and still get another two full terms.
            It’s roughly the halfway point of his Presidency.

          4. I see your thinking there Sos but if she took over now she would get pretty much two full terms. That should be plenty to bring in the New World Order or the Apocalypse more likely!

          5. She’s already running him.

            Get a majority in both houses at the mid terms, before what’s happening and being done (think Blair) is clear to middle America and the Dems have potentially six years of control. Potentially voter ages down to 16.

            Three terms of Harris would see the USA changed beyond all recognition.

            The left think and play a long game.

          6. As I understand this thread she could have a total of nearly10 years in the White House but only if Biden gets just beyond the half-way mark?

            If she can serve less than two year’s of Biden’s term she will get two full terms after serving what is left of his term. But if he serves less than 2 years and she serves more than 2 years of the remainder she would only get one more term.

          8. I see your thinking there Sos but if she took over now she would get pretty much two full terms. That should be plenty to bring in the New World Order or the Apocalypse more likely!

          11. As I understand it, if the VP takes over after the half way point of a President’s term it doesn’t count as a “term” for them.

            That allows them to stand for two more full terms, so Harris could be in place for the better part of ten years, in theory.

          12. I thought they could – I didn’t know there was a limit on how long they could be in office as ‘taken over presidency role’ beore that ‘term’ was counted as one of the two. Was it not included on the wiki entry (I may have just missed it) or did you get your information from elsewhere?

            I only recall this issue as it was part of the plot of the short-lived TV series ‘Commander in Chief’ from 2005/6 – though I’m not sure how long the original president there was in office before dying.

          13. Many, many, many years ago I studied American Governance, politics and economics. It was fascinating. The “founding fathers” were so far ahead of their time that it is a great pity that they aren’t here today to point out all the things that are crazy in our world.

          14. Neither do I Harry though I would have thought if the POTUS became incapacitated at any time the Vice President would automatically succeed.

          1. You couldn’t write a book about any of this. It would be laughed off the stands!

          3. At least Yeltsin did not go around poking bad-tempered foreign leaders with a sharp stick.

          4. And at the end he played his “ace in the hole”…he nominated a young unknown called Vladimir Putin as his successor.

          6. He isn’t though.
            The Free World stopped being free when the doddering old fool was “elected”.

    7. He’s not a young man and is trying to look fit and active. Frankly, if I saw an old fellow falling on steep stairs I’d ask if he was alright.

      What I don’t really understand is the saluting at the top of the stairs.

    8. Someone should put the senile old fart out of his misery.

      Perhaps all Presidents are like that. President Trump didn’t care for stairs much. :@)

    9. According to the WH deputy press secretary, it was the wind that caused him to fall!!

    2. I read that as Britain’s fleet of 11 Challenger battle tanks; £750m seemed a bit rich …

    3. I believe (anecdotal) that the Royal Armoured Corps wanted the Leopard 2 instead of Challenger 2.

    4. Pah, most German companies employ at least one British engineer anyway. All the ones that fled during the Blair years.

      3. Bombay Duck is not a waterfowl.

        Not many people know that but I expect the Nottlers do as they are more intelligent than the many.

          2. I think you know weather this is the right answer, (Yes, we’re in for a bad spell of whether or, as an incomplete lamb might say, wether)

    2. Ada ” After our second jab Bert our lives can go back to normal”,
      Bert ” I know Ada, I’m trying to remember what normal was like”.

    3. Ada ” Bert did you book an appointment for our follow up jabs”?
      Bert “Yes. At the undertaker’s for the embalmer.”

    4. Ada, ” Bert, did you order the boxed set of Game Of Thrones”
      Bert, ” No Ada just the first series, the doctor said not to waste our money”

      2. Warring Kings and Queens. Spies and subterfuge. Naked bodies. Lots of sword action. Heads being chopped off. Dragons. Barbarians. Giants.

        I enjoyed it. Some of the scenes with Peter Dinklage was truly great acting.

        1. Apparently (not having seen it myself) Sean Bean’s character dies in it – not very original! Also, the last two seasons were poor, especially the final one. I’ll stick with the Lord of the Rings films only – that’s more than enough of that stuff for me…

          1. Yes. Sean Bean loses his head quite early on. Which i thought a mistake too. However it was an often recurring theme. Very often.

          5. Āeksios, aōhos ōñoso īlōn jehikās …… kesrio syt bantis zōbrie issa se ossȳngnoti lēdys…

        2. Is he the dwarf? He was my favourite character. My daughter told me to watch and I was shocked by the gratuitous (is that the word we used to use?) sex, but I came to enjoy some if not all of the characters. It would have been an amazing production 40 years ago.

          1. Yes Peter is the little fellow. Spent most of his time drinking and whoring. I rather liked him. Especially when he shot his father with a crossbow while dearest daddy was sitting on the khazi.

      3. Read the books, Bob, they’re much better. If only George R R Martin would get round to writing Books, 5, 6, 7…

    1. That’s not a real dashboard. The pump hasn’t got the little arrow to show which side the petrol filler cap is on.
      And I always thought the E stood for Enough.

    2. What’s wrong with that map?
      I always think it’s so annoying that the road signs only say things like “Basingstoke” when what people really want to know is where is the nearest supermarket or garage.

      1. It’s VERY annoying when the sign says ‘Basingstoke’ and you want to go to Llanelli.

  88. That’s me for this very agreeable day. Good bonfire. Cats thriving in the garden. Sunshine most of the day (but a chilly north wind).

    Tomorrow looks to be grey all day…still, lockdown is such fun, n’est-ce pas?

    A demain.

  89. 330555+ up ticks,
    “May” is fast catching up with “could” in the ” no action to be taken” stakes.

    UK MAY HOLD ASYLUM SEEKERS ON REMOTE ISLANDS

      1. I wouldn’t call 20 miles to France ‘remote’! I’m sure we have some old passenger ships that could be used to house these people until their cases are heard (which should be within a couple of weeks, tops), given 99.9% of them come from safe European countries before making the crossing.

        1. Indeed we could berth the ships in a French port following an overnight sailing! 🙂

        2. As I said yesterday, cruise ships are available very cheaply, around scrap value. None are in use and the older ones will not be recommissioned as the numbers of people going on cruises will be much reduced from 2018 levels.

    1. Pre election many Yanks said that Biden was the spearhead to open the door for Harris and they envisaged her taking his place within 6 months.

      Sooner if he keeps climbing stairs!

      2. I give the lefties more grudging respect.

        This was planned to the last detail.

        They can keep Joey in office just long enough to deTrump as much legislation as they can, “good ole Joe, looking after the great US of A”.

        Then the mid terms. Dem control of both houses.
        Then Good ole Joe bites the bullet, the one in his back, and stands down.
        10 years of Harris.
        No more USA as we know it.
        The new world order technocrats rule the world.

    2. Even worse – 10 years of Pelosi…if she survives that long (she’s older than Biden). TBH, I’d rather have Harris in, not because I like/respect her – its just that she’s REALLY useless (as evidenced by her terrible presidential nomination campaign and frequent lies on camera about her past) as a politician and is more gaffe-prone. Biden at least is smart enough (mostly) not to talk to reporters at the moment – she can’t help opening her trap. People would see through her instantly.

      4. No way, Pelosi is a minor side-show now.

        Harris is a far bigger threat to the USA than you are giving her credit for. Presentable, malleable, and a mask for what’s behind the mask.

        Don’t assume that the US MSM would give her a hard time.

      1. The Hill is one of those films that reminds me that Connery was a much better actor than the Bond films might suggest.
        But then again, the way he played Bond in those films was “so” tongue in cheek that I probably missed the subtlety.

        1. I remember his excellent performance in ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, which made me realise he could actually act.

        2. I remember his excellent performance in ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, which made me realise he could actually act.

      1. I think the problem lies with these silly masks, there is a design fault there in that you cannot see the immediate ground below. Because of this, in the very early days of mask wearing, I fell over the protruding legs of a stand in the supermarket and I couldn’t get a breath, as I tried to pick myself up from the floor, because of the stupid mask and panicked. I simply couldn’t breathe, and I have refused to wear a mask since. I think that is what happened to Biden, he could not see the changing level below his mask, his vision was obscured.

    4. Blimey, is Bill Thomas President of the USA?

      Quick people, apply for your Presidential pardons now, c/o Rashid and Thomas

    3. I posted A Subaltern’s Love Song earlier today drawing attention to the British motor cars mentioned therein.

  95. Never forget, when governments claim to be against ageism that they gave the experimental vaccine to all the old people first

  98. The Covid public inquiry will be an expensive waste of everyone’s time

    Public inquiries used to be rare, rapid and decisive. No longer.

    LEN SHACKLETON

    Labour is calling for the promised Covid public inquiry to begin in June, when many restrictions on business and social interaction are scheduled to end, and Dominic Cummings seems to agree. Are they right?

    The devastating death toll and the biggest disruption to our way of life since the War must undoubtedly be thoroughly investigated. There are serious questions to be asked about the timing and expense of lockdowns, the performance of the NHS, the shunting of elderly patients from hospitals to care homes, the availability of PPE, the contracts for test and trace. The list is endless.

    But a public inquiry will be immensely disruptive. Rachel Reeves has spoken of a ‘rapid review’ followed in time by a fuller review. This is excessively optimistic, if not disingenuous.

    What is the point of public inquiries? The late Lord (Geoffrey) Howe distinguished six functions: establishing facts, learning from events, ‘catharsis’ (allowing victims to get what Ms Reeves calls ‘closure and justice’), reassurance, ‘accountability, blame and retribution’ and finally demonstration that ‘something is being done’.

    Given the scale of deaths and the way we have all been affected by lockdowns, the danger is that catharsis, blame and retribution will play a far more prominent role in the Covid investigation than, say, establishing facts.

    Since Howe’s day, inquiries have become more diffuse. Outcomes are slower to reach and less satisfactory. The inquiry into the 1966 Aberfan disaster, in which 144 people (mainly children) died when a slag spoil heap collapsed on a school, took just nine months, concentrated on the facts, spelt out who to blame (the National Coal Board and nine responsible officials) and ensured that such a disaster was never repeated.

    Such inquiries used to be rare, rapid and decisive. No longer. There has not been a year since the 1980s without several ongoing inquiries: there are currently eleven active. And they go on for ages.

    Take the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths. It was set up in 2004 with the aim of reporting within 12 months on the sad deaths of five small children, and it didn’t conclude until 2018. Or the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, which took 12 years and cost £200 million in old money. Of current inquiries, that into Child Sexual Abuse has been through one complete reorganisation, is now on its fourth Chair, and is in its seventh year of deliberation. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry has already taken three years, seems nowhere near completion, and has been widened to include accusations of racism in local authority housing allocation.

    Further, public inquiries are open-ended job creation schemes for lawyers and administrators. The National Audit Office, in its 2018 report on inquiries, observed that sponsoring departments did little to monitor their costs. They found that inquiries spent on average 102 days hearing testimony from 200 witnesses and considering more than 52,000 documents.

    There are a number of reasons why inquiries now take vastly longer. The terms of reference are broader, and are often extended during the investigation as new groups of victims emerge, as unsuspected gender or ethnic angles are introduced, as opposition politicians put their oars in, and as social media whip up confected storms. They are interrupted as police investigations begin (this will surely happen with the Covid inquiry), meaning parts of the inquiry go on hold, and as stressed-out inquiry Chairs resign and have to be expensively replaced.

    The Covid Inquiry is going to be the Mother of All Inquiries. If I was a betting man I would stick a few bob on it taking ten years and costing £1bn.

    But it’s also inevitable. While other possibilities do exist (non-statutory investigations have been conducted by Privy Council committees, for example), the UK remains curiously fond of public inquiries. That this one will take up great chunks of the time and energy of ministers and civil servants won’t act as a deterrent. Perhaps we’ll be out of the woods by June and able to contemplate this colossal diversion from the task of rebuilding the NHS and the economy. But it’s certainly not something I’d count on, given previous disappointments.

    Ultimately, I’m with Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, when he says that starting the inquiry before the crisis is definitely over would be an extra, unnecessary burden. If things turn for the worse again, we can’t have the government battling on two fronts when it’s barely winning on one.

    Professor Len Shackleton is an Editorial and Research Fellow at the IEA and Professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/19/covid-public-inquiry-will-expensive-waste-everyones-time/

    1. The purpose of a public enquiry is not to make things clear but to put people in the clear.

      It will find nothing, exhonerate everyone who would be so obviously guilty.

    2. “The Grenfell Tower Inquiry has already taken three years, seems nowhere near completion, and has been widened to include accusations of racism in local authority housing allocation.”

      At that time, I called – on here – for a preliminary, technical enquiry to establish HOW the fire started/ was started.

      After three years of pompous and expensive judicial meanderings, we are none the wiser. We don’t know how it started/ was started.

      Meanwhile, the Grenfell inquiry has become a ‘black hole’ of insatiable expense and bewilderment serving no useful purpose.

      Many thousands are living in dangerously-clad buildings …

      1. And if you ask why the building was clad in the first place, you end up back in 1988 with the formation of the IPCC…

      2. Indeed – the technical side (including the actions of the fire brigade) should always been separate from anything else. It’s a sign of the times that ‘racism’ has found its way into the proceedings.

        A side enquiry should deal with the larger issues brought up with this, such as why so many properties were allowed to be designed and built using systems that could easily be installed incorrectly – whether deliberately or not, because of a lack of adequate supervision from building control etc and whether the changes in Building/Fire Regs and government/local council policies – both to encourage more cheap homes (but that may be of poor quality) and that had to be built because of policies over immigration and families generally (discouraging marriage/staying together, etc) exacerbated the problem.

        I certainly believe the lack of decent supervision of housing projects was a big factor. A properly built one, even with the very cladding system used at Grenfell, would’ve been fine if it was (IMHO) installed properly and the correct fire evacuation procedures/systems were in place.

        It should also be noted that (from what I gather – I cannot confirm this, just what I read) the person who’s overloaded sockets started the fire was apparently well known to other residents for doing so, and surely their own consumer unit/fuse box should have stopped that from happening – if correctly installed and maintained. I’d be interested to see whether the resident had tampered with it to allow them to use more devices off one socket.

        1. The order for everyone to stay were they where caused such a large disaster. The tower should have been evacuated as soon as the fire was confirmed. That is the golden rule of ALL fires.

    3. I wouldn’t trust anything that Van-Tam says. He was at this pre-COVID event on how to manipulate the public during a pandemic (same video commentary on the event from Dave Cullen on two platforms):

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/Hmxo720ccw4V/

      https://odysee.com/@ComputingForever:9/media-coordination-how-its-done:d

      As per some of my previous comments the last time I posted such links, the original source video Dave refers to has been deleted by YouTube (hmmm).
      I would like to think that we’d have a proper, dispationate enquiry into the entire response as well as looking into prior planning, etc, but I just can’t see either ministers, the Civil Service (especially the NHS management), care home providers, GPs, pharmacutical & medical equipment (including PPE) companies, media (especially social media firms and others like Bill Gates) and foreign governments (especially the Chinese) co-operating fully with it and being candid/honest giving full, accurate responses.

      Too many vested interests in keeping what really went on/reasons behind actions hidden, especially as many are likely connected to the ‘bigger picture’ of The Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution of the WEF and Agenda 21 & 30 of the UN/WHO. If the actual full truth was revealed, I think the result would be bigger than the Nuremburg trials, given the global impact and its scale, especially over the long term.

      Great concept for a film, which either would never make it to screens or that would result in lynchings of the ‘great and the good’ worldwide if it did.

  99. We have been reminded today (BBC TV News) that we need to fill in our Census questionnaire this weekend.
    There’s just one difference this year – we have the opportunity to record a sexual identity other than the one we were born with.

    What do make of this talented group?

    https://youtu.be/ACRIuAqoFQM

      1. There are 18 squares on the form – I’m not sure if that is a sufficiently identifiable gender description. 🤔

        2. Do we get to say ‘house’ if we get a line or diagonal? Or that there’s a special prize behind one of them?

    2. It’s ‘superstraight’ time…

      I’m also wondering if they have a ‘Sex’ question with some tickboxes. Is there a ‘yes, please’ answer?

    5. I thought there was a ruling in the Courts that for census purposes you are either YY or YX viz. Either Female or Male at birth.

      All the other transgender guff is at most a sign of mental illness and is not representative of a physical state.

  100. Interesting BTL Comment filched from John Ward’s Slog:

    “Bobby47 on March 19, 2021 at 9:17 pm
    Well, whatever disease comes at us next, and there will be one or a cluster of them, you can be certain of that, I do hope they’ll use their imaginations a great deal more and ensure that they scare the fuck out of us all a little bit more.
    The title Coronavirus 19 didn’t scare me. I barely gave its label a backward glance.
    Now, if they come up with something in the future that’s a little more death related, it might just grab my attention.
    What would scare the fuck out of you lot more? Coronavirus 20 or Death In Twenty Minutes. I know which one that would scare the fuck out of me. Pop the word death or the phrase certain death and or even something that implies your limbs are about to be consumed by a flesh eating virus, and it definitely tends to grab your attention and frightens the fuck out of you.
    See, the medieval’s knew what they were doing. None of this mamby, pamby stuff that gave you some hope of survival. Fuck no! They had it right….
    Black Death!!!! You can’t get better than that can you. It essentially tells you three things. One it’s a disease and it’s highly likely to be unpleasant.Two, you get to turn black and Three you get dead.
    That’s what you call proper scaremongering!
    If I attended the Doctors, not that it’s possible to get through their bloody doors nowadays, and the quack said, ‘I’ve considered all of your dreadful symptoms and here’s a tiny note that says, ‘ You’ve got Black Death’, I’d then fulfil my bucket list of things to do, that are all mostly illegal and I’d prepare to meet my maker confident that I was soon to drop down dead.”

    1. It was more that Blair gave them an inch (thinking it would playcate the Nats and make sure Scotland stayed Labour) and they took a foot (the Nats were encouraged to want much more). Probably his worst ever mistake – even including Iraq. Very difficult to put the proverbial Nat genie back in the bottle, though with the current malarkey with Sturgeon, that may help put a lid on things for a few more years at least.

      Don’t also forget the film Braveheart from 1995!

    3. I agree, King Stephen!

      Braveheart,1995 and Trainspotting in 1996 (coinciding as it happens with the advent of Blair on the scene), played the ‘Hate the English’ card.

      Blair’s initiatives on Scottish devolution were intended to bolster the Scottish Labour vote; ironically, they ignited an ignoble – and irrational – fire for independence.

      Blair’s judgements – on Iraq, the EU, and on Scottish devolution – don’t stand him in good stead.

    1. We Are Who We Are reminds me of an old manager of mine, he used to say “It Is What It Is”, normally after he stuffed something up.

  103. When will journalists get it in their heads that pension tax relief isn’t something the government gives us but the application of the general principle of taxing income when you get it not when the attendant work is done?

    And when will governments stop treating the people that pay for State employee pensions worse than those State employees?

    And when will governments stop deceiving us they want us to save for our retirement when they really want us to get and spend the money now so that they can get tax now not some other government later on?

    1. Short-Termism,the political plague far more deadly than Covid that will be a terminal disease for us all in the end

    2. Tax relief is not giving you anything – it is merely robbing you of slightly less.

  104. Oh Gawd,They’re rare but I’m gagging for a ciggie,over a year since my last but a few drinks taken and I’m hanging,nicotine is an evil addiction,from weed to acid,charlie to ecstacy all easy to beat but nicotine………….
    Arghhh I won’t surrender,off to beat my head agin the wall fpr a while……..

    2. Just over 11 years since I had my last puff. Only when sat outside a bar with a glass of beer on a Greek Island do I ever get the faintest hankering for a puff but never had.
      You are right about nicotine, bloody addictive but I was an expert on giving up, I done so many times until I finally succeeded 11 years ago.
      Keep fighting the battle, you will surely win.

      1. It took a heart attack ten and a half years ago to make me stop. I nick a ciggie off a friend once or twice a year just to taste how nasty they are.

        1. I noticed how my annual dose of Man Flu reverted back to a common cold after I gave up. I was fortunate that I had nothing serious health wise making me abstain from the ciggies.

          1. I’d never even attempted to give up before that. I’m sure it’s more difficult to give up out of a sense of just knowing it’s better to do so.

          2. There comes a time when you really want or have to. Until then I think any attempt is likely to fail.

    3. I gave up cigarettes 33 years ago at the end of 1987 three months before getting married.

      However I smoke one pipe a day after supper but I only smoke at home and never travel with my pipe. I enjoy my pipe but I am not addicted to it as I was to cigarettes. I know that if I had a cigarette then in a couple of weeks I would be back to between 20 and 30 a day. All or nothing for me.

      Good luck. Be strong.

    4. 330555+ up ticks,
      Evening Rik,
      First started on dry cane & earwigs all our gang had a chinese hue about them,went into hospital few year back on a heart monitor for four days, had an x ray, I was lying on the bed and looked down the ward to the nurses station where they were looking at x ray plates, they were as black as lammys @rse, never smoked since.

      1. Possibly the most bizarre way of quitting, but good on you. Just imagine what ailments a view of the real thing could cure.

    5. I hated smoking as my dad smoked Woodbines and the ceiling in the front room went brown. As he was dying I would buy him packs of Rothmans and Benson and Hedges Duty Free and a few six packs of IPA on my visits.

      I started smoking in about 1975 and was advised by one of my bosses to give up at Age 30 at the latest (1982). I did so. I had been smoking Gitaines and Gauloises French cigarettes and Gold Leaf. I took up a pipe smoking Black Shag to wean myself away from cigarettes.

      Having given up smoking I turned my attentions to French wine and have remained a devotee since.

    6. I knew I had to stop after my 3rd heart attack on 21st March 2017 but I still had that craving buzzing round my head for nic, nic, nicotine, so I got myself some e-cigarettes and nicotine liquid for it – not easy in Oz at that time – and I’m now a happy e-cig puffer.

      1. It is possible to make your own e-liquids. You can then over a period of time reduce the amount of nicotine by tiny amounts. Better than going cold turkey.

    7. I’m one of the lucky ones who never succumbed to the temptation (and to be honest, it was never much of a temptation in the first place) in the first place so I’ve never had to give up, so I will never criticise any smoker who has trouble giving up.

      HOWEVER, I will call them stupid for starting in the first place.

  106. Evening, all. Oddly enough, I was chatting to my painter this afternoon and he said that the EU vaccine fiasco had really showed up what a nasty lot they are. He can’t understand that anybody could still want to be involved with them.

    1. Evening to all the late nighters.. The nastiness was there for all to see, Its just that most good people couldn’t believe that the EU could be so, er, nasty.

      1. I may be old fashioned and a Little Englander to some but I have always resented the EU and it’s stupid imposition of inexplicable charges on the UK taxpayer.

        I remember butter mountains, wine lakes, dead fish thrown back into the sea to serve idiotic quotas, mountains of apples and tomato’s going to waste, subsidies given to non-existent olive groves and all the rest of their abominable practices.

        Regrettably I have now discerned that the EU wishes to continue abusing the UK with insult upon insult and all manner of diktats to prevent free trade and stoke the seeds of dissent in Ireland.

        On the question of the enmity over vaccines I would give the fuckers our useless vaccines for free and watch them succumb. I will never take these poisons.

        My wife and I are both laughing incredulously at the staged vaccination of Fataturk. I would have given the fat bastard a shot between the eyes. A darts player might have made a better performance when giving Fataturk the placebo than the staged nurse.

        Clue: Most nurses in the NHS are built like the Zeppelin yet when we see the staged vaccination of politicians and celebrities the nurses resemble catwalk models. It is like the old Benny Hill ‘doctors and nurses’ sketches.

    2. Unfortunately, there are still many who will turn a blind eye. Dyed-in-the-wool EUrophile Shites.

      1. 330555+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        Them there three monkeys have a lot of pull in the polling booth, that has been the trouble for decades.

  108. Good night, all, at 02:15. I was hoping that we might be on Saturday’s page but it’s not to be.

    Your joke will be late tomorrow.

    First day of spring – vernal equinox and all that.

  109. An early mug of tea at 05:30 & sat up in bed with the DT.
    Poked my nose out of the front door and it’s a chilly start but a beautifully clear sky this morning.

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