Friday 22 May: Another reason why the coronavirus cannot be allowed to delay Brexit

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/21/lettersanother-reason-coronavirus-cannot-allowed-delay-brexit/

851 thoughts on “Friday 22 May: Another reason why the coronavirus cannot be allowed to delay Brexit”

  1. Good Morning All. It’s raining here and more expected tomorrow. It will brighten up again on Sunday. The gradual relaxation of lockdown is rather disheartening. An extract from the “road map”:
    Phase 2: You will be able to meet family and friends outside involving larger groups. You will also be able to meet people from another household indoors. In both scenarios, physical distancing and appropriate hygiene will need to be maintained.
    My highlighting.
    Are they insane? The next door neighbour can come into the house but we must maintain social distancing? Will we have to inform the police so that they can come with a measuring tape to check?

    1. It’s all so complicated to remember exactly what is allowed this week and what isn’t, according to whether the other person is your mother or your cleaner etc.
      No wonder people are just ignoring the rules shambles.

    2. Late result: London League: Covid-19 nil, Londoners in Lockdown 8 million. That means Covid-19 wins on penalties (after extra time).

    4. My hallway is too narrow.
      Also, won’t they breathe while they’re inside my apartment?
      Should we allow them to breathe while they’re visiting?
      Or hand them a mask!

    5. My first house, social distancong would mean max 4 people, one in each room.
      Not so very social.

    6. This Corona Virus thingy is making The Master (Mr Lime) feel rather randy. Fortunately, I do not need a visit from the police to ensure social distancing. I now always carry a rolling pin around the house with me and – should he attempt any hanky panky – I give him a good clip on the cranium. He has got the message and now self-distances without a whimper!

      :-))

  4. Good morning, all. A grey start – with the look of a shower on its way Ideal for having the removal men arrive.

      1. Good morning, Aeneas.

        I thought your clip was going to be:

        “Dad, Dad, do you know the piano’s
        on me foot?”
        ” No Son, you hum it and I’ll play it.”

    2. Good morning everyone.

      Bill, I hope your belongings arrive safely. I have to admit that it has rained every single time I have ever moved, so you have my sympathies there!

      2. The morning our lorry of furniture was to arrive at our current house, we woke to about 18 inches of snow.
        The lorry couldn’t get down the hill to the house, so everything had to be carried about 1/4 mile extra. That was less than fun.

    1. Arboreal neotropical xenathran mammal capable of sleeping for 15-18 hours a day……

      2. Ferrets can sleep up to 18 hours a day – norra lorra people know that 🙂

  7. English death rate now at normal winter levels as coronavirus deaths fall. Thu 21 May 2020 19.44 BST.

    Deaths rates in England have fallen to the same level as in an average winter as the devastating impact of coronavirus wanes, the chief medical officer has said.

    The number of Covid-related deaths has fallen sharply since a peak last month, and the number of people in hospital with the virus has fallen below 9,000, compared with more than 20,000 in mid-April.

    It is beginning to look as though the Israeli epidemiologist who forecast that the virus would run its course and then eventually die out was correct. Unfortunately its effects will not. Our “leaders” have screwed up big time. They have destroyed the UK economy and the Foundations of Democracy on a panic spree unworthy of hysterical schoolgirls.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/21/english-death-rate-now-at-normal-winter-levels-as-coronavirus-deaths-fall

    1. How’s the weather, then, Bill??
      Good luck with the demenagement. And good morning!

      1. What a difference a day makes; yesterday, shorts and T-shirt – today PPE.

        1. Same here. Was outside scrubbing the farmhouse, today indoors. Dull, spitting with rain – but the land is dry, so it’s not all bad. Got to go & get the spray gun ready to start paining soon. Hate those fiddly jobs…

          2. Not even got that far. Gotta scrub the mould off the old paint first – and there’s a lot of old paint. Can barely move now… :-((

    2. ‘Checking the veg’? Is that a quaint euphemism??

      ‘Morning, Bill. Trust you, and the veg, are well. Mine would benefit from a good soaking, but this part of yer parched sarf east is out of luck today.

      1. There are spits and spots as I type – but it will come to nothing and be all over in half an hour.

        That said, it is ironic that after nine dry weeks, the one day when a dry day would have been appreciated….

  9. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/21/transponder-data-proves-farage-right-on-french-handover-of-illegals/

    More evidence of failing to intervene as illegal immigrants land on our shores, seemingly unopposed. And this time the RNLI was directly involved – not to rescue but to escort. I find this disturbing…here we have a voluntary rescue service, paid for not by government but the goodwill of the public, being dragged in to this ludicrous and totally unacceptable activity. I fear that the hitherto fine reputation of the RNLI is likely to become badly tarnished.

    1. 319509+ up ticks,
      Morning Hj,
      This has been strongly suspected from the outset and only a matter of time before the sh!te struck the fan.
      To my mind the same players who took to the stage post 24/6/16.
      Damage limitations, same players.

    2. For me it’s reputation ( or reputation of the managers of the RNLI ) was irrevocably tarnished by that wretched (and I suspect embittered lesbian) excrescence who objected to a girlie mug in the Whitby Station and caused 2 lifeboatmen to be dismissed – even now, 2 years later , I seethe with bitterness that this female is still both breathing and in post polluting a once great institution.

  10. Dreadful BBC……

    SIR – I was rather bemused by to read the self-gratulatory piece by Sir Tony Hall (Commentary, May 20), about the way in which the BBC has kept the public informed during the Covid-19 crisis.

    What he fails to say is that BBC sensationalism has also helped to scare the British people to such an extent that many are now too afraid to come out of lockdown. And this as the economy falls off a very steep cliff.

    The BBC has reported extensively on those cases where death and incapacity might not have been expected, such as deaths of young and active people, and infants. This reporting is detailed in “horror- movie” depth, This has included “horror movie” details, which is sometimes misleading as well, since co-morbidities are less evident in these gruelling accounts. Is this because that doesn’t fit the narrative?can be misleading. Honest and thorough accounts would place those desperate cases alongside statistics of those who recover. Or would this not fit the narrative?

    A  C White

    London SW1

    SIR – Philip Johnston (Comment, May 20) is correct – we must all bite the bullet and return to normal life as soon as possible. We were born to live with risk, not in a sheltered, guarded world.

    The BBC has been the very worst culprit, with its constantly repeated scare reports and projected fear of returning to normal life. The sooner it is privatised and required to make its own way in the world, the better.

    Roger Vine

    Emneth, Norfolk

    1. I read Tony Hall’s awful piece of propaganda – I think “nauseating” sums it up better than “self-gratulatory” – it could have won a prize for fiction!

    2. Hear, hear Roger Vine and A C White! Well before lockdown (ugh) the BBC was calling it the “deadly virus”…

      I posted this elsewhere, when Hall’s smugness just got to me:

      ‘News’ – as Sly, BBC etc pretend to put out in their broadcasts, is so relentlessly negative, repetitive and predictable that I switch it off whenever it appears. And the trend to interview – sorry, exploit – bereaved relatives is beyond the pale. The broadcasters’ attempts to put a cuddly, wuddly story at the end is just irritating in the extreme, and I can’t be alone in wondering what other important items are being buried while they feed their obsession with the endless time-filling of the Chinese Virus. Important though the pandemic is, it seems to be treated by newsrooms as a gift for filling the long hours with little effort on their part.

      Besides, even if I did watch it, what little trust I had in the BBC was permanently destroyed by their appalling con called Panorama.

    3. BTL Comment from the small hours:-

      Robert Spowart
      22 May 2020 4:26AM
      Well said AC White.

      Sadly, thanks to the panic and scaremongering sensationalism of the MEEJAH, both printed as well as broadcast, we have been turned into a nation of hysterical and paranoid Germaphobes.

  11. Morning again

    SIR – Well-managed care homes are not locking residents in their rooms (report, May 18). My mother’s excellent home isolates residents only if they have symptoms of Covid-19. Even if she is in her room, my mother regularly sees staff and carers.

    In contrast, my 92-year-old neighbour sees a relative, at her door, once a day. No one pops in and out, or takes meals and cups of tea. No one sets up video conferencing so she can speak to her family and friends.

    It is those living alone who are lonely, not those in the many good-quality care homes that are being tarred by others.

    Tim Spurry

    Mansfield, Nottinghamshire

    1. ‘Morning, Epi. I’m just wondering why Mr Spurry doesn’t assist his neighbour with some of these tasks? Provided she is out of the way while he visits, and provided both just follow basic advice afterwards, surely this is possible? Have I missed something?

      1. It’s more virtue-signalling to write to the paper about it than just quietly get on and do something.

  12. SIR – The knives are out for a scapegoat to blame for errors made in handling the pandemic (report, May 20). As a scientist of more than 60 years’ experience, I’ve been worried by the claim of decision- makers that they are “following the science”.

    Most of them do not have a scientific background or understand the working process of science, especially in a developing situation, where it observes, hypothesises and challenges the hypothesis.

    On any one point, a variety of views is put forward by a number of scientists, and it is often the most persuasive that attracts the attention of whoever takes the final decision.

    In a recent BBC interview, an eminent German epidemiologist said that the major factor in the apparent success of the German approach to the pandemic was Angela Merkel, who is a trained scientist with a PhD.

    As the impact of science increases, it will be necessary for decision- makers to understand scientific processes. We must avoid blame for things going wrong being pinned on unprotected scientists rather than politicians, who are always looking at the next election.

    Roger Hull

    Blandford Forum, Dorset

    1. A scientist’s view is based on the desired outcome of who pays his research grant.

      1. If the science had always been settled no one would have invented the wheel. The future development of the world depends on the science NOT being settled.

        This is one reason why the climate change, environmental debate based on ‘settled science’ is a total fraud.

      2. A famous university professor in Australia pointed out recently that any questioning of Global Warming is career ending.

    1. One spring is NOT the future. Telegraph, stop being so drama queen and hysterical.
      Sheesh!

  14. SIR – I hope we are clapping for doctors and nurses on Thursdays and not the NHS’s provision of service provision ins generally. The cost in human terms by way of lost treatment is increasing each day, and a balance needs to be struck urgently. I am going blind in one eye but can see clearly the folly of procrastination with the other.

    Peter Healey

    Knutsford, Cheshire

  15. 319509+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    I can honestly see the similarities between the Brexitexit
    and the latest episode of treachery that has run it’s course and requires the damage limitations departments attention, first a coating of “seemingly things are being done” same players, same party.
    Talk about fools and misplaced trust, we as a country can read a newspaper from space, and this governance party would incarcerate a group of indigenous practising mid channel synchronised swimmers yet allow through an invasion force.
    All this as with the treacherous handling of brexit will be
    handled in-house with some opposition aiding & abetting.
    Try looking behind the facades.

  16. ‘Nothing can justify this destruction of people’s lives’. Spiked. 22nd May 2020

    Any reasonable expert – that is, anyone but Professor Ferguson from Imperial College who would have locked down everybody when we had swine flu – will tell you that lockdown cannot change the final number of infected people. It can only change the rate of infection. And people argue that by changing the rate of infection and ‘flattening the curve’, we prevented the collapse of hospitals. I have shown you the costs of lockdown, but this was the argument in favour of it. But look at Sweden. No lockdown and no collapse of hospitals. The argument for the lockdown collapses.

    Considerable Common Sense here. Have a read.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/nothing-can-justify-this-destruction-of-peoples-lives/

    1. “But look at Sweden. No lockdown and no collapse of hospitals.”

      Maybe Sweden had better hospital capacity.

    1. Yo anne

      I think it very offensive, that you call us ‘campers’, when you know damn fine that we cannot be ‘camping’: well not unless you are a BBC TV presenter.

      2. Each morning in the Marmaris Marina we had a brief radio transmission on VHF on which we could discuss the relevant issues of the day, marina news, advertise goods, services, parties etc. The comperes rotated and, for example, Caroline used to do the Wednesday slot.

        One waggish compere addressed us: “Hello Sailors”

    2. It cannot happen here. I see no mechanism by which any political party can survive any suggestion of placing a real limit on immigration, of only considering asylum claims from people outside the country, of requiring immigrants to subscribe to our values, of requiring that immigrants work or leave, that immigrants cannot cover their faces in public, that they must learn to speak English. It will not happen.
      What recourse do we then have to prevent our country falling completely into enemy hands?

    1. That won’t happen, when buying meat most people don’t give a second thought for how the animals are slaughtered.
      There not even bothered that some of the sheep meat has been stolen from farmers fields.
      If at all possible we would boycott this Islamic butchery process. But it’s all part of the ‘cultural exchange’.
      But in 50 plus years time everyone will be on their knees right across Europe. No pubs no brewries or distilleries, women in dustbin bags, stoning beheading,…… It’s part of the adgenda.

        1. Exacto! (As someone once said.). The average butcher keeps lamb chops on thr menu by selling NZ lamb when UK is out of season. But probably does not mention it and most customers won’t ask.

          1. Good morning, Horace.

            British lamb is available for most of the year,
            albeit from different areas of the UK………..
            at a price, but well worth it!

        2. Animal rights activists and feminists are total hypocrites when it comes to Islam.

      2. Morning RE

        Some of you may remember a comment I made months ago when I asked the new young butcher who had bought out the old butchers shop whether his meat was Halal, and he answered me by saying “Why , are you racist?”

        1. I guess he lost a customer TB.
          It should be a legal requirement to display a halal notice.
          It seems to be a preference the other way round.
          Most of us wouldn’t go into a kosher butchers. Why would want halal meat.

      3. 319509+ up ticks,
        Morning Re,
        Only if the peoples require it to be so, two world wars & before that bloody great red crucifixes on knights tee shirts showed
        people power in action.
        The pedigree of the governance parties & the perfidious nature
        of politico’s is / has been clearly shown so the Country got what it voted for, repeated failure via the ballot booth.

      4. “…on their knees right across Europe..” Five bloody times a day…

    2. Choking on their own blood may be happening on sheep slaughtered at home in the backyard or over a drain on the street but it certainly should not be the case in a licensed slaughterhouse in the UK. I don’t approve of Halal or the Jewish slaughter processes but Gerald Batten is greatly exaggerating the Halal blood choking problem.
      Halal meat is now commonplace and will be widely sold in supermarkets and even local butchers.

      1. Gerald Batten may be melodramatic in his portrayal of halal slaughtering; the question remains why the majority of supermarket meat (and that provided at the big chain fast food outlets) is halal, when only 5% (and rising) of the populace are followers of the 7th century cult which demands such slaughter?

      2. 319509+ up ticks,
        Afternoon C,
        I cannot see how you can exaggerate choking from a cut throat
        besides it being totally illegal.
        Knifing / acid scarring, paedophilia / rape & abuse is now commonplace do we legalise it ?
        We have witnessed lying in the gutter dying of a cut throat courtesy of islamic idology followers, lest we have forgot.
        Incoming invasion forces and those already here requiring halal meat do we grant an amnesty ?
        It has no place in a decent society.

  19. Our dimwitted police state. Spiked. 21 May 2020.

    But they all have to take some responsibility for this mess. The hysteria created by the commentariat in the rush to lockdown, the indifference shown to civil-liberties concerns, and the ludicrous shaming of park sunbathers and ‘non-essential’ shoppers, lent the police a kind of moral authority that some officers readily abused. When a journalist tried to film an altercation between police and a member of the public in London last month, he was threatened with a fine and told he was ‘killing people’ (despite the fact that the journalist was keeping his distance and the cops, spitting their orders, were not).

    Those who demanded this police state can’t now wash their hands of it. They helped give unprecedented powers to bumbling idiots.

    “Bumbling” makes them sound benign, as if they were unknowingly engaged in breaking up one of Pooh Bears Honey parties. Bungling would be better but it would still be an understatement. The truth is that they are more than willing to implement laws that are profoundly undemocratic. They have also revealed their true nature which is that of bullying thugs. I’ve just watched two of them (two Police cars) this morning, jump the queue at the Butchers and go in together to buy the weekend joints. These are the last people one should entrust with any form of authority.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/21/our-dimwitted-police-state/

    1. I have said on previous occasions the the perlice with their black shits, cargo trousers and Doc Martin boots look more like the thugs they’re supposed to be protecting us from. Oh for the days when we had a Police Force who k ew the law and protected the public applying the one law for all principal.

  20. Good moaning all. We’ve had a few spots of the wet stuff this morning but need a lot more for the gardens. May be on the way with a cloudy sky.

    I expect you’ve seen the piece in the DT about MPs expected to pass laws enabling the perlice to check that international travellers to the U.K. are observing the 14 day quarantine idea. It just beggars belief doesn’t it? All this time, they’ve been coming in to the U.K. with not a care in the world and now, as the virus is dissipating especially in London, the PTB want to ensure quarantine is observed. You couldn’t make it up. What an absolute shower this lot is turning out to be.

    1. Morning Vouvray. “Shower” is rather too kind. We have had some discussion below on this topic, and, on the proviso the reports are true and not just some MSM scare story, I never thought I’d see the day when a Conservative government could even contemplate such a concept.

      1. I must have a look at the earlier posts Richard, early morning is not my scene! #metoo.

      3. 319509+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        “Conservative Government”
        as sure as God made little green apples could never/ ever
        describe this mob.
        Prefix the current crowd with ersatz would be much nearer the truth.

    2. 319509+ up ticks,
      Morning V,
      Seen to be done, in the main rhetorically only, no further action.
      As for “you couldn’t make it up” they I am sure have a whole department doing just that.

    3. Not only that but this extract from Charles Williams’ diary of the Caerhays estate is interesting. They have a number of cottages which are normally let out and it seems that Big Brother looms large:

      http://thediary.caerhays.co.uk/may/22nd-may/

      “Our holiday lets manager has had attempts to make spoof holiday lets
      bookings on our website to see if we would accept them. Also more formal
      calls from trading standards asking what our holiday letting policy is?
      If a family can get into a car and drive where they like (behaving
      responsibly) why should they not end up in a holiday let or a caravan
      site? Naturally we will not accept holiday let visitors until we
      properly can.
      The beach café, which is open only for takeaways with lots of new
      rules, risk assessments and compliance with the specific government form
      which must be displayed to the staff and customers alike, has been
      reported to the authorities by a competitor café. A taste of the ‘new’
      Britain which had been expected. The inspector and the police who turned
      up to investigate found it difficult to fault the new arrangements but
      we will see what develops.
      Has the complainant not been visiting their local village shop for
      groceries during lockdown? What is the difference between takeaway food
      at a beach café and a village shop?”

      1. It’s dreadful isn’t it, never thought the Brits would be sneaks. How sad we’ve become.

        1. Good morning Vouvray.

          You are quite right about sneaks , it seems to be a continental trait , you can see how infiltration works , can’t you .

          1. I am not having this sort of snide comment, Maggie – I am calling the Dorset Police RIGHT now…{:¬))

        2. They’ve always been here, but not so overt or in such high numbers.
          One of the blessings of ‘being in Europe’ and deliberately importing those who do not adhere to our mores.

          1. There were various Press comments about certain British civil servants and diplomats giving confidential information to the EU during Brexit negotiations.

            Anyone remember the outcome?

            Mass sackings? Disciplinary actions?

      2. Sickening, isn’t it. Don’t tell anyone but we’re travelling to Lincoln next week to attend a graveside funeral of a sister in law. We feel we couldn’t possibly not go no matter the restrictions. I think they’re all barmy anyway but no doubt Plod will be monitoring our car journey.

      3. Sneaks should be taken off behind the bike sheds and given a good seeing to as in the old days.

    4. One enacted, never repealed… the police will be allowed to just burst into your house at any time of night or day to “check” who is there.

      1. I believe you used to be able to ask the police to leave your property – I suppose this will not be the case any more. Aanother liberty removed?

    5. Not going to be bothering with the fruit pickers, though. Makes a mockery of the whole thing.

  21. Good morning all.

    Cloudy, breezy.

    One of my William Lobb moss roses has come out. Although described as a shrub rose, both that I have are in fact well-established climbers.

    2. Northerly wind gusting to 46mph here, no rain left, just some scudding clouds and sun. I note the wind is supposed to be from the Southwest, but I think it gets trapped by our southern slope and goes every whichway!

      1. We have just another of windy weather , and a very drying wind . Watering the garden is a tedious task, because everything needs a good soak.

      3. Well it certainly IS here in the south-west…
        So violently gusty I have been out to rescue my irises: I’ve brought 6 indoors, which would otherwise perish.
        The roses have strong stems – they blow about quite happily …

  22. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with Longbòw and Axe ( both in lockdown handbag)
    It’s been a cooler day then yesterday, breezy and cloudy but the sun is now breaking through
    the early morning mist.

    1. Morning, Lady of the Mercians.
      Rather a relief – says Chatelaine of Allan Towers going into full Anglo-Saxon whinge mode!

      1. Good morning again .

        Oh excellent. It’s very much a favourite fish, hope you enjoy it
        with some nice wine .

  25. Australian-style sea patrols needed to return migrants to France, says former Border Force chief. 22 May 2020.

    Tony Smith, a former Border Force Director General, said Britain needed a more “robust” response with enforcement officers with powers of arrest and trained to remove migrants from their dinghies and fingerprint them before returning them to France.

    Mr Smith, who will be giving evidence today to MPs investigating the Channel crisis, said Border Force cutters and the French vessels are currently constrained from such Australian-style tactics under international maritime law that only allows officers to intervene if they are invited to do so.

    Unless this “search and rescue” role was changed, the migrants could continue to be shepherded by French boats into UK waters where they could “invite” the British to save them or, as has happened in some cases, call for help from the British coastguards or police.

    Morning everyone. As Opinion Polls in the UK are not there to demonstrate Opinion but to form it, so enquiries in Parliament are not there to enquire but to ensure that the nothing of the kind takes place. This is a typical example. The lid has come off this can of worms and the public are not happy with what they can see inside so it’s necessary to put it back on. It was only last week that there was no mention of these arrangements in the MSM and now, thanks partly to Nigel Farage’s exposure that all is not as it should be; it rates an “enquiry”.

    This particular guy has been dredged up from the past (This makes him reliable) to obfuscate and serve as a place filler (there have to be witnesses at an enquiry) and spout about what ought to be done. A mythical concept at best. And one might even ask why did this not occur to him when he was head of the Border Farce himself?

    What we are not going to see addressed here is the part the Home Office plays in organising and facilitating this Cross Channel Traffic. The corruption that is a necessary part of it and God Forbid that it is largely an Islamic Enterprise. Instead some meaningless formula will be pronounced and the whole thing shut down.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/21/australian-style-sea-patrols-needed-return-migrants-france-says/

  27. Octopus Energy is to pay its electricity customers 2p/Kw to use surplus energy on Sunday for 2 hours twice during the day . Smart meters are required for this. The Chief of the company says it is cheaper for the grid to supply him with the energy rather than pay the generator companies to switch off their generators. He thought this was the way to encourage green energy. When asked if still there was a need for stand bye gas generators he said there should be no need for “dirty brown” generators as there would be electric cars which stored enough energy to power a household for a week to back up the grid if required. BBC Radio 4 News this morning.
    I think this character needs to think again.

    2. That probably works out to be a round 20squid a year.
      And they’ve nailed you with the ‘smart’ meter.
      I upset our current suppliers by flatly refusing to have on installed.
      They have recently told us that we consume more than the national average in gas and electricity. A disguised price rise.
      I can’t possible believe a word of it, we are quite frugal. And with only two people living in a 4 bed home how the hell can this be true ?
      Scuz the puns. 😉

    4. Can’t they just use disused coal mines to store the electricity?

      I’ll get me ohmmeter…

      2. That’s just silly. They only need to put the wind turbines into reverse.

  28. From a Premium DT article on Quangos:

    “It is understandable that Tory MPs are now more openly talking about the fitness for purpose of these organisations.”

    What absolute and utter tosh.

    Ten years in Government and only now posing some questions? I’m sure these people think that because there’s water coming out of the tap, the reservoir is full.

    For me, the following BBC article shines a light on the deep financial mess we’re in:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-52761890/how-will-we-pay-for-the-coronavirus-damage

    1. Putting my cynical hat on, QUANGOS were set up for the sole purpose of having someone else to blame when the Government makes a mistake.

    2. Ten years, most of which were spent in the appalling Libdem coalition of paralysis, followed by the May socialist government of paralysis. It is only since the election we have a government with a big enough majority to start getting things done. Unfortunately they too are now subject to paralysis of the lockdown variety, with a leader in an excessively close relationship with a green.

      1. Unfortunately, a large-majority government can sometimes breed arrogance and a throwing out of the baby with the bathwater.

        Personally, I’ve had enough of our politicians’ antics to last a lifetime and long for a new breed of MPs. I doubt if it’ll ever happen but I live in hope.

        1. In my mind that’s exactly what we need to. We need MPs that haven’t been MPs before. We need new parties instead of three parties all offering various shades of the same colour politics. If CV has taught us anything it is that neoliberalism is a complete crock of shite, just in time supply chains are stupid, and welfare is too low ( or else why was it increased by £19 temporarily?).

          I’d love to vote for a libertarian Georgist party. There’s only neoliberalism on offer.

          1. We’ve got some extremely tough times ahead and will hopefully get new people to match the challenges. I watched a documentary last night about a blind lad climbing to the top of the Old Man of Hoy stack. Those are the sort of young people we need.

            Locally, it’s the ordinary people who’ve shone over the past few months with the politicians being in the shadows. Hopefully, that’s where they’ll stay when this is all over.

          2. We watched that – amazing feat for someone who couldn’t see where he was going.

          3. Particularly as the architecture of that route means that his partner, who usually “guides” him to the right area to search, couldn’t see him for a good percentage of the time – I take my hat off to him; I probably couldn’t lead that even seeing where I was going!!

          4. Brilliant, wasn’t it.

            I’m always baffled by the unsung heroes who climb up there first to film those climbing up after them.

          5. …or are dropped there by helicopter.

            I’ll get Araminta’s cynic hat.

          6. Not much room on the top of that stack – though obviosly some of the filming was done from the air.

      2. The libs were almost unheard in that coalition and May is not a socialist and nor were her administration. Face it, the Tories as just bloody useless, in fact everyone in the HoC almost is entirely useless. You’ve had three leaders, multiple shuffles, and just can’t find a good mix of ministers. Well that’s because they are all bloody useless.
        Can you list every vote that was blocked under the coalition if the vast majority is so important. NHS reshuffle went ahead, austerity went ahead, the Libs shafted their student supporters by changing free tuition to 9k payments wholeheartedly.
        Stop blaming Cameron’s uselessness on the Libs, they didn’t block a thing.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Thayaric, “Stop blaming Cameron’s uselessness on the Libs, they didn’t block a thing.”

          Except the Boundaries Commission recommendations that would have removed up to 50 of the tossers in the Commons

          1. Was never voted on.

            I did however find one….

            An amendment for pub landlords to be given greater freedom in negotiating rent and beer price with their chain brewer.

            So they stopped all the important Tory manifesto policies and nothing got done right?

          2. “Was never voted on.” because the Clegg said he wouldn’t support it and Cameron knew he wouldn’t have a majority without Clegg’s failures.

          3. Even so pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. The Tories ran the show and were very much in charge as evidenced by all the lib dems on TV telling us we were all in it together and we all had to pay extra tax and receive fewer or poorer quality services. There were no rebellions, at no stage did it look like the whole coalition edifice would be coming down. It also lasted the full five years.

        2. For once, T – I am in full agreement with you.

          Not often that happens!

        3. They didn’t need to block a thing because Cameron’s agenda was socially very left wing.

          1. Economically very right-wing, about as far away from the natural position of the LibDumbs as you can get.
            Turns out all that austerity was purely ideological, achieved nothing overall and cost us a decade in growth.
            And mitigation from the libs? Absolutely nothing. They even screwed their biggest supporters all so Clegg could play kingmaker.

    3. I wouldn’t worry too much, it’ll be the same as any recession. Unemployment will go up, welfare will balloon which will force a deficit on the government whether they like it or not which will force money into the private sector and so build aggregate demand enough for businesses to start taking on workers again. Perhaps this time we can avoid the lost decade by swallowing the higher debt (we’re paying the lowest rate of interest on gilts in history and we pay nothing on any the BoE holds) instead of launching into austerity which almost never works in the way the IMF used to claim (seems they know better these days).

      1. “know better” . learned a lesson from other peoples painful experience, maybe…
        Afternoon, Thayeric. Hope you’re keeping well.

        1. I’m good Paul. Yes the IMF learned a lot from the West’s experiments with austerity, the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis. They are at last starting to realise that austerity is the wrong medicine but it’s a big slow ship and you know those, they take a while to turn.
          My only worry is that it’ll just be more of the same after lockdown ends with nothing reformed. We’ll keep all the just in time supply chains, we’ll keep on running services down, we’ll keep on thinking we need austerity when the past ten years has simply lost us a decade of growth opportunities.

      2. Like the generals who fight the last war, I feel our leaders assume that what happened in the past will happen again.

        Personally, I think we’re sailing uncharted waters and anything’s possible.

    4. 2009, David Cameron promised a “bonfire of quangos”. Tory MPs haven’t stopped lying yet!

      2. They had it or more correctly tried to have it but soon realised that almost every Quango was useful so they rolled them into each other instead. That just cut the number of quangos but not the cost or much of the functionality.

    5. Putting my cynical hat on, QUANGOS were set up for the sole purpose of having someone else to blame when the Government makes a mistake.

      1. Cynical hat, Araminta, never?

        Add the economic effects of the virus to Brexit to the financial pickle we were in before this lot started and we are, as the lad from the Chinese chippy would say, set for some interesting times.

        That, my friend, is true cynicism.

          1. Apologies.

            I had a long walk in the sun yesterday and a long sleep last night. I’ve not woken up yet 🙃.

          1. Speaking of which and hoping not to spark any fish puns, I ended up in town yesterday as part of my exercise walk. A chippy there (English) had just opened after lockdown so I ventured in. Although I’ve enough stuff to feed the street, I fancied a change and a chance to help the local economy.

            Half a mile back up he road, I realised I’d lost my pocket camera and returned to the last shop I’d been in. Whew, they had it.

            By the time I eventually landed home and polished off a welcome cuppa, the fish and chips were almost cold. Nevertheless, they were a treat.

          2. That’ll be the pocket camera you use to snap the neighbours when they are failing to follow the government’s stiff rules on distancing etc etc…!!

          3. That’s the one, Bill.

            Incidentally, I passed a couple of stern-looking bobbies in town so it looks like they’re still taking lockdown seriously.

          4. Hope you snapped them – and complimented them on the way they have been seeking out old ladies to harass..

          5. Speaking of which and hoping not to spark any fish puns, I ended up in town yesterday as part of my exercise walk. A chippy there (English) had just opened after lockdown so I ventured in. Although I’ve enough stuff to feed the street, I fancied a change and a chance to help the local economy.

            Half a mile back up he road, I realised I’d lost my pocket camera and returned to the last shop I’d been in. Whew, they had it.

            By the time I eventually landed home and polished off a welcome cuppa, the fish and chips were almost cold. Nevertheless, they were a treat.

    1. Are these test to see if someone HAS the C-19 Wuhan virus and is therefore liable to pass it on, or to see if they have HAD the virus and are thus likely to be immune?

    2. They are immediately killed – to control the spread of the disease, Richard. It’s really very simple.

      1. Or have to wear a yellow star, and be quarantined in camps, concentrated there……(Geddit..?)

  31. Effing doom and gloom in the papers, on the radio – where, Boris, are the bloody “sunlit uplands”?

    1. Are there any left who still think the answer to your question is Pratt’s Bottom?

  32. Morning all

    SIR – The piece by Charles Moore (“The coronavirus crisis must not be allowed to delay Brexit,” Comment, May 19) was excellent. There is another important reason why there should be no extension.

    Those of us categorised as “Brexit-supporting former Labour voters” will not forgive another extension. The message “Get Brexit done” persuaded many of us to vote Tory.

    The last extension was forced upon Boris Johnson. Another one will be seen as his choice. Newly elected Tory MPs would be well-advised to remember this.

    Cliff Peers

    Chester-le-Street, Co Durham

    SIR – As we near the June date for a review of negotiations, the European Union’s language and demands become ever more desperate.

    One of its more outlandish demands is that, because the United Kingdom is too geographically close, the EU must be able to continue to exert some degree of economic and political control over us. This it justifies in all sorts of totally unconvincing ways.

    Advertisement

    What it really means, of course, is that it doesn’t want an outward-looking, competitive and sovereign country on its doorstep, as this would contrast sharply with its own increasingly obviously outdated, protectionist market.

    Mike Patterson

    Camberley, Surrey

    SIR – The explanation by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the findings and implications of the recent judgment by the German constitutional court was first class (“EU risks losing Germany if it picks a constitutional fight to the death, or the euro if it doesn’t,” Business, May 18).

    The court asserted the supremacy of German law over the creeping assumption of powers by Brussels, in particular the European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice.

    It was a revealing statement by Andreas Vosskuhle, the outgoing chief justice of the German constitutional court, that it speaks for “normal people” and sees itself as the counterweight to “liberal elites”.

    After recent judgments by the UK Supreme Court, one wonders if its judges would similarly stand up to Brussels and see itself as speaking for “normal people”. With a heavy heart, I have made my own judgment on that.

    Dr Bill Duff

    Belfast

    SIR – All the fish in UK waters are a UK commodity, just like minerals and oil. The EU has for too long benefited from this unacknowledged contribution by the UK of its natural resources.

    The French have grown accustomed to netting in our territorial waters while we were members of the EU, and now must now accept that our waters belong to us, just as theirs belong to them.

    We simply cannot agree to a blanket inclusion of fishing rights within the proposed trade agreement.

    Trevor Butterworth

    Horsham, West Sussex

    1. BTL Comment reference Mr. Butterworth’s letter:-

      Robert Spowart
      22 May 2020 4:04AM
      An excellent point made by Trevor Butterworth.

      Surely, when calculating the UK’s financial contribution to the EU, the value of the fish caught by EU countries should be added to the sum?

  33. Has anyone investigated if animals, domestic and wild, can carry the virus?

    1. Yes, apparently. Some reports say they do; others that they don’t.

      Ask Professor Branestorm….for a definitive guess.

        1. A boy at school affectionately known as ‘Fat Bleeder’ joined the force and ended up in the Royal Protection Squad – I assumed because he offered protection from a wide range of fire….

        4. How do such people get into the police ‘service’?

          I may be a bit corpulent nowadays but I have never let myself go like this! When I was a schoolmaster I used to play squash a couple of times a week with some of the Sixth formers which kept me fit and in the summer I played in the Masters’ cricket XI and swam regularly. And of course in the summer holidays I was off on my boat.

          One of the best things about teaching in a good school is the free availability on site of swimming pool, tennis courts, squash courts, cricket nets, gym, sports hall etc But surely those in the Police would have easy access to such things too?

      2. Wasn’t there a report about a week ago that a domestic cat had it?

        2. My Vet said that cats & dogs can’t and don’t get it. I believe the story of a cat & dog dying of it to be fake news. Just like the stats for Covid deaths of people.

          An extremely small percentage of extra deaths have occured.

          1. The BVA and the Kennel Club state that cats and dogs can’t get it. I did put the link up a few days ago, but I can’t find it now.

    2. I was sitting in the backyard yesterday afternoon, chatting to the VFC (Very Fine Cockrel), who lives two gardens up from me and he assured me, that he was virus free, as were his concubines.

      SWMBO thinks that I should get out more

  34. God morning all,

    Breezy here , there was some mizzle , no showers , overcast.

    The roads will be busy with day trippers again .

    2. Good morning Maggie and everyone else. A decent amount of rain last night and dull & overcast at the moment here.

  35. Further to Nottl comments made when I last posted about illegal immigrants crossing the
    channel, the following was sent to my MP Andrew Rossindell. His response is shown later:

    ‘Immigration

    Thank you for your response. Elements of it offered some reassurance.
    However, concerns still remain. Regarding the activities of police and volunteers in France – and expanding on a point I made in original letter – the situation is that for the last eight weeks until yesterday, in order to leave your residence, you had to carry a signed, dated AND timed document explaining why you were out. I am advised by resident that the police are everywhere enforcing this. For a load of illegals to wander several miles across Calais (which is swarming with police) without being stopped and checked is – quite simply –
    unbelievable. If the UK is paying the French for patrols we are wasting our money. I am forced to wonder if human nature is such that if a problem exists that can be easily transferred elsewhere by ‘blind eye’ technique then there is considerable risk of this occurring.

    Can you please let me know your reaction to this please?’

    Reply:

    ‘Thank you very much for your response about migrants illegally crossing the English
    Channel from France to reach the United Kingdom.

    Andrew is grateful to you for taking the time to email him, and he has authorised me to
    respond on his behalf.

    We agree with you, the French authorities could be doing more to assist with the
    situation and a parliamentary question will be tabled to ask the Home Office
    how much money has been provided to them.

    Yesterday, Andrew sent a letter to the Home Secretary, the Rt. Hon. Priti Patel M.P.,
    asking her to clarify the Home Office’s response in handling the situation. Please find
    attached the letter for your reference.

    Should you like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact Andrew at any
    time.’

    Letter:

    ‘Dear Priti

    Migrants Illegally Crossing the English Channel

    I am writing to express my dismay and that of my constituents about the increasing
    number of migrants illegally crossing the English Channel from France to reach the United Kingdom.

    My constituents in Romford have forcefully expressed their frustration to me about
    this matter and fail to understand why these illegal migrants are not being stopped from making the crossing. I completely agree with them and wanted you to know this.

    My understanding is that more than 3,200 migrants have successfully made the
    illegal crossing since 2018, with the number more than doubling in the first two months of this year compared with the same period last year.

    As the numbers continue to surge, I am alarmed that the Home Office appears not to be
    taking strong enough action to end this crisis, especially when it is widely reported that
    Covid-19 is spreading quickly throughout the migrant’s makeshift camps in France.

    I was pleased when the Home Office announced last week that all illegal migrants
    intercepted by our Border Force and brought ashore will be quarantined for two weeks to prevent the further spread of Covid-19. However, I am somewhat perplexed that only a small number of these illegal migrants are actually being returned from where they came. Is it actually correct that 1,400 people arrived between December 2018 and October 2019 and of those, only around 6% were returned?

    If this is so, the fact that so few of these illegal migrants are being returned is concerning for two reasons: firstly, it is not fair to those legal migrants who have completed the correct
    process to enter and settle in our country; and secondly, it looks like we are allowing the U.K. to become a magnet because of the knowledge that illegal migrants are highly unlikely to be removed if their asylum application fails.

    My constituents really do expect Her Majesty’s Government to be taking firm action
    to bring this sad episode under control and I know that you, as Home Secretary, will understand why it is so important that a government elected on a mandate to control immigration, is seen to be doing so.

    I have full confidence that with you as our Home Secretary, the government will get a firm
    grip on this situation, but we must do so quickly and I, therefore, urge you to crack down
    now on all those who attempt to illegally cross the English Channel to evade the U.K.’s border restrictions.

    Thank you for taking the time to consider the points I have made, on behalf of my
    constituents.’

    I am not sure – as mentioned in second-from-last paragraph – about ‘full confidence’ as
    nothing so far suggests proper action is taking place. Still, a relatively hard-hitting missive from Rossindell.

    1. This is a serious issue, and one that could bring the Government down. If, going by video evidence, the UK and French authorities are actually colluding in bringing illegal immigrants to the UK then the PM and HS are either blissfully unaware of what the Border Force is doing or are complicit in it and ignoring their manifesto promise of ‘controlling our borders’. Given that assisting illegal immigration is a criminal offence, when are the Border Force and/or the PM and HS going to be prosecuted?

      1. Should there indeed be collusion, it begs the question as to who has the most to gain from it. One group springs to mind.

        1. Try googlimg the “UN Global compact on migration” and read paragraph 13.
          By signing up to it (thanks, T May), the UK is OBLIGED to help them across the channel! That’s why it isn’t stopped.

          1. Rubbish Paul. Paragraph 13 doesn’t say that….
            It says…
            “This Global Compact recognizes that safe, orderly and regular migration works for all when it
            takes place in a well-informed, planned and consensual manner. Migration should never be an
            act of desperation. When it is, we must cooperate to respond to the needs of migrants in
            situations of vulnerability, and address the respective challenges. We must work together to
            create conditions that allow communities and individuals to live in safety and dignity in their own
            countries. We must save lives and keep migrants out of harm’s way. We must empower
            migrants to become full members of our societies, highlight their positive contributions, and
            promote inclusion and social cohesion. We must generate greater predictability and certainty
            for States, communities and migrants alike. To achieve this, we commit to facilitate and ensure
            safe, orderly and regular migration for the benefit of all. ”

            OK so firstly migration has to be planned and consensual. Migration from France to the UK by rubber boat is neither planned nor consensual, nor is it an act of desperation, there’s no fear for their lives in Calais. Responding to the needs of migrants in rubber boats, well I’m up for handing out some life-jackets and towing them back halfway across the channel. I’ll even stump up for some oars if they have gone overboard. This is all about safe, orderly consensual migration not illegals turning up on Hastings beach.

          2. When Treason May signed the Invasion pact, a part was highlighted that is likely to lead to opposition to migration being made illegal if it is translated into law, but I don’t remember which part it was now.
            The UK should get out of the invasion pact asap.

          3. “To achieve this, we commit to facilitate and ensure
            safe, orderly and regular migration             for the benefit of all”

          4. Nothing wrong with that.
            Most countries want to take in a few immigrants.
            Again this doesn’t say turn up on Hastings beach and we’ll take you in.

      2. Sometime never. I suspect that voters look at the alternative on the Opposition benches and think, ‘this lot is marginally less bad’.

    2. I expect she’ll do what most politicians do when confronted with a true statement, a knowledgeable and well formed question that is difficult to justify and to answer.
      Pass it on to her civil service staff, they are the best and well practiced liars in the country.

    3. hard-hitting – he didn’t protest “in the strongest possible terms”, so not that hard-hitting.

    4. From me , a female point of view .

      This government is idiotic . It is identifying these illegals with the folk who are propping up the NHS in London .
      This government is on a guilt trip because the feel they owe Muslims re the bollocks in the Middle East.

      This government has forgotten about the Manchester bombings or the near beheading of Lee Rigby or the grooming of ignorant working class females for sexual purposes, or all the other horrors that are far too many to mention . We should be very suspicious and guarded about who we want as so called best friends .

      This government seems too comfortable courting Muslims , and rather uncomfortable taking care of of the indigenous population of the British Isles.

      Our priority now should be to get the Eastern Europeans in to sort our fruit picking and harvesting of vegetable, they are experienced , very fit and extremely capable . What a load of nonsense this new quarantine idea is .. Why on earth wasn’t that brought in when we had first warnings about the virus .

      I have heard that migrant communities of a particular faith and our own narcissitic idle unfit youngsters are incapable of picking and sticking to the job that our farmers require of them .. We need these Eastern Europeans , with out restrictions to feed the country , and to keep our NHS on track!

      As I said earlier , the government have got their priorities all wrong , they are appeasers to one particular faith , and I think that is unbearable.

      1. You’re right, Belle, we do need some migration from Eastern European fruit -pickers – they benefit and we benefit.

        Quarantining incoming passengers now that the epidemic is waning is a nonsense when it wasn’t applied from early March onwards.

        On the other blog, we had a discussion this morning on the apparent policy of those in charge of this country to impose on us an ideology which appears to favour Muslims rather than the indigenous people of this country.

        This is what I said there.

        Ndovu Publius • 3 hours ago

        I’m not bothered by the colour of people’s skin – I’ve met some delightful people from all over the world.

        What
        does bother me is the way in which “hate speech” has evolved to be a
        one-way process – only white people can be racist; only “right-wing”
        protesters or journalists are charged with criminal offences.

        Mosques
        have appeared all over this country – more in the pipeline, including
        one proposed for Picadilly Circus. Social distancing only seems to apply
        to white people; there are places in this country where the
        perpetrators of horrible offences against young girls have been allowed
        to continue their crimes for years. A report into this matter has been
        suppressed; the Home Secretary has now promised to released a heavily
        purged version, due to pressure from people who have signed a petition.

        “Islamophobia”
        is a perfectly natural reaction that has grown since this country and
        others in Europe and America, have been subjected in the last 20 years
        to terrorism, which has been perpetrated by Muslims against the general
        population. Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists, but since the
        IRA subsided, most terrorists have been Muslim. The exceptions to this
        have been very few – I can think of Breivik, and the Australian gunman
        in NZ.

        1. I wish I could have been as erudite as you , I agree with everything .

          Why can’t our elected government put their heads together and work things out… is it because they are young and inexperienced and have always been exposed to a multiracial Bame society .. and try to appease and please .. and more importantly VOTE CATCH , and of course because some of the multinationals are foreign owned?

          1. I don’t know about erudite!!

            I think the current government is afraid of what people think. Why do we have to resort to sites like this to say what we think? I never speak out on Facebook or Twitter as I don’t like the kind of reaction I’ve seen when people voice something even slightly right-wing. I have friends who are not into politics at all, and others who are definitely left of centre. I nearly came to blows over coffee with a good friend at the time of the referendum.

            We are confortable voicing our opinions here because most people, with the obvios exceptions, are of a similar mind.

            This government was on the right lines regarding Brexit, though they were surprised by the referendum result – then May nearly sold us out. They are in a bubble of leftist thinkers in London and the South west and they really don’t speak for the majority of the people who voted for them last December.

            Boris is now in hoc to his saviours of the NHS, and too timid now to lift the lockdown.

          2. Spot on , yes , totally with you there .. If one speaks out of turn on F/B , the reponse is horrible . I have been in exactly the same position as you with friends , people just turn , re the Brexit question , an importer of Spanish cheeses and meats had a real pop at me !

            I think Boris has had a conversion , he has had some of his strength drained out of him .. and of course being a new dad courtesy of his latest squeeze hasn’t helped matters either.

          3. I fell out with my younger son over Brexit when I was in Switzerland in 2018 – his Swiss restaurant owner friend was sitting at the table with us and mischievously wound us up.

          4. That is a shame. It’s the Owner you should fallen out with. I bet he was smiling while you both were arguing.

            Discussing politics in the family is not a good idea. Hope you have extended the olive branch to your son.

          5. SWMBO was a Remainer until about 18 months ago, when she started to waver. Now she’s seen the light, and a Brexiteer – as are the two lads. Result!

          6. He was ok at Christmas and seems to be alright. His friend has now sold the restaurant, which was their family business – probably just in time now that everything has shut down.

        2. “…we do need some migration from Eastern European fruit -pickers…”

          There’s a difference between hiring temporary labour and allowing permanent residency. Also, there’s something very wrong with the economy if certain businesses can only continue to survive on cheap foreign labour. Indeed, some only exist because of it. Sports Direct and some internet sales/courier operators come to mind.

          1. The fruit pickers come and go, as in earlier times the hop-pickers from London used to go to Kent for the season. As far as I know, the migration bill allows for these temporary agricultural workers. They do a good job, which British people are not keen to do.

            I spent a week when I was still at school, picking blackcurrants – it was hard work and I didn’t earn much.

            There used to be a lot of “pick your own” strawberry & raspberry farms, but I assume the wastage was too much for it to pay its way. You don’t see those round here now. The seasonal workers know what they are doing, and are willing to work for lower wages than British workers, though I do think they should have a fair wage. It must be worth their while to come here.

          2. “It must be worth their while to come here.”

            The wage differential has narrowed considerably over the years and soon it might be difficult to hire so easily from other countries.

          3. Even if they have to pay standard British rates of pay, the Romanians will still be far better off than at home.

          4. “But for how long?” is the question.

            Some farmers and growers had been having difficulty hiring for while, partly because of the referendum and the fall of the pound but also because the countries from which the first big wave of migrants came had seen rising standards of living and wages. That will continue.

          5. We’ll just have to see how things pan out. The economic shock of the pandemic will cause a lot of resets, as jobs disappear and businesses go bust.

          7. Same here, N. Add to that the visiing pickers are there to pick, not party, will live in the (admittedly sparse) accommodation provided, so there’s no time wasted travelling to the field from home, will work 7 days, accept a low wage, and are brought up often on a farm so they know about hard physical work. Norwegian youth is too soft, wants comfy accommodation, doesn’t want the hard grind and no party Friday night…

          8. Our minimum wage is a small fortune to those from some Eastern European countries. No wonder they are willing to undercut British labour, especially since they get accommodation thrown in (although some gang masters take an amount out of the wages to pay for that).

          9. In my childhood, the Irish used to come over for the pea picking and potato lifting season.

          10. Fruit producers have to use foreign labour because it is cheaper. The price of the produce is dictated by the supermarkets. Farmers have offered higher rates but local people still would not do it.

            In the case of sports direct, Mike Ashley is a cheapskate bastard. He could easily pay people a better rate that compares with other shops. He chooses not to.

          11. Supermarkets dictate a low price because their customers dictate a low price.
            We’re surprised every time we visit the UK that the advertising for pretty well everything stresses the low price, as opposed to other virtues – so, the result is, cheapest possible production.
            Would anybody pay another, say, 30-50% for a punnet of strawberries because it was picked by a Brit, rather than an Estonian? Same strawberries…

          12. I have never been asked. I certainly wouldn’t want to put dairy farmers out of business to make competition easier for them.

    5. How about this for a non-answer:

      “Thank you for your email.

      The Home Secretary said this week that “we are out of the EU by the end of this year fully, therefore we are not going to be bound by some of the regulations around how we handle illegal migration.”

      I have seen the video and it is disappointing that these boats are setting out in the first place from France, considering how much we have invested to try to prevent, or at least reduce this. The criminal gangs encouraging these illegal crossings are human traffickers and we need a joint event to stop these criminals from operating and profiteering.

      Claims that French officials have been aiding illegal migrants to enter UK waters need investigating and I know the Home Office is looking into this as I spoke to the Home Secretary yesterday. It will immediately deploy more drones and helicopters to monitor the Channel and further measures should be announced soon.

      Many thanks once again for getting in touch,”

  36. That Nagging Munchetty on BBC Breakfast, the voice of Labour .. They are talking about schools opening , but no one has mentioned the packed out beaches with families . No such thing as social distancing .. life is getting very tricky.

    1. Good morning Maggiebelle

      It seems that it is not just the politicians who are hypocrites – basically the whole population are!

  37. “MPs could back law giving officers power to check people stay inside after travel” – so, legal to burst in the door, unannounced, then. As seen on a video a week or two ago.
    When will they burst in? before 06:00 is the traditional time for this kind of activity. And when will this be repealed? I won’t be holding my breath, it’s too good an opportunity to control people to give up.
    Corona virus, in causing chaos and damage to society, acts as camouflage and opportunity for a take-over by the “elites” to “save” society and restore order. At the same time, freedoms are removed to ensure “safety”.
    Like boiling a frog, by the time society realises, it’s too late.
    Thus, virus panic encouraged, all leading to draconian curtailment of freedom, all to “protect” society. Nearly there now – look at the discussion of legalised police entry in today’s Telegraph.
    Never waste a good crisis.

    1. And all the while millions go out once a week to clap the government knows it is safe to bring in more draconian measures – idiots.

      1. No claps or saucepan banging evident in my area last night I’m proud to say.

        2. Sadly, our leafy suburb has numpties who indulge in that sort of virtue signalling.
          MB was parking his car in the road ready for the tree surgeons arriving this morning and we wondered what the hull was going on. Would living amongst statist sheep qualify us for a council tax reduction?

    2. If this is true and not a MSM scare story, this is one of the most insidious moves of modern times put forward by any government. If it is the case then it invites letters by every right thinking individual to their MPs to vote against such a proposal. Talk about losing the plot.

  38. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/prince-charles-pick-for-britain/2020/05/21/b977d074-9a08-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html

    Prince Charles wants furloughed workers to pick berries. Farmers wonder if Brits are up to the task.

    Last year — amid warnings that an abrupt Brexit would lead to a shortage of farmworkers — The Washington Post spent days searching for the rarest of the rare, a British-born berry picker. We eventually found four university students working on a strawberry farm in Herefordshire.

    But that was before the pandemic, before approximately 7.5 million people in Britain had been furloughed.

    1. We still have pick your own strawberries in this part of France. I remember picking delicious fruit from such a farm in the New Forest when my parents lived near Keyhaven.

      Those who come to France are often disappointed by the fact that it is very difficult to find genuine unbuggeredabout cream –
      crème fraîche has been deliberately soured. Nothing can replace either Devonshire or Cornish cream and so my father – born and bred in Devon – had his own cow when he was in the Sudan and taught the people who worked in the kitchen how to make proper clotted cream.

      Delight of delights – we have found a local farm which produces thick double,untreated cream which we shall enjoy with the Strawberry season approaching.

      1. I had some English dawdies from Berks last night. They were really very good.

    2. Most young Brits are terrible when it comes to service industry.
      IMHO they only focus on what they can get out of the task.
      How many times have you all been dissapointed with the service in a UK
      pub or restaurant ?
      Foreign staff are far more polite and caring. We have two family run Italian restaurants not far from where we live and the hard working attentive staff make the event a pleasure.

      1. Yes, i also noticed an improvement with foreign staff in British restaurants. However, i don’t believe it is just about lazy Brits.

        Restaurants and Bars in Malta prefer to employ foreign nationals too.

        It is probably because of the benefit systems in place.

        Occasionally a Bar or Restaurant may need a person for an extra shift.

        Someone on benefits working 16 hours in a Bar has used up their allowance of hours worked and if they say yes then they have probably lost the 16 hours pay as well.

        A foreign national is much more likely to say ‘yes please’.

        1. One exception was about 12 months ago with a Polish waitress at Luton Hoo, were we met for lunch with some old friends. She became stroppy when she thought the tip wasn’t good enough. We explained the gratuity reflected on the service and the meal.

          1. I can understand that happening in America because that’s how they do things.

            For her to do it here was plain rudeness.

  39. Today’s Ponder

    Retired Health Message

    As I was lying around, pondering the problems of the world, Irealized that at my age I don’t really give a damn any more.

    If walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal.

    A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water, but is still fat.

    A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years, while a tortoise doesn’t run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for 150 years.

    And you tell me to exercise! I don’t think so.

    Just grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to remember the ones I do,

    and the eyesight to tell the difference.

    Now that I’m older here’s what I’ve discovered:-

    1. I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

    2. My wild oats are mostly enjoyed with prunes and all-bran.

    3. I finally got my head together, and now my body is falling apart.

    4. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

    5. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

    6. If all is not lost, then, where the heck is it?

    7. It was a whole lot easier to get older, than to get wiser.

    8. Some days, you’re the top dog; some days you’re the hydrant.

    9. I wish the buck really did stop here; I sure could use a few of them.

    10. Kids in the back seat cause accidents.

    11. Accidents in the back seat cause kids.

    12. Its hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.

    13. The world only beats a path to your door when you’re in the bathroom.

    14. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he’d have put them on my knees.

    15. When I’m finally holding all the right cards, everyone wants to play chess.

    16. Its not hard to meet expenses . . they’re everywhere.

    17. The only difference between, a rut and a grave, is the depth.

    18. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter…

    I go somewhere to get something, and then wonder what I’m “here after”.

    19. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

    20. HAVE I SENT THIS MESSAGE TO YOU BEFORE?

    2. Pedantic I know, but, I really can’t see a wild rabbit living for 15 years, we’d be up to our necks with ’em if they did.

      1. I can see him from here,

        i would say he had lots of Kids, but that would have made him a Goat

  40. OT (and in between unpacking boxes…) the other night I had recorded a BBC4 prog about the Hanoverian Georges.

    To my horror, when it started, it was presented by that tart with he big mouth and Anna Wintour hair – who, in recent docus, spends her time drawing endless attention to herself by dressing up – quite ruining what might be an interesting prog.

    However, she looked quite different, and – apart from some unnecessary wardrobe changes throughout – and a bit of “look at me” – it was quite interesting.

    At the end, I saw it was made in 2014 – BEFORE the hussy became a telly tart. So, if you had thought about looking in (as we used to say) but were put of by the presence of said tart – don’t be.

    1. Am I the only one on this forum who actually likes Dr Lucy Worsley? I find her quite pretty, witty and stimulating.

      As a confirmed sapiophile her erudition is quite a turn-on. 😉

          4. I am enjoying films with lots of British actors in them at the moment.

            ‘Wisteria and sunshine’ is very uplifting.

            A ‘Private Function’ is amusing.

            ‘My family and other animals’ and anything Gerald Durrell has created.

      3. You are not, against all my petty dislikes and prejudices I find her demeanor and unrestrained delight in her subject strangely alluring and infectious even though she is one big showoff .

        1. I think it is her enthusiasm and knowledge. I have a horrible feeling I’d be the same if I ever had the chance to front a telly history prog.

        1. I can’t stand Carol Klein, but I just cannot put my finger on why she irritates me so much.

          1. One thing which irritates me immensely is that she always dresses in bright colours & puts the flowers in the shade. Look at me, not the flowers!

        1. She is very knowledgeable on her subject, John. I also like Carol Klein on Gardeners’ World for the same reason: knowledge and an enthusiasm for putting it across.

    2. It was a good prog and very informative, it held my interest throughout. I’m looking forward to the next in this series. There did not seem to be any politically correct diversity included, either. So I thought it must be an early dated series. How far we have sadly come in so short a time.

  41. Without wishing to sound like the late BJ, I see that an Airbus 320 has crashed in Karachi. Pakistan International Airlines.

    I bet you one Euro centime that Airbus say that it was pilot error.

    1. Is your reference to the “late BJ” just because he has stopped posting or is he really dead?

      1. No, no, no – Mags. “Late” meaning “formerly of this forum…”

    4. I heard that there had been a crash, but I didn’t know which aircraft, airline or where.

    5. Looks like a complicated one, they made several approaches. Reading the wires, it seems that both engines were scraped on the underside at some time.

    6. The pilot had apparently reported “technical problems” and made two attempts to land. Airbus will blame the pilot; the Pakistanis will blame Airbus.

      1. Airbus planes are infallible; faultless. When they fall out of the sky it is ALWAYS pilot error.

  42. I am amazed at the sense of entitlement that Chris Hawarth displays in his letter about dogs kept on a lead during the deer birthing season. It’s he who should be kept on a lead so him and his ego can’t move more than 2 metres from his house. Come up to Highlands with that attitude Mr Hawarth during lambing and you’ll find your dogs peppered with lead shot and hopefully yourself too.

  43. Conspiracy Theory

    Why would China need to develop a bioweapon when all they needed to do was create a world wide panic by showing an emergency hospital building site featuring loads of busy diggers side by side, officials dressed in full hazmat suits dragging screaming unmasked residents out of their homes, dead people being left on the street, trucks gushing out disinfectant covering whole streets, local communities barricaded off by the military with supporting reports that both medical and cremation workers were breaking down under the stress of dealing with the number of untreatable dying and dead people?

    Then conveniently having in stock loads of testing kits for something or other promoted by none other the head of WHO.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/22/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-fifth-people-believe-virus-hoax/

    1. Why would XR need to shut down the economy in order to save the planet if they can come up with a faked pandemic scam?

      1. Are you saying that a Swede has turned us all into couch potatoes whilst preserving her own country’s economy?

      2. Ans easier than being pulled off Tube train roofs or having to glue yourself to mucky roads.

    1. But … but … without labelling how would people know there was a halal section?
      And we know it’s illegal to label halal products.

      1. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes had a halal seal of approval on the packet, last time I bought them. It was the last time I bought them.

      3. Presumably, there is a section labelled halal (in Arabic, possibly), even if the products themselves are not labelled. It isn’t illegal to label halal products; when I was at college, the chicken sandwiches were labelled ‘halal’, admittedly in small print. I didn’t buy anything other than drinks from the cafe.

    2. 319509+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      Wonder is old jack Cohen would agree to the islamic ideology course tesco’s are steering.

  45. A woman takes a man home one night. When they get to her apartment, she suggests that they try a 69.

    “What do you mean?” he asks.

    Not knowing quite how to explain, she says, “you put your head between my legs and I’ll put my head between your legs!”

    Unsure but willing, he agrees. Unfortunately, as soon as he gets his head between her legs, she lets rip with a horrible, ghastly, rotten-egg type of fart.

    “What the hell was that all about?!?” the man gasps.

    “Oops! I’m so sorry! Let’s try again” she replies.

    But the man, who by this time is already dressed and half-way out the door, replies, “If you think I’m sticking around for 68 more of those, you’re out of your fucking mind!

  46. Well, as I just reported, the lads have gone.

    If anyone in East Anglia wants an outstandingly good (and those are words you don’t often hear me say) removal firm, Abels of Watton are the people for you.

    Unsolicited testimonial.

    1. Did have time to sit in the garden and do the crossword then? 🤣🤣🤣

    2. Morning Bill. I used to go to their auctions when I was stationed at RAF Watton. Noel D Abel if I remember right. In fact I furnished our first house for less than £100

      1. The very same. I first used their removals in 1984 – and again in 1993. They were remarkably good then – and, 27 years later – just as good.

      2. I was at RAF Wyton when squadrons from RAF Watton moved to RAF Wyton. That created some confusion!

        1. 360? My job at Watton was fitting out the T17 Canberras, ECM Comets, Iris Hastings and Varsitys. Left there in ’67

          1. 51 as I recall – Comets, Canberras and some Varsities; maybe also a Hastings but a bit hazy on that.

      1. Funny you should say that, Grizz. In fact, the MR was saying ten minutes ago how handy it was that shed one had been cleared and and cleaned. I am on my way there now, with the first load to stuff. More follows!!

    1. It all seems to have risen just as immigration kicked in, not sure if there is a connection though

    2. It does seem to have taken off.

      I can think of a number of reasons –

      a) Prior to the 1970s women and girls were reluctant to report these things – the police were unsympathetic and the legal system made victims feel they were to blame.

      b) There is more sexual freedom now and everybody is at it – but some men don’t realise ‘no’ means ‘no’.

      c) The population has increased exponentially.

      d) Some members of the public seem to think young girls are fair game.

      e) Not all victims or perpetrators spkeak the truth.

    3. Do the police think the girl’s horrific injuries were self-inflicted? Who are they trying to protect?

    1. I’m very, very surprised that it wasn’t the lead article on this morning’s BBC news

    2. Maybe if we asked very nicely the Muslims would allow us to mention it. There again, they probably would not.

    3. Google thinks an African musical instrument is more worthy of celebration today, the ‘Mbira’ or something.

  49. Rare white grizzly bear sighted in Canadian Rockies. 22 May 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc3a675023bdf4ef371d66ebce32d790b8d9b05c2d50eb71365c55205fa13d72.jpg

    Grizzly bears normally range in colouration from dark brown to blond, but a white bear is incredibly rare.

    Experts say the colouring is the result of a recessive gene in the cub – not albinism. Nor is the young bear a member of another Canadian subspecies, the Kermode “spirit” bear, which is found in the temperate rainforests of the country’s west coast. Those elusive animals also have white fur, but are a subspecies of the black bear – not the grizzly.

    “It’s definitely a pretty unique animal,” said Seth Cherry, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada. “I’ve never seen a white bear personally.”

    I’ve no wish to see any coloured bear personally.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/22/canada-rockies-white-grizzly-bear

        1. Could have been, Bill. Wherever, I know I had to put on an extra pair of socks.

          Mind you, it was glad of the calamine lotion I handed over.

    4. I know a bit about grizzlies (natch!).

      The grizzly bear, Ursus arctos horribilis, is a sub-species of the pan-Northern hemisphere brown bear, U. arctos, that is found only in North America. The name “grizzly” comes from the “grizzled” silver tips to the hairs present on many specimens of the species. These bears vary in colour from black, through various shades of brown, to white. There are cases on record, in the north of their range, of brown bears mating successfully with polar bears to produce a very pale offspring.

      The North American black bear, U. americanus, is a much smaller and totally unrelated species.

    7. No doubt we will read reports in a few months time that some sick trophy hunter has ‘bagged’ it simply for the bragging rights….

          4. And there I was thinking you were gasping pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

    2. Therefore everyone over 30 should be exempt form paying the Telly Tax.

  52. Earth’s magnetic field is WEAKENING between Africa and South America, causing satellites and spacecraft to malfunction. Mial. 22:06, 21 May 2020

    Scientists have made a shocking discovery – the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening.

    The magnetic field is vital for life on our planet, as it shields us from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted from the sun.

    Researchers are speculating that the weakening is a sign that Earth is heading to a pole reversal, which is when the north and south poles switch places – and the last time this occurred was 780,000 years ago.

    Wow! Imagine that! Shocking discovery? Yes I think that was back in the 1920s when they discovered Pole Reversal. Will it mean the end of Civilisation as we know it! Yes. So no change there then either!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8345553/Earths-magnetic-field-WEAKENING-Africa-South-America-malfunctioning-satellites.html

    1. There is also unusual activity with the shifting of the North Pole, which at present is absolutely galloping , I think from Canada to Siberia. Will find the link.

    2. With the sun being at a low point in its activity, I wonder, when it moves back to it’s more active normal activity, if the chance of a major solar flare like the Carrington Event will increase?

      1. A coronal mass ejection could be catastrophic. Surely we’ve had enough of events to do with ‘corona’.

    4. Global reversal has happened already, do you remember long ago when the NHS was there to save the people and gov policy was to grow the economy. And, interest rates were positive.

    5. Got to keep the fear level high. They will be going on about a super drought next. Time for another possible meteor strike?

      What shows them up for the scaremongers they are is that when the ‘thing’ didn’t happen they have nothing to say. And even when it did happen all their forecasts of doom were exaggerated.

      Good morning, Minty.

        1. Even if they were, they cannot swarm in such great numbers in Northern climes. 🙂

          1. That’s what they said about sub-Saharan Africans and Arabian Muslims. };-O

          3. Those were just prawns, sucked into the air by a gale like the one we have now.

          4. There is a type of locust regularly seen in Europe but the conditions aren’t right for them to grow into vast swarms.

          5. ‘Morning, Stephen, those are emmets and not locusts though they may swarm the same way.

      2. Read Michael Crichton’s “State Of Fear” – it’s a techno-thriller and the last chapter is a polemic about sates that rely upon frightening their populations in order to keep themselves in power.

    7. “Will it mean the end of Civilisation as we know it?”

      The progressive decline of civilisation commenced with the deaths of Dickens, Austen and Kipling.

      1. In future, you will have to navigate using one of the new pocket sized star compasses that the Chinese are working on.

      2. In future, you will have to navigate using one of the new pocket sized star compasses that the Chinese are working on.

      3. I shall have to get my sextant serviced – then I can get my latitude at noon and then, with an accurate timepiece I shall be able to get my longitude too and even without a compass I shall be able to steer in approximately the right direction.

        I sailed across the Atlantic and back in 1984-85 and it is incredible how accurately one can navigate with a sextant.

        1. A clock with only the hour hand, boiled?

          “Sailing Alone Around the World”, Captain Joshua Slocum.

      4. I think you will have to throw it away for the next ten thousand years Bleau!

    9. The field has been known to be weakening for some time; as has the fact that, rhythmically speaking, we are ‘overdue’ for a reversal.
      However before a reversal finally happens, it comes close to it numerous times.
      I was aware of all these 25 years ago, when I realised to my surprise that a) magnetic reversal happens, & b) no one has properly explained it.

    10. Not sure how this causes spacecraft malfunction, its not as if they use a scout’s magnetic compass for their navigation.

      1. Here you are.

        The South Atlantic Anomaly is of great significance to astronomical satellites and other spacecraft that orbit the Earth at several hundred kilometers altitude; these orbits take satellites through the anomaly periodically, exposing them to several minutes of strong radiation, caused by the trapped protons in the inner …

    1. Certainly compassion is seen as weakness by the perpetrators and their co-ideologists.

  54. Published:

    SIR — The eating of scones (Leading Article, May 21) is best undertaken with one’s eyes closed. Many of life’s pleasures may be greatly enhanced in this way. The question of Cornish versus Devonian methods of jam application is then, as far as your taste buds are concerned, purely academic.

    Martin Bastone
    East Grinstead, West Sussex

    Not published

    SIR — The residents of Cornwall and Devon need to grow up (report, May 21). Who cares whether you put the jam or clotted cream on first? Neither way is “wrong” it is just personal preference.

    My own preference is for the scones to contain sultanas and then spread with just butter: no jam, no cream.

    A Grizzly B.
    Skåne (not Scone), Sweden.

    1. Jam first, then cream. The opposite way around gives a significant likelihood of the jam sliding off onto your lap.
      :-((

          1. Sorry, and I have complained about posters giving the results of Formula 1 races. Is there no end to the man’s hypocrisy?

      1. I asked the girl with dulcet tone,
        To order me a buttered scone.
        The silly girl has been and gone,
        And ordered me a buttered scone.

        Anon.

  55. Brendan O’Neil

    As part of the post-terror narrative, our emotions are closely policed.

    Some emotions are celebrated, others demonised. Empathy – good. Grief –

    good. Sharing your sadness online – great. But hatred? Anger? Fury?

    These are bad. They are inferior forms of feeling, apparently, and must

    be discouraged. Because if we green-light anger about terrorism, then

    people will launch pogroms against Muslims, they say, or even attack

    Sikhs or the local Hindu-owned cornershop, because that’s how stupid and

    hateful we apparently are. But there is a strong justification for hate

    right now. Certainly for anger. For rage, in fact. Twenty-two of our

    fellow citizens were killed at a pop concert. I hate that, I hate the

    person who did it, I hate those who will apologise for it, and I hate

    the ideology that underpins such barbarism. I want to destroy that

    ideology. I don’t feel sad, I feel apoplectic. Others will feel

    likewise, but if they express this verboten post-terror emotion they

    risk being branded as architects of hate, contributors to future

    terrorist acts, racist, and so on. Their fury is shushed. ‘Just weep.

    That’s your role.’………………………………….

    …………………..

    Stop and think about how strange it is, how perverse it is, that more

    than 20 of our citizens have been butchered and we are basically saying:

    ‘Everyone calm down. Love is the answer.’ Where’s the rage? If the

    massacre of children and their parents on a fun night out doesn’t make

    you feel rage, nothing will. The terrorist has defeated you. You are

    dead already.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/05/23/after-manchester-its-time-for-anger/
    I haven’t posted the Lammy tweet today.it sickened me too much

    1. When I read “David Lammy”
      I do not know why
      but my palms go all clammy

      1. It’s because you want to punch him. Perfectly natural thing to want to do.

    2. It reminds me that there are three things a Bride sees when she enters the Church:
      Aisle
      Altar
      Hymn

        1. I think I read it here that married women end up being disappointed that their husbands didn’t change. And married men end up surprised and disappointed that their wives did….

        1. Thanks, Bill. Ron used to be our Rector here. I miss St Gargoyles, but parted company with the Church Times when their editorial said that the powers that be should just ignore the 17.4 million who voted Leave, coz they’re ill-educated thick mainly Northeners who are definitely zennofobik (see – if i was educated, I could spell it), and probably racist.

          1. By the way, it’s still Lent in the village church. I’m working on the assumption that we won’t be open before Advent, so the purple hangings will still be relevant. The only change since late March is that the Paschal Candle now has a ‘2020’ transfer…

      2. I’d like to see what you post on FB Sue – would you accept a friend request from me?

    4. Pentecost a week on Sunday, then it’ll have to go green for Trinity Sunday.

  57. From the Anti-BBC – ‘News you can trust”:

    “Annemarie Plas, cited as the person who helped start the weekly clap for carers initiative in the UK, suggests next Thursday’s celebration should be the last.

    Speaking on Radio Two’s Jeremy Vine show, she said: “Next week will be the tenth time and I think that that would be a beautiful end to the series.

    “Perhaps then we move to maybe an annual moment, because I also feel the mood slowly shifting and other opinions start to rise to the surface. I feel like this has had its moment and after that we can continue to something else.”

    1. because I also feel the mood slowly shifting and other opinions start to rise to the surface.

      Yep, people are waking up to the fact it serves little useful purpose and alienates many.

    2. Talking of the Clap I expect that with all this lock down and social distancing, business at the GU Medicine clinics will be a shadow of its former self for a while and then when restrictions are lifted there will be an explosion of new cases!

    3. Unfortunately heard the Whine show and this woman dribbling on. It was like listening to Pollyanna!

      1. I caught a Beeb programme briefly today. The reporterine was saying that people were unhappy because the LA (didn’t catch where) was leaving it up to parents to decide whether to send their kids to school or not. One woman was quoted as saying that it wasn’t right; somebody had to make the decision for them so that everybody went or didn’t. We are doomed. Offer them a choice, a touch of personal responsibility and they can’t cope.

      2. Oooh! Sue!!! You are awful!!! But I like you!!!
        I bet you wouldn’t post that on your BBC inhouse blog!

      3. Won’t we have to blow something up first? (Asking for the community.)

    1. This reminds me of the Millennium or Y2K Bug, which many people claim never happened, whilst ignoring the efforts of thousands of computer programmers in rectifying code to ensure it didn’t. In other words, would the NHS have coped if preventative measures hadn’t been taken? Of course we’ll never know, but that doesn’t stop people from bashing the Government. It would be tragically ironic if the Government bowed to media pressure and lifted the lockdown, only for a second wave to occur. A case of damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

      1. As someone who was intimatley involved with Y2K remediation, I can only agree.

      2. 319509+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Aa,
        I take it to mean that the first priority of a governance party would be the protection of the indigenous peoples & especially children.
        Seeing the ongoing paedophilia actions,& the incoming daily
        invasion force I do believe that peoples have very good reasons for having NO trust in these ersatz governance parties.
        The best of the worst should never enter the equation.
        By the by they damned themselves via such leaders as major,
        may, the the wretch cameron, lest we forget.

      3. If not now, when?

        We cannot stay in stasis forever.

        There is no guarantee a cure/vaccine will be found. And the virus does come with a second wave surely it is better that it happens outside the ‘flu season. We are due a bad ‘flu year and we are always told that the NHS struggles with such. imagine a bad ‘flu combined with covid-19.

        1. Since their aim is to not overwhelm the NHS and the hospitals are not crowded, surely the answer is to start a gradual release now and adjust levels in keeping with NHS utilisation.

          None of this trip to the crowded beaches either, go to work or stay home. Don’t have an extended holiday at the expense of the taxpayer.

      4. They had to clear the decks to make room for the expected wave of covid cases. They also did a sterling job of setting up the Nightingale hospitals – but in the end, the extra capacity was unused, and many people have gone without their elective surgery and cancer treatments.

    2. I don’t accept Katie Hopkins’ premise that we all knew this was a complete overreaction. I certainly didn’t. I had no idea at the time the restrictions were imposed what kind of a health crisis the country was facing. Quite how Katie Hopkins knew any better than I did escapes me. If it turns out that she is correct, will that be due to her greater intelligence, more acute intuition or just being lucky?

      I’d like to see her forecasts back in March of where we would be now in terms of Covid-19 deaths, hospitalisations and infections, assuming the government and health authorities had done… well, what exactly? Was she advocating that they did absolutely nothing other than treat it as if it were like an influenza outbreak, and simply relying on a surge in deaths and hospitalisations to spook people into voluntarily modifying their behaviour in whichever ways they guessed and hoped might work?

      Given that there is still a large measure of public support for the restrictions, with a substantial minority not wanting them lifted, where does her generalisation come from that we all knew the restrictions were an overreaction? I know she thinks she’s a spokesperson for the untold millions who are constantly being ignored and whose voice is never heard, but I’d like to know where this supreme confidence comes from – or is it arrogance? – that she speaks for all of us.

  59. “Joe Biden just massively insulted black voters – telling a popular black radio host on Friday that he ‘ain’t black’ if he was still weighing whether to support Biden or Trump in the November election”.

    JB the git that keeps on giving…

    1. Black is a state of mind, nothing to do with skin colour or genetics.
      Black seems to be to be a victim, in all possible circumstances. That’s why hey call dark-skinned people “coconut”, “Bounty” if they do not show the appropriate level of victimhood.
      Obama was apparently black – but had the whitest job on Earth.

      Edit: So, Biden was right. The presenter wasn’t being a victim, so he cannot be black. Vote Biden – remain in your victimhood forever!

  60. Just discovered the one thing that I left in Laure (gave to a neighbour) because I thought I had a set in Norfolk. Allen keys. WRONG!

    Can’t wait to find what else I done wrong (sic).

    2. We have, Bill, complete set; check with Hertslass how to contact. We are in North Suffolk so not too far away.

        1. Put some wadding, eg paper, around a flat head screwdriver that is slightly smaller than the hole and it should allow you to tighten/loosen whatever it is that you’re dealing with

          2. Have you tried long-nosed pliers, or even a pair of scissors, to shift it?

          5. Soldier neighour* is coming round for a drink in half an hour. I have asked her – she’s good with tools.

            * It’s alright, officer, she is the gardener….

    3. Just discovered the one thing that I left in Laure

      They will be Metric then in Laure

      Narfok is still on Imperial, or BSP

    4. You mean those bendy metal things you can never find until after the job’s been done with a table knife and a hammer?

      1. The very same. I shall ask Father Christmas for some….as a ramadan present.

  61. End New York City’s lockdown now! 22 May 2020.

    By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.

    It needs to end. Now.

    In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

    We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

    Meanwhile, the Big Apple is ¬dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. ¬Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.

    Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.

    I can remember once upon a time long ago, when you might have read something very like this in a UK newspaper. Perhaps the old Daily Mirror or even Daily Star, maybe even the News of the World. No longer. They have all become slaves of the Central Power and their only concern is to toady to it if not actually anticipate its wishes!

    https://nypost.com/2020/05/20/end-new-york-citys-lockdown-now/

    1. As I observed whilst queueing to shop earlier: today the pace of life moves forward slowly 6 feet at a time. And after a while it stops and moves slowly down 6 feet.

      2. Queueing to shop now seems so idiotic now that thousands of families are trooping to the beach and spreading out their towels , parking their cars close together and paddling in the sea!

        1. There is a limit to the length of time you can keep people locked away “for their own good”.

          2. Judging by the number of peole at the beach it has already. The road trafffic is back to normal.

        1. Yup – I was moved to put that in a Hi Coo!

          Life moves six feet at a time
          until heart beats stop
          and is buried 6 feet down.

    2. Perhaps New Yorkers might think more carefully about voting for a Democrat next time.

      1. The geriatric, Joe Biden, is getting a lot of support in those states that turned to Trump in 2016.

        Goddam Democrats, what did they ever do for us?

        1. Only political party in history to drop a nuclear weapon in war.
        2. Only political party in history to go to war to keep slavery.
        3. Instigators of the Jim Crow laws.
        4. Instigators of the Ku Klux Klan.

        Yeah, what did they ever do that was good?

      2. Let’s face it, Phil – do most people “think” about who or what they are voting for?

        1. Mostly tribal or self interest but their is not much left after they all abandon their manifesto’s.

  62. Just seen a video about people having hallucinations and delusions whilst in ICU being treated for COVID and post discharge. I didn’t realise that an obsolete American gull-winged British built car gave so many people nightmares.

    1. Let’s not forget that he received a ‘knock at the door’ from the nation’s finest, to try and frighten him off the scent.

  65. Priti Patel has a Border Force official at her Downing St update today. I wonder if Nigel Farage gets a chance to ask a question

    1. How will they know who is who to prosecute re the people who are not self isolating when they arrive in Britain.

      What repatriation of British nationals ..he really means Asians , doesn’t he ?

      1. Afternoon T-B -The head Border Force man got a soft ride from the questioners. I think the questions are fixed before the event. He was on about the strict controls that will be enforced for travellers coming into the UK. They must fill in a form before they leave to come over. They must say where they intend to stay and if they haven’t anywhere to go they could provide somewhere to put them. If they don’t have such a paper on arrival they will be fined and if they cannot sort things out they could be repatriated. If they break the quarantine rules they could face a £1000 fine. No mention of the boat people who are invading this country. Nigel Farage would have sorted him out. Some questions about giving NHS workers UK citizenship and the likelihood of schools opening in September.

        1. They were all soft questions and not one of them got a straight answer. Patel was repetitious and waffling. Dreadful.

        2. I wonder if crossing the Strood to Mersea would count as foreign travel? Or is that the next stage, when internal passports are introduced?

    2. You mean like: “When are the Border Force officers who are facilitating illegal immigration going to be prosecuted?”

  66. Re the travel sector , what families need to be reunited here, and who are these families who have to self isolate.. why are they so different to the millions who have entered Britain in the last 3 months since our so called lock down?

    1. The purpose of the new restrictions is to kill the tourism industry inbound and to prevent Brits enjoying foreign holidays.

      Of course, furloughed people won’t be quite as badly affected by this as the self-employed and people who have to go to work.

        1. One risks the virus but as to holidays; not necessarily, France is certainly slowly starting to reopen things as is Greece.

          1. Poor Greece having a mighty lot of trouble from infections in the latest camps.
            No wonder they’re imposing lockdown on them.

          2. I’m a cynic, as you may have noticed, but I wonder whether the virus is a jolly convenient excuse to get them shifted all over Europe.

        2. Portugal is opening up for tourism…they have managed the virus very well.
          Nice people, very cooperative.
          (PS Belle…am about half way through the sewing…could you email me, & I can send pics for you to choose?)

          1. ….It’s ghastly…. always raining, cold, wet and windy and the seafood is inedible….

          2. Yeah, I know, I’ve been there.

            We used to holiday there as a family and every summer was superb.

            When HG and I went there on our honeymoon it was very sunny on the first day and then rained most of the rest of the fortnight.

            Great, you might think, as newlyweds there are other things to do; except that she fell asleep on the beach and got very badly sun-burnt. No honeymoon baby for us!

          3. I spent my honeymoon in London. In the evening we went to the local flicks to see
            ‘The Boston Strangler’….

    1. Try stopping their pay. Then they can go on strike. As they are not at work – who cares?

      1. Give the children a chance to get a proper education as opposed to brainwashing.

    2. Legally? Won’t they be in breach of contract? I would be surprised if the standard employment contract includes some kind of “force majeure” clause.

  68. Mr Grizzle, if you are about

    Wood’s Rum is £23.00 a bottle n Morrisons.,

    I got some ‘for my Neighbour’ smorning

    1. Mr Final Attempt,

      I am, thank you. I shall visit Ken’s estimable emporium the very next time I’m in Albion.

  69. Afternoon, all. It seems that foreign fruit pickers will be exempt from quarantine. Either it’s necessary or it isn’t. Everybody needs to follow the same rules. The excuse is they will be isolated on the farm – I can’t see them social distancing in a caravan, myself:

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fruit-pickers-to-be-exempt-from-coronavirus-quarantines-qrbd3nvgf?utm_campaign=1416263_22%2F05%2F2020&utm_medium=dotmailer&utm_source=Countryside%20Alliance&dm_i=44G9,UCSN,1MJH5T,3P2U3,1

    1. This farrago descends ever further into farce every day
      Wot a bleedin’ joke

      1. We’ve just been treated to police and business ‘leaders’ in East Anglian resorts telling us to stop enjoying the Bank Holiday.
        Mental notes are being made; we have a little list.

      2. We’ve just been treated to police and business ‘leaders’ in East Anglian resorts telling us to stop enjoying the Bank Holiday.
        Mental notes are being made; we have a little list.

      1. Two summers, me. Enjoyed it immensely. Became crazy fit, and quite good with a tractor & disc harrow…
        I’ll get me chewing straw…

    3. The whole thing is complete bollox, Conwy, run by a pig-ignorant shower of no hopers.

      1. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Quarantine isn’t a choice; either you isolate everybody or it isn’t effective.

        1. Except it isn’t really quarantine.
          We’re isolating the well, not the sick.

          1. The principle is the same, though, surely. If you’re locking people down (us) to prevent the spread of disease, then you shouldn’t be letting in people who may or may not have it and letting them loose to mingle, even if it’s only in one place. They are sharp enough stopping us going out and about in the fresh air.

          2. But that’s the point, the sick are being imported and the well are being restricted.

            The sick should be the ones being locked down immediately, then the well can carry on living normal lives/working.

          3. Unless they undertake a mass testing programme we shall never know who is sick, who is well and who has had it and recovered.

  70. I must go now; soldier neighbour is on her way to have an illegal drink with us.

    I hope to join you tomorrow. Who knows?

    A demain.

  71. Oh good.

    Saga holidays have emailed me.

    Start dreaming about your 2021 holiday.

    Ha ha bloody ha.

    1. “If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
      If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
      If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
      And treat those two impostors just the same;”

      RK

        1. And I shall have to put winning Burghley off for another year; it’s been cancelled 🙂

  72. Here’s one for you. Firstborn bought some “cheddar cheese sauce” in a squeezy bottle, from Sweden. With the main ingredients being rapeseed oil & water, and the last ingredient (at 0,5%) being cheddar cheese, 1: Can this really be called food, and 2: Can it be called “Cheddar”?
    It tastes bad, btw. Not of cheese, but oxidised slime.

    1. I’ve never eaten oxidised slime, but then I’m not Norwegian.

      };-))

      As to the revolting sounding concoction, doesn’t Norway have a trades description act or something similar?

    2. I’ve just turned a delicate shade of green.
      Talking of green, some years back Germany had green tomato sauce. Did it catch on?

      1. Heinz used to do Green Tomato Sauce but I’ve not seen any for a while, not that I’ve looked for it though.

    3. The biggest selling ost in yer Sverige — by far — are those humungous chunks of soap known as hushallsost (household cheese) that makes even the most bland of mass-produced “cheddars” appear to have flavour.

      I speak from the experience of others since there is no way on this planet that I am prepared to sample the shit.

      I’m quite partial to the odd piece of Grevé (a poor man’s Gruyère) or a slightly stronger Västerbottonsost; however, when it comes to cheeses, yer Sverige is no Frogland, Switzerland or England.

    4. It’s sauce. Sort of. Aberdeen butteries are made with palm oil now, and not butter. Ice cream is made from palm oil and not cream and milk.
      The interesting thing is that these horrors are permitted by EU law. Despite this the Remainers continue to claim that standards will fall. Most people want stuff to be as per the name, and want higher standards. I do, so that is one of the reasons I voted to leave the EU.

      1. People won’t eat fat, as apparently it makes them, err, fat (no discussion about sugar). So, veg oils are wonderful – except when you see the chemical plants used to hydrogenate them, and the ever-rapidly shrinking rain forests…

        1. Hydrogenated vegetable oils are bad for you as the hydrogenation process produces trans fats.

        2. People who won’t eat fat are uneducated (or just plain stupid). They will cut the (tasty and nourishing) fat off their steak then tuck into a dish of pseudo ice-cream full of sugar and palm oil!

          You cannot educate pork!

      2. I treated myself to a really hefty ice cream maker (a bonus from the flu hysteria, nothing else to spend money on; 35% reduction from Nisbets).
        I’m having great fun making ice CREAM!

      3. I had to laugh during the last election; I attended a hustings where Antoinette Sandbach was wittering on, in response to a question expecting the answer yes about standards falling after Brexit. She said, the EU’s standards were very high – we were constantly striving to bring them up to ours! The UKIP candidate thanked her for pointing out that our standards were higher and asked why, in that case, standards would drop when we made them for ourselves.

        1. AS (boy, was I tempted to add an ‘r’ and an ‘e’) was deservedly given her marching orders in December.

          1. I know. She couldn’t resist a party political broadcast after the results were announced at the count.

        2. Our next door neighbour (biochemist) said exactly the same, and therein lay the problem – we would not be competitive because our standards were so much higher.

  73. Oh dear…….
    “Tens of thousands of coronavirus tests have been double-counted, officials admit.
    Two samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government’s official figures”
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/tens-thousands-coronavirus-tests-have-double-counted-officials/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

    It is not the first time the Government has been caught massaging the testing data. It was accused last month of including thousands of home tests which had been posted but not completed in a bid to reach its target of 100,000 tests.

    1. The test involves a swab from the mouth and nose as well as a sample of saliva.

      If there are tests from the mouth and nose where does the saliva sample come from?

        1. That’s quite an achievement as most folk queueing resemble zombies…..

          1. The instructions in the test kit don’t say anything about having to undertake the whole test in complete darkness!

        2. Then according to this Government video you use the single swab in the test kit to retrieve living skin cells from the back of your mouth and then proceed to wipe both of your nostrils with them:

          https://youtu.be/5qHTBlxfNes

          2. That’s precisely why you’ve got it where others wouldn’t.☺️

    3. Gosh – they’ll be saying that the deaths have been double-counted, too. Oh, hang on a mo……

    1. She was chastised by the authorities. The queue to carry out the spanking went around the ward twice, apparently.

      1. Margaret Thatcher was going round a mens ward and noticed one guy abusing himself behind the curtains surrounding his bed. A bit shocked she asked why he was doing that. The reply was it was a medical necessity as he’d has an op on his nuts and he was doing this to keep the tubes free. Further on there was a guy getting a BJ from a beautiful nurse. Margaret Thatcher asked if this guy had had the same op. The reply was yes. She then asked why the first guy was doing it himself but this guy was getting a BJ. The nurse said “The second guy is in BUPA”

    2. Don’t they simply experience it as ‘the country I would like to relocate to, for reasons of expediency, will shortly be more similar in temperature & climate to the country I am leaving, so hopefully I should feel at home’….?

    3. The main “terror” blacks in American cities face, is the fear of being killed by one of their own. Black on black male violence statistics are never talked about here as white folk are not the “baddies”, and the numbers show that most (90%+) of attacks on blacks are by other blacks.

      2. It’s just the same in London, though currently we aren’t hearing of such attacks as there is only one news topic at present.

    4. “racial terror”: knowing that your uncle will sell you into slavery, but not knowing when…

  76. Lockdown facts.

    I hope they give us two weeks’ notice before sending us back out into the real world. I think we’ll all need the time to become ourselves again. And by “ourselves” I mean lose 5 kilos, cut our hair and get used to not drinking from 9:00 a.m.
    Current monthly budget: Fuel $0 Entertainment $0 Clothes $0 Groceries $2,799.
    Breaking News: Wearing a mask inside your home is now highly recommended. Not so much to stop COVID-19, but to stop eating.
    With all the beauty salons, nail bars and hairdressers shut – things are getting rather ugly.
    Low maintenance chicks are having their moment right now. We don’t have nails to fill and paint, roots to dye, eyelashes to re-mink, and are thrilled not to have to get dressed every day. I have been training for this moment my entire life!
    When this quarantine is over, let’s not tell some people.
    I stepped on my scale this morning. It said: “Please practice social distancing. Only one person at a time on scale.”
    Not to brag, but I haven’t been late for anything in over 6 weeks.
    It may take a village to raise a child but I swear it’s going to take a vineyard to home school one.
    I wanted zombies and anarchy. Instead we got working from home and toilet paper shortages.
    Worst. Apocalypse. Ever.
    You know those car commercials where there’s only a vehicle on the road – doesn’t seem so unrealistic these days …
    They can open things up next month, I’m staying in until July to see what happens to y’all first.
    Day 63: The garbage man placed an AA flyer on my recycling bin.
    The spread of Covid-19 is based on two things:
    1. How dense the population is.
    2. How dense the population is.
    Appropriate analogy: “The curve is flattening so we can start lifting restrictions now” = “The parachute has slowed our rate of descent, so we can take it off now”.

    Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask and ask for money.
    Home school Day 1: I’m trying to figure out how I can get this kid transferred out of my class.
    Putting a drink in each room of my house today and calling it a pub crawl.
    Okay, the schools are closed. So do we drop the kids off at the teacher’s house or what?
    For the second part of this quarantine do we have to stay with the same family or will they relocate us? Asking for myself …
    The dumbest thing I’ve ever bought was a 2020 planner …
    You know what is REALLY scary ? In thirty or forty years time, this country (the world?) will be in the hands of people who were home-schooled by drunken parents.

    2. …. “cut our hair” …
      Bugger. That’s me holed up until after Independence Day.

        1. 4th. July.
          Nipped round to my hairdresser, and unlike the local garage, still no mention of an opening date.

          2. Join the club.
            The sheeplike behaviour of the Brits has been a sore disappointment.

    2. Goodnight, Conners, and sleep well tonight. It sounds as if the book is a real cracker – can you tell us the title and author? PS – That goes for Peddy, who seems to spend lots of his evening reading.

      1. My book is called “Jacke wie Hose” (6 of one & 1/2 dozen of the other), which has had me rocking with laughter. I shall probably finish it tonight.
        My edition is in the “pre-neue Rechtschreibung” style, which makes it a delight to read.

      2. This one is “Marie Antoinette the last Queen of France” by Evelynne Lever. I’ve nearly finished it. It follows on from “Louis XIV the Women in his Life” by Antonia Fraser and “All the King’s Women” by David Hibbert about Charles II’s court. I am gradually moving forward in time; I have a great number of unread books to choose from so I may stay with Charles II or head for the 20th Century 🙂

        1. Don’t want to spoil things for you, Conners, but if you head for the 20th Century and read about WWII be prepared for a shock. We fight back after Dunkirk and during The Battle Of Britain and eventually win. Poor old Adolf meets a sticky end.

          :-))

  80. Figures just released show that last year around 400,000 migrants arrived in the UK, from elsewhere than the EU. A net increase of around 270,000. The figures for the EU incomers are lower at 49,000 net. One question, not answered, is who are the 120,000 emigrants who left the UK and where did they go? How many of them are involved in “white flight”? (Something like this happened in the 80s when white people left London to move to Milton Keynes.).
    As the birth rate of 11.4 per 1000 results in a natural addition to the population of about 650,000 per year, the immigrants arriving are adding about 50% to our normal increase. (I’ve not deducted deaths from the figures.). One third of the increase in the UK population is the result of foreigners arriving to live here.
    I’ve not done the sums, but it seems likely that white faces are going to be an unusual sight in 20 years?

    https://uk.yahoo.com/news/immigration-uk-non-eu-countries-091000220.html

    1. And when the time comes, as it will, do you think the new masters will give a flying fuck about the white minority in the same way that the white bleeding heart lefties do about the incomers?

  82. COME INTO THE GARDEN MAUD –

    Busy day in the garden battling against a fierce wind.

    I’m disappointed in the response to the NoTTlers FLOWER SHOW post.
    I was hoping Ped would post some pics, he is a keen gardener and rose grower. Garden pics, tips advice welcome from all NoTTlers….gardening a welcome escape from the boring…boring, bloody Coronavirus.!!!

    PLEASE don’t tell me you haven’t time!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fc09bd4c75fc5c73db3089735a1e50a30a18bec402ff265643c8c76d6c56024.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/71c1f898a327827971ee45027e34efb12971ff85915ccac7c840a7b3c54b4cc7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/54a17bab34054fe1a62434c66f1d85113fa222b9d983d99e3697a5b029e22a20.jpg

    2. I put mine up in two stages; the first in April and the last two about three days ago. Yours is a very nice garden, incidentally. It’s been blowing a hooley here. All I’ve done is water the plants I transplanted yesterday.

    3. Weeds in the grass here.
      Only a very few of the various species
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/46886ef5a4d94931b884969a6d0d14c53efd24006e45baf265090a8be71b5531.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3f7913e021cf8a482c12d4d66c3ca5aa5a2ea325843c464d0283228000b1215.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b34e9d0e688fb54b8adf07a863ad382419f1ab77bdb633ce7fd7eb5bac3409ef.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b358f731030f322847dcbf0c6e10076eaf8ab9d9fce237f9f6c4168b0d75357c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ad525c16eb44236922fbf69bfdbffe4e8ed9842e46999fbc83ceba707b6f0774.jpg

      1. Been cutting trees & pollarding in the orchard. Pix tomorrow. Totally knackered, tbh. Beer, pasta & bed for me.

        1. I’ve been wrestling with the rotavator.

          Yes,it’s quicker, but it is absolutely knackering.

          1. I do not believe that you save any effort using a rototiller, you just compress the effort used into a shorter time.

          2. I’m of a similar view, but seeing an improvement in 4 hours instead of 4 days/weeks makes me prefer the machine.

          3. Our rotavator wont start. Bastard. Borrowed a tractor-mounted one…. Bliss! One pass, all done.
            Like trying to start the Queen Mary by pulling on a string, so it is. Bastard!

          4. Mine wouldn’t either. I nearly relocated my shoulder trying.

            I resorted to witchcraft.

            For some reason an hour in direct sun encourages it. First pull, and it fired. Same with the very old lawnmower.

        1. We’re very lucky (and I work at it) because the wind currents seem to bring in the seed/spores. The trick is to spot the leaves at the early stages.

          We have at least 20 species now and literally thousands of orchids around the garden. Some I’ve only seen one or two of the variety others, such as the tongue orchids, are like carpets.

          1. They’re so beautiful, I thought some were orchids, you’re very lucky to have them blow into your garden.

    5. Lovely colours and garden. Similar colours that Vouvray likes in our garden. I try to put pictures on here but they’re not accepted no matter how many times I try.

    7. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fd73a23f2e44b9b1042f5e87c40ae7afd8382e216f4661d6ca6422b948692ea8.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7bdb30cb4f1a50633940ce2aec9728d379e6437fcb77fe3410791bedfab451f.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1539ccf719083f407cc57c6c08035911d438654189104d3db569147383d65034.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ef0123d9ef61a30b8cd03e64468f5250a5c82812d41847b38dc8a2b00024c8f.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab06374bcc741d1043059b737602c1e57406937382dd5eb2870d66bed522dbef.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de996a2b303be7ccf3857db05c23b36553bb3214b7a5f455bf8493abf80fb727.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4cf25e26bcc00e3fb63da2ebab6d1ef6cd09c69b7cd9d29afc63c31ee31d9d63.jpg

    8. I will post when I have something to show!! At the moment it’s all rock, trees and river views until my prickly pears bloom, which will be later in June. My gardening days now are reduced to containers and this year they are sadly lacking.

      1. Looking forward to your posts and pics Jill. Gardening tips and advice welcome…

    9. Posted a few pics yesterday.
      The garden will hopefully improve over the next few weeks as finally I have managed to order the materials I require to rebuild some raised beds and finish off some areas left over from last year’s effort. Builders’ merchant very busy after lockdown and grateful for my order. Hopefully getting back to some sort of normality.

    2. But no justification as to why, what is the objective and how might quarantining incoming passengers support delivering that, as yet undefined, objective. The whole lot couldn’t organise a pi.. up in a brewery.

  86. I think it’s time for a mass civil disobedience movement, open the shops, pubs, cafes, restaurants, just get back to normal. This idiocy cannot go on for much longer.

    1. “Health care resources are finite”

      Lefties don’t think so!

      This bloke should be first up on the BBC, instead of the politicians.

      1. No way, if it was by the back door lots would be flying off tall buildings

          1. Lock me in a room with Owen Jones. I will take some extended time playing with him as a sadistic kid would when pulling the wings and legs off a daddy long legs.

            It would be so gratifying listening to his prolonged squeals of anguish.

          2. He does rather seem to bring any latent sadistic tendencies to the surface…

    3. I think we’re all pretty much in agreement with almost, if not all, he says. So how many others in the population agree with him?

      1. I found this talk interesting and so I looked him up on wiki and was surprised to hear that he is a vegan, an anti-vivisectionist and a transvestite married to a woman 26 years younger than himself!

        3. Would we have taken his talk a little less seriously if he’d been dressed in just “suspendies and a bra”?

    4. “Human lives are worth more than anything else. Never put anything above the saving of one human life.”

      And therein lies the conundrum that is killing the planet. Mankind’s selfish and idiotic belief that IT is more important than anything else is what is killing off the necessary biodiversity that sustains All life, and is making the human population of this planet run amok and out-of-control.

      Maybe the good doctor would be best advised to preach compulsory birth control … worldwide.

      1. “Never put anything above the saving of one human life.”
        It follows then that saving of two or more human lives is of less value, silly old bugger.

      2. I’d put quite a few things before saving a certain T. Blair’s life. Not that I wish him ill, just if the choice were there…

  88. 319509+ up ticks,
    Is it not morally wrong if it is a proven fact that meeting with the french to take groups of immigrants to resettle in the UK smacks a little bit of knifing the British people in the back.
    Also is it not treacherous to bring to these shores potential felons endangering adults & children alike.
    Do these governance politico’s not consider their actions
    could help build another rotherham.
    Does patel consider the border force fit for purpose if so
    can she explain the “Dover, gateway to the welfare office” daily ongoing campaign ?

    1. The French are still talking revenge for us beating the crap out of them many years ago.
      One day of course they may get round to thanking us for saving them from the nazis. Or perhaps that’s the real problem.

      1. One of our first experiences in France, when we moved here, was when my wife parked our obviously British car and an old lady approached.

        “Est-ce que vous etes britannique?
        Oui
        Nous vous devons beaucoup, merci.”

        It put a different perspective on the area.
        We always attend Remembrance Day here and still the very old make similar comments.

        1. I have found that the wartime generation are grateful for what we did, but of course, they are becoming fewer.

        3. I have always found the French people delightful, The people that run their country not so.

        4. We had a similar experience. He added, ‘sadly, the young not so much, these days’.

          1. I remember some 50 years ago celebrating my birthday in a country restaurant in the Beaujolais region. The elderly waitress, who must have been a grandmother, made a fuss of us as though we were her own grandsons.

        5. In 1981- on my first visit to France, we were travelling with another couple and our two children. A lady stopped and asked if our blonde friend was German. When we told her we were all English, she relaxed and we enjoyed a shared lunch together. She came from Perigord and had been in the Maquis during the war – and had marched down the Champs-Élysées with de Gaulle in 1944.

      4. 319509+ up ticks,
        Evening Re,
        Maybe so, but why are our governance party of seemingly their own free will, acting in collusion with the french in such an anti British morally illegal manner, and against the wishes of the
        majority of the British peoples ?

        1. She wants to keep her ‘job’. She wouldn’t be able to make a living outside the political sector. Just like the other 649 of the useless baskets.

          1. The political job is, often, the route to extremely lucrative positions later (Clegg) which are secured on one’s ability to pull some strings in Westminster and Whitehall (same applies to senior covil servants)

      2. 319509+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        They are all polished rhetoric jockey’s, talking a good remedy to
        ANY problem but the end result is 9/10 no action taken.
        Half the time it seems that they create a problem to goad the people, then when the peoples don’t bite they come up with a rhetorical solution.
        Maybe the goading has a purpose after witnessing the police and their actions currently.
        My personal opinion.

  93. Good night my beautiful Gentlefolk – I shall return au matin. God bless you all.

  94. One of the many symptoms being bandied about in the early stages of COVID-19 infection was a woolly brain.

    Brain dysfunction is not one of the issues reported as being particularly significant as a symptom of COVID-19 infection but today I came across this YouTube video of patient experiences of delirium which is now being seen as a disturbing and enduring side effect of the virus especially if the patient has been on a ventilator in ICU.

    This is particulary relevant in Mental Health Awareness Week because important decisions affecting our everyday lives are being made by people who may not be aware that their infection has given them a woolly brain.
    It is characterised by an individual making illogical decisions and because it is an abnormal behavioural state that individual will be incapable of self recognition of their mental state. In that respect this mental state mimics dementia.

    The individual must be persuaded by others that their judgement of the world they are living in is flawed. This state of affairs becomes increasingly problematic the more of us get into such a predicament which is just as easily induced by an unrelenting fear of a ongoing situation.

    It could be that children are more aware of the fears in our COVID society than we are.

    https://youtu.be/8_AKe07J7tE

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