Friday 23 April: Even with Covid passports, expensive tests will prevent people travelling

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/2021/04/22/letterseven-covid-passports-expensive-tests-will-prevent-people/

512 thoughts on “Friday 23 April: Even with Covid passports, expensive tests will prevent people travelling”

    1. Good morning, Minty, and all NoTTLers. Today I shall be wearing an English rose in my buttonhole, to celebrate both St George’s Day and Shakespeare’s birthday – Happy Birthday, William!

    1. Uptick to the first one but I’m not English so wouldn’t fly the second.
      Have a lovely day, all whether its being SGD is close to your heart or not 🙂

      1. Song Of Patriotic Prejudice
        Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

        The English, the English, the English are best
        I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest!
        The rottenest bits of these islands of ours
        We’ve left in the hands of three unfriendly powers
        Examine the Irishman, Welshman or Scot
        You’ll find he’s a stinker, as likely as not
        Och aye, awa’ wi’ yon Edinburgh Festival!
        The Scotsman is mean, as we’re all well aware
        And bony and blotchy and covered with hair
        He eats salted porridge, he works all the day
        And he hasn’t got bishops to show him the way!
        The English, the English, the English are best
        I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest!
        Ah hit me old mother over the head with a shillelagh
        The Irishman now our contempt is beneath
        He sleeps in his boots and he lies in his teeth
        He blows up policemen, or so I have heard
        And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third!
        The English are noble, the English are nice
        And worth any other at double the price!
        Ah, iechyd da!
        The Welshman’s dishonest, he cheats when he can
        And little and dark, more like monkey than man
        He works underground with a lamp in his hat
        And he sings far too loud, far too often, and flat!
        And crossing the Channel, one cannot say much
        For the French or the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch
        The Germans are German, the Russians are red
        And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed!
        The English are moral, the English are good
        And clever and modest and misunderstood!
        And all the world over, each nation’s the same
        They’ve simply no notion of playing the game
        They argue with umpires, they cheer when they’ve won
        And they practise beforehand, which ruins the fun!
        The English, the English, the English are best
        So up with the English and down with the rest!
        It’s not that they’re wicked or naturally bad
        It’s knowing they’re foreign that makes them so mad!
        For the English are all that a nation should be,
        And the flower of the English are Donald, Michael,
        Donald, Michael,
        And Me!

    2. Best country in the bally world.

      Just a bally shame it’s run by a bunch of greedy, lazy, incompetent fools.

  4. Happy St. George’s Day from a bright but chilly Derbyshire. An absolutely beautifully clear day with a distinctly -3°C on the yard thermometer!

  5. Good Morning Folks,

    Another bright start here, bit of frost on the lawn.
    I think we have had more frosts this last few weeks than we have had all through the winter.

    Happy St Georges Day

      1. ‘Morning, Bob, no hyphen necessary, an apostrophe might be nice but thanks for the wishes.

  9. Happy St George’s Day!

    How heartening to read some good news – Richard Tice and Laurence Fox have formed an alliance – with the backing of Farage!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/23/backing-st-georges-day-pact-defend-liberty-against-authoritarian/

    It makes sense that the small pro-freedom/anti-lockdown parties combine their forces. it would be great to see David Kurten on board with this as well.

    I hope that they propose some kind of written constitution for the UK. We need some legal protection to prevent this or any future government snatching away our rights and freedoms, like sweets from a naughty child.

    1. ‘Morning, JK and thank you for your wishes.

      We already have a Bill of Rights 1689 and I quote, “In the United Kingdom, the Bill of Rights is further accompanied by Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 as some of the basic documents of the uncodified British constitution.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

      A written constitution identifies what you may only do whilst an unwritten constitution allows you to do what you wish, always provided that it breaks no law.

      1. Morning Nanny! I think what I was trying to get at in my rather clumsy way, is that we need some way to prevent this or future governments nodding through lockdowns or other restrictions on us. Even the Green agenda which Johnson is pushing was not in any manifesto, but will have huge financial and lifestyle implications. There needs to be more ‘checks and balances’ on the unrestricted power of the State, and sadly it appears that our current system does not give us that protection.

        We have seen a fundamental shift in the relationship between the citizen and the State in the past year. From the English Common Law approach of ‘everything is permitted unless specifically made illegal’ to the Napoleonic Code of ‘the State forbids everything, unless it specifically gives us permission.’

        I liked the ‘Old Normal’ where I could live my life in freedom!

        1. Not clumsy, Old Troop, I understand the desire to rein in the Government and on that score, I have to agree with Ogga1 that we need a strong, preferably right-wing, government, held to account by an equally strong opposition.

          Would that we could find either party before we’re completely sold down the river. Cometh the hour, cometh the man but…

          …where the f*** is he?

        2. Not clumsy, Old Troop, I understand the desire to rein in the Government and on that score, I have to agree with Ogga1 that we need a strong, preferably right-wing, government, held to account by an equally strong opposition.

          Would that we could find either party before we’re completely sold down the river. Cometh the hour, cometh the man but…

          …where the f*** is he?

        3. English Common Law is specific, rather than general, in its prohibitions.

          When I was suggesting a week or two ago that it is better to identify and ban certain Covid threats and let freedom be the default, it awoke some criticism from libertarians here. However, my intention was always for the prohibitions to wither on the vine as soon as they no longer become necessary, and generally ignored by the law enforcers until such time as we get another emergency that can then be swiftly dealt with, without the delay and rigmarole of getting it past some central Court of Justice and empire of administrators first.

          Right now, I certainly support a blanket ban on movement to and from countries such as Brazil and India.

    2. This is most interesting news. Centrist Fox is considerably to the Left of Tice, and Reclaim is essentially founded on true egalitarianism “All Lives Matter”, rather than Tice’s more transatlantic Thatcherite – “hand all over to the winners and the Devil take the slackers and losers”. Nevertheless, they (and I) have common cause when taking on the woke menace.

      All we need now is for the SDP to join the alliance, and we have a full spread of political opinion that has enough enough critical mass to make a bid for Government.

  10. Did Putin get what he wanted in latest round of sabre-rattling? 23 April 2021.

    As thousands of Russian troops retreat to their barracks, we question what was behind the Russian president’s latest military escalation.

    Well it was quite obviously to prevent Ukraine taking over the Donbass, this being part of a larger plan to assassinate Lukashenko and draw Belarus into NATO’s orbit as well.

    Both of these moves have now been frustrated and it looks as if Putin has come out ahead as per usual. We won’t hear the details of what actually happened for years but I suspect that after his Red Lines speech he privately put the Hard Words onto the Americans and told them unless they backed off there would be War and it wouldn’t just be Ukraine that went under the hammer. The Americans, their plans for both Ukraine and Belarus shot down, and the Black Sea closed off to them backed down.

    Signs to look out for that this is true? Well Navalny will probably call off his “Hunger Strike” in a couple of days and the UK entry into the Black Sea may well suffer a similar fate.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/22/job-done-putin-russia-turns-away-brink-war-west/

    1. The political hack from the Evenng Standard was on Talk radio last night, giving it large about the wonderful Biden making Putin look very silly! I listened in amazement!

    2. When I read about the troop redeployment, the chess move ‘Castling’ came to mind. Although not strictly defensive it spiked the narrative that Russia was building up forces to invade Ukraine. Your move Joe….

    1. Johnson even uses the phrase “climate emergency” which is straight out of the XR/Thunberg lexicon. We might as well have elected Caroline Lucas, there is nothing noticeably conservative about Johnson or his government of Woke Greens.

      1. 331905+ upticks,
        Morning AS,
        Just run Jack down & George up, with a backing chorus of blackbirds ( avian) whistling the Nation Anthem.

  13. SIR – Electric vehicle charger ratings are typically 3.5 kilowatts or more, and with 20 million electric vehicles the peak charger load would be 70,000 megawatts, which alone exceeds current maximum demand on the national grid. That assumes only one electric vehicle per household. To that must be added the load applied by heat pumps (Letters, April 22).

    On some winter days, the total solar and wind capacity is little more than 1 per cent of maximum demand, suggesting that we will need more than 23 new 3,000 megawatt power stations, plus an upgrade of the transmission system, to cater for the potential electric vehicle charger load.

    It is has also been reported that the carbon footprint of an electric vehicle doesn’t fall below that of a petrol or diesel vehicle until it has travelled 50,000 miles (average annual UK vehicle mileage is around 10,000 miles). One has to ask: what cost-benefit analysis is the policy based on, when the UK is responsible for only about 1 per cent of global hydrocarbon emissions?

    The programme will not only put more into fuel poverty, but will also drive energy-intensive businesses abroad to countries such as India and China, where they will cause even more emissions than before.

    Roger J Arthur
    Storrington, West Sussex

    The author’s parents must have thought they were being very funny when choosing J Arthur’s first name.

    1. The only discernible conclusion one can make from what they are planning is that very few people will have cars or they are planning for a much smaller population

    2. Been saying that for ages now. But Government “follows the science”, apparently, except when it’s inconvenient.

    6. A few weeks ago one of the Elite wrote in the Press that once we had all gone electric there will be far less cars on the roads.

      Anyone got the link?

    7. Facts and reality are not something fat state bothers itself with. There has been no analysis, just ‘green is good, we want green. Stuff the consequences. After all, it won’t affect them. They don’t care.

      I see their idea of electric cars as simply a battery for their unreliable energy networks.

    1. Cry, “God for Harry (not that one), England and St George!”

      Good morning, Sue and thank you.

    2. mng and thanks to you and others who’ve passed the same. In poking a wasps nest I sent similar just now to UK Kenya High Comm in Upper Hill and no surpsise – zero response. But then they’re on half day Friday working hours

  16. The Dark Side Of Women…

    A woman was in town on a shopping trip.

    She began her day finding the most perfect shoes in the first shop and a beautiful dress on sale in the second.

    In the third, everything had just been reduced by 50 percent when her mobile phone rang.

    It was a female doctor notifying her that her husband had just been in a terrible car accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU..

    The woman told the doctor to inform her husband where she was and that she’d be there as soon as possible.

    As she hung up she realized she was leaving what was shaping up to be her best day ever in the boutiques. She decided to get in a couple of more shops before heading to the hospital.

    She ended up shopping the rest of the morning, finishing her trip with a cup of coffee and a beautiful chocolate cake slice, compliments of the last shop. She was jubilant.

    Then she remembered her husband. Feeling guilty, she dashed to the hospital.

    She saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about her husband’s condition. The lady doctor glared at her and shouted, ‘You went ahead and finished your shopping trip didn’t you! I hope you’re proud of yourself!

    While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself in town, your husband has been languishing in the Intensive Care Unit! It’s just as well you went ahead and finished, because it will more than likely be the last shopping trip you ever take!

    For the rest of his life he will require round-the-clock care. And YOU will now be his carer!’

    The woman was feeling so guilty she broke down and sobbed.

    The lady doctor then chuckled and said, ‘I’m just pulling your leg. He’s dead. Show me what you bought.’

    1. I refuse to believe this. No woman seems capable of going in to just one shop and choosing the clothes she wants to buy. It always takes at least 30, only to go back to the first one.

      This is why when we shop as a family, Junior and I come home until she’s finished.

  17. SIR – Con Coughlin’s timely analysis (Comment, April 21) of New Zealand’s attitude to its membership of the Five Eyes intelligence and security alliance carries an implicit warning about the importance of Western allies keeping a united front in dealing with Beijing.

    New Zealand does not have the resources to contribute much to Five Eyes; it gets a great deal more than it can possibly ever give. However, its detachment from the alliance would still be a big strategic win for China and of far-reaching significance.

    New Zealand, for obvious reasons of geopolitics, faces its own challenges in handling its relations with the Chinese Communist leadership. However, it would be strongly in New Zealand’s national interest if its prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, assured her Five Eyes allies, privately if she does not wish to raise Chinese hackles, that her government’s commitment to the alliance is and will be rock solid.

    Sir Richard Dearlove
    Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) 1999-2004
    Cambridge

    BTL:

    Peter Beveridge
    23 Apr 2021 12:16AM
    To Sir Richard

    Remember Jacinda’s Background as the Pres of the Int Union of Socialist Youth and her ultimate goal for a job in the trough at the UN.

    Her Govt has been a disaster for NZ with failures on all fronts. Yet as she gave the MSM 150million to keep afloat they sing her praises far and wide.

  18. This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,–This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

    That scum in Westminster never read this!

    3. Good morning, sir!
      We’ve got the blackthorn blossom out and the elms are full of elm keys with their leaves coming out as are the sycamores, but after looking at several ash trees I think we’ve lost more than a few of them to die-back.

      1. ‘Morning, BoB, here in Suffolk, the blackthorn being the earliest, has already been and gone – I’ve noted the sites for sloes in September/October.

        What we do have is an abundance of hawthorn, though our small beech-hedge, while still the chat-room for the spuggies, remains obstinately brown.

      1. Wasn’t it Leeds where the City Council wanted to cut down all the trees lining the roads?

        1. Norwich City Council wanted to cut down chestnut trees lining the roads. Under the guise of ‘elf & safety as kids wanted to collect their conkers.

          1. Bastard council chopped down a hundred year old tree because some dumb biddy complained about the light. If it’d been my choice I’d have shoved a branch up her bottom and left her up there.

  20. These were meant to be my goodnight posts,epic fail due to wine so I’ll drop them off now

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  21. I suppose some learned left wing academic scholar will come on the tv or radio this morning and come out with the killer line that St George wasn’t even English, so take that all you deplorables, he wont say the last bit, but he will be thinking it.

    1. He won’t bother to mention that St George is also the Patron Saint of Georgia (the European one) and several other countries.

    2. St. Patrick wasn’t Irish, and St. Andrew wasn’t Scottish. Of the four patron saints of the British Isles, only St. David was born in the country of which he is patron – Wales.

  22. I suppose some learned left wing academic scholar will come on the tv or radio this morning and come out with the killer line that St George wasn’t even English, so take that all you deplorables, he wont say the last bit, but he will be thinking it.

  23. Former MI6 boss Dearlove still stuck in the past seeking a role for FCDO / MI6 follwing collapse of Empire wittering on about Jacinta Arden but overlooking basic fact Arden before entering “politics” was a footsoldier in Blair’s office udring his rise up the ladder. “Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s” poor attempt to virtual signal in a Bretton Woods reference via his name might need to start looking at the source of Fort Detrick and US Mil competitors actvities at Wolrd Military Games in Wuhan – but I doubt it

    SIR – Covid passports will help (report, April 22), but if costly tests are required to visit even “green” countries, many will still be unable to travel.

    Why does the travel industry not use its bulk-buying power to reduce these excessively high prices – or even to offer tests free to customers, and certainly to those who originally booked their holidays before the pandemic started?

    David Oldcorn
    Windsor, Berkshire

    SIR – The importance of good ventilation and fresh air to reducing transmission of the Covid virus has been emphasised, yet people seem determined to share recirculated air in aircraft and foreign hotels for the sake of a few days in the sun.

    I hope that the cost of tests brings home to them the risks they are taking with their own and others’ health.

    Mike Penberth
    Soham, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – Millions of pounds have been invested in lateral flow tests, so, if they work, why are they not being used for returning travellers? If a suspect reading is obtained, surely that is the time to carry out a PCR test.

    To suggest that people will be placated by yet another travel review on June 28 is ludicrous, as this is far too late to help travel companies and for would-be travellers to make plans.

    David Archer
    Maidenhead, Berkshire

    SIR – Why does the Government continue to insist on PCR testing for all travellers returning from overseas?

    PCR Covid tests are highly sensitive and are capable of detecting infectious people with high viral loads as well as those who are asymptomatic and who have low or insignificant viral loads. That means a positive PCR result puts everyone in the “infectious” category. Surely the lateral flow test, which is less likely to provide “false infectious” results, should be used instead?

    The PCR test could then be properly employed as a follow-up for detecting variants of concern.

    Dr Lindy Thomsen
    St Albans, Hertfordshire

    SIR – Arriving at Heathrow recently, I imagined the Border Force would be ready to process passengers’ Covid paperwork quickly and efficiently.

    The passport check e-barriers were not working, and the test results and forms of two planeloads of passengers were processed by just four officials. Two more checked passports manually, while about 15 check desks sat empty. Imagine the chaos if travel restrictions were loosened this summer.

    Sean Arnold
    London SE1

    SIR – Last summer people were allowed to go abroad just as we had got the rate of infection down. Cases then began to surge and we had another wave.

    There are worse things than not going abroad – like dying.

    Dr Jenny Jessop
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    The lab in Wuhan

    SIR – It is becoming clear that the World Health Organisation’s investigation into the origins of Covid in China has been severely hampered by a suspiciously overprotective Chinese government.

    Those of us in the biosecurity and terror world have been in the vanguard of defence against pathogens, in my case for more than 31 years. I’ve dealt with al-Qaeda anthrax attacks in Iraq and Isil attempts to use bubonic plague in Syria. But – like most, I suspect – I completely missed a pathogen such as Covid as a potential catastrophe‑maker.

    What concerns me about Covid is that it is almost “too perfect” a pathogen: highly transmissible, deadly and ever-evolving. If this was the result of a zoonotic transfer, why now? People in China have been eating bats and pangolins for millennia.

    This question is too important to drop. We must get to patient zero and find out what really went on in the Wuhan lab to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. There are thousands of labs and more than one million scientists working on pathogens around the globe at the moment. Covid has demonstrated that we can no longer let them go about their trade unregulated.

    Hamish de Bretton-Gordon
    Tisbury, Wiltshire

    National parks’ future

    SIR – I disagree with Norman Cowling (Letters, April 16) about the proposed changes to national park management.

    It matters not whether the executive is central or in the regions; what matters is that the members, like those of county councils, are elected rather than appointed. Then those of us living and working in these areas could vote out the failures.

    Regardless of where the decision-makers are based, national park residents need an authority that can produce credible plans to welcome tourists safely , support traditional hill-farming and balance both of these demands with environmental aims – something I have not yet witnessed during the 22 years I have lived and worked in Dartmoor National Park.

    Joss Hibbs
    Yelverton, Devon

    Bank v customer

    SIR – I have sympathy with Brian Symonds (Letters, April 21) and his experience with Metro Bank.

    I started a small business a couple of years ago and, having had a personal account with Metro Bank for a while, decided to see if I could open a business account.

    Like Mr Symonds, I had to jump through lots of hoops, but the thing that brought the process to a halt was the bank’s insistence that I had an accountant – an obstacle that we could not overcome.

    I turned to Barclays, where I have a joint personal account with my husband, and my business account was opened in three weeks.

    Metro Bank has now lost two customers.

    Penny Cole
    Watlington, Oxfordshire

    Super League lessons

    SIR – Following the controversy over the European Super League (Letters, April 22), football has found out who has the real power.

    Owners and managers come and go, as do players, but loyal club supporters stay for life. Perhaps cricket will also discover this when the Hundred starts.

    Peter Spellissy
    Nailsea, Somerset

    Five Eyes alliance

    SIR – Con Coughlin’s timely analysis (Comment, April 21) of New Zealand’s attitude to its membership of the Five Eyes intelligence and security alliance carries an implicit warning about the importance of Western allies keeping a united front in dealing with

    Beijing.

    New Zealand does not have the resources to contribute much to Five Eyes; it gets a great deal more than it can possibly ever give. However, its detachment from the alliance would still be a big strategic win for China and of far-reaching significance.

    New Zealand, for obvious reasons of geopolitics, faces its own challenges in handling its relations with the Chinese Communist leadership. However, it would be strongly in New Zealand’s national interest if its prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, assured her Five Eyes allies, privately if she does not wish to raise Chinese hackles, that her government’s commitment to the alliance is and will be rock solid.

    Sir Richard Dearlove
    Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) 1999-2004
    Cambridge

    Digital artefacts

    SIR – Whatever the legalities, there will be increasing demands that items of antiquity be returned to their places of origin (Leading Article, April 22).

    However, this can be done relatively painlessly by using digital modelling technology to create visually perfect facsimiles for the countries returning the items to keep. Since these items are normally too fragile to be touched, there will really be no loss.

    Dare I suggest that this approach might be taken with the Elgin Marbles?

    David Dunbar
    Broadway, Worcestershire

    Garlicky greeting

    SIR – I well remember my first visit to Paris in the late 1960s, and the wonderful aroma of Gauloises and garlic on the buses (Letters, April 22).

    Thirty years later, however, on a train from Blois to Paris, the French travellers looked most put out when we ate our garlicky baguette sandwiches. Has my nose adapted, or is French transport no longer the hotbed of garlic it once was?

    John Dinnis
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    SIR – In the good old days, the Paris Metro was completely 3G – garlic, Gauloises and Gitanes.

    Rosemary Stanbury
    Swindon, Wiltshire

    Cut back on hedge-trimming when birds breed

    SIR – Jean White’s idea of tackling the decline in bird numbers by introducing a close season for hedge-cutting (Letters, April 12) is covered by regulations issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which prohibit trimming between March 1 and September 1 without a derogation.

    This is too often regarded as applying only to farmers. We need announcements, particularly for the opening of the season in September. This would prevent much of the unnecessary trimming done during the breeding season.

    Bill Hookey
    Bookham, Surrey

    SIR – Prince Philip was an advocate for conservation. How sad, then, to see on news reports hedges being cut at Windsor before his funeral. At the peak of nesting season, he surely would have preferred unclipped bushes with the birds undisturbed.

    Graham White
    Kingham, Oxfordshire

    Electric vehicles will drive up emissions abroad

    SIR – Electric vehicle charger ratings are typically 3.5 kilowatts or more, and with 20 million electric vehicles the peak charger load would be 70,000 megawatts, which alone exceeds current maximum demand on the national grid. That assumes only one electric vehicle per household. To that must be added the load applied by heat pumps (Letters, April 22).

    On some winter days, the total solar and wind capacity is little more than 1 per cent of maximum demand, suggesting that we will need more than 23 new 3,000 megawatt power stations, plus an upgrade of the transmission system, to cater for the potential electric vehicle charger load.

    It is has also been reported that the carbon footprint of an electric vehicle doesn’t fall below that of a petrol or diesel vehicle until it has travelled 50,000 miles (average annual UK vehicle mileage is around 10,000 miles). One has to ask: what cost-benefit analysis is the policy based on, when the UK is responsible for only about 1 per cent of global hydrocarbon emissions?

    The programme will not only put more into fuel poverty, but will also drive energy-intensive businesses abroad to countries such as India and China, where they will cause even more emissions than before.

    Roger J Arthur
    Storrington, West Sussex

    1. David Dunbar – the Elgin Marbles.

      And let the originals be destroyed by an impoverished and careless Greek Government?

        2. Of course they would.

          Smashed up, as hardcore for roads and as building material for hovels.

      2. They were pretty gone in when the noble lord, Lord Elgin turned up with his cheque book.

      3. Morning Nan.

        The reason these items were found and then saved was because they were brought to the West. The ransacking of the Baghdad Museum and the theft of priceless articles as well as the wilful destruction of Ancient Monuments throughout the Middle East by Islamic Terorists dictates that this should remain so for the foreseeable future!

        1. Will these priceless articles be safe in the UK in the future as the inflatable boats keep piling into our shores? I think not.

        2. Morning Minty,

          Just a small, but significant amendment…

          “The reason these items were found and then saved was because they were bought by and brought to the West. “

        3. Perhaps a good test of how well Muslims respect their heritage is to explore how much of ancient Mecca, one of their five pillars, their most important city of pilgrimage, and to where they direct their prayers five times a day, survived the modern redevelopers?

      4. Morning Nan.

        The reason these items were found and then saved was because they were brought to the West. The ransacking of the Baghdad Museum and the theft of priceless articles as well as the wilful destruction of Ancient Monuments throughout the Middle East by Islamic Terorists dictates that this should remain so for the foreseeable future!

    2. “…my business account was opened in three weeks” – how can it take so long? In Norway, it takes about 5 minutes or less, and way back in the 1980s, I was able to open a business account in Newport Pagnell in about 30 minutes.

    3. FFS – there are some real wimps writing to, and getting published in, the Telegaffe! Yes, you Mike, and you Dr Jenny!

      1. My take on the majority of names is, using yday’s example of list within new Box 500’s graduation year [Ken McCallum], put list of alphabet soup names in a hat then given a topic to write about. The tone of recent letters certainly points to attempting to both deflect people’s attention from real issues while touching on issues they want to “promote”. Just a gut feel

    4. Dear Dr Jessop,

      There are worse things than dying. Like not living until our time is up. If we are not living then we are already dead.

      Yours very sincerely,
      poppiesmum

    5. “What concerns me about Covid is that it is almost “too perfect” a pathogen: highly transmissible, deadly and ever-evolving.” So deadly, Hamish, that 99.7% of people who get it, recover. All viruses evolve (and get weaker).

  25. Morning, all. Bright and sunny with another frost here in N Essex.

    Here’s another brick in the green wall that Johnson & Co are attempting to build. Kwasi Crazy Kwarteng encouraging veganism as a method to tackle climate change. Ergo, this will become policy over time. Get prepared for no more beef, pork, lamb, dairy products, eggs etc, etc and be prepared for tofu, other delightful soya products, meal worms (EU cleared these for human consumption recently, I believe), insect protein (rumours that a certain Davos/WEF billionaire is already looking at this with patents in mind).
    Madness? Of course. Johnson, his paramour and the collection of imbeciles that constitute the Cabinet have to be removed before this nonsense develops any further.

    https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1385258324963246082

    1. Problem is, they’d have to cut down all the rainforest to make space to grow all those beans the world will need. Animals can graze on low quality pasture between the trees, that would otherwise not support planted crops.
      Not so green now, eh?

      1. The greens have a very narrow focus, as do many activist groups. Their inability to see the wood for the trees sits well with your very much on the ball point. As things stand their plans will do more damage to the Planet than they are capable of understanding. The other, very sinister, downside for these people is that those powerful people whom they think support them have radical plans to reduce the World’s population and I can’t imagine that the greens would be a protected group.

      2. The case for Veganism is based on choosing only to examine American methods and ignoring those from anywhere else, because anything not American doesn’t count. Never more so than choosing to use the steer lots in Kansas, with huge inputs of bought in rainforest soya, lakes of slurry and routing dosing up with growth hormones and antibiotics, with mass production of the burger staple, and ignoring traditional mixed farming in the endangered family farms in Europe.

        I lived in Herefordshire for five years. This is a pastoral county, but in the 1980s, farmers were encouraged to get out of dairy and beef and into arable. Stockproof hedges were grubbed up to make way for more efficient machinery, and the land was sprayed ten times a year with all sorts of killers and chemical supplements. We had the Lincolnshire 4-course rotation imposed: barley, barley, barley, world cruise. Mixed farms use animal manure to fertilise the field, which creates a food chain feeding insects, which feed the birds, which feed predator mammals. It is how it should be, and it is far more Green than the arable prairies the Vegans are demanding to be made universal.

        I bought a corner of the neighbouring farmer’s field to make a garden next to my home. When I dug into the soil to plant some trees to make a windbreak, it was like handling a corpse. There was no life in it, and it smelt somewhat industrial. In the end, I had to walk down to an untouched wood a mile away and take a few bucketfuls of forest soil to try to colonise some natural life back into the ground.

        Planting trees was used as grounds for divorce, so my wife could claim her women’s right to get her a more adequate husband, and so I had to leave the home, as the law demands of men. Still, the corner of Worcestershire where I now live has half an acre of land that has not been ravaged by progressiveness, and the neighbour’s sheep keep the land sweet.

        1. …and ‘supposedly’ on the poor grass that will exist, under the vast acres of so-called ‘Solar Farms’.

    2. He doesn’t believe a word of this. He is just spouting some guff the BPAPM’s mistress has ordered him to.

      1. It would be interesting to put Meghan Markle and Princess Nut Nuts in a prison cell together with a bottle of poison, a dagger and an gun and see which one kills the other first and which way she does it!

        1. That’s very cruel, Rastus. Don’t give them poison, dagger or gun. Put them in strait jackets and lock the door. Only each other for company – what a way to die!

      2. BT, I do not think that very many are true believers in this nonsense. The problem we have is that they will, for reasons known only to themselves, but I suspect for political advancement or merely remaining in a job, follow the leader. This exposes them as shallow careerists who have no true ideological base. Their current leader is a fine example of that ilk: poses as a Conservative but acts in his own self-interest.

    3. Except we can’t tell him to sod off. Such nonsense should see him looking at the door for such idiotic comments. It’s a prime example of the state having far too much power and not realising it’s job is absolutely limited in the extreme. Without the massive amounts of our cash they couldn’t do this nonsense.

  29. Not only is today St George’s Day, of course, it is also the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare….

    In The Grimes today, there is just one entry in their “On this day” column. 1984 – discovery of virus that causes AIDS.

    Gee thanks, The Thunderer, for nothing.

    1. Good morning Bill

      “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”

      I thought today was the WS’s birthday?

      1. Marked as such – but uncertain, Maggie. No mention anywhere, of course. Hideously white slave dealing imperialist.

  30. Pinched from Going Postal:-

    St George he was for England,
    And before he killed the dragon
    He drank a pint of English ale
    Out of an English flagon.
    For though he fast right readily
    In hair-shirt or in mail,
    It isn’t safe to give him cakes
    Unless you give him ale.

    St George he was for England,
    And right gallantly set free
    The lady left for dragon’s meat
    And tied up to a tree;
    But since he stood for England
    And knew what England means,
    Unless you give him bacon
    You mustn’t give him beans.

    St George he is for England,
    And shall wear the shield he wore
    When we go out in armour
    With battle-cross before.
    But though he is jolly company
    And very pleased to dine,
    It isn’t safe to give him nuts
    Unless you give him wine.

    —- G.K. Chesterton

    1. Thank you, BoB, I like Chesterton – and Hilaire Belloc for humour.

      For England and England’s ways, it’s hard to beat Kipling and Masefield.

      1. I remember learning The Rolling English Road by heart when I was at prep school and I can still recite it!

        Chesterton was derided in academic circles for not being intellectual enough. Hilaire Belloc – most of whose cautionary verses I love and know by heart wrote:

        Remote and ineffectual don
        That dared attack my Chesterton!

        Lines to a Don

        Remote and ineffectual Don
        That dared attack my Chesterton,
        With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
        Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
        Unworthy for a tilt with men—
        Your quavering and corroded pen;
        Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
        Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
        Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
        Don nervous, Don of crudities;
        Don clerical, Don ordinary,
        Don self-absorbed and solitary;
        Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
        Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
        Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
        Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
        Don hypocritical, Don bad,
        Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
        Don (since a man must make an end),
        Don that shall never be my friend.

        * * *

        Don different from those regal Dons!
        With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
        Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
        The Absolute across the hall,
        Or sail in amply billowing gown
        Enormous through the Sacred Town,
        Bearing from College to their homes
        Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
        Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
        Uprising on my inward sight
        Compact of ancient tales, and port
        And sleep—and learning of a sort.
        Dons English, worthy of the land;
        Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
        Good Dons perpetual that remain
        A landmark, walling in the plain—
        The horizon of my memories—
        Like large and comfortable trees.

        * * *

        Don very much apart from these,
        Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
        Don to thine own damnation quoted,
        Perplexed to find thy trivial name
        Reared in my verse to lasting shame.
        Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,
        Repulsive Don—Don past all bearing.
        Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
        Don despicable, Don of death;
        Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
        Don evil; Don that serves the devil.
        Don ugly—that makes fifty lines.
        There is a Canon which confines
        A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
        If written in Iambic Verse
        To fifty lines. I never cut;
        I far prefer to end it—but
        Believe me I shall soon return.
        My fires are banked, but still they burn
        To write some more about the Don
        That dared attack my Chesterton.

        1. My favourite Chesterton is:

          The Song Against Grocers

          God made the wicked Grocer
          For a mystery and a sign,
          That men might shun the awful shops
          And go to inns to dine;
          Where the bacon’s on the rafter
          And the wine is in the wood,
          And God that made good laughter
          Has seen that they are good.

          The evil-hearted Grocer
          Would call his mother “Ma’am,”
          And bow at her and bob at her,
          Her aged soul to damn,
          And rub his horrid hands and ask
          What article was next
          Though MORTIS IN ARTICULO
          Should be her proper text.

          His props are not his children,
          But pert lads underpaid,
          Who call out “Cash!” and bang about
          To work his wicked trade;
          He keeps a lady in a cage
          Most cruelly all day,
          And makes her count and calls her “Miss”
          Until she fades away.

          The righteous minds of innkeepers
          Induce them now and then
          To crack a bottle with a friend
          Or treat unmoneyed men,
          But who hath seen the Grocer
          Treat housemaids to his teas
          Or crack a bottle of fish sauce
          Or stand a man a cheese?

          He sells us sands of Araby
          As sugar for cash down;
          He sweeps his shop and sells the dust
          The purest salt in town,
          He crams with cans of poisoned meat
          Poor subjects of the King,
          And when they die by thousands
          Why, he laughs like anything.

           

          The wicked Grocer groces
          In spirits and in wine,
          Not frankly and in fellowship
          As men in inns do dine;
          But packed with soap and sardines
          And carried off by grooms,
          For to be snatched by Duchesses
          And drunk in dressing-rooms.

          The hell-instructed Grocer
          Has a temple made of tin,
          And the ruin of good innkeepers
          Is loudly urged therein;
          But now the sands are running out
          From sugar of a sort,
          The Grocer trembles; for his time,
          Just like his weight, is short.
          G.K. Chesterton
          (From “The Flying Inn”, 1914)

          …and I’m old enough to remember Grocers’ Shops like that with bills whizzing across the shop on wires to the ‘Lady in a Cage’.

          2. She was a teller. One system was the wire dispatch method. Another was the pneumatic tube .
            http://simplelifetogether.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Rapid-wire.jpg

            In the late 1920s and early 30s (mainly in the USA) there was a teller with a scratch pad & pencil, and a pulley system with a can on it. The teller would do the math, take the payment, put it in the can and then pull the cord to send the money to the cashier. The cashier would make change, write the receipt, and send it back to the teller. (Yankee spellings).

            I vaguely remember seeing a pneumatic system. It must have been in London in the early sixties.

          3. My local Co-op had the wire system when I was a child, but the haberdashers had the pneumatic system. They used to fascinate me.

          4. For those who didn’t have pneumatic tubes, as described by Ped, the ‘Lady in the Cage’ would check the bill and be paid by the customer and give out any change, thus relieving the counter-hands from touching filthy lucre and letting them get on with fleecing the next customer.

  31. Pentagon blames Russia for mystery illness affecting US troops. 23 April 2021.

    US military leaders believe Russia is behind a series of suspected “directed energy” attacks causing illness in US troops and diplomats, unnamed officials have told Politico.

    According to the news site, the Pentagon has been investigating the incidents since last year, and has now briefed top lawmakers on the matter.
    The first suspected attack was in 2016 in Havana, Cuba. Employees of the US embassy there reported having headaches, ringing in their ears, and loss of hearing, memory, and balance. Some suffered long-term brain damage.

    God this story is almost as old as me! I can remember it in the sixties! This one must have been cobbled together as a Comfort Blanket after being spanked by the Russians over Ukraine. Even its source in Politico denies its reality.

    Circumstances surrounding these incidents are murky, and U.S. officials have encountered difficulties in attributing the suspected attacks to any particular weapon or country.

    Desperation on all fronts!

    https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/22/pentagon-russia-attacks-us-troops-484150

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pentagon-blames-russia-mystery-illness-b1836104.html

    1. HAARP [Weather Control], septics have been busy revisiting testing [part of the Climate Change / Green Energy gig]. Pentagon should know, they created it

    2. ‘Morning, Minty.

      The Embassy staff in Cuba had probably all been put on Statins, in order to boost Big Pharma.

  32. Another lifting from going Postal, hat tip to poster John Craven. The link to the show appears to be pay walled, but the transcript is a worth while read:-

    Every now and then a listener comes on the radio and is so eloquent and filled with down to earth common sense that you just want to stand and cheer!

    Today that happened on The Rush Limbaugh Show with Rush’s “Guide Host” Todd Herman who’s based in Portland, Oregon, I think. By the way, Rush’s show is actually growing in audience size even though he is no longer with us in this world which has to make the loons on the left be going even more criminally insane than usual since God has obviously loaned Rush’s Guide Host the same talent he lent to Rush lo these many years!!

    He took a call from Houston from a young lady named Joyce of the tender age of 88 years who is a black woman who lives in one of the hardest neighborhoods of Houston! What she had to say was simply inspiring!

    https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2021/04/22/amazing-african-american-caller-with-a-wake-up-call-for-the-black-community/

    Amazing! African-American Caller with a Wake-Up Call for the Black Community
    Apr 22, 2021

    TODD: Let’s talk to Joyce in Houston, Texas. Joyce, you’re on the Rush Limbaugh program, Todd Herman, your guide host. Hi, Joyce. Welcome.

    CALLER: Thank you. You know, I want to talk about the Floyd situation. And I didn’t watch the trial because, I purposed in my heart that he could not get a fair trial — and I’m not saying that he should have gotten away scot-free. That’s not what I’m saying. But there is no way that this man, this policeman, could get a fair trial.

    When you are picking jurors, and they awarded that family $27 million, what is that telling the juror? Then you got your whole city boarded up because if thugs don’t get their way, they’re going to burn down your city. I don’t agree with the jurors, but I can understand their reasoning, that if you can’t protect your police precinct — you let it be burned down.

    What is to say that these people learn that I was a juror, that they won’t burn down my house? I could understand that. I don’t agree, but I can understand their reasoning. And then, in my community, when it became racial, I am so sick and tired of this “systemic racism.” There are no organized conspiracies to keep blacks down. There are pockets of bigotry for sure. But they’re not powerful enough to keep you down if you have some get-up-and-go about yourself.

    TODD: Hmm. Hmm.

    CALLER: And I hear this constantly. I live in the most dangerous neighborhood in Houston, the sixth in the nation, and we constantly talk about racism. “Who is keeping us down?” and I contend that — and I’ve always said that those old rich Republicans are the reason that our nice communities in Houston have turned into ghettos, and the old white, rich Republicans are the cause of it.

    I get so tired of telling my people, “The old rich white Republicans is not our problem. We are our problem — and until we face the fact that we are our own worst enemies, nothing is gonna change!” There are blacks in my community, senior citizens, that have gotten broken into and murdered. You don’t even know their names! But you know Floyd, all over this nation.

    All over the nation, you know Floyd, and he shouldn’t have been killed, okay? But you don’t even know these seniors’ names. Ask my congresswoman, Sheila Jackson Lee. When she is up in Washington getting things ready for illegal aliens to stay here, ask her does she know any of these seniors’ names in our community! She is our representative. I guarantee you they don’t know their names.

    But I tell you one thing, she sure know about Floyd, and we have got to stop in the black community… I have traveled out of this country several times and I want to say to the blacks that’s listening that you’re so angry and you come up with this fake racism and every scene. That’s not our problem. There’s no better place for us, and you’re gonna sit here and allow people to use you as pawns to mess up what’s best for you today.

    There’s no better place for us. Like I say, I been several times. There is no better place for us, and I am tired of you blaming someone else and then, in our community, one of the main reasons that these young people are getting shot and killed, because they didn’t have — and especially these young black men, they didn’t have — no dads in the home.

    When Obama was in the White House, all in my community just, “Oh, we are so blessed! We have a black man in the White House.” I said, “We need to a black man in the black house!” If we had black men in these homes, the policeman… If they had these black men in these homes, put something on their behind when they needed to it —

    TODD: (laughing)

    CALLER: — then the policeman wouldn’t have to shoot ’em when they stop them because we have taught them to hate the policeman. We teach them from little bitty things, “If you’re bad, I’m gonna call the policeman!” You put that in that baby’s mind that the policeman is bad. There are few bad policemen, but basically the policeman is out there to do a job to protect with us, and I get so tired of, “Oh, they arrest more blacks than they do whites.” Well, hell, we do more crime! So what are they gonna do, just let us go? We have got to change.

    TODD: Joyce, the last thing in the world I want to do right now is to cut in. The clock is sometimes… It’s what we do in the radio show. I need you to hear me. You are… I get paid money to speak. You are one of the most eloquent people I have ever met, and I feel torn between crying and joy to hear the words of wisdom that you’re speaking and the way you speak them. I hear the… I just…

    I hear you, and I want you to know a whole bunch of people just heard you. And this is easily one of the top three calls that I’ve ever, ever heard on radio, and to be a participant in it, Joyce, God bless you. God bless you and keep you. You know what? Forget my name. That was Joyce, the program participant on this segment of the Rush Limbaugh program.

    1. They should get her on afew more shows so people could hear common sense for a change.

  33. Happy St George’s Day one and all.

    From Wiki.

    St. George’s day may be celebrated with anything English including morris dancing and Punch and Judy shows.[17]

    That’s out then…

      1. I am going to assume that Italian migrants brought it with them. Those migrants integrated and their descendants are now English.

        Good morning.

  34. 331905+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Friday 23 April: Even with Covid passports, expensive tests will prevent people travelling

    Decent freedom loving indigenous English / GB peoples would cut OUT
    “Even with” rhetoric straight away.

    This issue IS the end of the beginning ( reset) but it is surely the beginning of the end, for decent freedom loving peoples.

    Will the mad turk, amnesties R me, loco johnson follow the American offer
    offering a joint for a jab, with a line for the swine ( herd) in the United Kingdom ?

    Fast forward St Crispin’s Day and our Enries input, ” we will march home with sore & bloodied knees”, in opposition to the lab/lib/con coalition way
    of taking the knee in an appeasing submissive nature.

    Continue with the voting pattern lab/lib/con/greens coalition whos input, to date, has successfully got us as a Country into dire straits WILL guarantee
    a future of 24/7 incarcerated controlling lockdown sh!te, give a thought also as you cuddle the grandkids the legacy you are leaving via the polling booth.

    Have a nice St Georges day.

    1. They just need to go as they please, but come back by Rubber Dinghy and get a new house

      1. 331905+ up ticks,
        Morning OLT,
        Many a true word spoken…..
        Those incoming uninvited guest’s are none of my doing but the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition are still finding support / votes that condone their actions.

        One, in your face success this coalition is having is the ongoing, daily mounting, DOVER campaign.

      1. Well, of course! (Actually, there are several hundred thousand English people in Scotland who are entitled to vote.)

      2. Well, of course! (Actually, there are several hundred thousand English people in Scotland who are entitled to vote.)

    2. The state places no value on heritage, only if you’re going to give it the result it wants.

  36. The search for County Louth teenager Svetlana Murphy has been stood down after she was found “safe and well” in Belfast.
    Bloody Russians are everywhere!!

  37. Good Moaning.
    (Sigh. Grizzle. Harumph.)
    Another sunny day. I am bored of sunshine.
    We need rain. Have you seen the reservoirs?
    Global warming climate change ……
    Millions dead. Ashby-de-la-Zouche covid mutation will kill all hamsters …..

    Am I up there with the zeitgeist?

    1. Absolutely, Anne! Perfectly en point! Even the grammar is spot on! Good morning.

    2. Cats now at risk after kitten dies of CV. Can life get any more scary… all felines to be culled…aarrghhh.

    3. Yes – was thinking of that. When did it last properly rain?

      Growing up I remember much wetter weather.

  40. It is probably racist, xenophobic, anti-woke, to say so but:

    Today is 23rd April

    St George’s Day

    Oh, to be in England,
    Now that April’s there,
    And whoever wakes in England
    Sees, some morning, unaware,
    That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
    Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
    While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England – now!
    And after April, when May follows,
    And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows –
    Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
    Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
    Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent spray’s edge –
    That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
    Lest you should think he never could recapture
    The first fine careless rapture!
    And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
    All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
    The buttercups, the little children’s dower,
    – Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

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

      1. It is not just the English, but also the Scots and the Welsh. We are to be international and nothing.

        1. It’s fine to be proudly Scottish and fly the saltire; ditto Welsh and the red dragon. Fly the St George’s cross and you are immediately a racist bigot 🙁

  41. London, England

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/45f460a83687d0a67a7ebdb71601817b2fd48db8/0_0_5568_3712/master/5568.jpg?width=720&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=445db2fa1dcfbb8c6ffcd68fcc695c49

    A woman swims in a transparent acrylic swimming pool bridge that is fixed between two apartment blocks at Embassy Gardens next to the new US Embassy in south-west London. A world first, the transparent 25-metre-long outdoor pool, known as the Sky Pool, will allow residents to swim from one building to the other, 10 storeys above the ground
    Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

        1. Video unavailable
          This video contains content from LeakID, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

  42. It’s never ending.

    Black trans lives matter protesters and cops came to blows Thursday
    night after the protesters apparently sprayed a statue near Columbus
    Circle – and at the entrance of Central Park – with anti-cop graffiti
    and red paint resembling blood.

  43. In Scotland the mechanics (the app) for the Covid passport scheme are not yet quite ready. What is abundantly clear is that a Covid passport scheme is to be introduced. When it is introduced it will become obvious that it will be meaningless and unworkable unless it is compulsory.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56843281

      1. Bear in mind that in Chancellor Merkel’s speech on the subject some weeks ago she specifically stated that mobiles would be used by the

        authorities to track the whereabouts of all tourists. A bit spooky?

    2. IMO it is essential that Elf & Safety checks are made at the Scottish border to prevent the spread of the deep fried Sars Mars bars covid mutation from reaching the chipperies of Northern England

    1. If used as a means to grab prime land and herd immunity concentration camp scenario anything’s possible. Woke entities always explain intentions ahead of time

  45. On reviewing detailed data it became apparent to the SAGE group that no one-legged people have been afflicted with Covid-19. This afternoon the Prime Minister will announce, that as of Monday next, all persons on foot in public must hop on one leg. Bipedal motion will not be permitted. The choice of which leg to use is left to individuals. Police foot patrols will be stepped up. The new motto to be promulgated by the PM, Boris Johnson, is,”Stay safe, Hop to it, Save the NHS”.

  46. See the Democrat race-grifters are protesting that shooting of a black girl wielding a large knife, by police in Columbus, Ohio. They are saying the perpetrator should have been disarmed using non-lethal force but apart from the obvious danger of mixing it at close quarters with an armed lunatic – not all coppers are Bruce Lee clones – the officer was too far away. I’m sure we’ve all seen the video evidence from his body-cam, clearly showing that he had just seconds to act, if he were to prevent the frenzied stabbing of another black girl. That girl is alive today, thanks to the swift reaction of the cop, who deserves commending for his quick thinking, not censure.

    That said, I’m wondering what the Dems make of these words, spoken by their former US President:

    “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
    — Barack Hussein O’Banana (Dem. Fundraiser – Philadephia 2009)

  49. I used to enjoy going to the pub – but you have to choose the pub you go to and I fear the sort of pubs I liked had already gone out of business before the plague arrived.

    Those who, like me, love John Betjeman’s verses, will remember the following:

    THE VILLAGE INN

    “The village inn, the dear old inn,
    So ancient, clean and free from sin,
    True centre of our rural life
    Where Hodge sits down beside his wife
    And talks of Marx and nuclear fission
    With all a rustic’s intuition.
    Ah, more than church or school or hall,
    The village inn’s the heart of all.”

    So spake the brewer’s P. R. O.,
    A man who really ought to know,
    For he is paid for saying so.
    And then he kindly gave to me
    A lovely coloured booklet free.
    ‘Twas full of prose that sang the praise
    Of coaching inns in Georgian days,
    Showing how public-houses are
    More modern than the motor-car,
    More English than the weald or wold
    And almost equally as old,
    And run for love and not for gold
    Until I felt a filthy swine
    For loathing beer and liking wine,
    And rotten to the very core
    For thinking village inns a bore,
    And village bores more sure to roam
    To village inns than stay at home.

    And then I thought I must be wrong,
    So up I rose and went along
    To that old village alehouse where
    In neon lights is written “Bear”.

    Ah, where’s the inn that once I knew
    With brick and chalky wall
    Up which the knobbly pear-tree grew
    For fear the place would fall?

    Oh, that old pot-house isn’t there,
    It wasn’t worth our while;
    You’ll find we have rebuilt “The Bear”
    In Early Georgian style.

    But winter jasmine used to cling
    With golden stars a-shine
    Where rain and wind would wash and swing
    The crudely painted sign.

    And where’s the roof of golden thatch?
    The chimney-stack of stone?
    The crown-glass panes that used to match
    Each sunset with their own?

    Oh now the walls are red and smart,
    The roof has emerald tiles.
    The neon sign’s a work of art
    And visible for miles.

    The bar inside was papered green,
    The settles grained like oak,
    The only light was paraffin,
    The woodfire used to smoke.

    And photographs from far and wide
    Were hung around the room:
    The hunt, the church, the football side,
    And Kitchener of Khartoum.

    Our air-conditioned bars are lined
    With washable material,
    The stools are steel, the taste refined,
    Hygienic and ethereal.

    Hurrah, hurrah, for hearts of oak!
    Away with inhibitions!
    For here’s a place to sit and soak
    In sanit’ry conditions.

    2. The Old Chain Pier Bar in Newhaven was run by a very formidable lady. It stands on the edge of the sea. It was shabby and the walls and ceiling were festooned with calling cards, postcards from afar, obscure paper money in unknown languages, as well as photographs faded to sepia. The seating was hard wooden banquettes around the walls. Venerable tables and chairs had to be moved to give access to the cellar to change over barrels.
      But now, it has been updated. It now has the decor of an Indian restaurant with flock wallpaper and keg beer. All else is gone . The atmosphere filled with the ghosts of the past has gone. Like many, many others.

    3. My local is still little changed and the focal point for a certain portion of the village. No jukebox, no fruit machine and no TV (except for the 6 Nations). It’s on a quiet road and has a broad view across the wooded Tamar valley to Devon. I’ll be there for a couple this evening at 5pm.

      1. One would wish that we even had a pub but no shop, school, village hall or bus service.

        The church is the village hub, when we can use it again for quizzes, kids cookie icing, coffee mornings, PCC meetings or even, heaven forfend, worship!

    4. Very good.
      Yesterday i manged to lay nine holes of golf with number two son i had to use a buggy he enjoyed the exercise.
      I hadn’t picked up a club or hit a golf ball for over 8 months, I put the ball on the tee, one practice swing and straight down the middle. Lovely sunshine despite the cold wind. Anyway due to my vast experience, my once 12 handicap and one birdie I beat him (two up) by two holes.
      We drove to the nearest pub, also for our first pint for 8 months, The Elephant and Castle at Amwell, it’s a very old country pub and has a well just inside the front door. It was rammed, the car park was over flowing, so we had to by pass and go to another in the next village, that to was packed, but there was another pub opposite with a parking space and two spare outside seats, so we manged to buy a most enjoyable pint and saw and chatted to a couple of people we knew. The bass player from my elder sons (not played for nearly two years) band and his Girl friend. And change from a tenner.

  50. Morning, all, and Happy St George’s Day!

    I’m all ready for tomorrow’s march; should any intrepid Nottler fancy meeting there, please get in touch via the wonderful Hertslass!

    1. I’ll have to support you from Cornwall. So what’s now written on your placard and what will you be wearing so we can recognise you?

      1. “No to vaccine passports” on one side; “Smile 🙂 ” on the other (everything got too complicated for placards so I went hippy, LOL). If you see someone with those words hand-painted in rainbows on a black background, c’est moi. The eccentricity of my clothing will give me away!

      1. Central London, 1 p.m. Exact place to be announced at 11 via Telegram. Probably be a lot less organised than the Scouts 🙂

    3. Good luck – hope all goes well. I couldn’t join you – back problems for years.

    4. I shall be with you in spirit. I can’t get down to London these days; it is too long for a day trip (and I have to arrange care cover).

        1. agreed, I lived there late 90’s found them all great company / great sense of humour, everywhere was clean. Was sad to leave

    1. This is no doubt how the state thinks energy is produced.

      Frankly, they should be forced to drink sewage infested water. That’s the future they’re demanding for us, they should start.

    2. Anyone reading the requirements to apply for a contract from a Scottish Council would rapidly reach the view that if that if they had not worked for the Council previously, they never would. That would be a correct conclusion as all contracts past, and future, are predetermined.

  54. Morning all, am i the only one who is confused ? I thought it was St Georges day today but reading the earlier references to April 23rd i see it’s to be known as Stephen Lawrence day.

    And here’s a such a different and unexpected view on recent events the BBC reporter seemed to close the interview down mid flow and far earlier than most people might have expected.
    https://www.bitchute.com/video/DnqJ7UAnctyz/

          4. 331905+ up ticks,
            Afternoon P,
            The poisonous porg, the assassin / pm candidate in the mayday farce.

        3. A convenient scapegoat for Cameron and Boris’ poor decisions.

          It’s disgusting.

  56. Alexei Navalny urged to end hunger strike immediately. 23 April 2021.

    Doctors of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have urged him to immediately end his hunger strike, warning that otherwise he could die.

    In a statement, the five say they have been shown the results of his medical tests conducted on 20 April.

    “If the hunger strike continues even for a minimal amount of time, unfortunately, we will simply have no-one to treat soon,” they say.

    None of these doctors have seen this faker. They are just going by written reports issued by the hospital. Nevertheless I’m sure their appeals will work and he will arise to lead his people once again, particularly since the Ukraine fiasco is now over.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56854267

    1. besides the articles’ got more holes than a colander the woke tone sounds that whoever penned the piece is desperate to have lunch with him. What’s not considered by the author/ess Navalny might be enjoying colonic irrigation as opposed to “Westernised” water boarding. But that might be considered an “off message” topic

    1. been busy elsewhere standing ground re your post dealing with British Council woke muppet here [I sent her both as examples], one generally around BBC not functioning https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3874de38ae737c73f8c9fc133d884bd5e80cc64790d5bd0e5aed0edd54b12d7.jpg and specifically on position regarding PC related issues https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f127a8e7247d44071f0046421d41331d4506b4cc2c0ce5dabdd680757f45e46.jpg we ended our “exchange” when drop kicking her Buy Large Mansions attempt [apart from it being wholly irrelevant in Nairobi https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e0dddd3db295f83e0129dbce518fb9b1cf35515a095659ea017d78df42d3796.jpg now I need to catch up on Sri Lanka v Bangladesh test match. Nothing more irritating than British Council contacting you to merely push their own agenda then throwing toys out of pram when “one won;t play ball”. Then again, I did remind them it’s St George’s Day a point they got unlike the UK High Commission.

      1. No. That’s the answer to one of the other questions – Some Like It Hot and Manhattan. There are 10 questions altogether and I’m just stuck on this one.

          1. My daughter-in-law has just come up with the answer – it’s Clockwork Orange and a Moloko Plus.

        2. Hello there! Good to see you again.

          Did you see your birthday wishes on the Nottlers’ forum yesterday?

          1. I did, thank you, and I did respond saying that although I don’t often comment myself I do often laugh at the other comments.

          1. Happy Friday, Elf.

            Crème de Menthe is a liqueur and should be served in small glasses so you don’t get legless. :@)

          2. Wotcha Phil
            What you reading these days??
            Have you tried John Ringo??
            Live Free or Die series very good and his Posleen War series not bad,if you want a standalone from that try “Watch on the Rhine”

          3. Hi Rik.
            Dmitry Glukhovsky…Metro 2033 and Neal Stephenson…Snow Crash.

            Thanks for the heads up. I’ll take a looksie.

          9. True….but. You can also buy the white variety. Hope the little green men on Mars don’t think i’m alienist. :@(

          12. That would explain my ignorance; I don’t think I’ve ever been in a cocktail bar, although I have drunk cocktails in my misspent youth.

  60. Russia’s foreign exchange holdings have continued to rise, reaching $583.7 billion as of April 16, the latest data released by the country’s central bank shows.
    The holdings rose by $3.2 billion, or 0.6%, from the previous week. The growth was a result of “positive exchange rate revaluation and foreign exchange purchases within the framework of the fiscal rule,” according to the regulator.

    The country’s international reserves are highly liquid foreign assets comprising stocks of monetary gold, foreign currencies and Special Drawing Right (SDR) assets, which are at the disposal of the Central Bank of Russia and the government.
    The holdings have surpassed the target level of $500 billion set by the regulator in June 2019 and have remained above the threshold ever since.

    Now imagine what Navalny and his Western backers could do with all that loot.It would be the steal of the century.

    2. Well they fit in with some of the other countries in that commission – Japan, Lebanon, Pakistan. Egypt, Mauritania and Tunisia.

      We had hoped that Trudeau would see this comission as an opportunity for him and bugger off but no, the black face groper was still there this morning.

  62. “… prevent people from travelling…”

    Mission accomplished. Green agenda enforced, choice eradicated.

      2. Not many got out of that – one of the lucky ones was covered in water from the ballast tank.

    3. 331905+ up ticks,
      Afternoon W,
      The johnson, ” tonight’s the night we’re gonna have some fun” now carrie you did promise.

  63. Putin critic Alexei Navalny to end hunger strike. 23 April 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03961ce680f4158c833d5a5d62583add6147e187f784245efe3d516f55e8f0d5.png

    Taking into account the progress we made, and other circumstances, I’m exiting the hunger strike,’ Navalny said in an Instagram statement.

    Surprise Surprise. Minty rules OK? Gloat. Gloat! Lol!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alexei-navalny-russia-hunger-strike-putin-b1836439.html

    1. Good afternoon Lady of the Oracle.

      You are clearly an expert at interpreting and seeing between the lines and getting to the truth. Don’t bother applying for a job at the BBC.

  65. Congratulations to all those subpostmasters who this morning had their various convictions for apparent wrongdoing quashed.
    Now let us hope that those presiding over this utterly disgraceful state of affairs be brought to task in a proportionate way. I see one was already awarded a CBE.Presumably she will be stripped of that.
    Under the current administration, I am not holding my breath!

    1. Oh Brilliant News!
      Now, I hope they receive full recompense from the Post Office for their troubles!

  66. I see that white people have been given rules with which to comply if they dare to enter the square named after that revered model of decency, honour and integrity, George Floyd.

    I was wondering if his white-hating supporters have given any thought as to who pays the taxes that Minneapolis needs to do such things as give $27 million to his family. What’s the betting that the vast majority of these people are white?

    A couple of days ago I saw a news commentary about the trial verdict on that left-wing channel, France24. The only white person in the entire report was Joe Biden!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/940e5f432c8d86ca5c1d865a4d05dd547d4b736ac88acfd3f1f2f96e62c27205.jpg

    1. Typical of Buy Large Mansions, laud a violent, criminal, drug addict.

      I’m beginning to really despise them.

  67. Hmmm..snowing hard here with an inch on the ground.
    Oh well,better pack the global warming away for another few weeks.
    There’s a big bumble bee at the window…he can buzz off!

  68. I see that Boris has called for a celebration of St. George’s Day “Without embarrassment, without shame”. This shows that embarrassment and shame at being British are infecting the very fabric of our society, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to say it.

    The wokes and destroyers of our heritage, culture and traditions, led by the Guardian and the BBC, need to be shouted down when the silent majority has finally had enough and finds its voice.

    It’s about time that Boris led the way – but I’m not holding my breath!

    1. The total disgust and contempt I have for this bombastic, immoral, incompetent and stupid idiot grows by the day.

      But why are the British people so gullible? Why did they vote for him at the last election believing he would ‘get Brexit done’ when he had somehow managed to avoid even showing us what was in his surrender WA by ducking an interview with Andrew Neil?

      And then, after the election, little by little it emerged that he had betrayed us with his WA. So why did he get praised for pulling off a deal which can now be seen as a total catastrophe in Northern Ireland, British fishing waters, in the financial services industry and at all EU customs borders with the UK?

      Shame on Johnson for fooling us once – but shame on us for going on and on being fooled by this repulsive nincompoop? (And why was Farage naively fooled into saying the deal was acceptable without even reading it thoroughly when he had seen the EU’s fraudulent dishonesty at work for so many years when he was a MEP?)

      1. Tesla are ahead of the game in the state of current affairs.
        That’s a big enough plug for Elon Musk.
        Have a good POETS day E&S.

  70. 331905+ up ticks,
    breitbart,

    Exclusive Video: UK Parliamentarians Declare China Is Committing Genocide in Xinjian

    There could very well be a touch of black kettle & pot here surely,
    .

    1. Old trick. Blame someone else of your own nefarious dealings to deflect attention, hoping people will not see the hypocrisy. Guilty as hell.

      1. 331905+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Pm,
        I am bloody sure this LLC coalition is the manufacture, a mass producer of chaff to deceive the electoral fools, sorry member / voters.

          1. 331905+ up ticks,
            Pm,
            I honestly see it as the electorate have had a seven headed
            political hydra LLC by the tail especially these last three decades, plain to see .
            A concerted effort is urgently required to termingly nut the lab/lib/con hydra.

            A foolish short term satisfaction is their party wins against opposing parties of the same odious ilk, coalition, the Country as a whole loses, again,again,& again.

    2. Old trick. Blame someone else of your own nefarious dealings to deflect attention, hoping people will not see the hypocrisy. Guilty as hell.

  71. Afternoon, all. I am proudly flying the cross of St George on my flagpole for St George’s Day. No way am I embarrassed by my English heritage (despite the part Welsh ancestry). Meanwhile council incompetence continues apace. I sent off the bills for the work I’ve had done (house maintenance, etc) to explain why I took money out of MOH’s account ahead of submitting the financial assessment forms. They have assessed us as being fully self-funding because they have ignored – or lost – all the evidence in the form of bills and payments I had sent them and consider the work hasn’t been done and so we still have the assets! I have just emailed them to ask what they are playing at. Why can nobody do their job properly? It was bad enough that I sent the forms in before Christmas and have only just heard, without them losing everything and getting their assessment wrong.

    1. Good day, Conwy. Try your local councillor? He might be able to kick someone’s arse.

    2. Draw a deep breath: “It’s because of Covid. Your safety is of prime concern ……” Blibble, blibble, blibble…
      We have learnt that requests for any form of assistance are always turned down in the hope that you’ll go away.
      All joking aside, you really could do without that sort of hassle – particularly from people who have sinecures that have no connection to actually doing their job.

    3. I’ve just spent well over an hour trying to get through to Lloyds after they requested that I contact them. What a palaver, just to be allowed to speak to someone and zero certainty that they have done what I needed.

      1. We are with the Halifax, which is in the same group as Lloyds: they gave us a Vulnerable People phone number,
        ‘cus we is old

        SWMBO gets through to them (on the phone) Immediately

        Ask them about it

    4. Incompetence is a First Class Honours degree course at the University of Dimwits with a 100% pass rate.

    3. Bummer!
      I change my wheels tomorrow. Hope we’re done with snow here in S Norway.

      1. I changed mine on Monday.We live on a hill and the few cars i’ve seen are struggling.

      1. It is a slightly hardier and later variety.

        50 yards away, our neigbour has a glorious one, twice the height and width of ours – but the flowers – out two weeks ago – a magnificent sight – were done for about a week when we had a sharper frost than usual.

    5. At least he learnt by himself. Fizzy our cat was a house cat before we got her and, when she was introduced to Rural Suffolk at 2½ years old, she’d never seen grass and I had to teach her to climb trees – she soon learned.

          1. I have still a fair way to go yet…. I cannot think how long it must have taken to write. You deserve an accolade. I will report back when I conclude.

  74. I’m picking brains.
    Currently I’m sorting out my playroom/study. I have at least 2 boxes of magazines from WWI; there are women’s, children’s and just general interest. I doubt there are complete runs, but they might be useful archive material.
    Can any NOTTLer think of who might be interested?

    1. Consult your local auction house, you might be very pleasantly surprised, there are numerous collectors of such things.

      1. Failing that…
        tear into 6 x 3 inch pages
        Pierce top LH Corner of all sheets
        Pass string through them all
        Tie ino loop
        Hang in Cludge

  75. Last night I made a lamb curry, but apparently they prefer grass.
    Sometimes people are afraid of change and that’s because I throw it very hard.
    At school I was the best at wasting paper by quite a large margin.
    How good is my speech therapist? It’s hard to say.

        1. I try to supply one daily – many get over-looked as being misogynist, even though we love the ladies.

  77. Snooker condemned for “Institutional Racism” as referees always wear white gloves…..
    (Yes,yes I just made that up but in today’s Clown world??)

  78. Just published in Le Figaro:

    https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/en-direct-attaque-au-couteau-a-rambouillet-une-fonctionnaire-de-police-decedee-20210423

    A Tunisian (presumably a Muslim) entered a police station in a Paris suburb earlier this afternoon and stabbed and killed a police-woman. The other members of the police force who saw it happening shot the murderer who has now gone to Hell.

    At least the French deal with this sort of thing without too much fuss.

    1. Imagine had it been in the USA!
      There would be non-stop coverage of Ilhan Omar ranting on for days!

    2. Under Napoleonic law you need to provide evidence that you are not guilty before you get shot in the act.
      It’s a bit of a trial, I know, but C’est la vie en France !

    3. Under Napoleonic law you need to provide evidence that you are not guilty before you get shot in the act.
      It’s a bit of a trial, I know, but C’est la vie en France !

    1. Children need to be trained how to recognise a bent cop and issue a Reg 15 notice.
      Either that or try some more soap.

  81. I shall be able to get a seat, all on my own, on Public Transport, ’til 01 June, when we are having the new shower fitted

    hehehehhehe

    1. Because Boris Johnson and his colleagues want to destroy the indigenous population.

      1. That has gone beyond conspiracy theory, Rastus, and is now a full-on certainty, unfortunately.

      2. It strikes me that every bloody politician in the West wants the extinction of white people. Perhaps they think they will go down in History.

        Like Genghis Khan or Adolph Hitler

    2. If we actually fought fire with fire, and tracked every single relative who arrived at the same time, and also tracked down all their relations living in the country (yes, I know this is a French atrocity) and executed all of them, the problem would soon disappear, because friends and relatives would try to save their own skins by reporting the crazies at the first hint that they might be “radicalised”

  84. From John Ward’s The slog:

    “Unless you made an early getaway to Planet Drongo before the lockdown, you will have read pretty much everywhere that “India sees world’s highest daily cases amid oxygen shortage”. In fact, the BBC tells us that “some people” have died waiting for oxygen, the Indian health service is “completely overwhelmed” and the country now has “sixteen million cases”.

    So it’s a disaster, right? Well actually, no – it isn’t. The Indian health ministry has already made it clear that the Covid19 variant they’re dealing with this year has “a considerably lower death rate than the previous version”.

    Go to the Worldometer site, and you’ll see that India’s deaths per million is a minute 134: that’s 7% of the US and French figures, 6% of the UK and Italy’s and the lowest by far of any country in the Top 30 for cases. Virtually no vaccination has been undertaken in India (only 1.3% are fully vaccinated) and the country is not using lockdowns. The Times of India has just denied the BBC’s ‘deaths from oxygen shortage’ fakery.

    What India IS doing, however, is employing the anti-inflammatory drugs tocilizumab and itolizumab and the antivirals favipiravir and hydroxychloroquine on a very wide scale. Go to Pharma site/accolyte spaces, and you’ll see all four drugs being rubbished: the Pharmafia and their bureaucratic whores don’t want any signs of a success to get out.

    But the Truth already is out there: India is doing spectacularly well without either vaccines or lockdown. You won’t find that reality expressed anywhere in the Western MSM, but the facts show that its infection management drugs have delivered one of the lowest case to death rates on the planet.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjEqtR8BAUs

  85. HAPPY HOUR – So how was it for you?

    Determined to get some housework and gardening done today I
    made for the borders before 10am. Pruning carried out
    I planted several foxgloves among the shrub roses….very
    Sackville-West….
    Time for a well deserved sherry!
    Changed sheets/towels etc ….and charged up the washing machine, set to
    quick wash. Lunch was a mere cheese sandwich with a glass of sherry…or two!
    A thorough hoovering was required throughout the house…a job
    I detest…however the exercise was good for my crap leg.
    …..it was then I that I fell apart…..
    I found a hoard of Maud’s doggie biscuits hidden under the sofa………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/11abb7446c0b27c21fe877abae2b051752137851a7326e2b7c429f2abc99e1c9.jpg

    1. I can so identify with that. I keep finding strands of Charlie’s hair (and dog crumbs; he was a terribly messy eater). I downloaded the images off my camera today (needed proof that I’d had the fence repaired) and found loads of photos of Charlie that I’d taken just after Christmas, including one of him having come into the kitchen with snow flakes on him.

      1. I drove to Czechoslovakia two years after Robinson died. My Czech lady contact said, “Oh, I see you have a dog”. His hairs were still there – part of the car!

      2. While sorting out my playroom I found discs with photos of our various dogs.
        Pause for thought … in fact, several of them.

    2. On a more cheerful note. I’ve just come in from the garden, the noise of cicadas/grasshoppers is amazing.
      Very, very early here.

      Less cheerful, perhaps they’re locusts.

    4. So sad, Plum, that something so mundane that can yet pluck at the heart-strings.

      You’ve said it yourself – you need a replacement for Maud; and tout suite!

      1. It’s the mundane, ordinary, small things, that catch you off guard. Pet or person.
        It’s tough, no doubt about it.

  86. Off to watch the (recorded) racing from Sandown and finish the bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. Sladers, folks.

  87. Bloody Awkward…………….

    “I told him that this was ‘mad’ and totally unethical, that he had ordered

    the inquiry himself and authorised the Cabinet Secretary to use more

    invasive methods than are usually applied to leak inquiries because of

    the seriousness of the leak. I told him that he could not possibly

    cancel an inquiry about a leak that affected millions of people, just

    because it might implicate his girlfriend’s friends. I refused to try to

    persuade the Cabinet Secretary to stop the inquiry and instead I

    encouraged the Cabinet Secretary to conduct the inquiry without any

    concern for political ramifications. I told the Cabinet Secretary that I

    would support him regardless of where the inquiry led. I warned some

    officials that the PM was thinking about cancelling the inquiry. They

    would give evidence to this effect under oath to any inquiry. I also

    have WhatsApp messages with very senior officials about this matter

    which are definitive.”

    https://dominiccummings.com/2021/04/23/statement-regarding-no10-claims-today/
    Dom does detail,Boris does not…………….

    1. Dom might yet be Boris’s AND the rest of the corruption on steroids Cabinet and advisors downfall.

      I certainly hope so.

      And better yet, it might (I won’t hold my breath) be the start of a Domino (ho ho) effect across the entire Covid pandemic scam.

      1. Hope springs eternal Sos,however the “Talent” pool to replace Boros is thoroughly depressing………..
        Gove,the slimy toad
        Rishi,the globalist shill
        etc,etc,etc

        2. My hope is slightly broader.

          Germany, France, USA Canada; and all the other, under-the-thumb of the globalists, countries.

      2. More likely just let Starmer in to pick up the work of destruction. Not that I’m trying to depress anyone.

    2. Oh dear Boris – you really should have realised that lying is stupid, especially when people keep records!

    3. Drosten, the German being sued over the PCR testing protocol, just so happens to be tied up with our very own Neil Ferguson. Criminals joined at the hip.

  90. That’s me for St George’s Day. Attached is a snap of the church of St George at Ezra in Syria, Built in 515 AD. I expect it has been turned into dust during the uncivil war going on there. The MR and I were there in 2000. Amazing. I had hired a car and DROVE round Syria – looking back – total madness!

    Anyway, have a good evening and make your plans for the next lockdown – starting as soon as ramadanadingdong ends.

    A demain

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca30e2cfaca5412bc2a1812c3e670185f2da414999a050bf92a54c80ffe25621.jpg

    1. I use to be a frequent visitor to New York. In my company, one of the major international firms of accountants, we had several black partners and employees, all of whom were highly respected and there wasn’t one iota of racism.

      But I sometimes used to take walks in the evenings. In various areas where said people congregated it was another story altogether. I once, innocently, walked into a bar on Broadway and 42nd st. for a beer. I was approached by one of these people who told me, politely, that I would be well advised to leave the bar immediately because some of the N*****s don’t like white people, even though there were other white people in the bar, and, by the way, “someone was shot dead in the bar a couple of weeks ago”.

      When I first went to Los Angeles, I was told to be sure never go anywhere near to Watts for fear of my life!

      What can I say? I have met kings, princes, billionaires and prime ministers but I have also met some of the poorest and most unfortunate people imagineable. Among those whom I have met are some very unsavoury individuals but, as they say, variety is the spice of life!

      It seems that nothing much changes in the US except for wokeness and ‘President’ Biden

      1. Something I learned – in London – in the 1970s, as the Secretary of a very tit-nosed West-End Gentlemen’s’ Club, with 6 male members of the Royal Family, the Prime Minister and many members of the Cabinet, was the ability to walk with Kings, yet retain the common touch; something our American Cousins are sadly lacking in.

          1. Yes, I assumed it was White’s. I used to go there as a guest of a member and I understood that there was such a long waiting list for membership that people used to register their sons’ names for membership as soon as they were born!

            There is also the story of a member having to resign because he was so disgusted at seeing Aneurin Bevan in the Club that he physically kicked him down the stairs!

          2. I have been in the Reform Club many times mostly because my boss was a member and then there were various other invitations to events in my line of work.

            I was horrified at the state of the kitchen at the City of London Club when tendering for a project. A quarter inch of grease on the walls and dead mice and rats behind the kitchen equipment.

            I greatly enjoyed a Granite Guild event at the RAC Club in the eighties. Otherwise the London Club scene passed me by.

          3. A waiting list similar to that confronted by those wishing to purchase a Morgan motor car in the eighties.

            Membership of Lords was similarly long sought after. There you had to wait interminably for a succession of old buffers to drop dead.

      2. I wonder if the bar crowd would have accepted you if you had been introduced by one of the regulars?

        1. Even if I had, I don’t think that I would like to have stayed there for very long!

        2. I once worked briefly for a wealthy gay man, with a country estate in Hertfordshire, who boasted that he could gain access to any establishment in New York on the arm of Andy Warhol.

  96. Well, things are looking up somewhat!
    I’ve finally got the van back from the garage with it’s new gearbox fitted and have all my woodstacks filled ready for next winter with a fair amount of wood waiting to be sawn & chopped so I’m relaxing with RV-W’s Dives & Lazarus on R3 and a glass of Peak Ales IPA.

    Tomorrow I’m hoping to get to t’Lad’s to drop off the furniture from the DT’s Mother’s that’s been stuck in the back of the van for the past 3 weeks!

  98. Apologies for the late ping –

    Just to ask: could this country have a government that is neither incompetent or corrupt? Just once?

    Hell, do decent people not want to run for office? Does it attract just worms? (and that’s an insult to worms).

    I’m sick and tired of these incompetent, malicious, oppressive, fundamentally stupid, bickering, feather bedded, overpaid, immature, brattish dolts. They need their heads banged together and reminded who they serve.

  99. Just back from watching the racing. Ryan Moore (highly successful winning jockey) has made me feel much better – he was coming to challenge and his horse jinked and threw him! If it can happen to him, its happening to me on Wednesday doesn’t make me feel such an idiot!

  101. The climate extremists will never be satisfied

    No policy, not matter how damaging to ordinary life, will ever be enough to appease the cult of St Greta

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    I don’t know how you chose to celebrate “Earth Day” on Thursday. But in London the protesters from Extinction Rebellion (XR) decided to mark it by shattering windows at Canary Wharf. The group of women specifically targeted the headquarters of HSBC, a bank who XR accuse of being linked to that dread fossil fuel industry that keeps our lights on.

    There were some fine sights and moments. One participant, Susan Reid, a 62-year-old grandmother, was quoted saying, “I shouldn’t be having to do this.” Personally, I have always tried to hold it as a general rule of thumb that if you ever find yourself on a weekday morning using a hammer and chisel to try to break windows in a public space and catch yourself thinking, “I shouldn’t be having to do this,” then the likelihood is that you don’t.

    But that is the problem with the diehards of the climate cult. For them it is not possible to examine evidence, weigh up the options and come to any reasonable conclusions. It is not even possible to doubt the efficacy of the cult’s crazier actions even as you are taking part in them. For such true believers the whole thing is already clear: we are all going to die, very soon and if we aren’t going to die very soon then our children and grandchildren will, and so we have to do whatever is needed right now to save them from the flames. Our ancestors in the Middle Ages may have been confused by some of the specific language of the climate cult but they would have understood the theology very well.

    The problem with XR and their ilk is that they not only tolerate no compromise or contrary opinion: they actually resent the suggestion that there is any such thing. As Earth Day came around like some ancient and widely-recognised event, governments across the globe used the opportunity to make promises that are almost certainly impossible for them to fulfil. All were meant to impress the green fundamentalists.

    For example, US President Joe Biden promised that he would ramp up his government’s commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. He used Earth Day to announce that the US would aim to cut emissions by 50-52 per cent by 2030. President Biden will be 86 by then, and in any event will be out of any position where he will be held responsible should the US not manage to make this target. But the happy promise was left for his successors to clean up.

    Other world leaders made similar promises. Canada’s Justin Trudeau pledged that he would fulfil a new emissions reduction target of 40-45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. A surprising array of other world leaders made similar stands. President Bolsonaro of Brazil promised that Brazil would go carbon neutral by 2050 (by which time he will be 95). And President Putin jumped on the same train by saying that Russia would “approach with complete responsibility” its obligations to fight climate change. You can almost hear the smile.

    In any case you would have thought that any political movement that had managed to unite Biden, Putin, Trudeau and Bolsonaro might bank its success and get down to work. But the climate extremists do not operate like that. They hector and they smash and they chisel and they blockade and when world leaders give them almost everything that they want, they tell the same world leaders that they are callous vermin.

    The leader of the children’s crusade of our time, Greta Thunberg, demonstrated this nicely on Earth Day. As the leaders of the world’s major powers queued up to promise to cripple their economies by an implausibly early date, St Greta released her own statement. With typical grace she blasted all world politicians for “ignoring” what she and her friends call “the climate crisis”. Had you or I helped to ensure that President Putin and President Biden were doing our bidding then we might sit back for an afternoon, pour ourselves a cool drink and consider things as going broadly in the right direction.

    But the climate extremists never can do that. They can never take a moment off just as they can never take a step back. Because they believe that they, and only they, have access to the truth. And those who would bow to them ought to keep this in mind.

    Anybody who tries to appease the green gods will find the same pattern at work. HSBC might divest from a certain proportion of their fossil fuel related holdings, only to be told that it is not good enough until the figure is zero. They will then be criticised for having shares in technology companies and the same dance will go on.

    So it is with governments. 2050 is not good enough as a target. Promise to do the implausible by 2030 and you will be told that you are not trying hard enough either. Unless you promise to do what the climate alarmists demand of you this very instant and damn the consequences then you can expect Greta and the rest of them to berate you roundly. The more moderate elements will merely demand that you start wrecking your economy immediately. The more extreme will be at your windows ineptly thwacking away with hammers and chisels.

    It is a shame, because the future of our planet is a subject worth addressing. However, the doomsday cultists are the worst imaginable people to drive the discussion. For their idols will not be appeased.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/23/climate-extremists-will-never-satisfied/

  102. I first saw news of the CWGC report yesterday. It was a Guardian headline:

    PM ‘deeply troubled’ by failures to honour black and Asian war dead

    Defence secretary Ben Wallace says he will explore ‘decolonising’ schools’ teaching of first world war

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/22/minister-apologises-for-black-and-asian-war-dead-commemoration-failures

    My first reaction was “FGS, get off your knees!” but on reading the Guardian report it appeared that there were some ‘shortcomings’. However, Charles Moore’s piece gives some context to the IWGC efforts. I don’t suppose the rodent Olusoga will take notice.

    This war graves row shows racism claims are given more credence than real history

    The report on colonial war graves was well-produced, but its potential is undermined by those who claim to represent ethnic minorities

    CHARLES MOORE

    At six o’clock on Thursday morning, BBC radio news led with characteristic words: “Pervasive racism has been blamed…” That day’s sinner was the Imperial War Graves Commission after the First World War. It had been guilty of a “failure to commemorate” some tens of thousands of the non-white soldiers and auxiliaries who had died for the British Empire in the same way as it commemorated white ones. A report by a special committee of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (the same body, renamed in 1960), published later that morning, would make a formal apology.

    The BBC report also quoted “one colonial governor at the time” who said: “The average native could not understand or appreciate a headstone.”

    On the ensuing Today programme, Martha Kearney interviewed Professor David Olusoga, the historian whose film company had helped bring the problem to light. He spoke of “a form of apartheid in death”. He paid tribute to the worldwide CWGC cemeteries, but then flew into a rage about how long the organisation had taken to face up to the problem: it was “one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever come across as a historian”. Because the BBC had broken the deadline, it did not interview anyone speaking on the report’s behalf. Listeners would have concluded, by the BBC’s tone and treatment, that the most shocking revelations had come to light.

    I have read the CWGC report. It is a proper piece of work. By this I mean that – unlike, for example, the National Trust’s sloppy, tendentious report on links with slavery and “colonialism” – it is actual history. Original sources have been consulted (within some stated limitations caused by Covid), and carefully weighed. No one sounds off. The context is properly given. That context was the worst war in history. Britain, its Dominions and Empire lost well over a million men. It was decided to try to commemorate every one of them, and apply a “principle of equality of treatment in death”. This was a massive democratic advance on all previous forms of military commemoration. It was also decided to keep the bodies buried in the countries where the men fell, to give their graves uniform headstones and to tend them forever. In the hundreds of thousands of cases where no body could be found, collective monuments, where possible including each individual name, would be erected. Think of Lutyens’s great Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.

    This global project was brilliantly executed – a labour of love, art and remembrance without parallel in human history. It was added to by the deaths of the Second World War (not covered in this report). Today, the CWGC is responsible for no fewer than 23,000 sites across the world. Many readers will have visited these places and been struck by their peace and beauty and the loving care of the CWGC’s local staff. As the West Indian-born Blondel Cluff, one of the special committee’s members, puts it to me: “It was a bloody noble thing, in very difficult circumstances.”

    Those circumstances included the enormous problem of identifying so many bodies in fields repeatedly churned by battle. Outside Europe, there were added complications. Many sites were remote and dangerous. In some, the political situation impeded the Commission’s work. (This was a big problem for the Basra Memorial in Iraq, for example, which commemorates 40,600 British Empire soldiers, chiefly Indians, with no known grave.) Across a disparate empire, records were not always as good as in London. The names of non-white people were not clearly codified; spellings were confused. Non-soldiers, such as the numerous carriers who served, were particularly poorly recorded. In colonies, unlike on the Western front, the Commission’s writ did not run, but depended on local administrators. It was often impossible to achieve the accuracy sought.

    There was also a cultural conundrum. Rudyard Kipling, who contributed so much to the Commission’s work, said in 1919 that the bodies of Indian soldiers would be treated “in strict conformity with the practice of their religions”. This was surely appropriate but bound to quarrel with the principle of equality of treatment in death. Muslims, like Christians and Jews, are buried. Hindus and Sikhs must be cremated. Since a headstone stands above a grave, Hindus and Sikhs could not have one.

    The named headstone is chiefly a European phenomenon and was also little known in Africa at that time. If – God forbid – there were a world war today, professional anti-racists would be the first to complain of cultural imperialism if Britain insisted on a headstone for people of all religions. A century ago, the Commission wrestled conscientiously with such problems. Which brings me to the colonial governor quoted above. His form of words – “the average native” – would rightly never be used today, but perhaps he was not being dismissive. The man in question was F G Guggisberg, Governor of the Gold Coast (modern Ghana). The report does not go into his character. He was no stuffed-shirt colonial reactionary, but a Swiss-Canadian writer and topographical surveyor. I believe a statue of him stands outside the Korle Bu hospital in Accra which he built. He set up the best West African higher education institution of his day and was praised for his “positive faith in the capabilities of Africans”. Might not Guggisberg have meant, speaking from a position of knowledge, that in a country which had no indigenous tradition of headstones some other form of commemoration would be more culturally sensitive? I do not know, but I do know that these matters are immensely complicated. (Touchingly, a Ghanaian paramount chief paid Guggisberg a culturally appropriate mark of respect by causing a headstone to be erected over his grave in Bexhill-on-Sea.)

    The CWGC report is surely right to say that “in many ways it is understandable” that its operations “were not perfect”. It goes on, however, to criticise its imperial forebear strongly. There were, it thinks, important respects in which many non-white people were treated unequally in death. Some were recorded only as numbers; others who could have had headstones did not get them. Sometimes, it says, this was the result of “cost cutting”, more often of imperial attitudes which tended to regard non-white people, especially Africans, as uncivilised. In doing so, Commission officials diverged from their own organisation’s principles. The CWGC may be too hard on itself: 100 years ago, it was ahead of its time on most racial questions. But it is surely right to err on the side of self-criticism – particularly if, as in this case, it can lead to new action. The report makes 10 recommendations, including a renewed search for names and putting recovered names on existing memorials. It also proposes new structures – memorials to the missing among the missing, you might call them.

    Properly covered, a report like that from the CWGC can help raise the public debate on all these matters. The current problem is that the people who make the most noise are treated by the BBC and others as the legitimate representatives of ethnic minorities – which is as ignorant and patronising as saying Jeremy Corbyn is a spokesman for all white people. Last month, the ground-breaking Sewell report on race and ethnic disparities did a comparable service in a current field – using modern data to start questioning the lazy assumption that racism is the root of everything. The usual voices grabbed the microphone first and started shouting. I think they are so angry because they fear they are losing their monopoly.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/23/war-graves-row-shows-racism-claims-given-credence-real-history/

  103. Coronavirus latest news: Mask-free summer ahead, say government advisers

    The public should be able to ditch face masks over the summer as vaccines do the heavy lifting in controlling Covid-19, Government scientific advisers believe.

    Step 4 of the Government’s road map for England currently states that all legal limits on social contact will be removed by June 21 at the earliest, when restrictions on large events such as festivals are also expected to ease.

    Scientists advising the Government say there is nothing currently in the data to suggest that people will not be able to enjoy a relatively normal summer, though coronavirus cases may well rise as the autumn approaches.

    Asked about mask-wearing in the coming months, one source said that vaccines are working so well, and there is such good vaccine uptake among members of the public, that things will return to much more like normal life over the summer months, with cases dropping very low, particularly in May.

    But wait a moment…
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    However, masks and possibly other measures may be needed next autumn and winter if cases surge, they said.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/covid-news-passports-tests-coronavirus-vaccine-lockdown-cases

    1. Masks do not work. Those who have submitted to the gene therapy injections will now be super spreaders of the virus and infect those who declined. Stay away from the mask wearers, they will be the morons who have accepted the corrupt medico advice.

  108. Dominic Cummings declares war on Boris Johnson
    Former chief adviser launches extraordinary attack on the Prime Minister, accusing him of quashing a leak inquiry to protect Carrie Symonds

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/04/23/dominic-cummings-accuses-pm-quashing-leak-inquiry-protect-carrie/

    A final barbed remark from a BTL comment:

    “If the price of wielding the sort of power Ms Simmonds is wielding is that she has to sleep with the physically repulsive prime minister then I reckon the price she has to pay is far too high.”

      1. That’s very kind of you to offer a portrait of Charlie. Thank you. The problem is, I have no room on my walls! I do have several watercolours of him (and pastels and acrylics of my other dogs).

        1. No worries – just a thought. I’m glad you have paintings of him and his like to keep the flames of memory alive.

    1. mng, the “AIER” is an oxymoron in itself. AIER owns American Investment Services (AIS), an investment advisory group which helps provide “earnings” to fund AIER. A number of AIS‘s investments are in the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries with holdings including Chevron, Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, FirstEnergy, Entergy, NextEra Energy, OGE Energy, Philip Morris International, Xcel Energy, and ExxonMobil among others. That said thanks for the post link, it’s further added info for use this end of the “parish”

        1. I can only give my take on it but yes they’re trying to play both “sides of the coin”, tick all the pertinent boxes with vested interest [theirs] paramount. But that’s my take, others may have different views

  115. SIR – Among crimes against English grammar (Letters, April 21),
    the now frequently used of is never needed following outside.

    Malcolm Axtell Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

    Mr Axtell needs a trip to eats shoots and leaves doesnt he

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