Friday 26 February: Dehumanising masks must be jettisoned once vaccination is complete

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/02/26/lettersdehumanising-masks-must-jettisoned-vaccination-complete/

690 thoughts on “Friday 26 February: Dehumanising masks must be jettisoned once vaccination is complete”

  1. Biden bombs Syria in message to Iran: US airstrike destroys multiple facilities used by Tehran-backed militia behind rocket attacks in Iraq that injured American troops and killed a contractor. 26n February 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c0ba98a5f17a6647d97e7ef67cdaeb718f204efb68307c1e29829f0057117f27.jpg

    The United States on Thursday carried out an airstrike in Syria against a structure belonging to what it said were Iran-backed militia, two officials told Reuters, an apparent response to rocket attacks against US targets in Iraq.

    Morning everyone. Just warming up! Back to the good’ole days!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9301807/U-S-carries-airstrike-against-Iranian-backed-militia-target-Syria-officials-say.html

      1. Yes, the Yanks (politicians) always pick the wrong side – until it rewards them by turning on them too. They backed Egypt against Israel, France and the UK over the Suez crisis; and where did that get them? The God awful mess we are still in in the Middle East. Even in WWI and WWII they stayed out of the fray. One, to see Britain and its Empire diminished in power and influence (they still hadn’t forgotten the failure of the war of 1812 against the UK) and two, to profit from supplying the belligerents with arms, ammunition and other supplies. It only joined in when bitten by its ungrateful recipients. With the aid of British politicians they achieved their objective of destroying the British and French Empires but that left the world without a controlling hand. They still haven’t learned their lesson, look at the Ukraine, Saudi and Syria for just three example.

        Look upon your handwork Yankie politicians – and weep!

  3. Good Morning Folks,

    Bright frosty start here.
    Spring is on it’s way, I can always tell when it gets light before the new post

    1. Her Majesty has always been very careful about how she speaks and what she says. I don’t for a minute believe she was involved in this way.

      Never in a million years would she say “you know”.

    1. Dotted around Colchester town centre are posters with a similar message along the lines of, “Let’s work together by staying apart.”

      2. Good Lord. I didn’t realise people visited Colchester town centre. In fact, I didn’t realise it still existed.
        Morning, KtK.

  6. Biden must freeze Putin’s pipeline and prevent this “bad deal for Europe”. 26 February 2021.

    In August 2016, then US Vice President Joe Biden stood in Stockholm and declared the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project to be a “bad deal for Europe.” In doing so, Biden added vital policy leadership against Putin’s pipeline to his role as the Obama administration’s point person supporting Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression.

    The only people (who count) that think this is a “bad deal” are American LNG exporters!

    https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/biden-must-freeze-putins-pipeline-and-prevent-this-bad-deal-for-europe/

    1. Americans buy lots of BMW & MB cars –
      Germany buys Russian gas with the US$
      Why not exchange German cars for US Gas and leave Putin out in the cold?

    1. The answer to problems created by “Europe” is always “more Europe”. The Project has no reverse gear. But here’s me, preaching to the choir – it’s the 48% that worry should worry us.

  9. I welcome the American study into the effective halal abbatoir techniques, preparing journalists for the logistics trade. How to hack an overweight hack into an attaché case being carried around the streets of Istanbul without even a sniff from a passing dog.

    As well as the obligatory blessing, would this not require the bodily fluids being drained before skilful dismemberment?

    As someone who, as a postman, once had to deliver a dead fox to a taxidermist on my my round, and had the thing leaking all over my van, I welcome advances in packaging when most produce must these days be done by mail order. Did taxidermy get its name because its art materials were sent by taxi (presumably safeguarded from passing dogs)?

  11. Good morning and a bright crisp one here in Derbyshire with a -3°C in the yard and frost covering the field on the other side of the pond.

  12. Nicked

    “Your reminder that the ISIS bride Shamima Begum will find out today whether
    she will be allowed to return to the UK to fight a decision to strip her
    of British citizenship. Decision will be handed down at 9.45am this
    morning.

    If she is allowed to return then once she places just one
    foot on British soil whatever happens after is completely academic and
    theatre. She will of course never be allowed to leave and years of
    legal infighting will be the result, millions spent only to end up with
    the reinstatement of her citizenship. We already have the proof of this
    with the Stanstead plane hijackers and more recently the English
    Channel oil tanker hijackers.

    The sensible decision is to refuse
    because she still has Dutch nationality (Dutch father) and we are not
    making her stateless. I fear though the courts are so cucked they will
    allow the return and at that point the precedent is set and the
    floodgates will open for all the others.

    Meanwhile the law abiding
    British population remains locked up under the most draconian
    restrictions of freedom since the Middle Ages.”
    Oh flucking joy!!

          2. I wonder idly what the reward is for female jihadis, do you think they are greeted by 40=50/60/70 (insert your own no.) of virgin or experienced husbands?

    2. Big problems with this case. I have no time for Shamina’s ideology, but civis romanus sum.
      Years after the events known as 9/11, civil servants in the Home Office have consistently REFUSED to introduce effective identity checks at airports, and consequently the twits at check-in etc were fooled by a 16 year old teenager. Whoops, three teenagers.
      It would appear that in England & Wales using a stolen passport to obtain goods and services is not a criminal offence if you are only sixteen.

  13. Morning all

    Mask letters….

    SIR – Mandatory wearing of masks after the end of lockdown must be rejected. Face masks are vile, dehumanising devices. Nothing better exemplifies a continued divergence from “normality”.

    When the majority of the population has been vaccinated, including all the high risk groups, masks should no longer be compulsory.

    John Wainwright

    Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

    SIR – There should be clarity about the law, which must be obeyed, and what is guidance, which we may follow at our discretion (“Schools told they cannot force pupils to wear masks,” report, February 25). Currently even policemen are confused.

    David Linsell

    Lymington, Hampshire

    SIR – If there was no vaccine, would the plans to come out of lockdown be any different?

    Roger Young

    Steyning, West Sussex

    SIR – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article on the social cost of delayed reopening (Business, February 25) is telling.

    Advertisement

    Advertisement : 4 sec

    The Government acts as though we hadn’t already vaccinated 18 million people. Given that there are now nearly 5 million people on furlough, it is incredibly relaxed about the effect of keeping lockdown going.

    The biggest danger is complacency, not on the virus but on opening up, with an unwillingness to move quicker if the data shows it’s possible.

    Graham Mitchell

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – I do not understand the fuss about “vaccination passports”. I have carried proof-of-vaccination documents with my passport for 50 years.

    Colonel the Rev Peter Lear

    Thornton-le-Dale, North Yorkshire

    SIR – When I had my first AstraZeneca inoculation, I was checked on a laptop, efficiently, three times – on arrival, pre-jab and departure. I assume these facts are registered and that anyone with due cause could establish this. So who needs a “passport”?

    However, if all the facts are there, I can see no reason why “passports” based on them can’t be created with similar efficiency.

    Piers Evans

    Caterham on the Hill, Surrey

    SIR – Peter York (Letters, February 23) makes a humorous point about people who don’t like coffee missing out on the forthcoming freedom to share steaming mugs on park benches .

    In reality our sympathies should lie with the many lonely people who simply have no one to share their coffee with.

    James D C Perks

    Bicester, Oxfordshire

    SIR – I cannot be the only person who has enjoyed lockdown. I have read so many books, baked, painted my Easter cards, gardened in the sunshine and enjoyed the cricket back on television.

    Wendy May

    Hereford

    1. Or, Mr Perks, people who live in Bicester and don’t have many park benches to share their coffee on, because greedy development plans have not factored in people’s need for parks.

    2. SIR – I cannot be the only person who has enjoyed lockdown. I have
      read so many books, baked, painted my Easter cards, gardened in the
      sunshine and enjoyed the cricket back on television.

      Wendy May.

      Obviously not short of a bob or two or gives a shit about the suffering of others. Smug cow.

    3. P Lear – and did you have to show said documents to get into a cafe, shop or pub? Arse.

  14. BBC class quotas

    SIR – The BBC is to introduce quotas for working-class employees as it is worried that its thinking does not reflect that of its audience (report, February 25).

    The audience doesn’t care what class BBC employees come from, or about their sexual orientation, religion or ethnicity. It wants the BBC to recruit the most able person for each role.

    Quotas, diversity role models and wokeness simply show that the BBC is moving ever further from its audience.

    Clive Button

    Chester

    2. “The BBC is to introduce quotas for working-class employees”.

      Exactly how many brooms does the BBC possess? *sarc

      1. They’ve had the same one for twenty two years. It’s only had eleven new handles and fourteen new heads,

      2. They’ve had the same one for twenty two years. It’s only had eleven new handles and fourteen new heads,

      3. When I did a temp secretarial assignment there many years ago, the cleaners were all black, and there wasn’t one black face among the admin staff that I saw!

  15. Harassed dean

    SIR – I understand that the Very Rev Dr Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford (Letters, February 23), is termed a “medium to high safeguarding risk” to all staff, students and beneficiaries of the charity, and that his own staff have been instructed not to come to his residence unaccompanied. Even on the most hostile reading of his alleged crime (an allegation dismissed by police), is this not excessive?

    The dean is reportedly required to write for permission to attend his own cathedral, and his attendance must be private and supervised. All visitors to his (and his wife’s) residence must be accompanied or chaperoned. Such petty measures smack of extreme vindictiveness. They are clearly designed to harass and humiliate.

    As an alumnus of Christ Church I join the call to its governing body to accept the dean’s offer of mediation, a solution backed by our alumni association and long recommended by the Charity Commission.

    James Gordon

    St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

  16. Democrats are wondering why Biden has taken so long to try to get rid of Assad,
    Apparently it’s taken him a month to say- babababababababaababaababaa bomb Sesesesesessessse Syria

  17. Stop wearing masks NOW. Wear a badge no mask and just see how pleasant people are to you in supermarkets.( staff not customers)

    1. You hardly come across anyone, anywhere, wearing a mask here in Sweden. And we are not dropping like flies!

      1. The two states in the USA that did not mask up Florida and South Dakota have the best results of all.Its hard to find anything about it on the Media.

        1. Last summer there was a motorcycle meeting in South Dakota
          400,000 attended the week long event
          250,000 bikers, from all over the USA, went home and developed Covid

  18. Morning hall.
    Headline in this morning’s BBC teenmag:
    “MPs investigate ditching smart motorways”.
    Good grief. Aren’t they dangerous enough already? You couldn’t make it up!

  20. The Salmond scandal has shattered my belief in devolution. 26 February 2021.

    The scandal here isn’t so much the allegation but what it reveals about the mechanics – and decay – of democracy in Scotland. Salmond might be peddling the most outrageous conspiracy theory, or he might have a point. We’ll never know if the claims are not investigated. But the Scottish parliament committee has decided to censor his written testimony which, under its rules, affects what he can discuss when giving evidence today. It also affects which allegations Sturgeon can be made to answer.

    Well better late than never one supposes! The truth of the matter is that this indifference to Democracy extends to Westminster as well. The “Pandemic” has ushered in rule by Diktat where all Parliamentary (and Opposition) oversight has been abandoned. The UK is now a Benevolent (for the moment) despotism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/25/salmond-scandal-has-shattered-belief-devolution/

    2. All these fools who are surprised by the events in Scotland have clearly never read a history book.

    3. So what about the pilot?
      It was a male.
      Bigger news would have been an actual female pilot.

  22. Reuters, BBC participated in UK FCO’s project to weaken Russia. 25 February 2021.

    The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) fostered and supported the BBC and Reuters to carry on a series of concealed programs with the purpose of “promoting regime change inside Russia and undermining its government across Eastern Europe and Central Asia,” according to a series of leaked documents, reported The Grayzone, an independent investigative news website.

    In October 2020, some leaked documents, closely resembling UK FCO-related documents, were released anonymously, The Grayzone reported, which also revealed a tremendous propaganda campaign funded by the UK organization to foster support for regime change in Syria.

    The anti-Russia propaganda is bad enough but the arming of Jihadists and the murders in Syria purporting to be Chemical Attacks by Assad’s forces were worse! Most of the people who carried out the latter are now here in the UK under the White Helmet cover story!

    https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-25/Reuters-BBC-participated-in-UK-FCO-s-project-to-weaken-Russia-report-Ya0X5PBHTq/index.html

  25. Power Cut

    We had a power cut last week and my PC, TV and games console shut down immediately, it was raining- I couldn’t play golf so I talked to my wife for a few hours.

    She seems like a nice person.

  26. This letter is from yesterday’s batch but I do wonder whether the author argues the case so eloquently when considering face veils so beloved by some pupils and their parents.

    SIR – When I heard that all pupils were to return to school on March 8, I was filled with hope. However, this turned to dismay when I read that masks will be required in secondary school classrooms (report, February 24).

    As a teacher, I will not be able to carry out my job effectively if the faces that tell me whether my pupils are confused, happy or bored are covered. This is the last thing that young people need after a year of isolation, educational disruption and uncertainty about the future.

    Boris Johnson said last August that masks in classrooms were “nonsensical”. I agree, as do many other teachers and parents. There is little evidence that this measure has much effect in schools, but it will have a severe impact on the learning experience of all secondary pupils.

    Anna Dunham

    1. Face coverings have a severe impact on all interactions between people – that is why they are used as a tactic to keep those uppity women under control.

    2. In Spain, many pre-schools insist that the toddlers (2-3) have to wear compliances all morning, except when drinking. I have seen a recent photo of a masked nursery school group, truly horrifying. (I tend to avoid posting jpegs of children, even if they are almost unrecognisable)

  27. So Donald looks very likely to run in 2024…

    That’s so great……

    That could be 12 years of President Trump by the time he’s done..

    No, that’s not a mistake !

    1. Biden will get 110 million votes in 2024…

      Trump will be too old, you need a lot of stamina for the campaign and the job.

  30. Good Moaning. Beautiful sunset last night and a gorgeous morning today.

    On to The C21 Scottish Play.
    “She (Sturgeon) added that just because he had been cleared of criminality, “that doesn’t mean that the behaviour [women] complained of didn’t happen.” Isn’t the Fishwife a lawyer? If so, she should know better than to make such public pronouncements.

    Arguably, the nearest Scotland ever came to democracy was between 1707 and 1999. Seemingly, the High Heid Yins just can’t help themselves; MB and I have been surmising the late Uncle Willie’s appalled reaction to such shenanigans.

    Talking of sunrises and sunsets:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTwbQlJKY5E

    1. Lest we forget, the verdict of “not proven” is available in Scottish law. And even south of the border, a verdict of innocence in a criminal trial does not guarantee immunity in a civil action.

      1. Off the top of my head, there was one ‘not proven’ verdict.
        However, I was making the point that a lawyer and politician should know better than to publicly question the jury’s verdict. And then I remembered that Scottish politics have always been a snake pit.

        1. In summary, one charge was dropped, and the jury threw the rest out with most being “Not Guilty” and one “Not Proven”.
          However the women involved were from an extended time period of years. They were brought together. As as far as I can recall it is claimed they were able to talk to each other before the trial and were coached on giving evidence, by, allegedly, officials of the government. All alleged, of course.
          The pattern is one of conspiracy, whatever hard evidence might be lacking (shredded, deleted, redacted). That Sturgeon was not involved is beyond preposterous. Everything about her is suggestive of being a “power freak”. She picks everyone in a position of any authority. There are no voices of dissent permitted. The upper clique has been together for years.

          1. I wonder how often ‘top civil servants’ chow down with their senior ministers in the official residence?
            How often are they taken on a conducted tour of said residence – a tour that includes bedrooms?
            Did none of these seemingly naive ladies wonder, as they mounted (the stairs) and wandered along landings with a man rejoicing in a reputation for being hands-on operator, why they had left the public areas of Bute House?

    2. Why is Edinburgh called the Athens of the North? Because it is full of eighteenth century neo-classical architecture. In other words, wealth flowed in following the Act of Union!

      2. Well, the Union came about after England had strangled Scottish trade and hence our economy.

          1. Self defence. England has always had 10 times the population of Scotland, and repeatedly sought to conquer us. So don’t come it with the victim card!

          2. Excuse me, but Scotland tried to invade us several times! We just had a problem with rustlers off our northern borders.

    1. I actually know someone whose near-neighbour died of the plague. That was nearly a year ago. And, er, that’s it.

    2. Morning Bill. I looked at my postcode fatalities yesterday. Five people have now died in it since the “Pandemic” began! This is one more than in March last year!

      1. One wonders how many people died in accidents in the home, at work and on the roads during the same period….

      2. One wonders how many people died in accidents in the home, at work and on the roads during the same period….

    4. Deceptive. It suggests 16 deaths in my postcode. My postcode covers the block of 16 flats which I call home. If there had been any deaths here in the past year, I’d have known about.it.

      1. Gosh,chaps, here’s a thing! I entered the postcode for the block next to mine (also 16 flats) and got an identical result.

      2. Gosh,chaps, here’s a thing! I entered the postcode for the block next to mine (also 16 flats) and got an identical result.

      3. Middle layer super output area is not the same level of detail as your full postcode. There will be many postcodes in one middle layer super output area.

        Edit – see RichardSK’s post for much more detail. Thanks Richard

        1. Many thanks, all is made clear. I say “clear” in the sense of “deliberately misleading”.

        2. Also depends on whether the area contains hospitals or care homes. Average age or socio economic profile would also play a part.

    5. Wonder what the italicised bit in “Number of deaths due to COVID-19 in Middle Layer Super Output Areas, death registered between March to December 2020, England and Wales” means?

    6. Good morning everyone, and Mr T.

      This postcode & area stuff has been covered in the press a while ago. You search by entering a postcode, but the area covered (which includes that postcode) is some sort of territory defined by local government. If I recall correctly, not a borough, nor a parish, but a type of zone that exists for administrative purposes.
      As for the deaths, yes, I know of people who have died or suffered terribly because of the Covid19 restrictions, but not OF or WITH Covid. Collateral damage, often tragic.
      The quandary for the government is that if they were to have excluded marginal cases, critics would have accused them of a cover up. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

      1. My (cynical) view is that the figure of 120,000 includes 100,000 who died from seasonal ‘flu and pneumonia.

        The truth will never be known because – if I am right, or even close – it blows the government’s action out of the water.

        1. The only question is, have our money and lives been wasted to save their faces or their @rses? Either way, it’s a high price.

    7. Four people have died in our ward (Barrington, Orwell and Gamlingay) but one of those was in residential accommodation. He was the only one from our village. All very elderly.

    9. Our local rag is still reporting “Covid deaths”. I doubt they are; they’ll be people with underlying conditions who probably caught Covid in hospital.

  33. Why, after 35 years, I have resigned from Amnesty International. Chris Bryant. 26 February 2021.

    That’s why I am so angry with Amnesty about its decision formally to remove the Russian activist Alexei Navalny from its list of “prisoners of conscience” because of comments he made in the past that it deems to be hate speech. Whatever you think of Navalny’s politics – and let’s leave to one side for a moment the irony of Putin’s sidekicks accusing him of gross nationalism – there is no justice in the Russian courts. Russian judges are Putin’s puppets. Once charged with a political crime in Russia you are automatically convicted. One Russian MP told me that Putin didn’t need the death penalty because he presumed that once a political prisoner had spent six months in a Russian jail, they’d either be dead or so scarred they’d never sleep in peace.

    Russia doesn’t even pretend to observe common norms of criminal justice. On top of his supposed political crimes, Navalny is in prison for breaking his parole on the extraordinary grounds that he did not check in with the Russian authorities when he was lying in a coma in a foreign hospital having been poisoned by the same Russian authorities.

    Whataboutery never excuses other evil deeds but one wonders why Bryant has never protested about the treatment of Tommy Robinson at the hands of the British Judiciary or the Show Trials for those who could be framed to be Far Right? Navalny’s nationalist beliefs were already known to those who could be bothered to enquire; it is just their coming out that has annoyed his supporters! As to his breaking his parole, he did this deliberately; he was not lying in a hospital bed in a coma but jogging around the Black Forest, a remarkable performance for someone supposedly poisoned by the world’s deadliest Chemical Weapon!. He could have returned in ample time to avoid the penalty.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/25/35-years-have-resigned-amnesty-international/

    2. One must assume that anyone who is active in Amnesty is safely cocooned in layers of hypocrisy.

    3. If Mr Bryant is to be believed it seems that Russia is turning into a version of Scotland.

    4. Chris Bryant is well up there on the list of entrants to compete for the title of most odious person in politics.

  34. Bulldog Lives Matter. A lady who’s Gaga has offered a $500,000 reward for the black suspects who shot her dog walker return of the dogs.

      1. Was the dog walker killed or just injured? The MSM is far more interested in the dogs..

    1. Good morning Mr Thomas. Do you have a link to the source for that map? I need to monitor this situation over the next few weeks…

    3. Of course, as George Bush pointed out ironically (he may have been unaware of the irony) that the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur!

      If they did have any entrepreneurs in Brittany they would set up a business in Roscoff selling the immigrant dealers dinghies guaranteed to sink after two hours at sea and defective outboard engines

    1. From what I heard on the radio this morning it seems she already has. Also on the radio earlier was a lady ( some professional ) being interviewed about the jab and she said ” The jab is not mandatory – – AT THIS POINT ” .

    2. I am disgusted that the odious government persuaded the poor old woman to join their vaccine promotion campaign. I wonder if they have something with which to blackmail her?

      I remember an old snippet of rhyme from when I was a child :

      When Jesus came to Britain two thousand years ago
      He voted in Conservatives – and Jesus ought to know!

      The CofE may have moved sharply to the Nomansland of the Left since my childhood but the Conservatives are still up to their same old dirty tricks.

  38. A possible 12 years in office for Donald ?

    Well sort of…

    He’s done four. Now he’s de facto President as he devolved power to US Forces who act with him. All in accordance with the Constitution using emergency powers available to the President.

    That’s to 2024. Then another four years after a massive win, or again with US Forces.

    Biden/Harris have no power.

    By the way, Biden didn’t attack Syria.

    Donald was dealing with Iranians in Syria.

  39. Good morning. I have recently been posting about sites selling fresh fish. Peskyfish, Hamilton’s of Salcamb etc.

    I did wonder why when export markets had dried up that to buy fish here seemed even more expensive.

    It turns out the middlemen have disappeared and people are phoning the boats direct. Because their phones are wringing off the hook the price has been going up. The plus side for the fishermen is they get a better price for their catch.

    I watched this last night and it explained quite a few things. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rh10/cornwall-this-fishing-life-series-2-episode-1

    5. That series was – on the whole- very informative and interesting.

      The one duff episode involved some men who bought a second hand boat for £50,000 – spent a similar sum “doing it up” only for it to fail the boaty MOT and have to spend £20,000 more. They then discovered that the fishing licence which they “thought” had been included in the original sale price was NOT. Huge debt; useless boat – very stupid men. I had no sympathy for them at all.

      1. Good morning. They really should have researched it better. BTW this is the first episode of series 2.

        Well made and honest. Rather surprised it’s on the Beeb.

          1. I’m looking forward to it.

            Though the series is obviously edited it was interesting to hear what the fishermen and women had to say.

          2. I thought the youngsters were very impressive – in these days where one usually only hears about them stabbing or shooting each other.

          5. In the other series on Trawler fishing around Scotland they were finding it very difficult to find crew. The reason given was that the younger folk were put off by the fact that a wage wasn’t guaranteed each month. Mortgages to pay and such like.

            There were a few crews made up of foreigners. Some Africans too.

            Clearly some people do want to work and work hard to support their families back home.

            As we have seen the majority rolling up illegally on our shores do not.

            I would like to know the figures for all the migrants whose asylum claims were accepted and were then allowed to work, how many of them did so. How many became self supporting and how many are still sucking at the teat of the benefits fairy.

      2. I feel sorry for the innocent who are duped – being naive is considerably better than being nasty.

        However I am disgusted when people like Johnson were completely duped and outmanoeuvre3d by the EU

    6. There is a fish buying stall on West Mersea promenade – every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.
      I assume it hasn’t done anything for the past year, but I must check out when it restarts.

      1. I’m sure they would appreciate the support. We lost our last wet fish shop years ago. You could only buy fish from the supermarket which was sometimes weeks old (other than online).

        Before all the shops were shut we had a husband and wife team open up selling fresh fish. Yet to see if they survived or not. Even though it would be more expensive we need to support local and homegrown businesses.

      2. I never knew that, Annie. Must take a trip to West Mersea when non-essential shops re-open.

  40. BBC headline today [and not the main story!] – Biden approves US air strike on Iran-backed militias in Syria. I wonder how that would have been presented if “Orange Man” had ordered the same strike??

    2. It’s only take Corrupt Creepy Uncle Joe 1 month to default back to the agenda of the Military Industrial Complex and Establishment Washington politics.

      Business as usual is BACK.

    3. Trump had more sense than to stir up a hornets’ nest in Syria. No good will come of infidels meddling in muslim lands. We tried it in Afghanistan in the 19th century and failed. The Russians tried it there in the 20th century and failed. Everything that’s been tried recently in that region has made things worse.

  41. Russia relations remain in ‘deep-freeze’ after Salisbury poisonings. 26 February 2021.

    On March 4 2018, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were targeted with the nerve agent Novichok and left seriously ill.

    Wiltshire Police Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was also treated after coming into contact with the substance when he tried to help the pair.

    Charlie Rowley and his partner Dawn Sturgess, 44, fell ill in nearby Amesbury months after the incident.

    Ms Sturgess died in hospital in July after coming into contact with a perfume bottle believed to have been used in the attack on the Skripals and then discarded.

    In normal times one might wonder why there is an article in the Cumberland Star about Russia and Salisbury. No longer! There is clearly a process whereby Global Propaganda is distributed to regional sources for increased spread. In this case it is almost certainly due to the lack of belief in the Skripal Saga in particular and the anti-Putin narrative in general. The whole fabrication is beginning to show signs of strain in the face of continuing online scepticism. It’s not difficult to see why this is so when one looks at the three paragraphs above where reality has been amended to support the Official Account. There is no evidence that Nick Bailey ever attended the Skripals; he in fact says the first he heard of it was in his office and he was sent straight to their house. This is not just a minor quibble since if even this is in doubt what of the rest? The Perfume Bottle is a Bête Noir to the Security Services. It simply does not fit. Aside from having supposedly moved to Amesbury from Salisbury by some unknown means, it was still sealed when Charlie Rowley found it, and for that reason alone could not have been used on the Skripals! These holes in the Official Narrative might seem small but they are accompanied by many more, and are unanswerable, which is why they are ignored.

    https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/national/19119552.russia-relations-remain-deep-freeze-salisbury-poisonings/

      1. Our security services attempted to bump off the Skripals in a very public way whilst blaming two Russian agents who had been spotted in country.

        The reason for this being that Sergei was a double double agent and was about to spill the beans to Moscow about the Steele document. Which would expose the meddling hands of the Clintons.

        I’ll get me bread for the ducks.

    2. Do you work for Putin – say from the St. Petersburg troll factory? I had quite a few run-ins with that lot over the last 5 years or so on the Telegraph – whereby they posted 95% of the time on articles about Russia and Putin, saying a lot of ridiculous stuff. 90% of your postings here appear to be defending Putin and the Russian regime, both of whom are VERY grubby indeed. The current smear campaign against Navalny is worthy of the KGB.

        1. Careful, komrade, as that was the go-to response from the St.Petersburg crew on the DT when their motives were questioned. That and quoting ‘TASS’ and ‘Sputnik News’ whilst pretending to live in Slough or suchlike.

          It rather gave them away (amongst many other things), annoying them that they soon had to make up another account and name to login under to continue their propaganda and disinformation efforts.

          Untill those trolls brought up the ’77th brigade’, I assumed they were referring to the old TV programme ‘M.A.S.H.’

      2. Araminta Smade has been a regular here for a long time and posts on numerous different topics.

        I very much doubt that he/she is a Russian troll, notwithstanding any pro-Russian posts made.

        I am equally as sceptical over the constant stories against the Putin regime and the oligarchs, of which I am no fan. I’m afraid I do not believe the Skripal narrative we have been sold.

        But EU and US interference in areas where Russian influence and interests are very long-standing, particularly the old Soviet/USSR/Warsaw pact satellites, suggests nothing more than expanding the EU’s influence and empire building. I suspect that Biden is keen to stop the pipeline because America will benefit.

        Russia has a long memory and many invasions over the years have made them wary when neighbours start scrumping in their orchards.

        1. I suspect we’re not being told the truth on both sides, which is how intelligence services like it.

          As regards ArSm, I’ll see how things develop, bearing in mind that 5 years isn’t that long. I have personal experience over many years sparring with the Ruskie state trolls (and a few Chinese ones) when I was a subscribed to the DT and, as I indicated, my ruskie troll-o-meter started dinging away at ArSm’s posts.

          1. You are relatively new here.
            Like you I posted on the DT, in my case for many, many years before stopping and settling here. I too came across all sorts.

            When I see the type of abbreviation you have given Araminta Smade I immediately start to think obnoxious Troll who is trying to be unpleasant.

      3. AS has posted on here for yonks and she (?) has always been sceptical of official accounts about anything, not just Russian matters.
        I also have doubts about official versions on many matters. I think we should be careful in dealing with Putin, but he probably has more loyalty to what we view as western values than many European rulers. His methods are mediaeval and wouldn’t look out of place 500 years ago.

  43. 329739+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Another little carrot prior to the 6th May, as in, them pretendee tories are not so bad.

    Dt,
    Shamima Begum loses legal bid to return to UK to fight for citizenship.

    1. She’ll be back. A terrorist, a lover of terrorists, a supporter of terrorists, a wife of a terrorist, and a breeder of terrorists. Our Courts will insist on her return.

      2. As long as the government keeps shovelling tax payers’ money into the pockets of shyster lawyers, this saga will run and run.

        1. A bit too late now, Annie. (Good morning btw.) There will always be some “useful idiot” who will campaign for other “useful idiots” to use crowd-funding to pay the shyster lawyers.

    1. Conservative Home has a new platform provider (I think that’s the right term). I still can’t get into it to comment.

    2. My current pooch has been so much better behaved since he became an only dog (the old boy he shared the pack with died at the age of 17 – the age the “youngster” is now). It’s the reason I can’t ease in a replacement.

  45. Shamima Begum, who left the UK for Syria to join the Islamic State group as a teenager, will not be allowed to return and fight her citizenship case, the Supreme Court has ruled. Have they gone mad? Wot about ‘er ‘uman rites? Wot about the other 350,000 cases awaiting confirmation and compensation. This day will go down in infamy… I know, I know, they have all got it in for me!

          1. She was a very good lawyer. She went mad when appointed to the bench. And got worse the higher she went.

    2. Who paid for all the legal fees? No prizes…

      It is a great pity that the total costs borne by the taxpayer cannot be awarded against the Human Rights lawyers who took on the case, because they have zero financial risk.

      If they knew that every time that they lost one of these cases there was the possibility they would lose a lot of money personally I doubt they would be quite so eager to act.

        1. If they lose the first round they should become PB.
          If it has to get to the SC, and they lose, they should be charged the entirety of the Government’s costs and be forced to cover every cost since the first round.

          They need to be forced to have some significant “skin” in the game.

      1. Don’t worry they will now argue that if a 15 year old can make grown up decisions then they can also vote…..

    5. A somewhat surprising decision since some of the filth that actually went from here to fight have been allowed to return. Begum was actually honest enough to speak the truth. Before anyone asks, no, I’m not offering her a room.

    1. Ron Paul is one of the few senior GoP politicians that actually has a brain, common sense and a conscience. Just a shame he’s not the most charismatic of politicians. He took down Biden’s new pick for ‘assistant’ health doo-dah ‘Rachel’ Levine yesterday very well. See Steven Crowder’s YT channel for more, and a lot of laughs.

  47. Morning all, I’ve been so busy around the house and garden. Making good around the new boiler flue clearing the dam moss off the roof fixing outside lights.
    And the funeral on Wednesday of my good old mate, who I went to SA with in 1968. I discovered he had been working at one of the dreadful and lethal asbestos mines in Zimbabwe, i’m not sure why he did that, but it with out any doubt led to to his untimely death. But I met his widow and his first born Son (now mid 40s) and he has his father’s sense of humour. Keep it going M.
    I’m having a bit of a job keeping up with all these strange goings on in our increasingly strange world.
    Biden’s bombed the Syrian Iran border !
    This afternoon it’s all going to be about Alexi Salamander and Olga Krankie.
    HMQ Brenda has been making her thoughts known about the bame vaccine dissenters. But like the rest of the media not specifically naming them.
    Harry’s been running ahead of Oprah (she’ll be pulling (wig orff) her hair out) and been interviewed in LA on and open top bus by James Cordon.
    Last evening a large bee arrived in out kitchen. I rested over night under a flower pot, I placed it out this morning on a low brick wall in the sun shine,
    It’s gone now.
    And now i have more climbing roses to prune and train through a trellis before they get out of hand.
    I might even have to mow the grass some time next week I have a brand new still in the box lawnmower.
    I might pop back later.

  48. From reading the papers, I understand that in the Newham area of London, where 70% of the residents are Black, Asian, BAME, they won’t accept vaccine… [read- BAME means MAJORITY Ethnic] – lack of trust/belief in the doctors etc . .

    I have a Simple Solution – Ask them witch doctors they would like to go to . . . !

    1. Witch doctor medicine is precisely what they’re rejecting. The laugh is that the multi-kulti bods didn’t see it coming.

      1. I suspect that too many of them can either directly or via tales from their parents tell us of instances back in their homeland where dodgy doctors and foreign ‘Aid’ / Pharma / Charity organisations (in addition to corrupt local officials and clinicians) took advantage of the poor and desperate to carry out all sorts of nasty experiemental ‘treatments’ to save on testing them for ages in the West and at vastly higher expense.

    2. I have a complete lack of trust in government, pharmaceutical firms and the government agency that is the nhs.

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

    FSU Anniversary

    The Free Speech Union celebrates its one-year anniversary this month. “In our first year, we have been contacted by hundreds of ordinary people,” Toby told The Express. “They have fallen foul of a censorious minority – often with the backing of HR departments – that will stop at nothing to silence those whose opinions they disapprove of.” In its first year the FSU has helped hundreds of members, including “bus drivers, social workers, council employees, civil servants, police officers, students and teachers”. One such member, featured in The Express article, is Evan Heasley, a firefighter in Suffolk who was given a six-month written warning because he asked a question about the woke gobbledegook being peddled by the Black and Asian Network of Suffolk Council. “Free speech is the very foundation of our democracy,” Toby said. “It allows us to hold those in authority to account, to expose wrongdoing and to robustly debate the most important issues of our time. For all our sakes, it must be protected.”

    Freeze peach

    In a comprehensive piece for Spiked, Brendan O’Neill gives an overview of the present free speech crisis and its denial by those who support censorship. He criticises the present Government as well, pointing out that if it were truly in favour of free speech it would “dismantle laws that mean people can be arrested for making jokes online. It would re-examine ‘religious hatred’ legislation and the chilling impact it can have on playwrighting and comedy. It would overthrow Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which makes it an offence to be ‘grossly offensive’ on the internet. It would scrap Prevent, the anti-radicalisation strategy that has led to numerous illiberal intrusions into people’s reading habits, speech and thoughts.” He argues that “both sides in this so-called culture war fail to see what’s at stake…fail to appreciate why freedom of speech is so essential to human flourishing”.

    Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens laments the loss of freedom in Britain in his regular column, recalling in the not too distant past “a general feeling that we were free to do, say and think as we liked within the boundaries of a clearly understood law and of good manners”. Following his recent defence of free speech on Channel 4 News, he says he was “unpleasantly surprised to find just how unpopular this view now is with the fashionable people who watch that programme”. In that interview, he identified the core problem of cancel culture: “The people who are cancelling actually think their opponents are bad – not just wrong, but bad.”

    Writing in Spiked, Wendy Kaminer makes an argument for free speech on moral grounds, pointing out that free speech is essential for freedom of conscience. Laws that restrict free speech “violate what should be sacrosanct – freedoms of belief and conscience. Put very simply, regardless of consequences, it is profoundly immoral for any person, civil or governmental entity to assume the power to tell us what to think.”

    Left-wing free speech

    The Telegraph reports that gender-critical feminists are the most frequent victims of no-platforming at Britain’s most prestigious universities. Out of 21 incidences of no-platforming at Russell Group universities, eight have “involved ‘gender critical’ speakers, including Dame Jenni Murray, feminist campaigner Julie Bindel, and Oxford history professor Selina Todd”. Toby told the Telegraph he’s been shocked that “the main victims of censorious student mobs are Left-wing feminists”.

    Professor Selina Todd gave an interview to Spiked, in which she discusses being no-platformed and requiring security to give lectures, as well as broader free speech-related issues. She also makes an exhortation to those on the Left: “The left should be out there defending democracy. It was the left that campaigned for democracy through the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the left that championed women’s suffrage. It’s an absolute tragedy that the left is not owning this debate.”

    Comedian Andrew Doyle is often labelled “far-right” but says, “In truth I am more left-wing than most comics. Because I support free speech above all.” The creator of Titania McGrath is the subject of an extensive piece in The Times this week, which also marks the release of his new book Free Speech and why it Matters. The official launch will take place online on the 2nd of March from 7 to 8.30pm. Everyone is welcome to join – and it’s free.

    Racist anti-racists

    Writing in the Daily Mail, Calvin Robinson recounts the litany of racist abuse that has been directed at him by founder of the Race Trust charity and other supposedly “anti-racist” public figures, who see him as “a puppet controlled by oppressive white puppet-masters, who use me to spout their own messages”. While he recognises “the sad truth…that many on the Left want to remove my freedom to speak independently”, he refuses to “be intimidated or bullied into submission”.

    In a separate piece for the Telegraph, Calvin insists that cancel culture is alive and well, pointing to his own recent experience of being no-platformed. “This is a freedom of speech issue,” he argues, concluding: “Freedom of speech is essential to our democracy; it is the cornerstone of every healthy, functioning society. Unless we have free speech, can we ever truly be free?”

    All events to resume at Exeter University

    After the Exeter University Students’ Guild asked every student society to cancel all events involving external speakers, the FSU wrote to the Vice Chancellor, Professor Lisa Roberts, to remind her of the University’s statutory duty to uphold free speech. The exchange, which has been published on the FSU website, resulted in a decision to resume all events. Toby said: “I’m glad the Vice-Chancellor has finally seen sense. It was as if the Guild saw how censorious other student unions were being and said, ‘Hold my beer.’ Students at Exeter are already being short-changed because of the lockdown. To add to their miseries by cancelling all online events is scandalous.”

    Freedom to boo

    The FSU has written a letter to the FA arguing that football fans must be allowed to boo players who take the knee in support of Black Lives Matter. Toby wrote: “From a free speech point of view, it cannot be fair or reasonable that people on the pitch are allowed to express their political views, but those in the stands are not.” The Daily Mail wrote about the letter in its sports pages last Saturday.

    Free speech reversals

    The Liberal Democrat Party deleted a tweet that read: “Should free speech at universities be a priority right now? ‘Absolutely not’.” The tweet quoted a comment by Lib Dem MP Layla Moran’s on Question Time. The comment and the tweet were a reaction to plans announced by the Department for Education to create a “Free Speech Champion” among a raft of measures to protect free speech and academic freedom at universities.

    Facebook apologised for removing ads from ThinkScotland, a unionist think tank, after a letter organised by the FSU and signed by a number of prominent Conservative MPs and a cross-section of peers was sent to Sir Nick Clegg, the chairman of Facebook’s Oversight Board. ThinkScotland’s editor Brian Monteith had argued that the removal of the ads was an attack on free speech, but a Facebook spokeswoman said it was just a “mistake”. “We restored these ads last week and are sorry for the inconvenience caused,” she said. You can read the FSU’s letter to Sir Nick here.

    Facebook vs Australia

    Australia passed a law requiring Google and Facebook to negotiate payment to Australian news organisations in exchange for including their content on their platforms. Last week, Facebook retaliated to the proposed law with a week-long blockade of news sharing in Australia, but backed down after changes were made to the new law allowing the tech giants more leeway in avoiding the new rules. In a blog post for Facebook, Sir Nick Clegg compared the law to “forcing carmakers to fund radio stations because people might listen to them in the car, and letting the stations set the price”.

    Twitter warning

    Twitter has reintroduced a feature it briefly tested last year that will issue a warning to users before posting anything considered offensive by Twitter’s algorithm. The announcement stated: “We’ve relaunched this experiment on iOS that asks you to review a reply that’s potentially harmful or offensive. Think you’ve received a prompt by mistake? Share your feedback with us so we can improve.” The warning can be ignored.

    Cancelling Christianity

    Writing in Catholic Culture, Phil Lawler warns Christians to anticipate further suppression of speech in the wake of Twitter’s blocking of Irish Catholic Bishop Kevin Doran, whose opposition to assisted suicide apparently violated one of Twitter’s policies. “All of us,” he argues, “insofar as we spend time online, are working for the internet giants, and being paid nothing for our time.” But he offers some suggestion, including, “protest the ‘cancel culture’”, “press for government action to protect free speech on the internet”, and “create alternative services”.

    The offence of being offensive

    Merseyside Police apologised after promoting a billboard that read “being offensive is an offence” as part of an effort “to encourage people to report hate crime”. After a tsunami of protest, Superintendent Martin Earl clarified that “‘being offensive’ is not in itself an offence”. Toby commented: “It’s deeply alarming that Merseyside Police have such a poor grasp of the law. As Lord Justice Sedley said in a landmark case in 1999, ‘Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.’”

    The Free Speech Union has written to Merseyside Police asking for assurance that they have not interviewed or arrested anyone for this imaginary crime.

    Countering extremism

    With the support of former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron, the Commission for Countering Extremism has released a report calling for new laws that restrict hate speech and the glorification of terrorism. The report’s co-author Sir Mark Rowley said: “Not only have our laws failed to keep pace with the evolving threat of modern-day extremism, current legal boundaries allow extremists to operate with impunity.” Previous attempts to legislate against “hateful extremism” have failed due to free speech concerns as well as an inability to define “extremism” objectively.

    Academic freedom to offend

    Writing in The Critic, Toby comments on the predicament of Bristol University professor David Miller, under fire for alleged anti-Semitism, owing to his “longstanding interest in conspiracy theories”, especially “those involving Jews”, according to Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. Unlike Finkelstein, who calls for Miller to be sacked, Toby thinks the University ought to “defend the right of all Bristol’s academic staff to express whatever views they like, however offensive some people might find them, provided they don’t break the law”.

    Launch of the Free Speech Champions

    The Free Speech Champions held a successful launch event last week, featuring a number of speakers, including founder Inaya Folarin Iman, Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and Cambridge philosopher Dr Arif Ahmed, as well as a bracing question and answer session with nearly 300 guests, including several of the champions. The event can be viewed on YouTube and donations to the new initiative can be made here.

    Sharing the newsletter

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

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

    Kind regards,

    1. I have little sympathy with those feminist ‘leaders’, given they’ve been wanting to apply censorship to me for a LONG time now. They are now getting a taste of their own medicine from the nutty trans lobby and the Gen-Z/millenial naive nutbags.

      Sadly, I believe that things are going to get a LOT worse before getting better, if they do at all. I remember quoting a variant of the ‘And then they came after me’ saying on another forum when wokeism and cancel culture was starting to take over, and only one other person agreed with that assessment. They all thought it would never happen to them – but to go after X person to cancel their account for saying something that 10 years ago would’ve got nearly everyone agreeing with them – publicly.

      1. I agree. The Feminazis – as opposed to feminist – are now being given a taste of their own medicine.

  52. The Beeb gives itself a whitewash.

    ‘The events of the past year have shown

    how important it is that the whole country has access to vital public

    health information at a time of crisis,’ she said.

    An ‘impartial news provider’ has an ‘essential role’ in serving society,

    supporting democracy and holding power to account,’ she added.

    (She said all that with a straight face)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9300087/BBC-executive-claims-TV-licence-fee-widely-backed-public.html

    1. Like the proclamation that Greta Doom Goblin, “speaks truth to power” as she reads a bonkers script written by some of the most powerful men on the planet. Irony is dead.

    2. Other than initially watching the ‘COVID news conferences’ and the re-run of the (2002) Battlestar Galactica series on BBC2, I can count the number of times I’ve consumed BBC TV or radio content at home since the pandemic broke on the fingers of one hand.

      It’s about as useful and relevant to me as Channel 4 News or SKY News is to me.

        1. I never watched the 2002+ remake before now – probably because I was put off by the original being so naff. I technically could binge watch via the iPlayer, but instead I just watch the two episodes the BBC shows late on Friday nights/wee hours of Saturday morning – recorded on my PVR.

          I think I’m up to season 3 out of 4 (plus some TV movies, I think). A lot of people believe its the best scifi show ever or up there with The Expanse (another show th was, until recently, good, but not the best ever), but I don’t think so. It’s alright, but apart from a few episodes I really liked, it’s fine, but nothing special. I’m lead to believe that the earlier seasons are better (I preferred season 2 thus far).

          I really don’t like the deliberately unsteady camera shots all the time, which is kind of ironic, given around that time, the ‘steady cam’ had finally arrived on the scene.

          1. I won’t mention any spoilers then if you haven’t finished. For its time it was good but i don’t think it was brilliant.

            I enjoyed the Expanse a lot. Some real good moments of tension. In case you are unaware The Expanse has finished airing season 5 and it looks good for another season.

            Avenue 5 was a laugh and a bit slapstick.

            Brave New World was really good.

            The 100 wasn’t bad if you stick with it.

            I also find it annoying with the wobbly camera shots. My eyes are bad enough as it is !

    1. I can’t ride my bicycle at the moment. I am deeply offended by your callous disregard of other peoples feelings and deeply hurty statements about how much fun you are having.

      Where’s me compo?

      1. Sorry- I am identifying as female today. So you can whistle for your compo!

        And it wasn’t “fun” at all!

          2. One of my most memorable meals involved cheese possessed.
            Four of us sat in the cab of an M2 Rig waiting to build a bridge over either the Weser or the Leine and feeling hungry.
            I poked my head up through the crew hatch to ferret about as best I could in the mob box and pulled out a tin of cheese possessed and one of strawberry jam.
            Both ends of the cheese possessed tin removed, contents pushed out, cut into slices, smeared with the strawberry jam and yowfed down
            very quickly.

          4. Righty-ho! I thought you meant the beanie hat worn by ‘im from Summer Wine…

            Probably down to me being a ‘young’un’ here. I did hear that some popular beat combo called ‘The Beatles’ were quite popular some time ago as well. 🙂

    2. I know what you mean. During the early summer last year, I dug my new bike out (not having ridden it since acquiring it and not having ridden any bike since my 2019 holiday) and decided to venture out up some of the more hilly country roads in my area, as the town (mostly flat) ones were no challenge at all (having walked them for ages and needed a change in route).

      At the first hill, which was much longer and more steep than I realised, I had to stop 4 times on the way up and had to take a 15 min break at the top. Not quite as bad for the remainder of the route, but I was absolutely cream cracked on returning home after 2 hours and 20 miles later. 20 years ago I used to be able to do that with ease. A few weeks later, I tried riding up the steepest hill in the area, and practically passed out on reaching the top.

      I thought that months of brisk walking up to 5 miles on a near daily basis (including up the same really steep hill at least once a week) had got me fitter. I was wrong. They can easily get me to the top, but not riding quite a heavy mountain bike with offroad tyres.

      Whenever the swimming pools/sports centres re-open as the lockdown is hopefully wound back, I’ll be in there like a shot – especially the pool.

      1. It’s like riding and race riding. You can ride regularly, but until you step up the faster work with short stirrups and have to push a horse for three miles, you don’t know what fitness is!

    3. Afternoon Bill – I’ve been out most days in inclement weather doing my daily 6 miles in 3 stages. The route is mostly the same but the gradients are getting steeper. I have my last ride out today about 4.30. The pot holes in the roads are breaking up and there are some deep holes I need to avoid.

  54. The Salmond interrogation is very tedious at the moment. I am going to wait for the summary.

        1. Sadly. I was looking forward to her being humiliated and Salmond casuing the Independence movement/SNP to simultaneously collapse.

          How convenient that the very organisation demanding the redaction of evidence is also one of those coming in for most criticism for cronyism and corruption during the proceedings. Seems the Dear Leader Jimmy K is taking a leaf out of the US Dems’ playbook for going after political opponents.

    1. Agreed, it’s redacted and what’s more there’s the awful redacted by that redacted by the name of redacted. Just had to get that off my chest.

  56. Good afternoon all. A few more here ….

    Kids today don’t know how easy they have it. When I was young, I had to walk 9 feet through shag pile carpet to change the TV channel.

    Senility has been a smooth transition for me.

    Remember back when we were kids and every time it was above 30o outside they closed school? Yeah, Me neither.

    I may not be that funny or athletic or good looking or smart or talented. I forgot where I was going with this.

    I love approaching 90, I learn something new every day and forget 5 other things.

    A thief broke into my house last night. He started searching for money so I got up and searched with him.

    I think I’ll just put an “Out of Order” sticker on my forehead and call it a day.

    Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

    Having plans sounds like a good idea until you have to put on clothes and leave the house.

    It’s weird being the same age as old people

  57. Why is the state taking away so many children? Spiked 26 February 2021.

    This is why stories like that of Holly Kobayashi, who had her baby removed from her after telling a midwife he had a bruise, are so galling. Kobayashi was a new, single mother staying at her friend’s house with her eight-day-old son. After showing the ‘5p-sized’ bruise to the midwife, fearing that it was a sign of leukaemia or some other condition, child services were called and Kobayashi’s son was taken from her for four months, while an investigation into possible child abuse could take place.

    This is the sort of thing you get when all individual freedom and rights have been crushed and the State is the arbiter of everything!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/26/why-is-the-state-taking-away-so-many-children/

        1. Apparently the MSM, some Dem politicians and their allies/hencemen and women in law enforcement are now implying this was a politically-motivated act for her appearing on Biden’s inauguration. Words fail me.

    4. We are so sick of preachy adverts. We mentally – and often physically – switch off.
      Please go back to trying to sell us stuff we don’t want.

  66. Just had a devil of a job getting back here! This is the old account I haven’t used for over a year. Had to go through all the robot bikes and traffic lights several times. Not sure what happened but all the recently self-deleted posts had turned into “guest” posts which usually indicate someone has closed their account.

    Also deleted and banned a few spammers – the first of those for a few days.

          1. I’ve just spent the last hour retrieving them! I use different gmail accounts for different things……..

          2. Go to and use a ‘Restore Point’ – available in Back up and Restore.

            It will put your computer back to the date you select, i.e., before all the angst. but, still download and run Ccleaner, SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes once Restored.

          3. Sounds too technical for me! I got them all back ok eventually. My son has back-ups for me if I lose things in the file system.

        3. You didn’t offend the Woke Police of the twitter/Facebook/Google cabal, did you? Like criticising their Dear Leaders?

      1. Don’t know – but I may have deleted some cookies that were keeping me logged in. The Daily Fail kept popping up on every tab and I got fed up with it and cleared a few things.

        2. Download and run Ccleaner, J, and also SUPERAntiSpyware.

          Malwarebytes will get rid of any PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programmes).

          Reboot and you should have a nice clean system.

          It will take time – I estimate about 90 minutes but it may be worth it.

          1. Thanks – but I’ll give that one a miss – sounds as though it might clean up more than I want it to. I’m running an old version of Linux and I don’t get any problems with hackers.

    3. My Disqus account has been running quite smoothly of late, aside posts on here with embedded links to Tw@tter saying ‘Java script is not available’ but still opening fine.

      1. I find that script on my phone but not usually on here (laptop). I don’t normally have any trouble staying logged into everything I use every day.

  67. Oh God protect us from politicians.

    Mandatory quarantine for arrivals in Canada- three days in a hotel $2,000.
    Say Up yours and walk out, fine $800.

    They are wondering why onbody respects them.

    1. It’s 10 days in Hotel Corona here! And £10,000 if you lie about where you’ve come from! Except for the boat people of course…..

      1. At least that is the right way round , it would cost more to break the rules. Also our clowns only have this quarantine rule for airline passengers but drive over the border and you just have to promise to self isolate.

        We are probably going to be blacklisted from entering any other country this year, they have announced that by mid March anyone over 80 can book an appointment for a vaccination. I think that Trudeau has signed his minions up as an unvaccinated control group.

        1. Britain is just as daft. You’re not allowed to leave without a valid reason, but anyone can enter the country giving no reason at all – they need to take three covid tests, one before arrival, one on Day 2 of quarantine and one on Day 8.

          1. Don’t forget the inflatable people who get a private NHS ambulance service then taxied to a four star hotel which they can leave at any time.

            All free of charge…….to them.

        1. That was the reading 3 weeks ago. My cholesterol was at 8.4.

          Both are now coming down with the weekly blood letting. And of course the Cloppydogrel and Atorvastatin + Aspirin.

          Narrowing of the arteries plus Polycythaemia became acute.

          It’s touch and go.

          1. Last week, I was admitted to A&E with acute premature ejaculation.
            The doctor said that, for a while, it was touch and come.

            I’ll get me white coat… :-((

          2. It was the white coat syndrome that a locum a year ago gave as a possible reason for my high BP.

            Do you need some tissues?

    3. Are NHS dentists closed? I go to a private one and they have silly rituals in place and charge extra for their “PPE” but they’re still offering a range of treatments. The hygienist does plaque removal with no scale and polish or rinse, which makes it even more expensive assault and battery than usual but the plaque removal is needed, so hey ho!

        1. The tariff for a dentist’s consultation for a standard check up in France is 23 € = £20. And you can always get an appointment within a week where we live in Brittany..

          But surely the NHS – which costs you over 1½ times as much as the French system – is far better because it is not based on an insurance funded scheme as the wicked French system is. So it is worth the long delay getting an appointment.

          1. Our wicked capitalist Canadian system charges about $100 (£65ish) for a descaling without the polish.
            I get to see the hygienist on Monday, it my social outing for the month.

      3. Even the NHS ones now try to fiddle it so they don’t do any scale and polish, which IS part of the tier 1 charge (£23.80), with the checkup and any X-rays taken. They like to get you to make a separate appointment with the hygenist so they can charge extra. I’m not sure if such an appointment is ‘NHS’ as it isn’t specifically covered on the charging items page.

        https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/dentists/dental-costs/how-much-will-i-pay-for-nhs-dental-treatment/

        Given most checkups last no more than 15 minutes (most of mine around 10 mins, even with X-rays), charging a minimum of £90+ an hour and likely much more (on 4 appointments an hour) is still very nice work if you can get it – even for NHS dentists.

        What the dentists and politicians forget is that to have a separate appointment with the hygenist, that means more time off work (often having to take half a day off)/away from home and for many, like me, extra travel costs as well (my dentist is 10 miles away) for that additional appointment.

      4. I had last June’s appointment cancelled and the December one with the hygenist was as you say. When I queried the extra charge I was told it was for the PPE and the extra assistant for the hygenist. I don’t know about NHS ones but I was still paying every month for no treatment from the private one. I only see the actual dentist once per year and at least he did some xrays.

    4. I just received a reply from my NHS dental practice saying that the denist is ‘no longer with us’ (I didn’t ask if they had died) after I’d enquired again as to whether I could book a reagular checkup, having received an automated email from them saying my 6-monthly checkup was overdue (since last May), despite telling me before that the dentists weren’t available throughout the pandemic.

      I now ‘might’ be able to get ‘provisionally booked’ in for a checkup ‘when they can get a new full time dentist’ hopefully in March (they are using locums for ’emergency work only’). Maybe.

      I’d do better getting blood out of a stone.

      Meanwhile, my parents’ private Dentist has been open for all treatments since July last year (the earliest they were allwoed to re-open).

      1. My Dentist is private and he was working 7 days a week to make sure all his patients were looked after.

        He normally goes surfing in Cornwall. But couldn’t obvs.

  69. Having visited China and North Korea, I fear Britain is sleepwalking into the same mentality. 26 february 2021.

    There will likely be no camps for us, but in attempting to deny our old concept of death being that which gives life meaning; in setting a precedent for such massive intervention in our private lives with such a low level of actual danger; in emasculating ourselves by submitting to illogical decrees while at the same time taking the consolation of the convenience of Netflix and food deliveries, we are in danger of sleepwalking into something akin to the Chinese model.

    Hmmm. Well we are already very like China and I wouldn’t bet against the camps! When things begin to go wrong they will need someone to blame and it won’t be themselves!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/having-visited-china-north-korea-fear-britain-sleepwalking-mentality/

    1. Yeah – locking people away for no good reason, because they disagree with governmental decisions or uncovering corruption is REALLY bad.

  70. So can some one with financial dealings knowledge please help. Do I understand this correctly ? If you have scrapped worked hard and saved some dosh over you past life time and have some savings in or of any shape or form, shares, a private pension allowance, (unless you civil service of in politics) income from property, a annuity or anything else that might hand the older generation a well earned few bob now an then. This effing useless government are going to tax the very Ars* off of anything you have previously been entitled to ?
    Iif so what’s the answer before that greedy no good chancellor get’s his hands on it ?

      1. The way i see it is, if you have savings and unless you are below the set current allowance of annual taxable income, if you remove any part of it to buy either property of Gold or what ever BANG !……….. they are going to tax it beyond belie, over certain amounts over 50%.

          1. I have only just been skipping through this vw, it’s on the front page of the Times today. Sunak’s Tax Raid on Pensioners

        2. With a private pension you need to draw as much as you can below the limit and try not to spend it but invest in areas the Gov can’t get hold of it. Too late for some folks.

      2. Are cryptocurrencies a solid investment? Musk has been playing bitcoin and the price is all over the place, hardly a good investment.

        We are shipping money from MILs estate to a US account and investing there. It was tough to turn down the .01% interest that her bank was offering!

        1. Crypto are not a solid investment and the big boys enjoy manipulating the markets but if you invest say $1000 and are prepared to leave it it could pay off as digital currency is the future.

          I wouldn’t invest in bitcoin now. You need to buy low and sell high. Knowing when to get out is the trick.

          Even with Biden in charge the Dollar tends to perform well globally.

          Investing in anything is for the long haul. My bet is now spread betting penny shares on tech medical and robotics.

          I am also getting the most wonderful .01% on my day to day savings but i also have bonds and NS& I which defeats inflation.

          4. Gosh, that was long. I took notes, mostly coherent.
            It’s quite interesting because it’s the first thing I’ve seen that offers me some inkling of an answer to the pressing question “what should I do with my savings while these shennanigans are going on?”

            The German lawyer is Dr Reiner Füllmich, who is bringing a class action in Germany because of corona losses.
            The organisation is the Stiftung Corona Ausschuss.
            Dr Füllmich said that when he worked at the Deutsche Bank, he became aware that there were people there who were breaking the law.
            Catherine Austin Fitts says there is a parallel criminal economy, and she linked this to small businesses being shut down during the pandemic and all the money being channeled to big players like Amazon.
            She makes the point about the BLM riots destroying “opportunity zones”, she alleges on purpose, because these zones attract more government money for anyone who invests in them.
            She says that it’s not possible to see how much US government money goes to each district. She saw a lot of fraud with government money when she was employed by teh Bush administration to investigate it. She believes the only way to prevent fraud is to allow people to see this for their district.

            CAF’s main accusation is that there is a class of people who have centralised finance, and who operate above the law and kill with impunity, and this has a trickle down effect on the whole economy (eg what happened in 2020). People using government policy to make themselves wealthy. Billionaires investing in real estate.
            “Crime that pays is crime that stays”

            ca 36 minutes, she analyses the BLM riots and which areas they destroyed. These destroyed buildings were in opportunity zones which give tax advantages to investors, and were then worth little and could be snapped up by investors. She calls it “a real estate acquisition plan”.
            She was involved with an attempt to create software to allow citizens to inspect government money being spent in their area, the DoJ seized it. (NB A software developer writes: Can’t believe it wasn’t backed up.)

            47 minutes – maps of Minneapolis and buildings burned.
            She says she doesn’t yet know how many buildings have changed hands, and it may still be happening.
            51 minutes – explanation of Antifa. Suggestion that Antifa did the burning.
            CAF talks about a long history of disaster acquisition of real estate, in conjunction with government officials. She left the Bush administration over this issue, she says.
            She says only transparency at local level will clean this up.
            CAF gives example of government officials hiring contractors rather than employees – more expensive, but backhanders flow back to officials, plus the contractor companies prop up the stock market, effectively with government money.

            ca 60 minutes
            Going Direct Reset – plan prepared at Blackrock by central bankers, 2019
            Great Reset is just a distraction, the real reset is financial.
            going direct reset is a financial reset of the world economy. You can read it, incl why they need to evolve the currency systems.
            “State of our Currencies” – they want to abolish cash and national currencies and control transaction data.
            All electrical grid is part of it.
            1:06 – if people can’t earn money, they are dependent upon printed money, and they have to do what the government wants.

            1:12 – CAF suggests that control of space will be increasingly important in the future.
            Story about insider trading in Indonesia just before tsunami.
            Sounds a bit strange. CAF speculates about disaster capitalism and whether it is possible to induce natural disasters. (Me: I think not, they only have to wait til one happens).
            1:22
            Private owners of central banks running govt policies, and we the public are financing them. Governments need central banks to buy their bonds. Govts want our taxes even though they are spending the money outside the democratic legal framework.
            Tax dollars must flow within the law and for purposes agreed by the people. Most important question in 2021.

            1:24 CAF says govts cant print unlimited money because it debases the currency. Also need taxation for control.
            CAF says people are building a prison system for the future (cryptocurrency, not using cash etc)

            Chapwood index. Trying to track increases in basic goods 8-14% over last decade due debasement of currency via printing more money.

            Debasement of currency not a problem to people who have assets.

            1:36
            1995, described in “the Dillon Read Story”
            Discussion on how to fund the Boomers’ retirement. Netherlands did it. Not possible to achieve financially responsible solution in democracy because people always want free money.
            By 1997, US government had given up trying to solve this problem. Money started to flow out of government.
            Predatory lending, incl student loans – if you can’t implement a responsible solution, you have to lower life expectancy. After 20 years, govt full of liabilities. Enter “magic virus” to provide excuse for why govt can’t deliver healthcare etc. (Also deliberately killing elderly?? All speculation!)
            Website https://missingmoney.solari.com/ – tracking missing money since 1998 from US govt.

            1:43
            October 2018 – Law change, US govt agencies now allowed to keep secret books.
            1:49
            No crash in September 2019 – take-down. The Fed went into the repo market (170 bn dollars), quantitative easing, big stock market crash first quarter 2020. Not covid – result of QE.
            Putting massive amounts of money into investors, shutting down mainstream. Gives investors ability to buy businesses.
            In return for loans, companies had to give financial data to govt.
            Watch interview with Celebrity Report, John Tides – read his report, and also CAF’s State of Our Currencies.
            Every year, US stock market can’t keep outperforming all others based on actual companies. At start 2020, money was flowing out. After covid, very big gains.

            1:57
            C J Hopkins – articles about Sanders, Covidian cult. – declaring war on populism. Started process in 2016 to destroy independent producers (Trump voters??). Very happy with covid, it pushed their goals forward. Group CAF nicknames “Mr Global.”
            Lee Smith – “The 30 Tyrants” – globalists using China to attack the US.
            CAF: China not significant power over US. China a creation of G7. Two groups of oligarchs scratching each others’ backs.

            CAF: Sharing information very important to fight back. Globalists are trying to do something very difficult, complicated, too many people involved, we can fight back.
            Details of how to support the German class action are on the stiftung corona ausschuss website.

          5. It’s very worrying as to what the ‘THEY’ are doing to our world. It makes you wonder just Who do they they think they are ??

          6. Well, if one is very rich, I suppose it is tempting to think of oneself as billions of times cleverer than one’s fellow men.
            I don’t think they will succeed, as there are too many other sharks circling the pool – the central bankers, the billionaires, the CCP and Islam, which still aims to conquer Europe and the US.
            It’s up to us to fight back though, and not sleepwalk into totalitarianism.

          7. our day to day savings are also pretty minimal nowadays and although I don’t do penny stocks our investment advisor is pushing a lot of tech.

    2. Have we an actuary, a statistician who understands annuity rates or an accountant on the Nottlers’ forum who can let me know:

      i) The inflation proof pension a retiring civil servant would get at the age of 65 on a final salary of £100,000 pa.;
      ii) The size of the pension pot that would be necessary at today’s annuity rates for a person who works for himself or in the private sector which would be needed to get the same level of pension and benefits.

      Pension apartheid must end now.

      And if you kill the private sector altogether by over-taxation from where will the money come for public sector pensions!

      1. Well – I have a civil service pension and my salary before I retired was about a quarter of that. Also as I didn’t have 40 years service I only had a quarter of my salary and not half. Also they changed the rate of uplift from RPI to CPI a few years ago. So, although I am extremely grateful for this source of income – it’s not an enormous amount.

        The current retiring members of the ordinary ranks at any rate will not get the same type of pension as it’s now based on average earnings instead of final salary.

        1. I know how you feel, i know some one who worked in a senior position in insurance who retried on full salary pension more than 30 years ago, he was then earning more than the PM.
          Twice I have been ripped off by the British government, I took my complaint to my MP, but all i received in return was pages of complete and utter BS, I’ve still got it all somewhere.

      2. In the USA a $100,000 annuity would get you about $5,500 a year so you would need a hefty down payment to match a civil servant pension.

        That would be fixed as well, not indexed in any way.

        I don’t think that we could match their benefits though, government pension benefits include almost limitless travel insurance. Just try and get insurance for a months travel to the US nowadays.

        It makes the top up on my UK pension quite reasonable. I did not have the maximum years contributions so they let me top up the eligibility. By paying £350 per year and that resulted in an additional £10 payment per month for each year.

    3. If you were rich and pals with the elite – you can stuff your wealth in Panama. Then when someone finds out, you have to pay a lawyer to keep it out of public knowledge.

      1. I’m a long way from being rich Walter, i’m just an ordinary guy who worked hard for over 53 years and paid all my taxes etc but was twice ripped off by HMRC and nobody ‘gave one’ about it.
        I spent a total of 6 years out of the country working, came back in 1980 and was instructed in the mid 90s that if i wanted a full pension i had to have paid in for more than 40 years. I sent them a couple of cheques to make up the difference of the 6 years of ‘non payment’ and soon after they knocked it back to 30 years to qualify for a full pension. Also being self employed most of the time i had money taken out of my earning s on top of my NI payments. It stinks my good lady worked for much less time than i did but receives a lot more pension than i do. I wrote to my MP but got now where with it. I was also ripped off twice by the tax department.
        And when i die they’ll be taking more money.

  71. Salmond in his evidence to the Holyrood Enquiry has pierced the Sturgeon administration to the heart, but all that came out was piss and wind. She’s not bothered, that’s all you need to run Scotland these days.

      1. In any rational polity it would be the end, damage from which she could never recover; but this is Scotland. The Scottish Pound will have “I hate the English” printed on it, and citizens will be allowed to print their own.

    2. While Sturgeon and her crew may ignore everything, there was one piece of evidence that they cannot control. The police had a search warrant for documents, but the Scottish Government withheld around 40, we now know. Oops! That is a criminal offence.
      We spent three hours listening to Salmond being questioned. He had no friends in the room, all were against him, only Wightman, the former Green MSP, might have been impartial. He answered all the loaded questions carefully and fully. The committee is full of dunces and it showed.
      Some evidence could not be given and some questions could not be answered, because the Crown Office forbidden it and have threatened prosecutions. Who is being protected – Sturgeon, the Lord Advocate, the Civil Service heads?

      2. All of the above! Actually, I didn’t think the whole committee ware numpties – Jackie Baillie was fairly objective, and Fabiani at least slapped down the stupid Cole-Hamilton person.

      3. All of the above! Actually, I didn’t think the whole committee ware numpties – Jackie Baillie was fairly objective, and Fabiani at least slapped down the stupid Cole-Hamilton person.

    1. The gulf stream. El Nino. The disappearing rainforests. The melting of the glaciers. Species extinction. Asteroids. Mega volcanoes. Global warming. Meat gives you cancer.

      As Plum would say…time for a sherry.

    2. And we’ll still be paying taxes for the elimination of global warming even after the ice age is well set in.

        1. And the economy breaks. The can keep taxing and taxing and taxing but the end result is always poverty and economic collapse.

      2. I don’t see how. There won’t be an economy.

        Big fat state hasn’t thought about that. When people cannot get to work, cannot power their homes, hell, don’t have clean water – then we will see a real emergency.

        Paying for it is the least of our worries. Tens of millions will die. The survivors won’t have heat, light, fuel or food. It is truly astonishing that the state, in it’s desperation to throw us back to the stone age hasn’t realised that the first thing to go will be it.

    3. I think that someone from the Green Lobby is taking the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ rather too seriously. But then I presume that Princess Nut-Nut does as well, so our illustrious PM will be by next week.

    4. In order to explain the coming ice age… climate change again…..it means whatever they want it to mean. An esteemed Professor at Cambridge who really knew his stuff (fluid dynamics) informed me drily that I had no need to worry about the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Drift causing problems in my life time, nor the life times of our sons.

      1. Maybe not French grape varieties but plenty of varietals that can survive north American winters, even Minnesota has vineyards.

        You just need to adjust your taste.

    7. It is an article of faith for Alarmists that climate change will cause greater warming at the poles and a side effect of this will be the weakening of the Gulf Stream. So they are constantly searching for that, using wrongly applied statistical techniques to get numbers that support their argument, but are just rubbish. The Climate Change industry is unaware that you can’t use a statistical technique simply because it gives you the numbers you want, it must be an appropriate technique for the data. Their favourite fiddle is to use a binomial fit (normal distribution) on inherently cyclical data.

      In fact the NAO, North Atlantic Oscillation, has entered a negative phase causing cooler water up around Iceland, the Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic is overdue to dump it’s low salinity seawater into the Atlantic which it does every few years, and these have an effect on the northern end of the Gulf Stream. Bit as usual the Alarmists have the wrong way around, the Gulf Stream id not weakening, the top end is getting clobbered by normal cyclic behaviour.

  74. Spent the afternoon doing what I thought would be a ten minute job. And, yet again, wishing that I was good with my hands and had an engineers brain…
    To cap it all, as I was finishing the chore, one of the bolts holding what I was working on lost its thread. I looked through all my boxes of “stuff” and – natch – there was not a bolt of a similar size. I fear that I will have to buy a whole new unit for £60…..

    Still, the cats enjoyed it… They now go 100 yards away from the house.

      1. The automatic vent controls on the greenhouse. Which meant being up a ladder and working over my head – which added to my frustration!

          1. I don’t know the size. And, as the thread has gone, would be unable to match it.

            However to my complete surprise, I e-mailed the manufacturers (expecting zero) and, within 10 minutes, they replied saying that they do a spares pack for the unit at £2.50 – including clamps, bolts and clips. Brilliant service (on a Friday gone 5 pm).

  75. GRRRHHHHHHH
    For 50 years selfish politicians have refused to fund adequate numbers of training places for both doctors and nurses because the cost is now and the enormous benefits are far down the road beyond the next parliament and the political capital that accrues may not be to THEIR benefit
    This despicable sleazy short term self interest is typical of all parties over many other issues as well,bugger the country,all for party and personal power
    Cnuts the lot of them
    https://twitter.com/MigrationWatch/status/1365323237257666564?s=20

    2. There would be more trainee nurses if the apprenticeship system were still in place. The pay wasn’t brilliant, but you didn’t qualify with £30 – £50,000 of debt.

      1. Our useless governments (as they have for years) would rather steal nurses and Doctors from other countries where they are needed.

        1. Not only our government. I remember decades ago my Australian cousin declaring that they were expecting a shipload of some 500 nurses from the UK which would save their day, with nary a thought for the UK minus these nurses. It was that which got me – the lack of thought, just lots of hand-rubbing. I expect Australia was offering better rates of pay and opportunity, and a life in the sun. And no doubt we offer better rates of pay than other countries. So it goes on around the world, like a Mexican wave.

          1. The brother of one of my ex-neighbours is a doctor in NZ. He left for better pay and conditions.

          2. Yes and we had paid for their training. There’s a lot of money involved in the medical profession in Oz.

      2. Successive governments were idiots for removing the useful freebies and perks from certain Public Sector jobs, such as nurses’ homes and Armed Forces accomodation for staff and families on base. It meant that the useful things that meant these people could devote their career to a calling without fear of poverty could then be paid lower than average wages and still have a reasonable standard of living and feel good in their jobs.

        Now such careers are often just another job until it becomes too much and they leave, taking all their years and decades of experience and knowledge with them.

        Additionally, why should we take people who’d be far more useful in their country of birth as doctors, nurses etc? Never mind all the social and economic problems associated with 100ks of extra people from abroad coming in each year to be housed and assimilated into our culture (which often are not).

        1. In my view, if the WHO and the UN really were serious about healthcare and poverty/disease, they would be telling rich nations to stop poaching health professionals from around the globe.

          It’s a disgrace.

      3. 20,000 upticks, Anne, it should have always been the policy but then the ‘Administrators’, the ‘Trusts’ and ‘Guess Who’ got involved?

        I wouldn’t be surprised to find Bliar’s sticky, clammy fingers in there somewhere

        1. I think you’ll find it was the nursing unions that argued and won the case for the abolition of the SEN role in the NHS….

          1. But then created HCAs and CSWs instead.
            SENs were only abolished because they were referred to as ESNs

      4. Yes, yes and yes. Saddling nurses with a giant debt at the start of their careers was always madness. Make it a four year training if there’s so much theory that needs to be crammed in, they’d still graduate with a degree. There are paid apprenticeships in Germany that lead to poly degrees.

        1. Possibly a two year basic apprenticeship type training – like the SENs – and then any extra years could be chosen as a degree course by those who wished to specialise.

    3. 329739+ up ticks,
      Afternoon R,
      Was, over the years nearly getting weary of trying to get the very same across, but getting the same failure type result after every GE.

    4. Ontario has the same problem so the government has funded more training places for support workers.

      But being government they did not think it through and have not provided funding for new support worker positions in care homes.

  77. MB and I have spent the afternoon absolutely riveted by the Holyrood inquiry. It requires some concentration, but out of the carefully nuanced verbiage is emerging a very interesting – though not unexpected – picture.
    You can certainly see why Salmond has such a hold over the ScotsNats; like George Galloway, he handles the English language eloquently but with no fancy flourishes and is extremely good at picking his enemies and exonerating those he thinks may be useful in the future.
    Several on the committee have come out well: Linda Fabiani, the Convener who is SNP but I don’t know where her loyalties lie; Jackie Baillie, the Labour party leader who asks straight questions; and Murdo Fraser, the Conservative MSP. Other questioners were verbose and rambling; the perfect substitutes for Mogadon.

    3. Spot on Anne! Highly entertaining! I have never had much time for Salmond, but his grasp of the facts and his language are both superb.

      1. Well, he IS very highly motivated this time. Facts and truth-telling weren’t always so synonymous with Wee Eck in the past, especially in 2014…

        1. I’m well aware of his past demeanours – I used to work at Edinburgh Airport. However, in this case the way he has been thrown under the bus, and personally slandered by Nikeliar during a covid broadcast, deserves praise for his restraint! He hasn’t raised his voice or played the victim, just has every fact they have asked about, at his fingertips.

          1. I wasn’t trying to diminish your comment, just his hypocrisy at only being truthful when he needed to save his own skin.

          3. I suspect he would rather have the Union than the Independent Scotland that Splurgeon envisages. I think he is quite worried about what is happening in Scotland.

          4. I certainly would. The SNP cartel have a grip on everything. Their record in governance is a catalogue of incompetence, waste, corruption, and failure in every department.

          6. Being thrown under a bus is part of political life; it was far worse than that. They confected sexual assault accusations against him, coached his accusers, leaked Crown documents to the Press, and now Sturgeon has the contemptible arrogance to question the verdict of the jury. Well, she will not tolerate people voting the wrong way, they must be *stopped*.

      3. He really holds your attention, even when going into the most arcane points.
        MB is watching the extra time on his laptop as it gone past the time the Beeb had allocated to this saga.

    4. One would have thought that Wee Eck would have challenged the action of the Scottish Crown Office in the Supreme Court – aided and abetted by his feisty (and sensibly shod) fellow victim Joanna Cherry.

      1. Does the “supreme court” have jurisdiction over Scotland or does Scotland have its own version of a supreme court?
        Serious question.

    5. Salmond’s demeanour reminded me of the expression:

      “Revenge is a dish best served cold …“

    1. Defined benefits tend to be the public sector approach and defined contributions the private, that’s not a definitive comment, but it is my experience.

      A final salary, index-linked pension must be the gold standard, much rarer than it was when I started work.

      1. Thanks for the reply – Haven’t had one reply or tick show up yet – thought that either my posts weren’t showing up ( except to me ) -or – Any reply/tick was not showing ( other people had reported Disqus probs ) – or – I had been opposite-to-white listed.

        1. Despicable though this news is, does it not only affect those who are paying into a pension plan/pot – NOT those of us who are retired and receiving a pension?

          1. As I read it, it’s for those still in work, but given the greed of the governing class, I would not be surprised if they go for those already retired.

          2. Increase basic rate and lower the higher rate threshold. Dammit, when I was first paid in 1961, the basic rate was 8/6d

          3. I suspect that if they eliminated “personal allowances” altogether and lowered tax rates accordingly, removed the upper limit on NI or even cancelled it and made it as part of income tax, removed all other allowances and set it at a “fair” level, so everyone paid the same rates on ALL their income, life would be simpler, everyone would see the tax they were paying was the same rate as even the plutocrats and the exchequer would almost certainly raise a lot more tax AND save money on civil servants.

          4. But but but it might put lots of HMRC employees out of a job! Weren’t they thinking of making 60+ year olds pay NI?

          5. It’s one reason I would scrap it.
            Why should such a tax cease just because one is old and yet be more likely to need the NHS etc.

            Logically NI should start at 60, not finish at 60.

            };-))

          6. I don’t understand this desperation the state has to take more from higher earners.

            20% of 100,000 is more than 20% of 1000 after all. I appreciate the public are in the majority greedy and stupid, but the end result of such tax theft – hell, at the highest rate the state takes more of your money than the worker – just leads to the money never going near the greedy treasury at all.

          7. You know that, I know that, but the tax and spend thugs (Red or Blue Labour) just can’t get their heads around that basic fact. If the more you work, the less you pick up (because the State takes it off you, particularly to bankroll the feckless) why would you work harder? It has happened to a couple of my friends; one refused promotion because he would have been worse off after tax and the other ended up dropping hours because it just wasn’t worthwhile.

        2. Walter! Apologies to you for not replying to your message a couple of days ago! I can’t see my notifications on the iPad and have to use old man’s laptop. You were kind enough to give me some advice, so thank you for that! I think I may need Chrome!

      1. A pity if he’s been chased off.

        It took a long time before he dipped a toe in the water, and his initial posts were pleasant.

          4. No. As with others who have been banned they can come back on if they moderate their posts.

            I myself was once banned and spent a year in purgatory (Guardian Food columns).

            Stormy saved me.

            I promised to be a good boy and look what happened !

          6. Posts from earlier. The first one was my BP.

            Phizzee Rik-Redux • 3 hours ago

            195 over 125 why?1

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            Garlands Mod Phizzee • 3 hours ago

            Are you certain you are still
            alive?3

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            Phizzee Garlands • 2 hours ago

            That was the reading 3 weeks ago. My cholesterol was at 8.4.

            Both are now coming down with the weekly blood letting. And of course the Cloppydogrel and Atorvastatin + Aspirin.

            Narrowing of the arteries plus Polycythaemia became acute.

            It’s touch and go.5

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          7. I haven’t seen him/her elsewhere.
            That’s why I asked.
            He used to give up-votes regularly before he posted here, and he’s just vanished.

        2. If one is new to the Nottle site it actually takes more than a bit of courage, and probably a lot of unseen lurking, to make a post as everyone seems to know everyone else and be frightfully matey; it is like intruding a private club. Some oldtimers seem to take great pleasure in chasing new people away. And the site needs new blood, otherwise it will die.

    1. Ditto here – no snap. Looks like a chilly night followed by yet another sunny day. An opportunity to empty and clean the water butts.

      1. I need to get a drain pipe & stopcock fitted to my two buts.
        The small one I picked up down the road after it presumably fell off the back of a lorry, the larger one is actually a domestic water tank someone was throwing out!

        1. I have 8 – two are under an oak tree by garden sheds and get gunged up from leaves etc. They are the ones I shall tackle tomorrow.

  82. Right, chaps. I am off for the day. Useful – if tricky, work in greenhouse which, thanks to Tracey at Greenhouses Direct, may be solved next week.

    Have a jolly evening thinking which of Salmond and Sturgeon you’d choose for a bed mate.

    A demain – chilly start then sunny.

      1. 329739+ up ticks,
        Evening LD,
        Untouchable via lab/lib/con coalition the only way would be to re-instate the real UKIP under Gerard Batten leadership otherwise the odds are stacked in her favour for her return.

      1. I heard about this very early on which is why we refuse to have the vaccine. Having heard about Gates’s father, a eugenicist and Gates views very similar, on population control, not to mention Johnson’s father’s views on culling the population (see Amazon); the fact that Gates funds research at all the pharmaceuticals, SAGE and Imperial College; and the fact that the UN (Agenda 21 and 30) wants the population to be brought down to sustainable levels…. I decided that there were two many coincidences intersecting here, and prudence and caution would be the watchwords of the days to come.

          3. Precisely. He was not well liked in the u of c department where I worked. I soon found out why although I did not believe my informers at first. I am being polite as I do not wish to be sued.

            Edit: I did not at first believe them because he seemed so avuncular; a ruthless charmer I discovered later. A psycho who hides this facet of his character behind philanthropy (like most of them do, compare with J. Savile).

            Edit: In the past, I have known my own socio/psychopath with a totally charming facade who hid his true nature behind a) the church and b) charity in Africa.

          4. Hello poppiesmum,

            Yes, it sometimes takes a while to realise. The trouble is that they are so outrageous in their lies that one can’t initially believe that someone is being so dishonest. I’ve had the misfortune to have known 3 in my life: my father, his last wife, and my ex-husband.

            I’m so much happier now that they are all out of my life! :o)

          5. Hi Hl – out of one’s life and absolutely no contact for ever. It is the only way. I have known two, the last one being my sister-in-law. It took twenty-five years to the dénoument and for things to play out, but play out they did. She lives only eight miles away but we no longer see her and haven’t done so for the last 13 years. It is nearly always about money. SIL wanted our estate for her own offspring (obviously she didn’t state this aim and for many years we didn’t realise exactly what she was about) she tried to ‘see me off’, split us up in her attempts. Sometimes you just have to let things play out before one can reach a resolution.

    3. The problem with videos like these, and, as like the one from Dr Gold that I originally liked and promoted before, is that trying to find actual evidence to back up the extra claims is nigh on impossible.

      I think that viewing them is fine, but we need to look in more depth to see if the claims can all be verified. Some from Dr. Gold’s one I could, but some I could not, and it didn’t help that her organisation’s website is mainly looking for us to contribute, rather than show facts for free (given how important the issues are).

      I’ll watch this either later this evening or tomorrow, do some follow-up research and then comment further. Thus far, the only videos I properly trust are from Dr Sam Bailey, as she puts her thoughts across in a way that is 100% fact based – citing all her sources, and less on emotion and opinion. It could be that the claims in this video are true, but they need to present hard evidence to prove it, which means they have to do some hard work. Rather like the US election court cases, if the lawyers had done their homework and not just grand-standed, they might’ve won.

  86. Either China or Russia has closed it down or not enough of you made donations to it…WIKI is dead!

        2. No problems where I am. Not that wikipedia can be trusted any more to represent the truth.

          1. “Not that wikipedia can be trusted any more to represent the truth.”

            No, but it’s often a useful starting point.

    3. Say it ain’t so! I’ve sent them money every year. I use it, it has no ads, so I’m content to pay.

    1. Firstborn’s first word was “hollykepter” for helicopter.
      His first sentence was ” Daddy made pong!”

    3. Children tend to say “Dada” before they say “Mama”.
      Something to do with the tongue forming the ‘d’ sound being easier to learn than forming lips into the ‘m’ sound.

  88. I have just found my first Googlewhack.
    BTL comments under one of the 6N articles include one by someone called Cantillon Fishbangle.
    I Googled this and there is just one entry.
    🙂 🙂 🙂

      1. noun: Googlewhack; plural noun: Googlewhacks
        a search term consisting of two words, with no surrounding quotation marks, that produces one single result when entered into the search engine Google.
        “stumbling upon a Googlewhack is less likely”

  89. Off topic.
    It’s a pity “Hat” seldom posts, I would be very interested to read his views on what’s happening viz a viz the jab in Israel.

    2. It’s like the resident living in Greece who used reporting on conditions there to John Ward’s The Slog – no longer.

  94. I think Oliver Dowden MP, who has met with Melinda Gates, is part of a plan by the Davos billionaires to control the Internet.

    See the story in the Deep State News.

    This is being presented as being necessary to protect you.. but the truth is that it’s “necessary” to protect them and what they want which is to control you..

      1. “Who is OD?”

        Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

        He had a meeting earlier this week with (quoting Simon Heffer) “the leaders of 25 of the country’s leading heritage bodies and charities…to tell them ‘to defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down’ “. Not much came out of that except that one bimbo from a museum organisation told him to keep his neb out:

        According to Museums Association director Sharon Heal, however, the government’s “perceived interference” on matters relating to empire and slavery is a subject for concern. “It is both a hallmark of a democratic society and a cornerstone of museum ethics that our sector should operate at arms-length from the government,” she said.

        https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56185566

        Since then Dowden has “told Facebook to prepare for a major crackdown on Big Tech firms, saying Britain’s regulators ‘won’t shy away’ from intervening in the market.”

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/02/26/culture-secretary-tells-big-tech-prepare-major-crackdown/

        1. Actually, I am cynical enough to believe Polly’s version “This is being presented as being necessary to protect you.. but the truth is that it’s “necessary” to protect them and what they want which is to control you”

          The government don’t have a track record of protecting me, why should I expect them to break the habits of my lifetime?

          1. Absolutely bb2. That is always my baseline. Government does not work to protect the public unless it is, and coincides with, its own interests.

        2. Dowden’s met with Melinda Gates…

          It must be dodgy !

          This had Davos written all over it…

          NWO !

          1. Davos is a bit of a distraction. The real movers and shakers are the bankers. Davos is merely a front for them, a sort of window display.

            The real deals are being organised behind the scenes between the Rothschilds, the (privately owned) Federal Bank of the USA, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and the other ‘ruling’ banks including our own. They are robbing us blind and loading debt and obligation on our utterly feckless and entirely useless government.

            That debt is now ours. Our currency is debased and our savings effectively expropriated by record low interest rates.

          2. I’m sure that’s true, but Davos has an agenda driven by the well known billionaires to change how everyone lives. Net Zero and Great Reset, electic cars and heating, no gas, windmills everywhere and, top of the list, global government.

      2. Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

        He had a meeting earlier this week with (quoting Simon Heffer) “the leaders of 25 of the country’s leading heritage bodies and charities…tell them “to defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”. Not much came out of that except that one bimbo from a museum organisation told him to keep his neb out:

        According to Museums Association director Sharon Heal, however, the government’s “perceived interference” on matters relating to empire and slavery is a subject for concern. “It is both a hallmark of a democratic society and a cornerstone of museum ethics that our sector should operate at arms-length from the government,” she said.

        https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56185566

        Since then Dowden has “told Facebook to prepare for a major crackdown on Big Tech firms, saying Britain’s regulators “won’t shy away” from intervening in the market.”

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/02/26/culture-secretary-tells-big-tech-prepare-major-crackdown/

      3. Read the story in the DT.

        It’s been around for months and is being pushed by a Con MP. Oliver Dowden.

        Part of the plan is to control what can be said on the internet.

        1. ……. “is being pushed by a Con MP. Oliver Dowden.” I smell brown envelopes and money exchanging hands.

    2. It is always the way. “It is in your interests…..” for example “we have this lovely, lovely, vaccine….”. Say no more Polly, we get the picture. I always ask myself “when, actually, does Government act with my best interests at heart?” (Answer – never.) This is my baseline. Always an ulterior motive however it may be presented.

        1. Our governments for decades were and are still composed of inadequate grifters.

          I had hoped that the penny had dropped after the original (conservative) Telegraph unearthed the corruption and venality of our MPs during the exposure of the expenses scandal.

          Matters have not improved. We now have the spectacle of Johnson and his side kick Hancock selling us out to Gates’ owned Pharmaceutical conglomerates flogging dangerous vaccines and the International Bankers behind the funding (which is our accumulating debt in perpetuity).

          Meanwhile Rushi Sunak, a former international banker, married to the daughter of a billionaire, is printing money as fast as the printing presses will operate.

          All the while the billionaires become wealthier and the rest of us are sold into a form of slavery.

          Those taking the mRNA ‘vaccines’ will be dead in a couple of years. It is all part of the plan.

          1. Oh dear. I was hoping that I, and others who are not having the “vaccine” wouldn’t be a tiny minority of oldies left…

          2. That depends entirely upon whether the oldies took a vaccine or whether they took a saline solution. Had they taken an mRNA experimental ‘vaccine’ which is anything but, then they will succumb. That is part of the plan.

  95. Why is there always a round of climate change scaremongering after the weather changes?

    Whether it’s floods or a drought, snowfall or no snow ever again, there’s always a prediction about the impending doom of climate change

    ROSS CLARK

    Had we not had a cold spell a couple of weeks ago I doubt many people would have got to hear about a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience claiming that something called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could, thanks to human-induced climate change, reach a tipping point by the end of the century bringing Europe much colder winters.

    Yet, thanks to us all shivering for a few days, the paper, by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has fuelled claims that this month’s big freeze is a mere harbinger of even greater terror to come.

    It is only when you read the details that the case starts to weaken, rather like the AMOC itself. Direct measurements of AMOC currents have only been taken since 2004 – incidentally the same year as the Hollywood blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow, took to the screens, depicting London covered by an ice cap which reaches to near the top of Big Ben. To work out what happened before that, scientists rely on trying to interpret factors such as currents from patterns of ocean sediments and Greenland ice cores. And these, it seems, indicate that the AMOC has been weakening since 1850, well before carbon emissions could have had a significant impact on the climate. Moreover, ocean currents are only one influence on our climate; they are different from atmospheric circulation.

    Hysteria, though, has a life of its own, far removed from proper scientific study of the climate. It is largely driven by what kind of weather we happen to have had recently. Last year, when we had floods in February, they, too, were a warning sign – in this case of much milder, wetter winters to come. This year, we had a cold spell – so now we’re doomed to a freezing future instead. Last December a Met Office scientist was telling Panorama that snow in Britain could soon be a ‘thing of the past’, with freezing days extinct from most of England by the 2040s. That doesn’t quite fit with record snowfall in parts of Aberdeenshire earlier this month, nor with current scaremongering over AMOC.

    Just listen to the words of James Bevan, chair of the Environment Agency, who told the Association of British Insurers this week: “over the last few years the reasonable worst case for several of the flood incidents the EA [Environment Agency] has responded to has actually happened, and the reasonable worst case scenarios are getting larger”. Could this be the same James Bevan who last June, during a dry spell, said that we were wrong to think of Britain any longer being a “wet and rainy country” and blamed water shortages, too, on climate change?

    In the Environment Agency’s case, climate change is a convenient excuse to bat away accusations that it is failing to manage river flows properly – although in the agency’s defence, flooding and water shortages are also a factor of things beyond its control, such as planning, land use policy and the water industry’s failure to make water meters universal in order to manage demand.

    Climate change is real in the sense that there is a long term upwards trend in global temperatures, fall in ice cover and accompanying rise in sea levels. But much of the claims about us succumbing to ever wilder and more extreme weather is just hyperbole – lazy and contradictory assertion fed by our failure to remember that the weather always has been and always will be pretty extreme.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/26/always-round-climate-change-scaremongering-weather-changes/

    I’m sure you all remember the DT’s environment correspondent Geoffrey Lean. In 2011 and early 2012 he wrote several ‘the end is nigh’ articles about the terrible two-year drought of that time. The summer of 2012 was the wettest for 100 years.

    1. If the Sun is less active in the present Solar Cycle 25 compare with Solar Cycle 24 which was believed to have ended around December 2020 then I anticipate we can expect much cooler conditions in the northern hemisphere. We should know one way or the other by around 2026/27 when the current cycle is expected to reach its maximum. As a reminder of the Sun’s influence on Earth:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/91951e2158239db13057e5cdfea0909f46d11d152a5282eb88a105d668993d57.png

        1. I think that’s a lot more likely than “man-made global warming”. The Ice Age will be due to solar activity (or lack of it).

  96. C-19 vax passports to go to the pub which Blair on behalf of the Davos billionaires wants is linked to controlling internet speech.

    The same people want both.

    1984 – Here we come !

    2. Good grief. Blair is possibly the most hated person in the whole of the UK.

      He should have been brought before the International Criminal Court after his last attempt at imposing a World Order, by which hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens were killed.

      Hopefully, this time around, the bastard along with his sponsors will be subjected to a Nuremberg Style inquisition following this experimental vaccination scandal. Blair is part and parcel of the deception and doubtless stands to make yet more millions from lending his support to the scam pandemic.

      1. Tony ”Soros” Blair is ”secretly” advising Matt ”Soros” Hancock according to the Independent, Mail and Sunday Times. Blair wants vax passports to go to restaurants, pubs, cinemas etc.

        Just by purely random totally unconnected coincidence, David ”Soros” Cameron wants vax passports too according to the Mail

        Who are Blair and Cameron strongly linked to ?

        Gates and Soros !

        Matt Hancock enthused over Soros here……..

        https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1075319635464081409

        I think Hancock, like Blair, Cameron and Johnson, is yet another Gates/Soros/Open Society agent and using his position to deliver what billionaires want.

        1. Not so sure. The present pandemic deception is a bridge too far even for these reptiles. They have over reached this time. There are many cleverer folk in the world who can join the dots.

          We will have our vengeance on these morons.

          1. I only wish that you were right. But they will always protect themselves – why is Blair still walking free?

          4. 329750+ up ticks,
            Afternoon HL,
            Treacherously, yes, to continue to support / vote for the same
            anti GB politico’s / party’s after witnessing their actions over the last three decades, and the results of those actions on the welfare of the peoples & Isles.

  97. Evening, all. The sooner masks are no longer required the better. The toll of lockdown continues; I heard by a roundabout route (my friend who called the farrier to his horses had it from the farrier who was at school with the suicide) that a local village has lost yet another to suicide. Factor in all those who haven’t been able to get treatment, who haven’t been diagnosed because they can’t get doctor’s appointments and those who have just lost the will to live and I expect that the lockdown will have caused more deaths than it’s supposed to have prevented.

    2. Sorry.

      There was a suicide in a wood near here recently. The man in the search team who discovered the body was a friend of the victim.

      2. A 38 year old guy in the village, drove a truck and disposed of waste, Tipper J, topped himself last week and left a 7 year old daughter.

  100. ”What IS the truth about Covid deaths? Grieving relatives along with MPs and top medics demand inquiry as families reveal loved ones have been wrongly certified as virus victims”

    ‘Medical experts have demanded an inquiry into the number of fatalities that have been blamed on Covid-19”

    ”More than 100 Daily Mail readers wrote letters after Bel Mooney revealed her father’s death recorded as covid”

    ”Experts cited pressure on doctors to use Covid-19 as cause of death because it was ruled ‘notifiable disease’’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9305405/Grieving-relatives-demand-inquiry-loved-ones-wrongly-certified-virus-victims.html

    1. 100 letters – too much is at stake for our politicos and the world’s heavyweights behind them. There will be a whitewashing and a-sweeping under the carpets, methinks. There needs to be thousands and thousands of letters, not a hundred, before they start feeling uncomfortable under the collar.

      2. 329739+ up ticks,
        Evening PM,
        A start of rectification could be on the 6th May with a zero lab/lib/con coalition candidate vote.

        1. I simply cannot wait, Ogga. We usually only have a choice of three, here though. You know the ones….! If that is the case, my ballot paper will be returned ‘none of the above’.

    2. Let’s just hope, Polly, that it has the desired effect – i.e., to bring the Government and its (bad) advisors up with (what my Mother used to call) a round turn.

      Effectively a clip round the ear.

    3. Any doctor certifying a Covid death should be investigated. Very few deaths will have occurred from Covid. Most are the result of seasonal flu and co-morbidities.

      The NHS is always ‘overwhelmed’ in Winter simply because the vast amounts of tax money given to it is wasted on ‘management’ and the number of bed spaces has remained either static or else severely diminished over years as a result.

  101. ”What IS the truth about Covid deaths? Grieving relatives along with MPs and top medics demand inquiry as families reveal loved ones have been wrongly certified as virus victims”

    ‘Medical experts have demanded an inquiry into the number of fatalities that have been blamed on Covid-19”

    ”More than 100 Daily Mail readers wrote letters after Bel Mooney revealed her father’s death recorded as covid”

    ”Experts cited pressure on doctors to use Covid-19 as cause of death because it was ruled ‘notifiable disease’’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9305405/Grieving-relatives-demand-inquiry-loved-ones-wrongly-certified-virus-victims.html

    1. I thought the whole point of Brexit was that we could reclaim our borders, our fishing waters, our financial services industry and our sovereignty in Northern Ireland?

      And yet this chap Farage is trying to rival Johnson as buffoon of the year by saying we got a good deal when the deal is more clearly seen with each day that passes to have been a surrender and a catastrophe.

      If Farage is truly more than a loquacious mouth he will have the integrity and guts to stand up and say:

      “I must apologise. I was wrong. I passed judgement on the deal before reading or understanding its consequences. We must break completely with the EU and scrap the deal – it is the only way that the EU will respect us and learn that they have to treat us as a fully independent state and not a vassal nonentity.”

      2. 329739+up ticks,
        Evening R,
        You would somewhat agree with Gerard Batten then when he penned “Road to freedom” in 2014
        two years before the referendum, and was looking for total severance.
        Multiple fools & orchestrated treachery via the UKIP nEc / nige put paid to the real UKIP / Batten,
        then Richard Braine fell foul of the treacherous input.
        All in all they could NOT, would not allow UKIP to
        continue it’s successful run under the Batten leadership it had to be, and was ,stopped.

  104. ‘Morning All

    Just watched the original first Sweeney film,great crack spotting actors that had appeared in various episodes
    The plot is all about sinister business men corrupting government ministers………..
    Plus ca change…………….

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