Friday 28 May: Dominic Cummings feared responsibility for Covid policy, yet blasts the PM who embraced it

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/2021/05/27/letters-dominic-cummings-feared-responsibility-covid-policy/

653 thoughts on “Friday 28 May: Dominic Cummings feared responsibility for Covid policy, yet blasts the PM who embraced it”

  3. Facebook is acting as editor and censor of public opinion. 28 May 2021.

    Hitherto Facebook has banned posts suggesting Covid-19 may have started life in a Chinese laboratory; after Joe Biden told US intelligence agencies to redouble their investigation into its origins, Facebook duly lifted the prohibition. It is an embarrassing U-turn that leaves serious reputational damage. Why the theory was verboten in the first place is unclear: human error is not impossible.

    Morning everyone. Both Facebook and Twitter have joined the Globalist Media Network. You can see them as here, or with the banning of Trump’s tweets, dancing to orders from above.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/05/27/facebook-acting-editor-censor-public-opinion/

  4. Full Speed Ahead

    A retired sailor puts on his old uniform and goes down to the docks once more for old time’s sake.

    He hires a prostitute and takes her up to the room. He’s going at it as best as he can for a guy his age and asks, “How am I doing?”

    The prostitute says, “Well, sailor, you’re doing about three knots.”

    “What’s that?” he asks.

    She says, “You’re knot hard, you’re knot in, and you’re knot getting your money back.”

  8. Drivers to see red as mayor sets London traffic lights against them

    Crossings to be left on green man signal as Sadiq Khan bids to make the

    capital more ‘walkable’ but the move is likely to enrage motorists

    Pollution up

    Business slowed down

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

    Just a query, how do vehicles get through.

    Does the driver have to get out the car and press a button with a picture of a car on it, change the TRAFFIC light to Green?

    Sad Dick Khant is the ruination of London

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/27/traffic-lights-london-will-automatically-set-red/

    1. There is a war on against the car in London, the local councils are all just as bad.

      1. There’s a war on against the car full stop; London’s just in the vanguard.

    2. Ah! A devotee of The Ken Livingstone School of Traffic Management!
      Get the traffic light settings at junctions changed to create congestion and thus justify the congestion charge, then readjust them to shew the charge is working!

    3. Yes, Khan wants all traffic, other than TfL, to stop running so that his so-well-paid drivers can earn lots more overtime.

      Mind you, if all lights are red then buses and taxis will not run.

    4. One of the reasons I had to give up my driving job was that my tolerance for London traffic lights lasted only for about 1 1/2 passes into the city, after which I started to get road rage attacks against everybody there.

      The only vehicle I felt I could drive safely there, for my own sanity as much as the sensitive feelings of any Londoners within earshot, was a battered unmarked white van I once picked up in Hampton Wick. It was brilliant – it was like the parting of the waves, since nobody wanted to get near this thing in traffic.

      1. As a girlie driver, I learnt that early on.
        Drive a battered car and even middle aged male Merc drivers let you go first.

        1. I had my rear light knocked out by a white van – I had stopped at traffic lights but he didn’t bother.

    6. Must be taking lessons from Edinburgh Council. Vast roadworks as new tram lines are laid. Many diversions. Original traffic light timings have not been altered to match. One hour for five mile journey, is the norm. Main routes into Edinburgh now have wide cycle lanes, closed off by bollards, thus reducing car lanes from two to one. When we lived in Edinburgh the population was about 450,000, it is now 550,000. The useful roads have been much reduced. Huge communal bins in the streets that have tenements effectively close lanes in many roads near the centre.

  9. Good morning from a still chilly but at least dry Derbyshire. Bright overcast with 7°C on the thermometer in the yard.

    Only letters about Dominick Cummings published today.
    I don’t think I’ll be bothering to read them!

    1. mng bob, correct nothing seismic in the letters. Esther Ranzten’s obviously worried about her BBC pension, otherwise usual waffle

      1. Clucking Bell; Rancid’s not there again, is she! Maybe she’s Philip Duly on alternate days.
        I’m surprised such a rabid North London Leftie soils her eyeballs by reading the DT.

        1. as put in the intro rider, it seems like “writers” were on the lash, then the Dame Esther moniker is trying to challenge Lord Sumption, so would fit in well

        2. as put in the intro rider, it seems like “writers” were on the lash, then the Dame Esther moniker is trying to challenge Lord Sumption, so would fit in well

    2. Morning BoB, I have had a quick scan through, amazing only those that are critical of Cummings write to the DT, presumably all those who have a tendency to agree with him are content not to put pen to paper or finger to keypad.
      On a personal note, I think they are all contemptible who are barely worthy of public office.

  10. Ex-Labour MP George Galloway joins Batley and Spen byelection race. 28 May 2021.

    In announcing on Thursday that he would stand, Galloway made it clear that his focus was on placing Labour’s leader under pressure. “I’m standing against Keir Starmer. If Keir Starmer loses this byelection it’s curtains for Keir Starmer,” he said in a video posted online.

    Kim Leadbeater, who was selected as the Labour candidate for the seat on Sunday, said the party needed more “real people” in parliament to reconnect to its former voters and has vowed to “burst the Westminster bubble” if she wins.

    She is the sister of Jo Cox, the seat’s former MP who was murdered by a rightwing terrorist in 2016.

    Well disposing of Starmer is not an ignoble aim even by George. One notes in passing the slipping in of the “rightwing terrorist” into the narrative. Never waste an opportunity eh?

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/27/ex-labour-mp-george-galloway-joins-batley-and-spen-byelection-race

    1. If, as this quotation suggests, Kim Leadbeater is also standing against Keir Starmer, vowing to reform the Labour Party from the inside with a much-needed blast of commonsense from the North, then what’s to stop the metropolitan media and opinion formers handing all the credit to Starmer if Leadbeater wins?

      1. I agree. Jo Cox was no woke warrior; her main concern was with the lonely and socially isolated.

    3. I have seen the surname spelt as Leadbetter.
      If she’s elected, will she opt for the The Good Life?

  11. I would pay not to have to listen to him

    B-LISTER BERCOW BANKS A BUMPER £406,021
    New financial statements from John Bercow’s holding company, Fedhead Limited, reveal the ex-Speaker and Sally have £406,021 in the bank. It’s no wonder when the former Prince of Parliament lets you hire him to wish you happy birthday on Cameo. At £82.50 a go, [How tacky! Ed] he’s sure to be raking it in…

    Just as well he has because according to his JLA profile (the celebrity guest speaker booking agency), John is only registered as a B-List speaker, with an upper rate of £10,000 for his esteemed presence at your dinner or conference. Even Robert Peston rates himself as an A-Lister…

    https://order-order.com

    1. I guess he wasn’t in a position to command a higher price from the brown envelopes.

    2. I guess having a holding company called Fathead Limited is appropriate…

        2. Reminds me of the line in David Niven’s autobiography, spoken by a director (whose name escapes me atm) whose English was poor “You think I know fuck nothing? I know fuck all!”.

          1. Was that brilliant statement in Nivens’s first memoir, The Moon’s a Balloon, Sean, or in the sequel, Bring on the Empty Horses?

          2. The former, I think though I think the title of the sequel may have been uttered by the director in question (i.e. riderless horses).

          3. The former, I think though I think the title of the sequel may have been uttered by the director in question (i.e. riderless horses).

  12. mng all. Usual scatter gun array and given most “letters” are of the short variety, presumably 77Bde was on the lash. Judith Barnes wins the prize for the shortest communication which begs the question why bother?

    SIR – I listened with great care to Dominic Cummings’s testimony on Wednesday.

    He said he had communicated with three highly regarded people outside the Government who persuaded him that his thinking about the pandemic response was correct and that No 10 should indeed change course.

    Mr Cummings later said: “In February/March, I was very frightened about hitting the panic button – because what if I’m wrong?”

    He lambasted most of the Cabinet and the Prime Minister while admitting his own shortcomings in the whole procedure. Good move.

    Hindsight is facile, and the Prime Minister had to take the enormous decisions that Mr Cummings was so frightened of.

    Mary Bower
    Wadebridge, Cornwall

    SIR – If Dominic Cummings felt so strongly that the Government was mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic, why did he not resign earlier?

    His 20/20 hindsight evidence smacks of sour grapes from a disgruntled ex-employee.

    Sandy Pratt
    Storrington, West Sussex

    SIR – Is this man real?

    Judith Barnes
    St Ives, Huntingdonshire

    SIR – Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Revenge is sweet. Biting the hand that fed you. Cherchez la femme.

    All the clichés apply here.

    Jane Manley
    Byford, Herefordshire

    SIR – Having watched much of Dominic Cummings’s testimony, I have come to the conclusion that he regarded everyone who agreed with him as highly competent, and everyone who disagreed with him as unfit for office.

    David Kidd
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    SIR – The vast majority of voters made their minds up about Boris Johnson’s fitness for office a very long time ago. The vicious and inconsistent snipings of a bitter ex-employee will make not one iota of difference.

    The most damning aspect of this sorry affair, however, is that the Prime Minister ever saw fit to elevate such an individual to a position of considerable influence. That should be a genuine cause for concern to all of us.

    Richard Bryant
    London N16

    SIR – Thank goodness we had the wise (after the event) Mr Cummings working for us during the pandemic.

    What a shame he hadn’t the courage to stand for election, then we might have had the perfect prime minister for the perfect storm.

    Dr Warwick Brown
    Blairgowrie, Perthshire

    SIR – The more I read of Mr Cummings’s testimony, the more I respect the Prime Minister. It seems that his instincts and beliefs were in tune with mine – and those of almost everyone I know – after all.

    Julian Pullan
    Bramley, Hampshire

    SIR – I thought the era of self-important, narcissistic éminences grises in the civilised world ended with Rasputin.

    Mr Cummings has made the strongest argument yet for a public inquiry with evidence given under oath. A lesson learnt from the pandemic is that we should strengthen and improve the Civil Service before we look around for whackos and weirdos to advise government ministers.

    Philip Barry
    Lydden, Kent

    SIR – If, as Dominic Cummings claimed, the Prime Minister did use the phrase, “Let the bodies pile high”, then, bearing in mind his sense of humour, I have a sneaking suspicion that he might not have meant the comment to be taken literally.

    David Vincent
    Cranbrook, Kent

    SIR – “Sir! Sir!”

    “What is it, Cummings?”

    “Please, sir, Johnson had his eyes open during prayers.”

    Richard Cutler
    Newbury, Berkshire

    SIR – What next from Dominic Cummings, an interview with Oprah Winfrey, perhaps?

    Jonathan Mann
    Gunnislake, Cornwall

    SIR – Having watched Mr Cummings’s performance, I find that I now view Judas Iscariot in a slightly less condemnatory light.

    David Miller
    Newton Abbott, Devon

    SIR – I have a vague recollection from last year of the media and opposition parties castigating one Dominic Cummings as a rogue, a charlatan and someone who should not be trusted.

    Are these not the same people who now seem to be taking his so-far uncorroborated statements as gospel?

    David Bell
    Knowl Hill, Berkshire

    SIR – He didn’t even show respect for the committee and dress appropriately.

    Huw Wynne-Griffith
    London W8

    SIR – Mr Cummings was photographed in Westminster in a 3M FFP2 face mask that filters air coming in but passes his unfiltered breath into the environment through its cool-flow valve. As a Covid face mask it is useless. It sums up his view of his own importance and lack of attention to the facts.

    David Brinkman
    Poole, Dorset

    SIR – What would any of us give for a time machine to go back and rectify a past mistake?

    Dominic Cummings would do well while using his personal retrospectoscope to remember that there were many who doubted the value of a lockdown, let alone advocated an earlier start.

    He should also dwell on the outstanding success of the vaccine programme, which was launched after his departure from Downing Street.

    David Nunn
    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – Anyone reading the diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke would be shocked by discussions in important Cabinet meetings during the Second World War.

    Churchill made many errors in his political life but will always be remembered as the man who saved his country and perhaps the world from Nazi domination. In the same way, history will remember Boris Johnson as the prime minister who took us out of the European Union and masterminded our successful vaccination programme, whatever Dominic Cummings may say.

    Sandra Lewin
    Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – It’s worth remembering that, as Dominic Cummings noted, the alternative to Boris Johnson was Jeremy Corbyn, and he might well have given Health to Diane Abbott.

    John Stewart
    Terrick, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – To put into perspective the incompetence of Boris Johnson’s Government, 40,000 civilians died during the Blitz between September 1940 and May 1941. In just over 14 months since March 2020, the Government has at least 130,000 deaths to explain to the electorate, including those of hundreds of doctors, nurses and care-home staff.

    How can the Prime Minister possibly claim with any honesty, after the Cummings revelations, that he and his Cabinet have done everything they could to limit the death toll and human damage resulting from Covid-19?

    Kim Potter
    Lambourn, Berkshire

    SIR – No government, of any party, could have anticipated Covid’s impact.

    Mr Cummings’s “evidence” suggested that many lives were unnecessarily cut short by the lack of a “protective shield” around care homes.

    I was barred from visiting my husband from late March 2020. Public Health England published guidelines on April 6 2020 setting out the required personal protective equipment in care situations. I cannot blame the Government for the fact that my husband’s care home thought it unnecessary for staff within two metres of him to wear a mask – observed on FaceTime on more than one occasion during that month.

    Unsurprisingly, he passed away from Covid two weeks after the guidelines were published. Care-home providers must accept responsibility for a lack of common sense in dealing with a respiratory disease.

    Andrea Gray
    Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – Clearly there was no single correct response to the crisis.

    If you lost someone to Covid then it is likely that you think the Government should have acted more robustly in shutting down the country and concentrated on health measures. If you suffered financially and lost your job or business then you may well wish that the country had followed the Swedish model more closely.

    It is clear that there was (and indeed still is) conflicting scientific advice and modelling, that there were competing important interests to balance, and that no government anywhere in the world has got things completely right.

    This constant second-guessing with hindsight is of no help to anyone and merely an unwelcome distraction that prevents the country from focusing on its recovery.

    Amanda Dingle
    Swindon, Wiltshire

    SIR – Here’s what I don’t understand about opposing lockdown, as Lord Sumption consistently does.

    We know that the virus can only spread if people meet each other. Once it was within the community and spreading, until we had an effective vaccine the only way to prevent this was to stop people meeting. Can Lord Sumption explain why, in his view, the medical experts around the world who support lockdown are wrong?

    He points out how different we are from cultures in the Far East, but are we so different from Australia and New Zealand, whose people comply with and are thankful for strict lockdowns? How is it that the countries that have imposed lockdown faster and more strictly than us – Taiwan, New Zealand – have had far fewer deaths? He clearly admires Sweden, where full lockdown was not imposed. Why, when the Swedish excess-death rate is so much higher than that of its neighbours Denmark and Finland?

    Is he really confident that lockdown is not an effective way to prevent needless deaths?

    Dame Esther Rantzen
    Bramshaw, Hampshire

    SIR – The UK’s pandemic response has illustrated that our Government, led by Oxford arts graduates (like Mr Cummings), is ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of this techno-digital age, which is awash with dynamic data and information.

    Historians deal in past data, but scientific minds are needed to interpret current data. When a challenge like Covid-19 appears, non-scientific minds lack the skills to ask the right questions, let alone assess their answers.

    Dr Maurice Perks
    Sturminster Newton, Dorset

    SIR – For the Government to defer a public inquiry until the virus outbreak is over is indefensible. The deficiencies in the provision of facilities and protective equipment, and in the advisory and executive organisation needed to handle a pandemic, have already been demonstrated.

    Largely the result of historic failures to put in place the right corrective measures, these need solutions to be found now, not in 10 years’ time when some other bug has torn society apart.

    Robin Colby
    Bickington, Devon

    SIR – Now that Dominic Cummings has shown how easy it is to pick holes in just about everything that the Prime Minister has ever done, is there any chance that Sir Keir Starmer will wake up to the fact that he is supposed to be leader of the Opposition and start doing his job?

    Clive Pilley
    Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex

      1. mng bb2, am sure he did, as he’s no longer a player [apart from MSM mindset] he’s not even in the mix, merely used to deflect attention

      2. Mad and vindictive though he clearly is – it was fun to read him tearing bits of Halfcock and Carrion (among others)…!! Makes a change.

        1. Amongst the rubble, there will be a few useful items.
          I think DC is mildly autistic (much as I dislike using such terms but it is readily understood). He functions, but doesn’t know when to leave well alone; unless people attain his perceived level of perfection, they are wrong.
          Never underestimate the ‘sod it’ factor; it saves the minds of a great many human beings by stopping them from taking logic into the realms of insanity. Most of us have a ‘sod it’ factor.
          Jeremy Hunt has skin in this game; it was while he was Health Sec. that the lessons from Exercise Cygnus were ignored.

          4. I’m quite sure he’s a high- functioning autistic, with narcissistic tendencies. His lack of people skills also fits.

    2. SIR-I watched the BBC News last night and was horrified that Israel was only accused of genocide a mere 18 times rather than the BBC average of 100 times per news broadcast, this IMO is the thin edge of the wedge, this dropping off in standards by the BBC is a national disgrace & cannot be tolerated, having not paid my TV license in 30 years I can’t ask for a refund but I demand that the BBC make up for it tonight during the 2 minute hate that has replaced the Epilogue.
      Achmed the Unwary
      Bradford

    3. I do wish the DT would stop publishing letters from the “jumped up typist”!

  13. 333493+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    The decent peoples are without doubt being trampled on
    in the main by misguided fools in the ballot box for starters who have continued to support the build up to what we are now receiving daily, SH!TE.

    On this issue personally I would award 2 dozen teachers
    the DCM for services rendered, ( don’t come Monday)

    Maybe an innocent will suffer see that as collateral damage, for sure the governance overseers / employees
    use them tactics and innocents are guaranteed to suffer.

    Use the no show Monday as a prototype to be carried through to other sections of society, as in, use the boycott tool also in an organised targeted manner.

    People power = people reset, the peoples have proved in no uncertain manner that people power works when electing political CRAP to power again,again,& again
    try using ,for once putting the power source in reverse
    for the benefit of ALL.

    https://twitter.com/doctorwhotardi8/status/1398065516011479045

    1. Pondering Post

      Cafe and bookshop, operated by the imam of (Pick a Place) Mosque, praised by police, the NHS and local Government for being a place of refuge for the mentally troubled, in these difficult Covid times

      Local council gives Gift of 10,000 pounds to ensure the good work can continue

      1. 333493+ up ticks,
        Morning OLT,
        If that be the case in regards to mentally troubled, neglected all the time, that cafe must cover some land mass.

    1. The last remind me of Google’s analyticals – the American corporate insistence of throwing up disabling popups demanding we agree to their damned analytical cookies and javascripts or accept that we are allowed no further engagement with the internet. “Upgrades” in operating systems and browsers make this automatic, so they no longer need to pretend to get our consent.

      Soon, if not already, our analyticals condemn us, and leave us socially isolated in our bubbles. Feminism ensures that my domestic bubble is limited to one person.

  15. Good morning all
    Would someone be kind enough to publish where to find the GB News test broadcasts again?

      1. I’m not sure what services my father has got. Not having a tv myself since there were only four channels, I’ve been able to ignore this information.
        I will tell him 236 and see if we can find it.

  16. Lukashenko seeks to cement Putin’s support at Sochi talks. 28 May 2021.

    Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko will seek to further shore up Vladimir Putin’s support when they meet in Russia on Friday as the EU prepares sanctions on Minsk for forcing a Ryanair flight to land and then arresting a prominent dissident on board. The two leaders can often seem like awkward allies. So the meeting in Sochi is a crucial test for Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss, who wants to show the west and domestic opponents that Belarus can comfortably ride out increasing international isolation.

    Support? He’s going to get the Mother of all Bollockings! This won’t change anything of course. The Russians are stuck with him!

    https://www.ft.com/content/53919b64-e34e-40fa-9e12-cdec909cefe5

    1. Sun since about 03:00. Woke me by shining a reflection off windows in the building on top of the hill, into my eyes. Only fell asleep when the alarm came on, now feel exhausted and hung over.
      :-((
      Morning, Bill!

  18. Under Johnson we have become like a police state. he is not a fit PM. on this Cummings is correct.

    1. Well it is an actual Police State. Christian Ministers are arrested for preaching in public. Services are stopped. Free Speech is suppressed. School is merely indoctrination. Dissent results in dismissal and unemployment. The media is censored and propaganda abounds!

  19. 333493+ up ticks,
    As he & party embraced the brexitexit near five years ago much more embracing of that nature from these governance groups might advance the take over of these Isles by the desert dwellers by several months.

    Friday 28 May: Dominic Cummings feared responsibility for Covid policy, yet blasts the PM who embraced it

    Done well so far BUT your LLCGs support & vote is still needed for the last push over the …….

  21. Good Moaning.
    Corker of a BTL comment in the Tellygraff:

    Old McDonald Trump

    28 May 2021 7:32AM

    Let’s look at this whole farce that Hancock, Gove & Johnson and their SAGE goons presented to the world through the eyes of the child who was brave enough to declare “The emperor is wearing no clothes”.

    #1 The most logical explanation for the origin of Covid is that it was made in the Wuhan Institute of Virology during ‘gain of function’ research into bat coronaviruses.

    #2 Only the very elderly and most medically vulnerable need protecting with vaccines and shielding. Mortality and hospital admission data supports this.

    #3 Masks prevent the spread of disease in the same way the emperors new clothes kept him warm. Simple wishful thinking.

    #4 The PCR test is useless when used on those without symptoms. It can not discern between dead viral tissue and live infectious tissue.

    #5 There is no such thing as asymptomatic spread. (See #4)

    #6 The media has had its mouth stuffed with gold and pumps the state message without question. Look at Paul Nuki’s bilge in the DT.

    #7 Stoicism, courage, critical thought, numeracy, awkwardness are good characteristics, not the behaviour of ‘Covidiots’ or ‘granny killers’ or refuseniks.

    #8 There are many players at the very top of the global elite who have far too much vested interest in maintaining the new normal: WHO, GAVI, Gates Foundation, Big Pharma, Big six tech platforms, WEF. Their Great reset plans are real.

    #9 Death WITH China Lab Flu does not equal death FROM China Lab Flu (See #4)

    #10 There are already >300,000 variants of Covid, none of them can circumvent the Pfizer jab,

    #11 Natural immunity has been discounted along with the sensible recommendations of The Great Barrington Declaration. It is now clear that the south east Asian region has been hit relatively lightly by China Lab Flu compared to Europe. The Vietnamese and Japanese mortality figures are almost identical to Australia and NZ despite very different lockdown strategies. Prior exposure to SARS Cov 1 is the most logical explanation for such low infection and death rates in the Southern Hemisphere.”

    1. Many Nottlers will recall that some months ago I pointed out Chancellor Merkel’s speech where she stated that all countries in Europe would have a

      Covid passport.

      At the time all this government were furiously denying that they had any intention of introducing a Covid passport.

      ….and now? Who’s turned out to be the boss?

      1. 333493 + up ticks,
        Morning J,
        To my way of thinking these governance overseers have been showing out as eu assets plainly seen these past three decades, they do not change their lucrative stance overnight.

        They, the political parties are a LLCGs close shop coalition
        although the peoples still, i’m sure believe them to be of
        separate entities with INTEGRITY so the peoples continue to support & vote to keep the same type tripe in.

      2. Merkel’s just following orders like the rest. Only she can say it in her country, because they aren’t as bolshy as the Brits.

  25. President Assad wins 95pc of vote in election condemned by the West

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won a fourth term in office with 95.1 per cent of the votes in an election that will extend his rule over a country ruined by war but which opponents and the West say was marked by fraud.

    Head of parliament Hammouda Sabbagh announced the results at a news conference on Thursday, saying voter turnout was around 78 per cent, with more than 14 million Syrians taking part.

    When one takes into account the overall turnout, the winning margin seems to be accurate since most of the opposition will have abstained. Nevertheless it must stand, not only because the same rule would apply in the UK but because the alternatives are so much worse. Despite the posturings of the West; who only espouse democracy when it suits them, it was either Assad or the Jihadists!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/28/syria-president-assad-wins-95pc-vote-election-condemned-west/

      1. Morning Hatman. If that were true there would have been a 100% turn out!

          2. Mornin AW , The maths is simple, America the new Zimbabwe, allows long since dead but only recently registered voters, to cast their ballots !

          3. indeed, from Smokin Joe Frazier who died in 2011 through to those who died during the Civil war. And casting their ballots via postal option

    2. Assad and Lukashenko won elections which pi$$ off the West. And Demented Joe said Syria elections were not free, fair and without fraud! ROTFL

        1. I hope Syrian H&S checked them first.
          It would be awful if the hangees were injured when the lamppost collapsed.

          1. Elf & Safety is represented in Syria by our man in Damascus, Achmed the unwary, failed suicide bomber & pork butcher to the King of Saudi Arabia

  26. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ff648bfcde5943344905410153160635646a97bd16ae58f90a9dfb8712d7b3c.png To what greater depths is it possible for the lamentable Daily Telegraph to plumb?

    The delightful Emma Clare Thynn was a Viscountess when her husband, Ceawlin Thynn, was Viscount of Weymouth. Once he had been elevated to the Marquess of Bath, upon his father’s death, his wife then became Marchioness of Bath.

    She isn’t both a Viscountess and a Marchioness, DT! You need to conduct a thorough overhaul of your Court reporting.

    2. I blame the Sun for setting such a high standard with its page 3 girls, how can the Tory-Larf possibly hope to match the daily titillations of the Sun ?

  27. Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide. 28 may 2021.

    Germany has to agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (£940m) to fund projects among communities affected by the Herero-Nama genocide at the start of the 20th century, in what Angela Merkel’s government says amounts to a gesture of reconciliation but not legally binding reparations.

    Tens of thousands of men, women and children were shot, tortured or driven into the Kalahari desert to starve by German troops between 1904 and 1908 after the Herero and Nama tribes rebelled against colonial rule in what was then named German South West Africa and is now Namibia.

    Why? It is not that I approve of the activities of the Wilhelmine Military but what has this to do with 21st Century Germany? Even aside from the Slavery Reparations Scam there is literally no end to the claims that might be made for historical events. Are the Chinese to be compensated for the Mongol Invasions that killed 40% of the population, or the French for the Roman Conquest in the 1st Century BC? All this of course is linked to the do-gooding and self-enobling efforts of the Cultural Marxists. As long as someone else is paying the bills it’s great stuff!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/germany-agrees-to-pay-namibia-11bn-over-historical-herero-nama-genocide

      1. You just got fired! Get over it. They gave you a great work ethic by the way!

        1. For 40 years we wondered the Sinai desert eating only Mana from heaven & grumbling every day ” Oh Lord can we have some pickled herring & Gefilte Fish for a change ? “

          10. Typical unemployed! You should have blamed your Union Man Moshe. He got you there! Health and Safety issues and polluting the Water Supply! No wonder the Gyppoes were pissed! What did you expect?

    2. Can I claim compensation from some one or other when my DNA was revealed after a long wait , husband thought it would have been a fantastic idea as a birthday present for both of us ..
      A Pandora’s box of DNA for both of us was revealed.

      1. A Pandora’s box that the government can dip into when it wishes.
        Morning, Maggie.

      2. I had mine checked and found to my horror that I was predominantly Scottish with a bit of Ulster thrown in for good measure. OTOH it may just garner me a vote in the next Indyref!

        1. I had mine checked , my mother came from the depths of South West Cork , top family , but as the DNA knew nothing about my family history , shocked to find I am predomininantly British/ Scandinavian but 2% Spanish/Portuguese, the DNA suggests the Irish bit was tampered by the plunderings of the Spanish Armada and their raiders . They tracked my DNA to that part of Cork County precisely , I am still in shock .

          I am the only one in the family to have my father’s blue eyes, fair hair skin etc, he always assumed he was Viking stock ., which of course he probably was .

          Moh had an even greater shock with his results, so at a later date we will try another company . 40% of his DNA came from a region in Germany , which is a recent as probably 150 years ago!

    3. They will also keep the infrastructure created by the Germans, and carry on learning German in school and emigrating to that country.

  28. Revealed: The letter Carrie Symonds wanted to send to The Times objecting to story about Dilyn the dog – but Boris blocked it after saying: ‘I can’t sign this – it’s nonsense”

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/05/27/22/43536127-9627261-image-a-14_1622149897172.jpg

    o.uk/news/article-9627261/SIMON-WALTERS-note-newspaper-Carrie-Symonds-dwww.dailymail.coghouse.html#newcomment

    Carrion really is nut-nuts and out of control. Will they make it up the aisle?

    2. Sounds like the sort of spoof most NOTTLers could create.
      If true, how was it discovered?
      Personally, I’d advise rehoming the woman and keeping the dog.

      2. I bet Dilyn is spoiled (no discipline, no structure to his life, no regular walks). He’d probably be better off with someone who’d treat him like a dog and stimulate his mind.

    3. Her tone sounds very much like that unfortunate, hard-done by Duke of Sussex! The sooner she is expelled from the PM’s bed and the whole of Downing Street the better.

      There was a rather good line in an old Midsomer Murders in which Barnaby’s sidekick, Jones, described the actions of a rather highly sexed suspect as being loin-motivated. This clearly is what motivates our wretched prime minister and what has completely distorted his judgement.

  31. The most important story of the day in The Grimes this morning:

    “An anti-racism campaign by the Spanish post office has backfired after it was accused of racism over four stamps that have less monetary value the darker their colour.

    The campaign, which is being publicised in English and Spanish and fronted by Domingo Edjang, a rapper whose stage name is El Chojin, was intended “to shine a light on racial inequality and promote diversity, inclusion and equal rights” in European diversity week, coinciding with the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer.

    The stamps include a pink one with a value of €1.60, a light brown one worth €1.50, a dark brown one worth 80 cents and a black one worth 70 cents. Online critics claimed the differing values showed that the campaign was racist. “This is perpetuating the status quo,” said one. Another said: “Can you be more racist supposedly trying not to be racist?””

  32. Kenya’s high court overturns president’s bid to amend constitution https://www.eastafricanherald.com/politics/2021/5/14/kenyas-bbi-blocked-in-scathing-court-verdict-for-president-kenyatta Uhuru’s Building Bridges Initiative [BBI] the variant of “Build Back Better”. News filtered out via usual non MSM networks and wananchi. Now it’s starting to hit Kenya MSM. The reality here is the attempted amending of the Kenya Consitution 2013 [another US copy / paste of their one]

  33. Somewhat OT, but has anyone had communication with Fallick Alec/Spikey recently? I haven’t seen anything from him for a while.

    6. Thank you Paul – I’m ok and coping but with all the paperwork involved and my recovery driving I don’t seem to have time to spend on here, hopefully that will change shortly.
      I’m grateful for everyone’s concern and good wishes.

      1. Good to see from you, Spikey. Lots paperwork seems to be the bane of modern existence, even though computers were supposed to get rid of it all, what’s hapened is the computer just generattes the blessed stuff quicker.
        Do you drive for an organisation, or yourself? – like, are you called by the AA and RAC, or do people call you direct?

        1. I drive for the local garage who are agents for all the agencies – up here whoever you’re with you get me.

  34. I can’t sit about ll morning – serious bodging to be done – involving electric drills, nuts and bolts and a GREAT deal of swearing.

    A bientôt

    3. What’s the point of feeding two slaves cats and doing the work yourself?

  35. We’ll dispatch an officer to every burglary, new police chief vows.

    A chief constable has become the first to declare publicly that he will send an officer to investigate every burglary to dispel claims that minor crimes are ignored by police.

    Stephen Watson, the new head of Greater Manchester Police, pledged that his force would not “screen out” socalled “minor” crimes from investigation because he said each theft could be a “very big deal” to victims.

    “I’m 48 hours into the job, but in the future you will not have the situation where people’s homes are burgled and the police don’t come. That’s not happening,” he said. “We will investigate all burglaries and that will involve physical attendance of premises.”

    His pledge comes amid claims that up to two-thirds of burglaries are not properly investigated because cuts in police officer numbers have left them unable to cope with the rise in crime.

    The Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month that almost one million burglaries have gone unsolved in the last five years. In London alone, 22,634 house burglaries were “screened out” last year which meant investigations were abandoned within 24 hours due to an assessed lack of evidence.

    Mr Watson said he would not be screening out “minor crimes in the panoply of crime”. He added: “I think in those circumstances we miss the point frankly. It is not about the category into which a crime falls. It is the impact of the crime on the victim.

    “If you are somebody who has your car stolen but you need that to get to your weekly dialysis, that’s a big deal. If you are a workman whose job depends on the tools in their van, that’s a very big deal. And we ought to be reflective of the significance of these things.”

    His predecessor, Ian Hopkins, regularly complained that police cuts made it difficult for the force to investigate crime properly. Shortly before taking office in 2015, he warned that cuts meant police may not have the time to investigate burglaries straight away.

    For those who are “perfectly capable of phoning your insurance company, getting the locks sorted or the window boarded up, then I don’t see the necessity for us to turn up at that stage”, Mr Hopkins said at the time.

    Mr Watson took over as chief constable of GMP this week after his predecessor was forced to step down over an inspection report that found the force had failed to record 80,000 crimes in a year.

    He promised he would quit if the force was not in a “demonstrably better place” within two years as he promised that all crime would be “faithfully recorded” and “properly investigated”.

    “We will investigate to the satisfaction of the victim and when they are vulnerable, they will be safeguarded and even when we cannot solve a problem or detect a crime, the public should be left with the distinct impression that we have tried our very best in every case,” Chief Constable Watson said.

    He added that he would be banning visible tattoos on officers’ hands, necks or faces as they were “not compatible with service in the force”.

    He said he wanted to restore the “old fashioned qualities” of being smart and professional, punctual and polite with shoes polished and hair tied back, as well as keeping themselves fit – all the “hallmarks of a first-class police officer”.

    He also said he would not have a social media presence.

    A week ago we had Chief Constable Nick Adderley of Northamptonshire Police outlining his excellent views that graduates were not the ideal types for police recruitment.

    Today we have Chief Constable Stephen Watson of Greater Manchester Police (report, May 28) announcing that all reports of burglary will be physically attended by smart, properly-groomed, well-disciplined police officers who will not be overtly displaying tattoos.

    I, and countless other retired police officers, will welcome these positive moves back towards proper traditional policing and hope that they will signal the end of the modernist, Common Purpose, approach that has led, in recent years, to the ever-increasing decline of public confidence in the British police.

    3. Gosh! well he’s certainly saying the right things. I hope he carries them out. I’m glad he understands that burglary or vehicle theft is not trivial for the victims.
      Not having a social media presence is probably a positive sign too!
      Thank you for posting that.

      1. That’s an interesting question, Tom. The policy of ‘Zero Tolerance’ was first made famous by police chief Bill Bratton in New York. He used the policy to great effect.

        This was noticed by Det Supt Ray Mallon, of Middlesbrough police, who initiated its use there. Unfortunately, lots of ‘reasons’ were thought up by the new breed of Common Purpose police bosses who contrived to suspend Mallon and bring about a curtailment of his successful policy. As a result it faded from public consciousness.

  36. Forgot to mention the weather , dull overcast morning, slight breeze .
    Garden birds are feeding frantically .. competing with young starlings who have just finished splashing around in the shallow water dish .

    Fat balls containers are very popular . Have not seen any goldfinches for months , despite having Nijer feeders available.

    1. Good morning Belle and all.
      We have many goldfinches, siskins and green finches in our garden feeding on the sunflower hearts. Squirrels and larger birds can’t get at them.

    2. We had goldfinches in the front garden for one year. Never seen them again.
      They seem to spend their time in our elder son’s garden on the other side of town.
      Is it ‘cos we is posh and they felt outclassed by blackbirds with cut glass accents?

    3. I was awakened at 3.30 a.m by a noise outside. As it was light i went to have a look.

      I have netted my cherry tree to stop the fat wood pigeons from scoffing all the fruit. There was a starling trapped inside.

      At the base of the tree were two cats. I stared at them and they stared back. I went and got a broom because they weren’t going to give up their breakfast without a fight.

      I may be a bit of a pushover but i wasn’t going to let a couple of cats intimidate me. They did give me pause for thought though.

      Bird released.

      1. 333493+ up ticks,
        Morning AWK,
        Said it for years, also I believed the political governance hierarchy talked of doing just that, talked of doing just that, talked of….. …. ….

  40. Time to cash-in one’s chips

    Patrisse Cullors: Black Lives Matter co-founder resigns

    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6342/production/_118701452_gettyimages-1185136536.jpg

    Black Lives Matter’s co-founder says she is resigning from its foundation, but not because of what she called right-wing attempts to discredit her.

    Patrisse Cullors said Friday would be her last day at the foundation, which she has led for nearly six years.

    The 37-year-old activist’s finances came under scrutiny last month after it was reported she owned four homes.

    Black Lives Matter started as a hashtag in 2013 and has since become a global movement.

    Ms Cullors said she would step down from the Black Lives Matter Global Network to focus on her forthcoming second book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook, and a TV development deal with Warner Bros highlighting black stories.

    1. Paid off the mortgage on her mansion.
      Done the world cruise.
      Her (white) financial advisor has stashed away the rest in a tax haven.

      1. Come, come, Anne….she has four mansions bought for cash (proceeds of BLM)

          1. Like many Marxist trash, she preferred to live in a luxury home in a high end neighborhood, funded by skimming off donations.

      1. Not yet. He’s bizzy. Marcus is deep in conversation with the worst ever President of USA

        Marcus Rashford and Barack Obama share ‘surreal’ Zoom conversation

        Manchester United striker and ex-president discuss youth
        ‘When President Obama speaks, all you want to do is listen’
        https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ee0dd813b01e574d0b3513a275f53cb145082e5d/0_21_2362_1417/master/2362.jpg?width=700&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=8f838cc39d100e9ce71a92ddda497f0e

        http://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/28/marcus-rashford-and-barack-obama-share-zoom-conversation

        1. ‘When President Obama speaks, all you want to do is listen’

          I would imagine it rather depends on who you are, your background and what sort of interests you might have.

    2. Strange dates – he was murdered (yes, murdered) by an adherent of the Religion of Peace on 22nd March 2017.

    1. They don’t teach them stuff like that these days.

      We had a rootabout in the shed yesterday (looking for a ball of string) and found my physics notebook from when I was about that age – I was impressed.

      1. Just makes me realise how thick i am. I went to a Comprehensive. They didn’t do much teaching. I did manage an O Level in English though. Not bad seeing as i was taught by an Irish woman.

      2. They don’t teach them stuff like that these days.
        A bit more precise, Ndovu. Hope you don’t mind the impertinence of my correction…

    2. If you’d studied the syllabus all year and those were the questions in the summer end of term exam then yes, a 13 year old ought to have sufficient understanding. Of course in the 60’s the likes of Foucault and Derrida completely trashed this objective approach to history?

    3. Seems fair enough. The curriculum would have covered it. Libraries, with books, were available. By the time I was sitting exams the English Higher required the deciphering of a knitting pattern.

    4. Some Toughies, but if they had been paying attention in their lessons they would have the answers. The class sizes were much smaller around 20-25 back in the day.

    5. I got as far as writing my name at the head of the paper. I think i spelt it wrong.

    6. Not so gruelling but then, I was born in that year and was happily granted a good education, both from my parents, the State Primary School and the State Grammar School.

  43. More Meldrew Musings from the Old Grump.

    I had a letter from the Cabinet Office working for the Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme about my pension built up over five years as a postman. This year my annual pension goes up “in line with the scheme rules” from £1167.04 to £1168.38, a rise of £1.34 to cover the cost of living increases between 2020 and 2021.

    It is broken down this:
    Pre 06/04/88 GMP: 2020/21 – £898.56; 2021/22 – £898.56 from 06/04/21
    Pension in excess of GMP 60: 2021/21 – £268.48; 2021/22 – £269.82 from 12/04/2021

    Considering the amount of money made by owners Goldman Sachs after they advised and bid for the Royal Mail when it was privatised, where has the money gone?

  44. Good morning.

    I went out to lunch yesterday. I know i know…shocking.
    What was even more shocking was the bill. Or should i say BILL.
    £187.50 for two. Don’t ask me how. I think alcohol may have had something to do with it.

    Other than a long boozy lunch what i did find shocking was the Romanian taxi driver.

    It was clear from our conversation that he considered State benefits as unearned income.

    He told me it was difficult to exist on a single salary but was made easier for two.

    Both working (her on a cruise ship) and both claiming benefits.

    He said they were just managing to get by and were also saving money for a deposit on a house.

    He told me all this (are all taxi drivers so talkative?) without a hint of shame as it was normal behaviour.

    I didn’t tip him.

    1. The menu , I am now drooling , what delicious concoctions wer on the menu?

      So pleased to hear you are returning to normal .

      Son was recently working with a Nigerian , who had three brothers in a British prison , all here on temporary visas, and families were claiming benefits, and he the Nigerian worker was here in the UK to earn big stuff so that he could carry on and finish the hotel he was building in Lagos .

      The stuff my son tells me about shows there is an underground black economy that is not being tackled with foreign workers , and the furlough scheme is being abused widely
      Crooked accounting seems to a way of life for many .

      1. http://www.lauros.co.uk/

        I had salmon prawns and scallops.

        On the way in the taxi driver told me a funny story about Lauro. He said that Lauro had been invited to join the Lodge. And as was normal would give a welcoming speech to the Brothers.

        Larry is a Filopino and gave the speech in what people thought was Mandarin. He is very expressive and used lots of hand gestures.

        The taxi driver could barely finish the story because he was laughing so much. It turns out that Larry told them a list of his kitchen equipment.

      2. ‘Afternoon Mags, “Crooked accounting seems to a way of life for many .”

        Tut, tut, Mags, this is now known as creative accounting. I’m sure they are all paying tax on all their earnings, otherwise it wouldn’t be right, innit?

    2. £180, eh, with alcohol.
      Norwegian prices. I normally reckon on £100 a head when budgetting for a nice dinner, £50 for a curry.
      We don’t go out much.

        1. High minimum wage.
          25% VAT
          Duties on almost everything, especially alcohol.
          So, not so many eat out, and the fixed costs then get distributed over just a few covers.

          1. Doesn’t Norway have a very healthy Sovereign Wealth fund?

            I suppose the high prices keep the riff raff out. :@(

    4. Is she still working on a ship, or furloughed and doing nothing? Still we know the Romanians are only here for what they can scrounge off taxpayers.
      Glad you enjoyed your lunch!

    5. Nothing changes. About twenty years ago, the Blair government was congratulating itself on its estimate that only 7% of benefit claims were thought to be fraudulent. Based on my experiences in London and another British city, I’d have said 77% would have been closer.

      1. One of the friends I met this morning still works for DWP. She said the amount of obvious fraud has inceased hugely over the past year and they are told to ignore it.

          1. Yes – even claims for fictitious children – eg Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck………..and claims for “child 1, child 2 etc. Just pay them all.

      1. The nazi experience just may prevent this from being rolled out in Germany.
        It reeks of targeting the third world, and parents who themselves have little education.

    2. Bluddy Ell.
      Well that won’t be happening at my daughter’s school. It is a bonkers alternative private school, but one thing you can rely on them for is to be anti vaxx.

  47. China confirms ‘peaceful liberation’ of Tibet – archive, 1951. 28 May 2021.

    Peking radio confirmed to-night that an agreement for the “peaceful liberation” of Tibet by the Central People’s Government of China was signed in Peking on Wednesday.

    The radio said that the agreement followed negotiations between representatives of the Central People’s Government and the Tibetan “Regional Government.” Conclusion of the agreement was celebrated on Thursday night at a gathering addressed by Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese communist leader. The agreement lays down that Tibet’s foreign affairs shall be handled by the Chinese government and that the Tibetan armed forces shall be merged with those of China. A joint military government commission and armed headquarters is to be established in Tibet to carry out the terms of the agreement. Tibet, says the agreement, shall cooperate in the stationing of Chinese “liberation” troops in the country.

    Almost up to today’s MSM standards!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/china-confirms-peaceful-liberation-of-tibet-1951

    1. Wearing a face nappy to protect you against a virus is as effective as standing inside a lawn tennis court to protect you from being shot by someone standing outside.

  49. Seems no one has a good word to say about Mr Cummings. I addressed that yesterday. If you are more logical, more intelligent and better at solving problems than other people, and worse, you are not friendly and affable, you will be very much disliked.
    But that is not the point, is it?
    We know that the government handling of Covid was disastrously flawed from the outset. We were there. We read the rules, regulations, laws even, without quite knowing what was compulsory and what was not. Never a week went by without some changes being made. It was shambolic. Worse, we learned that the government was deliberately using the techniques of psychological warfare to manipulate us through fear.
    The government and ministers deserve much worse than a kicking in a committee, and I do not care who does it.

    1. Absolutely Horace. All my management training, on-job and in the lecture room, made it clear that as a manager of people you aren’t there to be liked but to take responsibility for your actions. If you happen to be “liked” it’s a bonus!

  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.

    Batley teacher allowed to return

    The Batley teacher will be able to return to the classroom – a welcome result that should never have been in doubt – but the Batley Multi-Academy Trust appears to have capitulated to the mob demanding Islamic blasphemy codes be enforced in schools. The Trust has said it is “committed to ensuring that offence is not caused”. Few have dared to voice their support for the teacher, but the local branch of a trade union for rubbish collectors tabled an excellent motion in his support. As Brendan O’Neill puts it in the Spectator, “If you need someone to support your right to freedom of speech, forget the teaching unions.” It’s the binmen who’ve shown true solidarity.

    Following a controversy at Allerton Grange School in Leeds about pupils displaying the Palestinian flag, Madeline Grant writes in the Telegraph about the growing number of culture war episodes playing-out in schools, including Batley.

    We have written to the Education Secretary asking him to investigate the shoddy treatment of Dr Bernard Randall, the former chaplain of Trent College in Nottingham, who lost his job after delivering a sermon in which he told the pupils they were free to make up their own minds about LGBT issues and didn’t have to accept the prevailing orthodoxy. You can read that letter here.

    If you are a sixth form or secondary school teacher and would like to book a speaker to talk about the importance of freedom of speech and expression, please contact the Free Speech Champions.

    Higher education

    Much of our recent case work has come from Scottish universities, and there are now calls for Scotland to introduce free speech legislation of its own to mirror England’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Writing in Spiked, Jamie Gillies argues that “Scottish ministers would be wise to adopt the priorities of their counterparts down south” with respect to free speech. Magnus Linklater says in the Times that the state must step in if universities can’t be trusted to stop the muzzling of dissenting views. Free Speech Champion Rob Lownie calls on students to defend the right to free speech in Areo, citing the case of Dr Neil Thin, the Edinburgh academic we are supporting.

    The Institute of Economic Affairs published research this week arguing that lack of competition between universities is a key driver behind the campus free speech crisis, the solution being to make it easier to set up private universities. Noah Carl wrote in Quillette about the petulant and absurd campaign against our Advisory Council member Professor Eric Kaufmann, which, luckily, seems to have fizzled out. A welcome statement from the Provost of UCL set out his position on the importance of universities remaining neutral arenas for public debate, facilitating free speech rather than taking a stance as an organisation; in stark contrast to the position taken by actors’ union Equity on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

    Meanwhile, the universities of San Diego and Rhode Island have dropped investigations into academics following an intervention by the Academic Freedom Alliance.

    Police Scotland targeting gender critical feminists for stickers and tweets

    We have offered our support to Marion Millar, a feminist campaigner north of the border who has been left unable to sleep by the stress of a police investigation over comments made on social media about transgender rights. Police Scotland have also put out a much-ridiculed call for the public to come forward if they see “controversial stickers” being put up by gender critical feminists. Erasing the rights of women is not an acceptable price to pay for trans rights, says Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph.

    Following the extraordinary report commissioned by the University of Essex that found Stonewall gave it “misleading” advice, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has withdrawn from the Stonewall diversity scheme.

    The waning power of cancel culture?

    Alexander Larman asks in the Critic whether cancel culture is starting to lose its power, a theme explored by Louis Wise in the Sunday Times. But Jonathan Goldsmith warns that while the Higher Education Bill promises more robust protections for free speech in universities, countless other workplaces and professions will lack the same protections.

    Kenan Malik argues in the Guardian that cancel culture comes from both the left and the right, but the preponderance of our case work involves a certain type of authoritarian progressive – the woke – censoring dissenters. Although there are instances of the right cancelling people, as Tom Slater points out in Spiked. He argues for the importance of defending the principle of free speech consistently, regardless of whose voice is being silenced.

    Who fights in the culture war?

    A new study claims to demonstrate limited public awareness of terms like “cancel culture”, “woke”, and “trigger warnings”, but fringe ideas can spread into workplaces, schools and universities with incredible speed, as we have seen in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, the National Trust is embroiled in an anti-woke rebellion after members forced the resignation of the Chairman, with calls now for the departure of the Director-General. This follows the National Trust’s publication of a report last year about the links between its historical properties and the slave trade.

    Harpsichords face imminent “decolonisation” after the Royal Academy of Music pledged to review its collection of rare instruments in the wake of George Floyd’s death. It is unclear what connects historical instruments to events in Minnesota, a point made by our Director Douglas Murray in the Spectator.

    Businesses have been advised not to invest in unconscious bias training, the Telegraph reports, which leaves white men feeling that they’re “being told off for who they are”.

    “The best way to defend freedom of speech may be to abandon the defensive position and instead turn the tables on utopians, by offering them a platform to explain their own beliefs so that they will be forced to face the inherent failings of utopianism itself: a generous and ironic strategy.” That’s the suggestion of Ewan Morrison, in his long read on the perils of utopian thinking in Areo.

    Ofcom, social media and censorship

    Dominic Cummings made a series of bombshell revelations about the government’s cack-handed response to the coronavirus crisis in the House of Commons on Wednesday. But why hadn’t we heard about these scandals before? One reason, says our founder Toby Young in the Mail, is because of Ofcom’s coronavirus guidance, warning broadcasters to exercise extreme caution when broadcasting material that could undermine public confidence in the Covid advice being pumped out by authorities. As long-standing members and supporters will recall, we tried to persuade the High Court to declare the guidance unlawful in December but were unsuccessful.

    The battle for the control of Ofcom is more important than ever, given how powerful the regulator will be if the ill-conceived and chilling Online Safety Bill becomes law. The legislation would hand huge powers to Ofcom to police social media. As per our briefing on the Bill, the sections empowering Ofcom to punish social media companies for refusing to censor “misinformation” should be scrapped – and the reason that is so wrong-headed is illustrated by the fate of the lab leak theory about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. 12 months ago, it was dismissed as “misinformation” and anyone posting about it on Facebook risked being banned. This week, Joe Biden called for it to be properly investigated and, like clockwork, Facebook lifted its ban. You can read another piece by Toby in the Mail about that.

    Nick Buckley, whose case we successfully fought last year, wrote about the “cruel mistress of shallow pleasure” that is social media, suggesting that it will be another decade before we know whether it has done more harm than good.

    A leak of Facebook documents has shown how it goes about censoring anti-vaxxers, with the social network using an algorithm to calculate a “vaccine hesitancy score” and demoting comments, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

    The future of game shows…

    Educational Liberty Alliance

    US readers (and others) may be interested in this free event:

    The Impact of “Safe Speech” Codes in K-12 Schools

    Wednesday 2nd June, 4-5 pm (Central).

    To register, please click here.

    Sharing the Newsletter

    We’ve received several requests to make it possible to share these newsletters on social media, so we’ve added the option to post them on a few different 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.

    Remember, all of our work depends on our members, we receive no public money: sign-up today or encourage a friend to join and help us turn the tide against the censors.

    Best wishes,

    1. Batley teacher allowed to return.
      Can you imagine the terrible and hostile atmosphere that teacher will encounter in the classroom and on entry and exit through the school gates.
      I expect every word that is uttered from now on in the classroom will be secretly recorded. I hope someone in authority uses a ‘jamming device’ for hidden mobiles. Or stop and search occurs. But given the ‘makeup’ of some of the pupils, that’s not going to work is it ?

    1. Some common sense might prevail from this, but i think our journos need to get out more often, to collect the facts.

    2. Why is it not only fake news but evil and unbelievable when Trump says that Covid may have come from the Wuhan lab but the objective and believable truth when the senile idiot Biden says it?

  52. TCW Both Barrels

    “Cummings’s additional testimony points in the same direction. By

    emphasising the incompetence of the government in failing to act with

    CCP-style ruthlessness, he aimed to deflect from the political and moral

    corruption which has defined the UK response, and simultaneously push

    the system still further in a repressive direction.

    Here again, systematic government criminality, including the refusal to distribute cheap and effective pharmaceutical remedies and

    the government terror campaign masterminded by Michael Gove and the

    Sage propaganda unit, were left unmentioned by Cummings because both

    actions represented strategic decisions designed to maximise damage

    rather than simple mistakes.

    At the same time, the human cost of this programme was attributed to

    scapegoats, in particular the visibly stupid Matt Hancock, blamed for

    the tens of thousands of medical murders in care homes-turned-death

    camps where the elderly were cut off from their families, denied

    effective medical treatments and left to suffocate unattended. In truth

    these deaths are the responsibility of Gove, UK branch manager of the

    global Great Reset, and he should answer for them in The Hague.”

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/cummings-portrait-of-a-weak-minded-fanatic/
    Bang on,the removal of HCQ,the Vit D fiasco,the demonisation of eminent scientists like Didier Raoult,this was mass murder!!
    At whose orders we wonder………………

    1. I cannot believe that Johnson’ capitulation to the EU over both N. Ireland and Britain’s fishing waters was not the direct consequence of Gove arriving in Brussels only a day or two before the deal was agreed.

      Michael Gove is cleverer than Boris Johnson – but he is far nastier.

      1. Apparently after another hour of parading the wooden box around, one of the bearers had to be replaced because of suspected Covid.
        He had nothing to stop his coughing.

          1. I’ve always wondered in the Crems’ if they take the bodies out of the coffins to burn the bodies. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  54. On the subject of exams…

    From The Spectator, 27th November 2004

    Dumbing down: the proof

    As a service to Spectator readers who still have any doubts about the decline in educational standards, we are printing these exam papers taken by 11-year-olds applying for places to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1898.

    ENGLISH GRAMMAR
    1. Write out in your best handwriting:–
    ‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
    And call the cattle home,
    And call the cattle home,
    Across the sands o’ Dee.’
    The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
    And all alone went she.
    The western tide crept up along the sand,
    And o’er and o’er the sand,
    And round and round the sand,
    As far as eye could see.
    The rolling mist came down and hid the land –
    And never home came she.
    2. Parse fully ‘And call the cattle home.’
    3. Explain the meaning of o’ Dee, dank with foam, western tide, round and round the sand, the rolling mist.
    4. Write out separately the simple sentences in the last two lines of the above passage and analyse them.
    5. Write out what you consider to be the meaning of the above passage.

    GEOGRAPHY
    1. On the outline map provided, mark the position of Carlisle, Canterbury, Plymouth, Hull, Gloucester, Swansea, Southampton, Worcester, Leeds, Leicester and Norwich; Morecambe Bay, The Wash, Solent, Menai Straits and Lyme Bay; St. Bees Head, The Naze, Lizard Point; the rivers Trent and Severn; Whernside, the North Downs, and Plinlimmon; and state on a separate paper what the towns named above are noted for.
    2. Where are silver, platinum, tin, wool, wheat, palm oil, furs and cacao got from?
    3. Name the conditions upon which the climate of a country depends, and explain the reason of any one of them.
    4. Name the British possessions in America with the chief town in each. Which is the most important?
    5. Where are Omdurman, Wai-Hei-Wai, Crete, Santiago, and West Key, and what are they noted for?

    LATIN
    1. Write in columns the nominative singular, genitive plural, gender, and meaning of operibus, principe, imperatori, genere, apro, nivem, vires, frondi, muri.
    2. Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive singular of solus, uter, quisque.
    3. Write these phrases in a column and put opposite to each its Latin: he will go; he may wish; he had; he had been; he will be heard; and give in a column the English of fore, amatum, regendus, monetor.
    4. Give in columns the perfect indicative and active supine of ago, pono, dono, cedo, jungo, claudo. Mention one example each of verbs followed by the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative.
    5. Translate into Latin:–
    i. The general’s little son was loved by the soldiers.
    ii. Let no bodies be buried within this city.
    iii. Ask Tullius who found the lions.
    iv. He said that the city had been taken, and, the war being finished, the forces would return.
    6. Translate into English:–
    Exceptus est imperatoris adventus incredibili honore atque amore: tum primum enim veniebat ab illo Aegypti bello. Nihil relinquebatur quod ad ornatum locorum omnium qua iturus erat excogitari posset.

    ENGLISH HISTORY
    1. What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?
    2. Give some account of Egbert, William II, Richard III, Robert Blake, Lord Nelson.
    3. State what you know of Henry II’s quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven bishops, the Gordon riots.
    4. What important results followed: the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Gunpowder plot, the Scottish rebellion of 1639, the surrender at Yorktown, the battles of Bannockburn, Bosworth, Ethandune, La Hogue, Plassey, and Vittoria?
    5. How are the following persons connected with English History: Harold Hardrada, Saladin, James IV of Scotland, Philip II of Spain, Frederick the Elector Palatine?

    ARITHMETIC
    1. Multiply 642035 by 24506.
    2. Add together £132 4s. 1d., £243 7s. 2d., £303 16s 2d., and £1.030 5s. 3d.; and divide the sum by 17. (Two answers to be given.)
    3. Write out Length Measure, and reduce 217204 inches to miles, &c.
    4. Find the G.C.M. of 13621 and 159848.
    5. Find, by Practice, the cost of 537 things at £5 3s. 7½d. each.
    6. Subtract 37/16 from 51/4; multiply 63/4 by 5/36; divide 43/8 by 11/6; and find the value of 21/4 of 12/3 of 13/5.
    7. Five horses and 28 sheep cost £126 14s., and 16 sheep cost £22 8s.; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep.
    8. Subtract 3.25741 from 3.3; multiply 28.436 by 8.245; and divide .86655 by 26.5.
    9. Simplify 183/4 – 22/3 ÷ 11/5 – 31/2 x 4/7.
    10. Find the square root of 5.185,440,100.
    11. Find the cost of papering the walls of a room 16ft long, 13ft 6in. wide, and 9ft high, with paper 1½ft wide at 2s. 3d. a piece of 12yds in length.
    12. A and B rent a number of fields between them for a year, the rent and other expenses amounting to £108 17s. 6d. A puts in 2 horses, 5 oxen and 10 sheep; and B puts in 4 horses, 1 ox, and 27 sheep. If a horse eats as much as 3 sheep and an ox as much as 2 sheep, how much should A and B each pay?

    These papers were kindly sent in by Humphrey Stanbury, whose father took the exam, and passed.

    FOOTNOTE:
    The Daily Telegraph featured this story today (Friday 26th November 2004). It quotes the current headmaster of King Edward School: “I’m sure we would all have difficulty completing the paper. It’s very challenging. If I were to be critical, I would say that it’s heavy on factual knowledge and mechanical exercise and low on analysis and the creative side.”

    2. ARITHMETIC Answer 12.

      I don’t think an ox can even eat as much as two sheep let alone a horse eating as much as three – they are both ruminants!

    3. Well, the Latin alone will keep out many of African and Caribbean descent and possibly those Slammers from the Religion of Peace (The severely bent ideology).

    4. Holy cow! I see now that standards had dropped considerably by the late 70s!

      Geography Question 3 is the only one that today’s 11 year olds could answer confidently – and they’d be wrong!

    5. I do not think that the 11+ was that difficult back in 1959.

      Could many graduates complete that test nowadays?

        1. I passed the 11+ in 1960. It was just another set of tests (my primary school regularly tested us with similar things).

    6. Here is a cheery little ditty. I encountered the Percy Grainger setting, which I sang at a wedding I think:

      “Six dukes went a-fishing

      
Down by yon sea-side,

      One of them spied a dead body,
      
Lain by the waterside.
      The one said to the other,

      These words I heard them say,
      
”It’s the royal Duke of Grantham,

      That the tide has washed away.”

      They took him up to Portsmouth,

      To a place where was known,

      From there up to London,

      To the place where he was born.
      They took out his bowels,

      And stretched out his feet,

      And they balmed his body,

      With roses so sweet.

      Six dukes stood before him,

      Twelve raised him from the ground,

      Nine lords followed after him,
      
In their black mourning gown.
      Black was their mourning,

      And white were the wands,
      
And so yellow were the flamboys,

      That they carried in their hands.

      Now he lies betwixt two towers,
      
He now lies in cold clay,

      And the Royal Queen of Grantham,

      Went weeping away.”

    1. Do you have the down load link for the from Ogga i can only see this post on my Mobile and not on my computer screen. It happens a a lot with twitter.

    2. Criminal. I shall share this with all my friends and rellies. I don’t even trust them once you have ticked the opt out box, it might get miraculously changed to an opt in box.

      1. Afternoon, BB2, at the bottom of the form there is an area marked:

        For GP Practice Use Only
        Shewing two boxes to be filled in as to whether you’ve opted out or in.

        I suggest that before submitting that form, if you wish to opt out, you put a big, thick black cross through the opt-in box. It’s what I shall do.

      1. Just found the original form and it was 2014! Doesn’t time fly! So now I suppose we have to do it again.

    1. Wasn’t Solomon up agaisnt the real (Greek) Philistines, not the pretendy Arab ones?

  60. Good afternoon all

    I received this email this morning and it shows exactly what’s been going on. It has not been about the ‘vaccination’ it has been about SURVEILLANCE.

    Your Surveillance Appointment ID:

    I am writing to confirm that your referral has now been closed as requested by you or we have not been able to contact you, your referring GP has been notified.

    Please contact your referring GP, in the first instance, should you wish to discuss, or have any questions, concerning this referral.

    Yours sincerely,

    Adam Wallwork
    Director of Patient Referral Management

    The Dictatorship now has the records of all the millions of those who are compliant.

    2. Good grief, what an error. They must have had a supply person in who hadn’t a clue what she/he was writing about and looked in the file for further information for a heading. Or the file itself was simply marked ”Surveillance’

    4. Dear lord alive. Has that Wallwork ever seen proper grammar?

      I suppose that’s what you get with a generation of ignorami.

  61. Ryan Giggs trial date set for January on ex-girlfriend assault charge
    It is alleged that the former Manchester United player assaulted his ex-girlfriend and caused her actual bodily harm in November last year

    DT Story by India McTaggart

    After seducing his brother’s wife and continuing to have an affair with her I very much doubt whether he has much public support on his side. But will he be imprisoned if he is found guilty of assaulting his ex-girlfriend?

  62. Attacker on the run after French policewoman badly wounded in stabbing. 28 May 2021.

    An assailant stabbed and badly wounded a policewoman on Friday in the town of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre in western France, a police source said on Friday.
    The attacker was on the run, the police source said, and a search operation was under way.

    Another one! Policewomen are regular targets in yer France are they not?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/28/attacker-run-french-police-woman-badly-wounded-stabbing/

    1. The motive for the stabbing was not immediately clear. Really ??

      The incident comes a month after a female police administrative worker was knifed to death near Paris by a Tunisian national who had watched religious videos glorifying acts of jihad just before waging his attack.

    2. ‘Assailant’.

      Usual tired code for either black or middle eastern immigrant. It’s boring. Just tell the bloody truth.

  63. GBTV is up on my telly! Freeview 216! Just babble at the moment, No programmes!

    1. We are quite use to all that from the other TV channels, it gets worse everyday.

  64. The manufacturing of fear. Spiked. 28 may 2021.

    The fearmongering about Covid began even before the pandemic hit the UK. We were primed by videos from Wuhan in China, which were then widely circulated by UK-based media outlets. These painted an apocalyptic picture, featuring collapsed citizens, medics in Hazmat suits, concerned bystanders and a city grinding to a halt. In one memorable video, which went viral, so to speak, a woman fell, stiff as a board, flat on her face, on a pavement. The split second where she falters is a giveaway – this was a set-up. If the rest of the world had Covid, China had ‘Stunt Covid’.

    Hmmm?. Someone else noticed!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/28/the-manufacturing-of-fear/

  65. Just arrived in my inbox and posted so that fellow NoTTLers can get some idea of how comprehensively ghastly Stephen Toope, Vice Chancellor of Cantab, really is. He’s creepy in every possible respect. Here he sings the praises of various Cambridge academics who have won awards over the past year whilst he does his Marxist best to destroy the institution from within. Sickening.
    https://youtu.be/Y8FZ05SMXVM

    2. Boring, says nothing except, “Look at me, how wonderful I am to be running this dump” – as it is now identified.

  66. Good afternoon all.

    Just had phone call from local hospital offering me a bone-scan week after next.

    There are no facilities for my wheelchair.
    No hoists to get me onto the bed.
    I must book an ambulance to take me on a stretcher and I must arrange help to get on and off it.
    The vehicle MUST be booked to wait for me, otherwise I’d be stuck there.

    Oh, and the referral was made in 2019 and, of course, covid is to blame.
    NHS is safe with the cretins at the Senedd.

    1. Issy, very sorry to hear that you need a bone scan & that the hospital near you is so poorly equipped in this day & age. At times I complain about my own local heath service provider & our government run hospitals & out patients clinics but it seems that the UK’s NHS is just a pale shadow of its former self nowadays.

    2. Where is the compassion , the engagement of brains , team effort to assist you .

      What are people being paid to do in the NHS .

      So very sorry you have to endure such a tiring fuss, Issy.

  67. Unfortunately i missed a long awaited hospital appointment this morning, yesterday and still as tap the key board, I started another bout of Atrial Fibrillation. It’s a repeat of last month when i had to go to A&E. I had the Catheter ablation nearly 6 years ago i’m worried that this return could be any thing to with the double Covid jab. There appears to be a similar time scale from the first jab to the Afib and the second jab to yesterdays reversion. There was not much sympathy from the booking people at the hospital, I just have to go back to my GP (impossible) again and restart the whole process of my arthritic knee all over again.
    The NHS is clapped out.

    1. But i did manage to speak to a nurse in the Lister Cardiology department re Afib and the nurse said the Cardiologist will ring me back today, fingers crossed. Not holding the little breath i have.
      It’s very wearing, the last time this happened i thought i was on my last legs. I went to the green house bottom of the garden earlier to water the plants, picked up and bagged the dog poo, my legs ached and i was out of breath by the time i had made it up the 8 steps and in to the back door.

      1. This is very worrying for you and clearly causing anxiety for you family, and us on here as well.

        Relax please , and try to stay calm .

        1. Thanks for your concern. 😍

          Symptoms
          Most people with atrial fibrillation show no symptoms. Some of the noted symptoms include:
          Heart palpitations – feeling of the heart racing or beating irregularly
          Shortness of breath
          Weakness
          Tiredness
          Reduced ability to be physically active
          Light headed-ness and dizziness
          Confusion
          Chest pain

          All of the above Maggie, unfortunately. I’ve worked out that it came on around 8 weeks after the first AZ jab. And this second bout is about a month after. It could be a coincidence of course but i’ll probably never know.

        2. Hi TB i was hoping to talk to my GP today but it’s apparently going to be this Friday. I was checking possibilities out by means of the internet re my current and recent Afib condition and both bouts i have had. I have been fine since my catheter ablation 5 years ago this coming September. I mentioned it to my wife as a possible connection with both of my AZ or covid in general jabs, but only weeks after the Jabs the Afib restarted. The second bout was closer to the jab than the first. But my wife being sensible she said no. Today I have been researching it and it seems i might have been right all along. If you have the time could you do me a favour and take a look along those lines for me, I would very much appreciate an unconnected to our family and friends opinion on this. 🙂 I’ll also ask a close friend from the North east. Who was also a nursing sister.

    2. I wasn’t convinced that my GP was able to recognise AFib after I produced my ECG trace.

      My heart does lose its timing synchronism but I’ve found that it mainly occurs when my body is not responding to sympathetic stimulation.

      I discovered this by decoupling my sympathetic system by lying down flat and recording a heart rate variability sequence mapped onto a Poincaré plot:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/61f9c3d8b10e76a15210d5c70e5a118957080c6e3cface57c57d5dcc08e93f9c.gif

      This plot shows the transition from a sympathetic mediated sinus rhythym to a parasympathic asynchronous cardiac cycle that would be difficult to see even on a ten second ECG strip.

      Is this AFib?

      2. It looks fairly regular and consistent. I’m not sure what you’re looking for?

        My heart rate is all over the place more often than not.

        1. I’m looking for some answers as to how cardiologists distnguish between various irregular heart pacing patterns using heart rate variability analyses of the R-R interval.
          Specifically I would like to know what algoithms are used to allow the automated interpretation of Atrial Fibrillation.

  68. Brendan O’Neill
    Batley Grammar and the triumph of the mob
    27 May 2021, 3:08pm

    Here’s the depressing truth about the Batley Grammar controversy: the mob has won. Angry protesters who gathered at the school gates to demand teachers be forbidden from displaying images of Muhammad have pretty much got their way. Following an external inquiry into what happened at Batley Grammar, the trust which runs the school has said such images should never be used again.

    This affair kicked off in March, when a teacher was suspended for showing his pupils a cartoon of Muhammad during a Religious Studies discussion about blasphemy. In an attempt to resolve this surreal situation, in which a teacher in a supposedly modern secular democracy was effectively being punished for blasphemy, the Batley Multi Academy Trust commissioned an inquiry.

    Many people are focusing on the inquiry’s favourable comments about the teacher. He did not intend to cause offence to Muslims, the investigators conclude. He ‘genuinely believed’ that the image of Muhammad had ‘an educational purpose and benefit’. His suspension should be lifted, they say. Let him back into the classroom.

    I’m sorry, but that is easier said than done. It is highly unlikely the teacher will be able to waltz back into his old job. He has been subjected to vile abuse and death threats. He has been in hiding for two months. According to his father, he feels ‘crushed’ and ‘devastated’. He is worried that ‘he and his family are all going to be killed’.

    Does this sound like someone who will be turning up to the school gates tomorrow morning, lesson printouts tucked under his arm, buzzing to engage his pupils in discussion and debate?

    Saying ‘lift the suspension’ is fine as far as it goes. It is, of course, an outrage that this teacher was suspended in the first place simply for challenging his pupils to think about religion, blasphemy and freedom. But it is also naive, given the circumstances. It overlooks the extraordinary levels of demonisation and persecution this teacher has experienced just for doing his job.

    That persecution was witlessly assisted and even emboldened by the cowardice of various institutions. They essentially capitulated to the mob.

    The school in West Yorkshire suspended the teacher and issued an ‘unequivocal’ apology for his ‘totally inappropriate’ display of the image of Muhammad. The teaching unions were mostly silent, apparently because they didn’t want to inflame tensions. But tensions were already inflamed, courtesy of intolerant protesters calling for a teacher to be sacked for offending their religious beliefs. Any teaching union worth the name would have got stuck in and said: ‘This teacher did nothing wrong. Freedom in the classroom is more important than your feelings.’

    This capitulation had a devastating impact. It pleased the protesters and it left the teacher with very few public defenders. As his family said, he felt like he had been thrown under a bus. An inquiry now saying ‘Hey, you can come back to the classroom’ is unlikely to be of much comfort to a teacher so publicly put through the wringer.

    Indeed, the inquiry continues the capitulation. It advises that images of Muhammad should not be displayed in classroom settings in the future. It says it is ‘not necessary’ to use images of Muhammad in religious studies lessons. Apparently, it is not appropriate to use ‘any such images of the type used on 22 March’ — the day the teacher committed his supposed speechcrime — in religious studies lessons ‘or any other lessons’. Batley Grammar – and presumably other schools – should commit themselves to ‘ensuring that offence is not caused’, the inquiry says.

    This is yet another cave-in to intolerance. It gives the protesters what they want: an assurance that no image of Muhammad will ever see the light of day in Batley Grammar again. It essentially subjects Batley Grammar to the blasphemy laws of the religion of Islam by insisting nothing untoward or offensive should be said about the Prophet on school territory. This should alarm everyone who believes in freedom of speech.

    Britain is not an Islamic country. We do not have Sharia law. Our public servants should not be pressured into bending the knee to Islamic ideas — or to any other religious ideas, for that matter.

    This all sets a dangerous precedent. It will embolden cancel-culture mobs — whether of the religious or non-religious variety — by making it clear to them that if they kick up a stink, then they too might be able to wipe ‘offensive’ material from a school’s curriculum. This is the hecklers’ veto in action. Giving schoolgates protesters a veto over what happens inside the school is a very bad idea indeed.

    2. Sharia Law is on the way in the UK. The former Archbishop of Canterbury , Rowan Williams said back on 8 Feb 2008 that the UK had to “face up to the fact” . He said adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law could help social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial, etc, etc, etc. so yes the UK establishment has already decided that it will come to pass & my guess is it will be applied to Non-Muslims as well as Muslims in UK cities where Islam is at least 10% of the population

    3. The second the department of education didn’t say ‘Good, teach the truth.’ and the police didn’t immediately disperse the crowd of Muslims and tell them there would be absolutely no tolerance of bullying, thuggery or violence and that the pyjama wearers were guests here and should either accept our laws and mores or leave – immediately – it was clear our society now sided with the invaders – ignoring all the destruction Muslims have caused to our culture.

    4. Britain is not YET an islamic country – give it time. We do have sharia law in places – we certainly, thanks to Cameron, have sharia compliant banking. Look at the prevalence of halal food. Softly, softly catchee monkey.

      1. Long way away and only 2 years old, but is this of interest, Con?

        Tommie Kemp
        • 13 hrs ago
        Need to rehome dog. Hi, my father-in-law passed recently and has sadly left his dog. If our situation was different he wouldn’t need to be rehomed. He is a 2 years old white staff with black spots, lovely temperament but doesn’t get along with cats. Fully vaccinated, flea, tick and worm treatment all up to date. Don’t really want to go to rspca or dogs trust because they are already overflowing with unwanted lockdown pups. Please message if you or anyone you know is interested.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fd5f4ad5d79343729b35d34803bf8838540972d5147211625de8d81bd6a9138a.jpg

        1. Thank you, but unfortunately I don’t want a staffie – there are loads of them available, alas. I do hope he gets a good home – I agree about not giving him to the RSPCA (they have a bad reputation for kill rates, even of healthy dogs). He should try Rescue Remedies. If he’d been a Border or a Patterdale, I would have snatched your hand off.

          2. I do appreciate your efforts. I didn’t mean to sound sniffy. It has to be the right dog (but I’m getting so desperate I am tempted to go for ANY dog, which would be a mistake). I looked through probably a hundred dogs today all over the country, but the ones I would have liked all had reasons why I couldn’t have them (too far away with a time limit/distance condition or the need to visit multiple times; no neighbouring dogs; medical conditions and/or guarding issues …). I can’t take on anything that requires massive amounts of work or training because my time is taken up looking after MOH.

          3. Not sniffy at all. I do appreciate the constraints and was merely professing my canine ignorance, hence the smiley. If I could engineer the right match, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But, you must keep trying, I think, however hard the course.

          5. Thoughts remain with you and I will continue to hope for a good outcome.

      2. PS: Do you have this “next door” thing up there? May be worth signing up to.

          2. Thank you. I hadn’t heard of it; it must be an urban thing because I know the names of my neighbours and chat to them face to face – I don’t need an app! 🙂

          3. We’re not urban, hardly even a village, but you do get posts from surrounding places. I usually just read the e-mailed “top posts” headlines..

  69. Brendan O’Neill
    Batley Grammar and the triumph of the mob
    27 May 2021, 3:08pm

    Here’s the depressing truth about the Batley Grammar controversy: the mob has won. Angry protesters who gathered at the school gates to demand teachers be forbidden from displaying images of Muhammad have pretty much got their way. Following an external inquiry into what happened at Batley Grammar, the trust which runs the school has said such images should never be used again.

    This affair kicked off in March, when a teacher was suspended for showing his pupils a cartoon of Muhammad during a Religious Studies discussion about blasphemy. In an attempt to resolve this surreal situation, in which a teacher in a supposedly modern secular democracy was effectively being punished for blasphemy, the Batley Multi Academy Trust commissioned an inquiry.

    Many people are focusing on the inquiry’s favourable comments about the teacher. He did not intend to cause offence to Muslims, the investigators conclude. He ‘genuinely believed’ that the image of Muhammad had ‘an educational purpose and benefit’. His suspension should be lifted, they say. Let him back into the classroom.

    I’m sorry, but that is easier said than done. It is highly unlikely the teacher will be able to waltz back into his old job. He has been subjected to vile abuse and death threats. He has been in hiding for two months. According to his father, he feels ‘crushed’ and ‘devastated’. He is worried that ‘he and his family are all going to be killed’.

    Does this sound like someone who will be turning up to the school gates tomorrow morning, lesson printouts tucked under his arm, buzzing to engage his pupils in discussion and debate?

    Saying ‘lift the suspension’ is fine as far as it goes. It is, of course, an outrage that this teacher was suspended in the first place simply for challenging his pupils to think about religion, blasphemy and freedom. But it is also naive, given the circumstances. It overlooks the extraordinary levels of demonisation and persecution this teacher has experienced just for doing his job.

    That persecution was witlessly assisted and even emboldened by the cowardice of various institutions. They essentially capitulated to the mob.

    The school in West Yorkshire suspended the teacher and issued an ‘unequivocal’ apology for his ‘totally inappropriate’ display of the image of Muhammad. The teaching unions were mostly silent, apparently because they didn’t want to inflame tensions. But tensions were already inflamed, courtesy of intolerant protesters calling for a teacher to be sacked for offending their religious beliefs. Any teaching union worth the name would have got stuck in and said: ‘This teacher did nothing wrong. Freedom in the classroom is more important than your feelings.’

    This capitulation had a devastating impact. It pleased the protesters and it left the teacher with very few public defenders. As his family said, he felt like he had been thrown under a bus. An inquiry now saying ‘Hey, you can come back to the classroom’ is unlikely to be of much comfort to a teacher so publicly put through the wringer.

    Indeed, the inquiry continues the capitulation. It advises that images of Muhammad should not be displayed in classroom settings in the future. It says it is ‘not necessary’ to use images of Muhammad in religious studies lessons. Apparently, it is not appropriate to use ‘any such images of the type used on 22 March’ — the day the teacher committed his supposed speechcrime — in religious studies lessons ‘or any other lessons’. Batley Grammar – and presumably other schools – should commit themselves to ‘ensuring that offence is not caused’, the inquiry says.

    This is yet another cave-in to intolerance. It gives the protesters what they want: an assurance that no image of Muhammad will ever see the light of day in Batley Grammar again. It essentially subjects Batley Grammar to the blasphemy laws of the religion of Islam by insisting nothing untoward or offensive should be said about the Prophet on school territory. This should alarm everyone who believes in freedom of speech.

    Britain is not an Islamic country. We do not have Sharia law. Our public servants should not be pressured into bending the knee to Islamic ideas — or to any other religious ideas, for that matter.

    This all sets a dangerous precedent. It will embolden cancel-culture mobs — whether of the religious or non-religious variety — by making it clear to them that if they kick up a stink, then they too might be able to wipe ‘offensive’ material from a school’s curriculum. This is the hecklers’ veto in action. Giving schoolgates protesters a veto over what happens inside the school is a very bad idea indeed.

  70. How low and scuzzy can the Bercows get?

    BERCOWS CLAIMED £30,000 FURLOUGH PAYMENTS FROM TAXPAYERS WHEN THEY HAD £400,000 IN BANK
    Further to Guido’s story yesterday that the Bercows have over £400,000 in the bank, an eagle-eyed bean counting co-conspirator spotted a detail tucked away near the bottom of their company’s accounts: the outline of an accounting policy for government grants. That policy is typically only for businesses which have relied on the furlough scheme.

    Given that the accounts statement also shows the company only employs two people (John and Sally), there are a limited number of ways the grants could have been spent. Guido wonders whether these tough economic times left John with no choice other than to furlough Sally for the past year…

    UPDATE: HMRC documents reveal that the Bercows did claim furlough money, with the report showing that their company (Fedhead Ltd.) made three claims across December 2020, January 2021, and February 2021 for a total of £30,000.

    28 May 2021 @ 10:28

    2. I don’t care. If he’s a business then no impropriety.

      If he is NOT a business and claimed fraudlently, then join the queue of incompetent officialdom.

      In either case, the money isn’t coming back, those officials responsible won’t be affected. Nothing will change. Nothing ever does.

  71. Bodgery completed. Had lunch and risked a beer. I was working in the garage – and the postman asked if he could leave the mail on the floor.

    The page facing up was an advert which read:
    “Ladder falls account for one-third of all home fatalities.”

    Charming, I thought…..{:¬))

    2. Bill did the rest of the advert read ” If a ladder falls in a forest nobody hears it & so Achmed & Achmed who provide tail ending & whiplash witness’s services to the needy of Bradford are there to help corroborate your false claim for damages !

  72. London Bridge terror attack victims ‘unlawfully killed’ by prisoner on release. 28 May 2021.

    An inquest jury at the Guildhall in London has concluded university graduates Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt were “unlawfully killed” during a terrorist attack at Fishmongers’ Hall.

    Jack was remembered as “a force for good in the world” by his grief-stricken mother Anne, who read a statement to the inquest.
    “His death was a tragedy but his life was a triumph,” Ms Merritt said through tears.

    Saskia’s family paid tribute to her as a “valley of light” who was dedicated to helping people in difficult situations.

    When you are brought up by parents who pass this level of self-delusion onto their offspring, tragedy of one kind or another invariably awaits!

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-london-bridge-terror-attack-24203938

    1. Bet there is no campaign to honour the lives of those killed on London Bridge, nor a political movement set up to remove all cultural heritage associated with the values and beliefs of those who conducted the killing.

      Clearly if you are not an American gangsta with sense of supreme entitlement, your life doesn’t matter.

      1. Yes, they were brought up with unrealistic expectations, both of people, and the world as it actually is. There is a reason for what is now called Xenophobia and Islamophobia. Both usually heralded various kinds of unpleasantness!

        1. A phobia is an irrational fear……..it’s not irrational to be fearful of Muslim terrorists.

  73. Nothing highlights our government incompetence as much our American neighbours telling us that they are about to unilaterally reopen the US Canada border.

    Somehow I don’t see how this can be done if Canada keeps saying that the border is closed but having American tourists roaming around while we are supposedly under a stay at home directive might open a few liberal eyes to the gross incompetence in the corridors of control.

    3. Normally it would be unseemly to be mean about a woman with a set of juggz of that quality, but sadly one is simply forced to.

      2. Never underestimate the power of a cunningly fashioned foundation garment that uses artifice and engineering transform a pair of deflated beach balls into an embonpoint that would have Dolly Parton weeping into her dobro.

      1. To quote the not so funny as he thinks he is comedian Lenny Henry ” Is it because I’m Black ? ” seems to earn Back racists like her a free pass in the media.

          1. Bring back caning at least on the hands, it will do wonders for school discipline!
            Years ago I was talking to an elderly American lady here in Israel, a retired schoolteacher from California, we were discussing the behaviour of kids in the classroom both in the UK when I was a lad & in the traditionally relaxed US school system. She told me straight out many US schoolteachers suffer mental breakdowns from the daily abuse they had to take from pupils of all races. I can’t say what the situation is today in the UK but I would guess many teachers choose to leave the profession because of the increasing abuse they have to endure daily from both pupils & their parents without anyway to enforce any effective discipline due to woke politically correct multi-ethnic orientated laws unlike in my days when a clip round the ear would put down a classroom disorder & just the threat of the cane was enough to quell a riot!

          1. I have not seen any of his films & only viewed some clips from them on YouTube, I can’t say I was impressed with his line of comedy, Groucho Marx he ain’t !

        3. The government’s definition of racism is

          “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”

          Prejudice against every other group that isn’t black seems to be her message. At the moment, as a straight white male, being the one who seems to be paying the taxes to support everyone else – and especially when they’re paid to rant and squeal about how horrible I am I feel damned marginalised.

  75. How did the National Trust end up in this sorry state?

    The once-beloved institution should return to caring for the country’s heritage, rather than denouncing it

    By Harry Mount • 26 May 2021 • 7:28pm

    In the heritage world, David has just beaten Goliath. This week, Tim Parker, chairman of the National Trust, resigned after seven years in the role – and just 24 hours after a rebel group of members launched a bid to depose him at the annual general meeting.

    Restore Trust – of which I am a member – was only founded last month. It already has 10,000 supporters and a fighting fund of £50,000. It was founded to restore the trust to its original aims – to concentrate on conservation, an aesthetic experience, a sense of place, a feeling of welcome and an apolitical ethos. It has claimed a major scalp in the shape of Tim Parker.

    “This is the first step in a very important process,” a Restore Trust spokesman told me, “returning the trust to its true purpose, to care for the nation’s heritage – you can’t do that if you’re denouncing it. It’s vital it now has a chairman who cares about Britain’s heritage and can rebuild trust in the organisation.”

    It’s also a victory for grassroots members and volunteers over the National Trust management. During the past four years, the trust has become disastrously politicised. That – and the trust’s catastrophic dumbing-down – has been snowballing for 20 years.

    This decline has been at the hands of the trust’s management. The members and volunteers have only ever wanted what the trust was founded to do: preserve buildings of national interest, along with their furniture and pictures, and preserve beautiful landscapes. It’s the management that’s turned political.

    Last September, the trust published a report into the links between its properties – including Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill – and Britain’s past colonial and slavery connections. The report was sloppy and littered with errors, like so much of the trust’s literature in recent years.

    Parker’s tenure as chairman since 2014 has only intensified the politicisation. At last year’s annual meeting, he said the trust had “not become a political organisation that has been taken over by a bunch of woke folk”. Yet in recent years, the trust has become increasingly political in its focus.

    There’s nothing wrong in the trust researching historical slavery links with its houses. But, as well as publishing its self-lacerating 2020 study, snappily entitled ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’, in recent years it has launched a series of political initiatives slanted at attacking historical attitudes – and the owners of its houses – for not following modern progressive opinions.

    Any idea of praising the trust’s extraordinary contribution to British architectural, artistic and intellectual history has been eclipsed by this obsession with attacking “old-fashioned” attitudes.

    In 2018, the trust explored women’s history and suffrage via the anniversary of women gaining the vote in 1918. Of course, women getting the vote was a marvellous thing, but it is the trust’s job to look after houses and landscapes – not to celebrate political anniversaries.

    In 2017, as part of the trust’s ‘Prejudice and Pride’ season, it outed as gay Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-69), the kind man who’d given Felbrigg Hall to the trust. It also tried and failed to stop volunteers who refused to wear rainbow-coloured lanyards from working with the public.

    That year, in 2017, I went to the National Trust’s AGM in Swindon. Many of the members were up in arms. They had trekked hundreds of miles to the meeting on a cold, windy day – and their complaints were comprehensively ignored.

    One member, Stephen Green from Carmarthen, was outraged about what happened at Felbrigg. He asked the chairman if he would stop the trust being a political campaigning organisation that represented the “few who live and breathe political correctness”.

    Parker was the master of the non-apology apology: half-saying sorry, and then quickly snatching it away. He admitted that, with the benefit of hindsight, the Felbrigg incident had been a “small misjudgement”. But then he went on to say he was surprised and bemused by the hoohah.

    At the AGM, Patrick Streeter, a National Trust member from Essex, asked for an apology over the Felbrigg saga. Parker apologised “for any offence caused” – another classic non-apology apology.

    The trust also denies the catastrophic dumbing-down of its properties. Parker said: “We are not engaged in some social engineering experiment to thin out the intellectual content of our house presentation.”

    But the thinning-out of intellectual content at trust properties is undeniable. Last year, the trust set out its proposals for ‘Curation and Experience’, as part of its ‘Reset’ programme. It planned to get rid of all the lead curators in the regions and many junior curators. That meant losing talented scholars in architecture, archaeology, historic gardens, paintings and artefacts.

    Also last year, in a report called ‘Towards a 10-year vision for places and experiences, version 2.1′, Tony Berry, the trust’s Director of Visitor Experience, said he wanted to “dial down” the trust’s role as a big cultural institution and move away from looking after English country houses. The trust planned to put its collections in storage and hold fewer exhibitions at its properties to prioritise its role as the “gateway to the outdoors”. The 10-year strategy also attacked the “outdated mansion experience”.

    In 2017, I gave the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Lecture, which I entitled “Betrayal of Trust: How the National Trust is losing its way”. I spent months touring trust houses and was staggered by the intellectual collapse of an organisation I’d revered since childhood.

    The trust’s house guides were littered with spelling mistakes. At Hughenden Manor, the Buckinghamshire house of Victorian prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, the trust’s official literature described his climb into “high soceity”. Isaac D’Israeli, Disraeli’s father, was called “Isaace”; closely was spelt “closey”.

    It’s not just the lack of attention to detail; baby language was everywhere at trust properties. At Osterley Park, the elegant Adam house on the fringes of west London, the servants’ quarters were decorated with a sign saying: “It was the scullery maid’s job to empty and clean the chamber pots every morning. A very smelly job.” A tree stump at Hughenden had a sign next to it, reading: “Please do not climb on me.”

    The trust has been dumbing down for 20 years, ever since Dame Fiona Reynolds, a senior civil servant, became its director general.

    Dame Helen Ghosh, Reynolds’s successor as director general, accelerated the dumbing-down. She even removed furniture from the fine Regency library at Ickworth House, Suffolk, temporarily replacing it with beanbags. There was “so much stuff” in trust houses, she said, that it put people off. Exhibits needed to be “simplified”.

    The trust is an astonishingly successful organisation, with just under six million members. And yet its management is tortured by paroxysms of self-hating agony because those six million people are largely white, middle-class and middle-aged.

    “Accessibility” is the trust’s great false god. Of course, anyone can go to any trust property they want. And yet the trust is deeply depressed when the visitor profile is dominated by the pale and stale. And so they’ve become obsessed with changing that profile.

    A former chairman, Sir Simon Jenkins, was once told by a trust employee that it “feared” many of its new members were “over 50”. As Jenkins said: “In 15 years, half the population would be over 50 and a third over 60. It was good news.”

    Most charities, anywhere in the world, would be delighted with six million members, of any age or skin colour. Only the National Trust is mad – and rude – enough to take against the background of its members: the people who pay for the trust, volunteer for it and love it.

    And, as a now-dead former senior employee of the trust once told me: “What you must understand is that a lot of senior people at the trust actually don’t like old buildings.”

    This whole process – the politicisation and the sad dumbing-down – need never have taken place. English Heritage has maintained its properties with no dumbing down and none of its members has complained.

    Here’s hoping the new National Trust chairman will end the politics and the hatred of the past and concentrate on the job – looking after its artistic, architectural and landscape treasures.

    Harry Mount is author of ‘How England Made the English’.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/26/did-national-trust-end-sorry-state

    1. There was “so much stuff” in trust houses, she said, “that it put people off. Exhibits needed to be simplified”.

      The level of ignorance is quite astonishing, isn’t it?

    2. GB News is will hopefully usurp the BBC, three initials, with many connotations……

      Restore Tust is doing it to unWoke the National Trust: :It was founded to restore the trust to its original aims – toconcentrate on conservation, an aesthetic experience, a sense of place, a feeling of welcome and an apolitical ethos.

      Now, the next stage MUST be to get rid of the control that Boros is exercing over even the tiniest bitz of our lives, vai the Guidance and Laws brought in for COVID Control
      He now rants about the Indian Strain,being more conragious Yes it is
      More Harmful No it is not
      If he sust lies down and Carries on Bonking for a week, he will the find Herd Immunity has saved us all
      I am off to make an effergy of the creature(I cannot call Boros a man) and stick pins into it

  76. Met three friends this morning for coffe and a bacon sarni – inside our local cafe……. the proprietess has kept busy throughout the last few months doing takeaways but it’s good to see how she has kept the place going.

      2. Only to go through the door…… and as a small act of rebellion I didn’t sign in. Nor did I scan the QR code on Monday when I met my friends in Gloucester.

        2. Here’s an example of the Government’s joined up thinking – today I had my hair cut; sitting down in the chair I was still required to wear a mask. On completion I went for a coffee in a nearby cafe – once seated I was not required to wear a mask! Obviously this very clever virus can not only distinguish height but can tell the difference between a salon and a cafe!

          1. When I had my haircut the other week my hairdresser told me to take the mask off.

          2. My hairdresser has always worn a face mask while she puts my colour on but doesn’t expect me to do the same. When I had to put the colour on myself during lockdown, I understood why. It stinks and when you’re holding the bowl and brush, it’s hard not to breath in the fumes.

          3. I gave up colouring my hair in 2005. We were away for five weeks in South America and it got a bit bleached in the sun – and after we were back home I just couldn’t bother witth it again. It’s mostly white now, though there were some darker areas.

          4. I’ve been shorn twice by the barber in Matlock, the one opposite the new Booth’s place, and never had to mask up on either.

          5. It’s even cleverer than that; it can tell whether you are in England or Wales and also knows the time. It won’t attack you until after 6pm in Wales and in England it will wait until after 10pm. It also knows whether you’re having a scotch egg or just a pint.

  78. I – and most other people – couldn’t care less about Cummings. That’s internal party nonsense.

    What we’re bothered about is:

    20% business tax rates.
    Hiking business rates
    Hiking energy taxes for a scam that no one believes in.
    Hiking council tax – now my highest bill – more than three others combined and for what? Nothing.
    High costs of food due to taxation.
    Clean, hot water, increasingly going to be rare due to the destruction of the energy grid in favour of unreliable, inefficient ‘green’.
    Industry scarpering
    Spending 3 days of a 5 days holiday travelling due to not having fuel.
    A refusal by the state to enforce law fairly and equally.
    A refusal by the state to uphold British values
    A deliberate cover up and support of Muslim violence and abuses
    A complete media black out over the killing of a black woman by other blacks – where is the Black looting mob now?
    The lack of censure over black racists – Abbott, the other woman.
    A refusal to not only stop but ompletely prevent the Palestinian thugs.
    Not opposing the EU firmly enough with their banking policies.
    Not preventing – not ‘not processing’, preventing – illegal immigration.

    Those vaccines going to the Chinese? All very nice, but that’s my tax money. I don’t pay it for you to give it to people who shouldn’t and cannot identify their right to be here.

    In the 70’s we had a three day week because miners refused to dig coal for power stations.

    Pretty soon we’ll have the same, only this time it won’t be the workers refusing, it’ll be the state preventing them. Government is a gormless, mindless fool. The administration incompetent.

    Edited spelling.

      1. Morning Belle, I don’t think so, I just look at the theatre and politicking and think it’s a pointless farce practiced by clowns.

        I can’t be alone in thinking these things, so I just put my own rage on paper.

  80. French police chase down and kill ‘radicalised’ man who walked into police station and stabbed officer. 28 May 2021.

    The slain suspect’s identity is being verified, France’s national gendarme service told The Associated Press.

    The man, who had been on the run after the attack in La Chapelle-sur-Erdre near the northwestern city of Nantes, was “radicalised and suffering from a very serious psychiatric illness“, one source said.

    Of course he was! His Mother didn’t love him and his Father ran over his dog!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/28/attacker-run-french-police-woman-badly-wounded-stabbing/

      1. Oberst, you are a ‘Mod’; should I downvote you or just say that your remark is in poor taste?

        1. Poor though it may be, do you really think that the equivalent isn’t being taught in mosques and madrasas all across the planet?

        2. It was in bad taste, I agree.
          Having several good friends who follow Islam, I was actually reflecting the French police’s apparent attitude to the man who stabbed the policewoman.

    2. 333493+ upticks,
      Afternoon TB,
      Jog my memory Lest I forget who was the only party leader to warn of islamic ideology rhetorically & in book form way back in 2005 Gerard something ?

    3. So, open hate crime is OK when it’s muslims doing it, and endorsed by the police, since they have kindly made the Jews aware of it.
      This is NOT OK.

      1. The police are scared stiff of the Muslims , so is the government .

        We are well and truly sunk by a minority with their murderous spiteful intent, dictated by Mosques and religious spite and malice , like they do in Iran.

        1. Longer the problem is left to fester, the worse the solution will be when it comes to it.

          1. I have mentioned this previously, watch the BBC TV Prog Blood and Gold. In Grenada they kept (barbary pirates stole them from costal towns) kidnapped children from northern Europe as slaves and fed those they didn’t like or want to the pride of in house lions . And it took 400 hundred years for Spain to drive the perpetrators out.

        2. Every where on earth they are, or where ever they go, they create lawlessness and long lasting irreversible trouble. They just don’t fit in anywhere. And there is no doubt whatsoever it’s deliberate.

      1. There is a slight problem.
        What would replace him would lock down even harder.
        {:-((

        1. He is not liked… in the private sector he would have had his marching orders. However, there is another bus coming along…..

    1. They don’t ‘buy any car’. If it’s been involved in an accident and repaired they don’t want to know.

    2. If you wish to dispose of a serviceable older vehicle they will purchase it for roughly £750 to £1000 below the price they can get for it on resale.

  84. Biden strikes again, I am glad that we have a trade deal with the US.

    They are now after Canadian beef exports and demanding country of origin labels, a practice that has on several occasions been rejected by the courts.
    Last week US dairy farmers lodged a complaint about restrictions on dairy product exports to Canada and before that in the dumbest of moves they proposed a doubling of import duties on Canadian softwood.

    Not forgetting if course the threat to shut down the oil pipeline serving Eastern Canada and the north eastern US.

    At least with Trump he would spout off with his vote winning ideas and then just leave it to lower levels to reach compromise deals.

    1. I understood that part of their demands to Britain was that country of origin labels on meat should be forbidden (so that they could export their sub-standard meat to us).

  85. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9dbde2a4bad5a81310415273326223dc950e0ffbfda4060820a12abe4642613c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/093cf7e282b51a6ab03d7a7d31d21bea2171b473f5ebb9dfbcca721406079a76.jpg For those among you who still suffer from the delusion that Sweden is wall-to-wall gorgeous blondes, let me assure you that it isn’t. Chavs proliferate here and they can outChav anything the UK has to offer, both in ugliness and stupidity.

    This particular creature turned up at my local supermarket the other day, replete with all the necessary prerequisites of Chavhood: tattoos; assorted junk metal in face; two brats; pushchair; can of cheap booze; cigarette; mobile phone; dog on lead; and … a terrified cat also on a lead!

    I thought I’d seen it all!

        1. Good grief. Did you offer her a burkha? To hep her look more attractive…{:¬))

          1. No. I was simply frozen in bewilderment. Tomelilla is known for particularly ugly people — a remake of The Beverly Hillbillies wouldn’t be out of place here — but this ‘lady’ took the biscuit!

    2. If you think that’s bad, it shows how long ago it is that you left the UK.

    4. Don’t you have to take some sort of ownership exam to have a dog in Sweden?

      1. Not as such, Conners.

        There is advice given that most serious breeders of dogs prefer it if potential owners take organised lessons in how to properly train their dog before committing to a purchase.

        1. Ah, I thought you had to pass a test after taking the training course. One of my Swedish friends was looking at getting a dog, but opted for a cat in the end 🙂

    2. Is the guy in bed a copper ? That can’t be a doctor he’s not on the phone.

  87. That’s me – it has just started to drizzle. Good day in the garden – bodging this morning – just hard work this arvo. Planting out starts over the weekend/Monday when nights are going to be warmer.

    Have a jolly exciting evening. Think of the questions you would like t ask Cummings…

    A demain.

    PS Cats like playing with garden netting…. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/af8efb5ae882ca9ff2b0a5534d8cb92846f7d64e1da8bbb381321ae5890b8b2b.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e27d5854c631ab5510b7d45db7b1ff69f250421bb68f4affe3deb139da84d56e.jpg

    3. So that’s how the cats repay you both; eating the MR’s wedding dress the day after your anniversary…

      };-O

    5. I’ve only just planted my peas today; I nearly ran out of time to get it done before the end of April.

    6. mng bill, at least you got started. Re Cummings – one Q – how many of those against him [“Govt, Opposition” / MSM] are / were Remain supporters?

    1. Probably watering the garden , walking their dogs , shopping before the Bank holiday rush ?

      I have just picked my car up , been off the road for over a week . Coolant pipe had rotted or whatever coolant pipes do, bit difficult to access , all fixed now .

        1. Agree with you re shopping , bit like dancing the tarantella , a slow dance of , dodging ducking and diving . People say sorry all the time .

          The back of my ears are so sore with dry skin caused by the face masks , and as the weather is getting warmer , my glasses steam up when I am shopping .

          Many places still have queues, including our small chemist and the butchers … but the pub gardens are full so I justdon’t get it

          1. You aren’t supposed to get it, Maggie – just do as you’re told and don’t you dare think!

    3. This NOTTLer spent an unfeasible amount of time just trying to get shopping done.
      All the Covid nonsense means practically everything you do takes twice the time.
      Several places had shuffling queues so I then had to drive elsewhere to find somewhere less frustrating.
      I’m bloody sick of having my time and energy p!ssed away because of government hysterics and the British showing that their ideal society would be the GDR ….. let’s just say I’ve had enough.
      End of rant.
      Good evening, OLT.

      1. We shop one day a week. Fakenham Market – 8.45 Thursday morning. Followed at 9.15 by Morrisons. ll done and dusted and home by 10 am for coffee and a toasted tea cake. Once a month – Martins Farm for chicken, pork and sausages.

        You ought to get organised – you woman, you!!!

        1. It took visits to 4 different chemists to get particular plasters. Not in stock/ in stock but different/ bloody queues ….. Queuing at the butcher ….
          Tried to pay newspaper bill and the computer thingy played up.
          A day of total frustration.

          1. Plasters – Amazon – order now delivered tomorrow.

            15 months ago I would have spat at anyone who suggested this. Since the plague I have relied on Amazon(and other online suppliers) for speedy and efficient service.

            Just saying.

      2. Just been out for dinner, first time for I don’t know how ling, with friends. SO GOOD! Social life is weird, but nice, we discovered.

        1. I’m going out to dinner on Saturday night – it’s the lunch I was going to have on Boxing Day (cancelled by the Government’s stupid tier regulations), only six months late.

          2. I am going out with the racing/hunting companion that I was going to lunch with on Boxing Day. It was just so wonderful to have food prepared for me and no washing up! Plus, of course, a reason to wear something other than jeans and a sweatshirt.

          3. Is it a late dinner or are you now back? If the latter, hope you enjoyed it.

          4. I got back about 9pm. It was a leisurely 3-course meal with coffee afterwards. After all, one must make the most of what freedom one can snatch!

    4. I have been off blog & busy commenting on a number of YouTube channels . I am a collector of Swiss Army knives ( known to the initiated as SAK’s) and follow a number of the dedicated SAK’s channels , also channels that cover EDC ( Every Day Carry) which includes knives & sometimes pistols , Precision Sports , which covers pistols, rifles, weapons etc , history channels & of course music, TV & film channels

        1. Happy Friday Sos, I used to have several including one in my desk at work but none of them have decent blades & some are like Rubik’s cube or a transformer toy , you have to open up almost every tool to find the one you are looking for !
          I much prefer the functionality of a Swiss Army knife & my preferred PTK ( Pocket Tool Kit ) is the very popular 4 layer Huntsman model .
          https://www.victorinox.com/global/en/Products/Swiss-Army-Knives/Medium-Pocket-Knives/Huntsman/p/1.3713
          https://imageengine.victorinox.com/mediahub/39710/560Wx490H/SAK_1_3713__S1.jpg

          1. I have a Leatherman and I had a SAK with almost every toy available. I passed it on to one of my sons.

            The L’s tools, in my experience, are much more practical than those on the SAK. I agree one needs a first class honours degree in origami to get the most from it, but I like the heavy duty element of the L.

          2. Sounds like you had on of the multi-layer Swiss Champ models, expensive & unwieldy . I also got fed up with the Leatherman because they have to be pouch carried as any decent one is too big for pocket carry .

          3. Agree re the pouch.

            I forgot I had mine on and was shopping, fortunately the French are not as strict about carrying knives.

          4. I have a genuine Gurkha knife brought back from WW2 by a family member, can I play in your gang? 😉

          5. I have a Camper (Oo-er missis!), excellent kit. Not allowed to take it out unless camping, but it lives in my range bag, poised for action!

    5. I have been off blog & busy commenting on a number of YouTube channels . I am a collector of Swiss Army knives ( known to the initiated as SAK’s) and follow a number of the dedicated SAK’s channels , also channels that cover EDC ( Every Day Carry) which includes knives & sometimes pistols , Precision Sports , which covers pistols, rifles, weapons etc , history channels & of course music, TV & film channels

    1. Bored with this response now. Google “UN Global Compact on Migration”, the UK signed up to it, they have to faciltate orderly and safe migration.
      This means, they WILL NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, IT IS THE DESIRED AND AGREED SITUATION!
      Fuck me, how often does one have to write this?

  91. Where are the meritorious in HMG?

    Fox News and BLM are both wrong about meritocracy

    It’s the antidote to nepotism – yet, as Adrian Wooldridge argues in his new book ‘The Aristocracy of Talent’, meritocracy has become vilified

    NOEL MALCOLM

    Who could possibly be anti-merit? That would be absurd, like being against justice or virtue. But if you ask who could be anti-meritocracy, the answer is: lots of people. Michael Sandel, the avuncular American philosopher granted guru status by BBC Radio 4, has written a book denouncing it; and in the United States, hostility to meritocracy unites the rabble-rousers of Fox News with the ideologues of Black Lives Matter. Even the person who coined the term in the 1950s, the Left-wing sociologist Michael Young (father of Toby, by the way), did so in order to attack it.

    Young’s view was that letting people rise to the top on merit would destroy proper socialist equality. The Fox News complaint is that it creates an arrogant elite who are unlike ordinary people. BLM thinks “equality of opportunity” is a fraud, because black people are always systematically disadvantaged. And Sandel thinks a bit of all of the above.

    Some of this may sound plausible, until you try to picture a world where people do not rise on merit. And there’s no need to strain your imagination; the world has been like that for most of its history.

    In the early chapters of this hugely stimulating book, Adrian Wooldridge describes what things were like when heredity and nepotism ruled – when job appointments were favours, and many jobs were sinecures. (I liked the story of Mrs Scott, who in 1783 was still receiving a huge salary as wet nurse to the Prince of Wales; he was then aged 21.) He sketches some of the ways in which clever people could still climb the ladder: showing talent in royal service – like Thomas Cromwell – or in the Church. But in the UK the big changes began only in the mid-19th century, with meritocratic reforms to the Army, the universities and the Civil Service.

    Then the story gets more complex. For many on the Left, meritocracy was about rational state planning, not equality or fairness; indeed, it got mixed up with the eugenics movement, which was a “progressive” cause. Bertrand Russell thought the government should give people colour-coded “procreation certificates”, and fine those who procreated with the holders of incompatible tickets.

    Still, it was state planning concerns that launched what Wooldridge sees as a vital development; the use of intelligence tests to measure mental talent, independent of educational privilege. The first big testing programme involved US Army recruits in 1917: alarmingly, the average soldier had a mental age of 13. More recently, fierce campaigns against IQ testing have spread the idea that the whole theory of IQ is discredited. But Wooldridge mounts a spirited defence, arguing that this is still the best way of cutting through the advantages of schooling to identify raw talent underneath.

    That forms part of a larger defence of meritocracy itself, made with cogent arguments, thoughtful suggestions, and a welcome reassurance that this doesn’t mean developing an exam-factory society à la Singapore or China. I have only two criticisms. The first is that he often blurs the meaning of “meritocracy”: the “-cracy” should imply actually ruling, but he talks mostly about attaining high status and wealth.

    And the second is about his caricature version of Brexit. This, apparently, was a populist revolt against the meritocratic elite, expressing the resentment of the uneducated against those who benefited from “intellectual achievement”. But if the less educated and the more educated voted differently (which they did, to some extent), why not accept the obvious explanation, which is that they thought differently about the issue itself? Why invent a story in which benighted Leave voters were not really voting about Brexit at all, but about their dislike of other people?

    Then again, we are told that a vote for Brexit was a vote against globalisation. But the EU is not the globe; it is both a unique experiment in supranational government and a protectionist bloc. And when Wooldridge writes that the Leave campaign “promised to ‘take back control’ from foreign bureaucrats and global forces”, he is simply making that last bit up.

    Boris Johnson is portrayed insistently as the British Trump, the embodiment of populist “fury” against the (meritocratic) Establishment. A simple thought experiment: imagine that the Establishment had been pro-Brexit all along; would Brexiteers have adopted any anti-Establishment rhetoric then? Of course not. Hostility to the Establishment was a consequence of being pro-Brexit, not the cause. But it suits a certain sort of Remainer argument to put this upside-down.

    And so Boris emerges, absurdly, as the greatest threat to meritocracy in this country. Here is the impeccably meritocratic credo printed in his election manifesto of 2019: “Talent and genius are uniformly distributed throughout the country. Opportunity is not. Now is the time to close that gap. We Conservatives believe passionately that every child should have the same opportunity to express their talents and make the most of their lives.”

    It’s a pity that such a valuable, thought-provoking book should contain, on this one issue, an inverted pyramid of piffle.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/fox-news-blm-wrong-meritocracy/

    1. Meritocracy is a terrible idea. Taken to its logical conclusion, all children would have to be removed from their parents at birth and given the same education, in order to ensure a fair outcome. These pesky middle class parents will keep giving their children advantages otherwise.

      Far better to just accept that life is unfair and some people will never reach their full potential, for whatever reason.

      1. Sorry, I disagree
        Having a degree is not Metrocratic, it in lots of cases, it is to reduce age relevant unemployment figures

        We need apprenticeships, skilled waiters, gardeners, shopkeepers who can sell things, nurses who nurse (not Uni graduates)
        Everyone should strive and be encouragedto to do THEIR best.
        Education has failed our kidz, why else would we have businesses that teach those who have left skule the Three RRRs
        Like the NHS, our Edukashun system is Krapp

        1. Yo, Tryers.

          That’s the most sensible, true and pertinent comment of the week.

        2. Yo, Tryers.

          That’s the most sensible, true and pertinent comment of the week.

      2. Life is unfair, but if every child gets a decent education, suited to their abilities, there is no reason (other than perversity or sheer laziness) why they should not make the most of it and achieve their potential.

    1. She could not possibly be worse than the series of wanqueurs who have been “elected” in the last 30 years.

      1. And might well be a damned sight better, even though she’s a leftie of the first water…

        1. Something of which I cannot convince my French friends; they continue (no doubt aided and abetted by the portrayals in the French media) to believe she is “extrème droite”.

    2. Prison hulks for illegal immigrants and then take them back to the ME and N Africa.

      Their choice where they want to disembark.

      1. Now that’s a HUGE surprise.
        I never thought you would volunteer to pay for their wedding.

        Even though, amongst the Nottlers, you are one of the few who could afford to….
        };-))

        1. One viewing on day 2, 4500 brochure downloads last week. No further viewings but we asked the Agent to filter out time wasters and the inquisitive.

          The hesitancy is now about the probable ending of the Stamp Duty holiday. Folk realise that they will not complete by end of June so are holding back.

          Our thatched cottage is no castle but would suit someone with an appreciation of older buildings of character. We have lived here for 27 pleasant years. It would not suit everyone but a certain type who value oddities and are prepared to rub along with spiders.

    3. I wonder if the wedding will ever take place? Boris will pay – in that if he loses his position as prime minister his paramour will walk out on him staright away.

  95. GB News is in ‘preview mode’ on Freeview 236.

    Curtain up on 13 June, perhaps ?

  97. Reckless Hancock left care homes to fend for themselves

    Dedicated carers across the country were being hindered, not helped, by the actions of the state

    CAMILLA TOMINEY, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

    While two men with receding hairlines quibble over just how many care home residents the Government managed to kill last year, let me paint you a picture of how shambolic the situation actually was. Regardless of what Health Secretary Matt Hancock might have you believe, testing in care homes was a fiasco right from the beginning of the pandemic.

    I know this from first-hand experience because my father, a retired GP, has run a care home for the elderly in St Albans, Hertfordshire, for more than 25 years. Anticipating the crisis about to unfold at the beginning of March 2020, he took the decision to lock the place down – three weeks ahead of the Government’s “stay at home” diktat of March 23.

    Thank God he did. The decision – taken in the face of official guidance which, up until March 13, said that “it was very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or in the community will become infected” – saved lives. Most crucially, he refused to take hospital discharges without them being tested for coronavirus first.

    By some miracle – and thanks to the extraordinary efforts of his dedicated team of staff – my father managed to avoid any residents testing positive within the home last year. Other homes were not so lucky. As we now sadly know, Covid ripped through facilities caring for 400,000 residents in England, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) later confirming that care homes accounted for roughly half of all excess deaths – 25,374 – between March 7 and September 18.

    This was largely the result of the Government’s catastrophic decision to discharge 25,000 untested hospital patients into care homes, which failed the most vulnerable members of our society. Frankly, the issue of whether Mr Hancock misled the Prime Minister over this aspect of testing is less relevant than the whole systemic failure on care homes.

    While dedicated carers across the land were bending over backwards to prevent infection spread, they were being hindered, not helped, by the agencies supposed to support them.

    From the local GPs who only started limited face-to-face visits three weeks ago, to the endless reams of unwieldy bureaucracy sent by bodies like the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as part of an ongoing buck-passing exercise, care homes were essentially left to go it alone. Far from “putting a protective ring” around providers, as Mr Hancock ludicrously suggested in May last year, there was initially no direct advice about how to deal with the crisis, with managers largely left to make their own decisions. The various agencies have since sent countless, largely duplicated, emails seemingly as their insurance policy against infections running rampant through homes again.

    The truth is, there were a string of blunders throughout the crisis.

    Staff had to wait weeks for personal protective equipment (PPE), and when the first 300 masks did finally arrive – they were of poor quality, not even elasticated and ran out within hours.

    Since the kit recommended by the World Health Organisation included an FFP 3 respirator face mask, a long-sleeved disposable gown, gloves and eye protection, providers had no choice but to source their own, more adequate equipment. Yet when they contacted the private suppliers they had been using for years they were told that all their stocks had been diverted to the NHS.

    By the time weekly PCR testing was finally introduced to care homes last July, the results would frequently take more than a week to come back. Both Boris Johnson and Mr Hancock had claimed that people, on average, received their test result within 24 hours – but this simply wasn’t the case.

    Between July and September, my dad’s workforce never received a result within 72 hours – let alone a day.

    These delays resulted in asymptomatic staff continuing to work without knowing they were positive. Meanwhile, the need to self-isolate with symptoms, but without test results, meant employees were needlessly off work for days with coughs and colds putting even more pressure on a workforce already at breaking point. (Lateral flow tests were only introduced this year – and have produced false negatives.)

    On one occasion, an entire batch of swabs was lost in the system. All 150 tests simply vanished. Following a number of frantic phone calls, it soon became apparent that no one in charge of testing was able to “track and trace” the actual tests – let alone the results.

    On another occasion, my dad’s home didn’t receive any tests at all. No explanation was ever given, despite more time being wasted trying to sort it out, on top of the difficult job of providing unparalleled geriatric care.

    Since January, any positive test has resulted in the home being closed to visitors for 28 days. (Obviously during the actual lockdowns, the home was closed completely.) Yet again, when it came to readmitting visitors, the Government purposefully left it to owners’ discretion – ensuring that they incurred the wrath of families, rather than ministers.

    Funding remained a problem throughout the farrago. Mr Hancock made a great show of giving “billions” to local authorities to distribute to care homes. But let’s not forget that this was a sector facing a £3.5 billion shortfall even before the pandemic hit.

    While councils did provide some funding to cover a few months’ worth of infection control, it was never enough to make up for the vast expenditure on PPE – let alone the additional spending on extra staff to cover sickness and testing, the drop in occupancy numbers and so on. There is still no visible audit trail of exactly where taxpayers’ cash went.

    After the first peak killed at least 10,000 care home residents, largely due to government ineptitude, the public has understandably lost faith in care homes. Admissions are still well down and many homes have gone out of business. There will undoubtedly be more closures to come.

    As with the rest of society, the vaccination roll out has just about saved my dad’s life’s work – but it has come at an enormous cost. Not just financially; the trust is gone. My father has dedicated his entire career to helping others. But when he needed help, he was left woefully unsupported.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/28/reckless-hancock-left-care-homes-fend/

    1. Looks like a tasty mullet. First time I’ve seen this site, Belle, no sign of eggs yet?

  100. CheshireLad.

    Please make one post, if only to say “hello”, just so we can see that you’re real.

  101. The Wuhan lab leak was always a credible theory – so why did scientists dismiss it?

    In silencing all mention of the theory at first, professors have shown just how political they can be

    ROSS CLARK

    In Dominic Cummings’ ideal society, government would be run by a select band of scientists who, in times of crisis, would be awarded dictatorial powers. Just what a hellish place this would be is demonstrated by the evolution of the theory that Covid might have a man-made origin. Scientific method might be designed to tease out objective truth, yet scientists are foremost human beings who, like everyone else, are infused with political opinions, not to mention emotions of jealousy, rivalry, revenge and all the rest.

    When a deadly novel coronavirus emerged in a city where there just happens to be an virological research institute known to work with coronaviruses, to collect them from obscure caves and – as was confirmed in a 2017 paper – even to engineer viruses, common sense might suggest that this be taken seriously as a possible origin of the outbreak. Yet this did not happen. On the contrary, the opposite occurred. In March last year a round robin letter appeared in the Lancet – signed by 27 scientists, including Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust – dismissing the theory that Covid could possibly have had anything other than a natural origin, and denouncing anyone who dared entertain it. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” they wrote. “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”

    The use of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ was telling. The possibility that Covid is manmade – or might be a natural virus which escaped from a lab – does imply that there is a cabal of scientists in the Chinese Communist Party secretly engineering a deadly virus to unleash on the world in a bid for global domination. Somewhat more likely is that it was a cock-up: a laboratory accident of the kind which has happened many times before, with SARS and with the world’s last fatal outbreak of smallpox in Birmingham in 1978. Yet the inference from these 27 scientists, and from others, was that anyone who believed the emergence of Covid was anything other than a natural event was a fruitcake – or, worse, someone of malign intent.

    Any scientist with a dissenting opinion was silenced. Angus Dalgleish, a professor of Oncology and vaccine researcher at St George’s Hospital in Tooting says that journals refused to consider a paper he wrote last year observing that the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid 19 – showed signs of man-made genetic sequences. What made it especially difficult, he says, was that the man-made theory had been expounded by Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State. “No scientist was willing to get into bed and agree with Trump,” Dalgleish says. In other words, what ought to be an objective process – a journal assessing the quality of science, aided by a peer-review process – was subverted by partisan politics. Trump was a bad man, and therefore anything he said must be treated as the embodiment of evil.

    How things have changed now Beelzebub has been forced into retirement. This month 18 scientists signed another round robin letter, this time to Science magazine appealing that the theory Covid came to us by means of a laboratory accident should not be dismissed. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s chief adviser on infectious disease, who previously dismissed the lab escape theory, supports an investigation into the theory of human origin.

    The farcical World Health Organisation inquiry, which dismissed a lab accident as implausible but took seriously the idea that Covid came to China via frozen food imports, is widely derided. It turns out that Peter Daszak, who drafted the Lancet letter and who runs an organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance, has worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and had an interest in it not being blamed for what would surely be the world’s most expensive accident ever – something which wasn’t clear when he added the words “we declare no competing interests” to the letter.

    Of course, the lab escape theory remains just that. There is still a possibility that the virus got to us naturally. We don’t yet know and we may never do. But there is a moral to the story: beware scientists who try to declare a consensus. It might be tempting to think that a group of people who have been trained to think objectively must be right when, en masse, they settle on a point of view. But it is a dangerous misconception. A dictatorship of scientists would be no better than any other kind of dictatorship. No system of government is perfect, but we can be grateful for having one in which scientific advisers are on tap but never on top.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/28/wuhan-lab-leak-always-credible-theory-did-scientists-dismiss/

    1. As someone has pointed out, scientists can be bought as easily as politicians. Especially academics in universities.

    2. So ust because it was close, should the doorknob poisoning in Salisbury have been linked to Porton Down?

      We all know damned well that the Chinese lab was discounted because Trump put the blame there.

      1. When one of PD’s top people just happens to be on hand in Salisbury on the day one has to wonder.
        };-)

        1. Well of course,they all take turns shopping in Salisbury. Wasn’t a PD doctor also able to diagnose the chemical in a surprisingly rapid manner?

          Just a shame that they did not offer advice to the police officers left standing guard on the doorstep. They could have at least told them to keep six feet away.

      2. We live in strange world

        Everyone (almost) thinks Biden was elected POTUS, by a rigged ballot.

        However, he can do no wrong

        MISTER Trump is blamed for all the adverse happening in the world , just as a storm is caused by a butterfly flapping its’ wings

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

    3. Fauci and the other ‘scientists’ have been rumbled so are now trying to hedge their bets. They are all going down under an international criminal court for crimes against humanity.

      Being fools they do not know when to stop with their well funded adventures.

    1. Yo Lozza

      hees a polytishun

      Need I say more

      PS I hope you read the Nottler Daily

      1. This weirdness brought to you from Southern California, othingto do with Canada- this time.

  104. The founder of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid, was asked about the future of his country, and he replied, “My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going to ride a Land Rover…but my great-grandson is going to have to ride a camel again.”

    Why is that, he was asked? And his reply was, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times. Easy times create weak men, weak men create difficult times. Many will not understand it, but you have to raise warriors, not parasites.”

    And add to that the historical reality that all great empires…the Persians, the Trojans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and in later years, the British…all rose and perished within 240 years. They were not conquered by external enemies; they rotted from within.

    America has now passed that 240 year mark, and the rot is starting to be visible and is accelerating. They are past the Mercedes and Land Rover years….the camels are on the horizon.

    1. I bow to you Zen Master

      (as I listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Lois Armsrtong)

  105. “Boing – time for bed”, said Zebedee. Good night good NoTTLers, ’til morning’s light.

  106. Just playing with the letters BEZOS and AMAZON. Remember the Wizard of OZ.

    Subtract the letters O and Z from each and you are left with BASEMAN. Bezos loved wordplay and appears to be behind every high crime in the world.

    1. Some say Bezos intends to be the next George Soros, the master behind the scenes manipulator of people, especially politicians & media people

      1. Bezos is already the master and the most wealthy person on the planet. He is aiming to put a hub on the Moon.

        Another wordplay that interested me was Gove’s very own Operation Yellow Hammer.

        I am a conspiracy theorist but it is an obvious anagram of ORWELL MAYHEM.

        Ok, I might be a fantasist but I believe that the messages issued by politicians are coded, just as the Third Reich issued coded messages.

        1. What you are proposing, is an Enigma

          Perhaps a Hut in bedfordshire can solve it

          1. I just know that there is more to this fake pandemic than meets the eye. Nobody but a fool would submit to experimental jabs yet many have been persuaded by the coercion and societal pressure and have succumbed.

            I am open to any and every conspiracy theory. We conspiracy theorists generally call it right. This will be of little comfort to those damaged by vaccines.

        2. What you are proposing, is an Enigma

          Perhaps a Hut in bedfordshire can solve it

      2. Bezos is already the master and the most wealthy person on the planet. He is aiming to put a hub on the Moon.

        Another wordplay that interested me was Gove’s very own Operation Yellow Hammer.

        I am a conspiracy theorist but it is an obvious anagram of ORWELL MAYHEM.

        Ok, I might be a fantasist but I believe that the messages issued by politicians are coded, just as the Third Reich issued coded messages.

  108. Evening, all. Late on parade tonight because I was so tired I went to bed in the late afternoon and slept for several hours. Now I’m catching up.

    3. Happy Saturday Geoff, FYI , I learnt today that its official Disqus policy to deliberately slow down pages on a blog once they reach 1,000 comments.
      See bellow , a post by Cali the Mod on Discus Disqus
      https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-discussdisqus/bug_reports_feedback_time_warp/

      Cali 🗽😷 Get Vaccinated! 😷 🗽 Mod BlueDot • 2 hours ago

      Yikes, that thread is closing in on 450,000 comments. While there is no hard limit for the amount of comments that can be posted to a thread, Disqus intentionally slows down updates on threads that grow larger than 1,000 comments. While the discussion will still load on the page, you may notice that the thread is slow to update with new comments, votes, deletions, etc. This helps Disqus perform better across our entire network and prevents large threads from straining shared resources.

Comments are closed.