Monday 13 July: Single-use masks are effective only when worn and disposed of properly

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/2020/07/12/letterssingle-use-masks-effective-worn-disposed-properly/

917 thoughts on “Monday 13 July: Single-use masks are effective only when worn and disposed of properly”

      1. Took a few days off for 39 wedding anniversary. Went to a nice family hotel near Geilo, and bummed around, walked in the hills – then slept like the dead. I’m clearly no mountain goat any more (fjellgeit), and definitely an office rat (kontorrotte).
        So – no. Window frames to sand back smooth & paint, 2 sides of the house to finish the white (we ran out on Thursday but are now resupplied), and bargeboards to replace. Currently hunting a draught that blows through the wall, so we can fix it before recladding and painting that part of the house.

        1. I used to refer to my part-time colleague in Sweden as den gamla geten – she was no friend of mine.

          2. It is, or a stud, in the Jackie Collins sense, but in this context it is a sarcasm.

          1. Yes. Fjell Old Norse for mountain/hills above the alpine tree line.(according to my Dad, a Cumberland man)

          2. Yes. Fjell Old Norse for mountain/hills above the alpine tree line.(according to my Dad, a Cumberland man)

  2. MPs need to stop letting Boris Johnson gaslight the public and stand up for honesty. Indy. Alistair Campbell. 13 July 2020.

    The Johnson/Dominic Cummings project – which started with Brexit and now has institutions as varied as the independent judiciary, an impartial civil service, the BBC, the military and security services in sight, is founded on the destruction of tradition and custom, and the use of lies and gaslighting to do it.

    Parliament needs to stop playing “good chaps” with a thoroughly bad man. And the Committee on Standards in Public Life needs to remind people that it exists. Because those standards are rotting, from the top.

    Morning everyone. The irony! This man and his leader invented lying to the public!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-coronavirus-uk-care-home-deaths-face-masks-lockdown-a9614641.html

          4. Major Gowan might be able to deliver an after dinner lecture on the difference between idiots, loonies and nutters.

          5. Fawlty Towers? The episode where he explains the difference between cricketing teams has been in the news lately…

          6. I wish there would be a proper informed discussion on this, perhaps a feature on ‘Newsnight’? My understanding was that there were both wogs and niggers in the West Indes team, but neither in the Indian and Pakistani teams. Prince Harry once suggested they were ‘Pakis’ but that is clearly inappropriate since Bangladesh seceded and has never applied to Indians.

            How many former colonials could be referred to as krauts and frogs? Algeria was for a long time a part of France, but only some of them were frogs, whose webfooted namesakes are amphibians and do not thrive in the desert. Luckily none of them play cricket, so what they are called shouldn’t be an issue.

            Would it be correct to presume that rosbifs predominate in English county cricket, or is that a French fallacy?

          8. I was not sure who Major Gowan was. I thought “Gowon” and looked up Biafra. Reading on, I was reminded of that disaster that the UK did nothing to mitigate. sometimes, like now, I almost weep at the mess we make by backing the wrong causes.

    2. He obviously lives in a house without mirrors (apart from being a bitter and twisted leftie of course).

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    3. I am, to put it mildly, somewhat disillusioned with Bozza, but a lecture from a lying trud who encouraged another lying trud to take this country into an unnecessary war is beyond satire.
      Morning, Minty.

    4. Open Comment:-

      For Alistair Campbell to pontificate on the veracity or otherwise of Boris Johnson’s statements to Parliament is hypocrisy in the extreme when one considers how he assisted his master Tony Blair in perfecting the art of lying to Parliament.

    5. Pure Alinsky
      “Always accuse the opposition of what you are most guilty of”
      ‘Morning minty

    6. WHAAAAT??? Blair, Campbell, and the rest of them were the ones who intentionally blew up and sabotaged the independent judiciary, the impartial civil service, etc by politicising everything they could. They destroyed every traditional value in sight.

      Campbell is a brazen mad hypocrite,

      1. Alastair Cambell is signed up alongside David Cameron, Theresa May, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the Washington Speakers Bureau.

      2. He’s also a Burnley supporter.

        I can guess how he reacted to the “All Lives Matter” Burnley aeroplane.

  4. I was just reading this morning in the Speccie about the amount of Chinese students that are coming to the UK to study at university, especially at Oxbridge where large sweetener donations are going in and how things might have to change if we have a cold war with China.
    Which got me thinking ( careful ) why does China send so many students to the West? then I thought well what better place to brainwash their brightest young folk in Marxism and Communism than at a top flight British University, they have been doing it for hundreds of years on European and British elites.

    1. And more…

      The Red Square Mile: Jobs in City firms for children of Party leaders and the country’s critics banned from the Lord Mayor’s show… how China’s ‘red aristocracy’ has sneaked its way into the heart of Britain’s financial powerhouses
      *China’s red aristocracy is placing its children at the heart of Western finance
      *So-called ‘princelings’ are placed in high-flying financial businesses in the West
      *Deutsche Bank used bribes and corrupt practices to gain access to China

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8515719/How-Chinas-red-aristocracy-sneaked-way-heart-Britains-financial-powerhouses.html

    2. And more…

      The Red Square Mile: Jobs in City firms for children of Party leaders and the country’s critics banned from the Lord Mayor’s show… how China’s ‘red aristocracy’ has sneaked its way into the heart of Britain’s financial powerhouses
      *China’s red aristocracy is placing its children at the heart of Western finance
      *So-called ‘princelings’ are placed in high-flying financial businesses in the West
      *Deutsche Bank used bribes and corrupt practices to gain access to China

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8515719/How-Chinas-red-aristocracy-sneaked-way-heart-Britains-financial-powerhouses.html

    3. ‘morning, Bob.

      Just one snag in that argument: Marxism isn’t hundreds of years old.

      3. The thoughts behind it are.
        Peasants’ Revolt, the Levellers, even the Gracchi brothers.

  5. Morning all.
    My first thought on awakening this morning was for some reason, the Channel Four thing where the bits of the C4 logo make up an awkward metal giant and how much I dislike it.

    3. I agree. It is ugly and frightening.
      It certainly has a totalitarian aura to it.
      Morning, BSK.

  7. I posted this on an old Spectator article, concerning on particular concern I have over the expiry of the transition period in December:

    “On a personal level, the end of the transition period brings back the same thought over and over, and that is over the antidepressant Trimipramine, which I have been on since 1998 as a consequence of divorce and unfair dismissal and prejudicial blacklisting at work. Trimipramine is the only antidepressant that does not interfere with REM sleep and allows dreaming, which I consider therapeutic as I resolve in my sleep my serious disappointment with society and the law.

    It used to be patented under the name ‘Surmontil’ and therefore regulated, but in 2013, the patent lapsed and it went generic. In theory, this should remove R&D costs and make it a lot cheaper, but under the Free Market system in this country, where we emulate America, the drug companies operate a cartel and can do what they like once a drug goes generic. What happened here was a drug, which costs pennies to make and with the normal commercial markup should cost about £8 for a course of 28 tablets, found its price for one packet raised to £200, chargeable by the NHS through the Drugs Tariff to local surgeries. Government insists the Department of Health always negotiates the best price for its medications, which is clearly a lie, but since MPs are “honourable” I cannot use this as an argument. The drug has been delisted on cost grounds, but doctors have been instructed by the Department of Health to lie to their patients by asserting that it is clinically unsafe, when it is in fact one of the safest antidepressants around. This has resulted in my case in me losing confidence in the advice coming from my GP, who has now taken early retirement.

    Where does the EU Withdrawal transition period come in? When trawling the internet for any way of getting hold of this drug outside the NHS-induced cartel profiteering, I did find some dodgy importer in Canada, selling mostly counterfeit medication produced in India for the American market, where US citizens have a similar issue with profiteering. The best answer came from a High Street pharmacy in Germany, who was supplying Trimipramine on prescription for €16.85 for a packet of 100 tablets, which I reckon to be cost price with the normal 100% commercial markup and an acceptable profit margin for German business. I manage to get a private prescription in the UK which is valid for three months in Germany, and on a trip to Germany last year to a concert in Flensburg, I nipped to a high street chemist and got my box of 100 tablets. By rationing me to 1/2 tablet twice a week, I could spin out some sort of treatment for my depression, anxiety and insomnia to 2021.

    My supply is running out, and I am eager to repeat the exercise while British prescriptions are still recognised in Germany, which they probably won’t be when the transition period expires. I am planning a visit to Salzburg in December to attend Alma Deutscher’s ‘Cinderella’ where I have a ticket reserved for the opening night. Salzburg is just a short bus ride from the German border. However coronavirus has thrown doubt over the whole trip – the theatre is still negotiating with Vienna social distancing that would make the show viable, and I am not sure whether I would actually be able to get there. If the Rules make it impossible, then time might run out, and I must accept that after my tablets run out, I am on my own to cope with my chronic disappointments. I had another nightmare last night, and I normally have several anxiety nightmares a week about being let down by those I should be able to trust, and these are the ones I can remember having.

    When I voted Leave four years ago, it was on the understanding that the Free British could develop a trading system that was a marked improvement on the stitch-up coming from the EU, but here is one example for me personally where it clearly isn’t.”

    1. Jeremy Just a thought why not try to find a small pharmacy in Germany willing to accept your prescription by mail and post your medication back to you?
      [Peddy might be willing to advise on the wording of your request in german].

      1. That wouldn’t work. They refuse to ship abroad because of international regulations and the terms of their licence. The parcel would also be intercepted by customs at the central depot in Heathrow, since they are eager to protect the commercial interests of the drug companies trading in the UK.

        What might work is to find a friendly German, who could present my prescription and then post the package to me, but that exposes my friend to a charge of fraud the moment an identity check is made.

        2. But your friendly German might be able to find you a doctor in Germany with private practice, who you could go to for examination and a prescription for the drug, all perfectly legal. You should be able to get a six month supply without rationing that could keep you going for a while.

          1. Costing considerably more than the £200 chargeable to my local surgery. I’ve also got to track down that friendly German. It’s hard enough trying to find a friendly English person in my village who won’t let me down.

          2. Peddy likely can advise, and I work with Germans (it’s a German company) – also, you could make the 6-monthly “pilgimage” to the doctor for resupply into a holiday, or as part of a concert visit.

          3. I have no German contacts living in Germany, but if I can help with the language, just let me know.

          4. A son and his family now live in Texas. D-i-L needs a daily medicine which she has been on for 20 years.
            It’s as cheap as chips – I can buy a year’s supply in the local pharmacy for £280.
            However, I cannot post it to the USA and they are unable to come here for their summer holiday.
            That was the intention until CV reared it’s head.

            It’s $8,000 for 12 mths supply ( Health Ins pays 50%)

            USA – Land of the Free – as long as you are in good health.

    3. There are times I am very grateful for the “hide” facility. What a gauche monstrosity.

          2. Please Sir,

            Please could you release my ”Mail to a Conservative MP” from Spam Prison.

            Thank you !

            Polly

        2. There is an unofficial German term for a certain type of architecture – Zuckerguss. “Iced like a cake”.

        3. Lots of Genoa sponges piled on top of each other with smaller blocks tacked on the sides with raspberry jam. Then covered with that disgustingly sweet fondant icing.
          Would make constructing a battenburg easy peasy.
          Morning, Herr Oberst.

          1. Urgh! That description makes my teeth tingle… Morning (well, evening now) Anne!

    4. Good morning, Sir.
      The only saving grace I can think of for it is the amount of employment it provided not only to build it, but to maintain and clean it.

      1. It strikes me that the bride-to-be is as nouveau as the intended groom. IMHO she’ll eat him alive, just as with Migraine & Harry, but that’s another issue.

    3. Don’t forget, Peddy, I don’t own a TV ‘cos I’m not prepared to pay the licence fee.

      (Good morning to all NoTTLers, btw.)

        2. Part 1 last week was very good. Tonight’s episode deals with a very creative period, from 3rd to 7th Symphony.

          1. I seldom fancy anything on TV (which is why I have no licence), but I hope that one ends up on YouTube. I was utterly obsessed with the Seventh during lockdown. Settled on HvK’s recording. Glorious, life-giving.

            Morning, all!

          2. I was forced to enjoy the 7th after it was boomed at all hours through the wall from my neighbour’s room in Hall. Seriously, I did get to like it & now it’s my favourite after the 9th. I have HvK’s version, unfortunately on vinyl, which I can no longer play.

          3. I learnt to love the 7th as a young teenager, but the Toscanini recording I have is on vinyl and I can no longer play it.

          6. We might get snippets on the Beethoven programme (missed the first one last week) or maybe I should get the cd.

          7. Have you heard the HvK version? It’s really smooth. The Toscanini comes across as tinny & rather jerky, perhaps due to the recording equipment in the ’30s?

            You can catch up with Pt1 on i-player.

          8. I don’t use i-player because our internet connection is too slow, especially on my laptop. The only way I could use it would be sit downstairs (in a cold room) using the desk-top pc, which is close to the router.

        2. …in which case you may find the letter from Michael Staples JP reassuring.

      1. I’d not seen it before, probably not paying attention as I knew he had retired some time ago.

  14. Once Upon a Time in Iraq. 9pm, BBC Two. Tonight. 5 part series. Let us see what the BBC makes of this!

  15. Thanks to the NTTLer who posted the recipe for Chicken Basque a few days back, ‘t missus assembled it in last night and it was blooming gorgeous , it’s going to be one of our standards now.

    1. I thought a basque was an item of tittilating ladies underwear…
      I’ll get me liberty bodice :-((

  17. SIR — Extending the mandatory wearing of face coverings causes me alarm because of the way people use them.

    Mask wearers tend to fiddle with them incessantly, then touch other surfaces. Instead of carefully disposing of these single-use items, which are now damp and germ-ridden, people then frequently stuff them into a pocket or bag, or put them on the car dashboard, ready for their next outing.

    To my mind, this is far more unhygienic than not wearing a mask.

    Rona M Bromley
    Ingleton, North Yorkshire

    You have written the most sensible letter yet on this vexed subject, Rona. As I’ve been banging on about for months, these idiotic muzzles are nothing more than an attempt by those in charge to exercise more control over our lives.

    Stuffing a used mask into one’s pocket or handbag to be used over and over again is exactly the same as putting a soiled, but unwashed, nappy back on a baby.

    A sequentially more idiotic population will always elect ever-more cretinous leaders. The proof of this is all around for everyone to see. And it gets worse by the day.

    1. Good morning, Grizzly

      As often, I agree with you!

      I try to avoid wearing a mask unless I am compelled to do so. I find a mask inhibits my breathing and makes me feel suffocated – I cannot believe that this is good for me or anybody else. Masks are no more than window dressing and unhealthy virtue signalling.

        1. All that ‘Bull Dog Spirit’ etc…. is an absolute load of cobblers.
          Vera Lynn’s death signified rather more than the passing of a 103 year old.

          1. The BBC didn’t think so. They placed more emphasis on covering the funeral of a habitual drug-crazed robber from another country than the funeral of someone who selflessly raised the spirits of all the allies during the biggest conflict in history.

      2. Good morning, Rastus, and thanks.

        “Masks are no more than window dressing and unhealthy virtue signalling.”

        You’ve got it in a nutshell.

      3. Yo mr t

        It helps your breathing, so am told, if you rub a litte Vick ointment (or similar) on your top lip

    2. A cheap ill-fitting mask causes my glasses to steam up so that I can’t see and I don’t wear glasses to read, I wear them to see my way out of bed. A properly fitted surgical mask doubtless wouldn’t do that but that isn’t what’s on offer. Therefore I will self-identify as exempt.

      I took the Circle Line from Goldhawk Road to Barbican and back yesterday without a mask and without being challenged. A young woman got on and sat opposite me on the way back and just fiddled with her mask with it on her lap for the whole journey.

      It does feel like living in a bizarre alternative universe where everyone else is dressed as clown.

      1. It would certainly help if there ws a scientific consensus on masks.
        I can accept that increasing knowledge changed the recommendations but we have seen the “experts” vaccinate between no masks, simple bandanas, not masks, not not masks, nneeded, good, bad and and other combination.Aided and abetted of course by political interests.

        Masks or not, an obvious conclusion is that spread results from large gatherings. Waiting for lockdown number 2.

        1. I hope the autocorrect has been at you richard,nobody’s injecting me with a mask!!!!

      2. I know exactly what you mean, Sue, when you talk about your glasses steaming up.

        I have a plethora of safety equipment in my woodworking workshop; this guards against noise, dust, sparks and all manner of injurious and noxious things that come about from cutting up timber and steel.

        Amongst this kit are: safety specs (that fit over my own specs), plastic face shield, ear-defenders and industrial-quality air-filter masks. The problem is that whenever I attempt to wear any combination of these — very substantial — bits of kit, my specs steam up! This alone causes more danger than it prevents. How am I supposed to be wary of the whizzing blade on my table saw when the kit that protects me from the dust it generates stops me seeing it?

          2. I wore them for over 30 years but gave up about 10 years ago when my eyes became increasingly dry and sore.

          3. The pair of you should try Ortho-K. They are rigid lenses you wear while you sleep. Once you take them out in the morning, your eyesight is 20/20 for the day. Worth investigating; it’s like having laser surgery without the risk.

          5. I switched to it when I had problems with dry eye. Previously I had worn soft contact lenses (monthlies so I didn’t have to keep taking them out and putting in a new set daily) which worked very well and eliminated the problems of getting dust under my lenses when filling hay nets. They do, however, suck all the moisture out of your eyes and that made a slight problem a major one. I had started off (in the sixties) wearing hard lenses, so I’ve come full circle!

  18. SIR — Of all the buzzwords created by coronavirus, “new normal” is by far the most irritating.

    There is “normal” and there is “abnormal”. We are living in an era that is abnormal, but things will slowly return to normal. “New normal” actually means the old normal, but with hard-won freedoms curtailed.

    Robert Rees
    Penshurst, Kent

    George Orwell presaged this in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Facile expressions, such as “new normal”, are clear and unambiguous examples of newspeak. That is as good a reason as any not to use them.

        1. Doubleplusgood…Grizz

          We did 1984 at school …
          I was 16. Too interested in boys to take much notice of Orwell, however I did enjoy Road to Wigan Pier later.

          2. I read Nineteen Eighty Four when I was in my mid-teens (nothing to do with school).
            It frightened me so much I’ve never been able to read it again.
            I had hoped it wouldn’t be fulfilled during my lifetime – but hey ho…

          3. I re-read it some years ago, my father was an Orwell fan and said we would rue the day of television…. Big Brother.

            In similar vein we will rue the day of the Internet and the digital age…

            Oh for the Summer of Love…Peace and Love Brother.

          4. I re-read it some years ago, my father was an Orwell fan and said we would rue the day of television…. Big Brother.

            In similar vein we will rue the day of the Internet and the digital age…

            Oh for the Summer of Love…Peace and Love Brother.

          7. The trouble is, it was meant as a warning, but the PTB took it as an instruction manual.

          8. I reread it in 1983 as the time was getting near……… I downloaded it on my Kindle a couple of years ago, but haven’t yet dared read it again.

  19. Just booked myself in at the barbers. Used a pseudonym of course, I don’t want special treatment.

  22. 321287+ up ticks,
    The eu criminals will be barred under a new points system, priti pet.will set out the details later after a period of making it seem plausible to the herd.

    Leaves things in a grey area concerning Dover but the invasion WILL continue once the fog clears.

    1. If they can not stop people in rubber dinghies arriving on these shores illegally, there is little chance of getting rid of time served criminals when they are already here and have the weight of the legal aid system behind them.

      1. 321287+ up ticks,
        Morning Kp,
        But they can stop them, which in point of fact makes it a whole lot worse.

    3. How will that affect the ongoing farce over the Turkish master criminal who the HO want to deport but the Judiciary has allowed his appeal because he is married to an EU national?

      1. 321287+up ticks,
        Afternoon AA,
        Regarding the eu national I am sure the establishment have not lost the art of the “stitch up” AKA
        being Tommy Robinsoned” prior to deportation.

  23. Universities and Free Thought
    JULY 13, 2020 BY JOHN REDWOOD MP

    Government should look carefully at what research it is commissioning, as there is no longer a need to commission more research to extend or prove things academics claim to already know. There is more need for research which pushes the boundaries and challenges some of the tired assumptions of current thinking, argues regular contributor John Redwood MP

    Some universities are said to be in financial trouble. It has arisen because they have expanded, offering many places to overseas students, only to find that model poses difficulties at a time of retrenchment for international travel and exchange. Over reliance on Chinese students could be especially difficult. The deteriorating relations between the West and China over civil rights in mainland China, the new Hong Kong law and the intellectual property issues may put some Chinese students off coming . It would be good to hear from the university representative bodies what they think about the extent of China links, and how they respond to the current Chinese policies on human rights and intellectual property.

    Universities have also entered the academic end of the leisure and entertainment business, offering informative conferences during the breaks between terms. These have stood empty for months with a substantial loss of income. They have invested in student accommodation, which has also been without tenants during the lock down period, leading to further income shortfalls.

    The university establishments receive substantial research grants from governments, and some from companies for research that their sponsors wish them to carry out. The system of peer reviewing is said to be a strength, where research is assessed by other experts in the field who have the power to publish and recognise it or to mark it down and keep it out of the respected journals. Having a quality control in one sense is a good idea. There is however the danger that it encourages me too thinking, where a younger academic has to proceed around the work of a better established academic, without challenging the foundations of what the elder was doing. It can create groups of like minded people training up a new generation to think the same.

    It also knocks on to governments procuring research. The senior academics are likely to influence the grant awarding and commissioning bodies in the public sector, pointing them in the way of research that bears a family resemblance to what they have already done. It can just be a case of the academies corralling around their fashionable theme or theory, seeking to prove it and extend it, whilst keeping out any serious challenge to it.

    Government should look carefully at what research it is commissioning. There is no need to commission more research to extend or prove things academics claim to know. There is more need for research which pushes the boundaries and challenges some of the tired assumptions of current thinking.

    1. They could start by firing every single climate scientist who has ever stated: “The science is settled.”

      2. and cut the ridiculous salaries of the Vice-principals and nebulous research projects , oh yes and Mickey Mouse degrees

        1. ‘Morning, Spikey.

          What do you think is the principal vice of all those researchers?

    2. Chinese students equal profitable income. Profitable income means fat salaries for Vice-Chancellors. Look no further. It is all about the money. Same applies to post-graduate students from anywhere, and undergrads from the Middle East and Asia.

      1. Don’t forget the travel jollies for recruiters who jet off to exotic places to sign up next years cohort of cash cows students.

        1. And establish ‘sub-campuses’ in exotic locations with pleasant climates.

    3. That means all research into Climate Change should be stopped. After all, don’t they continually claim ‘the science is settled’?

  24. You could not make it up! A double dose of insanity from the USA.
    American Black Teacher Brittany Marshall claims that the concept of “2 + 2 = 4” is RACIST and, quite justifiably, receives a lot of ridicule.
    A Webpage produced in support of her, claiming that the criticism against her is RACIST!

    https://mathedcollective.wordpress.com/2020/07/09/attack-on-brittany-marshall/comment-page-1

    It then highlights as an example of this RACISM a Youtube video criticising her produced by a Black lad!
    https://youtu.be/In8ihkPd5J4

    1. Thanks Bob – made my day….“Unfortunately it’s nothing new,” remarked one. “There are videos circulating showing black students promoting to stop science because it represents white supremacy. They would prefer magic and voodoo.”

      1. In 2011 I had a male Black dental nurse, born, bred & clinically trained in the UK. Great to work with, but when he fell ill, his mother had to send for some dried bones (or something) from Africa before he felt better. He later retrained as a psychiatric nurse & I lost contact.

        1. Yo Peddy

          You remind of a man.
          (What man?)
          Oh, the man with the power.
          (What power?)
          Oh, the power of voodoo
          (Who do?)
          Oh, you do, you do
          (Do what?)

          You remind of a man.
          (What man?)
          Yeah, the man with the power.
          (What power?)
          Yeah, the power of voodoo
          (Who do?)
          Yeah, you do, you do
          (Do what?)

          Uh, we could take ’em out of this rex,
          Save us from the man with the hex.
          Save us from his evil course,
          It’s gonna get bad, yeah, it’s gonna get worse.

          Uh, hocus pocus alakazaam,
          Save us from that evil man,
          With hairy legs and heavy feet,
          He cracks up, baby, as he creeks.

          You remind of a man.
          (What man?)
          Yeah, the man with the power.
          (What power?)
          Oh, the power of voodoo
          (Who do?)
          Yeah, you do, you do
          (Do what?)

      2. If this is the case should they not abandon all that has been created by whites and return to their ideal primitive lands where they won’t be troubled by racism.

    2. Oh God, this is the first post that I read today and already my world has dissolved before my eyes.

      I shall henceforce use maths of colour when I tot up my golf score today.

          2. Ah, autocorrect does not like crayons, surely overpowered by shirley (maybe the autocorrect function is reading the world out loud).

            That and a tablet that is losing power so I did not check before hitting the post comment button.

      1. Ignoring that the study of the history of mathematics is fascinating, alongside it’s application in music and art, I think this person is simply inventing a nonsense title for their own aggrandisement.

    6. Follow carefully

      1 + 0 = 1
      2 + 0 = 2

      1 x 0 = 0
      2 x 0 = 0

      0 = 0

      divide by ‘0’

      1 + 0 = 2 + 0
      0 0

      therefore, 1 = 2

    7. What an absolute effing moron.

      In his world 1+1 equals more than 2 but also equals abandonment.

    8. Of course 2+2 = 4 is white.

      It can only be white because it’s the white answer.

      The problem is that maffs teecher’s teech number stuff and not yer engrish and thus dunno how to use the write speling when torquing about maffs innit.

      Now if you were a colonist you would be white about thinking what Imperial mint!

  25. Oh dear…. have there been politician hands in the cookie jar ?

    Is this why Brits got stuffed with Hinkley Point which might never work, and why Boros is mad for Huawei and a Chinese HS2 ?

    ”Chinese fixer targets FIVE Prime Ministers: New evidence of Beijing’s infiltration of British Establishment as it emerges leading figure ‘tasked with grooming foreign elites’ met politicians including Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Tony Blair

    Zhirong Hu has also met former Prime Ministers Theresa May and Gordon Brown

    He leads the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries

    Academics say its mission is to groom top ‘business, political and media leaders’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8515561/Chinese-fixer-targets-five-leaders-New-evidence-Chinas-infiltration-British-Establishment.html

    1. 321287+ up ticks,
      Morning PP,
      He will go far as a must have item of crockery for the
      English / GB political elite, always, always open to offers
      and now with the brussels golden trough on rocky ground
      leaving fertile ground aplenty for brown envelopes to flourish.

    2. Like the Romans seducing warrior chieftains with warm baths and larks tongues.

        1. We already had the oysters.
          Boadicea rocked up to buy some for a dinner party, the fishmonger told her she’d got to queue and wear a mask before she entered the shop ….. The rest is history.

    3. I’m sure I’ve posted this but…

      Mandelson sits on Huawei’s board as an advisor. What’s happened is clear. Huawei bought him and he then bought civil servants and MP decision makers to buy in Huawei.

      The man is blatantly, openly corrupt and clearly on the take. He doesn’t care that tax payers foot the bill as long as he gets his no doubt seven figure cut.

  26. It’s only a random coincidence that Trevor Coult MC tweeted Soros is an adviser to the British Army… and that now one of Britain’s top General’s sounds exactly like Soros..

  27. Morning all. These useless masks again….

    SIR – Extending the mandatory wearing of face covering-s causes me alarm because of the way people use them.

    Mask wearers tend to to fiddle with them incessantly, then touch other surfaces. Instead of carefully disposing of these single-use items, which are now damp and germ-ridden, people then frequently stuff them into a pocket or bag, or put them on the car dashboard, ready for their next outing.

    To my mind, this is far more unhygienic than not wearing a mask.

    ADVERTISING

    Ads by Teads

    Rona M Bromley

    Ingleton, North Yorkshire

    SIR – The Government now wants us to wear face coverings while shopping, but it also wants us to spend money in pubs and restaurants, where masks are not necessary. If it is safe to spend time in a restaurant, why is it unsafe to pop into a shop for 10 minutes?

    As a health worker who has to wear a surgical mask all day, I will give all unnecessary shopping a miss if I have to cover up there as well.

    Steve Lenane

    Thetford, Norfolk

    Advertisement

    SIR – Scientifically, we know that face masks do not prevent all aerosolised matter getting through unless they are of medical-grade standard and fitted for the person.

    However, a mask will reduce someone spreading bugs if they cough. It will also stop them putting contaminated fingers into their mouth or nose, and will send society a message that the situation is serious.

    Dr Michael Pelly

    London SW6

    Shoppers wear masks as they leave shops in Glasgow

    Shoppers wear masks as they leave shops in Glasgow as it became compulsory to wear face coverings in shops from last friday CREDIT: Andrew Milligan/PA

    SIR – Martin Thurston (Letters, July 10) complains that pubs and restaurants lack atmosphere as a result of Covid-19 restrictions. But it does not stop there.

    Stores such as John Lewis and M & S will not allow customers to try on clothes. Yes, you can bring them back if they are unsuitable, but for me that would involve a round trip of 40 miles, which I am not prepared to make. Other shops insist on customers making an appointment, and wearing a mask and gloves.

    I shall not be visiting shops while this persists. It is not fear of the virus that keeps me at home; it is the joyless experience that is the result of all these new rules.

    Patricia Jagger

    Elstow, Bedfordshire

    SIR – If face -masks are to become compulsory in shops, could they not sell them for 10p as we enter? After all, they are more than happy to flog us a 10p plastic bag on the way out.

    Angela Lawrence

    Woodbridge, Suffolk

    SIR – I much prefer the high street to shopping online, but having to wear a face mask will keep me on the internet.

    Mary Wilson

    Reigate, Surrey

    SIR – The tape and distancing safety measures in our reopened shop create the impression that customers are walking into a crime scene. I applaud all who are brave enough to intrude on this apparent tragedy.

    William Hamilton

    Berwick-upon-Tweed

        1. I should think that her singing is drowned out by all the percussion in her ears.

          4. I never thought the day would come when I’d look at a photo of Harold Wilson and feel nostalgic for another Britain.

          5. I’ve stood next to his, very modest, grave (and seen his small bungalow). They are both at Old Town on St Mary’s, Isle of Scilly.

          6. An inveterate cigar smoker who seldom lit his pipe, even when the cameras were rolling.

    1. Face nappies are very bad but apparently exemption is something you self declare, like your gender.

    2. It was Charlie Brooker, who got his gorgeous wife, a former Blue Peter presenter, to draw a smile on the mask. It greatly improved it.

    3. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a resurgence in ‘V for Vendetta’ masks.

      1. Funny you should mention that – I have one “saved for later” in my on-line basket. This will be my mask of choice if I’m forced to wear one!

  29. SIR – Fraser Nelson (Comment, July 10) describes the “problem in the British care home industry” as being a refusal to pay decent wages, and a dependence on casual and agency staff.

    As the former manager of a charity-run care-home, which contributes to the cost of care, I know that staff – who are selected for their essential qualities of respect, gentleness and empathy – are disgracefully poorly paid. However, this is not generally due to greed on the part of homeowners, but to the huge discrepancy between the actual cost of care and the maximum funding provided by our squeezed social services.

    I hope that the coronavirusp pandemic, and the recent recognition and appreciation of the value of care and NHS staff, will result in proper funding for those residents who are unable to fund themselves, so that staff can be properly paid.

    Gillian Crick

    Underriver, Kent

    1. People are in care homes because their families cannot look after them. Families cannot look after the sick and elderly because they all have to go out to work to earn a living, pay rent, mortgage and lots of tax. The Government needs lots of tax in order to fund expensive social services like care homes. This is where 60 years of progress has brought us.

    2. Couldn’t they get some people in from Leicester on £ 3.50 an hour, I’m sure it must be better than working in a sweat shop.

  30. Morning again

    SIR – Ralph Barnes (Letters, July 11) asks who goes to jail for not having a television licence. The answer, of course, is no one. However, in my experience as a magistrate (now retired), the people fined were most often single mothers on benefits, who were at home when the licence inspectors called.

    I cannot recall a single case where the detector vans were used as evidence and suspect that they were just dummies to frighten people into buying licences. In my view, if any category of person deserved not to pay it was not well-off over-75-year-olds, but young mums on benefits.

    Michael Staples JP

    Seaford, East Sussex

    SIR – Television has been a vital mental support during lockdown for the aged and vulnerable who have been unable to leave their homes. Many will continue to need such support for months to come. Does the Government really intend to make these people pay £157 a year for such an important source of support?

    Stephen Buck

    Puddletown, Dorset

    SIR – I am over 75 and somewhat deaf. Much of the BBC’s output is, unfortunately, in audible to me. There should be a concessionary rate for the deaf as there is for the blind.

    Dr Diana Samways

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – Instead of removing the over-75s’ licence fee, could the BBC not raise the age limit year by year? The very elderly won’t have to pay, while those now paying will continue to do so.

    J Andrew Suter

    Sunningdale, Berkshire

    1. Over 75’s are well-off, are they? All of them? How nice, how do I get some of that?

          3. Gentle stretching helps and freeze gel massage gunk.The swelling has diminished but resting is anathema to me….
            Patience is a virtue….apparently!

      2. I’m just over 2 years from my 75th birthday. Will it be like passing GO?

      3. Yo Ol

        Go to Calais,

        Get yourself smuggled (on a RIB) to Mid Channel,

        Then be picked up by the charity supported Royal National Lifeboat (for) Incomers,
        Wwho will deliver you to a good hotel and the benefits office in Dover area

        1. If we decide we’ve had enough and sain across to France in a dinghy, will we be allowed to stay?

    2. This is an attempted diversionary tactic. The real point is that the Television ‘licence’ should be removed in total, not from just a select few.

    4. One of your colleagues, Mr Staples JP, was a smug, self-entitled supercilious bitch who smilingly said in an interview that if fines for unlicensed TVs were not paid she would happily sentence the offenders to prison for non-payment. She did, on many occasions.
      They “were most often single mothers on benefits”, as you say. What you do not say is that the children were usually taken into care and sometimes the family was never reunited. An appalling crime in itself, but one with which your fellow magistrate was quite satisfied when it was brought up in discussion.
      And moreover Mr magistrate Staples JP, you dam well know it!

      2. His point about ‘detector vans’ is valid but negated by referring to ‘inspectors’. They are nothing of the sort. They are commission-driven salesman with no more legal authority than someone selling double-glazing.

        I would expect a JP to be more savvy than that but when Crapita hold special TV licensing training seminars for magistrates, you know the relationship is too cosy.

    5. Too much ‘sound’ on all TV Channels is now overbearing music, with incidental speech

      Edit Yo Epi

  31. SIR – I recently had a repeat attack of gout, which makes joints red, swollen and very painful.

    On reviewing my diet in lockdown, I realised that I was indulging not in excess alcohol but Marmite (Letters, July 10). I found that it is high in purines, which can trigger gout.

    Monica Giddens

    Caterham, Surrey

    1. I have had gout for 30 years. When I first got it, my big toe swelled so much that I thought I had been bitten by a scorpion! However, I was advised to take 100mg of allopurinol every day, which I have done since then. I have had no repeat of gout and I drink alcohol, no doubt far more than the do-gooders say I should, and eat whatever I like.

      I am slightly mollified in having gout by the fact that the word for gout in Arabic is داء الملوك (disease of kings)!

      1. How do you know you have had gout for over 30 years if you have had no repeat of it since then? Perhaps it was a one-off.

        1. Because I once went a week without being able to access a supply of allopurinol. The following week I had a small recurrence! It is only the magic pills (with no side effects) that keep it at bay!

        2. Because I once went a week without being able to access a supply of allopurinol. The following week I had a small recurrence! It is only the magic pills (with no side effects) that keep it at bay!

      2. I also keep my gout (mainly knees, sometimes feet) at bay by taking allopurinol and drinking gallons of water to wash out all the sharp uric acid particles from my joints.

        I eat Marmite in moderation and, at present, I have given up drinking alcohol (to help my diet). I also eat other items of high-purine food, such as prawns, asparagus, offal. spinach, etc, but again, only in moderation.

          1. My brother swears by water melon when he has an attack. I found that rapid re-hydration helps though I haven’t had an attack in years.

        1. Yes, I stand corrected! But in any case it can be intensely painful, just like gout, and in some cases very dangerous!

      4. The worst thing about gout (apart from the pain) is that others seem to thinks it is amusing or self-inflicted.

          1. I loathe peanut butter.
            Marmite on toast or in a sandwich is loverlyeeee …..
            I never forget Danish D-in-L’s father scooping out a huge spoonful ….. we quickly explained that it was stronger than his beloved Gammel Dansk.

          3. We weren’t quite quick enough, so we had the double pleasure of watching his reaction and feeling virtuous by warning him.

          4. On your recommendation I had some on low-carb crispbread [I’m not eating bread at present] yesterday. It was lovely. Thanks for the tip.

          5. I was working MENTOR some years back with my usual mate, Craig, a mere stripling. all of 18 months younger than me, when during a transit I went to do some toast.
            “Craig, what do you fancy of your toast, jam, peanut butter or Marmite? Hmm, second thought, what does peanut butter AND Marmite sound like?”

            And thus was born a popular snack!!

        2. Involuntary foot tapping and coughing? See, embryonic gout caused by Marmite.

          1. Quite a lot of pollack on wrecks SE of the Eddystone. Tides weren’t very big but we have to get out when the weather permits. Lovely day seeing sharks, dolphins and a sunfish. Mackerel are around in quantity, but a bit too large for live bait. Between the 4 crew we caught (on lures only) 40-45 pollack to 11lb and 2 ling to 12lb. Compared to the other charters out there searching for fish we did very well.
            Oh, on returning past the Sound Breakwater we came across a couple and a small boy in a small cruiser with a dragging anchor deployed and smoke coming from the inboard engine. We rigged a tow, inline to get them to clear water and then a side-by-side tow with a spring line to take them back to Sutton Harbour marina.

          4. Yeah,we took the child as insurance. I say ‘we’ did this and that but our charter skipper is such a good mariner and boatman, he practically did the whole thing on his own.

          10. I remember fishing for pollack in Cornwall on a camping holiday when I was 6 y.o. First fish I ever caught. Mum fried it over a Primus & I thought it was great. It’s one of the few fish I hate now.

          11. I’m not keen on pollack to eat and I never take any of them home, but they do fight well. One cod was also caught, must have slipped my mind because I didn’t catch it.

          17. As paying crew we could have taken any fish we wanted. Two of us (me included) took no fish, one took the one cod of the trip (damn him), and one, not as regular as the rest of us, took a large pollack and the biggest ling. We left the rest to the skipper who has a commercial licence. We clean all the fish and give the fishing deck a good scrub down. In return we get a nice reduction in the charter price. Fishing 8oz or 10oz leads to get your lures down 240′ feet and constantly working them on a 10 hour trip gives you a good workout too. So that would be “in someone else’s freezer.” perhaps.

          18. I absolutely adore ling. I first had it at a hotel in Scotland. The dish was three small fillets of fish: halibut, salmon and ling. The salmon was OK, the halibut tasty, but the ling was knockout.

            I can’t get fresh ling, here in Sweden [where they call it långa (pron: “longer”)], since they take all they catch, preserve it in lye until it turns translucent and rubbery, to produce the disgusting lutfisk, which the natives scoff at Christmas. They are most clearly a primitive race!

    4. I take daily medication to lower my uric acid levels and haven’t had gout in years. I have a few beers chilling in the fridge for later and have just had a few cream crackers smeared with this mysterious brown substance. (OK, Lidl’s own version but it tastes the same).

  32. SIR – A lady I know who recently gave birth needed several stitches after a difficult labour. Concerned that she was not healing well, she phoned her doctor. The receptionist offered her a Zoom appointment.

    Shirley Horwich

    Altrincham, Cheshire

    1. Here’s an idea. Harry Hill needs a new outlet for his talents – why not a podcast manual on brain surgery by Zoom, presented by the great doctor himself?

  33. Fun fact………..

    In the 1630s there was a song only played in the Sistine chapel. The Vatican kept the composition of “Miserere Mei Deus” secret for 150 years until 14-year old Mozart listened to it twice, transcribed it from memory and produced the first unauthorized copy. This is one of the earliest records of musical piracy !

  35. A challenge for NoTTLers.

    Guess the religion of the three suspected of killing the Bayonne bus-driver……….

    3. Caroline found the names of the suspects and their assistant in a French on-line newspaper, Le Parisien:

      A. Mohammed. C, Mohammed, B.Musa and Z. Selim

      No great surprises there – but why does the MSM always hush such news up?

    6. Caroline found the names of the suspects and their assistant in a French on-line newspaper, Le Parisien:

      A. Mohammed. C, Mohammed, B.Musa and Z. Selim

      No great surprises there – but why does the MSM always hush such news up?

  36. Catching up with ‘The Spectator’, I found this interesting and educational (conclusion – Hitler and Goering deserve a good share of the credit for our victory):

    The caution that almost cost us the Battle of Britain

    It was a closer-run victory than it should have been

    he Battle of Britain, which began 80 years ago this week, occupies a unique place in our island story. Its epic moral quality, representing the triumph of freedom over tyranny, continues to resonate to this day. The RAF’s victory marked a crucial turning point in the war; it was the first time the Nazi machine had suffered a defeat. If the Luftwaffe had gained the mastery of the skies over southern England in September 1940, the Germans might well have been able to launch a vast, seaborne invasion across the Channel. Beaten in the West, the Reich had to turn eastwards, to Russia, with disastrous consequences.

    What makes the tale all the more gripping is the narrow margin of the RAF’s success. The Luftwaffe had overwhelming superiority in numbers, with an attacking force of more than 2,600 planes, including 1,200 bombers and 980 fighters. That compared with a total of around 900 aircraft in RAF Fighter Command at the start of the battle in July 1940. Despite the heroism of the British pilots, the Germans’ numerical ascendancy began to make itself felt by the end of the summer. On 7 September, Sir Hugh Dowding, the austere chief of Fighter Command, warned his fellow officers that his force was ‘going downhill’.

    But that same day Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, made a major error. Thinking that Fighter Command was finished, he ordered his planes to switch the focus of their assault from the airfields to London. The change in strategy brought carnage to the East End as the Blitz began, but it gave Fighter Command a vital breathing space, during which squadrons were replenished by new planes and pilots. When the Germans renewed their offensive on 15 September, they were astonished to be confronted by reinvigorated defences. Having suffered crippling losses, the Germans abandoned the struggle. On 17 September, Hitler postponed his plans for an invasion.

    The narrative of bleak adversity followed by the glorious salvation is a stirring one. Yet it can be argued that the RAF should never have been brought to the brink of defeat in early September. The fact that the Luftwaffe almost gained aerial supremacy was partly due to Fighter Command’s tactical inflexibility, poor deployment of resources and limitations in Dowding’s leadership, as well as longer-term failures in aircraft production.

    A widower of Scottish descent, Dowding was a somewhat incongruous figure to be a fighter leader. Aloof, cold to the point of frigidity, he was known as ‘Stuffy’ because of his social awkwardness. But he also possessed an unconventional mind that embraced vegetarianism, spiritualism and reincarnation; he claimed that in a previous life he had been a Mongol chieftain. This unorthodoxy extended to his work in charge of Fighter Command. A visionary technocrat, he not only presided over the introduction of the revolutionary fast Spitfire and Hurricane monoplanes, but also the creation of a sophisticated ground-control network which used information from radar stations and the Observer Corps to guide the RAF fighters to the incoming targets. Under this system, Fighter Command was divided into four geographical groups, the most important of which was No. 11 in the south-east of England, commanded by the purposeful but prickly New Zealander Keith Park.

    Throughout the Battle of Britain, the central aim of Dowding and Park’s strategy was to protect their resources by deploying only small numbers of squadrons on combat missions. Since Fighter Command was heavily outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, they felt it would be folly to send massed RAF formations into the fray. Caution was their watchword, attrition their goal. But this guarded approach could be counter–productive. In practice, the reluctance to engage in large-scale attacks allowed too many bombers through, bolstered German morale, and kept Fighter Command on the defensive. In one of his combat reports, the renowned RAF Polish pilot Witold Urbanowicz complained that the enemy had ‘a free passage’, when instead the RAF should been ‘putting everything in the air and sweeping it clean’. After the war, the senior RAF commander Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté wrote that Park’s ‘spoiling tactics’ were ‘very exhausting for our fighters and it is possible that our losses were greater and our successes not so decisive as would have been the case if we had attempted to throw larger concentrations of our own fighters into the battle’.

    Known as ‘the Big Wing’, the concept of the mass formation of several squadrons had strong advocates at the time, including the legless pilot Douglas Bader. Dowding and Park were dismissive, maintaining that such wings took too long to assemble. But when the tactic was tried, it often proved highly successful, never more so than on 15 September, when Bader’s own No. 12 Group, based in East Anglia, pulverised the German raiders. For RAF pilot Bobby Oxspring, it was ‘glorious’ to see ‘60 Hurricanes and Spitfires charging on the sorely harassed bomber force’ that decisive day.

    But the full resources of Dowding’s command were too rarely galvanised to hit the enemy with maximum impact. He acted like a detached observer, reserved and uncommunicative, and effectively left Park in charge. As a result, Park was allowed to be far too proprietorial and uncooperative, so the firepower outside his No. 11 group was overlooked. At times, the Battle of Britain seemed to be fought not by Fighter Command, but mainly by No. 11 Group. The Spitfire pilot George Unwin of 19 squadron, based at RAF Duxford in No. 12 Group, later said that Park’s attitude was ‘ridiculous’. ‘We were always called too late and there’s no excuse for it. He had 60 of us waiting — waiting ten minutes’ flying away — and an awful lot of lives could have been saved, I think, and a lot more damage done.’

    Given that the nation’s very survival was at stake, every Spitfire and Hurricane should have had a central part. Instead, too many planes were kept far away from the action. At the beginning of battle, no fewer than 21 squadrons were in Scotland, the North and the Midlands, while at the beginning of September, there were 65 Spitfires in the south-west. The argument that Fighter Command had to be prepared for sudden Luftwaffe attacks elsewhere in Britain will not wash. First, radar meant that surprise incursions were impossible. Second, it was pointless to keep a reserve for the future when the Fighter Command was under heavy assault in the present. Wing Commander Dizzy Allen, who fought in the war, felt that the ‘poor deployment of squadrons’ and ‘incompetent handling of the fighter force’ indicated ‘the paucity of intellect’ in the RAF’s high command. Even some of Dowding’s stoutest defenders, such as his biographer Peter Brown (a former Spitfire pilot), admitted that there was a lack of authority within Fighter Command to ‘co-ordinate overall battle tactics and to utilise all squadrons to best advantage’.

    In one respect, Dowding’s determination to husband his resources carefully was understandable, for the saga of fighter production in the 1930s had been traumatic. Indeed, within the RAF there had been an innate prejudice against fighter planes, because strategic bombing was regarded as the main purpose of the force. The attachment to offensive bombardment meant that fighters were widely viewed as an irrelevance, reflected in the words of Sir Hugh Trenchard, the founding father of the RAF, that ‘the aeroplane is no defence against the aeroplane’. This ideological blindness was eventually overcome, partly through the efforts of Tory politicians Lord Swinton, the air minister, and, surprisingly, Neville Chamberlain, who as chancellor was a powerful advocate of fighters, not least on the grounds that they were cheaper than bombers.

    Even when the Supermarine Spitfire emerged in the mid-1930s, alongside the Hawker Hurricane, to fulfil the RAF’s urgent need for modern, fast fighters, there were tremendous production problems with the new type. A small company based in Southampton, Supermarine did not have the capacity to meet a major contract, while the advanced design, with its elliptical wing, proved stubbornly complex to build. Soon the promised deliveries fell badly behind schedule, prompting Swinton to complain of ‘a disgraceful state of affairs’. But he was the one who paid the price. Forced to resign in May 1938 after a parliamentary row over the fighter delays, he was replaced by Sir Kingsley Wood, who tried to overcome the problems by ordering the construction of a huge new Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich in Birmingham. Costing £7 million and run by the Morris cars magnate Lord Nuffield, it was due to turn out 1,000 Spitfires by June 1940.

    Yet by this date, not a single one had emerged from the Castle Bromwich production. The building was a shambles, the management incompetent, the workforce recalcitrant. It was only when the dynamic press baron Lord Beaverbrook took over at the Ministry of Aircraft Production that the factory began to operate properly under new executive leadership from the Vickers aircraft company. ‘The effect of Beaverbrook’s appointment can only be described as magical,’ recalled Dowding. A subsequent unpublished government report into the fiasco of Castle Bromwich found that the management had been given ‘a blank cheque’, the plant was ‘extravagantly laid out’, expensive machinery was left ‘idle’, recording systems were nonexistent, labour was ‘in a very bad state’ and discipline was ‘lacking’.

    It was a damning indictment, though fortunately Supermarine at Southampton had been turned around before the war. Even so, due to this mess, Spitfires were not available in the numbers they should have been in the summer of 1940, and Fighter Command had to rely on the robust but slower Hurricane for two-thirds of its complement. When Winston Churchill famously declared in his Finest Hour speech on the eve of the Battle that ‘Hitler knows he has to break us in this island or lose the war’, he turned out to be right. But it was a far closer-run thing than it need have been.

    WRITTEN BY
    Leo McKinstry

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-won-the-battle-of-britain-just

    1. Top BTL comment:

      Philip Brooks • 11 days ago
      An interesting, revisionist article written with a lot of the benefit of hindsight.
      Couple of points missed out. No mention of Luftwaffe losses, which from the Battle of France to Battle of Britain Day, 15 September, were significant. Also, from about 1939 onwards, aircraft production in the UK had begun to outstrip that of Germany.
      It is true that squadrons were dispersed around the UK but so was the threat. There were Luftwaffe attacks made from Norway against Scotland and North-East England which had to be met. These were met decisively because they were outside the range of fighter escort, however there was no guarantee that they would not continue in spite of ultra intelligence. Not too difficult to redeploy some Luftwaffe squadrons. Also, dispersal allowed RAF squadrons to be rotated out of the front-line for rest and re-equipment eg 41 Squadron was rotated several times between Rochford, Southend, and Catterick in Yorkshire. Rotation of units was not something practiced by the Luftwaffe. Hence many of their crews were exhausted coupled with the fact that many of their units were well below full- strength.
      As for Dowding not utilising other groups to support 11Group, that is not the complete truth. 11 Group was loyally supported by 10 Group, HQ Exeter, from the South-West. However, support from 12 Group, guarding the Midlands, was sporadic due to politics. The AOC 12 Group, the unimaginative Trafford Leigh- Mallory regularly attempted to undermine Dowding, he thought he should be AOC 11 Group not Park, and was regularly late in ordering his squadrons into the air and doing what he wanted not what the tactical situation demanded. As for the Big Wing, it was a hobbyhorse of Douglas Bader, who, whilst a brave and highly competent pilot, it is fair to say his tactical nouse was negligible, his tactics those of WWI. The Big Wing was unwieldy and did take time to form up.I was taught to fly by one Sergeant James ‘Ginger’ Lacey, 501 Squadron RAF Kenley in 11 Group, also the second highest scoring fighter ace in the B of B on the RAF side and he was completely dismissive of the Big Wing concept.
      One final point. There had never been an Air Defence battle before in history, so Dowding and Park were learning from scratch. All in alI I would say that they did pretty well.

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      1. The numbers of losses were close. I read a pamphlet in our school library in the early 60s. It detailed losses virtually daily. The Germans lost between 8 to our 7, and 8 to our five. The Germans could afford to lose, we could not. Is criticism justified? Academically, in the sense of learning from war games, yes. As a criticism of the leadership and actions of these involved, all one can say is that we won. What more did we want?

      3. That pretty much sums up what I wrote earlier, although I hadn’t got this far (I read newest first). I’m with Ginger Lacey on this one. Leigh Mallory and his wife lost their lives when the aircraft they were in crashed in bad weather. Was LM insistent on flying and the pilot (whose responsibility it was to decide on suitability to fly as captain of the aircraft) didn’t oppose him because of who he was?

      4. I flew with ‘Ginger’ Lacey – as a passenger when I was learning free-fall parachuting at Grindale Field near Bridlington in Yorkshire. When he wasn’t taking us up to jump he was running the parachute club bar. He was a lovely man.

        1. It surprised me when I listened to him, given that he was a Yorkshireman, that he didn’t have a regional accent.

    2. 321287+ up ticks,
      Afternoon LD,
      If adolf had only left it for 80 years he would have had a major success with his invasion campaign via Dover.
      Give credit where it’s due the campaign is running smoothly currently, ALL in it together,
      ( lab/lib/con/supporters).
      If it were only beneficial to England / GB.

      1. Dolly wouldn’t have stood a chance; a white male? Be turned back immediately.

    3. Beaten in the West, the Reich had to turn eastwards, to Russia, with disastrous consequences.

      The invasion of Russia was always Hitler’s intention. He hoped that France and Britain would agree peace terms so that he could then concentrate on his main aim – Lebensraum in the East.

    4. Brilliant account, thank you.

      How about al-beeb installing a reading of Douglas Bader’s “Reach for the Sky” instead of all of the multicult rollux on R4>

    5. Let’s not forget that until Operation Barbarossa (the assault on the USSR), British Communists were actively sabotaging production. Also, I’ve flown over the cliffs of Dover in a Spitfire and France is VERY close. There would not have been time to assemble a big wing, in my view. Tactics were based on attacks from airfields in Germany, not France. The fall of France meant things had to change and they did; without the Dowding system we would have lost. It must be remembered that Park also served in Malta and helped secure victory there. He was a very able commander. There were not the fighters needed because governments had spent so long on appeasement, not to mention their being wedded to biplanes. The Germans attacking from Norway got a massive shock (and lost a lot of aircraft) because they thought that all the fighters were concentrated in the south. Keeping some in reserve in the north gave pilots the opportunity to be rotated – something the Germans didn’t do, thus leading to more fatigue and Kanalkrankheit.

          2. It was what they called the neurotic response to being asked time and time again to fly out over the Channel (Kanal) and return in shot up aircraft with wounded crew or an ailing single engined fighter.

    6. Of course the switch to targeting London had absolutely nothing to do with Hitler’s rage at the RAF raid on Berlin on the 25th of Aug 1940………………

  37. Charles Moore
    Will Cambridge stand up for free speech in China?
    12 July 2020, 8:06am

    Last month, Dr Priyamvada Gopal, of Churchill College, Cambridge University, tweeted ‘White Lives Don’t Matter’. She was abused online and received threats of violence. Cambridge issued a statement: ‘The university defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions, which others might find controversial… [It] deplores in the strongest terms abuse and personal attacks.’ Dr Gopal was promptly promoted to a professorship. Perhaps professorial chairs should not be handed out as prizes because the person promoted has expressed apparently racist sentiments, but the university was surely correct to defend Dr Gopal’s free-speech rights. So it should protest when the universities with which it associates infringe those rights themselves.

    This week, Xu Zhangrun was detained (after a year’s house arrest) for criticising the ‘personality cult’ of Xi Jinping. He is the author of the most famous dissenting essay in China during the Covid crisis, ‘When Fury Overcomes Fear’. Last year, the Communist party authorities at Tsinghua University stripped Mr Zhangrun of his professorship there. At Jesus College, the UK/China Global Issues Dialogue Centre works in partnership with Tsinghua University. Jesus and, so far as I know, Cambridge have never stood up for the free-speech rights of Mr Zhangrun.

    1. ♫Money,money,money,it’s an academic crime♫
      The Vice-chancellor’s song…………….

      1. “Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around…
        Chink-a-ling … Chink-a-ling ….”

    2. Cambridge University has gone to the dogs. Remember the treatment Jordan Peterson received?

      Cambridge University rescinds Jordan Peterson invitation
      This article is more than 1 year old
      Offer of visiting fellowship to controversial professor resulted in backlash from faculty and students

      jordan peterson
      ‘[Cambridge] is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles,’ a spokesperson for the university said of the decision to un-invite Jordan Peterson (pictured). Photograph: Mikko Stig/Rex/Shutterstock
      Sarah Marsh
      @sloumarsh
      Published onWed 20 Mar 2019 17.41 GMT
      2,639
      Cambridge University has rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, the self-styled “professor against political correctness”, after a backlash from faculty and students.

      Peterson, a psychology professor from Toronto who has courted controversy for his views on transgender rights, gender and race, announced on Monday via his YouTube channel that he was joining Cambridge for two months.

      “In October I am going to Cambridge University in the UK for two months and I will be a visiting fellow there at the divinity school and should give me the opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months, as well as students,” he said. “It’s a thrill for someone academically minded … to be invited there, to sit in and participate for a few months.”

      The University of Cambridge said Peterson requested to be a visiting fellow and was initially granted the opportunity, but after further review it decided to take back the offer.

      “[Cambridge] is an inclusive environment and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot,” a spokesperson for the university said.

      Peterson, whose self-help book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, became a bestseller in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany and France, has amassed more than 1 million followers on Twitter.

      In September 2016 he expressed concern on YouTube about the development of a federal amendment to add gender identity and expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act. This would make it illegal to stop someone from getting a job or discriminate against them in the workplace based on the gender they identify with or outwardly express.

      Peterson claimed the law was an infringement of free speech and said that he would refuse to use any pronoun other than he or she. His views sparked protests across Toronto University’s campus.

      He also challenged his university’s plans for mandatory anti-bias training and has railed against Marxism, human rights organisations, HR departments and “an underground apparatus of radical left political motivations” forcing gender-neutral pronouns on him.

      In an interview in April 2018, he doubted the science behind climate change: “Most of the global warming posturing is a masquerade for anti-capitalists to have a go at the Western patriarchy. That’s partly why the climate change thing for me is a contentious issue, because you can’t trust the players. You can’t trust the data because there is too much ideology involved.”

      In a statement, Cambridge University students’ union said: “We are relieved to hear that Jordan Peterson’s request for a visiting fellowship to Cambridge’s faculty of divinity has been rescinded following further review. It is a political act to associate the University with an academic’s work through offers which legitimise figures such as Peterson.

      “His work and views are not representative of the student body and as such we do not see his visit as a valuable contribution to the University, but one that works in opposition to the principles of the University.”

      The Guardian has contacted Peterson for comment.

      1. …Cambridge issued a statement: ‘The university defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions, which others might find controversial… – as long as they agree with that opinion. Otherwise, the academic is O.U.T.

      2. In case you didn’t have time to read the article I have just posted here is the crux:

        We expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles,’ a spokesperson for the university said of the decision to un-invite Jordan Peterson.

        In other words: think what you like but make sure you have the thoughts we approve of or you’ll have to go.

        .

      3. If his values are not representative then it’s even more important he be brought in. You learn by having your views challenged and arguing your case using logic.

        If students cannot cope with challenge, they’re not learning. Not learning means no point pretending it’s an academic institution but merely just a very expensive kennel for young humans.

  38. “My Covid-19 symptoms have lasted more than 100 days…” Statnews 12 July 2010.

    Some in the group had prolonged low-grade fevers that didn’t respond to standard fever-reducing medications. Some experienced terrifying neurological manifestations such as memory loss and changes in their ability to recall words in a primary or secondary language. Others were battling exercise-induced fatigue, with attempts at walking around the block sparking a relapse of symptoms. I’ve seen people citing symptoms in the central and peripheral nervous systems, the gastrointestinal tract, the skin, cardiovascular system, and more.

    I have had some of these symptoms for months, but they have not been severe enough to force me into a hospital. IMO, for an old man to let the medicos decide to intubate and hook him up to a ventilator is suicidal.

    I saw my family physician two weeks ago for a routine visit and we discussed this. He did not seem overly concerned about the old man. Perhaps he is tired of me.

    The media continue to rant and rave against re-opening the economy, opening the schools, etc. This is pathetically, obviously, part of a “throw it all at the barn door and see what sticks” effort to raise the public’s discomfort reaction to such a level that enough of them will give the marxists and the machine Democrats the perhaps irreversible power they lust for. Judge Emmet Sullivan is just another such operative in this game. So far, their Goebbelsian campaign is working.

    I did the arithmetic today on Florida’s casualties to date. Florida has around 20 million inhabitants and just over 4000 deaths attributed to COVID-19. This yields a product number of .03 % death in the overall population. The same arithmetic against deaths among those said to be infected (254,000) yields 1.6 %.

    This is the Black Death? I think not. Pat Lang

    The view from the States.

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

      1. Be good to your spouse, remember right now they could poison you and it would be counted as a Covid death

        2. Hush! Don’t give her ideas – She already has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Murder Mysteries and I often catch her watching NICS…. 🙁

    2. Was it something like 15 000 new cases in Florida yesterday, the statistics may well be changing away from “who cares” towards a matter for attention.

      The new case count is increasing by 500 to a thousand each day, hardly insignificant but don’t worry Disney opened up.

    3. I saw my family physician two weeks ago for a routine visit and we discussed this. He did not seem overly concerned about the old man. Perhaps he is tired of me.

      Perhaps because the old man was not his patient. How many times have I been asked at parties. “This friend of mine has such-&-such a dental problem…” STFU!

      1. I got the impression that the author was referring to himself as the old man so it seems likely that he would be the patient of “my family physician”

        1. Hmmm… Reading it again, I see what you mean, but OTOH, why does he refer to the old man & not an old man?

          1. I think it is down to the peculiar way he phrased the paragraph/sentence regarding intubation and “an old man” and just continued with the thread.

            Certainly slightly odd.

  40. We have more than 20,000 hospital beds in Scotland and over 400 intensive care places. Are they empty?

    From the BBC: “A total of 550 patients are in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, she added. Of these six were in intensive care, no change in the past 24 hours.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-53386093

  41. Black British history: the row over the school curriculum in England. 13 july 2020.

    Of the 59 GCSE history modules available from the three biggest exam boards, Edexcel, AQA and OCR, 12 explicitly mention black history. Only five mention the history of black people in Britain, the rest are about black people in the US, other countries or the transatlantic slave trade.

    Of the five that cover black history in Britain, three include migration, one deals with empire in the 17th and 18th century, and one mentions race relations in postwar Britain in a thematic study of power over an 850-year period.

    Of course it is a long time ago but I think my school syllabus consisted of 2 x 45 mins history lessons a week. I can remember nothing of them except some generalisations about Caesar in Kent and William at Hastings. I learned about history in the school library where I read all the fiction books by Henry Treece, Rosemary Sutcliffe and Ronald Welch with a thorough grounding in politics provided by The Young Caesar by Rex Warner. This gradually led to an interest in the real, so much so that I was an expert on the Legions by the time I was sixteen. So I suspect it is nowadays. For all the talk here about modules I doubt that anyone learns anything from them worthy of the effort. History requires vast amounts of time to read and weigh the various views and opinions and after many years you will arrive at a synthesis of these that will be very nearly the truth. For all my love of it I don’t think I would raise any objections if the subject were dropped (along with a lot of others) from the curriculum entirely.

    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jul/13/black-british-history-school-curriculum-england

    1. “History teaches us that history teaches us nothing” – don’t know who said that, but I think it’s true.

      1. I don’t think that it teaches us nothing only that our leaders are incapable or unable to learn from it!

    2. You know what (to quote Hayley Turner)? I am beginning to wish we didn’t have ANY black people at all. I hope the wokery is happy about that.

        1. All of them descended from Merlin (Arthur’s chum), Roman legionnaires, and a few later slaves from Jamaica.

        2. I remember the fifties – they were good times. We didn’t have much, but we were, on the whole, happy. There was a police house in the village and a village policeman who knew everybody. We could leave our door unlocked and not be burgled. Neighbours helped out if a family had problems (my mother had to go into hospital for a serious operation and I spent the time with a widowed neighbour because my father had to work).

    3. I agree that teaching of history is so poor and disjointed one feels it’s almost not worth bothering with, but if compleetely wiped from the syllabus, would many children grow not knowing any such thing as history actually exists to be studied.

      1. I gave up history after the third year, so didn’t take it for O level. By that time we’d done the Romans, Saxons, Tudors, etc and were starting on things like the Corn Laws. All pretty dull stuff but I much enjoyed historical fiction. Later on I developed an interest in Family History which has kept me going for over 20 years.

        1. I have the distinction of having failed both history O Level and A Level. I didn’t want to take history A Level, but had no choice – with my problems with numbers I knew perfectly well I’d fail, given it was European History from the end of the Hundred Years’ War to 1914 and British History from 1810 to 1914. There are an awful lot of treaties, all with dates, in those time spans. Not only that, none of my preferred periods (Tudors, Stuarts and the Battle of Britain) was included. I would far rather have taken a third language (either German or Greek) but it didn’t fit in the timetable and the Head refused to let me take three languages as a matter of principle, thus preventing me from reading Classics (no Greek) or double modern languages (no German). I went off and studied Russian from scratch (to gasps when it was announced in assembly where everybody was going and what they were going to study!) instead.

          1. I did music O level which didn’t fit the timetable so dropped history as the syllabus didn’t fire me with enthusiasm. I continued with geography, which i just about scraped through. Maths was a lost cause – but I got grade 8 when the bottom was 9 , so I thought that was an achievement. I would have liked to have done another language apart from French & Latin, so I eventually did German in my thirties.

          3. I like history, I’m just not good at numbers, so consistently get the dates wrong. Not a problem when I’m reading it for interest, rather more so when it’s being marked for an exam!

          1. Each to his own, Johnny. The world woud be a dull place if we all thought the same. On the other hand, that seems to be what the lefties want, as no other opinions are allowed.

      4. History and geography are the same subject.

        Every event in history took place somewhere. Every location on the planet has existed throughout history.

        You cannot study or discuss history or geography without completely involving the other.

        1. Afternoon Grizz. Perhaps you should try: Why the West Rules – For Now, by Professor Ian Morris. Geography as fate!

          2. Afternoon Plum. Yes we can see the Anglosphere breaking up around us. When that is finished the US will be only one of the worlds hegemons!

          5. Democracy is always lauded but it has rather a dark history. This is partly because to get the Plebs to go to war you have to make it an existential crisis and thus all conflict becomes a fight for survival itself with all that follows.

            Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.

          6. Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant

            The founding principle of The Ropery.

          10. Afternoon Plum. Yes we can see the Anglosphere breaking up around us. When that is finished the US will be only one of the worlds hegemons!

          12. If you go to Africa every country is now a sh*t hole now why is that.? ( South Africa is slowly going the same way.)

          14. Because they defecate in the street which in the heat dries out and then turns to dust which covers every surface. You also breathe it in. President Trump was right to call these places ‘shitholes’.

          15. They were doing that in Dorset recently……..no loos open, so people use gardens.

          16. There is a campaign to end open defecation in West Africa but it’s been following a model that was fairly successful in India but largely failed in Nigeria.

      5. My O-level history textbook made a dubious claim about the Luxembourg franc, which I was able to put to rest a mere fifty years later.

  42. You have all read about the demand that we “Go out and spend” – and “Use your local restaurant” to get the economy moving…..

    Last night, son and D-i-L went to a pub on the coast at about 5.15. Enjoyed a drink in the garden. (It was a glorious day). About ten to six, couple at next table were served very nice looking cheeseburgers. At six, Dan went into the bar and asked for some of the same..

    “Sorry, mate,” the barman said, “The kitchen closed at 6 pm. Would you like another drink?”

    They went elsewhere………………

    1. Say it ain’t so…

      RISHI’S £170,000 FEMALE FOCUSED SEX PARTY INVESTMENT

      Dishy Rishi is about to live up to his nickname after the Treasury conditionally approved a £170,000 investment in a female-focused sex party company for swingers. Taking his “Eat Out to Help Out” slogan literally…

      Killing Kittens, described by the Guardian as “a members-only sex club”, launched a crowdfunding campaign in May – to help it transition from an events-based company to a “sex tech platform” company that runs some events – raising £170,000 from investors, which the government is to match through the Future Fund scheme. Thanks to Rishi, the UK taxpayer will hold a 1.47% stake in the company if it fails to repay the government loan…

      Rishi’s Wednesday mini-budget was criticised by some left-wing MPs for being too targeted at male-dominated industries, so the likes of Sarah Olney will be delighted to hear the Treasury’s latest taxpayer splurge are to a company designed to be “female friendly”, with Killing Kittens:

      “fully focused on the pursuit of female pleasure. Girls remain at the forefront…in control, knowing what they want whilst also empowering adventurous couples the world over.”

      Presumably Labour will oppose the Treasury handout, if only because the company’s name will bring back sore memories for their Shadow Business Secretary. Guido does question the viability of the sex-orgy business in a time of social distancing, still, it is only taxpayers’ money…

      https://order-order.com/2020/07/13/rishis-170000-female-focused-sex-party-investment/#comments

      1. I do like the idea of ” a government handout “.
        More likely, a hand job … sorry folks !

  43. 321287+ up ticks,
    Is there any truth that priti pet. was seen on the ferry crossing to france
    releasing the contents of a 45 gallon oil drum from the stern of the ferry ?

  44. Our fearful leaders are failing to stand up to a radical woke minority.

    The Lefts’s march through the institutions will continue until the Right organises its fight back.

    How have we allowed things to get this far? How is it that a minority of extreme activists can dictate to politicians, broadcasters, universities, firms and the wider world what can and cannot be said, and who can and cannot say it? Why do they get to determine the true meaning of words written or spoken by others?

    As the mainstream grapples with these questions, several old thinkers keep coming up. Michel Foucault, a post-modernist, argued that all discourse is oppressive. Antonio Gramsci, a Marxist, said that cultural hegemony perpetuates political hegemony. Rudi Dutschke, another Marxist, advocated a “long march through the institutions of power”, in which the Left would transform society by seizing control of organisations within and beyond the state.

    Each of these thinkers, and more recent academics, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American theorist of intersectionality, help us to understand where we are today. But we also need to ask ourselves a more prosaic question: how are we allowing an aggressive minority to dictate a new moral code that is intellectually incoherent, ethically dubious and deeply divisive?

    The answer comes from another old political thinker. “An organised minority,” Gaetano Mosca once said, “inevitably forces its will upon the disorganised majority.” And while Left-wingers organise, often hiding their radical agenda behind apparently reasonable slogans like “Stop the War”, “Extinction Rebellion” and “Black Lives Matter”, their opponents are fragmented and disorganised.

    From illegal direct action – disrupting traffic, occupying private property and vandalising monuments – to violent disorder, conservatives hate this trend of radical activism. But what are they going to do?

    To be fair, most conservatives are like most people, bewildered by what is going on. It is, after all, almost impossible to argue with this strange cultural liberalism on its own terms. Language deemed unacceptable and racist when used against other groups, for example, is now encouraged when referring to white people. Concepts such as “white fragility” – surely as racist as anything said about minorities – are not only tolerated but promoted, even by the BBC.

    The idea of white fragility is especially pernicious because anybody who questions it is supposedly demonstrating their own fragility. But this modern-day witch trial has never been logical or fair. When minorities fail to conform and hold conservative beliefs, for example, they are attacked in violent, and even racist, terms. Just think of the Guardian’s depiction in a cartoon of Priti Patel, a Hindu, as a cow.

    It is also why theories of intersectionality – the idea that black women, for example, have different experiences from black men and white women – are all the rage, yet nobody makes this argument about white working class boys, whose chances in life are at least as tough as those of any minority. In fact, in the doublethink of cultural liberalism, just referring to the white working class is a crime, because it “legitimises racist attitudes”. Predictably, those who make this argument were silent when a leading Black Lives Matter campaigner called white people “sub-human” and “recessive genetic defects”.

    But confusion cannot be used as an excuse for fear and cowardice. For rather than taking a stand for common sense and free speech, people in positions of power often prefer to surrender to a noisy minority who bay for blood each time they identify so-called “micro-aggressions”. And so it was that, after criticising the Black Lives Matter campaign, Nick Buckley was sacked by the Manchester charity he founded. Baroness Nicholson was sacked as vice-president of the Booker Prize for her views on trans issues. After asserting her feminist beliefs, Suzanne Moore was denounced by Guardian colleagues as a “transphobe”. The list goes on.

    Sometimes the problem is not cowardice but cynicism and complicity. It suited Sadiq Khan to play silly games with statues rather than address the thornier subject of making sure the police use their powers legally and respectfully, while still remaining tough enough to reduce crime. It is not only Labour. Ministers will this week rule out allowing people to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis, but it was Tory ministers who, hoping to appear “progressive”, originally proposed the change.

    Companies not known for their sense of social responsibility are also desperate to prove their woke credentials. HSBC, arguably complicit in Beijing’s assault on Hong Kong, lectures British customers that “we are not an island”. From footballers to bankers – representing two of the most rapacious industries going – many have rushed to “take the knee” in solidarity with a campaign that wants to “abolish capitalism”. On Twitter, tea firms explain that they are “educating themselves” about racism, while the Body Shop piled into the criticism of JK Rowling over her feminist critique of trans campaigners. Twitter itself promises to police language and warns its users to avoid gendered pronouns.

    One can argue that none of this matters much. After all, ministers are contending with an unprecedented public health crisis and a deep recession; they are leading Britain out of the EU, and have ambitious plans to rebalance the country’s economy. But Gramsci was right. Cultural hegemony does bring political hegemony. Those who police our language police our moral code and our behaviour. Those who promote ideas like “white privilege” and “white fragility” undermine the cohesion of our country. Those who view everything through a prism of race or gender see complex problems in simplistic ways, and fail to see injustices of other kinds.

    Thanks to confusion, cowardice and cynical complicity, our leaders are allowing the mainstream majority to be bossed around by highly organised ideological and unrepresentative radicals. But an organised minority can only force its will on the rest of us as long as we are disorganised. In government, on campus, in business and across society, it is time for conservatives to fight back.

    Nick Timothy, Daily Telegraph 13/07/20.

    This is what I have been warning about for a number of years now, Nick. We, the sensible and supposedly intelligent members on the Right, have been caught with our trousers down and our thumbs up our arses whilst the Left have mobilised their forces and taken positive action.

    They have inveigled themselves into every position of power and influence in the country and inside the establishment, whilst we have remained sitting, or supine, tut-tutting at everything on social media or writing our “Mr Angry of Tunbridge Wells” missives to newspapers.

    If the Right had remained alert and watchful, this wouldn’t have happened. We are now lamenting our inertia and, in panic mode, fruitlessly searching for an answer as how to even begin the fight back.

    Short of a revolution, matters will continue to deteriorate for some considerable time.

    2. When you think, our grovelling leaders are willing to bend and change and to destroy our heritage for a group that is no more than 3%of the population. The number of blacks who are actually bothered will be only a small element of the 3% but are bolstered by the white wokes. A society which does not protect its values and goes belly up to a group that was not even here as an identifiable metric one generation ago is doomed to failure. However, it is not the blacks that are slowly taking over but the followers of the hostile ideology of big Al.

      1. When that 3%, along with their witless, white, ‘woke’ supporters take over, it won’t be too long before the country will have deteriorated to the pitiful levels that South Africa, Zimbabwe, and a few other similar states have done since industrious whitey was killed off.

    3. The younger generations have been cowed by being re-educated with the ‘Diversity programs’ none of which appear to take into account our indigenous diversity ….

      1. There’s a new initiative to make equestrianism more diverse. Personally, I’m happy with it the way it is. We have the occasional Asian dressage rider (Anand Patel) and Oliver Skeete was a show jumper at one time. That’s fine by me. Don’t shoe horn people into equestrianism just on the colour of their skin.

  45. Afternoon, all. It’s been raining, so I’ve abandoned the garden for Nottl distraction. I have finally managed to make an appointment at the local hospital for a blood test for MOH (at the second attempt; the first time I was told I was sixth in the queue so I put the phone down and took the dog for a walk). We both have to wear masks, which is going to be fun [not]. I’ll take a couple of scarves with me in case they don’t supply any. Scarves, apparently, will be acceptable, which makes a bit of a mockery of the purpose behind wearing a mask, I would have thought. Still, mustn’t think, must we? There’s a panic on, after all.

    2. As Firstborn said to me last week: “If you can smell my farts after they have seeped through 2 layers of cloth, how will a mask help anything?” – he has a point, the virus is very small…

  46. Russia Completes Human Trials Of Covid-19 Vaccine. 13 July 2020.

    After Brazil was the first emerging market to get a test drive of the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine, its Russia that is the first to complete human trials.

    Elena Smolyarchuk, chief researcher for the Russian Center for Clinical Research on Medications at Sechenov University, told TASS newswire on Sunday that human trials for the vaccine had been completed and those test patients will be discharged soon.

    “The research has been completed and it proved that the vaccine is safe. The volunteers will be discharged on July 15 and July 20,” Smolyarchuk was quoted as saying in the report.

    Old Vlad on the ball!

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/07/13/russia-completes-human-trials-of-covid-19-vaccine/#428817187153

      2. Got out by polytunnel. They should have seen it coming when the 4 of them started eating nothing but runner beans.

    2. They cannot find a vaccine for the common cold so thery have no chance, as all viruses change their structure all the time.

    3. We always have a bottle in use and a bottle on the shelf. So we will be fine for months.Thats the problem when the firm is owned by japs.

      1. I normally do. But I use it very day and when I first ventured back to Tesco, they didn’t have anything except their own brand in very small bottles. Last week, they did have some little bottles of the genuine stuff, but none of the normal size.

        1. There is absolutely no substitute for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. Own-brand and Heinz versions are YUKK!

          1. Holbrook’s was an adequate substitute. It’s now manufactured in Australia.

      2. Owned by KraftHeinz. Not bought by us as we have boycotted all Heinz products. I had a slight contretemps with them as they did a promotion of sauce samples done up to look like a packet of three condoms, sort of thing, aimed specifically at students. I wrote to the UK HQ. No sense. I wrote to the US HQ. No sense there either.

        2. “done up to look like a packet of three condoms” Bloody Johnny foreigners.

          4. 21 months ago and you’ve still got it ! What’s wrong with you man? Anyone would think you were a Southerner.

          6. Yes, we use that now. Today, in the spag bol. Does not have any anchovies though. On the other hand it tastes much the same, so maybe the amount of anchovies in L&P is very small.

          7. No anchovies because it’s made in Yorkshire. They use fermented whippets and ferrets instead.

  49. Guido has put up a link to a gofundme site aiming to defund the BBC:

    “The campaign group Defund the BBC is ramping up its
    activity after the Beeb confirmed three million more households will be
    forced to pay for a licence fee from next month. They are appealing for
    funds via a Go Fund Me Page, so they can keep the pressure on the government,
    just as reports suggest decriminalisation of non-payment of the fee is “on the agenda”.
    The BBC ignored their promise to former Chancellor George Osborne when they
    moved to target the elderly, meaning over-75s could now be jailed for
    not funding them. Defund The BBC is now the largest group pushing to end the BBC’s stranglehold over
    UK media, after recently assembling an experienced campaign team.”
    The link to make a contribution is here:

    https://www.gofundme.com/f/defund-the-bbc

    1. Happy to add a ‘smidge’. They are just over £27,000 towards target of £100,000.

      Would love to see smirk wiped off of Lineker’s face!

  50. Headline from so-called Independent: ‘Poland’s anti-LGBT president Andrzej Duda wins re-election, say officials.’

    Think there is rather more to him than that, but interesting what the Indy regards as important.

    1. “The Independent” – now there’s an oxymoron, with the emphasis on moron!

    2. What is interesting is the demographics of who voted for him.

      Apparently he’s their equivalent of Trump in divisiveness terms.

      Comically people on the left are complaining about the Right surging ahead yet don’t seem to realise the chaos they’ve created that has caused the demand for sound, rational government.

  51. I wonder if some brave woman might start a movement of white single mothers whose children grow up to describe themselves as “black” even when they have rarely, if ever, met their fathers. A former President of the United States springs to mind. Is it not a form of racism to prioritise the ethnicity of one parent while denying the other?

    2. Follow the money; well, after white grandparents have paid the school fees, of course.

    3. For our parents’ generation the expression “a touch of the tar-brush” said it all.

  52. Fun fact………..

    In the 1630s there was a song only played in the Sistine chapel. The Vatican kept the composition of “Miserere Mei Deus” secret for 150 years until 14-year old Mozart listened to it twice, transcribed it from memory and produced the first unauthorized copy. This is one of the earliest records of musical piracy !

    1. The Vatican had it coming! If they’d published the music, they could have collected royalties. Incredible piece of music, btw.

    2. There was a fabulous performance of the Allegri Miserere at the Proms a couple of seasons back. Late night with the Albert Hall lights dipped.

  53. Good morning, all. A smashing weekend. My son and daughter-in-law did SO much around the garden, including pruning three wysterias, a hydrangea petiolatis (which had become enmeshed with the electricity and phone cables; and a ‘Kiftsgate’ rose which had take over the west wall of the house. A real devil of a job.

    They are such good company and so happy together.

    The only downside was when they talked about their children (two each). All mid-20s. Three graduates in sensible subjects. Lovely people, bright, funny and very good company.

    BUT – Dan and Di told us that three of them are hooked on sochul meeja and BELIEVE EVERY WORD. Dan tried to explain to them that, for example, BLM is a Marxist outfit determined to destroy the way of life that enabled these young people to have happy childhoods and a decent education. They simply refused to listen to him – saying that the brain-dead “clebs” whom they “follow” on sochil meeja were right – and everyone else was wrong.

    The two parents felt very depressed about this – and the inability of their children even to think that there might be another view…..

    Other than that – a good time was had by all….

    1. You had time to talk to them after they were tasked with that much garden work?

      I bought myself one of those fancy zero turn mowers at the weekend, I can now our three and a bit acres in less than two hours. Driving it is a scary business though, it felt counter intuitive to pull back on the handles to slow it down which is my excuse for denting a tree. I never thought that I would appreciate having a seat belt on a lawnmower.

      1. Yikes – they cost a bomb! I have a bloke who comes and does our grass. I am past it….

      2. I seem to remember from when I used to fly that one has to pull back on airport luggage trolleys to stop them.

  57. Simon Hopkinson Sticky toffee pudding. No calories at all…. 🙂

    Yield4 PeopleActive TimeLess than 30 minsTotal Time30 mins to 1 hour

    Ingredients

    For the sponge

    175g/6oz dates, chopped

    1 rounded tsp bicarbonate of soda

    50g/2oz salted butter

    pinch salt

    75g/2½oz demerara sugar

    75g/2½oz molasses sugar

    2 free-range eggs

    175g/6oz self-raising flour

    1 tsp vanilla extract

    butter, for greasing

    For the sticky toffee topping

    250ml/9fl oz double cream

    80g/3oz butter

    80g/3oz molasses sugar

    For the extra sauce

    300ml/10fl oz whipping cream

    50g/2oz molasses sugar

    50g/2oz salted butter

    double cream, to serve

    Preparation

    1. Preheat the oven to
    180C/350F/Gas 4.
    2. Pour 275ml/10fl oz boiling water into a large mixing bowl and add
    the dates. Stir and set aside until lukewarm. Meanwhile, measure out all
    the other ingredients for the sponge. Add them to the dates and water
    and mix together until well combined.
    3. Blend the date mixture in a food processor until nearly smooth, but
    with a few specks of date still visible. Generously butter a baking
    dish on all surfaces and pour in the sponge batter. Bake for 40 minutes,
    or until just firm to the touch.
    4. Preheat the grill to medium.
    5. Meanwhile, make both the topping and the extra sauce by heating the
    ingredients gently in separate pans, whisking regularly, until they
    briefly boil. Pour the topping over the cooked pudding.
    6. Place the sticky toffee pudding under a moderate grill until
    bubbling.
    7. To serve, spoon the pudding into individual bowls and pour around
    the extra sauce.

      1. I think not Willum,the only time I tried shop bought the sponge was bland while the other elements were sickeningly sweet,overall,revolting
        Whereas my sister’s version is pure ambrosia

    3. If I even looked at that, I’d gain four pounds.
      I recently realised that my father who is in his late 80s eats more calories a day than I do, and doesn’t put on weight!
      Penalty for sitting at a computer all day I suppose. (and then relaxing on the computer when I get home doesn’t help either!)

        1. We have a sofa, after several years of not having one, but I rarely sit on it. Habit. I’m just not used to it!

      2. If you are that long at the computer i would suggest you do some stretching exercises every so often.

        1. I’m a software developer, my exercise during the work day consists of going to the kitchen to fetch more coffee (black, no sugar). I have low blood sugar etc because I fast for at least 14 hours a day. I’m fed up with eating so little, but I know from experience my weight will balloon within a few days if I let up.
          We made some home-made bread at the start of lockdown, I gained ten pounds in the first two weeks. I only eat proper cooked meals at the weekend, the rest of the time it’s just salads.
          I love food and hate this regime.

          1. Commiserations.

            I use Fybogel to keep the hunger pangs at bay. Good for clearing the colon too.

            Salads can be made more interesting. Add things like baby artichoke and black olives and anchovies.

            I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that you need to get away from that desk occasionally.

          2. All my food’s super high fibre anyway (dark choc, kiwis, walnuts, apricots, brassicas, beans etc) because I suffered from poor gut health when I was younger. It was the root cause for a lot of symptoms like depression, headaches and such. Runs in my family I think, as we tend to be a gloomy lot.

            I’d love to take early retirement and get away from the desk, not a hope in hell. I lost too much of my early working life to the above ailments.

    4. I love Simon Hopkinson’s recipes. I have his Roast Chicken and Other Stories book. It was voted ‘best cookery book’ in the DT awards about 20 years ago, voted for by chefs all cross the country.

      1. On my bookshelf. Plus i bought his Bibendum and The Good Cook. He is clearly passionate about food and cookery.

        When Roast Chicken and other stories came out i was so impressed with it that i bought 8 more copies for the women in my family. I got rather mixed responses.

        1. “Elsie Bloodaxe” asked me for a recommendation for an all-purpose cookery book. I suggested Roast Chicken & Other Stories and he tells me he likes it.

          1. What “other stories”, Grizz? Loking for a new cookery book, but not much interested in one that focuses on chicken – world’s dullest meat.

          2. It has quite comprehensive chapters on: anchovies, asparagus, aubergine, brains, ceps, chicken (natch!), chocolate, cod, coriander, crab, cream, custard, eggs, endive, garlic, grouse, hake, kidneys, lamb, leeks, liver, olive oil, onions, parmesan, parsley, peppers, pigeon, pork pieces and bacon bits, potatoes, rabbit, saffron, salmon, scallops, smoked haddock, spinach, steak, sweetbreads, tomatoes, tripe, and veal. It is certainly a good all-rounder for both the novice and accomplished cook.

    5. I made sticky toffee pudding once. I honestly believe it subverts the laws of physics; the vast pile of butter, cream and sugar just sort of vanished into nothing. Astounding. It was delicious, but I’ve never eaten it since.

  58. That’s me for the day. Still basking in the memory of son and D-i-L’s visit.

    Risking a trip to Narridge tomorrow – our longest journey since 21 March.. I’ll wear a mask, of course…and sanitise the car door handles….

    MR has to go to the dentist – amazingly, she rang this morning and got an apptmt tomorrow. I shall go to Panks for Pumps to get two parts for the 1,000 litre water butts. If they re open…..

    Drink in hand – have a jolly evening – in the rain.

    A demain

    1. Just for a moment I thought you were after shoes from Panks… silly me!
      :-((

        1. It’s Panks for Pumps. Must be a hardware store, judging by what Bill was going to buy there.

        2. A shop? No idea. I might go to Panks to buy pumps, if pumps was what I needed. The water shifting kind, or the foot covering kind.

    1. UC is always on throughout été, automne and hiver. It is only absent during printemps.

  60. Mail to a Conservative MP… one of the better ones………….

    Perhaps you question my motives for researching and analyzing so much detail into ”influence” and how it has affected the UK ? Well, my motives are simple. I don’t like watching what I believe is the UK being forced to have very damaging policies over a very long period of time by politicians and officials who apparently are secretly acting for billionaires and overseas organizations because they have been promised huge benefits for themselves as a ”quid pro quo”.

    There certainly looks to be a lot of ”quid pro quo” around, and much as expected, the news in the ”Daily Mail” indicates the UK as a rosy apple into which China has likely bored on one side, and billionaires on the other…………….

    ”Chinese fixer targets FIVE Prime Ministers: New evidence of Beijing’s infiltration of British Establishment as it emerges leading figure ‘tasked with grooming foreign elites’ met politicians including Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Tony Blair”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8515561/Chinese-fixer-targets-five-leaders-New-evidence-Chinas-infiltration-British-Establishment.html

    Is this why Brits got stuffed with Hinkley Point which might never work, and why Prime Minister Johnson has been crazy for Huawei and a Chinese HS2 ?

    We know about Theresa May and her series of million dollar plus speeches. A series of eight so far which would have been about twelve by now had some not been postponed due C-19. That would have meant about $2,000,000 plus expenses. We know now about David Cameron and his link to billionaire S long suspected.

    What was dismissed as ”conspiracy theories” about the Marriage Act, Gaddafi and other issues, I think now look pretty realistic theories. The Withdrawal Agreement, a likely product of the Open Society machine. Scottish politics likely influenced too given the apparent connections and policies of Nicola Sturgeon. The links appear to go deep.

    The latest development is the extraordinary similarity of statements on very important policy by a very high ranking UK official to the desires of billionaire S. Foretold remarkably by Trevor Coult MC long ago if you remember what he said. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but it certainly looks odd given the fervor with which it has been embraced.

    So what does the UK need ? A good dose of truth, honesty, complete explanation without cover ups, and communication with the public I would have thought. Someone who will tell the whole story without fear or favor to their party. Someone who can evoke the spirit of Elizabeth 1 at Tilbury, Wellington, Churchill and Lady Thatcher. Someone who in the interests of the UK will take some risks and not hide behind the furniture. Someone who could gain the respect of the nation. The UK badly needs another hero.

    Who could that remarkable individual be ? Do you have any ideas, Sir ?

    Polly

  62. “Boris Johnson has said people in England “should be wearing” face
    coverings inside shops to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53388444
    “There may be enforcement tools”
    Well Boris,you cretin,you utter cockwomble,you useless wanksock you can just FOAD before I wear a muzzle

    1. Should be does not mean must. May be means there won’t necessarily be. What a waste of space.

      1. “there may be enforcement…”

        Boris has lost it. If masks should have been encouraged at all, that was months ago, before the death rate fell to negligible.

    2. I think he knows it will put more people off shopping than it entices in, so he’s being mealy -mouthed.

  63. Forgive me if I brag a little; my three-year-old in training with Mark Johnston has just won a little race at Kempton Park. He was stone last for most of the race before steaming up the outside (he had a poor draw) and winning by 3/4 of a length. I am gobsmacked. He was giving them all weight (at least 2lb) and there were plenty with better, more recent form than he. I wasn’t expecting much so am really thrilled. It was his first start of the season as well. Woo-hoo!

    4. Racing language is so different , but wow I understand your excitement , and can understand how thrilled you are . Clever brave horse . Congratulations to all involved .

          1. No, owners are not encouraged (there are very few badges issued) and the protocols make it unwelcoming – for one thing I live a long way from Kempton, so only being able to be there for the race itself, having no entry to the parade ring or winners’ enclosure, and being subject to temperature checks before being allowed in means not only could I potentially have driven all the way there, only to be refused on a technicality, but in any case it would be for a maximum of three quarters of an hour. I watched it on the replay thanks to Sporting Life. If I have a runner over the sticks at Bangor (on Dee/is y coed) I might give it a go because that isn’t nearly as far.

          2. That’s a shame. To watch one of yours winning must be worth the money ploughed in to training, stabling, vets bills, and so on.

          3. We’re lucky to be racing at all, even if it’s “behind closed doors”. At first no owners were allowed, but they are relaxing it a bit now. Still not the racing experience I am used to and enjoy, though. The last time I went racing was at Haydock Park in February when I got caught in Storm Brian on the way back and went down with the C19 lurgy thanks to getting so cold and wet waiting on railway stations. I got my ticket money refunded from the various train companies and I suppose I acquired C19 immunity into the bargain as well as a win, so although it was unpleasant at the time, it wasn’t all a disaster 🙂

          4. I once accompanied a trainer pal to Southwell for a day out, he had a runner there which he told me with some confidence “was going to win”. I asked him how he was so sure, he told me that there was only one other serious contender in the race and, as it had changed stables the week before, was unlikely to put in a good performance. He laid cash bets with all the trackside bookies (spreading it around in order to preserve the odds) and the horse won. He picked up a huge wad of cash, about 6 inches high.

          5. Southwell on the all-weather or Southwell over the jumps? Presumably the former. Changing stables can set a horse back (they like routine), but sometimes it rejuvenates them. We bred one who was a box walker (spent all his time walking around his stable using up energy). He went to Donald McCain who put him in a field with just a field shelter and some mates and he was fine. He went on to win several races.

          6. All-weather. It was one of my only brushes with horse racing. I have an ex-colleague friend who went into ownership and I believe he now has the distinction of having had a runner at every course in the land. Whatever turns you on…..

            Are you familiar with arbitrage betting?

          7. Despite living within 1/4 mile of Carlisle Racecourse for the first thirty years of my life, I’ve been to the races twice. Both were ‘sponsored’ occasions: once at Newmarket, at the July course, and once at Cheltenham. Each time, I left with more money than I arrived with. Fortunately, I know when to stop…

          8. Despite living within 1/4 mile of Carlisle Racecourse for the first thirty years of my life, I’ve been to the races twice. Both were ‘sponsored’ occasions: once at Newmarket, at the July course, and once at Cheltenham. Each time, I left with more money than I arrived with. Fortunately, I know when to stop…

          9. Carlisle is a nice racecourse. It’s dog friendly, like Hexham and Cartmel, as well, which is a bonus. I have visited all bar one of the racecourses in England and Wales (the missing one is Taunton).

          10. No, I don’t know much about betting at all (it’s all those fractions that confuse me ). I do understand the concept of “over round”, though 🙂 I, too, have had a runner (and, amazingly enough, a winner) at every course, but I have been in (shared) racehorse ownership for a very long time.

          12. I took my first share in racehorses (and broodmares) in the very early eighties. That’s a long time to manage to accumulate winners 🙂 My early horses were with Toby Balding (uncle of Claire). Since then I’ve been with quite a few syndicates and Clubs, latterly with some very successful ones. I still retain an interest in breeding. There’s nothing quite like seeing a horse that you’ve been involved in since the selection of a stallion make it to the racecourse and even better if he or she should win.

          14. When I visited Kempton I did Lingfield as well (one was an evening meeting) so as to make the long journey worthwhile. Normally I would stay overnight if it was a long way away (I do that if I go to visit my horse with Paul Nichols as Ditcheat is such a distance), but for some reason I didn’t on that occasion and I went up and down in a day. It was a bit of a marathon.

          1. Harry’s question about SP means Starting Price for the betting. It was a handicap so each horse is allotted a weight depending on its previous performance, with a view to having all the horses go across the winning line in a dead heat (the better horses are given more weight, but an apprentice jockey can claim anything up to 10lbs which is deducted from the weight the horse is set to carry – the theory is that an apprentice is less experienced and so the horse won’t get as much help from the saddle). The draw is the position in the stalls (which can be on either side of the track or in the middle). On a round track, if you are drawn on the outside, you have to go farther unless you can get a position on the rails.

      1. 11/1. He clearly wasn’t fancied. He beat the favourite into second place (that dead-heated). Your next question would probably be, “did you have anything on?” to which the answer is, “I don’t bet, not even on my own horses” 🙂

        1. I would never be so nosey, Conway. But the SP is of interest. What I should have asked is how many runners.

          1. Ten. There was one non-runner. People usually want to know if I back my horses and are quite surprised when I say I don’t bet, despite being keen on racing. The last time I had a bet was on Millenary in the Chester Vase in 2000. I had been asked for some tips by friends who were going to the races so I checked the form and made some selections. Having done that, I thought I’d have a small flutter to back my judgement. By the time I’d won on Millenary, I’d gone through the card,so I thought it was time to stop! Quit while you’re ahead is my motto – I don’t do the Getting Out Stakes 🙂

          2. Addendum – I find I did have one bet after Millenary. I went to the Melbourne Cup in 2002 and put a small bet on Media Puzzle. My Aussie friend who accompanied me (and who had never been to the Cup before, surprisingly) was very impressed. He wanted to back Beekeeper of Godolphin’s so I persuaded him to back it each way and he was delighted to get some money back when it was placed. After that, I definitely quit while I was ahead 🙂

  66. Birdwatchers spot one of Britain’s biggest-ever wild birds as bearded vulture flies from the Alps to UK – only the second time it has been seen in this country
    Bearded vulture seen by birdwatchers on Howden Moor, Sheffield on Sunday
    Bird of prey has only been spotted once before in the UK on Dartmoor in 2016
    Two-year-old raptor travelled around 780 miles from the Alps to Peak District

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8517209/Birdwatchers-spot-one-Britains-biggest-wild-birds.html

    1. I thought the muzzies didn’t like going into the countryside and we had to make it more diverse 🙂

  67. Laughing Policeman first verse

    I know a woke ole policeman, he’s never on the street
    A woke old, rainbow clad, upon his epaulette
    He’s too fine for a policeman, he’s never seen in town
    And everybody says he is the happiest with one knee on the ground.

    Wha hahahahahahahahaha wooohhahahahaha

    woo hahahahahahaha

    1. I know a fat old policeman,
      he’s always on our street,
      a fat and jolly red faced man
      he really is a treat.
      He’s too kind for a policeman,
      he’s never known to frown,
      and everybody says he’s the happiest man in town.

      Not entirely sure of your point, Bob.

  68. Laughing Policeman first verse

    I know a woke ole policeman, he’s never on the street
    A woke old, rainbow clad, upon his epaulette
    He’s too fine for a policeman, he’s never seen in town
    And everybody says he is the happiest with one knee on the ground.

    Wha hahahahahahahahaha wooohhahahahaha

    woo hahahahahahaha

  69. I was wondering what would happen if we boycotted Chinese good entirely. Would the Chinese refuse to carry our goods in their ships? They do have a vast fleet.
    I looked up figures. Although the Chinese fleet is the third largest in the world, it is not nearly as big as that of Japan or Greece (the biggest). So no problem anticipated. The UK merchant fleet is 10th, in case you were wondering.
    However, delving deeper I found some strange statistics.
    Bulk transport of oil and gas in 1973 was 1867 million tons. In 2018 oil and gas accounted for 3194 m tons, an increase of 1327 m tons, or +71%, in 35 years.
    Even allowing for some increase in transport by long distance pipelines, and more domestic consumption over imports, that is a very small increase.
    During the same period transportation of dry goods increased from 1407 m tons to 7811 m tons, and increase of 455%. Much of this movement, 61%, was inside Asia, that is an area from Japan to India.
    It is not the developed world that is transporting, using, manufacturing, consuming, polluting, it is Asia. They are not doing it for us, but for themselves, it looks like.
    This would suggest that Extinction Rebellion have not looked at the facts or have decided that the facts are irrelevant and that the West must be destroyed anyway.

    https://stats.unctad.org/handbook/MaritimeTransport/WorldSeaborneTrade.html

    1. Extinction Rebellion have not looked at the facts or have decided that the facts are irrelevant.

        1. I remember when I was at school in the year dot , hearing that China wanted to rule the world , and make us do as we were told , and that they had the largest population ever.

          My son here at home has a nice collection of model aircraft and many different types of drones . These smaller drone machines fit into the palm of your hand , they are incredible ,, can right themselves when they crash , turn themselves back the right way round, have so much power , really and truly and have the most amazing camera which is smaller than a thumbnail.. pure genius must have invented these and they are manufactured in China .

  70. 321287+ up ticks,
    Lesser of two evils, keep him deport them.
    breitbart,
    Judges Block Deportation of Foreign Crime Boss Deemed ‘Serious Threat to Public’

  71. It wasn’t that long ago that we were shipping lots of our waste to China for processing recycling of for dumping in the sea, I was just wondering about the £ 15 billion spent on PPI mostly from China, did they convert all our old crap into face masks?

      2. WASTED AID Boris Johnson under pressure to cut £14.6b foreign aid budget after China and India handed £151m
        Adam Bennett
        31 Dec 2019, 1:13Updated: 31 Dec 2019, 19:50 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10644367/boris-johnson-foreign-aid-china-india/
        BORIS Johnson was last night under increased pressure to cut the £14.6billion foreign aid budget after it emerged China and India received £151million in UK cash – a rise of 12 per cent.

        While both giants splashed out on space programmes, British taxpayers paid for schemes to cut salty diets, send text alerts to problem drinkers and find if yoga helps diabetes sufferers.

    1. Some families are incredibly talented. The family of one chap I once met, a Consultant Microbiologist, comprises seven doctors.

        1. Given the current climate, the film will have to be renamed “Snow White and the Seven Vertically Challenged People”.

          1. The others were PhDs and, being modest chaps, preferred not to use their academic titles. Doc of course wasn’t really, just an MBCHB.

    2. We watched it last night – joyous. And none of them mentioned “white privilege”. They have done very well on their own talent.

      1. #Me too. Amazing how they were able to swap their instruments around & play them well.

      1. Highly talented, middle class, mixed -race family living in a large, detached house with a good garden. No sign of any hang-ups about “privilege”.

          3. Hmmm. My just-out-of-warranty Panasonic Croustina breadmaker used to do brilliant sourdough. Now, the finished product finally only rises half way. Can’t work out whether it’s the machine, the flour (I bought 32 kg of the bloody stuff), the yeast, or whatever. Might select the ‘dough’ setting, and do it in the oven.

        3. The BBC are only all over them because they are mixed race though, let’s face it. It’s impossible to know whether there are similar or more talented white families that are ignored for being hideously white and middle class to boot.
          I know he won some award, but frankly, anything on the BBC can’t be trusted nowadays.

          1. The Kapellmeister at my church has an incredibly talented family. He, his children and his wife all play instruments and sing beautifully. They often give concerts. Of course, they are white (and Christian) and consequently of no interest whatsoever to the Bbc.

          3. You’re right about the BBC and their motives, but it was a very enjoyable programme – there are few enough of those these days.

          4. At the weekend, I found myself sitting in a shack surrounded by piles of tyres on an industrial estate on the edge of a big town in the rain, listening to a professional concert pianist playing an old piano.

            Would have made fantastic TV, but she’s white so it wouldn’t interest the BBC.

        4. The BBC are only all over them because they are mixed race though, let’s face it. It’s impossible to know whether there are similar or more talented white families that are ignored for being hideously white and middle class to boot.
          I know he won some award, but frankly, anything on the BBC can’t be trusted nowadays.

  74. That’s me for the day. Done half the windowframes on the house – left half, naturally :-)) and can’t be arsed to continue today. Aass IPA beckons… and my right-hand is still bleeding sore – splinters of wood & dried paint make for sore & scarred pinkies :-((

    1. Perhaps the Mayor should award the contact to the London Zoological Society who are familiar with handling wild and dangerous animals?

      1. So the Mayor is taking BLM seriously by reducing the police force to nothing , and encouraging London to go pieces.

        No one will want to travel on the tubes and trains and buses if civil disorder breaks out ?

    2. Well, the change has certainly reduced the number of criminals. And as there is less chance of catching the perps, the prison tab is reduced as well. Excellent.

    2. Since 1324, all sturgeons, whales, and dolphins become the personal property of the monarch when taken in waters around the UK. Hence the entwined motif.

    4. Dunno about sturgeons, but with a vertical tail fin, definitely a Boeing fish.

  77. Washington Redskins to retire controversial team name following review.

    Perhaps they’ll rename it Washington Yellowskins…..?

    1. It seems that the Exeter Chiefs RFU club are thinking about re-naming themselves, and re-branding away from the Native American headdress logo.

      1. Sorry, it appears we both thought the same thing but I was 30 secs behind you.

    2. I wait with eager anticipation as to what will happen with Exeter Chiefs in the Rugby Premiership, do they cave as well. I don’t hold out much hope for Bristol Bears either, Bears Lives Matter.

    4. Should change it to Washington Whiteskins. I wouldn’t be offended.

      The left would screech with fury for precisely the opposite reason that they are screeching about “redskins” at the moment, i.e. that it is associated with a successful team.

      1. When Columbus landed on the Caribbean islands, he thought that he had reached part of India, so referred to the inhabitants as “Indians”. The name stuck.

          5. Some of these ‘pun’ jokes are not Apache on some others.

            [D’oh, a repeat! Sorry, Paul!]

          8. Some of these ‘pun’ jokes are not Apache on some others.

            [D’oh, a repeat! Sorry, Paul!]

    10. 90% of Native Americans are not offended by the name. Why are they always so keen to appease a tiny minority?

      1. Because tiny minorities are perpetually offended (by something – anything) and have access to sochul meeja where they are “followed” by millions…..who take on their perpetual offendedness and retweet it etc etc….

  79. Look at the comments from Simon Langelier (13 Jul 2020 5:43PM) and David Crook (13 Jul 2020 4:35PM) and then take a deep breath.

    Face masks should not be made compulsory

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    Speculation has been rife that the Government is poised to order the compulsory wearing of masks in shops in England as they already are in Scotland. It was fuelled at the weekend by the sight of Boris Johnson sporting a face covering for the first time in public. However, Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, said yesterday that, while people were encouraged to wear a mask in crowded spaces, there were no plans to make them do so in shops. “I trust people’s good sense,” he said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

    It is good to hear that, and there needs to be more trust if the Government wants the country to resume anything approaching normal life any time soon. Arguably, the mandatory wearing of masks on public transport is holding back the return of people to work. Behavioural scientists versed in the ways of “nudge” are advising ministers that masks will give people the confidence to go back to the office. But they have the opposite effect by adding to a sense of fear and foreboding.

    When governments insist on our wearing specific items, we are entitled to think they are life preserving, for instance crash helmets or seat belts. And yet little compelling scientific evidence has been produced to demonstrate the efficacy of masks. In some countries, especially in Asia, face coverings have long been commonplace among people who think they act as a barrier to disease or toxic pollutants. It has not been difficult to get their populations to wear them.

    Here, left to decide for ourselves, many of us might indeed don face coverings. By making it a personal decision, rather than a state-mandated one, more will be done to help restore confidence in the safety of public transport, shops and offices.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/12/face-masks-should-not-made-compulsory/

    1. ALM (Asian Live Matter)

      Cus HMG is 5h1T scared (of the backlash)

      Sweat shop owners love BLM, cus we Whities are scared to talk about Asian Slavery OUT LOUD

    2. Too late now. Even if they introduced born in Britain rules you would still get this kind of council in certain areas.

      1. What they need is the Test Act and Clarendon Code (but to include non-conformists and RCs). At least that way we’d get Christians.

    1. In a world that is criminally overpopulated, for a country that has no connection, whatsoever, to a family of grossly irresponsible people, yet throws considerable sums of money at them to enable them to live a life in utter workshy luxury, is an abomination beyond description.

      Compare this to how many veteran servicemen are living in dire poverty, with no support from the government whatsoever, it makes my blood (and piss) boil!

      1. Me also G, me also. I was furious when I saw that article.

        Entitlement , you couldn’t make it up. What are they doing here and why are they here?

  82. Good night all.

    Beethoven programme was excellent.

    3rd & final portion of chicken paprika, stewed plums.

  83. Millions of people have been out shopping these past 4 months without wearing masks and have not succumbed to the virus. I’ve given up asking shop workers how many of their colleagues have gone down with the virus as all I asked said none.
    It occurs to me the Government is engineering its demise to the point where the public & press are clamouring for a General Election prior to the final date of our exit from the EU…In this I hope I’m very much mistaken. However, given the recent ‘leadership’ nothing would surprise me.

  84. So – having been kept under house arrest for months, we now have to be suffocated when we we go out, just to get some food.

    1. There were reports earlier that Covid-19 can induce brain damage among a number who are infected. I’m beginning to wonder if our PM was so afflicted……

      2. It seems that there are some nasty after effects for some people who have recovered from the virus, brain damage being one, followed by heart problems. Not a pleasant thought.

    1. Enough to make you puke. Police should NOT be making political statements, especially in support of an organisation that has a record of closing down free speech.

      1. 321287+ up ticks,
        Afternoon A,
        Quite so,head of state
        by the same token as is
        dick head of law.

    4. I find it not only offensive but bloody outrageous! It is reprehensible that taxpayers’ money is being wasted on this partisan support for one small section of society. It is no wonder that the police are now so low in public esteem.

      PS Is the crown shown here the rank of Superintendent? If so, he/she should be setting a good example of neutrality and ensuring that their subordinates do the same.

      1. The basic concept of a police force is to remain impartial at all times and not show fear or favour towards or against any section of society. Being told to wear this idiocy goes directly against that basic concept.

      2. The basic concept of a police force is to remain impartial at all times and not show fear or favour towards or against any section of society. Being told to wear this idiocy goes directly against that basic concept.

    5. It is to lull you into a false sense of security whilst you are about to be tasered!

    6. It’s inappropriate, whether it’s supporting the NHS or the LGBTQWERTY brigade.

    7. I would simply refuse to wear the idiotic thing. If they wanted to discipline me I would let them, but I would still refuse to back down. They couldn’t sack me because I would not have committed any disciplinary offence.

      Disobeying an order is only valid if that order is a lawful one affecting my capability or suitability to do the job. That would not be covered in this case.

      1. Same with bending the knee. Forget it, unless you are the Monarch, or God.

        1. Kneeling’s tricky with non-functioning prosthetic ankles. I’d bend the knee to HM, but she’d have to help me up again. As for God, I’m sure he’d understand. Besides, He has enough to contend with, with the CofE bishops/hierarchy. Although He’s prolly given up on them. I know I have…

          1. I’ve been watching The Crown on Netflix. Everyone (male) coming into contact with HM just stood to attention and gave her a bow of the head.

          6. Luckily, I’m never likely to be in that position. I have one or two neighbours who may be in line for such an “honour”, but I’ll be long gone from these Surrey parts…

        1. Well, there were in my day (said whilst trying not to sound too ancient!), but I wonder how would it be possible to ‘modify’ one of today’s sackbag excuses for a uniform without improving it.

        2. On my beat I was Lord of the manor.

          I’d rather be the captain of a cruiser than first mate on a battleship.

          1. “Cruiser” is an unfortunate choice of word in this thread, Grizz…{:¬))

        2. You’re probably right. Why do they do it when we’ve all been going shopping for months and had no ill effects, hardly anybody in intensive care, very few deaths now, and they can’t let us get on as normal.

    1. Some of those commenting on Youtube don’t realise it’s a spoof. And a very funny one.

    2. Why on earth didn’t Boris Johnson release this excellent informative video back in March?

  92. Look I know it is not just me but what the f**k are our government thinking of. We have already endured 3 months of lockdown during which we were encouraged to stay at home and wash our hands.

    Months later we are asked to wear face masks. Why were we not asked to wear face masks previously? The whole episode strikes me as a near perfect example of multiple failures of government and its agencies.

    I give up in trying to understand the actions and inactions of our government. I would lay the blame equally with the supposedly scientific ‘experts’ who appear in reality to be recitative morons.

    1. Perhaps he should move to somewhere like Dudley. That’s in the Black Country, isn’t it?

          2. What! It said it couldn’t post it, now it’s been posted multiple times! Damned Discurse!

          3. Damned Discurse. It kept rejecting the post, now it’s posted it multiple times. Sorry about that.

  94. Off topic.
    Just back from a village function. Masques were conspicuous by their absence. There was dancing and singing and the odd bit of sneezing!
    Certainly three, possibly even four and just conceivably five generations of French people enjoying an evening out.

    When I expressed my appreciation to the organisers, and all the stalls we bought from, there was a view that the world had reopened.

    We’ll probably all get covid, but for one night of “normality” it might well have been worth it.

    1. The incidence of ‘covid’ in our parts (i.e. yours and mine) is close to zero. However the recent influx of tourists might change that.

      1. I suspect that it will, particularly if the numbers attending events is similar, I can’t recall one here that was so well attended. There was social distancing, but very informal.

    2. And if you don’t all get covid (or even any of you get covid), it will show the risk is nowhere near as great as project fear has attempted to make it.

  95. What’s going on with this mask nonsense??
    They’re teeing us up for compulsory vaccinations come September “to avoid a deadly second wave”
    It’s a bloody amazing virus ain’t it not dangerous until the 24th…………………..
    Fuckwits,fuckwits everywhere

    ‘Night All
    Edit
    For those that shop on line book your slots fast,thanks to the cretin in no 10 they’re vanishing faster than a snowball in hell

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