Monday 14 June: Why prolong Covid restrictions when the vast majority are now safe?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/06/13/letters-prolong-covid-restrictions-vast-majority-now-safe/

704 thoughts on “Monday 14 June: Why prolong Covid restrictions when the vast majority are now safe?”

  2. GB News launch night, review: First show beset by glitches but message comes through loud and clear. 14 June 2021.

    Could one of them perhaps, or Neil himself, have fronted GB News’s first show proper? The 9pm slot on a Sunday belongs to former Sun showbiz man Dan Wootton, one of GB News’s big-name signings, and when Neil’s introduction was over we launched into Tonight Live. Wootton has his strengths, but with Neil having spent an hour stressing that GB News would be grown-up, responsible and level-headed, what the channel cried out for was the firmest hand on the tiller from the go. If you were unsure about GB News’s claims of impartiality, you needed Brazier or McCoy to take your hand on the first night. Wootton will have scared a few nervous horses.

    Morning Everyone. Could they have chosen someone better to open than a large Homosexual Australian with unfortunate personal mannerisms? Almost certainly yes! We will have wait for GB to bed itself in before arriving at a definitive judgement!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/gb-news-launch-night-review-first-show-beset-glitches-message/

    1. I thought it was all great. The tone was great as well. Its not going to be left for sure.

    2. Minty I have to agree that in terms of its billing as ‘GB News’ the strine accent jarred somewhat. MoH decided she won’t be watching in future – not because of the content but because of the presenter.

    3. It certainly needs a bit of smoothing; the nerves were clear and understandable, but it does need to become more watchable.

    4. He is a Kiwi, born in Lower Hutt, not far from Wellington, NZ – they don’t like being called Aussies. Being a bit limp wristed he could burst into tears and spoil the show.

  5. Why is the government so reluctant to give freedom back to citizens? Theresa May. 14 June 2021.

    One year on, we are no further forward. We have a devastated industry, jobs lost and global Britain shut for business. We have gone backwards. We now have more than 50 per cent of the adult population vaccinated, yet we are more restricted on travel than we were last year.

    I really do not understand the government’s stance. It is permissible for a person to travel to countries on the amber list, provided that it is practicable for them to quarantine when they come back, but the messaging is mixed and the system chaotic.

    Portugal was put on the green list, people went to the football, then Portugal was put on the amber list, leaving holidaymakers scrabbling for flights. That is not to mention the impact on the airlines, on travel agents, and on the tourist industry.

    Business travel is practically impossible: global Britain has shut its doors to business and investors. In a normal pre-pandemic year, passengers travelling through Heathrow spent £16 billion throughout the country. That has been lost.

    There are some facts on which the government needs to be upfront with the British people about. First, we will not eradicate Covid-19 from the UK. There will not be a time when we can say that there will never be another case of Covid-19 in this country.

    Secondly, variants will keep on coming. There will be new variants every year. If the government’s position is that we cannot open up until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world, we will never be able to travel abroad ever again. The third: sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK in the future, as 10,000 to 20,000 people do every year from flu.

    We are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up.

    The government may say all they have about the importance of the aviation industry, but they need to decide whether they want an aviation sector in the UK or not, because at the rate they are going, they will not have one.

    It is incomprehensible, I think, that one of the most heavily vaccinated countries in the world is the one that is most reluctant to give its citizens the freedoms those vaccinations should support.

    Yup folks. This is that Theresa May!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/theresa-may-one-year-on-we-are-no-further-forward-

    1. I think Theresa May is a vindictive opportunist with the integrity of a sewer rat.
      The problem is that she is absolutely correct.

      2. How much of her piss poor performance as HS & PM was due to the stress of being in a job she was totally unsuited for, as well as having to deal with snivel serpents with their own agendas, was affecting he mental capacity?

        1. She was dismal at both but I don’t think she’s mad.
          The Spectator article is cogent.

    2. 334288+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      The ersatz plague is a controlling repeater issue as in a prior post when its tag runs out of countries,cities,
      towns, it will be politically stamped out, ending with
      Midsummer hamlets.

      The antidote is radical change of political overseers.

    3. Proof that the jobs of Home Secretary and PM were so beyond her abilities that the stresses of holding such important positions seriously affected her mental capacity.

  6. Plenty of supportive comments BTL

    Public fed up with virtue-signalling police who should be locking up burglars, says police chief

    Chief constable tasked with turning around Greater Manchester force warns officers’ traditional impartiality is being put at risk

    By Charles Hymas HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR
    13 June 2021 • 9:00pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/06/13/TELEMMGLPICT000260991511_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqek9vKm18v_rkIPH9w2GMNtm3NAjPW-2_OvjCiS6COCU.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Stephen Watson of Greater Manchester Police

    ‘Woke’ policing is at a ‘high water mark’ and needs to be rethought, says Mr Watson CREDIT: Heathcliff O’Malley
    The public are “fed up” with police officers’ virtue-signalling rather than locking up burglars, one of Britain’s most senior police officers has said.

    Stephen Watson, the new chief constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), said police officers’ traditional impartiality is being put at risk by “making common cause” with campaign groups by, for example, taking the knee or wearing rainbow shoelaces.

    He believes “woke” policing is at a “high water mark” and needs to be rethought. Asked if he would take the knee in uniform, he said: “No, I absolutely would not. I would probably kneel before the Queen, God, and Mrs Watson, that’s it.”

    Mr Watson, 53, has been handed one of the toughest jobs in policing: to turn around one of Britain’s biggest forces after excoriating criticism of its poor performance and the premature departure of its previous chief constable.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, he pledged to restore confidence by investigating every crime however “minor”, banning the recent fashion for “screening out” weak cases and restoring neighbourhood policing, or more colloquially “bobbies on the beat”.

    His track record suggests he can do it: he turned around the struggling South Yorkshire Police force with a similar strategy such that it was rated by HM Inspectorate of Police as the country’s most improved constabulary for three years on the trot.

    His return to Manchester also completes a circle – it was after a chance meeting with two bobbies on the beat in the city that as a young student he decided, in 1988, to turn his back on the family’s naval tradition (his father and grandfather were naval engineers) and join the police.
    *
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    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/13/public-fed-virtue-signalling-police-should-locking-burglars/

    1. Music to my ears! Feared we’d seen the last of this breed of police officer. Hopefully he won’t have to leave as a result of ‘falling down stairs’.

      1. One begins to assemble a list of old-fashioned Brits – the can-do, arse-kicking variety, who in the past painted most of the globe pink.
        First Kate Bingham, now the CC of Manchester.
        Still a way to go, but the journey has started!

    2. I would probably kneel before the Queen, God, and Mrs Watson, that’s it.
      I wonder how long he’d last in post.

    6. I must say that his inclusion of Mrs. Watson as someone whom he may kneel to was both humorous and reassuringly human.

      1. afternoon, welcome aboard. I wondered where you’d disappeared to, presumably “other sites”. Usual rules, everyone on here’s mad, but we all admit it. Catch up with you later

  7. The Swiss referendum on lockdown rules shames Britain’s authoritarian stance

    Switzerland trusts the Swiss people to decide what is best for them. It’s time the British people got the same right

    JONATHAN SAXTY 13 June 2021 • 2:03pm

    ***********************************************************

    Carpe Jugulum
    13 Jun 2021 2:29PM
    The sheer moronic stupidity of this government of scientifically illiterate liars is surpassed only by their abject ineptitude.

    This is a government that sanctions a psy-ops campaign of compliance through fear against it’s own people. A campaign that exaggerates fears beyond any hint of reality. A campaign orchestrated by the amoral trash of the SAGE behavioural psychologists cadre.

    This is a government that then doesn’t ‘follow the science’ but follows the poll results wish list from the populace it has just spent £millions on terrifying. Of course the scientific concept of a positive feedback loop doesn’t feature in Classics and PPE degrees.

    This is a government that has not carried out one single cost/benefit or efficacy analysis of one single restrictive policy! They literally do not know what they are doing or what effects they are having!

    This is a government that needs to go. Now.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/13/swiss-referendum-lockdown-rules-shames-britains-authorit

    1. This is a government that paid thousands for results from Neil Ferguson without asking any questions about his methodology, tools, testing procedures or accuracy record!

      Clueless clots who wouldn’t last five minutes in a real company that makes stuff.

      1. Or even tracking the data against the prediction, to see what the divergence would be like.

      2. Well, maybe. Every expensive TV advert was signed off by an officer of the company whose goods/services were being advertised. Hard to believe…I know.

          1. Golly! I was thinking that about the USA this morning. I was thinking what with the voting frauds, do they grow bananas in Florida?

    2. 334288+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      This is a government that needs to go. Now.

      To be replaced by what ? it would upset straight away
      the hard core family tree voter to have their parties term in office cut short and labour, whos term it is next taking up the destructive agenda.

      1. ogga1, we are living through times not seen since 1939. Then we had an identifiable enemy external to these islands. Now, we have an enemy that is our own government but many still see the problem as SAGE and other “experts”. The people have to understand that SAGE is subordinate to the government and packed with people the government appoints. The problem is the government, full stop.

        In the 1939 – 1945 era the government comprised of people from many backgrounds and drew on the experience of people across a wide range of disciplines. Who is to say that this arrangement cannot be formed again and formed in an apolitical manner. No crazy ideologies, no wokeism, no influence from people or corporations from outside the UK? A group of people determined to do their best for the Country and all its people.
        I watched a short piece of Lord Sumption’s interview on the new channel last night: IMHO he would be an ideal candidate for a position on a government of all the talents to lead us out of Johnson’s quagmire.

        1. 334288+ up ticks,
          Morning KtK,
          The days of powdered egg & saccharine we had unity as a Nation and were proud of these Isles IMO the complete reverse of today.
          To my mind the polling booth is used by many as others use a football team, voting to keep their team top of the league regardless of consequence to country which takes second place to party.

          We are witnessing daily the political produce the polling,booth churns out time after time consented to by the people’s time after time.

          Consequences of the regular close shop voting pattern there are anti UK forces with established bases in place and numbers building daily, IMO the next VERY serious conflict will take place on home turf and it will not be pretty.

    3. This is a government following an agenda laid down by the wretches who inhabit Davos. Johnson advocated, “…vaccinating the World,” at the G7 jamboree and by so doing placed himself alongside Gates in that quest. Quelle surprise!

      Johnson and his spiteful government not only need to go now, they need to be held to account by the people of the UK.

      1. We received an email last night purporting to be from Boris Johnson, parroting the Davos phrase “build back better”.

        Oh dear!

        You’d think that he would want to keep well away from that phrase.

        1. On the GB News Channel last night Lord Sumption described Boris Johnson as “intelligent but intellectually lazy.”

          Listening to our bumbling, incoherent prime minster I can only agree with the observation that he is lazy.

  8. SIR – I wonder whether the safety feasibility studies for e-scooters and smart motorways were done by the same people.

    Susan Sang
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    Shrill?

    3. An elderly lady with poor eyesight tripped over one of the damned things left all over the pavement, fell down, and broke her neck! Still alive, but they aren’t sure if she will walk again.

  9. SIR – In the academic world it is seldom accidental that people work on what they do. Personal enthusiasm can drive energetic if not always completely objective research, as exemplified in the case of Professor Kate Tunstall’s long and distinguished career.

    In connection with her prominent role in the recent boycotting of Oriel College, Oxford (report, June 11), it may not be irrelevant to note that her scholarly endeavours have been primarily concerned with the writings of Denis Diderot (1713-84), the French Enlightenment “philosopher”, best known for his belief (as paraphrased from his poem “Les Éleuthéromanes”) that “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

    So perhaps we can see where these troubles are coming from, and with what we have to deal.

    Richard Sharp
    Senior research fellow, Worcester College, Oxford, 1995-2002
    Glanton, Northumberland

    3. I didn’t know her so I looked up Kate Tunstall. It turns out she is the bastard child of a half Scottish, half Chinese mother who worked as a dancer in a bar and her Irish father was a ‘client’ who never saw the child. Given up for adoption, she became a singer with a penchant for effing and blinding, running down other singers, promoting left-wing causes and campaigning to save the Earth from Gorbals(sic) warming. She learned that her biological father had died, but she was united with two half-sisters by her father’s second marriage. Having suffered an unsuccessful marriage and several latent genetic disorders she is still banging out Inde music – whatever that is…

      …but that is KT Tunstall.

      The one you mentioned is an academic – Interim provost of the self-styled “People’s Republic of Worcester College, referred to as Red Kate by her fellow teachers, and prominent in the massed refusal of 150 other hard left academics to teach Oriel students because there is a statue of a wicked white man over the door. When she is not otherwise engaged she helps lead anti-Israeli protests and supports the people of Palestine in their struggle to return to the West Bank and drive the Jewish occupiers into the sea.

      Father’s second marriage, half sisters? They could be… No, no, no, God wouldn’t be so cruel – would he?

    4. I didn’t know her so I looked up Kate Tunstall. It turns out she is the bastard child of a half Scottish, half Chinese mother who worked as a dancer in a bar and her Irish father was a ‘client’ who never saw the child. Given up for adoption, she became a singer with a penchant for effing and blinding, running down other singers, promoting left-wing causes and campaigning to save the Earth from Gorbals(sic) warming. She learned that her biological father had died, but she was united with two half-sisters by her father’s second marriage. Having suffered an unsuccessful marriage and several latent genetic disorders she is still banging out Inde music – whatever that is…

      …but that is KT Tunstall.

      The one you mentioned is an academic – Interim provost of the self-styled “People’s Republic of Worcester College, referred to as Red Kate by her fellow teachers, and prominent in the massed refusal of 150 other hard left academics to teach Oriel students because there is a statue of a wicked white man over the door. When she is not otherwise engaged she helps lead anti-Israeli protests and supports the people of Palestine in their struggle to return to the West Bank and drive the Jewish occupiers into the sea.

      Father’s second marriage, half sisters? They could be… No, no, no, God wouldn’t be so cruel – would he?

  11. With football uppermost in the majority of people’s minds at the moment the demise of Christian Erikson is receiving a lot of media attention.

    It is reported that he had a cardiac arrest during the first half of a EURO 2020 match but that subsequent investigatiins have not revealed an underlying cause.

    I undertook an analysis of my own heart’s performance after my cardiologist told me it was time I didn’t need to take things so easy after the resolution of a heart rhythym irregularity.

    I investigated the latest sports medical research which uses Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as measures of what are known as overreaching and overtraining.

    I did this by using a Polar chest strap with HRV recordings to the Elite app on an Android tablet for a period of over a week.

    Here is a segment of a two minute daily HRV recording that I made:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75bbae2c58abe69dc3e580c5f08ad2bd018400c9a2a1b74be77f182279f2f3fe.jpg

    Here is the weekly report on my readiness on a scale of one to ten to start increasing my level of cardiovascular activity:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/87151c811495fcb783104179012cdb1841c969385fd43c375782a5519d8adad2.jpg

    I have concluded that there are still a lot of unknowns in the field of heartbeat irregularities and that cardiac arrest could cover a range of cardiac irregularities.

    New irregularities are still being discovered and are being categories as inappropriate because they are not fully understood.

    HRV analysis itself in sports medicine is considered a contentious approach to the assessment of heart fitness by cardiologists who tend to disregard patients’ self assessment using Fitbits .

    Nevertheless there is still some evidence that you can do yourself harm by trying to become too ‘fit’.

    1. Just to be clear: Eriksen isn’t dead. He was, briefly, but is no more.

    3. I had some irregular heartbeats and reported this to the GP. “It’s nothing”.
      Phew!

      1. I was under the illusion that heartbeats were regular and you would be in what is called sinus rhythym.

        However, I was puzzled as to how my latest pulse oximeter could display my respiration rate by just monitoring the blood flow pulsations at my finger tip.

        It turns out that irregularities in your heartbeat timing are related to you breathing cycle and that these need to accounted for during interpretation of an electrocardiogram strip recording.

  12. Rod Liddle
    Euros 2021: Football’s coming home
    13 June 2021, 4:34pm

    Match 3: England 1 (MBE 57) Croatia 0

    I have no animus against Croatia. Catholic Slavs who think they’re Austrians, basically: not a bad mix. Many of my friends, the Spiked lot – ie former Revolutionary Communist Party – turn puce if you mention the name of the country. My mate Mick Hume, for example, wouldn’t dream of going there on holiday. Ustase! Nazi collaborators! Ah live and let live, Mick. Look at Luka Modric’s mournful little face – how can you not love him? And their islands. I’ve had such wonderful meals on islands named by an imbecile: Krk, Rab, Pag.

    Horseface left Jack Grealish out but otherwise picked a reasonable side. Further, the knee taking was so brief nobody noticed – I do hope the brevity does not delay the onset of racial equality.
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    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/euros-2021-football-s-coming-home

  13. Coming out of lockdown reminds me all too much of the stupidity that surrounds the Age of Consent. How can someone aged 15 years and 364 days be deemed a “helpless vulnerable child” subject to every protection of social services against any “abuse” and denied any right to decide for himself or herself what others do to him or her, under pain of eternal legal damnation and blacklisting for life. Then a day later, all restrictions are lifted, and somehow this very same person is deemed capable of making decisions based on a presumption of the same experience enjoyed by a 60-year-old.

    I do not believe that all restrictions and precautions can be completely and irreversibly lifted overnight, be it on 21st June 2021 or any other time. There must be a period after liberation of acting sensibly, taking each day on its merits and holding back whenever it’s looking too risky. Suddenly going into party mode when there is someone there going down with a fever, just because at long last one can taste freedom, is utterly barmy.

    I’d like to see all legal restrictions lifted next week, but there should also be a series of public information films to keep vigilant and not be afraid to be a party-pooper at any hint of trouble. Unless everyone is prepared to act responsibly, the March 2020 lockdown could return. Like a No Deal Brexit, that option must always be made available, even though with any luck and a lot of sense, it should never be taken up again in my lifetime.

    1. I’d like to see all legal restrictions lifted next week, but there should also be a series of public information films to keep vigilant and not be afraid to be a party-pooper at any hint of trouble.

      Morning Jeremy. This would require Trust in the People which is a non-starter. These people are more authoritarian than the Chinese Government and use pretty much the same methods!

      1. Indeed. If we are ever to get a civilised prosperous nation in the future, we must as a priority address the collapse in our national culture, starting with doing something about Oliver Dowden and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

    2. This is the problem of taking control of everybody’s life – how do you unwind that position? Same with invading Iraq – how do you get out of it? Or, like my mate driving along the coast of Oman with his wife some years ago, feeling hot – stops the car, and hops into the sea for a swim. When it came to getting out, he found the small sandy cliff was quite unclimbable, so he couldn’t get out. Finally, his wife came to see wtf he was, and put the car’s towrope over to pull him out. It was only a 2 foot or so cliff-ette, still couldn’t get out. Same with lockdown. It’s easy to jump over the cliff, almost impossible to get back up. They should have trusted people to behave properly, explained carefully what the problem was, and let them get on with it.

      1. Maybe a redefinition of the term “Liberalism” might be a start? Like so many words in our mother tongue, such as ‘marriage’, ‘gay’, ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and many other horrors we here know all too well, Newspeak has robbed us all of a means of expressing a valuable concept.

        In the case of Liberalism, I have been ignored for years by the political experts that it should mean a balancing of freedom with responsibility, and the devolution of power to the lowest level feasible, starting with the individual. Only when the lower level fails to honour its responsibilities must power be passed to the next level up. If it fails there too, then up it goes, right up to the Almighty if needs must. Better though to strive to keep it down to a level we can all keep a watch on it.

        1. It’s the feminising of government and society I blame. Many women can’t resist telling everyone how to behave, and are risk-averse. As government, that gives the nanny state, instructing you how to live (and arresting you or smashing your face in) if you don’t comply, not permitting even the tiniest risk. So, for all our sakes, you got to stay home and hide under the bed, because nanny knows best, you aren’t capable of deciding for yourself what level of risk you will tolerate, you must have no risk at all.

          1. Which is odd, as the vast majority of officialdom is male.

            It is only my experience, but the war queen tells her team what to do and lets them do it. She has her own work to accomplish.

            As an addendum, I think the problem is the deliberate intent of those same statist officials to ensure nothing does change to maintain their status quo. With no penalties for failure, no rigour, no disicpline and absolutely no change whatsoever unless they want it they keep power to themselves by being the very things that do not change.

            Her biggest problem is when what she asks isn’t done, when she asks it to be done. I don’t remember Lady T being risk averse. She was simply organised and planned her battles – and she won.

          2. Lady T was a one off. That is why so many of the sisterhood loathed her; she showed them up as smug poltroons. The ‘higher’ educated the female, the more vitriolic their loathing of our first female Prime Minister.
            As a side issue, the females delegated to gooing over Johnson minor and listening to kiddiwinks reading about the Doom Goblin, got right up my nose. Were none of those accompanying G7 females capable of telling the organisers to stick their patronising list of photo opportunities?

          3. “Many” women, not all.
            SWMBO is a ball-breaker, and very much into letting people get on with it, but even so, I see in her occasionally behaviour that is risk-averse, much more than the boys and I have.

          4. Sadly, I do have to agree.
            The feminisation of teaching means the rot starts early.
            If women had been in charge mankind would never have descended from the trees.
            Damp caves – which aggravated Ugg junior’s cough – nasty big cats with even bigger teeth, dusty grass concealing horrible wriggly things …. The excuses would have been endless.

          5. Since women got the vote, there has never to my knowledge been an indepth study of the long-term effects on society.
            It’s time to face up to the fact that they have probably been overwhelmingly negative.
            We haven’t had fewer wars.
            We have had a vast encroachment of the nanny state, and a lot of welfare laws that have been good for the individual, but disastrous for society as a whole.
            We have abandoned even the pretence of the most masculine of policies, that of defending our borders.

            I’d give up the vote voluntarily if it would reverse these catastrophes.

      2. The state doesn’t trust people though – however more, it doesn’t *want* people to think for themselves as independent thought is frightening to the state. It has spent decades dumbing down and dictating to people. Most haven’t noticed, happy to abrogate their responsibilities. The few who have – folk like us – notice the creeping authoritarianism, the control systems, the erosion of freedoms and liberties and we say no and the Left, the statist, oppressive Left calling for this squeal and shout abuse.

      3. What? Treat people as adults capable of weighing up risk?
        Next, you’ll be allowing them to vote every 5 years on who runs the government!

  14. Flying the flag for woke imperialism. Spiked 2021.

    Secretary of state Antony Blinken has authorised US embassies to fly the Black Lives Matter and rainbow Pride flags. The immediate spur for this decision is clear. Late May marked the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death and June is Pride month. But to fly flags other than the Stars and Stripes from the buildings that represent the US abroad is still extraordinary. It shows that the Biden administration is committed to exporting its woke values around the globe.

    To me the whole G7 thing looked like Wokey’s Reich. This of course is why it’s opposed to Putin personally and not Russia itself. Vlad is not one of their number. He’s a Patriot. This disqualifies him from membership. He’s also a Christian which damns him doubly. The only people getting cancelled in Russia are Navalny and his associates. There is no Culture War. Men are not being addressed as Women. Boys are not being told they are really girls. Children are not being told that they are gay and need gender reassignment. Statues are not being knocked over nor history being rewritten.

    The view from Russia must be kind of scary. They see a West that is even more unhinged than Nazi Germany. Its leader is a corrupt paedophile who espouses a series of beliefs that transcend the borders of sanity. His acolytes cheer him on and are gearing up for War. What sensible person would not prepare for what is certainly coming?

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/14/flying-the-flag-for-woke-imperialism/

    1. If you cannot cope with a picture of someone who epitomises everything good about this country then you really don’t deserve to be here.

      Please let the country. Just go. Where, no one cares.

  16. Good morning, all. Saw a little bit of GB News. A shouty chap speaking out of sync was enough to deter me. He also can’t read his autocue properly – he was looking over the top of my head.

    Warm start to the day.

    1. Morning Bill. Reminded me of The Ring! I thought he was going to climb out of the telly and do unspeakable things!

  17. King’s College London is accused of ‘woke hypocrisy’ for honouring China’s hardline justice secretary in Hong Kong with fellowship – after being forced to apologise for marking Philip’s death
    King’s College London endorses Teresa Cheng despite US sanctions against her
    She was sanctions for suppressing democratic rights in Hong Kong
    She graduated from King’s College with a degree in civil engineering in 1981

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9681757/Kings-College-London

    1. Never mind; oodles of British taxpayers’ money pours into her bank account, regardless of how foul she is.
      So many universities are being shown up as a complete waste of money. Parents and teenagers take note.

  18. Morning all

    SIR – There is no immunological rationale for postponing the end of lockdown (“Fears that restrictions could be in place until spring”, June 13).

    We have massive rates of immunisation, with 80 per cent of all adults now having antibodies. Death rates are below the rolling five-year average. The hospitalisation rate is also low, and is largely occurring among vulnerable or unvaccinated people.

    The vast majority of the population is now protected against variants, either through vaccination or infection, and that is discounting cross-immunity from previous exposure to coronaviruses such as the common cold.

    The Prime Minister must unlock the country – or explain the real reasons for the obfuscation and endless delay.

    Gill Mullins

    Dunmow, Essex

    SIR – Like millions of others, I have had two jabs against Covid-19. Restrictions should be finally lifted on June 21, or at least not apply to the fully vaccinated.

    ADVERTISING

    Boris Johnson, however well-meaning, is risking a permanent voter backlash if a summer of discontent is needlessly imposed on Britain.

    Dominic Shelmerdine

    London SW3

    Placeholder image for youtube video: m9_RDtXG63U

    SIR – If the Government decides, after all the shenanigans down in Cornwall, that the country must remain stuck under the rule of science for a further four weeks (report, June 13), then I shall resign my party membership.

    I will also not vote Conservative ever again – in fact, I won’t bother to vote at any future election, as we shall prove to be governed no longer by elected politicians but by unelected scientists.

    The rest of the world is starting to resume normal life, so why can’t we? If the virus is still so terrible, why was the G7 allowed to be held in person, not on Zoom?

    Ann Wright

    Cambridge

    SIR – If our release from lockdown is postponed, can we possibly expect that Boris Johnson will have finally learnt to shut borders immediately should yet another variant emerge?

    In April – when India was put on the red list – he allowed 42,000 people to travel between India and the UK before the travel ban came into effect.

    Advertisement

    Peter H York

    Daventry, Northamptonshire

    SIR – Professor Susan Michie (Letters, June 13), a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said that mask wearing and social distancing measures should continue “forever”, to protect us from any virus that happens to be around.

    As a member of the Communist Party of Britain, she may well be happy to witness the resultant closure of large parts of our free-enterprise economy and the enslavement of the population to an increasingly intrusive state bureaucracy. Professor Michie’s remuneration and career prospects would no doubt be well maintained.

    Tony Rigby

    Middleton-on-Sea, West Sussex

    1. Mr Rigby, this is how communism works. The communists never expect they’ll be the ones grubbing for food, without light, heat, water and fuel.

  19. Resuscitation choices

    SIR – Camilla Tominey (Comment, June 11) is right to castigate doctors for issuing do-not-resuscitate orders to patients with mental illness or learning difficulties where there were no other significant medical problems.

    These decisions are rarely simple or made lightly and in the vast majority of situations doctors do try to discuss them with patients or families.

    Less than one in 10 attempts at resuscitation in hospital are successful. Moreover, they provide little dignity, with those surviving often left with broken ribs and/or brain damage. Many die within a month of resuscitation. I would not want to be resuscitated if I was seriously ill and had significant medical conditions.

    During the worst of the pandemic, I remember times when it was difficult or impossible to contact relatives of elderly patients who were rapidly deteriorating and unable to understand complex discussions around resuscitation. In those cases, we made do-not-resuscitate orders, as is allowed. But this was not the norm, and I believe that health professionals and hospitals are aware of the need to make these decisions with patients and families’ knowledge when possible.

    Advertisement

    Dr David Chadwick

    Hutton Rudby, North Yorkshire

    1. WE keep hearing how doctors are really wonderful, caring, hard-working people, but the stories (like this one), or the refusal to give face-to-face consulattions keep pouring in. I am more inclined to believe the individual experience rather than the shills for the profession.
      Strange that dentists don’t feature in the same way, except for praise in keeping their doors open… wonder why that is?

      1. I imagine if they don’t work, they don’t get paid.

        I’ve seen my GP a couple of times and the nursse regularly. I can’t believe my surgery is the exception?

    2. “During the worst of the pandemic, I remember times when it was difficult or impossible to contact relatives of elderly patients”

      Somehow that doesn’t have the ring of truth. Those relatives would have been at home.

    1. Lantana camara (common lantana) is a species of flowering plant within the verbena family (Verbenaceae), native to the American tropics

    2. That’s quite nice. As art, some effort has gone into it.

      If I were a cruel and spiteful person though I would say it’ll let the savages feel more at home.

    3. I like them, especially the ‘herd’ arranged to look as if they are progressing through woodland.

    4. Nice sculptures, the plant is very pretty too but, like the current influx from elsewhere, it is a noxious weed which, when introduced into non-native soil, will quickly overrun the indigenous species and change the country forever.

  21. Good morning.
    Back home in a bright & sunny Derbyshire with a rather pleasant 14°C on the thermometer already and looking to push quite a bit beyond that.

    I am now sat in a very cluttered sitting room with another vanload of stuff to unload and somehow squeeze in.

  22. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bec3639848a781a3acb82df3d72753cd7b94db9c9bbfd5c13adf828eeaf28ff4.png

    Surely, Shirley, you don’t really believe that catgut is taken from pussies?

    Catgut is a type of cord that is prepared from the natural fiber found in the walls of animal intestines. Catgut makers usually use sheep or goat intestines, but occasionally use the intestines of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys. Despite the name, catgut manufacturers do not use cat intestines.

    3. David, our great friend and our Henry’s godfather, is a very versatile musician who was a very successful director of music in a leading independent school. On one of his many visits to us he brought his Northumbrian Pipes with him. He had not entirely mastered them and the noise they made was excruciating.

      One evening he started paying his pipes and our lovely boxer, Rumpole, was very distressed by the noise and started howling. David and Rumpole had always been very close friends and Rumpole was always delighted when his friend came to stay – but the Northumbrian Pipes was a test too far on their friendship and when David came down to breakfast the following morning Rumpole looked very surlily at him and actually growled – something he had never done to any of our friends before.

      It took some days before Rumpole actually forgave David and they became friends again but the pipes remained firmly locked in their box and out of Rumpole’s sight.

  24. Good Moaning.
    Oh dear. Talk about two nations divided by a common language.
    Because I wiped history and cookies, I had to sign in again with Disqus. The Capcha asked me to pick the pictures containing a bicycle; one was of a woman riding a bike.
    Do I assume the Merkins don’t use the same term for a popular girl?

    2. I’d like to see a British version of Captcha images – Click every square with a hoodie/kebab shop/stabbing.

    2. Unpublished:

      SIR — Photographs of the world leaders meeting for the G7 summit in Cornwall showing them attending outdoor events whilst not observing social distancing, the wearing of masks, and enjoying food and drink; whilst similar activities are currently forbidden for weddings in the UK. This clearly shows that we are living under a hypocracy.

      A Grizzly B.

  26. Lara Trump urges Americans on Mexican border to ‘arm up and get guns’. 14 June 2021.

    Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, has urged Americans living on the US southern border to “arm up and get guns and be ready”, in response to the influx of migrants crossing from Central America.

    There is of course still a chance that Biden and his Marxist Government will be brought down but it will be by the American People taking it into their own hands. Fortunately unlike ourselves they have the means to do so!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/13/lara-trump-urges-americans-mexican-border-arm-get-guns/

    1. 334288+ up ticks,
      AS,
      So have we in the United Kingdom but for the lab/lib/con coalition supporter / voters.

    1. Morning Grizz.

      What I don’t understand is what customising your new Audi has got to do with the FSU….?

    2. The Online Safety Bill means OFCOM becomes the Ministry of Truth.

      I think it was desired by Mr Soros who likely leveraged Theresa May as it goes back to her days as World Economic Forum UK agent.

      1. It’s a terrible lurch into technocracy, as is the sentient animals bill.
        These two pieces of legislation prove that Boris is fully on board with the technocratic takeover.

    3. Good morning, Grizzly

      Toby Young ought to be given a slot on Andrew Neil’s GB News channel.

      They interviewed Lord Sumption last night and I would like to see Douglas Murray and Candace Owens in debate with people with opposing views to theirs.

      Indeed, there are several people who are generally shunned by the BBC who should be given air time. Any suggestions?

  28. Good morning my friends

    I must try to be optimistic that Andrew Neil’s News Channel will be a success. It was a great shame that it was bugged by so many technical problems which made it seem very amateur.

    Amongst the glitches was that Nigel Farage was cut off in mid flow to be interrupted by an advertisement and he did not return after the ‘commercial break’. I was hoping that he would be questioned about Brexit and comment on the bottom line question underneath the N. Ireland impasse with Macron (to borrow from a BTL comment) : “Why on earth did Boris Johnson ever agree to the Northern Ireland Protocol? Is he weak, incompetent, naïve, gullible or all four? Or was it a deliberate act to thwart his own deal? Whatever – he is not up to the job of being prime minister?”

    Farage said it was a good deal the day it was announced – I would like to hear what his view of the deal’s surrenders on fishing and Northern Ireland is now.

    I also wonder whether the new channel is going to question the current climate change orthodoxy which says that the science is fixed?

    1. In the past the Church held sway over science and their orthodoxy led to the threat of torture and house arrest (Galileo) and torture and death for many more thinkers. Those who hold sway over science today are a bit more humane in the punishment e.g. de-platforming as opposed to being burnt alive but no less brutal in its application.

    2. In their drive to reverse the ratio of managers, consultants and advisers to journalists and creatives, they forgot the technicians, who do their best work when totally invisible.

      I attended a couple of concerts at Broadstairs Folk Week. One was a big name celebrity with her own band and sound team, who wrecked the performance. The thumping bass whilst fashionable, edgy and trending was horrible to listen to, and I ended up most of the time with my fingers in my ears.

      Then for the next item, they brought back the in-house sound engineer, who mixed it to perfection. All those acoustic instruments sounded as if they were being played in a living room, rather than a big marquee. Everything pin-sharp and a pleasure to listen to, even in the back row. When the performers pointed to the mixing desk during the curtain call, I gave a standing ovation to the sound engineer because he deserved it.

    3. BBC glitches often happen when the interviewee’s answer doesn’t fit Auntys agenda!

      ” I’m sorry we must leave it there” Aunty

    4. It is early days and these things happen. Proof of pudding is if they get the man back.

      Deep breaths Rastus. It’ll come together as you learn you need redundancy in connectivity, more bandwidth and so on.

      What I am interested in is why they went with a freeview channel and not simultaneous casting using youtube or some such. Perhaps floatplane, provided by Linus Media group. People say that’s immature, but one thing it isn’t is Youtube.

      Heck at that scale their own broadcasting app could have been created with the show downloadable later. It isn’t *that* complicated even if there’s a delay.

  30. Mail to a Con MP…

    An obvious item to open up are the events leading to Legal Net Zero 2019.

    Involving Mr Soros again, and his financing of a Conservative think tank via different routes. Including by Mr Soros’ green sector financial advisor who told him where to invest his billion dollars.

    Imho, the report by the Con think tank was a fix. The decision to do Legal Net Zero had surely already been taken and that was just a cover to legitimize the reason to do it. Pretty clearly it was marketed accordingly. That’s why all those international green organizations financially partnered the tank in 2018. How come that happened when nobody far away from London has heard of it.

    What is Theresa May’s relationship with Mr Soros? Very close, imho. That would explain all those mega dollar speeches, Legal Net Zero and the UK’s entry into the UN Migration Compact.

    QinetiQ !

    Why did Tony Blair, John Major and George Soros apparently all come together on this sale to a private equity fund in DC in 2003?

    With $7.5 Billion to play with in a tax haven!

    If this doesn’t look massively suspicious, then what does?

    No wonder Mr Major, Mr Blair, Mr Brown and Mr Cameron didn’t want to draw attention to Mr Soros!

    Polly

    1. Is this an appropriate moment to point out that the BBC claims that Mrs May will be the next head of NATO.

      Nottlers may consider the ramifications of that appointment.

      1. What a terrible thought. Could there be anyone more unsuitable than any living ex British Prime Minister?

        Why can’t May just realise that her ambitions vastly outstrip her talents, and crawl decently back under her rock?

      3. Considering the purpose of Nato, she’d be a better bet than the current incumbent, who is an ineffectual Marxist who claims to be an ex-Marxist. (I doubt if there is any such thing).

        1. So would an ineffectual but determined Remainer make a better job?

          Remember that she was the PM who was busy transferring British military knowledge and equipment to the EU whilst pretending to negotiate an exit for Britain.

          What a slime ball.

          2. I was not particularly defending her, but just pointing out that the current incumbent is far, far worse; simply not fit for purpose. And unfortunately in its current form, neither is Nato. Let Macron have his EU army and disband Nato; the only current members that are reliable allies of Britain are Poland, the Baltic states, the US and Canada. The Five Eyes, plus the ones I mentioned, should form the core of a new trade, military and intel sharing bloc.

      4. Unlikely.
        They choose ex politicians in small, easily bullied, countries with little contribution to NATO and who kiss US arse. Hence Denmark, Norway recently.
        Apart from the butt-kissing, UK is a major contributor. I’d look to Iceland or Liechenstein, or similar.

    2. Is this an appropriate moment to point out that the BBC claims that Mrs May will be the next head of NATO.

      Nottlers may consider the ramifications of that appointment.

    3. There were rumours t’other day that Soros had gone to meet his maker. I presume they were just wishful thinking.

      1. Nothing will change.

        Alex Soros is ready to take over and already has met with many Western leaders including Sec Gen of the UN, Antonio Guterres who, imho, is on the Soros payroll.

  31. Another Shaggy Dog Story

    A guy walks in on three of his friends, and much to his surprise, he sees that they are playing poker with an Alsatian!

    “Holy shit!” the guy says. “A dog playing poker! Wow!”

    So one of his friends turns around and whispers, “It’s not all that impressive, really. Every time he gets a good hand he wags his tail!”

  32. Peter Hitchens makes a suggestion:

    “Actually, I think we should just give Northern Ireland to the Americans, in full and final settlement of all our remaining debts to them. They claim to love Ireland, after all, so why not have a bit of it which is their very own? If they’re so clever, and know so much about it, no doubt they can sort it out. I wonder how long it will take all the Americans who once put money in IRA collecting boxes, or who finance Sinn Fein today, or the US politicians who win votes by embracing crude nationalism, to discover how stupid and ignorant they have been. But it will certainly solve the sausage problem.”

    1. I’ve made a similar observation in the past, but for the whole of Ireland.

      Dublin is closer to Washington DC than is Honolulu.

      The Micks would probably vote Democrat, which would give the Dems an almost perpetual majority in the Senate, Biden and all the American Pseudo-Oirish would love it.

  34. Daily Human Stupidity.

    “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” George Carlin.

    G7 jamboree, anyone?

    1. In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

      Nietzsche

    2. Wow! Scott Hamilton is a legend. Those kids can swing! And the chick sings the number beautifully. Is that Sant Andreu, Barcelona?

      1. 2018 shiny stockings ( Frank Foster ) adaptación Alfons Carrascosa

        del cd Joan Chamorro presenta Alba Armengou ( 11º de la colección)
        primer video de la serie THE JAZZ HOUSE SESSIONS

        Alba Armengou ( voz)
        Joan Chamorro ( dirección)
        Scott Hamilton ( invitado especial , saxo tenor )

        Joan Martí, saxo alto
        Joana Casanova, saxo alto
        Marçal Perramon, saxo tenor
        Èlia Bastida, saxo tenor
        Alba Esteban, saxo baritono

        Joan Mar Sauqué, trompeta
        Victor Carrascosa, trompeta
        Elsa Armengou, trompeta

        Joan Codina, trombon
        Max Tato, trombon

        Jan Domenech, piano
        Carla Motis, guitarra
        Miquel Casanova, contrabajo
        Pablo Ruiz, Bateria

        Grabación David Casamitjana
        Materización Josep Roig en Temps Rercor
        Video Ramón Tort

    1. If that were a fly by, such a missed opportunity. I don’t want to kill them, just make them go away for a decade or so.

      Apart form the Japanese fellow. By all accounts he’s a decent chap.

      1. If they’d been Japanese aircraft in the air display would the result have been Zero carbon emission?

        I’ll get me kimono.

  39. Junior’s most asked question is ‘why’.

    ‘Why is Mummy so angry all the time.’
    ‘Ask your father, she says’.
    ‘Mummy is not angry, she is just very busy and needs to concentrate.’
    ‘What is concentrating and why does it make Mummy angry?’

    Worm. Can. Opened.

    So we used an example by making some Lego models for concentrating and being interrupted.

      1. He is a very good student and does well in his grades. He isn’t especially good at maths (we get him someone to help with algebra and fractions) but his reading is way above a 6 year olds. Close to a 10. He’s currently reading Jasper Fforde.

        More importantly, he’s confident enough to ask questions without feeling a fool or needing to feel he’s ‘top of the class’.

  40. In which a government minister lies about the Cornwall farrago and the flagrant breach of the (daft) covid regulations:

    ““I think your viewers will understand the serious business of bringing leaders together to bring back the economy stronger, greener, deal with the pandemic, shift the point at which the whole world is vaccinated from 2024 to the middle of next year.

    “That’s a serious business they’re engaged with, amidst all the leisure activities on the beach.”

    He added: “Both in terms of the checks that have been done — the daily checks for Covid, the precautions, the slim-line delegations — we’ve taken every measure possible to make sure this is not just Covid-secure but that it could take place.

    “I think that we’ve gone well beyond and above in making sure this was Covidsecure.”

    Downing Street said the event on Saturday night was done “in an entirely Covid-secure way within the existing rules”.

    1. Saturday night was done “in an entirely Covid-secure way within the existing rules ….for the Elite

        2. For goodness’ sake; why would those people busily rebuilding the world want peasants breathing over them?
          Carbis Bay twinned with Versailles.
          Only a month to 14th. July, mon brave.

      3. I’m sure they are right about Saturday night.
        The rules are “We, the elite do what we want, now go back to your occasional treat of a bugburger, peasant”

      1. Haven’t seen much of Raab during the charade but on the few occasions I’ve seen him he hasn’t appeared to be well briefed and therefore not very convincing. Perhaps he’s not as adept at barefaced lying as some.

    6. The only thing they accomplished was to reiterate their commitment to Davos and Soros to each other.

      I hope they all die. Slowly.

  42. ‘Morning All

    Lockdown Sceptics:

    “Just three weeks to flatten the curve,

    just a few more weeks, just another few weeks to save the NHS and it”l

    be all over, just wear your masks and keep your distance, just one more

    push – sacrifice christmas to save easter it will all be worth it, once

    the elderly and frail are vaccinated we’ll lift all restrictions, once

    the over fifties are vaccinated it’ll all be over, once the over forties

    are vaccinated … just until the over twenties have been jabbed … erm

    once all teenagers are been vaccinated we’ll end restrictions, well we

    can’t lift restrictions now because of all these variants going about ….

    I would find it incredible that after 15 months of being strung along

    like this that there is anyone out there with with even just a couple of

    healthy working brain cells who cannot see through this endless virus

    nonsense – if people are still being duped by this claptrap then I

    suspect there is something going on here that is far more serious than

    just plain stupidity – its like severe case of battered housewives

    syndrome but on a national scale.”

    Mine

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e784dd2e2f6c560d642d2baedc56d1814934d7e350a8504cc8f46ca2d38068f.jpg

    1. 3342288+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      Yet the lab/lib/con coalition and repeating cast of misguided supporting fools, are hell bent on allowing the take over to take place as long as the “party”
      lab/lib/con gets recognition and are left as caretakers.

      It’s on the parliamentary menu.

    3. If you want to practise selective indignation you must make sure that you are only indignant about things done by those who will not seek revenge on you.

      Post a photo of the Archbishop of Canterbury in flagrante with a girl of 14 and all hell will be let loose; but mention the age of the Prophet’s brides and somebody will want to blow you up. So if you want to be indignant – go ahead – but remember it is safer to be careful with your selectivity and that it is less potentially vexatious to criticise Welby with a lie rather than to criticise Mohammed with the truth.

    2. Better stop people crossing the street then, as that is a far greater health risk.

  49. GBNews was not good. Picture is blurred like an old VCR tape. Sound out of sync with lips. No subtitles.
    Was their equipment bought in a street market? “Psst, Andy, got some good gear here. No not, the powder. Electronics. We got it all, speakers, woofers, tweeters, wiring, mikes, daveses, and more stuff round the back, Neilly-baby. And cameras, you should see our cameras. Discretion?, Mum’s the word. No questions, no jail time right?”

    1. We were listening to a Farage interview and it suddenly cut in with an advert mid-word. This is not good.

  50. What next?

    Got this letter from e-on this morning announcing a new website from a team of ‘Energy Specialists’ called:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2bb7f0846ebb282e3728acff8db52102e9ae783c77b5d81c52d81227ffca6e38.jpg

    There is a paragaph of concern because they are expecting to ‘take care of everything’ regarding the supply of electricity to my property:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/28ad14c799aa9b47d5fc4d0aed6920f958fb316d13c6eae0c5a3b4d1bedfdfa3.jpg

    Anyone in the same position or know if this is just another Government incentivised initiative towards ‘smart’ metering?

    E-on have cofirmed that I have declined the installation of a ‘smart’ meter but continue to send repeated harassing letters expecting compliance with Government led continuously metered supply directives.

    1. It’s very important to install “smart meters” so that the Government can switch off your power if they have a shortage of generating capacity.

      Oh! By the way, the local BBC news announced that Dungeness B has now been closed, some seven years ahead of its planned date.

      That will cheer up Carrie.

      2. Dung “B” was a crock.
        Early use of stainless steels in hot coastal service led to chloride stress corrosion cracking in spades, and as a result, much changing of piping and vessels. It almost never operated correctly until way through it’s life, which (IIRC) was expected to be up to 40 years. It never ran properly. See attached from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeness_nuclear_power_station

        Dungeness nuclear power station comprises a pair of non-operational nuclear power stations located on the Dungeness headland in the south of Kent, England. Dungeness A is a legacy Magnox power station that was connected to the National Grid in 1965 and has reached the end of its life. Dungeness B is an advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) power station consisting of two 1,496 MWt reactors, which began operation in 1983 and 1985 respectively, and have been non-operational since 2018 due to ongoing safety concerns.

        There were many problems during construction of the second power station, which was the first full-scale AGR. It was supposed to be completed in 1970, but the project collapsed in 1969. The CEGB took over project management and appointed British Nuclear Design and Construction (BNDC) as main contractor. There were more problems and by 1975 the CEGB was reporting that the power station would not be completed until 1977 and the cost had risen to £280 million. By completion the cost had risen to £685 million, four times the initial estimate in inflation-adjusted terms.

        In March 2009, serious problems were found when Unit B21 was shut down for maintenance, and the reactor remained out of action for almost 18 months. In 2015, the plant was given a second ten-year life extension, taking the proposed closure date to 2028. In September 2018, both units were shut down and were expected to restart in December 2020. On 7 June 2021, EDF announced that Dungeness B would move into the defuelling phase with immediate effect.

        In other words, it became too difficult and expensive to run safely.

    4. Funny that – I had the same garbage just now. Three times they have tried to fit a smart meter – it doesn’t work here – there is no signal.

      Interesting, too, as, this morning, I spent 45 minutes waiting to speak to someone at EON about the non-payment for the electricity generated by my solar panels. About half way through, a man called Dave tried to answer my question but admitted that he knew nothing about FIT meters and that I should have tried another number. He would put me through…. That number does not work. There is only one effing phone number to ring the outfit for all queries. After an hour a woman actually phoned me and said that it as my fault for not sending hem a meter reading on 31 March (when the prices change). I told her that in ten years I have never ha to do that, and have never been told to do so – and that it was a complete surprise.

      She said that I should have noticed…

      Following this, an e-mail to the CEO resulted in my being told that my “complaint had been noted” and that sometime in the next year, someone will send me a standard response telling me to eff off. (or words to that effect).

      1. You need to contact that chap from the Jimmy Young program, the legal eagle or some such…

    5. E.ON Next are a hive-off from E.on who became my electrikery suppliers by default after taking over the old East Midlands Electricity.
      I am not very happy as it seems my quarterly electric bill has suddenly become a monthly bill, possibly as a ploy to get me to have a stupid meter.

      2. My smart meter hasn’t worked for over a year now. I’ve reported it, complained, whinged.

        No one’s bothered about replacing it. Covid, they say. Up yours, I say. Well, I don’t but still.

        If the intent is to control our energy use – they won’t bother, there will just be rolling brown outs and blackouts – these incompetent cretins couldn’t have picked a more useless bunch.

        I’ve honestly thought about one of those home battery and solar panel things but the return on investment is decades, not years. However I do expect those people with an electic car will be allowed to power their home from their car battery.

      3. I have had the same problem with my phone and broadband (Royal Dutch Shell took over from the Post Office). I used to pay quarterly, now I have to pay monthly (and download the bills from the Internet or pay £2 per paper copy).

    6. If they are offering monthly bills, they must be collecting meter readings automatically from their customers, surely, unless it is an estimate.

      I would definitely mistrust that, as they have the power to collect 15 minute readings if they want.
      How cunning, to get people to agree to regular bills, rather than regular spying.

  51. How strange…
    Stricken Denmark star Christian Eriksen has reassured fans about his recovery and could even attend his nation’s next game when they face Belgium at Euro 2020 on Thursday, with his agent saying the player is out of serious danger.
    Less than two days after his ordeal shocked the world when he collapsed on the pitch during Denmark’s tournament opener against Finland, Eriksen’s manager has claimed that the playmaker could leave hospital soon and wants to watch his side’s showdown with the top-ranked side at Copenhagen’s nearby Parken.

    That would mean a remarkably swift return for Eriksen to the stadium where he lay prone on the turf before being resuscitated and taken to hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest during the first half of the match on Saturday, when fans and players feared for his life.

    Relaying Eriksen’s words to Gazzetta dello Sport, representative Martin Schoots quoted the midfielder as saying: “Thanks for your support. I will not give up.

        1. of course it’s been denied, He took the Pfizer jab. And he had pre-existing heart issues. Danny Blind, one of the Dutch players aired this as Blind has similar conditions to Eriksen and almost never played last night

          1. Tested every year for nigh on 10 years at Spurs…no heart irregularities.

          6. Are there any internet references to him being jabbed that date from before the match?

        3. They would all have been jabbed in order to travel internationally.
          Of course they are denying it.

          2. I think they would still have had to have had it. They are after all mixing with others from elsewhere, even though we know it doesn’t work effectively as a vaccine, the pretence must be maintained. The truth is always sacrificed as a matter of course when necessary.

          4. Propaganda.

            We are being lied to all the time. Every minute of every hour, every day. It is imperative that the narrative must be maintained.
            Also from https://citizenfreepress.com

            Dr. Thomas Binder, cardiologist, Switzerland
            Thank God Christian Eriksen is o.k!
            Heat and dehydration increase the risk for the occurrence of vaccine-induced thromboembolism and physical stress increases the risk for the occurrence of ventricular tachycardia / fibrillation in the context of vaccine-induced myocarditis, which is highly likely the case here.
            Hopefully, they will suspend the European Championship, so that we will not see more life-threatening side effects of the unnecessary, ineffective and unsafe serial experimental mRNA and DNA injections against SARS-CoV-2 than goals at this European Football Championship.
            “CDC to hold ‘emergency meeting’ over cases of heart inflammation following second Covid vaccine:”
            https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/myocarditis-covid-vaccine-heart-inflammation-b1864343.htm

          5. I don’t know who dictates these things (UEFA?) but if it was compulsory and he wasn’t, and the the team management knew, they should be disqualified.

          6. I can’t believe that they would play a major tournament which will involve travel at some point without being jabbed.

      2. Christian Eriksen had not contracted Covid-19 and was not vaccinated against the virus, according to the director of the Danish star’s club team, Inter Milan.

    2. I wish the chap well but does anyone think that the instant grief generated by the ball kickers and their circling of the stricken body all a bit much. Its as if they have privilege and don’t expect life to bring the same tragedies to them as the rest of us. Gawd, some player even dedicated his goal to Ericksen. So kind and thoughtful, and perhaps it worked as there seems to have been a remarkable recovery.

      1. Some BBC reports didn’t show the moment he fell to the ground. The same organisation made sure we saw a dead Syrian boy on a Turkish beach in 2015. Is it distasteful or illogical of me to make this observation?

    1. But will shortly be taken off the air following complaints about his hate crimes.

    3. I don’t do twitter. Please would someone pass this on to Mr Wooton for me?

      Did you apologise to Nigel Farage for the fact that he was being metaphorically vasectomised by an advertisement on your programme last night which cut him off before he even got into his stride? And when/if you get him back again please ask him why he agreed so quickly that Johnson’s capitulationn deal was ok and what he thinks about the Irish Protocol and the border in the Irish Sea which he promised we would never have. And while on the subject of the deal, why did Johnson not retake complete control of fishing in British waters?

      1. Twitter allows only 280 characters per tweet unfortunately. Hence much mangling of the English language has to be excused.

      2. 334288+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        And is he footing the repair bill for 30000 REAL UKIP member jackets, with knife rents in the back.

    1. Can someone persuade LF to have his horrible tattoos lazered. They really are not quite the thing.

      1. Richard, are you trying to drum up business for our Annie’s relative-in-law?

        :-))

          1. Sorry, Annie, I think my memory is slowly fading. (You’ve told me it’s your niece several times.)

  54. Joe Biden repeatedly mixes up Syria and Libya while discussing ways of working with Russia in latest press conference blunder ahead of meeting with Putin. 14 June 2021.

    Joe Biden repeatedly confused Syria with Libya while discussing ways of working with Russia during a press conference at the G7 on Sunday.

    The 78-year-old gaffe machine spoke of working with Vladimir Putin to provide economic assistance to the people of Libya, prompting some confused glances from the press pack at the G7 summit in Cornwall, England.

    ‘I’m hopeful that we can find an accommodation where we can save the lives of people in — for example, in — in Libya,’ the president said, mentioning the north African country for the third time instead of Syria, which is in the Middle East.

    Gaffe Machine? In the MSM! Lol! Is this the Emperor’s New Clothes moment?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9683881/Biden-repeatedly-mixes-Syria-Libya-discussing-ways-working-Russia.html

    1. I shall be 75 in a few weeks. I find it deeply worrying that Biden is under four years older than I am. I hope to God my brain will be working better than his when I am 78.

      1. Biden has spent most of his life as a professional liar politician. Who has delegated thinking to others. Which is why he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.

        You on the other hand are well read and use your mind. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

          2. But, but – he was Secretary of State….foreign affairs (as it were) and all that…

          5. Oh, i don’t know.

            Russians are flash.
            French are stingy.
            Italians are loud.
            Americans dress as if they are on safari to see Tarzan.

          6. Seven shot in London over the W/E, the Americans who would now be most at home as tourists would be from Chicago, NY, Minneapolis and Detroit. Thanks but no thanks.

          7. This is probably very old but it does illustrate “The Way We Were.”:
            An American Visits the UK
            This Is His Description Of British Life
            A good laugh. Most of it’s correct!
            If you’re from Britain it’s quite easy to often forget how great this place is. If you’re not from Britain, however, we probably seem like quite an odd bunch at times.
            The following Facebook post, written by 66-year-old American Scott Waters, pretty much fits both of the above. Penned following a visit to the UK one summer (most of which appears to have been in Cornwall), Waters wrote up the various cultural differences and posted them to the world of social media. The post promptly went viral and has been shared almost 50,000 times.
            Here’s what he had to say about us:

            I was in England again a few weeks ago, mostly in small towns, but here’s some of what I learned:
            * Almost everyone is very polite.
            * There are no guns.
            * There are too many narrow stairs.
            * The pubs close too early.
            * The reason they drive on the left is because all their cars are built backwards.
            * Pubs are not bars; they are community living rooms.
            * You’d better like peas, potatoes and sausage.
            * Refrigerators and washing machines are very small.
            * Everything is generally older, smaller and shorter.
            * People don’t seem to be afraid of their neighbours or the government.
            * Their paper money makes sense, the coins don’t.
            * Everyone has a washing machine but driers are rare.
            * Hot and cold water faucets. Remember them?
            * Pants are called “trousers”, underwear are “pants” and sweaters are “jumpers”.
            * The bathroom light is a string hanging from the ceiling.
            * “Fanny” is a naughty word, as is “shag”.
            * All the signs are well designed with beautiful typography and written in full sentences with proper grammar.
            * There’s no dress code.
            * Doors close by themselves, but they don’t always open.
            * They eat with their forks upside down.
            * The English are as crazy about their gardens as Americans are about cars.
            * They don’t seem to use facecloths or napkins or maybe they’re just neater than we are.
            * The wall outlets all have switches, some don’t do anything.
            * There are hardly any cops or police cars.
            * 5,000 year ago, someone arranged a lot of rocks all over, but no one is sure why.
            * When you do see police, they seem to be in male & female pairs and often smiling.
            * Black people are just people: they didn’t quite do slavery here.
            * Everything comes with chips, which are French fries. You put vinegar on them.
            * Cookies are “biscuits” and potato chips are “crisps”.
            * HP sauce is better than catsup.
            * Obama is considered a hero; Bush is considered an idiot.
            * After fish and chips, curry is the most popular food.
            * The water controls in showers need detailed instructions.
            * They can boil anything.
            * Folks don’t always lock their bikes.
            * It’s not unusual to see people dressed differently and speaking different languages.
            * Your electronic devices will work fine with just a plug adapter.
            * Nearly everyone is better educated than we are.
            * If someone buys you a drink you must do the same.
            * Look right, walk left. Again; look right, walk left. You’re welcome.
            * Avoid British wine and French beer.
            * It’s not that hard to eat with the fork in your left hand with a little practice. If you don’t, everyone knows you’re an American.
            * Many of the roads are the size of our sidewalks.
            * There’s no AC.
            * Instead of turning the heat up, you put on a jumper.
            * Gas is “petrol”, it costs about $6 a gallon and is sold by the litre.
            * If you speed on a motorway, you get a ticket. Period. Always.
            * You don’t have to tip, really!
            * There are no guns.
            * Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall really are different countries.
            * Only 14% of Americans have a passport, everyone in the UK does.
            * You pay the price marked on products because the taxes (VAT) are built in.
            * Walking is the national pastime.
            * Their TV looks and sounds much better than ours.
            * They took the street signs down during WWII, but haven’t put them all back up yet.
            * Everyone enjoys a good joke.
            * Dogs are very well behaved and welcome everywhere.
            * There are no window screens.
            * You can get on a bus and end up in Paris.
            * Everyone knows more about our history than we do.
            * Radio is still a big deal. The BBC is quite good.
            * The newspapers can be awful.
            * Everything costs the same but our money is worth less so you have to add 50% to the price to figure what you’re paying.
            * Beer comes in large, completely filled, actual pint glasses and the closer the brewery the better the beer.
            * Butter and eggs aren’t refrigerated.
            * The beer isn’t warm, each style is served at the proper temperature.
            * Cider (alcoholic) is quite good.
            * Excess cider consumption can be very painful.
            * The universal greeting is “Cheers” (pronounced “cheeahz” unless you are from Cornwall, then it’s “chairz”)
            * Their cash makes ours look like Monopoly money.
            * Cars don’t have bumper stickers.
            * Many doorknobs, buildings and tools are older than America.
            * By law, there are no crappy, old cars.
            * When the sign says something was built in 456, they didn’t lose the “1”.
            * Cake is pudding, ice cream is pudding, anything served for dessert is pudding, even pudding.
            * Everything closes by 1800 (6pm)
            * Very few people smoke, those who do often roll their own.
            * You’re defined by your accent.
            * No one in Cornwall knows what the hell a Cornish Game Hen is.
            * Soccer is a religion, religion is a sport.
            * Europeans dress better than the British, we dress worse.
            * The trains work: a three minute delay is regrettable.
            * Drinks don’t come with ice.
            * There are far fewer fat English people.
            * There are a lot of healthy old folks around participating in life instead of hiding at home watching tv.
            * If you’re over 60, you get free TV and bus and rail passes.
            * They don’t use Bose anything anywhere
            * Displaying your political or religious affiliation is considered very bad taste
            * Every pub has a pet drunk
            * Their healthcare works, but they still bitch about it
            * Cake is one of the major food groups
            * Their coffee is mediocre but their tea is wonderful
            * There are still no guns
            * They have towel warmers!

          10. #metoo. It’s a bugger…but gives the children ample excuse to laugh at me for my Gammon ignorance.

          1. Did Eriksen collapse from a drugs overdose then? I was sure it would have been Covid 🙂

          2. A few lines of coke can bring on a heart attack. Especially if your blood pressure is high.

      3. He’s only a year older than me and, despite the whisky intake, I could beat him hands down in ANY debate.

      1. Just what I thought, sos! Scarf over her hair, long skirt and slippers…not yer normal British garb!
        Unless they’re going to Asda!

    2. Raise voting age to 25, and big pharma will be creaming themselves over their profits of all those extra “youngsters” jabbed

    2. It speaks volumes about their quivering fear with all the BLM barricades thrown up around OUR seat of government.

    1. With the best will in the world, I’ve wandered around a hotel trying to find my room before realising that I was in the wrong hotel.

          1. septic Govt standard problem – two left feet, unable to engage brain [doesn’t exist hence “follow the leader”]

    1. When, oh when will they recognise the need to change their name to Border Farce and Wog rescue.

      1. 334288+ up ticks,
        Afternoon NtN,
        Never, not ALL the time the political close shop coalition gets support & votes as far as the border force are concerned they are doing right by the peoples, the polling booth confirms it.

    2. Why is the label border force? They never, well, what’s the word… enforce our sodding borders!

    3. 334288+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Our enemas army is established with bases in place, and reinforcements added daily, openly, via DOVER with air & sea cover via the governance politico’s.

      Orbán: ‘Migrant Armies Are Banging on Europe’s Doors’

      1. I’m sure a local farmer will come to help give them a tow with his diesel tractor.

        1. Looks like a modern version of the buses used to ship Jews from one camp to another back in the 40s. No windows, no external exhast. Quickly determined to be too slow, and Zyklon-B was preferred.

          1. I expect the savvie Jews in the UK are already making travel arrangements. I know i would.

    3. The organiser said it showed more investment was needed for the recharge network.

      Cornwall is one of the poorest regions in Britain and northern Europe. Fifteen constituencies in the county rank among the most deprived areas in Britain, according to national statistics….and it is not recharge points they are lacking.

      On top of the deprivation they have to put up with the elite circus coming to town.

      1. understand the organiser’s shrill, but the basic question he avoided, having agreed to send an electric bus to the Eden Project on tour, how’s he going to recharge the bus batteries?

        1. I believe one can map the charge points to plan a journey. I wonder why they didn’t.

        2. Buy some from Amazon

          https://www.amazon.co.uk/Duracell-Plus-Power-Alkaline-Batteries-Black/dp/B005KP74BI/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-rsf-lq2a1_0?crid=3BLL2CKC9PPQ2&cv_ct_cx=batteries+9v&dchild=1&keywords=batteries+9v&pd_rd_i=B005KP74BI&pd_rd_r=832997c0-7203-4eee-82e1-d25d6a235dc5&pd_rd_w=aMjrq&pd_rd_wg=xE9bi&pf_rd_p=9025057c-38b7-4193-9183-e74fcc2cd9ec&pf_rd_r=9M012RZ6GJHFFDC5266H&psc=1&qid=1623678471&sprefix=Batteries%2Caps%2C177&sr=1-1-bb3e1dfe-c8c7-4a73-872e-aca8f78beebe

      2. Yo Fizz

        Fifteen constituencies in the county rank among the most deprived areas in Britain, according to national statistics…and it is not
        recharge points they are lacking.

        Only in Winter/the cold months,

        Come Spring and Summer, the London Wokeristas will decamp to their Second/Third homes down there

        2. Were you based at Culdrose for a while, OLT?

          We were there 1970/ 71, nearly 2 years before Mohs squadron decamped to Prestwick .

          There appeared to be a scarcity of vegetables one could buy in Helston, lots of cauliflower, onions and potatoes. I cannot remember much else.

          1. Yo T_B

            Just for courses (SAMCOs)

            Was down there when the Mayor of Helston said to CO of Culdrose
            “Please do not give your sailors theusual day off for the Floral Dance, we do not mind the Orficers, though”

            Certainly he said and we will run buses into Falmouth all year round for the wives to do their shopping (1770’s few had cars

            Gulp said the Mayor, of course they will be welcome

    4. The organiser said it showed more investment was needed for the recharge network.

      Cornwall is one of the poorest regions in Britain and northern Europe. Fifteen constituencies in the county rank among the most deprived areas in Britain, according to national statistics….and it is not recharge points they are lacking.

      On top of the deprivation they have to put up with the elite circus coming to town.

    5. They look like they had a super game of popping the bubble wrap planned for the evening

      1. Yep, I guess that they’re afraid of their future on any one of these gallows – and we have the piano-wire and will not hesitate.

        2. It’s a pilot training simulator to demonstrate what it feels like when you take your hands off your joystick and experience inverted flying.

          The official flight mode is known as tits up.

    1. On the top by Gina Carano, I mentioned this to my good lady this morning while the latest updates were being flouted by the ‘usual experts’……..I wonder why they is never any alternative opinions on all of these broadcasts or regarding all this continuous flow of ‘information’, why are we expected to take all these people say as being truthful and honest ?

      1. Every single video Star Wars disney channel posts on Youtube is flooded with all about Gina Carano.

    2. You’re damned effin’ right we will, given half a chance.

      Plenty of stepladders and piano-wire here.

  67. Some good stuff here. Remainers wanted us to be subsumed into this quagmire. Not to cast any nasturtiums at the good professor, but never forget that University of Swansea’s law school became The Hilary Rodham Clinton (failed D.C. bar exams) School of Law a couple of years back.

    Andrew Tettenborn
    Brussels has launched a full federalist assault
    14 June 2021, 11:04am

    It’s not only in Northern Ireland that the EU has taken to acting like some imperial power. Last week, with international correspondents’ eyes conveniently fixed on the G7, it quietly began a legal push to take over large areas of its remaining member states’ domestic affairs.

    On Tuesday, the Commission announced that it was suing no less than seven of them in the Court of Justice for breaking EU law. Czechia and Poland are accused of not allowing EU citizens generally to join national political parties, and Hungary of not accepting migrants according to Brussels’s plans. The Netherlands, Greece and Lithuania are charged with failing to have severe enough laws against hate speech and Holocaust denial. Germany is in legal trouble for allowing its constitutional court to say that the German constitution, and not EU law, governs the expenditure of German taxpayers’ money (more on this later).

    As if this was not enough, on Thursday the European parliament, in a bizarre twist, threatened legal action against the Commission itself. In these proceedings, which one suspects may be quietly welcomed by the Commission, it is asking the court to order a cut-off of all Covid financial relief from Poland and Hungary until they change their stance on gay rights, media pluralism and judicial independence.

    If push comes to shove, most of these claims will probably succeed. But whatever the details of EU legislation, it is no secret that the European Court of Justice is a court with very sensitive political antennae despite its formal independence. It also has a record of fairly consistently supporting the centralisation of power and jealously guarding the principle of the supremacy of EU law against all comers.

    It is hard to avoid seeing these developments as substantial and deliberate Euro-mission creep. Moreover, it is mission creep with a very distinct twist. It is coming to look increasingly like an attempt to reproduce America’s New Deal, where the federal government and the Supreme Court injected a large dose of federal law into what had previously been state matters.

    Think for a moment about the subjects involved in the proceedings against the Netherlands and the central European states: immigration, civil rights, freedom of speech and public order, the judicial appointments process and electoral law. All concern functions traditionally central to the nation state.

    This concerted push by the EU to take on traditional state functions reveals two related facts. First, by increasing the uniformity of rules throughout the bloc, the EU signals that it views itself as a federal state (like the US, Canada or Australia). Secondly, it sends a strong signal to member states that they should accept that they now exercise their powers essentially under the EU’s supervision — Brussels is the master now.

    Of course, you might (and many progressives will) see in this the EU acting as a benevolent force, rather like the US government when it fought such evils as segregation through the federal Civil Rights Act. However, there is an important difference. The US federal government as a whole is a functioning democracy. The EU is not.

    Just look at its largely complaisant parliament — unable to come up with any legislation of its own — where laws come from the bloc’s unelected civil servants at Commission and directed by behind-closed-door meetings of the Council. It follows that its recent initiative is not only an attempt to clip the wings of European nation states: it will also have the effect of removing important areas of social policy from the control of national voters. Immigration, electoral law and the running of national political parties are straightforward examples. The question of whether Holocaust denial should be a crime, traditionally a point of agreement to differ between European states with different traditions and histories, is another. Britain, for example, has no law against Holocaust denial.

    But there’s more. The most symbolic claim by the EU is that against the German state, and it merits a closer look. It all started with EU proposals to borrow €750 billion (£645 billion) to finance Covid recovery, a move that would potentially cost German taxpayers serious money, and which for drearily technical reasons is also of questionable EU legality. An organisation called Bündnis Bürgerwille (Citizens’ Will Alliance) has taken up this point. It says that German taxpayers’ money can be spent only in so far as the German constitution permits it and that using it to bankroll Euro-projects is only permissible if they are actually lawful under EU law.

    Ten weeks ago the German constitutional court agreed with the Alliance. It peremptorily ordered the German government not to sign up to the EU scheme. It then rubbed salt in the wound, stating that it had the final decision on such matters. Even if the European Court itself approved a scheme, this would make no difference, since within Germany the EU had only such power as was specifically given it by the German constitution, on which the German judges were the final and only arbiters.
    The German position has the benefit of logic, and also of impeccable democratic virtue. The EU has nevertheless now resolved to attack it head-on. Its stance is that it has a legal power to sideline any constitutional rule in an EU member state, however fundamental or democratically embedded it may be. The political stakes are therefore sky-high.

    If the EU court sides with the EU — and the smart money is on its doing exactly that — then there is every chance that the German constitutional court will simply not accept its ruling. In this clash of the irresistible force and the immovable object, the resulting inconceivable disturbance may well incidentally sweep aside much of the foundations of the EU.
    We will have to wait some months to see what the European court decides on the matters announced last week. But whichever way its decisions go, one thing is clear. The fissures in the EU can only grow wider. At least this is a show we can now watch from the sidelines.

    WRITTEN BY

    Andrew Tettenborn is professor of law at the University of Swansea

    2. Sounds like lots of exits, coming soon to a nation state near us.

      Bring it on and lets have a lot of El Collapso of both the tyrannical EU and its cheapo €uro.

  68. I thought the GB NEWS breakfast show was appalling. Tolerated it for 5 minutes then went to brew some fresh coffee – it seemed to deteriorate so switched it orff.

    1. I don’t really like breakfast show formats either, RT has some interesting programs on around 6am, can’t think of their names but they have some good debates

          1. Pebble Mill at One is a British television magazine programme that was broadcast live on weekdays at one o’clock on BBC1, from 2 October 1972 to 23 May 1986, and again from 14 October 1991[1] to 29 March 1996.[2] It was transmitted from the Pebble Mill studios of BBC Birmingham, and uniquely was hosted from the centre’s main foyer area, rather than a conventional television studio.

            Unless they have resurrected it again…No.

    3. They need to get the synchronisation sorted.
      It’s like watching The White Horses when our sons were primary school age.

    1. Enjoy it, whilst you can

      105% sure that it will nevereversterer be allowed to happen again

          1. Lots of multicultural booing then.

            How d’ya say, “boo'” with a Scots accent?

    6. I just had a look, and Adams the No 10 for the Scots is certainly no ginger haired lad.

  70. Hi, fellow NoTTLers and good afternoon.

    I’ve been out of commission for a couple of days, as yesterday we went to IKEA in Narridge to collect two new desks and today we have re-vamped the orifice in order to accommodate these (smaller) desks but give us far more office space.

    Ah, the sacrifices we make!

      1. It’s Boris, Phillip who has the screw loose.

        I doubt he’ll ever be trusted again.

        1. Happy Monday molamola , it was remade in 2006 with Nicholas Cage , I’ve seen it & of course the original version with Edward Woodward & Peter Cushing in 1973.

          3. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price were all great friends and they appeared together (usually in pairs) in a number of Hammer horror films in the 1960s and 1970s.

          5. Eddy can you repost the link please, right now it wont display properly : Bad Request SVL-0002 Categories=ERROR Message=’Missing cookie: open-xchange-public-session-qb1b2t1h3bKjZRtiIOIOVg. Please re-login.’ exceptionID=586186036-2570059

  71. Has everyone else’s print shrunk, sitting about 6 inches from the screen with binoculars just to read it

  72. #GreenClownWorld

    https://twitter.com/Chrissy_2697/status/1392251591856689158?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1392251591856689158%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dgoingpostalcomt_i%3D6432220https3A2F2Fgoing-postal.com2F3Fp3D64322t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fgoing-postal.com2F20212F052Fmisdiagnosis2Ft_e%3DMisdiagnosist_d%3DMisdiagnosis207C20Going20Postalt_t%3DMisdiagnosiss_o%3Dpopularversion%3Ddfaa05f4d3af8a4fe09cfd70007bc5b2

  73. How many times will it be “one last heave” until we’re free?

    If we don’t open up now, will we ever?

    ROSS CLARK
    14 June 2021 • 12:12pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/14/many-times-will-one-last-heave-free/
    *****************************************

    Tony Osborne
    14 Jun 2021 12:38PM
    It’s only for a few weeks to stop the NHS being overwhelmed, masks are only a small inconvenience, it’s only on public transport, it’s only only for a little while longer until we get a vaccines, it’s only until the most vulnerable are vaccinated, it’s only one Christmas, it’s only until the over 50s are vaccinated, it’s only until we are past the peak, it’s only until the majority have been vaccinated, it’s only until we get the data on the new variant, it’s only until June 21, it’s only a four week delay, it will only be until those aged 12 to 15 are jabbed, it’s only another Christmas.

    *******************************************

    https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/50066887.jpg

  74. I’m not sure how many of these complaints are true, but looking around C21 Blighty, they are all believable.

    ……………… complaints received by “Thomas Cook” holidays from dissatisfied customers :

    “1. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”

    2. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”

    3. “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”

    4. “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.”

    5. “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”

    6. “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”

    7. “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time — this should be banned.”

    8. “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”

    9. “Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”

    10. “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”

    11. “The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”

    12. “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.”

    13. “I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.”

    14. “The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the resort.’ We’re trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service.”

    15. “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”

    16. “We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”

    17. “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”

    18. “I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”

    19. “My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.” “

    1. Just Imagine the complaints were any of these people to unexpectedly arrive in NoTTLerland!

        1. I think the people going to the Costas are employed. Or at least were.

          Hairdressers, nail bars, scaffolders. Those types. They also pay tax.

  75. I found lots of interesting stuff in this ‘ere article – don’t be put off by the author’s background.

    Why the elites hate Vaughan Williams

    The Lark Ascending has become proxy for Brexit
    BY BEN COBLEY 14 Jne 2021
    (Ben Cobley writes the blog A Free Left Blog and is author of The Tribe: the Liberal-Left and the System of Diversity. He is a journalist by trade and a former Labour Party activist.)

    *************************************************************************

    Don Holden
    Another reason the woke brigade hate RVW is for his love of country – volunteering to join the army in the First World War when he was in his forties. They would much prefer to worship Benjamin Britten who scarpered off to America with his boyfriend during the Second.

    Ethniciodo Rodenydo
    And then got commissioned to right a war requiem which looks like a calculated insult to those who actually fought

    https://unherd.com/2021/06/why-the-elites-hate-vaughan-williams/

    1. I like a touch of warm.
      Hot is over about 36. When the inhalation scorches the nostrils.

      1. Clouded over here now and looks as though it’s blowing up for something. Not so hot.

    1. Being caught off his line…OK, it happens.
      Throwing himself into the net? Oh dear!

  82. Things re demented Mother looking a bit more hopeful.
    Seems that a local agency can provide live-in care at a price that doesn’t mean we have to sell the children. That will mean she can live at home, almost regardless how daft she becomes.
    A bright light on the horizon. Now consuming vast quantities of alcohol to celebrate the unhatched chickens… :-D)

      1. Nope, but she would get to stay at home – most important. In any case, she doesn’t remember who I am most of the time.

          1. Not so sure – after all, if you aren’t compos mentis, you won’t remeber what memory is… and forget almost instantly.

          2. OH’s mother had dementia – but every so ofter she had a flash of recognition that all was not well. The last time we saw her before she died, I couldn’t be sure if she recognised him or not – but she raised one hand as though waving goodbye

          3. I wonder if people get an inkling of what’s coming.
            SWMBOs brother called her the day before he died, and they had an unusually long conversation. Next day, he said to his wife that he felt weird, collapsed and died on the spot.

          4. My father called to see a relative one lunch-time for a quick chat, something he never did (it was a weekday). Three hours later he was dead from a heart attack.

          5. Indeed it is, but I think it’s harder on those who have to care for someone with it.

        2. You don’t resemble the little boy that she might remember. Any Family photo’s?

          I know it probably won’t help much but, like music, you may get a spark of memory. Anything that could make her smile.

          1. She seems happy enough. Doesn’t get upset about not remembering, a little anxious now & then when her parents haven’t come home from visiting her aunt in Leicester.

    3. Yo Ol

      Now consuming vast quantities of alcohol to celebrate the unhatched chickens.

      You or Mum?

    4. Good news, Paul. Live-in care can be horrendously expensive (but probably not as expensive as going into a care home).

      1. There’s a local home in Barry. £700 a week. Live-in care: £1250 a week.

        1. Blimey! That’s cheap for a care home! Here you’re looking at nearer £1k/week.

  84. Can we keep our faith in NATO?

    Brussels, Belgium

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bfd5e31793741ede52f6d508260e84aaf4676303/0_0_4854_3235/master/4854.jpg?width=720&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=23caf37414445075612bb658ab7a914a
    The Manneken Pis statue is decorated with a Nato costume as the organisation’s summit takes place in Brussels

    Thank heavens he didn’t show on Juno beach on 6th June 1944

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/eda6b78f09879b7e3b7304248d9a7be9439982fe/0_0_3500_2334/master/3500.jpg?width=720&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=08a128c380ded9b04869a57496df263a
    Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, wears colourful socks for a Nato summit at the alliance’s headquarters

  86. That is me gone for another day. Strange weather – at times very hot – then cloudy and cold.

    However, not all bad. Treated the potatoes and tomatoes with Bordeaux Mixture AND the greens with Neem Oil. Remember my banging on about that years ago? Does its job. Now for a glass and 100 people to clap on the back and mingle with “all completely within the covid regulations”….

    A demain

    PS Could someone tell me when (if) GBTV gets its sound right and the shouty bloke calms down? Thanks.

    1. I hear that ‘Bordeaux Mixture’ is about to be banned, Bill.

      IDGAF; i much prefer a jolly good vintage Claret …

      1. That was proposed a few years ago. The French wine industry was up in arms – and the “dangerous chemical” suddenly became OK again!

    2. Where did you get hold of your Bordeaux mixture, Bill? I can’t get it round here.

  87. YouGov poll says 70% support delaying freedom.

    That’s YouGov – the poll that gives you the answer YOU want.

    1. I too seriously distrust YouGov, but it seems Project Covid Terror might be working. Perhaps the solution would be to stop the furlough scheme, but I suspect the government don’t want to get back to “normal”?

  88. The most popular baby names of 2021 revealed: Muhammad is still number one for boys Dreary Fail

    What a surprise!

    1. It might be the most numerous but I doubt it will be the most popular for a few years yet.

    3. You mean the most common (meaning the one most used) not the most popuar, surely?

  91. Scotchland lost whatever they were doing. Took too long to get off their knees and ended up kicking the ball the same way as their opponents.

        1. Christmas 🎄 will be banned as fake news thanks to the Online Safety Act.

  94. So if we get an extra four week delay on the release date then we are up to 21st July and by then we will have the Blue Peter Variant, (one they prepared earlier).

    1. And then the nights are drawing in and its all very difficult and why don’t we just carry on like this until next spring and then we’ll take another look?

      Yes, that’s it. There’ll be another Press Conference next March. Or April maybe. Have a good Christmas, see you next year.

      1. Meanwhile the American aviation industry is already going full tilt as in a usual summer.

        Pity that the British government couldn’t care less about British aviation.

        1. The British government couldn’t care less about anything British, to be honest.

    2. Boros doesn’t care. All that matters is a mega job with Bill like the former CEO of the MHRA.

  97. ‘Totally unacceptable’: Sir Lindsay Hoyle vents anger over move to hold Covid road map press conference before MPs are told

    Well, Mr Speaker, it is totally unacceptable that you have not been doing your job and making the Government report to the HoC regularly and to allow dissenting voices to have a lengthy say at all ministerial questions.

    1. I agree. The House of Commons is a bunch of fat, greedy lazy gravy train passengers who are not serving the electorate in any way on the covid issue.

      1. I just wish (forlorn hope) that there could be a George Galloway/Frank Skinner type who held the sceptic view and was well briefed on the counter arguments/statistics and could press home the points loudly and consistently.

        1. James Delingpole and Laura Perrins were talking about this on their chinwag on the Delingpod the other day – how the previously trenchant “rebels” have simply melted away over the covid issue.
          They were thinking about journalism, but it’s just as applicable to the House of Commons.

          All those people who made a good living out of being establishment rebels – when it gets serious, suddenly they’re nowhere to be seen.

          1. Criticise them as much as one likes, but at least the Oxford and Cambridge Union debates allowed all views to be put forward and voted on, however abhorrent they would have been to the woke.

            Less so now of course.

            It’s a great pity there are no longer any Powells.

      1. Probably – I don’t know what variety. We bought this house 26 years ago and the garden had recently had a makeover – the wisteria was just a little stick.

    2. Gosh – what a beautiful colour.

      And so much later, Our blue one is over. The white didn’t really take off this year and the one with very long blooms is also just ending.

      1. It’s normally out like this by the middle of May – only a week or two ago quite a lot of the buds looked as though they were not going to open.

        A neighbour has a lovely white one and that is now going over.

        1. I think we all hated the miserable May but she’s been replaced by a W⚓️.
          The month of May was awful.

      1. Yes – just where we sat out for dinner – not sitting out tonight as it’s turned quite cool & cloudy.

  99. Surprising US hasn’t blamed Russia for starting BLM movement that shook nation, Putin jokes, while backing African-American rights
    Russia is sympathetic to the cause of black rights in the US, but is wary of extremism, President Vladimir Putin has said, joking that Washington could have done more to try to pin the blame on Moscow for the recent protests.

        2. There is a HUGE difference between non-whites a la Asia and blacks a la America, UK, Africa.

          2. Fully open Finland’s borders to Africa while offering them all free education, health care, housing, and living expenses and maybe, just maybe, it will remove your head from your arse.

          4. Really?

            You’re the one suggesting to us that all non-whites are similar and that Russia has lots of them, true though it may be.

            Get out there, follow your convictions, call for Finland to open it’s borders totally to Africa, and while you’re about it the Islamic world.

          5. Try having to put up with what we have to put up with. Then you can come with an informed opinion.

          6. You are a genuine expert on Russia. I respect that. They (and the Red Army – and Air Force) – are just a few miles from you.

            Could you just let us plebs know:

            (a) How many black presenters are there on all Russia TV channels?
            (b) How many blacks in Russia TV and press adverts?
            (c) How many blacks playing in the Russian wendyball team?

            And

            (d) How many blacks in the Norn Ireland Assembly?

          11. You forgot to add – – while demanding everything is changed to suit them – raping thousands of young girls – – setting up drug gangs – – Racing round the roads while having no license, insurance or whatever, then running off after they crash into an innocent law abiding motorist. And the rest.

          13. And marching in the streets with banners saying ” All non-believers should be slaughtered – – while living on the taxes of the non-believers they want to slaughter !!!!!!! ) – -while they had a POLICE ESCORT !!! )

      2. I wonder why that is?

        If it was wrong for the whites to go to places like Africa then why is it right for blacks to come to Europe? Is this consistent thinking?

        3. Because we “owe them”. For turning their countries from cesspits into civilised places. But of course the slave trade that had gone on for hundreds of years (and still goes on) before whitey ever set foot in Africa is all OUR fault. Muslims are keeping very, very quiet, aren’t they, about their own very large part in this, Hypocrites.

  102. One day a minister might actually reply to the SAGE question:

    “Do you want to be responsible for 100,000 Covids deaths minister, if we don’t lockdown?”

    with

    Do YOU want to be responsible for 5 million early deaths caused by your lockdowns?”

          1. Just conjecturing so (allegedly and all that) Rothschild? Plus more of that ilk. Allegedly.

          4. Look outside your usual suspects and at those who have genuine political weight behind the scenes as well as money up front, particularly Asian.

  103. ** NoTTLer ALERT ** Return of the Disqus Upvote eater

    I never succeeded in set up a new email/Disqus account. The Citroen1 upvote total went vastly negative…earlier this afternoon it had climbed back to +4703…it has now gone back in a number of steps to 4562

    1. Wear your zero with pride.

      If these cretins think you are worth targetting you are right on the money.

    2. I’ve been using my old account since I had a cookie meltdown a few months ago and had to go through the rigmarole of logging in again to Disqus and all my email accounts. The newer one is still logged in on my phone.

    3. Some of us had all our upvotes taken away a while ago. We became the Zero Heroes. I believe we still get no upvotes despite who actually upvotes us online.

      1. Not entirely accurate. I was a Zero Hero for a long time. One’s ‘upvote account’ was debited until it carried a vastly negative balance. Subsequent upvotes have been credited to that account and if you get lots and lots, a positive balance eventually emerges.

    4. My old profile is well below zero. Are the new ones being affected now as well?

  105. Time to start preparing for No Deal 2.0

    Without goodwill on both sides, the Northern Ireland protocol is unworkable and may kill the free trade agreement with the EU

    MATTHEW LYNN
    14 June 2021 • 4:55pm

    The lorries will be tailing back along the M20. Tesco and Sainsbury’s will be running low on lettuce. Supply chains will freeze up, the planes will stop flying, and our mobiles will stop working.

    Most of us, and companies in particular, may have thankfully forgotten all the warnings of chaos if we left the European Union without a deal to keep trade flowing smoothly between Britain and the continent. But hold on. Just when we started to think all that was safely behind us, we need to start preparing for No Deal 2.0.

    As the tense talks at the G7 Summit over the last weekend made clear there is little prospect of a compromise over Northern Ireland. It may have started with a row over sausages. But it is not likely to end there. The leaders of the Europen Union are determined to enforce its rules and regulations in the province.

    The UK is determined to maintain its sovereignty. If the tensions can’t be dialled down, and there is little sign of that at the moment, we will have no choice but to tear up the agreement. If so, we will be right back with No Deal – and companies need to start preparing for that now if chaos is to be avoided.

    The compromise struck over Northern Ireland in the withdrawal agreement was always a messy one. With some goodwill on both sides, it could possibly have been made to work. There is little sign of that, at least from the EU. Instead, it is insisting on maximum border checks on goods shipped from Britain to Northern Ireland just in case the occasional unregulated sausage slips into the Single Market.

    Every bag travelling between Britain and Ulster is inspected, while pets can’t travel from one to the other without vaccination certificates, and many traditional goods – sausages included – are no longer available on the shelves at supermarkets in Belfast or Londonderry. It is a weird situation for what, despite what Emmanuel Macron appears to believe, are regions of the same country.

    Of course, the protocol could always be renegotiated. Chancellor Merkel and President Macron keep ruling that out, even though of course contracts and treaties get renegotiated all the time. There is nothing very unusual about taking a look at how something works in practice – not very well in this case – and then starting a discussion about how it could be improved. Unless that happens, however, the agreement as it stands is unworkable.

    The politicians will argue over that, point fingers, and try to lay the blame on someone else. For the economy, however, the important point is this. It will lead to the Free Trade Agreement with the EU being scrapped.

    An extreme interpretation? Not really. If the EU won’t try and find a solution that works for both sides, the UK may have to pull out of the deal. Alternatively, the EU may decide that it can’t live with an open border adjacent to the Single Marker and decide to terminate the deal itself. Even so, the message for businesses is clear. They need to start getting ready for No Deal 2.0.

    One one level, at this stage of the game, it might not make a huge difference anymore. The trade deal, as it turned out, was very thin. It removed tariffs and quotas on goods flowing between the two sides, but it still imposed all the paperwork, enforced rigorously on the other side the the Chanel, and had nothing to offer on services or finance, which happen to be the UK’s most significant exports.

    As the trade data released last week made clear, the flow of goods across the Chanel was hugely disrupted through January and February but has mostly returned to normal as firms got used to the changed regime. Even exports of shellfish, one of the most contested products, are almost back to 2020 levels. Most companies have either got their heads around the extra paper, or decided not to bother exporting to the EU. Switching to WTO rules won’t make a lot of difference on top of that.

    And, of course, companies have plans that were shelved. In the run up to Christmas, with negotiations on a knife-edge over whether a trade deal would be agreed with the EU before the transition period came to an end, just about every trader of any size had to put a plan in place for dealing with the disruption of switching to WTO terms.

    Stockpiles were built up, paperwork prepared, and alternative suppliers sounded out. If tariffs and quotas were imposed overnight then businesses needed to be ready for that. Most of those plans will only be a few months old. They can be dusted off in case they are needed again.

    Even so, terminating the free trade agreement will still be disruptive. Supply chains will become even more strained. Exports will be treated even more harshly at Calais. There will be bottlenecks and possibly even some shortages as businesses get used to yet another trading regime with a bloc that still accounts for 40pc of our imports and exports.

    Even more importantly, we can forget about a closer relationship with the EU. The City had been hoping for an equivalence deal on financial services, but that will be off the table for a generation or more. Likewise, open access for other services won’t be on the agenda any time soon.

    In truth, the Northern Ireland protocol is unworkable. It was a half-baked compromise, which might just have worked with plenty of goodwill, but is not going to survive the tensions between the two sides. It might happen over the summer. Or it might be autumn.

    But it now looks increasingly like that the Free Trade Agreement with the EU will have to be jettisoned. Companies will have to be ready for No Deal 2.0 – and the time to start preparing is now.

    *********************************************************

    Andrew Sutherland
    14 Jun 2021 5:04PM
    If Boris was to tear up the existing deal and revert to No Deal as you suggest I would literally, at a stroke, forgive his incompetence over Covid, HS2 and all the rest and change my view and voting position in his favour.

    That single decision would probably see him in power for a decade.

    Does he have it in him though? Doubt it.

    1. Tearing up any deal (however bad that “deal” is for this country) isn’t in Boris’s mental capability. I have only one thing to say to Boris: “Are you a man or a mouse? Squeak up”.

      1. It’s a lot easier than stopping immigrant from being exported from France. No sweat.

      2. To be fair, I think she would do a lot more if left to herself. Her hands are pretty much tied by government policy and the civil serpents at the dead and buried Home Office.

    2. For once, good for her.

      Still not clear why Southgate (and others) weren’t asked about the provocative nature of ‘the knee’ and why some other gesture (linking arms, say) couldn’t be substituted. In my view, had this been done, there would have been next-to-no objection from anyone, except those wondering if racism is as rife in this country as has been claimed.

      3. I am surprised that they have doubled down on it, when it’s clearly so unpopular.

  107. Evening, all. There is no valid reason for prolonging restrictions, but the PTB just cannot let go of control. Incidentally, Oscar had his first visit to a friend’s house (where I drank coffee) and he met another dog there (who accompanied another friend – we all usually meet up on Mondays). He behaved well, on the whole (just a bit wary of the young dog getting in his face and so told him off). I’ve finally managed to erect the arch that has been mouldering in my shed for more than a year and have now trained Comtesse de Bouchard and Dorothy Walton clematis up it.

    1. The one thing that irritates Spartie is over-enthusiastic ‘teenage’ dogs.
      Apart from that, he’s everyone’s friend.

      1. After a bit of posturing they both settled down and chilled out. Bertie is about ten years younger than Oscar.

    2. It all sounds very good, Conway

      For Your (and Oscar’s) Information

      The was a Parson Russell Terrier called Uggie who come close to winning an Oscar
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/05052881_PRT_braun_rau.jpg

      Uggie
      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

      Awards 2011 Palm Dog Award
      2012 Golden Collar Award
      2020 Palm Dog of Palm Dogs (posthumously)

      Uggie (February 14, 2002 – August 7, 2015)[1][2] was a trained Parson Russell Terrier famous for his roles in Water for Elephants and The Artist. His memoir Uggie, My Story was published in the United States, UK, and France in October 2012.

      The campaign “Consider Uggie” was launched in December 2011 on Facebook by S.T. VanAirsdale, an editor at Movieline, for Uggie to receive a real or Honorary Academy Award nomination. BAFTA announced that he would be ineligible for one of its awards, while he received a special mention at the Prix

      1. I vaguely remember something about him in The Artist. Of course, Oscar (he already has his award!) is a Fox Terrier and much superior 🙂

      1. No, but he is getting better at weeing to order, particularly before we go to bed for the night.

        1. How does he get on with your OH? And, more to the point, hows does she manage with Oscar?

          Nous pensons souvent à vous.

          1. Merci, Bill. Everything is okay on that front, thankfully. I cut the lawns today (had to buy a new mower – spit! – because the old one gave up the ghost and the new one is pathetic, unfortunately; everything has been cheapened, but not in price), so MOH had to supervise Oscar indoors . He goes nuts with the vacuum cleaner, so I didn’t want him anywhere near the mower, which could do him much more damage. At least the front lawn no longer looks like a meadow. It took me so long to mow it that I’ve left the back lawn until tomorrow. “Suitable for small lawns” it said on the box. Suitable for pocket handkerchief lawns, more like!

    2. Good morning, director general…

      This is George Soros’ Open Society London here.

      I wonder if you might have time for lunch one day at the Ritz…

    3. The last Marquess of Bristol was a drug sodden degenerate, so possibly they’re trying to recreate the ambience.

    4. I cannot even access articles now , nor can I view the comments section.. They want money from me .

      Andrew Neil needs to hear about the NT and do something about our cultural icons that were bequeathed to the nation .

  109. My inner Mme Defarge is running full throttle this evening.
    What with the lying shiites claiming that next time we really, really will return to ‘freedom’ on 19th. July (cue new, extra nasty scariant on 18th. July …)
    Currently MB is watching some trashy programme about the stinking rich and their hideous pads. Quite frankly, I could herd the lot of them and the creeps pandering their whims into a large cellar and turn the machine guns on them.
    Last weekend’s shenanigans in Carbis Bay/Versailles have congealed my loathing into a cold, deep hatred.

    2. That’s what I like about you, a moderate, kindly old lady, counter balance to my own views!

    3. Been there a long time now. I cannot express my deep hatred well enough. Alf says I should stop reading anything about it but I just can’t seem to stop myself. They are vile absolutely vile people, controlling us all, and the worst of it is that polls seem to suggest the majority of the public thinks they’re doing a good job! I have never sworn so much in my life and I never used to swear. It seems the only way I can relieve my feelings. I would kill them all if I could. Well, obviously, I wouldn’t really but that’s how filled with rage and fury I am.

      Why don’t people see wha they’re doing to us? When furlough ends there will be a huge jump in unemployment, many businesses will have gone under, all fitting in nicely with the crazy zero carbon green world they want us to live in. No cars, eventually, no flying off for holidays, mortgage payments not made so a little way down the line evictions (Government will come up with some scheme to prevent evictions – doesn’t look too good!), impoverishing many people and making them ultimately dependent on the state for everything. Well and truly under control. And wanting to inject everybody with … what? Who knows. For as long as I have the choice I will not be having an experimental jab. It worries me that they have their eyes on children. God help us all.

      End of rant. Goodnight all

  112. News latest !

    Boris Gates delays opening by four weeks…

    Matt Gates to address Commons….

  114. Boris is right: we need to learn to live with Covid. So why not now?

    Tonight’s miserable announcement was peculiarly at odds with the data – which showed substantial good news

    JANET DALEY

    For the life of me I cannot understand the logic of this. I lost track of the number of times that the Prime Minister and both of his outriders stated quite aggressively (as if they expected us to disagree) that “this virus will be with us forever”: “we are going to have to learn to live with this virus”, “we can’t eliminate Covid”, and so on and so on. But the obvious conclusion was absent: nothing much seemed to follow at all from that insistence. If we must learn to live with the ineradicable risk of the virus, why not start now? Apparently because it would be better to vaccinate more people first. By the new great liberation day of 19 July, we will, they adamantly predicted, have fully vaccinated two thirds of the adult population. Fine. But why is two thirds a magic number? Why not insist on three quarters of the population being protected? And what if a significant percentage of people who remain unvaccinated simply refuse to be jabbed? Will they be allowed to hold up the re-opening forever? Presumably not, since there were several explicit assurances from Boris Johnson that he personally was “confident” that 19 July would be the end of it.

    And then there was that welcome but oddly inconsistent exemption for weddings and wakes. They will be allowed to go ahead with more than 30 guests starting on the original promised date of 21 June – providing that they observe social distancing. So you can have weddings without embraces, without dancing, without the relaxed intimacy that generally goes with the imbibing that weddings involve. What a joyous thought. Of course, it won’t happen: people will behave at weddings as they always have and I somehow doubt that the police will crash in and close them down. But anyway, why should weddings be exempted but not twenty first birthday parties, or christenings, or golden wedding anniversaries? One suspects this is because there is a weddings industry to lobby for special treatment whereas there is no such organised campaigning for those other major life celebrations.

    For what it’s worth, I thought Boris looked uncomfortable with this. He did not appear confident, reassuring or absolutely convinced that he had made the right decision. Nor did his two sidekicks who seemed less smoothly insouciant than they often have. Indeed, the announcement they were making seemed peculiarly at odds with the data that Professor Whitty displayed on his familiar slides – which all seemed, as he remarked himself, to show pretty substantial good news. It was really all a bit strange. Perhaps it is a good thing that the prime minister has given himself an opt-out by saying that there will be another review of the data in two weeks’ time when he could – just possibly – change his mind. [Pft! As if…] Or will official pride make that impossible even if the figures for hospitalizations and deaths are absurdly low? Will saving the credibility of the government and its advisers win out over the quality of the rest of our lives?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/14/boris-right-need-learn-live-covid-not-now/

    1. Why does Boros look uncomfortable?

      Is it because he’s taken the money and isn’t in charge?

      1. He looks to be racked with guilt. He has married a mistress with too many teeth and ideas above her station in life and has spawned a brat who resembles an extra terrestrial with a blond wig.

        Johnson’s entire life and that of his disjointed families is a lesson to us all and not a route any of us should follow. The man is a disgusting womaniser and gargantuan fraud.

        He has taken the globalist shilling (or billion) and knows no shame.

    2. I’ve never seen such a shifty looking trio.
      Johnson is particular was bloviating for England.

    3. And more than one thousand muslims attended one funeral. And the authorities probably stood and watched.

    4. I got into a slightly heated conservation a week or so ago. A man was proclaiming how good and wonderful he was because he was “safe” because he’d had both jabs. So I asked him – If all people who’ve had 2 jabs want to go to see the same show at the theatre, then why can’t the theatre be full of “safe” people – who will STILL have to wear masks – instead of haveing to sit spread out? After a minute or so he just walked off. No answer.

  115. Over the weekend, bad sleeping as normal, the radio was on R5’s Jim Davis. An 80 yr old lady came on – talking SENSE about the Covid restrictions – I instantly thought “She’s a goner” but to my surprise, He let her talk. That woman should be a Nottler !!!!!,
    Anyhow, a short while after she left, a text was sent up which seemed to amuse him and her read it out. “Good God Mr Davis, you let a sensible woman on and ler her talk sense, Have you forgot that you work for the BBC “?

  116. Amazing how looking after one little 16 month old grand child can leave an elderly couple as tired as they might be after a 10 mile walk.
    I give in, i’m of the bed peeps Goodnight all.

      1. We have three now, they are such fun, I was was always working when our three sons went through these younger days. I remember reading them bed time stories and them telling me wake up dad, ‘cos i had dropped off.

  118. Tuesday’s DT editorial.

    This delay is far more significant than the Prime Minister made out

    Freedom is being treated not as the inalienable right of every individual, to be curtailed only in extreme emergencies, but as conditional

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    It was meant to be Freedom Day. On June 21, the last restrictions would fall, an unprecedented experiment in social control would end, and the Government would concede that it had no justification for using the full force of the law to regulate the lives of the public in order to contain a pandemic that vaccinations had begun to tame.

    For a time, it appeared as if hope would triumph over experience. Despite the Government’s baleful record of moving the goalposts, the Prime Minister had been making optimistic noises about the data. The reopening of schools, pubs and shops took place without an overwhelming surge in infections. Hospitalisations and deaths from Covid were at low levels. The R number rose, as would be expected given the resumption of some social contact, but it seemed clear that positive test numbers in themselves were little to worry about thanks to the vaccination of the vulnerable.

    In the end, however, Boris Johnson’s commitment to freedom could not survive a backlash from a risk-averse scientific-technocratic class that has never appreciated lockdown’s costs. The rise of the Delta/Indian variant gave licence to officials to revive their irresponsible campaign of fear. First, warnings about the effects of variants convinced the Government to go backwards on foreign travel, with suggestions from ministers that limiting our freedom to go abroad would protect freedom at home. Now even the return of freedom at home is being sacrificed, to what is being described as a sensible delay.

    Is it only a delay? At his Downing Street press conference last night, the Prime Minister was at pains to emphasise that it is only a temporary pause of four weeks to enable more people to be vaccinated. The Government portrays its decision as a pragmatic postponement, not a cancellation, and one that will be of no lasting significance.

    But it is much more significant than that. It is a betrayal of thousands of companies, already driven to the edge of ruin by lockdown and social-distancing, who have spent significant sums of money in preparation for a full reopening on June 21. Ministers might say that their mantra all along has been “data, not dates”. However, has anyone in Government bothered to calculate how many companies will be bankrupted by weeks of extra restrictions? It is a betrayal of the public, many of whom have only been able to endure the past few months because of the firm knowledge that an end was in sight. They have embraced vaccination, believing that it would be used to reopen. Instead, they find themselves under tighter restrictions than this time last year, when there was no jab.

    Above all, it is a betrayal of Conservative principles. Freedom is being treated not as the inalienable right of every individual, to be curtailed only in the most extreme of emergencies, but as conditional – to be disregarded whenever it is convenient to the Government.

    The case for the state continuing to intervene in our lives has not been made. We will never be “safe” from Covid-19. It is likely to become an endemic disease that societies must live with, possibly indefinitely. The point of the vaccination campaign was not to eliminate the risk, but to lower it to manageable levels, which has arguably been done. It may be impossible to sever the link between cases and hospitalisations completely.

    In any case, will the situation really be much different in four weeks’ time? Yes, more people might have the full protection of the jab. But there will remain a proportion who will not have been afforded its protection and perhaps never will be. Positive test numbers may even be higher by mid-July. If the Government remains concerned about the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed, especially now that it has to deal with the non-Covid backlog, it is extraordinary that so little effort appears to have been made to boost capacity. If we are truly in a race between variants and the jabs, why has the vaccination programme not been massively accelerated?

    The Government may claim that it is merely following the science. Yet this could well turn out to be a defining moment in the Prime Minister’s political career – when he missed his opportunity to liberate the country from Covid restrictions, and end the unseemly bartering over our freedoms. Already the outlines of a longer-term architecture of control are beginning to emerge, with calls for some social-distancing to stay permanently. Will it ever be judged “safe” to return to normal?

    In an ideal world, Parliament would vote down this unnecessary extension to lockdown. Shamefully, however, only a handful of Tory backbenchers could be counted upon to oppose it. The Government faces no real opposition from the Labour Party, which has predictably fallen into line behind the delay, seeing it only as a reason to spend more money. Millions of people, particularly those who enjoy the benefits of working-from-home, appear to be content to remain in a state of semi-hibernation. The Prime Minister is popular, still enjoying the after-effects of the Tory victory in the Hartlepool by-election.

    The history books may not be so kind. Unless the remaining restrictions are lifted by July 19 at the latest, Boris Johnson risks being remembered not only as the prime minister who took away our freedoms, but who was unwilling to give them back again. Does he have the courage to avoid that fate?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/14/delay-far-significant-prime-minister-made/

    2. “Yet this could well turn out to be a defining moment in the Prime Minister’s political career”
      Career, career? What fucking career, the man’s a total waste of space, Thinks he’s a Churchillian figure, but speaks like an eleven year old child ( and not a bright one).

      1. Lord Sumption is generally right and he was quite right to say that Boris Johnson is intellectually lazy. However he was doltish wrong in saying that Johnson is intelligent – he is a total buffoon.

        1. Boris is definitely intelligent – it’s his weakness that makes him look foolish.

      2. 334288+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        Behind a great deal of this is payback for the 24/6/2016 verdict as well as testing out herd control.

      3. I think the lack of maturity comes from never having had a proper career. He and Gove went straight from Oxford into jounalism – spinning words for tutors to spinning words for editors. It’s all just a giant game, albeit one that they want to win.
        We desperately need a more balanced and genuinely diverse House of Commons, with more roots in manufacturing, farming, medium sized enterprises etc.

  119. Goodnight all Nottlers. Bedtime music: “Parlez-moi d’amour” is a song written by Jean Lenoir in 1930. Lucienne Boyer was the first singer to record the song.
    Vocals – @Tatiana Eva-Marie. Violin – Gabe Terracciano, Guitar – Vinny Raniolo, Rhythm guitar – Sara L’Abriola. Bass – Wallace Stelzer
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZCsVlhThU

        1. Looks like arm-wrestling with scorpions at each end then. I’ll be sending a sub to represent me, of course.

    1. Johnson looks to be a broken man riddled with guilt and presumably fearful that half the population will continue to refuse the useless and potentially fateful jabs.

      As with America the wheels are falling off the project. Whitty is down on my list as a war criminal along with Vallance, Van Tam, Ferguson and Farrar along with the clearly compromised silent medicos and those wilfully administering the injections.

      The repercussions of this whole Covid farrago will bring the government crashing and burning to the ground.

      If the G7 can fart around un-masked and un-distanced so can the rest of us. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f083d8aed62aaa8eb16946413242c9eae6dbb89f6c83b866e11e183b2992f29b.jpg

      I repeat a post I made a few days ago:

      We were warned decades ago. In 1958, in “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State,” C.S. Lewis wrote,

      [T]he new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value… I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.

    2. To be fair to BJ it’s a bit like people asking when the War will end. Thank God we didn’t have the equivalent of SAGE in WWII, otherwise we’d still be fighting the peksy Jerries.

    1. Good night, Tom, and all NoTTLers. I would just like to add that today I went with “The Wrinklies (U3A) Film Club members” to watch THE FATHER at our local cinema. This is the film which earned Anthony Hopkins a Best Actor Oscar and a Best Actor BAFTA. It is a wonderfully moving film about an elderly man (Hopkins) who is slowly being destroyed by encroaching Alzheimers and the struggles of his daughter Anne (a supporting role played wonderfully well by Olivia Colman) who is trying to support him. A unanimous “Thumbs Up” from all nine of us – if it is showing at a cinema to you, please do NOT miss it.

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