Monday 25 May: The law and the behaviour of Dominic Cummings in going to Durham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/24/letters-law-behaviour-dominic-cummings-going-durham/

902 thoughts on “Monday 25 May: The law and the behaviour of Dominic Cummings in going to Durham

    1. I wouldn’t bank on it…

      Haven’t been there since 1953 – in a pre-war Austin 12. The car boiled before we reached the top!

    2. Even if I’m sat in the queue behind them, I love watching someone trying to restart on the 1st hairpin when they’ve ground to a halt after trying to get up in too high a gear!
      3rd gear at the bottom and ready to slam into 2nd just before the hairpin is the way I prefer.

      1. Morning Bob. When the lockdown came into force and Sutton Bank was still open. 4 sports cars came up at speed. The first one.
        . in a red Ferrari ,misjudged the top hairpin and hit the kerb sideways on with a loud clatter. After a short pause he found the correct gear and raced off on the Scarborough direction at high revs closely followed by the 3 other cars. I decided they were footballers out for fun and speed early in the morning. Last week as I was out walking early again a motorcyclist came up at high speed and took the straight road line at the top and found himself on the minor road. He stopped and it took him a while how to find his way back on to the Scarborough road. I use your technique on the climb up. I had a lovely quiet walk this morning but the fields below are very parched. We need some heavy rain very soon.

  1. ‘[Morning All

    The Conservative Party is still full of remaniacs who only went along with Boris to save their place at the public trough and still plot to avoid a real Brexit

    “Boris Johnson’s under-fire chief adviser Dominic

    Cummings squashed a plan to delay Britain’s true Brexit day which was

    “all but agreed” while he and the Prime Minister were “laid out on their

    sickbeds”.

    Cummings, resented by much of the media establishment and the “deep

    state” for his role in the Vote Leave campaign and open disdain for

    journalists and bureaucrats, is currently the subject of a media circus

    over allegations he broke lockdown rules by travelling from London to

    Durham so his family could look after his young child if he and his wife

    were incapacitated by their coronavirus infections.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/24/boris-adviser-squashed-plan-delay-real-brexit-concocted-while-he-pm-covid/
    Cummings has provided much needed spine,no wonder at the hysterical attempts of a full on Remainer MSM to get rid of him

  2. Britain ready to welcome Hong Kong refugees. 24 May 2020.

    But the Sunday Express has learnt that at a meeting earlier this year at the Prime Minister’s official country residence, Chequers, Mr Johnson told MPs that he could be prepared to give Hong Kong citizens refuge.

    The meeting at Chequers saw unanimous support for the move. It is similar to the campaign to provide full citizenship to Ugandan Asians in the 1970s, when they were persecuted by dictator Idi Amin. One of the families to come over then was that of Home Secretary Priti Patel.

    North West Leicestershire Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who is one of 183 people to sign a letter demanding action on Hong Kong, said: “We clearly have a moral obligation to those residents, especially those with British overseas citizenship, given the Chinese crackdown.”

    Morning everyone. One wonders if Mr Bridgen’s “moral obligation” is prompted by his Serbian wife whose presence in the UK must stand on even shakier ground. The acceptance of this specious argument by Boris and Unanimous Co looks to be more convenience than conviction, after all when has any Government Minister opposed the principle of anyone moving to the UK? They pay lip service to its prevention certainly, but as we see with the Cross Channel traffic that is all it is. The truth is that if there were not public opposition they would simply fling open the doors and hang a WELCOME sign on the White Cliffs of Dover. The vast building programme to house “refugees” the failure to prevent inward migration tells us this. Whence comes this largesse? This total indifference to native sensibilities or beliefs? The Elites certainly do not share them. Patriotism. A respect for the People and History of the UK, a love of this land and its traditions? They feel nothing for these things or the people that made them possible. They are like ungrateful and spiteful children who having inherited a beautiful home and vast fortune amassed by their parents at much cost in Blood and Suffering, then treat it with contempt and disdain, inviting all and sundry within to share its delights.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1286442/china-security-law-hong-kong-refugees-uk

    1. 319583+ up ticks,s,
      Morning As,
      It is just not a feasible proposal on SPACE alone.
      I cracked on long ago vertical sleeping
      accommodation, compulsory boarders,
      all families MUST take in two children
      cut of age of immigrant child hood being 35.

    2. Morning Minty ,

      These MP’s are probably encouraging wealthy Hong Kong money men to come to Britain , hoping they will bale us out.

      You can bet your bottom dollar there is a ulterior motive.

  3. What the flying f*** is this all about??

    “Chief of the Defence Staff

    General Sir Nick Carter has revealed that 77 Brigade is involved in

    countering misinformation online relating to Coronavirus.At

    the daily UK Government coronavirus briefing on the 22nd of April,

    Carter said that they had been tackling false information about the

    pandemic.”

    https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/77-brigade-is-countering-covid-misinformation/
    Just who died and made you God??
    Who the hell are you to decide what’s false and what’s true on Social Media??
    Or do you just mean we censor everything critical of the government line??

    1. They are probably the ones who censored Brendan O’Neill’s article the other day!

    2. They are probably the ones who censored Brendan O’Neill’s article the other day!

    3. They are probably the ones who censored Brendan O’Neill’s article the other day!

    4. The Wehrmacht is now working closely with the SS. For the protection of citizens.

      1. Although in its infancy here, the 4th Reich is shaping up nicely…

        ‘Morning, Bill.

    5. It seems strange to me that Gen.Sir Nick Carter, who has enjoyed a distinguished career as an officer in the Army, has decided that he has mistaken his vocation after all, and should have been a policeman.

    6. 77th Brigade specialise in “non-lethal” forms of psychological warfare, using social media including Facebook and Twitter to fight with information in response to external factors, like Russian misinformation.

    7. Bugger: there go my plans for a military coup.
      Even the Forces are infested with weevils.

  4. The press can sit outside Dominic Cummings house but they cannot go to Dover for some reason

    1. What, go to Dover and give some credibility to that nasty patriotic racist Farage man? Not on their agenda.

    2. IYo Bob

      I hope they are all keeping their 2 Metre distance from each other

          1. Standing on a bridge somewhere, flouting the rules for some extreme clapping? Oh no, that’s Thursdays innit?

            ‘Morning, B3.

          2. Either stopping families travelling to get a bit of fresh air, or hunched over screens trawling for hurty words.

        1. Today’s Rant

          Bill

          All this Lockdown &Social Distancing etc is getting out of hand

          Legally there is no difference between the SoS (Shower oof Shite) in the piccy above, ignoring the Two Metre Ruke, than with Mr Cummings taking his child to a place of safety.

          Medically there is a difference: Mr Cummings and family were esconced in their car and a danger to no-one
          The SoS above are cheek by jowl and spreading Covis with every biased utterance that they make

          To summarise. they are breaking the same ‘law’ as Mr Cummings did, and should be castigated for it

          if Mr Cummings loses his job, so should all those in the picture above (and their bosses for not giving them exact instructions about distances) for disregarding the rules

          To keep it in the family:

          Mr Cummings is being treated as a fatherless child

          The press are acting ‘a little bit pregnant’

  5. Good morning all. A gorgeous still start to the day. One lives in hopes of better times. Briefly.

  6. It is a litany of challenges, and doctors are desperate to know exactly why and how all these different parts of the body are being so badly affected.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/52760992

    The whole thing about being a doctor is that you need to present to the patient an impression that you know what you’re talking about. It is very common that a medical professional after seeing a patient will go straight onto the internet and start using a search tool – precisely what they tell the patients not to do.

    Many current medical procedures now are prescribed for specific conditions as defined pathways which makes a series of complex treatments very easy to follow by medical professionals.

    With COVID-19 there is no pathway – we are on our own.

    1. Even at my level, I can remember having to keep a blank face and give an impression of knowledge when faced with something unexpected.
      Doctors must have to act all the time.

        1. Do you make a long, ponderous résumé of what the client has just said – with one or two posh words thrown in for good measure, and then promise to consult revised acts, discuss with colleague who specialises in these arcane matters …. blah, blah, blah ….
          A significant glance at leather bound books on shelves lining the room would make the client feel he was getting his money’s worth.

      1. ‘Morning, Johnny.

        Did you see what I had for supper last night? I posted the recipe.

        1. Morning Peddy

          Your recipe for supper must have tasted delicious . I tried to shop in W/rose the other day , the queue was very long outside , there was a biting wind , and I gave up all thoughts of purchasing a few delicacies.

          1. Morning, Belle.
            Mother-in-law reports shortages of cucumbers, and onions. Have you noticed anything like that?

      2. Last night’s curried lentils had an unfortunate effect – like a brass band, so it was.
        Morning, Johnny. Hope all’s good with you.

        1. I nearly had a heart attack this morning, Paul – after my usual “visit”. Then I remembered that I had eaten a lot of beetroot last night……

  7. Good morning all,

    We are now living with double standards aren’t we.

    At the time Dominic Cummings dashed up North to visit his parents , our airports were still busy with how many passengers arriving in the UK, wealthy people clearing off to their holiday homes, Prince Charles taking his team upto Scotland .. illegal migrants.

    Public health messages are now an absolute load of nonsense .

    1. All the Royals left London did they not? Scarpered to their country palaces safe above the rules being imposed on the lower orders. No doubt the police escorted them, rather than stop them to question their movements.

  8. 319583+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Compassion is one thing, downright anti GB treacherous actions are another.
    The Cummings / goings is all political foreplay portrayed by the top rankers making up the governance elite, eye catching, deflecting bollocks covering up their real agenda setting the United Kingdom up for takeover.
    The perfect setting for a civil unrest is being put in place
    these pinstripe clad political tosspots in the main, are far from stupid, add educated treachery to the mix makes for a recipe for disaster, the consequences we are witnessing currently are the fruition of years of giving them carte blanche, as in party first voting mode.

  9. SIR – Will this plague of self-righteous hypocrisy ever end?

    John Eldred

    Barnet, Hertfordshire

  10. Good Moaning, on a bright sunny bank holiday.
    Don your face masks, draw on your plastic gloves and hie thee to a garden centre (take your own sandwiches).
    A Rod Liddle article for your delectation. The headline deliberately conceals the delights within it.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-schools-should-stay-shut

    “Why schools should stay shut | The Spectator

    Has the stock of any politician fallen more sharply, these past three or four years, than that of Shami Chakrabarti? As the leader of Liberty, and an almost weekly performer on the BBC’s Question Time, she was a respected purveyor of leftish sanctimony to the masses, a humourless voice of conscience and, I think, self-regard. The battles she fought then were at least, in the main, on the side of decency — and while we might have found her a little trying and even bumptious, there seemed no doubt that here was a young woman motivated by principle.

    That notion was swiftly expunged when she accepted a brief from Jeremy Corbyn to whitewash anti-Semitism in the Labour party via an ‘independent inquiry’ headed by herself. She renounced any semblance of impartiality immediately by joining the Labour party, and produced a report which an awful lot of Jewish people felt lacked a little, you know, rigour. She was swiftly rewarded with the job of shadow attorney general — but any belief we might have had in her has now evaporated. I’m sure it wasn’t as simple as ‘Look, love — clear us of hating the Red Sea Pedestrians and we’ll bung you a top job.’ But that is how it looked to an awful lot of people.

    Now she’s even lost that post and, sadly, far more ludicrous BAME harridans have replaced her on Question Time, spouting victimhood whining and frankly racist bile. Shami’s most recent contribution to the political debate has been an article of characteristically lumpen and clichéd adolescent sarcasm, headlined: ‘Since when did teacher–shaming become Britain’s national sport?’ Oh, Shami. This would have been dumb enough coming from anyone, but emanating from a woman whose disdain for Britain’s teachers was so fathomlessly vast that she had her son educated at one of the most expensive private schools in the country, Dulwich College, it kind of smacked a little of hypocrisy as well as stupidity. Yes, hypocrisy… that was another reason we fell out of love with Shami. Mind you, I was never that much in love in the first place, to be honest.

    The problem for me is that I broadly agree with the teachers about the inadvisability of re-opening our schools in the first week of June, even if the union objections — especially from Trotsky’s grizzled old niece, Mary Bousted — are in part politically motivated. There seems to me little thought behind the announcement — either political thought or indeed scientific thought — and still less guidance. I find myself on the left in this whole debate, and that in itself is problematic and paradoxical when it comes to the teachers. Those teachers most voluble in their commitment not to return to work are also on the left — and it would cheer me up no end if the government sacked all of them, even if I believe that on this sole occasion the teachers may be right.

    The bigger picture, you see, is the brainwashing misery they are intent upon inflicting on our children, a programme of institutionalised cretinisation and wokeness, the curriculum now a palimpsest of idiotic delusions. The kids have had three or four months’ respite from the vacuous propaganda they are forced to ingest, day in, day out, during the school terms. They will be much the better off for it. The bias has long been rancid, open and unapologetic. One book doing the rounds of our schools, for example, suggests that pupils might benefit from being a bit greener and that one way to start might be eating less meat. Well, OK, maybe — although that point is itself contentious. Eat more avocados imported from Colombia and less lamb reared five miles away? But whatever. Pupils at one school have been implored to be ‘less Donald’ (picture of the US President) and ‘more Greta’ (picture of that weird Swedish lass). Because everybody hates Donald and loves Greta, right? That’s certainly true in our staff rooms and it is duly hammered into the heads of these impressionable young people. They could have said ‘Be a bit less like Lenin and a bit more like Hitler’, given that Vlad was a glutton for carrion and Adolf a pristine vegetarian. But that was not the allusion they chose.

    Or there’s this. Parents of 11-year-old kids who attend the Archbishop Sentamu Academy in Hull took grave exception to some of the homework their kids had been set in their magnificently pointless and usually malign PSHE class. This asked the pupils — 11 years old, remember — to define the following: pornography, soft pornography, hardcore pornography and transsexual pornography, as well as female genital mutilation, wet dreams, trafficking, male circumcision, breast ironing and more.

    Breast ironing. Here’s a tip. If you’re going to do it, make sure the iron is put on ‘steam’. It really gets those crinkles out. Anyway, after these young children had spent a weekend tapping ‘transsexual pornography’ and ‘hardcore pornography’ into Google to see what came up, so to speak, the principal of the school, stung by complaints, offered one of those familiar non-apology apologies: ‘I have asked that any future materials of this nature have a clear statement ensuring students and their parents are aware of any potentially sensitive content and will ensure all materials are fully age appropriate.’

    A better apology would have been: ‘I am very sorry our school urged your children, for wholly fatuous ideological reasons, to research filth. I have resigned.’

    It would be a great boon if PSHE — and all those other ancillary non-academic subjects, often called stuff like ‘Resilience’ — were banned entirely from the curriculum, as they are simply an expedient conduit for witless gender and race propagandising. If PSHE were ended, I suspect the Tavistock Clinic’s gender reassignment programme would go bust within a matter of weeks. But there would still be all those other subjects into which wokeism can be injected (pre-eminently history and geography, both of which would now be better termed ‘resentment studies’). It’s both the singer and the song. It needs to change.”

    1. I had been searching for a suitable epithet to describe the harridan from the teechurs’ union. Our Rod sums her up perfectly.

    2. I haven’t really thought much about the fact that Shami Chakrabarti sent her son to Dulwich College where Raymond Chandler, Nigel Farage and the great P.G. Wodehouse were pupils.

      But I think I must be one of the very few people who sympathised with the ‘Nottlers’ Hate Icon’, Diane Abbott when she decided to send her son to a private school knowing full well that such a decision could ruin her political career and expose her to ridicule, derision and charges of total hypocrisy. But she courageously decided to put what she thought were son’s best interests above all else. Who else would have had the courage to do so – especially not David Cameron, the Old Etonian who cynically put his own children’s best interests lower than his own by sending them to state schools in the hope that he would appear to be non-posh Dave.

      At a personal level the future of, her son, James Abbott Thompson, has proved to be a tragedy. He is clearly unbalanced and needs psychiatric help and some sort of imprisonment for his own and everybody’s else’s security. I would hazard that he must have been an extremely difficult child and that his mother was desperate to do her best to help him even if it brought opprobrium down upon her head.

      1. The irony is, Richard, that the poshly and expensively edjacated youth stood trial for various violent crimes. Including putting the fear of God in in mother.

        1. A tragic irony for his mother.

          I wonder what the boy was like when his mother decided to send him to a private school – I should imagine he was impossible. Most of us with our own children know very well that being a father or a mother can give you the greatest despair and anxiety as well as the greatest joy in your life.

          1. I’m wondering why a “posh” private school would accept a mad nigger as a pupil anyway.

          2. I am sure that at the time he was as sweet and innocent as most small children.

            Dulwich took him for the fees.

      2. I think she did it because she was as arrogant and as shameless as her son. She knows she’s untouchable.

      3. I do feel sorry for her on that one.
        That is why, when she was mocked over her shoes, I suspected something else was going on in the background. Also, I had wondered whether she was suffering from some neurological complaint; possibly sheer mental and emotional exhaustion may have been the answer.

      4. Sorry Rastus, I have to disagree with you on this one. By all means send your child into private education if you think that is best for them, but don’t then lecture others about the alleged evils of fee-paying schooling. To do so is the very finest definition of hypocrisy. It wasn’t only Abbott who did so; many of the Labour front bench did the same – and probably still do. Trying to destroy something that you and your family have decided to use is inexcusable.

      5. The bit that sticks in my craw, Rastus, is not that she decided to send him to Dulwich, but that her politics seeks to deny that option to other parents.

      6. Nothing wrong with private schools. However, telling other people not to send their children to these schools while sending one’s own child to one is blatant hypocrisy.

      7. The Abbopotamus, Richard, it’s all down to faulty genes, I’m convinced of that – it’s one of the reasons why BAMEs are more susceptible to WuFlu than far right, white, old gits like me, despite the underlying health problems!

      8. I don’t believe for a minute that Diane Abbott was being courageous. She was being a normal Lefty hypocrite.

        As for her son, the only reason he became unbalanced was because of all the Coke he shoved up his nose on a daily basis.

      9. Chakrabati annoys because she is little more than a quango sitter. She advises the government to do what she wants (which is always not what the public want) and then takes money from us to do it.

        She is the epitome of waste and irrelevance – it wouldn’t be so bad if she had a real job and gave advice that was soundly and completely ignored using her as people use Toynbee: if she likes it, the right thing to do is the opposite.

      1. Hi HP, I’ve just spent a little time looking at the PHSE website:

        “ We are a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity, governed by a board of trustees.”

        Yet another quango, run by lefty woke types, that is disguised by its charitable status. It campaigns politically as seems the norm nowadays and is ‘supported’ in its campaigns by fellow quangos/chariteees:

        “ Signatories to this shared position statement include the British Heart Foundation and St John Ambulance (Every Child a Lifesaver coalition); Barnardo’s; NSPCC; Brook; Career Development Institute; Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition; Sex Education Forum; Economic, Business and Enterprise Association (EBEA); Economy; Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH); Mentor UK; National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT); National Education Union (NEU); PSHE Association; Young Enterprise (incorporating Young Money, formerly pfeg)”

        Just another carriage on the tax payer funded merry-go-round.

    3. ‘morning Anne, now imagine going into your corporate office and Googling that long list of terms the 11 year olds had to define/research. Once the system flagged you as searching for pornography on a company computer you would be quickly marched out of the building.

      The Headmaster and the ‘teacher’ that put together this assignment should be banned from going anywhere near children again. Many eleven year olds would be left very confused and upset after seeing some of the results of their searching. Not something that any school should be asking their young pupils to do.

    4. In most schools PSHE is a waste of time and I think little attention is paid to it by the pupils. I expect the Hull school is full of far left extremists pushing the agenda. I wonder how Archbishop Sentamu likes having his name attached to the school.

    5. Chakrabati wouldn’t be the first person to find the ersult a political party wanted, but she may be the most incompetent at hiding how deliberately rigged her efforts were.

    6. Thanks Annie, a good read as usual, but I wonder why he made no reference to the peerage that swiftly followed her anti-semitism whitewash?? At best it looked rigged, and at worst it very definitely was rigged.

      1. IF they included John, Paul, George and Ringo at the front this would have made a superb album cover for a “Sergeant Pepper’s Greatest Hits” album.

    1. I just hope they identify the ‘twatter’ that posted it. Ideally it will have come from one of the so called civil service ‘Mandarins’ – then not only can they get rid of the him/her but it will add more evidence to their case for massive reforms. We can but dream 😃.

          1. Oh yes! £250.000 pa plus £175.000 expenses in one year!
            And he seems to spend his time blocking everything he doesn’t like. Boris, Brexit, reform of the CS…..!
            Definitely ripe for a huge fall!

        1. There are loads in the queue behind him. Just like in that old Monty Python sketch.

  11. The joylessness of the pro-lockdown elite knows no limits

    From government advisers to daytime TV hosts, coronavirus has brought out the same old double standards

    JULIE BURCHILL

    I’ve had a good lockdown, with one exception. On the first Sunday I decided to use my hour of allotted exercise to walk from Hove Lawns to Brighton Pier, the seafront stretch which was the scene of so many good times. Nothing during these two months has left me as sorrowful as that promenade; for some reason I imagined that the beach bars would still be open for business (because I saw the esplanade as some fantastic fiefdom which was a law unto itself, like Narnia with hen parties) but of course they were closed. The sun was shining, the canned cocktails were cold – and I felt like I was walking towards my own gallows.

    Well, what a difference eight weeks makes! I’m proud to admit that I was one of the ocean-going rotters who crowded onto Brighton Beach on Wednesday.

    I’m burnt to a crisp – but it was so worth it. I love humanity – with the exception of the silly man who has gone viral after a clip of him being interviewed on the very beach where I was basking appeared on Good Morning Britain. Standing there drinking beer, he opined – for all the world like the Homer Simpson of Sussex – “I think we should be stricter like Spain and none of us be allowed out.”

    He’s not alone in his double-think; elsewhere on daytime TV, the presenter Phillip Schofield could be seen clutching his pearls when a woman who lived alone stated her intention to meet up with her similarly self-isolated sister to celebrate her birthday. This would be the same Phillip Schofield who also begged for pubs to open way earlier than planned because “people are going crackers” and “we’ve all got really good at social distancing”.

    We’re used to people in power being hypocrites. There’s a whole rationale for it; de La Rochefoucald’s old saw that “Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue”. You could get away with this in a culture of deference which also had no mass media, where the peasants could be scared into believing that they’d burn in Hell if they even contemplated misbehaving themselves as their betters did. But as populism in general and Brexit in particular showed, we no longer live in forelock-tugging times. New plague, same old double standard. Teachers who’ve happily availed themselves of the labour of working-class people for the past two months but think they’re too special to go back to work.

    Government advisors preaching lockdown and getting around like something out of a Beach Boys song. The sneering on social media at the people licking Mr Whippies on Southend beach which wouldn’t be aimed at some snob swanning around Sandbanks, even though those who bore the brunt of the patronising fury were far more likely to be on furlough, freshly unemployed and/or stuck in a small home without a garden. This is just the latest joust in the culture war which has been vivifying – or ‘splitting’ as the miseries would have it – this nation ever since the referendum.

    A recent poll by Opinium shows a nation split down the middle, 46 per cent saying the Government is either doing too much or the right amount and 47 per cent saying it’s not doing enough. It doesn’t show who’s on what side but it’s an interesting statistic – and from what I’ve seen I’d bet that those who voted Remain (generally smug stick-in-the-muds) are in favour of a continued lockdown while those who voted Leave (generally reckless rushers-in) want to get things going.

    The timid may stay at home forever if they wish. But they shouldn’t try to keep the rest of us treading water in the shallow end of life forever, just because they’re scared of the dark and deep.

    Increasingly, we have the science on our side; a new paper in The Journal Of Infectious Diseases shows that while coronavirus can survive for days on indoor surfaces, 90 per cent of it is deactivated in ten minutes when exposed to the midday sun.

    Even more importantly, what makes us human is other humans; without them we are just lackadaisical apes looking at the stars, wondering where we are and pining for an echo of our kind.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/24/joylessness-pro-lockdown-elite-knows-no-limits

      1. The stitch up will be in place for the next res-errection.
        The ‘Administration errors’ all worked out well last time.

    1. It would be reasonable to assume that he means London will be made better by immigrants. This is an implicit slur on the ancestral Londoner.

          1. And Milton Keynes. We lived there in the early 80s and most of the people were from London, Cockneys even.

  12. The East Germans recognise the danger:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/24/german-state-vows-end-lockdown-new-threat-merkels-authority/

    “German state vows to end lockdown in new threat to Merkel’s authority

    Thuringia in east Germany says it will allows its citizens to make its own choices

    24 May 2020 • 4:10pm

    Angela Merkel, speaking at a press conference on Friday. has struggled to co-ordinate German states as they exit lockdown

    Angela Merkel, speaking at a press conference on Friday. has struggled to co-ordinate German states as they exit lockdown

    The east German state of Thuringia has become the first to announce it will lift the coronavirus lockdown and allow citizens to make their own choices in a move that further erodes Angela Merkel’s control over the pandemic response.

    “Our motto will be: recommendations instead of bans, and self-regulation instead of state compulsion,” Thuringia’s state leader Bodo Ramelow said on Sunday.

    Mr Ramelow will reveal details of his plan later in the week, but an end to restrictions on movement and compulsory face masks, plus a complete reopening of schools are all seen as likely.

    “We made our decision in March based on estimates of 60,000 infections, we are now down to 245 [in Thuringia],” Mr Ramelow told Bild newspaper. “This success shows that restrictions were correct, but it also means we have to now make realistic decisions – meaning lifting the lockdown.”

    The changes will come on June 6th – the day after the lockdown extension agreed by Ms Merkel with state leaders earlier in May expires.

    State leaders have repeatedly ignored Ms Merkel’s warnings not to move too fast as they compete to get their economies back up and running.

    The former communist east of the country has been particularly eager to reopen businesses as it has been spared the worst of the pandemic.

    The rate of new infections across Germany has been declining for weeks. Official figures from Sunday show 431 new infections over the previous 24 hours, way down on a high point of close to 7,000 in early April.

    Meanwhile the reproduction rate – a figure seen by virologists as an important signal of the virus’ current trajectory – has stayed consistently below 1 since April.

    Nonetheless Mr Ramelow’s bold plan has been met with scepticism in other parts of the country.

    Thomas Strobl, interior minister in Baden-Württemberg, cautioned that “the virus is still out there. We must not put our current success at risk through irresponsible behaviour.”

    Ms Merkel meanwhile has adjusted her tone in recent days as she appears to accept that her cautious line is falling on deaf ears.

    Speaking for the first time about the crisis in the past tense, the Chancellor said on Saturday that “luckily we have been able to prevent our health system from being overwhelmed.”

    “I am happy to be able to say today that the current situation enables us to allow many things again that were restricted for a few weeks,” she added.”

    1. ‘Afternoon, Anne, “Thomas Strobl, interior minister in Baden-Württemberg, cautioned that “the virus is still out there.” and it’s not going away until we get ‘herd’ immunity, which doesn’t happen in a quivering household.

      1. We never got herd immunity for the common cold. That is why we have to learn to live with it.

    2. A Federal set-up. Golly, who would have imagined that a confederation of States could become fractious, argumentative, unco-operative, even secede?

  13. I’m glad Boris is standing by DC.
    It looks as if VW are going to be forced into compensation for the fake pollution figures they gave out.
    Good, but don’t hold your breath eh !

  14. 319583+ up ticks,
    Whilst peoples are otherwise engaged in the rights/wrongs of the deflectory material ie HS2, cummins,English Channel invasion, the real agenda is slithering into place courtesy of the serpents department of the reining governance party, join the dots reveal a giant mosque.
    breitbart,
    Loudspeaker Islamic Call to Prayer May Become Permanent Fixture in Britain.
    Submission,pcism & appeasement, lab/lib/con coalition guarantees it.

    1. ” May Become”? – they know that the “only in Ramadan ” will be ignored – and NOTHING will be done. The extermination of white English culture MUST carry on – THAT is clear. And the govt are using our own taxes to do it.

      1. 319583+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        Plus not only using the taxes but getting the peoples consent via the ballot booth.

  15. Covid-19 and the new war on terror. Spiked 25 May 2020.

    In some ways, the UK went even further down the illiberal path, as the New Labour government constantly expanded its raft of anti-terrorist legislation at the expense of free speech, habeas corpus and privacy. As then UK prime minister Tony Blair put it in early 2005, when justifying the latest iteration of a counterterror bill, ‘There are people out there who are determined to destroy our way of life and there is no point in us being naive about it’.

    Yes because they were getting in the way of Tony’s plans to destroy it! What a success it’s been. He has wiped out an entire Society; its Religion, Laws, Customs, whatever and with it large sections of European Civilisation. It almost makes you believe in the Anti-Christ.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/25/covid-19-and-the-new-war-on-terror/

    1. He will certainly be remembered in history books as the most influential person in Britain’s 21st century decay.

  16. Having slept on the words of the PM, I get the feeling that Cummings told him exactly what to say, especially the bit about “a lot of it being false”.

    A cynic might wonder what Cummings has got on Johnson…..

    1. I don’t trust the recently surfaced, month old later “sightings” which DC denies. I think they were poltically motivated lies and would be too easy to prove if true.

      If someone provides evidence then of course he’s out.

      I would be interested to know how many of the Tory rebels who want him fired are remainers who still seek Brino. The MSM certainly don’t want a DC structured departure and removing him would ensure it didn’t happen.

      1. I don’t recall any petitions to have a vote of no confidence in Nicola Sturgeon when she initially refused to sack the Chief Medical Officer of Scotland, who twice breached lockdown for far more trivial reasons than arranging emergency childcare:

        https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-05/scotlands-chief-medical-officer-apologises-for-visit-to-second-home/

        There is a toxic atmosphere in this country, a Stasi-like wish to criticise and inform on fellow citizens coupled with the bloodlust of the media and the hatred of Cummings by the Left for his role in Brexit. This virus has really brought out the ugly side of people.

          1. No, that was Professor Lockdown. Then again, we don’t know what she got up to on those visits to her charming country residence…

        1. I agree, JK. The atmosphere has been building for years, but has come to a head through the Brexit shenanigans, and now COVID. It’s most alarming.

          1. And it’s on the same lines as last time. Middle-class, risk-averse Remainers poring scorn on the sort of people who don’t live in big houses with large gardens and have comfortable office jobs which allow them to take their laptop and work from home.

            If Cummings story is true, he was essentially a parent trying to make sure his four year-old was taken care of by a relative, not a random stranger. But because of who he is, he is metaphorically put in the stocks. We have become a very unpleasant country (present company excepted of course!).

          2. Two months ago. Surely, if his ‘crime’ were so heinous, it should have made headlines at the time when the virus was at its peak.
            Don’t tell me there’s another motive – other than reverence for truth and openness – behind this news appearing now?

        2. I don’t remember a vote of no confidence in Nicola Sturgeon when it was widely reported that she had visited her lover in Luxembourg.

  17. The DT are without doubt in the same league as the Daily Star or The Sun. Newspaper my ar$e, more like a gossip rag. A quick look online at its home page gives you 8 articles about Cummings.
    The editorial team appears to hate him for his obvious disregard for the MSM. Perhaps they will censor the reporters standing outside Cummings house for ignoring the 2 metre with the same vigour.

    1. They hate him for being a successful leaver and having the ear of our Prime Minister.

    2. They hate him for being a successful leaver and having the ear of our Prime Minister.

  18. Morning again

    SIR – As a church warden I feel that hundreds of small churches could safely be opened, at least for private prayer, while obeying rules on social distancing. Why are church leaders not lobbying the Government harder, like most sports authorities?

    Michael Dugdale

    Wigmore, Herefordshire

    SIR – A group of MPs has written to the Prime Minister urging him to allow churches to reopen, especially for funerals (report, May 24). These same MPs approved a law which states that “a place of worship may be used for funerals”.

    It is bishops who stopped funerals taking place in churches. For the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, to welcome the MPs’ intervention – having told clergy not even to enter their churches to pray – leaves me speechless.

    Rev David Ackerman

    London W10

    SIR – I know of a small village church in Northamptonshire that remains resolutely open. Parishioners enter their church for tranquility and private prayer, comfort and strength.

    No services are conducted but God’s presence is felt and the peace of the building appreciated.

    John Lloyd Morgan

    London SW1

  19. Morning

    SIR – Dominic Cummings, when both he and his wife were exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19, travelled to be near his immediate family, in Co Durham, according to Saturday’s statement from No 10.

    They have a young child and it is said that there was no childcare arrangement available for them in London. Their immediate family offered to fill that gap.

    George Peretz QC was reported to have tweeted: “None of the listed reasonable excuses for leaving the place where he was living (his home in London) appear to apply.” That is disingenuous.

    The reasonable excuses listed in Regulation 6 of the coronavirus Health Protection Regulations for England, as they stood at the time, are inclusive, not exclusive. The sole issue in the case of Mr Cummings is whether what he and his wife did, in the circumstances as they existed when they drove to Co Durham, amounted to “a reasonable excuse”.

    That is a matter of opinion, not of law. Only a court can determine that: not a QC, nor Alastair Campbell, nor Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.

    Rev His Honour Peter Morrell

    Nassington, Northamptonshire

    SIR – I was very worried when the lockdown happened because we have grandchildren, and wondered what we should do if their parents became ill.

    I would have gone to them to help, as would anyone. We are a civilised nation and we care for our own.

    Sarah Duncan-Brown

    Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire

    1. This episode is not about breaking the ‘law’ regarding quarantine in the time of the Covid-19 outbreak. It is about Brexit.

    2. Thanks Epi. What those loudmouthed critics of DC are saying is: faced with the same situation they were ready to abandon their 4 year-old child? Sure!

      A finer example of double standards is hard to imagine.

    3. I simply wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I would have been on my way to assist in an instant; the rules of lockdown would not have entered into the equation, they would have been the last thing I would be thinking about. They were only guidelines after all, they were not law.

      I was concerned for our dog should anything have happened to us and I had made arrangements with our son to collect if needs be.

      The hypocrisy of the left obviously knows no bounds in the desire to achieve their goals. All this is sticking in my throat so much I feel I will have to avoid the media in all shapes and forms for the next few days. They do intend to get Cummings at all costs, even now they will be doctoring the videos and screen shots. For those who do not realise the agenda Cummings now represents the scapegoat for their anger at missing their loved ones, their family celebrations, funerals and the concern of their jobs, the frustration of possibly pre-adolescent and teenage children in the house, the concern for their jobs.

  20. SIR – The Prime Minister said that “this is a complex problem and we need to trust in the good sense of the British people”. There is wiggle room in the guidelines that thousands of sensible British people have been using.

    Boris Johnson and his partner moved from their base in No 10 for good reasons and returned to their second home for recuperation before finally getting back to base.

    Pascal Ricketts

    London SW1

    SIR – There is a substantial difference between receiving a regular visitor (as Professor Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College epidemiologist, did) and Mr Cummings and his wife deciding to keep the lockdown next door to his parents, who could provide care for their child.

    Professor Rudolf Hanka

    Wolfson College, Cambridge

  21. SIR – On March 23 you published my letter stating that I was using social activities to help me get over the death of my wife – to whom I was married for 53 years – and that isolation was killing me.

    I received 20 replies, mostly letters. I am still alive. But I wonder how many of the unexplained national surplus deaths over the past two months are simply due to widows and widowers giving up.

    It is really hard to deal with grief at the best of times; and at our age, without face-to-face social activities and hugging, what is life for?

    David Northcroft

    Sutton Valence, Kent

    1. A very sad and apposite letter.
      Officialdom never understands the laws of unintended consequences, or perhaps they do. Callous.

          1. Women, children and old – to the right.
            Fit young men – to the left.
            Or do you know how to play the cello?

          2. I gave your comment further thought. Much of the basic work and admin in camps was done by trusties. Jews assisted the bad people to kill Jews (and others, of course). We can look from outside and with hindsight but the decision by some Jews to work for their murderers was a betrayal. When we look at our country now we are looking at a vast number of those who are currently betraying us.
            All of those who appear on the BBC (other channels are available) are saying things exactly consistent with the mindset of trusties, that is, “If I do what they say, and help them, then I’ll be rewarded and better off”.

    1. Yes, thankyou Steve Harris, whoever the hell you are. In the interests of impartiality and balance, now put up a copy of the relevant part of the regulations, with the words “without reasonable excuse” in bold please…

      No, I thought not. You are just doing the bidding of your employer, the Bastard Broadcasting Corporation.

      Oops…manners…’Morning Belle. (The red mist descended.)

    2. Of course we binned ours. I don’t take orders very well. Certainly not from people with the IQ of a mollusc.

    3. I believe that that letter was issued after Cummings had travelled North and he was already back in London.

      1. You’re probably right. The date of receipt of that letter varied all over the country.

          1. So, (© Cathy Newman) what you’re saying is, they must have been posted at various times.

        1. Mine was very late; they had to wait for it to be translated into Welsh first.

    4. As someone posted yesterday:-

      At the government’s daily press conference on 24 March, England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries spoke of the “exceptional circumstance” of an adult unable to care for a young child during the pandemic.

      “A small child clearly is a vulnerable individual, so in this case, although we are encouraging everybody to stay in their own households – that’s the unit with the same risk of exposure – clearly if you have adults who are unable to look after a small child, that is an exceptional circumstance,” Dr Harries said.

      1. Good day Bob. ☺
        As I have mentioned previously one of our DiLs has MS they have a 3month old daughter and a very active nearly 5 years old son. Our son has spent almost everyday working whilst he’s been at home, most days he’s worked hours longer than he would if he’d been in his work place office.
        He works for an overseas company as a global manager. The time zones are now seemingly irrelevant.
        We have had to help out on many occassions. Distance doesn’t come into it. It’s about love respect and moral responsibility.
        Something our MSM do not understand. They are filled with vile and obsessive hatred.

        1. A lot of these work-from-homers who are being forced to stay that way by companies who are getting rid of expensive offices are going to find an unpleasant truth.

          Management will expect them to be at their beck and call 24/7. They can forget any semblance of 9-5.

          1. It is illegal in the UK. It is harassment. A few years ago I had a staff of over 30. If I needed someone to come in to take a shift because someone else was ill, I had to contact them out of their office hours. This can only be done legally if the staff member signs an agreement. All signed – of course it was an extra shift and extra pay.
            It is also fair. Who wants to get phone calls at dinner, or on Saturday morning, asking about the despatch to Bloggs or progress on the order for Smith?

          2. If working for a big bank or a Japanese or American company and you tried that you’d soon find your career stopped in its tracks.

          3. Actually, I was working for a big (Fortune 500) American company, and my actions were in line with guidelines.

          4. Lucky man.
            But I’m fairly confident that their standard contract will have had get-out clauses that if you didn’t accept them you didn’t get the job.

          5. Mmm. They probably do now. Now, about teachers and their contracts, do they have a force majeure clause which allows them to avoid going to work? If so, it will be vitiated if the Government sets date for return? Thereafter, they are on strike.

    5. Morning TB.
      I don’t think we actually received one of those letters.
      I can’t remember seeing it.
      We do of course get the usual bills etc through the letter box.
      And although she picks up and brings the post to us, our lovely doggo has never chewed anything.

      1. Morning RE ,

        We had one , I was going to keep all the Covid 19 stuff , one for the memory, if we survive the plague , but as we have so much clutter , I binned it last week . Perhaps it was targetting post war babies like Moh and myself.

        1. We are boomers born after our father’s managed to return from their WW2 duties.
          I’ll check with OH.
          It might still be in our waste bin.
          We have had other virus related leaflets posted, i have one of those long handle grabbers. I quarantine the post in the utility room before the rubbish goes into the paper waste.

        1. I don’t remember receiving one either, Anne, but I never read my letters anyway, so it’s possible I missed it.

          (Good morning BTW)

          1. They prolly didn’t send them north of the border, Duncan – relying on Mrs Murrell to send out her own – in Gaelic….

        2. I had one. Two pages. Types on one side only – so useful scrap paper for the printer.

        3. Me too. But I don’t remember much and assumed it had gone straight to recycling and been instantly forgotten

        4. My wife explained that it’s because we were/are not at risk.
          I would have thought after all the health problems I have had over the past 5 years I would have expected a had delivery. Perhaps it’s because I objected to my medical records being tapped into by those unknown.

    6. Yes, thankyou Steve Harris, whoever the hell you are. In the interests of impartiality and balance, now put up a copy of the relevant part of the regulations, with the words “without reasonable excuse” in bold please…

      No, I thought not. You are just doing the bidding of your employer, the Bastard Broadcasting Corporation.

      Oops…manners…’Morning Belle. (The red mist descended.)

  22. Morning all 😊
    What’s in store for us today, from our self serving self obsessed self opinionated hate media ? And of course all of its political band wagoners.
    Just for once can’t we in the UK pull together in this crisis.
    I’ve already dumped a couple of idiots on Facebook because of their nasty obsessive opinions. Who
    needs it ?
    Mental health issues eh. It’s nearly as infectious as the virus.
    I’m very envious of the outlook and sensibility of our friends and relatives in Oz.

    1. Blighty has always had its curtain twitchers and Stasi types. This confected emergency has certainly flushed them out in all their ignoble glory.
      Flashback to the death of St. Diana; ‘victim’ of a drunk driver and her own inability to keep her knickers on. Once again, Britain has become a foreign and scary country.

    2. Labour MP Steven Kinnock travelled to his parents house for a birthday. Labour MP Tahir Ali attended a funeral along with 100 other mourners, & Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething sitting at a picnic table having chips with his family, all during the lockdown. It seems to me Labour & our useless Media have selective memories

      1. Morning, Belle.
        Personally, I have no beef with those Labour MPs behaving like human beings. In fact, it is a relief to know that they do not adhere to the stupid and inhuman rules that were not deemed necessary during wartime.
        I noticed that the media had a half-hearted go at Starmer because his children were attending school. I have no time for Starmer, but he and his wife were doing their best for their off-spring.
        Prof. Pantsdown deserved everything he got for not being any good at his job – as did the government for listening to such a busted flush. His hypocrisy was merely the icing on the cake.
        This country has become an extremely unpleasant place; any retired Stasi agent, dribbling his life away in the “DunSpyin'” home for retired snitches would gain a new lease of life if transferred to Blighty, 2020.

      2. Plus funerals were restricted to 10 people. Well they were in Engliand.
        We ‘attended’ a family funeral on the funeral companies face book site.
        It’s not quite the same.

      3. ‘Afternoon, Mags, with Labour nothing changes except which hypocrisy is on today’s menu.

  23. Are we still in the grip of a national emergency, has lockdown finished.

    Dorset is overrun with thousands of visitors, yet everywhere is closed.

    1. Well on one of the graphs I looked at yesterday, deaths and cases of Covid are down below levels before the start of lock down, so we really should be returning to normal life in my opinion.

  24. Just in from watering the trombetti. It is a beautiful morning. Still and warming up.

    1. I could certainly use some warm. 1 month to midsummer, and yet spring has really not started properly, and it struggles to reach late teens Celsius. Pigging freezing, so it is. Apple blossom is visible, but not open, the pine trees aren’t really shooting, thinking of swimming to the Middle East to get warm…

  25. Who remembers George Orwell’s brilliant essay Shooting an Elephant?

    I used to read this aloud to members of my English classes because it was a good starting point for discussion about how an irresolute person can be influenced to act against his reason, his best interests and his will by the psychological pressure of the mob.

    The MSM, and virtually all the politicians in Westminster – including his own party members – are applying this sort of pressure on Boris Johnson at the moment and it will be interesting to see how long he will be able to resist it.

    SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
    George Orwell: Burmese Days
    This material remains under copyright and is reproduced by kind permission of the Orwell Estate and Penguin Books.

    In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

    All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

    One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.” It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

    The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

    The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

    I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

    But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

    But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

    It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

    There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

    When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

    I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

    In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

    Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

    Published by New Writing, 2, Autumn 1936

    1. “The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.”

      That puts paid, then, to the concept and belief of Buddhism being regarded as the most peaceable and friendly of religions.

      1. When I toured Sri Lanka in ’77 it was drummed into me that Buddhism is NOT a religion but a way of life.

    2. The Burmese gained independence in 1948.
      Ten years later the Colonels took over and ruled with a rod of iron for forty plus years. indeed, I suspect they are still in charge behind the scenes.
      What price the evil colonialists now?

    3. Hi Rastus, a very thought provoking piece. It is interesting to note how he felt about the ‘Empire’ of which he was but a small cog:

      “ I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it”

      That should be taught in schools with proper unbiased comparisons of the before and the after.

      Would I have shot the elephant? I’m not sure, it is difficult to imagine shooting a large passive animal; a much easier decision if it was still ‘rampaging’. Add the crowd into the mix and it is certainly a dilemma.

    1. Can keep you busy for hours! Is that trying to open a non existent link? :-))

  26. “Gavin Williamson: I ‘absolutely believe’ Dominic Cummings’ assurances to Prime Minister”

    Great.

    Unfortunately, Mr Williamson, I don’t believe a word you say.

    1. Gavin Williamson has the most appalling droning voice .

      People like that are just dabbling with politics , and have no altruistic interest in the electorate they represent .

    2. When any politician “absolutely” believes anything, I “totally” do not believe him/her/it.

      1. I totally agree, Grizz. Absolutely.

        He has been appointed to posts far, far above his intellectual capability.

        He is completely out of his depth. He is so dim, that he makes little Johnny Major seem almost bright.

    3. Gavin Williamson has the most appalling droning voice .

      People like that are just dabbling with politics , and have no altruistic interest in the electorate they represent .

  27. LBC News headline: the RNLI have warned that their people cannot be everywhere this Bank Holiday and that people should steer clear of the coast. All down in the Dover through to West Sussex areas aiding and abetting rubber dinghy users?

      1. Precisely. The PTB do not want anyone filming all those doctors, engineers etc running up the beach and disappearing into the Kent and Sussex hinterlands, as happened in Spain etc.

  28. An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman were talking at work.

    The Englishman says, “I was tidying my daughter’s bedroom the other day and I found a bottle of vodka! I was shocked! I didn’t know she drank!”

    “You know what?” said the Scotsman. “I was tidying my daughter’s bedroom the other day and I found a pack of cigarettes! I had no idea she smoked!”

    “Well, that’s nothing…” said the Irishman. “I was tidying my daughter’s bedroom the other day and I found a pack of condoms… and I didn’t even know she had a dick!”

  29. The sole issue in the case of Mr Cummings is whether what he and his wife did, in the circumstances as they existed when they drove to Co Durham, amounted to “a reasonable excuse”….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/24/letters-law-behaviour-dominic-cummings-going-durham/

    When it comes to litigation under health regulations where health professionals have acted in contravention of accepted practices that have resulted in patient harm the worst outcome for medical professionals is inappropriate treatment.

    Where no action or treatment has been administered at all then harm arising from inaction is neglect which is far more serious.

    I submit that in view of the Government’s inability to provide definitive legally binding tests for COVID-19 infection together with the suspension of virtually all NHS emergency services in March 2020 then there is sufficient doubt about the criminality of any action that was taken at that time to avoid harm to a minor.

    What is more important than someone who went to Co Durham in March is where has Fergus Walsh been since early January?

  30. The sole issue in the case of Mr Cummings is whether what he and his wife did, in the circumstances as they existed when they drove to Co Durham, amounted to “a reasonable excuse”….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/24/letters-law-behaviour-dominic-cummings-going-durham/

    When it comes to litigation under health regulations where health professionals have acted in contravention of accepted practices that have resulted in patient harm the worst outcome for medical professionals is inappropriate treatment.

    Where no action or treatment has been administered at all then harm arising from inaction is neglect which is far more serious.

    I submit that in view of the Government’s inability to provide definitive legally binding tests for COVID-19 infection together with the suspension of virtually all NHS emergency services in March 2020 then there is sufficient doubt about the criminality of any action that was taken at that time to avoid harm to a minor.

    What is more important than someone who went to Co Durham in March is where has Fergus Walsh been since early January?

  31. Good afternoon all

    A couple of things.

    First bowling of the season this morning. Great to be out in the open air again.

    Had a chat with my COPD terminal friend. Very cheerful and can’t understand why we still have lockdown.
    When he was discharged from hospital his discharge letter said “Had 2 negative Covid-19 test but he’s probably had it”. WFF.
    Friday last he had a call from the Respiratory Clinic Nurse who said that looking at the X-rays he probably did have it. He asked if it made a difference if one Xray was taken standing up and the other laying down. Yes she said and then he explained. Her reply was that he probably hadn’t had it.

    What a farce.

    1. Might have made a difference if e had been asked to lie down for the 2nd x-ray.

      1. That we will never know, peddy.
        The same as we will never know whether he should have been standing or laying down for both of them.
        BTW he was speaking to a friend in Japan last night who said that apart from locking down Tokyo and, I think he said, Osaka for a few days virtually all restrictions have now ceased and the deaths in total are what we had been having on a daily basis.
        Just a thought there are not many foreigners in Japan, could that be the difference?

        1. Doh! The point I was making was that he was lying down, not laying down.

          & you criticise me for using the term “Uni”.

          1. I accept the correction and note you must have been irked by that as it’s the only thing you pull me up on and that was from months ago.

  32. It’s National Barbecue Week! Not sure if you will be having one, but if you do, does this sound familiar?

    When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:
    Routine…

    (1) The woman buys the food.
    (2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert.
    (3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with
    the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who
    is lounging beside the grill – beer in hand.

    Here comes the important part:
    (4) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.

    More routine….
    (5) The woman goes inside to organise the plates and cutlery.
    (6) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks
    her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the
    situation.Important again:

    (7) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.

    More routine….
    (8) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.
    (9) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

    And most important of all:
    (10) Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.
    (11) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed ‘her day off.’ And, upon seeing
    her annoyed reaction, concludes that there’s just no pleasing some women…

    ENJOY YOUR BBQ THIS WEEK IF YOU’RE ARE HAVING ONE!

        1. As I said the other week, Elsie, I took the ‘unlimited exercise’ rule as a chance to do one of my walks.

          Walking through town, I noticed a scruffy bugger out of the corner of my eye. Only when I saw he was keeping in step with me did I realise it was my reflection in a shop window.

          My hare is a tad long but I don’t like to rabbit on about it.

        1. A neighbour tried with shearing shears.
          Now can’t wear specs, he’s got no ears.

        1. You need a head of hair like that Naga Munchetty bitch on the Bash Boris Campaign TV channel.
          She looks no different now as to 9 weeks ago, is it possible she is a do as I say not as I do hypocrite?

      1. It was clippers at 18:00 yesterday. Head like a tennis ball (bright yellow & fuzzy) and feeling better for it.

        1. I’m just off to do the lawn and it’s a bugger when your grass looks tidier than your bonce.

    1. Someone had a bbq on their London flat balcony yesterday and set the whole block on fire.
      All the other residents are now homeless.
      I hope the insurance companies pay out.
      Possibly ‘an end of something celebration’. Not a lot of defining information from MSM. Probably too busy with other things.

        1. The thousands of gallons of water the fire brigade used has seeped through all the flats below.
          I don’t expect anyone to be held to account on this occasion.
          Certain people are very accident prone.

      1. I’m surprised Sadiq Khant hasn’t banned barbecues, on the basis that someone might burn down their block of flats and the very busy and stretched emergency services would have to attend. Isn’t that the rationale for not allowing anyone to drive anywhere, i.e. they might possibly have an accident with a flock of sheep on an otherwise empty road??

  33. Funny thing – years ago, when a PM said that he had “complete confidence” in a colleague, it usually meant that said colleague was out on his ear within a few days.

    Perhaps that is what we’ll see this afternoon.

    1. Like the owner of a football club who expresses 110% support for the manager – just before sacking him.

    1. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, church bells will be permitted to ring out on Sundays.

      1. Yeah, right. Demolish all Mosques except those that have a complimentary Christian Church in Saudi Arabia.

    2. Afternoon Belle. This might help you in the near future. It is the Shahada, the Profession of Faith.

      There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger!

          1. I’ll bet when you hear the William Tell Overture, you immediately think of the Lone Ranger!

      1. “Fuerunt vero et pseudoprophetae in populo sicut et in vobis erunt
        magistri mendaces qui introducent sectas perditionis et eum qui emit eos
        Dominum negant superducentes sibi celerem perditionem”

        — 2 Pet. 2:1
        :¬(

  34. 319583+ up ticks,
    Worse things than this virus happens at sea in point of fact worse things are happening right NOW in the English Channel with what could be more odious ongoing consequences, ie murder, rape / abuse etc,etc,with the killing / injury victim ages ranging from cradle to early grave.
    Now the establishment are introducing today seemingly,
    “isolate and we will bring a Chinese to you”
    This lab/lib/con coalition have taken my dads, & millions more cry of “move along the bayonet please room for one more” and turned it into “move along the country please room for one more, treachery abounds.

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1264846769147523072

  35. 319583+ up ticks,
    This deflection material is cummings goings or what, HS2,etc,etc, is reminiscent of the internal wrangling of the mafia regarding one of it’s soldiers.
    The herd do NOT enter the equation.
    Whereas
    What is the latest on the invasion via the English Channel ?

    1. Have you posed this very important and relevant question to the BBC Ogga?

      1. 319583+up ticks,
        Afternoon Re,
        That would be on par with discussing the niceties of serial killing with Dr shipman.

      1. What happens in Durham seems to be different to all the nonsense coming ashore in Kent and our airports .

        The media are antiBrexit and are gunning for Boris , politics is once again becoming unbearable .

          1. We have discovered that they have quite good cheese. Or, rather, Cook has.

  36. Good afternoon again.
    Thanks to all of you for the advice. I am taking appropriate action, as suggested.

    Thank you..

    1. Interesting that DC was due to speak at 4pm and that Durham police issued a statement at 4.01pm
      That might explain the delay to DC’s appearance.
      The BBC really twisted the statement. You could almost taste the hatred.

        1. I thought he handled it all very well, I gave up at the fifth reporter, I’m staggered DC kept his temper

          1. He had to, sos. They were, I suspect, desperately hoping that he’d lose it…

  37. I and my partner have been driving to the remoter parts of Durham to exercise for months. Trying to walk around here means dodging hundreds of people who can’t give a hoot for social distancing.

  38. Cummings is the Mekon, engineered for a very high intelligence. He uses a flying chair, which is mind controlled, to carry around his atrophied body, to Durham !

    1. 319583+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Tb,
      The 650 are due a visitation to the electric chair with switch triggering a
      peoples daily raffle prize.

  39. Thought for the day.

    A secret conversation in Downing Street.

    DC: “Look Boris, we’ve got to get the country out of lockdown, and back to work and normal life very soon or there will be no economy left worth talking about”
    BJ: “I know that, but how on Earth do we get people back?”

    DC: “I’ll leak adverse news about my trip to my parents to protect my child, and the MSM will go ballistic”
    BJ: “Don’t be an idiot, how could that possibly help?”

    DC: “You then go on TV and give me your full support. All the traitors to you, and Brexit, will go berserk and the MSM will explode with hypocrital self-righteous indignation. The general public will then say ‘to Hell with this, we’re going back to normal’ et voila.”
    BJ: “Dom, you’re a tactical and strategic genius and I’ll know who I can get rid of and who not to appoint to ministries.
    I’ll take Sunday’s briefing”

    1. I’m inclined to agree with you sos.

      Yesterday I posted re DC breaking the rules…… I don’t give toss if he did or not……. he’s an idiot for being caught out!

      Not such an idiot…..?

    2. You should write fantasy novels, or perhaps new series of The Thick of It.

    3. There is just a little problem with that….. the death rate will go up – the media will make sure that it does, they will fiddle the figures, how would we know? (as a Head of Department once said to me) – and before you know where you are the papers will be screaming: “Cummings murdered my Gran!!”

      1. And Bojo and Cummings will rightly blame the media – especially as the latter were the ones screaming for lock-down in the first place.

      2. Possibly, but Bojo and DC will be able to say the public refused to do it gradually as the Govt. suggested.

        The beauty of “the cumming plan” (apologies Baldrick) is that it will clearly be Joe Public who refuses to obey, not the Government forcing them unwillingly.

        1. I do agree with you and it would be a very clever piece of manipulation.

        2. Should he stay or should he go….?

          How does the resignation of DC play out if your theory is correct…

          1. Double plus good.

            I thought DC resigning and being restored/resignation refused would send an even stronger message to annoy the Hell out of the MSM.

      3. The infection rate will go up, and as a consequence, the death count too. Inevitable, and it will happen (with the usual delays) as soon as lockdown is eased. Whenever that is, the timing doesn’t matter, the virus is there and waiting.
        We have this situation now in Norway. Our “R” value was down below 0,7, and now we’re easing the restrictions, it’s rising again. No surprise there, the virus has not gone away. Unless everybody is to remain entombed, it’s going to happen.

        1. If we were ‘in lockdown’ for years, I can see under our present system the virus would still be existing in pockets, and when people were finally released it would flare and run through the population. I think many of us have had it, we simply have to bite the bullet now and get the whole thing over and done with.

        2. Of course. No one can get immunity to it if they’re kept away from exposure to it, unless someone brought it into the household to infect everyone else in it.
          The whole idea was sold to us as “flattening the curve.” Thats been done. Hospitals were never overwhelmed. Time to ease up and get people to work.

          1. It is pretty obvious that they need to balance freedom against hospital usage. Back off on these controls but if they see hospital admissions peak , they need to reassess what they think they are doing.

            Texas relaxed restrictions and is now reporting over 1,000 cases a day, the highest count since this started. Would the UK accept such a high count and carry on as normal?

            It doesn’t matter what the government do anyway, if people are not back at work they will be mixing with others at the seaside.

  40. 319583+ up ticks,
    The noose tightens around old “blighty” only wants a General Election now following the regular voting pattern and next day we will be awaiting the manic yelling to nut the deck with your @rse in bike park position.
    breitbart,
    Scotland Govt Demands Boris Open the Borders to ‘Enrich Society’

  41. And now for something completely different:

    There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed
    Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red)
    And all the day long he’d a wonderful view
    Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue)

    Our geraniums, which have survived since we planted them last summer, are certainly red, my delphiniums are white, not blue, but have grown magnificently this year, along with lupins that are now covered in bees.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f9cf5be17f5604a428b4177c64124dd558a7ba3e275aadff3108b3c4e27a76dc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34931619d3dc82adad8ea5990dfb3cfbd3ef732faf688ceb6302b17a47301b96.jpg

  42. Steve Baker has shot himself in the foot by ‘touring TV studios to demand Cummings resign’. Is he not aware that he broke the lockdown rules himself?

    1. The fellow, Baker, has made it clear that he is a prat. Boris was correct to decline to make him a minister.

    2. I feel betrayed by Baker in the same way that I came to feel betrayed by Rees Mogg.

      I made the error of thinking that they were decent, principled politicians in whom one could have a bit of respect and trust.

      They warped my judgement and I cannot forgive them for it.

    1. Gave himself special dispensation?

      Or was it OK because they were all LGBTQWERTY?

    2. “Well Leo, now he’s on all fours are you having him first or shall I?”

    3. Right, chuck him before the media, hound his family, besiege his home, park a loudspeaker truck outside for good measure, write intimidating rubbish on the road outside, what isn’t known just make up…

    1. Yes he was okay.

      Now he is being grilled by the pious always perfect vicious media .

      Why should he apologise ..
      Why are they so forensic.
      We haven’t had any contact with second son for months , we talk and chatter on line .. but it isn’t breaking our hearts.

      I have had trips to buy groceries , but have kept to social distancing ..

      We got stopped after Easter by the cops for taking the dogs out .. to a field away from sheep.. Walking around the village has stuffed myknee/ hip up / hard walking and the need for a pair of new shoes is unlikely .

      Why are they hammering this man .

      Why are they asking inane questions ..

      1. It’s nothing to do with Coronavirus. It’s everything to do with politics.

        1. Yes, the disgusting politics being played out by the disgusting politicians (and their paymasters – in this case, not us).

    2. I am glad he will stay in post. If the MSM had got his scalp, it would have been the end of Boris’s government. Strange thing to say, but when you have characters like Sedwill running the civil service, it is important to have people on your own side, and the side of Britain, to call them out.

  43. ‘morning everyone, hope you are all well.

    Since the Brexit vote the MSM have gone full out ‘attack dog’ against anyone who voted to leave. Four years of dithering by May and schemes by Remain politicians, lords and the civil serpents followed. Once Boris was elected with a healthy majority it was clear that the Remainers had lost. Forlornly, it now appears, I had hoped that the majority of the MSM would return to reporting news rather than their views (Obviously sly not the BBC).

    Covid-19 has given all those anti-democrats a small slice of hope that all is not yet lost. In an almost impossible situation, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, the Government has done as well as any other in handling things. However, it has given the ‘anti-Boris brigade’ plenty of opportunities to criticise him and his government, especially with maximum use of hindsight!

    Even the DT has descended into full anti-Boris delirium’s with page after page of non-stories. The never identified gov source, tory backbencher and senior official, have all returned with a vengeance. It is chaotic and becomes worse by the hour after this latest DC episode. (IMO he did the right thing, but that is a whole other rant to be had).

    The UK MSM are out of control, after their ‘successes’ against May and her Government they appear to believe that they have a right to topple the UK PM, the Government and generally anyone they disagree with. This is not what the vast majority want but these people are their own elite, in their own pampered bubble, clapping and back slapping each other whenever a ‘point’ is scored against Boris.

    Once this pandemic is under control, Boris is going to need to lockdown’ the MSM. Do away with the TV license, no more taxpayer monies to CH4 and a campaign to counter every smear and lie the MSM report, Start hitting them financially, it is the only thing that matters to them.

    I cancelled by DT subscription renewal (due in September) a month ago and made it very clear why I had done so. Last week someone telephoned me to try and get me to take out a ‘new’ subscription with an offer of six months ‘free’. They did not appear shocked by my response and I suspect that I am far from alone in my actions.

    (Thank you for giving me space to rant, I went on the DT site briefly this morning and just could not bear to read any of the articles at all. It has got me so annoyed 🤯🤬, I have no idea what daily newspaper is worth reading anymore.)

    1. No ifs, no buts and NO delays.

      We’ve had enough of dithering and any problems arising from a clean break with the EU next January will be as nothing compared to the virus crisis. If we can manage the latter, leaving the EU will be a walk in the park (keeping our 2 yards distance of course).

    2. I refuse to pay a subscription for such journalism (I use the word lightly) and will continue to bypass the paywall.
      Just my little effort in the war against the MSM.
      Viva la plebs!

      1. As a Sometimes Pedant, may I correct you, Jay Gee? It’s either “Vive les Plebes!” or “Viva los Plebos!”

        :-))

        1. Shouldn’t that be “Vivent les Plebes”? I don’t know; I hate using French.

          1. But, but, but… I thought you regularly looked at the menu in the restaurant, mon ami. (But you’re absolument absolutely right, Peddy, I should have written “Vivent les Plebes”).

          1. Thanks for taking it in good sort, Jay Gee. So often (especially late in the day when medication has been taken) people turn very nasty and accuse people like me with a sense of humour of being right-wing racist Neanderthals!

          2. You have a sense of humour? That’s not fair! Humourist, even!
            Ey up, our Elsie.

    3. No ifs, no buts and NO delays.

      We’ve had enough of dithering and any problems arising from a clean break with the EU next January will be as nothing compared to the virus crisis. If we can manage the latter, leaving the EU will be a walk in the park (keeping our 2 yards distance of course).

      1. ‘morning Grizzly, all well thank you. Self isolating with occasional trips into the office as needed. Hope the same with you.

        With the DT having descended rapidly through the bottom of the proverbial barrel I could well be here more often. I can get some real news and views amongst the veritable NOTTLRs 😃.

    4. I’d say Breitbart for daily news, but it’s just so depressing for highlighting the ongoing insanity.

    5. They have taken advantage of Boris being under par. I didn’t bother with yesterday’s briefing, but the photos show someone who is picking up. (Which is why, after 2 months of sitting on the story, the media have ‘exposed’ Cummings now; time was running out.)
      Quite frankly, although I believe the government haven’t exactly shone during this episode, to misquote P.G. Wodehouse “it’s difficult to distinguish the difference between the MSM with a grievance and a pack of hyenas”.

    6. Take it easy, Hopon – but we know what you mean!
      Try a foreign paper – Aussie, Kiwi, even Murkin.

  44. Just when I thought my despair at what the CofE has become had peaked, up pops a bishop (Liverpool??) on the BBC radio news to have a pop at Cummings; get back to vicarring mate, and leave politics alone!

    1. The church is supposed to be in charge of all things spiritual, not temporal.

    2. You’d have thought a bishop would have some sympathy for someone who was visiting his parents who were mourning the loss of their brother. Oh and self-isolating where they could call on a relative to provide child-care should they become ill.

      1. The Russian Orthodox Church survived between 1917 and 1991 by being a government lickspittle. The CoE has gone down the same route.

        1. I think Justin’s appointment has Davos fireside chat written all over it.

  45. Italian boy shows calm and courage during encounter with wild bear in Dolomites. 25 May 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/900cc4ac572489bfa6c7782f9b037869855b57d184b709d74203bcdae6e9d9e0.jpg

    A 12-year-old Italian boy has been praised for his sangfroid after coming face to face with a brown bear in the Dolomites and then calmly walking away so as to not provoke the animal.

    The encounter – more reminiscent of Alaska or the Rockies than Europe – happened in the mountains above the village of Sporminore in Italy’s northern region of Trentino-Sud Tyrol.

    Alessandro Franzoi was strolling through an area of low bushes looking for semi-precious stones when the brown bear appeared.

    Hmmm. I remember once walking in the White Peak above Bakewell and descending a style into a very small field occupied by a herd of cows and as I was crossing to the other side realising that one of the cows was in actuality an exceptionally Large Bull. Trying desperately to look nonchalant I sauntered casually toward the gate while the refrain from The Little White Bull echoed idiotically around my brain. I don’t know whether the Bull was impressed by my sang froid but I have forever wondered since why I didn’t just leg it at Warp Speed instead of concerning myself with the opinion of an over sexed Bovine Stud.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/25/italian-boy-shows-calm-courage-encounter-wild-bear-dolomites/

    1. The shock was so much that you had to decamp to the nearby Druid Inn at Birchover and ask Brian Bunce to pull you a wonderful pint of Marston’s Pedigree which you supped while he cooked you half a roast duck served with wild strawberry sorbet and a crisp mixed salad.

      1. I used to drop into the Bakewell Pudding Shop Grizz and eat one of their gigantic Elephants Foot cream cakes!

        1. It’s a while since I ventured into the Olde Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. I used to nip into the nearby Tabwell Tools and lose myself among the top-notch, but very expensive, woodworking tools they sold.

          1. Tabwell Tools! I remember wandering around in there and coming across a pair of Handcuffs! Strange!

    2. “Hey Alessandro – you’ve got a bear behind!”
      “No I haven’t – I’m wearing trousers”.

    3. I was once told by an anthropologist that you should never turn your back on a silver back gorilla and run, even if it charged you.

      It appears that the charge is bluff to see if you’ll run. If you do run then it is an open invitation to the SB to chase and scratch your back.

  46. The press corps questionning Cummings are now trying to make political capital, indirect digs about BJ.

    Did any of the cretins actually listen to what he said?

    They are despicable.

    1. They aren’t there to listen to what he said, sos; they are there to bay for his blood, bring him down, savage him and hope that Bojo is dragged down with him. They should be prosecuted under the Hunting Act!

      1. If I had been in his shoes I would have been sorely tempted to reply.

        “I’ve already answered that. Next”

    2. Disgusting, self satisfied, smug hypocrites! As you say, they haven’t listened to one word he has said! Pre-planned attacks and revolting cant

      1. To paraphrase Dr. Goebbels:

        The MSM follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big,
        and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking
        ridiculous.

        1. If you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth. As we all know, a lie is half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

        2. Nothing would persuade me to watch the thing – but are the press “pack” (how appropriate a word) standing six feet apart?

        3. Pedantic historical note, in case anyone doesn’t know – Goebbels was complaining about this very phenomenon not advocating it.

          1. Show me a Big Lie that the National Socialists pushed.

            Meanwhile you’ve got:

            > The Katyn Forrest Massacre perpetrated by the Soviets and pinned on the Germans instead. Seven innocent German men hung for this crime, which was only admitted to by the Soviets much later in the 1990s.

            > During WWI it was claimed that Germans were cutting off the hands of babies in Belgium – which was debunked after the war provoking much sympathy for the wrongly-maligned Germans.

            > During WWII, Allied propaganda upped the ante and claimed that Germans were turning Jéws into soap (and briefcases, gloves, handbags, saddle bags – you name it). This propaganda was only debunked decades later in 1990 to little fanfare.

            > Not to mention the alleged lampshades of human skin, Jéws being allegedly thrown alive into road mixers; Jéws allegedly kiIIed with pedal-driven brain-bashing machines, Jéws masturbated to death and Jéws electrocuted to death in giant underground crematoria in addition to numerous other atrocity propaganda claims that were put out, some of which are perpetuated to this day. Germany’s propaganda didn’t even come close to the morbid propaganda machine of the Allies.

            >When war broke out, Hitler forbade the bombing of civilian areas of British cities. It was Churchill who initiated this war crime. In fact Churchill was so desperate to begin the terror bombing of civilians that he did so the very day after he became PM.
 One British raid on Hamburg netted 40’000 civilian deaths in one night. More bombs were dropped on Berlin than all Britain during the entire war. The devastation in Munich was worse than that of the atomic bomb. After around 5 solid months of firebombing attacks on Germany, Hitler reluctantly retaliated however to a much lesser degree. The story became “the London Blitz,” not the British Blitz of Germany.

            > In both world wars, the Allies accused Germany of trying to “take over the world” which is pretty ironic given that at the outbreak of war, Britain ruled over the largest colonial empire in history – with a quarter of the world and 502 million people under her control, while the Soviets were the world’s cruellest tyranny fully backed and supported by the United States with a massive lend lease program that practically matched the 22 million long tons dispatched to Europe for America’s own forces between Jan 1942 – May 1945

            > In addition after the war, the Allies, in crass violation of their own solemnly proclaimed ‘democratic principles’, carved up Europe among them, and were all too happy to sacrifice 125 million Europeans to the Soviets.

            > The Allies also handed Poland to the Soviets despite the war being allegedly fought in defence of her sovereignty. Another Big Lie.

            > The ‘Big Three’ Allies also established the United Nations to serve as a permanent world police force and proceeded to build military machines far greater than the Fascist countries had built, and to control the destinies of more countries than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan ever planned on doing.

            > And despite the Allies’ own claim that ‘WWII was the war to end all wars’, America has gone on to intervene in/attack at least 50 countries since WWII from Australia to Vietnam, Venezuela to Iraq, you name it.

            > Let’s not forget more recent Big Lies such as ‘WMDs in Iraq’, ‘chemical weapons in Syria’, ‘Diversity Making Us Stronger’, ‘War is Peace’ to name a few, and the very latest Big Lie – ‘Covid-19’.

            Look at what the West has turned into – in decline, overrun by mass immigration, Europeans displaced from their homelands – in fact many WWII vets came to say they would have would have lain down their weapons had they known what would become of the West and do you blame them? The EU is an almost exact copy of the Communist Politburo while our Marxist media today is run by the exact same minority which led the Bolshevik revolution – and they have people so brainwashed they’re still spouting anti-German WWII propaganda all while Communists have spent 70 years destroying our countries from within.

            Germany was the largest Christian buffer to Communism in Europe and her utter destruction in what was described as the ‘good war’ enabled Soviet Russia to be established as a world power without any counter-balance on the vast Eurasian heartland.

            The Marxist media calls WWII a victory – from their point of view it was: a victory for Communism. Not for the West.

          2. Thank you David Irving.

            Thank you for an albeit inadvertent demonstration of the typical pavlovian response conditioned by the Marxist media.

            Adverts for men menstruating, all sorts of degeneracy and perversion, the complete inversion of a healthy traditional society – this is the new order you’re defending with your ridiculous knee-jerk response. You’re so brainwashed you don’t actually know how brainwashed you are.

            Speaking of Irving, he was jailed for questioning the official story of the holocaust. Clearly the truth DOES need laws to uphold it.

            Of course, it goes without saying that just because the multitude of survivors lied about human soap, human lampshades, shrunken heads, steam chambers, electric floors, rollercoasters of death, masturbation death chambers, anus gas pumps and the peddle-driven brain-bashing machines, it doesn’t mean they aren’t telling the truth about ‘gas showers’. Duh.

          3. Yep just as I suspected. A thoroughly nasty piece of work.

            All the ills of the planet heaped on a tiny and much persecuted section of society.

            People like you make me vomit.

            Piss off, you won’t be missed here.

          4. Not a fan of free speech are (((you))).

            Despite their endless claims of ‘persecution’ it’s funny how every time that Jews have had absolute power over non-Jews they have tortured and killed them. To quote Jewish author Ron Unz:

            “This was true in the early Soviet Union, where Jews headed the secret police and ran the Gulags. It was true of the Jewish Bolsheviks who oversaw the Ukrainian Holodomor in the 1903s; true of the Jewish-led Soviets during WWII toward Polish officers, true of the Jewish-run camps in Poland AFTER the war, and today true of the Jews against the Palestinians.”

            And true too of neoconservativism, a heavily-Jewish movement calling for wars in which Israel’s neighbours are targeted in order to break up the Middle East and strengthen Israel’s hegemony at the mere cost of $trillions and countless American lives.

            Jewish neocon Madeleine Albright even said the deaths of 500’000 Iraqi children were ‘worth it’.

            PS: Your lack of concern for the millions of Christians murdered at the hands of largely Jewish Bolsheviks has been noted.

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

          5. I don’t deny your right to your opinion nor your right to state it.
            I wouldn’t ban Irving, but there is no way I will agree with his conclusions nor yours.
            But as I say, you make me vomit and your loss to the blog would make me happier.

    3. Cummings is very good though. Not arrogant, even self-deprecating, but sticks to his points.

        1. Look at the headline in the Mail though – they have cherry picked and twisted to make him sound dishonest, while not removing their lies from other reports.
          This is why it’s pointless humouring the media, they are rotten to the core.

          1. I’m leaving the headlines until tomorrow, when they will have worked up a proper head of steam.

          2. They are being so ridiculous, but either they’re manipulating the green arrows or they really have conned a lot of gullible people. 🙁

          3. Up votes. The DM has been caught in the past blatantly manipulating the up-votes to try and push their preferred opinion to the top.

          4. The DM happily deletes or blocks the ‘wrong’ comments. They add fake upvotes to put unpopular comments at the top of the pile knowing it stimulates further comments and enraged responses.

            The tell is when the allegedly highest rated comment runs counter to the sentiments of all next highest rated comments. That just isnt what happens when there’s no interference. So there will be situations where the highest rated comment is essentially the same as the lowest rated one. Never happens on unmoderated threads.

            It happened to me so I know they do it!

            I once made a hostile comment at the DM about unfunny ‘comedian’ Patrick Kielty. It was clear from other comments and the up/down votes that he was actually popular among them and I was very much the odd man out. I was getting more red arrows than green, fair enough.

            But a day later I had mysteriously gained over a thousand green arrows on my comment which was, by then, the highest rated by a mile despite there only being a handful of people even bothered about the article and most of them were clearly fans. So it was obviously completely fake, a blatant manipulation of the votes.

          5. yes, I’ve seen similar.
            That, and blatant manipulation of people’s emotions via trivial news items. Recently this tactic was used to get people’s support for removing delays to divorce, and for euthanasia. And for the Cummings affair, of course.

          6. Dear, Ped.

            It is always a good idea to not offend the existing bloggers
            on the site you wish to impart your wisdom……..

          7. Of course I wasn’t complaining about my own comment Al.

            I was using it as an illustration of one the ways in which public opinion is nudged, manipulated and distorted. A situation that, essentially, you’re happy with.

          8. I am neither happy nor unhappy about you losing your precious upticks. Be consoled. You have just received eighteen more from people who have either not read your comment or who have but have no idea what you are talking about. A situation that, essentially, you are happy with.

          9. Please……do not bring your petty arguments to this Site!

            I have a very twitchy trigger finger….:-))

          10. If you read my comment Al you would know I wasn’t talking about losing upticks.

            I was talking about the Daily Mail and the manner in which they gave me 1000+ upticks for a comment which was clearly counter to the feelings of other commenters on the same story. Yet mine was officially the most liked comment by a mile. Except it wasn’t really. Thus proving my suspicions about the manipulation of the votes on DM stories by the DM itself. As you must know, the DM doesn’t use Disqus, they use their own clunky outdated system like many other MSM outlets.

            I know you get very exercised about my upvoters. But if my friends upvote me because they generally agree with me and I do the same for them, then the outcome, well, it is what it is. Nothing to stop anyone else doing the same.

            There are certain people I routinely upvote because I think they’re saying good things. However they never reciprocate with me or anyone else. Which generally means their great comments languish at the bottom of a thread somewhere with one or two or just zero votes largely ignored, unread and unnoticed. Perhaps its a form of autism? One friend of mine, despite being on Disqus since about 2014 has never seemed to grasp even the simplest features of the system – how to find another’s comments, how to find another user etc. Its very frustrating because his great output deserves more attention but since he won’t (can’t?) play ball with other users he’s consigned to relative obscurity – even more than me!

            If you don’t think anyone is going to read anything what you write – why bother?

            You know Al, I feel we’ve had this conversation before.

          11. You used to be a mod at Morgoth’s Review and would, routinely, upvote comments made by your friends, regardless of their content even when they were directly attacking Morgoth himself. As a consequence, you were banned.

          12. That is not correct and not the whole story and Im certainly not discussing it with you in public.

          13. I rather fear it is the latter. There are a lot of non-thinkers in this country. The reason why that is, is another question altogether.

    1. No more about the balcony flat fire. There’s an awful lot of lumps under the carpets.

  47. I don’t understand the man has gone beyond the call of duty to serve his country, he deserves a medal

  48. Dominic Cummings’ parents leap to his defence, saying public aren’t aware of his uncle’s death. 25 May 2020 • 8:54am

    Dominic Cummings’ mother has defended her son’s decision to travel to Durham in early April, pointing to the fact it coincided with the death of his uncle.

    Morag Cummings told the New Statesman that her brother Lord Justice Laws, with whom the Prime Minister’s chief adviser was close, had died in London that day, of or with Covid-19.

    It is understandable that ordinary people suddenly thrust into the limelight of publicity feel that the MSM is only interested in finding out the truth about something in the news but one would have thought that Cumming’s Mother would have been better informed. The Media are not interested in the truth. What they are seeking is something that will support the particular agenda of the day. Here they print her excuses for her son and then point out that it contradicts Boris’s reasons thus casting doubt on it. Howard Spring wrote Fame is the Spur. Were he here today it would be entitled Fame is the Curse!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/25/dominic-cummings-parents-leap-defence-saying-public-arent-aware/

    1. There’s a name: Lord Justice Laws. He it was who reinvented the UK constitution in 2001 to get the government of the day off the hook over the Metric Martyrs appeal.

      The things you learn on ‘ere.

  49. As far as I’m concerned if the media can’t understand the moral behind the DC issue they must be more determinedly horrible than the public have previously realised.

    1. They certainly understand it, Eddy. What they can’t forgive is that he orchestrated the leave vote.

  50. Afternoon all.

    Just had this email …. seems a scam to me.

    Important information about your Amazon.co.uk account

    Amaozn.co.uk

    24/05/2020 15:48

    1 We noticed new login attempt with your account from a device we don’t recognize.

    For your security, there may be some limitations on your account.

    We need to confirm your information, we need you to take action on your account to continue using our services again:

    Confirm now >

    Thanks,
    Amazon

    Has anyone else seen this? — check the spellun !

    Thanks, Issy.

    1. I’ve just had a login security alert from Amazon.
      Used my phone for prime video selection.
      They used my name and said “if it’s you, ignore this message” yours is very suspicious.

    2. See Richardl_ below.
      log on to Amazon directly and check your account settings. ”
      Change the password as well, whilst you are there. Never click on the links in the mail to “manage your account”, always log in separately.

      1. Some companies do send that type of email so maybe possibly perhaps it is valid, but I would believe js.

        Gnore the email and log on to Amazon directly and check your account settings.

    3. See Richardl_ below.
      log on to Amazon directly and check your account settings. ”
      Change the password as well, whilst you are there. Never click on the links in the mail to “manage your account”, always log in separately.

    4. It’s been around for a while – if you run your cursor over the email address it gives you the real one

    1. Perhaps we should start one to retain him? After all, he knows where the bodies are buried, and Liebore would pay him shedloads more to hire him. Just imagine the damage he could do for his new masters.

    2. Perhaps we should start one to retain him? After all, he knows where the bodies are buried, and Liebore would pay him shedloads more to hire him. Just imagine the damage he could do for his new masters.

      1. Look, I’m typographically incompetent. My Pitman’s Typing Certficste has expired.

        1. Aren’t we all. It wasn’t intended as a dig.

          I clicked the red link thinking it was the petition, before getting to the second link; hence the “(seriously)” when I commented.

          1. No worries. I don’t mind digs, mostly. (Some few go beyond fun and fair comment. We are all nearly insane, as well.)

            I’ve also rung the changes with Chang.

          2. No worries. I don’t mind digs, mostly. (Some few go beyond fun and fair comment. We are all nearly insane, as well.)

            I’ve also rung the changes with Chang.

      1. I’m waiting with trepidation that Winnie the Pooh will be relaunched as one or more of 37 genders and, naturally, blik….

    1. ‘Afternoon, Hugh.

      Do you know, if I were a conspiracy theorist I just might think that the authorities and establishment were actually attempting to incite a civil war.

      1. 319583+ up ticks,
        G,
        I changed civil war to civil unrest this morning in an early post, the peoples are being prodded for a reason.
        I see conspiracy theories as pretty tame compared to some reality currently.

      2. If so, it would be to decisively crush the voice of the normal, to sweep away any resistance to the new future.

    2. I saw this coming 30 years ago. I used the phrase, “islam is an arrow aimed at the heart of Europe”. Oh, how they laughed at me.
      We are on the cusp. It will soon be over.

  51. https://m.youtube.com/watchv=4sjnq4ytum4

    Published on 24 May 2020
    Lockdowns were sold months ago on the idea of “flattening the curve.” In most places there never was much of a curve to flatten, yet the lockdowns are still in place. Tens of millions are now having their lives destroyed – for the crime of breathing.

    Tony Heller, who normally makes videos about climate change, mentions here that he is Jewish, and married to a woman from Russia, who’d lived under Communist Soviet control. The people who are all complaining the loudest about others breaking the lockdown, and snitching to the police, are the same as those spying on and informing on their friends, relatives, and neighbours. His wife’s brother was arrested for selling blue jeans after someone else informed on him.
    Tony Heller also refers to the propaganda used by the Nazis to persuade people that all the problems of Germany was because of those of the Jewish faith. The same propaganda is at play here and now, although were not yet sending anyone to the gulag or concentration camp.
    What happened in Soviet Russia and in Germany is happening in the U.S. and UK. And this is happening with a Conservative government, and with Donald Trump as President. Think how bad it would be under Labour or the Democrats…
    Watch the video, as it makes these points better than I can.

    1. 319583+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Ims2,
      My belief is it would be the same under lab, these parties share equally due to the mass uncontrolled immigration link,their share of the evil consequences.
      These govmental bodies are in name only and no way resemble the parties of old.

    2. The Cons are step by step introducing a socialist/communist culture. Labour must be delighted what with the almost universal wage, so many restrictions, people paid to do nothing and now not wanting to go back to work, no doubt Brexit soon to be delayed yet again, inhuman treatment of people, queueing outside shops to buy food etc. Hospitals set up to take the many thousands of patients that haven’t materialised, Covid19 patients sent home from hospital or back to care homes so they can spread the virus, thousands of hospital appointments cancelled along with interruption of treatments. To say nothing of the borrowing costs and the trashing of the economy.

      I just cannot understand the reasoning behind what’s going on in the U.K. you could almost think the government want us to go cap in hand back to the EU pleading with them to let us back in.

      As I’ve said before, prisoners are being released and the rest of the country is locked up.

      Sorry – rant over.

      1. That’s very interesting.
        I copied and the pasted the link into a fresh open page, and found the same thing, but the video is still there and playable.
        It’s the second time that’s happened, so maybe there’s something going on here, i.e., subtle censorship.
        you’d have to look it up on YouTube, under Tony Heller’s videos. It’s called “Guilty – Of Breathing”

    3. Most of us were brought up with Russia being the great terrifying bogey state where children sneaked on their parents who were subsequently taken to Siberia or shot.

      Britain’s sneak culture came from these roots and it started to accelerate greatly when adverts appeared on TV telling us to sneak on builders or other trades-people who were happy to be paid in cash.

      What thoroughly nasty people we have become.

      1. 319583+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Not all of us,the real nastie’s I would consider to be those that put party before Country regardless of known consequences.

          1. 319583+ up ticks,
            In my book you do not vote for mass uncontrolled immigration
            parties twice.
            The JAY report shot down lab 1400 / 1600 reasons in one area
            alone, consequences of mass uncontrolled immigration.
            The cons, guilty as sin on many fronts plus being a mass uncontrolled immigration party, ongoing via the English Channel.
            The libs are just sh!te but in many respects the most, out of the trio, honest sh!te.
            There has been no pretence regarding their stance on the eu.

      2. TBF Rastus it’s not Alf or I, nor I am sure, is it you, it’s those other bu..ers! I never thought the Brits were snitchers.
        Edit: snitchers not snatchers!

        1. Talking of the box – the Talking Pictures TV channel is a godsend. I have recorded lots of films – and am gradually introducing the MR to old ones. We are half way through “Albert RN” – which she is enjoying (so she say (sic)…. I have discovered that Will Hay is JUST as unfunny in 2020 as he was in 1951 (when I first came across him). More old memories to be stirred.

          1. I introduced the family to Will Hay nearly 30 years ago. The kids loved it. Those German guards must have been dummies to be fooled.

          2. For some unknown reason, we were shown it at primary school one day. Made a change from Mickey Mouse cartoons at least.

          3. My father and I normally shared the same sense of humour. Will Hay was the exception.

          4. My dad hated the Marx Brothers (he didn’t get them, their wisecrack humour went over his head) but he guffawed at the talentless slapstick of the Three Stooges!

    1. I’ve just watched a welter weight bout between Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch. They were shadow boxing.

        1. Not easy, judging by its size it is probably 30-40 years old if it’s a day.

      1. As an army cadet, I got lost in a rhododendron – in my defence, it was the size of Leicestershire, and I didn’t want to walk round it – and couldn’t get through, either.
        :-((

    1. Dear Bill,

      I am beginning to become concerned!!

      Are you happy with your R.M. deliveries?

  52. Off topic
    I’ve just had an email from my French bank offering me:

    An account aggregation service
    (1) which allows me to add and synchronize the accounts I hold in other banks
    (2) to view their respective balances and

    (3) to do it in the blink of an eye.

    I may be British, but I’m not falling for that!

    1. Our Bank of Scotland account offers the same. We have not taken up their nosy parker offer.

        1. No a couple of years ago I think. Santander offer the same. We have accounts with various banks to earn the maximum of the pathetic interest they offer.

          Edited to make a sort of sense.

          1. I’ve not seen it before.

            I was wondering whether the banks, collectively, might be gleaning the information to get a better handle on just who owes what and who has what; for when the system collapses.

          2. And to try to get all your dosh with them so they get a chance to rip you off rather than other financial institutions.

          3. Put what money you still have in National Savings. The place to save where your money is safer than in any ordinary bank.

          4. And just where do you think the Govt. will dip first, when it all hits the fan?

            Buy “stuff” that won’t deteriorate, bog-roll, hunting equipment, Trombetti seeds and the like, and then you can barter.

          5. You may think that. I am increasingly doubtful about banks in general. Even the very few decent building societies that remain offer peanuts. NSI is – because the govt is desperate – offering – in today’s terms – quite decent rates.

            And HMG can print loads money; banks and BSocs can’t.And in 20 years I won’t care, anyway.

          6. The rate/return might be OK, but when the time “really” comes, savings will vanish, banks/NSI/Gilts, etc. Don’t believe Thayaric, when it falls apart, money as a concept will too.

          7. Hmmm. 20 years? I am personally not that optimistic…anyway 20 years would put me disturbingly close to 3 figures.

          8. I think banks have been offering the option for some time. I never availed myself of it – couldn’t see the point and didn’t think it was a good idea to allow some other body to access my accounts.

          9. We have just downgraded our 123 account to 123 Lite and still get the utilities bonus and £1 per month and no interest on deposits. We have moved our money elsewhere and keep just enough in Santander to pay the utility DDs and payments to the regular saver.

          10. We have ours on Santander simply because the payback on various bills still works. We only have my account thought, because having two was a waste of time.

    2. And all the info is “for your convenience” passed directly to the Fisc…..

    3. Well established banking service here. You give your online account details from bank A to bank B then when needed bank B will log onto bank A to pull the info. Our banks offer that service, but only having a few accounts, it’s not worth the fuss.

      1. When I were nobbut a lass, I had an account with Lloyds and an account with Barclays. No money in either but a #100 overdraft allowance in both. I got away with writing myself cheques from one to the other all through college 🙂
        The trouble is, I grew up and found that’s also what the banks do.

  53. Evening, all. Been an absolute scorcher here; far too hot to do anything but lie out, parasol up, sipping a cold drink and reading a book.

    1. I had the pa’io doors open until some upwind neighbour decided to have another f’ing BBQ. I don’t know what they use to get them going – it must be inner tube stuffed with dried dogshit.

      1. Excellent, 11/10
        It’s not often a post makes me giggle but that was a classic:

        I don’t know what they use to get them going – it must be inner tube stuffed with dried dogshit.

      2. I’m wondering how you know what burning inner tube stuffed with dried dogshit smells like.

    1. Campbell: “…these people (the government) have killed tens of thousands of people…”

      No further comment necessary…

    1. Chief Inspector Abdul Mohammed told the press that there was no other crime to investigate, adding,, “These white trash bints are gagging for it.”

  54. The sole issue in the case of Mr Cummings is whether what he and his wife did, in the circumstances as they existed when they drove to Co Durham, amounted to “a reasonable excuse”….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/24/letters-law-behaviour-dominic-cummings-going-durham/

    When it comes to litigation under health regulations where health professionals have acted in contravention of accepted practices that have resulted in patient harm the worst outcome for medical professionals is inappropriate treatment.

    Where no action or treatment has been administered at all then harm arising from inaction is neglect which is far more serious.

    I submit that in view of the Government’s inability to provide definitive legally binding tests for COVID-19 infection together with the suspension of virtually all NHS emergency services in March 2020 then there is sufficient doubt about the criminality of any action that was taken at that time to avoid harm to a minor.

    What is more important than someone who went to Co Durham in March is where has Fergus Walsh been since early January?

  55. The Cummings nonsense has taken a turn for the worse, according to Al-Beeb 5Live news at midday.

    Additional statement: Visit to Durham by Dominic Cummings during lockdown
    Acting Durham Police, Crime and Victims’ Commissioner, Steve White said: “I am confident that thus far, Durham police has responded proportionately and appropriately to the issues raised concerning Mr Cummings and his visit to the County at the end of March. It is clear however that there is a plethora of additional information circulating in the public domain which deserves appropriate examination. I have today written to the Chief Constable, asking her to establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter at any juncture. It is vital that the Force can show it has the interests of the people of County Durham and Darlington at its heart, so that the model of policing by consent, independent of government but answerable to the law, is maintained.”

    “It will be for the Chief Constable to determine the operational response to this request and I am confident that with the resources at its disposal, the Force can show proportionality and fairness in what has become a major issue of public interest and trust.”

    Posted on Monday 25th May 2020

    1. and the Perlice local to where Mr Cummings lives can check

      …….to establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter at any juncture, committed by MSM journalits etc
      gathered outside Mr Cummings abode:

      It is vital that the Force can show it has the interests of the people, that it is politically impartial in its’ investigations

    2. and the Perlice local to where Mr Cummings lives can check

      …….to establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter at any juncture, committed by MSM journalits etc
      gathered outside Mr Cummings abode:

      It is vital that the Force can show it has the interests of the people, that it is politically impartial in its’ investigations

    3. and the Perlice local to where Mr Cummings lives can check

      …….to establish the facts concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations in this matter at any juncture, committed by MSM journalits etc
      gathered outside Mr Cummings abode:

      It is vital that the Force can show it has the interests of the people, that it is politically impartial in its’ investigations

    4. “concerning any potential breach of the law or regulations”.

      That’s ok then. He hasn’t broken any Law or Regulation.

      1. I wonder how the Left, the MSM and the Cummings haters will react if the police conclude he did nothing illegal?

        Ignore the police no doubt,

          1. I thought that that was an initial conclusion, but Steve White, acting Durham police and crime commissioner, has written to
            the force’s chief constable Jo Farrell “asking her to establish the
            facts concerning any breach of the law or regulations”.

            It’s a scandal, and I hope he survives and wreaks a terrible revenge on the Quangos, Civil Service and BBC.

          2. The Police and Crime Commissioner is usually a member of a political party. In Durham I doubt it would be the Conservative Party.

        1. This is just to add to the political pressure is it not? The whole thing is clearly, though loosely, orchestrated. What else would explain the sheer variety of the denigrators and their unanimous calls for him to go?

          1. The report will doubtless be along the lines of:

            HE IS GUILTY OF BREAKING GUIDANCE and then on an inside page: “even though he did nothing illegal”.

    5. FiveLive. It is, I believe, a BBC station so is not a trustworthy source.

      1. The post above is the statement from the A/PCC of Durham lifted from his website. I only picked this up because Al-Beeb mentioned it and I then did some searching to confirm the fact before posting.

        1. Police, Crime and Victims’ Commissioner.

          Fancy title for Political Officer.

          1. I could say something tasteless like “He’s just having a stroke”.

            But I won’t.

          2. Not sure which is the less appealing – his sweaty hand or her sweaty arse.

          3. Good job I’ve only just seen this Bill you might have spoiled my day. 😆
            But…….

          4. Thank goodness you have such natural good taste and graciousness. You are an example to us all.

    1. Yes we are here at the end of European Civilisation. The New Dark Ages are next!

    2. Churchill contemplates his defeat as Stalin and Roosevelt plan to carve up Europe.

    3. Good afternoon Rastus and others.
      Hmm, Sir Winston Churchill’s mother was a US citizen; President Trump’s mother was born British. Boris was born in the USA.

      Winston went to Harrow, where he won a Declamation Prize and later he supplemented his income via journalism and as an author. Boris was a KS at Eton and he writes a bit.

      Trump’s dad was a millionaire businessman, so was Winston’s maternal grandfather.
      Truman and Trump share the first four letters of their respective surnames.
      As a boy, Truman was a sabbath helper for local jews; Trump’s son in law is jewish.
      Truman was not expected to win the 1948 Presidential election, but he overtook his rivals.
      Hey, we could play this game for hours.

        1. It wasn’t fake news, though. At the first count, Dewey’s decimal point was misplaced.

          …. I’ll get me slide-rule …..

          1. That paper went to print before the polls had closed, when Dewey was widely predicted by the pollsters to be the winner. And the Trib was a very pro-Republican paper.

      1. Trump’s grandfather was German just to fill in the blank. Probably explains why he gets in such a snit when his orders are not promptly obeyed.

        And of course, until he decided he wanted to be President, he supported the Democratic Party.

  56. The indignation of cowardly bishops over Cummings is bizarre. 25 May 2020.

    I had almost forgotten that the Church of England had bishops. After all, here is a list of just of few of the moral issues on which they have remained mostly, if not entirely, silent: fornication, binge-drinking, social abortion, human embryo research, gay marriage, gluttony, knife crime and gang violence, blasphemy, usurious rates of interest charged by High Street banks on overdrafts. But it turns out that we do have some bishops after all, and they have rediscovered their zest for public preaching.

    I like this piece because I almost wrote something similar when I saw the face of one of the UK’s Bishops sticking out of Daily Telegraph page. In a time when Christianity is itself disappearing, when its Primate is a gutless Social Justice Warrior without a shred of spiritual belief or religious integrity, why is this clown mouthing off about a piece of Political Theatre with no moral or religious implications whatsoever? That of course is the answer. He is not concerned with anything of real importance, like the teaching of sexual perversion to children or about protecting marriage or even the murder of unborn children. He can just prattle away with no fear of a response from the Cultural Marxists who would see him drummed out of office if he did.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/25/indignation-cowardly-bishops-cummings-bizarre/

      1. Cockney Son of a London brickie built colossus.
        The hierarchy have kept that under wraps for a he’ll of a long time.
        To any of you Nottlers who hasn’t yet been to Bletchley Park. It’s an absolute must for anyones bucket list. One of my most favourite and fondly remember birthday presents.
        Tea and scones pretty good as well.

        1. Before the war my grandfather used to play chess with CHO’D Alexander.
          I have the pieces and the chess table (not merely a board) which they played on when he visited the old man. A Staunton set, the regnal pieces are nearly 3 inches tall.

          I doubt that “Pa” ever won many games, unless they were experimenting with opening gambits, but he was International master standard, so not bad.

          1. Apparently One of the qualifications required by the poeple who ran BP was the ability to complete the times crossword.
            Quite an interesting comment. Read the chess.
            I’ve never played it.
            But I once had a shared lunch with a chess player at a Hampstead bistro.
            The check table cloths must have been confusing. It took him ten minutes to pass the salt.

        2. Haven’t been to Bletchley but I used to regularly attend evening talks at the British Library and on one occasion got talking to an elderly lady in the bar who told me she’d worked at Bletchley. She was much more interesting than the main speaker. (It was a talk in defence of the EU!)

          1. Perhaps we should have a Nottlers day out at BP.
            It’s so interesting and very fascinating.

          2. It’s a long way for me and requires an overnight stay (something that is a bit tricky for me in my current circumstances).

          3. A post-lockdown Nottlers day out sounds appealing, Eddy. Get Stormy on the case; she was planning a bash a year or two back.

          4. Grandmother-in-law had a nice fat lady friend that I got to chat to some while ago. She was ex-Bletchley Park. Never squeaked a bean about it, but was fascinating to talk to.

          5. Shirley! The ladies girth is irrelevant?

            Bletchley Park was of course, immensely
            important in what it achieved in the war effort.
            Surely the exploits of Hanslope Park should
            be recognised…….but of course it will not be,
            …….Truly brave……but also truly naive!!

            Edited.

          6. She was lovely, and probably the sharpest brain I ever met, despite advanced age. Her girth was definitely a feature, though.
            Recognised… My Father worked at Harwell, on things atomic.

        3. Tommy Flowers? I went to BP last year. Also visited Uxbridge bunker and the Cabinet War Rooms. The year before I took in Bentley Priory and Brooklands. They were my “extras” when I was down for the Battle of Britain service in Westminster Abbey.

          1. I had a private tour of Bentley Priory a few years ago, by a retired Wing Commander friend who had worked there. We went all over, including the underground stuff, ending up in the Officer’s Mess for heavily subsidised drinks. As I lived within walking distance of the place at the time th visit was greatly appreciated.

  57. Even though I stated earlier (call for my resignation, I don’t care) I could not resist looking at the DM headlines.

    DC has them drinking their own vomit, they’re so angry.

    Ha ha ha; go Dom go, keep sticking it up ’em, they don’t like it.

    (Apologies to Corporal Jones.)

        1. That is dangerous. The dog could get a bit of balloon in its throat and choke. I had a case like that in 1962 when I first started out. We managed to get the balloon obstruction out but the dog could have died.

          1. My sister’s dogs eat all kinds of things they shouldn’t when they go into the garden.
            I’ve suggested she puts muzzles on them to stop them eating stuff, e.g., snails and bird poo.

    1. Well DC is not a politician, and hopefully he will never stoop so low.
      But as far as I’m concerned he’s a decent honest sort of person.
      That’s why arse hole media hate him.

      1. I guess that I am the only one that thinks he appears to have shown an awful lack of common sense when he went poodling up to his parents place.

        The press are just desperate to blacken anything government related so he can hardly have thought that he could nip out and drive for a few hours during a government imposed lock down.

        They brought it on themselves, now if he can go out tell everyone to get out and about!

        1. If he was starting to feel ill, worrying about what the press might say two months later might not have been in the forefront of his concerns.

        1. Don’t mention he was/is a key worker the media will be all over that it’s lockdown.

    2. Apologies if I played a role in tempting you to break your word and look at the DM 🙁

  58. I liked this BTL comment on the DT letters page – there is more:

    I wanted to cancel my subscription to the DT but it runs until next March and there are no refunds so I stick around a little longer. How amazing that most of the first letters you read are daming Dominic Cummings. The MSM including the DT have gone after Dominic because right now they can`t find any new dirt on Boris. If you can`t destroy the PM right now, kill his right hand man.

    China is doing to Hong Kong what it did to Tibet and all our press are concerned about is hounding an innocent family man. The MSM acting like a pack of dogs, desperate for the kill: a taste of blood.

    Dominic and his wife had contacted a potentially fatal disease. His four year old son I believe has ‘special needs’. They wanted to get near to family who could care for the boy if necessary. How can that be immoral, disingenuous or against the law? It can`t be in any civilised country. But since Cameron called the Referendum, we are no longer a civilized country.

    Until the last election the MSM and Parliament threw democracy back in our face. Then when the pandemic came to these shore, they saw this as a wonderful
    opportunity to bring down Boris. Nobody wins in a pandemic, we simply count our losses. So they knew he would be vulnerable and they have been
    frothing at the mouth ever since.

    The truly gross Piers Morgan was asking people to break all the current lock down advice because of what Cummings had allegedly done. Trying to bring the country into a state of anarchy in the middle of a pandemic. How totally irresponsible is that? Morality, decency, honour went out of the window in 2016 and I don`t know if it will ever return.

    Boris knows his advisor is a good, decent man and Boris must hold onto his integrity otherwise this once great nation is heading for the rocks, not
    just financially. We are becoming morally destitute. And lets not expect support from half of his cabinet. The Tories were a Remain Party and only backed Boris to save their skins. They, like the Telegraph, would now like to ditch Boris and bring in the likes of the limp Hunt….

    1. Perhaps Steve White, acting Durham police and crime commissioner, could write to Cressida Dick, asking her to establish the
      facts concerning any breach of the law or regulations on the part of Piers Morgan in his incitement to break the law.

      1. I admire your thought process. sos, but from where I’m sitting I know, and I guess you know, that that request is a form of pissing into the wind. Morgan has lost the plot big time, he appears to have delusions of grandeur and it’s past time that GMB got shot of him – just looked him up and there are questions about his lack of appearance today, have his employers put him on furlough?

          1. He seems to believe his opinion matters.

            Objectionable, hypocritical, self-opinionated…….

            and those are his good points!!

            [When P.E, was both funny and satirical he was,
            regularly, taken apart by that news organ.]

          2. Why the hell the foul swine who slandered British troops got to become a MSM spokesperson after his sacking gawd only knows

          3. He’s held a lot of very influential positions and probably has a lockerful of dirt on the great and the good.

      2. WTF has Dick got to do with events in Co Durham? She only has control over police matters in the metropolitan area of London, nowhere else.

        A police and crime commissioner is not a police officer. He or she is only a political appointee who has no control over operational police strategies.

        1. Absolutely noothing, but I guess you missed the story where the P&CC wrote to Durham Police about Cummings.

          I was merely using that wording as an observation regarding his local police ie CD questioning PM about his utterances.

    1. Not to worry, at 4 am they’ll be illegal immigrants going up the hill.

      {:-((

      1. Oh, you are a dry one Sos, yep could be so . Can you see all the cruise liners at anchor in the distance .. Queen Victoria , etc there are 6 at anchor in Weymouth bay.

    2. Even though it is a bank holiday, I am glad that everyone is taking it seriously and staying home to isolate themselves from badbug.

      Wtf are they doing standing in line waiting for a chance to sit on the beach with everyone else?

      The only reason to shut down industry was to stop people mixing and getting sick, it they do this then send them back to work.

    3. I feel for you, we are having the same problems here with big city folk coming down to the county to enjoy the beaches. Never mind that the beaches are closed!

      No public toilets? No problem, just crap at the end of some isolated driveway. No hotels or B&B open? No issues there either, just park the car in a field overnight.

      1. AT what was once RNAS Portland: they all came down in their own helicopters

        The driver had driven down earlier with their Mercs and Beemers

    4. Crowded beaches, queues lining up under threat of being killed by a deadly enemy, people wading out into a calm sea and a fleet of empty ships waiting offshore.

      Remind you of anything?

          1. Funny, I was only thinking of that the other day and then I couldn’t get the blasted tune out of my head!

    5. I suspect that was taken with a wide angle lens, which would ‘compress’ the beach & make it appear more crowded than it was. Same with the queue.
      Clue: Durdle Door is more at right angles to the coast line.

      1. It WAS crowded , there were traffic jams Peddy , and someone climbed to the top of Durdle Door with the aim of jumping off the top, all the news is on our local F/B.

  59. Anti-Cummings petition, organised by Change, nudging 340,000 sigs. I deleted it.

    1. How many did the petition to release the Grooming enquiry eventually get?

      If this petition gets more than that one it will crtainly show where the UK’s priorities have moved.

      1. The difference is that change.org petitions are totally ignored from the start.
        Unlike the official ones they are read by the PTB and after a few days they are ignored.

        1. Indeed so, Alf.

          Why should some tin-pot Californian petition
          company incite us to follow their lead?

          T*ssers!!

        2. I don’t “do” these petitions so didn’t realise there was a difference. Thanks for pointing that out.

  60. 319583+ up ticks,
    Any chance dicko the plastic policeman / woman can explain the daily breach of the beach at Dover ?

  61. Cummings was taking a big risk walking in the woods, we all know what happened to the weapons inspector

    1. He probably felt a moral responsiblity to carry out his duty as a husband and father.
      And can you imagine what would would be happening if a driver had caught the virus.
      Now the media like all of the knowall opposition are using hindsight to pose their questions and relentlessly challenge his obvious motives.
      It’s now time to zip it. 🏁

    1. Which left wing rag plans to publish this photo tomorrow, the DT or the Times?

  62. I see Cur Keir Slammer has leapt on to the bandwagon. “If I were PM, I’d sack Cummings.” Well, matey you aren’t and you can’t.

    1. Curs should be shot on sight (it’s a shame we don’t have an Atticus Finch). I wouldn’t mind some target practice with another cur: Cur Phil Slime-Green.

  63. I have been watching the DC press conference.

    The loaded questions from the media is a new low-point in this country, and I for one detest the their accusatory tone and their holier-than-though drivel. How DC kept his cool is a wonder to me.

    We now have Sky’s Bunter ‘erring’ away as he picks out the bits that he thinks will show the man to be on dodgy ground. What a total bluddy circus. I wish we could put our disgusting media in lockdown and leave obviously exhausted people like DC, still recovering from a serious infection, to get on with an almost impossible task.

    1. Holier than thou sums them up, especially the ones who seem to have great hair – illicit visits to the salon perhaps??!

  64. Something good on TV the first episode of All creatures great and small.
    Lovely stuff.

    1. I rewatched the complete program series more than once. A sad experience these days to watch it all again as it just highlights how good the BBC were and how bad they have become.

      1. And England as it used to be, an England I remember but will never see again.

        1. Yes I’m afraid the England of today was clearly on display when the journalistic scum vocally expressed their hatred and bile at the DC press briefing.

          1. Thank you, yes, ’tis I, photo taken two years ago. I tend to avoid the camera if I can….. (I am not fishing, btw – I just don’t like having my photograph taken.)

      2. We had a trailer on this morning for a programme on BBC Sounds, courtesy of James Purnell, explaining that 21st century family is all about LGBTQ, and that no other category really counts today.

        1. Remember the ghastly London Olympics – the true British family has one black and one white parent.

      3. We have stayed in Askrigg where one of the local pubs was The Drovers arms.
        Actually the Kings Arms.
        But it has dozens of old photos on the walls taken on the sets.

  65. I see the MSM scum are still at it. There should be no more statements or answers to the press.
    Johnson should call in his 17 MPs and let them know if they feel unable to support his decision, they are more than welcome to resign the whip. The last thing he needs to do is follow the example Mrs May style of leadership.

      1. And that’s one of the main reasons that the Left know they must “kill” Cummings

  66. And Sky wheels out the enemy of the people with the dodgy dossier to put his oar in, you couldn’t make it up

  67. The guidance outlines ways to pass the time and obtain food and medicine.

    However, it does acknowledge that it is not always straightforward when children are involved.

    It
    says: “If you have children, keep following this advice to the best of
    your ability, however, we are aware that not all these measures will be
    possible.”

    End of. Thats what he did, End of.all caused by the media lies.

  68. I somehow lost my BSK account and have reverted again to Sidcup.
    Why, after two or three days have I nowhere seen the headline “Cummings and Goings”?

          1. And you think you are quite White and stable on those old Broadstairs but what the Dickens is going on ?
            Do you have a pier- age ?

    1. I made the mistake of trying to verify a lefty’s assertion that DC’s sister was on the board of the company (Idox) involved with the covid tracing ap, whatever you do turn on safe mode before you search for Alice Cummings.

      1. There are bright because they are burning surplus gas Sue.
        They are totally obsessed

  69. Luckily for the European Union, international financier George Soros has suggested a novel way to finance the recovery from the coronavirus epidemic, namely ”perpetual bonds” as explained here in the Guardian………….

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/21/eu-should-use-perpetual-bonds-to-finance-covid-19-recovery-fund

    President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and George Soros are apparently close friends having first met as long ago as October 30 2012 at a financial conference in Berlin, so agreement between them would presumably be relatively straightforward.

    According to Mr Soros, in part ”the proceeds should be used for investments” and fortunately for the European Union, he apparently has extensive experience already in disbursing public funds in fiscal expansion programs such as this as explained by well known US author and journalist Peter Schweizer here….. please scroll………

    https://politicalarena.org/2012/01/14/democrats-sugar-daddy-george-soros-helped-craft-stimulus-then-invested-in-companies-benefiting/

    That Mr Soros is apparently very enthusiastic to help with this $500 billion process is certainly fortuitous and looks certain to ensure success for the benefit of everyone involved.

    1. Someone left the manhole covers off again. Once again the stench is rising in the steam.

      1. 319583+ up ticks,
        Evening Re,
        The rancid odour of sh!te leaks from the pores of the lab/lib/con
        coalition party and has gained strength daily, especially since the knife of treachery entered Thatchers back.
        Currently blatant treachery can be observed daily at Dover beach.

    2. That’s just because they can’t think for themselves. Someone has to tell them what to say.

      1. Nope. They are all singing from the approved Labour Party song sheet. They are seemingly unable to think for themselves. But then we already knew this.

      2. 319583+ up ticks,
        Evening Pm,
        In my book they are ALL cloned via the fact they all have
        slerpers tongue, gave themselves 10K rise before the enema
        issues hit the fan ie the breach of the beach odious treacherous
        actions, etc,etc.

    3. Barbara Keeley

      With ‘Lockdown’, it is “One rule for BBC Barbers, journalists, peeple who clap on Thursday, Alleged Pakistani Rape Gangs, etc and another for Mr Cummings, who was trying to do the best for his son.

    1. Greetings, PB. Good to have you aboard. This site is unique, hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

    2. Sounds familiar. ‘Pedestrian blogger’ was Igonikon Jack’s put down for those who disagreed with him. Presumably you know this.

      1. Yes. I used to mock poor old Jack and changed my moniker to what it now is, and has been for ten years, as a way of showing him how little I cared for his opinion. He was very amusing, albeit unintentionally. I hope that he still thrives and that his journalistic career is going from strength to strength.

    3. Greetings, Pedestrianblogger. If you’re new here, welcome along! If you’re an old hand with a new handle you will be spotted! But enjoy the comments and please contribute! We don’t bite, well, not always…..;@)

    1. I assume it’s that software scandal?
      It’s a classic one, that might yet have implications for the whole software industry if they decide that the blame doesn’t lie 100% with the managers at the Post Office who decided to believe that the software was infallible, therefore the Post Offices must have been dishonest.
      What was done to those poor people was appalling.

    1. Morning Geoff. Are the letters still hidden from you? I have them and can post them if needed.

        1. The letters have just appeared on the website, Bob. I will let nature take its course via Epidermoid!

        2. Oops! I’m mistaken, they’re yesterday’s. I just tried copy/pasting from my tablet edition and it wouldn’t let me. I used to be able to, so they’ve changed the format. I’ll keep trying.

Comments are closed.