Monday 26 October: The Government’s coronavirus restrictions are destroying our society

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/10/26/lettersthe-governments-coronavirus-restrictions-destroying-society/

755 thoughts on “Monday 26 October: The Government’s coronavirus restrictions are destroying our society”

  2. Wondering whether this free school meals malarkey has all been manufactured to take peoples attention away from the lockdowns.

    I seems ironic now Labour are seen as defending children from hunger when they ignored the mass rape of children.

    1. Morning Bob, and the lockdowns are taking people’s attention from Boris and his BINO theatrical farce that is reaching the conclusion many predicted.

  3. Almost two thirds of Britons want BBC licence fee scrapped. 25 October 2020.

    Nearly two out of three Britons believe the current BBC licence fee should be scrapped, a major poll has found, as leading Tory MPs called for a root-and-branch review of the corporation’s funding.

    BELOW THE LINE

    K R Knewnham26 Oct 2020 2:49AM.

    The BBC is simply a vehicle for left wing political activists to push their minority extremist left wing agenda. The BBC hates this country but fortunately I hate the BBC with the burning hatred of a white hot supernova. Together we can smash this vile diseased and poisonous institution.

    Morning everyone. A person after my own heart!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/25/almost-two-thirds-britons-want-bbc-licence-fee-scrapped/

    2. Do you want to save some money? Almost two out of three Britons say ‘yes please’ !

      In other news, the Pope was seen wearing a silly hat yesterday.

  5. ‘Morning, Peeps. The natives are increasingly restless:

    SIR – Last November, like many others, I voted Conservative at the general election. Nearly a year later the country has changed beyond recognition. We have seen restrictions on personal freedoms unprecedented in peacetime. Freedom of movement is restricted, and people are prevented from seeing children, grandchildren, parents and the sick in hospital. People have been unable to attend weddings and even funerals.

    Businesses – indeed whole industries – are being destroyed, thousands face redundancy, and young people’s education and futures are being wrecked. This has all been imposed by ministers without proper parliamentary debate. In short, I now live in a country closer to East Germany at the height of the Cold War than the Britain I grew up in.

    All this has supposedly been necessary to protect us from Covid-19. We are told that the Government is “following the science”, yet little of this science has been published or properly scrutinised, and the modelling quoted has been widely discredited. The aim seems to be to continue like this until a vaccine is produced. Meanwhile, people are dying as a result of not being able to get scans or treatment for cancers and other serious diseases.

    Nobody would pretend that the situation has been easy and the initial aim of protecting the NHS from a surge of patients was sensible, but it is utterly futile to continue in this way. We have to live with the virus. The NHS will not exist at all if the country goes bankrupt.

    I cannot vote for a government that persists in destroying our society in this way.

    Mike Finnis
    Hinchley Wood, Surrey

    SIR – In Wales we have started a 16-day “fire break” (report, October 25) – a catchy name for a total lockdown. All non-essential shops, bars and restaurants have closed, al though they have complied with all the regulations to make them safe. Essential shops, though open, cannot sell goods deemed unessential by the Welsh government. Where did it get the right to determine what is non-essential?

    We have already had cases of heavy-handed police telling people where they can and cannot shop, and issuing fines. It feels very much as if we are living in a police state run by a dictator. What has happened to our freedoms and democracy in Wales?

    Trevor Gall
    Carmarthen

    SIR – I am obviously labouring under the misapprehension that we live in the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It seems that Wales and Scotland are now completely independent nations, given their first ministers’ actions.

    Kevin Dowling
    Welbourn, Lincolnshire

    SIR – If Boris had made his a five-tier lockdown plan, would Nicola have made hers six?

    Paul Schofield
    Chawton, Hampshire

    1. Good morning, HJ.

      Mr. Finnis must have had a postal vote!

      The letters and articles keep coming, yet
      most people, or so it seems, are still in
      thrall to the restrictive rules and regulations.

      1. But for how much longer, I wonder?

        ‘Morning, G. A nice cold, sunny and dry start to the day here. More leaf-sweeping in prospect.

        1. Yes, it is lovely here,
          I am off soon to do a little light
          weeding in the Church garden,
          then to collect and deliver a friend
          to the Surgery.

    2. Time for massive civil disobedience. Riot. Burn the place down – it’s all bankrupt, anyhow.
      Burn government offices, palaces and council offices.
      It’ll likely sanitise the place, too.

      2. Good morning, Oberst.

        I am surprised how much, as a Nation,
        we have changed; in four years we have
        become frightened by our own shadow.
        When Mr. Cameron, the EU, POTUS and
        sundry others told us we could not and
        would not survive without the EU, we politely
        told them to ‘poke it.’
        Now, we have all curled up and seem prepared to
        die!

      3. It bothers that the endless demands for more taxes continue.

        The usual idiots crow for companies to pay their ‘fair share’ of private wealth, all to take ever more from us and put it in their hands.

    3. Regarding Mr Schofield’s question. I have seen it mooted that Boris may add a fourth tier; Nipoleon’s dilemma may occur sooner than we think.
      Whilst on the subject of Nipoleon’s five tiers, even Level Zero has restrictions. There is no normal in Nipoleon’s plans.

    1. And if the ‘do-gooding creeps’ get their way and the criminals are fed, housed and watered, expect many more to land on our shores by this method.

      1. ‘Morning, Herr Oberst. As we all know, piracy is a most serious offence, but instead I expect we will let them in and shower them with bennies…

        (This is a re-run of a similar conversation yesterday evening in Janus Towers, only the language was a little more ‘robust’.)

        1. It was one of the three residual offences that rightly carried the death penalty until we went completely soft.

          2. I’ve thought about that. When the ships of the Royal Navy were “wooden walls” built in government shipyards such as Chatham it made perfect sense. If you could not sink the RN at sea, you could sneak into a shipyard and destroy them on land. Then the Frogs could pile into barges, land up the Thames and Voila! we are all speaking French.

    3. We had a Tanzanian stowaway who sneaked onboard at Capetown, little realising we were heading to an exploration site just offshore of the Orange river where we would steam around in circles for more than 6 months. We found him in the engine room after 3 weeks and fed him up for a few days.

  7. SIR – I suggest this message (Letters, October 23) for Christmas cards: Felicium Temporum Reparatio.

    It has been found engraved on buried Roman coins, and translates as “the restoration ofre-establishing happy times”.

    Anthony Greenstreet
    Camberley, Surrey

    I prefer Illegitimi non carborundum.

  8. Morning all

    SIR – How did a policy that so obviously reduces motorway safety get implemented (“Smart motorway widow insists Highways England is responsible”, October 20)?

    The provision of refuges helps to maintain traffic flow and is also an acknowledgement of danger. Calculating the risk takes account of the distance between them and of access for the emergency services. Increasing their number does not completely eliminate the additional risk unless they become continuous – which is a hard shoulder.

    It seems to imply that a level of carnage and fatality is acceptable.

    Dr Brian Simpson

    Dinas Powys, Glamorgan

    SIR – I do not mean to make light of a horrific road accident, but a recent one on the M25 closed the whole stretch from junctions eight to 10 for more than eight hours.

    A motorway that cannot open even a single lane for so long seems anything but smart. I fear the Sage folk must have taken over, deciding that if there is no traffic the world will be safer.

    Daniel Fearon

    New Malden, Surrey

  9. The Special Boat Services exercise went well last night. With multiple helicopters overhead they managed to “overpower” the 7 “Nigerian hijackers” peacefully on the Liberian tanker. They are now revealed as refugees who want refuge in the UK. What a surprise. I suspect the police could have dealt easily with these 7.
    The Captain and crew of the ship should be interviewed by the police to ensure they weren’t party to this hijacking.

      1. Morning Hugh,
        I have been a lowly long term member of the club since before the Scottish referendum. I have usually been on the winning side. I am disappointed and irritated by the welcome these illegal, potentially dangerous, immigrants are given by the authorities who are paid to protect us.
        Edited to say I was a regular on the DT letter comments before Nottlers was founded. I waited a week or two before joining the Nottlers company and it keeps me sane..

  10. SIR – I do not mean to make light of a horrific road accident, but a recent one on the M25 closed the whole stretch from junctions eight to 10 for more than eight hours.

    A motorway that cannot open even a single lane for so long seems anything but smart. I fear the Sage folk must have taken over, deciding that if there is no traffic the world will be safer.

    Daniel Fearon
    New Malden, Surrey

    Quite so, Daniel Fearon. And if you are stuck in the queue for 8 hours in a battery-powered car, perhaps in cold weather and in darkness as well, just imagine how much longer it will be if you run out of juice!

  11. Morning, all Y’all. Misty, but warm for the time of year.
    Workmen have arroved and are demolishing my fence so they can drive their excavator down my garden and over the cliff to the garden below, thence to chisel out their drains – through which our drains run. Then, repairs. Hope we can move home in 2-3 weeks, if not sooner. Whilst the little cottage we are renting (https://www.finn.no/realestate/lettings/ad.html?finnkode=173136132) is charming & cosy, there’s nowhere like home!

    1. You’re living in a cardboard box which is only big enough for a cat? (The link returns what appears to be an error message)

      1. I guess now we rented it, they took the ad down. Bugger.
        No cats allowed, but it’s small, wooden, red & cosy.

          1. Nope, they are working as “Guard cats”, staying at home. We go round twice a day to make sure they are fed, the house is OK, and to remember what it’s like to sit in a really comfy sofa… (sobs quietly)

          3. They are all over us when we get in. This afternoon, I caught a few zeds on the sofa, and woke up with both cats sleeping on me.
            That was cosy and very nice & warm!
            Sewer replacement is going ahead fast – might even be able to live at home in a few days.

          5. Going well, so far, thanks.
            Or, are you referring to the dicing with danger, buried in huge cats (10kg & 7 kg)?

  12. The 12-minute Covid test you can take at BOOTS: £120 swabs that are ‘97% accurate’ in detecting virus are set to be on sale at within weeks. 26 October 2020.

    Boots is launching a coronavirus testing service with results in just 12 minutes.

    The high-speed test has proved 97 per cent accurate in trials and should be available within a fortnight. But the chain is also offering a 48-hour service from today and hopes 200 branches will offer tests by Christmas.

    Chief executive Sebastian James said it was the first step toward mass testing on high streets and a way to allow Britons to get on with their lives again. Boots will initially charge £120 but this is likely to fall if demand grows.

    This service like the Government testing program will do nothing to slow the spread of the virus. This is because the whole process is fundamentally flawed. You could have this test at Boots and prove negative and pass someone on your way out and catch it. This is the flaw. For testing to work you would need a limited population, a village, town; or if you lived in China a whole city. You then test the entire population and isolate the victims and thus eventually create a virus free zone. The identification of infected individuals is a pointless exercise.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8878251/12-minute-Covid-test-expected-available-Boots-weeks.html#comments

    1. Please note that it is a coronavirus test and not a COVID test.
      Just a higher percentage of false positives?

          1. Well most Nottlers think that there is another Agenda running parallel to the epidemic which has been seized on to facilitate its implementation. Whether you believe this or not is a personal decision.

        1. I have tried numerous combinations of questions on Google to see if there is a difference between a Coronavirus test and a Covid-19 test.
          Not one of my tries gave any indication of a difference and use both words in any article.
          I am not convinced there is a difference and am, therefore, still sceptical.

      3. I think I had a cold in Autumn 2018.
        I’ll give Boots a swerve and spend the £120 in the pub ….. ah ….

    2. However the government will ignore it. That will mean that there will be no reduction in the measures being taken by government, even though demonstrably useless.

  13. The DT Leader today:

    Police are now patrolling the roads to stop people crossing the Welsh border on inessential journeys. Before the pandemic struck, no one could have imagined this happening in the UK: the assault on ancient liberties, the economic damage and the impact on broader public health are tragic. Yet while the Government is rightly refusing to follow Wales’s lead in imposing an absurd and authoritarian “fire break” lockdown, it has still yet to provide any indication of how it plans to lift its own draconian restrictions.

    The whole world is waiting for a vaccine, but there are basic issues of infrastructure that, if governments got right, could help bring the infection under control. Here in Britain we were promised a world-class NHS Test and Trace system. Enormous strides forward have been made, and it is positive that ministers are reexamining the 14-day isolation period. But as Sir Bernard Jenkin writes on this page, Test and Trace has other debilitating faults that must be urgently addressed: a phone number that looks like it might be a scam call, too many IT systems, lessons from other countries overlooked and a lack of central command. If this project is akin to going to the moon, it sorely lacks its Cape Canaveral.

    The NHS, too, appears to be inexcusably under-prepared. As we report today, the way we treat coronavirus in hospitals has changed but the London Nightingale hospital has remained the same since it was put on “standby” in May. We always knew that Covid-19 would return, so why wasn’t the entire NHS made battle-ready in advance of the second wave? We should be smarter now, more sophisticated in our approach. If time was wasted over the summer, where is the cross-government effort now to ensure that the failures of the NHS don’t prolong restrictions?

    Areas being put under local lockdowns, now including more than 1.4 million people in South Yorkshire, have a right to know both when they will be set free and, crucially, how. No 10’s ambition is that Britain should enjoy as normal a Christmas as possible. It is the right goal but will be pure rhetoric unless the Government steps up.

    1. Morning Hugh. You are assuming that the government has benevolent feelings toward the population. I suspect, though of course it could never be proven, that when the crisis is over that the government’s measures will not have reduced the severity of the epidemic by one iota, just spreading it out over a longer time period! This will not apply to the overall death rate which will in fact be much higher due to the people with far more serious ailments being left to die.

      1. Haha…I am assuming no such thing, Minty. The very opposite, in fact. Why? Because like many others I simply don’t trust the barstewards.

    1. Have we no mercy? Not a drop of the milk of human kindness coursing through our veins?
      Where’s this poor man’s boy’s free follicle transplant?
      Wherefore the Human Rights Act if it’s not to help these poor, defenceless creatures?

    1. Why would I have to welcome asylum seekers? Why are they not responsible for integrating properly into my country.

      If no one owns anything, then who are we paying rent to and for what? As for a small group will own things – that’s been tried. It doesn’t work.

      The English language is too powerful.

  22. “More than 800 former judges and legal professionals have signed a letter
    accusing Boris Johnson and Priti Patel of “hostility” towards lawyers
    representing migrants seeking asylum.

    In a letter to
    the Guardian, they claimed the PM and home secretary “endanger”
    lawyers’ safety with their comments and undermine the rule of law.”
    Now there’s a list of names that will come in handy at some point………………………

    1. Boris Johnson’s and Priti Patel’s prime responsibility is towards national security and the national interest. Where there is conflict between these and the law, there is bound to be conflict, and if unresolved adequately, hostility.

      Lawyers are paid well to live with it.

    2. 325895+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      File it for near future use, second big bang is currently due methinks.

  23. 325895+ up ticks,
    Could be me but it has been my belief for a long time that these governance party’s far from being boat builders for the protection of the Realm are more likened to be boat burners.

    I cannot honestly see how any of the lab/lib/con coalition party can continue in the future as in opposition to each other for the betterment of these Isles, whilst their past actions have proved them to be the complete reverse.

    1. I haven’t watched the news for a few days, but i read the BBC were showing concern as to the possible rash treatment of the felons.

    1. I look forward to what happens when he makes a presentation – with a laser pointer!

    3. Playing with string plays an important role in the novel “Cat’s Cradle” .
      Vonnegut uses this to symbolize how all of mankind’s ideas and “truths” are really based upon lies, or narratives.

      1. Back in the day, I once gave a German boss a lesson with a handy piece of string.
        He kept continually harassing me and some of the other guys and he approached me suggesting alternative ways of carrying out my work.
        I put the handy piece of string on the work top and said watch this as i pulled it along, then i pushed it. I asked him what he saw ? He shrugged his shoulders and walked away but i think he got the point.
        Even his business partner walked out on him. I didn’t return after the Christmas break.

          1. when in the Girl Guides…naughty PT 🤔 whoops i misread that 😆

            I can still remember my scout knots especially the sheep shank and the noose.

  27. Good morning, my friends

    Like most of us I have always been sceptical about conspiracy theories but this BTL comment in the DT from a poster who calls himself Fred Spins strikes a chord:

    Well, there is something going on isn’t there. An assault of individual freedom perpetrated by a global elite.

    George Soros Barrack Obama Tony Blair Bill Gates… I wasn’t interested in conspiracy until is became so glaringly obvious

    1. What a lot of guesswork! “We don’t know what they were going to do…” – they don’t know f-all.
      Look at the draught – not in cargo. So, why did it come from Nigeria unladen?

        1. I think residual fumes in the tanks mean they are permanent gas chambers.
          (Just a throwaway line.)

        1. Ah… the sky fellah said they were maybe going to wreck the ship and cause a pollution incident.

        2. When I did some work at Mobil Nigeria in 2006, I was shocked to learn that all crude produced in Nigeria has to be exported for refinement into other products, then re-imported.

    2. Four points occur to me:
      1. It took nearly 3 weeks for the tanker to travel from Nigeria to Blighty.
      2. Did the stowaways carry enough provisions for such a time?
      3. If not, did the cooks not notice a marked increase in food consumption?
      4. If not, why not? 29 people consume rather victuals more than 22.

    3. Have they all moved into their new 5 bedroom (fully furnished at the taxpayer’s expense) family homes yet? Multiple wives and multiple kids by each, already on their way? Compensation claims in for being scared by the nasty SBS/commandos making bangs? – – Are they all doctors surgeons and scientists that are SOOOO desperate to come here and work??

    4. Four points occur to me:
      1. It took nearly 3 weeks for the tanker to travel from Nigeria to Blighty.
      2. Did the stowaways carry enough provisions for such a time?
      3. If not, did the cooks not notice a marked increase in food consumption?
      4. If not, why not? 29 people consume rather more victuals than 22.

      1. “Dem woz orl wun happy family till di bossman sed he woz goin’ to dob ’em in.” said a spokesman for the impoverished (apply Brashford) lunatic asylum seekers.

      2. These tankers travel slowly. One screw only (oo-er missis!) and the fuel costs grow something like the square of the speed.
        From Wikipedia: “Deadweights of the largest tankers have gone up from 12,000 to 30,000 tons and speeds have increased from 12 knots to 16 knots. In some instances speeds in excess of 16 knots have been adopted, but such ships were designed for special purposes.

      3. I crossed the Atlantic from Tenerife to Barbados in Raua, my 30′ sailing boat, in 1984. The voyage took 19 days.

  31. How many remember being given liquid Cod Liver Oil, every night? Capsules are for wimps.

    https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2020/10/david-davis-is-there-a-plan-b-on-covid-that-will-work-i-believe-that-there-is-namely-making-much-more-use-of-vitamin-d.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Monday 26th October 2020&utm_content=Monday 26th October 2020+CID_7e0e190606d71d79bba6a19dff5929da&utm_source=Daily Email&utm_term=David Davis My prescription for a Covid Plan B A strategic dose of vitamin D

      1. My particular bug bear was Parish’s Food – some sort of iron tonic.
        Oh, and senna pods simmering on the stove on Saturday night.
        Heck … do you think I’m due compensayshun?

        1. I think I must have rebelled against codliver oil on a spoon, as my mum used to get some capsules later on. We also used to have Haliborange which were more like a sweet that you could suck or crunch. Rose hip syrup was quite nice, too.
          I wasn’t a sickly child but I did have whooping cough, which went on for weeks.

          1. I missed most childhood ailments; even when my brother had mumps I was untouched.
            However, I did manage to catch measles; the spots appeared on the first morning of the end of year exams.
            I spent a happy fortnight slobbing around reading and drinking oranges squash while my class mates slogged through two hot weeks over sundry exam papers.

          2. I remember sitting up in bed when I had measles, and the library book I was reading was given to me to keep as they would not have it back due to the risk of infection sticking to it.

            I had chicken pox when I was 12, and mumps when I was 25. That was no fun.

          3. MB and I think we had measles – again – a couple of years ago.
            I know it’s supposed to be a once in a lifetime event, but lifetimes are rather longer than they were when that phenomenon was first observed, so we may have outlived the immunity.

      2. Liqufruta (garlic cough medicine); Kompo (garlic cold ‘remedy’); Virol (slimy honey-based multivitamin gloop); cod liver oil; concentrated orange juice (which tasted metallic); and cheap blended honey.

        These were just some of the vile potions “if they taste horrible it means they are doing you good” that were the quack medicines of my childhood.

      3. I do. I remember at about the age of 10 at school, I’d obviously had a cold, the teacher (horrible she was) said something like have you been eating garlic and turned up her nose

    2. I used to vomit immediately and violently if I got the taste of CLO.

      When I was at school, after lunch one of the other boys was passing around dog chocolates which contained it.

      They looked exactly like Cadbury’s buttons.

      He wasn’t quite as amused when he was covered in projectile vomit.

      1. I think dog chocolates have a damaging enzyme removed. Until I realised they were a special product, their appearance meant I thought they were merely out of date chocolate buttons.

        1. Theobromine in chocolate is toxic to dogs, dog chocolate isn’t really chocolate at all.

          Theobromine is also a banned substance for racehorses and other competitive horses (so never give choccy to someone’s horse without their permission).

          2. There was a case of a racehorse who snatched a bite of his lad’s Mars bar. The horse was disqualified when he tested positive for a banned substance.

          3. When I lived in North Yorkshire, near Malton, I knew a couple of girls who worked in the racing stables around there. One said that her boss had an outright ban on chocolate in the yard – because horses love it and they will snatch it if it comes near enough to them.

            Collies and spaniels (and terriers) are cleverer food thieves, but horses can be very determined ones – and I certainly wouldn’t want to put my hand in a horse’s mouth to try to rescue a forbidden treat.

          4. There was a case of a racehorse who snatched a bite of his lad’s Mars bar. The horse was disqualified when he tested positive for a banned substance.

    3. Morning – not night… square bottles from the National Health. Concentrated orange juice too. And National Dried Milk for little brother.

      A take capsules nowadays though as they are infinitely less messy.

      Vitamin D isn’t a fix for SARS-CoV-2 though not being deficient will certainly help your immune system.

      1. I couldn’t take the orange juice, it gave me the squitters. The National Dried milk came, I think, in a large white tin with blue print on it.
        My mother used to keep 2 teaspoons just for cod liver oil because the smell wouldn’t wash out.
        I take capsules from October to April. I’m happy to be a wimp!

        1. I can remember a white, fishy-smelling substance in a bottle. IT WAS VILE! My sister had something called, I think, Viral. (My spelling may be suspect.)

          2. Virol…yes, that was the stuff my sister was given, but the foul-tasting fishy gunge in a clear glass bottle still remains a mystery.

          3. I was given a sweet toffee-like substance that went by the name of Radio Malt, then my parents switched to giving me Virol. I preferred the Radio Malt, it had a lighter texture and flavour. I also preferred the label with its two ears of barley either side!

            Edit: Neither were good for teeth.

        2. My mother told a horrible story of having a baby (probably 9 or 10 months) brought into the children’s ward when she was nursing (mid 1950s). His mother had been given the bottles by her district nurse and was too ashamed to admit that she couldn’t read the labels; she had been giving him the orange juice undiluted. Mum said they had him in the ward for weeks trying to get his poor little innards sorted out.

          I think you are right about the dried milk tins. I wasn’t quite 3 when baby brother arrived, so my memory is a bit hazy. He would have gone onto cow’s milk from about 6 months anyway since we had a cow and there was always milk and to spare. Mum hated bottle feeding him, she had fed my sister and me herself, but he was a greedy baby and she had mastitis twice before he was a month old. Nowadays they encourage mothers to keep feeding, but in the 1960s the advice was to wean onto the bottle. I can remember her coaxing him to take a cup so that she could get rid of the bottles… Isn’t it funny which bits stick in one’s mind 50-something years later.

          1. It is most strange; I can remember the name my brother gave to his knitted teddy bear, but I can’t remember any of the names I gave to my dolls.

        3. I seem to recall the dried milk came in tall tins with a lilac label. We had some in our shed for years afterwards used for storing odds and ends.

    4. Cod Liver Oil and Malt, doled out at skule. We wus poor, so Mum couldn’t buy such stuff.

      My Mum had 8/- a week each for my brother and I. My sister the eldest, was awarded nowt.

      3 Yorkshiremen wasn’t in it, innit?

          1. Fanks, Paul, it was deliberately written as by a pore beknighted yoof who dun’t kno be..er.

      5. If you were born between 1948 and about 1965 then the Cod Liver Oil was free on the National Health – it didn’t matter how poor you were.

        1. I was born in 1944, my brother in 1941 and my sister in 1940. I can give you the whole family tree back to 530 – Egil King in Sweden (Uppsala).

  33. More (justified) criticism of the NT:

    SIR – I am glad the Charity Commission has woken up (report, October 23) and is to look into the National Trust.

    The Trust has strayed beyond its registered objectives and it deserves censure. Keeping historic buildings in shape is what it is for and why so many people leave money to it in their wills. Contentious issues such as historical slavery and modern-day racism are matters for political action groups, not causes to be espoused by charities.

    Hugh Rogers
    Ashby, Lincolnshire

    SIR – I read that the National Trust is reducing costs and laying off staff due to coronavirus (report, October 9).

    No doubt this has had an effect, but I suspect these actions are also driven by the large number of resignations it has received from members outraged by its attempts at political correctness.

    John Hutchinson
    Addingham, West Yorkshire

  35. A Letters BTL comment about global warming that caught my eye…yet another budding Nottlr I think:

    John Kirby
    26 Oct 2020 4:28AM
    @Kevin Bell ,,,,Hi Kevin, I agree 100%

    As I write the BBC have a group discussing Global Warming.

    All of them believe that carbon dioxide causes it. No scientific debate then, no Devil’s Advocate. They want “De-Carbonisation” of the economy by 2050.

    Successive governments have taken us along this path with the Climate Change Act of 2008.

    No attempt has been made to follow true scientific debate. Any opposition has been treated as some sort of heresy.

    Our politicians have followed the dogma. This is a much greater threat to the economic and intellectual future of Britain than the covid virus

    Yet the government continues with this dangerous and wrong-headed policy.

    I repeat some facts:-

    1) CO2 is a trace gas.

    2) At 0.04% it is 1 part in 2,500 of the atmosphere.

    3) But 24/25ths of atmospheric CO2 comes from nature,

    4) From rotting vegetation, volanoes, wildfires and the oceans.

    5) So manmade CO2 is 1 part in 2,500 X 25 of the atmosphere

    6) That is 1 part in 62,500 of the atmosphere.

    7) In terms of Statistical Thermodynamics

    8) and in terms of Common Sense,

    9) that is insignificant

    I think the slight increase in CO2 is CAUSED by global warming, warming up the oceans and driving out dissolved CO2.

    1. Another scamdemic. There must be a factory somewhere producing them.
      When will the next one be floated.

      1. Institute for Government.

        The Behavioural Insights team, popularly known as the “Nudge Unit”, is playing a big role in helping the government formulate its response to coronavirus.

        The Nudge Unit was established in the Cabinet Office in 2010 by David Cameron’s government to apply behavioural science to public policy. Now owned partly by the Cabinet Office, by Nesta and by employees, it has operations across the world.

        Its chief executive is Dr David Halpern, former director of research at the Institute for Government, who is also the government’s What Works national adviser.

        This is where the pan banging for the NHS and the Diversity ads and all the rest are dreamed up.

        https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/nudge-unit

    2. Studies from ice cores have shown that CO2 increase lags warming. It’s been known for decades. It’s just an inconvenient truth.

  36. Prince Harry waffling on about ‘unconcious bias’ in the DM. I won’t bother with a link because it’s all a load of tosh.

    Can anyone explain what ‘unconcious bias’ is in plain English?

    3. Although this isn’t a direct answer to your valid question it does provide a balanced insight into the subject. From this week’s Speccie.

      ‘If I don’t say this, who will?’
      Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch on the ‘poison’ of identity politics

      FRASER NELSON

      Even now, months after the event, Labour MPs have not forgiven Kemi Badenoch for saying that Britain is one of the best countries in the world in which to be black. It was during the Black Lives Matter protests and many politicians — including Sir Keir Starmer — were ‘taking the knee’ to show fealty to its cause. Badenoch took a different view, seeing within all this a pernicious ideology that portrays blackness as victimhood and whiteness as oppression. In parliament this week, she went further: this, she said, is ‘critical race theory’ — a new enemy for the Tory party and, as equalities minister, one for her to fight.
      We met earlier this month in her old workplace, The Spectator (she was our digital chief), where she reassessed her earlier stance. ‘I’d go further and say this is thebest country,’ she says. ‘I’ve lived in the US, I’ve lived in Nigeria, so I feel like I’ve got some context to compare. I look at South Africa and look around Europe and ask: are those places better to be black than the UK? I don’t think so. It doesn’t mean everything is perfect… But if as a politician, especially a black politician, I don’t say this, who will?’
      When she spoke in the Commons this week in a six-hour debate on Black History Month, it was quite a moment for the Tories, who, as a party, have tended to shy away from the issue of identity politics. About 30 of them offered support from the normally empty benches as she declared war on critical race theory and BLM. She added that teaching children white privilege as a fact was ‘illegal’.
      ‘Many people don’t realise that [critical race theory] is political,’ she tells me. ‘It’s getting into institutions that really should be neutral: schools, NHS trusts, and even sometimes the civil service.’ She is particularly incensed by the boom in sales of texts such as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (which claims all white people are racist and any denial of this is further evidence of racism) and Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race (whose thesis is that black history has been eradicated for the political purpose of white dominance). ‘Many of these books — and, in fact, some of the authors and proponents of critical race theory — actually want a segregated society.’ The ideas in such texts, she says, are reaching deep into large private companies and our institutions, as part of the movement to train people to be aware of their supposed ‘unconscious bias’.
      She’s sceptical about such training, claiming that there’s no evidence that it works: if anyone is biased, she says, ‘You’re not going to change it within an hour’s training course.’ I point out that her own department, HM Treasury, offers this to civil servants. ‘I’ve asked to do the training!’ she replies. ‘I think there’s been enough time to have a look and see whether it’s working or not. And if it’s not, then we should remove it.’
      I ask her about a recent story concerning the V&A, whose guidance for employees defines ‘black’ as ‘a term that embraces people who experience structural and institutional racism because of their skin colour’. ‘This is to politicise my skin colour,’ Badenoch says. ‘The logical conclusion of what they’re saying is that people in Africa who are not discriminated against on the basis of their race are not really black. It is associating being black with negativity, oppression and victimhood in an inescapable way. It’s creating a prison for black people.’
      Black people who think like her, she says, tend not to be invited onto television. ‘There is a left-wing view of racial politics that’s assumed to be the black view of politics. Being black is not just about being a minority. On a global scale we are not a minority — but the rhetoric in this country is talking about us as if we are almost a separate sub-species.’
      A Tory equalities agenda, she says, should be based on Martin Luther King’s ‘dream’ — that people should be judged ‘on the content of their character’ and not the colour of their skin. ‘Now, it’s all about the colour of your skin. That cannot be,’ she says emphatically. ‘You can’t pick and choose the rules depending on the colour of someone’s skin. That is what the racists do.’
      I put to her that the Tories have dabbled in all this for quite some time, talking up racial injustice, then posing as the avengers. David Cameron notoriously claimed that a black Brit was ‘more likely to be in a prison cell than studying at a top university’. ‘There can be an issue,’ she responds. ‘In trying to show that you are a party representing all people, you accept some of the false rhetoric in order to be able to demonstrate that you’re doing something about it. But there are enough problems for us without having to create new ones…The repetition of the victimhood narrative is really poisonous for young people because they hear it and believe it.’
      Badenoch grew up in Nigeria and, aged 16, won a part-scholarship to Stanford University to study medicine, but the fees were still prohibitive. She then moved to Britain where, she admits, she experienced discrimination. ‘Some very lovely liberal headteachers said: “Why don’t you try being a nurse instead? It’ll be easier for you to get it.” I would call that racism. In their minds, they were probably trying to help me because they thought: “Oh, this poor black person, she seems to be doing OK at school, let’s get her on the nursing track. She won’t fail at that. But if we give her anything difficult to do, she will fail.”’
      She began a career in software engineering before joining Coutts and then The Spectator. She then stood for the Greater London Assembly before being elected to the ultra-safe seat of Saffron Walden in 2017. When she was handed the equalities brief, it surprised her friends because she has had far stronger views on the subject than her party had, historically, been comfortable expressing.
      ‘Too often, everyone’s waiting for the prime minister to come out and say: “This is really terrible and we’re going to do something about it.” Of course, as politicians, we have a role to play. But it can’t just be us. If you’re just waiting for your MP to say something, then you’ve lost the battle.

    6. Afternoon Phizzee. It is exactly the same as the old Marxist Meme about False Consciousness.

      False consciousness, in philosophy, particularly within critical theory and other Marxist schools and movements, the notion that members of the proletariat unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their genuine interests within the social relations of production under capitalism. False consciousness denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and legitimize the existence of social classes.

      A long winded way of saying you’re wrong cos you are an uniformed halfwit and I’m right!

    7. The complete disintegration of Harry is very sad to behold. And now that his elder brother is showing signs of premature senility on the subject of climate change and, considering the erratic behaviour of his parents, one must suspect that there is a severe genetic fault in his make up.

      1. That is the inbuilt disadvantage of the monarchical system – you’re stuck with whatever nature throws up.

  37. Patience has been rewarded. Two very small ginger kittens (“free to good home”) were collected an hour ago and are now beginning to explore the kitchen. They like the AGA… More details will follow…. The MR is in 7th heaven!

    3. Aww… Aren’t you the lucky ones. Can we see a pic please…

      Beware Bill. They are a trip hazard. Watch where you put your feet.

      1. When the principal farm cat turns up with a litter of three and her three daughters from last year produce 3, 4 and 4 kittens all arriving on the farm doorstep within about 10 days – so you’ve gone from 4 cats to 18 cats in less than a fortnight – you tend to find the farmer muttering about “too many bloody cats” as he trips over a kitten for the umpteenth time.

      1. Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw —

        For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.

        He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:

        For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!

        Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,

        He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

        His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,

        And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!

        You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –

        But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

  39. Biden lets the cat out of the bag.

    In a further gaffe Saturday, Biden declared that his campaign has put
    together the “most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics”:

    1. And why was the old cliché of racism used to encourage us not to call it the Chinese Plague?

    3. That has been my view from Day One. A deliberate act of economic germ warfare.

      Good morning, Hugh.

  42. As soon as the news that the “hijackers” (aka illegal economic migrants) have been helped ashore, fed and watered and their bogus asylum claim treated seriously by Border Farce – expect loads more such events. The jungle bunnies will work out that it is much cheaper to hijack a vessel than to pay the extortionate rates demanded by the Calais Rubber Boat Service.

    1. Hijack! How many countries did the boat sail by before arriving in UK waters? I think that the Master was offering a sideline to his oil transportation business.

    2. The Bastard’s Revenge: Going around the Durex Factory with a pin!

      The Patriot’s Revenge: Going round the Avon and Zodiac factories with a harpoon!

  43. Interesting things – SST. 25 October 2020.

    Learned here on SST that a lot of the huge book contracts given to swampies are a form of money laundering. I have long tried to figure out how the publishing companies could afford to pay yuudge advances for ghost written books in a country where so few people read much of anything any longer. Simple answer! Big money people order yuudge numbers of books in advance so that the publisher is assured a profit.

    I begin to suspect that a Trump wave election is coming. The size and ubiquity of the rallies, and the enthusiasm displayed at them must mean something. Who ever expected to see nuns at a political rally? What is this, Spain before their civil war? The nuns fear al paredon or lamposts on K Street? And then, there are the pro-Trump demonstrations in such unlikely place as Long Giland and Manhattan, the boat flotilla parades, the convoys of Trumpies, even at the Biden “rally” in Pennsylvania yesterday, etc.

    Joe and that pathetic creature, Obama can’t attract a crowd anywhere. Don’t tell me they are doing “social distancing.” That is a joke and 1984 type spin.

    Trump said last night at one of his heartland love fests that the swampies of the Deep State extend into his administration and that people like Brennan, Clapper and company continue to be protected from prosecution by; Christopher Ray, Durham, Barr, Gina Haspel and the like. The unspoken promise involved in a second term includes dismissal for these people as well as the upper crust at the Pentagon.

    Things could be worse. Pat Lang.

    The book contracts must be an American variation of the lecture tours used to pay off the UK Elites. Let us hope that Colonel Lang’s suspicion of a Trump Wave prove correct!

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

    1. The amount of money the evil Mrs May was given to speak in empty US lecture halls was a a scandal which the MSM did not investigate properly. Why?

  44. Trump mocks ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden, 77, for forgetting who is President and saying we ‘need to stop four more years of George’ – then accuses the ‘Fake News Cartel’ of trying to cover the story up
    Trump tweeted this morning: ‘Joe Biden called me George yesterday. Couldn’t remember my name. Got some help from the anchor to get him through the interview. The Fake News Cartel is working overtime to cover it up!’
    Biden last night appeared to say that George was president, perhaps a reference to George W. (in office 2001-09) or maybe George H.W. (in office 1989-93)
    The 77-year-old former VP said we need to avoid ‘four more years of George’
    When Biden said ‘George’, his wife Jill quietly corrected him under her breath
    Blunder once again raises questions about elder statesman’s mental capacity

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8878991/Joe-Biden-appears-confuse-Trump-Bush-calls-president-George-virtual-rally.html

    2. The whole 60 minutes program showed how bad the choice is in the US

      Bidens slip shows what a disaster he could be, the Trump interview could be summarized as a petulant schoolboy crying “Mummy, mummy you are always nicer to the other one”.
      As for the vice presidents, a condescending Pence was creepy and although Harris at least acted as if she was alive, her words were hollow.

      I bet that the Americans wish that Biden was still fighting Bush, they would have someone to vote for then.

      1. Out of about 331 million people, the US gets to vote for those two.
        Who could believe it?

    2. Looking at her picture it is astonishing that she could find anybody to father a child with her – let alone two different ones.

      3. After landing my new job as a B & Q “Greeter” – a good find for many retirees. I lasted less than a day.

        About two hours into my first day on the job a very loud, unattractive, mean-acting tattooed babe walked into the store with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance.

        As I had been instructed, I said, pleasantly, “Good morning and welcome to B & Q.” I then said, “Nice children you have there. Are they twins?”

        The woman stopped yelling long enough to say, “No, they ain’t effin twins. The oldest one’s 9, and the other one’s 7, why the hell would you think they’re twins? Are you blind, or just effin stupid?”

        I replied, “I’m neither blind nor stupid, Madam. I just couldn’t believe someone shagged you twice… Have a good day and thank you for shopping at B & Q.”

        My supervisor said I probably wasn’t cut out for this line of work.

      4. Yo Rastus

        St Dunstan’s!!!!! (as was)

        They are heroes there and you would need to be one

        1. My grandmother took me there, when I was quite young, to visit a man who had been gassed in WW1. I think he must have been a member of her husband’s regiment. We used to play cribbage using his Braille playing cards.

      1. Buying junk food and takeaways is far more expensive than buying fresh food.

        Just one pound of mince, some carrots, onions and potatoes would make enough cottage pies to go in the freezer to feed her 7 days out of 31 and that is just one dish. You can do the same with curry too.

        I can get at least a dozen meals out of a large chicken.

        Lazy, feckless and stupid. You don’t need a Gym to get exercise.

        That cupboard is a disgrace. Pop tarts are not food.

        1. I see that she can afford tats, piercings and orange hair, but not proper food, apparently. Stupid cow. As for pop tarts I’d sooner eat the box.

        2. We know that – but how was she allowed to be so ignorant? She needs some instruction on how to live.

        3. Quite right!! I learnt the basics in Domestic Science classes in secondary modern back in time, mid-50’s plus my Mom made sure I could prep and cook before I married Jack. It’s all too easy these days, especially when the youngsters are glued to their electronic stuff!!

        4. One pound of mince, tut tut Phizzee, we haven’t left the EUSSR yet, 500gm please. 😉

          1. Even the French use pounds. Une livre. It’s all very well buying potatoes in Kilos but for smaller amounts not so much.

            We are never leaving the E.U.

    2. Big article on the lunch time bbc ‘news’ re the more than doubling (around 3.5% to over 8% of the local population) of benefits in the Tottenham area of north London. Lammy country. Come on Dave sort it out.
      Also the bbc espoused their sympathy for the very threatening and violent tanker hijackers from Nigeria. Suggesting they were only asylum seekers.
      Now being fed watered and all needs met by British tax payers.

  48. I think Boris Johnson lives on Planet World Economic Forum and Planet Marxist United Nations which is happy to abolish private property according to this range of WEF predictions for 2030……………

    Abolishing private property could be achieved by wrecking economies, destroying currencies by printing unlimited money and far higher taxes.

    Ummmmm…….

    Oh.

    .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx3DhoLFO4s&feature=emb_logo

  49. https://twitter.com/Mare_of_da_manx/status/1320631884431413250

    Aten_Ra
    @AtenRa7
    ·
    35m
    Replying to
    @Mare_of_da_manx
    and
    @Hannover2u
    Why do you have to have a muslim council of wales? why do you always have to divide and seperate? there are already councils in wales for everyone.

    Muslim Council of South Wales.
    @Mare_of_da_manx
    ·
    32m
    It is not a County or Parish council, it is a representative body, rather like Unite, Stonewall, BDSM, BBW. A unite voice guided by God.

      1. Morning .

        I cannot believe we have Muslim councils in Britain , and how really frightening to have things like that masked up in yellow, what are they ?

    2. They never miss an opportunity to put on some sort of show do they ?
      Are they new contestants arriving for strictly.

  50. ‘Corpses, corpses everywhere’: Medical worker reveals bodies piled up in a Russian morgue as Covid cases rise by a record 17,000 in one day amid a second wave gripping the country. 26 October 2020.

    A Russian medical worker has revealed the grim toll that coronavirus is taking on the country as he filmed the bodies of dozens of victims packed into a morgue.

    On Monday the country reported 17,347 new cases of the virus, a new one-day toll that brings its overall total to 1,531,224.

    The country also reported 219 deaths from the virus, the lowest daily total for a week, but amid suspicion that many deaths are not being logged and the true toll could be three times as high.

    BELOW THE LINE

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/35ab5d657ba414ad816301bda44321e9856a68f62ebb8ef21c19a8ef62da6ef9.png

    Hmmm. Scotched that bit of propaganda with a local post! Lol!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8879409/Russia-coronavirus-Bodies-pile-morgue-country-hits-one-day-case-record.html

    1. Remember the photo that was being widely circulated in the spring of coffins lined up in a church. We were told that it illustrated the Covid death toll in Italy but the picture turned out to be a still from a 2017 movie called “Unlocked”.

      1. Afternoon Sue. That piece of whimsy escaped me. It’s now impossible to believe anything without corroboration on line!

  52. Thank you all for you comments about the kittens. No names yet. We are thinking… They are very young – 6 or 7 weeks. One is inquisitive; the other less so. As this is their first day away from their home and their mum – we are leaving them to get used to us, our kitchen and life generally. Here are a couple of snaps:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08b0d8fc9f6ccc62aaedf092651a28ab996039342eb17ab12d5958ad8b8e2adb.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5ac04909ea26605d0247825fd7990ffea80b39f92fd400e261f852caddf74d56.jpg

    They are lying on a duvet that belonged to my late hound, Robinson, who died in 1991 – in a basket bought in 1993 for Bob and Thompson – our first two gingers.

    3. When I was a child (under 3 years old) we had two kittens I thought needed to learn how to swim, so I chucked them into a creek off the River Yare.

      My mother rescued them but their names were Mick and Muck.

    6. They are absolutely beautiful Bill! The will undoubtedly bring you years of joy and with their needle like claws, tears of pain! I’m very envious – I love kittens!

          2. Nearly 5 decades ago, not long after I’d been posted to Maidstone, (No Royal Mail Jokes PLEASE!!!) I knew a lass with a cat.
            We were standing having a cuddle one time when the bloody moggy leapt up and clung onto the back of my trousers, claws digging into the flash as well as the material!

          3. When I stayed with a friend in Canada his cat, for no apparent reason, suddenly ran across the room and clawed my thigh. It drew blood. I hadn’t done anything to it except be friendly. Needless to say, I kept well away from it from then on.

        2. Our beautiful Chaucer loved a bit of rough and tumble but usually he was careful not to bite or scratch. From time to time he wanted a proper rough house – as he had Siamese blood in him – and on these occasions it was advisable to put on a pair of gloves.

      1. God bless you Rik. I am having a horrible time and didn’t think I would be able to laugh this evening.

          1. Thank you, but I am too miserable and busy to share it! I’m old enough to know that all things pass, but sometimes they suck too much joy, time and energy in the passing.

    9. Aww. I’m not a cat person, but they look cute. Soon they will grow up to be man-eating tigers 🙂

  53. Afternoon all,. From Breitbart …

    A journalist was traveling through Amish country when he stumbled upon an
    unmasked gentleman. He asked the native if the Covid-virus was much of a
    problem. The gentleman replied, “Of course not.”

    When the journalist inquired as to why, the gentleman replied: “We have no television

  54. The border between Wales* and England has been closed. This happened unilaterally without debate, argument, or democratic vote. On the English side – who had no say in it – the closure is being enforced by English police.
    Now consider the border between Eire and Northern Ireland. For a hundred years it as been wide open.. Yet it became a serious bone of contention between the EU and the UK. The dispute over this invisible and almost non-existent border was seen by the EU, and their odious catspaw Veradkar, as a means of controlling the UK in perpetuity. I find it a bit strange that the UK government would make such a fuss about the Irish border when they could have simply told Eire and the EU that it’s their problem, yet let this Welsh nonsense materialise.

    (* Wales is a non-entity. It is as real as Ruritania but great deal less pleasant. It is a province of England. the use of terms like Wales are entirely a matter of courtesy. Wales is not mentioned in the Treaty of Union which created the UK and does not have its own legal system any more than does Birmingham or Wells.)

    1. Wales, as a conquered Nation is subservient to England. It’s status as a Principality is merely a sop.

      Wikipedia repeats facts taught us in History in the 1950s:

      The conquest of Wales by Edward I, sometimes referred to as the Edwardian Conquest of Wales, to distinguish it from the earlier Norman conquest of Wales, took place between 1277 and 1283.

      I’m proud to have Edward Longshanks in my Family Tree.

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

      1. Do you remember Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons?

        In this Sir Thomas More says of Richard Rich who has been rewarded for his treacherous betrayal and duplicity with a high Welsh political position:

        “It profiteth a man nothing if he gain the world and lose his soul….. But for Wales!”

        1. I recall that it was on R4 some years ago and I enjoyed it muchly. One of the best radio dramas in many years of such listening.

        2. Our old farmhouse north of Colchester was once owned by Richard Rich. It came in the parcel labelled Little Horkesley Priory.

      2. Glad to see, Horace, that for putting Wales in its rightful place, I too have earned a downvote, albeit anonymous but I’m sure it’s from SWMKA.

        SWMKA = She Who Must Know All!

        NLASA.

  57. Nicked

    I’m not normally one for the conspiracy theories, but there’s a documentary on BBC2 about the covid.

    Two guys from the Wuhan research centre, where Trump suspects it was
    engineered, were due to get on Flight MH370 that miraculously
    disappeared.

    Seems they were the guys behind the development of
    the new strain, and intending to use it as a weapon, someone caught wind
    of their plans and purposefully downed the plane. Neither of them got
    on the flight though. It’s really interesting. Have a look for it on
    iplayer, it’s called Two Wongs don’t make a Flight.

      2. That’s odd, saw that this morning on the way to walk the dog. Got to confess the upper rainbow was too faint to see the reversal.

    3. Good grief. This is dreadful. What frightened people we have become. If there isn’t some kind of rebellion soon masks will become permanent. How antisocial and distrustful they are making everyone. Of course that is their objective. Divide and rule.

    1. Neither Alf or I wear a mask when shopping. We have printed off a paper badge from the government’s website that says: I am exempt from wearing a face covering. If anyone asks would you like a face mask we just show the badge. We are always polite and say no thank you with a smile and that’s accepted. Nobody asks why we are exempt and I wouldn’t expect them to.

      1. If asked say:

        “I have Covid-19 and I am an asymptomatic super-spreader, employed by the Chinese government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who supplied me with this badge.

          3. Yes, because they raised the issue & left it in mid air.
            If I have an issue which is nobody else’s business, I don’t initiate a conversation about it; I keep my mouth shut.

          5. Legitimate interest. In the meantime Alf has confessed that there is no medical reason; it’s just to be bloody-minded.

          6. They told us months ago there was no medical reason but you could just use a badge and no questions asked. So you are being bloody minded.

          8. I cannot see any confession made by me. You assume too much and you know what that mean, it makes an ass out of u and me.
            I am complying with the law and at present, unless you know different, that is not against the law.

        2. Because the legislation says we can be.
          Two can play the game of legislation. We’re using it to counteract the government’s disingenuous use if legislation.

          2. I have seen a consultant at the hospital, a doctor and nurse at the surgery without wearing a mask. My answer is yes don’t wear a mask. I did inform them before attending that I would not be wearing one.

          4. I had been having slight breathing problems which the surgery were aware of by wouldn’t carry out the spirometry test the doctor ordered. That is what I said. My wife did the same but the mask caused her distress, one of the example for not wearing a mask quoted on the government website.
            Go to the exemption section where you can print a badge.
            https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own

        3. Actually Peddy if I had seen your question before Alf I would have said it’s no business of yours!

          BTW thank you for the correction. Actually a typo.

          3. Certainly not, but if you bring a matter up, you must not b surprised if there is interest.

      3. I will do this. Today I put the mask on to go into Sainsbury’s and I had a panic attack with this thing on my face, I tripoed over a stand and somehow I couldn’t breathe. I was frantic to get out of the place but managed to complete my purchases. I think the problem was I had started to hyperventilate, seeing that handgel at the entrance set me off. (I had a bad experience with highly scented handgel in Devon a month ago.) I was thinking I just cannot do this any more, but like Ndovu I don’t like confrontation. But enough is enough. We have to breathe, and they are impeding our most basic necessity for life.

        2. I have had a few moments of mask panic in supermarkets too. Mainly at the till, where I seem to have lost my ability to select a suitable amount of money (I refuse to use a card).
          Depriving the brain of oxygen has a noticeable effect!

        3. Oh dear I’m so sorry for you Pmum, must have been horrible. On the government website it said one reason for non use of face covering was “extreme distress”. Surely you qualify; Perhaps you will think about printing a badge off?

        4. Good morning poppiesmum this is the relevant section and the link to the government website.

          https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own

          This is where you’ll find the badge to print.

          When you do not need to wear a face covering

          In settings where face coverings are required in England, there are some circumstances where people may not be able to wear a face covering. Please be mindful and respectful of such circumstances, noting that some people are less able to wear face coverings, and that the reasons for this may not be visible to others.

          This includes (but is not limited to):

          children under the age of 11 (Public Health England does not recommend face coverings for children under the age of 3 for health and safety reasons) people who cannot put on, wear or remove a face covering because of a physical or mental illness or impairment, or disability where putting on, wearing or removing a face covering will cause you severe distress

          if you are speaking to or providing assistance to someone who relies on lip reading, clear sound or facial expressions to communicate
          to avoid harm or injury, or the risk of harm or injury, to yourself or others ‒ including if it would negatively impact on your ability to exercise or participate in a strenuous activity police officers and other emergency workers, given that this may interfere with their ability to serve the public

          There are also scenarios when you are permitted to remove a face covering:

          if asked to do so in a bank, building society, or post office for identification

          if asked to do so by shop staff or relevant employees for identification, for assessing health recommendations (for example by a pharmacist), or for age identification purposes including when buying age restricted products such as alcohol

          if required in order to receive treatment or services, for example when getting a facial

          in order to take medication

          if you are delivering a sermon or prayer in a place or worship

          if you are the persons getting married in a relevant place

          if you are aged 11 to 18 attending a faith school and having lessons in a place of worship as part of your core curriculum

          if you are undertaking exercise or an activity and it would negatively impact your ability to do so

          if you are an elite sports person, professional dancer or referee acting in the course of your employment
          when seated to eat or drink in a hospitality premise such as a pub, bar, restaurant or cafe. You must put a face covering back on once you finish eating or drinking

          The government’s guidance for keeping workers and customers safe during COVID-19 in restaurants, pubs, bars and takeaway services clearly advises that designated indoor seating areas for customers to eat or drink should at this time only be open for table service, where possible, alongside additional infection control measures.

  62. Liberal Democrats in Breach of Trade Descriptions Act

    Ed Davey and Layla Moran: Neither liberal nor democratic

    A member of the South East Liberal Democrats and a reader of Lockdown Sceptics was outraged yesterday when he received an invitation to the SE Region Conference and AGM on November 21st. This was his reply:

    I am surprised that these MPs
    listed below have the bare-faced effrontery to show their faces in front
    of members after they have unilaterally committed our supposedly
    LIBERAL party to demanding that the government impose full-scale martial
    law on the British people. I joined the party all those years ago (from
    its inception, in point of fact) because it was a liberal party that
    believed in fundamental human rights. It is difficult to think of human
    rights more fundamental than freedom of movement, freedom of association
    and the right to protest, but now, as a consequences of the
    Parliamentary Party’s unilateral action, it seems that we have been
    transformed into a party that opposes those most fundamental of
    fundamental human rights and is committed to the imposition of tyranny
    and the enslavement of the human race by the global elite. I, as a
    member, was never at any point consulted about this, so I think that the
    word “democratic” can be removed from the party’s title as well as the
    word “liberal”. What has been done is an act of infamy and betrayal that
    makes the propping up of Cameron’s Tory government from 2010-2015 seem
    trivial by comparison. How does it make you feel, as a liberal, to see
    fascist police stop people crossing the border into Wales, break up
    private parties, beat up peaceful demonstrators and impose illegal fines
    on innocent members of the public in the manner of the Tontons Macoutes
    of Papa Doc Duvalier? How can you defend the culling of care home
    residents and the denial of vital treatment to cancer and heart
    patients? How can you defend the destruction of peoples’ livelihoods,
    the further impoverishment of the world’s poor, and the unsustainable
    accumulation of public debt? Martial law is evil. Its purpose is the
    imposition of serfdom. The Parliamentary Party must know this. The
    Parliamentary Party must also know that COVID-19 has an infection
    fatality ratio of 0.26%, which is almost identical to the more severe
    variants of seasonal flu. More than 97% of the population has nothing to
    fear from it. I cannot believe that any of our MPs is gullible enough
    to believe the lies pumped out by the Government, the mainstream media
    and the prostitute scientists bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates
    Foundation and big pharma. Their actions must be motivated by one of
    three things: wickedness, extreme stupidity or cowardice, or perhaps by a
    combination of all three. Utter and everlasting shame on them.

    Something tells me he won’t be renewing his membership.

    2. Davey and Moran will triumph where Clegg and Huhne failed.

      Clegg and Huhne did their very best to destroy the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party completely but failed to do so, Davey and Moran undoubtedly look as if they will succeed.

    3. “Ed Davey and Layla Moran: Neither liberal nor democratic.”

      They should be renamed the Golden Delicious Party. [After apples that are neither golden, nor delicious.]

  64. An uplifting diversion.

    Lincoln Cathedral was once the world’s tallest building – and it’s still a towering feat

    John Ruskin thought it the finest bit of architecture in the British Isles, and worth two of any of our other cathedrals

    SIMON HEFFER

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1b8fc6e7d1a2f71ab0a2f9bbbd73b32148326a4e0c360ed739ce82b649fc40b5.jpg
    Lincolnshire has some of the greatest architecture of any English county. There are fine houses: Belton, not long ago restored to its full late-17th-century glory; the Elizabethan mansion at Doddington; the William and Mary magnificence of Gunby; and, perhaps finest of all, the Marquess of Exeter’s palace at Burghley. That house stands outside Stamford, one of the most handsome towns in England, whose beautiful churches are not even the best in a county that abounds in them.

    In an often flat landscape, the sheer height of so many churches overwhelms the visitor. The sight of Boston Stump as one crosses the fens to the town has an effect almost like an orchestra playing a very loud chord; Louth and Grantham have breathtaking spires, the latter especially when seen from the railway between King’s Cross and Edinburgh; and there are smaller parish churches of the greatest distinction, such as St Peter’s at Barton-upon-Humber, one of the finest surviving Saxon structures in the country, and the 12th-century Theddlethorpe All Saints.

    But no building in Lincolnshire is quite so redolent of history, or awesome in its aspect, as Lincoln Cathedral. As one approaches from a distance and sees this massive edifice on a hill, one realises it was designed as an overpowering symbol of God’s glory. And how much more mighty it must have looked until the mid-16th century, with the great central tower capped by an enormous spire that had made it, since 1311, the tallest building in the world, reputedly at 525ft. Our forebears must have felt it reached almost to heaven itself. In 1548, it collapsed, and eventually the spire on the two towers of the west front came down as well. Of medieval cathedrals only York Minster was bigger. John Ruskin thought it the finest architectural achievement in the British Isles, and worth any two of our other cathedrals.

    Ruskin was obsessed with the Gothic, which he felt the only truly Christian way to build; and certainly Lincoln is a masterpiece of the Early English style. But the story of the present building begins with Norman work. An earlier edifice was destroyed in 1185 by, of all things, an earthquake. A French Bishop, known to posterity as St Hugh of Lincoln, began to rebuild it.

    The earliest work contains the great semicircular arches and ornamentation that recall Norman architecture, notably on the sprawling west front; though the use of statuary there signifies a more transitional period of design. Once one gets inside and sees the nave, one is swamped by Early English, with its pointed arches and ribbed roofing vaults – the latter unique in England, with their irregular pattern. Outside, flying buttresses typical of the Early English help shore up the walls of what was then an ever-expanding building. Such precautions became more obviously necessary after the first central tower collapsed in the mid-13th century.

    In the 14th century, when the architectural fashion became Decorated, Lincoln acquired two highly atypical features – a pair of rose windows, rare in medieval England. One is on the south side of the church and is known as the Bishop’s Eye; the other, on the north, as the Dean’s Eye. The tracery is highly unusual. It is curvilinear and, as one looks at it, curves that go counter to those of the window itself take the viewer’s attention from the centre of the window to the edges. Further curvilinear work then divides the window into a riot of small shapes.

    Finally, the Chapter House is a gem of gothic architecture and, like so much else in this building, rather unusual – it is decagonal in form, but with vaulting that gives the impression of being under the canopy of a giant tree. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this superlative building is that it is built from the same limestone as that upon which it stands. It is above all that sense of continuity and respect for antiquity, as well as great scale and beauty, that make Lincoln Cathedral so stunning.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/architecture/lincoln-cathedral-worlds-tallest-building-still-towering-feat/

    How it might look with the spires restored.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/698b126c1e9b3f6f16e20f20f8e186dabb43e9d32245b1e59d807b9639c0fe96.jpg

        1. I know that. But the cathedral makes a beautiful backdrop. I’m not aware of any airworthy Lincolns.

          2. Yes. The other one in the picture is from Canada and toured the UK a couple of years ago.

    2. Lincoln Cathedral – a welcome sight for crews returning from bombing raids (Lincolnshire was known as Bomber County because there were so many airfields there).

    1. Isn’t that the investigating officer woman whose experience, prior to joining the police, was in teaching/HR or something?
      And she was fast tracked to her current position.

    2. People certainly wouldn’t bother turning out for her now – they gave her unconditional love and she tossed it all back at them. To the Royal family too. I wonder what the Queen really thinks of her now.

        2. My favourite photo is the shot in the chapel where HM is looking daggers at MM. The Daily Mail described the Queen as looking “chuffed with pride”

  68. A question for people.
    The disease is called ‘coronavirus disease’ or ‘COVID-19’.
    The virus is called ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2’ or ‘SARS-CoV-2’.
    Is ‘Covid’ now being used as an accepted abbreviation for ‘Covid-19’, or is there more than one type of ‘Covid’?

    1. Surely the common cold is a coronavirus disease? There is still wide disagreement as to whether SARS-CoV-2 has actually been isolated, though CDC claim that it has.

        1. So SARS is deliberately omitted from references to the virus so as not to spread panic.

          Yet those countries that have had to deal with previous SARS outbreaks have been dealing with COVID-19 disease far better than those who have been treating it as a novel form a corona virus with pneumonia complications.

          Instead, governments have been instilling fear in their populations by publishing extremely large numbers of cases which in themselves are derived from a testing method not originally evolved for that purpose.

          2. That’s because there populations have greater (but not complete) immunity from the previous infections.

          4. Typical. Grabbing 15 minutes to eat a sandwich and have a quick nottl. Not sufficient attention (because my head is still wrestling with the VAT variations for the hospitality industry – horrors).

            Please note that I did not use the offensive “that’s fixed it for you”.

            Obviously time to get back to work.

          6. Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese have both posed the question as to whether people have the right not to be offended. Quite often one finds that the most easily offended people are those who are the most offensive!

      3. SARS-CoV-2 was, without a single shadow of doubt, isolated months ago.

        Anyone claiming otherwise is just another mad idiot.

  69. Just heard on the news that the security guard at Manchester Arena, who was informed about the bomber acting suspiciously prior to him detonating his murderous bomb, by a member of the public, was a 19 year old called Mohammed! He didn’t do anything because he didn’t want to cause panic!!

      1. I can’t quite get my head round a 19 year old being much use as a security guard!! The name Mohammed might have been a clue!

          1. 325895+ up ticks.
            Evening N,
            He is covered by the unwritten rulings of the submissive pcism & appeasement rulings.

          2. I understand that but in general, do you have much life experience or common sense at 19? It reeks of cheap labour!

      2. 325895+up ticks,
        Evening Anne,
        The English have both hands tied behind their backs in this war .
        As General Ogga I would, for every paedophilic single rape / abuse act deport if foreign, say Pakistani, 50 families same day the guilty verdict was read.
        NAME,SHAME,& CASTIGATE any politico’s who disagreed.
        Submissive pcism.& appeasement kills.

    3. I thought long and hard about what I would do if I saw what I thought might be a suicide bomber when there were no police about. Confront him and risk an early detonation? Probably not. Surely the only way to stop someone like him is to phone the police and hope that there is an AFO nearby who can quickly shoot him – but in a foyer with plenty of other people about? It’s a tough one.

      2. If I am completely honest, I would probably remove myself from the scene, but be too embarrassed or scared of being punished for being an islamophobe to report it.

    4. Why didn’t he consult a colleague?

      I can’t help thinking that this whole exercise is missing the point.

      There are many people in British society who wish to do us a lot of harm and a significant proportion of them are Muslims and that’s the elephant they are ignoring.

      1. He apparently told the member of the public that he would pass on their concerns…..but didn’t!

        1. Did he even see the bomber?

          This poor sod (unless he was in cahoots) is going to be like the policewoman the other day.
          Hung out to dry as a scapegoat for all the politicians and “liberals” who thought, and continue to think, that bringing in hordes of people who hate us and allowing them and their relatives to arrive, is a good idea.

      2. Rather similar to the crew of the Andromeda who probably knew about the stowaways, but things may have got nasty before the ship entered Southampton water , the pirates probably needed to be dropped off at a different location!

  70. Armistice Day 2020: poppies, commemorations and why the act of remembrance matters

    The Telly Subbies strike again:

    1. This year, the Royal British Legion, together with the BBC, is creating a pre-recorded programme that will be broadcast on BBC One on Saturday November 7. Staff, volunteers and members of the public will not be able

    to attend the filming of the event.

    Cannot understand!

    2. The first Remembrance Day in Britain and the Commonwealth was held in1919. However,
    Australian journalist Edward George Honey is originally thought to have proposed the idea
    of a two-minute silence in a letter published in the London Evening News in May 1989.

    Edward George Honey (18 September 1885 – 25 August 1922) was an Australian journalist
    who suggested the idea of five minutes of silence in a letter to a London newspaper in
    May 1919, about 6 months before the first observance of the Two-minute silence in London.

  71. BTL comment in the Tellygraff’s editorial:

    “Police are now patrolling the roads to stop people crossing the Welsh border on inessential journeys

    What an opportunity for old footpaths and bridleways to be brought back to use by new entrepreneurs willing to supply the Welsh.

    Four and twenty ponies trotting through the dark,

    A kettle for the parson, a thriller for the clerk.

    Lace for a fine lady, and clothes for her to try.

    So watch the wall my darling, while the Englishmen go by!”

    3. That animal is a member of the family Bovidae and the subfamily Caprinae and is called Dai Lemma – you can tell by the horns. 😉

    5. Like Claudius’s offence it is rank and smells to heaven!

      Apparently adherents of the RoP are keen on eating billy goats. We don’t have many of their sheep rustling gangs in these parts but I would not be very unhappy if somebody came and rustled Twistleton – the name I have given this intruder after P.G. Wodehouse’s character Pongo Twistleton.

      As well as our resident rodents and moles we get a wide variety of animals visiting us: foxes, badgers, rabbits, hares, cows, bullocks, horses, wild boar and deer. I have only once seen an adder in our garden and this was a long time ago but, now that we no longer have a cat, we have very many birds who visit us. A family of pheasants wintered with us this year and were quite friendly though the cock pheasants fought quite viciously with each other..

      1. We have a Roebuck who eats my geraniums and pansies, a tame cock pheasant who taps on the glass door, and a variety of other birds visiting. Not to mention the occasional fox and badger.

      1. Not learning to play the organ. I get by, though…

        I took Grade 1 theory, and piano, but my teacher went bankrupt, so I never had anything to show for it.

    4. I have no regrets in my life. Given my life over again I can’t think of anything I would change.
      I have a wonderful wife.
      Two fabulous children.
      Three marvellous grandchildren.
      What more could a man want?

        2. He certainly towered over me by 3 feet. I had to take two steps back just so i could see his face.

    5. Don’t laugh too much.

      I should have been a Primary School teacher.

      Either that or an assassin.

    6. Whatever you could have changed would have led to a completely different life. Maybe better, maybe a lot worse. What will be will be, the moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on. It’s done, don’t dwell on things like that, carpe diem.

    7. In the early hours of 1st April 2016, being somewhat inebriated, I set up a Disqus channel, called “Not the The Telegraph Letters”. Little did I know what it would lead to… :-))

        1. It is from our point of view, but look at it from his side of the one-way mirror, I suspect he gets a lot of emails and hassle behind the scenes that he can well do without.

          1. ‘Whingers United’… ?

            Somewhat like our premier
            footy teams! … too full of their
            own importance?

          2. There aren’t enough of them to make a five-a-side. I would love to see what their lunches would look like………………from the next planet !

          2. Good morning, Dear One.

            I apologise, I have no right
            to censor your choice of
            viewing … hangs head!

    8. Not switching my computer off before realising that Microsoft could download Windows 10 onto it whilst I wasn’t watching.

      1. There is a patch you can download to make it look like Windows 7 with a start button and proper menu. I’ve done it for MOH’s laptop, so if I can do it, any fule can.

    9. Biggest regret? Going to college instead of joining the Army or RAF when leaving school.

      1. I would agree with that.

        I missed national service by a couple of years and university was Hatfield poly with weekends back home. I think that I missed a lot of growing up in those years.

        1. I fluffed my A levels because I didn’t bother working at them – missed my place at University.

          1. I bolloxed it up, too. Too much into theatre… but was lucky enough to be offered a place on a course they couldn’t fill. Turned out vastly better than the one I wanted to join! I couldn’t have done the things I have in work if I’d qualified as an aeronautical engineer.

          2. I only just passed A level chemistry but that was because they taught the wrong sylabus. Probably the best thing that happened to me because that made me reevaluate career ideas and I moved into computer science

        1. Not even a little one Obers? Wouldn’t it be better to have a less dictatorial partner that you make mutual decisions with, rather than one that you ‘must obey’?

          1. We work together well; plenty discussions before a decision is made. She tried the “Do that!” approach many years ago, and I said “No. Not if you are going to order me about” – so, she stopped.
            I’d not want to be without her, that’s for sure!

    10. Biggest regrets?
      1st marriage.
      Coming out of the Army when it went tits up. The marriage not the Army! That came long after my demob.
      Opting for redundancy when my Tech Control Engineer post with Midland Main Line was abolished.
      Being stupid enough to try & get into teaching.

      1. Not buying a house while stationed in York in 1985, as a good mate had done. £14-15k for a solid 3-bed terrace which I could have rented out.

        1. I often wished we could have afforded to move here from Southampton without having to sell our house there. Leased out it would have provided us with a nice extra income!

          1. Ditto – selling my house in central Cambridge when we got married (we each had a home). Having said that, tennants are a hassle and a nuisance. It us a double edged sword.

        2. I think probably my biggest regret is not buying a detached house in a desirable country location for £7k. It would be worth a fortune now! I talked myself out of it by listing all the things that needed to be done. In hind sight, they were no big deal and not insurmountable.

  74. Last post – here are the kittens – still unnamed. They are very young still but beginning to show some interest – briefly, before going back to sleep….!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a7360ad5fc43c818518ca310e0e852a2aec46832106c252d77172bbc167bc69.jpg

    Now we have to wonder about insurance – for the first year, anyway. We discovered what the annual jabs cost……a nasty shock, showing how out of date we are with vets and their “fees” …. Any tips will be welcome.

    A demain

    4. I reckon to pay £40-50 for Missy’s annual MOT & booster. Blood test (optional) comes in at about another £40.

    6. Vet daughter would recommend Petplan or Direct Line. Expensive but they have never refused payment and pay quickly.

    8. Our last cat, who fitted very well into the this spaniel loving family years ago , was a ginger tabby. We called him Scud.. it suited him , he had a happy life with us for fifteen years.

      Can’t advise re cat insurance , sorry .

          2. Oddly enough we had a ginger queen at home and she clearly passed the gene on because whilst she had no ginger daughters there were several ginger grand-daughters and one great-grand-daughter. They were a great ratting family, and one of them was a mole-catcher too. But I’ve never encountered a ginger female since.

          3. I have only met one – some years ago – they named her Jaffa. The red gene normally comes out as Tortie.

          4. Ours was called Rusty – she came to us already named from a family in the village who were moving into Aberdeen and didn’t think that the city would be good place for the cat. We had torties in that family too, but they were certainly all female.

            Rusty was one of those cats who would, if she felt inclined, come for long walks alongside us, not exactly “with” in the way that a dog is with you, but sort of shadowing. After a few years, when the farm had too many generations of her offspring and she felt a bit crowded, she went back to the village and persuaded the people who had moved into her old home that it was still hers and that they ought to take care of her. A proper cat, with a very definite mind of her own.

    10. Get them vaccinated as kittens and then forget the vets unless they are ill. Healthy cats living in Norfolk don’t need annual boosters unless you have to put them in a cattery while you go away. Insurance doesn’t cover routine treatments like jabs.

      1. Our two are insured as they are pedigree & very costly, but the last one, Magnificat, wasn’t; he cost bugger-all, just routine innoculations until that last one way visit to the vet.
        Still miss him. He was a real cat.

    14. Whisky and Brandy. Not original, I know, but it has to be something fairly snappy you don’t mind calling from an open doorway on a cold winter’s night shaking a box of treats at the same time. And registering them with the vet as well. They use your surname as well these days. I think Belle’s suggestion of Malbec and Merlot is good.

    15. You probably have to get them chipped and snipped. I expect there’s a mortgage for that…..

  75. In the light of all the commotion about meals for school children during their school holidays, there are at least 2 things which should be done.
    Research workers should investigate why parents can’t afford to feed their children properly during their school holidays. They should look at their income including their benefits and such as their use of food banks. Their spending priority should be determined and what priority do they give to feeding their offspring. There will be an uproar but the taxpayer should be told what the problems are.
    Secondly, the tax avoidance scheme which allows very rich people, such as footballers, to avoid tax legally should be made illegal immediately. I thought the Government had said they would do that.

    1. The Government should be mean about testing. People like Lewis Hamilton should not be given any air time at all as he is domiciled in the tax haven of Monaco. You can throw Garry Lineker into that dustbin too as he is massively overpaid to cover his tax bill.

      All these so called celebs should pay the same rate of tax that someone who works in McDonalds is subject to.

      These overpaid ****s support a Left wing ideology and i wish they would all shut their gobs for the hypocrites that they are.

      1. One the things about you that I find hard to reconcile is how you are so kindly and lenient towards the bastards.
        };-O

        Normally you spout a certain amount of sense.

        They should be hit at the top rate, never mind that of the poor hamburger flippers.

        1. Hit at the top rate and they all piss off leaving the burger flippers to take up the slack. I’m talking about people who work here and pay tax here.

          I know from personal experience within the Hospitality industry that if HMRC believe you may be receiving tips they take a guess and grab what they want…the bastards.

          1. That particular HMRC assumption is an absolute rip off.

            I generally pay by card and leave a cash tip separately. If I know the Pub/restaurant I pay cash and leave a tip that I know goes into a staff pot for both front AND back office.

            I never add the tip to the credit card bill because I suspect that the owners take the majority.

  76. 325895+ up ticks,
    How about the train set is put on hold and the funding goes into backing Maggie Oliver as in being a female Elliot Ness, in regards to child rape & abuse issues,
    Give her unlimited funding until sorted, over-riding any political in-put.

    UK Child Abuse Inquiry Refuses to Investigate Pakistani Grooming Gangs.

    In two weeks of hearings for this investigation which took place from late September, the IICSA chose not to hear from grooming gang crime experts, victims of the phenomenon, or their advocates like whistleblower and former Greater Manchester Police (GMP) detective Maggie Oliver.

    This is another attempt to silence those with an alternative viewpoint based on fact and knowledge… The establishment don’t want to hear that truth, they peddle out the same platitudes… They always say these are historical failures.

    “These are not historical failures. These are current failures, that every single day children are being groomed by gangs of predatory men,” she said, asserting a belief that authorities’ unwillingness to investigate the issue could be “linked to the racial or the religious aspect of it”.

  77. Three good posts by Norman Tebbit in the DT, as ever.

    Tucked away with my wife and her team of nurses and carers in ourast Anglian home, I continue to think of how fortunate I am not to be in Government grappling with the problems thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Whilst I would certainly not suggest that Boris Johnson has been getting everything right, it would be very hard to do so when the professional advice given by the “experts” keeps changing from week to week. That is not surprising either when the worldwide statistics seem to be changing too. All that we do know for certain is that our efforts to defeat the virus take away medical resources from treating such illnesses as cancer and heart and liver disease and that that increases the overall death toll.

    Myself, I begin to wonder if there is a really effective strategy, or whether we might just as well confine ourselves to treating the symptoms of those infected, and resigning ourselves to a total level of fatalities which does not seem wildly above the average of recent years.

    Most of Covid’s victims appear to be amongst the elderly or those with pre-existing long term health problems – that is, people like me – who even without its malign effects are most unlikely to be around at the end of this decade. Of course, if any of the teams working to produce an effective vaccine are successful the economic and human costs would be all the less.

    It may sound a hard-hearted approach to the problem, but the economic costs of successive lockdowns are bringing poverty alongside growing social costs which would be hard to correct while GDP is shrinking.

    Having heard the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, accept that a tier three regime might be right for his city but only if it was to be given more money, his policy seems to be about economics rather than public health. That of the Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, seems to be to say nothing which might be quoted against him in a year’s time or so.

    The former Conservative Party Leader, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, is more open, warning that the level of public spending to support present policy is too high said. “The honest truth,” he said, “is it’s notmsustainable now, as the latest borrowing and debt figures have shown.”

    I think it might be better to concentrate on enabling the economy to get back into growth. Unless we do so, the present generation of young people will leave school, college or university with neither the skills needed to make industry and commerce able to grow and increase our national wealth, nor jobs to go to.

    One way to land a Brexit deal
    Had we not been hit by the Covid-19 virus, as we approach the end of October the media would have filled pages with the news on the progress towards Brexit. I think that a deal is probably possible. Not even the French can really believe that an independent United Kingdom could accept the jurisdiction of the European judiciary. No other country in the world outside the EU does, so why should we?

    Perhaps we could give a little on fisheries. As I understand it we do not have enough boats, nor skilled crews, to maintain the present level of catch, so we might allow a generous EU initial quota to be cut back each year as our fleet grows. The EU could then back down on its many puffed up health requirements on our food exports in return

    The best news on Brexit came from Tokyo where Trade Secretary Liz Truss completed with Japan a trade deal of the kind that Remainers said would be impossible.

    Enough from the woke folk
    Back on the home front, I gave a great hurrah as I read in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph that the National Trust may face an official investigation by the Charity Commission for straying from its “clear and simple purpose” to preserve historic buildings and treasures.

    It is a long time ago that the National Trust ended hunting over land on estates it had inherited and more recently it has required volunteer workers to wear rainbow lanyards to support LGBT rights. Now it is getting excited about links to slavery. It is infantile nonsense to seek to impose our twentieth century values on people and their works of long past times.

    Should we seek to root out the Vikings who invaded Eastern England a thousand years ago? Or question the legitimacy of even the House of Windsor? Had we been led 80 years ago not by Churchill and Attlee, but a bunch of the woke folk, would we have defeated Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Germany?

    It is time that said woke folk fell silent and went back to sleep.

    2. “I begin to wonder if there is a really effective strategy, or whether we might just as well confine ourselves to treating the symptoms of those infected, and resigning ourselves to a total level of fatalities which does not seem wildly above the average of recent years.”
      Exactly.

    3. Whenever Norm speaks, it is as though he has taken the thoughts from my own head and translated them into more eloquent English.

    4. Whenever Norm speaks, it is as though he has taken the thoughts from my own head and translated them into more eloquent English.

    5. Once upon a time , there were many men like Sir Norman , they demonstrated commonsense, , even though mistakes were made .

      I feel a little bit nostalgic for earlier decades when honesty and decency were not an unusual trait in a few of our senior politicians

  79. For Cat people everywhere:

    For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
    For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
    For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
    For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
    For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
    For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
    For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
    For this he performs in ten degrees.
    For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
    For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
    For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
    For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
    For fifthly he washes himself.
    For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
    For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
    For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
    For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
    For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
    For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
    For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
    For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
    For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
    For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
    For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
    For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
    For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
    For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
    For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
    For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
    For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
    For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
    For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
    For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
    For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
    For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
    For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
    For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
    For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
    For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
    For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
    For he is tenacious of his point.
    For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
    For he knows that God is his Saviour.
    For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
    For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
    For he is of the Lord’s poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
    For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
    For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
    For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
    For he is docile and can learn certain things.
    For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
    For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
    For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
    For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
    For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.
    For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
    For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
    For the former is afraid of detection.
    For the latter refuses the charge.
    For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
    For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
    For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
    For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
    For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
    For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
    For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
    For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
    For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
    For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
    For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
    For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
    For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
    For he can swim for life.
    For he can creep.

    2. Evidently my cat George was an ungodly creature, as Jeoffry’s tenth degree was his first. Lovely poem.

      Could anyone enlighten me as to the meaning of “prank” in line six?

      2. Dear Uncle Bill is such a sweetie and we should all lick him like a pussycat does……….erm….

  80. From today’s Grimes (taken, princiapply, because of Mr Wu – cf George Formby!!)

    “China’s top epidemiologist has said that his country has done too much testing and that it amounted to “overkill”.

    Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said that attempting to test everyone as China has done was unnecessary, did not eliminate the risk of outbreaks and had vast “social costs”.

    “It was overkill,” he said in an interview with China Newsweek. “From the scientific perspective of epidemiology, there is no need to test everyone.”

    Mr Wu added that the decision to do mass testing had been political. “But there’s still a 1 to 5 per cent chance of uncertainty,” he said. “If you test everyone, the public and local government officials think it will provide 100 per cent reassurance that the outbreak is contained.””

    1. Where the immigrants have come from?
      Ha bluddy ha.

      They’ve come from all over the world, not “our” urban areas, and the locals certainly won’t be heading East to Shitistans or South to Blekutopias if they can avoid it

    2. All the new housing around every village and town is for white flight, not the locals who grew up here.

  84. Good to slow down to before bed.
    Problem is, it makes me think of my beautiful friend, Elaine, who killed herself some 15 or so years ago. So, it can be hard to listen to without becoming emotional.
    https://youtu.be/7O049oi2Dxw
    Goodnight, y*all.

    1. It brings to mind rain drops trickling down a window pane. A beautiful melody with hints of desolation.

      1. Sometimes ‘remembering the good’
        leads to an overwhelming sense of loss.
        I try not to remember because it is too
        painful.

        1. Just sometimes it’s ‘good’ to remember. Even though it’s hard work.
          The mood takes me that way now and again.
          Here’s some more emotion, currently playing on my PC. Fits well wih a Nordic forest:
          https://youtu.be/tCL9FiAuezk

          2. Well…. there’s the privacy of darkness… and the time to do it properly.
            Goodnight, Plum. A hug before bed.

    7. He’s lost the plot. The barnet is ludicrous and he keeps changing his glasses, a couple of weeks ago he had some Arthur Askey style specs that didn’t suit him at all.

      Next week expect an earring or two!

  87. ‘Black Lives Matter’ registers as political party and could stand in local elections next year
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/26/black-lives-matter-registers-political-party-could-stand-local/

    Finally – they have come clean and admit that the movement is a political one. Any sportsman who wears a ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogan on his clothes should be barred from competing, as political slogans are not allowed on sportswear. Lewis Hamilton, take note. Premier League footballers – stop ‘taking the knee’.

  91. Apologies if posted previously but such common sense seems to be in short supply.
    If only he was 40 years younger our search for a worthy conservative leader would be completed.

    We cannot sacrifice the future of the young to keep my generation safe
    Norman Tebbit 26 October 2020 • 4:36pm
    5-6 minutes

    Tucked away with my wife and her team of nurses and carers in our East Anglian home, I continue to think of how fortunate I am not to be in Government grappling with the problems thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Whilst I would certainly not suggest that Boris Johnson has been getting everything right, it would be very hard to do so when the professional advice given by the “experts” keeps changing from week to week. That is not surprising either when the worldwide statistics seem to be changing too. All that we do know for certain is that our efforts to defeat the virus take away medical resources from treating such illnesses as cancer and heart and liver disease and that that increases the overall death toll.

    Myself, I begin to wonder if there is a really effective strategy, or whether we might just as well confine ourselves to treating the symptoms of those infected, and resigning ourselves to a total level of fatalities which does not seem wildly above the average of recent years.

    Most of Covid’s victims appear to be amongst the elderly or those with pre-existing long term health problems – that is, people like me – who even without its malign effects are most unlikely to be around at the end of this decade. Of course, if any of the teams working to produce an effective vaccine are successful the economic and human costs would be all the less.

    It may sound a hard-hearted approach to the problem, but the economic costs of successive lockdowns are bringing poverty alongside growing social costs which would be hard to correct while GDP is shrinking.

    Having heard the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, accept that a tier three regime might be right for his city but only if it was to be given more money, his policy seems to be about economics rather than public health. That of the Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, seems to be to say nothing which might be quoted against him in a year’s time or so.

    The former Conservative Party Leader, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, is more open, warning that the level of public spending to support present policy is too high said. “The honest truth,” he said, “is it’s not sustainable now, as the latest borrowing and debt figures have shown.”

    I think it might be better to concentrate on enabling the economy to get back into growth. Unless we do so, the present generation of young people will leave school, college or university with neither the skills needed to make industry and commerce able to grow and increase our national wealth, nor jobs to go to.
    One way to land a Brexit deal

    Had we not been hit by the Covid-19 virus, as we approach the end of October the media would have filled pages with the news on the progress towards Brexit. I think that a deal is probably possible. Not even the French can really believe that an independent United Kingdom could accept the jurisdiction of the European judiciary. No other country in the world outside the EU does, so why should we?

    Perhaps we could give a little on fisheries. As I understand it we do not have enough boats, nor skilled crews, to maintain the present level of catch, so we might allow a generous EU initial quota to be cut back each year as our fleet grows. The EU could then back down on its many puffed up health requirements on our food exports in return

    The best news on Brexit came from Tokyo where Trade Secretary Liz Truss completed with Japan a trade deal of the kind that Remainers said would be impossible.
    Enough from the woke folk

    Back on the home front, I gave a great hurrah as I read in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph that the National Trust may face an official investigation by the Charity Commission for straying from its “clear and simple purpose” to preserve historic buildings and treasures.

    It is a long time ago that the National Trust ended hunting over land on estates it had inherited and more recently it has required volunteer workers to wear rainbow lanyards to support LGBT rights. Now it is getting excited about links to slavery. It is infantile nonsense to seek to impose our twentieth century values on people and their works of long past times.

    Should we seek to root out the Vikings who invaded Eastern England a thousand years ago? Or question the legitimacy of even the House of Windsor? Had we been led 80 years ago not by Churchill and Attlee, but a bunch of the woke folk, would we have defeated Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Germany?

    It is time that said woke folk fell silent and went back to sleep.

    Edit. I see KenL posted previously, great minds etc…

    1. Just treating the infected seems to be what Trumps White House is moving towards right now.

      CNN have been having a fit

        1. Testing would be sensible if it was just a diagnostic tool that led to a treatment plan but it seems to be the be all and end all when politicians talk about testing rates.

      2. CNN has an agenda, orange man bad. No matter what he says or does he would be wrong according to CNN

    2. I could weep. People with his intelligence were running this country within not only my lifetime, but that of our sons.

  92. Evening, all. There seems to be no point in locking everybody down when some areas have virtually no cases of the plague. Even my young, twenty-something neighbour has come to this conclusion. He is ready to rebel. He thinks the restrictions are ridiculous, contradictory and not in the best interests of anybody except possibly the government seeing how far they can push us before we fight back. He doesn’t think wearing a mask does any good at all except as a virtue signal. If his views are shared by his age group, there is hope for the country yet.

  93. A couple of years back, when I was dropping a couple of trees at the Cromford end of the garden which were in danger of falling into the road, I also seriously attacked and cut back a Buddleia growing on the bank above them.
    Using the Lidl chop saw I bought about the same time, I chopped the larger sticks from it to fit into those plastic mushroom trays you can scrounge from the greengrocer’s.

    They have seasoned beautifully and give off a very pleasant scent when they burn!
    And boy, do they burn!

    1. I hacked down most of a huge Buddleia globosa when I moved into my last rented home (about 30 years ago) because it had been allowed to get so big I could hardly get out of the back door and round the corner to the garden gate.

      There were only a few large sticks, but lots of spindly stuff, and I left it in the shed for 12 months and used it for kindling for most of the second winter. Never lit fires so easily again.

      1. whatever wood I’m cutting, anything above finger diameter is worth chopping for the fire and I find plastic mushroom trays are perfect for stacking the stuff!
        The chop gats bolted to my outside bench a set distance from a stop block which allows me to chop through several stems at once. I can fill a tray in under 10 minutes!

        1. I don’t normally do wood cutting. It was just your comment about the buddleia sticks which made me remember what good kindling (or “morning sticks” as they call them round here) it made.

          There was a huge horse chestnut about 15 yards from the front door, and after I’d used up the buddleia I used to collect my kindling from the fallen stuff underneath it.

          I’ve got electric heating here. There is one fireplace but I don’t light a fire very often.

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