Monday 27 December: Experienced volunteers are being rejected for vital vaccination work

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here

532 thoughts on “Monday 27 December: Experienced volunteers are being rejected for vital vaccination work”

  2. Experienced volunteers are being rejected for vital vaccination work

    I wonder why, do they have less control over experienced volunteers?

    1. Morning Bob. Yes. Curious. Is there a chance that these people might realise that it’s a scam?

      1. Disclosed and barred. A whole industry has grown up shutting “inappropriate” people out. They call it inclusivity.

    2. They have more experience than the newly trained and less to lose, being volunteers, than those employed.

  5. Pointless star Richard Osman reveals his lifelong struggle with food addiction and how he has thought about eating every day since the age of nine. 27 December 2021.

    Pointless star Richard Osman has revealed how he has struggled with food addiction since the age of nine.

    In an extremely candid interview broadcast on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs today, the 51-year- old reveals: ‘My addictive behaviour has always been food. It has been since I was incredibly young.

    The Horror! I used to be the same! Even now I have this uncontrollable urge to eat. I’m sitting here with the aroma of Chicken Chasseur emanating from my slow cooker and thinking you should really throw it away Minty and starve. It would be much better for you. I don’t know how I’ve lived so long eating every single day of my life! The Biafran’s had the right idea in my view. Look where they are now!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10344735/Pointless-star-Richard-Osman-reveals-lifelong-struggle-food-addiction.html

    1. I have a cure for food addiction – my Christmas duck is sitting in bits in my fridge. Is there anyone with the stomach to take it on?

    2. Is it a sign of age or just detachment from mass media culture that I have no idea what “Pointless” is or who Richard Osman is?

    3. I definitely had a food addiction over the weekend: two – yes, two – slices of Christmas cake.

    4. Just an unsubtle nudge because of the high levels of obesity.

      If people stopped overeating processed junk food they wouldn’t be obese.

    2. All SAGE members should read this and give us their honest opinion of this common sense article. It mostly exposes the dangers of these new vaccines and the data that is kept from the public. Well worth a read. I will have no further Covid vaccines.

    4. What with the threat of ‘home visits’ and adverts such as this it’s looking as if the desperation to have everyone jabbed is growing. Is
      there something coming around the corner that being non-vaccinated will expose as being unnatural?

      From a comment I posted yesterday: chimes with #3 from the article.

  8. Morning all

    Experienced volunteers are being rejected for vital vaccination work

    SIR – The Oxon, Berks and Bucks health trust has decided that only trained nurses can give vaccinations. So my daughter, who vaccinated for three months during the main programme, is not now qualified to give the booster injection.

    Presumably the nurses who are used leave vital work to take the place of my daughter and other volunteers.

    My daughter frequently receives texts urging her to come back, but when she replies is told (again) that she is no longer qualified, not being a nurse. She works as an occupational therapist, licensed by the NHS.

    It is the general public who are disadvantaged.

    Sheila Ellison

    Thatcham, Berkshire

    SIR – I absolutely hate Christmas. I would have been much, much, happier being in our local vaccination venue over these Christmas holidays giving jabs to those who need boosters.

    I was willing to do it for nothing. Unfortunately, even though I am a practising GP with more than 40 years’ experience, I was told I could not do so because I “haven’t been trained”.

    So I had to stay at home with a bad head and indigestion instead.

    Dr David Jenkins

    Locum GP

    Ferryside, Carmarthenshire

    SIR – How frustrating to see some retired nurses unable to re-register to act as vaccinators because of the arbitrary cut-off date enforced by the Royal College of Nursing.

    I volunteered to give vaccinations at the start of the pandemic. My GP practice was keen to have me as I was the practice nurse for 12 years and experienced in vaccination. My request to re-register was turned down because I was three months outside the date permitted for return.

    Now a shortage of vaccinators sees soldiers being brought in, and doctors and nurses taken from “non-essential duties”. Civilians are now being trained to do a job I could do with my eyes shut. How many other willing retired nurses are being undervalued and underutilised during this crisis?

    Patricia Rees

    Weyhill, Hampshire

    SIR – My vulnerable partner was admitted to hospital for a non-Covid related issue shortly before her booster was due. However, the hospital could not vaccinate her because, I was told, they are not licensed to do so.

    This major shortcoming in provision seems at odds with government policy.

    Martin Leech

    Windlesham, Surrey

    SIR – With the prospect of further Covid vaccinations, it is time to set up a Vaccination Service, in some ways like the Blood Transfusion Service.

    This would ensure proficient staff to administer an increasing range of vaccines and remove the need continually to deflect frontline health workers, including GPs and pharmacists, from their principal roles.

    Martin Hill

    Liverpool

    1. Dr Jenkins sounds nice, an Ebenezer Scrooge with the desire to poison people on his day off.

  9. Noel Coward’s last word on playing the virgin

    Noel Coward’s starring debut The Scoundrel (1935), written and directed by Ben Hecht

    SIR – Lady Diana Cooper may have put Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, in her place (Letters, December 22), but she met her match in Noel Coward.

    Following her great success in London and New York as the Madonna in Karl Vollmöller’s play, The Miracle, she met Coward at a party and said: “Noel, I saw your new play last week and I yawned, and I yawned, and I yawned!”

    Coward replied with the perfect put-down: “Diana Darling, last year I saw you playing the Virgin and I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed!”

    John Bromley-Davenport

    Malpas, Cheshire

  10. Strike-hit travellers

    SIR – I wish rail workers could think of a more constructive way of settling grievances than by screwing up Christmas for many, once again.

    Martin Moyes

    Holt, Wiltshire

    1. That’s the whole point of strikes, Martin. They are intended to eff up non-union members’ plans.

  11. We’re betraying our Armed Forces’ sacrifices. 27 December 2021.

    These young people pay a price for what we ask of them, even when the bullets aren’t flying. We should not take them for granted. Perhaps if we gave them the same unstinting support that they willingly give us, our political leaders would be less ready to forsake them. Their sacrifice was betrayed by our ignominious flight from Afghanistan this year. Soldiers who put their lives on the line for our country there and in Iraq have been shamefully hounded through the courts, hostage to successive governments desperate to signal their fake virtue.

    The UK Elites, both Left and Right despise the military almost as much as the indigenous population. They use them of course in much the same fashion as they employ the resources built up by previous generations to play Social Justice Warriors on the World Stage. The difference is that the people pay in cash and the military in blood. The futile wars of the last fifty years, the surrender to the IRA, the abandonment of veterans to malicious prosecution; these are just some of the many betrayals. The British Armed Forces were one of the great fighting forces of history and like the country that admired and nurtured them are now fading into nothingness by those who were supposed to protect them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/26/betraying-armed-forces-sacrifices/

    1. Well said, Minty. May I add… sub-standard accommodation for many service families and endless redundancies. People like Dodgy Dave, Bliar and other disgusting poltical creatures who are happy to breach the Covenant while praising them. They are all beneath contempt.

  12. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    I can’t help thinking that the first of these is tongue in cheek:

    SIR – I gazed with astonishment at the holed knee in the jeans worn by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.

    After some moments digesting the photograph, I recognised the meaning of this gesture. It demonstrates the affinity of the Duke with those unable to provide for themselves the warm, intact clothing so necessary at this dark and cold time of the year.

    He is to be heartily supported in reaching out to others in this way. We wish him seasonal greetings and a happy new year.

    Barry Bond
    Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

    SIR – It was nice to see the publicity-shy Sussexes sending out a Holiday card and generously donating to charities on behalf of the recipients. Now they have gone public wouldn’t it be good to know if they were meaningful donations?

    The couple listed a number of charities they support but the general rule of life is: the person in the room boasting about giving gives the least.

    T B Cockroft
    Rotherwick, Hampshire

  15. Just for once I watched a BBC programme yesterday evening that was well made and, apparently, free from all their usual ‘diversity’, social engineering and elitist claptrap – it was on BBC4 about a production of the Nutcracker for a performance at Covent Garden. What incredibly talented youngsters.
    Highly recommended.

    Edited for typos.

  16. David Amess and the deafening silence on Islamism. Spiked. 27 December 2021.

    Conservative MP Sir David Amess was stabbed to death in October in a suspected Islamist terror attack. It shocked the nation.
    But the political and media response to his killing revealed something else, too. Namely, that we live in a society that is increasingly indulging in terror denialism – especially when it comes to the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.

    This was clear from the way politicians and pundits were quick to blame Amess’s killing on anything but Islamist terrorism. Indeed, many seemed happy to attribute his death to the ‘toxicity’ and ‘divisiveness’ of contemporary politics. Others seemed keen to blame social media, and social-media anonymity in particular. One MP even called for a ‘David’s Law’, which would force users of platforms like Twitter to reveal their actual identities.

    It’s not “society” but the Elites that suffer denialism. It is they who have allowed this Cultural Incubus to take up residence in the UK and it now having grown powerful dare not oppose it. Even when one of their own is killed they refuse to credit the cause. Appeasement is the policy in the fervent hope that nothing will happen while they are in office!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/12/27/david-amess-and-the-deafening-silence-on-islamism/

  17. Good morning, all. Yet another day of grey, dreary, miserable weather. And my sore throat is, er, sore. I’d forgotten how unpleasant a cold could be!!

    3. Morning Bill,

      I too have a cold but what I can guarantee is that I didn’t catch it from anyone. Terrain theory. Not at work, anxious over Christmas, succumb to inner weakness. My temperature is normal this morning so grateful for that at least. Had a good night and woke up weepy. Breakfast may help.

      1. I didn’t know Weepy was one of the seven dwarves. Perhaps he’ll revert to Grumpy when he’s had his breakfast.
        };-O
        Get well soon.

      2. Good morning, Our Susan. Sorry to hear your news.

        Remember what that wog minister said: “Omicron will seek you out”. He was right, you see!

  18. Good morning to all.
    A VERY foggy start (the WEATHER not me) to the day with 2°C in the yard and an almost dead calm.
    I don’t think we’ll be seeing many Unicorn Farts produced today.

    Mr. Vass makes a fair comment in today’s letters I see:-

    Tiananmen memorial
    SIR – Hong Kong University has removed a sculpture commemorating the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre to accord with mainland China’s authorised version of history.

    Here in Britain we remove statues that may “cause offence” to modern values. There doesn’t seem much difference to me.

    Bob Vass
    Bollington,
    Cheshire

  20. 343326+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Monday 27 December: Experienced volunteers are being rejected for vital vaccination work,

    Giving it some thought I believe a great many would find
    being a part of a politico sponsored door knocking, bully
    boy,enforcing press gang consequences of which IMO will be seriously life threatening is NOT to the common sense brigades taste.

    1. Exactly the same types as unionised nurses who were so busy telling the rest of us what was ‘not a nursing duty’ that they never seemed to get round to looking after those pesky patients.

    1. What is Richard Braine up to now? Should he not be joining one of the groups which oppose the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib/Dems etc.?

      It seems to me that the people in most of these groups – including Nigel Farage – find it very difficult to work with others in any role other than that of leader. They remind me of this chap:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgn-n6L5Fro

      1. 343326 up ticks,

        Afternoon R,
        We must refrain from getting anywhere near linking
        nige to decent peoples such as Richard Braine who I believe is sill awaiting his due from the uKiP nec failed court case.
        Braine was working well with other party members after winning the leadership election in a very convincing manner the UKIP party under Batten Braine showed the way to success, gaining members daily and financially sound.

        The herd preferred nige and the tongue of a con patter merchant the consequences are now being suffered.

      2. It seems to be a problem with all the ‘Leaders’. They can’t relinquish an iota of control, thus Laurence Fox, Anne-Marie Waters and Farage will carry on being nothing nor than less a vote-splitter and achieving NOTHING!

        1. Been my point for quite a while, Tom.
          It’s why I don’t have anything to do with them, after being (briefly and remotely) part of UKIP and seeing what an unbelievable shambles of an ego trip it was.

  22. Good luck Mr. Gorsky!

    When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!” statement but followed it by several remarks — usual com traffic — between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control.

    Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark “Good luck Mr. Gorsky!”

    Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the “Good luck Mr. Gorsky!” statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.

    Just last year, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 50 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died, and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

    When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in the front of his neighbour’s bedroom window. His neighbours were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky.

    “Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You’ll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!”

    1. “One Second After” (and its sequels)by William R Forstchen is an excellent if chilling exploration of such an event

  24. Good morning all, I hope everyone had a good Christmas. We had a Christmas where only one daughter and family made an appearance, the other daughter together with son-in-law, and grandchildren were in isolation due to positive LFT results. Still we made the best of it with a visit to the pub before tucking into a meal of mashed potato, cold meats and pickles with fresh baked bread. To complete the day we were visited by friends who we have both known for nearly 50 years who traveled down from Lancashire to see us and their families.
    One of my presents was a book of Dad Jokes, I don’t see why I should suffer alone so I plan to share some with you. I just hope the Mods does not ban me for crimes against Nottlers.

    I told my wife she should embrace her mistakes.
    She gave me a hug.

    See what I mean!

      1. Many people still believe that officials know what they are doing; not everyone is a cynical NOTTLer.

        1. Not least – regular (becoming less) interaction with Best Beloved who is all up for her 4th jab. Currently exhibiting stomach pains. I’m lost!

  27. By the sounds of it, Dr. Daughter is up and about so I’m logging off from the laptop to get dressed and reclaim my chair downstairs.

    See you later!

  28. Good morning blackbox2 (if you are here or hereabouts).
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/becd6e0fc2a4f4ee982c45ed17f49fd4b99db5338fa66cbec31dc1b31ca1f05f.png I have taken the audacious move to copy and repost your waterfall art on here since the comments are now closed for the 25th thread. You asked me what I think of it.

    It is a quite extraordinary graphic and colourful piece of symbolism. The background is beautifully rendered in a way that I have not yet quite mastered (my skill set is still in development). I’m not quite sure what the falling objects that look like a pack of playing cards actually are: I suspect that they are mobile phones and that the piece, as a whole, represents the throw-away mentality of current society.

    It is a striking piece of art and I like it a lot. Please tell me just how wrong I am in my layman’s interpretation of it.

    1. Glad you like it! (NB I now see a couple of things that need correcting though)
      The waterfall follows natural laws of gravity and water flow. It looks chaotic, but is actually pretty predictable. It is also very old, and exists in a space that it has carved out (the wall is because there was an eighteenth century cement works that used the stream).
      It has a second significance as a border (paintings are boring if they only have one meaning!). We are standing on the brink of huge changes in society in the west. We are also in a time when society is divided in a way that won’t heal for a generation, and the stream is a border in both of these scenarios.
      The phones start off being neatly stacked, which is us thinking that we have technology under control. But very quickly it falls out of our control, hurtling into space in a completely chaotic and unpredictable way.

      The contrasts are manufactured/natural, old/new, gravity&surface tension/random chaos, known/unknown, pro-vaxxers/anti-vaxxers. The painting is held together with a colour scheme based on David Austin roses and water. It sort of worked about 85%. I expect I will have another shot at this idea to improve on it.

      1. Not only does artwork require to have more than one meaning, it also needs to be thought-provoking: without that it fails. You fulfil all those necessary criteria in your superbly-crafted piece.

  29. Excellent BTL Comment:-

    Angus Long
    9 HRS AGO
    It doesn’t surprise me one iota that retired healthcare workers are unable to help due to stupid “red tape”.
    This is the problem with the moden public sector. It is rife with useless managers paid a fortune but are next to useless and simpley create problems rather than solving them.
    Oh how I wish they were more like the officer in command during my days in the military.
    I will never forget the words of the Major.
    He said that it is his job to ensure that when the time comes to go to war, the men in his command are ready and equipped, to the best of his ability, to undertake that task.
    They are to be trained, equipped, be fit physically and mentally to do the ultimate job. The men under his command are a team that work and live together, where each person’s role, job and function are like links in a chain and that chain is only as strong as the weakest link. It is his job to ensure there are no weak links in his chain. That means making decisions on the best use of the time and resources available to him. That is because in the military we have a job to do and if we don’t have enough tools and resources we don’t stop, we don’t whinge and we don’t cry. What we do is, we improvise, we overcome, we adapt and we deliver.
    For the sake of our country, please bring back ‘the Major’.

  30. Comments from Going Postal:-

    Porn Baron • 2 minutes ago
    Is today Boxing Day again?

    Do I have to eat and drink myself silly again?
    Reply•Share ›
    One other person is typing…

    Bernard from Bucks Porn Baron • a minute ago
    Only on the ‘left overs’. 😉
    •Reply•Share ›

    Bob of Bonsall Porn Baron • a minute ago
    No, I think today’s Bank Holiday is to compensate for Christmas being on Saturday.
    Tomorrow is the Boxing day BH.
    •Edit•Reply•Share ›

    Avatar
    Porn Baron • a few seconds ago
    So two days of stuffing myself?
    •Reply•Share ›

    Bob of Bonsall Porn Baron • a few seconds ago
    FILTH!!!

    1 •Edit•Reply•

    4. Would this have been on the Hoax list?

      Gruesome report in DT yesterday on the eugenic approach with the posting of Do Not Resuscitate notices on those with learning difficulties or Down’s Syndrome who are being treated for Covid.

      1. I sometimes think that the eugenicists are not just targeting those with learning difficulties but also those who are gullible enough to fall for the Great Vaccine Con.

      2. In the DT:

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/26/children-learning-disabilities-offered-do-not-resuscitate-orders/

        Children with learning disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders during Covid pandemic

        Revelation adds to fears that controversial resuscitation orders may have been issued in a discriminatory fashion during the pandemic

        26 December 2021 • 8:00pm

        Children with learning disabilities were offered “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic, The Telegraph can disclose.

        GP surgeries asked if teenagers with autism and Down’s syndrome wanted not to be resuscitated, amid concerns about the pressure on the NHS.

        The Telegraph has spoken to two families who were asked about the controversial orders – known as DNACPRs – during routine appointments.

        Both families live in Kent and The Telegraph has seen an apology from their local health authority – who they have asked us not to name – saying that the question should not be asked.

        The families said that they believed they were only asked about DNACPRs because of their child’s learning disability.

        At the beginning of the pandemic, medics were warned that learning disabilities “should never be a reason for issuing a DNAR order “ and therefore if the decisions had been put in place it would have been a breach of their guidance.

        ‘A disgusting question’

        Karen Woollard, who attended a ‘health check’ with her now 16-year-old son, Toby, who has Down’s syndrome, said she was asked by a healthcare assistant if her child should be given a DNACPR.

        “It is a disgusting question”, said Mrs Woollard, who works as a teaching assistant. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting”.

        Another woman, who is the mother of a 16 year-old with congenital severe autism, said that her son was asked if he wanted to be resuscitated during an appointment and initially agreed because he did not understand the question.

        The revelation will fuel fears that patients with learning disabilities were discriminated against during the pandemic and raise concerns that some orders could have been applied without families knowing.

        Dan Scorer, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Mencap, said that “the 1.5 million people with a learning disability across the UK have a right to equal access to healthcare just like anyone else”.

        In June, The Telegraph revealed how patients with mental illness and learning disabilities were given “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic.

        Families, carers and doctors said that medics decided that patients with these conditions should not be resuscitated if their heart stopped – a decision which in one case appears to have led to the patient’s death.

        However, prior to today’s investigation, the cases which have emerged relate to adults, not children.

        In March 2020, NHS England wrote to medics reminding them about guidance from the previous year which said that the term “learning disability … should never be a reason for issuing a DNACPR order or be used to describe the underlying, or only, cause of death”.

        ‘The doctor devalued his life’

        Debbie Corns attended an annual ‘health check’ for her son Oliver, who was 15 at the time, at their local GP surgery in March this year.

        Oliver was diagnosed with a learning disability and congenital classic autism when he was two years old. His mother told The Telegraph that having a learning disability means that their son needs support with everyday tasks including going out safely or managing money.

        Despite this, Ms Corns said he is a “happy and healthy teenager” who attends national swimming galas and has won several gold medals.

        Ms Corns said that towards the end of the consultation, Mrs Corns recalls that the doctor asked her son if he would like a DNACPR.

        Oliver said “yes”, but his mother felt he was unable to understand the decision and corrected his answer, ensuring the documentation reflected this position.

        “I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home. I am a strong person, but I was devastated”, said the teaching assistant.

        “The doctor devalued his life”, she said. “During the pandemic, I worked from home and the question by the doctor confirmed to me that this was the right decision, because imagine he went to hospital after an accident by himself. We would have lost control of his healthcare and they might not have resuscitated him”.

        Several days after the appointment with the doctor, Mrs Corns and her husband sat down with Oliver and asked him how he would like to be treated following a serious accident.

        “If your heart stopped, would you like the doctors to try to save your life or would you like to die?’, we said to him.

        “He went upstairs for 20 minutes, but before leaving for school he looked at my husband and said, “Dad, save my life”.

        “He said it several times over the next few days. It broke our hearts. With the right language, support and time, he did understand. He had time to think about it. When the doctor asked, he couldn’t consent properly.

        “It’s not right and I wonder how many people have got these on the records unknowingly? Parents should check their child’s file”, said Mrs Corns.

        ‘At the bottom of the tree’

        Mrs Woollard said that during a health check for her son, a health assistant told her 15 year-old that she was going to ask his mother an “awkward” question.

        “You don’t want me to tick that he shouldn’t be resuscitated, do you?”, she asked. “I said of course not, please don’t tick that”, I replied. “It was very upsetting”, Mrs Woollard said.

        “To be asked this question makes you feel like your child is at the bottom of the tree. A child with a learning disability has to fight for so much, do they now have to fight for their life too?”

        Both mothers complained to their child’s GP surgery following the incidents and say they are aware of other cases, including one where the GP said a family with religious beliefs had agreed.

        Mrs Corns asked for her CCG not to be named, but The Telegraph has seen a letter they wrote to her apologising that the GP asked about whether her son should be resuscitated.

        The same CCG also posted on social media about the incidents saying that a “template” had been used which “unintentionally [gave] GPs the impression that they must record the status as part of the annual health check”.

        They said that they had contacted practises “advising that this question is not mandatory and should not be asked for our young children”.

        1. Back to 1933 and a hunting ground for today’s Doctor Mengeles.

          Any medical person who carries out these orders, MUST be convicted of MURDER and hanged.

      3. In the DT:

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/26/children-learning-disabilities-offered-do-not-resuscitate-orders/

        Children with learning disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders during Covid pandemic

        Revelation adds to fears that controversial resuscitation orders may have been issued in a discriminatory fashion during the pandemic

        26 December 2021 • 8:00pm

        Children with learning disabilities were offered “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic, The Telegraph can disclose.

        GP surgeries asked if teenagers with autism and Down’s syndrome wanted not to be resuscitated, amid concerns about the pressure on the NHS.

        The Telegraph has spoken to two families who were asked about the controversial orders – known as DNACPRs – during routine appointments.

        Both families live in Kent and The Telegraph has seen an apology from their local health authority – who they have asked us not to name – saying that the question should not be asked.

        The families said that they believed they were only asked about DNACPRs because of their child’s learning disability.

        At the beginning of the pandemic, medics were warned that learning disabilities “should never be a reason for issuing a DNAR order “ and therefore if the decisions had been put in place it would have been a breach of their guidance.

        ‘A disgusting question’

        Karen Woollard, who attended a ‘health check’ with her now 16-year-old son, Toby, who has Down’s syndrome, said she was asked by a healthcare assistant if her child should be given a DNACPR.

        “It is a disgusting question”, said Mrs Woollard, who works as a teaching assistant. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting”.

        Another woman, who is the mother of a 16 year-old with congenital severe autism, said that her son was asked if he wanted to be resuscitated during an appointment and initially agreed because he did not understand the question.

        The revelation will fuel fears that patients with learning disabilities were discriminated against during the pandemic and raise concerns that some orders could have been applied without families knowing.

        Dan Scorer, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Mencap, said that “the 1.5 million people with a learning disability across the UK have a right to equal access to healthcare just like anyone else”.

        In June, The Telegraph revealed how patients with mental illness and learning disabilities were given “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic.

        Families, carers and doctors said that medics decided that patients with these conditions should not be resuscitated if their heart stopped – a decision which in one case appears to have led to the patient’s death.

        However, prior to today’s investigation, the cases which have emerged relate to adults, not children.

        In March 2020, NHS England wrote to medics reminding them about guidance from the previous year which said that the term “learning disability … should never be a reason for issuing a DNACPR order or be used to describe the underlying, or only, cause of death”.

        ‘The doctor devalued his life’

        Debbie Corns attended an annual ‘health check’ for her son Oliver, who was 15 at the time, at their local GP surgery in March this year.

        Oliver was diagnosed with a learning disability and congenital classic autism when he was two years old. His mother told The Telegraph that having a learning disability means that their son needs support with everyday tasks including going out safely or managing money.

        Despite this, Ms Corns said he is a “happy and healthy teenager” who attends national swimming galas and has won several gold medals.

        Ms Corns said that towards the end of the consultation, Mrs Corns recalls that the doctor asked her son if he would like a DNACPR.

        Oliver said “yes”, but his mother felt he was unable to understand the decision and corrected his answer, ensuring the documentation reflected this position.

        “I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home. I am a strong person, but I was devastated”, said the teaching assistant.

        “The doctor devalued his life”, she said. “During the pandemic, I worked from home and the question by the doctor confirmed to me that this was the right decision, because imagine he went to hospital after an accident by himself. We would have lost control of his healthcare and they might not have resuscitated him”.

        Several days after the appointment with the doctor, Mrs Corns and her husband sat down with Oliver and asked him how he would like to be treated following a serious accident.

        “If your heart stopped, would you like the doctors to try to save your life or would you like to die?’, we said to him.

        “He went upstairs for 20 minutes, but before leaving for school he looked at my husband and said, “Dad, save my life”.

        “He said it several times over the next few days. It broke our hearts. With the right language, support and time, he did understand. He had time to think about it. When the doctor asked, he couldn’t consent properly.

        “It’s not right and I wonder how many people have got these on the records unknowingly? Parents should check their child’s file”, said Mrs Corns.

        ‘At the bottom of the tree’

        Mrs Woollard said that during a health check for her son, a health assistant told her 15 year-old that she was going to ask his mother an “awkward” question.

        “You don’t want me to tick that he shouldn’t be resuscitated, do you?”, she asked. “I said of course not, please don’t tick that”, I replied. “It was very upsetting”, Mrs Woollard said.

        “To be asked this question makes you feel like your child is at the bottom of the tree. A child with a learning disability has to fight for so much, do they now have to fight for their life too?”

        Both mothers complained to their child’s GP surgery following the incidents and say they are aware of other cases, including one where the GP said a family with religious beliefs had agreed.

        Mrs Corns asked for her CCG not to be named, but The Telegraph has seen a letter they wrote to her apologising that the GP asked about whether her son should be resuscitated.

        The same CCG also posted on social media about the incidents saying that a “template” had been used which “unintentionally [gave] GPs the impression that they must record the status as part of the annual health check”.

        They said that they had contacted practises “advising that this question is not mandatory and should not be asked for our young children”.

      1. We all know the truth is banned. I have had success in sharing some of these through Messenger to like-minded contacts.

      2. Hmm, mine is posted, Johnny.

        I think their guidelines don’t include truth. I prefaced my post with, “Something for the fact-checkers (Opinionists) to get their teeth into.“

    1. Yes, the publishers were obliged to label it as ‘Fiction’.
      But who knows, because Mr Forsyth qualified as a Pilot Officer during his National Service.

    2. Good to hear this.
      Now there is only one Mosquito left airborne, some one in the US has pent years and a fortune getting it up and flying again.

    1. The thing these Lefty quare idiots forget is that *no one gave a stuff*.

      It was your choice what you did in private. All we wanted was you to be happy. Now, you want to tell US how WE should live and what we should think and say. Now you’re grumpy that there’s a backlash against your life choices.

      Do you not realise how far back you have pushed your agenda? How egocentric you are?

      1. Quare is not a term you come cross often.

        Does it mean that the steeplechaser, Quare Times, winner of the 1955 Grand National (Pat Taaffe up), presaged the modern madness?

  36. Good morning, my friends,

    Just failed to post some images of idiots on their mobile phones which a friend of ours sent us. Will try again later

    1. A great friend of ours, with an aversion to mobile phones, sent us these by email this morning.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de4e6fd83841f29c56e99bed814ff3e1aefd7e897e48b36e20eb17dbcbdb4ce4.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/20bfb4824972f1a3f05baeaddbaba143606a0053f1531c5bf92417dfeb8acbfc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e4a9aacfc0cf2f7adfcfa993f08cb607ad19aeabba547e2c2921b8e6a44d685f.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e1b93720c43d10ae6f90c1a3b56e34422439d1918de53eebc1e92084f8d006a4.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/179f23c1fe819bdc1f1e192716deebdf8445bfd0acb9695739efa73318cade4e.jpg

      1. Since imbeciles beget imbeciles, it will only get worse and worse with each successive moronic generation.

    2. The Hubble telescope was defective I recall with a lens misshaped. Then some clever chap worked out a computer programme that compensated for the resulting distortion.

    3. In Whitty’s case:

      There’s no success like failure – and failure’s no success at all.

      [Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero]

        1. But Disney now has the rights, similarly, The Jungle Book.

          Mad people selling off our heritage without so much as a “By you leave?”

    2. Exactly the same as the pre-Christmas diet and the during-Christmas diet. I eat my meal, then 24 hours later, I eat another one.

      1. Must have an obsession, as does Richard Osman, Grizz. Thinking about food every day… ;-))

  40. Interesting Telegraph article from the former chairman of the Vaccine Task Force, on why the OAZ vaccine offers better long-term protection than the mRNA ones, and why the lab results don’t show this.

    Britain’s relatively low recent death toll from Covid compared to Europe may be a result of earlier use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab to vaccinate the most vulnerable, according to the nation’s former vaccine tsar.
    Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the Vaccine Task Force, told The Telegraph that he believed the AstraZeneca jabs offered more robust, long-term protection against severe disease and death than RNA-based alternatives made by Pfizer and Moderna.
    Britain’s Covid death rate has been relatively flat for several months, and there has not been a noticeable surge in Covid deaths due to omicron.
    However, many European countries have recently seen steadily increasing death rates and have more Covid deaths on a like-for-like basis than the UK.
    Figures from Our World in Data, a website run by the University of Oxford, shows the UK has 1.7 daily deaths from Covid per million people. In comparison, the EU as a whole has almost four.
    “If you look across Europe, with the rise in cases, there’s also a corresponding lagged rise in deaths, but not in the UK, and we have to understand that,” said Dr Dix.
    “I personally believe that’s because most of our vulnerable people were given the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Dr Dix said.
    The key, he says, is that although the RNA jabs produce a more obvious and rapid jump in antibody levels in lab tests, other vaccines may be better at priming another part of the immune system: cellular immunity.
    Cellular immunity includes various forms of T cells, including those that destroy infected cells, and also memory cells, ensuring a person can fight off an infection several years after they are first exposed to it. They are slower to react than antibodies and do not prevent infection, but do halt the pathogen in its tracks, making it harder for the virus to cause damage.
    “We’ve seen early data that the Oxford jab produces a very durable cellular response and if you’ve got a durable cellular immunity response then they can last for a long time. It can last for life in some cases.” he said.
    The only notable difference, he said, between the UK and Europe’s vaccine rollout was the approach to the AstraZeneca jab.
    While Britain used its ample stock to rapidly inoculate the oldest and most vulnerable people, officials on the continent besmirched the vaccine’s reputation and dragged their heels on its approval, opting instead to wait for the Pfizer vaccine.
    MRNA vaccines like those made by Pfizer are based solely on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and produce highly specific antibodies. But AstraZeneca, and other jabs like those made by Novavax and Valneva, used a more well-rounded approach, said Dr Dix.
    “We know that with adenoviral vector vaccines and adjuvanted proteins you get a much broader cellular response and I think we need to look at all that data across all the vaccines,” said Dr Dix.
    He added that there was “nothing wrong” with using Pfizer or Moderna as a booster, but alternative vaccines may be a better alternative in the long-term.
    Lab results ‘don’t always translate to the real world’
    The decision to move away from giving a primary dose with AstraZeneca and to only use Pfizer or Moderna for boosters was based on various data, including a major study that showed Pfizer and Moderna to be the most effective. But how these lab results translate into real-world effectiveness remains to be seen.
    “I think we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves by just measuring antibodies and neutralising antibody responses in the lab as that doesn’t follow through for serious disease and death,” said Dr Dix.
    “If you look at all the data, there isn’t a great correlation between neutralising antibody lab results and protection from severe illness and death, they don’t seem to correlate.
    “And that’s almost certainly because the cellular immune response is the important thing to stopping serious illness and death.”
    The lab-based studies had also thus far failed to suitably measure T cell levels over time, something Dr Dix says needs to be urgently addressed if we are to establish the best jabs for annual boosters, which he thinks will be needed for the over-50s and the vulnerable, much like they are for flu.
    “[The T cell analysis method used in most studies] just tells you that there are some T cells in the blood that do recognise antigens in the virus.
    “It doesn’t tell you very much about the quantity or the quality of the responses and it doesn’t differentiate between the different T cell classes very easily.
    “I do think we’ve lost the battle with transmission. There’s no vaccine that is going to change that. I think we should focus on the cellular immune response, and it may just get us out of the woods.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/26/decisive-use-astrazeneca-vaccine-may-have-spared-uk-omicron/

    1. It’s normal for antibodies to decline and T-cells to provide the long-term protection. That’s what natural immunity from earlier infection does.

      1. Exactly. It’s about time the powers that be started taking decisions based on proper, full, data.

  41. Good morning all

    Nice wet day, pouring, mild and breezy.

    Covid-19: India’s unwinnable battle against spitting…if you have spent time in India, you know what the Narasimhans are up against. Saliva graces the streets. Sometimes plain and phlegmy, sometimes blood red from chewing tobacco-laced betel nut or paan, it decorates simple walls and mighty edifices alike. It even threatens Kolkata city’s historic howrah bridge.

    I can remember visiting London 5 years ago , and felt shocked to the core at the sight of people gobbing spit everwhere, I even saw people doing that on Waterloo station .

    Footballers do it on the pitch , a fine example the give , but bods from all over Asia and Africa keep to their dirty habits .

    Spitting has probably been responsible for the spread of this virus .. and probably spread by the great uninvited.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-51908404

    1. I’ve always wondered whether the increase in TB and drug resistant TB is down to the diverse and their habits.

        1. I once assisted a man who had collapsed in the City of London. He was obviously a down and out and was wheezing away and while I was trying to help him, waiting for professional assistance, I must say that the risk of TB was running through my mind.

          2. Probably, but I don’t know, because we moved to Canada and I don’t have the usual round mark on my arm.

          3. I no longer have the round mark on my forearm, either, but at the time it came up like a gigantic wart! Medico took one look and told me I didn’t need the jab.

          4. The round blobs from the heaf test faded after a year or so – I didn’t need the jab. I never met my grandfather or his siblings – they all (except one ) died of TB. My father may have passed his immunity on to me.

      2. It is. The largest concentrations of TB are in the ethnic areas. But one is not allowed to say that as it is racist.

        1. Not surprising. They bring their disgusting “cultural” practices with them, and ensure they are passed down the generations.

    2. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53dee4a9cc804b74561d88d2a3aa1ec1c49302792e28f41be54f2833dade0b28.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b1ea9ded2a54f41b97ef08cd8a34ec4a4af786aa26ca66f0455469dfed855b5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e0c1789f376897261d8e45f2f9e4aba9bbfa2c310643f82e8b5ac466b45d7214.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/521097ce10b093df30ec4e26e1d14658634e66d5a24e394fece8ff1124f88861.jpg Out and about this morning. A tad milder but still a crisp -4ºC.

          1. No, Annie, but I think there is a deranged Methodist hiding behind one of the trees.

            Lol.

    3. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53dee4a9cc804b74561d88d2a3aa1ec1c49302792e28f41be54f2833dade0b28.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b1ea9ded2a54f41b97ef08cd8a34ec4a4af786aa26ca66f0455469dfed855b5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e0c1789f376897261d8e45f2f9e4aba9bbfa2c310643f82e8b5ac466b45d7214.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/521097ce10b093df30ec4e26e1d14658634e66d5a24e394fece8ff1124f88861.jpg Out and about this morning. A tad milder but still a crisp -4ºC.

    4. This is because Londonistan is a toilet, populated by the very people who left one toilet to turn our capital into the same.

    1. I remember long heated discussions in research in the 80s about the value and role of models, and one highly regarded scientist making the point that the best judgements are evidence based, and the most succesful scientific advances throughout history have been based on evidence. His concluding remark was that “models are not, repeat, not, evidence!” He is still alive but retired so I will decline from naming him.

    2. I remember long heated discussions in research in the 80s about the value and role of models, and one highly regarded scientist making the point that the best judgements are evidence based, and the most succesful scientific advances throughout history have been based on evidence. His concluding remark was that “models are not, repeat, not, evidence!” He is still alive but retired so I will decline from naming him.

  43. How accurate are lateral flow tests?

    Experts reveal the best way to take the test and what a faint red line on the ‘T’ means

    According to a meta-analysis of studies by medical database the Cochrane Library, lateral flow tests detect an average of 72 per cent of symptomatic cases and 58 per cent of asymptomatic ones — which could be the reason why you’re testing positive one minute and negative the next.

    Most people should take a lateral flow test twice a week but if you’ve been in contact with someone who has caught Covid-19 you should do a daily lateral flow test for the seven days following.

    “Lateral flow tests are easy to do and provide results in less than 30 minutes. You can take them at home and report your results instantly online through the NHS. This means that anyone who gets a positive result can begin isolating straight away. Lateral flow tests provide accurate and quick results without the need to risk infecting others.”

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/covid-lateral-flow-test-report-omicron-b1982704.html

    By suggesting that it’s normal and responsible to test, test and test again, this is a piece of panic-the-public propaganda. I read frequently of people who are testing every day and shutting themselves indoors for weeks at a time. Isn’t this now stable-door science?

    1. People are frightened. People are happy to be kept frightened.

      I think there’s a degree of terror in the possible chance of dying from covid. I can understand that, but there’s a point where you have to ask if your terror is stopping you living. We don’t live forever.

      1. I found the one test I have taken to be an unpleasant experience that I don’t intend to repeat in a hurry. I certainly won’t be doing daily testing.

        1. #Me Too. Drakeford may have inadvertently done me an expensive favour in shutting down spectators for Bangor-is-y-Coed. I am unlikely to get the full benefit of my annual membership, but at least I won’t have to show a test result in order to gain admission. Hopefully, by the time the reciprocal days at Haydock, Chester, Ludlow and Hereford come round, some semblance of sanity might have returned.

          1. Next-door- neighbour’s partner now well enough to go home – but she’s run out of tests and there are none to be had anywhere…….. I’ve generously offered her mine.

    2. I’ve come across people doing this. Some are expressing their fear of the ‘virus’, others are equally scared but won’t admit to it, claiming to be behaving sensibly. One of the latter was extremely rude to me re my vaccination status, and putting her in her place resulted in the club we were members of banning non-vaccinated people. Being placed on the naughty step because I exercised my legal right to refuse a medical intervention hasn’t bothered me in the least. I wouldn’t want to be associated with people of that stripe anyway.

      1. I have had the vaccine. I’ve had a slight cold this weekend, the first for a long time but I haven’t tested and I won’t be.

  44. Another great day in the Ashes. After almost threatening to make a game of it, England now look like having a couple of days off in which they can have some extra practise to try and avoid a third whitewash in five visits.

  45. Social media is a bad feelings machine. Why can’t we just turn it off for good? 27 December 2021.

    Of course I could delete all my social media accounts. Cancel my season ticket to The Discourse; stop watching as a new villain of the day is crowned on Twitter. You think I don’t want to do that? I Google “lighthouse keeper jobs Orkney” twice a week. But I’m a journalist. The editors who commission me are on social media. I worry about disappearing. And besides, I’m addicted. I’ve checked Twitter eight times writing this piece.

    I need a responsible adult to do it for me. I’ve had enough of the bad feelings machine. Won’t somebody switch it off? Please? Can we switch it off?

    Utterly pathetic. I have no problems with Social Media at all! I don’t get depressed, irate, enraged or suicidal. This is because I don’t use it! This is voluntary. I exercise my personal will!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/27/2021-reporting-harm-social-media-online

    1. Morning all.

      You do realise, Mimty, that your last sentence is exactly what TPTB are determined to stamp out?

      1. To an extent, this is social media. We all keep in touch, look out for one another, share news and opinions.

    2. Perhaps that sums up the guardian’s entire reporting staff – in need of a responsible adult to tell them how to do things.

    3. Try cancelling or opting out of any of those. No facility to ‘Delete Account.’ Anywhere. Believe me, I’ve tried.

      1. As they say in the land you used to visit:

        Mon ouil !

        I have a suspicion that when somebody dies too soon after the ‘vaccine’ that that is not deliberate. What they want is for people to die three or four years later so that the doltish public won’t make the connection.

        1. I have to agree with you.

          A large percentage of people being vaccinated dropping dead within a few days of the jab would start alarm bells ringing in even the densest of people. The MSM could not keep from the public gaze large numbers of people suddenly dying, no matter how much they would wish to: they’re struggling now with the numbers occurring.
          The fact that it is happening at all is probably indicative of the lack of testing performed due to the need to rush to market.
          Ditto variants. Caught on the hop they are having to resort to one lie after another to try and explain how and wherefrom these variants appear. The current target is the non-vaccinated but isolating that group and then seeing variants and infections growing within the “vaccinated” will expose that lie.

          1. There does seem to be a lot of fit, young sportsmen dropping dead on the pitch or collapsing with heart defects.

  47. BTL comment on TCW today:

    christine • 3 hours ago

    “If
    you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized,
    coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished
    and criminalized … If all of this is considered necessary to gain your
    compliance — you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted
    is not in your best interest.”37

    •

    Reply

    •

    Share ›

    1. A friend of mine has received numerous text ‘reminders’ to go and get ‘boosted’. Still suffering from ‘coincidental’ effects post “vaccination”, including fatigue, swelling of the left foot diagnosed as gout and mysterious small red spots appearing and then disappearing on her left hand and arm. Curiously, she was asked if she was experiencing the red spot phenomenon by a 111 operator when calling about another problem. They do know something but will not admit to anything.

      1. I was fortunate in not experiencing any obvious side effects from the two AZ jabs I had – (except – possibly the stiff shoulder) but I’m certainly not going to have another – and definitely not a jab of gene therapy. I don’t want to push my luck any further.

        1. We took two for the team so our grandchildren could have something like a normal youth with lots of socialising.
          Since that promise was obviously a lie, they can stick any further jabs – but not near my arm.

        2. Perhaps you received the placebo shot. The creep now at Education, but formerly “vaccination” minister, admitted to the HoC that a placebo group existed.

        3. Soon after the first AZ jab I developed bursitis in the left elbow. Never had it before; eventually it went away. Not long after the second jab, I lost all feeling in my right little finger, and had partial numbness in the adjacent finger. The Ulnar nerve was discovered to be ‘thickened’, when I had ultrasound investigations. Eventually saw a surgeon, by which time, most of the feeling had returned. Having ruled out diabetic neuropathy, which is gradual (this happened overnight), he asked me whether I’d had a virus. “No,” I replied, “but I’ve had a vaccine which is designed to flood me with spike proteins.” He didn’t disagree, and his letter to my GP confirmed that he thought this may be an adverse reaction to the jab. Touch wood, things are almost back to normal. It was impossible to play the organ with a useless appendage on my hand, hopefully that episode is over.

          Nerve conduction studies next week, and a telephone appointment with the surgeon shortly after. I’m hoping surgery won’t be necessary, since there are no guarantees of success, in fact it could make things worse.

          That’s it for me. I dodged a bullet. The only way they’ll get a mRNA booster into my arm is by force.

          1. Gosh – that was nasty! It sounds as though you had some serious reactions – I hope things are settling down now.

            I don’t know if my stiff shoulder was vaccine induced or not, but it ‘s been like it since the summer when I first noticed it – I had the second jab in April. Painful in certain movements but I have more or less full mobility in it. The worst is getting reverse in my car.

      2. Blimey! That’s like me. Red spots and marks originally on right arm, where I had the jabs, and then some on my left arm. My right foot and ankle is still puffed up. No more fatigue than usual.
        When our GP’s office called to offer us the booster and I said no because of the red marks, the lady paused and then said, “Oh dear.”
        Today we got hectoring texts telling us to get the booster. Rude.
        No way and there is obviously something afoot which is being covered up. Husband is threatening to buy a bazooka in case of a door visit.

        1. I deleted the text I got yesterday. There’s something amiss if they need to do this coercion and threat to get everyone jabbed and jabbed again and again.

          6. I don’t have a smartphone but i still get daily text messages telling me to click the link which i can’t because my phone like Anne’s is dumb.

          8. The link appears when it comes from my GP surgery. This mornings was from NHSbooster and contained no link

          9. I haven’t had one from the surgery lately – they sent one about the flu jab and I ignored it.

          11. Agreed, j, 100%

            …and they think we’re stupid enough to be taken in by these blandishments.

    2. When the green agenda has fully kicked in, however, you will have a cardboard box in exchange for your normal life and lump it.

  49. My mother, who is 96 is trying to decide whether it is better to live to 100 or to go to a clinic in Switzerland. She asked me to ask everyone here what they do with the body in Swiss clinics. It’s a bit difficult lining up for airport security after the injection, and I said the Swiss don’t tend to chuck old ladies in the fondue.

    I said that they might have clinics in Belgium, which is closer, but you have to live there first, and she doesn’t want to live in Belgium.

    Edit – wasn’t there something in Monty Python about a traditional Norwegian dance where they chuck the old lady in the fjord?

    I suggested the Liverpool Care Pathway as a cheap Ryaniair alternative and is available on the NHS, but my mother says they don’t give you anything to drink, and the mouth gets a bit dry.

    1. I read a report that people going to Dignitas were then cremated. Placed in a sealed urn and dropped in the lake. The picture showed a big pile of them on the lake bed.

    2. Tell her to live the rest of her life as best she can and not to worry about what happens after her death.

    3. My grandmother said she was a burden in her last days.
      I told her she was an angel. She allowed the rest of us to show selfless love for her. There was no further benefit to be had from her other than that she allow us to love her.
      She accepted this. In a sense it helped her feel less useless.
      She died in peace with myself and my father at her side.

    4. My Mother often said she’d like to do herself in before she lost her marbles. Problem is, she left it too late. So, when the ward Doctor rang to discuss “Do Not Resuscitate”, she was a bit surprised to find I was ahead of her, and so if Mother has a bad fall / some kind of attack, the DNR kicks in. I did stipulate, though, that I won’t agree to their dehydrating her to death. You wouldn’t do that to a dog, let alome a person (at least, I wouldn’t). Dr agreed. Hope they pay attention.

      1. That seems to be the preferred way to “see them off” these days. Friend’s MiL aged 99 was left to dehydrate in hospital for her last days.

    5. I do remember, Jeremy when I was taking instruction, before reverting to Catholicism before my marriage, that Father Bezant (the instructor) told me of the paucity of space in Switzerland for burials, such that graves of over 75 years where exhumed, the bones being collected in a charnel house.

      His wry comment was that, “Come the resurrection, there’s going to be an awful lot of sorting out therein.”

  50. Only popping in for half an hour.
    I hope all Nottlers had a decent Christmas as we did, but now today we find out our 6 year old grand son has tested positive, his 2 year old sister is more difficult to carry out the test to for obvious reasons. They caught it from their locked down parents. They are so upset and absolutely fed up to the eyeballs with all this, it’s very difficult to put it all into perspective, the whole thing has become extremely disconcerting. I’m still not sure if this so called ‘pandemic’ has deliberately been manufactured as a planned. I have reached the stage now where I simply don’t trust anyone in or who speaks for the government, or any so called expert.
    I’m off the make a curry from al the left over turkey we had due to ‘covoid’.
    Slayders.

    1. Next door neighbour is isolating as her newish partner has tested positive – he’s not feeling too good but it doesn’t sound like much more than a cold.

      1. That’s what our son and DiL said but i’m not sure children have the resistance they obviously have not been jabbed. More than fingers are crossed Ellie.

        1. It’s rarely serious for children unless they have underlying conditions. They’ll be fine, Eddy.

        2. If my 93 year old gets barely a symptom, then I’m sure your wee ones will be fine, Eddy.

    2. Rotten news about the six year old. Does the two year old have to be tested too?
      Our younger grandchild has been tested five times (that we know of) since late September. Four of those were while she was still 3. Negative every time but supposedly testing is mandatory every time they get a slight sniffle.

        2. I’m not surprised, poor little mite. I really think schooling children, little more than babies really, should be exempt from testing especially if they aren’t even unwell. Are babies also supposed to be tested? Utterly cruel.

        1. Absolutely. My husband reckons it is mandate bed the child can go back to school but I think it could be my son and his wife. I would ask them but would likely get my head bitten off and a lecture about ‘being responsible’.

    3. I have said here many times that I believe the tests are rigged to obtain a “positive” from a perfectly healthy person.

      1. I know people who have been negative in the morning and with out having further contact with anyone, been positive next test on the same day !!
        If you look at the details on the boxes it firstly mentions SARs then covid with a different number to 19 .
        Personally I think this variant was brought here from Southern Africa and deliberately released in certain areas of the UK.
        Our Neighbour who traveled back from CT was safe and one of my nieces who lives in CT flew over to the UK isolated and she knew nobody there who had caught it. And now apparently it has arrived in Oz how ???

        2. I don’t believe a word from the NHS or government anymore. I have stopped reading anything relating to covid panic as it’s all couched to scare and intimidate.
          The only thing I did read today was an article in the Daily Hysteria (Express) by a doctor who said that if you’ve had the AZ jabs you’re possibly protected maybe even for life. If that’s so then why in the name of all that’s sane, would I need a different type of booster. Grrrr.

          1. We are being fed a different kind of hysteria, AZ is being put down as less effective than the mainstream jabs.
            Government and public health advice is remarkably in line with whatever shortages pop up in the way of supplies and drugs. I am sure this is purely a coincidence

            As you say, I don’t believe a word

          4. The only reason I had the two jabs was the trip I didn’t go on last March when we were locked down.
            Then it was rebooked to October – and again because the red list was lifted too late. Now booked for February, but looking less and less likely as each day goes by.

          5. SWMBO was jabbed so she could go to UK and see her family. Brother still hasn’t been scattered yet… I’m too much a sceptic, trusting to my well-exercised immune system to take care of me – reinforced by Vit D, C, and other useful over-the-counter preparations.

          6. I still see no reason to think the bug I had in January 2020 was not covid.

            I’ve had nothing since then, not the slightest sniffle. Been taking VitD, Vit C+zinc.

          7. #Metoo, Paul, I prefer to trust my body rather than Big Pharma’s costly medications – containing, God knows what.

          8. And don’t forget the hatred being whipped up against the unvaxxed. Positively Nazist, so it is.

        4. My CT sister is holidaying up the coast near Durban where my 2nd sister has a holiday home, the younger sister and her husband , her daughters , son in law and additional members of the family from Gauteng area have all had the SA version .

          CT sister doesn’t know anyone from Muizenburg and surrounding area who has had this SA Omicron

          When I explained our Christmas dilemna, when they all spoke to me on Christmas day, they all insisted that the LFTs were useless, and that we should understand that we had succumbed to the Omicron variant.

          I really do believe that we are in the middle of an evil experiment thrown at us by mad men.

          1. My niece lives in Summerset West, if I remember correctly Gauteng is quite a tightly knit community. It’s a long long time since I was in the Cape but I loved every minute of it. Our neighbour’s relations, sister and mother live near Simons Town where the naval base use to be. I lived in Humewood PE for about 8 months. Windy and very quiet.
            Our two grandchildren although the little 6 year old lad has tested positive, all though the little girl is not sleeping very well neither have signs of a particular illness. So what is all the fuss about booster vaccinations etc for adults and ‘vaccinations’ for children, it makes no particular sense at all.

      2. Maybe a positive from an avocado, a melon or a swab from Gus’s nose. Other fruits and cats are available.

      3. It looks like Carribean tests are fixed in a way that helps hotels boost revenues.
        A pcr test is mandatory before holidaymakers can return to Canada these are normally arranged through the hotels for them. Quite a few are being told that they tested positive, they need to isolate for two weeks and surprisingly the hotel has a special exorbitantly priced room available for them!

        Not a bad deal for a resort that is running at less than capacity.

        1. A bit like our Yuman roights act shyster lawyers – we’ll fix it for yer and the taxpayer pays – no worries.

  52. This man has a good name for a political adviser – BJ should offer him a job – or a jab!

    “Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night
    Time Industries Association, said: ‘The uncertainty is killing our
    sector at the moment.

    ‘If the
    Government closes businesses for New Year’s Eve, people will simply
    gather in people’s households or at illegal events and it’s going to be
    counterproductive.’”

    1. What disappoints me most is that the press just accept and reprint what they’re told. Whatever happened to “fact-checking” and “independence” and “investigative journalism”? Now, you can’t believe anything told unless you can fact-check it yourself, and, frankly, I can’t be arsed.
      I believe it will backfire on them at some point, when their complicity in spreading propaganda and half-truths comes to light. Maybe even a few of them will be hanged, who knows?

      1. As do the Beeb and ITV- just spout govt propaganda without any question or analysis. I truly despise all the people, be they govt, NHS, MSM or whatever, who are enabling all this hysteria and attempting to run our lives for us.

        1. Despite having been to the well known opticians, I read that as “ruin our lives for us” – maybe I’m right!?

      2. Strewth, Paul, I’m much in favour of hanging with piano-wire on the highest lamppost. For God’s sake bring it on and I’ll be a happy bunny.

  54. Thought for the day.
    Perhaps the Omicron bug isn’t actually a variant of Covid at all, but is merely a variant of the common cold.

    1. 343326+ up ticks,
      S,
      You’ll be in deep trouble when the jabbyknockers come acalling, spreading common sense.

      1. Sounds like Lewis Carroll. My advice is to shun them as well as giving a very wide berth to the Frumious Bandersnatches which cause so much unnecessary unpleasantness these days.

    2. And, as I postulated yesterday the common cold is a corona virus and catching it and recovering from it may be far better than any vaccine which only gives a very low level of immunity.

      The omicron cold could prove to be the great panacea. But if it is then Big Pharma backed up by their bought politicians, will do their very best to suppress the information.

    3. Misattribution? Heretic! You’ll burn.

      Seriously, many, myself included, thought that happened last year re the flu. How would we know whether or not an infection is covid related? Would those people at the testing centres, if they really exist in sufficient numbers to test millions of swabs a week, be aware of the genetic sequences for covid, as compared to, say, a strain of common cold? The edifice has been built on a mound of lies: where does it start and where does it end?

      1. The test, I understand, is for coronavirus and there is a multitude of them. I think it would take far more testing to identify the strain anD, of course, there is the number of cycles they use in the test. Not sure that’s ever been divulged. I know it shouldn’t be above 28 but with all the lies being told i wouldn’t mind betting it might be 40-45 to get the results they want.

        1. It is 40-45. Kary Mullis, the inventor of the test, said you would be able to find anything you wanted at those cycles, and that the test wasn’t suitable for diagnostic purposes, certainly not for the purpose that governments required it. In the case of covid, the test can diagnose only a coronavirus, any old coronavirus, a fragment of dna live, or long since dead. It cannot distinguish between dead or alive dna. It cannot specifically diagnose ‘covid’, only that it is a coronavirus. Thus Kary Mullis was correct. He died, fortuitously for the world’s governments, in August 2019. One could almost argue that governments knew what was coming down the line, especially as orders for the testing kits were starting to be put in end 2018.

  55. 343326+ up ticks,

    Oxford Prof: Academics Fear Mob Will Destroy Their Careers If They Defend British Empire

    What would happen in pre chicken run days is decent folk would find a larger cudgel and add another couple of nails.

    1. Those critics don’t need to do the defending. They simply have to point out the facts.

      If the mob want to remain ignorant, that’s their choice. You aren’t going to convince them with logic.

    1. The “College of Policing” is an entity that was never required. Time to disband it (along with the BBC).

      1. Couldn’t agree more, George. Time to de-politicise any seat of learning.

        Do away with degrees for Coppers and Nurses, recognise that they both have a (separate) job to do and graduate scholarship doesn’t enter into it. It’s all all about, what we in other fields, learnt to do – on-the-job training – learn from those who’ve gone before.

        1. When I was at school you did not need to go to university to qualify as either a solicitor or a chartered accountant. With 5 “O” levels you worked for five years as an articled clerk and studied for the exams during the evenings and your employers gave you study leave. With 2 “A” levels you had to serve 4 years of articles and with a degree you had to serve 3. The quickest way to become fully professionally qualified was to leave school at 15 or 16.

          2. You could- not sure when they were brought in but a BEd was available as a 4th year option.
            I’ve said this before but the finest teacher I ever knew was the Deputy Head at the school in Manchester and she was emergency trained after the war. She only did 2 years training and she was superb.
            I have also encountered teachers with strings of qualifications who were bloody useless.

          3. My godfather did the 2 year training when he left the Navy after WWII.
            He loved his job as a primary school teacher.
            The teacher who finally caused me to switch off from maths was a brilliant mathematician, she had practically every letter of the alphabet after her name; but she was incapable of understanding why I struggled.

          4. That’s the problem when you find everything so easy. It’s really, really hard to comprehend that some people just don’t get it.

          7. MH taught me how to play. I have beaten a few times but not as often as he’s beaten me. Grrr.

          8. Two of the best teachers with whom I have worked were in my English Department. One had read Theology at Durham and the other read Music at Nottingham and mainly taught music but filled up his timetable teaching English. Neither had formal teaching diplomas or a PGCE but both loved their books, were avid readers and had a rare ability to establish an exceptional rapport with their pupils. The examination results of the boys and the girls they taught were outstandingly good and they were both loved and respected by their pupils.

          9. I did my PGCE at Southampton University. It was not very strenuous and some of the lectures were quite enjoyable.

            On one of the courses for example, as a potential English teacher I was given various children’s books – one to read thoroughly each week – and then to discuss in a seminar and say how you could use it in the classroom. During this term I read: Watership Down; The Hobbit; The Wizard of Earthsea; Smith; The Iron Man; The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; The Dark is Rising; and The Silver Sword. (The Harry Potter novels and the His Dark Materials sequence had not been written by then but I re-read all twelve of the Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons novels which I had loved as a child). We also had some lectures on Child Psychology and The Education Act.

            But the most important things were the teaching practices. These tried to establish whether or not you were capable of standing up in front of a class, maintaining control and interesting the pupils in what you were trying to teach them. We spent one full term in a school after an initial spell in a school in the first term as an observer.

            Some were miserable and made the right decision not to go into teaching after all; those of us who enjoyed their teaching practices (mine were great fun) decided to become school teachers. Caroline’s sister is an academic with Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Biology and a Doctorate in her specialised field. She now lectures in universities around the world and has written various books. However when she tried to teach in a school she could not control the pupils and was a total failure at it and had to give up.

          10. I remember one history teacher in my all-girls’ grammar school was completely unable to maintain any sort of order in the classroom – she eventually went back to Cambridge and academe.

          11. ‘Evening, Richard, the thing I learnt most from all 12 volumes of the Swallows and Amazons, (avidly read in the garden sunshine at 7 years old with rheumatic fever) was the gentle moralising throughout. The difference between right and wrong.

          12. I have never undertaken any formal teacher training in any of my jobs throughout my working life. It is noteworthy, however, that in every one of those jobs, I was very soon “pushed” into a tutoring rôle in order to teach the necessary skills to recruits. In my first job, in engineering, I was given such a duty even before I had finished my own apprenticeship.

            In the police I was an accredited tutor constable as soon as I had finished my own probationary period. They wanted me to take on a position at police training school but I have never seen myself as a “classroom” type; theory always irritated me, I was much more comfortable in practical situations. In later careers I helped to formulate and apply training schedules for recruits.

  57. The Green Planet

    David Attenborough still plugging his Green Agenda.
    BBC Sunday January 9th. 2022

    Must remember to send him my electricity bill when it’s due…….!

    1. Aye. I’ve no problem folk going green, but would they happily pay the 30% hike in my bills? No? Why not? Oh! I see! They’re hypocrites who want others to pay for their choices.

    1. I really don’t know why they continued the lie. Well, I suppose I do. Idiots believed it and thought themselves safe, thus encouraging up take.

      Now that crusading army, having been duped and knowing it has are fighting ever harder to justify their unwitting decision.

  59. Living a net zero life has huge benefits for personal wellbeing, new study shows. 27 December 2021.

    “Our research demonstrates that many lifestyle choices not only reduce climate impact but also improve quality of life. This is based on careful evaluation of well-being effects,” Felix Creutzig, of Technische Universität Berlin, told i.

    “A key example is the choice of walking and cycling. More active mobility improves life expectancy significantly and is also related to high happiness – contrasting with being stuck in congestion.”

    “Another key example is a shift to more plant-based diets. The consumption of meat increases the risk of heart diseases, and eating more vegan food leads to a more healthy life. Meanwhile, choosing electric cars instead of fossil-fuel based machines benefits yourself and your co-citizens by reducing local air pollution – though cycling is even better, for yourself and for air quality,” added Dr Creutzig.

    Furthermore, retrofitting houses with heat pumps and other green renovations will create thousands of new jobs in the next decades.

    There was no Central Heating in Dachau or fat people in Belsen!

    https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/net-zero-life-has-huge-benefits-for-personal-wellbeing-new-study-1361152

    1. Well Felix, you knock yourself out – I’m sticking to “normal” life with a car, oil heating, woodburner and meat!

    2. Mr Cruetzig, that’s all very nice. You live that life. Happy for you. Other people want the choice. Do you remember that?

    3. Those who gave up their fat ration for cigarettes ended up having to get closer and closer to the fire. In the end, the lack of fat killed them.

    4. Well, I walk regularly (and lived close enough to my place of work to walk there), but I wasn’t particularly happy when I was working. You need a certain amount of fat (see my comment about the lack of it in the concentration camp). Retrofitting old houses with heat pumps is a stupid idea; they are not sufficiently well insulated (solid walls and wooden floors, anyone?) and many of them don’t have the necessary land for ground source heat pumps.

    6. Felix (he will be happy, but it appears he won’t have nothing) doesn’t appear to have tried to get a heat pump recently. Owing to the imminent removal of a hefty bung (of taxpayers’ money) to install one, there is a severe shortage of parts as the gullible (or gimmes) dash to spend thousands on installing one.

    7. …and cycling on pavements increases the death-rate for the elderly mowed down by cyclists (sorry – from covid).

  60. Afternoon, all. Really depressing poll in my local rag – 80% of respondents think those without a vax pass should be banned from attending anything! The majority think restrictions are too lenient and generally freedom of choice is a very bad thing which should be stamped out 🙁 Moreover ITV Racing is dividing the nation further – celebrating everything “Welsh” (it’s the Welsh National today – behind closed doors thanks to the pretendy Assembly) and never mentioning anything English (like the brilliant English-trained and ridden Shishkin winning an English race). At least the Irish or the Scots didn’t win anything or that would have been another national (any nation but England) fest. Then you had the token black making a fool of himself in the paddock; he’s supposed to be an “expert”, but he claimed that Shishkin was “carrying condition” – i e was fat and unfit – despite the knowledgeable Adele Mulrennan saying she couldn’t fault him because he looked trained to the minute and his skin was gleaming. Shishkin won in a canter defeating proven performers. Will they sack the inexpert “expert”? Of course not. He’s a protected species.

    1. The 80% have been brainwashed, Conners – stay sane with us here! That’s what nearly two years of propaganda has done to them.

      1. That was exactly what I felt. I have long since stopped watching the news of any kind. It’s wall-to-wall hysteria. I did have a chat with a woman pushing a pram, when I was out walking yesterday, who felt the same as I did. She didn’t believe the figures and thought that very few, if any, died “of” Covid.

    2. Shishkin looked marvellous. I’ve seen ITV’s Guy Gibson’s dog-in-the-paddock three times now and he is massively infuriating and invariably wrong. Of course they won’t get rid of him

      1. Shishkin did, didn’t he? What a magnificent performance. Such class! I mute the witterings of GG’s dog-in-the-paddock, but Ed (don’t notice I’m sycophantic) Chamberlain went on about what an “interesting” comment it was and then explained (for those who don’t have any interest in racing, which appears to be most of their intended audience) what carrying condition meant. I’d listened to Adele (who knows what she’s talking about) and seen with my own eyes how well Shishkin looked. I really think that ITV is trying to dissuade people like me (involved in racing since the early eighties) from watching their offerings.

        1. I saw Frankel at Newmarket in 2010, I think it was for the Dewhurst, because everyone was talking about how good he was.

          Even an amateur like me could tell, just by looking at him, that that horse was something extraordinarily special.

          1. I saw him at Banstead Manor Stud after he retired. He was magnificent. He has such presence. “The Look of Eagles”. Some horses just stand out.

    3. Crikey, where did you get the picture of my Welsh ex in-laws?

      Edited after a Mr. Morecombe moment.

  62. Talking of brain-washing, I’ve just got back from the Monday post-Christmas Meet (not on Boxing Day because that fell on a Sunday). Hundreds of happy people (I can’t recall seeing one mask, either), full of bonhomie, plus a good field of riders, waving and smiling. Oh, yes, also a miserable quartet of sabs with a banner (everybody ignored them) who looked like a family of 2 parents and 2 children. What sort of life those children will have I dread to think.

      1. They would be more likely to confiscate the children of the supporters, unfortunately – un-PC leanings, you see 🙁

  63. From this evening’s Grimes:

    “No more new Covid restrictions in England before New Year’s Eve”

    Yeah, right. Just loads effing tests to kill any joy. They are like Rooshian Roulette.

    2. The only reason the buffoon didn’t was because he would have had to recall the MPs and would probably have lost his job, even if he had won a vote for more lockdown.

    6. Silly girl. She’ll catch her death …..
      Nice fleecy lined Liberty bodice is what she needs.
      On the plus side, she already has the suspenders.

  65. That’s me gone for another day. Dreary, grey and damp – and the weather was much the same. Still, had a skype with gorgeous, favourite grand-daughter. She is SUCH fun!

    I hope to join you tomorrow – but who knows what the tests will show? Total defeat, I imagine.

    A demain.

  66. I was too bloated to post this yesterday – Sorry

    Rejoice! Amid all the right-on lunacy, common sense is making a comeback
    Rod Liddle
    Sunday December 26 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    This may seem a strange thing to say at the end of a year in which we have been bossed around by a scientific clergy that cleaves to the view that both death and a case of the sniffles can be made permanently illegal, but 2021 has been rather a good year for that half-forgotten, ectoplasmic thing, “freedom”.

    Or maybe not, for even at the best of times I am an unreliable witness possessed by the guileless optimism of a village idiot, and Christmas just makes it worse. For sure, there have been numerous, horrible persecutions of people who have simply stated an honestly held view shared by the vast majority of the population — none more so than JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock, of course.

    Yes, our universities still reside under the tyranny of a minority who shriek and stamp their feet and then run away with their hands over their ears when faced with an opinion that challenges their own asinine world view, and are encouraged to do so by their dim-witted, desperately ingratiating lecturers. And it’s true that too many institutions still kowtow to the anti-history brigade, the people who wish the past to be eradicated because they see it solely through the narrowest of prisms, devoid of nuance and context.

    So there’s all that, I concede. But there is a certain resistance to these manifest idiocies growing, exemplified by the Court of Appeal case last week involving Harry Miller, a former copper from Humberside.

    Mr Miller, you may remember, was visited by his old colleagues after he had retweeted a short poem they deemed “transphobic”. They told him they had popped round to “check your thinking”, which has a nicely Soviet ring. Mr Miller took particular exception to his non-offence being recorded, under national policy guidelines, as a “non-crime hate incident” on the police database and thus a permanent stain on his character.

    After various lengthy legal proceedings the Court of Appeal agreed unanimously that this policy had a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech, and upheld Mr Miller’s complaint. He said, after the case: “Being offensive is not, cannot and should not be an offence.” Quite.

    Better still, the home secretary, Priti Patel, consequently asserted that the police should henceforth investigate real crimes rather than ones they have made up: “We want officers to focus on policing actual crime, not hurt feelings.”

    There have been more than 120,000 of these “non-crime hate incidents” registered on the national police database, including a chap who whistled the theme tune to Bob the Builder whenever his neighbour hoved into view. I assume that right now someone is very busy with the delete button.

    Priti Patel’s intervention was especially welcome because hitherto this supposedly Conservative government had done battle against liberal overreach with all the resolve and ferocity of a recently gassed badger. I suspect they are as scared of the woke commissars as are the rest of us.

    More good news? In the same week that Mr Miller received his vindication, the Scout Association apologised to an assistant scout leader, Maya Forstater, after a two-year investigation into her, er, appalling behaviour. Ms Forstater’s crime was to have referred to a heavily bearded scout leader as “he” when this chap identified — not wholly convincingly, in my opinion — as “non-binary”. Forstater was charged, absurdly, with bringing the Scouting movement into disrepute, but the heirs to the decidedly odd, masturbation-obsessed Lord Baden-Powell have now conceded they got it completely wrong, and Forstater has been exonerated.

    I like to think they did so because they recognise that the tide of public opinion has turned decisively against this lunacy, and that a respect for freedom of speech and common sense is at last beginning to bloom, like a valiant snowdrop breaking through the desolate frozen ground, or something. But perhaps that’s just my village idiot thing kicking in again, the consequence of hitting myself on the head too hard with an inflated pig’s bladder on a stick.

    There is trouble ahead. The Online Safety Bill, now in draft form, promises to outlaw any comment which someone, somewhere — probably Nick Clegg — deems “harmful”, rather than actually illegal. On past evidence this could mean suggesting, online, that Omicron is perhaps less injurious to health than the bubonic plague.

    So Mr Miller and Ms Forstater’s triumphs are not the end. They may not even be the beginning of the end…

    (Note to sub-editors: Please fill in the rest of that Churchill quote here and wish readers a Happy Christmas. My mince pies are burning.)

    Cancel culture is killing comedy

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F1d0d2a0a-6576-11ec-b5e6-0d64a8c5ca0d.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1010

    Holding governments to account
    One of the less uplifting photographs of the year showed Nigerian lorries dumping Covid vaccines in a landfill site because they had passed their expiry date. No more than 3 per cent of Nigerians are fully vaxed.

    There is a moral (and indeed practical) imperative to ensure that Africa receives sufficient vaccines for its 1.2 billion people. There also seems to be a moral imperative to blame almost anything else on earth — rich countries, capitalism, bad luck, probably racism — for the failure of many of these countries to use the vaccines they have been given without charge, rather than to hold to account their chronically inept and usually corrupt governments.

    My physics report said simply: ‘Who?’
    My daughter’s school report has arrived. I’m delighted to tell you she is a paragon of virtue, diligence and perspicacity.

    But then, all school reports say that these days, because they’re terrified of upsetting the sensitive little monsters. Parents are required to decipher the code. So, “Emmy is very independently minded” really means “she’s an arrogant, gobby little madam”. I still recall her glowing report from pre-school which ended with the “things to work on” bit: “It would be nice if Emmy could learn to resolve conflict situations in a less screamy manner.”

    But it’s hard to complain when you compare this with the sort of stuff I got on my reports. Back then the teachers told the truth. My physics report one year said simply: “Who?” Another said: “This is the last year I will be teaching Roderick, thank Christ.”

    Mum’s gloves were off on Boxing Day
    You are reading this on Boxing Day, an important date in the old Liddle household. It was the day on which my mother would sit down and estimate the value of the presents we had been given by other people. And then compare them with the value of the gifts we had bought for them. All neatly annotated in a ledger.

    “A pair of bloody socks and a box of orange Matchmakers? The stingy cow’s getting nothing next year. That bottle of Baileys was double what she spent.”

    A day, then, of reckoning and bitter resentment. I hope you’re enjoying it and I hope, even more, that 2022 fulfils your wildest dreams. I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it, though.

    1. While I hope the woke Left aggressors get the kicking they so deserve, that government is forcing through a truly dreadful, utterly inept (the internet has already wandered past their waffle) draconian control system the ‘online safety bill’ will do only harm, as will the unecessary crime bill.

      It’s odd. We already have bills that cover the crimes discussed in these documents. Is their only purpose truly just to add more and gold plate them?

      We should be removing legislation, not adding to it.

  67. Interesting thing has happened to the VVOF household, just before Christmas Mrs VVOF had a PCR test kit arrive in the post.
    No idea why, we have safely stored it somewhere in the house, ready to be thrown out after a suitable period.

    1. Hang on to it.
      The rate they are being used suggests that a pristine one, with provenance, will eventually appear on Antiques Roadshow and be worth an absolute fortune in 2121, when the idiocy will have finally been exposed with the release of all the documents.

  68. Channel 4 weather, sponsored by a green energy company, shows an electric car being charged while it is snowing gently.
    Presumably zero wind power and certainly zero solar power. Who do they think they’re kidding?

    1. The Blair ejookatid generation who have only been fed “environmental” science (perhaps I should have put quotes round that, too!) and have had no grounding in critical analysis.

        1. Is your postman an actor in her spare time? If so, she’ll never get herself awarded an Oscar. Lol.

    2. Looking at the background flag, it seems they were one of the early hires for GBNews.

      Lol.

    3. As long as I was in the US they were referred to as “mail carriers”. Mind you, in rural areas they drive from house to house.
      Here on the sunny (hahaha) south coast, we never see the same postie twice. Must be really dodgy territory around all these elderly people.

      1. At my last place, John the now sadly departed postman noticed my Ring video doorbell, and never failed thereafter to pull grotesque faces at it. Here, there seem to be three or four different posties.

        1. I used to have an outstanding postman; an ex-stable lad, he had such a sunny disposition that you always felt cheered and uplifted after even a brief conversation with him. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident.

      2. We know our Postman (Aidan) here in rural Suffolk and, on the odd occasions he may be replaced, we get the same, caring, service.

    4. In the USA they used to call what we used to call The Postman, The Mail Man. I’m told that they now refer to him/her as The Person Person.

      Lol.

  70. https://youtu.be/E_5E791U7Sc
    Who knew globalist Hunt’s wife was Chinese?
    And Mitch McConnell’s… and wasn’t she on Trump’s cabinet?
    And Zuckerberg’s?
    Not that I mind in principle. My own wife hails from foreign climes (Madagascar) and the best US news channel is NTD – Chinese in exile. Not to mention Gravitas and WION.
    But who knew this about Hunt?
    And is there a CCP-EU connection since that is where Hunt wanted to drive us?
    Sometimes I join dots into a squiggle. But sometimes it looks more like a real thing.

          1. It’s more likely we’ll be overrun with Eritreans, Sundaese, Iraqisand all the other dross.

    2. I think I did know she was Chinese – I seem to remember somebody misspoke and said she was Japanese a while ago and was corrected by Hunt himself.

        3. I think he deliberately erred, how could he make a mistake like that? I think he wanted to draw people’s attention away from the fact that she was Chinese in case people started to join dots with CCP connections. In so doing he over-egged the pudding and did exactly what he was trying to avoid, in spades.

    3. I knew it, but only because his girlfriend at university was also Chinese, and it was completely obvious that he only fancied Chinese women.

    4. After marrying a Dublin Jackeen and later a Swede, I’m very happy to have ended up with an English lady, who, despite her Irish and Scottish ancestry, is happy to espouse all things English.

  71. https://youtu.be/E_5E791U7Sc
    Who knew globalist Hunt’s wife was Chinese?
    And Mitch McConnell’s… and wasn’t she on Trump’s cabinet?
    And Zuckerberg’s?
    Not that I mind in principle. My own wife hails from foreign climes (Madagascar) and the best US news channel is NTD – Chinese in exile. Not to mention Gravitas and WION.
    But who knew this about Hunt?
    And is there a CCP-EU connection since that is where Hunt wanted to drive us?
    Sometimes I join dots into a squiggle. But sometimes it looks more like a real thing.

  72. The Boris Johnson charge sheet:

    Carpe Jugulum
    2 DAYS AGO
    The triumphs of Boris!
    Guiding the national debt to record levels.
    Incarcerating millions of British citizens in their own homes for billions of days.
    Destroying hundreds of thousands of livelihoods.
    Turning the NHS into a single disease health service and sentencing tens of thousands of cancer patients to pointless deaths.
    Cancelling people’s holidays, pointlessly, for two years.
    Using utterly witless restrictions that have achieved precisely NOTHING beyond extending the lifetime of a coronavirus pandemic to a completely unheard of TWO YEARS+, a feat never achieved by nature.
    Allowing a psy-ops terror campaign of compliance gainst the British people by the utterly amoral scum of the SAGE behavioural ‘scientists’.
    Not a proud record Boris. Just go    . EDITED

    REPLY
    9 REPLIES
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    Jason Ellis
    1 DAY AGO
    Reply to Carpe Jugulum
    To add to your list….
    Destroying energy security and making Britain reliant on indirect gas supply from Russia.
    Acting so as to ramp inflation to over 7%.
    Housing tens of thousands of illegal Calais Benefits Shoppers in hotels and funding legal for for parasitic lawyers to stop incompetent Home Office Staff from deporting them.
    Giving away British fishing rights to French trawlermen who had been fishing illegally in U.K. waters before Brexit.
    Lying about parties in his own flat whilst they were illegal for everyone else.
    Lying about who paid for his flat refurb.
    Renewing Cressida Dick.
    Raising National Insurance.
    Is there anything he has done right aside from blunderbussing money at vaccine development? This is a symptom of the issue at the heart of the Conservative Party, they’re all incompetent, tokenism obsessed Europhile leftist Tim Nice but Dims. That Boris was the only even vaguely plausible leadership candidate who wanted to get Brexit done says all that needs to be said.

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    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/12/25/will-boris-johnson-survive-2022-issues-could-make-break-prime/

      1. I think it’s more accurate to say he’s not done anything outside of those – such a waste with so much that he could be doing! On Brexit the other scum were going to force us back into the hated EU, cheating the democratic vote, offering another one and just ignoring it completely and offering servitude.

        Of theose crimes the only one I don’t mind is the spending on vaccines. While not vaccinated due to blood clots, we needed something. However, where he went wrong was the lies – the selling it as some magic panacea.

        1. … I think he has too many skeletons rattling about inside his cupboard, including nepotism (#arcuri) which rendered him impotent when others jumped onto the gravy train.
          As for needing something and hence, vaccines… there were early treatments that were deliberately suppressed, notably HCQ/AZITHROMYCIN + ZINC and later IVM. It’s impossible to know what Boris knew or didn’t, but he has surrounded himself with people of stunning mediocrity.

        2. Bojo hasn’t exactly extracted us from the EU other than in name, though. We are still subject to the ECJ, paying France eye-watering amounts to watch the gimmegrants flood over here, have failed to protect our fishermen, created a border in the middle of the Irish Sea and I wouldn’t mind betting that the usual proportion of VAT still goes to Brussels instead of all of it coming to the Treasury as it should now we are “out”. Not to mention we have not ditched all the burden of EU regulations which we could easily have done. Nul points.

          1. True – however, he has the opportunity. We’ve given him that power to actually force those changes. That he’s doing nothing with it is in infuriating bit.

            Everything he’s done has been the wrong thing. Intentionally. I’ve given up. The intent is to cause so much chaos to ruin this country and force us back in to the EU.

          2. Well done, wibbles, you got there in the end! Bojo had no intention of truly getting us out (he’s avoided so many opportunities to do so) and making the most of the opportunities which Brexit offered. Instead, his actions, assisted by the Chancellor, have brought the country nearly to its knees and wrecked the economy. Add to that inflation and the Great Green Scam and it’s very nearly a perfect storm. Now they’ve perfected their psyops project fear, any future vote will go the way of “we can’t possibly survive on our own, let’s rejoin.”

        3. Why did we need something? We could have just gone for herd immunity (as they were going to do in the first place until they were got at). Yes, there would have been deaths, but the sensible thing to have done was to have compared it with ‘flu (from which hundreds die every year). Instead of “Keep calm and carry on”, we got, “panic! Hide! Stay away from everybody! Be terrified! We’re all going to die! We’ll pay you do do nothing.”

    2. Correction: “That Boris was the only even vaguely plausible leadership candidate who pretended he wanted to get Brexit done says all that needs to be said.” Incidentally, they may be dim, but they aren’t nice at all.

    3. Correction: “That Boris was the only even vaguely plausible leadership candidate who pretended he wanted to get Brexit done says all that needs to be said.” Incidentally, they may be dim, but they aren’t nice at all.

    1. Err, it didn’t, as the tax payer had to fork out the money to keep them there. It’s all wasted money that could be better spent on something more useful – like … of, anything, pothole filling. Getting shot of the gimmigrants is a must, alongside preventing the next bunch pouring in.

  74. About 10 days ago, Allison Pearson in the DT passed on some info she had received from a reader who is close to someone in SAGE:-

    ‘The next lockdown starts on 5 January 2022….’

      1. Nah, definitely Allison Pearson in her 17/12 article in the DT. I remember these things.

        Glad you liked the Sting song, I think the words are wonderfully atmospheric.

    3. Which is odd, as folk will be going back to work then.

      I think I may just riot if there’s another blasted lock up. On the upside, people are fed up with it. Even the testaholics, the fervent maskers roll their eyes now.

      1. They still comply, though. We need them to stop rolling their eyes, tear off their masks and shout, “Enough is enough!”

        2. Before Xmas there was a man at the entrance to Asda offering masks to people, a few took one but MH just walked past and I flashed my exempt lanyard. I don’t see many masked people in the shops here and no-one has challenged us.
          The cab driver on the way home today asked if we had our masks and when we said we were exempt he wasn’t bothered.
          When we left home it was lightly spitting with rain- when we came out of dreaded Asda it was pouring. Got rather damp 🙁

    1. But don’t people only go for a PCR test if they think they already have covid and they have already tested positive on a lateral flow test?

        1. Self-selection. Skews the statistics, not a representative population. The question then becomes “Out of a population who feel unwell and suspect they have Covid, how many are testing positive?” Can’t be applied to the whole of Ireland, unless they all feel unwell and fear they have Covid.

          1. So it looks like roughly 50% of the people that feel unwell and think they have covid actually have covid.

        2. You have to include those people who are required to have tests as a condition of employment.

    1. Always assume that tomorrow will be worse than today.
      If it is, you were right.
      If it isn’t, make the most of it, and enjoy the day.

  79. We’ve just been watching the film about Pavarotti – recorded on Christmas Day I think. Never my favourite singer, but it was interesting and plenty of music.

    1. Pavarotti had a wonderful voice in his younger years but his voice became grating in his later years.

      The pianist Andras Schiff on hearing late Pavarotti’s ‘Ave Maria’ decried the sound as ’horrible’. I agree.

  80. We have had an enjoyable evening watching the box .

    Mild 11c and very wet .

    https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81252357

    Two astronomers go on a media tour to warn humankind of a planet-killing comet hurtling toward Earth. The response from a distracted world: Meh.
    Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio,Jennifer Lawrence,Meryl Streep

    We then switched over to the Duchess of Argyll 3 part series on BBC1.

    High society scandals seem go unmentioned these days .

    1. I just watched the racing, then read a few chapters of the book I got for Christmas. Then I gravitated to Nottl 🙂

        1. If you would like me to. It’s called “Voices of Courage” and it’s about the Dam Busters. I also had “Trenchard”, a biography of the Father of the Royal Air Force, for Christmas. Like Phizzee, I tend to have more than one book “on the go” at any one time, so the Dam Busters are in the sitting room and Trenchard is for bedtime reading.

          3. My much older friend in south London had a brother who was in the RAF. He was shot down and killed over Dunkirk; Flying Officer David Jenkins. She and I visited St. Clement Danes together once.
            She never married and I often wonder if she’d had a beau who also died in the war.

          5. I’ve seen it a few times, too (it was the first film I ever watched in a cinema – I persuaded my parents to take me). I also have a lot of books on Operation Chastise.

    3. From Dambuster to DamBUILDER:

      Medals belonging to 21-year-old who Guy Gibson called the ‘best pilot in 617 Squadron’ are to be sold to pay for a new dam in Africa

      Flight Lieutenant John Hopgood’s medals to be sold to raise £40,000
      Money will be used to fund a new dam in Uganda for charity WaterAid
      ‘Hoppy’s’ Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar to be auctioned
      He won the medal before the famous Ruhr valley dams raid in 1943
      Flt/Lt’s Lancaster Bomber lost one engine before the fatal mission
      He lost a second engine on the bombing run and the aircraft crashed
      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3330665/Dambuster-pilot-s-medals-sold-pay-new-dam-Africa.html

      1. I have some medals that I need to research. My grandpa was in the RFC so maybe one is his.

      2. What a total mis-use of funds! Rather like the three pounds a day to sponsor ‘Water-Aid’ among others.

        Teach them to boil water before using it, in order to kill 99.99% of the bugs therein.

      3. How long before the Africans turn into dam busters? Ironically, the current 617 Sqn were given the task of shoring up the dam at Whaley Bridge that was in danger of collapse fairly recently.

  85. Late, I know, but this, from Celia Walden’s piece, struck a chord….

    “Yesterday, at lunch,” wrote one Ione Carver, from Guildford, “the waiter serving me was moving away quickly, and I needed to tell him we had no salt. I put my hand on the bare flesh of his arm. I am 102, and I am concerned that in 15 years, if this comes out, I may be asked to leave the retirement home in which I live.”

    1. Historic quackery now replaced by its current successor, gene therapy via inoculation. How many once good doctors have been turned into quacks by this government’s propaganda?

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