Monday 7 December: The European Union has never been seeking a trade deal in good faith

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/12/07/letters-european-union-has-never-seeking-trade-deal-good-faith/

678 thoughts on “Monday 7 December: The European Union has never been seeking a trade deal in good faith”

  3. Darker than the inside of a cabinet minister, and raining. I’d prefer to go back to bed!
    Morning, all!

  4. From https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/gesundheit-oekologie/corona-wie-sicher-sind-die-in-rekordgeschwindigkeit-entwickelten-impfstoffe-li.124140 (you can switch it to English)
    Corona: How safe are the vaccines developed at record speed?
    Tens of thousands of test subjects have received the preparations so far. Approval authorities evaluate the data. Britain plans to start vaccinating this week.
    December 7 , 2020 – 7:02 am , AFP
    The vaccine developed by Biontech / Pfizer.
    Washington One year after the first corona cases were registered in China, the long-awaited corona vaccines are within reach. In Great Britain, the vaccine from Mainz-based company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer will be administered this week. Biontech / Pfizer and their competitor Moderna have also applied for emergency approval for the EU and the USA. Vaccination campaigns could start in December and herald the end of the pandemic. But many people are still skeptical: How safe are the vaccines developed at record speed?

    Statistics show that almost all vaccination side effects occur in the first six weeks. The participants in the large-scale studies for the vaccines from Biontech / Pfizer and the US company Moderna were observed for at least two months after administration of the second dose – as required by the US FDA for an emergency approval.

    “There is a difference between fast and too fast,” says Saad Omer, director of the Institute for Global Health at the US elite Yale University. An observation period of two months actually covers the “overwhelming majority” of undesirable side effects, he says.

    Typically, the FDA requires six months of observation. If the first eight weeks after vaccination go well, it is very unlikely that you will experience any side effects in the next four months.

    Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna assure that none of the test persons experienced serious side effects in the two months after the second injection – that is, life-threatening consequences that make hospital treatment necessary or permanent impairments. This category includes allergic shocks or neurological problems and, in the worst case, death.

    According to the company, a small proportion of the test subjects suffered from side effects such as tiredness, headache and joint pain and a reddened and painful injection site, especially after the second dose. The approval authorities evaluate far more and more detailed data than the companies announced in their press releases.

    Large number of test subjects
    To underline the seriousness of the current studies, reference is made to their large scope: there are 44,000 volunteers at Biontech / Pfizer and 30,000 at Moderna. The health data of tens of thousands of test subjects are therefore available to the regulatory authorities. In the past ten years, vaccine studies have included an average of only 6,700 test subjects.

    The effectiveness of the vaccines will continue to be monitored even after approval. In the USA and Europe there are well-established systems in place to statistically record a possible increase in health complaints of the vaccinated and to relate cause and effect. In the case of influenza vaccines, for example, the CDC has found a possible minimal increase in cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a curable neurological disease with symptoms of paralysis.

    Post-approval surveillance resulted in the first rotavirus vaccine used in the United States being withdrawn nine months after approval in 1999. Two weeks after vaccination, a few young children suffered from bowel obstruction. Most of the side effects observed with widespread use did not result in a vaccine being withdrawn from the market, says infectiologist Omer. The application is only restricted to certain groups.

    1. “After you, Claude.”
      I’ll stick to scientific observation for … ooh … 5 years? Possibly 10?

    2. “…there are well-established systems in place to statistically record a possible increase in health complaints…” Just as there has been for recording and analysing the incidence and seriousness of Covid-19?

  5. Morning all. Here are the Brexit letters….

    SIR – It is totally transparent that the European Union will not negotiate a trade deal in good faith, seeking only to restrain the United Kingdom from opening its market to the world. It is a recidivist protectionist organisation intent only on exercising control over its citizens.

    An attempt was made by Theresa May, when prime minister, and Sir Oliver Robbins, her Europe adviser, to hide the true scale of EU demands. Boris Johnson was left with no alternative to passing the fatally flawed Withdrawal Agreement in order to make any progress with the fractious Parliament of last year.

    The history of the negotiations should indicate that we give concessions to the EU at our peril. Yes, there will now be recriminations at a “no deal”, but once the dust has settled we can recommence discussions on individual areas, based on a semblance of equality which the EU currently refuses to acknowledge.

    George Kelly

    Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire

    ADVERTISING

    SIR – May I please remind Boris Johnson and his colleagues that we are not negotiating to join the EU. It may be costly to reach no trade deal but freedom has always carried a price tag.

    Mike Nichols

    Earls Barton, Northamptonshire

    SIR – I hope that in the next few days I don’t need to say to my fellow Brexiteers: “With that deal we might as well have stayed in.”

    Alan Love

    Chelmsford, Essex

    SIR – How typical to witness the French government behaving like burglars intent on grabbing what they can before the return of the rightful owner.

    Terry Scott

    Fadmoor, North Yorkshire

    SIR – By not respecting the UK in these negotiations the EU may get what it feared most – a highly successful economy setting an example to the EU.

    Michael John Sidebottom

    Exeter, Devon

    SIR – We are frequently reminded that any trade agreement will have to be translated into the languages of all the 27 states of the EU, with the clear implication that this affects the time it will take.

    Surely the work will be carried out in parallel. It should take no longer than if required for one.

    Robert Whittle

    Hook, Hampshire

    SIR – I hope that someone remembers to tell the Royal Navy it may be needed in the English Channel on January 1 2021.

    David McFetrich

    Poole, Dorset

    1. SIR – We always seem to lose the argument with the EU, and in particular give in to the French. I am trusting the Government this time to hold firm over Brexit.

      My future vote depends on it. I’m still annoyed over the “e” on Concorde.

      Laurence Barnes

      Davenham, Cheshire

  6. Morning again The shame of “taking the knee”……

    Taking the knee

    SIR – When the initiators of “Clap for Carers”, the doorstep applause each Thursday, called a halt, it wasn’t for lack of support but because they realised such things have a time limit.

    If “taking the knee” at football matches had ended at the end of “BLM month”, the events at Millwall on Saturday could have been avoided.

    Jack Hague

    Sheffield

    SIR – As a Cambridge graduate who has a doctorate in early 19th-century economic history, Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, should know better than to say that the Black Lives Matter movement has shone a light on the history of slavery.

    The academic study of the history of slavery stretches back for decades. Black Lives Matter, an extreme Leftist cause, is hardly going to help anyone’s understanding of the past.

    C D C Armstrong

    Belfast

  7. With the importance that the Europeans are placing on keeping a large share of our fishing waters under a Brexit deal it makes those that signed them away so easily back in the day look pretty stupid

      1. 327267+up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        That has truly been revealed
        since major first sampled a curry.

  8. SIR – I have no doubt that Simon Henderson, the Head Master of Eton (Letters, December 5), believes wholeheartedly in the ideas of freedom of speech and an open-minded approach. Indeed, like every fellow head I know, I imagine he spends much of his time at school emphasising the importance of those ideals.

    However, it appears to be the case that lawyers advised him that the talk in question, put on video by a master, breached equality legislation. If so, Mr Henderson had no choice. Schools cannot break the law; Eton is the most scrutinised – and routinely criticised – school in the world and had the lawyers’ advice been foolishly ignored, the risks would have been significant.

    It is an unenviable position, very much a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

    Mr Henderson has been harshly and quickly condemned in the court of public opinion. Many of those whose ire he has invoked are using him as an easy target on which to vent their dislike of a widespread growth of practices they condemn as “woke”.

    Advertisement

    However, as Nikolai Tolstoy writes (Letters, December 1), if a law suppresses freedom of speech, that law needs to be changed, and so that is where criticism should be directed. The two issues should not be conflated.

    Mark Mortimer

    Headmaster, Bryanston School

    Blandford, Dorset

    1. For a headmaster, Mr Mortimer is not thinking straight.

      If an individual puts a video on YouTube which is against equality legislation then it should be referred to the authorities, not “take vengeance” by making the wife and children of the poster homeless.

      1. Mr Knowland has made himself and his family homeless by ignoring the conditions which attach to his tied cottage. Anyone who has ever lived in a tied cottage knows how it works. Mr Knowland’s YouTube channel makes blatant use of the fact that his words come from Eton College… hence the requirement to remove them. Mr Mortimer’s thinking is just fine.

  9. Ms Manning’s letter suggesting roads are named after political or historical figures could lead to some amusing consequences. For example Keith Vaz Way could lead to Jeffries Passage in Sussex, Tony Blair Avenue could be the road to Twatt in Orkney, Gordon Brown Avenue might be on the way to Great Cockup in The Lake District. I’m sure NotTLers can think of others.

  10. Road-naming and so on:

    SIR – As readers have noted (Letters, December 5) developers take great pleasure in embellishing the origins of housing estates in the street names they give them. My favourite is Highfield Meadows (Yeadon, Leeds) – previously Gas Works Street.

    Graham Breeze
    Ilkley, West Yorkshire

    SIR – As Alfred E Neuman said: “The suburbs are where they cut down all the trees and then name streets after them.”

    Stuart Morris
    Goytre, Monmouthshire

    SIR – The day may not be so far off when the sham-bucolic street names of housing developments spreading across the land will be the last echo of the countryside they have devoured.

    Locally, a development has been given the title of Wildlife Way.

    Kevin J Larkin
    Droitwich, Worcestershire

    SIR – Bagshot has been blessed by a development of ugly houses crammed on to a site bounded by the busy A322 and the M3 motorway. It is called The Woodlarks. No woodlark would be seen there unless it was dead.

    June Green
    Bagshot, Surrey

    SIR – In contrast to the tendency to give concreted areas rural names, the French system of naming streets after famous political, religious and historical figures or events provides a constant and enjoyable history lesson.

    Patricia Manning
    Epping, Essex

    SIR – I was amused by the reference by Roger Furnell (Letters, December 5) to an area near the sewage treatment works locally known as Pooh Corner.

    There is a part of central Bath named Terrace Walk where there used to be an elaborate subterranean public lavatory. Bathonians only know it as Bog Island.

    Rob Dorrell
    Pennsylvania, Wiltshire

    1. As Joni Mitchell said, “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot…”

      ‘Morning, Hugh.

      1. There was a spate under Reagan/Thatcher of selling off the national parks to crony developers. It was someone on Reagan’s team, the U.S. equivalent of Nicholas Ridley, who once told the world “the only good park is a car park”.

          1. But unfortunately their demise is never before they have deliberately inflicted much damage on the people they supposedly represent.

        1. The reason Kent number plates carry the ‘G’ prefix is because Kent (as illustrated above) is referred to as “The Garden of England”.

        2. The reason Kent number plates carry the ‘G’ prefix is because Kent (as illustrated above) is referred to as “The Garden of England”.

    2. “Pennsylvania, Wiltshire”
      That’s a new one on me, an English village named after an American state.

      1. There is a village in Sussex named after an American revolutionary. And a duke of Sussex who aspires to become an American revolutionary.

    3. Mad Magazine used to print one liners vertically and diagonally in small print in the margins. One I enjoyed was: A mrs as good as a mule.

  11. Good morning all.
    When I dragged myself out of bed half an hour ago it was still barely light despite being turned 8am.
    Those who agitate for the retention of BST through the winter ought to note that it would have been just after 9.

      1. Yo JBF

        Some politicians etc think that they change the direction in which it shines though.

        Arris Ole being the pointer

    2. I was awoken this morning to the sound of the builders bashing bricks in the wall by my head 🙁 Considering the dog was restless again last night and I had barely got to sleep, I was not best pleased.

      1. Ouch. Not nice.
        Nearly 4.1 decades ago I’d just done my 1st night shift at Eastleigh loco works when the landlord decided to knock the ceiling down on one of the upstairs bedsitters.

  12. The Millwall Revolt. Spiked 7 December 2020.

    The offending noise occurred at the Millwall v Derby game. As has bizarrely been the case for months on end, players for both teams ‘took the knee’ before kick-off. Quite why British football players are still bowing down in sorrow over a police killing that took place months ago and thousands of miles away is anyone’s guess. A group of Millwall fans, who came to watch a football game, not yet another spectacle of obedient subjugation to the politics of identity, booed and jeered. Everyone’s shocked. Which is mad. It would have been far more shocking — and disappointing — if fans hadn’t booed.

    Yes they were also bending the knee to a criminal apprehended in the act.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/06/the-millwall-revolt/

      1. Most of those professional footballers would not understand the meaning of the word ‘genuflect’.

      2. Steady, Grizz – I remember how I forgot to give you a trigger warning on this subject.

    2. Morning Minty ,

      Bending the knee is similar to a Nazi salute .

      Remember the dog owner who was arrested for teaching his dog to raise his paw?

      1. No one was arrested for teaching a dog to raise a paw. He was, however, arrested for repeating the phrase “Gas the Jews” no fewer than 23 times in a video lasting less than 3 minutes. The pictures were not important, the damage was done by the soundtrack.

    3. Spot the brain cell, what are they actually hoping to achieve ?
      I see Lewis Hamilton is not feeling great after being diagnosed with Covid with all the protection they seem to have it’s a bit strange how he came into contact with it.
      He’s feeling a bit tired but nearly better.
      The new boy might have won the GP if the crew had been up to scratch i think it emphasises that it’s more likely to be the car and not specifically the driver that gets across the line.

        1. 🙂Nobody who relies on so much technology and massive financial backing to succeed in a sport deserves individual merit.

      2. A youngish, fit millionaire is felled – very conveniently.
        Was GR’s youth and drive beginning to contrast rather painfully?

  14. Thomas Ravenscroft’s Remember, O thou Man on Radio 3. Annabella Tysall with the Rose Consort of Viols.
    Exquisit!

  16. Usual disingenuous propaganda coming out of the earpiece attached to Nick Robinson when pushing James Cleverly into condemning disgruntled Millwall supporters for expressing open disapproval for the brazen racism displayed by the players their subscriptions pay.

    They say it’s White Van louts against Those Fighting Racism. I say Robinson is cheating the listeners. I sympathise with the Millwall booers, yet I am a middle class liberal and always have been. The fist of BLM aimed at “white privilege” and the genuflecting to gangsters, simply because their race is favoured, is not fighting racism, but promoting racism. I do not want race to be constantly rammed down my throat, and nor do the Millwall supporters.

    Isn’t it time the BBC understood this, and not peddle lies?

        1. Update: I’ve just ordered a Millwall cap – more visible than a scarf. Two can play at virtue signaling!

    4. 327267+ up ticks
      Morning JM,
      All I can say is good job arch criminal / far right racist, Tommy Robinson
      was NOT within the stadium area.

        1. The FA and fascists don’t have a good history. I read that one of the England regulars made it known that he would refuse to ‘follow orders’ and was subsequently dropped.
          I can’t remember the name of the player, nor find any mention when searching for background on this debacle.

          Not sure if that’s down to history being airbrushed or my poor searching skills.

          3. Thank you. I’d been searching for England international players, not club sides. Good for him, pity the current mob (and their agents) are too busy following the PFA/FA ‘advice’ to think for themselves.

    6. White van louts? I take it those are the footballers. The ones fighting racism, the supporters? After all, one side is promoting on the basis of skin colour, the other is condemning it.

      After all, that’s the reality – but that does ignore the BBC reality distortion field.

          3. As I commented t’other day I found T. Dan Smith’s demise in one of those tower blocks he so loved to build for the proles yet always bragged, “You’ll never catch me living in one of those,” poetic justice in the extreme!

  18. Today’s DT Leader:

    As the Brexit negotiations draw ever closer to the deadline, there are signs that the Europeans are moving towards the UK’s position on fishing, as they should. Britain has been perfectly reasonable: its sticking points are straightforward questions of sovereignty over which no self-respecting government would back down. In that spirit, the Government will proceed with the Internal Market Bill with the controversial Northern Irish clauses, which were taken out by the Lords, reinstated.

    The clauses are part of the background music to the negotiations. The problem with the May administration’s approach was that it was never serious about a no-deal Brexit, so the EU could always ask for more in the expectation that we wouldn’t walk away from the table.

    Boris Johnson changed that, and it was Britain’s renewed determination to leave that led to the Withdrawal Agreement and our departure on January 31. Arguably, the Northern Ireland protocol should never have been part of that equation, but Mr Johnson accepted it in the expectation that the EU would negotiate a trade deal in good faith. It has not. The Government therefore felt it had to act to ensure that if these talks do break down and no deal is in sight, a trade barrier will not be imposed down the Irish Sea. In a spirit of “be prepared”, it is even planning to fly in Covid vaccine doses from Belgium by military carriers in case there is disruption at the border.

    To add to the headache, even the Government has acknowledged that the Northern Irish clauses would lead to us breaking the Withdrawal Agreement, and international law – albeit in a “very specific and limited way”. But the alternative would be far worse.

    The UK’s position is that it is a sovereign state, negotiating for a trade deal that enriches both sides. The EU is treating us as if we were still trying to escape them. It wants us to swallow as much alignment as possible, and to show that our departure has consequences, even to the very integrity of our constitution.

    Hopefully, none of this will come to pass. The Government wants a deal. Even Labour MPs, including some of the most ardent Remainers, have said they will vote for one. As the clock ticks down, the UK for once seems relatively united and clear in purpose, while it is the Europeans who must compromise the most because they have taken such an unreasonable position.

    1. Surely the only solution is to get out with no deal and then negotiate as a free sovereign state when the EU no longer deludes itself into thinking that it has us by the short and curlies?

    1. ‘Morning, Maggie.

      Peering out through the mist I noticed that I have what appears to be a squirrel’s drey in the Hawthorn tree in the west hedge. That could be interesting in the spring.

      1. Morning Peddy

        A squirrel’s drey , interesting, because what I assumed to be a drey , was probably a nest of magpies, three of them appeared from the communal warmth.

        1. I wondered about a magpie’s nest, but it doesn’t have the classical domed shape & has appeared in the last few weeks – wrong time of year. In your case, the magpies may have ousted the squirrel & taken over the drey as shelter. It’s the sort of thing they would do.

    2. Doesn’t it smack just a weensy bit of scapegoating. After all most government whether local or national is now irredeemably corrupt. So why pick on these two?

      1. The lack of shame in this instance is that of the press… since there is no intention to do anything of the sort. It is very noticeable that 99.99% of the “news” pertaining to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is in the form of allegation and virtually none of it has, as yet, proved to be truthful.

    3. They are still deciding whether to call them “the Privacy Awards” or “the Modesty Awards”….

    1. Yo OLT.
      We discussed these scam redelivery mails last week before your return. Just delete it.

  25. A SONG FOR CHRISTMAS 2020

    ♫ “An icy wind sighs through the silent street
    Anxious glares from folk you chance to meet
    Suspicions and distrust are born
    This comes to pass, when a mask is worn.

    Covid-19 is everywhere, they say
    And now it’s here, lockdown’s the only way
    But you’ll be safe – no need to be forlorn
    This comes to pass, when a mask is worn

    In these sad times of anguish and distress
    You must Stay Home – Protect the NHS.
    Soon ‘cross the land will dawn a brand new morn.
    This comes to pass, when a mask is worn.” ♫

    1. Good morning DM

      Jonathan Jones
      Wed 15 Feb 2012 13.03 GMT

      From 1347 to the late 17th century, Europe was stalked by the Black Death, yet art not only survived, it flourished. So why are modern Europeans so afraid of epidemics?

      The age when European art rose to glory was an age of disease and death. In 1347 the Black Death – probably bubonic plague – was brought by a Genoese ship to Sicily. In the next few years, it is estimated to have killed about a third of the entire population of Europe. Some cities, such as Venice, lost more like 60% of their people.

      The Renaissance was just getting started, and the plague, too, was at the beginning of its reign of terror. The Black Death was more than a medieval explosion of horror: it kept coming back. For the next 300 years and longer, plague became a regular part of life – and death – in Europe. Terrible outbreaks periodically devastated cities. One of the very last, and most terrifying, of these plagues hit London in 1665 and is described in chilling detail in one of the first historical novels, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year.

      Another catastrophic attack of plague massacred the people of Palermo in Sicily in the 1620s, and this outbreak is chronicled in a new exhibition, Van Dyck in Sicily: Painting and the Plague, 1624-5, at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Van Dyck, the gifted Flemish painter, had been working in Genoa, where brilliant works by him survive. But when he moved on to Palermo he soon found himself surrounded by death and panic. The exhibition shows his art in this eerie light.

      It is a fascinating perspective, yet it is just the tip of an iceberg, for if you think about it, the entire story of the Renaissance and baroque periods in art is sealed inside the kingdom of the plague. Pestilence had all of Europe in its grip from 1347 to the late 17th century, with outbreaks in southern Europe recurring in the 1700s. This means the lives of all the “Old Masters” were experienced in its shadow: Michelangelo, Rembrandt and the rest all faced the danger that mortal contagion could at any moment seize their city.

      Some great artists, probably including Hans Holbein and Titian, died of it. Others tried to fight it with art, like Tintoretto – who painted his greatest works in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, a building dedicated to a plague-protective saint.

      Yet the strangest thing, today, is this.

      The art of these centuries abounds in images of death, sure, yet it is also full of joy. The Europeans of the 1500s and 1600s created incredible treasures and beacons of civilisation. Far from being driven to despair by pestilence, it is as if they were spurred to assert the glory of life.

      In the 21st century, nameless terrors grip us. We fear epidemics that never come. We imagine that if a natural catastrophe hit our society, the result would be total collapse.
      Yet history is actually full of optimistic messages. People have endured disasters that modern Europeans can barely comprehend, and come out not just fighting but winning – just look at St Paul’s cathedral, a hopeful dome that rose from a city blighted by the 1665 plague, and the Great Fire soon afterwards that necessitated Wren’s rebuilding.

      Human beings have a shocking resilience. They also have the power to rise above self-pity. If that does not seem obvious today, just consider St Paul’s, serene in the London sky, a message to us from an age of everyday heroism.

      1. But you are looking into the past, a world that we no longer live in.

        For at least a generation, what we call the lefty inspired education system has been instilling a sense of self importance and their rights into their charges. The old fashioned duties and responsibilities no longer apply to the latest generations.

        So when it comes to this year there is no self discipline, no acting for the common good among the twenty-year olds and the scared hideaway behaviour of many who are a bit older.

        Of covid is real or not is irrelevant, the younger ones are more interested in self gratification – that party or that sale and to hell with consequences for others.

      2. Michelangelo lived to age 89 and was working to the last. Possibly much more chaste than the gay lobby would like us to believe. The fact that his love poetry was dedicated to both sexes and he never married, doesn’t really prove much.

      3. In the fourteenth century death was ever present and people accepted it as a fact of life (as, indeed, it is). Nowadays, nobody likes to talk about death or dying, it’s a taboo subject. They will use euphemisms (“passed over”, was “lost”, etc) rather than face up to the face life is a terminal illness. As soon as we’re born, we start to die.

    2. That was a decent jab at it DM.
      My own expereince of the virus has been that two elderly guys I use to play golf with, caught it early doors at the Cheltenham festival. One hospitalised, but both okay now. The daughter of a local friend of mine who lives in central London caught it, then unknowing passed it on to her husband, brother and his wife. My friend tested positive, one of the many elderly at risk with underlying health issues, but was not badly effected. Two weeks at home he was okay.
      Four people in their early 40s, family members of friends, who are all school teachers. And one middle aged couple, the husband fell over and fractured his hip, tested negative before he was admitted to hospital. Came home after his stay in hospital passed on the virus he caught in hospital to his wife and then both died with in a week of each other. Very sad that one.

    3. Good morning Duncan. Hope your celebrations 🥳 were suitably exciting yesterday for which I wish you a belated Happy Birthday.

      Loved your Christmas song. The British population is deluded if it thinks the vaccine will end all restrictions. People have allowed themselves to be scared witless over a common cold virus and TPTB will not be relaxing this psychological warfare voluntarily. When will people wake up?!!!

  26. 327267+ up ticks,
    European Union has never been seeking a trade deal in good faith

    Many of us knew this, post referendum result.
    Why for nearly 5 years has this, still in situ
    lab/lib/con/brussels coalition been given carte blanche still by the peoples ?

    Yet the genuine Brexitexiteers, the ones who designed and triggered the referendum, (not the one vote day trippers) NOT given a shout initially and listened to ?
    A certain Mr Batten Gave us the route OUT two years before the referendum.

    Total severance, NOT, political tory testicles attaching future latch lifting tentacles.

  27. Back from the post office – bought stamps from cards etc – also a few to beat the price increase. Total bill £117. You be ghasted how flabbered I was,

    Jolly cold out – below zero.

    1. So what you’re really saying is (© Cathy Newman) that you left it to the MR to fix the AGA.

      1. I remember it being 3d to post a letter and 2½d for a postcard or, provided you left the envelope unsealed, a birthday card.

        1. There was also a special rate for
          rolled newspapers but I can’t
          remember what the cost was.

          Good day Bob.

      2. They used to be 1d in 1840 (which would be a lot of money today). I remember when the basic stamp went up from 2d to 2½d – 1951, I’d say…

        Oddly enough, that is roughly equivalent to the present rate. As I said the other day, it is (to an old fogey) a ghastly thought to be spending SEVENTEEN shillings just to post a letter.

    3. Despite the high price of stamps, you must’ve been sending out a LOT of cards! That amount is about half as much as I’ll be paying for my (otherwise average) car’s (significantly pre 2017) VED this year.

      1. NAh – the usual number – but we were stocking up against the massive increase on 1 January 2021. What I bought will last us two years at least!

    4. When I went to post four cards to overseas and a parcel and a calendar, I had to wait nearly half an hour even to get inside the door of the post office. True to form, they only had half the tills operating.

  28. I was reflecting on the difference between the sexes that lost Eton College its international reputation for excellence, and a number of good, thoughtful men the blacklist, courtesy of Black Lists Matter.

    Back in the golden days when men were permitted to marry women, it was said that a woman marries a man in the hope and expectation that he will change, but he never does. A man, however, marries his sweetheart in the hope and expectation that she will never change, but she always does.

  29. SIR – In contrast to the tendency to give concreted areas rural
    names, the French system of naming streets after famous political,
    religious and historical figures or events provides a constant and
    enjoyable history lesson. Patricia Manning Epping, Essex

    I have no doubt, that the Elite of today, just love roads, etc named after Nelson Mandela

    Us lowly tax paying serfs would love to see a Tommy Robinson Rise

    That is not being right wing, we just want our country back

  30. Apologies if posted earlier/yesterday evening.

    Standing in for Lewis Hamilton after the world champion contracted coronavirus, the 22-year-old Briton excelled from the moment he went out on track in Bahrain, and would have won had it not been for a bizarre pit-lane mix-up from the normally flawless Mercedes team.
    Even after that demoted him to fifth place, he might still have pulled it off, only for a puncture to cut short his pursuit of Racing Point’s
    Sergio Perez, who took a brilliant maiden victory.
    The pain was etched all over Russell’s face afterwards, but there was satisfaction, too, and he said he would wake up on Monday morning with his “head held high”.

    Mercedes take note. You can afford to lose Hamilton and see how Russell gets on.

    1. Eat your heart out Hamilton you are not the best driver, you are just lucky to drive the best car as George Russel has proved. Call me a cynic but could this debacle have been on purpose to avoid Hamiltons embarrassment at someone else of ‘inferior’ ranking winning a race is HIS car – slow puncture? yeah right!

      1. Hamilton is a very good driver or he would not have climbed the rankings and been offered the Mercedes seat.

        After all there is so much racism in the sport that he must have been baulked and blackballed at every stage of his career .

        1. They are all good drivers or, as you say, they’d never get offered places in those teams but the difference between them is minimal when you put them in the top car

          1. I’ve certainly thought so.
            Where the driver really makes the difference is when the tracks are wet.

      1. IMHO ‘Accidental on purpose’, perhaps designed to save Mercedes’, Bottas’ and, to a lesser extent, Hamilton’s blushes that a rookie could do so well in a car he had never driven until Thursday and came within 0.026 sec of beating him to pole.

        What was worse still was that in the race Russell beat him off the line, then had the issue (the tyre mix-up), came in again, passed him once more, then had a puncture and nearly passed him again by the last lap after pitting for a fourth time.

        If I were Bottas, I’d be seriously worried at this point. Hamilton will at least be in place for one more season in order to break Shumi’s and his record of 7 world championships, but after that, who knows?

        2. I know that it is specious to compare drivers from different eras; however, highly skilled drivers from yesteryear, such as Jim Clark and Juan Manual Fangio, had to rely on pure driving skill and not technology to win their races.

          In a similar manner footballers, like Pelé and Stanley Matthews, had to kick and head a heavy, often sodden, leather ball with consummate skill. Modern-day players, who routinely kick something no heavier than a balloon, would struggle with such a ball.

      2. Yes, entirely accidental. I did wonder about Russell’s later ‘puncture’ but he admitted that the tyre was deflating in the post-race interview.

      5. Funny you should say that……as i suggested earlier, it might have taken the edge off of the Hamilton knight hood if the rookie had won.
        Perhaps his ‘covid episode’ is to enhance some sympathy for him. They all seem too well protected to suffer the slings and arrows ‘the ordinary folk’ are exposed to.

        1. In sailing races they have ‘one design classes’ as well as boats designed within certain restrictions governed by prescribed limits – e.g length, depth, breadth, sail area etc. etc.

          The RORC and RYA apply a formula to determine a handicap system for yachts which are not of a standard design and the winner of a race is decided by doing the sums which use the elapsed time a boat took to do the course and the corrected time after the handicap formula has been applied.

          Dinghies of different classes which wish to compete against each other use something called the Portsmouth Yardstick. In the 1960’s an uncle of mine called Basil, a doctor in Norwich, sailed his Norfolk Punt in the regatta to establish each class’s Portsmouth rating. To everyone’s surprise he beat the then considered aristocrats of dinghies – the Flying Dutchman, the 5o5 and the Osprey.

        2. I’d defy anyone to find identical horses. But there is no question that some jockeys can win on horses where other jockeys can’t. Because you’ve got two living creatures there is scope for rapport between the two – and horses definitely have their preferences.

          The car doesn’t choose whether or not to race; but the horse very definitely does… and if it chooses not to race there is nothing that anyone can do to force the issue (as has been proved on several occasions to the deep embarrassment of all concerned).

      3. Non-identicality is the basis and incentive for all innovation, research and development in F1, Rastus !

      4. Which is the case in some of the junior formulas, Formula Ford for example. But F1 is a Whole Team sport and many innovations developed in the competitive environment of F1 have been adopted successfully on everyday road cars, adding to road safety and engine efficiency, for example. As sos has said, this incentivises the teams to ever improve. By the way, F1 cars have to comply with many construction regulations, some to ensure safety and some to describe the parameters within which the cars can be designed and built.

  31. Apologies if posted earlier/yesterday evening.

    Standing in for Lewis Hamilton after the world champion contracted coronavirus, the 22-year-old Briton excelled from the moment he went out on track in Bahrain, and would have won had it not been for a bizarre pit-lane mix-up from the normally flawless Mercedes team.
    Even after that demoted him to fifth place, he might still have pulled it off, only for a puncture to cut short his pursuit of Racing Point’s
    Sergio Perez, who took a brilliant maiden victory.
    The pain was etched all over Russell’s face afterwards, but there was satisfaction, too, and he said he would wake up on Monday morning with his “head held high”.

    Mercedes take note. You can afford to lose Hamilton and see how Russell gets on.

  32. Don’t be conned by the anti-vaxx zealots… they threaten to do serious harm to all of us. 7 December 2020.

    As for side effects, those who have had test jabs report that they are comparable to the effects of a mild dose of flu. Most have no side effects at all – not even the ‘symptoms of a mild hangover’ reported by one man who volunteered for a test jab in Texas.

    Nor has the new vaccine been rushed through. Not unless you ignore the 100,000 people who have volunteered to take part in the trials.

    How desperately sad and worrying, then, that so many people – some polls say a third – are ‘uncertain’ or ‘very unlikely’ to be vaccinated.

    Morning everyone. Here’s John Humphreys view of anti-vaxxers; oddly enough there is no mention of Dan Hodges view that it’s a plot by Vladimir Putin to destroy the UK. His assertion that the vaccine has not been rushed through is contradicted by Wikipedia…

    A vaccine for an infectious disease has never before been produced in less than several years, and no vaccine exists for preventing a coronavirus infection in humans.

    …while the number of people involved in the tests were 42,000 and not 100k with no pregnant women included.

    It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion from the propaganda effort that the number of those refusing the vaccine will be even higher than the 30% forecast which would also explain the choice of care homes as first recipients since their inhabitants can be most easily coerced into taking it. There is also the not inconsiderable point that no one knows how long any effect may last (one of the reasons for long vaccine gestation periods) nor whether it prevents you passing it on. Humphry’s makes much of comparing this vaccine with others such as Salk and MMR but this is not a valid position since they were approved under the old system.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2261805-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine/

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9024333/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-Dont-conned-anti-vaxx-zealots.html

    2. Mr Hancock stated on the BBC website that this vaccine “would suppress the virus”

      I’d prefer a vaccine that prevented me catching the virus.

  33. Football Players bending to the BLACK LIVES Movement –

    “BLM – definition as in Wikipedia.
    “Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement advocating for non-violent civil disobedience”

    [Maybe this fits BLM better? – Burn Loot and Mayhem]

    2. It might advocate for it, but oddly it never seems to suggest that the black looting mob shouldn’t smash windows.

    1. And politicians who think that welcoming thousands of freeloading people who hate us – is good for us.

          1. Hi Grizz,

            Tried Hendersons relish for the first time today. Most excellent. Won’t be buying Worcester again.

            I added it to a sweet and sour sauce i was making. Tried a teaspoon full. Very nice.

            Nice to see at least one thing Northerners can get right. 🙂

          2. They used to do a thicker version, Philip, a bit like HP. I’m not sure they still do it though. Yep, it’s always nice to hear of a new Hendo’s convert.

          3. We converted last year. I discovered that Worcestershire sauce was owned by Heinz.

    2. If these are seeds, does this mean that Y-A Brown will eventually meet Diane Abbott. Which prompts me to write that Diane will crush most of the other 31.

        1. I think Vallance, Whitty, Ferguson, Johnson, Hancock, Barnier, Verhofstadt, Gates and Soros all tie for first, in no particular order.

      2. 327267+ up ticks,
        Afternoon VW,
        Hard choice maybe just close one’s eye’s and’
        Pick the prick with a pin prick.

    5. Although he would have much competition, you should add Giuilani.

      After all despite all of the evidence repeatedly reported here, he has not successfully presented any evidence of fraud to the US courts and now he is in hospital having caught the non existent Chinese flu.

      1. I didn’t realise Rudy G. had stated the flu was non-existent. Anyway, it’s very nice of you to mock him at this moment. Presumably you get much satisfaction at any non-mask wearing sceptic who goes down with Covid-19.

          1. Well I don’t think I went out of my way (as you did with Rudy) to ogle over Joe Biden’s broken foot. BTW I rate Rudy a much more principled individual than the incredibly greedy political prostitute (and major thief), Biden.

      2. He has presented a LOT of evidence of voting fraud that benefitted the Dems – don’t forget that the US courts are even more politicised than our now are (which is saying something). Note that local courts mean nothiong except buying time until it gets to SCOTUS, which is (sadly) GoP controlled (i.e. not just independent and following the law/constitution). I don’t recall him saying the Wuhan flu didn’t exist either.

    6. What was it that Dominic Frisby said about the 32nd seed, Lord Adonis, in his Brexit song?

    1. I seem to remember they did a very politicised episode once before, put me right off after that.

      1. Perhaps she’s been told that any future contracts with the BBC depend on her doing what she is told?

  39. SIR – I have resisted the pressure from utility companies to have a smart meter fitted (Letters, December 1). But now I have received a letter from my supplier: “Your meter certification has now expired, which means your meter must be urgently replaced as we can no longer guarantee its reliability. According to the Electricity Act 1989, all electricity meters licenced by suppliers must be tested and certified for accuracy.”

    Do suppliers have the authority to enforce the fitting of smart meters rather than a replacement “non-smart” meter?

    Stephen Whitaker
    Bramhall, Cheshire

    Nice try…our meters were first installed 31 years ago and, to my knowledge, never tested in all that time. I would be asking for a copy of the relevant legislation, Mr Whitaker, with reference to OFGEM if necessary.

    1. Sounds like a shabby tactic to force a smart meter on unwilling occupiers. I received the attached letter in 2012 which states “It’s the law” (Circled). A complete lie of course.

      Doubtless, any inspection of my meter would result in an “unserviceable” verdict, followed by: “the only one I’ve got in the van is a smart meter”.

      I believe that the occupier can insist on the smart meter being installed in “dumb” mode, something they are reluctant to tell us. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/abe449b9634359fb17e08288ff9c713af7532307e1f226c82113af3a21128842.jpg

  40. 327267+ up ticks,
    Answer in honesty not desperation, could this farage reformation mean johnson getting a second term ?

  41. DM Story

    When have Mercedes ever put the wrong tyres on?’: Furious fans claim Lewis Hamilton’s team INTENTIONALLY sabotaged stand-in driver George Russell’s race – as others say rookie’s dream drive shows car is reason for F1 champ’s success

    Motorsport fans have accused F1 giants Mercedes of deliberately sabotaging Lewis Hamilton’s stand-in driver’s race – after he was twice robbed of a fairytale debut win.

    That is what I suggested on this site some time ago before seeing the DM article!

    1. Unless Bottas and LH have already signed for next year I think the team should sign George Russel and Perez. Both together would probably be cheaper than LH alone.

      I watched the race late last night and bet that every English F1 fan had tears in their eyes when the farce happened. Was the team embarrassed by George Russel’s fantastic drive?

      1. Bottas has signed, one Knee LH yet to sign. Russell parent contract is with Mercedes, and Perez is MSM wise being pushed to Red Bull. Racing Point could also bite the reality bullet and bin Stroll Jnr and re-engage Hulkenberg

    3. The latest on LH is he’s got to test negative by Thursday or Russell “deputises” again in Abu Dhabi. It’s 50/50 whether LH drives the last F1 this year, or he’s been told to politely wind his neck in over BLM and omitting him gives him MSM cover.

      Have followed what you put earlier and other’s comments, add to the grist: F1’s not so new owners Liberty Media protecting their investment re MSM market [think Septic land – social media etc] and Racing Point owner Stroll [with his stake in Aston Martin] wanted his slice of the cake as well as deflecting attention for binning Perez for Vettel in 2021 and keeping his son in the car.

      Like all other businesses, F1 is rearranging itself and expect a downturn in profits, they know they can;t keep airing purely for TV, races with no crowds.

      Direct answer to your Q – yes Russell got shafted, and he knows it

  42. DM

    Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will launch their own ‘woke’ awards rivaling the Queen’s gongs to honour significant contributions in the couple’s favourite fields

    Meghan and Harry will award individuals, charities and companies with honours
    Those who champion the Duke and Duchess’s favourite causes will be awarded
    Fields include: ‘Charitable service, education, science and youth empowerment’
    The awards scheme will be run by Duke and Duchess’s Archewell foundation

    I wonder if Harry really is still in lurve with Meegraine?

    1. award winners will all be wax work dolls from Madame Tussauds with the winners being Harry, his missed carriage OH, Carrie Symonds. Rolf Harris to provide artwork

  43. Here’s an article from the BBC from yesterday; “Climate change: Snowy UK winters could become thing of the past” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55179603
    And here’s an article from the Independent in 2011 “Steve Connor: Don’t believe the hype over climate headlines” talking about an Independent article from 2000, quoting “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/steve-connor-dont-believe-the-hype-over-climate-headlines-2180195.html

    1. Apologies to Wham

      Last Christmas – when we were all free
      We didn’t wear masks – and weren’t in Tier 3.

  47. Apparently Colchester United fans booed when the players kneeled.
    Followed by the usual Uriah Heeping on the agony by the chairman afterwards; ‘against racism’ … yada, yada, yada …..
    Sonny Boy has tweeted back that, as a supporter of freedom of speech and opinion, he will no longer support the team or buy any of their merchandise. He used to regularly take the children to home games.

    1. I hope he explains why to the thick chairman. And precisely what the BLM thugs are all about. Worth a stamp.

  48. Just been out to fetch something from the car. There is still lacy frost on the bushes at this time of day.

      1. I don’t even like footie – and that’s an understatement.
        However, I have bought two Lion badges as a gesture of support for real people.

    4. Years ago I knew a woman who was very keen on fox-hunting (remember that?). She called the hounds “Millwall Supporters”…!!

    1. I really don’t understand why people want such tiny dogs. Mongo has never been that small, even as a puppy.

      1. In general I prefer large dogs and our boxer, Rumpole, was adored by everyone. However I was besotted by the sporty cheerfulness of the border terrier I had as a boy.

          1. A Cavachon (just another crossbred in all honesty) is a cross between a Bichon Frise and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Neither breed is inclined to snap. Like poodles, bichons have curly coats which don’t shed making them good for children with asthma and/or other allergies.

            Small dogs are great for small children who are timid with large dogs, or fragile children who move about in wheel chairs. They are also far more suitable for city dwellers with small spaces than large dogs which need to run for miles and require a hearthrug large enough to suit the hearth in a baronial hall to snooze on.

  53. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/no-legal-justification-police-patrolling-county-borders-amounts/

    COMMENT
    There’s no legal justification for police patrolling county borders, which amounts to harassment
    Although guidance suggests that those in Tier 3 should restrict travel outside it, this has no legal force

    FRANCIS HOAR
    7 December 2020 • 9:43am
    Police forces have threatened to stop vehicles leaving Tier 3 areas
    On December 2, the new English coronavirus restrictions – the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020 – came into force. These replaced the regulations imposing during the second ‘lockdown’ (the ‘No 4 Regulations’).

    I wrote for this paper arguing that the Government was wrong to suggest that the No. 4 Regulations imposed a ban on international travel. In the absence of an express provision banning such travel, the principles that must be applied in interpreting ‘secondary legislation’ (regulations made by ministers under powers delegated by an Act of Parliament) would not allow the No. 4 Regulations to be read as imposing any restrictions on leaving England. Those principles apply also to the successor regulations and are as follows:

    Regulations apply only within the territory of England.

    No law may withdraw fundamental rights without clear words (known as the ‘Simms’ principle after an important legal judgment).

    All laws must be interpreted ‘so far as possible’ so that they are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (under Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998), including Article 8, the right to ‘respect’ for a person’s private and family life.

    The UK remains subject to EU law until the end of 2020 and so all legislation must be compatible with its treaties. These include Article 20(2)(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which provides that all EU citizens (and British citizens until 2021) have ‘the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States’.

    The All Tier Regulations imposed on England re-introduce the three ‘tiers’ that had a short life of two weeks in October. They do impose restrictions on those in higher tiers from participating in gatherings that are not permitted within their ‘tier’. So, for example, a person living in ‘Tier 3’ cannot ‘gather’ indoors with more than one other person in a pub, even though those living in ‘Tier 1’ are permitted to gather with up to five other people outside their household in pubs.

    This restriction is limited. It does not prevent a person in a higher tier from going into premises which must remain closed in his or her tier – for example to play squash, which is permitted in Tiers 1 and 2 but not in Tier 3, or to drink (but only with one other person) in a pub that – in an extraordinary act of permissiveness – is actually permitted to serve alcohol without food. Although guidance suggests that those in Tier 3 should restrict travel outside it, this has no legal force and there is no justification for the North Yorkshire Police warning that they will stop cars travelling between areas in Tier 3, which would appear to be harassment.

    Nor, from a travel perspective, would it be reasonable for a hotel or self-catering business to refuse to take bookings from customers in higher tiers. It is important to note that – as with the regulations requiring face coverings in shops or on public transport – there is no duty on a business owner to enforce the requirements. So, for example, while a pub will be required to enforce the laws relating to its tier (whether that be only serving alcohol with food or only permitting gatherings of different households of up to six people), it will not be required to enquire as to whether a customer is within a higher tier.

    The new Regulations in Wales and Scotland, however, do impose express restrictions on travel.

    The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 establish four ‘levels’. Anyone living in Level 2 or 3 (the highest as the lowest level is called Level 0) may not leave that level without a ‘reasonable excuse’; and no person may enter a Level 2 or 3 area without a reasonable excuse. The Local Level Regulations give a large number of examples of ‘reasonable excuse’ (including work, medical emergency, exercise starting and ending within the person’s tier, leading acts of worship and performing elite sport) but these are inclusive not exclusive. Thus, performing an activity not mentioned might be a reasonable excuse.

    The Welsh Executive and Senedd has imposed a similar restriction on the whole of Wales, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the principality without a ‘reasonable excuse’, which is again expressed in inclusive and not exclusive terms.

    These Regulations appear to express themselves clearly. On the face of it, and unlike the No. 4 (‘lockdown 2’) Regulations in England, they cannot be read so as to permit travel because of the absence of express words removing fundamental rights (the ‘Simms’ principle) or so that they are compatible with Convention rights (under the Human Rights Act).

    However, there are two fundamental problems with their lawfulness.

    The first is that they purport to restrict the right of EU citizens to enter and move freely through parts of the territory of the UK. While EU law has traditionally permitted member states to impose more onerous restrictions on its own citizens than on citizens of another member state, this imposition is on its face incompatible with the right of free movement. As has been said, the current statutory position means that any secondary legislation incompatible with EU law is invalid.

    The second difficulty with the Welsh Regulations is that they purport to legislate outside the territory of Wales. They do that by purporting to criminalise residents of Wales as soon as they step onto English soil (save where they have a ‘reasonable excuse’) and by making it a criminal offence for a person leaving Wales with a reasonable excuse (say by going to work) to stop the activity that constitutes a reasonable excuse or to stay away from it, when the reasonable excuse would end.

    Under Section 108A of the Government of Wales Act 2006, legislation of the Senedd cannot extend beyond Wales unless it is ‘in relation to functions exercisable otherwise than in relation to Wales, than is necessary to give effect to the purpose of that provision.’ It is highly questionable that it is ‘necessary’ for the Senedd to impose criminal offences on persons in England in order to achieve the perceived aim of the Regulations.

    In addition to those fundamental problems, each regulation can be overturned by the courts, after a judicial review, if they are irrational, unreasonable or disproportionate. It is strongly arguable that restrictions on movement are disproportionate to their intended object of reducing the spread of the virus, particularly given that most persons travelling outside their areas are likely to do so with a ‘reasonable excuse’ anyway.

    Francis Hoar, a barrister, is acting in judicial reviews challenging the first and second lockdown and the International Travel (‘Quarantine’) Regulations.

  54. 327267+ up ticks,
    May one ask, was the last can of odious worms opened at the last General Election and revealing same type PM / MPs, the very last ?

    These Isles will NOT stand another of the same ilk.

    Peoples must be honest with themselves & ask “What has this lab/lib/con coalition done for my Country / me”

  56. 327267+up ticks,
    Now if there was a chap who knows about caving it is definitely “nige” New Years honours material there for stating the bleeding obvious.

    May one ask, how is Ann Marie Waters party “For Britain” doing because if on the rise then a vote splitter campaign will come into being.
    Let recent treacherous history be a lesson.

    breitbart,
    Brexit: Farage Warns Boris Will Cave, as EU Won’t Give the UK ‘Anything’

  57. I tried a novel approach to the AGA. I relit it. Seems to have worked.

    Bloody thing – just what you want to discover at bedtime that the kitchen is cold for a reason….. Kept me awake half the night.

    1. For the last week I’ve been having problems regulating the Rayburn and the temperature has dropped on occasions. I seem for the last couple of days to have achieved the setting that’s found the “sweet spot” and it’s stable. Could, of course, be famous last words!

  58. Picture in the Telegraph of Millwall players – caption reads . .

    “Millwall players take the knee while Colin Kazim-Richard raises his right fist”
    Now, if memory serves me right, – wasn’t the “Black Fist Salute” the sign of the BLACK POWER Movement – Olympic Games demo?

  59. Isn’t this wonderful?.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c0502fbabed76d3967b67af104d4e3fd80e9154463842258e4c3181bc6125137.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5dfa8423cf52a143069fd07a4ac586b1f8347acaf8fdc5be3f1124a09b1657b8.png

    And a warning to Bill and MR.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eff720914e0af65752642f4af6c422a553aaa3ca54c2e33e8c2d0536c587c74f.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/214101a8c15f38237f795f0b441407e2b436761e6773be9e79d92530f0808e09.png

  60. It may be wintry outside but there is no better stimulating start the day than a freezing shower.

    Start off with douching well under a stream of Hot water, then, in gradual stages:
    Turn it down to Warm.
    Turn it down to Lukewarm.
    Turn it down to Tepid.
    Turn it down to Lukecool ™.
    Turn it down to Cool.
    Turn it down to Cold.
    Turn it down to Perishing.
    Turn it down to Freezing!

    I feel like a Swede who has run, naked, straight from the bastu [sauna] and dived into a frozen lake. Invigorating is not the right word! 😲

    1. I couldn’t imagine anything worse Grizz.
      I’ve only had one sauna, after sweating for half an hour I went into the swimming pool in the garden, as i dipped to shoulder level i thought my head was going to explode, so i quickly got out.
      Once in a hotel I had a dip in a thermal pool in Rotorua North island NZ………. i took my book and thought i’d relax for a bit, too blooming hot for my liking. And very smelly. I’d rather hug a tree.

          2. Some where ‘in storage’ I have a colour slide of three mates hands and arms out stretched against a Baobab tree in a safari park it had an absolutely massive trunk. One like this https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=orYSNqM7&id=8F8E96CA200205D4BD168A772BD06DFA32A91660&thid=OIP.orYSNqM7MHRkIXV2hlnWHwHaFj&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fi.imgur.com%2f5PygsXZ.jpg&exph=1200&expw=1600&q=baobab+tree+image&simid=607995085519587270&ck=F984146567B7B2D1E15F65B67B967EB7&selectedIndex=9&qpvt=baobab+tree+image&FORM=IRPRST

          3. That’s quite a big tree!
            There was quite a big one where we stayed in South Africa one year.

    2. My first trip to Finland was to work with a client up in the north. At the end of the second day the instruction was “OK, now we have a sauna”.

      Bit, I have nothing to wear was met with a smug “Thats right”. So off we went to the top floor of the office building where I discovered that they had a large sauna as well as a deck where we were expected to revel in the snow.

      As Grizzly says, invigorating.

      1. Was in Finland last autumn.
        The top floor of the office was the board room, with a wet bar (well stocked, too), and sauna.
        That was very civilised!

    3. Not if the water in the pipes IS frozen! 🙂

      Jokes aside, I too like to give myself a dose of cold water before leaving the shower – it certainly wakes you up and apparently is good for the skin as well as the circulation (in short doses). I can attest to that as my hands practically froze stiff when outside for a few minutes this morning dealing with all the bins. Even when I had ski gloves on (admitedly cheapo ones) half an hour ago for a short trip to the post office and shops, my hands got VERY cold.

      Those Romans got it right 2000 years ago!

  61. A lovely sky tonight, but the temperature has dropped towards -1½°C and is likely to drop a fair bit further.

    1. Controversial barrister suspended for two years over ‘obscene’ tweets. Dec 19 2019.

      Hewson, a civil liberties and public law specialist, has long courted controversy with her views on child sexual abuse and confrontational manner in expressing them. In a 2013 blog post, she called the Operation Yewtree investigation into historic sex offences “a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did”.

      Her social media activity has drawn attention for many years. In 2015, Legal Cheek reported several examples of tweets sent from Hewson’s Twitter account telling people to “grow up you cunt” and “get off my tits, you cunts”.

      An obvious lesbian with paedophile tendencies!

      https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/12/controversial-barrister-suspended-for-two-years-over-obscene-tweets/

        1. A few more than “several” Bob.

          In Ireland, the age of consent has been 17 years of age since the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935.

  63. Just received a letter telling me that the Clydesdale Bank – the bank I’ve used all my life – is to be no more. The CYBG (Clydesdale Yorkshire Bank Group), having acquired Virgin Money, is dropping the Clydesdale name and logo, and will trade under the Virgin Money name and logo.

    Now here’s the thing. The Clydesdale Bank is one of the three Scottish banks entitled to issue their own banknotes. Does this mean that in future we can expect to see Richard Branson’s smug, highly-slappable face, alongside the Virgin logo, on our banknotes?

    That’s the best reason for a cashless society that I’ve heard to date.
    :¬(

    2. It’s unsettling, isn’t it, when things you’ve known all your life are suddenly no more………..:0(

          2. Do you play as well Grizz ?
            Rastus is a strummer also. He has a very nice Martin acoustic.

          3. I’d make a good punk, Eddy. I’m a master of three chords! I’ve tried all my life to master the instrument but it has always mastered me. Coincidentally I’ve just given away my two guitars to friends who play much better than I ever could. A Fender dreadnought cutaway semi-acoustic; and an Epiphone Les Paul. I’ve kept my 200W Marshall amp, though, in case I start to play keyboards again. I was reasonable, 30 years ago, but nowhere close to Spikey or Geoff standard.

          1. Didn’t Chet Atkins play Gretsch ?
            I have 7 guitars and two home made Ukes. I’m not really that good, my best mate who also plays and sings, and I, went to see Tommy Emanuel at the St Albans area a couple of years ago I felt like chopping mine to bits when i got home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdPRIBfTlpM

            Our eldest son plays lead in a local band as well.

            The Maton guitars Tommy plays are made near Melbourne. Last time we were over there and before we left the UK I tried to book a tour of the factory, unfortunately though it was fully booked 2 months in advance, there were no places available. After we had arrived home they had sent me an email saying some people had dropped out and I could join the tour. Too late……….

          2. Chet did indeed play a Gretsch, in my yoof I played a Hofner Galaxie, a Fender bass and a Burns London. My first one however was a Rosetti acoustic from Frank Hesseys in Liverpool (1954). Sounds like you collect guitars like I collect keyboards (11 at the last count)

          3. Didn’t Chet Atkins play Gretsch
            I have 7 guitars and two home made Ukes. I’m not really that good, my best mate who also plays and sings, went to see Tommy Emanuel at the St Albans area a couple of years ago i felt like chopping mine to bits when i got home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdPRIBfTlpM

            Our eldest son plays lead in a local band as well.

  65. Latest DT News stream

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/07/brexit-news-latest-no-deal-eu-talks-update-fishing/

    Brexit latest news: EU must make ‘small but significant concessions‘ in order for a deal to be reached, minister says

    ‘small but significant concessions’

    I smell betrayal. Maybe the French will reduce their demand to fish in British waters to 9½ years instead of 10 and the EU will gives us their word that they won’t mess about with the N. Irish border or any other aspects of our sovereignty but, of course, this does not have to be written down in any binding form – we must trust in their ‘good will’. Added to which the EU will decide which rules need to be applied to ensure a level playing field and competitive advantage.

    2. Aren’t the words ‘small’ and ‘significant’ contadictions in terms? What we should’ve done is set a much earlier deadline for meeting all our ‘demands’, then go for the ‘Dutch auction’ method of negotiating by taking off one demand of theirs’ from the table for each day or week that it went over time, then the final deadline (and one that gives people and especially business/government depts sufficient time to make other arrangements) means No Deal/WTO only and everyone knows for months, maybe a year what to do.

      1. 327267+ up ticks,
        Afternoon EA,
        Mr Gerard Batten suggested our route OUT two years prior to the referendum but being branded
        as a far right racist, went unheeded.
        Instead we received ” leave it to the tory’s”
        Was this decision made with the tory past track record in mind and a wish to totally
        destroy the UK ?

  66. Put a call through to the hospital this morning to remind them I’m due a 5 year repeat colonoscopy early next month. Told they were way behind with their bookings due to, anyone want to guess? Covid.

    We have saved the NHS many times over and they’ve had nearly 9 months to get organised and they’re not even fully booked up until Christmas. What on earth have these highly paid NHS managers been doing all this time while collecting their full pay and not being furloughed. Certainly not planning. Essentially I suppose i was being told to FOAD.

    Email will be on its way to CEO and MP later.

    2. At least you might get a checkup – I’m supposed to have a yearly checkup for a back issue (range of movement), but the nurse who performs these checkups retire two years ago, so they just said, sorry, not doing them any more. The NHS – serving their own needs for 70 years.

    3. I just had a call from the practice nurse for the GP service at Charing Cross Hospital. “About your flu jab…”. I declined and caught myself telling a fib. I do feel fine and I do live alone but I claimed to be following their rules. I said it without thinking and I sort of follow some of their rules, by default – but I said it because it got the desired response. Oh dear. Very Mohammedan.

      1. The spoiler is achieved by clicking on the icon below your draft post of an eye with a diagonal line through it.

        Alternatively once can put the word spoiler between before the text one wishes to hide and /spoiler after it.

        To see the text one clicks on the dark hiding mask.

        When I am posting ungentlemanly rude jokes – which dismays our more sensitive friends like Garlands – I often try to protect people’s delicate sensibilities by using spoilers.

      1. I’m still trying to work out what Covid has to do with putting a camera up the other end of the body.

          2. A nonsense joke from my schooldays which I have hidden behind a spoiler so as not to offend Garlands.

            When Winston was arrested his girlfriend, Lulubelle, went to the police station to talk to him.

            “Why woz you ‘rested, Honey boy?” she asked him.

            “I dunno,” Winston replied, ” but when I went to the farmers sea to buy film for my camera the girl behind the counter asked me: ‘what size is your brownie?’ So I showed her.”

          1. It could be an alternative to the top down approach i.e. a bottom up approach in search of an elusive covid virus. :-))

    1. And to reiterate the response made late last night: ‘We now need a new Conservative Party as well as a new right of centre newspaper and a new broadcaster.

      What is behind this mass movement to the left? And what have we done to deserve it?’

      1. 327267+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Continued the support for lab/lib/con adding to a crime scene via the polling booth.

      2. We vote against the Left, so we (and I mean ‘The People’) get the pandemic, The Great Reset (aka contiuation of globalisation and corporatism for the few uber rich and their stupid woke allies) and the 4th Industrial Revolution. The MSM were already in their death throws, so grabbed at anything they could that might keep them going. Unfortunately, they grabbed the wrong thing.

    2. She’s been writing in the travel section for some time. We only buy the Saturday one (or get it free from Waitrose) so I never see any other day now the paywall is up.

      1. I looked up her ‘writings’ after I’d posted it – afew travellogues, plus (in late 2018) the obigatory misnadrist diatribe about Brexit, and her playing the victim card for ‘maybe’ at some point getting cancer. I must admit I smiled at the latest comment in the ‘cancer’ article – reaping and sowing and all that.

      2. I looked up her ‘writings’ after I’d posted it – afew travellogues, plus (in late 2018) the obigatory misnadrist diatribe about Brexit, and her playing the victim card for ‘maybe’ at some point getting cancer. I must admit I smiled at the latest comment in the ‘cancer’ article – reaping and sowing and all that.

      3. I cannot contribute to the comments column anymore .. They want me to pay.. My words surely add some value to their stupid newspaper, and keep conversations going.

  69. DUCK, Dear friends.

    The RAF has just flown over NN29;
    I may just have to pop off to hide
    under the kitchen table….

  70. That’s me for this filthy, foggy, freezing day. And the same is promised for tomorrow. Great.

    Have a jolly evening trying your gin concoctions. A spirit that I have never liked.

    A demain

  71. Mr Buckland makes some fair points but omits the big one.

    The Human Rights Act is not infallible

    An independent review will ask whether elements of the Act should change in accordance with our law

    ROBERT BUCKLAND

    Should our Human Rights law still be decided in Strasbourg?

    The concept of fundamental human rights is a profoundly British one. From the signing into law of the Bill of Rights in 1689, to the British lawyers who helped to write the European Convention on Human Rights, we have led the world on this issue for centuries.

    The protection of these basic but important rights has become a beacon for modern societies like ours, signifying a relationship between states and individuals that is built on mutual trust and respect. We should be proud that they have stood the test of time in our country.

    The evolution of our legal system has helped to protect them through the ages. Our organic constitution – made up of various pieces of legislation, common law and convention – prevents us from taking the ill-judged view that an effective legal framework can be captured by a moment in time. Instead we find strength in its adaptability.

    The Human Rights Act (HRA) was enacted to give further domestic effect to the protections in the European Convention on Human Rights, thereby reducing the need for people in the UK to take their cases to the Court in Strasbourg. It has now been 20 years since the HRA came into effect. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights has continued to evolve over that time, affecting the relationship between national authorities and Strasbourg. Over the past 10 years, reforms mean the Strasbourg Court has in some areas given greater deference to national authorities. It is only right that we should ask ourselves how should our domestic courts should respond.

    The HRA also brought with it the ability of the domestic courts to, in effect, re-write Acts of Parliament to ensure that they comply with the ECHR. This has not always been limited to minor, uncontroversial technical changes. For example, in 2001, the HRA was used to essentially strike down the rape shield which had banned the cross examination of rape complainants on their past sexual behaviour. The court held that this law was not compliant with the HRA as it infringed on the right to a fair trial, and used its power to re-write this legislation, adding exceptions to the rape shield law.

    Courts can make a declaration of incompatibility with the ECHR, leaving it to our Sovereign Parliament to decide whether, and if so how, the incompatibility should be remedied. It is surely worth asking whether, and if so how, such important and controversial decisions should be returned to parliament.

    Acts of Parliament are not set in stone and any one Parliament cannot bind its successors. Now is the right time to take a fresh look at the Human Rights Act, see how its provisions are operating and consider whether the framework could be improved.

    As Lord Chancellor, I am a successor to Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who was instrumental in the careful drafting of the Convention in 1950. I think we honour his contribution to the basic rights contained in that document, as well as the political traditions that he and I share, by committing to re-examine the way they work today.

    Let there be no doubt that this government remains committed to human rights and that our Parliamentary democracy must continue leading the world in this area of the law. We believe that an independent review, led by the highly respected former Court of Appeal judge, Sir Peter Gross, is best placed to determine whether there are ways in which the HRA can and should change.

    The Government does not have any preconceived ideas about the review’s findings, but we are looking for options and there are some specific areas where we would like to see a focus – including whether the Act can result in judges being drawn, unduly, into matters of policy as well as law and whether they have struck the right balance between re-writing Acts of a Parliament and making a declaration of incompatibility.

    Reviewing the Human Rights Act is a huge undertaking. These are complex matters of law that interact with our most basic rights. It is precisely because we want to ensure that the Act protects those rights in the most effective way that this Review is taking place.

    Sir Robert Buckland QC is Secretary of State for Justice

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/07/human-rights-act-not-infallible/

    1. A lot of the people who come here, then commit the most awful crimes against innocent people, use the HRA to ensure they stay here getting their taxpayer funded lives. They claim they will be persecuted, if sent back, for the crime they deliberately committed here. With absolutely NO concern for their victim or victim’s family, only thinking of themselves and getting THEIR family here for yet more freeby lives, they should be sent back. Why should we have to fund, and be in danger from, people like this? SEND THEM BACK – NO MATTER WHAT THEY CLAIM THEY’LL FACE.

      2. According to lefty bleedin’ hearts that would make you a racist. I believe it would make you a concerned citizen.

      3. It is seldom easy or even feasible to send them back. Where do you send them back to if they have no papers and would wherever you want to send them agree to take them?

  72. Mr Buckland makes some fair points but omits the big one.

    The Human Rights Act is not infallible

    An independent review will ask whether elements of the Act should change in accordance with our law

    ROBERT BUCKLAND

    Should our Human Rights law still be decided in Strasbourg?

    The concept of fundamental human rights is a profoundly British one. From the signing into law of the Bill of Rights in 1689, to the British lawyers who helped to write the European Convention on Human Rights, we have led the world on this issue for centuries.

    The protection of these basic but important rights has become a beacon for modern societies like ours, signifying a relationship between states and individuals that is built on mutual trust and respect. We should be proud that they have stood the test of time in our country.

    The evolution of our legal system has helped to protect them through the ages. Our organic constitution – made up of various pieces of legislation, common law and convention – prevents us from taking the ill-judged view that an effective legal framework can be captured by a moment in time. Instead we find strength in its adaptability.

    The Human Rights Act (HRA) was enacted to give further domestic effect to the protections in the European Convention on Human Rights, thereby reducing the need for people in the UK to take their cases to the Court in Strasbourg. It has now been 20 years since the HRA came into effect. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights has continued to evolve over that time, affecting the relationship between national authorities and Strasbourg. Over the past 10 years, reforms mean the Strasbourg Court has in some areas given greater deference to national authorities. It is only right that we should ask ourselves how should our domestic courts should respond.

    The HRA also brought with it the ability of the domestic courts to, in effect, re-write Acts of Parliament to ensure that they comply with the ECHR. This has not always been limited to minor, uncontroversial technical changes. For example, in 2001, the HRA was used to essentially strike down the rape shield which had banned the cross examination of rape complainants on their past sexual behaviour. The court held that this law was not compliant with the HRA as it infringed on the right to a fair trial, and used its power to re-write this legislation, adding exceptions to the rape shield law.

    Courts can make a declaration of incompatibility with the ECHR, leaving it to our Sovereign Parliament to decide whether, and if so how, the incompatibility should be remedied. It is surely worth asking whether, and if so how, such important and controversial decisions should be returned to parliament.

    Acts of Parliament are not set in stone and any one Parliament cannot bind its successors. Now is the right time to take a fresh look at the Human Rights Act, see how its provisions are operating and consider whether the framework could be improved.

    As Lord Chancellor, I am a successor to Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who was instrumental in the careful drafting of the Convention in 1950. I think we honour his contribution to the basic rights contained in that document, as well as the political traditions that he and I share, by committing to re-examine the way they work today.

    Let there be no doubt that this government remains committed to human rights and that our Parliamentary democracy must continue leading the world in this area of the law. We believe that an independent review, led by the highly respected former Court of Appeal judge, Sir Peter Gross, is best placed to determine whether there are ways in which the HRA can and should change.

    The Government does not have any preconceived ideas about the review’s findings, but we are looking for options and there are some specific areas where we would like to see a focus – including whether the Act can result in judges being drawn, unduly, into matters of policy as well as law and whether they have struck the right balance between re-writing Acts of a Parliament and making a declaration of incompatibility.

    Reviewing the Human Rights Act is a huge undertaking. These are complex matters of law that interact with our most basic rights. It is precisely because we want to ensure that the Act protects those rights in the most effective way that this Review is taking place.

    Sir Robert Buckland QC is Secretary of State for Justice

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/07/human-rights-act-not-infallible/

  74. In a reply to a post from me this morning, Richard_L replied he took much joy in the fact that Rudy Giuliani (who has apparently been v.unsuccessful in convincing any judges to do anything re. voter fraud) is in hospital with Covid-19. Whose Covid-19 would give you the biggest lift?

    My candidate would be the election fraudster Maduro in Ecuador (and all his major cronies).

      1. Tony Blair, on the basis that he would pass it on to every member of his vast empire of leftie wastrels around the world and they could in turn pass it on their own vast empires of leftie wastrels.

      1. Nah, he’s already past his sell-by.

        Give it to his son and heir and hopefully the son will pass it on to Soros’s daughter too..

      1. Why waste a wish?

        The new Dems will grant them both Arkansacide within 25 months, if Biden wins it.

  75. The writer omits to mention that Hancock has also suggested it…

    On the public health establishment’s dystopian logic, every flu season should bring another lockdown

    Having adopted the collectivist mindset once, it will be far harder to argue against it a second time

    MADELINE GRANT

    Do you believe in life after lockdown? If so, what does it look like? In the tussle between normals old and new, some recently-acquired habits are well worth keeping. People with colds should wear masks on public transport. Improved hand hygiene is a no-brainer; as is staying fit and healthy. Beyond that, it’s Old Normal all the way.

    Ours is a social species, not a socially distanced one. 2021 should be a year of travel, parties, hugs and joyful reunions. I want to see everyone, drink everything, and leave it to hair-shirted eco-warriors to mourn the loss of the diminished world created by lockdown. But will that really be possible? A telling exchange between the Prime Minister and his Deputy CMO revealed this new divide. At last week’s press conference, Jonathan Van-Tam suggested that mask mandates and social distancing could persist for years. The PM disagreed publicly with him but doubtless many in the health and political establishments will not.

    Having adopted the collectivist mindset and lockdown’s underlying logic once, it will be far harder to argue against it a second time. Lockdown was sold as a means of protecting the health service from inundation; which is by no means confined to Covid. Arguably, the NHS has been overwhelmed in the not-too-distant past. A severe flu outbreak in January 2000 filled every ICU bed in London. Media coverage at the time reported hospitals at breaking point, with patients languishing on trolleys in corridors. Stay-at-home orders could conceivably reappear during other periods of high healthcare demand.

    In extremis, the logic of lockdown and recent precedent could justify other intolerable interferences and cultural changes; children with mild colds being kept off school, the arts sector annihilated by continuing social distancing and mask requirements, weddings and other large events cancelled at the last-minute. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but a year ago, who could have predicted the annus horribilis about to unfold? Imagine travelling back to last December and explaining to your former self that, within months, leaving your home would become a matter of public debate, police drones would monitor dog-walkers on remote hillsides, Welsh lawmakers would impose prohibition by executive fiat while their English counterparts argued over the proper circumference of a Scotch egg.

    Already, ministers are hinting at longer-lasting restrictions and a surveillance state that may never be fully dismantled. Last week, the Health Secretary spoke of mass testing for flu, perhaps even the common cold, among the population. History suggests that once governments develop a taste for executive powers they are usually reluctant to relinquish them.

    With an end in sight, it’s tempting to suspend criticism as we await the vaccine. No one wants to make their elderly relatives the Wilfred Owens of the pandemic, killed a week before the Armistice was signed. But alongside improved hand hygiene, 2020 has bequeathed two salutary lessons; the slippery slope has never been better oiled and our liberties are infinitely more delicate than we could have guessed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/06/public-health-establishments-dystopian-logic-every-flu-season/

    1. 327267+ up ticks,
      May one ask, how can the governing overseers say they are protecting the NHS from being “overwhelmed” and then overseeing the Dover potential troop intake at the same time.

    1. Give Scotland independence.

      Cut off ALL money from the UK.

      Close the borders tighter than a flea’s arse and grant independence to the Shetlands and the Orkney’s, with a get out clause that they can be part of the UK away from Scotland if they wish.

      1. The Shetlands and Orkney won’t separate from Scotland; that’s a fantasy. But more importantly what will my country be known as if Scotland becomes independent and what will be its flag?

      1. Nearly right, Bob.

        Its sex is male. It “self-identifies” as an idiot. Note my judicious use of the identifier “it”.

    3. Problem. Only female officers are allowed to search females and only male officers to search males. Can a TG officer only search other M-F TGs?

      2. It would not have been a problem in my day since it would have been required to resign for the disciplinary offence of conduct unbecoming of a police officer.

  78. Here’s an article from the BBC from yesterday; “Climate change: Snowy UK winters could become thing of the past” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55179603
    And here’s an article from the Independent in 2011 “Steve Connor: Don’t believe the hype over climate headlines” talking about an Independent article from 2000, quoting “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/steve-connor-dont-believe-the-hype-over-climate-headlines-2180195.html

    1. We had a temperature registered on the car thermometer of minus 20C here in SW France as well as some snow. The locals had told us we would hardly ever see any.

      We drove up to the UK and the UK roads were awful, with snow and ice and impassable places and pavements like skating rinks.

      ALL the French roads we used to drive North and South had been ploughed and pavements cleared sufficiently to walk on reasonably safely. It rammed home how much better prepared they are here.

        1. Not at all, only 125 metres.

          But when we get the severe cold snaps coming in from the East, combined with clear nights the temperature plummets. We get between -5 and -10 at some point most winters but that was an exceptional year.

          That year even the hot water pipe between the outbuilding that contains the central heating boiler and the house froze one night, luckily the pipe didn’t burst and I was able to keep the heating on all the time and turn the water through every few hours which prevented it happening again. We lost a couple of taps where they had split but I found those immediately they thawed and isolated and then replaced them and improved the insulation around them.

          A lesson that could have been much worse.

    2. I think it was in 2010 that there were satellite photos of the whole of the British Isles blanketed in snow.

      1. I remember it very well.
        I broke my ankle – by tripping on the (indoor) stairs, not slipping over on the ice.
        I felt very silly.

          3. I was visiting. 2009 Valdivia, Villarica & Pukon. 2010 Atacama, San Pedro & Iquique. 2011, 2012, 2013 Santiago, Valparaiso & Viña del Mar.

        2. We missed the “Beast from the East” but arrived home to the aftermath – burst pipe and a flooded bedroom.

    1. I think you mean if people want to cohabit with people of the same sex that’s their choice. Marriage is quite specific; it’s the union of a man with a woman with a view to producing offspring.

  80. The outcome of these negotiations rests on a single question. Will Boris blink?

    Anyone who assumes the trade talks are being conducted with Churchillian resolve on the British side needs to look at the PM’s record

    ROSS CLARK

    Who knows what is going on in the mind of the Prime Minister right at the moment? Certainly not Boris himself, I would guess. This morning he was reported to be going about the corridors of Downing Street singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ to himself – apparently preparing himself for, and indeed celebrating, the possibility of what he likes to call an ‘Australian-style deal’ and everyone else refers to as no deal at all.

    But there is alternative outcome for which everyone needs to be prepared. That is that he folds and, desperate to get a trade deal on the table just as he was a withdrawal agreement last year, we end up with a deal which gives away most of our fish stocks as well as keeping us locked in a regulatory orbit around the EU for decades to come.

    Anyone who assumes the trade negotiations are being conducted with Churchillian resolve on the British side needs to look at Boris’ record. The same man who a few years ago complained that wind farms ‘couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding’ now says he wants our cars and homes entirely provided by them by 2030, in spite of warnings that their intermittency will make this pretty well impossible.

    Look, too, at how his libertarian principles crumbled before Professor Neil Ferguson’s graph back in March and how, on 21 October, he accused Keir Starmer of “wanting to turn the lights out” with a two week nationwide national lockdown – only to call a four week lockdown himself just 10 days later.

    Boris has shown himself to be nothing if not versatile in his views, liable to change his mind according to the last piece of advice he was given, however robust or otherwise the evidence behind it. Michael Barnier, Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen, I am sure, will have taken note.

    On the evidence of the government’s Covid response, all it will take is a frightening graph claiming of how, say, the price of carrots will rocket in the event of a no deal – and a soft deal will be on the cards. UK fisherman will be thrown overboard like a pile of pilchards which exceeds an EU quota, UK manufacturers will find themselves condemned to obey EU diktats forever after.

    Last year’s withdrawal agreement does not inspire much confidence. At the time it was hailed as a coup, an achievement which had eluded Theresa May. Yet this week the Prime Minister is asking the Commons to pass a law which will override that withdrawal agreement, it since having become clear that Boris had only got his deal by agreeing to what May said she never could: drawing a UK internal border down the Irish Sea.

    The chances of Boris caving in have been bolstered immensely by Len McCluskey’s call for Labour to back a trade deal if it is agreed with the EU. Keir Starmer himself is reported to have come to the conclusion that his party should back a deal in the Commons, even though the party currently has no official policy.

    Agree a trade deal – however injurious it is to British interests in the long term – and Boris will be able to pose as a great unifier, reaching out across the Commons in the national interest. But with so many of his own MPs having already gained a taste for revolt by voting against the second lockdown, it would be fatal for his leadership.

    The best solution, by far, would be a trade deal which fully respects UK sovereignty. But I suspect that the EU side is still calculating on Boris capitulating to pretty well all their current demands. Right now I fear that is the most likely outcome.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/07/outcome-negotiations-rests-single-question-will-boris-blink/

    1. 327267+ up ticks,
      Evening WS,
      “Will johnson blink” his eyelashes will be going up / down
      quicker than lady’s underwear in a house of ill repute on a Saturday night, & we the peoples will suffer the same fate as the actions taken.

  82. A warning from Patrick Flynn.

    The issue of fish is a red herring in the Brexit negotiations

    It is the level playing field rules that are the real guts of Brexit, on which we must not compromise sovereignty

    PATRICK O’FLYNN

    To some it is the proverbial red herring, but the totemic importance of fish in the Brexit saga should never be underestimated.

    Back in the days when I was an MEP campaigning at public meetings to get Britain out, I always had a winning line in my back pocket for occasions when I felt I was in danger of living up to Willie Whitelaw’s famous jibe against Harold Wilson: that he was “going round the country stirring up apathy”.

    The thing that would be guaranteed to ignite passions in corn exchanges or village halls was to refer to the sad decline of Britain’s offshore fishing fleet and then simply utter the name of Edward Heath. All hell would break loose.

    In places such as Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft – struggling towns which had once been world renowned for fishing – it was always a home run. But it worked inland too. At one sluggish meeting in landlocked Bedford I recall it being a tremendous “light the blue touchpaper” moment.

    The cultural potency of this issue also played a key role in the referendum itself, with the spectacle of Bob Geldof’s boat of spoiled metro-brats flicking v-signs at protesting trawlermen on the Thames reckoned by many longstanding Brexit campaigners to have been the moment that swung things in our favour.

    With all sides aware of the emotional attachment of the British – and indeed of the French – to their trawlermen, it is hardly a stretch to think that clever spin doctors have worked out how to exploit this in the final stages of talks.

    On the one hand, the issue has always been stamped “handle with care” but on the other the disproportionate passions aroused by the fishing industry compared to its tiny size in GDP terms gives it useful distraction potential.

    Be seen to win on fish and all kinds of other defeats on central but less readily understandable questions could perhaps be smuggled through.

    Therefore, one must approach all the stories about sticking points on fish with caution and scepticism. Was Michael Barnier’s recent suggestion that the EU should only surrender 15-18 per cent of its quota in British waters a genuine negotiating gambit or was it designed to set an artificial benchmark that will allow UK negotiators to claim victory if the figure finally agreed turns out to be 50 or 60 per cent?

    And were reports that Emmanuel Macron will veto the whole deal if French trawlermen are not permitted to carry on fishing indefinitely in the North Sea meant to focus British public opinion even further on this aspect?

    In short, are the battles about fish the politically equivalent of those highly choreographed sequences in televised wrestling bouts in the 1970s, which famously excited the passions of grandmothers in Wolverhampton?

    It is impossible to judge for sure from the perfidious briefings emerging from all sides. But what can be asserted with confidence is that what gets agreed or not agreed on the issue known rather opaquely as “Level Playing Field” will constrain many more future decisions about Britain’s economy and society.

    It is the LPF clauses of any deal that will really set the parameters on how much sovereignty and control Britain is really taking back from Brussels. Will a future UK Government be permitted to step in with direct support to save an ailing company of strategic importance, or indeed an ailing economic sector? Will we be able to offer tax breaks to attract new inward investment? Will we be allowed to tweak our own employment or environmental laws in ways that the EU might find unwelcome?

    This is the real guts of Brexit. The EU has been content to sign free trade deals with many other countries that do not constrain its trading partners on any of these issues. Yet Britain, allegedly on grounds of our economic clout and geographic proximity, is being treated more harshly.

    Any restrictions at all that Britain signs up to will mean diluting sovereignty to some extent. Many of us are not quite absolutists on this front and could be prepared to go along with some limits if we judge the rewards to be worth it.

    After all, we support other international obligations that limit sovereignty. For example, membership of the Nato defensive alliance obliges us to militarily engage on behalf of any member that is attacked – all for one and one for all.

    But as Brexiteers and democrats our initial stance on all such matters should be sceptical. It is up to our governing class to convince us that what they sign up to is proportionate and justified.

    Those who say fishing doesn’t really matter because it only accounts for 0.1 per cent of GDP are missing the point: with Ted Heath’s decision to gift UK waters to the EU as a “common European resource” reversed and freed from the absurd constraints imposed by the Common Fisheries Policy, the UK fishing industry has potential for very significant growth in the years ahead.

    But given that the Government has already resumed sovereignty over our exclusive economic zone as set out under the 1982 UN convention on the Law of the Sea, some kind of British “win” on the issue is all but guaranteed anyway.

    So we must not lose sight of the less emotive LPF clauses and indeed of the governance mechanism to be deployed to resolve any disputes that occur. Could EU judges be in a position to declare legitimate future UK choices illegal? For any deal to be worth supporting we must win on the briny but avoid Brexit in name only.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/07/issue-fish-bit-red-herring-brexit-negotiations/

    1. Give them all the fish that they want, just insist that those fish are either off loaded in the UK for processing and onward transmission and that they pay for the quota, or that they pay the fees and take them home themselves.

      The far bigger issue is sovereignty over what we do with our home industries and laws.

      1. Yes. I agree. The issue is all about sovereignty and always was and from that swirls the issue of our territorial waters. Brexit was always about sovereignty.

  83. Following on from the various posts about snow in a world refusing to be snowless, the BBC is offering you a chance to top up your panic levels tonight with another piece of propaganda.

    Britain’s Wild Weather
    Panorama
    07 December 2020

    The UK’s weather is getting wilder. This year has been a record breaker, with unprecedented rainfall, sunshine and sustained high temperatures. It’s a sign that climate change is already happening in the UK – and it’s going to get worse. Justin Rowlatt visits communities around Britain battered by this year’s extreme weather to find out how they have coped. With access to Met Office data and experts explaining how hot and wet every part of the UK could become, he discovers a future of more heatwaves, intense storms and little snow for most of us, and asks whether we are ready for the even wilder weather that is coming.

    And it’s a full one hour. Strap yourselves in!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q5zz

    2. it might be an improvement on the garbage we get here as we’re daily tsunamied with septic garbage: Ancient Aliens, American UFOs, Swamp People [red necks on marsh boats in Louisiana]. That said other than BBC World News, BBC World Africa at 20.00, never gone near BBC after they pulled 2 yrs ago the Carol Concert at Kings I think on Xmas Eve.

      Rule 1 here, unless live sport, plug in hard drive and movie or documentaries.

    1. 327267+ up ticks,
      Evening TB,
      Beware of false NEc prophets bearing glad tidings.
      They joined the coalition tis now, lab/lib/con/ ukip.
      Proof of the treachery pudding the
      Gerard Batten / Richard Braine treatment.

        1. 327267+ up ticks,
          TB,
          If you find my post confusing then in the nicest possible way may I suggest that you do check out the treatment meted out to
          Richard Braine, voted in by a clear margin in a membership election, and prior to him the treatment meted out to Gerard Batten ex leader re-applying candidate, treachery
          via Nec / farage input.

  87. Isn’t it funny ..

    France didn’t want us to join the EU, they shouted Non Non Non at us

    Emphatic ‘No’ by de Gaulle
    The General gives his reasons
    Nesta Roberts
    Tue 28 Nov 1967 16.51 GMT
    149
    At the start of his press conference at the Elysée Palace, he was asked whether he had made that remark so often attributed to him. He denied it. For a beautiful creature, he said, nakedness was natural enough: for those around her, it was satisfying enough. “But I have never said that about England.”

    At the end of the press conference, he spelt out in detail his reasons for remaining opposed even to the opening of negotiations for British entry.

    The recent report of the Brussels Commission, he said, had shown clearly that membership of the EEC was incompatible with the economy of Britain, with her chronic deficiency in balance of payments. It was also incompatible with the British tradition of obtaining cheap food from all parts of the world.

    It was incompatible with restrictions on the removal of capital from the country and with the state of sterling, which had been thrown into prominence by the devaluation and the loans which had proceeded and accompanied it. All these things prevented Britain joining the solid, interdependent and assured society of the EEC.

    Transformation

    To say that, in spite of all these things, Britain might enter, would mean the explosion of the Community which they had begun to build.

    Theoretically it was true that the economic system of the Six was not the only one which Europe might practise. One might imagine, for example, a free trade area covering the whole of Western Europe, or a free trade unit of 10, 12, or 15 European countries on the lines of the Kennedy Round.

    France did not propose either, since it would mean the abolition of the Common Market, but if they were suggested, she was prepared to examine them within the context of the Rome Treaty.

    What she would not consent to was any association with Britain, which would mean the destruction of the Europe which they had begun to build – a Europe independent of a monetary, political and financial system which was foreign to her. In sum, before Britain could hope to become a member of the Community, she must undergo a fundamental and radical transformation.

    Commenting on the gold fever, the General expressed the hope that the “squalls” which had led to the devaluation of sterling, and which now threatened the dollar might end in the establishment of a monetary system founded on “the immutability, the impartiality, and the universality which are the privilege of gold.”

    He said it was “remarkable” that the total of US balance of payments deficit for the past eight years was precisely that of the total of American investments on Western Europe.

    As had been expected, General de Gaulle maintained what has been his consistent attitude towards the Middle East conflict. At present, he said, the conflict was merely suspended, since the belligerents had not accepted the ceasefire imposed by the United Nations.

    Any settlement must have as its basis the evacuation of territories which Israel had gained by force, the end of all hostilities, and the recognition of each of the States concerned. After this, there must be a new delineation of frontiers, a settlement of the fate of refugees, free navigation in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Suez Canal, and an international status for Jerusalem.

    He maintained his intransigent support of French Canada to the extent of repeating, to the very tone of voice, his famous cry: “Vive Le Quebec Libre!”.

    The General took the matter even further when he said that, since the French Canadians aspired to become the masters of their own destiny, it would be necessary to change all the institutions of Canada, to wipe out “the Anglo-Saxon dominance” and bring about, perforce, a sovereign Quebec.

    Rehearsal

    Domestic affairs brought from the General a rehearsal of France’s industrial economic and technological achievements, with the assurance that she had no reason to fear the lowering of tariff walls, which would come when the Common Market was fully operative next year.

    He added that the first investment necessary was that in the growth of the population of France. That was why the country was “incessantly” adopting measures which would help the expansion of young families.

    After de Gaulle? Somebody was crude enough to put the question. General de Gaulle was not abashed. “Everything has an end, and everybody ends,” he replied. “It may be this evening, or in six months’ time, or in five years’ time, the legal end of my term.

    “If I wanted to make some people smile or gnash their teeth, I might say in 10 years or in 15 years. But the last really I don’t think possible.”

  89. 327267+ up ticks,
    Endgame,
    ‘Remaining Significant Differences’: Boris Johnson to Travel to Brussels For Final Brexit Talks,

    When you are holding the winning hand in the United Kingdom brusseks comes to you unless……

    Final talks = ORDERS.

    1. I saw that a few minutes ago in the DM and wondered if you had seen the report True_Belle. Are you anywhere nearby?

      1. Hello Jill

        No , I am in South Dorset , but I saw that alert on Twitter . My husband is a Hampshire man .

        We are all so worried though because many villages here are being threatened with lots of development , we are fighting off the threat of nearly 500 homes .

        No wonder there is a problem with climate change .. we are being smothered with buildings, solar farms more traffic , building on flood plains and the destruction of broadleaf woodland .

        1. We have an over-population problem, not climate change.
          The climate has always changed, it’s driven by solar activity.

          The destruction of habitats is driving our wildlife to extinction, not climate change.

          1. We have both. It’s true that the climate has always changed, but the pace of change is picking up because of man’s activities and those activities are, in part, a result of the rise in population.

          3. Proven by pretty well every scientist who has looked at the issue. Not accepted by the same people who refuse to accept Biden’s victory and who peddle anti-vaccination stories. i detect a pattern.

          4. The pattern is clear. The credulous serfs who gobble up the swill served up to them by our ‘betters’.

            Covid, Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Emergency, Orange Man Bad, BLM/raycism. Trannies are wonderful, immigrants good. And the end result of buying into this cobblers? Life will be worse for almost everyone.

          5. It is amazing to me how one down to earth sensible comment can hit the nail on the head with just the facts of real life in the real world.

  91. Boris cave in appears to be starting. Independent reporting that Boris has offered to stop the new “law breaking” internal market Brexit clauses , with provisos.

    1. Is there any effective metaphorical way in which the British public could spit in Boris Johnson’s face if he betrays us?

    1. Good night, Peddy. I note that you good wishes are directed at all of us NoTTLers. I also note that Phizee has decided to downvote such a decent and innocent/good-natured wish. It proves to me that Phizzee really is a disgusting piece of Silly Sausage.

        1. As you know, Peddy, a Silly Sausage is the greatest insult I can give to people. In reality, I totally agree with you, but I prefer not to use foul language if I can possibly help it.

  94. I see that the state of Georgia has confirmed Biden’s victory in the election after two recounts, so I’ll repeat a question I posed a week ago and which wasn’t actually answered – what will it take for Trump’s supporters here to acknowledge he lost?

        1. Do you not understand how it works. In the end it will be decided by the Supreme Court.He will appeal and that is were it will end up.

          1. I do understand how it works. Trump needs a case if he’s going to the Supreme Court and I’m asking what case he’s brining? Strangely you seem unable to answer.

          3. You could be more careful in how you speak to people on here. This isn’t a social media platform where people are beastly to each other all the time. (i know i know).

            The majority of posters on here have been posting their views for many years stemming from the Daily Telegraph letters page. It is why others respect their views whether they agree with the point made or not.

            You will never ever get anywhere just by baiting or rabble rousing on here except for scorn.
            Wouldn’t you like to be known for better than that?

          4. I too have been posting on this forum since its Genesis in the old DT pages and whilst Cochrane upsets other posters, it is generally because of his views and not his language. If posters want their views to be respected, then it is only fair to respect Cochrane’s views. Compared with a few others, Cochrane is almost always courteous and on those rare occasions when he isn’t, it is in response to an insult directed at him.

          6. Thank you, Phizzee. I agree with probably 80% of the views expressed on this forum, I am neutral on about 5% and am hostile to the remaining 20%. You will no doubt have spotted that my percentages add up to 105% – that’s because I used a US voting machine to count them up!

    4. I am not really fully committed in this debate but it certainly strikes me that if the courts are completely corrupt and people have been corrupted on a great scale then the courts’ judgements are not going to be very reliable.

      The fact that we know that the MSM is biased in Britain and suspect that it is just as biased in the USA does not exactly give confidence in the system.

  95. Evening, all. The EU has, from the start set out to punish us for our effrontery in voting to quit. Don’t take my word for it, the apparatchiks drawing their fat EU salaries have been quite open about it. Leave Now! WTO is the Way to Go!

    1. 327267+ up ticks,
      Evening C,
      This has been evident since ” job done leave it to the tory’s” echoed early post referendum result.

      The way to go was laid out by Batten two years prior to the result but …. the “experts knew better”

    1. Contents: couple of quid.
      Bottle…..: the rest of the cost.

      We have become a Society
      full of show over substance!

      I challenge anyone to better my
      homemade ‘Sloe Gin’!!

        1. Well, Billionaire Vodka did exactly that. With a brand motto of “It’s good to be the king”, Billionaire Vodka produces the alcoholic drink entirely by hand and completely on demand. Each bottle uses a top-secret Russian recipe and is made in small micro-batches to ensure exclusivity.

          The huge five-litre bottle is covered in approximately 3,000 diamonds and Swarovski crystals and designed by Leon Verre.

          Billionaire Vodka is the most expensive alcoholic drink in the world!

        2. Dear One,
          Have you heard of Ian Puddick?

          Not only are his ‘Police’ revelations
          very interesting but his Gin revelations
          are probably more interesting!!

        1. I don’t like Gin … I had
          an unpleasant experience
          a couple of years ago, when
          I was 23!
          … but sloe gin is something
          else .. I know it is ready when
          the smell of Gin is no longer
          apparent!!!

          1. Alf used to work for Gordon’s in London when we first went out and became a distiller. I used to meet him there when he didnevening shifts and,at one time, I could taste the difference if a publican gave me other than Gordon’s. He became impervious to the smell when he was working there. I’ve never tasted sloe gin.

          3. We used to make Sloe Gin when I was at Gordon’s. The sloe’s were steeped in gin for 3 months the drained and the pulp lightly pressed. If the stone were broken the kernels would turn the gin bitter. It was sweetened with what we called capillaire, a type of sugar syrup. It was a great product and, apparently, still sold by Asda.

      4. Send us a bottle and i will give you my professional opinion. Make a good birthday pressie…hint hint. 🙂

        1. Hint ignored Dear one;
          You are worth so much more than a bottle of Gin.

          ‘Old Bakery Gin.’
          Well!.. If it is good enough for
          H.M. [by Appointment] and Harrods
          I am certain it is okay for you,
          [although I do rather draw the line at
          Harrods!!

    3. One of the most recognisable gin bottles in the world is from Bombay, London’s most well-known gin company.

      However, they decided to go one step further and create a limited edition series called the Sapphire Revelation.

      For $200,000, you’ll receive a jewel-shaped bottle, made from Baccarat crystal, diamonds and sapphires, filled with the best gin the company has ever created.

      After you finish enjoying the gin, you might be able to re-sell the bottle, or keep it as an impressive one of a kind house ornament!

          5. To fund the purchase i would have to sell everything i possess including the house. Not everyone lives in a Chateau you know !

            Would you be prepared to post a pic of yours? No need to make it identifiable in any way. Just a turret or two…

          7. I live in a GreenHouse much to our conservator Corri concern at the time. We’ve made up now Lol.

            My home is a traditional two bed bungalow in an area where there are lots of them. As the exterior became a bit ravaged over the last 35 years i decided to have it rendered in Pistaschio. All of the houses i had previously lived in had been painted in Magnolia. Caused quite a stir.

          8. It’s easily found from all the information I’ve given over the years.

            Seek and ye shall find.

            The best starter for ten is the gite.

          11. Dunno. How fat are you? If we get to any sensible place in the future i would book a gite from you but i would also like to show you a good time……..STOP ! I would be honoured to cook dinner for you and Mrs Sos.

          12. Fat?

            Between you and BT, approximately. Depending on end of winter or end of summer!

            That’s kind, thank you.

          14. They do have very busy lives. I did have to tell them because i was time rich it didn’t belong to them. It’s all very well feeding their pet and watering their garden but to have to do it all the time i thought they were taking the piss. Unlike my family they understood and made arrangements. God i hate Ticks.

      1. At £18 a bottle i expect M&S will sell all their stock. Get your timing right for Ebay and double the price.

        If your good lady bought three bottles they are probably earmarked for presents. Either that or she needs help from AA. 🙂

          1. That would be annoying. I bought someone a rather expensive bottle of men’s cologne (about £100) for a birthday. When i asked him how he liked it he said he had left it in his cabin on a weekend cruise. He also didn’t bother to contact the company to get it back. Made me suspicious so he got socks next time.

          2. Years ago a man I knew, although married, used to buy gifts for a woman he knew. After she mentioned one day that her son needed a new laptop he went and bought her a new £300 laptop.and proudly presented it to her not telling her the cost. Next time he saw her he asked if it was ok for the son. Her reply – “It wasn’t really what he wanted, so . . I hope you don’t mind, but he sold it to a mate”. Trying to keep a face on he asked her how much he got for it. He nearly choked when she said £50. He couldn’t keep his temper and said loudly “That cost me £300”. To which she instantly phoned the son shouting at him to get it back. The very happy new owner refused to hand it back. . . . She didn’t get anything else.

    2. Scraping the barrel now. The mRNA vaccines are dangerous. They will kill more people than they are supposed to cure and cause sterilisation in women and a dependence on Pfizer’s Viagra in men. They will do as Gates’ promised if widely applied and reduce the world population.

      That is not just my opinion but an opinion shared by every serious immunologist and epidemiologist. Vaccines do not work on Corona viruses, even the ferrets used in testing when subjected to Covid died.

          1. I think Cochrane has identified the German scientist who has developed the mRNA method which is being exploited by Pfizer to flog vaccines to the world under Gates’ patents. All publicly funded of course with indemnity given to the drug merchants should it all go tits up, as it will.

          4. Yay i got a downvote. That must be Peddy because Jenny is still adding bits of innocent animals into her cauldron.

          5. If you hover your pointer over the downvote you can clearly see that the downvote was JenniferSP’s. So why do you involve Peddy in this? You really can be a nasty piece of work at times, Phizee.

  98. Am I alone in thinking that Ursula v.d. Leyen would make a great fish wife. She’s got the stature and, having already had 7 kids, she could concentrate on gutting fish at the quayside.

    1. BERLIN — Ursula von der Leyen is planning a new career as European

      Commission chief in Brussels, but the German defense minister still has

      questions to answer back home.

      An investigative committee of the German parliament — the toughest

      instrument that lawmakers can use to probe government misdeeds — is

      digging into how lucrative contracts from her ministry were awarded to

      outside consultants without proper oversight, and whether a network of

      informal personal connections facilitated those deals.

      https://www.politico.eu/article/the-scandal-hanging-over-ursula-von-der-leyen/

      She sounds like a typical politician to me.

    3. I recall the spectacle of the torchlight procession held when she moved from Minister of Defence to EU Chief. It was straight out of the Nazi playbook.

      Truly frightening when you consider that Hitler himself was more fitted to being a cyclist messenger in WW1 yet gained ultimate power and destroyed most of Europe before he was stopped.

  99. A BTL Comment on Boris Johnson’s Brexit talks on the DT article about his offer of olive branches to the EU: (note the preposition to rather than from)

    From a Mr Fred Beach.

    “Boris I`ve heard you talk the talk now I want to see you walk the walk.”

    I fear that we shall soon see and hear him:

    SQUAWK the SQUAWK

  103. As many NoTTlers will know, I frequently find occasion to be highly critical of those of the black persuasion, so, not being totally au fait with modern political terminology, I’m wondering – does that make me an adherent of Critical Race Theory?

    1. For someone like you or me it is very easy to determine:

      In the race to criticise, if you think you’re right and you’re white; you’re in the wrong.

    2. It makes you normal.

      Anyone seeing the rioting over the past six months or so can only be critical of how many of those riots have turned into an orgy of looting and unacceptable behaviour. Any sympathy that the coloured community deserved for the unacceptable way the police treat many blacks was lost once the rioting became widespread.

      1. The “black community” are not victimised by police. US Statistics show that you’re more likely to be killed by the police if you’re white. This despite the disproportionate amount of crime committed by blacks.

        George Floyd, whose death caused the riots to kick-off, was a violent career criminal. He did not die of strangulation under police restraint, as was alleged by BLM and SJWs everywhere, the autopsy showed he died from an overdose of fentanyl. And the death of that lowlife street-nigger is destroying America in the name of some imagined “racial prejudice”.

  105. 327267+ up ticks,
    The johnson & the pillow whisperer squeeze are certainly a losing double
    for these Isles, me thinking major / curry was bad, then the
    wretch cameron / leg over clegg worse, leading to treachery on stilts may,
    now amnesty R me johnson & pillow whisperer.

    Then follow on to that line of creatures in the treachery league is going to take some finding for the tory group membership.

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1336035893271007233

      1. Me neither. Didn’t even get a message, apart from: “Disqus seems to be taking longer than usual”

        1. I’m answering this on notifications since its not appearing on the main page. I had a big Windows Download the other day with nothing to show for it. Probably an updated censoring program for the internet!

        2. Good morning, Oberst.

          Disqus has been doing maintenance,
          for some hours the site was
          inaccessible. We can now use it
          but it looks like we may have to
          continue on Monday’s page.

          Edited.

  107. “A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19” retracted Johns Hopkins journal article. 6 December 2020.

    The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease.

    “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.

    In an interview with The News-Letter, Briand addressed the question of whether COVID-19 deaths can be called misleading since the infection might have exacerbated and even led to deaths by other underlying diseases.

    “If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification,” Briand replied.

    In other words, the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the U.S. is considered problematic only when it increases the total number of deaths or the true death burden by a significant amount in addition to the expected deaths by other causes. Since the crude number of total deaths by all causes before and after COVID-19 has stayed the same, one can hardly say, in Briand’s view, that COVID-19 deaths are concerning.

    The editorial board of this Johns Hopkins student journal retracted the article after they were confronted by faculty wokists and Covidians. Pat lang.

    Morning everyone since I’m barred from posting on Tuesday’s page and maybe forever I’ll put this up since I’ve already written it!.

    This is the view from the United States. The definition of Death by Covid-19 for the purposes of “favourable” statistics has been altered several times in the UK!

    Public Health England has changed its definition of deaths. The new definition is now death in a person with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test and died within (equal to or less than) 28 days of the first positive specimen date will now be reported.

    In other words fall off a chair and break your neck while decorating, trip over the rake and impale yourself on the railings while gardening; heart attack; bubonic plague. If you had a C-19 test just before: you died of Covid-19!

    https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/public-health-england-death-data-revised/

    https://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/12/httpswebarchiveorgweb20201126163323httpswwwjhunewslettercomarticle202011a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-c.html

  109. Good morning, all. Whatsapp? Discurse on the blink?? Freezing fog here.

    I see Mrs Murrell has been stirring up trouble again.

  110. BBC Breakfast TV
    Bard gets Jab

    To Jab or not to Jab – that is the question that William Shakespeare has had to face.
    Under international convention such an inoculation remains voluntary subject to informed consent of a person with mental capacity.

    As far as I know the MHRA has not published the summary of the basis of approval for the Pfizer vaccine.

  111. Economic decoupling from China would be ‘act of national self-sabotage’, Labor and Liberal MPs agree. 8 December 2020.

    Australia would be shooting itself in the foot if it tried to untangle itself from economic reliance on China, politicians from both major parties have declared, while warning there is no end in sight to the turbulence in the relationship.

    Labor MP Tim Watts cautioned on Tuesday that economic decoupling from China – an idea that is advanced by some of the most hawkish politicians in Canberra – would be “an unprecedented act of national self-sabotage”.

    This is certainly true but it is also the path to appeasement. China through the medium of this economic reality may coerce Australia (as it is doing at the moment) into agreeing or at least remaining silent to its policies on Hong Kong and the Uighurs. It will not end there of course. Soon they will require agreement on the South China Sea and approval of the annexation of Taiwan. The path to follow here is one of gradual disengagement.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/economic-decoupling-from-china-would-be-act-of-national-self-sabotage-labor-and-liberal-mps-agree

  112. Found you all at last.

    This reminds me of the time I came home from school and discovered that my parents had moved, not that I was unloved or unwanted in any way! 😂

      1. Morning Minty, it was there when I opened my eyes this morning.
        Seriously, I have now found Tuesday’s page thank you.

  113. ‘Morning, Peeps. Since Disgust (or perhaps GCHQ?) has decreed that Tuesday isn’t going to happen this week, here is part of Charles Moore’s column to be going on with. All I can say about Johnson’s excursion to Brussels is – you had better come back empty-handed, matey!

    In BBC parlance, a “breakthrough” in EU negotiations always means agreement, regardless of whether what is agreed is any good for Britain. Thus a surrender can be hailed as a victory – and would be this week, even if (which seems highly unlikely) we gave away all our fish plus Northern Ireland. As the talks verge on collapse, with Boris Johnson taking the high risk of flying to Brussels, let me propose a different definition of the word “breakthrough”.

    In the long, uncomfortable years of our membership, EU negotiations of all kinds were bedevilled by the British failure to understand how the continentals thought. We said their grand schemes of a single currency, European government etc were “for the birds”. We thought what really mattered – to them, as to us – were economic advantages.

    We were wrong, although our partners were naturally keen to snatch economic advantages along the way. The continentals saw the EU as their destiny (and still do). They bickered about pace and detail, but not about direction of travel. We British, on the other hand, were agnostic about destination. We didn’t know where we wanted to go. So we annoyed our partners by being obstructive, and damaged ourselves by trading our long-term contentment for short-term gain. The Single European Act, for instance, won us more market access, but put us more in thrall to EU power.

    When the British people voted to leave, it was the continentals’ turn to misunderstand. They were upset, but did not think Britain would fully depart. The issues would be fudged, as they had so often been with British leaders before. Theresa May’s period in office seemed to confirm their view.

    Even today – despite Brexit following Mr Johnson’s resounding election victory a year ago – Michel Barnier and other Brussels grandees have difficulty in grasping that, as David Dimbleby prematurely put it on referendum night 2016, we’re out. We mean it; and if Boris turns out not to, he will have no political future.

    The paradox is that only by accepting the extent of our disagreement can both sides reach an agreement which could stick. That would be the true breakthrough.

    Unlike all our previous efforts, the British negotiating team, under the able leadership of Lord Frost, now has a better understanding than the Brussels one. It knows that the bottom line on both sides is, in essence, the same. Neither the EU team nor the British one will compromise on its version of its sovereignty.

    So there is no point the EU thinking it can, in the latest French phrase, “unilaterally rebalance” (ie unbalance) tariffs if it does not like what we are up to, or split Northern Ireland from our customs territory or surrender the fishing waters we have just reclaimed. It’s a divorce: there is no going back. Recognise that, and there is just enough time to make it an amicable, clean break, not an ugly, ongoing wrangle.

Comments are closed.