Monday 8 February: No booze in pubs – another mindless attack on the hospitality industry

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/02/08/letters-no-booze-pubs-another-mindless-attack-hospitality/

845 thoughts on “Monday 8 February: No booze in pubs – another mindless attack on the hospitality industry”

  1. Peer is asked to investigate the activities of extreme right and left. 8 February 2021.

    The government has reportedly ordered an investigation into the extreme fringes on both ends of the political spectrum, with a peer tasked with offering recommendations to the prime minister and home secretary.

    The review will be led by John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits in the upper chamber as Lord Walney and was appointed as the government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption last November.

    Announcing the review in an interview with the Telegraph, the unaffiliated peer cautioned that the UK must take notice of the rise of far-right groups in the US following the storming of the Capitol building last month.

    Woodcock stressed that there was “not an equivalence of threat between the far-left and the far-right” in the UK, with the latter a far bigger issue.

    Morning everyone. Well I’m pleased to see that he isn’t prejudiced. Perhaps he could furnish us with a list of all the terrorist acts carried out by the “far-right” in the UK in the last twenty years? Reading the “Anarchists Cookbook”; a fifty years old tome freely available on Amazon has managed to get several people convicted. I’m not finicky; a couple of speeding tickets would suffice.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/08/peer-is-asked-to-investigate-the-activities-of-extreme-right-and-left

    1. Morning Minty et al.

      From ZH With reference to the state of play (or should that be the Play of State) in the US. It resonates here too:
      ”
      A Comrade of Proven Worth
      5 hours ago
      I remember as a kid hearing people say, “It’s a free country.”
      It occurred to me recently that I haven’t heard that in years.

      Templar X
      5 hours ago
      That is because 40 years ago it was true; you could do pretty much anything you wanted to, as long as you did not hurt someone else.
      These days we are all in the gulag!

      1. 329203+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        Could it possible be, especially these last three decades the voting pattern appertaining to the
        lab/lib/con coalition ( recurring treacherous failures) and the political closed shop.

      2. If he heard that when he was a ‘kid’; what is he hearing now that he’s a ‘Billy’?

        2. You’re beginning to sound like Peddy, Grizzly. (And good morning to you and all other NoTTLers.) By the way, where is Peddy these days – he seems to have disappeared?

    2. Extreme Right = not wanting a mandatory vaxx, not wanting mandatory lockdowns, not wanting mandatory masks, not wanting mandatory vaccine passports, wanting democracy, wanting to leave the EU, not believing in man made climate change, not wanting world government, yes I can see why they regard those issues as a bigger threat then the far Left.

      1. ‘Morning, Bob, that’s a pretty accurate summation of my current attitude. I suppose I should either top myself, or turn myself in to the thought police.

    1. It is utterly criminal what has been done to people.

      Morning Rik and everyone. Weather app says -1 but feels like -7!

    1. The Government will use any laws they can in ways that were never considered when the legislation was written. This whole lockdown fiasco is just one example of how they do it.

      1. Agreed, the politicians are too spineless to actually order the populace to get vaccinated; after all, liability-free or nor, not one of them will wish to be associated with any future legal cases that may occur.

        it will be forced on us through attrition as the onus is passed to employers, holiday/travel firms and transport, concert venues etc. to ‘protect’ their employees/customers.

        Meanwhile at entry points to the country (including the daily flotilla arriving at Dover), it’s a case of come one, come all.

    2. A reply btl in the dm today:
      “There are no statutory provisions that can force individuals to become vaccinated. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 specifically states that members of the public should not be compelled to undergo any mandatory medical treatment, including vaccinations. Forcing, coercing or manipulating an employee to receive a vaccine is in breach of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects people from being interfered with physically or psychologically and includes mandatory vaccinations. Forced vaccinations in the workplace, is not only a human rights concern, but also has criminal implications. Forcing anyone to receive a vaccine injection under duress, under UK law, constitutes an unlawful injury. A vaccination requires an individuals informed and voluntary consent.”

      1. From: MegaCorp HR Dept.
        Dear Wage Slave
        Appt. First Aid Room – 11.30am, 02/03/21: Nurse Mengele will be pleased to assist you.
        Do not ignore this communication.

  8. He means us of course,the rebel alliance……………

    “Britain’s enemies are using social media to ‘tear apart the fabric of society’

    General in charge of cyber attacks warns the real threat will be in how a society could be influenced by ‘sowing discord'”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/08/britains-enemies-using-social-media-tear-apart-fabric-society/

    BTL

    Oh really, so now anyone who opposes lockdown is a Chinese or Russian
    secret agent, or unknowingly influenced by them, how very convenient.

    1. The BBC is the main social media purveyor. Every morning it broadcasts utter slush, as well as full on pro-government propaganda.

  9. Covering the Russia protest: ‘Police usually let western reporters go’. 8 February 2021,

    It’s clear why police are targeting journalists: they don’t want us there. Independent Russian journalists are fearless – if Russians want to know what happened at a protest, it’s enough to open up the websites of Novaya Gazeta, MediaZona, OVD-Info, TV Rain, or other independent media to get the latest.

    If you keep your eyes open these things slip through the propaganda occasionally. This one has bypassed all the baloney about the “Kremlin Controlled” media and “Putin’s Press” Both best-selling newspapers in Moscow are foreign owned and are Anti-Putin!

    https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2021/feb/08/covering-the-russia-protest-police-usually-let-western-reporters-go

  10. Latest Breaking News – Swimming pools to reopen next month, as long as they have no water in them

  12. BBC Radio 4 News today
    Over £1mllion Illegal immigrants invited to register with a GP and get vaccinated. The Government has promised they will not be deported.
    Guardian has seen released papers which show that the Queen lobbied Parliament to keep her private finances free from publicity.

    1. 329203+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      It has been on the cards since dick the overseers leader
      wanted an amnesty the virus was the trigger, the pillow whisperer WILL be in full agreement.

  13. The heavy snow forecast turned out to be a very light covering. Thick cloud and -0.8C at 07.30 Hrs.

    1. Not here. It’s a foot deep, and two feet in the drifts caused by the strong easterlies.

      Brrrrr!!!!

    2. Not here. It’s a foot deep, and two feet in the drifts caused by the strong easterlies.

      Brrrrr!!!!

    3. Morning Johnny. I’ve just took a look outside in the early morning light and though I need some bread I’m not going out in that lot!

  15. SIR — You report (February 6) that Captain Sir Tom Moore allayed his daughter’s wedding day nerves by droning on about concrete pipes. This took me back to my wedding in 1973.

    My father, who was born in the same year as Sir Tom, was a major in the 4th County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters) and was awarded the Military Medal, sensed how tense I was going into the church. He immediately settled my nerves by asking: “Are my flies done up?”

    Pat Stone
    Ingatestone, Essex

    1973 must have been a year when “flies” outnumbered “fly”. I recall being astounded to discover that my first-issue uniform trousers, upon joining the police, had button flies! The degree of mirth this gave my girlfriend of the time was immeasurable. The amount of frustration it gave me, especially on cold and frosty mornings, was incalculable!

    1. Now zippers are properly reliable, a button fly is a thing of the past, I thought, until I bought a pair of chinos a couple of years ago that have buttons… pesky things! Awkward, especially the top button, and if one is in a hurry.
      Morning, Grizz.

      1. Morning, Paul.

        Even worse if your fingers are frostbitten and you are desperate to ‘go’. I’ve told the story before about the time, on duty, when I had no feeling in my fingers and I had to elicit the assistance of a female publican to undo my buttons prior to using the Gents.

          2. The meds are working so i am able to get a full night of sleep. Still can’t walk more than a few yards but then i’m not going anywhere soon.

            Thanks for asking.

        3. Back in ’74 after I fractured the head of my right radius, I was forced to ask the i/c of Stores Troop to do my flies up!

    2. One of the most horrible experiences one can have is to get the end of one’s willy caught in a fly zip.

      I has happened to me – has it ever happened to you?

      1. We have about 4 inches of snow – and, natch, the Council failed to grit the road. It is virtually impassable.

          1. I am only talking about a couple of inches of snow, Paul. Usually they put down salty grit which does the job. Last night (being a Sunday) they did SFA.

            Our cleaning lady has just walked in – local roads are blocked by snow and by lorries and cars that are stuck in the snow.

            No one round here has either snow tyres or chains…..

          2. Even if you had snow tyres / chains yourself, Bill, you still couldn’t go anywhere – “local roads are blocked by snow and by lorries and cars that are stuck in the snow.”
            Clearly, just gritting even a couple-four inches of snow “becomes an icy mess.”

          3. MOH purchased cheap plastic snowchains last year.

            They won’t go a long way, but will certainly get you home safely.

            Buy a set and leave in the boot.

          5. Yes Bill, that’s definitely my view.

            However sometimes you are away from home and the Council has forgotten to grit the roads…so it’s a good idea

            to have some form of snow chains to get you home.

    1. A perusal of the World’s weather would tell you that it is snowing like the clappers almost everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment! Japan; record falls! The US; blizzards. Europe; even Denmark is getting a walloping. And my backyard’s not doing too well either!

      1. A rather desultory light splattering here with an even more desultory light fall at the moment.

        1. I don’t know how you are managing that Bob! You are only twenty miles from me and the last time I went down Monsal Dale in Winter my feet almost fell off!

          1. We get by, but only 20 miles and you’ve never called in for a cup of tea???

            I think it’s a long johns & extra pair of socks day for my walk to Cromford for the paper & a bit of shopping!

        2. I don’t know how you are managing that Bob! You are only twenty miles from me and the last time I went down Monsal Dale in Winter my feet almost fell off!

        3. Morning Bob. Light dusting of snow in N Yorkshire. Blue sky and sunshine at the moment,.

      2. 329203+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Same as that,
        Global warming just another in your face farce,
        there are others inclusive of the lab/lib/con coalition group as overseers.
        Sadly not so obviously seen as such by the multitude of the herd.

      3. It’s try to snow here, but the wind keeps moving it about so it can’t lay.

        I won’t mention that the kitchen is actually close to freezing because of the weather though. I’m also close to accepting the £60K quote to replace the roof. Insurance has said they’ll pay – for part. I assume one slate or something. dammit, just dealing with them is exhausting let alone knowing they’ll likely triple the premium next year despite the whole point of… bah, I hate them.

    2. A perusal of the World’s weather would tell you that it is snowing like the clappers almost everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment! Japan; record falls! The US; blizzards. Europe; even Denmark is getting a walloping. And my backyard’s not doing too well either!

  22. Good morning World.
    I am glad that Nottl often (usually?) ends up discussing anything but the DTletters. They used to be an interesting alternative commentary on the previous day’s headlines or a correspondent’s description of a remarkable or amusing anecdote. I am getting so fed up with their being a succession of whinges, I dont think I can be bothered to read them any more.

    1. ‘Morning, Storm.

      You shouldn’t give up on the DT Letters. I agree that most of them are crap but every now and then you can find one that is either amusing in its own right or so patently stupid that it begs to have the pish taken out of its contents/author.

      Works for me, but then I’m easily amused!
      ;¬)

      1. Morning DM

        I loved this little gem!

        SIR – Covid boredom in a London flat without a garden has meant my husband has, for the first time in 39 years, started to iron his own shirts.

        Anne Adams
        London SE22

        1. She’s indulged him for nigh on 40 years!?! She’s a disgrace to the National Union of Annes.

          1. I still iron my own shirts, press my trousers etc. It’s not easy to break the habits of a lifetime!

            (Good morning BTW)

          2. Worst domestic job there is, ironing.
            I’d rather unblock the toilet. Or the shower drain (where does all that hair come from!)

          5. One of my French friends (who claims she enjoys ironing) watches TV while she’s pressing the clothes.

          6. You do? Wow!
            I’m slowly inventing an ironing machine. Clothes in at the top, ironed & folded nicely out into a basket at the bottom. Fit into the same space as a washing machine.

          8. If you haven’t worked out where the hair comes from by now… it’s a bit late to try to teach you 😉

          10. Perhaps she could point him in the direction of the vacuum cleaner? Good morning Anne!

        2. ‘Morning, Maggie.

          I should add that I’ve found that the BTL comments are often better reading than the letters themselves.

        3. I have always ironed my shirts, and pressed my trousers and jackets, after I was taught how to do so properly in my early 20s. I wouldn’t trust anyone else (male or female) to do a better job then I do.

          2. Morning, Maggie.

            I was crap at ‘bulling’ my boots until I was taught how to do it properly by an ex-squaddie. Mirror shines from then on.

          3. Spit and polish – we used this on our boots and the straps of our spats in the CCF at Blundell’s before a dress parade. We also had to blanco our belts and polish the brass buckles.

            At the age of 13 when we were fags we had to clean two sets of corps kit – our own and the kit of the prefect whose fag we were. Mind you, a decent prefect would look after his fag well and help sort out his problems, stick up for him if he got into any scrapes and give him a good tip – 10/- or a pound – at the end of each term.

            Just as the newly wealthy are reputed to treat their servants badly a yobbish prefect allowed power to go to his head and exploited his fag and treated him unfairly. On the other had a well bred prefect respected his fag and became his philosopher and guide and was respected and liked in return.

          4. My mother used to iron pillow cases and curtains. She would iron jeans.

            When I bothered wearing a shirt, I’ll iron it. Everything else can hang. Life is genuinely too short.

    2. Couldn’t agree more, Stormy. I think they save them up for the annual compilation of the ‘unprintable’ ones, money to be made out of those. A particularly dull collection today; par for the course now.

    1. It’s very good, but the problem is that all the people complaining and deriding have their hands on the levers. The majority of the sensible don’t, and are – deliberately – kept away from stating the facts and moving society forward to expose the charlatans.

  25. By chance yesterday evening, I read “Love among the Ruins” by Evelyn Waugh. About the end of the world (sort of).

    The Ministry of Euthanasia is so inefficient, people die of natural causes while waiting for their “invitation” to be exterminated. Sound familiar?

    Worth reading if you can find it.

    2. Good morning, Bill.

      The plot sounds weird.

      Love among the ruins by Robert Browning. Poem.

      Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,

      Miles and miles

      On the solitary pastures where our sheep

      Half-asleep

      Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop

      As they crop—

      Was the site once of a city great and gay,

      (So they say)

      Of our country’s very capital, its prince

      Ages since

      Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far

      Peace or war.[1]

      — Stanza I

    3. I found , in my bookcase, Auberon Waugh’s autobiography “Will This Do?” which I purchased about 30 Years ago and am currently reading for the first time. It is a very amusing book. He and his father Evelyn didn’t get on at first. AW details his early public school life in an upper class society but with very little money. They lived in grand homes and mixed with the aristocracy. He failed at Oxford through laziness but saw the futility of the course ambitious politicians took at the University. AW pulls no punches when dealing with the top people at private school, in society, in the army, politics and in the press. He lambasts Randolph Churchill, snide remarks about Harold MacMillan and others he meets along the way. Usually with polite humour. His father was a commando in WW2. AW served in Cyprus and whilst fiddling with the point of a machine gun to sort out a problem was shot in the chest by a burst from the gun which nearly killed him. He has little money and thrives on the courtesy of the old boy network and the hospitality of his more prosperous aristocrats. He used to write for the DT and, as I remember, had a fascination for Japanese woman. He has a low opinion of the lower classes which he doesn’t hide. He was born a few months after me in 1939 and died in January 2001 in Somerset.

      1. Bron Waugh is a much-missed columnist of the Daily Telegraph. He was both ascerbic and witty and he hated modern life. He did not trust computers (“Computers don’t work!” was his oft-quoted put down of the technology), and he typed all his copy out on a trusty old Olivetti typewriter.

        1. I realise this is a minority view, but I can’t stand any of the Waughs. Pretentious snobs and not as clever as they think they are.

      2. ‘Bron’ Waugh wrote two novels when he was a very young man – The Foxglove Saga he wrote when he was a boy at Downside and The Path of Dalliance when he was briefly at Oxford. I recommend both these pieces of his juvenelia.

      3. “He has a low opinion of the lower classes which he doesn’t hide”.

        “He has little money and thrives on the courtesy of the old boy network and the hospitality of his more prosperous aristocrats.”

        Not just a scrounger but a snob too.

        1. He befriended Mandy Rice Davies and was photographed with her in a nurse’s uniform in Israel for a UK newspaper. The press thought she was a nurse so AW had her photographed as such. I haven’t found that photo.

    4. Good morning, Bill

      I seem to have lost my copy – I thought I had copies of all EW’s novels. Looking through my shelves I found Scott King’s Modern Europe and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – I really do need to reread his books all of which I first read when I was at university.

  26. 329203+ up ticks,
    Now surely that should have been the prime aim from the outset giving the herd some control over initial usage.
    DT,
    Covid vaccine could be made available in pill form

    Many of the ovis have very little, if any trust in the overseeing politico’s with proven good cause so when they push a commodity so strongly it creates a great deal of well founded suspicion.

    One thing having an irretrievable jab physical, against a pill that if on an ongoing campaign can be controlled.

        1. Caroline is a keen embroiderer – she finds it therapeutic and it reduces the inevitable stress of living with me.

  28. Big Brother comes to America. Spiked. 7 February 2021.

    The principal aim of the Stern Center’s report is to restore trust in the moral authority of the mainstream media in the US. It fears that millions of Americans no longer trust the media as a reliable source of information because they have bought into the belief that it is biased. It argues that people’s distrust of the media and their ‘wrong’ belief that social media are biased against conservatives will escalate in coming years, especially as social-media companies increase their ‘fact-checking’ operations.

    This itself is based on a false premise. Once trust is lost it is irrecoverable. The Soviet Union tried for seventy years using everything from the most blatant lies and propaganda to torture and murder to convince the Russian people that they were living in a Socialist Paradise. Guess what! It didn’t work!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/08/big-brother-comes-to-america/

    1. Frightening stuff, Minty.

      Who could have imagined that only twenty thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we would witness the same style of totalitarian regime being created by commies in the USA?

      Edited to correct number of years … I’ll get me calculator…

    2. This reminds me of the Time Magazine article where the Democrats said piously that they were trying to restore and protect democracy by making sure that votes for Trump were eliminated. What a scandal, they claimed, it would be if Trump had won because he got more votes!

      I must say that to begin with I did not really believe that the Democrats could have cheated in such a massive and coordinated way. But I am sure that more and more people are beginning to see that it is probable rather than possible that the Democrats’ victory was based on corruption and fraud.

    3. What’s Merkin for ‘Pravda’: New York Times?
      (I know what it is in English English’)

  30. Oh well I guess it had to come – a little fine snow is drifting down to earth now – the first of the winter.

          4. I once took a southern girl out for the night. On the bus home we sat behind a man with terrible dandruff.

            I said to her: “He could do with some Head and Shoulders.”
            She looked puzzled for a couple of minutes before replying: “What’s ‘Shoulders’?”

  31. Nicked,Oi Laffed

    One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke

    up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products

    ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket

    and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been

    pulverised with rocks. “What’s this?” she asked.

    “Pulverised willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.

    “What happened to the carpet?” she asked.

    “The carpet was nylon, which is made from Butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.

    Greta

    smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the

    planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a

    toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre

    bristles.

    “Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”

    “Where’s the water?” asked Greta.

    “Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”

    “Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.

    “Well,”

    said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do

    we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need

    elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be

    mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving

    equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has to be

    smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as

    a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need

    insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy

    is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and

    nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system,

    you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and

    rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone

    plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper

    smelting furnace and . . .

    “What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.

    “Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”

    “How so, raw?” inquired Greta.

    “Well,

    . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum

    products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential

    for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about

    how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you

    rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in

    an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges

    in Sweden anymore.

    “But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.

    “Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”

    “What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”

    “Not

    anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires

    chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your

    organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which

    is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the

    bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really

    burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are

    rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for roasting eggs

    and staying warm.”

    This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a

    day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food,

    and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will

    save the planet.

    Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesised.

    2. This is how I want all the green fanatics to live. Just for a month, just so they can experience the world they so desperately want for everyone else.

      2. I want to see a vegan living in the wild, sat watching rabbits and deer nibble away at their meagre crop yield. I wonder how long before the red mist descended and they went on a fully carnivorous killing spree.

        Maybe just get them to walk across a 50 acre field as it is ploughed and have them count the hundreds of animals churned up and killed in order to plant their organic, morally righteous crop.

        Why have we Disney-fied nature to the point that these numpties bleat on about All things bright and beautiful without ever realising that the much vaunted “balance” of nature also contains all thing correspondingly dark and foul.

  32. Good morning, my friends

    DT Headline

    Keep the faith in Oxford Covid jab, urges vaccines minister
    Public told to trust vaccine after study shows reduced effect against South African variant

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/02/07/vaccines-minister-public-can-confident-oxford-jab-effective/

    Am I alone in finding , to use the letter-to-newspapers-writer’s cliché, that we are once again being given a confused and ambiguous message.

    On the one hand we are told by government that they are following the science and that is all important. So even the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to embody the government’s message that we should abandon faith as it is based on unscientific mumbo jumbo and cannot help us.

    So perhaps Nadhim Zahawi , the vaccines minister, has gone seriously off message in telling us to have faith?

    2. “Est autem fides sperandorum substantia rerum argumentum non parentum”
      — Heb.11:1
      ;¬)

      1. עכשיו, אמונה היא המהות של הדברים המקווים, הראיה של דברים שלא נראים

        1. Hippo, bird, feather, river, hippo, camel, eye, scales, duck, duck ……
          “Knock, knock, who’s there?
          Rameses.
          Rameses who?
          Rameses ewe.”

    4. This story – part of a series – is not, I respectfully suggest, about Covid-19 or, indeed, the admirable Astra-Zeneca Oxford vaccine: It’s about Brexit.

      Since the vaccine emerged the story pumped out by our almost entirely Remain and Rejoin media, has been to deny this post Brexit success. Remember how the Remain Rejoin media simultaneously shared von der Leyen’s scepticism about the vaccine’s efficacy whilst hugely sympathising with the gauleiter’s demands that, rubbish it may be, but Europe was entitled to demand more of it and before the Brits got their order.

      2. The DT is even trying to claim that the EU did not violate Article 16 but only threatened to do so.

        The DT is moving very quickly to the left and pro EU – there is no right of centre MSM in Britain any more..

  33. SADIQ Khan’s plans to slap people outside of the capital with an extra London driving charge would hand HALF of the Met’s police officers a £800-a-year bill.

    Figures from the City Hall Tories show that 51 per cent of the Metropolitan Police’s officers and 77 per cent of the force’s sergeants live outside Greater London, and would be whacked by his proposed extra charges.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13979732/sadiq-khan-driving-charge-police-bill/?utm_campaign=sunmaintwitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1612771132

    1. Yo T_B

      All who live in what Sad Dick Kant calls the London area, must pay a toll to drive on the roads outside that area

      Simples

      Sorted

  34. A little Aussie humour.

    An Italian, a Frenchman and an Aussie were talking about screams of passion.

    The Italian said, “Last night I massaged my wife all over her body with the finest extra virgin olive oil, then we made passionate love and I made her scream, non-stop for five minutes.”

    The Frenchman said, “Last night I massaged my wife all over her body with special aphrodisiac oil from Provence and then we made passionate love. I made her scream for fifteen minutes straight.”

    The Aussie said, “That’s nothing! Last night I massaged my wife, y’know, all over her body with a special butter. I caressed her entire body with the butter, and then we made love and I made her scream for two long hours.”

    The Italian and Frenchman, astonished, asked, “Two full hours? Wow! That’s phenomenal. What did you do it to make her scream for two hours?”

    The Aussie replied, “I wiped my hands on the curtains.”

  35. Good morning, all, snowed in here in Suffolk, all 3 single-track roads out of the village a blocked with snow-drifts.

    Not that it will be any different than it has been for the last 11 months!

    1. Water pipe leading to the washing machine in the shed appears to have frozen. I’ll leave it for a while.

  36. From BLT

    The government does not want people outide their enforced bubbles chatting with each other

    Throw in alcohol and ‘Freedom of Speech’ will happen

    Before long the slow revolt to regain freedom would begin

    Boros and his mates would not like that

    We have become a nation of mushrooms: Kept in the Dark and fed 5H1T..

    1. 329203+ up ticks,
      Morning OLT,
      This AKA make boris PM he makes us laugh, the turkish delight, amnesties R me johnson & mates / party have been in anti UK action for decades, but such is the strength of the three monkeys power within the polling booth it hasn’t been noticed by the already blinkered electorate.

      Currently anyone / party disagreeing with the voted in
      again & again are promptly closed down.

      Example look no further than UKIP under Gerard Batten leadership.

  38. The lockdown that keeps giving…

    All the articles below are in one newspaper on the same day. Agenda 21/30 steps up yet another gear.

    It’s our patriotic duty to go green and rebuild Britain, says Leo McKinstry

    https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/1394725/green-britain-conservatism-jobs-economy-margaret-thatcher-cop26

    Meet the ordinary Britons leading the UK’s green revolution

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394723/green-britain-ecotricity-customers-environment-climate-change

    Green Britain is READY to lead the world: Exclusive poll

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394718/green-britain-campaign-comres-poll-uk-attitudes-climate-change-wildlife-pollution

    Five ways Britain can lead the world in a green revolution

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394714/green-britain-campaign-five-key-aims-climate-change-wildlife-electric-cars

    Green revolution can turbocharge UK economy and create 250,000 jobs

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394707/green-britain-campaign-jobs-economy-pollution-plastic-climate-change

    UK’s top environmental groups BACK our Green Britain crusade

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394699/green-britain-national-trust-greenpeace-wwf-friends-of-earth-wildlife-trusts-rspb

    It’s time for a GREEN Britain: Express launches historic crusade

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394645/Green-Britain-campaign-daily-express-pollution-wildlife-nature-boris-johnson

    Green Britain: Sign our zero for zero petition now

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394662/green-britain-zero-for-zero-explained-sign-express-petition

      1. …. and goodbye meat. But you will eat your greens …. possibly of the “Soylent” variety.
        :¬(

      2. Good morning Bill

        Dorset has created a Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy – The ecological emergency

        Dorset is a relatively wildlife-rich county, albeit in one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth. Complacency is easy when surrounded by apparent natural beauty, but this belies the scale of loss over the last 70 years. We have a responsibility to conserve that relative richness and enhance it, not only for the fabric of the natural environment, but for the health of our future economy. Bournemouth University studies have shown that of four future scenarios, ranging from high investment in nature recovery to high agricultural intensification, the highest economic returns are found by investing in nature.

        https://www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/emergencies-severe-weather/climate-emergency/climate-ecological-emergency-strategy/climate-ecological-emergency-strategy-the-ecological-emergency.aspx

        Hang on a second …

        FULL details of plans for almost 30,500 new homes in Dorset have emerged in the county’s Local Plan – which has been slammed as ‘rushed and inadequate’ by campaigners.

        Residents are being urged to share their views in one of the most important surveys in a generation for the county. But a campaign group claims residents will not have time to digest the information in hundreds of pages of documents before the consultation ends.

        The Government has said 30,481 new homes must be built in Dorset by 2038 – around 1,793 each year.

        Residents have until March 15 to share their views on where the homes should be built, and which areas should be protected from developments.

        https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/19072217.local-plan-includes-plan-build-almost-30-500-new-homes-dorset/

        My apols for being boring , but don’t you think we are residing in a ship which has no rudder?

        1. Good day, Maggie. Just think of all the illegals that can be put up in the new hovels houses.

          1. And then think of who will be paying for them and their families – their NHS, their schooling, their translators and everything else.

          2. It will be the woke generation who think all illegal economic migrants are “asylum seekers” and welcome them. Only when they are paying income tax at a basic rate of 50p will they realise their stupidity.

        2. Those 30,500 new homes will be needed for the white flight underway now as people seek out an England where they thought they lived once. We are seeing this here in the north east; I can’t blame people voting with what that have to do the best they can to escape the vibrancy and diversity of increasingly lawless cities run by immigrants in and out of uniform who think ten stabbed in a weekend is ‘average’ where they came from.

          1. All the nice, formerly small towns around here have huge housing estates surrounding them – full of white flight residents.

        3. Stop importing people! Stop all this house building on green land. Let nature and people recover without all this greenwash.

          The only problem inflicting all this rubbish is too many people in this country, and indeed, the whole world.

        4. Recommend, that the tne houses are built on the .moorland’ around Bovington

          The planners will just say ‘YES’ without even going to view it, as long as you make a mall protest

    2. Get back in that cave, peasant!

      The heating is being turned off at home while one of the pumps is fixed and I arrived at Television Centre this morning to be told that there isn’t any heating here either as the boiler is on the blink. Actually always feels cold in TVC so the few of us who still come in hadn’t noticed.

      Good morning all!

      1. TV Centre, as in the converted round building? Not a surprise that it’s cold – lots of glazing means high heat losses and lots of induced draughts.

        1. Not the doughnut itself but a wing attached to it and facing outwards towards White City tube station. BBC Worldwide (now Studios Distribution) kept that bit when the rest was converted. Yes, lots of glazing and very few internal walls.

    3. I’m currently reading a book about taxation and government intervention. This is precisely the sort of thing that creates ‘unintended consequences’ as big state simply hasn’t thought this through.

      The poverty and unemployment this sort of idiotic, state enforced nonsense will cause is incalculable. The freedoms it will remove staggering. The restrictions on individual liberty and common sense mind boggling. This sort of Left wing idiocy will create nothing but debt and higher taxes while achieving nothing.

      Well, nothing but dirty water, disease and death. It’s ironic that the state is destroying the economy to supposedly save lives from covid but is happy to destroy lives on the altar of green.

      1. Stop wibberling! If you can’t be asked to go down to your local river and do a weekly wash bashing your clothes on a rock, then global warming is all your fault! Proud of yourself? Eh? Eh?

      1. No, just Monday. It’ll be another paper’s turn to indocrinate their readership tomorrow. When will it be the DT’s day? Answers on a post card…

    6. I cant be bothered to read any of that, it’s all Bolero they don’t mean a word of it.
      I know i keep banging on about it but the only way to reduce our carbon emissions on this small group of islands is stop letting thousands of people from low carbon emission parts of the world and into our (once) green and pleasant land. Stop building them energy consuming homes, it’s a total carbon nightmare and stop destroying our countryside and wild life habitat.

    7. We have just been told that we should consider all of our hydro electric dams as no more than backup batteries for use when greener and less expensive solar and wind powered generation is not available (their logic, not mine).

      Which is how Quebec justifies building more wind turbines even though they already have surplus power. A vicious circle by the way because they subsidise sales of excess power to New York which makes their manufacturers more efficient, which forces more Quebec manufacturers out of business and so on!

  39. Greetings, lieges and those home-prisoning.
    Imagine if you lived on the wild West coast of Scotland where the pure waters of the Atlantic pound on the ancient rocks. In these unspoiled coastal waters you go out in your wee boat every day to catch fine healthy lobsters and crabs.
    You carefully pack them in seaweed and poly boxes (with air-holes). You now need to speedily send them to your customers at the George V and La Coupole in Paris.
    This means filling in a lot of paperwork using a computer and various software packages. You are a fisherman as was your father and his father before him. You can mend creels, and operate engines, you know tides and currents and weather.
    Now you have to deal with this:– (NB Just because it is computerised does not mean that there is no paperwork involved. There is.)

    New Computerised Transit System
    The New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) is a system of electronic declaration and processing that traders must use to submit Common Transit declarations. You can also use NCTS to submit Transports Internationaux Routiers (TIR) declarations electronically if you’re in Northern Ireland.
    The NCTS will process the declaration and control the transit movement. It’s used by the UK, all member states of the EU and the signatories of the Common Transit Convention.
    The Common Transit procedure can be used for movements between the UK, the EU and other Common Transit Countries.
    The TIR procedure is used for transit operations that begin, end or transit a third (non-EU) country that has signed the TIR convention. You’ll also have to declare such goods to NCTS for any part of the journey taking place within Northern Ireland or the EU.
    You must use it if you’re a trader and want to move goods under the Common Transit Convention.
    Exceptions to NCTS
    There are some exceptions to NCTS for goods moving by air, sea, or rail.
    Find out more about moving goods under the Temporary Storage procedure.
    You cannot use NCTS to make Proof of Union Status declarations (T2L) documents.

    What you’ll need
    To use NCTS and transit goods you’ll need:
    *an EORI number
    *your business address
    *a guarantee
    *Trader Identification Number

    To use the online service, you’ll need:
    *A government gateway ID, you can register for one the first time you access the system
    *access to a computer that can download and print Adobe Acrobat PDF documents
    *a good quality printer that can print barcodes so you can print your Transit Accompanying Document (TAD) and List of Items
    *specific settings enabled on your internet browser.

    These are just the headings of course. There is more, lots more.
    If you happen to be in Wester Ross or North Uist, good luck with an electricity supply, never mind broadband.

    So a big “”Thank You” to our Trade Agreement “negotiating team”, eh?
    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-the-new-computerised-transit-system-to-move-goods-across-the-eu-and-efta-countries

    2. Computerised Transit system? – The French don’t seem bothered about sticking labels on and tracking the dinghies though do they?

    3. so why hasn’t some enterprising young Scot with IT experience set up shop using satellite internet to provide a customs broker service to the fishermen.

      They need to be enterprising because you can rest assured that the rules will change as soon as shipments conform to standards.

      1. EU Mealworms YES!
        BUT the EU has banned UK sausages from being sold in NI Supermarkets

    2. Yellow mealworm safe for humans to eat, says EU food safety agency. Yellow mealworm
      finger foods, smoothies, biscuits, pasta and burgers could soon be mass
      produced across Europe after the insect became the first to be found
      safe for human consumption by the EU food safety agency.13 Jan 2021

      I don’t see a problem.

      1. Me neither, Phil, as long as you take a regular course of de-worming tablets.

        Maybe Dolly will share hers with you!

        1. We already share the Curcumin and Glucosamine tablets !

          Mealworms are just like maggots. When kept on a tray of flour for 24 hours they are cleansed. You can dry them and grind them and turn them into flour.

          4. Mealworms are cheaper and easier to grow and harvest than wheat. Plus they are a good source of protein.

            I’m not an advocate of eating insects but people eat grasshoppers. Why not locusts? They are plentiful.

    3. 329203+ up ticks,
      Morning P,
      Just topped up second time today pinky / perky my resident blackbirds mealworms.

      I am awaiting the worms within the polling booth to turn
      and vote for just once in a beneficial to UK manner.

    5. Right out of the World Economic Forum playbook for The Great Reset and the equivalent for the UN’s Agenda 21/30 or whatever its called. There’s another piece of proof, JSP.

        1. You really think a lot of your own opinion. A pity that it doesn’t come with any facts to back them up. Don’t give the excuse that you ‘can’t be bothered’. If you want to persuade people to change their minds, you can’t just patronise them and dismiss facts.

          3. Bollocks. There is no relationship. And you have proved nothing at all. You will continue to argue, but that only proves the correctness of my judgement of “idiocy”.

          4. You wanted proof of what I said. I gave it – and one from the WEF themselves. What more do you want?

          5. You provide no proof, and you cannot provide proof, that the event and the website are even remotely connected. Nothing at all, because it doesn’t exist.

            Did you truly manage to become an engineer without learning that causation and correlation are not, actually, related to one another?

            I sampled my first “insect bar” at a food fair about a decade ago. The search for marketable foodstuffs from insect protein goes back to my student days in the 1970s.

            The only thing you have “owned” is your own idiocy.

            Now please stop, or I’ll have to block you – and since you do occasionally write interesting comments – on matters that you actually understand – I’d prefer not to do that.

          6. Oh dear. Don’t bother blocking me – I’ll just ignore you just like everyone else. You can then shout at the wall by youself.

          7. Make sure you do it properly then, because no one else does. Ignoring someone means NOT writing crap about them – ever. So if my name/handle crops up in even one of your future comments I will know that you are not merely an abuser, but a liar to boot.

    6. Back in the day i was in a VW beetle with Mike we were driving along the road that followed the Zambezi river Zambia side. It was nearly dark and we saw a local standing at the side of the road with a wheel from his parked series 1 Land Rover. Flat tyre ? I asked as we pulled over. So we loaded him and his tyre on to the back seat and drove under his direction to his village. The local ladies were cooking and we were offered a beer each and plate of wingless fried Locusts. which we almost enjoyed the beer helped. Tasted a tad like prawns.

        1. We were just trying to be friendly tourists.
          Not long after in the pitch black we almost ran into the back legs of a Bull Elephant, judging by the mess, the whole herd had crossed the road minutes before. I still have the vision of the giants stern stare as he stood looking back at us.

    7. Will we see Boris demanding mealworms on the menu at the G7 meeting in a few months? Saving the taxpayer’s cash? Or will it be extremely expensive food cooked by extremely expensive chefs – and two fingers to the UK taxpayer who is forking out for it ( Rishi says the non-elite have plenty more to take )?

      1. They should respect the region they are in and have the local speciality.

        A Pastie and a glass of cider.

    9. No doubt preparing for the inevitable rationing that always comes with communist states.

      However, who’s going to cry ‘It’s made from people!’ first?

  43. DT Story yesterday evening:

    Irish ‘open to extension of Brexit grace period to solve border row’
    Country’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said he could support a ‘modest extension’ but terms of the protocol could not be renegotiated
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/02/07/irish-open-extension-brexit-grace-period-solve-border-row-says/

    On top of all the green crap in the DT (highlighted below by Honda 1234) the DT cannot even bring itself to tell the truth about the fact that the EU violated Article 16.

    “Tensions over the Irish border issue were exacerbated last month by the EU’s suggestion that it could trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland.”

    WTF – they didn’t just threaten to trigger Article 16 – they actually did it. Why is the DT lying about it?

    We need a replacement for the Daily Telegraph as well as replacements for Johnson and Gove if they do not sort out the mess they have caused by caving in to the EU on NI.

    So Simon Coveney humbly suggests we ask for a ‘Modest extension’ to allow a foreign hostile power to continue to mess us about! Johnson needs the testicular strength to scrap the WA – the EU violated Article 16 and should pay the price.

    1. Boris Johnson’s daddy fled to France a couple of weeks ago and applied for citizenship.
      Maybe Boris will follow,after successfully messing up the UK……

      1. As far as I can see the whole Johnson clan is morally reprehensible with the morality of the gutters.

      2. Maybe Johnson WILL HAVE TO FLEE elsewhere when more people work out what he’s up to. I doubt he will be alone.

          1. I remember a tv program that showed how asylum seekers/refugees etc had been dispersed all over the country. It got right to the end and zoomed into a certain area of Oxfordshire – where there was NONE – and the narrator said that was where DC lived – one rule for us and . . . . one for them.

    2. It’s interesting that Mr Netanyahu has been charged with bribing the Press.

      I wonder what the generous “gift” given by Mr Gates to the DT was for?

    3. Coveney, who is stiff-necked, and as anti-British as a Stuka, has clearly been got at from his own side. Nothing modest or humble about Coveney, he is an arrogant full on EU catspaw.

    4. Hang on, I’m confused over what happened and why.

      As I understand it, there were vaccines in NI. The EU wanted them and invoked article 16, preventing NI trading with the rest of the UK.

      This doesn’t really make sense, as NI is not a separate nation, it’s part of the UK. Why was distinction made encouraging it to be so?

      Fairly obviously this isn’t going to be the last time the EU throws a tantrum due to it’s incompetence, so what has been presented to mitigate that malice in future?

      1. Thanks to the WA there was a border created in the middle of the North Sea (despite protestations to the contrary). The EU threw a hissy fit over the vaccines and moved the border to the island of Ireland, thus doing what they said they wouldn’t and de facto triggering Article 16. They then pretended they hadn’t and nothing had happened.

          2. I know. Glad to hear you’re in the pink red – as it were.

            Now, is proofread a single word? Hmmm 🙂

  44. Here is an amusing little something that you may have missed.
    “Glasgow Rocks basketball player ‘disgusted’ by racial harassment”, says headline.
    The story is extremely one-sided. Reading between the lines it seems obvious that these darkies* were keeping their hard-working neighbours awake at night with loud music, ignoring all requests to turn it down. But that is not the thrust of the report, which is about how racist Glaswegians are.

    * What is a “racial slur” exactly?
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-55949810

    1. Well obviously the neighbours didn’t like all the noise and quite possibly those sport star celebrity players were not to careful when parking their three or more expensive cars in residents spaces. It happens, GROW UP you basic plonkers.

      1. Now “basic” – that’s a good word. Let’s replace the word “nigger” with the word “basic”. As in “some basics were involved in a stabbing in London”.

        1. I know the Rocks basketball team very well and have for a lot of years. Basketball players have an arrogance that goes with the territory (Le Bron James, anyone?) and particularly the American sub-NBA players who come to the BBL on short contracts. A small minority take to the place, most bring their own place with them. This happens every season so I expect the BBC are playing catch-up/stir-up!

      2. Got to defend them a bit here, Eddy! One car between them – they’re not that good!

    2. Julius – ” it’s not nice to feel unsafe ” – Yes we know – we feel the same going into an area full of immigrants – in our own country.

    1. Apparently it has come as far west as Cheltenham, but we’ve had none here. Just a chilling wind.

    3. That’s a BIG garden you’ve got there, Bill! Meanwhile, in my neck o’ the woods, we’ve had some snow, but not much. I spent all morning salting the local roads (unadopted by the council) and paths so the bin lorries could get round, and, yea, they actually are coming round to collect today, unlike two weeks ago where a bit of snow scared them off for 5 more days…

      1. Our road is untreated – of course. Virtually impassable. Though some vehicles have been along.

    5. Meanwhile over here in the snowbelt we can still see grass showing through the shallow layer of snow.

    6. We’ve had next to nothing today. What snowfall there was largely a desultory light shower, with occasional flurries of moderate for very short periods.

  47. I can’t believe all this garbage that is happening now over the villages connected to ‘slavery’ it’s just another bunch of woke morons who want to get noticed ( hopefully the residents might be able to claim legal aid and compensations from the perpetrators for destroying their peace of mind and their well being if the price of their properties suffer) by winding up the British people who have long established families living in the UK. This media lead hyped up BS is probably ruining the lives of the people who live in these and picturesque places. My suggestion to all those who obviously don’t like this country is leave, go to West Africa and give everyone you see an extensive cuddle and a peck on each cheek. Yes seriously go for it you can apologise on behalf of all those thousands of ancestors of the people who were sold off by their own kind and then who clothed the nation and also the Empire. Even the slaves i would guess.

    1. I hope someone is doing a tv program looking back into the ancestors of the woke brigade. How they lived/worked/made their money.

        6. We don’t! The vast majority of people’s ancestors were agricultural labourers who had nothing to do with slavery.

    2. The only people who should be allowed to be citizens, or have right of abode, in the UK should be those whose families have shed blood for it. Hmm?

      2. A fine photograph. And it’s been snowing.
        But as you suggest, it’s all getting very confusing now.
        All can tell you JS, is that the vast majority of people who regarded themselves as South African citizens up to, when Nelson Mandela became leader and gave them all the vote, were probably better off under separate development than most of them certainly are now. The country is now crime riddled and JHB once a bustling metropolis is now an absolute tip. Burnt out buildings rubbish strewn streets, no go areas such as the city parks. Drugs prostitution and murder abound. And now some of the poorest people are the whites. But the black population were given ‘the vote’ but as is the usual effect of that is it only benefits the government ruling classes. And re introduces the tribalism that only existed off the streets during the apartheid era.
        Having lived in JHB ( i was working on the construction of the Carlton Centre and Hotel. Now I believe long closed and boarded up, for about 18mths in the late 60s. I use to walk ‘home’ and alone after a night out in Hill-brow, through the dark streets Judith’s Paarl. Nobody would attempt it now, even in day light.

  53. SIR – Slim Dusty was right in 1957 when he sang: “There’s nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer”.

    Gina Coleman

    Richmond, Surrey

  54. I’ve developed an acid that will eat through any material known to man.

    I could make a fortune if I could only find something to put it in.

  55. My girlfriend said she wanted a puppy for her birthday, so I got her one.

    The next morning she saw me loading it into the back of my car and said, “Hey. Where are you going?”

    I said, “I’m sending him back.”

    “Sending him back!” she yelled. “Why?”

    I said, “It’s not your birthday any more.”

  56. My ex-wife was livid with me becuase our young daughter was crying after my one night of custody with her….

    “What ?” I asked, “You told me she loved watching that piggy thing ?”

    “I meant Peppa Pig, not Deliverance !”

    1. The problem is that teachers are fairly uniformly ‘right-on’ and the common room does not permit anyone to question the nth wave feminist inspired orthodoxy. That is part of what makes so many of them so boringly predictable.

      Candidates who run for the leadership of the teaching unions always see it as a stepping stone in their national political career, but it never is (see 1st paragraph). That means they will never do anything to tackle the problems that plague teacher’s professional lives, discipline, over management, unpaid over-time, violence – because that would put them against the constituencies they will need to be seen to be supporting as they rise through the Labour Party. Except the Labour Party always thinks they are wankers, because they always are.

      So they do the only thing they can – demand more money, like a cracked record. The occupation of teaching will not improve until teachers show some sense and elect decent leaders. Male, right of centre, charming, well turned out, abrasive when needed, with a clear headed agenda to improve their lot. It won’t happen.

        1. Levels of voting are very low, I think they just ignore the problem because they can’t bring themselves to vote for what they need.

  59. Oxford Covid vaccine has 10% efficacy against South African variant, study suggests. 8 February 2021.

    The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offers as little as 10% protection against the Covid variant first seen in South Africa, researchers have suggested.

    Prof Shabir Madhi from the University of the Witwatersrand, who led the trial, said that, while the study was small, it was designed to focus on determining whether or not the vaccine had at least 60% efficacy against Covid to any degree of severity.

    So it’s essentially useless against the Springboks? I hope I have this wrong because it means to me that we are back at the beginning!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/08/oxford-covid-vaccine-10-effective-south-african-variant-study

    1. But fear not, Minty. The whole population will be vaccinated with a useless liquid. And HMG will claim great success and demand to be clapped every night at 6 pm – for ever.

    2. What does ‘10% efficacy’ mean? Does it reduce symptoms by 10% or does it kill 9 in 10 people?

      2. Obfuscation is the deliberate path chosen by the government. They do not want anybody to be sure about anything.

  60. Bbc News just showed a clip alleging that Trump had ‘incited violence’ in a speech. It did nothing of the sort. Oops.

    1. Why are people not very much more pissed off than they are by the lies the BBC feeds us?

      We have given up. As one of the Germans says after Basil Fawlty’s rant:

      “How ever did they (The British) win?

      I thought the whole point of getting a Brexit deal rather than leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ was so that we could have freer trade across borders and yet the EU is doing its best to thwart the pathetic BRINO deal that the deal has turned out to be.

      We would have been far better off with a No Deal Brexit. If this goes on then Boris Johnson will be kidnapped and drowned by the cheated fishermen or executed by the Northern Irish Unionists.

      2. “How ever did they (The British) win?”

        This is a question I’ve asked myself over the decades. Apart from Churchill and Thatcher, Conservative Party’s 1992 Committee “Grandees” (i.e. the chinless Wuperts) have constantly done all in their power to install one of their kind as p.m., even when far better-qualified candidates were available. When RAB Butler was the obvious choice, they chose Macmillan and then Home. When Whitelaw and Maudling were available they chose Heath. Their motto: “Why bother with a meritocracy when you have nepotism?”

  62. I read an article today “Watching the pot come to a boil” which compares what is going on in Burma with the worrying developments in the US. Here is part of it:

    “The problems facing the Democrats in Washington DC are similar to the problems facing the army in Burma.

    “The Burmese army has to deal with millions of Aung Sang Suu Kyi supporters conducting street protests. They’ve arrested Suu Kyi so that she can’t communicate with her supporters, and they’ve shut down internet social media so that her supporters can’t communicate with one another.

    “The Democrats have to deal with 74 million Trump supporters who, according to polls I’ve seen, overwhelmingly support Trump. The wealthy, powerful “Big Tech” companies have colluded with the Democrats to shut down thousands of social media accounts to prevent Trump from communicating with his supporters, and to prevent his supporters from communicating with each other. This kind of mass censorship is previously unheard of in America, and suggests that America is becoming a Stalinist dictatorship.

    “The Democrats are taking other steps. Joe Biden announced last week that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens will be permitted to enter the United States freely. The apparent purpose is to send them mail-in ballots in 2022 and instruct them to vote for Democrats.

    “What about violence? The Burmese army is on the verge of violence as the only way to handle even peaceful demonstrations by the millions of supporters of Suu Kiy.

    “Would the Democrats use violence to control peaceful demonstrations by the 74 million Trump supporters?

    “Let’s make it a little more specific. Look at the first picture at the beginning of this article with a mob of peaceful demonstrators carrying placards with pictures Aung Sang Suu Kyi. Now imagine that as a crowd of Trump supporters carrying placards with pictures of Trump, with text reading “Trump – The Real President.”

    “Something like that could actually happen. What would the Democrats do? Would Nancy Pelosi totally freak out? On January 20, the acting Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli said that Nancy Pelosi had requested thousands of troops to remain in DC for months, and she wanted them armed with crew-manned machine guns. These are the guns used in countries like Burma to kill dozens of student protesters within seconds. The request was denied, but this request shows the state of mind of Pelosi and the Democrats.

    “We also note that Biden is ordering the army to “stand down” so that “extremists” can be weeded out. To the Democrats, all 74 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters are extremists or cultists that need to be “deprogrammed.””

    http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ww2010.weblog.htm

    1. If they dared use machine guns on Trump supporters it really would precipitate a civil war.

    2. 329203+ up ticks,
      Afternoon S,
      Much closer to home after the treachery show by the UKIP nec towards G,Batten and taking down a successful leader as shown by his year in office, Richard Braine was
      voted in with a resounding victory, he then wanted to make G Batten his deputy only to be stopped by the very same neC from having contact with the party members.

      If treachery was an asset the current UKIP would have a majority in parliament.

      An ex long term member.

    3. Not much mention of the attempts by the Rohingya, using terrorist tactics, to force the creation of their own independent state.

  64. 329203+ up ticks,
    Just heard corbyns plaything on radio four trying to justify the amnesty for a million illegals plus another million if truth be told if they accept the jab.

    Two facets of the coalition political overseers group seen to be working successfully so for more of the same support & vote come the 6th May for their agents down your way.

    1. These people must be in a bit of a dilemma

      Get an amnesty but risk your life, get an amnesty but risk your life, get an amnesty but risk your life

    2. How long will it be before the Gummint introduces ID cards by the back door, i.e. vaccination certificates?

      1. 329203+ up ticks,
        Afternoon AA,
        All depends in the near future and the current voting pattern stays radically unchanged, what the imams say.

    2. The hammer, if used correctly is

      ‘an air-cooled, hand operated percussion tool used for applying the correct controlled force to an inanimate object’

      If not correctly used, it is A Brummigum Screwdiver

    3. I don’t know who Brian Greenham is, but he seems to have had a SoH bypass 🙂 Made Oi laff. Been there, done that as a radio ham. Are the valves glowing cherry red? Yes. Is it the anode plate? Yes. Oops! Too much current.

  69. “A communist party that exercises mass influence will be essential if Britain is to take the road to socialism in practice, through political class struggle”.

    This is a headline on the website of the Communist Party of Great Britain! The current general secretary, Robert Griffiths, is a Welsh ‘political activist’.

    I would love to ask Mr. Griffiths why he thinks that millions of people risk their lives to escape from socialist and communist regimes but never in the other direction! I would also like to ask him why he thinks that his party has 600 fewer members than the Monster Raving Loony Party!

  71. Despicable:

    Teachers ‘using Covid pandemic to push pay rise’

    Union capitalising on school closures to demand long-term perks and better conditions, claim MPs

    By
    Hayley Dixon,
    SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
    7 February 2021 • 10:21pm

    Britain’s biggest teaching union was on Sunday night accused of “hijacking” the pandemic to sneak through pay demands at the expense of education.

    The National Education Union (NEU) is including pay rises in “key demands” and bosses have said that any reduction in class sizes should be “long-term” – not just for social distancing.

    Union leaders have congratulated their members for closing down schools, claiming that it was their threats to not turn up to class, as opposed to the scientific data, which led to Boris Johnson ordering that children should stay at home last month.

    NEU bosses described the pandemic as a “turning point” in the power of teachers over the Government, but MPs say the union is “playing politics” and “hijacking the pandemic”. NEU officials want to return to schools when it is safe, but have rejected the Government’s proposals at every turn.

    They recently claimed that vaccinating teachers would not be enough to get back to the classroom. Since the schools have closed they have said that it is an “unrealistic expectation” for teachers to do every lesson as a livestream.

    But their requests go beyond health and safety and workload. In a “Covid bulletin” to reps, the NEU on Monday sets out “key demands for all workplaces”. The five demands are risk assessments, an end to work assessments during the pandemic, extra time to plan, prepare and assess students’ work, and an agreed pay progression.

    Reps are told to “secure a commitment to automatic pay progression at the end of this academic year. Where possible, win a commitment for this policy to be permanent”. But Tim Loughton, former minister for children and families, said that a long-term demand for pay increases should not be included in demands.

    The Conservative MP said: “The NEU demands have been about keeping schools closed, it has always been ­’computer says no’. The missing ­element in all their activities has been the ­welfare of children. They should not try to hijack the pandemic to promote demands for pay and conditions.”

    In their clash with ministers about primary schools reopening after Christmas, the NEU advised members to cite employment laws to refuse to attend the premises, claiming they were not safe. As a result many schools said they did not have enough staff to open. General secretary Kevin Courtney “congratulated” every member who had sent a letter, saying this, and not the data, had shut schools.

    Joint secretary Dr Mary Bousted said that “for too long teachers and support staff have not had a voice” and “the creeping authoritarianism from government has also crept into too many schools. This pandemic has loosened the chain of authority from government through Ofsted to schools. You have the opportunity to change your working lives, to get back some agency and to get that proper authority over your professional knowledge, concerns and issues.”

    Her comments were echoed by executive members Chris Denson and Venda Premkumar. Mr Denson said that the action “wasn’t just a moment, but it’s a turning point”. Ms Premkumar said that there was a “newfound confidence”, adding: “We have got to capitalise on that, we have got to take that forward, there is no going back to what it was pre-pandemic.”

    Despite recognising the damage that school closures are having on children, the NEU say in their national recovery plan that the Government “must accept that a full return by all students may not be possible for some time”.

    1. well, what did you expect to come from Edookashun Edookashun, Edookashun.

      When I were nobutalad, teaching was a vocation and teachers aspired todo the best for their pupils,

      whatever the level they were being taught

      Discipline in schools is non existent, schools run for the teachers- not pupils

      They all aspire to the lowest level, ie little/no streaming

      BLM not GCSE

      1. To be fair, OLT (and I have to declare an interest here), discipline is lacking largely as a result of the Children (sic) Act, which gave all the rights, but no responsibilities, to the pupils. That followed on from banning corporal punishment so there were no sanctions. Mixed ability [spit!] is not something most staff teaching academic subjects ever championed.

  72. I have an appointment tomorrow morning for blood extraction and blood tests at 10.30.

    Just had a call from the Hospital that they now want me to have an abdominal ultrasound at 9.30.

    I have already had full leg and then groin ultrasounds.

    I wonder if they know i am due a full CT scan?

    I also have to have a lateral flow test before both of those appointments.

    Three different floors and long corridors…it’s going to be a long day.

    I will need my wheels.

    I’ll get me skateboard.

      2. Yes Bill.

        With the amount of appointments i have this month and next i have just had a cunning plan… open a Travel lodge next to the hospital. It would be cheaper than paying the parking charges. A fine of £60 last time because my debit card flatlined. :@(

          1. Very sensible. If someone is long term hospitalised it helps if their husband or wife doesn’t have to travel everyday to visit them. Cheaper too.

      1. Thanks J. They keep springing these appointments on me at short notice but i really shouldn’t complain when others are having theirs cancelled.

          1. Nah. The flow test is to see that i haven’t got it so i can go on to the other departments. And keep the staff safe.

            When i die of boredom in the waiting room…then it will be covid.

    3. Mr Zimmer is your friend.
      Do you know anyone who can lend you one?

      Or possibly a mobility scooter.

      I know it’s late in the afternoon but we can hire them here at a pharmacy.

      1. A zimmer wouldn’t help but i did buy myself a wheelchair. I have yet to customise it with banks of mirrors and an aerial with a foxtail on it then i’m set.

          7. Nope. I remember them. I did actually mean to say Sundance rather than Butch but i’ve had a little drinky before i go nil by mouth.

          2. My mother has a 3-wheeler. But with larger wheels and more robust tyres which allow her to go “off-road” and move easily on their gravel drive and garden path. It’s has a seat and a basket for her secateurs so that she can still do a few small tasks and feel that the garden is still hers.

          3. That’s a Rollator, Grizz. MOH has one, but still managed to fall over using it so it has been locked away for safety.

          4. They’re very common over here, Conners. I’ve never actually seen a UK-type zimmer anywhere. Also popular are those ski sticks. People look so comical using them with no skis.

          5. I carry a hazel staff with a horn handle when walking – especially on rough terrain.

            A friend, who will be 80 this year, took to using two poles for hill-walking about 5 years ago – she’s still hill-walking but only on low hills now – she reckons that she won’t be able to do Scafell Pike again. They may look comical, but if they keep you active… does it matter?

        1. So, are you remembering ze pretty nurse who vas bedbathing you each day? I vas zat nurse. Ha ha!

    6. It’s good to see you have not lost your sense of humour! (from later comments) Hope all goes well, hadn’t realised you have been sick.

      1. Thanks Jill. These things are sent to try us. Having a sense of humour is a big help. I even made the Consultant laugh.

          1. I told him he reminded me of Hugh Lawrie who played ‘House’ in the U.S TV series. He does look like him.

        2. It’s having a sense of yoomor that keeps you going, Phizzee! Don’t let circumstances grind you down.

    7. Blimey Phizzee, no wonder nobody else can get an appointment. {:-))

      Hope all goes well. Perhaps the abdominal ultrasound is to to check for AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm).

  73. Police issue Lake District warning after rescuer falls 150 metres. 8 February 2021.

    Police have urged visitors to stay away from the Lake District after a mountain rescuer fell 150 metres and sustained “life-changing injuries” while coming to the aid of two hikers.

    Rescuers were called to help two men who had travelled more than 100 miles in contravention of coronavirus regulations to camp overnight on a 780-metre (2,500ft) fell in near-freezing conditions. The hikers, who were from the Leicester area and the Liverpool area, requested help after one of them experienced chest pains on Saturday morning.

    So people only fall off crags during shutdown?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/police-issue-lake-district-warning-rescuer-fall-covid-lockdown

    3. It was not the 150 metre (how have big that is) fall that hurt him/her/it,
      it was the abrupt stop at the end of the fall,

      1. Indeed. They keep saying ‘speed kills’ when it comes to motor accidents, but it’s the rapid deceleration that actually does for people.

    4. Reports elsewhere state that the hikers were fined £200 each for breaching lockdown rules. Meanwhile, the NHS is spending £thousands per day treating the man who came to the idiots’ help.

      1. Laff of the day here in Salop; a shoplifter has been fined. For shoplifting? Hell no! For an “unnecessary journey”! I kid you not.

  75. A man has been charged in Lanarkshire in connection with an offensive social media tweet about Sir Captain Tom Moore.
    Sir Tom died in Bedford Hospital last Tuesday, aged 100, after testing positive for Covid-19.
    He had captured the nation’s hearts with his fundraising efforts during the first coronavirus lockdown, raising more than £30m for NHS charities.
    The 35-year-old man is due to appear in court later this week.
    World War Two veteran Sir Tom’s family said the last year of his life was “nothing short of remarkable” and that he had “experienced things he’d only ever dreamed of”.
    A Police Scotland spokeswoman said: “On Friday 5 February 2021, we received a report of an offensive tweet about Sir Captain Tom Moore who died on Tuesday 2 February.
    “A 35-year-old man has subsequently been arrested and charged in connection with communication offences and is due to appear at Lanark Sheriff Court on Wednesday 17 February.”
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-55986646

        1. He’ll have his dog collar felt for tweeting in bad taste? If it’s very funny perhaps the court will just laugh it off.

        1. No, they didn’t. The joke wasn’t why he was in court. He was in court for repeating the (very offensive) phrase “Gas the Jews” more than 20 times in a 2 minute video. As he bloody well deserved to be.

      1. “An offensive tweet about Sir Captain Tom Moore”, not “offensive to Sir Tom” Sos.

        2. I suggest that you are arguing semantics.

          This issue is about offence taken on behalf of someone else. Who happens to be dead.

          Are you suggesting that if I post something offensive about Hitler or Stalin that I should be prosecuted?

          1. What? Who suggested that anyone should be prosecuted? I was simply saying that you are twisting what the “35-year-old man” said. It is the readers of this man’s post who were offended, not Sir Tom himself.

          2. Hold on, you are taking my post out of the original context. I was replying to an earlier post which suggested that that 35 year old man had been arrested and charged, which usually implies that a prosecution is possible.

            I was not twisting anything, I was commenting about the prosecution of that man because someone else had taken offence and worse, in my view, they had taken that offence on behalf of someone who was dead. It is not unreasonable on that logic to make the admittedly hyperbolic, to drive home the point, comment that I did.

            If you must make a pedantic correction, using bold letters, to show how clever you are, expect more of the same from me.

          3. The correction I made was intended simply to correct what you had written, and not intended to either to insult you nor to show how clever I am. Make of that what you will, Sos, I have no intention of continuing this to and fro until it escalates into insults and open warfare.

            Good night to you and to all NoTTLers – sleep well.

          4. Agreed.

            But before you go.

            I get more than a little upset by constant pedantry, NOT you, normally yours is pleasant, you just hit a nerve the other night…

            The regular pedants have chased off far too many good posters, who made minor mistakes.

            Anyone reading their posts knew exactly what they were saying, spelling grammar, punctuation, definitions etc. aside, but they were jumped on.

            As I guess you know, I’m very thick skinned so I bite back, we’ve lost a lot of newcomers who were jumped on.
            My take is that we should welcome anyone as a friend on Nottle until they prove otherwise.

            Anyway, bottoms up, cheers, Santé and sleep well.

            };-O

          5. Thanks, Sos. I will try not to overdo any “corrections” in future. I’m off to bed now, see you all in the morning.

  80. And almost six years later………..

    It is a slow day in a little Greek Village on Thassos . The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

    On this particular day Angela Merkel, disguised as a German tourist, is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner she wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

    The owner gives her some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

    The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.

    The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

    The guy at the Farmers’ Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the taverna.

    The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him “services” on credit.

    The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

    The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything.

    At that moment our Angela comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory for her, puts the money back in her purse, and leaves town.

    No one produced anything.

    No one earned anything.

    However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

    And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the Greek bailout package works!

  81. I think my posts about my health are becoming monotonous. I will just give updates in future if changes are for worse or better.

    I am receiving excellent care. Even the local pharmacist at Lloyds chemist phones me up weekly. Then follow up calls from my GP.

    Thank you all but if you ask me how i am the stock answer will be …’I’m fine/I’m not fine.

    Don’t want to hog the threads and put people on a downer.

    2. KBO – and drive carefully when you go to hospital. You don’t want to end up in A&E. Will be thinking of you. And laughing…{:¬)) Don’t let it get you down, seriously.

    3. They are not, in the least, monotonous. One think that I’ve noticed about this forum, over the years, is the way that we all look out for each other (well, at least the goodies among us) when all is not well healthwise. Long may that tradition continue.

      You continue telling us about your health problems, Philip, and we will continue to give sympathy, advice, take the piss, and do whatever is necessary to help you keep your chin up.

      Capiche? 😉

      1. Kapsosh!

        I am one of the younger posters on here and i know others have health and troubles to deal with.

        I just wish i hadn’t wasted my life on fags, booze and brothels.

        Actually i don’t. :@)

        1. ‘I am one of the younger posters on here …’

          You speak for yourself ….. you yoof!

          Us, what’s about 28’ish have seen it,
          done it and don’t regret it, well not much!

          10. Three.

            One to polish my shoes.
            One to run my bath.
            One to iron my shirts.

            Doesn’t everyone have a piccayune stored under the stairs? Don’t tell the BLM ers

          18. Well i hope when you become woke tomorrow you don’t wear clashing colours or purple lipstick.

          19. I’ll be guided by you…{:¬))

            Must dash – bottle of 1986 Chateau Léoville Barton to open. The last one…{:¬((

          21. I visited Chateau Langoa Barton, where Léoville Barton, is produced in 1975 on a trade trip. Had the pleasure of meeting Ronald Barton. Used to sell Barton et Guestier wines.

            Ah. Those were the days.

    4. We are really concerned, Phizzee, and we will all worry more about what we do not know. I hope all goes well for you tomorrow. Wrap up warm, it is bitterly cold out there.

    5. I understand, Phil. But keep us informed, please. We care. To put it in context, Dianne’s ex, and the father her two youngest of her kids (test tubes notwithstanding), is now in hospital in Bournemouth, initially for pneumonia, but now has Covid, has been on a ventilator, and has just had a tracheotomy. 70-ish, I fear his prognosis is not good. I prolly shouldn’t care, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy…

      2. That’s not good; being admitted to hospital is definitely not good for your health, regardless of the reason that put you there in the first place!

    6. You can moan as much as you like Phizzee! You’re amongst pals here and we happen to care about you! Best of luck tomorrow and (if you’re up to it) let us know how you get on! 😘

    7. We care about you, Phizzee; we want to know you’re okay (and if you aren’t we want to be able to bully you into doing something about it until you are!).

    2. Musk’s a rat.

      My bet is that he’s somehow bought a considerable quantity personally, and then used his company to buy more with a huge fanfare.

      He’ll make a killing, and the idiots who have big holdings in his company will find their fingers very badly burnt.

  83. A very perceptive BTL comment under a DT article about Andy Burnham:

    “The left at one time represented the cream of the working class now it represents the dregs of the middle class.”

    1. Good evening, Rastus.

      Surely you mean:
      ‘it represents the dregs of any class.’
      Or indeed:
      ‘Of no class at all.’

  84. I am signing off, on the cold and snowy day. More forecast overnight – but they also mention sunshine, albeit with low temperatures.

    I’ll join you tomorrow, all being well.

    A demain

  85. I assume it’s already been discussed but I’ve only just caught up with the news that Johnson has surrendered the UK with his amnesty for illegal immigrants. Couple that with his eco-madness and it’s clear that the man is now a danger to the country. Any gratitude shown towards him for getting us out of the EU, however unsatisfactorily, must have all but leaked away now. I thought leaving the EU would be euphoric but it’s been tainted by the events of the last year.

    Once upon a time the backroom Tory suits would have eased him out. They wouldn’t get away with that with today’s media but even if they could, who would replace him? The pleasure of the thrashing of Labour in the 2019 general election seems a lifetime ago.

    The bottle opener will be busy tonight…

    1. AFAIK, it isn’t an amnesty per se. He just wants ‘undocumented’ people to get jabbed. All 1.3m of them.

      1. Good evening, AA.

        As with every Government dept. or
        side shoot….if 1.3m have yer vaccination
        then each one has to be allocated to a
        number … and if you haven’t got one then
        yer NHS will issue you with a temporary
        one!! Next step … apply for a permanent one!!
        ….. Job Done!

          4. Indeed and a pretty penny it costs us, too. Back in the eighties interpreting was running at nearly £60 an hour plus expenses – it won’t be any less now.

          5. If someone requested an interpreter in France I suspect that there are singularly few instances where the State would automatically offer one, let alone pay for the service.

          6. Absolutely; you pay for your own. It should be like that here – after all, it isn’t as if English isn’t a world language.

        2. I doubt they will. They won’t believe that the government won’t use the stats to deport them, and anyway very few of them are probably in the vulnerable categories.

          1. You must be joking, the Government have set up a cast iron guarantee that they won’t be deported and even if the Government then attempts to do so, the HRA lawyers will fight for ever and a day.

          2. Most immigrants don’t trust the authorities in my experience. Well, do you blame them??

          3. I thought BAMEs were ‘vulnerable’? At least that’s what they keep telling us.

      4. Effectively is is an amnesty because if they rock up, although they are illegal, they won’t be prosecuted and sent back (which is what needs to happen to send a message that illegality doesn’t pay).

    2. When David Blunkett was asked how many migrants were in the country he said he didn’t have a clue.

      Now apparently we know as they did all along.

    3. 329203+ up tick,
      Evening WS,
      ” The pleasure of thrashing lab” = the pleasure of threshing the cons and so the game continues whilst the Country is covertly taken over by alien forces.

      The lab/lib/con are a COALITION ANTI ENGLISH / GB GROUP surviving on fools playing political musical chairs
      where they ALL retain a seat, thanks to a very obliging electorate.

      People will be heard saying on the way to the fifth prayer of the day at the mosque, ” gave them tory’s a good seeing to.

        2. 329203+ up ticks,
          Evening VW,
          I am afraid the party I supported for many a year was taken down by treachery via the internal
          Nec / lab/lib/con/ and their supporters in many cases protecting the close shop.
          Keep in mind the electorate want “their ” party in number ten, party first & foremost regardless of consequence.

          The three monkeys are a success in covering the fact that the toxic trio are a proven coalition.

          Supporting / voting lab/lib/con coalition in my book is not an option.

      2. I agree with you. We have no choice in the three party system where all three parties are branches of the same withered tree.

        By way of consolation it is even worse in the USA where elections are rigged by an assortment of repulsive bigoted Democrats in collusion with China, Iran, Pakistan and Italy and Janus like faux Republicans.

        If you are not in the Deep State Swamp you are a ‘deplorable’, or as a comedian noted “It’s a big club but you ain’t in it!”

        1. 329203+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          Party before Country has brought us to our present odious plight as a nation, we are knowingly leaving a legacy of sh!te for those following.

          The treacherous history of these political overseers is an open book and the frightening thing is it has NEVER lacked in support for decades.

    4. Johnson’s whole approach portrays a man completely obsessed with globalist policies. Did anyone see this coming? The weaponising of CV19, his intention to remove gas and other fossil fuels from the power inventory to be replaced with intermittent and unreliable renewable sources; talk of taxing meat and dairy, depriving people, especially children, of essential protein, minerals and vitamins necessary for healthy development – perhaps there will be a vaccine for those?
      All those cheering, “Good old Boris,” less than two years ago must be feeling extremely let down by the globalist in a buffoon’s clothing. People MUST NOT give this man any kudos come May 6th. He will try and ride triumphantly on the back of the death list reducing and the vaccines. He must fall as May fell, by leading the Tories to a disastrous election result.

        1. I didn’t trust him, or any of them to be fair, and I spoilt my ballot. He has turned out so much worse than I could have imagined.

          1. Yup. Johnson is full of wind and piss not unlike the rest of his dissolute family and friends.

            He ain’t Churchill is he? Churchill’s monkey was more intelligent.

          3. Same here. I had no one I could vote for as there were only the “Big [failed] Three” on the ballot paper.

          1. I reckon Boris hankers for his own private jet and a couple of yachts moored in Monaco and Kerry-like six vast properties dotted around the globe.

            Oh and sorry about the pillow whisperer who will be consigned to the deep as Boris builds a company of concubines to serve his lust starting with Inga and following with Oxana, Ursula, Lucille, Rachel, Desdemona and Delilah.

            Edit: I am banking on Delilah after she removes the wig from the potato.

        3. For shame, I voted for him in the leadership election, as well as the GE. At the time, he seemed the least worst option. Now – I’m not sure I’ll ever bother to vote again. It’s clear from the MoS article yesterday that the Government is happy to experiment on us all.

          If voting ever made a difference, they wouldn’t allow it.

          1. At elections, I’m presented with a choice of candidates representing four parties, SNP, Con, Lab or Lib/Dem. All of them seem to be driven by pursuing radical and mainly ludicrous agendas which are the very antithesis of my political beliefs. All of them are in favour of ever more state control and the taking away of our hard-won liberties. All of them believe in censoring our right to free speech and all of them are proven liars.

            If I ever get the chance to vote again, I’ll not be voting for any of ’em. But I will take the trouble to go to the polling station and I’ll spoil my ballot – that way, my vote must be counted and recorded. I hope others who feel their voices are not being heard will do the same. Maybe if enough folk did, it would send a strong message.

            Vain hope? Probably, but I see no other choice.

          3. Unless you are willing to stand yourself – or persuade a like-minded friend to do it. At least that would put an alternative on the ballot paper. If you get more than 5% of the vote, you get your £500 deposit back. You could stand for the NOTA (None Of The Above) party. You’d just need to register it with the Electoral Commission as a party.

        4. He never had mine. I thought he was an unprincipled egotist who would say, or do, anything that he thought might bring him power and never mind the consequences for us poor plebs.

      2. Korky, I am so let down with this farce that I voted for but…

        …what are the alternatives?

        Labour – never in a month of Sundays – too socialist

        Lib/Dems – neither liberal nor democratic

        Greenies – they neither know nor realise where their policies will lead

        UKIP – would have had my vote but they started infighting and lost any credibility

        Reform/Reclaim. To be viable, credible manifestos are required. Do we have them? NO!

        Where on Earth does that leave we centre-right voters?

        1. Good morning, NtN.

          I was in that quandary at the last GE and Cameron 2015. I did not vote in the latter and spoiled my ballot in the former. I voted for May (holding my nose, is the correct phrase I believe) and got my fingers rather badly burned by that woman.

          I have always believed that being able to vote is one of the most important responsibilities we hold but many modern day politicians and their parties are beyond the pale and voting for the least bad option is not really an option that I agree with.

          In mitigation to those who voted for Johnson in 2019 they could not have known what a complete disaster he would turn out to be. A liar, not unexpected in a politician to be fair; a formidable expert in the art of u-turns; a globalist (who knew? A late convert?); wedded to green nonsense and weak in the art of leadership. The last item chimes with the reports of his lazy attitude to dealing with detail. If you’re not on top of the details then you are open to being led by those who do have a grasp of the detail and who are following a different agenda.

          I appreciate your dilemma, NtN. I am in the same boat.

    5. Even bojo’s Brexit is not unbridled joy; there are many nasties hidden in the small print. I don’t like to sound prescient (i e “I told you so”), but in the run-up to the election I was trying to warn about his lack of conviction about Brexit and that he wasn’t a Conservative (with or without the capital letter).

    4. When things get tough, it will be nice to know that you are relying on someone who was chosen because they ticked a diversity box. Sigh.

    5. In space no one one can hear you say FFS! There again, the Space Station does need a clean.

    1. Getting a downvote from JSP (what’s the betting she didn’t even watch any or the entire video?) – quelle surprise! Presumably she is more of an ‘expert’ than Dr Gold, being a ‘farmgirl’. Below is the retracted Lancet article about hydroxychloroquine

      https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31324-6/fulltext

      Note that Dr. Sam Bailey from NZ is essentially saying the same. Their evidence has now convinced me to not take this vaccine unless and until it can be definitively proven – by people/organsaitions who don’t have an agenda to go along with the current narrative – that it is safe over the short and long term.

          1. The downvotes signify that what you say (post) get far enough up its nose to cause the backlash.

            It means that what you say is far more cogent than any rebuttal it may come up with.

            Downvoting is the final recognition that they have nothing to say.

        1. Apparently she so riled at me quoting facts that she’s now threatened me with being blocked (I’m sooo scared!). I just said I’ll ignore her from now on like everyone else…I have visions of her swearing a lot at the moment.

          2. I’m already blocked which means that I can see her but she can’t see me and that’s why she no longer downvotes my posts. I think she believes that her blocking me means nobody in the forum can see my replies to her.

            Foolish cailleach that she is.

          4. No, I’m not swearing at all. I’m not calling people names either. But I see that you are still not ignoring me – self-condemned as a liar.

          5. What’s not to ignore? Keep the ignorant out.

            If I upset you Jennifer SP, then I have achieved my objective,

        2. One of the nastiest individuals I have had to deal with as an Architect was the woman who prepared the farm accounts for a couple of farmers for whom I worked.

          The first was the owner of Belchamp Walter Hall, famed for featuring in the Lovejoy series. It is a 9 bay Queen Anne House and the adjacent former Stables were the antiques base for Tinker.

          The second was a Danish couple for whom I restored a farmhouse and outbuildings at Brook Hall in Foxearth near Sudbury.

          The wretched woman and her equally repulsive husband, name of Maskell, were forever trying to thwart my efforts in order to promote and maintain their own positions.

          Needless to say, the farm workers despised them and expressed a wish to murder the husband who was forever reporting on them, watching through keyholes and ingratiating himself with his employers by pretending to competence (of which he had none).

          Dear old JSP puts me in mind of the Maskell woman, a true grunt from inter-bred Sudbury for anyone familiar with the place.

      3. I have noted that a very large number of clinicians and scientists have questioned the promotion by governments of experimental vaccines and experimental genome altering treatments which are not vaccines at all.

        My wife and I will not be submitting to these vaccines and treatments. They are experimental and neither of us wish to be guinea pigs for Pharma companies, exempt from prosecution when it all goes tits up, and the dark forces promoting this shit for personal gain.

        1. Great, thanks. Four months into the new home. Settled in. I’ve had to seriously downsize, but that’s not a bad thing. Since DVLA are all at home, and eschewing paper applications, I’m still not driving. The game changer is that I’m 2 mins walk from Wanborough Station, from where I can get to Guildford or Aldershot, return, for around £2 – £3. There being no shops in the village (yet), my nearest convenience store is Tesco Metro in Guildford. I can board a train, walk to Tesco, back to the station, board the same train, and be home – all within 40 minutes. I couldn’t do that in a Ferrari… And there are occasional buses.

          My biggest gripe at present is that the PCC have decided in their infinite wisdom to suspend worship services. So it’s back to bloody Zoom. :-((

          1. Good news. When we are freed I’ll get the boat to Guildford and we can head up to Godalming for the day.
            In the meantime I’ve been stripping wallpaper through out the new house whilst waiting for planning permission for alterations and extensions. I just hope the decrepit Central Heating lasts for another few weeks.

            Bruckner Te Deum just started on Radio 3 A real treat!

          5. What a pain! Do any of those trains go to Farringdon (Smithfield)? I know two churches (Barts Great and Less) still holding services.

          6. Nope. I’m on the North Downs Line, Sue. I can change at Guildford. Some trains go all the way to Gatwick, were I allowed to leave the country.

            I eschewed my local Zoom service yesterday, and “attended” Communion at Guildford Cathedral. Via YouTube. Sadly, it’s not much better than our village churches can manage.

            But here’s the link… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxSnxbflihA

      2. A group of almost 200 British academics from more than a dozen UK universities could face jail, as officials probe whether they may have unwittingly helped the Chinese government build weapons of mass destruction.

        Officials are investigating the academics amid suspicion they may have breached laws designed to protect national security and human rights.

        The academics, who are from 20 UK universities, including some of the most prestigious in the country, are suspected of breaching the Export Control Order 2008.

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9236123/Almost-200-academics-British-universities-face-jail-sending-information-China.html

          1. Here’s me thinking that they may belong to a different nationality ..

            I mean , Uni’s are full of foreign money now, aren’t they .. It must be so easy to be involved in espionage.

          3. A few months ago I visited a project in Cambridge Grand Arcade. Every other student was Chinese.

            Cambridge University was once famed for both its scientific community and is complimentary Arts community. The University and Colleges gave up the Arts and took the Chinese funding. The place has been the less since I first lived there forty years ago.

            The city has been wrecked by insensitive modern buildings and much of its fabric has been lost owing to the greed of colleges and the ignorance and insensitivity of its planners. It is becoming an ugly place.

          4. Thanks, Cori – 20 years ago, Cambridge was an ugly place. What, if anything, has changed?

      1. Having spent several weeks rehearsal and then signing this with the choir I found the Non confundar wall of sound spine tingling..

    1. BBC SW TV News devoted an inordinate amount of time to this story tonight as the boy concerned lived in Cornwall. One ‘extreme right’ terrorist will get far more attention than 100 Muslim terrorists. I wonder why this is?

      1. Balance.
        F or every one ‘extreme right’ terrorist there will be 100 Muslim terrorists.

    1. “Is TV comedy in its death throes?” It was in its death throes more than 20 years ago, and is now dead, pushing up daisies, shuffled off this mortal coil…

        1. And Eddie Izzard’s sketch on technology [computer error causing the end of the world] is actually very funny – sadly the YouTube clip is no longer available here.

  94. Evening, all. Never mind the hospitality industry, no booze in pubs is another mindless attack on community cohesion and the public’s ability to meet and put the world to rights.

    1. Evening, Conway.
      How are you? Is it as cold and snowy in your part of the country?
      For the first time in 20 years, the underground water pipe that feeds the washing machine in our shed has frozen.

      1. Evening, anne. I hope your frozen pipe doesn’t cause problems when it thaws. It’s been very cold here (0.5%C, although the wind chill made it feel much worse), but we only had a very light dusting overnight and, despite its attempts to drop a few flakes during the day, nothing of any significance materialised and what was lying disappeared.

      2. Bad luck, can you get at the point where it is frozen, or will you just have to wait for the thaw?

        1. Funny that, I was of the impression and thaw’t that it mattered not one iota what those on here consider cogent. You just wish to destroy.

      1. Unfortunately, I have no idea, croc. The loan arrangement which would have solved many of my problems fell through – Elfansafetee, red tape, too [insert your own excuse here]; you know the sort of thing. I can only hope he’s getting occasional exercise (or it will be VERY interesting when I ride him again) apart from stuffing his face in the field.

    4. Allowing pubs to open with no alcohol on sale might just be the turning point in Brits’ acquiescence to all this ‘beyond the pale’ nonsense. A stout response is needed from the bitter, drinking populace.

    4. You can bet your bottom dollar that ain’t nothing but a paper currency. What you need is solids investment!

  97. Oh dear! Went to upvote a comment and got a blank screen so there are a couple of hundred comments I missed.

    It actually got up to -2° today. but has now dropped back to just under -3°. Got busy with the bush saw this afternoon & cut some of the smaller bits of wood I collected at the weekend to fill 8 mushroom trays. I’ve had to chuck a few of the trays out over this winter so will have to try & scrounge some replacements.

      1. It’s not a bloody Class 55 Deltic, it’s a EECo Type 3, class 37 at one end of an OLE inspection train parked at Millerhill yard after a 9 hour shift.

          1. Not really, I just get a bit fed up with 🥃⚓️⚓️ not being able to tell the difference!

  98. A perceptive piece of writing pinched from Going Postal:-

    ′′One young devil asked the old man: “How did you manage to bring so many souls to hell?” The old devil answered: “I instilled fear in them!” Answers the youngster: “Great job! And what were they afraid of? Wars? Hunger?” Answers the man: “No, they were afraid of the disease!”

    For this youngster: “Does this mean they didn’t get sick? Are they not dead? There was no rescue for them?” The old man answered: “but no . . . they got sick, died, and the rescue was there.” The young devil, surprised, answered: “Then I don’t understand???”

    The old man answered: “You know they believed the only thing they have to keep at any cost is their lives. They stopped hugging, greeting each other. They’ve moved away from each other. They gave up all social contacts and everything that was human! Later they ran out of money, lost their jobs, but that was their choice because they were afraid for their lives, that’s why they quit their jobs without even having bread.

    They believed blindly everything they heard and read in the papers. They gave up their freedoms, they didn’t leave their own homes literally anywhere. They stopped visiting family and friends.

    The world turned into such a concentration camp, without forcing them into captivity. They accepted everything!!! Just to live at least one more miserable day . . . And so living, they died every day!!! And that’s how it was very easy for me to take their miserable souls to hell….. ′′

    C.S. Lewis – ′ Old Devil’s Letters To Young ′ 1942.

    2. But I do not believe this was genuine Screwtape!

      They used to read C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters to us in the daily morning chapel service we all had to attend. I think the old padre thought he was being trendy by having something other than the Bible read aloud to the boys.

      2. After a closer reading I was doubtful myself, particularly the reference to “Concentration Camps” in 1942.

      1. I just found the person on Reddit and am even more of the opinion that this Trans bullshit is a mental illness and the last thing they should be doing is dealing with it by surgical mutilation.

        1. 329203+ up ticks,
          Evening Bob,
          It deflects & eases in more FGM so as in the near future to be taken as norm.

        2. How about getting on with your own life and leaving them to get on with theirs. They do you no harm.

          1. Until it goes wrong, then they sue the NHS …
            NHS Negligence Compensation Budget is £83,400,000,000 this year.

          3. You do realise, don’t you, that 1 in every 200 babies is born with an intersex condition (there are many) and that most are not diagnosed at birth. The child’s sex really is “assigned” because it is not known in those cases.

            A friend who had lived in an uncomfortable and very imperfect, apparently male, body for 50 years learned the “he” produced as much oestrogen as most women – and less testosterone than most women. In other words “he” wasn’t “he” at all and never had been. She now lives, much more happily, as herself. The changes in her paperwork are the “cosmetic” part.

            That’s not deviance it’s biology – which is, invariably, imperfect.

          5. So deviance is not normalised. Normality is normalised. The normal spectrum for humans is very wide indeed.

          6. If it has a willy, it’s male. If it hasn’t, it’s female..

            What’s so hard to understand – does your brain not do male and female – too hard a concept?

          7. It is quite correct to observe that because of chromosomal or developmental disorder some are born with what is described as an ‘intersex’ condition. It is quite wrong to suggest that all of those who think they are ‘born in the wrong body’ should be indulged in what is probably a mental disorder.

            We must hope that the ‘trans’ movement destroys itself through its own madness. Unfortunately, that will probably only happen when women are assaulted or killed by men pretending to be women.

          8. Never mind ‘intersex’ condition – there has been, for many, many years, a condition that identifies as ‘hermaphrodite’ but I suppose that the spelling of such is beyond the ken of the JSPs of this world.

          9. Cutting chunks off bodies as a result of a mental disorder is akin to opening the skull and lobotomising the person. It should be the last resort after all other kings of mental therapy have been tried.

          10. Kaypea, individuals around the transitioning person are also harmed deeply, both by the trans political cult, and by this condition. It very often goes along with a lifetime of depression, suicidal tendences, sleeplessness etc etc.
            It involves a LOT of suffering, that is spread around everyone who comes into contact with the trans person! They just aren’t “allowed” to tell their story in public.

          12. Trust me, a LOT of harm is done to others. It’s like throwing a stone in a pool, and the ripples affect everyone around the person.

          13. Sorry Jennifer, but I disagree.
            They are promoting a lie that has caused and is causing immense harm to other people.
            A men can not become a woman nor can a woman become a man.

        3. Correct, it is the mind that is changeable, the body is what you are born with. If the two do not agree, the mismatch is in the mind and these conditions are normally regarded as mental illness. Chopping bits off is not the answer.

    2. Literally fell for that ‘sh1t. Good luck, enjoy your life as an idiot.

      I don’t think that you were really meant to be an XX woman – your XY somehow got in the way. Go on, sue your surgeon.

      1. They should sue the hardline political groups that are making it impossible for any doctor or psychologist to be honest with them, or to seek alternative treatment other than surgery!

  100. The UK Kent COVID strain is more virulent than the South African variant – well it’s British innit! 🤔

    3. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the programme’s viewing statistics.

      Mind you failure is rated very highly at the BBC – I believe that Zoë Ball lost millions of listeners when she took over a morning radio slot and was then rewarded by becoming the highest presenter on the BBC after Gary Lineker.

    4. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the programme’s viewing statistics.

      Mind you failure is rated very highly at the BBC – I believe that Zoë Ball lost millions of listeners when she took over a morning radio slot and was then rewarded by becoming the highest presenter on the BBC after Gary Lineker.

    1. I reckon she scrolls through the every single daily comment until she finds yours (and those of one or two others) Remember each of those downvotes is a badge of honour, to be worn with pride. She blocked me so I can no longer enjoy her downvotes.

      Still, she did award me the post-nominal letters VOB some time ago, so that’s a result!

      G’night Cor.
      ;¬)

      1. Do any of us know whether the down ticker is a SHE ?
        A few years ago , a very rude troll haunted these pages , I think the very same person who down ticks has many disguises.

        I blocked it , life feels so much easier now.

        1. The downvoter is JenniferSP, Maggie. Thought everybody knew that.

          If you hover your cursor over the downvote arrow, the name will be revealed!
          :¬))

          3. ‘Guest vote’ appears if you have blocked that person, Belle. JSP always downvotes cori, if I haven’t signed in and read anonymously her name appears, but as soon as I sign in her name disappears, comments the lot. Comments are marked with ‘this person is blocked’ and upvotes and downvotes as ‘guest vote’.

          4. All the down votes I get are from a Guest. I think I once even got a down vote for posting ‘Good morning, my friends‘.

          6. It’s their own damned fault.
            The bile that corrie, Duncan and a few others throw at Jennifer would not be accepted on any reasonably balanced site.

            If they can dish it out then the poor babies can take it as well.

          8. So you really think that they can act like complete idiots, insulting anyone that doesn’t agree with their views?
            If ty want right of polly, go to breitbart

          10. They don’t speak to anyone else like that. JSP has brought the opprobrium on herself.

            Which is how she likes to live in real life.

            ‘oh woe. why is life so horrible. Actually it isn’t. So i will provoke people into being horrid to me. Then i’ll feel better’.

          11. And the Threats I received when I dared disagree with some posts don’t count?

            It comes back to the fact that they should grow up.

          14. open your eyes to their behaviour. If that is acceptable then it is more Godfreys “we’re doomed”.

          17. The bile was not unprovoked though. I think if anyone throws the kind of scolding and insults at men that JSP has, they are likely to get a similar upfront response.

      3. VOB is the best accolade of all! It is spectacularly amazing. It took sometime to work out what it meant, I was gob-smacked when I did.

        1. Then you’re ahead of me, PM. I can’t think of much that doesn’t involve extreme age and being born out of wedlock…

          1. Well done! It should not fall out of favour! A nottler award of the highest order, to be worn with pride! : – ))

      4. I may not be on the G&S Lord High Executioner’s list but I am on hers. Not worth worrying about it.

      5. I checked it yesterday – 13 downvotes and not a single comment on any of them but also self-puff comments on other posts. What a complete and utter megalomaniac. Best ignored. You cannot improve on ignorant.

        1. I think one should look at downvotes as proof of having won the argument (whatever it may be!)

    3. Just ignore it.

      Many of us on here enjoy your comments , and I love it when you wander off into artistic dissapproval of modern building designs .

        2. Ever since all my upvotes were deleted, I have become indifferent to both ups and downs. Although that said, it’s nice to know there are people who agree with me enough to give me an upvote. As for downvotes – they can have a multitude of different reasons, disagreement, disapproval, sheer bl**dy-mindedness…

  107. Goodnight, Gentlefolk on here. may the Good God give you sweet dreams and the troll God prevent any sleep for the silly ones.

  108. Need any more evidence Biden is not in charge ?

    If Biden was in charge at the Pentagon, why appoint General Charles Flynn, younger brother of Trump National Security Advisor and Trump pardoned General Michael Flynn to command US Army Forces in the Pacific ?

Comments are closed.