Monday 8 March: A substantial pay rise for NHS staff is simply unaffordable at this time

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/2021/03/08/letters-substantial-pay-rise-nhs-staff-simply-unaffordable-time/

776 thoughts on “Monday 8 March: A substantial pay rise for NHS staff is simply unaffordable at this time”

  1. Sober reflection: will a memoir rescue the reputation of President Biden’s black sheep son? 8 march 2021

    Next month Hunter Biden, scapegrace son of the US president, will publish Beautiful Things, a memoir that has been billed as an account of his “descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety”.

    Hunter Biden missed a crucial rally during his father’s presidential campaign last year after allegations of past narcotics offences surfaced. After his brother Beau’s death in 2015, he embarked on a relationship with his widow; and last year a judge criticised him for trying to delay child support hearings after DNA tests proved he fathered an illegitimate child with an Arkansas stripper called Dusty.

    Morning everyone and Happy Birthday to Geoff. This article isn’t so much a critique as a step on the way to rehabilitating this piece of human rubbish. After all it’s a long road to the next election, and normalising this tale of corruption, venality and depravity will take some doing. The Bidens are an American version of the Bean clan of Sawney fame. Families; as history and experience tells us, are well able to conceal and protect their members, particularly its Patriarch and Provider, from what will be seen as a hostile world.

    Greedy, corrupt, and though not a cannibal (as far as we know), Joe’s paedophile tendencies have probably scarred and twisted all of his immediate family and their progeny as well. Concealment, explanation, self-denial, must be the order of the day for such a household. Hunter is the human evidence of that process. The whole ensemble wouldn’t be out of place in the later Roman Empire. They certainly wouldn’t fit into pre-Trump America. They are the First Family; the living embodiment of how far the United States has passed from the vision of its Founding Fathers. From here on its path to absolute tyranny will inevitably steepen and darken. It will have no Allies or Friends, only subordinates and servants. The US will become a Curse to the World; a Blight on all who wished merely to live their lives in Freedom, Peace and Safety.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/sober-reflection-will-memoir-rescue-reputation-president-bidens/

    2. 330074+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Then the “Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, over here, over here.
      The johnson ( the turkish delight) dislike of Trump is filling up the NO space we had not got left with Dover incoming delights I pondered what was behind the daily intake.

  2. Sober reflection: will a memoir rescue the reputation of President Biden’s black sheep son? 8 march 2021

    Next month Hunter Biden, scapegrace son of the US president, will publish Beautiful Things, a memoir that has been billed as an account of his “descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety”.

    Hunter Biden missed a crucial rally during his father’s presidential campaign last year after allegations of past narcotics offences surfaced. After his brother Beau’s death in 2015, he embarked on a relationship with his widow; and last year a judge criticised him for trying to delay child support hearings after DNA tests proved he fathered an illegitimate child with an Arkansas stripper called Dusty.

    Morning everyone and Happy Birthday to Geoff. This article isn’t so much a critique as a step on the way to rehabilitating this piece of human rubbish. After all it’s a long road to the next election, and normalising this tale of corruption, venality and depravity will take some doing. The Bidens are an American version of the Bean clan of Sawney fame. Families; as history and experience tells us, are well able to conceal and protect their members, particularly its Patriarch and Provider, from what will be seen as a hostile world.

    Greedy, corrupt, and though not a cannibal (as far as we know), Joe’s paedophile tendencies have probably scarred and twisted all of his immediate family and their progeny as well. Concealment, explanation, self-denial, must be the order of the day for such a household. Hunter is the human evidence of that process. The whole ensemble wouldn’t be out of place in the later Roman Empire. They certainly wouldn’t fit into pre-Trump America. They are the First Family; the living embodiment of how far the United States has passed from the vision of its Founding Fathers. From here on its path to absolute tyranny will inevitably steepen and darken. It will have no Allies or Friends, only subordinates and servants. The US will become a Curse to the World; a Blight on all who wished merely to live their lives in Freedom, Peace and Safety.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/sober-reflection-will-memoir-rescue-reputation-president-bidens/

  4. Good morning and a Happy Birthday, Geoff. Thank you for all your great work on this site.

  5. Good Morning all. I’m up early for a change.

    I echo wholeheartedly KtK’s comment just before mine. Thank you Geoff for setting up and continuing to provide our little clubhouse.

    Happy birthday. I hope you enjoy your day.

    1. 330074+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      Leilani has it right, seemingly the same peoples who in putting their party first at any cost instead of analyzing the parties past history before kissing the candidate thus X, and returning the same political pelt
      to power again,again,and again.

      Lacta alea est & the outcome accepted by many, making these issues ongoing.

      IMO we should take the casting cup away from the close shop.

  10. Morning all, happy birthday to the boss. Today is a no media day/week to avoid all reference to the cringe worthy duo.

    1. 330074+ up ticks,
      Rik,
      By the same token why do “we” vote for it
      again,again,& again, then some ?

  14. Morning all

    SIR – I am a ward manager of a very busy surgical ward and am utterly appalled by the recommendation of the Royal College of Nursing for possible strike action (report, March 6) due to the Government’s 1 per cent pay increase.

    We nurses are fortunate to be able to go into work each day. We have not been furloughed, we have homes to go to at the end of a shift and have great support at work. We continue to get paid if we are ever off sick.

    This pandemic has exerted an unbelievable toll on the economy of our country and this will take years to put right. We must never put our patients’ lives at risk just for more money that isn’t there.

    Mary Moore

    London E2

    SIR – While I am sure many taxpayers would love to reward NHS front-line staff handsomely for the dedication shown during the pandemic, we have to face facts: the country has ratcheted up billions of pounds of debt that has to be paid at some point. Doubtless other public service workers could also put forward a case: police who acted as Covid marshals, say, or teachers who operated online. The blunt truth is that NHS staff have secure, pensionable jobs – unlike millions of others who face an uncertain future.

    ADVERTISING

    Eve Wilson

    Hill Head, Hampshire

    SIR – Our front-line NHS workers have, in effect, saved the face of the Government during the pandemic.

    This was a great opportunity to reward the valiant nurses and doctors appropriately and to differentiate between the heroes on the front line and the overpaid and under-effective bureaucrats behind the scenes.

    It’s disappointing to realise that our elected Conservative Government is so out of touch with voters.

    Robert Barlow

    Little Bookham, Surrey

    SIR – Why is our Government so unskilled in both employment good practice and public relations? The offer of a 1 per cent pay rise to NHS staff was rightly seen as insulting.

    The payment of a bonus of 10 per cent to reward staff for their special dedication to duty in the year to March 31 2021 would have been greeted as both meaningful and fair. Future pay reviews could then have been looked at later in the year in the normal way, and not in the context of the special stresses of the past 12 months.

    John Padovan

    London SW1

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    ADVERTISING

    SIR – Police officers, teachers, postmen, refuse collectors and the Army should also be recognised for their front-line work at this time.

    The police particularly have suffered great abuse both physically and mentally, but have never been “clapped” for their efforts. Our society takes them for granted and their role during the pandemic has been difficult and complex.

    Deborah Young

    Winterbourne Bassett, Wiltshire

    1. Personally, I’d see GPs who have failed to treat patients “because of Covid” take a swingeing pay cut!

  15. SIR – Within a few short years the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be of little interest to the United States. Their fair-weather Hollywood friends will have deserted them, as they will no longer have close royal connections, and for similar reasons they will be of no further use to Netflix.

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    However, all is not lost, and if they do decide to return to this country, I am sure that most people would find it in their hearts to forgive them for leaving us.

    Ted Shorter

    Tonbridge, Kent

    SIR – As Oprah Winfrey well knows, celebrity has a very short shelf-life unless accompanied by exploitable talent.

    After they tell “their truth”, what else have Harry and Meghan got to sell? Their lives as relatively poor, semi-detached royals will be ones of painful exclusion from the mega-rich social lives of the American tech and media moguls they may court.

    Brian Seage

    Liskeard, Cornwall

    SIR – The image of Prince Harry and James Corden on top of the bus in Los Angeles (report, February 27) put me in mind of the sketch in which Peter Cook, dressed as Greta Garbo, drove through London in an open-top car yelling through a megaphone: “I want to be alone!”

    Andy Moreton

    Uxbridge, Middlesex

    SIR – Meghan married a prince and made him a pauper. She has destroyed his initiative.

    Miriam Howitt

    London SW15

    SIR – I share Charles Moore’s irritation (Comment, March 6) that the Sussexes have only spent six hours in their titled county.

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    As an exiled South Saxon, I would like to register my additional concern that neither of their coats of arms contains a Sussex martlet – the birds normally present in an inverted pyramid in the county shield.

    Phillip Pennicott

    London E18

    1. It struck me that this unhappy woman needs to see a shrink or a priest, who can put things right. It’s not a hard case; even I could probably sort her out.

      I remember listening to the grievances from Thomas Markle over how he has been treated by certain close members of his family (it seems that he could not even attend his daughter’s wedding, and was rushed to hospital when he tried). It struck me from the Winfrey interview that it was a case of like father, like daughter. If she could somehow find it in her heart to be nicer to her clearly troubled and imperfect father, then folk might also be nicer to her. Meghan would be wise to grasp the concept of karma and apply it positively, rather than destructively.

      As regards flippant comments about race that would send most normal Los Angeles to the valium and throwing themselves off the Hollywood sign, I have this to say.

      My mother once inherited a cat called Maisie when she took over a property, which came with cat. The previous owner could not take the cat with her. Maisie was a princess, and the only role for humans was to pander to her every whim and treat her with due dignity. She would sit on her padded pouf with her nose in the air, and her servants had to brush her and groom her. Only the best tinned food was acceptable. Attempt to give her second-best, and she would walk past it with the sort of haughty look only cats can give, followed by a slaughter of the local songbirds, small mammals and amphibians as punishment for this lèse-majesté.

      My brother had this terrier thing inherited from my father. Imagine a downmarket Dllyn, with the social graces of Dave Lister.

      Upon meeting Princess Maisie, the first thing the dog did was to rush eagerly up to her and sniff her bottom. “What on earth is THAT?” scowled Maisie, as she gave her best Noël Coward impression as she endeavoured to rise above this indignity. Completely oblivious to the disdain, the dog discovered Maisie’s uneaten bowl of substandard food and scoffed the lot. By this time, any attempts to keep majestic dignity were clearly futile, and Maisie stormed off in a huff to sulk.

      These two eventually became close friends and allies. Maisie learned what dogs are about, and graciously made it clear that it was not this creature’s fault being a dog, and that he was not bad really. Not like the other cats in my brother’s household, who attacked Maisie and put her in her place. Dog and Maisie then became allies when taking on the other cats.

      As regards the Duchess of Sussex, it seems that she has met the Duke of Edinburgh.

    2. Phillip, I think Sussex has had a lucky escape. I don’t know what planet Ted Shorter is on, but it isn’t the one inhabited by most people I know! I don’t think Harry had much initiative in the first place, to be honest.

  17. Morning again

    Easing lockdown

    SIR – I agree with Jill Kirby (Commentary, March 6) that the vaccinated elderly should now “manage their own risk”. With increasing evidence about the effectiveness of the vaccines when it comes to reducing serious illness and transmission, the locked-up elderly should be permitted some freedom now.

    Indeed, I believe that people of all ages would back an OAPs campaign: Oldies Against Perpetual Solitude. Some relaxation of the restrictions would improve the physical and mental well-being of this group, many of whom have barely been out for 12 months. They should not be made to wait until May to have a cup of tea with a neighbour indoors.

    William Tice

    Southampton

    SIR – The Government tells us that it will be guided by data not dates in taking the country out of lockdown. The data say to start unlocking the country now, so why are we waiting for an arbitrary date? Every day in lockdown adds to the cost in terms of failed businesses, lost jobs, mental health problems and the debt that we will be paying for the rest of our lives.

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    A “Big Bang” approach to ending lockdown would be reckless, but there is no longer any justification for stopping families and friends from meeting in an outdoor setting for a drink, a meal or a round of golf.

    Christopher Cowan

    Hook, Hampshire

  18. Slim chance

    SIR – The most overweight couple I know always have a fridge stuffed with diet foods (“GPs will prescribe diets to combat obesity”, report, March 3).

    Amanda Howard

    Enfield, Middlesex

  19. Police officer accused of killing George Floyd faces extra charge, with trial set to begin Monday. 8 March 2021.

    The trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer accused of killing George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, is set to begin on Monday despite a late court ruling which added another charge to the indictment.

    On Friday the Minnesota Appeals Court decreed that the jury must also consider whether Chauvin should be convicted of third-degree murder, which carries a maximum 25-year jail term.

    Prosecutors’ decision to reinstate the third-degree murder charge was to ensure jurors had “every option” to hold Chauvin liable for Mr Floyd’s death, said Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who has been advising Mr Floyd’s family.

    They must have thought that there was the probability of his getting off on the more serious charges! The Black and White members of the Jury can now settle on a verdict without too much fallout!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/07/police-officer-accused-killing-george-floyd-faces-extra-charge/

    1. Vaccination certificates will have a code that takes an authorised person (policeman, Border force person, airline booking clerk, library assistant) directly to your medical records.

      1. 330074+ up ticks,
        Morning HP,
        Agreed, it will stummy the forgers for a while but for all negatives the is a pos………

      2. Precisely why I don’t use ‘loyalty’ cards.
        Supermarkets grease up to the government; your buying pattern, particularly of items judged to be harmful by the latest medical fad, will be added to your medical notes.
        Forget any treatment for heart problems.

    2. 330074+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Morning Og, may I ask will the electorate
      ovis go for ear notching do you think ?
      I believe many of the lab/lib/con party before ALL else will,put out as a fashion item.

      2. And may there be many more to come.
        Just keep the organ in good tune and you’ll be fine.

  23. Good morning from a bright but overcast Derbyshire. Still a bit chilly this morning, but at least the yard thermometer in in positive figures! 1°C!

  24. Good morning from a bright but overcast Derbyshire. Still a bit chilly this morning, but at least the yard thermometer in in positive figures! 1°C!

  26. I thoroughly recommend ‘The Queen’s Gambit’. I read the book a few
    years ago and was engrossed. The TV series does it some justice. A
    good watch.

    1. I beg to differ Phiz. I watched it a few months ago and after the first episode, the story became quite monotonous.

      1. I’ve only watched the first episode. Will let you know what i think further in.

        Do you play Chess? Might have a bearing on it.

  27. Good Moaning.
    A corker of an article by Douglas Murray in the Spekkie.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/alan-rusbridgers-damning-silence-on-Roy-Greenslade

    “Will Alan Rusbridger apologise for the Guardian’s Republican cell? | The Spectator

    Douglas Murray

    Subscribers will know that I wrote in my column for the magazine this week about the revelations by former journalist Roy Greenslade that he was an active supporter of the IRA throughout the Troubles.

    But there are a number of people who we should still hear from on this, and have not. One is Greenslade’s long-term editor and defender at the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, now the Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

    As I mentioned in my column, in 2000 The Spectator ran a piece by Stephen Glover identifying a Republican cell within the Guardian. Rusbridger responded furiously to this, denouncing the piece, The Spectator, the magazine’s then-editor Boris Johnson, and demanding an apology. Naturally the piece was completely right. Ronan Bennett’s IRA sympathies have always been well known. He was the partner of Rusbridger’s deputy editor, Georgina Henry. Greenslade has now outed himself. The 2000 accusations against Jonathan Freedland still stand unanswered. Freedland – who is still at the Guardian – stands accused of being naïve and ignorant. It would still be interesting to hear from him.

    Still more interesting would be to hear from Rusbridger, who in 2000 ran a newspaper editorial saying the accusations were ‘half-baked gossip’.

    Let us take Rusbridger at his word that he did not know Greenslade was a supporter of the IRA. Yet even if he did not know this in 2000, he must have known it 14 years later. Among many other actions, in March 2014 Greenslade stood surety for the Hyde Park bomber John Downey. By then there could have been no doubt, even in the mind of Alan Rusbridger, that his colleague was on the side of the IRA. As I say, this is March 2014.

    In October of that year Maíria Cahill came forward to reveal that she had been raped by an IRA member. The claims rang through the Republican movement and had the possibility of causing the organisation some strife. By 2014 even the IRA had worked out that rape and its cover-up were not good things. So they went for their usual tactic – which was to smear the accuser. As ever the Guardian under Alan Rusbridger could be relied upon to try to help the IRA out in this scrape. The newspaper ran a piece that was nothing more than an attempt to smear, shame and otherwise deny the brave revelations made by Maíria Cahill. It was a journalistic hit-piece on a woman who had accused a murderous gang of harbouring a rapist. And who was the author of this hit-piece? Why Roy Greenslade of course.

    As Cahill has described here, the piece contained so many falsehoods that in any normal editorial process they would have been discovered and the piece would not have been published in the form it was. Rusbridger must by now have known that Greenslade was a supporter of the IRA, and yet he allowed his pro-IRA colleague to be the one let loose on an IRA rape-victim.

    By 2014 Rusbridger had known of claims about Greenslade’s IRA sympathies for at least 14 years. Why then did Alan Rusbridger allow Roy Greenslade to try to silence and intimidate a rape-victim – a brave woman who under the circumstances was even braver than most other rape-victims in coming forward? Did Rusbridger not care that there appeared to be a special motivation for Greenslade’s hit-piece? Did he not notice? Was he still pleading ignorance? If he even suspected, then how on earth did he allow it?

    The question is pertinent not just because of the position Rusbridger once held, but because of the position he holds today. I wonder what the students under Rusbridger’s care at Lady Margaret Hall should make of the fact that their Principal not only allowed a Republican cell to operate under him, but allowed one of them to take the side of an IRA rapist against a young woman? Is Rusbridger a suitable person to have charge over any young person, especially young women?”

    1. It makes me shudder every time I see the Hyde Park bombing mentioned. But it is worth recalling what happened, including the oft forgotten fact that another bomb was detonated in Regents Park on the same day.

      At 10:40 am, a nail bomb exploded in the boot of a car. It exploded as soldiers of the Household Cavalry, Queen Elizabeth II’s official bodyguard regiment, were passing. Three soldiers of the Blues & Royals were killed immediately, and another, their standard-bearer, died from his wounds three days later. The other soldiers in the procession were badly wounded, and a number of civilians were injured. Seven of the regiment’s horses were also killed or had to be euthanised because of their injuries.

      The second attack happened at about 12:55 pm, when a bomb exploded underneath a bandstand in Regent’s Park. Thirty Military bandsmen of the Royal Green Jackets were on the stand performing music from Oliver! to a crowd of 120 people. Six of the bandsmen were killed outright and the rest were wounded; a seventh died of his wounds on 1 August. At least eight civilians were also injured. The bomb had been hidden under the stand some time before and triggered by a timer.

      The rider of one of the horses, Sefton, was so traumatized that he split from his wife and committed suicide after killing his two children.

      The Queen said that it was the worst day of her life.

      No punishment is sufficient for the perpetrators of this utter outrage.

      1. I remember it clearly. Was working at MVEE in Chertsea at the time, living on the Isle of Dogs.

      2. I remember it all too well. It was the start of my boycott (how appropriate!) of Irish goods.

  28. Syria, spies… and sarin. 8 March 2021.

    The disastrous outcome of the 2003 invasion of Iraq is the main reason for the absence of effective US intervention in Syria. Obama reluctantly authorised the CIA to supply weapons to anti-Assad rebels in Operation Timber Sycamore. But when, after the Ghouta attack, David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote on UK involvement in military action, the news reached Washington “like a bucket of ice water on hot coals”, Warrick writes.

    Things looked bad enough back in 2013. But Syria’s war, now in its 11th year, has had appalling long-term consequences: 500,000 people have died and half the country’s population has been displaced, either at home or abroad. And Assad remains in power, backed by Iran and Russia. Putin’s proposal to save his ally by persuading him to surrender his chemical weapons worked wonders.

    Lol! I can remember when I used to point out on the old Telegraph threads that this must be happening in the face of US denial, (you can’t knock tanks out with placards) hordes of Trolls would descend asking if I were a Russian.

    Putin got Assad off the hook here by getting him to scrap his Chemical Weapons arsenal and since this was the only thing preventing his defeat by the Jihadists, the quid pro quo was that Russia would support him militarily instead. This is why all the subsequent Chemical Attacks are False Flags since Russia would not allow themselves to be linked to such attacks. This of course hasn’t prevented Mi6 with the help of the White Helmets manufacturing them and attempting it anyway!

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/08/red-line-by-joby-warrick-review-syria-spies-and-sarin

  29. So the George Floyd Kangaroo court begins selecting the jurors today.
    Predictably, no comments allowed on this article and my attempt to comment on the Letters BTL was deleted.
    If Officer Chauvin gets a fair trial, it will be a miracle.

    Police officer accused of killing George Floyd faces extra charge, with trial set to begin Monday
    Minnesota Appeals Court ruled that Derek Chauvin should also face a charge of third-degree murder

    By David Millward, US CORRESPONDENT
    7 March 2021 • 7:34pm

    The trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer accused of killing George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, is set to begin on Monday despite a late court ruling which added another charge to the indictment.

    On Friday the Minnesota Appeals Court decreed that the jury must also consider whether Chauvin should be convicted of third-degree murder, which carries a maximum 25-year jail term.

    Chauvin was initially charged with third-degree murder, but following a public outcry, prosecutors substituted the more serious offence of second-degree murder, which carries a 40-year maximum jail term, and second-degree manslaughter.

    Prosecutors’ decision to reinstate the third-degree murder charge was to ensure jurors had “every option” to hold Chauvin liable for Mr Floyd’s death, said Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who has been advising Mr Floyd’s family,

    Chauvin is one of four officers facing trial in connection with Mr Floyd’s death.

    Three others are accused of aiding and abetting Chauvin.

    The death of Mr Floyd, 46, triggered rioting across the US after mobile phone footage emerged showing Chauvin, a white police officer, kneeling on his neck.

    Mr Floyd’s plea “I can’t breathe” was taken up by tens of thousands of protesters as he was seen as a symbol of the brutality inflicted by some police officers on African-Americans.

    His death became a pivotal issue in the presidential election with Joe Biden offering condolences to his grieving family and appealing for racial justice, while Donald Trump focussed on the wave of destruction which accompanied the protests.

    Just last week, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives in Washington passed the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act” which, among other things, would ban the use of chokeholds and make it easier to ensure officers are legally accountable for misconduct.

    The bill, which still has to clear the Senate, was praised by Mr Biden who hailed what he described as a “landmark policing reform law.”

    Ahead of the trial, security has been stepped up in Minneapolis, with the deployment of approximately 2,000 members of the National Guard and 1,100 police officers.

    Offices and buildings have also been boarded up as a precaution.

    The heavy police presence has led to accusations that Minneapolis was being turned into a “police state” at a time when a coalition of 17 activist groups is planning to mount a peaceful protest during the trial.

    Tension rose in the city after a fatal shooting near “George Floyd Square”, a junction that serves as a memorial to Mr Floyd, on Saturday. The circumstances surrounding the incident remain unclear.

    Such is the level of security that jurors will remain anonymous, being referred to by number rather than name.

    It is anticipated that it could take as long as three weeks to pick a jury of 12 and four alternates.

    Potential jurors have been asked to complete questionnaires detailing their age, occupation, marital status, views on the police and the Black Lives Matter movement.

    They have also been asked to disclose what they read and their favourite TV news station.

    Despite the late intervention by the Minnesota Appeals Court, Chauvin’s trial is expected to begin on Monday with jury selection, Mr Crump said.

    “George Floyd’s family, as the victims who I represent, have been informed that they have every intention of the trial going forward,” he told Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation.

    Mr Crump said the family urged protesters to avoid violence.

    “Their message is thank you for standing up and exercising your First Amendment rights, but doing so in a peaceful way. I know Attorney General Keith Ellison, the first African-American attorney general for the state of Minnesota, is going to prosecute this case zealously.”

    1. Only potential jurors who’re black and know that the police are guilty will be selected. The whole point about a jury should be that no one knows what they think or believe about anything.

      1. But that’s the point, isn’t it? This isn’t a trial. It’s a public execution. A message that law is not fair and that some groups will be given favourable treatment to others.

        Which rather makes a mockery of law, but when these same idiots push for ‘gay rights’ and ‘trans rights’ (already covered under the mental health act) they make one group more powerful than another.

    2. It’s just as likely that there’s no comments allowed’ because the author of the ‘article’ is David Millward – who is well known to DT readers as an anti-Trump, pro-Biden stooge who would IMHO appear right at home writing for the Guardian or Indie. After being castigated by DT readers on ealry Trump hit piece articles over a year ago, his articles have rarely, if ever, had reader comments allowed.

      This also applies to most of their US Desk team, who appear to be like-minded individuals. Nowthat their former lead Ben Riley-Smith is back on this side of the Pond (‘job done’ in helping Trump out of the door), time will tell if comments will be allowed on his articles again, now that he isn’t running one Orange Man Bad article after another.

      1. When the charges were changed because of ‘public outcry’ then you know the trial is a farce.

        The first and only question to ask is: if George Floyd had not been a career criminal, not high on drugs would the police have stopped him? If he hadn’t resisted arrest, would they have knelt on his back?

        I’d also ask why the person filming the incident didn’t intervene.

    3. A police state….when ..activist groups….peaceful demonstration.

      We’ve seen that before! The black looting Lefty mob, smashing everything up, stealing, destroying, burning. Largely peaceful, the press call them.

    1. What happens if Amazon charges you for something you didn’t take? Do you complain? Assassinate Jeff Bezos or just (the easiest way) shrug?

      1. 330074+ up ticks,
        AS,
        Go get a DpD with attached circulating pump re-enter then take
        twice the amount of a needed item, show a profit.

        DpD = dead persons digit.

      2. If that happens then you just ping Amazon and they give you your money back.

        Weirdly, theirs is the least hassle setup I’ve ever encountered. A 6 pack of shampoo arrived with one missing. Instead of getting 1/6th of the price back (as I asked for) I got a third.

    2. As a technology, it’s amazing. It’s joining you to your amazon account, tracking your telephone and, I assume charging your account when you leave.

      What you – like I did – you leave your telephone behind?

  31. A wealthy left-wing muckraker, otherwise known as Oprah, is in the news at the moment. Here is a fable in which she appears, that illustrates the consequences of socialist meddling and liberal hand wringing.

    THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER ORIGINAL VERSION:

    The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

    Come winter the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

    MODERN UPDATED VERSION:

    The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

    Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while others are cold and starving.

    CNN shows up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

    America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

    Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

    Rev. Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house, where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

    Kamala Harris exclaims in an interview in the New York Times that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share.”

    Finally, Nancy Pelosi drafts the “Economic Equity and Anti-Ant Act”, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

    The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

    Hillary Clinton gets her law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of Federal judges that Sleepy Joe has appointed from a list of illegal immigrants and single-parent welfare recipients.

    The ant loses the case.

    The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

    The ant has disappeared in the snow.

    The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

    1. See Democrat grasshoppers fleeing the shitehole California they created to Republican ant Texas for further details…………
      (Edited)

  33. Good morning one and all and especially Geoff, our knight in shining armour, who rescued us from the DT and gave us somewhere to vent our feelings. A very 🥳 Happy Birthday to you Geoff and many more of them.

  35. Reposted from midnight

    Monday 8th March 2021

    Geoff Graham

    A Very Happy Birthday

    and many, many more joyous anniversaries

    With our most heartfelt and well-deserved thanks for giving so many of us Nottlers the chance to air our views and make friends.

    Caroline and Rastus

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu1Altb1N6A

      1. Happy Birthday Graham! I shall sing the usual full belt in your direction. I’m only in Yorkshire so you’re bound to hear it.

  37. I could be wrong but some people don’t seem to be taking International Women’s Day as seriously as they might…………..

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-crngCovEeSM/UTt2f8s8IhI/AAAAAAAAJXE/CVYTAIlnD6w/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/funny-international-womens-day.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f81ca59b0a8f438bf4a4193263e8d12f9a8e02d7d03bb36334ddedf84b3a711b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/619b598b9c7edeeba97667199a569a0ed9979889bafc1575376125f023c54a48.jpg

  38. Well, I suppose we all just have to be grateful that Boris didn’t meet Meghan first.

  39. Thanks, folks, for all the birthday wishes. I’m now stepping away from the laptop, so don’t be offended if I fail to reply to any later greetings…

    5. Grattis på födelsedagen to a fellow Piscean and truly nice bloke.

      Hope you have a wonderful day, Geoff. 🎂🍷🐻

  40. Prince Snivel is not very bright is he? Bad genes somewhere in his DNA?

    Apparently the brat is going to be one that will, in time, grow breasts but the pathetic little thicko fluffed his lines:

    The Duke said: “[I’m] just grateful to have any child. Any, one or two, would have been amazing but to have a boy and then a girl what more can you ask for?

    Wouldn’t it have been even more amazing for the foetus to have shown a mixture of genders?

  41. Prince Snivel is not very bright is he? Bad genes somewhere in his DNA?

    Apparently the brat is going to be one that will, in time, grow breasts but the pathetic little thicko fluffed his lines:

    The Duke said: “[I’m] just grateful to have any child. Any, one or two, would have been amazing but to have a boy and then a girl what more can you ask for?

    Wouldn’t it have been even more amazing for the foetus to have shown a mixture of genders?

    2. Morning Richard

      They say they got married properly 3 days before the state wedding .

      We know the state wedding cost more than £30million, the taxpayer footed the bill and the Royal family £2 million .
      Can we assume the Harry and Meghan will now repay the taxpayer?

          2. And from memory, his nose is not that of Hewitt, but that of his great-uncle David. I do not see even momentary glimpses of Hewitt in Harry’s face, it is all Windsor and Diana’s family genes are reflected in his skin and hair colour.

      2. My thoughts exactly. £30m so that woman could have her ‘princess’ moment.
        I don’t know what the Great British Public in general and the Royal Family in particular ever did to deserve this woman but it must have been bad.

      3. Plus it gave me a miserable day having to watch it in the South of France, thanks to the royalist French friend I was staying with at the time. I had hoped to miss it all 🙁

      1. Weren’t they telling everyone, not so long back, to save the planet by having no more than one child?

    4. One does wonder about the sex of the miscarried foetus.
      It’s not unknown for the ‘wrong’ sex to be aborted.

      1. And a deeply cynical observer might suspect that if this episode should start to rebound against them both badly, the current child will miscarry and the Royal family will be blamed.

        1. Sadly, I do have to agree with you. This insurance policy business is fraught with obstacles.

    5. Prince Phillip was an idiot about Charles’ marriage. The Queen is reasonably intelligent, but Phillip is not the sharpest knife in the box, and neither was Diana. Both OK, but intellectually unimpressive. What was needed was for Charles to marry a girl who was actually clever and bring some brains into the family. Instead, Charles was given a short list of one to marry, she was the only one they could find who ticked all the ‘must have’ boxes.

      Hence Harry, frankly a bit dim, who is being run round in circles by a woman much cleverer than him, but then most are frankly.

      1. He should have married Camilla from the start. There’d be no Prince Harry then.

        1. That’s what Charles wanted, that’s what should have happened. Charles didn’t make the same mistake with his own sons. One, it’s gone well, the other is a disaster. Fortunately the disaster side of things doesn’t matter that much.

  42. Wise words from the letter of Paul Penrose. I follow exactly the same method when going for walks, including in that county when on holiday. Common sense, really, especially when many country lanes (most with high hedges and no path or grass verge to walk on) are derestricted roads, whereby oncoming traffic are ‘allowed’ to do 60mph, even though it is barely safe enough on many stretches to do 20-30.

  43. Apparently, according to Migraine, the real wedding was “held in just the back yard with the Archbishop of Canterbury present.”

    This cannot be true. By law there have to be witnesses as well – she must have mistaken the rehearsal for the actual event.

    Is this not also a great libel or slander against our Archbishop of Canterbury to suggest that he was involved in a gross deceit?

    2. Well, Rastus, the “pomp and ceremony” wedding service a few days later was also not a real wedding because the Archbishop married Meghan to some chap called Harry and, as we all know, the sixth in line to the throne is called Henry.

        1. Harry reminds me of that line from The Great Gatsby :

          “You’re so dumb you don’t know you’re born.“

        2. Things are really well, thank you Sue. I now have three raised plots in my side garden and am doing the preparatory work on a long lower border to create a long narrow bed alongside my neighbour’s fence. I hope this will be finished by the end of the week, but the weather forecast has suddenly changed to rain on Saturday and that would move the completion date back a week.

          1. Side garden! Well, there’s posh… Sounds lovely – hope it goes to plan.

    3. She said “just the back yard”, not “just the Archbishop of Canterbury”.

      1. I think the implication was that he was the only one there.

        I remember a friend of mine who was divorced “got married” for the second time in a C of E church (as did a nephew of mine who married a divorcée.)

        It was almost exactly the same as a real wedding but in fact it was a celebration or blessing of the marriage not the actual thing.

        So maybe Migraine is right after all and it is not surprising that she now wants to exploit the fact that all the expensive pomp and fuss was just a sham.

        1. This reminds me of an off-colour (if you’ll pardon the expression) joke.

          A couple who were very much in love and adored each other went on honeymoon. They decided that terms like ‘sexual intercourse’ sounded rather clinical and unromantic and the vulgar words for copulation – such as bonk, shag and f*ck – were not suitable terms for the pure and holy physical act of the love that they both had for each other so they decided that they would use their own word and they chose the word concert because the metaphors of prelude, harmony, unity, crescendo and climax were so very appropriate.

          When the couple returned from honeymoon the groom was questioned by his best man.

          “What was the honeymoon like?” he asked.

          “It was marvellous. When we reached the hotel we dashed straight to the bedroom and had two concerts before dinner, After the champagne and oysters we were still full enough of energy to have three more concerts before falling asleep in each others arms. The following morning we had three more concerts before lunch and after a swim in the sparkling warm Mediterranean Sea we returned for another concert and a rehearsal.”

          What on earth is a rehearsal?” asked the best man.

          “Well, it’s just the same as a concert but nobody comes.”

  44. ‘Morning, all. Now for something completely different, here’s a report from the Daily Markle Express from a couple of days ago:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e41a9ddb5704e7153513a9baed94a0e643ed0defafa50268dd8fe1cc66bd241.png

    Monks at a Scottish monastery claim their “precious haven of peace and harmony” will be “caught in the noise of gunfire”. The world-famous retreat of Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery in Eskdalemuir, has attracted thousands of visitors looking for ­spiritual guidance since it was founded in the 60s including rock icon David Bowie.

    If these feckin’ drop-outs find that life in Scotland doesn’t quite meet their requirements for “peace and harmony”, in which to contemplate their navels, I suggest they take their wind-driven prayer-wheels, together with their Dallas* llamas, and consider relocating to a more “peaceful and harmonious” Buddhist country like … oh I dunno … Myanmar?

    * For those of you unfamiliar with North East Scotland, Dallas is a wee clachan not far from Elgin – a town world-famous for its marbles – where an old chap named MacDonald keeps a herd of pedigree llamas on his mixed-livestock farm. Dallas llama wool is much prized by Scottish Buddhists, who spin it and weave it into cloth to make their distinctive robes.

    2. A reasonable question might be to ask why a shooting range is required when there is not going to be much of an Army. We have ranges to cope with the much larger Army of yesteryear. So what has changed?

    3. Is it an external or indoor range? An indoor range probably wouldn’t generate that much noise. I think their real problem is that it’s about guns. Bloody pacifists !

  45. Well, no surprise the racism card has been played by sparkles. Very damaging as there is no way to deny the accusation. But why would someone even talk about the baby’s possible skin colour, its not something anyone could alter, not something that is relevant and not something that will change the price of fish. A deeply destructive comment to the RF and she knew it, but in the wider context it will stoke racial division in this country at a time when a period of calm would be welcome. As for Mental health issues! we’ve all got them these days, dear, so last year, do move on.

    2. I find it interesting that a few years ago anyone discussing mental ill health – in particular clinical depression – would face a chorus of “We all have our low mood days, just pull yourself together”. Now, when mental health “experts” tell us that lockdown is causing “massive” mental ill health issues, the self-same “pull yourself together” masses insist that they are suffering from mental ill health.

      1. You have to understand that mental health issues are to be sympathised with should they arise from the perception of racism, but dismissed out of hand should they have their roots in a lockdown amounting to solitary confinement for many. I have personal experience of this. Those with this mindset simply cannot see the cognitive dissonance.

      2. Meghan claimed to have ‘thought about killing herself’. This seems to be the stock phrase trotted out by celebrities to gain sympathy.

      3. Sometimes, Elsie, it isn’t possible to “pull yourself together”. When you are genuinely clinically depressed, that isn’t an option.

          1. Depression (real, clinical depression, as opposed to just feeling low) is the hidden illness. To people who say “pull yourself together and cheer up” I say “if I had a broken leg in plaster, would you say to me, just get on and climb that mountain?”

        2. Conway, having suffered from clinical depression in the past I feel sorry for anyone else who has and it always annoys me when people say “pull yourself together” – if only that were possible. But now, the fashion is to say “This lockdown is causing my children and I serious mental health issues”. Personally, I don’t buy it. I think what they mean is that they find it upsetting and difficult to deal with. It bears no relation to serious mental illness.

          1. I agree. There is a tendency to over-egg the pudding. Just as every death (even at 100 years old) is “a tragedy”, so every bit of feeling low is suddenly “a serious mental issue”. The first time I plunged into clinical depression, I found even managing to drag myself out of bed a problem, yet I still managed to hold down a job (although it got me in the end) and keep on functioning (until I literally ground to a halt). I was desperately trying to “pull myself together”. Sadly the circumstances that brought it about the first time are re-creating themselves now and all my attempts to stave it off are being stymied “due to Covid”, just as the first time all my efforts to manage the situation were negated by my management. It is not a good place to be and the sooner lockdown is ended the better it will be for me.

          2. How difficult and horrible for you, Conners.

            At least here, there are people who for various different reasons and in different ways have suffered clinical depression. I am so sorry to hear that things are being re-created that floored you the previous time. Believe in yourself – you have conquered it in the past, you are strong. Even though you my not feel it at the moment.

            All I personally can go on – and I have been through the hell of clinical depression too, is the knowledge that I have felt that awful; and that I eventually got out of it, last time and before… Or I wouldn’t be here now.

            This too shall pass…as it did before. Hang on to hope.

            Warmest wishes xxx

          7. Thank you, Hl. Yes, I know that if only I can keep going, eventually I’ll start to climb out the other side of the abyss once I can reduce the stress, but it’s tough at the bottom.

          12. Thank you, Hl. Yes, I know that if only I can keep going, eventually I’ll start to climb out the other side of the abyss once I can reduce the stress, but it’s tough at the bottom.

  46. It didn’t take long for the BLACK LIVES MATTER Activists to jump on the Me-Meghan/Harry/Archie band-wagon . . .

    On Morning TV, we had a black self-styled BLM Activist, Doctor some-one or other, gobbing off about racism and how our Royal Household and society in general are deemed all to be racist towards Me-Meghan . . . .etc..etc.. !

    1. None of the presenters pointed out that he was the very first person to bring race into it, and that perhaps, actually, it’s he who is racist?

      1. No, she’s mixed-race. But only if she’s blick can she abrogate all responsibility for her narcissism and sociopathic demands and say that everything went wrong because of prejudice against her colour. Her own warped personality’s fault – nah! Why take personal responsibility for what you are when you have an easy racism let-out for your own failings?

  47. With all the razzmatazz going on the BBC has descended to a social media shoutfest of the most common and disrespectful sort in an unprecedented manner.
    Good manners should have dictated that the BBC say nothing, discuss nothing, and allow no one else to discuss the recent interview. But that’s just me.

    1. And me, perhaps this site can be free as much as possible of the Ginge & Cringe show.

  48. Like it or not Harry and Markle are going to be in our faces for awhile….

    BBC news this morning lead with “the colour of Archie’s skin” piece and negatives against the Royal Family.

    But there again…they reported the BLM thugs on the rampage last summer as “Peaceful protesters”.

    It’s all falling into place now….

    First they parachute Markle into the Royal Family through its weakest link…then BLM appear and now the scene is set for an upsurge in racial tensions.

    Both sides of the Pond.

    As I’ve stated before … the elite are gagging for civil war whether it’s by responding to terrorism…the importation of illegals who hate us or turning blacks against whites.

    1. Interesting that this morning the BBC news emphasised that the Meghan film can be watched on ITV this evening.

      We’ve never known the BBC to ever advertise ITV before.

      Oh! …and they also pointed out that the film was made by Harpo Productions.Anyone else find that amusing?

      1. They are advertising ITV because they want people to watch it….

        Then the BBC will profit from the fallout.

    2. I have claimed for some time that the main purpose of BLM is to promote interracial mistrust and hatred and Migraine is one of their key agents.

      I wonder what she will do with the despicable Harry when he is of no further use to her?

        1. But DNA tests essential. First to establish the paternity of Harry himself and then the paternity of Migraine’s brats.

          1. I have met Charlie several times over the years and he’s never had a strand of ginger in his barnet fair!

          2. The deniers (sorry I do dislike that word, but it seems appropriate) claim that it’s the Spencer gene that gives the red hair. Failing that, they point out the Tudors had red hair. Myself I can’t see any resemblance to the Windsors, whereas William is a dead ringer for his Uncle Edward.

    3. They should be careful what they wish for. Unintended consequences may be the result.

  49. Theoretically and Reality

    A small boy has a school homework question to answer, so he asks his father

    “Hey Dad, what’s the difference between ‘theoretically’ & ‘realistically’?”

    His Dad thinks for a while & then says;
    “Right-o son……go & ask your mother if she’d sleep with David Beckham for a million quid.”

    The boy trots off and comes back saying “Dad, dad, she said she would!

    She would sleep with David Beckham for a million pounds.”

    “OK son,” says his dad. “Now go & ask your sister the same question.”

    The boy toddles off, & comes back saying “Dad, dad, she said she would too!”

    So then his dad says “Right, son, now go & ask your elder brother if he’d sleep with David Beckham for a million pounds.”

    The son comes back excitedly saying “Dad! Dad! He said he would too!”

    “Well there you have it, son,” said his dad.

    Theoretically we could be sitting on three million quid.

    Realistically we’re living with two tarts & a poof.”

  51. Morning all, just a quickie.
    Happy Birthday Geoff, i hope you have a well 🎹 organised day 🤩😎 you’re a star ⭐

    1. As I stated yesterday, Dr. Sam Bailey’s view (excerp of her most recent video at 11min 10sec) is that the use of this medicine is not (yet) proven for general use for COVID patients and should be used to treat specific illness in ‘COVID’ patients when their symptoms demonstrate it is specifically needed, as per existing usage guidance:

      https://youtu.be/tQoC39n4QP8?t=670

      1. Dr. Bailey needs to be reminded of the duty of care she has to the sick. To separate them from a medicine that will save lives is unethical medical practice and must be condemned.
        There is now no doubt that Ivermectin works so well against the virus that further trials are forbidden and possibly illegal.

        1. A. She didn’t say ‘don’t use it, but to treat specific symptoms that warrant it, rather than a ‘catch-all’. Doing so would be irresponsible. COVID affects people in different ways.

          B. You second statement is contradictory at best. The manufacturers of the medicine (as she showed in the clip) have not said it has been tested for use with COVID in general.

          That doesn’t preclude it being tested to see if it has had a positive effect on certain patients with ‘COVID’ that display certain symtopms. In fact, quite the opposite – many medicines have been tested to see if their have some positive effect against COVID or specific symptoms from the very start.

          If other clinicians have conducted tests, then they should publish them or cite other published tests that similarly prove their claims – not just say how ‘great’ they are on a video (Dr Bailey always shows her citations on screen).

          I’m sure she’d be happy to know (and would update her advice) if published testing did conclude the drug was useful outside the treatment of what it was originally design for (as she stated) – just put the info in the comments on her video – she reads them (hence the Q&A).

          Dr Bailey (if you watch her other videos) is far from being one of the COVID establishment, even going as far as saying she won’t be vaccinated because she’s relatively young and otherwise healthy, but recommends older or less well patients to more strongly consider them as their age and type of illness increases.

          Watch her other videos to see that she is very responsible.

  53. Vaccine diplomacy: how Russia and China are using their Covid-19 jabs to win friends and influence people. 8 March 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bf6a766597f36cf9b880701bf48aed650b44f58fbd70ee02bab6f12a77696106.jpg

    On Thursday, the Russian Embassy tweeted a cartoon showing the Sputnik jab protecting a cowering world from coronavirus, while bricks thrown by a figure in a US flag tie bounced off the vaccine vial. “Depoliticised approach saves lives,” the tweet read.

    Now that is Russian propaganda! Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/vaccine-diplomacy-russia-china-using-covid-19-jabs-win-friends/

    1. With the US locking down production for domestic use, they are a fair target in the propaganda game.

  54. Prof Colin Semple, of SAGE, has just stated that masks do not protect the people wearing them.
    Well, we knew that.

    1. Semple taking a toe and sticking it just a teensy-weensy bit out of the dark-side? Has he realised that Johnson has parked the bus just around the corner from SAGE’s HQ?

    1. Harry is a weak wimp and the less his family has to do with him in the future the better it will be for him and them.

  56. Sometime I wonder who is behind Harry and Meghan……….

    ”We leverage policy, legislation and political influence and build strong relationships with officials, politicians, NGOs and other actors’.

    Who. in precis, said it……………

    1) The mafia.

    2) George Soros, who Nigel Farage tells us has ”spent billions to undermine the nation state”.

    Undermining the nation state fits with undermining the Royal Family…..

    https://hrdn.eu/open-society-foundations/?sfw=pass1615200646

      1. Interestingly Obama introduced Meghan to Harry… and Obama is Soros’ puppet.

    2. 330074+ up ticks,
      Morning PP,
      In my book, the establishment coalition group, perfect chaff material for deflection use as in the DOVER campaign, potential troops / felons stepping ashore in such a
      manner as to have a list of complaints / demands on hand, in 20 plus tongues.

    3. The Monarchy stands in the path of global communism. It is being taken down. Will ‘they’ succeed? Believe nothing of what you see and hear.

      1. Global communism will lead to one improvement I suppose – a massive reduction in population.

        However all the money produced by the efficient, Western economies will evaporate leaving nothing for these fools to waste.

  57. When, as is inevitable, they divorce – there will be a terrible fight over the children.

      2. Not in the US, but she is a US citizen and he is not, so yes she would get the kids.

        The US Courts are not convinced by completely unsubstantiated accusations of violence from the wife in the way that our ‘Family’ Courts are. Accusations of domestic violence? Unless I miss my guess, he has that coming.

    2. The danger for Harry is that ‘the interview’ will turn out to be a high point. As people’s careers fade they try and repeat the high points, and if that happens, Harry will get, both barrels, to anyone who will listen.

    4. Once the US tax man sends him an income tax bill, she will drop him quickly.

      Unless he is nice to granny, he might lose any diplomatic exemptions that might have been arranged. He needs to ponder on the fact that the US taxes overseas income, not just domestic.

    1. The Left continually say we have a housing crisis. They complain about places like Grenfell.

      The Right say we have a population crisis – the root cause of the need for homes.

      It’s funny how the Left can ignore the problem, complain about a related problem and then endorse and promote the actual problem. It’s pure doublethink.

      1. 330074+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        For quite some while now it is clearly obvious that the left / right
        lib/lab/con/ukip have morphed into a left coalition group, house seekers are still arriving at DOVER on a daily basis and take precedence over indigenous peoples, proven by the fact they ( the ind.) still have a waiting list.

        These Isles sorely need to house a pro English / GB patriotic party
        & kick the coalition into touch.

        1. Enforcement of the law would be enough. They’ve no right to be here and should be deported.

          Apologies, if politics were the answer then it would been solved by now.

  60. I know opinion is divided about the vaccine, however i have just booked mine.
    As i am on the endangered species list i thought as a gambling man i would roll the dice.

    1. Just throw a 7.

      There was a short story about a gambler who bet with the Devil and if he lost the Devil would take his soul.

      The Devil threw the die and naturally it was a 6. Just before the man threw his die, a fly landed and crapped on the 6.
      Sure enough the man threw his 7.

    2. Damned if you do or damned if you don’t situation…

      I’ve opted to not have the jab. My thoughts are that I can still have it in the future but I can’t take the vaccine out if I do.

      Since refusing I have researched the net and each day I see both the good…the bad and the ugly side of things. Many have had no reactions whereby several have died because it didn’t work for them.

      Then there’s the conspiracy aspect…since studying the earlier conspiracies written long ago about things like the NWO and watching them come true has made me very wary of agreeing to what I’m told to do by this corrupt government.

      I sincerely hope yours turns out fine.

        1. I guess we are all sheep…

          I have to hold my hands up to being the minority black sheep of the family and I guess it takes all kinds to make the world go round…LOL.

      2. 330074+ up ticks,
        Afternoon H,
        This and a mess of past corrupt ,
        treacherous, governments.

        1. Afternoon O

          But none worse than the current lot…certainly over the last decade.

          1. 330074+ up ticks,
            H,
            IMO, it is not a case of better / worse to my mind it is a continuation of the wretch cameron’s plan if the referendum went awry,orchestrated from the outset, may placement, 9 month delay the whole nine yards.

            You cannot touch the lab/lib/con/ukip coalition as being masters of treachery.

          2. Aussie MP Ann Bressington said the same about her governing parties in the video I aired yesterday…except she included “naive” whereby we all know that’s anything but with our lot of all colours.

          3. 330074+ up ticks,
            Agreed, the lib/lab/con / ukip coalition manifesto’s are rhetorical
            herd fodder, no further action is taken whereas the action that IS taken by the coalition is totally unacceptable to the saner element of the peoples.

            The placement in positions of power and the building of mosques clearly shows the chosen path the governance parties
            have taken and should be viewed as downright sinister, it also explains the Dover replacement service the governance group is running.

      3. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

        If you don’t trust the state because it’s lied to you then when it presents something that could actually help we don’t trust it.

      4. I feel the same. I haven’t ruled out having the jab at some future time, but I want to know the long-term effects of it.

    3. I had the OA-Z on Friday evening. Barely felt the jab and no side effects that I noticed. I’ve so many aches and pains from other shite how would I recognise a side effect?

      1. I know how you feel. My foot is still giving me gip after 2 months and i can only walk a few steps without having to sit down because of the pain.

        Thank goodness for Vodka and Tramadol.

        1. As my dear old mum would say: Why not hit the other foot to take your mind of the gippy one?

  61. I can’t even read the flipping papers today. I am having to confine myself to walesonline.co.uk . There’s nothing else for it, I will have to do some work.

    1. Let me precis for you.

      300 articles of Ginge and Cringe whining.
      200 articles on Covid
      1 article on Richboy Sunak stealing candy from middle class babies.

      1. Quite a few ‘celebrating’ International Wimmin’s Day (I bet the DT is in their woke Women’s Section, given they love talking about the ‘gender pay gap’ and misogyny all the time).

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/

        Yep, they are. If I didn’t see the Telegraph’s name at the top, I would’ve thought I was looking at The Grauniad.

      2. I counted 40 daily mail articles about brash and trash.

        Did I miss something?

  62. Good day one and all. Happy birthday Geoff, the time and effort you put in to keep us ticking over is much appreciated.

  64. Harry was reported to have been a good and well-respected officer but his current behaviour calls this into doubt and makes me doubt if he was so.

    Any person in authority – be it as an officer in the armed forces or in the police, the business world or even in schoolmastering or being a parent – will know that it is easy enough to be ‘one of the lads’ and to court popularity by sucking up to those one is meant to be leading and rather more difficult to be firm and unbending when necessary without being too authoritarian and pedantic.

    I can easily see Harry being one of the lads – but I am having more difficulty in seeing him as a leader capable of exercising any natural authority when it is needed.

    .

    1. One of the most difficult things to do is to move from being one of the lads to being boss of the lads when promoted.

    2. He wanted to keep his military titles. Yes I can just imagine the Captain General of the Royal Marines asking each of the marines under his command to imagine being a raindrop.

  65. An early childhood memory was sparked off today by Radio 3’s Composer of the Week, Ruth Gipps.

    When I was about five, I remember going to a music school on the far side of Richmond Park. I used to catch one of the last two trolley buses still in service from Teddington. There was a drawing room with the names of master composers across the walls. I remember being taught to conduct. At the end of each lesson we had to conduct to ‘They’re Changing the Guards at Buckingham Palace’. The lady running it was a Mrs Gipps.

    Reading Wikipedia, it seems that Ruth Gipps lived in Twickenham in the early 1960s, and was a contemporary of my mother. She was also involved with a music group in Gypsy Hill, which my mother also attended. I remember the WW2 Nissan huts they had there at the time, now long gone. I asked her if she knew her, and my mother said that it was Ruth Gipps’ mother who ran the music school I went to.

  66. Whilst bread making, I heard a man on Radio 4, no idea who he was, but almost climaxing and wetting his pants over the production of electric cars and batteries now being made in China. I wonder, has he no attention to the long known reality that China is the most polluting country on the planet. China uses billions of tons of Australian iron ore and coal for it’s manufacturing processes and to produce the electricity it takes to run all the non ‘green’ electric vehicles they the Chinese and he are so proud of !
    Some of the trans Australian freight trains that transport the minerals to port are at least more than a kilometre long and have even been over 4 miles long.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LsuNWjRaAo
    Shirley Shifting all this stuff around is enough the unbalance the planet earth and could be the cause of Global warming !

    1. Old news, China is in a huff with Australia and has blocked import of their coal.

      I don’t know where the coal comes from nowadays but it probably travels further and burns dirtier.

        1. Which country is the world’s leading producer of crematorium ovens?

          (aka ‘cremation chamber’)

      2. Not to worry – it’ll come with software that generates in-cabin noise to mimic a V8 engine if required…

    4. I once watched a two-mile long goods train being hauled across the Mojave desert by 11 close-coupled diesel-electric tractive units.

      1. I hope you didn’t get sunburnt waiting to cross the track. Or did you shelter under a Joshua tree ?

        1. Neither, Eddy. I was a passenger in the front seat of a police patrol car being given a tour of the city of Barstow where I’d travelled to on a Greyhound ‘bus, when I visited LA on holiday in 1980.

          When the officers at the local police department learned that I had the same surname as their city (and I was a serving officer at the time in the UK) I was feted as a VIP guest and given the red-carpet treatment. I still have a patrolman’s motorcycle helmet and various shirt badges given to me as gifts. [I never did see a Joshua Tree].

    5. I met Shirley Shifting once. She was very evasive and I could not pin her down.

  68. Wow !

    Just had an uptick from my favorite journalist !

    jamesdelingpole upvoted you on God bless you, Nigel Farage. Pretty Polly 3 hours ago

      1. I just love the way the penguin is standing in the middle of the dinghy gazing calmly at the tourists as if he were simply late to the party!

    3. Not happy – just life. The Orca’s gotta eat too (just like us), but can’t visit a local supermarket to buy their grub! 🙂

      1. Yes Orcas have to eat too, but not the little chap who sought refuge in a tourist dinghy! It reminded me of a time when being punted down the Cam – a clutch of ducklings was swimming alongside and suddenly one leapt out of the water, jumped into my lap, beat a swift tattoo with its little feet, eyed me for five seconds and then leapt overboard to re-join its siblings.

  70. International Women’s Day – some soundly advice.

    STFU….

    Happy International Women’s Day 2021 Wishes: More power to you!

    1. Happy International Women’s Day.

      They’re all just as miserable as ever though. :@)

      1. There has to be a suitably biting reply
        to that comment ….. but I am damned if
        I can be bothered!

        2. Sorry to hear that, Stormy. Is there no light at the end of the tunnel? MOH has an appointment with the Occupational Therapy Team (not that anything positive will come of it; they’ve been before and couldn’t do anything) on 23rd March. Ah, said I, a year from the start of lockdown. Oh, yes, so it is, said the OT. Well, if that date isn’t seared into your memory, you haven’t been touched by it!

      1. I must admit being amazed at why this day is celebrated in the West with (normally) loads of rallies and protests, yet 99% of the actual problems as regards the treatment of women can be found in Muslim nations, where none of these ‘brave’ protestors or groups every set foot in.

        Rather like BLM campaigning in the UK.

      1. Men don’t need the blue blanket of comfort. We already know we are Gods of the Universe.

        1. Having done the shopping, cleaned the bathroom, hoovered, got dinner on, helped junior with his school work and both loaded and emptied the washer….

          At the end of the day it’s a partnership.

    1. I don’t think so – this cartoonist from the Times I think and is anti Royalty and Pro Ginge and Cringe.

      1. This is from the Evening Standard, a paper that went more anti Britain and anti Brexit on Osborne’s arrival and it has got even worse since his departure.

        1. The sheer arrogance gets to me most! “They must respond!” Yeah – f…off!

          1. My view is that they and their cheerleaders/supporters should maintain a dignified silence apart from:

            “We are very sorry that Prince Harry and his wife feel this way and we wish them success in any future charitable ventures.”

        2. The owners and editorial team probably think that they are just catering to the average Londoner. Unfortunately most readers are commuters who live in the Tory shires who don’t agree with their views, but just want something to read on the way home from work.

          The Standard used to be a decent-ish paper back in the day.

    4. The ‘Firm’ and our system of government of a constitutional monarchy is much stronger than some vapid ‘celebs’ in California and, fortunately, is not subject to the whims of the gutter press in the UK.

      1. I hope so, but the BLM bandwagon continues to gather pace and racism is the new cardinal sin.

        1. I have no problem with educated black people. I do have a problem with uppity nignogs.

        2. Our supine politicians reacted too slowly and did not stop BLM in its tracks before it gathered any momentum

          1. Our politicians can act pretty quickly when they wish. The fact that BLM was not stopped and the nation’s statues were not prevented from being vandalised tells me that our politicians wanted this to happen to foment trouble and division.

  72. The guy sitting next to me on the train pulled out a photo of his wife and
    said, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I said, “If you think she’s
    beautiful, you should see my girlfriend mate.”
    He said, “Why? Is she a stunner?” I said, “No, she’s an optician.”

  74. I was fishing on holiday in florida when I ran out of bait,I saw a small snake nearby trying to swallow a frog .
    knowing the snake couldn’t bite me with the frog in his mouth.
    I grabbed him right behind the head, took the frog, and put it in my bait bucket.
    Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bit.
    So, I grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a little whiskey in its mouth.
    His eyes rolled back, he went limp.
    I released him into the lake without incident and carried on fishing using the frog.

    A little later, I felt a nudge on my foot.

    It was that snake, with two more frogs

    1. All the Eastbourne pond-life would gather and cause trouble. I’ll get me Parka.

      1. “If it appears to the local planning authority that the amenity of a part of their area, or of an adjoining area, is adversely affected by the condition of land in their area …”

        The council would have to provide proof that his garden pond was “adversely affecting” an adjoining area.

        1. Some woke barstard living nearly would have complained. Like the two women who moved here and complained about “agricultural smells and mud on the lanes”. Probably a Green party voter.

    4. Just read the story. Hopefully he’ll ignore the ignorant bastards and the locals will support him.

        1. Great Crested Newts are the best. Unfortunately, it is illegal to touch them, let alone transport them. He should, however, do a “desktop survey” and find some – ahem 🙂

    8. The only justifications (that the council might use) I could think of are:

      1. It destoys an existing area of knwon interest – highly unlikely in someone’s garden (large plot of land, perhaps);
      2. The pond was not designed/built properly and ‘somehow’ will contaminate surrounding areas. Again, highly unlikely.

      I suspect it’s got far more to do with whether he asked for and got planning permission before proceeding, A house near my flat had a rear garden conservatory built (before I moved to the development) without planning permission, the council found out (presumably from a disgruntled neighbour) and told them to remove it and put the house back to its original state.

      It cost them £40k for the priviledge of having nothing to show for their trouble. Always find out whether planning permission is needed and if it does, make sure it is received before proceeding – too many people assume they’ll get it and planning committees don’t look kindly on that sort of ‘arrogance’ (in their eyes).

        1. Anything can be temporary if you then knock it down! 🙂 To be fair, I think the rules have changed since that incident I referred to (from the early 2000s).

          People can put a single storey conservatory on the back of their house as long as it doesn’t take up more than a third (I think) of their back garden’s area. Bigger or higher building work still needs planning permission and can be objected to be neighbours.

          As regards wooden sheds, who knows? I was just guessing (long shots) over the pond issue.

          1. There is such a thing as “permitted development” and you’re right about the size limit, but I think it’s the area of the house, rather than the garden. Wooden sheds are temporary structures and don’t need planning permission (unless, of course, they are cemented in). They have to be easily movable.

    9. The only justifications (that the council might use) I could think of are:

      1. It destoys an existing area of knwon interest – highly unlikely in someone’s garden (large plot of land, perhaps);
      2. The pond was not designed/built properly and ‘somehow’ will contaminate surrounding areas. Again, highly unlikely.

      I suspect it’s got far more to do with whether he asked for and got planning permission before proceeding, A house near my flat had a rear garden conservatory built (before I moved to the development) without planning permission, the council found out (presumably from a disgruntled neighbour) and told them to remove it and put the house back to its original state.

      It cost them £40k for the priviledge of having nothing to show for their trouble. Always find out whether planning permission is needed and if it does, make sure it is received before proceeding – too many people assume they’ll get it and planning committees don’t look kindly on that sort of ‘arrogance’ (in their eyes).

    10. My final suggestion, and perhaps more apt, is he could self-declare as a transponder.

  76. Looks like circuit breaker has popped on the DT Letters comments. Too much under-current.

  77. If you had to sacrifice the population of just one city to get rid of this virus …

    Which city would you choose?
    and why Bradford?

  78. I’ve just had confirmation that I am now registered as a non donor of bits upon death. As of next month those in Scotland who have not opted out will form part of a donor bank. My medical file has now been marked with the shortcode DNR.

  79. A propos vaccination, I haven’t seen posted here (apologies if I missed it) the warning issued by one of the world’s top vaccine experts, Geert Vanden Bossche, in which he explains the concept of and risk inherent in viral immune escape. He is very pro vaccines, but warns that rolling out mass prophylactic vaccinations during a pandemic is actually dangerous. (Note: he’s not against the vaccines themselves, just the way in which they are being used.)

    If anyone wants to read this (because he obviously explains it so much better than I could), his five-page document is linked here https://mcusercontent.com/92561d6dedb66a43fe9a6548f/files/bead7203-0798-4ac8-abe2-076208015556/Public_health_emergency_of_international_concert_Geert_Vanden_Bossche.01.pdf, (or probably not – there’s no box appearing in which to put the link. Sorry!). Alternatively, if you google his name, you should get his Twitter account, where he has pinned a shorter version at the top, or there is a video on YouTube of him being interviewed by Dr Philip McMillan to discuss this.

    If he’s right – and he does appear to have some very distinguished credentials – then governments across the world must halt the rollout of vaccinations once their vulnerable members have been vaccinated, or risk disaster. I have sent the above to my MP, noting that the government has put me in a living hell for nearly a year now on the “safety first” principle, so surely the only ethical thing now would be to apply “safety first” and halt the rollout. I shall let you know what he says (whilst not holding my breath).

    Please note, he is NOT saying that the vulnerable shouldn’t be vaccinated – he approves of the vaccines – I am not trying to panic any of you that have had it. I personally welcome this intervention as it gives moral force to refusing the vaccine, meaning that there is a faint hope of stymieing (gosh, that looks wrong!) their vaccine passport schemes.

    1. Vaccine passports are a control system. I imagine there will be plenty of counterfeit versions.

      It’s an interesting article. While I’d agree that rushing out a pancked response is not a good thing, when do you administer a vaccine? After the event?

      As it is, the maount of misinformatio spread about what a vaccine is and how it works is astonishing. Makes you despair of people.

      2. The way I read it, it’s not that he’s necessarily condemning the quick response, more the mass vaccination efforts – the more people who are vaccinated with these particular vaccines, the more chance the virus will mutate into a monster. I could well be wrong, mind!

        Vaccine passports are definitely a control mechanism; my only hope comes from a friend who reckons the bureaucracy always stuff up massive IT programmes, so they won’t happen for that reason!

      1. Quite! I’m quite looking forward to being offered one and declining. If they try to coerce me, I have all my arguments prepared. I quite pity anyone who tries.

        1. They may not coerce you, but they will hound and harass you. So far I have had three letters, two emails, a text message and two voicemails, the last voicemail requesting my plans for vaccination. The person said they would be phoning back in a few days. Both voicemails came from different numbers, they have both been blocked.

          I wondered how they had got hold of my mob number. I rarely give it out to anyone, only a few friends and family have it. Then I remembered, of course, at the hairdresser back in July when we were let out on parole, having to write my name and address and contact number in case someone with ‘covid’ had attended the salon. There were several sheets with names and addresses, I expect at the end of the week they were all posted off to the Track and Trace Dept.

          1. When I was struggling to contact my GP (I did tell audiology who told me to do it that I would have more chance winning the lottery) the recording went on and on about the Pfizer vaccine and getting done. It seems to be the one my surgery have signed up for. The cynic in me wonders if they pay better than Astra Zenica. I might have spared my ears the bother (and saved the phone call). “Due to Covid” they didn’t do anything I needed any more. “But the Audiology Department told me to get you to do it” – “due to Covid”, blah, blah, blah. Then, the pièce de résistance, bearing in mind I was contacting them about a problem that required an ear examination for deafness, “we can offer you a telephone conversation (after the appointment with the Audiology Clinic)!” I nearly said, “will you listen to yourself, woman? What’s the point in having a telephone consultation with someone who’s DEAF?” As it was, I just told her I was wasting my time and put the phone down. Then I indulged in a five minute swearofest. I don’t know how I didn’t treat her to my extensive profanity vocabulary at the time, but I managed to keep a lid on it because I don’t want to get banned from the surgery.

          2. We have had problems with the surgery today. We called in at the village shop on our morning dog walk where prescriptions for residents here are sent, if they wish. Being rural, there is a pharmacy attached to the surgery which is about five miles away. Although the request had been put in last Tuesday, we discovered it hadn’t arrived at the shop. It should have been ready for collection by us on Friday by the latest at the shop. So, we get back from the dog walk and husband gets the car out to go down to the surgery. Arrives at the surgery – it had closed at 12 noon, not open until 3.00 pm (it used to close at 1.00 pm and open again at 2.00 pm pre-covid days). So, back home he comes, we have lunch and he sets off again at 2.50 pm. Returns home empty handed – the items are on their way to the village shop…. we shall start the same performance tomorrow with a trip to the village shop. Pre-technology life seemed to be so much more efficient.

          3. Co-incidentally, when I went into town to do more shopping (I did at least manage to have the weekend off from that chore), as I passed my neighbour’s house I waved to her while she was standing in the window talking on the phone. She frantically beckoned me to come up the drive and put the phone down. She’d had a disaster with the NHS and wanted my opinion about what she should do. I said complain, complain, complain – or they’ll just keep getting away with it. Envy of the world? I don’t think so.

          4. The nhs is there for the benefit of its inmates…ah, employees; covid and tik-tok dancing have shown us that. People who are not well are just a nuisance.

          5. The nhs is there for the benefit of its inmates…ah, employees; covid and tik-tok dancing have shown us that. People who are not well are just a nuisance.

          6. What a nuisance! Poor you. The buggers!

            I am fully prepared for the onslaught, having read several such accounts here and elsewhere (for which I am grateful, as 99% of my friends and family have accepted it as A Good Thing without a second thought.

            Thing is, I quite like a bit of an intellectual skirmish from time to time, and have honed my skills over the years in philosophy groups. Also armed with facts and figures and the outline guidance of the Nudge Unit. Pretty certain most of those ringing up to harass me will not be quite so well equipped – hence rather looking forward to the conversations (they’d be the most interesting thing that has happened in a LONG time). Hehe.

          7. I am prepared for the next one (phone call) although I do not like confrontation. Thanks for the info, very helpful, I have taken a copy of the précis. I had been thinking of this, that perhaps the novel jab might mess up one’s own natural immune system. It would explain the ‘covid in the wild’ effect. Better safe than sorry. If needs be, I will become a hermit rather than have the jab, I will not be coerced. As long as I have my books I will be happy and I then I can live my life in whichever century I choose. But I will miss France which I love.

            Everyone we know has been so excited about getting this jab! Except for some here on Nottl and also my Pilates lady. It is the complete acceptance I cannot understand. Total trust. They hear the word ‘vaccine’ and that is it. I am going to check out my sons’ views this week, the ‘Vaccination Conversation’ – I can only give them the information, the decision is up to them, they are in their late thirties. If they think their mum doesn’t know what she is talking about I will remind them of a certain beefburger incident twenty five years ago…..!

          8. It’s extraordinary, is it not? Those who have spent their whole lives railing against the establishment suddenly rolling over to have their tummies stratched. I have the feeling that it’s going to go one of two ways. The first, for which I pray, is that the Powers What Be meet a wave of popular pushback, and retreat to lick their wounds before popping up like cats to maintain that they didn’t mean it like that. Let’s hear it for the second.

            I’m not one for confrontation either, but this turns out to be the hill upon which I am literally prepared to die.

            Are you a Dorothy Dunnett fan?

          9. Funny you should say that. I have just taken receipt of the first three in the Lymond series.

            Me too about the hill on which I am prepared to die. Normally I am quite prepared to being amenable to other people’s plans but with this, the harder they try to persuade me the more I dig my heels in. I seem to have lost a friend of 48 years who was giving me the hard sell (she is steeped in the nhs and Papworth Hospital). I sent her a terse text message in reply to her last effort ‘Please respect my decision as I respect yours.’ I have heard nothing since. Sometimes one just has to stand up to the bitter end (and be true to oneself) for what one believes in.

            If you read the comments in the DM there are many people who are not being taken in by all of this. I live in hope.

          10. Oh, how I envy you the glory of Lymond’s world seen through fresh eyes!! I warn you, you’ll fall hopelessly in love. Do let me know how you get on. With absolute certainty it is a better world than that which we now have.

            I’m so sorry for the potential loss of that friendship. I know I will lose friends when I decline vaccination. Interesting times, no?

          11. Losing friends over differences of opinion on the vaccination seems to be a new phenomenon, I am hearing about it from other people too. I do not know why people can accept a difference of opinion, and respect the individual’s right to choose. I am expecting to receive a white feather in the post any day now. Interesting times indeed.

            Yes, I am looking forward to starting the series, but it is something I will have to do when I have acres of time ahead of me and I am not harassed by other duties. I do not want to push in a chapter here and there when I can, I want to revel in it! I will give you a verdict in due course – in order to remind myself I will put a yellow stickie on the front of the first book.

  80. I see all comments have been removed from today’s DT Letter page. I wonder why …

        1. Possibly (I only check it at breakfast time), but it’s rare to say the least that the most popular BTL comments area aside from certain ticker feeds is deleted entirely. It could be that readers peed off at not being able to comment on the huge number of Ginge & Nutmeg articles felt the need to do so where they could, resulting in the moderators getting a bit overwhelmed and saying **** this and scrubbing them all.

          All that’ll do is just push more subscribers out of the door by this blatant censorship. There’s an easy way around any legal issues with reader comments (especially really nasty ones) being ‘published’ – they say anything uploaded is the opinion of the person doing so and not the paper, but ANY comments advocating committing a crime against anyone else will be removed. After all, despite the Mail successfully getting sued (for privacy issues?) by the pair, the paper STILL allows all BTL reader comments AFAIK.

          1. The Mail censors heavily.

            How very unpatriotic of the Telegraph to censor all those comments supporting the RF!

    2. There were some fairly incendiary comments on there and then…poof…all gone!

  81. I’m late to the party, having got lost & confused as usual.
    If the Archbishop really married H&M in a garden, when did they apply for a Special Licence?
    Were there two witnesses at the signing, and who were they? Was a churchwarden present?
    When the religious ceremony took place later, the Archbishop would presumably have asked aloud if there were any lawful impediment.
    But he would have been aware that they were already married, so he was being economical with the truth.

    1. Justin Welby being economical with the truth? How dare you suggest that about an ex oil company executive !

      1. It is possible that JW insisted on a secret civil ceremony as the bride was a divorcee, and then he could spiritually justify the church service as a form of disguised blessing.

        1. Maybe. It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know, after all (and how much wonga you have).

    2. Until those issues are proven I am assuming that that story was clearly bullshit and it raises doubts about most of the rest of the sobfest.

      1. I agreed to marry Caroline in a Roman Catholic Church and the vows we exchanged did not oblige her to say she would obey me.

        So I said to her that she would have to promise in private to obey me which she did.

        Fat lot of good that did!

        1. We had the form of solemnization of matrimony in accordance with the book of common prayer.

      2. I think none of the story was believable. So much of the stuff raised questions. For instance, the day she was pondering suicide was also that same evening when she appeared at the Albert Hall with Harry clutching her bump looking radiant, the light flashing and reflecting from her sequinned frock. It was also the evening they were first booed as a couple as they took their seats.

        1. Perhaps the booing was what triggered such thoughts and why should remember exactly which day?

          1. I think it was more a case of emulating Diana which she has tried to do all the way through this marriage – this interview with Winfrey has been her Bashir moment, during which Diana apparently said she threw herself down the stairs when she was expecting William, and how unhappy she was because of the stultifying nature of the RF. Even her make up was similar to Diana’s, especially the heavily lined eyes; and her facial expressions. I simply don’t believe a word of what she has said.

          2. I don’t believe it either, but I must admire your ability to have spotted the similarities.

            Let’s hope the fraud is exposed a lot faster than the Bashir one was.

          3. But will she emulate Diana’s finale? Will it be emulated for her? Oh, I hope not, she would become a martyr to the blm, hopefully she will slip into obscurity in a mental asylum somewhere.

    3. Meghan probably assumes that you can get married outdoors in the UK, as they do in the USA. This isn’t the case yet, so any such ‘marriage’ would have been unlawful in English law.

      1. And don’t forget Migraine converted to become a member of the Church of England.

        1. It was rumoured that Meghan was a Roman Catholic and converted to the CofE before her marriage. However, this is not the case, as she was baptised into the CofE, and no such baptism would have been necessary as the CofE recognises baptism in other Christian denominations.

          1. “Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum.”

            One baptism per person, them’s the rules. Except the Anabaptists who like to get baptised every day, and twice on Sundays.

          2. If she were RC surely she couldn’t have got divorced – unless His woke Holiness has changed the rules and I’ve missed it.

          3. Catholics can divorce, but may not remarry without obtaining an annulment of the dissolved marriage.

          4. Ah, so that’s the way round it – slip HH a few quid for an annulment 🙂 We’d still have been Catholic if Henry VIII had thought of that 🙂

          5. Actually, he did. Henry never divorced any of his wives. He had the marriages annulled by his Archbishop of Canterbury, since the Pope would not annul his first marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Henry VIII was not a Protestant. He remained doctrinally a Catholic until he died, continuing to burn Protestant ‘heretics’ almost until the end of his reign.

          6. Yes, I am aware that Henry remained doctrinally a Catholic, but he lost control over the Church he created. Once the genie was out of the bottle it proved impossible to put it back (as his daughter Mary discovered). The thing was, HH wouldn’t grant him an annulment; if he had, we’d never have broken from Rome – at that time, at least. It was because Hal couldn’t get the go ahead from Rome that he split and had a DIY annulment – taking it “in house” so to speak. A bit short-sighted on the Vatican front, I think.

          7. At the time, the Pope was a virtual prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor – Katherine’s nephew. So he was under pressure not to grant an annulment. It was political decision – Kings and Emperors had been able to obtain annulments with relative ease before and after Henry VIII.

          8. Actually, he did. Henry never divorced any of his wives. He had the marriages annulled by his Archbishop of Canterbury, since the Pope would not annul his first marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Henry VIII was not a Protestant. He remained doctrinally a Catholic until he died, continuing to burn Protestant ‘heretics’ almost until the end of his reign.

          9. Ah, so that’s the way round it – slip HH a few quid for an annulment 🙂 We’d still have been Catholic if Henry VIII had thought of that 🙂

      2. You can marry outdoors as long as the structure has been licensed and has a solid covering ie a gazebo but not a marquee. In Scotland you can marry anywhere outdoors.

        1. Yes, my daughter was looking at the possibility of getting married outdoors, but it had to be in a gazebo, licensed for the purpose. You can’t just get married in a back garden in England, which is what Meghan was referring to – a ceremony performed in their ‘back yard’.

      3. You can marry outdoors as long as the structure has been licensed and has a solid covering ie a gazebo but not a marquee. In Scotland you can marry anywhere outdoors.

    4. UPDATED: it was simply an exchange of vows with the Archbishop present.
      Welby 1 Markle 0.

  82. The BBC at least… tell of mixed reactions on social media sites over the Markle interview…

    As per usual the BBC role out plenty of black people who support Markle and go on to say how people are divided about the interview.

    It just shows how they are keen to promote racial tensions which seems to be part of their brief.

  83. And to cap it all – there are hours (24 in all) of “music” by women on R3 and virtually every other classical music programme.

    1. Strangely, they overlook the few good ones every time. Not listening. More and more the off switch is my friend.

    2. I’ve noted many times that a large number of very talented woman composers of the past failed to get the recognition they deserved due to their sex whilst nowadays there appear to be huge numbers of mediocre (at best) women composers get a huge amount of recognition because of their sex.

      1. Not just composers – actresses, screenwriters, journalists, film and TV producers, politicians…

      2. I can think of a few women composers of merit, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn and Nadia and Lili Boulanger.

        I had to switch off R3 when they put on some cacophonous racket. I had not realised the noise was created by a woman composer.

    3. That message doesn’t seem to have got over to the various departments of the NHS I was grappling with today. I had an assortment of (classical, fortunately) music, but none of it written by wimmin. Appropriately enough, the last piece, before someone deigned to answer, was the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy – which I think of as “Everyone’s a Fruit and Nutcase”.

  84. I took a look at the New York Times’ (Democrat-central) take on the interview, expecting to see a lot of RF-bashing. The following are the top comments – I was surprised:-

    ‘NYT PicksReader PicksAll

    Dana, Santa Monica, 10h ago

    These two are the most incredibly tone deaf and entitled people imaginable. “Trapped” is being stuck at a job you hate with colleagues to whom you most certainly can’t “speak your truth” to because you have rent to pay and children to support. And most of us certainly don’t have wealthy family members to rely on to support us and to be aggrieved with if they don’t maintain our grand lifestyle. So utterly disgusting and tone deaf. Switch places with the custodians at your kids’ school or a grocery clerk for a day for a taste of what trapped feels like! Amazing!

    28 Replies1530 RecommendedShareFlag

    Jazzie, Canada, 11h ago

    No-one can attest to the veracity of much of what was said, but some was either untrue/suspect. Canadians paid for their security when they were on Vancouver Island; contrary to what both mentioned, they were never without protection. I imagine they are now on the hook for it themselves. Meghan assumed Archie would be a Prince, but only children of the Monarch and grandchildren of the monarch in the male line (Prince William) are automatically given that title. Harry said that he was ‘cut off’ from royal funds, but he inherited $10 million from his mother’s estate. If he had no career prospects, she probably did. He said he felt “trapped” as a royal, yet bemoans the fact he lost his royal stipend, royal privileges, patronages and honorary military titles. It is hard to believe Meghan would be oblivious of the fact that one curtsies to the Queen – should have done her homework. Harry’s comment about finding her in tears after Archie’s birth shows just how unique they think they are – most mothers of new babies spend the first year or so adjusting and having a hard time of it, and yes, crying. It’s called postpartum blues/depression. I wish them well in their new palace in sunny California but I hope that we are spared further lectures from the affluent and entitled (and not just these two) about how we should all live good and meaningful lives (“of privilege”) – there is so much more afoot in this desperate world of ours that is in need of our attention.

    11 Replies1466 RecommendedShareFlag

    Evelyn commented 10 hours ago

    Austin, TX, 10h ago

    With more than half a million Americans dead from COVID-19, economic insecurity and unemployment at levels unseen since the Great Depression, and our nation’s having recently endured an attempted insurrection to stop President Biden from taking office after his legitimate election, I struggle with why on earth Harry and Meghan believed NOW was the time for them to air their apparently numerous grievances, notwithstanding their considerable wealth, much of it inherited—not earned—by Harry from his mother. Their timing and actions speak not only of tone-deafness and self-absorption, but call into question their judgment. There are so many others in the world with stories so much more compelling than Harry’s and Meghan’s but whose voices will never be heard. It would have been far more meaningful if Harry and Meghan had provided a platform for those voices instead.

    11 Replies1264 RecommendShareFlag

    Jack Walsh commented 11 hours ago

    Jack Walsh
    Lowell, MA, 11h ago

    I was with the Megs until ““I didn’t do any research about what that would mean,” she said. “I never looked up my husband online”. Pants on fire, Megs. Now I don’t believe anything.

    7 Replies1129 RecommendShar

    1. On the ‘curtsey’ issue. A friend had an audience with H.M. Queen. Very informal. A woman, she was told either nod or brief curtsey as you wish. Same with another friend who met Prince Charles. Very informal and easy to speak to. I somehow suspect that they would find the Duchess more of a challenge.

      1. A while ago now, but to loosen up, the advice given was as you say. The Royal household wanted to downplay all the obsequious stuff as it was beginning to get in the way in modern times.

        Markle saying it was Sarah Fergusson who at the last minute showed her how to do it was just another dig at Her Majesty.

        When Sarah Fergusson curtsies, just like Theresa May they look like they are trying to hold in a prolapse. Both over do it and look stupid.

        It is not necessary.

        For someone who acts for a living she is very unconvincing.

        2. She’s as false as her tits and her narrative is as thin as her scrawny legs!
          ;¬)

          1. You goin’ on about Sturgeon again?

            International womens day and look how these two behave. Back to being chained to the kitchen sink is too good for some of them.

          3. Her vulture like legs are as big a turn off as Spaghetti Junction on the M6 near Birmingham.

        3. I thought it strange, in the little I have read, that Markle referred to Sarah Ferguson as ‘Fergie’ and not ‘Sarah’; Fergie is the name the press uses. Surely the RF must use her Christian name. Perhaps she is not so familiar with Sarah Ferguson as she would like us to believe.

      2. My late aunt met the Queen several times at gun dog Field trails , their interest in working dogs was a good conversation point .

        Our Queen is a natural conversationalist , and was always happy in comfortable surroundings . Aunt did say our Queen has rather a shrieky voice , but she is what she is .

    2. Not related to the ginger characters but when junior was born, the warqueen seemed ok but one evening when she couldn’t stop him crying there were difficulties and she had dreadful depression. Thus I took over the minibrute.

      It might explain why his first words were ‘farty farty farts’ and when he could crawl, he’d make a bee line for Wiggy’s bed and would curl up there to nap. Wiggs didn’t seem to mind except for the one occassion of looking at sleeping baby to me, to baby to me.

      1. Firstborn’s first word was “helicopter” (OK, hekilopter), and his first sentence “Daddy made pong”.
        Poor parenting, I fear, and it’s been downhill from then.
        :-((

  86. They say Meghan might once have thought about suicide, now we are all thinking about it.

    1. 330074+ up ticks,
      Afternoon B3,
      Get back to watching DOVER and not a brace of deflector defectors.

    2. Not me – I am more of a homicidal bent at the moment! (please note, this is not to be taken literally)

    1. I respect and agree with his sentiments, but do we commonly hear people we know to actually say that? I might say it at the pub (when I get back in there), but ironically.

      1. His maternal grandfather was Hungarian, and survived the war by chance. He was an expert on sugar beet.

  89. I haven’t looked but I’m told there is wall to wall coverage in the MSM. Is there any chance that NottL can henceforth become a Markle & Spencer Free Zone?

    2. 330074+ up ticks,
      Afternoon S,
      🎵
      Look away,look away look away to ….
      deflection, as in the intake doubling up on the invasion front at Dover.

    1. Because Princess Nut Nuts has told Boris she will deprive him of his carnal pleasures if he does anything to stop it.

      We all have to accept that the so-called Conservative Party doesn’t give a toss for the British people.

      1. 330074 + up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Then why does the electorate not
        reciprocate in the same manner ?

        1. I have not voted for any of the British political parties for over 35 years. But I would have voted for UKIP in 2015 if I had had the chance.

          1. 330074+ up ticks,
            Evening R,
            In my view there are a multitude out there who use an old family tree voting pattern currently against parties that operate to their own agenda.

            They are voting currently for a name of a party, a party that once had political integrity but now has NO honest content.

            The voting setup favours the politico’s every time,even if they lose, they win, they stand down for a period, then back into power, the electorate do their bit by supporting / voting for the close shop parties , much to the politicians delight.

            We had a real chance in UKIP 2018 under the Batten leadership
            the party nec / nige put paid to that via treachery.

            We are suffering now through decades of supporting/ voting
            via a self locked in voting pattern, with the herd actually blaming the sheep for our nationwide plight.
            Believe me the sheep are completely innocent, the humans, not so much.

          2. 330074+ up ticks,
            Evening R,
            In my view there are a multitude out there who use an old family tree voting pattern currently against parties that operate to their own agenda.

            They are voting currently for a name of a party, a party that once had political integrity but now has NO honest content.

            The voting setup favours the politico’s every time,even if they lose, they win, they stand down for a period, then back into power, the electorate do their bit by supporting / voting for the close shop parties , much to the politicians delight.

            We had a real chance in UKIP 2018 under the Batten leadership
            the party nec / nige put paid to that via treachery.

            We are suffering now through decades of supporting/ voting
            via a self locked in voting pattern, with the herd actually blaming the sheep for our nationwide plight.
            Believe me the sheep are completely innocent, the humans, not so much.

        2. I have not voted for any of the British political parties for over 35 years. But I would have voted for UKIP in 2015 if I had had the chance.

      2. Ah the prerogative of the ho’ through the centuries – power without responsibility.

    3. The hotels must be pretty full, they don’t like our army barracks, and therefore, billeting them upon us will be commencing as soon as lockdown finishes. Or maybe before.

      1. Not for nothing did the ONS want to know how many people and how many bedrooms in the Census!

    4. It has to be the class of refugees(?) that you select. I just heard an interview with the first Syrian family that came here five years ago:
      Number one son is starting medical school
      Number one daughter is off to university
      Two other kiddies getting top marks in school
      Mother and father running a successful business making and selling hummus and such.

      1. Well done them.
        And just who paid for their education?
        And just who paid for their housing?
        And will they pay it back or move on to the USA?

      1. Phil had probably been sampling the brandy again and breathed fumes all over the candles.

        That is a time gone by when someone would blow over their cake and then we would all eat a slice.

        1. That is what kept us all so healthy – the priming and updating of our immune system.

        2. Happy birthday to you
          Coughs, sneezes and ‘flu
          Bread and butter
          From the gutter
          And quick shits come too…

  92. Just had an email from Chris Evans! No, not the ginger dj, but the editor of the DT! He was asking for feedback on the “new look” paper, so I gave him some! I’d hardly touched the send button when a reply came back from ” Totheeditor”!

    1. I hope you told him that if you wanted to read “Hello” you would subscribe to it! As I don’t I’m about to unsubscribe my trial of the DT….

      1. That was only part of m mini-rant! I suggested that he didn’t publish articles which don’t allow comment, or allow comment then delete/disappear them! I asked what he was frightened of! Don’t expect I’ll hear back from Chris!

    2. I gave him my ‘opinion’ of the paper as my last thing as I unsubbed. I held back my feelings rather like Tom Cruise did recently when he found a member of the MI:7 crew had not been wearing their facemask. Oddly enough, no-one ever wrote back…

  93. Afternoon, all. Happy Birthday to our Dear Leader and Happy Commonwealth Day. I think there are some wimmin involved somewhere, too. What a busy day! I hope it’s been better than mine; if anybody asks me to clap for the NHS I’ll give them an earful!

      1. I am indeed early this evening. I’ve spent the day grappling with the “envy of the world” NHS and failing miserably to get any “service” for the usual reason. If anybody says to me one more time they can’t do X, Y and Z “due to Covid” I think I’ll explode! I gave up and came to Nottl. Even the pruning was unsatisfactory; I discovered that the scaffolders mangled most of my roses in the front bed when they did work on the house (now, thankfully, completed) and some of them may well not recover, they have been so trampled on and broken down. As if that weren’t enough, when I went to water the pots the short hose I use to fill the watering can (with my arthritis I find it hard to hold the can to the tap) soaked me to the skin. The builder had taken it off and cross threaded it when he put it back on. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all he’d done; I discovered he’d lost the washer as well, so simply threading it correctly didn’t solve the problem and I got a second soaking! I had to find a spare. Then, to cap it all, I pushed the hose on the water butt more firmly in because it looked as though it was going to slide out of the keeper only to find when I came back to it that it had fallen out anyway and the path was flooded. I think I should have stayed in bed 🙁

        1. Please don’t be offended:

          Is there any chance you have the spraying on CCTV so we can all share the joy?

          };-))

          Days like yours are sent to try us.

          On a positive note. I had similar problems with a builder trampling all over the wild orchids a couple of years ago. This year we are going to have a bumper crop, plants are popping up everywhere. Nature almost always gives man two fingers eventually.

          1. Sadly I don’t have any footage of the soaking, but anyway, I don’t see why you lot shouldn’t suffer frustration as well! 🙂

  94. I notice that Trash and Mrs Murrell – both “strong, fiercely independent feminists” resorted to tears which being questioned.

      1. Trash almost immediately in the Soap Oprah; Mrs Murrell before the “committee” in the Pretendy Parliament looking into Salmond’s beefs (as it were).

    3. I have known women who cry, and hate the fact. They can’t help it, it just happens. In the middle of a business meeting and suddenly there’s tears rolling down her cheeks. She says “Pay no attention to this, it just happens, I can’t stop it”. Acceptable on that basis. It’s a bit like blokes looking at cleavage.

      2. Probably because they are stressed out, trying to hold down a job and do all the family things.

  95. That’s me for this dreary day. Unexpectedly, it rained on and off all day. Was decidedly chilly. Pickles had eaten something which, er, “disagreed” with him. (I’ll spare you the detail…). The MR spent two hours on a skype meeting.

    On the plus side, Trevor the painter arrived and is dealing with two rooms – finishing them tomorrow. Then on Wed and Thurs will do two more – leaving the really big task of the sitting/dining rooms (which go from floor to roof height) till later in the month – together with the utility room and the boiler room.which suits us perfectly.

    Back to my book and a cat on my lap.

    A demain.

  96. The unbearable victim complex of Meghan Markle. Spiked 8 March 2021.

    The set-up bordered on nauseating. Here was a duke and duchess in the unimaginably luxurious surrounds of a Californian mansion talking about how difficult their lives have been. In a country where 40million people lost their jobs as a result of lockdowns, this pair who get paid millions for making naff podcasts moaned to billionaire Oprah Winfrey about their oppression by the establishment. Meghan was wearing a $4,500 dress. She’ll probably never wear it again. That’s more than twice the amount that desperate Americans will get in their stimulus cheques to keep them afloat in the next few months. It’s perverse.

    Then there’s the hypocrisy on the privacy question. Harry and Meghan detest the invasive media – they referred to it as a ‘monster machine’ – and insist they just want a private life. Yet they’re constantly revealing all. They’ve given us minute details about the miscarriage Meghan suffered. In the Oprah chat Meghan opened up about her suicidal thoughts while ‘trapped’ in the royal family. Nobody invades Meghan Markle’s privacy as much as Meghan Markle does. The problem isn’t us, the grubby, tabloid-reading public, pestering Harry and Meghan for info about their lives; the problem is them forever foisting their most intimate experiences down our throats. How about you leave us alone?

    Amen to that!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/08/the-unbearable-victim-complex-of-meghan-markle/

  97. Amusing that following the DT’s blatant censorship of readers today on the Letters Page that readers just continue on commenting on yesterday’s Letters Page.

      1. Too many anti-Meg comments. I wouldn’t be surprised if they delete yesterday’s Letter Page comments section as well. How long until ALL comments sections are deleted?

          1. The Telegraph’s moderators might well decide that selective deletions of individual comments which they deem to be troublesome becomes too time consuming, therefore a bloc deletion and prevention of further comments cuts through the problem at a stroke, but I regard it as disrespectful and rude – frankly – to the many contributors who share their thoughts in a considered and erudite way. Moderation on such a scale, without using any discernment, merely builds resentment amongst readers and risks losing substantial numbers of subscribers for whom posting viewpoints is an important facet of the interactive experience.

    1. Very good, I like the way the initial picture shows the fish in the clouds/mist

        1. With what I know now, maybe, but if I was like I was when I was a teenager, no.

  99. Would the wise old heads like to give me their best estimate as to when I can delve into the MSM without the risk of being swamped with the Ginge & Minge horror show.
    IMHO, the pubs are more likely to fully reopen before the horror show is played out.

    2. Weeell, we will have to have a blow by blow account of the rest of her pregnancy, so several months yet.

      We must respect their privacy though remember.

    2. I have to wonder – does Prince Harry want to bring down the monarchy? I’d like to hear his views on THAT matter.
      As far as what the Septics think, it’s none of their business.

      1. My suspicion is that he really does.

        He is unlikely to be King and hates the whole concept now, thanks to the viper in his bosom.

        She is trying to stir them up, the race card trumps all others in the land of septic-aemia.

  101. A bit late but Happy birthday, Geoff. And the same for next year and the year after that and the… 🍺 🍻 🥂 🍷 🥃 🍸 🍹 🧉 🍾

  102. Covid Psychological Opps Unit HQ
    Emergency Meeting Saturday 6th March

    Hancock, Whitty, Vallance and Ferguson are looking deeply worried.

    Hancock, kicks off the meeting, “well gentlemen, it looks like despite a year in lockdown, pubs shut until the summer, mask wearing, mass vaccination, vaccine passports, Man City top of the league, we still haven’t managed to break the will of the people, the old British spirit is still alive a kicking, I’m not sure that we have anything left in the toolbox, they seem unbreakable”.

    Whitty interjects, “Ah, what about making people wear two masks outside and while in the bath”.

    Vallance looks doubtful, ” no, they will just ask for three masks, what about forcing them to listen to Phil Collins tapes and clap every night at 6pm for ten minutes while we slowly pull down Nelson’s Column and the Cenotaph and replace they with BLM symbols?”

    Ferguson, then gives one of his cunning grins, “no,that wont do, I have it, Monday night we play a tape of Meghan and Harry to the nation being interviewed by Oprah.”
    Hancock, Whitty and Vallance can’t contain themselves, ” yes that will do it, they’ll all be topping themselves by the end of the week, especially if we leak it on Sunday and the media spend all week talking about it, Boris is going to love this.”

    1. Don’t joke about such matters, the bar stewards may well decided to repeat it every week on every channel broadcasting.

    2. Covid is cyber warfare and many governments around the world are in on it.

      The elites stand to make more billions and the rest of us will either become automata if we succumb to vaccination or else outcasts if we survive.

    3. Was it just a coicidence that at the same time loo roll was flying off the shelves, baked bean cans were as well?

    4. And once more i need a hair cut before Christmas last year was the last one, i had a trim up from Erin Doors but some mornings when i get out of bed i look like Donald Trump. It’s somewhat like going back to the 1970s. Flairs any one ?

        1. Oh well…………..😄
          As the chap on the bus said “Is this Wembley” ? another passenger replied ” no it’s Thursday”. “well so am it let’s go for a pint”🍻!

          3. Newcastle United won the Fairs Cup in 1969! It was the last trophy they won and I was in the old Leazes End when they brought the cup back to St. James’s Park! It was a fantastic afternoon!

        2. Wood eye bee correct in thin king you are involved in farming ?
          I missed most of your birthday chat i was busy.
          If so i have always admired British farmers for their endless hard work and out right tenacity in the daily lives.

          1. Yurse! My elder daughter, the vet, is married to a farmer in the Scottish Borders and they live just outside Biggar. She is on maternity leave at the moment and the lambing is just about to start. They do work tremendously hard and her husband is 4th generation on the farm. He loves his job!

          2. When i can i always watch the farming programmes on TV there’s a lovely family i think in the north Pennines who have about 8-10 children ranging from about 6 years old to teenagers. In my eyes they are absolute stars.
            But conversely we have a local farmer who is always finding something to moan about. He’s semi retired and uses his land only to graze other farmers sheep and cattle. And for hay making. He has put electric fences along the sides of every public footpath on his property.
            He had a modern storage barn converted into double storey homes and they have been on the market for nearly a year with seemingly no body interested in buying them.

          3. Oh I’ve seen them! The mother popped out her 8th or 9th then was up feeding the sheep! My daughter thought that was hilarious!! Just spoken to her and they’ve had a few lambs born tonight! My old man is helping SiL to connect his new smart TV to the cctv in the barns so they can be right there if needed at any time.

  104. Is she a plant ? Looks like it !

    Who is behind it ?

    ”We leverage policy, legislation and political influence and build strong relationships with officials, politicians, NGOs and other actors’. (precis)

    Who said it……………….

    1) The mafia ?

    2) George Soros, who Nigel Farage tells us has ”spent billions to undermine the nation state” ?

    Undermining the nation state fits with undermining the Royal Family.

    https://hrdn.eu/open-society-foundations/?sfw=pass1615200646

    Who introduced Meghan to Harry ?

    Obama, Soros’ puppet who did various mega insider deals with him including the IndyMac Bank Rescue and fiscal expansion 2009.

    Was wrecking the Royal Family the plan from the start, thereby undermining the nation state and ruining the British #1 institution ?

    Now Biden chimes in supporting her – another Soros puppet !

    1. Did Trump take over the Presidency on March 4th like you promised? No? So is he living in the White House? No?

      If you are going to constantly offer conspiracies and ‘inside information’, some of it has to come true once in a while. Otherwise you start to look like the cat lady.

      1. Poor Rodger.. totally out of the loop about powers available to the President in the event of a national emergency.

        Do some research for a change instead of pointlessly and ignorantly carping !

    2. Correction, Obama did not introduce Meghan to Harry, their acquaintance came much later.

  105. Is she a plant ? Looks like it !

    Who is behind it ?

    ”We leverage policy, legislation and political influence and build strong relationships with officials, politicians, NGOs and other actors’. (precis)

    Who said it……………….

    1) The mafia ?

    2) George Soros, who Nigel Farage tells us has ”spent billions to undermine the nation state” ?

    Undermining the nation state fits with undermining the Royal Family.

    https://hrdn.eu/open-society-foundations/?sfw=pass1615200646

    Who introduced Meghan to Harry ?

    Obama, Soros’ puppet who did various mega insider deals with him including the IndyMac Bank Rescue and fiscal expansion 2009.

    Was wrecking the Royal Family the plan from the start, thereby undermining the nation state and ruining the British #1 institution ?

    Now Biden chimes in supporting her – another Soros puppet !

  106. Let’s have a laugh…..

    A cartoonist was found dead in his home, details are sketchy
    I used to be a banker, then I lost interest
    England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool
    Broken pencils are pointless
    All the toilets in New York police stations have been stolen, the cops have nothing to go on

    I’ll go back to my book now ;-))

      1. By the way, my book is about your area, I think, Kate Mosse “City of Tears”

        1. I think her books are further South and further North of us, we’re in the South of the Dordogne.
          HG has really enjoyed the series.

          If you liked those you might also like the Martin Walker series which are set in this general area.

          1. Yes, I have enjoyed Martin Walker books, especially his Chief Inspector Bruno series, but took a break from them as they became a little repetitive I thought.

          2. Try Peter May some of his stories are set in France very descriptive i like to ‘Google Earth’ the settings he uses. As i do with many books i read it’s good to see the streets and buildings described in the novels.

          3. Try Peter May some of his stories are set in France very descriptive i like to ‘Google Earth’ the settings he uses. As i do with many books i read it’s good to see the streets and buildings described in the novels.

          5. Yes, I have enjoyed Martin Walker books, especially his Chief Inspector Bruno series, but took a break from them as they became a little repetitive I thought.

    3. Nobody’s been Russian to up tick Bob.
      I’ll give it one, i like live music it sounds like he’s swearing in English.

  108. Harry is saying that it was tabloid racism that drove him and Meeeagain out of the UK. Does anyone know of a single verifiable occasion when she was on the receiving end of racism? I note that the interview, the accusations were all against un-specified people, so they cannot be checked, cannot be defended, but if it was the tabloids as well it will be there in print. Has anybody seen it?

      2. OK, but if it was as bad as he is saying you wouldn’t have look. There would be lots of examples to hand, but nobody seems to know of any.

  109. Just had a phone call from no 2 son who lives in Sussex to say he felt dizzy getting up off the sofa , collapsed and now his legs won’t work , not sure whether it is cramp in his calves or something worse.

          1. We hope so, just rung his flat again , still has a headache and legs ache and he has gone to bed . He felt his phone buzzing .

            Why is life such a worry .

          2. I’m sure all will look better in the morning, I see someone has already asked about the AZ vaccination, perhaps that’s it.

          3. Me. In the middle of the night I thought my back was about to break. I always thought that Paracetamols were little more than placebos, but 4 later I had changed my mind.

            12 hours later I was more or less back to normal but, bloody hell, it hurt at the time.

          4. Gosh , yes . Mike said he had taken Paracetamol , hop they sort him out..

            I must say all sorts of alarms ran through me , especially the dizzy spell and falling over , symptoms like that shouldn’t be ignored.

          5. Apart from the incredibly rare Guillain-Barré syndrome, might it be a potassium deficiency?

          8. Me. In the middle of the night I thought my back was about to break. I always thought that Paracetamols were little more than placebos, but 4 later I had changed my mind.

            12 hours later I was more or less back to normal but, bloody hell, it hurt at the time.

          10. They are still a worry – no matter how old thwy are. I hope he will be ok in the morning.

          11. They never stop being your children. Our eldest will be 52 on Wednesday.

            Where did all those years go?

          13. Yep same as mine who are 52 and 47, and they will always be my boys / babies, silly really but you still see that small child in them .

            I am the eldest of four , yet my father used to call me his baby prototype!

          15. I’m so glad i seem to have instilled a sense of humour into our three, eldest just over 40, 37 and 31 all biblical names. Eldest named after the hospital he was born in, in Adelaide.

          19. Mathew, MBE. Daniel DR E and Christopher CBE, my nephew has a son name Zachary.

          23. When number one was born in 1979 we had a few telegrams and cards saying congrats on your MBE. He was born at the (Mathew) Flinders Medical centre.

          28. RE

            What a twerp I feel , I said ring 111… and it is 911..

            I was jumping around thinking of this that and the other !

            He didn’t want to bother anyone . Fingers crossed .

          31. Whoops sorry TB i’m as usual trying to do several things at once 111
            not 911 “THE NUMBER YOU HAVE DIALLED HAS NOT BEEN RECOGNISED. PLEASE CHECK AND TRY AGAIN.”

    2. Has he just had the AZ vaccination?

      TB – not a joke, I had similar symptoms after mine. So did my cousin in law.

        1. Dehydration? I remember some wicked cramps in the legs after 12 hour shifts on a blazingly hot back deck in the tropics.

          1. Not that he’s in the tropics, but perhaps a couple of pints of water and some salt might help, even cocacola.

          3. Coke (the drink) with added salt is good. Watch out for the fizzing as you salt it, though.

          4. Now that is so funny OB

            Coke ( the drink) …. because there has to be society’s alternative!

            We used to use flat Coke with added salt when ever there was a dehydration problem when we were overseas.

        2. The hospital should test for Guillain-Barré syndrome. There is a remedy, either an injection or intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG).

    4. Sorry to hear that, hope it all turns out OK in the end.
      As Mrs VVOF says, kids always a source of worry to us.

    4. Curious, Rik. That’s what I cooked today: my favourite lamb joint. And, Shepherd’s Pie to come later.

          1. Sat downstairs after pumping bilges and then tossing & turning for half an hour!
            I thought you’d implied you’d cooked what was shewn in the .gif Rick had posted!

    5. Curious, Rik. That’s what I cooked today: my favourite lamb joint. And, Shepherd’s Pie to come later.

  111. Madam is seething – planned to watch Unforgotten tonight but it’s been replaced by some whinging pair of recluses who shun publicity but are apparently happy to appear on some sort of interview where they can tell “their truth”, which apparently differs from real truth by being absolute bollox! And, what happened to the canal journeys??

    3. MB was firmly told to watch it on his laptop – with earphones.
      I am disgusted that he’s watching it at all.

          2. Thanks, Anne, for the two best comments for ages and a great belly laugh for me.

      2. I am delighted to say that I have not watched one second of it, The pair fill me with disgust and I have no desire to break my television set by throwing things at it in fury.

  112. Madam is seething – planned to watch Unforgotten tonight but it’s been replaced by some whinging pair of recluses who shun publicity but are apparently happy to appear on some sort of interview where they can tell “their truth”, which apparently differs from real truth by being absolute bollox! And, what happened to the canal journeys??

  113. Well done to Prickly Thistle/Tartan Pimpernel – her horse finished third at Southwell.

  114. Don’t tell me there is another hour of the phantom with the Oprah. I’m going to sneak down stairs to get a night cap, so i’ll say good night and pop orff.
    And as Dr Spooner would have said,……….. Bead my Rook.

    1. I think it’s a set up. Too ridiculous, too fake, too nasty and too organized !

      I think it’s got Soros and the globalists written all over it with the intention of destroying the RF. His puppets are involved. The Obamas who introduced them and now Biden, another Soros puppet, has popped up to say how brave she is.

      After all, they’ve destroyed the church and other institutions, exaggerated C-19 to ruin the economy, now it’s the RF’s turn.

      So I’m calling globalist set up from the start. Probably part of the Great Reset !

      1. Exactly this, Polly. It is all too neat to be anything else.

        It will be interesting to see what the Archbish of Canterbury has to say to the secret first wedding. Garden weddings in the UK are not legal, they have to be under a roof of some sort, perhaps Markle did not realise it is not the same as the US, and there have to be two witnesses. So, if she is shown to be fabricating on this, then it calls the whole of the interview into question. What will Welby do, I wonder? (After all, he us one of them, he is in rather a quandary, she has put him in a spot, I loved the ‘we just phoned the archbishop three days before and he came round..!’).

        1. Indeed. The reason why Chas and Cammie didnt get married at Windsor Castle, as was their first choice, was that giving it a licence would mean anyone would be entitled to book it as their wedding venue.

      2. Agreed this charade was rehearsed.

        The problem remains that they lack a director and should perhaps have employed Danny Boyle or those of his ilk. Hitler at least had Riefenstahl.

      3. I agree with you i think most people share your sentiments Polly. Take a look at all the upticks on FB there are thousands of people who have the same opinion.

  115. What a shame that Meghan isn’t dignified and talented and sincere . Why isn’t she cast in the same mould as the very delightful Emma Clare Thynn, Marchioness of Bath of Longleat who everybody respects and admires .

    Meghan just washes her dirty washing in public .. she has fallen out with everyone , she has no family life , and has abandoned her father who nurtured her !.

    1. We watched the first half then turned over for the news and it was all over there again. 🙄

      1. We avoided it .. Moh wanted to watch it , but it makes me feel quite ill thinking about the duplicitous whining of the couple , and in the clips I saw earlier , Haz the Naz( remember his party uniform ) he looked really dead eyed and drugged up!

      2. It will run and run now, in much the same way that the obsession of the media with Diana ran and ran and is even now occasionally resurrected.

    2. As with Lewis Hamilton I puzzle that half castes identify as black when they are at best half and half. The same applies to the wretch Obama who hates Whites, all Americans and the English. Some achievement.

        1. Meghan’s mother seems to have kept a dignified silence. But if you didn’t know you would suppose M was white.

          2. Lots of coloured people do – from Indians to blacks. Even in their societies, before the British ever entered their countries, paler skins were considered better. They are such hypocrites.

          3. I much prefer the mother. She seems a quiet dignified person without a racist attitude.
            Unlike her daughter.

    3. Indeed. We thought the royals were dysfunctional. I saw that documentary about the Thynns a few years back. Ceawlin’s acute embarrassment when he discovered in his grandfather’s collection of artwork an original from a budding Austrian landscape artist from the early 20th century who later went on to set up a 1000 year Reich. Then his own father’s collection of pornographic murals, inspired by his harem of seventy-odd “wifelets”, and the deep concern from his mother about the purity of the Thynn blood when chancing upon the gorgeous Emma.

      I was one of those inquisitive about John’s suntan, but it was pure curiosity, no malice. I actually think a bit of hybrid vigour is good for the genes of an inbred aristocracy. I wish Oprah Winfrey could see it this way, but I fear that she is a bit of a racist.

  118. Goodnight, all. I’ve had to log back in because Mozilla Firefox decided to throw a wobbly, locked up and then lost the page. Sounds about par for the course the way things have been going!

    2. Oh dear. That does not sound good.
      I hope you’re having a peaceful sleep whilst I type this.

    3. Oh dear. That does not sound good.
      I hope you’re having a peaceful sleep whilst I type this.

  119. Goodnight, all. I’ve had to log back in because Mozilla Firefox decided to throw a wobbly, locked up and then lost the page. Sounds about par for the course the way things have been going!

    1. ‘Morning, BoB,

      Funny that OT says that Meghan has no “black features” – especially he nose. Well, she had an operation on her nose – so that it was less black – so who is racist? Meghan herself.

  124. Too many Ginge & Whinge letters I see.
    That’s me off back to bed.
    See you all later.

  125. Too many Ginge & Whinge letters I see.
    That’s me off back to bed.
    See you all later.

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