Saturday 16 May: Teacher’s fear that a return to the classroom means someone might die

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 blacklisted.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/15/letters-teachers-fear-return-classroom-means-someone-might-die/

687 thoughts on “Saturday 16 May: Teacher’s fear that a return to the classroom means someone might die”

  1. Morning Geoff and queuers.
    How”s our patient doing today after yesterday”s notifectomy?
    Still on the hyperventilator?

    1. Morning AO’E. It’s happening across the whole Disqus platform. Disqus will no doubt cobble a fix together soon/sometime/never…

      1. OK Geoff,
        Let’s stay with it – we’ve made it so far – Never give up, never surrender!

      3. OK Geoff,
        Let’s stay with it – we’ve made it so far – Never give up, never surrender!

        1. 319270+ up ticks,
          Morning Aoe,
          “never give Up”
          ” no surrender”
          If only that was the
          overall mindset, as was.

          2. 319270+ up ticks,
            Evening Aeo,
            No giving up.
            No surrender.
            &
            No submitting, ever.

    2. There’s no need for anyone to die in the classroom as long as there is enough ventilation in the classroom.
      Kids know so much more from the internet now that their parents are way behind academically.

      Here’s a simple multiple choice ventilator question that any primary school child could answer after just fifteen minutes tuition on the web:

      https://youtu.be/__gK_9RzfIA

    3. There’s no need for anyone to die in the classroom as long as there is enough ventilation in the classroom.
      Kids know so much more from the internet now that their parents are way behind academically.

      Here’s a simple multiple choice ventilator question that any primary school child could answer after just fifteen minutes tuition on the web:

      https://youtu.be/__gK_9RzfIA

  4. Good day, everyone. Cloudy start to the morning. Supposed to be warmer later. Hmmm.

    No notifications, I see. So that only the determined will follow the threads.

  5. SIR – I don’t want to be part of this madness. I love my job, care deeply about the pupils, and am desperate to be back. However, schools can’t open at any price.

    I teach in an infant and nursery school. Since schools were closed I have been in, on a rota, caring for up to 20 pupils aged between two and seven. It has become clear that it is utterly unmanageable to make the setting safe while catering for the children’s needs.

    Many of our pupils are vulnerable, and the idea of opening our doors to them in two weeks’ time, in rooms with unfamiliar adults (to keep them in the recommended groups of 15) with minimal resources (in order to comply with recommendations on cleaning and materials, such as no wooden toys, playdough or sand), with staggered start times, play times, lunch times and home times, will be unsettling at best, and traumatic at worst. How do we comfort a child who is distressed? How do 120 children use six toilets without being near each other?

    My husband is a paramedic. If he doesn’t work someone might die. But if I carry the virus from my husband into work, and my 15 pupils carry it back to their homes, then I have failed them. Someone might die because I went to work.

    I am awaiting further advice from my union, but may refuse to work on June 1 because it is unsafe.

    Sarah Humpleby
    Buxton, Derbyshire

    Where to begin? You really are full of it, Mrs Humplebunkum. I wouldn’t want you anywhere near any of my grandchildren lest they grow up to be anything like as pathetic as you are…. “awaiting further advice from my union” my @rse.

    [Others have expressed their thoughts more extensively and more eloquently BTL@DTletters]

    1. SIR – Supermarket staff are exposed to thousands of customers every day.

      At our local Waitrose I regularly thank the staff for their efforts and inquire about casualty rates from Covid. None reported to date.

      I wish our teachers were as willing to serve rather than being herded by their unions into a policy of non-co-operation.

      Michael Willis
      Stirling

      Up the Scots, for once, so to speak.

      1. SIR – On Thursdays we clap for key workers. On Tuesdays should we boo for teaching unions?

        John Fowler
        Salisbury, Wiltshire

          6. Social distancing only applies to humans. No laws against snuggling up with our furry fiends.

          7. I’ve banjaxed them by hanging the feeders from some 20 gauge galvanised steel wire I salvaged from a 20 yard piece of redundant electric cable a previous employer told me to help myself to!

          8. I’ve tried that. They leap from the ground and swing on the feeders.

        2. I don’t hold with any of this clapping malarky.

          However, I do commend our postman, always cheery – always asks (mouthing through the window) if everything is OK.

          1. [I presume you typed commend but got ortokerrekted] Everyone hereabouts is very punctilious about thanking people in shops etc. My next door neighbour in No. 2 xxxx Cottages works as a technician in the Radiology Dept of Reading Hospital, using his screwdriver to make sure the machines work properly, replacing the radioactive thingummies, etc., etc. Obviously he is not ‘front line’ himself but interacts daily with people who are and will have nothing to do with this clapping bullcrap.

          2. We have a lovely postman who knows his patch and always does the little extras that make the difference between doing your job and providing a service.
            When chatting with MB a couple of weeks back, he mentioned that his wife is undergoing cancer treatment.
            But still he works and does a good job.

          3. I used to have a delightful postman; loved the dog (who loved him, too), always cheery and you always felt better for a conversation with him. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car crash. A sad loss.

          4. Our postgirl is a delightful, young woman, who always does the extra. Hope she carries on.

          6. Tut, tut, Spikey and me a happily married man…

            Work-related ones, obvs, though she is quite cute. 🙂

    2. The question I would ask Sarah Humpleby is – when will it ever be safe enough for you to go back to work?

          1. But imagine the pleasure to be obtained from infecting Blair with something deadly.

          2. He has already been infected with something deadly. It’s called evil.

            ‘Morning, sos!

      2. When it’s absolutely safe to do so. Well, that’s what a couple of teaching types said yesterday and Ferrari couldn’t get anything more specific out of them. Putting the examples of other European countries re-opening schools to these people elicited the same response, that every country is different, or words to that effect. Both parroting the same excuse looks as if they’ve been coached what to say to project unanimity.

      3. Indeed. At the moment, we really haven’t got the measure of this virus – is it the Black Death? is it just another lurg that goes round like a bad cold? or is it something in between? Nobody yet knows what it is and how to deal with it.

        Yet if we are so enamoured with our legalisms and our compensation culture (law firms these days take up TV advertising space that used to be used for chocolate bars, toothpaste and carpet cleaner), that every risk and hazard must be eliminated with the certainty that Domestos kills germs? They call it “safeguarding” and it is the constant eagle-eyed suspicion on everyone that I no longer feel able to worship in church. I am an old man living alone – of course I am a risk to women and children if allowed out of the home; the social studies textbooks insist on it. Yet if we cottonwool ourselves to such an extent, we lose our natural immunity built up over many millennia of evolution and become as fragile as snowflakes. What’s the point of keeping children away from dodgy people, and then expect them to know how to deal with them when they come of age and must enter the adult world with confidence?

        If life is to be worth living, we must take risks, even if this means holding hands occasionally.

    3. Many of our pupils are vulnerable….

      They are not vulnerable at all. No children have yet caught let alone died from this virus!

        1. Death rate for children is 0.01% though. While every individual death is a tragedy, they are also at risk from all kinds of other things, and will be the first victims of a depression.

      2. She means in terms of having personal development plans/statemented (children with development disorders such as ADHD, learning difficulties).

        In my experience such children always have parents on long term welfare.

    4. Here’s the first BTL I spotted – I trust that if Sarah Humpleby is refusing to go to work, she will similarly refuse to accept her salary? She’ll doubtless return her pay cheque – by flying pig.

    5. Here’s the first BTL I spotted – I trust that if Sarah Humpleby is refusing to go to work, she will similarly refuse to accept her salary? She’ll doubtless return her pay cheque – by flying pig.

    7. 319270+ up ticks
      Morning C,
      And there lies the rub, “awaiting advice from my union” buck passing”,
      cuts out the need for self assessing
      & acting personally on any given issue.
      Many do it when voting, same mindset.

    8. What a litany of inward-looking negativity…a classic example of ‘let’s find ways of not doing something’. Snowflakery at its very finest.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

      Edit: She’s in the Grauniad too:

      https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/reopening-schools-is-a-dangerous-move.

      And here, she is utterly fearless if her post is any guide:

      https://mobile.twitter.com/burbageprimary/status/663670817176293377

      Strangely, she isn’t listed as staff at Burbage Primary:

      https://www.burbageprimary.org.uk/wilts/primary/burbage/site/pages/aboutus/teachingandadminstaff

      1. Does she worry that children mightbe involved in a traffic accident on the way to school, and so refuse to teach in case they set off from home? Bah!

      2. You’ve linked to the wrong Burbage there, Hugh. Their telephone number 01672 etc. means that it must be Burbage, Wiltshire just up the A338 from me towards Pewsey.

        There are three primary schools near Buxton, Derbyshire

        Burbage Primary School
        No reviews · Primary school
        Cavendish Ave
        Temporarily closed · 01298 22278

        Harpur Hill Primary School
        (5) · Primary school
        Trent Ave
        Temporarily closed · 01298 23261

        Buxton Infant School
        (4) · School
        Temporarily closed · 01298 22499

        No staff listings/mugshots to take a gander at the irreplaceable Sarah Humpledink.

  6. Boris says “No Austerity” !

    So where is the money likely to come from to bail out Britain ?

    China !

      1. I have never liked “money tree” as a disparaging comment about unsupported profligacy, and use “Magic Fairy” instead.

        A money tree actually exists, and is a valuable concept. You grow the tree from seed, plant it and tend it, and eventually after a number of years it will reward you with fruit, wood and comfort. Its products provide wealth, and can either be harvested sensibly so that it continues to give for generation after generation, or it can be cut down and a lot more money made straight away, but of course, there is nothing for next year or for future generations. It works as a financial model just as much as it does a living tree.

        What we have here though is an imaginary entity that will generate wealth just by insisting that wealth exists. On a finance model, it is the endless borrowing, and tricks such as hedge funds and quantitative easing that are not real, but like real fairies offer great comfort to those that believe in them. Remember though, that every time someone says the fairy does not exist, a fairy dies. This applies equally to magic money fairies.

        1. 319270+ up ticks,
          Morning Jm,
          Yes, magic fairy does
          suit in so far as it also keeps the poof element happy, an all round acceptable description.

      2. 319270+ up ticks,
        Morning Jn,
        As a coalition works one segment helps out the other.

    2. 319270+ up ticks,
      Morning Pp,
      The way things are shaping is that one could wake up in the near future and find their landlords name is
      one hung low, and your local council goes under the heading of mejlis.

  8. Of course before covid nobody ever became ill and died when schools re-opened after holidays and half term breaks

    1. 319270+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      Maybe doing the kids no harm as in
      NOT being subject to some of the teachers bent personal views.
      As with politico’s these types should, by peoples power be outed, but the herd in many respects are far to lethargic.

    2. When I was in the first year at grammar school, one of the pupils died. She’d pulled out in front of a car on her bicycle and that was the end of her.

  9. Funny how a parent can be fined for taking a child out of school for a day to go to a museum, for example, but the government can close schools for two months without a murmur.

    I am beginning to see that Johnson is just as bad as Treason – but disguises his uselessness with bluster and a roguish charm.

    1. I received a survey from the school asking how my stressed teenager is coping. I looked for the box to tick that indicated that any pupil given three months off school and all exams cancelled whilst spending up to 24 hrs a day on the social mejia is in teenager heaven. That option was not available, survey binned.

  10. Oh deep joy.

    ‘There is a cure’: California biotech company claims it has
    discovered an antibody that can block ‘100%’ of coronavirus infections
    Up to 200,000 doses could be made a month while Sorrento awaits FDA approval for the drug

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8324395/California-biotech-claims-discovere-antibody-block-100-coronavirus.html

    At 200K doses a month that will give enough for the population of the USA in only 140 years…
    Let’s hope, if it’s true, it can be manufactured anywhere in due course.

    To be fair I would assume it would be used as a cure for those infected rather than the general population.

    1. Bet it doesn’t work on bames – so that they’ll have yet another whinge about racism.

      1. Or it only works on Bames, and they’ll refuse to use it ‘cos it’s a whitey plot…

      2. Didn’t Dean Martin record a version of

        “Oh Bamey it’s cold outside” ?

        Bet they’ll be complaining about that soon.

  12. Morning all

    SIR – There are many examples of the private sector and the self-employed coming up with inventive ways to deliver their goods and services because they need to earn a living.

    Contrast that with the National Education Union’s instructions to teachers not to co-operate with a return to the classroom, not to deliver online lessons and not to do any marking. In other words, they are to do no work whatsoever while enjoying full pay.

    The lame excuse for this is that it is “unfair” to the tiny minority of pupils who can’t access online lessons. Why can’t these disadvantaged children go to the currently sparsely attended schools with the children of key workers?

    I pity those dedicated teachers who would love to help their pupils keep up, but the union says “No”.

    Alison Levinson

    Hastings, East Sussex

    1. Paying people to do nothing is one of the fastest ways to destroy society.

  13. Morning again

    SIR – Anyone who suffers from anxiety should avoid BBC news programmes.

    There is a thin line between keeping everyone informed and unremitting doom and gloom. The BBC crossed it some time ago.

    Mike Kaye

    Nocton, Lincolnshire

    SIR – The BBC’s Today programme is quite happy to subject listeners to three hours of coronavirus scaremongering each morning, without a thought for the mental harm it may do.

    Yet it spent considerable time yesterday supporting the demand that trained medical staff be provided with counselling to reduce the likelihood of developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Brian Christley

    Abergele, Conwy

    SIR – The mawkishness in British society – the response to the death of Princess Diana, the grief tourism to Wootton Bassett, the “Clap for our Carers” sop to the NHS – is utterly embarrassing.

    If people really want to show their appreciation to the wonderful NHS, then they should turn up for appointments clean and on time, say thank you and do something about the abuse nurses suffer every day in A&E departments throughout the land.

    Lance Warrington

    Northleach, Gloucestershire

    SIR – I am becoming fed up with being fed up.

    John Pritchard

    Ingatestone, Essex

    1. About the abuse I can do nothing, as that is a consequence of universal access.

      Is it right? Life no. The obvious is to identify those abusers and refuse them access for a length of time, say a week, then a month, then 6.

  14. SIR – I share the sentiments of the reader prohibited from attending his wife’s funeral (Letters, May 12).

    My uncle died aged 93 (of non-Covid causes) in the first week of lockdown. After a spell in hospital, he had been moved in mid March to a nursing home for palliative care.

    Once there, no one was allowed to visit, not even in his final hours. I last saw him through the window of his room several days before he died. His funeral was behind closed doors with only the vicar officiating at the crematorium and no family member present.

    In normal times there would have been a funeral service in the local church. We were able to arrange for the hearse to drive through the village and stop outside his home, where prayers were said at the roadside.

    It is hard to come to terms with this situation, especially for his wife of 62 years. This is the reality facing many families up and down the country.

    Mary Kirkman

    Woking, Surrey

    1. Sorry to hear about your uncle, Mary, good innings though. His death will be attributed to Covid-19 at some point.

    2. How dreadful. I live in Woking but have seen funerals taking place at the crematorium. Wonder why that happened.

  16. SIR – Following government advice to wear face coverings on public transport, I have noticed a worrying trend for wearing dust-masks with fitted valves. These are designed to protect the wearer from inhaling dust by simple filtration of the inhaled air.

    However, the purpose of the valve is to allow exhaled air to escape with little resistance and no filtration.

    As the stated aim of wearing a face covering is to protect others from Covid-19 in exhaled breath, such masks seem to be worse than useless.

    John Stonehouse

    Corbridge, Northumberland

    2. Morning. Not that I have any intention of wearing one, but I had noticed that those with exhaust valves would only benefit the wearer, if at all. No-one writing in the media seems to have noticed this, unsurprisingly. Perhaps if you turned it inside out…

    3. Morning. Not that I have any intention of wearing one, but I had noticed that those with exhaust valves would only benefit the wearer, if at all. No-one writing in the media seems to have noticed this, unsurprisingly. Perhaps if you turned it inside out…

  17. Come on dentists. Behave professionally.

    SIR – The British Dental Association and the General Dental Council have forgotten that there’s more to dentistry (Letters, May 15) than an air rotor.

    Dental schools in this country are recognised throughout the world to be of the highest quality. Their graduates should be encouraged back to their surgeries to give caring, compassionate treatment in highly sterilised conditions. Children in pain, patients with infections, broken teeth and dentures, and those needing orthodontic treatment should all be seen as usual.

    Current advice should be rescinded immediately to allow the profession to get back to the work it knows best.

    Richard Manning LDS

    East Chisenbury, Wiltshire

    1. I had a word with Peddy the Toothwright

      He has promised to hold an online dental service for all Nottlers, every afternoon, from 1600 hours onwards,

  19. SIR – Before we all get too excited about the NHS, please consider this problem.

    I am a healthy 71-year-old. In late February I injured my knee and since then have only been able to walk short distances, with a stick and in pain. Two months after my injury happened, I managed to get an appointment to see a GP, who said I would need a scan, but the NHS would not be able to do it for months.

    Although I do not have insurance, I am happy to pay for the scan and treatment, but I cannot because the private hospitals have been taken over by the NHS and will not see me.

    So, instead of walking my dogs for an hour or two each day, keeping my garden tidy and tinkering with my old motorcycles, I am sitting about most of the time, bored and putting on weight. There is no resolution to the problem in sight.

    People love the NHS because it is free when you use it, but actually we are all paying for it. I seem to have been paying for nothing.

    Martin Quinlan

    Welwyn, Hertfordshire

    1. A gross derilection of medical duty to the sick and infirm. Doctors turning their backs on those they used to be dedicated to serving.

      1. I have to say that I find the sight of our closed GP surgery (pop your repeat prescription request into tin box in locked, unlit lobby) distinctly unimpressive.
        Morning, Epidermoid.

        1. I had a phone call from someone in the Memory Team the other day, checking up on the OH’s health. I was told that if there was any deterioration I should get in touch with our GP. When I pointed out that it was virtually impossible to get in touch with them these days (and it’s no use having a telephone consultation, MOH is deaf), she said I was to ring the Memory Team and they would get in touch with the GP. There is more chance of their doing it than my being successful, so I left it at that.

        1. Have you been affected by the covid19 virus? Ring 0800…….. to be connected to lawyers experienced in this type of litigation

    2. I have great sympathy for you Martin.
      I have had a major knee problem since mid-August last year. I’m fortunate that my local NHS trust has a Knee Pain Clinic and was seen within a week. Then had an MRI within a week and another appointment a week later. I had a steroid injection which lasted for 3 weeks. Then had another appointment with a different consultant who recommended an arthroscopy but had to make a case. Finally had an operation on 9 January when various foreign bodies, bits of excess bone, were removed. Started physio 2 weeks later. Another problem arose with my left leg mid-March. No access to NHS and their physio so I have been paying £45 a week for online video physio who has been marvellous and has got my leg working again through, mainly, back exercises and stretches. Still some way to go but the pain relief has been marvellous.

      1. Do you have a link? My brother is waiting for a knee op – which will, no doubt will now recede into infinity – and the site might be useful to him.
        Good morning, Founder of the Queen’s Naveee…

        1. The physio is near me but as it’s online shouldn’t be a problem.
          https://www.synergyphysio.co.uk/
          They fix an online appointment on Zoom. Vouvray holds the iPad and and shows her what she asks me to do. At the end of the session she sends an email with the exercise plan and each one is demonstrated on line to dhow how it should be done. Really very good. Each appointment is 30 minutes. Quite good value in my opinion.
          Good luck to your brother and I sympathise re the pain.

    3. The only unexpected thing about Martin Quinlan’s letter is that it’s taken him this long to realise how bad the NHS is.

    4. The NHS is something you pay for it to tell you when you can use it.

      It’s an odd organisation split in two – the bureaucratic and the healthcare. It’s clear example of the tail wagging the dog.

  20. SIR— The mawkishness in British society – the response to the death of Princess Diana, the grief tourism to Wootton Bassett, the “Clap for our Carers” sop to the NHS – is utterly embarrassing.

    If people really want to show their appreciation to the wonderful NHS, then they should turn up for appointments clean and on time, say thank you and do something about the abuse nurses suffer every day in A&E departments throughout the land.

    Lance Warrington
    Northleach, Gloucestershire

    Well, you can forget about ever applying for a Common Purpose course, Lance. Your ingrained and inherent depth of common sense would disqualify you at the interview stage.

    You have written the most sensible published letter of the year, so far.

    1. But if everyone did show their appreciation, there wouldn’t be any abuse of nurses…..

      I’ll get me PPE.

    3. Good morning Grizzly! Off topic, but just wanted to thank you for your recipe for GF buns – didn’t see it until this morning. I’ll try it!

      1. Good morning, Caroline.

        Thank you, it was my pleasure. If you would like to sample a much quicker (and even simpler) form of “bread”, here is a very interesting recipe for you to try:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HgySn5ck8I

        I shall still try it, despite one commentator on the YouTube declaring that “it tastes more like omelette than bread.”

        1. I know cloud bread – I can confirm that it is a bit like an omelette. I suppose that if you baked it like a flat bread you could turn it into a wrap – now there’s an idea.

        1. Good morning, Oberst. GF is gluten free. I have coeliac disease which means that wheat, barley and rye are off the menu. A nuisance, but at least it is something that can be kept under total control by diet and not by pills!

    1. Neat the way the car didn’t damage the wall.

      Fake news?

      Or an entry for the Turner Prize?

  22. Morning all.

    Did we actually re-elect Gordon Brown by accident? Even with a £300bn bill for the Lockdown (NOT the cost of the virus but the reaction to it) and a recession looming which will make the Financial Crisis look like a picnic, Johnson says ‘no return to austerity.’ No public sector pay freeze, double-down on ‘investment’ in infrastracture and Health/Police spending. Free money for everyone kiddies!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/15/boris-johnson-no-public-sector-pay-freeze-no-austerity-uk-emerges/

    Along with his support for ‘Net Zero’ we really do have a tax-and-spend socialist in No.10

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/04/brexit-news-latest-boris-johnson-eu-trade-dealclaire-perry/

      1. What’s the betting the UK will leave Australia to be picked off by China on its own, while Boris sucks up to China in the hope that the crocodile will eat us last?


    4. Germany’s Bundestag has approved a new law imposing a prison sentence of up to three years for damaging or destroying a European Union flag, in an effort to curb “hate”.

      Which is in no way at all totalitarian, and an Orwellian effort to outlaw certain emotions. Only liking the EU will be permitted.

    5. Well, if the Germans can’t burn the EU flag, they could always turn to burning books instead…

  25. Good morning from the Saxon daughter of Alfred of Wessex .
    Hope you are all well with the present plague and lockdown
    where everyday is Sunday.

        2. We used to sit round the radio listening to Peter Brough and Archie Andrews, when we were kids, my mother once said (about Brough) he’s good isn’t he and wondered why we all went incontinent

          3. “Harwich for the Continent”
            “Frinton for the Incontinent”

            The pushy nurse is just showing her age, Spikey…{:¬))

  26. 319270+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Their true colours unfurl more so revealing that
    NUT = a multitude of top ranker’s.

    ://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1261575326884409344

  27. Morning all 😊

    China trying to make a stake inside the artic circle ?
    Making advances on Greenland and upsetting Denmark.
    Apparently.
    Daily Express.
    Germany makes it illegal to burn the EU flag, jail sentences will be introduced for the offence.
    Lest we forget all the towels on the sunloungers.

    Still getting reminders of 3 day old posts and replies ?

  28. Portillo’s Empire Journey, review: a refreshingly balanced look at the British Empire. Anita Singh. 15 MAY 2020 • 10:00PM.

    The BBC has made an evenly balanced documentary about the British Empire. Just kidding! Portillo’s Empire Journey (Friday) was the latest offering from Channel 5, which has lately been upping its game in the history department.

    This first episode focused on India. As Michael Portillo pointed out, there are those who like to gloss over the deaths and the looting and the subjugation of a nation because, hey ho, they left behind a civil service and an excellent railway. And then there are those who see the East India Company as the epitome of evil, and that is the end of that.

    Morning everyone. Those seeking the reason for such an opinion need only look at the authors name. In reality Portillo gave us the PC Revised version of the British Empire where all that took place was due to the overarching ambition of the Villainous White Man. To demonstrate this it was necessary to insert a reference to the Chinese Opium Wars in the section on Wellesley’s tenure as Governor General and which had nothing to with him, occurring some forty years later, and very little to do with India even then.

    The piece on the Indian Mutiny (now revised to become, The Indian Insurrection or The First War of Independence) was pure malarkey being presented as a full blown rebellion of the masses against English Rule when in fact, it was, as its original title suggests, a military revolt in the ranks. Had the people joined with the Sepoys the British would have been expelled from the country in short order and India achieved Independence one hundred years earlier.

    These points were not the worst parts of the programme, The real offence was one of omission and one that is common to all modern Indian History. India was not an Oriental Paradise dismantled by rapacious White Men. It was a dysfunctional, poverty stricken hell hole, where Justice or Freedom did not exist even as concepts. It was ruled by despots that made the British look like Boy Scouts. V.S Naipaul described India as a “wounded civilisation” and that wound was the Muslim Conquest that divided India then just as it does today. It is also an object lesson to those who believe that the intermingling of disparate Cultures and Religions is going to result in a Hybrid Utopia drenched in the qualities of Tolerance and Understanding. It won’t.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2020/05/15/portillos-empire-journey-review-refreshingly-balanced-look-british/

    1. It is also an object lesson to those who believe that the intermingling of disparate Cultures and Religions is going to result in a Hybrid Utopia drenched in the qualities of Tolerance and Understanding.

      Morning, Araminta.
      If there is a body of people who believe that then it will be comprised of the small number of virtue signallers whose behaviour resembles that of clapping seals. The people projecting this idea e.g. the Government and the Globalists, do not believe it and know that this mingling will generate discord and much anger. Those are two of the reasons why these bodies are promoting the mingling.
      Currently, Johnson’s Government appears to be merely repeating what Cameron and May did, talk big and tell the people that they are acting whilst doing the exact opposite. At the moment Johnson hasn’t the nerve to bring in his amnesty for illegals and he will have to steel his nerve to act sometime to keep on schedule.
      It’s going to be interesting to watch Johnson, Patel et al. try and concoct the excuse that the UK needs mass immigration to fill the jobs and build GDP after the destruction to the economy being wrought by CV-19.

      1. For me, the truly horrifying thing about any amnesty is the family reunification that will inevitably follow under the Dublin accords, which we are signed up to, with the potential for many, many thousands of people to be allowed to pour in.

        1. The Dublin accords that Merkel unilaterally ignored, with Germany an EU member? Those accords, that we can’t give the finger to, now that we have left (even though we are supposed still to be under the RU thumb)?

          1. Posted a link a couple of days ago, with a snipped paragraph, to the UN Compact on Global Migration, which states that refugees are to be brought to safety in an orderly manner.
            So, assisted across the channel, not dragged back to France, for example.
            All these things are there, for anybody to read if they care. Mr Google is your friend… Same with the purpose of the EU, “… towards ever-closer Union…”
            Why is it a surprise to anyone??

      1. Bill, this is even better than you calling David Cameron “The Babbling Poltroon”.

    3. Yes, but everything on telly must pass the Soros Board of Telly Censors.. otherwise the screen stays blank.

    4. I didn’t watch it…more Empire bashing from the BBC.

      ” The BBC has made an evenly balanced documentary about the British Empire”……………… Really?

      I’ve yet to see anything evenly balanced from Auntie.

        1. Yo Ol

          I was just about to post this

          Yo P-T

          When they refer to anything about Mr Trump, they are evenly balance: they have a chip on both shoulders

      3. M’ Lord Hall’s bank balance is deep and crisp and even, shurely

        ‘Morning Plum

    5. Look at the Sudan now 60 years after the departure of the British and the end of colonial rule: genocide, famine, plague, endless civil war, religious persecution, collapse of infra-structure.

      Then look at how it was when the British were there and my father was the governor of the Northern Province.

      1. As a boy, I was fascinated by the diagonal stripes of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan on maps.

      3. The president of Ghana made some interesting comments which a Nottler posted a couple of days ago saying that his country had been independent for so long that it was absurd for them to think they should still have their nappies changed.

        Indeed, when Sarkozy, the much reviled President of France, told the leader of a former French colony that their country could not spend eternity hanging onto France’s shirt tails and expecting handouts he was criticised for merely telling the truth.

        Here’s the link to the Ghana president’s speech for those who missed it:

        https://youtu.be/MXCaRfveC-Q

  29. The “New Normal.” That’s a phrase we keep hearing with suspicious regularity, as if it was pre-agreed among “progressive” leaders around the world.

    https://m.youtube.com/watchv=2687mtu_ur4
    Laura Ingraham: “The masks are off”
    Published on 16 May 2020
    The coronavirus has taken many lives, wrecked a once great economy and shown, for all the world to see, who these new radical Democrats really are and what they want.
    In Los Angeles county, you can go to the beach, but you can only stay on the wet sand, not the dry sand. Presumably the dry sand is contagious, or something….who knows.

    2. This page isn’t available. Sorry about that.

      Try searching for something else.

    3. This synchronisation of phrases has been happening since this flared up in March. Flatten the Curve, Social Distancing, Phased Release and on and so on.

      I would like to believe that I.iticians and doctors are talking to their counterparts across national boundaries but I am sure that some see this as proof of a great conspiracy.

      1. If it’s being used as a means to take away the freedom of their people, isolate them, keep them afraid unnecessarily, destroy their local economies and businesses, wield power for its own sake and not for the benefit of their citizens, then I’m not sure what else you could call it.

        1. Even if everyone does the same thing for the same reasons it does not mean that it is a conspiracy. Most of us wash, bath or shower, in order to smell nice, or at any rate not smell bad. This is not a conspiracy. However, the outcome is the same as if it is.
          If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it may well a duck.
          So, we need to be wary of Governments and those who agree with them, when they all spout the same words and take the same actions.
          That is, we don’t have to be able to prove it is a conspiracy if the same things are happening as if it were. We should respond to the visible outcomes accordingly. At the moment it looks as if the only option will be revolution.

  30. Latest from NHS

    After much thought, about keeping people safe, all maternity Units have been closed until further notice.

    Expectant mothers will be able to get delaying devices off the Internet, by searching for Large Rubber Bungs

    (What have I done, this will happen now)

  31. OT – the cover of today’s “Travel” section in the DT has a photo of what I assume to be a Greek island.

    Following the norms for modern “journalism”, the photo has neither a caption, nor a photo credit, nor is there any reference to it inside the travel section.

    Are any NoTTLers sufficiently clued up about yer Greece (other countries are available) to tell me where it is?

    Ta everso.

      4. You will be lucky.

        It is a bank holiday over here this weekend and the roads are way more crowded than just a few days ago. That is despite all hotels, B&Bs and camp sites being closed. There are also ‘stay away’ campaigns to dissuade visitors.

        Not just a bit more traffic either. In the past few months our main street has been very quiet, almost no cars parked and traffic so light that you could just U turn wherever you needed. Yesterday, all parking spots were full.

  32. A very belated Good morning, Gentlefolk, at least, I think it’s still morning here in England. Let’s cap it all with an unlikely tale.

    A woman was in bed with her lover when she heard her husband opening the front door.

    “Hurry!” she said, “stand in the corner!” She quickly rubbed baby oil all over him and then she dusted him with talcum powder. “Don’t move until I tell you to,” she whispered, “just pretend you’re a statue.”

    “What’s this, honey?” the husband asked as he entered the room
    .
    “Oh, it’s just a statue” she replied nonchalantly. “The Smith’s bought one for their bedroom. I liked the idea so much, I got one for us, too.”

    No more was said about the statue. Not even later that night when they went to sleep. Around two in the morning the husband got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and returned with a sandwich and a glass of milk.

    “Here,” he said to the statue, “Eat this. I stood like an idiot at the Smith’s for three days and nobody offered me so much as a glass of water.”

  33. Don’t place too much faith in models predicting another coronavirus wave

    The Spanish Flu is not directly comparable to Covid-19, so anyone worried about a “second wave” should focus on minimising risk factors

    TOM JEFFERSON
    CARL HENEGHAN

    There is much concern about a second, third or even fourth wave of Covid-19, implying an inevitable increase in the numbers infected. Proponents of this theory think variously that infections could reoccur immediately after lockdown, that there will be multiple waves over the ensuing years, or that there is worse to come next winter. The truth is, no one really knows.

    The term “wave” as applied to infections originates from the 1889-92 influenza outbreak, supposed to have had two phases, the latter more severe. The current theories – used to inform most of the modelling studies – are based on accounts of the 1918-20 “Spanish flu”. This outbreak started in the “spring wave” and went on into the summer. The natural social distancing that occurred throughout summer led to a downturn in the infection rate before it picked up again in the winter. In several accounts, this later “wave” is described as being more severe.

    There are several problems in using Spanish Flu to direct predictions about Covid-19. First, the actual number of deaths that occurred is highly uncertain. The Spanish flu virus had no genetic characteristics to explain its virulence, suggesting human factors were at play. One of the most powerful was the long and dreadful war, during which huge numbers of people congregated, moved, starved and died. The late summer of 1918 led to further mass movement, and by the end of the war, further concentration, transport and dispersal of people occurred.

    Sequencing of influenza from RNA strands is only available for three affected individuals from the autumn of 1918. This evidence is used to infer that the flu caused many deaths. But the combination of war, movement and starvation means we cannot be sure that the same microorganism caused the preceding March-April outbreak.

    The term “wave” suggests that infections are synchronous, visible, and solid. They are not. It also wrongly suggests that they all behave similarly.

    In the “swine flu” pandemic of 2009, for example, 80 per cent of the deaths were thought to occur in under 65-year-olds. With Covid-19, two-thirds are in the over 75s. With flu, under-fives often have the highest hospital admission rates, but in the current outbreak their admissions are negligible. The circulation patterns of influenza also appear different from those of Covid-19. In the Northern Hemisphere, they usually start causing clinical cases in the autumn and cease being a problem in spring – following a seasonal pattern.

    Despite all our scientific advances, the means of addressing outbreaks remain virtually the same from a century ago. If readers are concerned about a “second wave”, they should devote their time to minimising their risk factors. In the face of uncertainty, we need good intelligence, flexibility in our thinking and knowledge of how to manage outbreaks locally.

    Tom Jefferson is an honorary research fellow and Carl Heneghan is director at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/16/dont-place-much-faith-models-predicting-another-coronavirus/

  34. Is anyone feeling cheerful?

    Our library gives us access to several streaming services for films, documentaries and TV shows. This weeks special recommended featureEurope on the Brink of the Black Death.

    Ideal for a Saturday night at home.

  35. “Sir — Having been unable to have a takeaway coffee for the past nine weeks, I’ve treated myself to a top-of-the-range coffee machine. Only another four weeks and the savings will have paid for it.”

    Stephen Dunk
    Dorchester

    I purchased my first “top-of-the-range” espresso contraption back in 1999. I am now on my fourth machine. Without such a device I would not be drinking delicious coffee at all since I dislike the beverage made using any other means.

      1. Nah! He’s far too sensible to follow his surname and resort to sucking on a soggy biscuit. :•(

        1. “Sucking on a soggy biscuit” is that a metaphor for the Cabinet’s deliberations over the past 8 weeks?

          3. How on Earth do you know about these things?

            PS- it seems very apt for Cabinet deliberations.

          17. I should have taken your advice – I’d have hoped everyone was a bad shot

    2. Too right. Anyway, the “takeaway coffee” is just brown, flavoured water – which costs a lot.

    6. We’re on our second Nespresso machine. Excellent coffee for 32p per cup. Don’t have the instant rubbish in the house.

    1. It is probably a work to rule because the Californian programmers are not allowed to sit on the beach!

    2. Yes. First the upvotes and now this! They’ve just brought it forward because of CV!

      1. 319270+ up ticks,
        Afternoon As,
        My line of thinking also, and if so it is working, with peoples not continuing to comment but leaving until it is fixed, if ever,
        I believe the Friday comment total confirms this.

  37. Oh look, nothing to see here.

    Canadas Auditor General objected to the lack of oversight on spending during the panic, now we see that Trudeau has proposed a new Auditor General.to fill the vacant position.

    1. Has he heard of Goldman Sachs – I’m sure they’d be very good or Jamie Oliver?

    1. Hang on a moment, can we just recap a list of good policies that wouldn’t have happened under Corbyn? Or destructive policies that would have happened if Corbyn was Prime Minister?

      Good things that wouldn’t have happened under Corbyn:

      Sensible reining in of public spending
      Stopping the invasion across the channel
      Leaving the EU in any meaningful way.
      Releasing the report into grooming gangs, and taking meaningful measures to curb the causes identified in the report.
      Reversing Blair’s destruction
      Banning face coverings, compulsory labelling of halal meat, banning foreign funding of mosques.

      Destructive policies that would have happened if we had been stupid enough to vote for Comrade Corbyn:

      Continued worship of the socialist NHS
      Politically correct police not stopping and searching due to minority rights
      HS2
      Unions bullying us
      Complete pig’s ear of WuFlu response
      Continued kowtowing to the EU
      Kowtowing to China
      Insane political correctness, police arresting people for mean tweets

      1. I don’t remember noticing any of those “good things”, but we’ve had plenty of the bad ones

  39. In Denmark classes are back in action because their trade unions know that pupils are SAFER in schools, says Danish headteacher
    Headteacher Jesper Larsen’s school returned on April 14 after Easter holidays
    Welcomed back nearly all 800 pupils to the school in Copenhagen, Denmark
    Says he wishes UK teachers could see how their schools work to reassure them
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8324981/Danish-headteacher-says-schools-action-unions-know-pupils-SAFER-schools.html

      1. They’re only frightened that they might have to earn their salary again.

        Good morning, Boll.

      2. Morning, Willum.
        This letter has had the mother of all pastings BTL.

        “SIR – I don’t want to be part of this madness. I love my job, care deeply about the pupils, and am desperate to be back. However, schools can’t open at any price.

        I teach in an infant and nursery school. Since schools were closed I have been in, on a rota, caring for up to 20 pupils aged between two and seven. It has become clear that it is utterly unmanageable to make the setting safe while catering for the children’s needs.

        Many of our pupils are vulnerable, and the idea of opening our doors to them in two weeks’ time, in rooms with unfamiliar adults (to keep them in the recommended groups of 15) with minimal resources (in order to comply with recommendations on cleaning and materials, such as no wooden toys, playdough or sand), with staggered start times, play times, lunch times and home times, will be unsettling at best, and traumatic at worst. How do we comfort a child who is distressed? How do 120 children use six toilets without being near each other?

        My husband is a paramedic. If he doesn’t work someone might die. But if I carry the virus from my husband into work, and my 15 pupils carry it back to their homes, then I have failed them. Someone might die because I went to work.

        I am awaiting further advice from my union, but may refuse to work on June 1 because it is unsafe.

        Sarah Humpleby

        Buxton, Derbyshire”

        1. Whether you work or not Sarah someone will still die. There are on average 600,00 deaths a year. Staying at home is unlikely to affect that.

          1. Most deaths happen in the home – by keeping her pupils in their homes more of them might die 🙂

        2. Yes, yes – we have been there, eviscerated the daft bint – do try to keep up; or rise earlier…{:¬))

          2. With discurse in its present mood, I am not surprised. Takes much of the fun out of the forum.

      1. Rather it’s about the teaching unions. I know a fair few teachers who are all working to help their pupils – distance learning, marking, recording lessons and so on.

        It’s important to distinguish teachers from unions.

  40. For your info, just received this

    Amaozn.co.uk

    16/05/2020 13:02

    1 We noticed new login attempt with your account from a device we don’t recognize.

    For your security, there may be some limitations on your account.

    We need to confirm your information, we need you to take action on your account to continue using our services again:

    1. “Please give us your name, date of birth, inside leg measurement and bank details. Oh, and your password”.

    3. last night the Telegraph published an article referring to ‘Honk Kong’. Amaozing.

    4. Apparently the Direct Debit for the TV licence I haven’t had for 8years has got a problem and they’d like me to click the link to find out why. They’re such little tinkers…

    5. I’ve just had a similar email. (Hovering the mouse over the sender’s email revealed the actual source of the email was xasasankjdieforj8@.ngd.) Deleted immediately. I do not use Amazon very often.

  41. 319270+ up ticks,
    Is there any truth that rocket launchers are being deployed on the Welsh / English border for erring cars
    crossing into ?
    By the by how is the beach intake faring do our new daily arriving guest’s have all their immediate needs, ie, NI numbers,useful local amenities, welfare office, accom, educ, med,
    catered for, do they know their rights ?

    1. The pleece are well hyped to stop and have words in Wales. Just the thought of someone going to the mountains to walk has the blue lights flickering as they know that soon all this nonsense will stop and they will have to return to catching criminals. Meanwhile, my bro works in a reception clinic for asylum seekers when they are ‘redistributed’. Not surprisingly, he has been tested +ve for the lurgy.

      1. Are you sure you’ve got those words in the right order? Welsh is back to front, you know 🙂

  42. Good morning NoTTLer friends.

    Carpe diem Live today as though it’s your last day and treat it as a bonus.

    Edit diem for idem.

    1. I have a tea mug with Seize the DAY ! printed on it and it goes on to say “or y’know mess about on the Internet”.
      Had my tea and coffee, things to do.

    2. Good morning, father 😉 a very good message is that. Never waste a day.

        3. As one grows older, never waste a spare chocolate croissant, I shall have two 😉

        1. Just pointing out Alf’s typo – as a lawyer, you should be well versed in Latin phrases.

          1. Thank you but it’s the damned autocorrect. When i tried the second time it changed to Dies. Luckily I saw it before posting.

          2. Bleak = fish = carp = fish. I was hoping to start a thread of……

            I’ll get me coat.

  44. Yup, notifications are broken. Nothing there since two days ago. And the blob is firmly black.

  45. Well, the fine, warm weather promised never arrived.

    Decidedly chilly in Norf Narfurk.

      1. Metcheck says it’s 52per cent cloud here, but it’s a clear blue sky…I don’t think their models understand coastal climates.

  46. Recently someone on here wrote of a 15 minute qualification for social distancing. I’ve had a quick look in the regulations and cannot find a reference to it.

    Anyone care to help?

      1. Well done. I was looking at the top-level ‘Guidance and support’ pages.

      2. This blog was last updated on 4 March 2020 and the information below has since been superseded.

        1. True, but I believe it may have been the source of the 15 minute qualification which was the question that was asked.

    2. That was me and I was making the point that when all this social distancing was coming in, the advice was to not get within 2m for longer than 15 minutes, and that since then the duration element has been forgotten, leading people to believe that if they get within 2m for as much as a millisecond they are doomed.

      1. Was anyone aware of the 15-minute rule? People were diving into the brambles from very early on.

        1. It was all over the news reports at the time, not as a rule, but advice. Now lost in the sands of time and forgotten. They were telling us in those days to be careful, cough into our elbows and limit close contact with others. No talk of a lock-down. That’s about the time Boris was teaching us to wash our hands, I think.

          1. Ah, those were the days – before we looked like the wild man of Borneo because of the barbers being closed and the pounds had piled on because of all the home baking!

    3. The following is from last week’s Government document and seems to recognise the practicalities of keeping a distance.

      “Keep your distance from people outside your household, recognising this will not always be possible. The risk of infection increases the closer you are to another person with the virus and the amount of time you spend in close contact: you are very unlikely to be infected if you walk past another person in the street. Public Health England recommends trying to keep 2m away from people as a precaution. However, this is not a rule and the science is complex. The key thing is to not be too close to people for more than a short amount of time, as much as you can.”

      1. 319270+ up ticks,
        Morning Re,
        Read between the lines on the
        HOc canteen menu.

      2. 319270+ up ticks,
        Morning Re,
        Read between the lines on the
        HOc canteen menu.

  50. ‘Weird as hell’: the Covid-19 patients who have symptoms for months. Luke Harding 16 May 2020.

    There is growing evidence that the virus causes a far greater array of symptoms than was previously understood. And that its effects can be agonisingly prolonged: in Garner’s case for more than seven weeks. The professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine says his experience of Covid-19 featured a new and disturbing symptom every day, akin to an “advent calendar”.

    He had a muggy head, upset stomach, tinnitus, pins and needles, breathlessness, dizziness and arthritis in the hands. Each time Garner thought he was getting better the illness roared back. It was a sort of virus snakes and ladders. “It’s deeply frustrating. A lot of people start doubting themselves,” he says. “Their partners wonder if there is something psychologically wrong with them.”

    This is quite an interesting read from the point of view of future reference if you should be so unlucky as to get a more severe version of CV. Harding is usually an anti-Russian propaganda outlet for Mi6 from which we may gather hostilities are temporarily suspended. This is unfortunate in a way since this article hints that he might have been a decent Journalist given the opportunity, though not as well paid of course!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/weird-hell-professor-advent-calendar-covid-19-symptoms-paul-garner

    1. Possibly some hypochondriacs amongst the ‘long term sufferers’ who compare symptoms online.
      “Meanwhile Covid “long-termers” have been comparing notes via a Slack support group. It has #60plus-days and #30plus-days chat groups.”

    2. I know that CV19 is the must have condition, but has Luke considered he might have something else. Other diseases are available.

    1. My cousins in Africa were born in Africa to parents born in Africa, They are white. They say they are Africans.

      Should they say they are European Africans even thought they have never lived in Europe?

      I am white; I was born in Africa but after the age of 4 I have never lived in Africa. I spent much of my life living in England but for the last 31 years I* have lived in France.

    2. From experience in living here, that’s not a common view. Identifying as African American puts them at the front of the queue for many things due to companies (and universities’) fear of being labelled racist and sued. And the universities clearly have quotas, hotly denied of course.

      And of course the looney tunes out there are still agitating for “reparations” for slavery. They do get PO’d though when they get asked if they would have had a better life had they stayed in Africa…

      Obama by the way never identified as a black guy called Barack when he was young. His old school friends still call him Barry as they did at school. I would bet that he got the message about “blackness” when applying to universities.

    3. I remember reading about a woman interviewing Nelson Mandela.

      He was somewhat taken aback when she asked him how it felt to be an African American.

      That’s what happens when you can’t bring yourself to just say ‘Black’.

  52. Morning all 😊

    China trying to make a stake inside the artic circle ?
    Making advances on Greenland and upsetting Denmark.
    Apparently.
    Daily Express.
    Germany makes it illegal to burn the EU flag, jail sentences will be introduced for the offence.
    Lest we forget all the towels on the sunloungers.

    Still getting reminders of 3 day old posts and replies ?

    1. So does the EU flag have 28 or 27 stars. I recon any blue rag will suffice, keep on burning.

  53. Afternoon all!

    I’ve been out and about today – it’s been so good to get out and SEE PEOPLE! Had a lovely drive up to collect my tomato plants from the 80 year old lady who grows them for me and others. Had a long chat with her in the garden. Then dropped off half of those to one of our hedgehog team – a long chat with her………..and her husband, and their neighbour, who we’ve known for many years. He seemed cheerful, but said this lockdown has basically bankrupted his business.

    We all agreed that antibody tests, if we ever get them, would be interesting – we all think we had the bug in January, and that this is all a huge overraction – vulnerable people should have been shielded, and the rest of us allowed to live our lives.

    It was lovely to just get out and go somewhere that wasn’t just Morrisons once a week.

  54. Posted late last night.

    Lockdown is showing us the misery that Net Zero 2050 will demand

    Eco-politics succeeds only with voters who feel guilty about being rich. Covid-19 will put paid to that

    CHARLES MOORE

    Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s evangelically green environment analyst, recently wrote this on his employer’s website:

    “I’ve just had a light bulb moment. The feisty little wren chirping loudly in the matted ivy outside my back door is telling us something important about global climate change. That’s because, intertwined with the melodious notes of a robin, I can actually hear its song clearly. Normally, both birds are muffled by the insistent rumble of traffic, but the din has been all but extinguished in the peace of lockdown.”

    Ah, the peace of lockdown. It is, for us lucky ones, very real. It is two months to the day since I last left my rural county. Never before have I experienced so much quiet here, or brighter stars. My long daily walks are almost mystically beautiful in their combination of light and air, the sound of nature and the silence of machines. If I were Wordsworth, I would give thanks in verse. Like Harrabin, I love hearing more wrens and robins and less traffic, and want it to continue.

    What might that involve, though? The light-bulb over Harrabin’s head – powered, of course, by green energy – is telling him that we must, in the new eco-buzz phrase, “Build Back Better”. Governments, in their Covid recovery packages, should support only companies and projects “which decouple economic growth from GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions”. Otherwise, we shall not achieve Net Zero. I am quoting from a recent working paper of the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment with the snappy title, “Will Covid-19 fiscal recovery accelerate or retard progress on climate change?” Its authors include the grandest of global greens such as Joseph Stiglitz and Lord Stern.

    Their opening paragraph says: “The Covid-19 crisis could mark a turning point in progress on climate change. This year, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will fall by more than in any other year on record. The percentage declines likely in 2020, however, would need to be repeated, year after year, to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Instead, emissions will rebound once mobility restrictions are lifted and economies recover, unless governments intervene.”

    The authors are in a bind. They half-recognise that Covid-19 – not just medically, but socio-economically – is a disaster from which societies will wish to recover. Yet it has brought about what they want. Emissions have fallen unprecedentedly because of the extreme economic contraction it has produced. Focus on their point that such a decline “would need to be repeated, year after year” to save the planet. They want the Covid effect – without, of course, the illness bit – to go on forever.

    That effect means two related things. The first is an enormous increase in government control. To fight the disease, we have had to surrender large parts of our freedom to work, trade, associate, travel, worship, even vote (local government elections being postponed) and in many cases our right to a family life.

    The second effect is greater poverty. This is caused by the compulsory stoppage of so many businesses, with consequent insolvencies, wage cuts and job losses. The poverty has been mitigated and delayed by government measures. This may not directly damage Harrabin or me as, on full pay, we enjoy the intertwining of chirpy wrens and melodious robins (though we shall surely notice it later in our taxes); but it was shockingly unexpected and is becoming shockingly real. It has also made billions anxious, lonely and gloomy.

    Stiglitz, Stern and Co are right that “emissions will rebound once mobility restrictions are lifted and economies recover, unless governments intervene”, but they do not seem to understand what they are saying. Why will emissions rebound? Because people will travel more – especially in cars (which are much safer than public transport against the virus). And why will economies recover? Because growth is a function of activity, and activity is made possible by energy, and globally energy remains about 85 per cent dependent on fossil fuels.

    (This applies, by the way, even to eco-activity. Part of the blessed peace of lockdown has been the absence of Extinction Rebellion street protests which cannot be organised without modern transport. The same applies to the planet-saving conferences to which rich and powerful people fly from all over the world. This year, because of Covid-19, Glasgow has been spared the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in which 196 countries would have met to talk yet again about limiting warming to 1.5C.)

    As Lord Lilley, the former Cabinet minister, put it in a Global Warming Policy Foundation webinar this week, the coming Covid recession is caused “by a suppression of supply, not by a failure of demand”. In other words, it is not what people wanted. It has been imposed upon them. In a democracy, people rarely vote for what they do not want. After the Covid lockdown, voters will want to get back to work unimpeded and take the full benefits of the collapse of the oil price in falling costs for transport and heating. They will not, you would think, be in the mood to go on paying ever-higher electricity prices for renewables.

    Even in goody-goody Germany, this thought is dawning on politicians. This week, Angela Merkel had to give in to her party’s MPs who protested that Germany should not contribute its bit to the European “Green Deal” – agreed shortly before the virus struck – for still faster climate reductions by 2030, unless all other EU member states do the same. It is an insoluble problem for green politics that they succeed only among voters who feel guilty for being rich. Greenery depends on the consumerism it hates for its very existence. Most voters will now be angry about getting poorer, not guilty about being rich.

    How can green policies survive, then? The clue is in that phrase “unless government intervenes”. Only governments can suppress the economic spirits of their people. And the only way they can do so is by exploiting the language of emergency.

    That is why the Covid-19 experience appeals to the Net Zero mind-set. Even before the disease came along, the phrase “climate emergency” had been deliberately deployed by activists and accepted by MPs. It was invented to persuade government to coerce public opinion. The remedy, you see, is “led by the science”, which is allegedly “settled”. The message to the people is: lose your rights or lose the planet.

    The Covid experience ought to have shown us the difference between a real emergency – a fell plague besetting the world – and a speculative one. Even in the Covid crisis, there is fierce debate about whether such action was necessary. Those doubts should be infinitely stronger in relation to Net Zero. Its entire edifice is based on models – we keep seeing how models can mislead – which make worst-case assumptions about the distant future. Problem, perhaps; emergency, no.

    Surely we should have some faith that our developing technology can continue to grow cleaner and quieter. Surely the resources of civilisation can make it easier for Harrabin and me to hear wrens and robins without beggaring humanity in the process. “Our house is on fire!” shouted Greta Thunberg last year. It isn’t, but it has been locked down. Once is enough.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/15/lockdown-showing-us-misery-net-zero-2050-will-demand/

    Meanwhile, in an unfortunate case of unintended consequences, CFC replacements have their downsides as well:

    Ozone layer: Concern grows over threat from replacement chemicals

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52663694

    PS There is an error in this article: “…increasing levels of ozone replacements…”. That should be ‘CFC’.

    1. It is two months to the day since I last left my rural county. Never before have I experienced so much quiet here, or brighter stars.

      It’s been like that here in Norfolk since I moved here in 2017. It’s why I moved here in the first place. It had been relatively quiet in Essex, until the council put in street lamps, and a new bypass was built, which just brought in more traffix,not to mention the endless house building everywhere, which is about to get a whole lot worse, I gather.
      And the reason for that is the endless unnecessary migration, started by Labour but certainly not halted or reduced by the Tories.
      And they want to go carbon zero, with an ever-rising population? How exactly are they going to achieve that? No doubt we’re going to find out….

  55. Today’s ponder

    Are the teeching unions advocating not re-opening schools to protect the kids or their union members

    If it is the former, there has not been an outcry from them about the failure of the CPS, HMG, etc over not releasing the Child Grooming investigation report .

    The only acronym happy about all the grooming is PIE, now which MP was involved in promoting PIE’s ethos

    1. 319270+ up ticks,
      Morning Olt,
      The lab/lib/con are as a coalition party in collusion their continuing actions as a mass uncontrolled immigration group prove that without doubt.

      1. She was just misled. She thought the first word meant a children’s doctor. Or one who means feet.

        2. The resemblance of the children’s doctor word led to the house of children’s doctor being attacked by a mob in Stirling. The mob were mostly from the Raploch.
          I never ever mention that I am a pedalophile.

    3. It’s just the far Left doing what they do best, i.e. taking a crisis and making political capital out of it, using it to their advantage.
      They don’t care about the children, or their education. They care about power, how to get it, keep it, and wield it, preferably permanently. They are trying to fashion the “new normal,” an authoritarian, soul-destroying society.

      How are you today? 😁

      1. “Never waste a good crisis”.
        The other phrase, as a warning, “Apres moi, le deluge”.
        One needs to be careful for what one wishes…

    4. Some years ago a good friend of mine — a welder — was married to a schoolteacher. She invited him to a casual open day at the school, just for teachers and their husbands and wives. He discovered that teachers inhabit a strange world of their own in which nothing outside of their narrow sphere exists.

      He told me, “I got pissed off with the number of teachers who approached me and asked, ‘Where do you teach?’.” He went on, “When I explained to them that I did not teach and that I had a real job in the real world, they gave me a patronising look of non-comprehension.”

      [Caveat: I know that not all teachers fall under this category; indeed, I have a vast amount of professional teaching experience under my belt (mainly, it must be said, in one-on-one tuition); however, my friend did find the attitude of his wife’s colleagues — who naturally (for them) presumed that everyone present must be a teacher — to be decidedly odd.]

          2. Funny all these errors from one who has a vast amount of professional teaching experience…{:¬))

          5. Not: “That’ll learn yer”, or is that reserved for graduates of Hendon?

          7. I once knew a physical training instructor at Hendon, a very large scots man, you wouldn’t argue with him.
            I don’t know if you every visited Hendon Grizz but it all gone now, except for the Aircraft museum next the railway line and M1, all flattened for cramped horrible cheap housing. Even my old squash club with the cricket and hockey pitches gone.

          8. Hendon is a place I have only ever passed through on the Midland main line from Sheffield to St Pancras, Eddy.

            The place has no relevance to policing outside of the Metropolitan force. I did my training at the regional training centre at Pannal Ash, Harrogate, which has also now closed. Others in the area, namely Dishforth, near Wetherby, Bruche, in Greater Manchester, and Newby Wiske in North Yorkshire all closed around 2006 when all forces became responsible for their own local training.

            That, in my opinion, was a retrograde step since being able to mix with trainees from other forces gave recruits a broad brush appraisal of what was going on elsewhere.

          9. You don’t know the half of it! :•)

            [Personally I had more fun battering things with a mixture of flour and water.]

          10. What do you want to know? Pick your subject: I’ll teach you!

            [And I don’t charge exorbitant fees] :•)

          13. With Peddy about we have to keep on our toes! He is especially jubilant if he can catch me, a former English teacher, out if I produce a grammatical error – or rather a typo.

          14. There is a world of difference between a grammatical error & a typo, Rastus.

      2. Most have never left school.
        They went from school to university, or teacher training college, straight back into school. I suppose it engenders a mindset that never properly grows up.

        1. How right you are.

          I worked in other fields – advertising and finance – before becoming a schoolmaster and then went back to university to get my P.G.C.E. and started teaching at the age of 28. After ten years teaching in independent boarding schools I took a sabbatical year and sailed my boat across the Atlantic and back with a doctor friend who had just qualified and a former Head of my House who managed to take a year away form his university studies. At the age of 40 I met a young woman teacher of Modern Languages of 24 who arrived at the school in which I taught and the following year we married, bought a ramshackle house in France and set up our business teaching British Sixth Formers French in France. When we had started our family we decided to buy another boat and spent some years exploring the Med as we home-schooled our children returning to France to run our courses so that we remained solvent.

          You could say we have never really grown up but our lives have not been conventional and I do hope we are not boring and brain-dead!

        2. Indeed. That was why I was determined to get a job in the real world (Ready Mix Concrete among others) in between.

      3. She was only the welders wife but she had acetenyl legs. ;-))
        I had a similar experience one Sunday morning quite a few years ago on my local golf course. My golf partner for the morning Martin and my self were playing in the summer weekly captain pro challenge. Pro obviously becoming slightly exasperated at being thrashed by My self 12 handicap and Martin 6, captain 18. Apart from good morning and shake of hands at the tee off. The banker captain actually spoke to me about half way round and said in high faulting accent, “and what doo yoou doo” ? I said with the upmost courtesy, “I’m a chippy”, Oh he said and walked off. Two holes later he came across again and said…..”and wharr’es your schop” ?

        1. As a working-class lad who was thrust, after leaving engineering, into the strange new world of the constabulary, I had to quickly assimilate my new life.

          The strangest thing that I discovered was that whenever I was in the company of the upper crust they invariably spoke to me on the same level that I routinely received with working-class folk. There were never any airs and graces and they would tell it was it was and we could have a laugh (or serious discussion) on level terms. I got on really well with such people.

          As for those at the “intermediate level”, many of those would routinely look down their noses at me. I have, over the years, gained many friends from what would generally be described as the “middle class”, but there were many more from that echelon who thought themselves too good to condescend to speak to me, unlike those from the aristocracy who were invariably open and friendly.

      4. One-to-one, eh, Grizz…. as in “I’ll teach you to do that again, you scrote”?
        Morning, BTW.
        Norryer in a tizzy today, worse tomorrow. Constitution Day. Parades,partying, eating, drinking, waving to the King, marching bands, speeches of unutterable tediousness, self-righteusness, lovely traditional dress, swathes of pretty women… all in one’s head, due to the virus.

      5. Or perhaps the biggest divide is between those whose salaries come from taxpayers, and those whose salaries are dependent upon their efforts?

      6. Many of the people in teaching think that by becoming teachers they have gone up in the world. My parents thought that when I became a schoolmaster I had gone down in the world!

        1. Good afternoon, Rastus.

          Social mobility is not always the panacea that it promises to be. You can never account for the mores (nor the aspirations) of others.

  56. Don’t place too much faith in models predicting another coronavirus wave

    The Spanish Flu is not directly comparable to Covid-19, so anyone worried about a “second wave” should focus on minimising risk factors

    TOM JEFFERSON
    CARL HENEGHAN

    There is much concern about a second, third or even fourth wave of Covid-19, implying an inevitable increase in the numbers infected. Proponents of this theory think variously that infections could reoccur immediately after lockdown, that there will be multiple waves over the ensuing years, or that there is worse to come next winter. The truth is, no one really knows.

    The term “wave” as applied to infections originates from the 1889-92 influenza outbreak, supposed to have had two phases, the latter more severe. The current theories – used to inform most of the modelling studies – are based on accounts of the 1918-20 “Spanish flu”. This outbreak started in the “spring wave” and went on into the summer. The natural social distancing that occurred throughout summer led to a downturn in the infection rate before it picked up again in the winter. In several accounts, this later “wave” is described as being more severe.

    There are several problems in using Spanish Flu to direct predictions about Covid-19. First, the actual number of deaths that occurred is highly uncertain. The Spanish flu virus had no genetic characteristics to explain its virulence, suggesting human factors were at play. One of the most powerful was the long and dreadful war, during which huge numbers of people congregated, moved, starved and died. The late summer of 1918 led to further mass movement, and by the end of the war, further concentration, transport and dispersal of people occurred.

    Sequencing of influenza from RNA strands is only available for three affected individuals from the autumn of 1918. This evidence is used to infer that the flu caused many deaths. But the combination of war, movement and starvation means we cannot be sure that the same microorganism caused the preceding March-April outbreak.

    The term “wave” suggests that infections are synchronous, visible, and solid. They are not. It also wrongly suggests that they all behave similarly.

    In the “swine flu” pandemic of 2009, for example, 80 per cent of the deaths were thought to occur in under 65-year-olds. With Covid-19, two-thirds are in the over 75s. With flu, under-fives often have the highest hospital admission rates, but in the current outbreak their admissions are negligible. The circulation patterns of influenza also appear different from those of Covid-19. In the Northern Hemisphere, they usually start causing clinical cases in the autumn and cease being a problem in spring – following a seasonal pattern.

    Despite all our scientific advances, the means of addressing outbreaks remain virtually the same from a century ago. If readers are concerned about a “second wave”, they should devote their time to minimising their risk factors. In the face of uncertainty, we need good intelligence, flexibility in our thinking and knowledge of how to manage outbreaks locally.

    Tom Jefferson is an honorary research fellow and Carl Heneghan is director at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/16/dont-place-much-faith-models-predicting-another-coronavirus/

  57. Today I conducted a thoroughly unscientific survey about you-know-what. As I left our Sainsbury’s I took a quick diversion via the kiosk and asked the young man how many people worked there. He reckoned about 100-120. How many people have had the disease? One. He was in his mid-20s and was off work for more than 4 weeks, having been quite ill. I didn’t ask any more questions about the individual or where he caught the virus.

    The staff generally seem less concerned about being close to people than are members of the public, many of whom have become cowering, cringing ninnies. Still, it means I don’t spend much time in there as they all dive out of my way…

    1. Snap outside Waitrose a couple of hours ago people stand 12 feet apart concentrating on their phones and not keeping up. Very frustrating. When we’re in there we head straight for what we want and, like your experience, people dive out of our way.

      Edit added people before dive.

  58. Why did the NHS not call the emergency Covid-19 wards the “Harold Shipman” wards?
    Might have been more appropriate.

        2. 6:45 pm – 7:45 pm | Saturday 16th May 2020
          John Le Mesurier: It’s All Been Rather Lovely
          BBC Two England | News

          A portrait of the prolific actor’s life and career, from his turbulent
          marriage to Hattie Jacques to his renowned role as Sgt Wilson in the TV
          sitcom Dad’s Army and parts in more than 100 films. Featuring
          contributions by Michael Palin, Clive Dunn, Ian Lavender, Jimmy Perry
          and Joan Le Mesurier. Narrated by Julian Rhind-Tutt

    2. He was doing a valuable job protecting ‘OUR NHS’. He should be clapped…

  59. Anti lockdown protest at Hyde Park. Police arrest protestors. Photos in Daily Express.

    1. Yes. One wonders how much of this goes on in the UK that doesn’t make it past the censors!

  61. 319270+ up ticks,
    Judging by the course the lab/lib/con coalition are steering could compulsory masks supported by a burka framework be on the parliamentary menu ?
    How balanced are the electorate
    on the subject ?

  62. Is anyone feeling cheerful?

    Our library gives us access to several streaming services for films, documentaries and TV shows. This weeks special recommended featureEurope on the Brink of the Black Death.

    Ideal for a Saturday night at home.

    1. TPTV had the Masque of the Red Death on last night, with Vincent Price and Jane Asher. I recorded it. I do have the DVD but it’s so much hassle finding it amongst my vast array of uncatalogued DVDs…

        1. I do not know. Fortunately, I neither watch nor listen to any news/politics/current affairs programmes on ANY television or radio station.

          1. Belated afternoon NTN (Disqus problems).

            Although they tried to stamp it out, I hear chain mail’s back in fashion.

  63. I went for a four mile walk through one of my old childhood playgrounds this morning. I met a few people on the path through the woods, maybe a dozen and there was some stepping aside to let one another pass, with comments such as ‘Beautiful day’, ‘Grand’ and ‘Oh for the days when we could pass on the path without diving for cover’. That last one got a chuckle from the lady when I said it.

    I had a wry smile just before I got back to my car when I passed a man and two women coming the other way. The path was quite wide there, maybe 3 metres, but nevertheless I stepped off it and stood about 6 feet into the wild garlic that was everywhere and making the place smell wonderful.

    The second woman was carrying her cardigan. As she passed she gave me an anxious glance and lifted the cardigan in two hands and held it about 9 inches in front of her lower face, lowering it when she got by.

    The world is quivering in unjustified fear. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57db7b346911607f30d9618f5d4a1b444bb480bf4facc161341cfb324ff508a5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59ece1843825676a8c06d40935a50faf508af84457abb705c629f6230fa1caac.jpg

    1. MEEJAH Hype has turned the UK into a nation of paranoid germophobes.
      When I meet someone like that I just remark that I’m ok, I’m not paranoid.

    5. I had something similar the other day.

      “I don’t think I’ve got it,” said I to the lady with the cardy over her mouth.

      “It’s not that,” said she, “I didn’t want you to see me laughing at the state of your hair.”

    6. “They wants ter make yer flesh creep” © the Estate of the late C Dickens.

  64. https://m.youtube.com/watchv=adj8mcszklgfeature=youtu.be
    UK Gov’t confirms Covid19 harmless to VAST MAJORITY of people

    Published on 14 May 2020
    In this clip from the Downing Street Corona Briefing on May 11th, Chris Whitty – the UK’s Chief Medical Officer – says that, to most people, the coronavirus is entirely harmless.

    Most people will never get it.
    Most of the people who get it won’t ever experience symptoms.
    Most of the people who experience symptoms won’t need medical care.
    Most of the people who need medical care won’t be need emergency or critical care.
    And even the tiny percentage of people who need who DO need critical care will survive, regardless of risk factors or medical history.

      1. Bill I’ve just watched the said interview. One of the daily updates which we don’t bother with) but on this clip Chris Whitty answers a question at about 45 minutes – I just skipped through it to see if I could find it.

    2. What was it all about then ?
      As many have said, no worse than a flu epidemic.
      And now I see on stage……..another political eff up.

      1. 319270+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Re,
        A lesson in who holds power & political muscle flexing, the new norm as shown by the governance parties have run a successful coup de grace to expecting decency & integrity
        from the lab/lib/con coalition via the polling booth.

      2. A good time to bury bad news, with the news almost exclusively given over to coronavirus.

        Slipped out this morning is that they are pushing through a trade agreement that would effectively make us a vassal of the U.S. corporate lawyers, with a motto of “kiss my donkey, you suckers and losers” when applying “America First” preferential watertight and binding legal directives, arbritated by the American courts. Forget being able to avoid chlorine chicken or hormone beef raised in cleared rainforest in sheds that are designed to pollute the water with slurry and antibiotics, rather than the old British way of fertilising the fields with FYM. Those making the deal will see that all such competition will be wiped out, and we will be given no choice. I see that the British corned beef has been taken off the shelves at Tesco, so it’s Brazilian stuff or nothing. Trump and Bolsonaro are buddies-in-arms, and there’s probably some arrangement going on there, and nobody will care about the natives being shifted into Covid hotspots so their forest can be cleared. Does anyone think anyone will care if the British natives are similarly put down? We are being set up to be had, and there is a lot of bonus at stake from those with conflicts of interest who make these deals.

        Does anyone really believe this is an improvement on what we’ve had to put up with from the EU for the last 47 years? No, so best stick to Thursday clapping and daily repeats of the Covid figures.

      3. COVID 19’s danger lies in it’s infection ratio – that is how many other people can catch it from one. For flu this is about 3 but for COVID 19 it sits somewhere about 8 or 9.

        However I agree. People have become paranoid out of terror and ignorance.

        1. Panic brought on by the media not knowing what could andmight mean when they saw all of those worst case scenarios.

          You never sell a newspaper by reporting that nothing is happening, life is normal.

          P.S. I have been watching the official counts of CV19 cases down in Georgia and since they eased up on restrictions, cases have continued to fall rapidly and are nowhere near what the could have been.

  65. Has anyone else had this: earlier on today Disqus wanted me to sign in and by mistake I signed in on a very little used Gmail account. As I didn’t want that name to appear I got into NoTTL via some older posts, and am now back as Hertslass.

    However, I keep on getting notification that 2 new posts have come in to HL, but it is two now older posts which keep on appearing, whereas new responses don’t show. I have looked in the Gmail but there is nothing there. Essentially, I have no idea who is writing in response unless I come across it as a “new” post – which is a bit hit and miss.

    Weird. Anyone else had that?

    1. There have been no notifications since Thursday. Click on the lttle dot of colour and you’ll see (whatever name you are using).

      1. I know, it keeps on telling me I have two new ones. But they are old ones, and I know that people have responded since that time.

        “Still, ne’er mind, eh – Longfellow” courtesy of Monty Python’s Big Red Book.

    2. It’s just par for the course H. GCHQ is sabotaging the system and anything is likely to happen!

    3. Yes, every time I refresh the page I get the same 2 old responses on the red spot.

    4. We changed to ProtonMail a couple of months ago and we get notifications on comments on there but nothing has appeared under my Disqus profile for 3 days now. This is all we use ProtonMail for.

  67. I have just realised that when we sold up in France, we have actually moved abroad.

    Radio 3 this morning had an Indian woman choosing her fave opera singers of color (sic).
    Radio 4 had an Indian woman shrieking away “presenting” Any Answer.
    That was followed by a R4 play (I was clearing the garage and wanted something to listen to) in which the actors were bames.
    Switching back to R3 – there is a bame introducing Ghanian funeral music.

    And silly old me thought I was coming home……

    1. Your reaction Bill is the same as the one my dear late father had when he last came back for a visit to the UK in the 1990’s .
      He was so upset when he arrived at Heathrow , he thought he had landed in the wrong country .

      Still it was his choice to leave Britain for good when Harold Wilson put his feet under the desk so to speak.

      Those of us who were left behind in the UK to do our bit for Queen and country blame the psuedo intellectuals for rotting up the system.

      1. I sympathize. Our shock to the system came some years back when the outbound carry on bag security checks were carried out by a Moslem female, complete with headscarf, long clothes, etc.

        Back in the ’80’s when there were proper outbound passport checks, I was leaving Heathrow and in front of me in the queue at the Immigration Officer’s desk was a well suntanned man, who had a Libyan passport. In those days you walked down a short ramp from Immigration to bag inspection. The officer wished him a safe trip and as he walked down, gave a nod to the security people, Libyan last seen walking away for a “closer” inspection. Happy days!

      3. I was asked earlier today if I “had lost the plot” during the lock down lethargy. I replied the only plot we can look forward to is 6 feet long and 6 feet deep according to the media!

        1. And 6 feet apart from the next one, of course. (The plague survives your death….)

    5. It saves on expensive foreign holidays. Add in an out of date supermarket curry and you should have the complete experience.

  68. And, in other news: – by Aidan Hartley in The Spectator (just when you were looking for something to brighten you day….)

    “As if 2020 hasn’t already scared the hell out of us all, a plague of locusts is upon us. When I first witnessed a swarm swirling across my farm in Kenya, it was hard to see them in the nightmarish way they’re depicted in Exodus or the Book of Revelation. They were millions of pink and golden Tinker Bell fairies, flying in a halo around the sun, filling the air with the sound of rustling skirts. But the breeding cycle of a locust is only a few months and they are growing in numbers exponentially. Soon, it’s predicted, we will see individual swarms equivalent to the size of London, each of which consumes as much food as half the population of the United Kingdom on a daily basis. In a variation on the theme of Covid-19, how this year of the locust arrived is a story of bad luck, human folly and cack-handedness — with ghastly consequences.

    Like diseases, locust plagues have been a regular cause of famine in history. Last century there were some enormous outbreaks that spread across different parts of the world, inflicting widespread hunger. In 1954, swarms from Africa reached England and in 1988 even made landfall in the West Indies. Concerted international action in the post-war years progressively brought the problem under control and, as a boy in 1960s East Africa, I recall desert locust control officers were as common as traffic wardens. Their job was to roam the wilderness, monitoring solitary grasshoppers that every few years, on a pheromonic signal triggered by unusually heavy rainfall, suddenly began congregating in ever larger bands to lay their eggs in wet, sandy riverbeds. After hatching, the flightless hoppers would begin massing — at which point locust control teams flattened them all with poisonous sprays. In the decades following the end of empire, locust swarms were rarely seen, existing mainly as a story of the bad old days before clever scientists came to the rescue.

    In late 2018, locusts began multiplying in Oman’s Empty Quarter desert, following heavy rains from the super-sized Cyclone Luban. These days it’s the job of a United Nations agency called the FAO — the Food and Agriculture Organisation — to lead global locust control efforts. Yet in this case the FAO, which is as feckless as the WHO during pandemics, completely failed to stop the locust populations metastasising across Arabia. Taking wing on the monsoon winds, swarms soon crossed into Yemen, where even if the FAO had wanted to deploy, access was impossible due to the civil war pitching multiple extremist groups and Middle Eastern states against each other. From there, the insect hordes crossed the ‘Strait of Tears’ into the Horn of Africa, where they found secure lodgings in Somalia, another failed desert state, where the jihadi group Al-Shabaab controls much of the territory. Last year, as the locusts went through several more breeding cycles and began spreading into Ethiopia and Kenya, the UN and sundry African organisations funded by western taxpayers realised it was time to act. Naturally, they declared an emergency and urged rich countries to send large sums of cash.

    As soon as the money arrived in Africa, it was pilfered. Powerful, politically connected men set up aviation companies and scored contracts to spray against locust swarms — only not much spraying got done. Meanwhile, as the world recovered from its New Year hangover this year, the locust swarms in eastern Africa got ever larger, with individual mobs covering 50 sq km. The swarms made an impressive sight, murmurations of billions of insects, showing up black against the horizon and then silver as their filigree wings caught the sunlight in unison. The numbers became so great that when they roosted in acacia trees, the creatures landing on top of each other caused branches as thick as a man’s torso to snap off. In southern Somalia, panicked militias opened fire on the flying insects with anti-aircraft guns and exploding rockets. But the locusts kept breeding and eating.

    Due to a weather system across the Indian Ocean, while this year kicked off with bush fires across drought-stricken Australia, excessively high rains lashed East Africa, creating more perfect conditions for the locusts to multiply. The FAO finally got its act together and is now doing a pretty good job, using crop-spraying Air Tractors to drop mists of deltamethrin, an insecticide you might be familiar with if you have an apple orchard. ‘They’re hard things to kill,’ says Mark, my crop-farming neighbour north of Mount Kenya. ‘An hour after being sprayed a few days ago they all fell off the trees. Then three days later they all got up and flew away.’ One swarm landed on his wheat fields and gobbled up 125 acres of young crops within minutes. The locusts tend to scorn the rough pastures of my cattle ranch, or the acacia forests of the wilderness. What they’re after is carbohydrates to fuel their bodies on migrations of up to 150 kilometres a day.

    Until now, most of the swarms have been breeding in remote desert areas inhabited mainly by livestock herds. But in the current rains across East Africa, they are now massing to invade agricultural areas just as the staple crops such as maize ripen. They will probably even reach the tea estates of western Kenya, where your PG Tips is grown. The global Covid-19 crisis has interrupted operations to import deltamethrin and spray the swarms so comprehensively that they are killed off before spreading ever more widely. Ideally, you want to destroy the insects at the egg or hopper stage — but it’s too late for that. It’s a sad sight watching the Air Tractors valiantly chasing swarms of adult locusts, which morph from bright pink to golden yellow as they reached their final instar stage of life when females each lay hundreds of eggs. There are now far too many adult insects multiplying for the planes to tackle. Forecasts are that by June or July the swarms will be 400 times the size they currently are. Catching a ride on the winds, they are migrating out of Kenya, heading across south Sudan and out towards the badlands of West Africa, where Boko Haram and other al-Qaeda affiliates will make it almost impossible to kill the locust advance. By mid-summer they will have arrived at the Atlantic and perhaps they’ll reach the beaches of Cornwall again. Meanwhile, other locust armies are heading east across Afghanistan. Pakistan declared an emergency in February, long before the coronavirus panic. By the end of 2020, many of these countries, struggling to cope with the economic effect of the virus pandemic, will be facing not recovery, but another plague.”

        1. Correct.
          Others may wish to avail themselves of the BTL Comment section.

          2. Toads are fatter & usually have a dry skin covered in warts.

            Frogs are sleeker & have a smooth, moist skin.

            I’m really enjoying reading “Jacke wie Hose”, just about 100 pages to go.

    3. This does not bode well. Migrant numbers are bound to increase. It’s unlikely they’ll head south towards Zimbabwe…..

      1. Kent Police are already setting up welcome committees – once the Border Farce have escorted the illegals from France

        1. They’ll probably go and pick them up from Calais to make sure nobody dies on the way.

    5. If the world really was serious about wars, over-population, Greening etc., the UN would say to Hell with them all, let them starve and fight to the finish.

      It isn’t, they won’t.

      1. Blame the big international charities who have pumped money into Africa and upset the balance there used to be. There all so healthy with populations in certain countries growing 4 fold in 35 years with not enough home grown food to feed them. Aid supplies food but there’s no more work and the so spend all their time bonking and producing even more starving children than there were in 1985 when St. bloody Bob started it all.

        1. Yep.
          Feed poor starving Africans and all you’ll get is more poor starving Africans.

    6. It’s probably too late now, but instead of spraying they should have harvested them as a source of protein.

      1. There was an entrepreneur somewhere in Herefordshire who has been doing just that. Breeding grasshoppers to be dried and ground into a protein meal. Made into cakes they are delicious, but they can be used for all sorts of things. England has several vacuum cleaner makers – Gtech in Worcester, Numatic in Somerset, and Dyson in Singapore. It cannot be that hard to attach a large horn fitting to the suction and pointing it at the swarm

    7. So the UN has failed to control the locusts where the British Empire succeeded?
      I’m not holding my breath to hear this story reported on the BBC…

  69. Yesterday we had a power cut. Typically they last between 5 and 10 minutes. Not this one. After about an hour I phoned the electric company on the only number that they provide. A standard recorded message gave me another number to ring. I rang it. After about 15 minutes of recorded music and intermittent massages saying, “we are very busy and we only have one young lady manning the phone because we are miserable skinflint foreign dogs only interested in getting your money for as little effort as possible, please hold the line” my call was answered. The young lady told me, “We don’t deal with this. Here is another number.” I dialled the other number which turned out to be that of the network management company. Their young lady had to check to find that there was in fact a problem. By which time, I saw their repair truck go past the window. On the road behind our house there is a line of trees. They have just begun their period of growth and are looking bright and green. I suppose the branches grow a bit as well. The local transformer is on a pole set in the line of trees. Every year there are problems because the growing branches interfere with the electric wires. The network company don’t put “trim the branches” in their diary for a date in the following Spring though.
    We got no proper cooked dinner yesterday.

          2. They have after-burners. Remember that young lass who lit up last week?

  70. Dinner is in the oven, wine is open and I’m not listening to anything that mentions lockdown
    or the Chinese bug. I shall read a book later peacefully .

    1. Excellent plan!
      What’s in the oven?
      I just put a metre and a half of coiled-up venison sausage in, to be eaten with mash, peas & gravy.

      1. Just polished off a home-made Chinese-style pork and mushroom curry [curry sauce, slices of fried pork fillet, mushrooms, onions] with a tiny portion of egg fried rice [rice, mushroom stalks, spring onions, peas, egg, splash of soy sauce].

        Washed down with a pint of sky juice [tapoline].

      2. Cod, asparagus, baby potatoes with a watercress sauce, followed by HD chocolate ice cream.

      3. Love venison sausage but the husband sees it as winter food,
        I like them braised in red wine with a spot of recurrent jelly,
        Juniper berries, pancetta, mushrooms and red onion.
        Also very much love wild boar sausages eaten with peas, mash with
        multigrain mustard and lots of gravý.
        Yesterday we has left over defrosted lamb slices ( from a roast a few months back)
        with rosemary new potatoes with broccoli, carrots and peas.

    1. Fortunately I am signing off – you have touched a nerve, Robert!

      I moved here nearly 32 years ago. I remain an incomer – but endeavour to follow the pattern of village life – though, to be fair, that has changed greatly. We no longer have shops or a school. And many people are commuters to Narridge or King’s Lynn.

      There are several recent arrivals who don’t like the farm smells; object to mud on roads and complain bitterly about the “unnecessarily huge” tractors and trailors….

      And they don’t like the church bell (singular) when it is rung at 11 am on a Sunday (those were the days).

      1. Getting mud on the roads is an offence*. I lived on a farm with 9001 (or whatever). The farm hands were out with shovels and brushes to keep the road clean.
        *An offence of which the police and the Scottish Government (per Public Information films) are apparently entirely ignorant. Of course, the police went to school with all the local criminals so few get arrested…

      2. If people don’t like church bells, whether solemnly tolling or change ringing, they should not live near churches.

        1. I love a peal of bells, no matter how inexpertly rung. Something we don’t get in Norway, just a tuneless (and rather mournful) clanging. It’s one of the very few things I miss about not living in England.

          2. I do remember, as a nipper of just 14, helping to ring the 8 bells of St Mary’s, Bungay. I was only allowed the treble – the others were considered too heavy for a nipper like me.

          3. Unfortunately, Paul, our little church, 50 yards away, has only one bell but our Nick does his best with it on the few Sundays when the Vicar (of 8 parishes) gets round to holding a service here.

            No, that’s not Old Nick – though he is about my age but a damn sight more sprightly – he is the husband of Reader Mary.

      3. When I first arrived in yer Narrrrfuk, I visited an old family-run butcher’s shop on Plumstead Road in Narrrrwich.

        The proprietor turned to me and said, “You not be from araaaand here, boy?”
        I replied by explaining that I was a recently-arrived “foreigner”.

        He looked me up and down, smiled, and said, “Oh, oi’ll give it around 25 years and then you’ll be one of us.”

        1. As soon as that? In places round here they are still affected by the Civil War!

          1. The butcher was being ironic and making at joke at his own expense. He was more than aware of how his fellow countymen are regarded by others so sought to make light of it.

      4. You’ll be alright in 8 years time, Bill as it takes 40 years for we Norfolk folk to accept an incomer. Now you have a reason to go on (as Harry Secombe had on his coat of arms). Let your MR know that you now have a firm objective.

    3. I always wonder what it was they expected? Trumpton? Heartbeat? Did they not visit first, with their honed, enquiring minds alert to see what it is like? Mud, cowshit, darkness, silence at night, and everything far away.

      1. They manage to negate most of those disadvantages by taking over a farm, pulling it down and erecting a small village of mansion + staff flats + tennis court + swimming pool, and having big fast cars to get them to restaurants.
        Happened to two farms in our village. The inhabitants are annoying. They both own a brace of Labradors and patronise the rest of us as yokels.

        1. Firstborn got new neighbours in that mould some two years ago. They managed to pee off everybody, with dog farming (endless howling, especially at night), and for some reason, they don’t put out their rubbish for collection like a normal person, they burn it in a field – clouds of plastic smoke, and the fire hazard… bonfires not allowed after mid April, but for them the rule is different. They have too many sheep and cattle for their land, and put the beasts out too early, before the grass has had a chance to start growing. Result: Their fields looks like an old khaki battledress. Even when they do have grass, they haven’t learned about strip grazing, so they put the cattle on the ffresh grass without any kind of control, and it’s trampled flat within a day: bugger-all for a happy cow to eat then.
          Arseholes.

          2. Ours can’t farm for toffee either. They’ve got so much money it doesn’t seem to matter. Still, it gives everyone else something to grumble about!

    5. Go for it Bob you have our backing.
      Better if these nasty vacuous agitating plonkers stay in the cupboards under their stairs.

  73. I am signing off – hoping for a warmer day tomorrow. Supper is risotto with our own asparagus, washed down with a 2012 Rigau Ros – from Capmany in Catalunya. We shall finish the Royal Academy Manet prog – (there was a lot of buffering last night; I guess lots of people are on broadband these days.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  74. Was anyone else annoyed that the anti-lockdown protesters got short shrift from the Politzei yet the extinction rebellion people were treated with kid gloves?

  75. Police in London have been accused of racial profiling by a school pastoral support worker whose account on Twitter of being handcuffed and questioned has prompted questions about the role of officers during the city’s lockdown.

    Dwayne Francis, who was detained while waiting in his car for a post office to open en route to work, said young black men’s negative experiences of police use of stop and search in London had got worse during the coronavirus pandemic.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/16/london-police-accused-of-racial-profiling-in-coronavirus-lockdown-searches

    Has Dwayne ignored the drug stabby stabby threat that most black youngsters are fearful of?

      2. Only if his surname is Pipe and he’s set fire to his parent’s garage in revenge…..

  76. Evening, all. I see the notifications problem has not been fixed. Went shopping again today. Few queues, shelves stocked and people going shopping in pairs. A far less stressful experience than it has been (but then I did pick my shops and avoided the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s).

  77. Coding that led to lockdown was ‘totally unreliable’ and a ‘buggy mess’, say experts. 16 May 2020.

    The Covid-19 modelling that sent Britain into lockdown, shutting the economy and leaving millions unemployed, has been slammed by a series of experts.

    Professor Neil Ferguson’s computer coding was derided as “totally unreliable” by leading figures, who warned it was “something you wouldn’t stake your life on”.

    The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.

    “In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”

    I don’t know when these guys are going to wake up, if ever, to the realisation that this Code like Ferguson himself, is as fake as a £3 note. Like all great scams it relies on the principle that the greater the lie the more it is likely to be believed. It surpasses even Lustig who sold the Eiffel Tower and Parker who sold the Brooklyn Bridge! Like Newman and Redford in The Sting he will probably get away with it because his dupes (the UK Government) cannot be seen to look foolish and they are not picking up the tab anyway.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led-lockdown-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/

    1. Well, it was our Government that decided on the actions taken. that they relied too heavily on one aspect of the many that should have been given appropriate weight in their considerations. That the model was unreliable, or even wildly wrong should have been considered. “How do we know that the model is suitable?” might have been a question to ask, followed by “prove it!”

      1. I am with Oliver Cromwell on this one; someone should have said “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

    2. I look forward to seeing this on the BBC website. Timed at 1:32pm on the DT.

    3. A poor article, IMHO. David Richards and Dr Konstantin Boudnik repeatedly try to pin everything on ‘the Government’ (implying this Government) whereas previous Governments were also bamboozled by Imperial/Ferguson modelling in earlier crises. Obviously there is crappy coding in the models but it seems to me that the mathematical algorithms for the spread of various types of infections are themselves crappy. Overlaying this are the lefty character flaws of Ferguson himself and his agendas. Given Ferguson’s appalling track record this Government were at fault for not getting a second and third opinion and allowed themselves to be panicked by the short time fuse. Our political class are out of their depth and intimidated by anything involving ‘science’ and/or ‘mathematics’….[and one could mention quite a few other topics but lets not go there just now]

  79. Utterly off topic.

    I really enjoy having the hares in the garden, but the little buggers have suddenly taken to chomping on my only mimosa cutting.

    Grrnngghh…

    2. Don’t let them lie around with the guts still in, Get them cleaned while they are still warm

      1. Ideally, open them up as soon as you get to them, haul out the innards, and prop the stomach open with a stick to let it all cool down as quickly as you can.
        Don’t puncture the guts when you do that! Stomach content or bile on the meat, and it’s bad.

      2. Don’t you dare!

        I get so much enjoyment from watching them, and they are usually quite happy for me to get close and observe.

        As long as I don’t make sudden movements they will carry on feeding.

        1. Firstborn’s hare is sacrosanct. Only ever seen from a distance, he (?) is a magnificent animal. He’ll not be in the pot, that’s for sure.

          1. Most of the time “mine” accept my presence in the garden.

            I can usually get quite close to them ~ 20 feet, and I’ve even gently stroked one that was up by the house, sunning itself in a scrape.

            Because we keep the plot very wild we get lots of creatures that don’t seen to mind our presence too much.

          2. Lovely!
            Getting up during light mornings (now, we’re running out of dark) for a wee, at about 03:00 or so at Firstborn’s place, it’s commin to see deer munching the grass. Later, after breakfast, BIG birds – hawks, and Golden and Fish eagles swinging overhead, woodpeckers (green & greater spotted), and distant ravens – they don’t come so close. There’s a big brown eagle sits in the top of a tree about a km away, just still, looking at you (binoculars are useful for that bird).
            Just the peacefulness of it all… makes me think of the poem “Leisure” by William Henry Davies.

          3. That sounds like chateau sosraboc.

            I have fencing all around the garden, (I don’t have the acreage you do), to keep out the deer and the wild boar but I do see them just beyond the fence occasionally.

            Because we are close to water, woodland, agricultural land and few houses we get birds, flowers and creatures that would make this an SSSI in the Uk. We get more variety than the typical Spring or Autumn watch programme.

          4. LeisureWilliam Henry Davies, 1911

            What is this life if, full of care,
            We have no time to stand and stare.
            No time to stand beneath the boughs
            And stare as long as sheep or cows.
            No time to see, when woods we pass,
            Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
            No time to see, in broad daylight,
            Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
            No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
            And watch her feet, how they can dance.
            No time to wait till her mouth can
            Enrich that smile her eyes began.
            A poor life this if, full of care,
            We have no time to stand and stare.

          6. His book “The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp” is a fascinating read.

          7. Mine too.

            It’s only now I have matured somewhat (and SWMBO still isn’t convinced) that some poetry says things to me. This is one of the few – I keep copies on the PC.

          8. You might enjoy Tennyson’s very short “Eagle”

            He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
            Close to the sun in lonely lands,
            Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

            The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
            He watches from his mountain walls,
            And like a thunderbolt he falls.

      2. I tattooed lots of rabbits all over my head.

        From a distance they look like hares!

    4. And we think lockdown is screwing us all up.
      “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (German: wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt) was a performance piece enacted by the German artist Joseph Beuys on 26 November 1965 at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. While it was only Beuys’s first solo exhibition in a private gallery, it is sometimes referred to as his best known action.”
      “At the beginning of the performance Beuys locked the gallery doors from the inside, leaving the gallery-goers outside. They could observe the scene within only through the windows. With his head entirely coated in honey and gold leaf, he began to explain pictures to a dead hare. Whispering to the dead animal on his arm in an apparent dialog, he processed through the exhibit from artwork to artwork. Occasionally he would stop and return to the center of the gallery, where he stepped over a dead fir tree that lay on the floor. After three hours the public was let into the room. Beuys sat upon a stool in the entrance area with the hare on his arm and his back to the onlookers.”

      2. My eldest daughter had to study this God-awful nonsense for her Abitur, and pretend to take it seriously.

    5. I brought home a seed pod from Spain 18 months ago, the that germinated are two foot high now. This species is the Silk tree Mimosa (albizia julibrissin) lovely pink blossoms.
      I hope I live long enough to see either of them mature. Quite spectacular to behold.

    6. Can you put a cardboard tube around the chewed-on bit?
      Firstborn’s hare is a massive bugger, size of a dog.

      1. I will probably use chicken wire around the mimosa.

        I like watching the hares as they rock back on their haunches, like a small kangaroo, eating at the long grasses.

        The biggest is as you say, the size of a small dog. I spotted it in a scrape looking head on. At first sight, I thought I had a baby deer in the garden. the ears were right back and with the legs bunched up it looked exactly ike a fawn.

        1. Wildlife is fun to watch – except when the do damage to other things you want to keep alive.
          We’re overrun with canada geese these days, so they might find some anti-aircraft fire when they don’t expect it… the hare is sacrosanct, there aren’t enogh of him to warrant sniping at. The fox and badgers might get a chuff of shot up the arse, though. The both of them are causing erosion damage to the sandbank in the orchard.

          1. I’m very much live and let live, although I must admit to a desire to wipe Mr Mole off the face of the garden.

          4. Of the bottles or the molery? Definitely empty bottles. They make the most noise 🙂

          6. My moles eat that kind of thing!

            We hired a mole catcher about 10 years ago, and he killed several in the garden, but he said that because we are surrounded by forest, long term it’s a waste of time and money.

            Clear out one set and there is a four bedroom detached molery awaiting the next tenants.

          9. One thing she didn’t mention (although you could see she was wearing gloves with soil on them) is that you should make sure that the trap and your hands are smothered in soil – moles have an acute sense of smell.

          10. I left mine outside for a year to acclimatise and I use gloves to set them.

            Not for the scent, the traps have a nasty tendency to spring as they get placed and heavy duty leather ensures one doesn’t lose a finger or two!

          11. I hold the handles when I place them – keeps my fingers out of the way 🙂

          13. Firstborn has old leg traps for foxes at his farm. Nasty looking sawbladed things, but nothing like the bear traps in his stabbur – there was one that looked like it was armed, under a built-in bunkbed! What kind of prize purple jellyfish does that? Leave a humungous toothed trap armed?Eventually plucked up the courage to try to trip it with a long pole. Poking at it, I found that it was open because the spring had broken! Relief, or what? Blasted thing is easily a yard in circumference, with what looks like a Landrover leaf spring as power… cacking myself, I was!

  82. Another Saturday night
    And I ain’t got pub music.
    I got the craving but I ain’t got the pub.
    Now, how I wish I had someone to talk to,
    the missus ain’t the same.

    With apologies to Sam Cooke.

      1. I love organ music… well, actually, pretty well all music. Unfortunately, my abilities to create music are limited to operating Youtube, or the CD player. I have no sense of pitch or rhythm, can’t hear a sharp or flat… sigh. Can’t sing, either. Have huge respect for those that can music. My Father even was organist at Durham Cathedral back in the ’40s, but I inherited none of his skills.
        :-((
        But, the Good Lord caused others to have the skill that I can enjoy, so… :-D)

        1. Like me. Grandfather played multiple instruments, composed original church music and was the Choirmaster, mother and uncles played and sang in choirs in their younger days. Me NOTA, except I can tell when something is off pitch.

          1. That would be me, I’m always bursting into song, by whatever prompts me, then getting that look, which tells me to sfu!!!

        2. I have been sent off, when joining singing the National Anthem at Rugby Matches

    1. My “so much” ran out many years ago. Somewhere in the mid ’70’s as I recall.

          1. I’ll give you a call tomorrow. i met someone today who you might know.

        2. I would strongly suggest it went downhill before that song in particular.

  88. Goodnight, Chums, I must climb the wooden hill to blanket fair before Best Beloved gets too twitchy. God bless us, one and all.

    1. Fair’s fair. You stab me with your syringe; I stab you with my machete.

      Deal?

      1. No, she pays for it. Don’t ask too many questions about the logic of social medicine, because they lead inexorably to the Government owning your body.

    3. A phrase that has echoed in my head all day.

      I was listening to the radio in the car this morning and some Labour MP was on complaining about this ‘far right’ demonstration and saying there should be a law against it, while backtracking on some of his earlier statements about who is organising it.

      This afternoon I was reading it being described as a ‘far left demonstration’.

      It would be a start if we just banned the word ‘far’ from being used in any broadcast communication.

  91. Bought some bread down the bakers today, queued of ages to get it.
    When i got home and took it out of the paper bag I was amazed to see it was all mouldy.
    I phoned them up to complain
    But was informed that all the staff had been furloafed.

        2. I reckon if you still had that in mint condition in the original cover it would be worth about minus 5 bob, Bob.

  92. F***k Ferguson and the ‘modellers’; bring on the canine sniffers !

    ‘Night all …

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