Saturday 23 October: The incompetent delivery of booster jabs has left the vulnerable in limbo

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

550 thoughts on “Saturday 23 October: The incompetent delivery of booster jabs has left the vulnerable in limbo”

  1. Morning all, been busy fitting a new kitchen. Lots to do still but I will try to look in to see what is going on.

    1. Yo vvof

      If,when you have finished, you fancy a working holiday on the Eat Coast, just a 5 minute walk from the sea…….

        1. Depends what appliances, vvof can get fitted

          Homemade Pea and Ham Soup
          A Tot

          Variety of Curries
          A Tot

          Slow cooked ribs
          A tot

          Bacon Butties
          A tot
          Local butcher cooked ham sarnies
          Tot
          Egg Banjo
          Coffee

  4. I think the family thought I had covid this morning but luckily the fit of coughing was only a bit of grapefruit that went down the wrong hole.
    At least they cared, I suppose, well the daughters did, the wife stayed in bed.
    They’ve all gone back to bed now.

        1. It’s the same nearly every night. I read 3 or 4 newspapers online while I drink a pint of milk. Then I go back to bed for a few hours.

        1. Blimey, if your mind’s that sharp, your chances of bashing out the zeds this morning is a bit limited.
          Good Moaning/Evening.

    3. Once I had a call at a stately home in the South Midlands on a misty summerr morning. As I drove across the great parkland, I saw the magnificent spectacle of a herd of deer about 100 yards away, the stag sideways on with its head turned towards me. antlers on full display.
      I stopped and quickly got my phone out and took a couple of snaps. And still the stag looked my way.
      After another minute or so, the mist had cleared fully and I realised – they were statues…

  10. Good morning all.
    It is still dark here with a dry 4°C start and a waning gibbous moon peering through the clouds.

    BBC Radio 3 has just announced that a group of MPs is pushing for schools to brainwash their pupils about Global Warming/Climate Change/The CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!/A CLIMATE CATASTROPHE!!!!!/{insert latest panic & scare mongering catch phrase here}.

    I thought they were already doing that.

    4. In that case they will have to find room in their other indoctrination sessions for the promotion of the hundred-odd genders…

      ‘Morning, BoB.

    5. If schools would put more effort into teaching science and mathematics, their pupils could then understand Climate Change and

      decide for themselves whether to believe it.

    6. The R4 Beeb announced this morning a daily prog on the effects of climate change called Fire and Floods to keep the uneducated in a terrified state. Its absolutely unrelenting and as if fires and floods never happened before.

      1. It’s the flood of illegal immigrants they should be talking about and the lack of fires in our power stations.

    1. Our Christmas pudding was made just over a year ago and has been maturing at the back of the pantry since then. Hopefully, we will eat it this year, but only if some of the family can get here. Otherwise it will be held until they can and we will then have a”fake” Christmas dinner.

      1. My paternal grandmother used to make 5 puddings at a time; one for each year.
        According to my father, the last one nearly blew your head off.

    1. Daylight here now and the light cloud through which the moon peered earlier has coalesced to a dull grey.

      1. The cloud free sky to the East in the shot has been replaced with high thin cloud tinged with pink. Forecast here is for sunny intervals until mid afternoon and remaining dry. Hopefully I will get some more slabs pointed and my new retractable washing line fitted.

      2. 🙂

        Currently (ho,ho) Allan Towers is more like the Kew Palm House (and that’s with the extractor fan going full blast above the cooker).

  14. Fly Swat

    I was visiting my son and daughter-in-law last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.

    ‘This is the 21st century, Dad,’ he said. ‘We don’t waste money on newspapers. Here, you can borrow my iPad.’

    I can tell you, that bloody fly never knew what hit it.

      1. ‘Morning, OLT, I start out by reading Oldest first and only when the comments get into the hundreds do I switch to Newest first.

  15. Morning all

    SIR – I am clinically vulnerable and spent many months self-isolating. I had my second Covid jab more than six months ago. Earlier this week I tried to book a booster online but the site would not allow me to. On Friday I received an email from the NHS telling me I’m vulnerable and urging me to go online to book a jab as soon as possible. The website still won’t let me, and says to await an invitation from my surgery (with no time frame).

    My husband, who is not clinically vulnerable, received his invitation two weeks ago and has a booster jab booked. Why are Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, and his colleagues still encouraging people to go to the website when it is not working? I often think that our Government cannot become more incompetent, and am always proved wrong.

    Amanda Lovejoy

    Castle Acre, Norfolk

    SIR – I am 75 and in the vulnerable category. It is more than six months since I had my second jab and I have made six attempts to book a booster, without success. Is this yet another case of the Government not knowing what is going on? Surely it is only a matter of time before we are back in lockdown.

    Neil Fraser

    Olney, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – The NHS is failing in the booster jab rollout and as a consequence another lockdown is looming, in order “to protect the NHS” (Leading Article, October 21). So the NHS is to be protected because of its own failings. The logic puzzles me.

    Tony Manning

    Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire

    SIR – If there were zero cases of Covid in Britain, the NHS would find another reason to declare a “winter crisis”.

    These reliable declarations are simply evidence of management failure on an annual basis.

    Paul Gaynor

    Windermere, Cumbria

    SIR – Why not implement Plan B? Surely if we all mask up and work from home Covid transmission will be reduced. I am definitely playing my part, as Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has asked us to do, but I don’t think he is. I am double jabbed and in a few weeks will be able to have my booster. Is the Government going to ruin another Christmas by not acting quickly enough?

    Anne Roberts

    Worcester

    SIR – The Prime Minister’s inability to act swiftly in the face of rapidly rising Covid numbers is staggering. By implementing the Government’s Plan B measures now, he could help to prevent more deaths and a possible further lockdown. His reliance on the vaccination programme is not enough. He has clearly not learnt the terrible lessons of past hesitancy in this crisis.

    Liz Smith

    Taunton, Somerset

    Green penalties

    SIR – I have a 2013 diesel car (bought on the advice of the Government). From Monday, the ultra-low emission zone will expand to the outer limits of London, meaning that I will have to pay £12.50 each day that I drop my children at school, collect them from a Tube station at night, visit my 94-year-old mother who lives one mile away, do the weekly shop, visit friends and family, go to the cinema, go to work or walk the dog.

    Our freedom of movement is being severely curbed and those on the lowest incomes are paying the highest price. This is simply punishment for people going about their daily business.

    Giles O’Flynn

    London SW15

    SIR – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (City, October 21) reports that there will be a multi-trillion pound return on British investment in net zero. Even if he is correct, the return will not arise until well after many have suffered from serious fuel poverty.

    Continuing to penalise fossil fuels with levies before alternative energy sources are available will only see more having to choose between heating and eating. If we are to avoid power cuts, stored energy (in the form of hydrogen, for example) will be needed for when there is little sun or wind.

    To achieve net zero and avoid power cuts, we will need a massive increase (far beyond what is planned) in solar and wind-power capacity in order to supply electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps. That is in addition to the new nuclear power station programme, which is all part of a mirage being conjured up by the Government. Yes, innovation and market forces can do the job, but only if allowed a reasonable time to deliver. Applying arbitrary target dates, while neglecting reality, threatens to return us to the Stone Age.

    Roger J Arthur

    Storrington, West Sussex

    SIR – Having received a quotation to install an air-source heat pump at more than £10,000 – with an agreed Government grant of £5,000 – I did not proceed when I discovered I would need to insulate the outside walls of my detached house and replace more than a dozen radiators. The Government would be wise to insist on installation of heat pumps only in all new houses.

    Alfred Pope

    Bristol

    SIR – Our new community centre has only heat pumps for heating. It is often booked at 9am. This requires the pumps to work at the coldest time of the night, when they cost us most.

    They perform poorly and at times we wish we had a gas back-up. In mild weather we use the heating system at midday to keep costs down.

    John Dyke

    Lifton, Devon

    SIR – The very suggestion of a meat tax (report, October 21) demonstrates yet again how our metropolitan Government is out of touch with country folk. Such a move would be political suicide for a party that has long relied on those in the shires who either work in, or fully support, the rural economy in all its guises, to roll out the Tory vote on election day.

    Charlie Bladon

    Cattistock, Dorset

    1. I wish, that our Local Surgery would stop texting SWMBO and me (myself?) to get the booster

      We only had the first jabs,as we thought we would be going tintenting in Spain again and would need ‘The Bit of Paper’

      That is now a No Go, so, So are we

      1. You are lucky OLT.

        MOH ‘phoned our GP surgery about a booster shot and was coolly told “We have no information about this”

    2. Reading the letters above I realise beyond a shadow of doubt we are all doomed! Strewth! Give me strength!

      Good morning. I’m going out shortly into the world of Covidphobia – wish me luck!

      1. Reading the above and numerous Twitter feeds it’s clear that too many people are still swallowing this dangerous government’s line. A little bit of research away from mainline media outlets would perhaps convince a good number that this government are most definitely NOT doing the best for the people.

        Gates’s advertised presence within the halls of government and his impact on Johnson and Javid along with Blair’s renewed call for “vaccine passports” should be a warning sign to all.

      2. Good luck, King Stephen! Judging by the dismal letters, the bed-wetters will be out in force! Masked and tutting, naturally!

        1. One should have set up in the home-collection bed linen laundry business – there’s a fortune to be made in the bedwetting fallout.

          1. ‘Morning, Herr Obers! When did so many lose the capability of thinking for themselves? I’d be ashamed to rely on someone else making my decisions for me! What a pathetic bunch so many seem to have turned into!

          2. ‘Ow do, Our Sue!
            Indeed. The herd mentalty is ever-stronger these days. I guess it’s easier – don’t have to think, and “they” take all responsibility – they wouldn’t do anything nazi nasty, would they?

          3. It’s the unquestioning belief in ‘they’ that really gets to me! And I was up very early, so I read the pathetic letters a long time ago! Really must go and reduce my BP!

    3. Have people not questioned why, a few months after their second jab, they need a ‘booster’. They were told that two jabs would suffice and that the jab’s efficacy and safety were fine. Israel are now applying the ‘second booster’ (there was a report I saw a couple of months back that showed the first ‘booster’s’ efficacy started to wane after 12 DAYS). Little wonder that the second is required.
      What’s that old quotation? …repeating the same action over and over…

        1. To be fair, I understand that Prof [ha!] Ferguson’s model will indeed give different results for the exact same input!

      2. I’m trusting to nature and the strength of my immune system in fighting virus infections. So far, OK. But no extra holes in the arm…

      3. I think it is because some folk have misunderstood what sort of virus Covid is, thinking it was a type of flu.

        Influenza’s genes are fairly stable, and a single jab if aimed at the current version can be relied on to see out the year.

        Covid, like SARS, is a type of common cold and notoriously prone to mutation. We are told of half a dozen of the more infamous ones, which we are not allowed to name after countries, since Kent raised a stink about being likened to a disease. However, I remember reading that about 10,000 different variants of Covid already exist, most of which are unviable and die out quickly, but not all of them.

        Our immune system therefore has never been able to protect us from catching the common cold. The point of a booster jab is rather to stop us ending up in hospital if some variant gets round the vaccine, which it will.

    4. We are all caught in the net of government stupidity.

      We were were encouraged to buy diesel cars, and when cars have their MOT, the test for lousy emissions is picked up or not?

      Our cars here at home , are efficient and even though the are elderly by modern standards , they are well maintained and fuel efficient !

      1. Our current car, 8 years old, is petrol driven – because it is apparently very efficient we pay £30 a year road tax [VED]. Recently I considered getting a new, self charging hybrid – the VED for that is £170 a year!! What buffoon considers that is joined up thinking?

        1. I only pay £20 per annum for my “gas guzzler” (according to the Bishopette of Birkenhead).

    6. There’s a bit of me wondering whether the delays to the boosters aren’t deliberate – if all the vulnerable are “protected”, there’s no excuse to harry the unvaccinated and introduce vaccine passports.

      When did I turn into such a cynical old bat?

      1. About the time you began to explore the latent motives behind political decisions I guess…

      2. Join the club.
        I simply assume that whatever the government says, believe the opposite.
        A million bog roll panic buyers can’t be wrong.

    7. Anne Roberts sounds insufferable, a total Pollyanna-ish smuggo. Ugh yug. What’s Worcester done to deserve her ? Is she Cromwell’s revenge on The Faithful City ?

  16. 340435+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Saturday 23 October: The incompetent delivery of booster jabs has left the vulnerable in limbo
    is that a bad thing or a blessing ? is it incompetence or orchestrated ?

    I do tend to see it as softening up via the control department as in
    toilet rolls disappearing off super-market shelves the herd canters, toilet roll shortage evident, full on stampede.

    Me thinks the whole jab upon jab upon jab issue is on the way to drug dependency state run, herd control, updated bromide in tea method ushering in the repress, replace, reset era.

    Many would say ” not my party they would Not entertain that”
    whereas two decades ago if a preview was given of theses Isles today , there would be 100% disbelief.

    1. Not sure about your last line. I was pretty much completely disillusioned with the UK twenty years ago – it was the Blair era, and he trashed the country fairly quickly. I’ve never seen cause to revise my gloom since then.
      Certainly going back to pre-Blair – it was another country.

      1. We left early in the Bliar years. The last straw was G Brown gutting my private pension. Bastard.

        1. So did we. The jumbo jet load of Britons that was emigrating every day were among the most productive. Every company I worked in had British engineers in the 2000s.

      2. 340435+ up ticks,
        Morning BB2,
        Do agree , all my prior comments do go back
        three plus decades,with the Thatcher political demise we were at the top of the treachery slide.

        The b liar was the prime cause an evil latch lifter, if ever, the toxic trio amalgamated becoming a coalition, still with many a persons consent.

  17. Just returned from Morrisons. One of their tankers was in the petrol station forecourt so I guess the panic is over. Noticed Bob’s gibbous moon through the cloud.

  19. Morning, all Y’all.
    Absolutely clear and silent here (apart from SWMBO crashing her breakfast crockery). Slight frost.

      1. :-D)
        How can one small woman make so much crashing just getting a plate for toast, and a mug of coffee?

          1. She followed up by rustling crinkly plastic at max volume, too!
            Argh! Need some silence… my introvert self needs some peace & quiet!

          2. Thinking back to a post the other day, now would appear to be a good time to hide any golf clubs..

      1. Don’t think so… she’s in a crashy phase just now, even doing that just now in the kitchen, everything goinf BANG! CRASH! Smash! …

  20. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Well said, Charles Moore!

    COMMENT
    The public is waking up to the costs of the West’s unilateral eco-disarmament

    Cop26 is a problem for Boris Johnson. It is unlikely to reach consensus, and voters at home are wary of the implications of ‘net zero’

    CHARLES MOORE
    22 October 2021 • 9:30pm

    As it happens, I shall be 65 on the day the Cop26 meeting opens in Glasgow next week. So I am old enough to remember during my adult life the genesis of the Cop (Conference of the Parties) process which sees itself as the way to save the planet. The occasion also makes me reflect on what causes the public to wake up to any issue.

    Environmentalism is often seen as a Left-wing cause, but Margaret Thatcher was the first leading world statesman to address global warming. As our first scientist prime minister, she was excited by the theory, propounding it to the Royal Society in 1988. The following year, she argued that the problem could be dealt with only through a global UN framework, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The challenge, she said, was “as great as any disarmament treaty”. She made that comparison because disarmament is worse than useless unless all parties really do disarm.

    The first Cop met in Berlin, six years later. The fact that there will very soon have been 26 of them suggests the task is not easy.

    In one sense, the process has been brilliantly successful. No cause in the Western world has more excited the activist young, or been more passionately preached from pulpits, in schoolrooms and on television. Like medieval monarchs blessing the Crusades, our current heir to the throne, and his heir, exhort their future subjects to ever-greater sacrifices for the sake of the planet. “Net zero” is the name for the sacrificial ritual. No mainstream political party dares disagree.

    Yet these Cops keep copping out. The same basic problem recurs. Nations which industrialised earlier are far readier to reduce carbon emissions than are developing nations, who fear being cheated of economic growth. Because the latter are growing so fast (China and India account for more than a third of all global carbon emissions), there will be no overall carbon reduction unless they “disarm”. They won’t.

    Indeed, as these rising nations become richer and more assertive, Western persuasiveness weakens. Even Barack Obama failed to achieve consensus at Copenhagen’s Cop15 in 2009. Neither his former vice-president, Joe Biden, nor Boris Johnson, has as much chance in Glasgow next week as he had then. The environmental equivalent of global multilateral disarmament is not happening. The unilateral disarmament of the West is.

    One person who never accepted the Thatcher remedy was her then chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson. Faced with a draft for her Royal Society speech proposing universal fuel levies and debt relief for developing countries in return for preserving their rainforests, he wrote, “These bizarre ideas are contrary to Government policy, and are political dynamite.” They were dropped from the speech, but never went away.

    Twenty years on, the financial crash of 2008-9 gravely injured the West’s authority over how the world is run. Lawson’s short book on climate change, An Appeal to Reason, came out at that time. It tackled IPCC projections for 50 or 100 years hence. These could not have any degree of accuracy, he said: there were too many imponderables. Even on their own calculations, food production was set to rise and people to be several times better off than they were now. Why tighten our belts to help our richer successors?

    Lawson also emphasised the clash of interests between the West and the rest. Shortly afterwards, Copenhagen exhibited this. The meeting produced vague promises of co-operation and “climate aid” to the developing world, but nothing legally enforceable. Carbon-based energy could not go away, said Lawson, because it was “far and away the cheapest source of energy … and is likely to remain so, not forever, but for the foreseeable future”.

    These basic arguments have never been disproved. Even if global warming is a very serious problem, why attempt the economically and politically impossible? Why not consider methods of adaptation, rather than cry catastrophe? Lawson and others set up the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Several years later, I joined its board, sitting with people much more expert than I.

    Over the years, the GWPF has produced work consistently pointing to alternatives – foreshadowing, in 2010, the shale gas revolution, for example – and to problems, such as the danger of depending on emergency gas supplies from Russia (in 2018). The latter is beautifully illustrated by Vladimir Putin’s threat that if we want him in Glasgow, we must accept his gas price “offer”. This week, a new GWPF pamphlet by Gwythian Prins sets out six fallacies of “green growth” and warns of the security implications of letting China manipulate our obsession with net zero while not truly decarbonising.

    When the GWPF board has met, we have discussed the repressive hostility from policy elites. Those elites have expended enormous energy arguing that we were “climate-change deniers” (a deliberately libellous term, echoing the Holocaust), none on considering what we were saying.

    Since the problems of the Cop process were so obvious, we puzzled, why did our leaders not admit them? But perhaps the answer was not so hard to see. It is a natural human instinct to side with a virtuous intention; and so long as it remains abstract, its virtue will not be proved wrong. Who would not favour a cleaner, greener planet?

    Rather than honestly confronting the growing practical difficulties, our leaders preferred to frighten the public with the idea of “emergency”. No emergency has been proved: if you want an example of a true emergency, think of Covid in March last year. A climate emergency, on the other hand, is a speculation.

    On climate policy, we sceptics concluded, minds would change only because of cost. If people were forced to pay substantially more for the essentials of life, they would start asking why.

    This is now happening, because the emergency’s artificial timetable is making change much more disruptive, expensive and frightening than it need be. People are worried about electric vehicle batteries and charging points, losing wood-burning stoves, being made to pay meat taxes or get rid of gas-fired boilers. In the case of heat pumps, customers face an unprecedented situation of being forced to pay more (through tax, if subsidised) for a technology which is slower and more cumbersome than the one it replaces. Only in recent months have the media in general latched on to what the GWPF and other sceptics have been saying for more than a decade.

    As I write at home, I can hear men replacing our old gas boilers with new gas boilers. I am determined to install something that actually works before the law forbids it. In the name of a distant, uncertain benefit for mankind in general, we are about to take direct hits on our pockets, our convenience and our country’s prosperity. How can I feel warm towards a government which will make me colder and poorer?

    Higher energy prices close in, and the public are trapped. A letter from our gas supplier this week announces a rise of 9 pence per litre (over 15 per cent) – but I still need a fuel I can trust. Our Government’s failure to recognise how much we need fossil fuels until such time as carbon-neutral, affordable, 24-hour alternative technologies can successfully operate, is driving up demand for those wicked old carbon-producers, and therefore their price.

    The government is also trapped politically and diplomatically, seeking to show off, in Glasgow, a virtue that does not impress large parts of the global or, increasingly, the domestic audience. Our rising enemies in the world, if they attend Cop26 at all, will be laughing at us.

    * * *

    The leading BTL comments. Nottlrs will be familiar with the points made:

    Barb Dwyer
    22 Oct 2021 9:40PM
    Yes, you have perfectly described the utter futility of it all.

    This is a world problem (that’s if it really is a problem at all). Either the whole world buys in or no-one does.

    To take this country down a greener than green route without mandate is simply not on, unaffordable to most and totally undemocratic.

    Hercule Smith
    22 Oct 2021 9:42PM
    The woke movement has ousted all rationality in the eco / green debate. The country is already grossly over indebted and we simply cannot sustain the huge cost of this ‘hair shirt’ approach to net zero, requiring vast, unaffordable investment in largely unproven or inadequate technologies, especially given that we account for under 1% of global CO2 emissions and will merely surrender business to China and others. The policy must change, which means Bunter must probably go.

    PMG Wilson
    22 Oct 2021 9:58PM
    Well said Charles. The Copout26 Conference is already doomed because China, India and Russia will not attend. How humiliating for Boris, Attenborough, Greta and the Royal Family for pushing this net zero, climate change scam when the chief perpetrators with the biggest carbon footprints can’t be bothered to turn up – and who can blame them. Nigel Lawson was right for tackling the IPCC projections too.

    Richard Nuffsaid
    22 Oct 2021 9:48PM
    Net Zero is the ruinously expensive removal of a harmless invisible substance with no economic benefit to anyone.

    1. Like medieval monarchs blessing the Crusades…

      But then the world was facing a real threat…

        1. It was stopped at Vienna in 1683. But the the threat never went away, and has come back with a vengeance.

    2. Just looked up the Nigel Lawson book on Amazon. New, it’s £97!
      But I just bought a second-hand one at £2.16.
      Edit: No, I didn’t. They want £29 for delivery! Jayzuz!

      2. Yo Ol

        Why would Lawson write a book on The Amazon
        He knows even less about that he does about being a Conservative

    3. The other day The Spectator published a column suggesting there was a third approach to the simplistic contradiction between the COPpers and the deniers. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-the-media-scrutinising-the-cost-of-net-zero-

      I actually have a lot of time for Patrick O’Flynn, being the thoughtful end of the old UKIP. I concur with many of his political stands.

      I accept that there is serious man-made disruption to the world’s climate that could well be turning out to be catastrophic. If anything, I think it has been underplayed, and that temporary natural mitigations are holding back the worst for now. In that respect, I am roughly on the same sheet as Greta Thunberg, and fear for the pathetic, blustering ad hominems coming out from her opponents, not least from nottler friends here.

      There is a question though as to whether we are doing the right thing about it, and here I tend to side with the very same people I so vociferously argue with in my last paragraph. Unilateral “Net Zero” not only wrecks our economy, I find it profoundly counterproductive, since it rewards those most willing to do their worst for the world, such as China, Brazil, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

      Air source heat pumps do not work, and there is no point in replacing a technology that works with one that doesn’t, however well the intentions are. If we must endeavour to minimise emissions of carbon dioxide to offset the mass destruction of the world’s forests by humanity, then the only technology ready and capable of doing the heavy lifting to maintain us in the style to which we are accustomed is nuclear. So it’s about time we made it safe enough to withstand any tsumami or breakdown of civilisation that might occur in the next 10,000 years.

      The biggest challenge is energy storage, and batteries so far are way off being adequate for the task. Again, more work is required, and probably more imagination and ingenuity.

      For example – during a heat wave, I have taken to hosing down the road outside my cottage as an alternative to watering the roses. The idea is that the latent heat of evaporation stops the road giving off quite so much heat, making it easier to sleep at night. The water vapour coming off also reduces the stress on vegetation all around, reducing their need to pump up quite so much moisture to the leaves, depleting ground reserves which eventually dry out the roots and kill the plant. It is an indirect approach that conventional, narrow minds might not be able to understand.

      I remember one pioneer on ‘Grand Designs’ whose hobby was thermodynamics, used excess energy generated from solar panels on his roof in summer to pump heat deep underground to use it as a long-term storage heater on a three-year cycle. He then used ground source heat pump to use this heat to stabilise his home to a comfortable temperature all year round, but which only reached optimum efficiency after three years. It was an interesting experiment and one which scientists and engineers should study and see if they can improve on.

      Practically, not many of us have access to the amount of land that can take a ground source heat pump, nor the willingness or the money to do the huge groundworks required, but that’s no reason why it cannot be adopted in the right circumstances.

      I noticed that the anarchists who purport to be “Green” and gluing themselves to motorways swapped their old name “Extinction Rebellion” for “Insulate Britain”. Both are worthy causes, although I might suggest that these activists may be hypocrites and in practice care about neither.

      Nevertheless, much as paying off the mortgage is far better a way to invest spare money than buying the latest SUV to “save the planet”, using less energy whilst maintaining the same degree of comfort is, I would have thought, a no-brainer and constrained only by the cost of insulating an old draughty home reliant on good ventilation and of course the conflicts of interest from professionals out to make a fast buck for themselves at our expense.

      1. It’s hard to take seriously anyone who opens with a line like this:
        “I accept that there is serious man-made disruption to the world’s climate that could well be turning out to be catastrophic.”

        1. Closed minds are sometimes like a seized-up door and need considerable effort to creak open. A bit of 3-in-1 on the hinges might help.

          3. I was unkind to O’Flynn. I realise now that he didn’t write the words I attributed to him. You did and in doing so rather exaggerated what he wrote even though his piece does include the lines “…too many right-wing people remain wedded, almost as an article of faith, to the idea that man-made climate change is a total fiction…” and “…outright deniers of man-made climate change.”

            I should have realised the sentiments were yours. I doubt very much that O’Flynn would hose the road to save his roses.

          4. O’Flynn is being a sceptic, as all good scientists should be.

            He ought to try watering the road though. I look forward to my experiment being repeated and hopefully verified.

        2. There may well be a more immediate catastrophe waiting down the line if you saw Rose’s post regarding La Palma that will certainly put ‘covid’ and ‘climate change’ in the shade. I feel nature is about to show who is really the boss in town. Those living on the east coast should have a bag packed and a tank full of fuel.

          2. ‘ Afternoon, Mum, whilst the East Coastal Area (East Anglia) is generally low-lying – far from flat, get on a bicycle and you’ll find that’s true – geographically, given the position of the Canaries, it is America’s East Coast, Gibraltar, South-West Spain,Portugal’s and France’s West Coasts and, maybe, England’s South-West Coast that will be most affected.

          3. Yes, the south-west will be affected, the drowned river valleys and low lying surrounding land, but water will slosh (non-geographical term) our island home somewhat.

          4. Strangely the BBC very rarely reports the goings-on at La Palma.

            However other news channels are available. Al Jazeera regularly reports on Cumbre Vieja, and Sky News managed

            to report on it without blaming Brexit.

          8. Yes Bob, however if Cumbre Vieja gets really worked up we can expect a Tsunami in the Atlantic, which

            in our opinion is really, really important.

            Fortunately we won’t be affected too much because the British government, remembering Fukushima, made

            sure that they never built any power stations near the sea.

        4. The planet warms and cools cyclically under the influence of the sun. Proper climate scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide increases 800 years after a warming period. Mankind certainly did not influence the medieval warming period.

      2. Jeremy, what are these ‘temporary natural mitigations are holding back the worst for now.‘?

        1. The absorption of carbon dioxide by the sea comes immediately to mind. The consequent acidification of the oceans may tip the balance of species away from shellfish and coral and towards the jellyfish, which appreciate more acidic conditions.

          The one I suspect (and which has not been properly investigated by scientists) is that long-term geological cycles were leading us towards a mini ice age, with a natural cooling offsetting warming effects through industrialisation and development.

          This may well support the argument by opponents of the Global Warming Theory that we have less to fear in reality for now. Supporters of the Theory suggest that feedback effects are already beginning to overwhelm any natural cooling with unknown consequences over the next century.

          Who is right? Anyone’s guess really, but not pretty if the guess is wrong either way.

          2. I do agree that no one knows which way climate change will go and think that current plans might do more harm than good as well as being financially devastating.

    4. What on earth makes folk think Boris will give us the choice! He’ll force the nonsense on us without discussion or interaction. It will simply be made law, and at a stroke, we will be impoverished. He won’t care.

      1. Yet the twerps are going gungho on this climate change thing .

        At least the EU kept an eye on this lazy lot , years ago .

        The European commission has decided to take legal action because of the threat to human health and to the marine environment posed by untreated water.

        The commission alleges that the UK is in breach of a 1991 urban waste water directive that requires treatment of sewage before discharge in order to have clean rivers, seas and lakes.

        Member states signed up to put in place adequate waste water collecting systems and treatment facilities for large towns and cities by the end of 2000.

        The EU’s environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said: “More attention needs to be paid to upgrading collecting systems to ensure full compliance with EU legislation on waste water treatment. Such investment will bring enormous benefits in terms of improving the quality of the environment.”

        Campaigners say the equivalent of 4,000 Olympic swimming pools of mixed rainwater and untreated sewage were pumped into the river between January and August this year, with the waste taking almost three months to disperse.

        “The dumping of raw sewage into the Thames is something that happened in the Victorian era. It certainly should not be happening in the 21st century in one of the most developed capital cities in the world,” he said.

        “If the UK government had taken the issue seriously and acted earlier, this action by the European commission could have been totally avoided.”

        The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was unable to comment on the specifics of the case.

        A spokesman said: “We remain confident that water quality in the UK is at a consistently high level. We’ve invested massively in improvements to overflows under the EU’s urban waste water directive. £2.5bn has been spent on improvements in England and Wales since 1989 and a further £1bn is planned for work to combined sewage outlets, as well as an additional £2.6bn for the Thames Tideway project.”

        The EU is also taking action over storm water overflows on the seafront at Whitburn, Sunderland.

        Hélène Mulholland
        Fri 9 Oct 2009 12.01 BST https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/09/river-thames-pollution-european-union

        1. This for us to decide not the EU and it is up to the people to vote in those that will carry out their wishes.

          1. Morning, Johnny
            “… vote in those that will carry out their wishes.”
            I wonder who that might be? The politicians available so far seem only to do what they want.

        2. No, the EU did’t keep an eye on it, it regulated and controlled to the nth degree. It prevented us doing a lot we needed to – lie build reservoirs.

          We have a water authority. We have a rivers authority. Where are they? What are they doing about this?

          Bugger all except complaining about Brexit, as now they have to get off their backsides and enforce the law.

    3. What counts as raw sewage? I know a few former farm workers’ cottages that still have the old runaway down an open ditch for a few hundred yards into the river. They’re several miles off any mains sewage system, and don’t have big enough gardens to install their own.

    4. My MP, the supremely useless Gillian Keegan is on the list. Have her number, it consists of crawling up the powers that be’s fundament to get up the greasy pole. Another psychopath without principles. Pro the Green agenda, pro EU, and thinks we are to stupid to have a say in such things because she is an international business woman who along with her multimillionaire husband also does international business. Both of them are wiser than all the people of West Sussex who really should shut up and let her and the “intellects” of Westminster get on with it. She was parachuted in to this seat because it a safe Tory constituency. But she is a Northerner with no connection to us at all.

      1. As is mine, the useless Dr Dan Poulter who should know better about typhoid et al.

        I shan’t be voting for him.

    5. I didn’t see our MP on either list i’ll have another look.
      But those tho voted in favour are absolutely disgusting creatures.
      But i read that after their recent price rises water companies have enough extra money to pay the fines for polluting the rivers.
      Let alone all the leaks that still happen, because they have never got on top of the old rusted and rotting pipework. Millions of gallons of drinking water end up being wasted.

  23. A couple of BTL Comments:-

    Simon Brown
    23 Oct 2021 8:51AM
    The defeatist and rather fatuous sound bite “Save the NHS” is designed simply to manage expectations i.e. the NHS will undoubtedly fail, aleardy has, but by imploring the entire population to “Save the NHS” its inevitabe failure can be blamed on the selfish population who failed to “Save the NHS”.

    Flag12UnlikeReply

    Maisie Surrey
    23 Oct 2021 9:15AM
    @SimonBrown

    It is not our job to save the NHS and I think, hope, that if the NHS and the Government rely once again on people sacrificing their own lives for the NHS they will be sadly disappointed.

    Locking down this country should have been a one off. Lockdowns are not benign, lockdowns kill, evidenced by the 70,000 excess deaths in the home and the 5 million plus collateral damage currently languishing on the NHS waiting list. Lockdowns must NEVER be the go to. Both the NHS and the Government needs to be told this very firmly right here and now.

    I want to see journalists doing a real job once again instead of parroting government propaganda, as they have done for the past 18 months.

    Instead of inciting panic and fear and encouraging the walking fearful to start calling for unnecessary restrictions, how about asking some pertinent questions of both the Government and the NHS?

    Where is the planning for extra beds and wards? Is their a plan to designate covid only hospitals so that the rest of the NHS can operate normally?

    The country and the NHS cannot afford to close up shop again. We have had 18 months of covid. We know it does discriminate, we know that 99.8% of people will survive it. Therefore there is no need to put any restrictions on people who are healthy. Put in place provision for those who want to shield and let the rest of us decide our own risk and get on with living life normally.

    And for those pitiful people who keep calling for mandatory masks. They do NOT protect you from a virus. It even says so on the packet of those environmentally damaging blue ones. They are a comfort blanket for some and a symbol of fear used by the Government. You are free to wear one if you want. You do not need the Government to tell you to!

    And there is certainly no justification whatsoever for vaccine passports. We as a free and democratic country do not want to go down the road to totalitarianism.

    2. The “pitiful” people were very much in evidence in Cambridge yesterday. Throughout the Museum. In many shops – but not, oddly enough, many in John Lewis.

      1. I cannot use John Lewis, for two reasons

        1. I do not have a dress or a pinafore

        2 My beard gets in the way of the lipstck

      2. Cambridge and the outer reaches are full of pitiful people. Remainer territory, people full of fear. Dare not let go of Nursey’s hand (EU) and need the security of their comfort blankies (their masks). The best way of dealing with with ‘hate stares’ is to focus upon the distance, be oblivious and make it a wasted effort on their part, or a huge smile to disconcert them…. how dare you be so confident without your mask! as it reveals their weakness and insecurities to themselves.

          1. Excellent. They are so zombified in this neck of the woods, they need to be shaken out of their complacency. When I first went maskless – after a week or so I had decided it was all ridiculous – I was terrified of public reaction so I employed tactic (1) but now it’s tactic (2) with a huge smile wrapped around my face so that everyone can see what they are missing by being so stupidly fearful.

    1. 340435+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      I also believe they have installed them in parliament and feed them choice halal fodder via the parliamentary canteen, oath taking is also in play via the koran.

      1. 340435+ up ticks,
        BB2,
        Agreed, many of us have been averse on four fronts as in the lab/lib/con/ & electorate in many cases.

  25. ‘White privilege’ should not be taught in schools as fact, says Nadhim Zahawi
    Social justice can be explained in a ‘balanced, factual’ way, says Education Secretary, but partisan political views must not be promoted

    It should say partisan political views must not be promoted, by any race, colour or creed

    I look forward to Mr Nadhim Zahawi lecturing the inhabitants of :

    Saudi Arabia that Arab privilege’ should not be taught in schools as fact”

    China That Chinese privilege’ should not be taught in schools as fact”

    Russia That Russian privilege’ should not be taught in schools as fact”

    The irony of it all, is of course, though he was born in Baghdad, he has been he has been elected, as a Conservative MP,
    for a constituency, ( that is not (yet) third world populated) and made a Minister in the UK, which used to be a White Country.

    I wonder how many white people are in the Iranian Government.
    I would also love him to point out what privelleges the whites are supposed to possess.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/21/white-privilege-should-not-taught-schools-fact-says-nadhim-zahawi/

    1. It would be nice, if some white actors could get employment, by taking part in TV commercials or photo shoots,
      But o course the ones employed now are there through Black Privelege, a completly different matter, of course

          2. Oi! Bill! You cannot get away with the fat shaming, no more! I is reportin’ you to that well known bully, Gordon Ramsey!

    2. The fact that only a non white person can criticise this stuff is proof that it’s taken over.

    3. Much as I would like to picture Albion as “White Country”, the green and pleasant land i watch outside my window when it is being rained on is only really white during a blizzard, which doesn’t occur often enough to justify the trains being late.

        1. Anyone wanting to pull a statue down should be required to read about it’s history, going back generations.

          Then they should be shot.

      3. How long before she drops her knickers for him?
        If she hasn’t done that already of course.

      4. She must have misinterpreted when she heard he is such a dick. It’s a bit like the old Clinton Lewinsky episode when she miss read the memo he left on his desk “Hold my calls and sack my cook”.

  26. Maddening. I am in the middle of making a loaf. The yeast simply didn’t start. Obviously stale. So opened new packet and off we jolly well went. Then realised that – in my haste – I had used a tiny fraction too little liquid….

    So – I expect a brick….though I may try to add some more water when I do the first knock down.

    You’ll be glad to know that it is not a white privileged loaf – but a loaf of colour. Wholemeal. I wonder if that is some sort of insult….??

    1. I have the recipe blutacked to the side of the fridge.

      Crucially, it is important to heat the water to tepid. About 40ºC is ideal.

      The recipe says to use dried skimmed milk, but then it was written for Americans, whose own fresh milk is reputed to taste of vomit (which is why Hersheys milk chocolate tastes as it does).

      I am somewhat fancy about “sugar”. White granulated seems a bit sacrilegious when I took such pains to acquire organic wholemeal flour. So I try a mix of maple syrup, cheap honey (the sort they use to give bears a treat in zoos) and molasses brown sugar, which turns it to a respectable unprivileged hue.

      They also suggest throwing in a bit of Vitamin C tablet with the yeast. Apparently it keeps it healthy. I use the effervescent ones from WIlko, but they give a slight ersatz orange hint to the taste, reminding one of E numbers.

      I keep my yeast in the freezer, but let the spoonful measured out warm up a little at room temperature before putting it in the mix.

      1. American milk is just as good as British milk but skimmed milk is popular over there, I always brought regular whole milk . Hershey’s, on the other hand, is junk. Any American that tries anything else never eats Hershey’s again. Give them a bit of Cadbury’s Chocolate and they practically swoon. However, the best is Ghirardelli chocolate which I don’t think you can get in the UK.

        1. An old and distinguished company from San Francisco. It was first taken over in 1963, and is now owned by Lindt, a Swiss chocolate company whose products are widely sold here.

          I buy my chocolate in Lidl or Aldi – German budget supermarkets whose chocolate is superb. Germans have a great reverence for good chocolate. Particularly fine is the 85% dark chocolate from Lidl, made from Ecuadorian Arriba beans. Even their milk chocolate contains as much cocoa as Cadbury’s plain.

          1. There is a Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco with a store run by Ghirardelli. Used to go there to stock up my chocolate stash. Also, near by, is a bakery that makes San Francisco sour dough bread. Also a favourite of mine but another thing that you can’t get in the UK. French sour dough is not the same and, I think, not as good.

          3. France does not strike me as the obvious place in Europe to find sour dough bread. Wouldn’t Germany or Poland be better?

          4. I was under the impression that France was supposed to be the centre for sourdough bread. Or is that the typical culinary egocentricity of the French?

          5. I once, in a hurry, used Bournville for cooking.
            I was appalled; I had become used to the far higher grade chocolate from Lidl and Aldi.

          6. Bournville is only 52% as far as I remember. The plain chocs from the German supermarkets will be over 70%. I eat them too – around four bars a week. They are very useful for keeping me awake and alert at work. But being so strong, I can’t eat too much. Give me a bar of milk chocolate and I find it hard to stop until it’s gone! So I stick to strong plain.

    2. I thought the general rule for anything that was vaguely health was that it was supposed to be grim, especially wholemeal anything which should be of sufficient density to assault a policeman in an anti-nuclear rally.

      1. Yep – I threw the first yeast mix away and opened a new packet (I used dried).

        Seems OK – and the loaf will prolly be OK, too – even though it didn’t rise as much as I like. Will be out of t’oven in 12 minutes!

  27. Morning all! Literally a dark day here in West Sussex, not just gloomy, but no rain. But I have the sun in my heart trala! And all that guff.

    I see in the Daily Mail that John Humphry’s is not happy with his new pump: “JOHN HUMPHRYS: My heat pump has me left in the cold… but I’m VERY hot and bothered about the PM’s eco-jollity”. Of course the PC BBC parasite does not drew the obvious conclusion, frack and nuclear.https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10121865/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-heat-pump-left-cold-Im-hot-bothered-PM.html

    And, last night. I came across this and watched. It is about how the government/establishment is lying to us and twisting reality to suit themselves, as if we were stupid and could not understand that we know what they are doing. Perhaps instead of spending outrageous amounts of money on ‘focus groups’ they could read sites like this one and get an idea of what real people think of them. Anyway, this video is well worth listening to and the title says it all really: “Britain: A Land Without Truth.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRWet-RQUnE&list=TLPQMjIxMDIwMjHwFPMi0uWJoQ&index=30

    1. I hope that they could install & commission new nuclear facilities quicker than Hinckley Point “C”.
      My first real job as an Engineer was on the safety case for it, and I’m now 60… so, a duration of some 35 years, and it’s not operating yet.

      1. Perhaps you can explain. Why can’t they make small ones? As someone pointed out the other day, they have small reactors in submarines. Do they, because of complexity, take as long as large reactors to build, or what? And, as a matter of curiosity. Do you know about Thorium reactors and what happened to that?

        1. I’m sure, Johnathan, that I’ve seen a recent article, which identifies that the Government has entered a contract with Rolls-Royce for miniature Nuclear Reactors.

          Maybe someone is waking up to the real probability of major and prolonged power-cuts before the EVs even get onto the road.

          1. I think you are right Nanny, now that you mention it. I can’t remember where I saw that either. I’ll search on the internet.

          3. The Chinese have miniature reactors, called Ling Long 1.

            They take one to a coal fired power station, unplug the furnace, and plug in the miniature reactor. Simples !

            Strangely, although this has been reported in the American media, we haven’t seen a single mention

            in the British MSM.

        2. I’d go for the same ones as used in nuclear submarines. Successful design, proven, easy to manufacture, so simple to operate that even a matelot can do it, compact… what’s not to like?

    2. Bright & Sunny after a dull grey start up here now.
      Just in for a mug of tea after some tidying up and bramble pulling up the “garden”.

    3. They don’t care, Jonathan. They are using green as a tax vehicle, a means of control to achieve an aim so utterly mindless, so ill conceived and pointless, so ruinously expensive that it could only come from the vanity, ego and hubris of spite.

  28. 340435+ up ticks,

    Look no further than the general ( he marched them up to the top of the hill ) chap

    Truth be told the likes of the real UKIP under patriotic leadership
    linked to Tommy Robinson as a non member party adviser was an United Kingdom asset, but subjected to a blitzkrieg of sh!te & treachery via those protecting their own party’s ( lib/lab/con) who consequently turned out to lead the field in treachery.

    https://twitter.com/AgainBraine/status/1451859215241318400

    1. Can’t have the truth cominng out. Can’t have an adult, rational discussion about a problem, can we?

      No, just shout diversity strength a bit more, scatter the embers of the border gates burned by Brown and Blair and ignore girls being raped, paedophilia, stabbings, mutilation, systemic corruption, terrorism, the slaughter of kids at a concert.

      Destroy our culture and everything beautiful. Just override it with foreign, wasters, dross, gimmigrants.

      2. 340435+ up ticks,
        Morning W,
        Lets not forget the fee paying electorate in
        compliance, again,again,& again.

    2. 340435+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      The “nige” chap in regards to anything islamic is on par with Andy Capp and the labour exchange.

      1. He’s a coward that doesn’t want to jeopardise his cosy existence with the establishment. He’s their ‘weather vane’ to see which way the wind blows. That’s why they pretend to keep their distance from him, they don’t want him seen as establishment and neither does he, it would ruin his scam. But his guest list on GB News makes it perfectly clear what camp he is in.

        1. 340435+ up ticks,
          Afternoon JR,
          On reflection I had him pegged as a tory coxswain when UKIP leader he was backing
          bolton, when we went to Birmingham and voted bolton out Batten in, nige was most displeased.
          I believe bolton was the farage conduit.

          What he done to Batten and the membership that had given him a platform for years was unforgivable.

          On reflection I had him as a tory coxswain

  29. BBC is awash with talk that Laura Kuensberg is giving up her role as BBC Political editor and transferring to BBC Radio 4 News Today programme as presenter.
    Daily Telegraph

      1. They must have successfully crossed a pig with a chimpanzee – after removing any trace of cerebral tissue.

      2. If it is like cbc you can guarantee that no white male will be in the role.

        It must be time for some black (of one shade or other), lesbian believer in white privilege to take the lead role.

    4. Even more reason to avoid Today. It’s bad enough now, but I’m not sure it’s big enough to hold Laura Kuenssberg’s ego.

      1. Never listen to it and will just be glad that the K**tsberg will not be yammering from the TV anymore.

        Had to put up with her curled lip whenever Best Beloved had BBC News on – I generally left the room.

  30. Distraught Alec Baldwin says his ‘heart is broken’ after accidentally killing cinematographer. 22 October 2021.

    A distraught Alec Baldwin said on Friday there are ‘no words to convey his shock and sadness’ after accidentally shooting and killing the female cinematographer on the set of his new movie Rust, and that he was cooperating fully with the police investigation into what happened.

    The very first lesson that I was taught about firearms; this before I had even picked one up; was never to point one at anyone, let alone discharge it, regardless of whether I thought it empty or even useless. In my view Baldwin is as responsible as whatever clown loaded it!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10118665/Rust-movie-set-starring-Alec-Baldwin-LOCKED-New-Mexico.html

    1. Young Algernon, the Doctor’s Son,
      Was playing with a Loaded Gun.
      He pointed it towards his Sister,
      Aimed very carefully, but
      Missed her!
      His Father, who was standing near,
      The Loud Explosion chanced to Hear,
      And reprimanded Algernon
      For playing with a Loaded Gun.

      [Hilaire Belloc]

    2. Familiarity breeds contempt. Yes, Baldwin is just as responsible as whoever loaded it. The interesting aspect to this is: who loaded it and why?

      1. Afternoon Poppies Mama. All sorts of reasons cross my mind, most of them of Agatha Christie like complexity. Has Baldwin committed the perfect murder or has some shadowy figure arranged the end of a lover, or perhaps even a movie and blamed it on some one else. The loading was certainly intentional!

          1. What was needed was a Hercule Poirot or Minty Smade on set to expose the villains in a thrilling dénouement to the movie!

      3. Usually there are props people looking after props. When firearms are involved it is usually a qualified gun handler. Apart from the physical risks, film productions require to be insured, and risk assessments are made. Insurers require high standards in order that they don’t have to pay out. Why was the gun pointed at a cinematographer?
        I too learned never to point gun at anyone. Twice in my young life I have taken a gun from the hands of someone who had not been taught the lesson.

        1. The lesson re pointing a gun, learned in childhood and reinforced in the Royal Air Force during GDT (Ground Defence Training) with Lee Enfield .303 and Bren Gun.

      5. …and why did he just fire it, without not pointing it at anyone? He wasn’t thinking, that’s the problem, he wasn’t concentrating on the gun. LIkely was playfully waving it around and pulled the trigger, as you do… and some poor lass is dead, and he’s deep in the shit and mentally scarred.

          1. Unthinking behaviour whilst attention elsewhere.
            In a shooting club I was a member of in the UK, one member used to load his pistol with a used cartridge case to ease springs before putting the gun away. He’d put in the empty case, point the gun at the ceiling, and click. Except, one day when talking, he loaded the empty case, pointed the gun at the ceiling, and BANG! He’d mistakenly loaded a live round… as happens when brain fade & firearme get mixed.

    3. And on picking it up, to personally clear it, not rely on what anyone else sasid or did.
      Bizarrely, unattended firearms grow cartridges. Dunno how it happens, but it’s a proven fact. Just ask Mr Baldwin.

    4. Am I the only person who had never heard of Alec Baldwin until today when the Mail devoted half its space to accounts of a workplace accident somewhere abroad?

      1. I think, BB2, that a lot of people, me included, confused him with a Coronation Street character called Mike Baldwin.

        I used to have to be aware of it, when 1st Wife watched, religiously.

      2. I thought he was the chap who wrote ‘Roots’.
        But the photo showed someone who was hideously white.

    5. Oddly enough, I read an article in my local rag just now about a 13-year old boy actor who was accidentally killed when someone dropped a prop gun on stage in the 1840s. The wadding hit him in the heart and killed him instantly. Seems history repeats itself.

        2. You want two I’s on Dannii, please. We’re marrying next year. Neither she nor the wife know this though.

          And admittedly, I’ve said this every year.

        1. I spent many happy hours at school drawing in my jotters. Fantastical towers and factories, resembling (very slightly) Neuschwanstein*, were kept busy in order to produce lead shot for my imaginary army …
          Anyway, maths, French, geography, science. were eased along by those dreamlike hours.

          *I had never heard of Neuschwanstein then. I did not see it until earlier this century when we were driving along the “Romantic Road”in Germany.

          1. There was probably more ingenuity and invention expressed in jotters than ever crossed the pages of an Exercise Book!

          2. When we needed a new ‘rough book’ we had to take it to the school secretary before you were issued a new one.
            She would riffle through, check the thickness … and then, reluctantly gave you a new exercise book. Depending on who needed a new one, it was probably one of the most interesting jobs in her working day.

          3. Yes, there are only so many time you can remove the front/back page before the jotter becomes suspiciously thin.
            Please see the film “Les Quatre Cents Coups” for detailed instruction.

          4. Yes, there are only so many time you can remove the front/back page before the jotter becomes suspiciously thin.
            Please see the film “Les Quatre Cents Coups” for detailed instruction.

          5. We had to have ours signed by a master, after being checked. I was very popular for being able to forge one of their signatures.

          6. Snap… and in our case, if you hadn’t written up to the edge of the paper, or unnecessarily skipped a line, you got a black mark for waste… :-((

          8. There was probably more ingenuity and invention expressed in jotters than ever crossed the pages of an Exercise Book!

      2. Oops… notreaddownery strikes again… Sorry, HP, my new post just agreed with you.

        1. No worries. I like it when people agree with me. It’s like a Red Letter Day, or a Blue Moon

        2. Long ago and far away, the company for whom I was working made a hash of the pricing for a major national customer. Many products wrongly priced for a number of weeks. As the customer HQ was in my bailiwick I was given the job of calculating the correct prices for the many thousands of invoices and adjusting the price accordingly to the satisfaction of the customer. (Our Head Office pricing department were too busy to correct their errors!). The stack of copy invoices was over six feet high. I phoned our customer. I was armed with the knowledge that his department (I.e his secretary) would have to check all my team’s calculations and go through every invoice themselves.
          I suggested that I would take one inch of invoices and work them through in detail to determine the amount owing. I would then multiply that financial figure by the height in inches of the stack of invoices and offer that as the settlement amount. The customer agreed.
          It was done. The customer was happy. I think my financial director had a fit when he found out – but he had not offered his services to do the sums.

          1. Yonks ago we gained a contract as we’d pitched a price of £1,600.

            Every other group pitched 1.6M.

        3. Long ago and far away, the company for whom I was working made a hash of the pricing for a major national customer. Many products wrongly priced for a number of weeks. As the customer HQ was in my bailiwick I was given the job of calculating the correct prices for the many thousands of invoices and adjusting the price accordingly to the satisfaction of the customer. (Our Head Office pricing department were too busy to correct their errors!). The stack of copy invoices was over six feet high. I phoned our customer. I was armed with the knowledge that his department (I.e his secretary) would have to check all my team’s calculations and go through every invoice themselves.
          I suggested that I would take one inch of invoices and work them through in detail to determine the amount owing. I would then multiply that financial figure by the height in inches of the stack of invoices and offer that as the settlement amount. The customer agreed.
          It was done. The customer was happy. I think my financial director had a fit when he found out – but he had not offered his services to do the sums.

    6. Made by melting gold and dropping it in a tiny stream from a height into water.
      That’s how they make lead shot, so why not? Back then, they weren’t stupid.

        1. Yes, it works well as long as you have a steady, even stream of molten metal. As with lead shot.

          1. In a yurt – 2,300 years back? It is the “steady stream” that I wonder about.

            But – looking at their other work – they were certainly extremely skilled.

    1. What a bizarre posture. He looks as though he is grasping a steering wheel and doesn’t know where he is. And this is the leader of the ‘Free World’. How embarrassing.

      1. I wonder if it’s a symptom of what he is suffering from. He’s an old man and is very stiff in his limbs. He really should be in a bath chair with a blanket for comfort and not pretending to be POTUS.

  37. 340435+ up ticks,

    May one ask,
    Will this apply to such places as rotherham,rochdale, oxford etc,etc,etc,

    Parents who are occasionally abrupt with their children may be guilty of ‘mild neglect’, says NSPCC
    Parents who fall into the category of ‘mild neglect’ may warrant a ‘targeted short-term intervention’ by the local authority or agency

    1. That may be too difficult for JumBojo to understand or the faux scientists he ‘believes’,

    2. If Noodles had added a comma after “retired nurse” I wouldn’t have spent so much time scratching my head. (I wasn’t at all clear who Dr Fauci was.)

      1. Americans, tch, can’t speak, pronounce, write grammatically, or punctuate and we still look to them for world leadership. Why?

        1. Speak for yourself, Tom. With “that fella from across the pond” (c.f. “that fella down under”) in “charge”, the USA has lost all claim to respect. And in any case, the 2020 elections were, in my opinion, a fraud.

  40. Combi boilers heat water directly from the mains when you turn on a tap, so you dont need a hot water storage cylinder or a cold water storage tank in the roof space. Hot water is generated by raising the temperature of the incoming ground water by a certain (limited) amount as it enters the home rather than being heated to a specific temperature and then stored in a cylinder.

    This simple fact destroys the whole argument that underlies the scientific principles of saving the planet by sucking local heat out of it. We should all be able to understand by now that storing energy as electrical in batteries or thermal as in AGAs is a way of delivering vast amounts of power over a short period of time. Just put an AGA kettle on an AGA hot plate and you can understand why heating water in a 3kW electric kettle is far slower.

    The idea of scrapping gas boilers and replacing them with heat pumps is on the face of it a good idea that is however destroyed through the need for energy storage. The idea is not sustainable if it means having to install a thermal energy storage unit in the form of a large water tank. It is a regressive step particularly for all those who have just ripped out their hot water tank to get more living space or install a combi boiler.

    Furthermore, what’s the point of sucking the heat outside your home only to try and heat the now cooled incoming air/groundwater that you now need to heat up even more to provide acceptable hot water and central heating?

    1. and, as bonus, you get given back a room that is big enough to use as a wardrobe or shower

      1. Don’t forget you can now also take out your last ditch method of providing hot water and heat in your home by taking out your redundant fireplace and chimney stack.

      2. What if you haven’t got that room in the first place? What if you’re not blessed with a basement, loft or a mass of outdoor space?

        The nutcase greens are fools, and need to be stopped.

    1. In the good old days the skipper was the only one at the toss. Now it seems they are all tossers….

    3. Perhaps us Whities could devise a salute to Honour Sir David Amess, the murdered MP, before sporting events take place

      It could be as simple a thing as waving at the crowd, in unision, with Right Hands,
      or

      Singing Land of Hope and Glory

      If BAMEs in our teams did not join in to honour an MP, murdered by a man of Somali extraction, we should rightfully advise
      our teams NOT to Take the Knee for BLM.

      Yes,I know that I am being silly in suggesting such a course of action

      1. Apparently he supported the CMC in promoting the leisure industry in Parliament. He was mentioned at the AGM and we stood for a minute to honour his memory, BUT the mealy-mouthed Chairman merely said we’d lost him – no, mate, he was MURDERED and by a muslim.

    4. I have given up supporting all England teams which kowtow to this racist, anti-white ideology

      Since more and more people in sport are becoming progressively obsessed by money we should stop supporting them in any way.

    2. Don’t be selfish and restrict the discussion to Islam in the UK. The role of Islam throughout the ntire western world needs to be looked at.

      Canada, the US and Australia really need to look, we depend on immigration but is the influx of adherents to the religion of peace a blessing or a curse?

      I won’t hold my breath waiting for the north American leaders to start the discussion

      1. We, the UK, need to sort out what is happening here, in the UK.

        I leave it to Canada, The US and Australia to sort out their own internal policies.

      2. Many of the immigrants from that particular belief don’t work – especialy the wives. I’m simply saying what we should do – I don’t speak for others.

        People in other countries don’t like to be told what to do from outside.

    3. “The minimum level of tolerance is absolute zero...”

      …and can only be achieved by declaring Islam as a terrorist ideology and outlawing and deporting ALL Muslims.

    5. Needs to, but won’t. The state won’t permit it. It cannot permit open and fair discussion of the truth lest it conflict with their agenda.

  43. The anatomy of a media smear. Spiked 23 October 2021.

    Why did the media spread falsehoods about those pro-Chappelle counter-protesters?

    Protesters were standing outside Netflix’s offices in Los Gatos, California, busily complaining about Chappelle’s supposed bigotry, when they were joined by some unexpected guests. Comedians Vito Gesualdi and Dick Masterson turned up with placards that read ‘Jokes are funny’ and ‘We like Dave’.

    But that’s not how the Associated Press (AP) reported it. Its article about the protest featured a picture showing Gesualdi along with a misleading caption: ‘Comedian and vlogger Vito Gesualdi screams profanities as he engages with peaceful protesters begging him to leave.’ It was a stock caption, meaning that numerous other sites repeated its content verbatim.

    One can only wonder at the naiveté of someone who asks such a question! The MSM is literally devoid of any form of truth seeking. There are more lies than reality. You can take nothing on faith. All must be dissected, compared and analysed. This of course militates against the masses obtaining a reliable world view since most have neither the time nor the inclination to do so. There appear to be two options open, you can either join Nottl or believe absolutely nothing as a default position.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/22/the-anatomy-of-a-media-smear/

  44. The anatomy of a media smear. Spiked 23 October 2021.

    Why did the media spread falsehoods about those pro-Chappelle counter-protesters?

    Protesters were standing outside Netflix’s offices in Los Gatos, California, busily complaining about Chappelle’s supposed bigotry, when they were joined by some unexpected guests. Comedians Vito Gesualdi and Dick Masterson turned up with placards that read ‘Jokes are funny’ and ‘We like Dave’.

    But that’s not how the Associated Press (AP) reported it. Its article about the protest featured a picture showing Gesualdi along with a misleading caption: ‘Comedian and vlogger Vito Gesualdi screams profanities as he engages with peaceful protesters begging him to leave.’ It was a stock caption, meaning that numerous other sites repeated its content verbatim.

    One can only wonder at the naiveté of someone who asks such a question! The MSM is literally devoid of any form of truth seeking. There are more lies than reality. You can take nothing on faith. All must be dissected, compared and analysed. This of course militates against the masses obtaining a reliable world view since most have nether the time or inclination to do so. There appear to be two options open, you can either join Nottl or believe absolutely nothing as a default position.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/22/the-anatomy-of-a-media-smear/

    1. Took it for years, but it’s no longer funny, just partial and whingey. So we cancelled.

        3. You are completely correct.

          As soon as that odious little tick started promoting his own pet polititical prejudices (e.g.s anti- Brexit, anti-Conservative, pro Woke) he lost the ability to be an effective political satirist. In fact he is now so useless in this capacity that he should be sacked by the BBC and given no further work.

    2. Prince William appeared to put his grandmother’s health scare behind him and carried on as normal this week as he was spotted outside the Windsor Suite at Heathrow airport along with his wife the Duchess of Cambridge and their three children.

      William and Kate, both 39, appeared to travel from the airport with Prince George, eight, Princess Charlotte, six, and Prince Louis, three, from their Kensington Palace home in London.

      The royals were driven to the airport by Prince William in a blacked out Audi closely escorted by security and a nanny.

      Climate crisis , save the Planet, nah nah nah nah… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10122869/Prince-William-Kate-Middleton-spotted-outside-Heathrow-Airport-children.html

      2. I thought that Biggles Flies Undone was the title of one of W.E. John’s books?

        One of my best friends from my days at UEA developed a passion for collecting books and spent most of his weekends travelling around to book fairs. He finally succeeded in amassing a complete collection of first editions of the Biggles books which must be worth a fortune now. When he had replaced a book which was not a first edition with a first edition he occasionally gave the discarded book to my son, Christo, who has always been passionate about flying. Christo’s childhood ambition was to become a RAF pilot but sadly his eyesight was not good enough. So he decided to study Aerospace Engineering at university and is now a design engineer for an American aviation company. His great passion is now hang gliding and he and his fiancée spend most of their weekends going to club events.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e35a62ea2391eb85824d4680b5bcce438e6d0ca0157f4a942d5e54920e0d19a8.jpg

        1. That was a spoof title (I have all the titles bar Air Ace, which at thousands for a paperback is beyond my reach, although I have read the stories courtesy of a friend).

    5. I can’t stand that tosser Hislop.

      He is a regular BTL poster on The Grimes – spewing forth his sanctimonious, remainiac, eco-freak, leftie drivel…

      1. In that case, Bill, why send good money after bad – delete your Grimey subscription – I would.

          1. Each to his own, Bill, but I guess a very expensive crossword and more than a pound of flesh in blood pressure.

          4. Better to pay a mere £624 per annum.

            As I say, each to his own – I probably spend more per annum on alcohol.

    6. I subscribed for 25 years from 1985 but gave up when Hislop became the sneering establishment toady he has become.

    7. I started reading PE in my 6th form days, but in the run-up to the Brexit referendum of 2016 I became increasingly irritated by its Remainiac stance, so much so that I cancelled my subscription. I found also that it had mostly lost its ‘bite’ and was becoming a bit lame.

    2. However it had been shared 89 times and gained 174 comments before it was taken down.

      The Horror!

    3. I see the YP has drunk the KoolAid. ‘Black History is Our History’. Anyway, isn’t that cultural appropriation?

      2. I left them a message saying, in effect, “I see that ‘Black History is your History’

        I guess that means you’ve only been going since 1948.

        English history goes back more than 2,000 years.”

  50. Why I fear the Church of England will not survive for my children
    From bishops’ groupthink to a war on our heritage, the Church is exacerbating the cultural threats it faces
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/23/fear-church-england-will-not-survive-children/

    BTL

    I think that the main brief that Justin Welby was given when he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by David Cameron, his fellow Old Etonian, was to destroy the Church of England.

    Given the success he is having so far in fulfilling this brief, his appointment is proving to be by far the most successful of Cameron’s generally dire appointments.

  51. Ouch … Ouch … and Ouch again.

    From the Spekkie.

    “Somewhere in this production lies Shakespeare’s tragedy: Almeida’s Macbeth reviewed

    Macbeth

    Almeida, until 27 November

    “Yaël Farber’s Macbeth sets out to be a great work of art. The director crams the Almeida’s stage with suggestive props, glass panels, microphones, a wheelbarrow full of jackboots. The witches are not the usual vagrants or carbuncled mystics. These grim-looking ladies have expensive hairdos and nicely ironed shirts — like a panel of disgruntled academics at a tribunal.

    William Gaunt is a decrepit Duncan who looks ready to receive his telegram from the Queen. He can barely rise from his NHS wheelchair. But one wonders why this frail old chap had to be knifed to death? Much easier to smother him with a pillow and claim he expired naturally. Gaunt speaks with an English accent but the rest of his court are ranting Scotsmen who wear beards and identical combat fatigues. It’s hard to distinguish one from another.

    James McArdle (Macbeth) seems too nice to be a half-crazed warlord. Give him a little brewery to run in Shoreditch and he’d be fine. Saoirse Ronan (Lady Macbeth) wears a natty white catsuit and speaks her lines with a pleasant Irish brogue. At times she seems like a Ryanair stewardess stranded in a team-building exercise for angry Scottish dads. The production makes her role larger than Shakespeare intended and she witnesses the murder of Macduff’s family. This certainly helps to explain her mental collapse at the end but her death is presented as a glamorous and beautiful sacrifice. What for? She’s a bigger psycho than her husband.

    The director believes that Scotland was suffering from climate change in the 11th century. There’s an electric fan to keep the castle cool as temperatures rise around the world. Meanwhile the melting ice-caps have caused the moat to flood, and a shallow pool of water spreads inexorably across the stage during the action. Important speeches are accompanied by the sound of boots sploshing.

    And let’s not forget the music. It never stops. A soprano ululates into a microphone while a cellist saws at a wooden box. Banquo’s death wins the prize for the most over-produced scene of the year. The two murderers stab him in the guts while the singer moans and the cellist grinds. The three witches watch this atrocity from the rear of the stage, looking elegantly furious. To one side Macbeth and his wife canoodle in a shadowy castle corridor. The whole thing is as artful and antiseptic as a George Michael video.

    So much effort has been lavished on these pictorial details that the basics have been overlooked. Scene after scene is ruined because the male actors simply bawl and shriek at each other. It’s like watching road-rage footage. The scene in which Macduff learns of his family’s murder is one of the most psychologically acute portraits of bereavement ever written. But it needs variety of tone. Emun Elliott begins the scene yelling at top volume so he has no higher pitch of emotion to reach for. Instead he collapses, like a stricken rock star, choking on streams of spume and snot. A wonderful opportunity ruined by saliva.

    The play closes with an inexplicable gesture. An actress crosses the flooded stage and empties the wheelbarrow full of boots into the shallow water. Somewhere in this gallery of contrivances lies Shakespeare’s tragedy. But it’s hard to spot.”

    4. In other words, the Producer wishes to make a Political Statement on stage, but, lacking the intelligence and/or ability to write his own play, leeches of The Bard.

  52. That’s me gone for this dreary day. Grey clouds and chilly breeze all day. Hope it is better tomorrow.

    Have a jolly evening planning your cabinet re-shuffle.

    A demain.

  53. 340435+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    No Lockdown… For Now! Govt Tells Britons to Behave if They Want to Keep Freedoms

    What ever could be the “or else” alternative be.

  54. Seems like the budget is such good news it has been released early. Improvements in public transport to “level up” the North, ahem, nothing to do with the poor not being able to afford an EV to get to work of course. You will own nothing……

  55. Seems like the budget is such good news it has been released early. Improvements in public transport to “level up” the North, ahem, nothing to do with the poor not being able to afford an EV to get to work of course. You will own nothing……

  56. 340435+up ticks

    That is of small concern women and children what must be protected is the political fraternity.

    We would be in a tidy state as a nation without them.

  58. Just seen this linked on TCW:
    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/10/21/developing-countries-say-no-to-net-zero/
    Signed by countries including China.
    Scroll down to the bit highlighted in yellow – it is a petty grudge that we’ve already taken more than our fair share of fossil fuels, including “theirs” and should now accept full decarbonisation while they are fully entitled to carry on consuming!

    Leaving out the small fact that they consume using only products invented by us, like the internal combustion engine and generators.

  59. The Duke of Cambridge revealed that he lies awake at night worrying that world leaders and politicians are failing to do enough to stop climate change.
    He said: “I get outraged by the inaction.
    “That’s probably a bit of a cliché but that is what I get most troubled about.”

    https://www.express.co.uk/n…

    The royal couple were spotted with their children George, Charlotte, and Louis at Heathrow Airport.

      1. Just as long as the dickhead doesn’t have to stop flying private jets, driving massive cars and heating huhe homes. Otherwise, it would all be too, too much.
        What an arse.

    4. Well, at least he won’t be lying awake at night worrying about how he’s going to be able to afford to heat his house.

  60. Can anyone explain to me why in this ‘Climate Emergency’ due to anthropogenic global warming, Antarctica has just experienced its coldest winter since records began in 1957, because I’m fupted if I know?

      1. And there was me thinking that after a period of 50 years worth of weather in any particular region one could refer to it as the climate….

      2. Doubleplus that one. It is utter tripe. DCC McCormick needs to be remined her jobs is to catch criminals, not waffle managementy bullturds.

          2. It kinda puts the COPout 29 into perspective! How on earth do these nutters think we can influence or control nature?

      1. A lot of folk in the US are hoping that if or when the wave strikes it will overwhelm Washington DC……

  65. Some funnies for Saturday night:
    1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
    2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
    3. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.
    4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
    5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
    6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
    7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
    8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
    9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
    10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
    11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
    12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: ‘You stay; I’ll go on a head.’
    13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
    14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
    15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
    16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
    17. A backward poet writes inverse.
    18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
    19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
    20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine .
    21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’
    22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’
    23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
    24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’ The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
    25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

  67. Just watched Lancaster 80th Birthday
    Curates egg,some very good stuff with the odd wokist dig about “despicable” war crimes,they just can’t help themselves can they…..

    1. We recently went to see Just Jane, a Lancaster go for one of its’ Three Times A Day taxi

      1. I’ve been to East Kirkby when she’s been out of the hangar and running up her engines. One Merlin sends thrills down one’s spine, but four Merlins are amazing.

    2. I’ve recorded that. Still to watch it, but I did notice in the blurb a bit about “diversity”. I presumed they didn’t mean the Aussies, Canucks and Kiwis who made up the bulk of non-British, but the odd Caribbean.

  68. I’m just listening to Mark Crispin Miller on the Delingpod.
    At 1 hour 3 minutes, he recalls the story of the couple who died after drinking fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine in the US – you may remember, that this story was used to smear Trump and discredit HCQ as a covid treatment.

    The man died, the wife survived. According the Crispin Miller, she was later arrested for murdering her husband!!
    That’s how bent the mainstream media are.

    1. Mark
      @markpfc
      ·
      11h
      Replying to
      @StephenMorganMP

      @portsmouthnews
      and 9 others
      Our water companies are not Britsh either they are owned by 8 foreign companies.
      You don’t have to make it illegal to dump, just make payments of share dividends illegal when they dump and hold directors criminally liable

    2. There have been several instances of Cryptosporidium in my area over the last 10 years from tap water.

  70. Evening, all. I suspect the delivery of jabs has left the vulnerable in a bad place, regardless of competence.

      2. I’m fine, thanks, but Mungo doesn’t belong to me 🙂 Oscar wasn’t well yesterday and had to go to the vet. He’s on Loxicon (it’s Metacam at probably twice the price of the generic). He does seem calmer today and he didn’t wake me up every hour to hour and a half last night, which was an improvement. He has cost me more in vet’s fees in less than five months than Charlie did in seventeen years!

        1. I have no idea if this is right or wrong but have you tried feeding him a big beef bone with meat on it? I know it sends my little dog into a stupor and when she wakes up she gets a lot of exercise in trying to hide the remnants from me.

          1. He gets bones and a ball in which treats are hidden (and which sends him into a frenzy rolling it around to make the treats fall out), which tire him out. He had some inflammation which needed a pain killer and then a daily dose of Metacam.

          2. I don’t know if you know but turmeric and curcumin is supposed to help. And not just for dogs.

          5. Yes, but I’d probably be able to leap on instead of climbing up a set of steps if it worked!

          7. It’s not quite so painful when I ride, thanks for the enquiry. Walking is still not pain-free and when I have to walk after I’ve been sitting I’m like a cripple. Still, I have a telephone consultation from the Pain Management Team on Bonfire Night, so I’m sure that will cure the problem (not!).

          8. That’s good! I’m sure the consultation will be just what you need. Sounds as though you need to do more riding and less walking.

          9. As it’s painful, I need to do less driving, too, but Bojo is working on that – petrol has gone up 8ppl in the last couple of weeks. 🙁

          10. Every time I go past our usual filling station it’s gone up a bit more. We’ve got some heating oil coming next week and that will be more too.

          1. Did it bite your hand? I was in town and making a transaction at the counter when somebody came behind and stroked his head – “Oh!” shrieked the woman as he tried to nip. “Um, he’s a rescue dog and he doesn’t like his head touched.” “I see, I should have asked.” “Yes, you should, if you value your fingers!” He seems to attract strokers – I had to tell one child more than once that he shouldn’t touch. It will be considered to be Oscar’s fault if people get nipped, but he’s fine if he isn’t touched.

          2. No – we were in the car and he was being walked along the lane. He looked happy enough on a lead.

            I expect it’s the curly hair that makes people want to touch him

          3. Yep, they all think he’s a teddy bear, little knowing that actually, he’s a grizzly! Oscar walks to heel on a lead and is fine with other dogs, although he does get tempted to try out floppy ears once he realises the other dog has them 🙂

          4. What happens if you offer your clenched fist (as I was taught – if he takes agin and bites, only your knuckles take the brunt of it)?

          5. People don’t do that, though. He’s fine if you offer your hand flat, knuckles towards him and let him sniff. Then people get bold, thinking ‘that went okay’ and try a stroke on his head. That’s when he retaliates.

      1. You may rectumfry a down-vote by clicking on it again – as I’m sure you know that, Philip, so basically it’s ‘stet’.

    2. We had salmon with leek, broccoli beans, potatoes. Followed by blackberry crumble with raspberries and cream.

  73. Just got back from a band playing at the local. Smashing, as busy as I’ve seen the pub for some years. A wicked bunch of ladies there, I felt quite in demand.

    1. Glad you enjoyed your moment in the sun(fish) but always remember, in these fuel-straitened times, there’s no fuel like an old fuel.

  75. !’ll say my Goodnights now as I tried to go to bed at 21:30 but that didn’t work and it’s now 01:30 So Good morning and God bless. See ya later…

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