Saturday 29 May: The pandemic modelling scare made following the science deadly

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/05/28/lettersthe-pandemic-modelling-scare-made-following-science-deadly/

566 thoughts on “Saturday 29 May: The pandemic modelling scare made following the science deadly”

  1. Boris Johnson raised human rights issues at Orbán meeting, says No 10. 29 My 2021.

    Boris Johnson raised “significant concerns” about media freedoms and human rights with Viktor Orbán, No 10 has said, after sustained criticism of the prime minister’s decision to meet the Hungarian leader.

    The decision to invite the rightwing populist has been criticised by opposition and antiracism groups due to Orbán’s links to China and Russia, downgrading of civic freedoms and remarks about minorities.

    No 10 said Johnson raised his “significant concerns about human rights in Hungary, including gender equality, LGBT rights and media freedom”.

    Morning everyone. You have to wonder what Orbán, and of course Vlad, think when they listen to this hypocritical blather. It’s like Churchill being lectured by Hitler on Human Rights! We are here in a country where you will be arrested if you preach Christianity in the streets. Where Fake News is the Order of the Day and Propaganda the Dessert. Where the State retains a vast internet apparatus, not against foreign entities, but its own people! Where the Larger Fear is State Policy and the smaller has created a climate where millions of people guard what they say in public for fear of the thought police; a State that organises violent mobs in masks and uniforms to attack opponents and fits up and persecutes individuals who dare to question its actions. It is here, in the UK that the Police State thrives and Lies Rule!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/28/johnson-raised-human-rights-issues-at-orban-meeting-says-no-10

    2. mng Araminta. Am sure 6 words from Orban shuts this down immediately “No Illegal Immigrants / Covid in Hungary”

    3. Would that we had a Prime Minister of Orban’s mettle – one who stood up to the EU and banned all immigrants from the middle East and Africa.

    4. Prime Minister of one country meets Prime Minister of another country.
      Wowsers. Is there something I’ve missed?

  4. mng all, weekend waffle follows from those no longer [if ever] invited to parties as KA Woodthorpe found out. The bells, the bells – Peter Saunders has been gazing into his crystal ball again:

    SIR – Matt Hancock, the NHS and the Prime Minister have all been blamed by Dominic Cummings for the appalling care-home Covid deaths at the start of the pandemic, but I feel none of these are the real culprits.

    At the time, pandemic data modellers were forecasting huge numbers likely to need hospitalisation. So the Government, using the Armed Services, built Nightingale emergency hospitals in double-quick time.

    The NHS, spooked by alarmist modellers, cleared the hospitals of all the non-Covid patients they clinically could, anticipating a deluge of Covid patients. Unfortunately, no one knew of non-symptomatic carriers, and the care homes were infected, with devastating results.

    The hospital deluge predicted by modellers didn’t materialise, nor anywhere near it. The Nightingale hospitals were hardly used.

    So, in apportioning blame for the horrendous care-home deaths, excitable modellers and their statistics, based on unrealistic assumptions, must be the primary culprits. It was a case of “following the science” that led policy-makers astray.

    Steve Male
    Highampton, Devon

    SIR – A friend’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2020. In November they were told she only had, at best, till Christmas.

    In that time she caught Covid. She died on December 30 2020. On the death certificate a doctor put that she died of Covid. No, she died of cancer.

    When the inquiry comes, they must look at this matter.

    Christine Reid
    Walton-on-Thames, Surrey

    SIR – Sadly, after 14 months in a care home, my 95-year-old mother died last month, not from Covid.

    The care home had made the decision not to take any patients from hospital (as other homes clearly did), to protect its residents during the height of the pandemic. The lengths the staff went to keep the virus out were beyond the call of duty. But still the virus found a way in. My mother tested positive in November last year, thankfully feeling nothing more than “a little under the weather”, and recovered completely.

    Perhaps it’s not as simple as saying that admitting hospital patients into care homes caused all the deaths. Do we not all want a reason for losing a loved one and revenge against those who (in fact) did their level best with no experience of such challenges?

    We can all point to mistakes in hindsight, but no one, to my knowledge, stood up during the pandemic with a complete, foolproof plan. When you make decisions, you make mistakes.

    Christopher Allen
    Swettenham, Cheshire

    SIR – Isn’t it likely that Covid was inadvertently introduced to care homes by administrative and care workers, who, certainly in the early days, moved in and out unprotected?

    Adrian Sanderson
    London N6

    The recoil of revenge

    SIR – In his attempt to destroy the reputation of his colleagues, Dominic Cummings (Letters, May 28) completely trashed himself.

    Prior to launching himself into this folly, he would have been wise to recall the words of Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

    Malcolm John Dickson
    Morley Green, Cheshire

    SIR – Dominic Cummings has unwittingly exposed Boris Johnson as Whitehall’s lone voice of sanity in questioning the pernicious, unrelenting and disproportionate Sage-inspired Covid hysteria that most leading politicians – and much of the media – have failed to challenge robustly.

    Moreover, Mr Cummings implies disingenuously that the production of Covid vaccines was inevitable. This is patently absurd, but we can assume that, without them, he would have supported a permanent national lockdown.

    Philip Duly
    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – The afterthoughts of Dominic Cummings do not demonstrate that the handling of the Covid crisis was wrong, as we could have gone another way and still had the high death rate.

    It was guesswork for all, and there might not be a right answer.

    Jonathan Williams
    Pickworth, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Sadly no one asked Mr Cummings: “What would your answer have been if you were still employed at No 10?”

    Ian Shackleton
    London SW7

    SIR – Dominic Cummings got one thing spot on: “I think everyone, from my wife to everybody in Westminster and Whitehall, will agree that the less everyone hears from me in the future, the better.”

    Bill Collier
    Earby, Lancashire

    Peckish postman

    SIR – I went shopping, leaving a trusted workman in the house.

    When I returned he said that the postman (Letters, May 26) had come into the kitchen and helped himself to some cheese from the fridge.

    He was bit worried and did not know what to do. In fact the postman was my son.

    Ted Shorter
    Tonbridge, Kent

    Covid from China

    SIR – I agree with Sarah Knapton’s analysis (May 20) that the doom-laden warnings concerning the Indian variant are over-egged and that it is no more dangerous than previous incarnations of Covid-19.

    However, the original Covid-19 should not be referred to as the “Chinese wild-type” as there is no conclusive proof that the virus evolved naturally in the wild.

    Research has shown that the furin cleavage and the charge on the spike protein are unique to Covid-19, and that it is virtually impossible to infect bats with it. Since Chinese virologists have published proof that they have added an identical spike protein to other coronaviruses, it seems the only possibility left is that Covid-19 did escape from a laboratory.

    Three laboratories in Wuhan were experimenting with more than 100 different coronaviruses.

    Professor Paul R Goddard
    Bristol

    Help as advertised

    SIR – George Teasdale and his wife, who are housebound, were told she could get a replacement passbook and PIN from Halifax bank only if she goes to her branch (Letters, May 27).

    As a former bank manager, I suggest their branch manager should make out a new passbook for Mrs Teasdale and take it to her, with a PIN in a sealed envelope. We would then see the bank fulfilling the promise of good service implied in its television advertising.

    John Hope
    Silves, Algarve, Portugal

    Choirs in the cold

    SIR – We are tough in Yorkshire, but rehearsing a large choir outside in a downpour is not pleasant. This week that was our only option due to the late changes to Covid rules (Letters, May 25). Our first rehearsal in five months was in a car park, with our members dressed as if for the Arctic.

    Pubs and gyms are filling up, and professional singers can sing inside, but my chorus can’t meet in a well-ventilated hall, with masks, full social distancing and reduced numbers.

    Two million people in this country sing in more than 70,000 choirs. For many it is a lifeline out of isolation and a path to well-being. I hope that next time we sing I won’t need my raincoat.

    Maria Mullin
    Director of the Great Yorkshire Chorus
    Bradford, West Yorkshire

    Harmful Harry

    SIR – Raising awareness of mental health issues is good if it de-stigmatises mental illness, creates understanding and encourages sufferers to seek appropriate help. Unfortunately, Prince Harry (Letters, May 25) is having the opposite effect.

    The sympathy we felt for him is evaporating as we watch this super-privileged “victim” indulge in a spiteful and very public whinge-fest.

    Worse, he turns a serious matter, which demands sensitive handling, into an ugly form of entertainment.

    Anne Cranfield
    Heathfield, East Sussex

    Childish bins

    SIR – John Stephen (Letters, May 27) is not alone in being annoyed by the anthropomorphising of inanimate objects. Our wheelie bin begs: “Please collect me, I am subscribed to the Garden Waste Service.” I suppose it is only four or five years old, but I really look forward to it growing up.

    Ann Allen
    Oadby, Leicestershire

    Britain could be the world centre of bell-making

    SIR – Rather than gnash teeth over the fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry (Letters, May 22), let’s rejoice that Loughborough’s John Taylor & Co foundry is to be saved by Loughborough Bellfoundry Trust and a £3.45  million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

    This family business dates from the 14th century, and its bells are equally famous – its Great Paul in St Paul’s Cathedral is heavier even than Whitechapel’s Big Ben. So, despite the loss of the Whitechapel foundry, Britain should become the global centre of the art of bell-making.

    Peter Saunders
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    When an Edwardian wine education backfires

    SIR – My mother, a woman brought up with Edwardian values, educated me never to take wine to a dinner party. To do so might cause offence, if the host thought that one considered he was unable to afford wine for guests.

    For years I followed this advice, before realising that I was considered mean and seldom invited again.

    K A Woodthorpe
    Dunster, Somerset

    SIR – For 15 years I had my own small vineyard in Italy. When invited to dinner by any Italian, one would never take wine as a gift. Your host would immediately assume that you thought that your wine was better than his.

    You would stick to taking flowers for the lady of the house if you wanted to be invited anywhere again.

    Gordon Barberry
    Heligan, Cornwall

    SIR – I no longer take a bottle of wine when dining with friends as a guest. My problem was that I either took a nice bottle and it wasn’t opened or a not very nice one and it was. I’m not sure which was worse, but now I take something I’ve made: marmalade, quince jelly or a big bunch of basil from my greenhouse in the summer.

    William Gore
    Andover, Hampshire

    SIR – While unwanted wine is suitable as a tombola prize (Letters, May 26), I found the ideal one in Tesco the other day: a tin of tripe soup – and only £3.

    John M Scott
    Aspley Guise, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – When I lived in Northern Ireland I remember a ghastly leather biscuit barrel that appeared regularly at tombolas. I eventually won it, did the decent thing and put it in the bin.

    Joanne Anderson
    London NW7

    1. What’s the matter with William Gore? When his friends invite him round for a meal do they just give him bread and water? What’s wrong with taking his hosts a decent bottle of wine in exchange for a (hopefully) decent meal, whether they choose to open it there and then or keep it to enjoy themselves at a later date? If his hosts, on the other hand, do in fact feed him something he considers inedible, then surely he is better off not being invited ever again.

      1. We just go to people’s houses and eat. And the same happens in reverse.
        Wine, plants, flowers, fresh eggs, homemade jam, chutney, cake and any other comestibles … all very welcome.

        1. Would you and Your Bill like to come over for a small BBQ one of these days, Annie? I could invite Korky the Kat too so that we make up a foursome. PS – no need to bring anything, although a jar of your delicious lemon curd would be most welcome! :-))

      2. what’s worse for “William” [to digest] is he no longer gets any invites, and hasn’t for years. He doesn’t want to figure it out or take a good look in the mirror. He’d rather shift blame into opaque territory where it’s more comfortable to self accept

    2. Appalling – but what a splendid statement by the judge, who is clearly 100% American.

  6. Life Is Not A Bowl Of Cherries

    Some nuns ran an orphanage in a rural area. One day, the Mother Superior called in the teenage girls who were about to leave.

    “You are going into a sinful world,” she said. “I must warn you that men will take advantage of you. They’ll buy you drinks and dinner, take you to their apartments, undress you and do terrible things to you. Then they’ll give you $20 or $30 and kick you out.”

    “Excuse me,” said one of the girls. “You mean men will take advantage of us and give us money?”

    “Yes. Why do you ask?”

    “Well, the priests only ever gave us ice-cream!”

  8. Good morning, all Clear blue sky and sunshine. Will it last?

    I noticed yesterday that BPAPM had expressed his “confidence in Halfcock. Were I him, I’d be worried. Such statemnts often precede the sack… One lives in hopes.

  9. There was some debate on yesterday’s blog as to the authenticity of Nut-nut’s draft letter to The Times re Dilyn. Steerpike has confirmed the story with some additional detail

    Steerpike
    Read: Carrie Symonds’s barking mad letter
    28 May 2021, 11:08am
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/read-carrie-symonds-barking-mad-letter?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BLND%20%2020210528%20%20Baillie%20Gifford%20%20SM+CID_812f8ec8f5809505e46fcf04f4a477b0

    ******************************************************************

    BTL:

    Roddyc • 18 hours ago
    “…has been the subject of interminable briefing wars about his constant yapping, destructive tendencies and attempts to fornicate with his next door neighbour. ”

    Yes, OK. But what about the dog?

    1. 333535+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      “But what about the dog?”

      Yet more orchestrated treachery,
      he got a bad name.

  10. Republicans are trying to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack. Don’t let them. 29 May 2021.

    Do you remember how, just a few short months ago, supporters of Donald Trump staged a violent insurrection? How they stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of last November’s presidential election, looting and vandalizing the seat of American democracy? The fact that they carried firearms, explosives and handcuffs, some wanting to kill Vice-President Mike Pence, and others to run the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, over with a car? And how the whole thing was incited by the former president, Donald Trump, who told the mob beforehand to “fight like hell”?

    Err? No! Mostly because it didn’t happen anything like that!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/republicans-trying-rewrite-history-capitol-attack

    1. What happened with the woman that was shot dead, I wonder I haven’t heard anything since if there was any investigation into what happened.

      1. Morning Bob. Unfortunately she was shot by a Policeman so they’ve swept it under the carpet!

        2. Pity the policemen didn’t kneel on her windpipe. They might remember who she was if he did.

  11. GILES COREN
    Sir Boris Falstaff saves merry England from plague

    The PM’s new biography reveals how the Bard redecorated the flat above the Globe with wallpaper handmade by Holbein

    Friday May 28 2021, 5.00pm, The Times

    It has been suggested that the prime minister may have missed Cobra meetings early in the pandemic, while trying to finish his book on Shakespeare. But this cannot be true. The publishers only fronted up £100,000 for The Riddle of Genius — mere pin money — so there is no way Johnson would have devoted enough time to it to necessitate the missing of anything. He is far more likely to have tossed it off literally in one of those tedious meetings, just to pass the time. As these pages from a ring-bound notebook found in a Cabinet Office briefing room attest . . .

    Totally Pointless Meeting About Chinese Coughing Thingummy

    Borrrrrrrring.

    Talk to Carrie about these gold taps. Also, must we keep dog?

    Right-o. Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Where to begin?

    Chapter One. This is the momentous story of the greatest English writer ever to put pen to paper . . . writing a book about Shakespeare. [Pause for laughter — no, wait, this isn’t a speech. Gadzooks, I wish this bald doctor would shut up, I can’t hear myself think.]

    Now then. William Alexander de Pfeffel Shakespeare was born in 1574 or 1561 or 1412 or something. That’s not the point. We will be guided by data, not dates. (VG — reuse!) His hometown was Stratford-upon-Avon (subs check) where he may or may not have got in trouble as a young boy for making up stories about the local squire, which jolly nearly got him sent down from Oxford, where he must have gone to university, despite what the lefties say, because how else did he get into the media? While there, the young William Alexander de Pfeffel, or “Boris”, as he was affectionately known, almost certainly founded the Bullingdon club, before heading to London to boff tarts and see what money was to be made. Buller! Buller! Buller!

    Now, reports that young Boris Shakespeare was overheard arranging the savage beating to death of his rival Christopher Marlowe have been hugely exaggerated. It is widely accepted now that Marlowe in fact stupidly beat himself to death, leaving Shakespeare free to rise to the top of the arts, despite not being the sit-at-home-all-day-working type. But he was funny, you see, and that makes everything OK. Although not in his so-called comedies, which could do with a lot more yuks if you ask me.

    He was also a terrific family man. After marrying some lovely young thing whose name history does not record, Shakespeare went on to have six children. Or possibly eight or ten. Nobody knows and it doesn’t matter. The point is that he had them and was an excellent father to them. Wherever and whoever they were.

    How many words is that?

    Cripes, is that all? What else, then? Ah yes, the plays. Most of these were about the importance of leaving the European Union and closing the wall up with our English dead, which were conveniently piled high in their thousands (VVG — reuse!) and starred Shakespeare’s timeless hero, Sir Boris Falstaff, a man of grand appetites who was just the sort of chap you’d want in charge of everything. Once in power, Falstaff appointed excellent subalterns such as Hancock, Patel and Raab (surely Bardolph, Pistol and Nym? — ed.) who were in no way dribbling idiots chosen because they weren’t a threat.

    But then, calamity! The plague came to London and threatened to close the theatres. Luckily, Shakespeare was on hand to tell everyone not to worry, it was just a bit of swine flu. They believed him because of his ridiculous flyaway hairstyle, which he kept even at the height of his fame, so that people would grasp that he was too posh and important to care about things like haircuts.

    Sadly, thousands of people died. But it didn’t matter because it was the Elizabethan era and death didn’t matter so much then. A bit like with poor people today. And old people. And people in care homes. On the plus side, Shakespeare was in a position to sort out all his old pals from Stratford with lucrative contracts to supply those carts they used to lob the corpses in, although none of them were ready until it was too late.

    It was then that Shakespeare made the difficult decision to leave his boring middle-aged wife — to whom he very generously gave his second-best bed, which he doesn’t get enough credit for — and start anew with a young filly from the office, who redecorated their flat above the Globe with special wallpaper handmade by Holbein. Some of the peasants, revolted, asked where a mere playwright got the money for this. But that’s nobody’s business but his.

    These were also Shakespeare’s most productive years, with the writing of the four great tragedies that totally sum up my life, I mean, his life: Hamlet, about a young man destined for greatness who is haunted by his preposterous father; Macbeth, about a ruler brought down by the ambition of his crazy girlfriend, I mean fiancée, I mean wife; King Lear, about a ruler driven mad by the ingratitude of those who can’t see how great he is; and Othello, about a top general whose most trusted lieutenant suddenly turns on him for no apparent reason and spreads all sorts of lies with his nasty little Geordie accent and shiny bald head, when it was Othello who made that man! Made him, do you hear me? Ungrateful little weasel.

    Anyway, Shakespeare went on to live a long and happy life and died in extreme old age, surrounded by his 800 great-grandchildren. Or possibly 900. Who’s counting?

    News to chew over
    People who have an extreme reaction to certain noises, specifically loud chewing and breathing, may have a “supersensitised” brain connection, a new study has revealed, with increased connectivity between the auditory cortex and the motor control areas related to the face giving rise to a condition called “misophonia”.

    Balls! Loud chewing and audible breathing are the worst noises ever and you don’t have to have a wonky brain to be puked out by them. And don’t get me started on strimmers, or the crapulent hiss of a fat man disguising a belch, the tinny rattle of pop music leaking from a teenager’s headphones, the whirr of a distant angle grinder on a summer afternoon, the constipated squeak of a prissily suppressed sneeze, smacky lips on a radio presenter, the grunts of lady tennis players, the rising interrogative inflection of pretty much everyone under 40, the slap-slap-slap of sweaty feet in flip-flops . . . they all make me want to KILL!

    And I’m not even an especially irritable person.

  12. Very, very fishy. The losing bidder has to be given a £10 million bung…to hush up about irregularities in awarding the contract to Riverlinx??? Incompetence or corruption or both.

    Sadiq Khan costs taxpayers £10m in row over Thames tunnel contract

    Transport for London settles after accusations of botched procurement process for Silvertown Tunnel

    By Oliver Gill, CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT and
    Ben Gartside
    28 May 2021 • 6:11pm

    Sadiq Khan has been forced to pay more than £10m of taxpayer cash to a consortium of builders to settle a long-running row over a flagship road tunnel under the Thames.

    Transport for London – chaired by Mr Khan, the city’s mayor – has struck a deal with the Silver Thames Connect group following accusations of a botched procurement process for the Silvertown Tunnel in east London.

    Sources said that TfL has agreed to pay more than £10m of public funds to the consortium, which includes the companies Hochtief, Dragados and Iridium Concesiones de Infraestructuras, after it launched a legal challenge when the contract was awarded to a rival.

    The revelations come as talks between Mr Khan and Whitehall go down to the wire over a fresh bailout for the capital’s transport authority.

    Mr Khan is seeking a £15.8bn long-term funding deal that will plug a hole in TfL’s balance sheet and pay for upgrades to public transport until 2030. He has until midnight on Friday to strike a deal.

    Sources said that Grant Shapps, Transport Secretary, is unlikely to agree to demands for a multi-year deal. A £1bn deal is being offered that will require an immediate budget cut and force TfL to identify ways to generate between £500m and £1bn of new income.

    Taxpayers have spent almost £4bn propping up TfL since the pandemic hit last March, bringing tube and bus travel to a virtual halt. If no deal is agreed, the Government could take direct control of London;s public transport network.

    A key sticking point is the highly political refurbishment of Hammersmith Bridge in west London, which has been shut for two years and is owned by the Labour-led Hammersmith and Fulham council. Repair costs are estimated at £150m.

    TfL awarded the £1bn Silvertown Tunnel contract to Riverlinx, a consortium that includes Heathrow owner Ferrovial. However, Silver Thames Connect insisted that its bid was better value for money and filed a legal challenge in August 2019 to suspend the start of the project.

    The suspension was lifted two months later but Silver Thames Connect pursued damages.

    The Silvertown Tunnel will link Silvertown with the Greenwich peninsula with the aim of reducing congestion through the Blackwall Tunnel and allow for cross-river bus links. It is scheduled to open in 2025.

    A TfL spokesperson said: “The losing bidder, Silver Thames Connect, made a claim to TfL in relation to the procurement for the design, build, finance and maintenance of the Silvertown Tunnel, which was the subject of court proceedings.

    “The parties resolved the matter in March, the terms of which are confidential.”

    A spokesman for Hochtief declined to comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/28/sadiq-khan-costs-taxpayers-10m-row-thames-tunnel-contract/

  13. Wuhan puts paid to Cummings’ idea of how to manage a public health crisis

    Wuhan scientists functioned under the dictatorial leadership Cummings yearns for – but where are they now?

    CHARLES MOORE 28 May 2021 • 9:30pm

    When we columnists have to decide what to write about, we sometimes find ourselves presented with strange choices, closely related to what the news throws up. This week, the choice is between Dominic Cummings and the origins of the Covid-19 leak in Wuhan.

    I am much better qualified to write about the former than the latter. I know Mr Cummings personally and I follow politics. I do not know Wuhan and I know nothing about science. On the other hand, there have been an enormous number of articles about Mr Cummings since he appeared before a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, and far fewer about the theory, recently revived, that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was not natural in origin.

    So I have decided to write about both, in order to bring out how strange the silence – until now – about Wuhan has been. The contrast is so striking.

    Here in Britain, the Cummings story is well known. Brilliant nerd masterminds Leave victory, then Boris’s general election victory; becomes “adviser to the Prime Minister”, but actually chief potentate in No 10; falls out with boss, is pushed out; is briefed against by those acting for Boris Johnson and even by Boris himself; hits back, appears before committee, claims everything was chaos over Covid, that lockdown delay cost “tens of thousands of lives” and that Boris is unfit to be Prime Minister.

    Over in Wuhan, something happened which has now led to 3.5 million deaths (and about 170 million cases) across the world. The scientists most closely involved have disappeared, as has anyone who spoke up to denounce what happened, as has physical and documentary evidence of what was going on in the lab. If there was ever a Dominic Cummings-type person within the Chinese communist regime, he has not been allowed to appear for seven hours before a televised committee of the National People’s Congress to tell what he sees as the truth that Comrade Xi Jinping is unfit to be president, has a “crackers” girlfriend and a lying health minister and has covered up the cause of the greatest avoidable public health disaster of all time. In the vanishingly unlikely event that such a person ever existed, we can be confident he is now dead.

    My own view about Mr Cummings’s testimony is that he made some very pertinent points about how British government and officialdom do not work, but also broke trust and unfairly accused individuals who could not answer back. But it is not relevant for the purposes of this article whether Mr Cummings was right to speak as he did. The point is that he could, and that the press and the public could study what he said, debate it and throw it all back at elected politicians.

    Although many of the matters Mr Cummings raised were seriously important, they matter much less than what happened in Wuhan. China’s behaviour has brought death, disease, misery and impoverishment and has reduced freedom everywhere. Yet its actions cannot be discussed in public in China at all. This has made the situation much, much worse than it need have been.

    It is interesting that we, the Western media – who pride ourselves on being fearless – and most Western scientists and academics – who pride themselves on following truth wherever it leads – have not shown great zeal in investigating what China did.

    Almost a year ago, I wrote a column here (“Was Covid-19 created in a lab?”) which drew attention to a paper in the Cambridge learned journal, the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery. The paper was downloaded 220,000 times. Its authors were the Norwegian vaccinologist Birger Sorensen and the British immunologist Angus Dalgleish. Studying the known data about the virus, they concluded that it was chimerical – made by human beings for human beings (presumably to learn how to vaccinate against such viruses rather than to infect the world). If correct, this meant the virus must have leaked.

    It had been hard to get the paper published. Some scientific publications – Nature, for example, and The Lancet – were vehemently hostile to such thoughts. Donald Trump had quickly given credence to the idea that the Chinese regime had created the virus. Most Western scientists were so horrified by the prospect of his presidential re-election that they rejected whatever he said. Large collections of scientists wrote angry public letters. The British scientific establishment was particularly timid about casting aspersions on China. All of the above treated the Chinese communist regime much more tenderly than they did Trump’s America. In some cases, commercial interests and Chinese academic sponsorships were in play.

    For the best part of a year, the idea that Covid came from the Wuhan lab, not the Wuhan wet market – or other animal sources – became almost unsayable in public. Facebook even banned publication of posts claiming Covid was man-made.

    Now this is changing, provoked in part by the obvious inadequacy of the World Health Organisation inquiry in Wuhan, which cleared China of lab leaks without any serious investigation. A letter from several scientists appeared in Science earlier this month saying that not enough “balanced consideration” had been given to the leak theory. Its leader was the distinguished Stanford micro-biologist Professor David Relman, who sits on many government-related committees. It is hard to believe the letter was not concerted to indicate a shift in the official US position.

    One of the signatories to the Science letter was Professor Ralph Baric, whose “gain of function” experiments in Chapel Hill had helped pass the necessary skills for virus creation to Shi Zhengli, “The Bat Lady” of Wuhan. He may feel uneasy about his past role, so his switching horses is interesting.

    All through the last year, Dalgleish and Sorensen have been developing their argument, backed, because of his knowledge of security issues, by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6. They have just completed a paper about the aetiology of the virus (“an abnormally high iso-electric charge in the receptor-binding domain on the top of the spike” which could not occur naturally). It combines a biochemical analysis of the virus with a historical analysis of how and when the Wuhan Institute progressed in its scientific work. The combined analyses, they say, “meet the criteria of means, timing, agent and place … to produce sufficient confidence in the account to reverse the burden of proof.” Sir Richard thinks Sorensen’s biochemical investigation “significantly shifts the nature of the scientific argument”.

    It is probably via intelligence as well as science that President Joe Biden has at last fastened on the leak problem. The fact that he has tasked his intelligence services to answer it within 90 days shows he wants to move fast. His approach suggests continuity with that of Trump, though much more soberly expressed. As tensions rise in the South China Sea, the US is not disposed to let China get away with an error (even a crime?) on the scale the lab leak theory suggests.

    In one of his less-reported remarks on Wednesday, Dominic Cummings expressed his frustration with all the conflicting elements within government trying to deal with the Covid crisis. “You should have had a dictator to run all this,” he said. One sees his point, but the story of Wuhan-and-after is a powerful reminder that a dictator – as well as being cruel and oppressive – makes an even greater mess of things than a free country.

    ************************************************************

    D S Wilson
    28 May 2021 10:01PM
    Trump has been saying all along that the virus was leaked from a Wuhan lab, but his detractors, including the incompetent oaf in the White House dismissed it. Trump was also correct in highlighting the incompetency of the WHO and their pathetic attempts to investigate the cause a few months ago. However, the cause of Covid will never be discovered because China will never allow it – corruption and coverups are the norm.

    What is Joe Biden going to do about China?….nothing. He will continue to kowtow to them and it will be “business as usual”. What a dangerous, embarrassing leader of the Western World he is.

    1. SIR – I agree with Sarah Knapton’s analysis (May 20) that the doom-laden warnings concerning the Indian variant are over-egged and that it is no more dangerous than previous incarnations of Covid-19.

      However, the original Covid-19 should not be referred to as the “Chinese wild-type” as there is no conclusive proof that the virus evolved naturally in the wild.

      Research has shown that the furin cleavage and the charge on the spike protein are unique to Covid-19, and that it is virtually impossible to infect bats with it. Since Chinese virologists have published proof that they have added an identical spike protein to other coronaviruses, it seems the only possibility left is that Covid-19 did escape from a laboratory.

      Three laboratories in Wuhan were experimenting with more than 100 different coronaviruses.

      Professor Paul R Goddard
      Bristol

      1. What’s all this about “furin cleavage”? Don’t furrin wimmin wear bras?

        1. No, Elsie. It’s an ailment of well endowed elder ladies who, in their later years,can develop fur in cleavage.

    2. It is probably via intelligence as well as science that President Joe Biden has at last fastened on the leak problem.

      No it’s more probably due to the Propaganda Programme now ongoing against China!

  14. Bore da I pawbh

    I have read this letter three or four times now, trying to see from what angle it might be interesting. The only thing of interest that I can see is a bit meta, i.e. that the writer thought it worth writing ant that the editor thought it worth publishing.
    Am I wrong?

    SIR – I went shopping, leaving a trusted workman in the house.
    When I returned he said that the postman had come into the kitchen and helped himself to some cheese from the fridge.
    He was bit worried and did not know what to do. In fact the postman was my son.
    Ted Shorter

    1. SID mng, usual woke waffle [look at the supposed author name. There was similar letter earlier this week on this topic but poorly attempting to make the point about leaving front door unlocked. As for the editor, probably trying to fill space with anything. Probably a shortage of LSD in the Islington Wine Cellar

    2. Ted Shorter is a very regular contributor to the DT.

      Usually of pointless letters.

    4. In the Tonbridge area Royal Mail are able to boast of Shorter delivery times.

  15. Good morning all. Another dry, bright but overcast start but with a slightly less cold 9°C!

  16. Belarusian leader meets Vladimir Putin carrying briefcase of documents that he says justify flight ‘hijack’. 29 may 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/23547a8814bd6afc5b1e6edc2bf99d678bc5b5d1930af99e9b775b6deb307212.jpg

    Alexander Lukashenko on Friday pressed a briefcase of mysterious documents onto Vladimir Putin, saying it contained everything he needed to know about what “really happened” with the forced landing of Ryanair flight in Minsk.

    The Belarusian dictator reached beside his chair for the briefcase at a meeting with the Russian president in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

    “I have taken some documents to show to you so that you understand what really happened,” he said, offering it to Mr Putin who looked on.

    The Body Language tells you what Vlad thinks to this Fat Fool and his briefcase!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/28/hundreds-belarusian-farmers-set-come-uk-trapped-flight-ban/

    2. Yo All

      TellySubbies strike again

      Belarusian leader meets Vladimir Putin carrying briefcase of documents that he says justify flight ‘hijack’. 29 may 2021.

      Whyfor would mrPutin take a briefcase of dodcuments to a minion?

    4. I think the “fat fool” may have some goodies in that briefcase.
      It isn’t verified but possibly it was the Lithuanians who suggested the plane divert to Minsk.
      It seems there’s a nuclear powerstation in Lithuania under the flightpath and they were a little bit jittery about the possible outcome of the plane coming down in the vacinity.
      All speculation at this point.

    5. Vlad: “Look, Sasha Old Chum, I read ‘Health and Efficiency’ when I was ten.”
      (By superhuman effort manages not to sigh and roll eyes.)

    6. “One more stupid word out of you, Alexi, and I’m going to leave. After I’ve decked you.”

    1. The Sun also comments, “The TTIP called for people to ‘pray for Sasha’.”

      TTIP? Trash Talkers In Peckham?

      2. It’s her “political party”. When I first read it, I thought “Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership”.

    3. Talk about muddle-headed: nobody has a clear idea of when you are adult:

      10 – Age of criminal responsibility
      14 – Allowed to go to pub accompanied by and adult
      16 – Allowed to drive a moped
      16 – Can sleep with a gangster but not a teacher
      16 – Can marry with parents’ consent
      17 – Can drive a car
      17 – Can Join armed forces
      18 Can marry without parents’ consent
      18 – Can drink in a pub
      18 – Can vote
      21 – Apply to adopt a child. Hold an airline transport pilot’s licence for an aeroplane, helicopter and gyroplane. Apply for a provisional licence to drive a large passenger vehicle or heavy goods vehicle.

      And of course the Paedophiles’ Information Exchange (PIE – supported by Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt) wanted the age of sexual consent lowered.

      1. There are a few other ages ignored by the lawyers. For example:

        2 – Age one learns to say “No”.
        3 – Communicates with the adult world in their language.
        4-5 – Schooling starts.
        7 (an important one for me) – holds a savings account.
        8 – safe to cross the road, and to go out safely unaccompanied. This used to be age one could get a passport.

        11 – school examinations and secondary school.
        13 – develops sexual interest. (Note, this is a couple of years before such feelings can be expressed legally or consensually)

        14 (another important one for me) – first paid employment. It was also the age that set my taste in women, which has not changed since.

        Of all of them, perhaps the most drastic change happened to me at the age of 15 years and 8 months, when my voice broke and I grew several inches taller in about a fortnight.

        Finally, when I was 13, someone at school brought in a paperback entitled ‘The Virgin Soldiers’. On the cover were the words “the only 19 1/2 year old male virgin in the world”. I thought then I hoped to God I wouldn’t have to wait that long. I was precisely 19 1/2 when I first made love.

      2. 16 – Can legally have sex, but not for monetary reward
        18 – Can legally have sex and receive a monetary reward for doing so

        1. 16 – Can legally have sex, but not watch
          18 – Can legally have sex, and / or watch.
          As pointed out to me by Second Son, then aged 17…

      3. Good afternoon Jeremy Morfey.

        I did not claim my list was exhaustive and I see that you have added some more below.

        Just as a matter of interest: why the downvote?

    4. For as long as this emotional taboo exists in our own society, there cannot be a sensible debate on the subject. It is all too subject to witch hunts, cancelling, no-platforming and safe spaces like a Cambridge University students union debate on Twitter.

      Adulthood is not something where one is a helpless child, and an hour later one is deemed fit to take on all the burdens of responsibility. It is a gradual process, takes years, and is different for everyone.

      I prefer the concept of “young person”, sometimes also referred to as “teenager” or “adolescent”, describing the period between puberty and majority. This is a particularly vulnerable time, since biological development is very often out of step with emotional development, and all the time hormones are raging, and bodies changing beyond recognition. This is the age when a young person strives to break free from parental influence, but usually does not have the experience or mental stability to carry it off without getting into serious peril. It requires very careful handling and the patience of a saint, but is also incredibly rewarding to encounter.

      The last thing anyone needs are moral condemnations because this is “the done thing”.

      1. And people still maintain that this senile paedophile won the US election fair and square?

  20. 333535+ up ticks,
    The construction of a perfect storm if, Heaven forbid, things go boobs up regarding the vax & johnson has given the go ahead for IMO would be state authorised child abuse.

    Double that up with a gates finger print on a brown envelope found in parliament …….

    Boris Johnson will be forced to decide on child Covid vaccinations
    Experts to offer ‘menu of options’ instead of giving recommendation on jabs for under-18s

    Ps,
    Bear in mind ‘menu of options’ as in another context that is the parliamentary canteen menu / halal nosh.

    1. I imagine that Johnson will have contacted his “vaccine” guru, Gates, for advice and instructions. The deaths, blindness, blood clots etc will be posted at Johnson’s door for evermore should he succumb to Hancock’s and Gates’s goading. Someone sensible, hard to uncover, I know, must whisper in Johnson’s ear that denying Hancock’s and Gates’s earnest desires for jabbing children will be an indistinct first step for Johnson to display some statesmanship. That would be a first for him; perhaps he would grow to like it and…

      1. 333535+ up ticks.
        Afternoon KtK,

        What you have listed is only the latest section of a list going back decades, inclusive of death, paedophilic MASS rape and abuse,mental scarring of kids, acid scarring, etc etc,all ongoing.
        My mistake and many more party members of the party I was in long term, seemingly via the lab/lib/con coalition members voters was in joining a far right , knuckle dragging , fruitcake, type party looking back and under the Gerard Batten leadership if it was a mistake then it was one of honesty & quality.

        The johnson is heading up a gang of political mercenaries, he is the best of them, the Capo dei capi.

  21. “I would rather be ashes than dust!

    I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

    I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

    The function of man is to live, not to exist.

    I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

    I shall use my time.”

    Jack London’s “Credo” – and why I’m marching again in London today. This time I’m quite literally lending my voice to the protest; I am.(was, probably) a professional opera singer. Any accusations of being a luvvie will be hurled back at you in Wagnerian mode – watch your eardrums!!

    2. Good for you, Ashes! I’ll be with you in spirit! Have a wonderful day and don’t speak to any strange men!

          1. Ashes very kindly painted a portrait of my little dog.

            We meet up in July for a dinner date. :@)

          2. Hope you both have a stonking time! It’s been a very long lockdown/health crisis! 😄

          3. I have already paid for two bottles of Champagne to start the evening off. Lucky the Hotel isn’t far away !

        1. I talk to strangers! Got talking to a young black woman on the last march. She was working class and very well informed. A pleasure to meet.

      1. Seems to be every couple of weeks now. I can’t make it today. Matins this morning and haircut this afternoon. Mind, those long walks do for my right hip!

        Morning!

        1. Morning
          I’m free next weekend, but confined to the house today…how annoying.

      2. As often as need be until we get our freedom back. As and when there’s another planned, I’ll post here.

    4. With you in spirit ATD, give em hell!
      Morning all btw. Weather undecided just now. Had a few sprinkles of the wet stuff a few minutes ago but here’s hoping for a nice day. Bowls this afternoon. Have a good day everyone.

    9. There are about 30 turning up from “Going Postal” keep an eye out for Puffin badges and banners they’re a good crew

    11. Go for it, atd! I did wonder where your handle came from; lots of people read it as ashes AND dust.

      1. Might have been clearer if I’d known how to capitalise when creating the account! I wondered who I should be when posting, and the first line of that Credo came straight to mind.

  22. 333535+ up ticks,
    May one ask, could these types being returned to the streets a part of the obvious fear campaign run by the overseers ?
    The DOVER campaign the overseers are openly running daily topping up the “on the street” very real threat to keep the indigenous herd on it’s hooves.

    If the voting pattern does NOT change then the forthcoming next odious issue will be to many foreign felons not enough baseball bats.

    https://twitter.com/mrbluesky99/status/1398376905426997250

  23. There was a report on the BBC television News last night saying that some goods being exported from Britain into the EU are having tariffs imposed upon them in violation of the free-trade terms of the Bumbler Boris Bum Deal.

    We do not expect the EU to object to this or even pretend to do anything about it but how long before anyone in British politics has the testicular strength to stand up and say loud and clear:

    “Enough is enough. We must immediately scrap the Bum Deal and trade on WTO terms.”

    1. Good morning Mr Hat from sunny and warm Sarf Wales. I misread that as Billy The Fish …. new glasses needed here !

  27. 333535+ up ticks,
    Soon this will be surpassed & read via DOVER courtesy of the reset ,replacement, smoothly running campaign.

    breitbart,
    UK SAW 18M PASSENGER ARRIVALS IN 2020

    1. ogga mng, I presume illegal economic migrants are now also classified as “passenger arrivals” under the UN Great Compact arrangement

      1. 333535+ up ticks,
        Morning AWK,
        Well according to the polling booth every boat in is a winner
        for voters & boaters ,do not see any support for anti mass ongoing uncontrolled immigration, all for the close shop coalition.

    2. Golly, imagine how many would have arrived if we had not closed our borders.

  28. State of dress of Londonistan Mayoral candidates

    A tale

    A cowboy rides into town and seeks out a barber

    There are two

    The first well groomed, a bit like Prince Phillip

    The second makes Worzel Gummidge look smart

    Which one do you go to?

    The easily fooled will go to the first

    The sensible ones to the second, as they must have cut each others hair

    Do not judge a book by its’ cover: London got Sad Dick Khan from doing that

  29. Good Moaning.
    Hoorah …. Zippity Doo Dah.
    The sun is out and I don’t have to do any shopping.

    1. Moaning Anne. My favourite phrase “I don’t have to do any shopping”! Alf loves shopping. He likes to look around at everything whereas I would prefer to pick up what I need and get home ASAP! I think he’s one in a million 🥳. When I say I hate shopping I mean all kinds of shopping not just food. (I’m possibly one in a million too!).

      1. I normally enjoy shopping – and the coffee/lunch/drink afterwards.
        At the moment, it is a tedious, time consuming chore.
        I do not enjoy being surrounded by masked sheep.
        I do not enjoy bossy notices plastered everywhere.
        I do not enjoy tannoys hectoring me as if I live in Maoist China.

        1. Yes. There is no pleasure is shopping at all any more. Of course, that is the goal – we should all be at home spending money on Amazon, not strengthening the little people by shopping locally.

        2. Evening Anne. Totally agree with your last 4 sentences.

          Just back from our bowls match in quintessentially English surroundings. Bowls green, cricket pitches x 2 and tennis, and glorious sunshine. Fantastic afternoon. Just off out now after a quick spruce up to food at our local pub.

          Have a great evening wondering which “variant” they will come up with next. Bar stewards!

      2. Morning vw! My old man loves shopping too! I need one a set of reins for him as he wanders off in all sorts of shops! I don’t often use my glorious old pink Samsung mobile but it is useful for locating him in Tesco/Aldi/Next etc!

          1. You’ve seen him then…
            He once went out to get a couple of French sticks and came back with a stereo system…as you do!

        2. 😅😅😅. Don’t have that problem Sue – Alf is usually the tallest man around.

      3. But if I didn’t like browsing we would never have tried anything new.

        1. That could be construed as the argument of a man that doesn’t know what he wants and needs to be entertained.

          *so a friend told me… :@)

  30. Super warm this morning – one can see the grass growing.,….

    Will be out and about – so enjoy yourselves. A plus tard.

    1. Morning Bill, define super warm? Its a warm 27’C at 13:33 PM in Sunny Tel Aviv today, in August the temps will be a sweltering high 30’s or even low 40’s

      1. Righty, those are not temperatures.

        Remind me why you live there? Maybe that’s why the place is so angry all the time. it’s too damned hot. Maybe if we moved all the grumpy folk to the Arctic they’d cool off and be happier

        1. I live in Israel because I am a war mongering Zionist troublemaker & its not us Jews who are permanently angry its the camel turd eating Arab murdering Schweinhund who have invaded our land and abused it. We Jews plant trees, the Arabs burn our forests down, we build roads, the Arabs tear them up to hurl the rocks at us, we go to the beach & frolic in the sea for relaxation, the Arabs burn tires & block roads for their relaxation, we hold joyous festivals that celebrate life, the Arabs hold festivals full of hate & murder !

      2. Hot: Temperature above about 36-38C. Air scorches nostrils on breathing in, feels hot when hand stuck out of car window when driving is hotter than when kept in car.
        Cold: Temperatures below about -12C. Air causes freezing in nostrils on inhalation.
        Comfortable: Between hot and cold.

        My hottest experience to date is +55C, in Kuwait by the Iraq border, 2004. That was a bit warm, taht, but low humidity so bearable. My coldest: -32C in Norway, near Noresund 200?. Poor car was freezing up as we drove, clutch cable grease stiffening, heater couldn’t keep windscreen clear of ice. Stopped and briefly got out – the cold made us cough.
        Incidentally, learned that in similar conditions, wrap up warm and keep the heating off, then you don’t get condensation freezing on the inside of the windscreen. Brr!

      3. Not so long ago, when the Met Office, however accurate or otherwise its forecasts, was run by people with a sense of perspective, the following guide was used for British summer temperatures:
        20C (68F) – warm
        25 (77) – very warm
        30 (86) – hot
        35 (95) – very hot

        Not today, where any pleasantly warm day is hot. I can’t think why…

          1. Mind you, I’ve reached an age where 68F has the same effect on me as as 86 did when I were a lad.

    2. We have 22C! Unheard of, and with sun, too.
      Moved the citrus trees outside – about a month later than usual.
      Tidied the garden wreckage up into neat piles – should have got my trailer and shifted it all to the tip a month ago, but the slow melting of the snow at Firstborn’s farm has only a week ago allowed us to unblock & open the barn doors and get it out, then repairs needed for car MoT, so haven’t got the trailer yet.
      Argh! Everything a month late…

    1. Positively terrifying. The thought of wasting that amount of money for so little gain is incredible.

  33. ‘Morning All

    As Boros attempts to lecture Orban………………

    From SpikedOnline:

    “If you want to see what vile anti-Semitism looks like, go to London –
    where a convoy of disgusting anti-Semites drove along Finchley Road
    earlier this month, waving Palestinian flags from their car windows and
    screaming through a megaphone: ‘Fuck the Jews… Fuck their mothers… Rape
    their daughters.’ Finchley Road runs through Hampstead, Golders Green
    and other areas that have large Jewish populations.

    Synagogues have been defaced and Jews have been attacked in London in recent weeks –
    but not in Budapest. In France and Belgium, Jewish buildings are often
    guarded by the police. There is no need for that in Budapest. In Berlin,
    Jews wearing kippahs face threats and even violence. Not in Budapest.
    Jewish life and culture is flourishing in Hungary, and the government
    has a robust, zero-tolerance policy towards anti-Semitism.”
    Awkward,#HateFacts
    Edit
    FFS
    Theres a Muslim demonstration in Luton- today I think . Fuck know what its about , could be Palestine , more Bennies needed , or someone once gave them a dirty look in the past 20 years . They love to demonstrate en masse just to remind us all of their power .

    As the Blair rat once said – to ‘ rub our noses in diversity ‘ . And by god that’s certainly happening .

    Police have warned any Jews to stay away for their own safety . That’s how low we’ve sunk .

    1. Police have warned any Jews to stay away for their own safety.
      What an appalling statement. I’m truly horrified.

      When the Nazis came for the communists,
      I remained silent;
      I was not a communist.

      When they locked up the social democrats,
      I remained silent;
      I was not a social democrat.

      When they came for the trade unionists,
      I did not speak out;
      I was not a trade unionist.

      When they came for the Jews,
      I remained silent;
      I was not a Jew.

      When they came for me,
      there was no one left to speak out.

      Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
      habe ich geschwiegen;
      ich war ja kein Kommunist.

      Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
      habe ich geschwiegen;
      ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

      Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
      habe ich nicht protestiert;
      ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

      Als sie die Juden holten,
      habe ich geschwiegen;
      ich war ja kein Jude.

      Als sie mich holten,
      gab es keinen mehr,
      der protestieren konnte.

      Pastor Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller

    2. “Police have warned any Jews to stay away for their own safety.”. That is only because the police will be turning up, mob-handed, heavily armed and ready and willing to make mass arrests of all demonstrators. Police will be prepared to provoke violence and will hold the arrested persons until the Courts re-open on Tuesday.

      Oh, oops, sorry, replying to wrong comment. I meant to refer to the police response to the Freedom March in London.

      1. Happy Saturday JP, more like the police will be turning up to give moral support to any violent Palestinian demonstrators as they have done recently with the Muslim WPC turd wallah involved not being dismissed from the force!

    1. Controlled opposition, at a guess. Main selling point is that they aren’t the BBC.

    2. No, categorically a man does NOT have a vagina. Nothing edgy, just plain biological fact.

      1. Mongo has a bank account just like you and I do. He even has a chequebook, which when introduced to he promptly signed vast amounts to me with a paw print.

    1. The exhibits are beautiful, especiall the pumping station.

      What I think epitomises London more than the architecture is the run down, lack of maintenance and graffiti. Those who live there don’t care, and think they have the right to urinate up the wals.

      Such people should be beaten and their hands smashed with hammers.

      1. Graffiti is a language utilised by people who have learned nothing to people who think they know it all.

        East Berlin was a mess. Much worse than London.

      2. Reminds me of the engineer’s bloody great wheel driven by steam.

          1. The figurehead was a whore in bed
            And the mast was a mammoth penis

            The captain of this lugger
            He was a dirty bugger
            He wasn’t fit to shovel shit
            From one place to another

            thanks for the Friggin in the Riggin. Have the record [vinyl] not heard it for a while

    1. When will people realise that you cannot control a 🦠 virus. IIRC either Dippy or Unbalanced said some months ago that we must learn to live with it like the flu. For crying out loud GET BACK TO NORMAL! NOW!

    1. I am soo disappointed in Priti Patel. I thought she showed promise when first appointed but it’s been downhill ever since. The gravy train is alive and well. And doing some people a lot of good.

  39. The real reason Dominic Cummings is so obsessed with Carrie Symonds
    The rank misogyny displayed by the Prime Minister’s former advisor is apparently so normal that it passed us by almost completely unchecked

    Bryony Gordon: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/05/29/real-reason-dominic-cummings-obsessed-carrie-symonds/

    No, don’t bother to read the article.

    Bryony Gordon is a seriously poisonous woman who likes to put forward her points of view but is not keen on having people respond which is why no BTL comments are ever allowed on her articles. She is clearly in one of the DT categories where BTL comments are never allowed – i.e. on Muslims, sexual deviancy, the royal family and especially anything to do with Migraine Markle..

    She’s the slag who likes slagging but does not like being slagged.

    1. Good afternoon, Rastus.

      Gordon is a talent-free nonentity who only got the job due to nepotism. Her mother, Jane, was a DT columnist of similar threadbare credentials.

    2. She was one of the reasons I stopped reading the DT, and won’t take out a subscription. Never met anyone who admitted to being a fan of hers.

    2. Apart from the marchers, there are so many people wearing masks outside! What on earth are they afraid of, and what do they think a bit of plastic is going to protect them from?

        2. The best plastic for protection is DERUX

          Other prophylactics are of course available

      1. Reminds me of the Paddy Power advert:

        Horse 1 “hey there!”
        Horse 2 “what?”
        Horse 1 “no, hey there!”
        Horse 2 “what?”
        Horse 2 “no. Hay – there!”

        Cut to stack of hay bales.

    2. Not needed ! Air launched precision guided missiles can be launched a long distance on the mosques & other terrorist targets in Bradford, Brummagem and Bow .

      1. Goodness! I wasn’t suggesting any attacks, merely a colourful and noisy V-sign.

        1. Never go in for half measures, jet fuel costs a fortune, fire & forget missiles need to be used on real terrorist targets where they can do some good for the UK not just on bomb ranges !

    3. Not needed ! Air launched precision guided missiles can be launched a long distance on the mosques & other terrorist targets in Bradford, Brummagem and Bow .

    4. Not needed ! Air launched precision guided missiles can be launched a long distance on the mosques & other terrorist targets in Bradford, Brummagem and Bow .

  51. Damned Health Nazis
    That’s the last time I donate blood. Made to wait in a queue with a mask
    on, 2m distancing strictly enforced. If that wasn’t bad enough the
    questions felt like an interrogation, “Where did you get it?”, “Why is
    it in a bucket?”
    Tsk

    3. I as a homosexual who wasn’t active before or after the AIDS pandemic have never been able to give blood.

      1. I cannot give blood in France because I’m British , they are still concerned about nvCJD

          1. That worked really well in Scotland. NHS Scotland imported blood products from the USA. In the USA people are paid for blood donations, all kinds of people, gangbangers, perverts, druggies, criminals, prostitutes and so on.
            Hardly surprising that hundreds of Scots who had “life-saving” treatment died of hepatitis or AIDS a few years down the line.
            Of course the NHS used public money to fight the families who lost loved ones and had raised legal actions against the NHS.
            there was over-up which included the destruction of records.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_blood_scandal_in_the_United_Kingdom#2015_–_Scottish_Penrose_Inquiry

  52. HAPPY HOUR – Goodness gracious me….

    US-bound Air India flight forced to turn back to New Delhi after a BAT flies through the cabin sparking panic among passengers..
    Video shows passengers panicking as bat flew through the Boeing 737 plane.
    Wildlife officials were contacted to retrieve the bat which was later found dead.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9631215/US-bound-Air-India-

    Bats are known to carry more than 60 viruses that can infect humans, and host more viruses per species than rodents.

    2. Just before the adblock kicked in, the picture of the cabin showed a twin aisle aircraft, so it most certainly isn’t a 737 – that’s not long-range, anyway. 737 across the Atlantic would be mostly empty, so they can get enough fuel in.

    4. The passengers then boarded a different flight before Air India flight AI-105 reached Newark later that same day.

      The airline had also reported the incident to the flight safety department, MailOnline understands.

      The airline has sought a detailed report from the engineering team.

      ‘Such mammals have the possibility of coming from third party vehicles such as for catering purpose,’ an Air India official said.

      Following the preliminary investigation report from the safety department, it stated that the loading vehicles were seen having rats.

    1. The scale of the invasion of hostile 3rd world men of military age who probably posses no skills other than intimate knowledge of the workings of an AK47 needs to be stopped by force if needs be & probably it does need deadly force!

      1. UN Global compact on migration, signed by the UK among others, means this must be facilitated in a safe manner. That’s why the UK doesn’t stop it, they agreed to encourage it.

        1. Its sad that there are no UK leaders with the spine to tear up the compact & declare the UK a no-go off limits territory for illegal migrants

          1. An inadequate army camp that was good enough for British soldiers and their families, I expect.

        3. This is not migration though. They have not applied to live here. Have no value in being here.

          They are simply criminals who should not even get close to this country.

        4. You mean MAY agreed to encourage it; she was the one who signed up to it. Nobody asked us.

  54. That’s me for the day. Very warm and sunny – though a slight edge to the breeze since about 3 pm.

    Looking forward to sipping a glass of medicine OUTDOORS in about ten minutes.

    A demain.

  55. Article from the Spekkie:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-catalogue-of-failures-that-allowed-usman-khan-to-kill

    The catalogue of failures that allowed Usman Khan to kill

    The inquest into the murder of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt by Islamist terrorist Usman Khan has revealed a collision of arrogance, hubris, naïveté and incompetence from which the two graduates arguably paid with their lives.

    Saskia and Jack were attached to a prison education programme supported by Cambridge University called ‘Learning Together’. The scheme, which appears not to have been formally evaluated, inspected or risk assessed by its creators – and had no clear rehabilitation purpose – placed criminology students from the university alongside prisoners on a study programme. In late 2017, at High Security HMP Whitemoor, Khan – an active threat to prison staff – was allowed to join this group. He later became a ‘poster boy’ for the organisation, even appearing in promotional videos.

    The decision by Learning Together and the prison authorities to allow his participation launched predator and victims on a fatal trajectory. On 29 November 2019, 11 months after his release from prison, Khan attended an event to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the scheme at London’s Fishmongers’ Hall. There, Khan repaid the idealism and commitment of his young mentors by stabbing Jones and Merritt to death. He was subsequently shot dead by police on London Bridge. The police and security services say the pair were deliberately targeted because of their relationship with Learning Together.

    Could these murders have been prevented? The painful evidence presented to the inquest at Guildhall over the last five weeks suggests it is plausible to think so. The testimony paints a damning indictment of our current terrorist risk management culture and practice.

    When Khan was locked up for eight years over an Islamist plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange, there was little doubt of the danger he posed. He entered the prison system as a high risk category A terrorist. In numerical terms, this put him in the top 0.1 per cent of our current prison population in terms of how dangerous he was. Most long-term prisoners travel down through the security categories as their behaviour improves and their risk reduces, spending time in Category D ‘open’ conditions before they can be trusted for release. Not Khan.

    He left prison as officially dangerous as he went in. In fact, a forensic psychologist at the prison – one of the very few who appreciated his lethal potential – stated in her largely ignored screening assessment that Khan was becoming even more risky.

    The police investigation into the attack, Operation Bamadan, revealed that in his eight years of prison custody – virtually all of his adult life – Khan’s prison intelligence assessments showed he was ‘consistently’ involved in activities as a radical Islamist. The list of concerns in his 2,000-page security file is extraordinary, ranging from planned extremist assaults on staff to forced religious conversions, to the manufacture of an improvised explosive device. He was, by any reasonable measure, an active and committed extremist behind bars.

    Yet HMP Whitemoor’s senior leadership still deemed him suitable to join the Learning Together course. They didn’t even have the excuse that he had abandoned his toxic worldview. In fact, they were showered with information suggesting quite the opposite.

    Amazingly, during his time on the course, intelligence was generated that labelled him a ‘senior terrorist offender’. And still, no one in charge thought letting an unrepentant Islamist continue to participate in a course where he had access to vulnerable targets was a bad idea. Certainly not the course’s founders, one of whom repeatedly denied that terrorist prisoners should be excluded on the basis of their offence.

    Prison governor, Will Styles, even went on to support a grant application for Learning Together in early 2019 that cited Khan’s ‘transformation’ as a result of the project. At least £214,000 of public money was poured into this experimental project, with little evidence of value or scrutiny. It was alleged in the inquest that public protection and common sense were surrendered because, in the words of counsel for one of the families, the ‘fairy dust’ of the Cambridge University connection had left senior managers in one of our biggest terrorist jails, who should have been making hard-nosed security decisions, ‘giddy’ with excitement. It’s impossible to disagree with this verdict.

    When Khan was released from HMP Woodhill in December 2018, two bits of critical intelligence emerged from the security assessments: that he was preparing to return to ‘his old ways’; and that he had the ‘aspiration’ to carry out another attack.

    The veracity of this intelligence is contested. But what is now clear is that it was never fully acted upon. In particular, the awfully prescient second attack theory, judged to be ‘low’ quality by MI5, was not properly shared with those responsible for controlling the continuing risk he presented to the community. This intelligence entered the overwrought pipework of the multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA), which promptly failed to convert it into measures that should have prevented Khan from ever attending Fishmongers’ Hall, let alone allow him to travel into central London, carrying a fake bomb, unescorted.

    The alphabet soup of agencies and micro-groups supposedly co-ordinating Khan’s risk management worked in silos. The information that Khan was considering another attack, which came from the security service MI5, was shared with some local police, but not with the lead agency in Khan’s public protection, the Probation Service. Overworked, under resourced and inexperienced people, some at junior levels, observed status-conscious Khan descend into isolation, anger and frustration at life after release. The reality of his constrained and thwarted existence was very far from the glimpse he had into the world of top academia. This may well have had an influence on the monstrous finale to his life.

    Probation staff were left in the dark about covert MI5 and counter-terrorist police operations planned for the days before his attack. The aim of these was to test their horribly misplaced theory that Khan was no longer a risk to national security. In the event, these exercises never took place. We will never know whether their findings might have prevented Khan from coming to London on that fateful day.

    In evidence given at the inquest from behind a screen, a senior MI5 intelligence officer said: ‘The most likely form of attack at the moment is a low sophistication attack carried out at short notice’ by a ‘lone actor.’ In other words, a strikingly similar method of attack as the one used by Usman Khan.

    Could someone like Khan carry out another terrorist attack on the streets of London? There are a significant number of terrorists already in the pipeline for release from our prisons. The inquest into the deaths of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt makes another attack seem worryingly plausible.

    We will be told in the days to come how much risk management of terror offenders has improved since the end of 2019. Can we be confident about this? In January 2020, at HMP Whitemoor, an officer was very nearly murdered by two prisoners dressed in fake suicide belts and carrying improvised knives. This is supposed to be one of Europe’s most secure prisons. This further evidence of catastrophic operational security failures suggests the prison service has completely lost its way in its primary task to keep society safe. Pandering to extremely dangerous terrorists to burnish woke credentials cannot be the new normal.

    As for the attack at Fishmongers’ Hall, Usman Khan bears sole responsibility for this atrocity. Given the quality of his risk management, so painfully exposed by the inquest, it is quite likely that had he been denied access to these victims, he might have sought others out to satisfy his death cult ideology. We can’t know for sure. Either way, acceptance of responsibility for mistakes from any of the agencies involved in this catastrophe are dispiritingly hard to find across the thousands of pages of evidence at the inquest. We can only hope the coroner will require them to take action; there are more Usman Khan’s in the pipeline.

    The best tribute ministers could now pay to the sacrifice of these two bright young people – the best of us – is the replacement of the institutional dog’s breakfast of multi-agency risk management arrangements that failed them. A single executive terrorist risk management authority must take its place. The current system is plainly unfit for purpose; it fell apart under scrutiny by counsel for both victims.

    On the first day of the inquest, a statement was read on behalf of the family of Saskia Jones, just 23 when she died. They said: ‘It would be her hope that no other family is devastated and heartbroken again in similar circumstances.’ The moral challenge to the Government could not be clearer.”

    1. The calls for prison reform are tantamount to giving license to all the psychopaths’ in prison the freedom to kill more innocent people once they go free!

    2. Sad that the two youngsters were murdered, facilitated by the utter incompetence of the various authorities, and unfortunately, by the naivete of the two themselves.
      They might have grown up to be really nice, kind, and useful people.
      They won’t now.

      1. Just remembering how many nice kind people have been been slaughtered here in the UK by murderous pyschopaths from a different land , the do gooders and the media have allowed these wretches from hell to wander our streets causing mayhem.

          1. Nope. There was nowt in pending when I got there. Nothing in deleted, either.

          3. FYI the ladies comment to me has now been marked as Spam, Mrs. Sugar is just one of my Followers & a one of many the loyal posters on my blogs & she probably followed me here .

          4. Pud – I’m happy to approve / trust your followers, but we have fewer mods these days, and I confess that I tend to get on with my life, once I’ve posted each day’s new page…

          5. No problem Geoff, we all have demands on our time, having fewer Mods means less less demands for pay increases & annual bonuses and as for life its not really that complicated once you discover that the meaning of life is 42.

          6. Ah.
            Thanks, Geoff.
            How you keeping? Any sun to enjoy synthesising vitamin D in?

          10. Thanks anyway, talking of Disqus thingees , I posted this to Geoff on yesterdays page, it shows what disgusting turds they are at Disqus HQ, to deliberately slow down comments & page up dating ! The lame excuse given is pure BS.

            Happy Saturday Geoff, FYI , I learnt today that its official Disqus policy to deliberately slow down pages on a blog once they reach 1,000 comments.
            See bellow , a post by Cali the Mod on Discus Disqus
            https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-discussdisqus/bug_reports_feedback_time_warp/

            Cali 🗽😷 Get Vaccinated! 😷 🗽 Mod BlueDot • 2 hours ago

            Yikes, that thread is closing in on 450,000 comments. While there is no hard limit for the amount of comments that can be posted to a thread, Disqus intentionally slows down updates on threads that grow larger than 1,000 comments. While the discussion will still load on the page, you may notice that the thread is slow to update with new comments, votes, deletions, etc. This helps Disqus perform better across our entire network and prevents large threads from straining shared resources.

          14. Ummm… it wouldn’t be deliberate but simply capacity. That’s 450,000 bits of text to load all from a database, presented to a page using javascript.

            That’s expensive in processing and rendering.

          15. Hi Wibbling the 450,000 comments is not on one day on a blog, its on a page that has been artificially kept open for a number of years on a particular blog
            The limitations to 1K comments before Disqus deliberately slows down the posting of comments on a page is not something that Disqus warns the owners of Blogs about, I am a blog owner & it is not in the rules that I agreed to follow. My blogs are the basic free to use ones, so I would understand if they put restrictions on the free ones, but NTTL is a paid service WordPress blog so they should not get a restricted service from Disqus.

      3. It is sad that they had to die to realise how misplaced their naive do-gooding was.

        1. Like the students who were murdered in an arab country; they went there despite warnings, thinking everyone was full of sweetness and light.

    3. The authors of the Cambridge University ‘Learning Together’ programme should be sacked and tried for criminal negligence and manslaughter.

      This was a predictable, nightmarish, ‘Woke’ crime …

        1. It looks ‘militarist’, Maggie; MSM have no business employing people who proclaim and project an alien culture …

    2. He’s very slim actually, and appears in good shape apart from the hands issue. Whatever it is, I think comments like LSW1’s are rather unkind.

      1. We all have problems with ageing.
        :-((
        I can’t remember what mine are…

    4. Almost as if he’s been bitten by something, but unusual for both hands to swell up.

  58. From YouTube. Made Oi larff…
    “I worked as a carpenter’s apprentice once and proved I was uniquely untalented at wood work. The boss referred to me as “The Wood Butcher.”

    1. How do you create LGBTQ cereal? Isn’t that just, well, cereal? How patronising of them, anyhow!

      1. The company has a Vice President of Gender and Diversity according to that link…ye Gods!

        1. Let’s hope it will be a case of “get woke, go broke”. They deserve it.

    3. My daughter innocently said “isn’t it just Fruit Loops?” to which I replied “yes.”

  61. Sittting on the terrace (nearly wrote “stoep”) with a wine & the laptop, some b*****d is flying a drone around. It sounds like a million hornets all coming for me.
    I wonder if anyone would be upset if I shot it with my 12-bore?

    4. Shoot! They have no licence to intrude on your air space. Shoot again!

    2. There was a freedom march outside Westfield White City shopping mall. The police stopped the marchers going inside but that wasn’t the point of the march anyway – they were actually heading for Television Centre but were also prevented from going there. A shame. It was a huge crowd. I got caught up in it by accident this time as I was just on my way home from the hairdresser.

  63. Evening all, the DT continues it slide down the press charts, it goes from bad to worse.
    I fail to see how the journalist, or should it be cub reporter, compare Sept 2020 and May 2021. What about the vaccine doses they are all praising, is it frigging useless Johnson? If it does not make a difference are we destined to stay locked down like frightened children for ever!
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/history-repeating-unlocking-amid-new-variant/

          5. Napoli… Puh. Siracusa is light years better, especially Ortigia.
            ;-))

          6. Almost made to Siracusa in 1971, on a school cruise on the SS Uganda. But, for reasons I can’t remember, we had to go to Messina instead, and went by coach to Taormina.

          8. It does have several Roman temples, an amphitheatre, and Dinysius’ Ear.
            The sorbetto limone is better, too, and Arancini to die for… 😉

    4. I’ve got it on the screen on mute and am reading a book, it’s that interesting.

  66. Manchester City v Chelsea European Champions League final. Both teams went down on one knee before the kick-off. The booing was loud and unmistakeable. When are these idiots going to learn?

    3. Disaster.

      They can’t both lose.

      What a pity.

      I’m sure that BLM hopes the team with most white people loses.

      1. Imagine that BLM can hardly believe their luck that this nonsense is still going on.

  67. If any of you are still sober enough to read…

    Lockdown-obsessed politicians are neglecting a generation of children

    The opposition has had very little to say about the horrifying collateral damage of lockdown

    JANET DALEY

    Dominic Cummings’s extraordinary performance last week will have achieved two major results. Matt Hancock is, for the moment, almost certainly unsackable, and the final lifting of restrictions scheduled for 21 June is almost certainly unstoppable. These consequences are presumably the opposite of what Mr Cummings would have wanted, which only goes to show how overrated his tactical skills have been. Mr Hancock must stay in his job until the public memory of the Cummings pronouncement – that he should have been sacked 20 times over – has faded into the mists because (as any trainee political adviser would know) to remove him now would vindicate that judgement, giving credence to Mr Cummings’s other pronouncement that the Prime Minister was “unfit for office”.

    The imminent great lockdown release must now, more urgently than ever, go ahead because the country needs, more urgently than ever, to have its confidence reinforced in the government’s ultimate success in dealing with the Covid crisis – whatever its earlier mistakes or confusions might have been. As it happens, and purely by lucky accident, the second of these two Cummings accomplishments – the impossibility of delaying the 21 June release – is a blessing for which we must offer him endless gratitude.

    The Cummings explosion (or implosion) will produce a lot of smoke and little damage to the government, not only because the man himself was so discredited by his own past behaviour (popular nickname: Lord Cummings of Barnard Castle) but because the crucial public discussion has moved on.

    What has become starkly, horrendously visible is the damage caused by lockdown – not just to the economy, but to personal lives, mental health, the social development of children and adolescents, and the educational opportunities of a whole cohort of school pupils, including a swathe of disadvantaged children whose life chances may never recover.

    This is what we need to talk about now, not who said what to whom a year ago, and who was in the room when it was said. As I write, the usual scientific suspects on the Today programme (which seems to have a contacts book full of them) are issuing terrible warnings not just about the Indian variant – which, in fact, seems not to be causing an increase in hospital admissions – but about an even newer variant arriving from Egypt via Thailand.

    Obviously, the possible threats of delay to the ending of this unprecedented experiment in social repression are as infinite as the number of mutations that this virus can undergo. And this pattern will not, as the choristers of doom keep making clear, be restricted to this particular organism: there are uncountable numbers of potential new viruses waiting to evolve into deadly pandemics as they are transported speedily around a globalised, interconnected planet.

    What must be clear to all the governing operations of the world is that putting populations into enforced forms of social isolation which are, in the literal sense of the word, inhuman, cannot be an acceptable response to these phenomena. Even as we are assessing the long term consequences in collateral damage to physical health and social wellbeing of this shocking policy, it is absolutely undeniable that a perpetual cycle of imprisonment followed by (always uncertain) respite is completely unacceptable. What has happened over this past year must never be repeated.

    So the proper, relevant questions must be: what do we do to escape from the loop this time, and how do we ensure that we are never trapped in it again? As the more immediate tasks at hand are confronted, the need for this will be even clearer.

    How on earth are we going to repair the devastating damage done to the education of millions of working class children who have lost a critical year of schooling and become so detached from the academic process that they may never re-engage with it? (Working class children are not the only pupils who have been affected by this of course, but the middle class ones will have the help and support of families to find their way back.)

    What is astonishing is how little interest the present Labour party seems to have in this matter. While the life prospects of a generation have been effectively shut down, reversing decades of progress in social mobility, Labour has busied itself with demands for more and longer lockdowns and faithfully mouthed the teaching unions’ demands for school closures which were almost entirely pointless.

    The conversations of real people are now a mix of sadness and sympathy for the bereaved, with impatience and hope for the liberation which is so close. Perhaps emboldened by the startling success of the vaccination programme (and genuine pride in the fact that it has been a national effort), there seems to be less nervousness about relinquishing the supposed security of lockdown and much more understanding of the cost of it.

    People are telling stories of the elderly relatives who died alone (not of Covid) without the comfort of their families, the children who gave up on school, the savings lost when livelihoods and businesses collapsed, the relationships that foundered through separation, the dangerous consequences of delayed medical diagnosis and – surprisingly often – the alarming effect that months of incarceration have had on the ability of healthy, confident people to emerge back into normal life.

    The complaint that there should have been more of this hell – that it should have started earlier and ended later and not had any of the gaps that it did have – is hopelessly ill-timed.

    As the evidence piles up about the collateral damage, even those who smugly benefited from the gains in money saved on commuting and child care costs, and thought they would be happy to live under indefinite house arrest are expressing doubts. The political future will belong to those who can find a way to protect lives without ruining them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/cummingss-attempts-relitigate-past-ignore-damage-done-lockdown/

    1. Labour is not interested in promoting social mobility; people who move on from being the underclass tend to want to keep what they’ve earned and don’t see why the fruits of their labour should be squandered on those who get everything for nothing without bothering to work. Then they stop voting Labour.

    1. Does anyone ever stop to think that perhaps improvements in aerodynamics ensures more bugs get pushed aside and over the wind shield?

        1. It happens all the time, the Nottleshield pushes comments to the side and many go over the heads of the readers.

      2. I once was zooming down the M6 on a very sunny afternoon with my driver’s window wound down, when a bug hit me on my right cheek. It felt like someone had slapped me so hard, it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

        I shudder to think how big and squishy it was.

        1. Never ride a motorbike without full-face visor… bugs in teeth at 70+ mph not fun :-((

      1. Neonicotinoids. For some reason daft farmers use crop sprays that kill the bees that pollinate their crops.

        1. I think they were banned a couple of years ago – but sugar beet farmers in East Anglia have applied for special permission to use them.

    3. It’s very noticeable.
      Years ago, car fronts were the graveyard of very many splatted bees, butterflies and more – now, very clean. I’m sure improved aerodynamics has helped, but even so…

  70. Picking bits and pieces fron the Guardian on line whilst Moh is watching the footie , and saw this ..

    “Grab a great hunk of parmesan and hold it over a bowl of pasta, then grate delicate little shavings of parmesan on top of the pasta, rhythmically moving the hunk back and forth so the cheese falls, romantically, like snow on a mountain-top. It’s a scientific fact that if you do this in front of a guest of any sexual orientation, they will fall in love immediately and want to have sex with you. I don’t know why. It just happens.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/may/25/a-handheld-grater-will-make-guests-want-to-have-sex-with-you-the-anatomy-of-a-grown-up-apartment

    5. Yo T_B

      I just bought a cheese shaver, for £1.00 from Yorkshire Trading.

      I will keep you all updated

    1. Rumours that Dominic Cummings was best man are somewhat exaggerated, Maggie …

      1. To calm the MSM, they had a Best Person

        Must get the lgbtqwertyers on side

    2. The ‘Boris and Squeeze’ guest list will be Sunday’s Scoop and very revealing …

  72. C’mon – ‘fess up – which NoTTLers were invited but kept schtum?

    Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds married in secret wedding ceremony at Westminster Cathedral

    Mr Johnson, 56, exchanged vows with Ms Symonds, 33, at Catholic cathedral in London

    By Edward Malnick, SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR ;Tim Stanley and Phoebe Southworth
    29 May 2021 • 9:05pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/boris-johnson-carrie-symonds-married-catholic-westminster-cathedral/

    *********************************

    BTL:
    Mick Gould
    29 May 2021 8:38PM
    Good move, Boris. Now she cannot be compelled by the prosecution to give evidence against you.

        1. There is no quip about organs that I’ve not previously heard. Perhaps the best was in the early 70s, when I enlisted the help of a friend to load my (crap) electronic instrument onto the Vicar’s trailer. “Could you not have taken up the Piccolo?”

    3. Interesting. The Catholic Church is supposed to refuse marriage to those who have lived in “open and public concubinage”. There is a Papal Encyclical on the subject.

  73. @Geoff
    Was listening to this, https://youtu.be/PyMz0w2UC9s and there’s a whole list of, I guess, organ settings. Is there any way of summarising what it all means? I mean, it looks worse than a pre-startup checklist…
    Organ by:
    Henry Willis II (1902)
    JW Walker & Sons Ltd (1962/69)
    David Wells Organ Builders Ltd (2014)

    SPECIFICATION

    Pedal
    1 Contra Bass 32
    2 Open Wood 16
    3 Principal 16 from Great Double Open Diapason
    4 Bourdon 16 ext. Contra Bass
    5 Octave 8
    6 Gemshorn 8 (from Positive Gemshorn)
    7 Bass Flute 8 (ext. Bourdon)
    8 Choral Bass 4
    9 Octave Flute 4 (ext. Bourdon)
    10 Mixture IV 19-22-26-29
    11 Trombone 16
    12 Bombarde 16 (from Great Bombarde)
    13 Octave Trombone 8 (ext. Bombarde)
    14 Schalmey 4

    Positive
    15 Gemshorn 8
    16 Bourdon 8
    17 Quintaton 8
    18 Principal 4
    19 Rohrflute 4
    20 Nazard 2 2/3
    21 Octave 2
    22 Block Flute 2
    23 Tierce 1 3/5
    24 Larigot 1 1/3
    25 Cymbal IV 26-29-33-36
    26 Crumhorn 8
    27 Trumpet 8 (from Great Trumpet)
    28 Clarion 4 (from Great Clarion)
    29 Orchestral Trumpet 8
    30 Sub Octave
    31 Tremulant

    Great
    32 Double Open Diapason 16
    33 Open Diapason I 8
    34 Open Diapason II 8
    35 Spitzflute 8
    36 Octave 4
    37 Principal 4
    38 Koppel Flute 4
    39 Super Octave 2
    40 Mixture IV 19-22-26-29
    41 Bombarde 16
    42 Trumpet 8 (ext. Bombarde)
    43 Clarion 4

    Swell (Enclosed)
    44 Geigen Diapason 8
    45 Gedeckt 8
    46 Viola 8
    47 Vox Angelica 8
    48 Geigen Principal 4
    49 Chimney Flute 4
    50 Octave 2
    51 Sesquialtera II 12-17
    52 Mixture III 22-26-29
    53 Bassoon 16
    54 Trumpet 8
    55 Hautboy 8 (ext. Bassoon)
    56 Tremulant
    57 Octave

    Couplers
    Swell to Pedal
    Swell to Great
    Great to Pedal
    Positive to Pedal
    Swell to Positive
    Positive to Great

    Accessories:
    Balanced mechnical swell pedal
    6 pistons to each division
    8 general pistons, plus stepper pistons
    Thumb pistons Sw-Gt, Pos-Gt, Sw-Pos, Sw-Ped, Gt-Ped, Pos-Ped
    6 toe pistons to Swell
    6 toe pistons to Great
    Gt-Ped toe piston

    3. Yo Paul. Organs are the ultimate ‘boys toys’. I bet you’ve never walked around the internals of a piano. What we have here is a substantial instrument with three manual divisions and pedals. Think of the Swell, Great and Positive as three separate organs, plus the pedals. Stops suffixed by “8′” are at the same pitch as a piano keyboard. Half the length of an organ pipe and you raise the pitch by an octave. Double it, you lower it by an octave.

      Diapasons, Octaves, Principals, Fifteenths and the like, have the classic ‘organ sound’. Other stops are more ‘flutey’ or ‘stringy’. On the above organ, the flute stops are largely self-explanatory. The ‘strings’ include the Viola. Then there are ‘mutation’ stops.
      The Nazard, Tierce and Larigot don’t actually play the note which corresponds to the keyboard. But they add harmonics and brightness to the overall sound.
      Then you have the reed stops. They work differently to the standard pipes, and have a vibrating ‘reed’. They imitate orchestral instruments such as the oboe, clarinet, trumpet and tuba.

      This organ has four divisions _ three keyboards, and one pedal board. From the top, you have the Swell, Great and Positive. The Swell organ is inside an enclosure with shutters which may be opened or closed by a pedal, adjusting the volume. The Positive organ may also be enclosed. Or not.

      Sw to Gt, Gt to Ped etc are merely ways of connecting sections of the organ together.

      Henry Willis descended from perhaps the greatest English organ builder. J W Walker were up there with the greats. They were based in Brandon, Suffolk, when I was organist in the main town church. Sadly, we couldn’t afford them. They have since changed hands. My current organ in Seale is largely Walker, and is utterly reliable, though lacking in reed stops. T’other organ in Puttenham is by Wm Hill, c. 1881, and has just been overhauled by Mander Organs* for five figures. Personally, I’d have taken a chainsaw to it.

      *N P Mander was a top flight organ builder, but sadly shuffled off for financial reasons. F H Browne of Canterbury (who were already the organ tuner at Seale) bought the name, and kept on a few staff.

      This has merely scratched the surface. Do let me know when you require the next lesson :-)).

      1. Bloody hell… and I thought poking the keys and pedals at the right time was difficult enough…
        Respect, Geoff!

        1. You can sit down at a Yamaha piano, a Bosendorfer, or a Steinway. There will be subtle differences. Even if the Steinway is out of tune (I’ve played one of those).

          But no two organs are alike. Even if the stop names are similar. Since you posted the organ spec above, here’s ‘umble Seale by comparison:

          Specification

          Pedal
          1 Bourdon 16
          2 Bass Flute 8

          Great
          3 Open Diapason 8
          4 Clarabel 8
          5 Dulciana 8
          6 Octave 4
          7 Flute 4

          Swell
          8 Open Diapason 8
          9 Stopped Diapason 8
          10 Viol da Gamba 8
          11 Principal 4
          12 Twelfth 2 2/3
          13 Fifteenth 2

      2. Gosh. I don’t understand how they work but I’ve been inside a pipe organ. Not a very big one but still possible to walk around inside.

        Is Disqus lying or do we really only have 384 comments today?

      3. Yo Boss

        Most of us on here have trouble with their own organs, let alone many piped ones.

      4. Yo Boss

        Most of us on here have trouble with their own organs, let alone many piped ones.

  74. Pianos made with colonial ivory, and sculptures of a revered composer who invested heavily in the slave trade, are under review at the UK’s oldest conservatoire.

    Officials at the Royal Academy of Music have confirmed they are reassessing the conservatoire’s 200-year-old collection to free up space for student learning, and to review its artefacts “through a decolonisation lens”.

    The review could give wider context to the Academy’s displayed portraits and sculptures of Baroque composer George Frideric Handel, who we now know repeatedly invested in the transatlantic slave trade.

    Other items ripe for reevaluation in the on-site museum include rare 18th-century pianos and violins, whose keys and fingerboards were made with colonial ivory and ebony.

    A spokesperson for the conservatoire told Classic FM: “The Academy has always trained its students for the evolving professional environments of being a musician.

    “It is vital that they understand the cultural, political and socio-economic forces that have shaped musical traditions, as well as the issues that are shaping it in the present, such as the pandemic and questions around equality, diversity and inclusion.”

    https://www.classicfm.com/composers/handel/royal-academy-of-music-decolonise-collection-slave-trade/

    Read more: Oxford University could ‘decolonise’ music syllabus to make it less ‘white European’

    2. They should demand that African tribes return the beads they exchanged for the ivory.

    3. I wonder if Ivory Coast will be obliged to change its name so it no longer reflects its colonial past? Answers on a very small postcard.

    5. I should prolly take a hammer and chisel to church in the morning. Get rid of that pesky ivory on the organ keyboards. Think of the pachyderm lives that will save…

    8. “It is vital that (our students) understand … the issues that are shaping it in the present, such as racism, genocide and censorship”
      Fixed it for them.

    9. “It is vital that (our students) understand … the issues that are shaping it in the present, such as racism, genocide and censorship”
      Fixed it for them.

  75. Royal Yacht Britannia replacement to enter service in four years, says Boris Johnson

    Prime Minister says work on the new flagship, which will be crewed by the Royal Navy, will start next year

    By Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    29 May 2021 • 9:30pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2021/05/29/259911138_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqFSoRFq0mffoTKzSkwZ–SwgOC2evmouZtjp6jJTM11k.png?imwidth=960
    What a crappy ‘Artist’s Impression’ – very inelegant and lacking in panache

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2021/05/29/TELEMMGLPICT000257458282_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqXDd7JT1VSaKZRxPyOHwH0V43QDp7PCbuBf0tmNwjMGQ.jpeg?imwidth=680

    2. The “Artist’s impression” looks like a rigid and angry ship, fast and stressed, and owned by a Russian oligark. Britannia looks like a happy, relaxed ship, one I’d be pleased to go on board.

    3. The “Artist’s impression” looks like a rigid and angry ship, fast and stressed, and owned by a Russian oligark. Britannia looks like a happy, relaxed ship, one I’d be pleased to go on board.

    4. I can’t say I’m impressed with the “impression”. I only hope HM gets to enjoy cruises on/in (I know nowt about sea things) her.

    5. An RN ship, does not fly the White Ensign from the jack staff, whilst under way.

        1. The UnionFlag from the jack staff (a removable flag pole on the weather deck at the stern of the ship, when the ship is at anchor or alongside

          The White Ensign is flown from the main mast when the ship is underway

  76. Thanks to the Nottler who provided the link to the Pornhub website.

    Here are some closeup action shots of hole filling.🔞

    Warning – images show intimate views of a tamper and a vibrator:

    https://youtu.be/WjUqgeqZD3Q

  77. Heard just now that Canada has cancelled elections, as voting in Covid times is “too dangerous” – is that true? Nowt in t’media…
    Edit:
    See https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/43/2/118
    VOTE NO. 118
    43RD PARLIAMENT, 2ND SESSION
    Sitting No. 103 – Tuesday, May 25, 2021
    MOTION TEXT (House of Commons – my text)
    That:
    (a) the House remind the government that a general election was held in October 2019 and sadly note that more than 1.3 million Canadians, including almost 360,000 Quebecers, have been infected with COVID-19 and that nearly 25,000 people have died as a result; and
    (b) in the opinion of the House, holding an election during a pandemic would be irresponsible, and that it is the responsibility of the government to make every effort to ensure that voters are not called to the polls as long as this pandemic continues.
    SUMMARY
    Results: Agreed To
    Yea: 327
    Nay: 1

    1. A pitiful excuse by Justina , elections were held in Israel on 2 March 2020 at the height of the Covid 19 plague , special precautions were taken , I voted
      The election result showed a political stalemate & a temporary coalition government was formed & this year another election took place on 23 March 2021, once again with special precautions albeit by then a majority of voters had been vaccinated with both doses.

    2. Nothing heard over here.

      Trudeau and friends are pushing out goodies to anyone that might vote for him, promising the earth and every decision appears to be aimed at increasing votes.

      For God’s sake he issued a public apology yesterday to the Italians who were interned during the second world War (never mind that we were at war with Italy and many interned were facists). He is also backing a move by Quebec to unilaterally modify the constitution so that French is the only recognized language in that part of a bilingual country.

      It is a minority government, the only reason that we are not headed for an election is that the lefty ndp will not vote against him.

  78. Our PM has married his partner today, Apologies it was announced earlier on this site by citroen1

      1. I like it, Johnny! Very practical reason for making an “honest” woman of her.

    2. True -Belle reported the marriage even earlier. The NOTTLERS seem to have beaten the press with this news. The PM should have done this before the baby was born.

    3. The last PM to marry in office was almost 200 years ago and Johnson is already one of few PMs to divorce in office. I have every expectation of him being the only PM to divorce twice in office.

    4. Hmm 2022 came early for them – trying to get to 2030 faster and ban all those petrol/gas guzzlers.

    5. mng, nothing more than an offshore tax dodge. Given MSM go into meltdown mode at whiff of a fake celebrity wedding, Johnson would have wanted to exploit both the coverage and benefits financially

  79. Evening, all. Been out celebrating perhaps the first step to normality by going out to dinner – yay! It was the Boxing Day lunch postponed for six months due to government panic and the ludicrous tier system (because the restaurant was over the border in Cheshire, it was in a different tier).

      1. Excellent, thank you. We were both so grateful to be allowed to escape and eat out!

  80. Night all, get to bed early, there will be a whole world to put right tomorrow

    2. Early to bed and early to rise
      Gives his partner a big surprise!

      G’night OLT and all.

      1. Or the old farming version, Angie, early to bed and up with the cock(erel)

        1. The late Jamie Shadbolt (Shadbolt Veneers) used that phrase in his after dinner speeches. He attributed it inevitably to a German: ‘Early to bed and up with the cock’.

          Shadbolt supplied the wood veneers for several of my London buildings. They held the most enjoyable annual parties which were always great fun.

  82. British-born former Islamic extremist, 29, reports his parents to the police for ‘radicalising him as a child’
    A 29-year-old’s case could lead to the first prosecution of its kind in the UK
    The man alleges his parents began radicalising him from the age of five
    His parents fell under the influence of a fundamentalist branch of Islam

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9632775/British-born-former-Islamic-extremist-29-reports-parents-police.html?ito=push-notification&ci=201125&si=26738248&ai=9632775

      1. Or several 137’s. You waited an hour at Sloane Square then three packed buses arrived at once. The bloody blacks jumped the queue as ever , packing the empty bus and you were lucky to get a standing place on the third bus.

        Occasionally I simply gave up and walked home or else paid the tube fare to Clapham Common.

  83. 333535+up ticks,

    Boris Johnson wedding: How did Prime Minister marry Carrie Symonds in a Catholic church?

    Special dispensation to lower its standards.

    1. It is possible for a protestant to marry a catholic in a catholic church but they will be denied a nuptial mass but the proddy has to promise that the nippers will be brought up as papists.

      I know, I was in that situation but I converted so that the wee Jackeen could have her hour-long nuptial mass.

          2. Gosh! We’ve gone to bed. Will have to turn the light off in a moment as he’s settled down.

          3. I think just the once would normally have been enough to ban the banns – trust Bojo to over-egg the pudding 🙂

        2. No, Connors, a callow youth of 20 but I’m sure Bojo has a Papal dispensation – with a bit of luck it’ll cramp his style and put a crimp in hers.

  87. We are presently partially disabled electrically because this idiot allowed a basin to overflow in the bathroom. Electricians say to leave it to dry out for two or three days. So no Rayburn which provides hot water, heating and cooking, no emergency immersion heating for hot water.

    We have power at one end of the house and lighting here and there.

    On the plus sided we ventured out to the Willow Tree Farm Shop in Glemsford where the brilliant proprietors have not only kept the Farm Shop open during this artificial pandemic but have built a Restaurant and Tea Rooms.

    I ordered an open sandwich of rye bread with lettuce, avocado and smoked salmon with a side order of chips. My wife Carol ordered their sausage roll with garnishes and a side order of chips. We had fizzy Elderflower for drinks. The total bill was a mere £21.00.

    The service was second to none and the ambience just relaxed and frankly wonderful. This started as a small local enterprise and this has evidently grown, despite the restrictions imposed by our idiotic and thoroughly useless government, during those restrictions.

    As I left I remarked to Carol that we should be very proud of the sheer resilience and ingenuity of our people to rise above the negativity of our discredited politicians, their medical ‘expert’ props and our utterly useless NHS management.

Comments are closed.