Saturday 4 December: It’s foolish to import oil and gas when Britain has found its own in the North Sea

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

677 thoughts on “Saturday 4 December: It’s foolish to import oil and gas when Britain has found its own in the North Sea”

  1. Diesel Fitter

    Sven and Ole work together, and are both laid off, so they go to the unemployment office.

    Asked his occupation, Ole says, ” Panty stitcher. I sew de elastic onto de cotton panties!”

    The clerk looks up panty stitcher. Finding it classed as unskilled labour, she gives him $300 per week unemployment pay.

    Sven is asked his occupation.

    “Diesel fitter,” he replies.
    Since diesel mechanic is a skilled job, the clerk gives Sven $600 per week.

    When Ole finds out, he is furious. He storms back into the unemployment office, to find out why his friend and co-worker is collecting double his pay.

    The clerk explains, “Panty stitchers are unskilled and diesel fitters are skilled labour.”

    “Vhat skill?” yells Ole, “I sew de elastic on, Sven pulls em open and says, ‘Yah, diesel fitter!”

    1. They’re playing Tag and the chicken is ‘It’. You can see that from where, 2/3 through, the dog comes up to the chicken, teases it then runs away.

  6. DT reporting that health ministers are asking GPs in England to ignore routine health checks of the over 75s for 4 months and to concentrate on the Covid vaccinations.
    I can see where this is going.
    I am due a diabetic check this month but can manage but others less fortunate may suffer the consequences..
    The Health Minister, if this report is true, should be ashamed of himself and removed from his post.

    1. ‘Dr Farah Jameel, the GP committee chair of the British Medical Association, said NHS England’s plans would remove “some of the more bureaucratic and target-based requirements within practices’ contracts” and free up time “to get more jabs into arms, while allowing practices to focus on patients who need their attention the most”.
      FFS
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59528615

      1. She also said the extra money that doctors get, for doing a job a nurse or a trained lay persons job can do, goes to the upkeep of the doctor’s surgery and not into his/ her pocket.

        1. Upkeep of the surgery? Such is the intention to never again see patients unless completely unavoidable, that our massive surgery (around 24 GPs albeit several are part-time) has removed virtually all the chairs in the waiting room. Limited footfall so nothing wears out anymore. Just what are these extra windfalls being spent on?

          1. I suppose a group of 24 GPs could afford to club together to buy an island in the Caribbean. There may even be one up for sale at the moment.

      1. Morning Alec, I have been in training for the last two months with limited success but in another 2 weeks I hope to be ready for the check. If I am refused my routine check I can enjoy the Christmas and New year period and recover for a check after April 2022.
        I only failed one check in the last 14 years.
        I check my blood sugar levels, at my own expense [ about £100 each year for the test strips] every other day.
        Glad to hear you are keeping well

        1. Evening CS, I don’t pay for my test strips. I used to be on insulin although type 2 but through diet got my levels down to a point where I just have the lowest dose of gliclazide tablets per day. I do test every time I go out on the recovery truck though. The main test (Hb1ac) is in the low 50s and the doc is ok with that. All my checks are carried out by the practice nurse.

    3. The GPs don’t normally do these checks themselves. What they mean is, vital health checks will have to be ignored because we are sending all our practice nurses and health care assistants (who normally do the checks anyway) to do the jabs so they won’t be available. As it is mostly these same nurses and others who do most GP consultations these days, and GPs don’t lower themselves to see or even phone most patients (regardless of clinical need), then good luck with even getting a nurse or similar for a normal appointment. But the GPs are happy to keep taking the £15 a jab bonus. Then they will wonder why A&E and UTC departments get busier.
      Given the lack of GP-patient interactions these days, why doesn’t Saint NHS simply employ fewer GPs and take on more nurses? Oh, yes, not enough nurses are being trained.

      1. The graph shown doesn’t appear to have anything to do with excess deaths, merely deaths by vaccination status.
        If there’s anything wrong, it is the lack of comparison of total vaccinated vs unvaccinated. Given vaccinations as a whole have risen as proportion of the population one might expect vax vs unvax to be higher.

        1. They really need to include data from previous years before covid for comparison or some sort of average for that period

          1. That’s one of many that don’t seem to be published. The majority seem to cherry pick according to the bias of the presenters. Getting figures that genuinely compare like with like is the Devil’s own job.

          2. Which is worrying, if there wasn’t anything to hide I’m sure they would be publishing them.

          3. There’s plenty to hide e.g. blood clotting now exposed as being a fact and the next big scandal will be the disclosure of all the heart problems. With elite athletes, footballers, basketball players etc dropping all over the World as never before it’s going to be hard to keep the lid on the problem. Coincidence it ain’t.

          4. When the athletes started having problems I tried to recall similar incidents; they were very very rare. Now there are almost daily reports.

          5. I had lunch with a school chum yesterday and I mentioned the athletes etc, having heart problems and that some had died. The only professional footballer either of us could remember having a heart problem during a match was Fabrice Muamba, playing for Bolton Wanderers against Spurs back in 2012. He recovered from the heart attack but was forced to retire. I do not expect this government to acknowledge a problem with the “vaccines” as they have an agenda to fulfil.

          7. The powers that be appear to have complete control over the mainstream media where the virus is concerned.

        2. They really need to include data from previous years before covid for comparison or some sort of average for that period

        3. sos, the reporter mentions ‘confounders’ underneath the graph, therefore equally sized cohorts of 100,000 of each type are used for comparison.The disparity in total numbers of each type nationally does not come into play.

          1. I presumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the use of confounders referred to other than absolute numbers.
            I am extremely wary of all such presentations and the way they get interpreted/used.

          1. As far as I can tell it’s deaths jabbed and deaths unjabbed, trying to suggest being jabbed is worse, without real context. (See other posts/replies on the original post.)

          2. The context is that it is age adjusted, and deaths per 100 000, which does make it a genuine comparison.
            You can see another comparison with non-vaccinated and vaccinated deaths if you look at graphs of total deaths for each month of this year. Several published graphs (eg the ones from Scotland, and from Germany) have shown a small but definite increase in total deaths following vaccine rollouts.

          3. All it is doing is showing absolute numbers and not mentioning the fact that there are far more people vaccinated than not. I would be very wary of drawing conclusions from it.

          5. In this case it’s merely a divisor it could equally 10, 100, or a million and the graph shape would be the same.

          6. Yes, but surely that means that a meaningful comparison is possible, because it is numbers per constant amount, whether that’s 10100, 100000 or a million!

          7. The 100 000 is calculated for each line from the two groups separately, not from the population as a whole. I think this is the point of difference?

      2. The data is from the UK Office of National Statistics and doesn’t refer to excess deaths as the graph heading explains clearly.

        1. I can see that. My comment clearly says ‘Deaths’. ‘Excess deaths’ is in my comment as extra info.

          2. I edited it within a minute of posting it as part of my normal proof reading and that post is clearly well after that time.

            Edit (on proofreading again): Oh, some posters clearly don’t realise that excess deaths show the same pattern as total deaths, because they are total deaths less a constant (expected deaths).

          3. You may have done so swiftly, but to then criticise a response to what was the original post when the edit made a material difference is disingenuous.

          4. By all means criticise me, but only when it’s valid.

            Read my words. Although the times will be less clear now, if I added 2 words ‘Death and’ immediately after the initial typing, something that took only a few seconds, then I clearly edited the post well before any of the comments were posted and, given the time taken to type, probably well before they started typing. I may be at fault for poor initial proof-reading or realising I’ve missed something, but disingenuous I am not.

            If people criticise me, why can’t I criticise them, particularly when they’re wrong or inappropriate? Why do you imply I’m deceitful when I clearly haven’t been and you have failed to check your facts?

            Edit: I’m off now, so don’t expect a response. I’ve had enough storms in teacups for the day.

          5. You clearly don’t realise that an edit doesn’t appear until the reader refreshes the page.
            When someone replies to a post they are replying to the one on their most recent connection.
            It also makes a difference if they’re replying on the page or via notifications, where usually the most recent version appears.
            I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t criticise responses, just to bear in mind that edits that materially change the meaning should be acknowledged.
            Everyone makes typos.

  10. Good morning from a not quite frosty Derbyshire with another 0°C outside. Looks clearish outside, but still getting light.

  11. Lead Letter, well said John Barstow:-

    SIR – The Cambo oil field off the Shetland Islands, and for that matter the Jackdaw field, need to go ahead – here and now.

    Oil and gas sources are essential to industrial processing, including green technologies. Greater domestic supply can make for cheaper prices and resilience for British industry. I note that objectors to Cambo and Jackdaw appear to be happy to import oil, as well as gas from Russia.

    The jobs connected with Cambo and Jackdaw will be needed in the future. They are crucial to levelling up and to nurturing more economic activity in the North.

    Does the governing party wish to retain its blue-collar vote and expand it? Approval of more blue-collar jobs in Scotland is a litmus test for the Conservatives’ one-nation credentials.

    John Barstow
    Pulborough, West Sussex

  12. A child’s murder

    SIR – I read with shock, revulsion and anger your report (December 2) about the demise of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes. The Government will say: “We will takes steps to ensure that this never happens again.” I have heard this shallow, meaningless line, like a stuck gramophone record, over so many decades that there is now a valid reason to bring back the death penalty.

    Dave Alsop

    Churchdown, Gloucestershire

    1. ‘Morning Epi. I heard that quote late yesterday, and it was our useless clot of a PM who said it. The only bit missing was the usual “We take this matter very seriously…”

    2. Lots of talk about changing the law. Proposals for “Jimmy’s Law” or “Jemima’s Law” sort of thing. We do not need more laws. We’ve got plenty of laws. We do not have enough people who will deal with bad stuff promptly. Action, not words. Action not bound by restrictions, “we need a warrant”, “can’t do it”, “need permission”…

      1. I recall many years ago that a local primary school was repeatedly trying, in vain, to raise a red flag about a clearly neglected child. LEA, SS, police – nobody interested. I think it took around year for anything to happen – even then it was pussy-footing, hand-wringing nonsense. I have a vague memory that the child moved to another school and the whole process had to be restarted.

    3. …not just for murder (of anyone) but also for rapists.

      Even as a man, I can understand how that would murder a woman’s self-esteem.

    4. This government are the ones responsible for this poor little lad’s murder. Lockdowns and restrictions meant Arthur slipped from view. How many other children are also at risk because of the actions of this asinine government?

  13. Frankly unlikely

    SIR – Has anybody else noticed that letters and cards are now franked on the day they leave the main sorting office? This means they appear to arrive on the day they were sent, which seems highly unlikely.

    Fiona Wild

    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

  14. Older and safer drivers

    SIR – If the government-funded report on older drivers (report, December 2) brings an improvement to road safety then it is to be applauded.

    However, it would appear from statistics that by far the biggest number of culprits of careless driving offences are the 45-54 age group, and the biggest number for dangerous driving offences are the 25-34 age group.

    Stuart Longworth

    Manchester

    SIR – I was appalled at the advice from the AA quoted in your report on safe driving on the motorway (“Don’t wait in your car after a smart motorway breakdown”, December 3). It advised people to get out of the car and go behind the barrier and as far back as possible, but to leave pets in the car. Imagine the trauma of watching a beloved pet die, if the car is rammed, which on these smart motorways appears to be very likely.

    Rona Wakefield

    Luton, Bedfordshire

    1. Leaving pets in the vehicle? Which is lower: The risk of getting killed in the car; or the risk of the pet escaping, possibly terrified in unusual surroundings, with the attendant risk of it getting killed in traffic and of causing mayhem and accidents for other vehicles?

      Leaving the pet in the car seems the least-bad of the options.

      1. Pets have to be restrained when travelling. Mine wears a harness and a lead. It wouldn’t get the chance to escape.

    3. If I had to stop on a smart motorway and get behind a barrier, my dog would be coming with me.

        1. The snow is now hard-packed on the roads so driving is a doddle for the rest of the Winter.
          Outside temp.this morning…-14C.

          1. Snow last night was too cold to pack, so was a lubricant on the road. Sevral ended up in a ditch. Should make it easy to shift today, though – light ‘n fluffy.

  16. SIR – I have a fully insulated, mainly electric house with no open fireplace, and with a gas boiler and pumps that are also dependent on electricity.

    Having suffered a six-day power-cut some winters ago, I feel well placed to offer advice. It is: move out.

    Victoria Edge
    Farningham, Kent

    That’s a bit drastic, Ms Edge. So much easier, and infinitely cheaper, to buy a small portable generator and ask and electrician to provide a socket that is switchable between it and the mains. A 1kw inverter model with smoothed output would be enough to power the basics as a temporary measure, and certainly a boiler, pumps and some lighting.

        1. 342436+ up ticks,
          Morning A,
          You mean we will give consent to have them banned ? how about a overseers sponsored suicide tooth
          for those that disagree with the governing trash ? let us seriously try taking down the lab/lib/con odious coalition.

      2. Ok in the countryside, but in urban areas they are nasty polluters that do far more damage than traffic fumes.

      3. Our coalman delivered 6 sacks of house coal to us yesterday , lovely lumps of shiny coal , and I feel very relieved that the bunker is now topped up .

        His lorry was large and rackety with a particular sound that only old rackety lorries have . Stacked with sacks of coal .

        These days the coal is presented in sealed plastic sacks , and the chap slices open the bag to deposit the contents in the bunker ..
        He informed me that if the 6 bags was an overestimate , he would still have to slit the remaining bags and leave them open near the bunker, because since hessian bags were no longer used , plastic bags of sealed coal were sold on!!

        He also told me that log deliveries were exceeding sacks of coal in price!

        The popularity of wood burners are creating quite a healthy mark up with log deliveries .

        Can any one who uses them , comment on that ?

        1. We haven’t had to buy any logs for several years since our neighbour got us a load of old pallets. We still have a shedful of those. Plus trimmings from our garden trees. So I don’t know what the prices of logs are like now.

        2. I had 1/2 ton of anthracite delivered the other day. Price went up by £10 from what it was in October. 6% increase and the first increase in 3 years. Cannot really complain
          My electricity went up by 1/3rd but is still cheaper than many are paying.

          2. You are welcome. Funny that this company, despite catchy new name, have been delivering coal for 200 years. So what has changed to require new regulations?

        4. Our burner can use wood or coal, so we’re stocked up with both. The coal is probably more efficient (I don’t know) but the oak logs we have make for a more interesting fire. Can’t move Oscar from lying in front of it. The price of coal and wood both went up here too.

        5. My coal (and anthracite) is still delivered in open bags, only they are no longer hessian (look like plastic weave).

    3. In our part of Sussex power failures were frequent, so many people had generators.

      We had a 2.8Kw one which did fine.

      2. Years ago, my cousin ‘s daughter married a young doctor who had many tales to tell of his time in A&E – pencils were popular then apparently for those without enough lead.

          2. Somebody told me that the logarithm is the preferred contraceptive method for Roman Catholic Canadian lumberjacks.

    4. Lucky old Casualty Dept. They were getting bored with all the patients local GPs couldn’t be @rsed to see.

  19. Many posts here quote statistics on vaccinated and unvaccinated infection and death rates.

    If you want to be objective then beware of taking everything at face value. Not only can statistics be manipulated and misrepresented, inherent differences in groups can produce totally misleading headline figures. This is particularly true for vaccinated vs unvaccinated headline figures with, for example, Simpson’s Paradox at work, with the age differences between the 2 groups giving a totally false picture when combined.

    See eg https://covidactuaries.org/2021/11/22/simpsons-paradox-and-vaccines/ that shows how vaccines’ halving death rates across all age groups gives a headline figure of a 25% higher death rate for an age range because the unvaccinated contain far more young people with a low inherent death rate and the vaccinated contain more elderly people with a higher death rate.

    2. The problem we have is that when people voice their doubts about what is happening we get other people screaming for the facts and evidence.
      This is not easy to come be when the powers that be control all the evidence and facts.

      1. I think it’s more that people are too lazy, gullible or biased. There are lots of independent sites such as the Institute of Actuaries Covid group (https://covidactuaries.org/) that explain the data in understandable terms and the DT’s Planet Normal podcasts are worth a listen to.

        1. That works both ways I suppose, those serial mask wearers and getting a salvos of jabs are not exactly doing much of their own research either they are just complying and not really wanting to know the truth.

  20. Good Moaning.
    Definitely a day to catch up on indoor jobs.
    Rake out the address book and start on the Christmas cards.

    1. Good morning, Anne.

      You asked for a report on the Kersey Bell. Yesterday was the first day under the new owners who run a number of pubs around the UK. The place was very quiet, my chum and I being the only two diners. A good looking menu although what I wanted was unavailable, not a great start but things did improve. My second choice, creamy chicken and mushroom penne was delicious and the portion was huge. My chum settled for fisherman’s pie and again a large portion that he found very tasty. We needed a while before we ordered dessert and coffee. Good sized portions of sticky toffee pudding and Toblerone cheesecake. We were informed that there will additions to the menu over the coming weeks. The staff were friendly and efficient and all round it was a good lunch. Adnams Broadside and Bitter available now with Ghost Ship in the future are a good sign of intent.

    2. I went to church to help decorate the Christmas tree, then I came home and did some more emptying of boxes and putting stuff away. I posted off some of my foreign cards (I’ll have to make sure I get the last of them in the post by Monday), but I need to get cracking on writing the rest of the UK cards and wrapping up the presents, not to mention decorating my own tree and the rooms. I’m starting to feel festive rather than festering 🙂

  22. Sometimes you think the things are just going along and then you discover that they are not, but vicious stupidity is in place.
    Being a reasonable person I had assumed* that those who served in our armed forces would be entitled to citizenship, and would be granted citizenship automatically. Could there be a better or more profound reason for citizenship to be granted than putting yourself in harm’s way to defend the country?
    After the brouhaha regarding Gurkhas I had thought * that this was all sorted. If memory serves those who served in the Roman army were granted citizenship after a period of service. Perfectly reasonable and an excellent model to follow. Them as is in power in this country went to toffs’ schools where they were proper educated in Roman stuff.
    Well, it was not all sorted. While we welcome foreign parasites who enter the country illegally, giving them shelter, food, money, health care and education (all free forever ) those who served us in the military have to pay to be here.
    Why? Surely somebody somewhere, In Parliament, in the Civil Service , in the Visa department, knew this disparity was in place and yet it has been going on year after year. Give me strength!

    *I know that to assume makes an ass out of me and a u out of me, or something.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59526516

    1. The Gurkha issue isn’t straightforward. Whilst some have made a success of it, many Gurkhas who have stayed here have found great difficulty in adapting and there is a strong argument that they and Nepal would have been better off with the old policy.

      1. There is no reason why they should not be given UK citizenship, is there? They could live here or return to Nepal, as they pleased. I am assuming (again!) that they receive a pension commensurate with length of service?

        There is the overweening problem that we do not give any concrete indication that we care about any of those who are prepared to die for us, and more.

        1. Whilst giving them U.K. citizenship sounds good, we are talking about something very different to our situations, cultures and attitudes. It may therefore do more harm than good.

          I think the Army does care about the Gurkhas, as do the general public. Thinking they would be better off back in Nepal is IMO pragmatic rather than uncaring. Of course, the civil servants in the MoD may be more concerned about money, but that shouldn’t detract from the argument that the older arrangements worked out better for all concerned

          FWIW I’m ex-military and have recently seen first-hand how life in the U.K. has failed to live up to expectations for Gurkhas, many wishing they’d gone back but now feel trapped.

          1. We don’t need to choose for them. They should be able to choose UK (as citizens) or Nepal. If they choose the UK and do not like it, as you suggest, they should be free to go back to Nepal.
            I was not really talking about Gurkhas though. I simply referred to that debacle as as an instance when you think that the sensible thing is happening when it is not.
            We should treat our ex-servicemen and women generously. Cost should not be the factor. No list of approved allowances – “we can give you £5 to assist you – absolute rot.
            This is a country that can throw away billions, almost uncounted billions, on schemes and systems that do not work, passport office, track and trace, military radios, etc etc.
            Anyway all those who serve in our armed forces, Americans, Canadians, South Sea islanders, Martians, should be given citizenship and whatever subsequent support that they need. Never mind the cost.
            If the government had spent that money sensibly…
            I think that there are a couple or two Fijiians serving in the Black Watch, so someone in the recruiting office has a sense of humour!

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJS_8kRX_ig

        2. Perhaps somebody should organise a charity to raise money to pay for trains and planes to transport Gurkhas to Calais where they can be put into robust rubber dinghies which are then safely escorted to Dover by the RNLI? Maybe Joanna Lumley would like to become the patron of the charity?

    2. The Gurkha issue isn’t straightforward. Whilst some have made a success of it, many Gurkhas who have stayed here have found great difficulty in adapting and there is a strong argument that they and Nepal would have been better off with the old policy.

  23. I see that “pestering of a sexual nature” is to become a crime. Good to know that the plod will have yet another non event to take them away from nasty men with guns and knives.

    It means, I suppose, that the lady in the local sub-post office who greets me with, “Hullo, my lovely what can I do for you this sunny morning,” will be guilty of an offence. And serve her right.

    3. Alas, Bill, you are wrong. The law will implicitly absolve women and will only be applied to white men in the same way as in existing laws on psychological domestic violence.

    4. The lady in our local post office hardly gives you eye contact, let alone a cheery greeting. Have a look at the Trip Adviser comments on Minchinhampton post office.

        2. Did you read the comments? Some of them are quite old, but they are still the same cheery couple. Sometimes it seems as though they can’t even bear to work together, as recently they’ve had one window closed off and only one of them behind the counter at a time.

  24. Rangnick revealed that he had spoken with Solskjaer for almost two hours on Sunday, and tried to convince Michael Carrick to stay.

    Yet another example of execrable journalism, this time in the Daily Telegraph’s Saturday sports section. Ralf Rangnick did not try to “convince” Michael Carrick to stay; he attempted to persuade him to remain at the club.

    One convinces someone to believe; but persuades him to act.

    2. That the majority of infections are in vaccinated people is only to be expected.

      Over 80% of the U.K. population aged 11 or over have had at least 2 jabs. The jabs seem not to significantly impact infection rates, their impact being on the severity of symptoms and death rates, so all other things equal we would expect over 4 times as many vaccinated positive cases than unvaccinated cases.

      Furthermore, that sample size is so small, particularly given that people tend to cluster in similar groups, that taking anything other than broad inferences is ill-advised.

      1. To be pedantic, We didn’t invent them, we just popularised the term. They’d been used for millennia before we coined the phrase.

        1. Stellenbosch was the pinnacle of the concentration camp art. A one way trip. Only surpassed by the ever efficient Germans.

      1. I imagine they don’t walk, they sidle. I cannot, however, imagine them bursting into a room, shouting, ” I’m here and I’ve got the booze!”

      2. They are all starting to look alike to me, thin lipped ferretty faces. They are a breed.

  26. Man tortured and killed in Pakistan over alleged blasphemy. 4 December 2021.

    A mob in Pakistan tortured, killed and then set on fire a Sri Lankan man who was accused of blasphemy over some posters he had allegedly taken down.

    Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national who worked as general manager of a factory of the industrial engineering company Rajco Industries in Sialkot, Punjab, was set upon by a violent crowd on Friday.

    In horrific videos shared across social media, Diyawadana can be seen being thrown on to the floor, where hundreds began tearing his clothes, violently beating him. He was tortured to death and then his body was burned. Dozens in the crowd can also be seen taking selfies with his dead body.

    Morning everyone. The Religion of Peace. The Elites preference over the indigenous UK population. The people whose word it accepts without demur. The one whose presence in heinous acts it seeks to conceal! That Religion of Peace?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/03/pakistan-sri-lankan-man-priyantha-diyawadana-tortured-killed-alleged-blasphemy-sialkot

          1. Grooming young girls (11+0) to satisfy the lusts, that their Religion of Peace denies them.

            Time for a bit of ethnic cleansing, methinks.

    3. 342436+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,
      “The Religion of Peace. The Elites preference over the indigenous UK population”.Surely the party member / voters deserve recognition, leveling out,
      straitening out, laying out when peoples patriotic
      fight back is triggered.

      Lest we NOT forget who they are.

  28. COMMENT
    Britain is in the dark over energy supplies
    Unless the plan is to let the lights go out, we will continue to need fossil fuels as the transition to green energy progresses

    TELEGRAPH VIEW
    4 December 2021 • 6:00am

    That Shell has decided to pull out of its role in the Cambo oilfield off Shetland has not only raised inevitable doubts about the project’s continued viability and put thousands of jobs at risk, it has shone a harsh light on the energy policies being pursued by both the UK and Scottish governments, whose lack of support played a crucial role in the company’s withdrawal.

    Shell has a 30 per cent stake in the oilfield, along with private company Siccar Point Energy, but appears to have been put off by the unrelenting and unequivocal opposition from Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP-dominated government in Edinburgh. The First Minister’s hostility to both oil and gas has only grown in intensity since, in the wake of the last Holyrood election, she struck a coalition deal with the Scottish Greens in order to secure her majority. Now, as even die-hard nationalists come to realise that independence is never likely to be more than a pipe dream, Ms Sturgeon has turned her attention to net zero, striking an increasingly dogmatic tone on climate change and putting the Greens’ co-leader in charge of meeting Scotland’s target.

    Where once the First Minister had seemed happy to sit on the fence when it came to the Cambo development – insisting that the ultimate decision was one for the UK Government and abnegating any responsibility – she has more recently evinced outright hostility, not only to that field but to any further exploration in Scottish waters. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson’s approach has scarcely been better, at least from the point of view of those who value this country’s energy security. The Prime Minister’s lack of visible and vocal support for the development of Cambo, which would have produced 170 million barrels of oil and gas (equivalent) over the next 25 years, has been notable.

    There are now serious doubts about the future of what is left of Scotland’s oil industry, which employs more than 100,000 people. A more general worry is how realistic is the UK’s target of achieving 100 per cent of our electricity through renewable sources by 2035. In spite of continued exhortations and promises from Ms Sturgeon and Mr Johnson about their shift to greener energy, oil and gas still provide more than 75 per cent of the UK’s total energy needs.

    Unless the plan is to let the lights go out, we will continue to need fossil fuels as the transition to green energy progresses. Abandoning British oil and gas would not reduce this country’s reliance on those resources, rather it would simply mean having to meet our needs with imports instead. This risks leaving Britain at the mercy of countries such as Russia and Qatar: powerless if they choose to turn off the taps and all the while lining the pockets of the regimes that run them.

    * * *

    Carolyn Bates
    3 HRS AGO
    ‘Unless the plan is to turn out the lights’
    Boris Johnson, as with everything else, does not have a plan when it comes to the energy crisis; all he can see is his Net Zero fallacy, there is nothing in between.
    You would have thought that with our own experience with France threatening to withdraw its electricity from the country, this would have brought it home to the Prime Minister the absolute necessity for us to not be reliant on any other country for our supply of anything.
    A more competent leader would have ensured this instead of blindly following on with his absurd fantasy project. Just where does he think all the extra electricity will be found to power all the millions of electric cars and domestic boilers?
    Letting Shell leave the North Sea oil project is downright insanity at a time when we are so desperately in need of becoming energy self- sufficient. Just what was he thinking in allowing Sturgeon to do this?

    * * *

    Well, Carolyn, as far as the ‘millions of electric cars’ are concerned, the cost of the lithium is heading north relentlessly, and anyone who saw the item on GBN yesterday will know that the cost is fast becoming prohibitive – to the point where EV production will become completely unviable. So there’s hope for us yet!

    1. Spot on, Carolyn. Interestingly (for me, anyway) I saw a short video of Jordan Peterson telling students the motivation for an action can often be understood by considering the outcomes. (I thought that was obvious, but maybe not to students of today.). HoHum.

      1. Doesn’t that mean, Dale, that there will be MORE desire to force child-labour to extract more and more Lithium to keep the price low?

        Last I heard, the pricing meant that the cost of these batteries was rising at a phenomenal rate, I’m sure that you’re on to it.

        1. Electric cars are being done on the cheap. The cost is being borne by car users. The electricity should be delivered by services laid in the road. It has been done for trams. It is not efficient as power is lost in the transmission process.
          However, the sensible approach would be to abandon electric vehicles completely (except for milk floats) and to continue to improve internal combustion engines. We could conserve rare earths for the future when they will be needed for interstellar travel probably.
          I have not even mentioned the disaster that would unfold if all our vehicles were electric and we lost our electricity supply. (But see NE Scotland and Cumbria for details)

          1. A week or two ago somebody posted a very interesting interview with Lord Bamford, the chairman of JCB.

            His R&D has looked closely at the future of both electrical and ICE (Internal Combustion Engines) vehicles. He is convinced that as far as his business is concerned ICE engines powered by hydrogen is the future because there are too many practical problem with electric diggers and other heavy plant machinery.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDKLoLUQgH0

    3. Johnson is lurching from one self-made crisis to another. He has no consistency of purpose because he has no plans, only grandiose pipe dreams. The agenda re viruses has been dictated to him by others and he is bound to follow it. He has turned into a capricious despot and will destroy this Country if he is not removed quickly. Sadly the Tory party is replete with globalist fellow travellers that have to be expunged before this Country can be put back on track to some state resembling normality.

    4. “…as the transition to green energy progresses”

      As the transition dies a natural death – would that it included the current PTB.

    5. Wee Krankie, in her abject desire to reduce Scotland (and she thinks, hopefully, the whole UK) into a vassal state of the EU. her dreams are constantly blighted by the realism of the majority of right-minded Scots to divert her from this horrendous car-crash course.

      1. Well, maybe. The disastrous management of Scotland is independent of nationalism, Some of it is just very poor management. For example, the last two hospitals built in Scotland are not fit for purpose. There is an ongoing enquiry into a number of unnecessary deaths in Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Campus, Glasgow, and the failings in the construction of the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People (aka Sick Kids).

        1. It all sounds as – being ‘Not Fit For Purpose’, Horace – now is the time to dissolve this wee pretendy parliament and return all its powers to Westminster, though, given the current abject hate lingering there. maybe that too, needs dissolving and reformation from top to bottom.

          Think on.

    6. What is the point of Eton School (apart from accruing vast wealth from over-rich and gullible parents)?

      Two of the past three prime ministers emerged from that establishment utterly clueless, gormless, hapless, witless and ill-prepared to make crucial and necessary decisions affecting the realm and its population.

    1. We are not being told by the PTB that the Moon is not made of cheese. This is a good conspiracy.. We need more robust conspiracy theories like this one because the ones we have at the moment are shoddy and not up to the job: once a conspiracy theory is proved to be true it must be discarded as it is no longer a conspiracy theory and must be replaced with a better one

    1. 342436+ up ticks,
      O2O,

      Overall governance sanctioned the rape & sacking of a once decent nation via the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella close shop coalition, with near forty years people consent.

      The time is fast approaching when one more boat load will tip the balance as to ” Who’s country is it now”

        1. Not for me, Plum, having a provable tree on my Father’s side, directly English since 1580, my patriotism isn’t flagging – I’d like a few more flags.

    2. Ahhh lovely stuff, it reminds me of a chance poem,………at the picnic by Cherrie Lake. 👩🏽

        1. I had to go to pick a prescription, they are fully PPI eyed, in the pharmacy. 😷🐑🐑🐑 Bah Humbug

  33. Frank Lampard hires ‘Mr Loophole’ after cyclist claims ex-Chelsea star was driving while using a phone
    Cycling campaigner says he spotted the ex-England midfielder in a car holding a cup of coffee and chatting on his mobile while in traffic
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/03/frank-lampard-hires-mr-loophole-cyclist-claims-ex-chelsea-star/

    The only time we use a mobile phone in the car is when I am driving and Caroline makes or takes the call. I do not approve of people using mobile phones when they are driving but when you are in stationary traffic it is rather different from when you are moving; but neither do I approve of sneaking and snitching on your neighbours or ‘celebrities’. Indeed most of us here were brought up with the horrific idea that Communist Russia encouraged people to sneak on each other – and especially children sneaking on their parents.

    Now policemen are not expected to do any police work in Britain – that is down to sneaks who are encouraged to sneak by the PTB and these sneaks expect to be rewarded for their sneaking.

    Sneaks in my schooldays were despised and considered to be the scum of the earth and often harshly dealt with by their peers. Grasses were, and still are, severely punished in the criminal fraternity – just examine the interiors of the concrete foundations of the pillars supporting motorway flyovers.

        1. “The richer China becomes, the more liberal and democratic it will be.” (Don’t discuss -howl with shame and pity that some of us actually believed this.)

        2. Not so. Capitalism must have a free society in which to function. State controlled businesses, whether in actuality or by threat, are not practicing capitalism. Free competition is what makes capitalism work. That is why the West invents and China steals.

        3. I watched Paul Merton in China talk to some very wealthy Chines ladies who lunch. Having done well from the present political system they are unlikely to criticise it, but they did point out that China has a private medical system and the UK has a government scheme. Which country did we think was closer to socialism.

          1. China is closer to socialism. Where is it written that in a capitalist society nothing should be ran by the state?

          4. It’s a very brief answer. A nationally owned utility is required to provide the service. A privately owned utility has to make a profit.
            A very different focus. Our utilities were owned by the State, although we were, and remain, a capitalist society.

          5. “India has a public sector which accounts for 6% of its economy, America’s private sector accounts for 305 of ts economy. India considers itself to be a socialist nation, America considers itself to be capitalist.” (J K Galbraith, 1968, paraphrased.)

          6. Despite its total collapse, I don’t think the NHS provides dried Pangolin scales, bats wings and similar folk rubbish while the Chinese one probably does.

    2. Any other witnesses?? or is being a cyclist so virtuous that his word alone is enough??
      GTFO

        1. Isn’t filming other road users when in charge of a bicycle a similar offence to the one which Mr Snitcher was committing?

          1. While leaning on the wall of the potager in Laure, I was struck by how many cars and lorries passed by with the driver holding a mobile phone and talking into it. To say nothing of those I saw when on the roads myself.

          2. Even though the law in France is strict on the matter and imposes points on your licence and heavy fines the French still continue to use their mobile phones while driving.

          4. Good morning, sos

            Yes, a phone using driver recently swerved towards and only just missed us when Caroline was driving.

            Have you noticed how very badly the French drive at roundabouts? When we first came to live in France 32 years ago there were not many roundabouts here. Now, apparently, France has more roundabouts than any any other European country and the French still haven’t a clue how to drive around them.

        1. They ride two abreast here. The roads are too narrow to overtake legally ( five foot gap) and the cyclists are either stupid (probability 90%) or taking the Mickey – I know my rights! – (66% probability).
          As many drivers routinely cut blind corners at speed they will at some point turn a corner and find that they are 20 feet behind two cyclists with a lorry coming the other way.

    3. Thinking about it the very deep steel and concrete foundations that are required for the forests of wind turbines that are going up will provide many more final resting places for the remains of grasses.

    4. Sneaks, grasses, whatever you call them, need to be consigned to the deepest, darkest, rings of hell, wherever they are found – and punished.

      1. And yet at the same time we complain when ropers don’t report their stabby bomby brethren.
        I think there are cases where snitching is for the general good.

          1. When it stops something that is clearly wrong or evil perhaps, but even there it will be in the eyes of the beholders, I suspect

  34. Frank Lampard hires ‘Mr Loophole’ after cyclist claims ex-Chelsea star was driving while using a phone
    Cycling campaigner says he spotted the ex-England midfielder in a car holding a cup of coffee and chatting on his mobile while in traffic
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/03/frank-lampard-hires-mr-loophole-cyclist-claims-ex-chelsea-star/

    The only time we use a mobile phone in the car is when I am driving and Caroline makes or takes the call. I do not approve of people using mobile phones when they are driving but when you are in stationary traffic it is rather different from when you are moving; but neither do I approve of sneaking and snitching on your neighbours or ‘celebrities’. Indeed most of us here were brought up with the horrific idea that Communist Russia encouraged people to sneak on each other – and especially children sneaking on their parents.

    Now policemen are not expected to do any police work in Britain – that is down to sneaks who are encouraged to sneak by the PTB and these sneaks expect to be rewarded for their sneaking.

    Sneaks in my schooldays were despised and considered to be the scum of the earth and often harshly dealt with by their peers. Grasses were, and still are, severely punished by the criminal fraternity.

  35. As I skimmed the mass coverage of the terrible murder of that poor little boy – and noted the claims that social services (and the system) had, once again, completely mucked up – I pondered on how many innocent, good parents had had their children seized by the SAME social services for perceived lapses in child care.

      1. I heard on the radio yesterday how difficult it was to remove at-risk children from the home environment. So why are the most at risk being allowed to remain, and be murdered? Common purpose in all its disgusting glory.

        1. If it really is that difficult why does one read of cases where the reasons children are taken for things such as religious belief or political views, even if those views might be extreme, but only to those with opposing viewpoints

          1. Weren’t those who were in favour of Brexit denied the chance of adopting or fostering children?

            I wonder if people wishing to adopt now have to declare their vaccination status and those who are unvaccinated will not be allowed to adopt.

        2. The police were grateful for being warned about the situation.
          They threatened to prosecute the concerned uncle for breaking lockdown rules.

    2. Good thinking, Bill, almost akin to the PAKI (come and get me) grooming gangs and what they do to young girls (11-16).

      3. It is so very sad that many of the worst, most sadistic abusers are attracted to caring professions where they can find vulnerable victims on whom to prey.

        That is why the following careers attract inadequate, deceiving and nasty people: teaching, social work, the law, nursing and the medical profession, the police, the priesthood and politics to name but a few.

      4. Also a similar scandal in Pembrokeshire where several men were jailed on the strength of outlandish accusations encouraged by Social Workers.

    4. I was nearly in tears when I saw all that I on the news Bill, we have very young grand children and they are so precious to us and their parents.
      And there was another little chap who had lost both his legs due to abuse, he walked miles for charity and raised a lot of money.

    2. Trudeau is not only as thick as a brick but I’d identify as evil.

      Why do you Canucks keep voting for the twat?

          1. You leave me out of this, Bill, English at least as far back as 1580 – can you do better?

            While stationed in Germany and, because of my surname, I often asked Germans why we might refer to them as ‘Huns’

            Blank looks, a few erudite references to the Hunnengrabe (Hun Graves – from the time of Attila – but his ‘Huns’ only got as far as Hungary before being defeated and turned back. So the term ‘Hun’ for Germans seems to just stem from WWI.

            My father, Kenneth William Hunn was much chided by his compatriots saying, “If your’re taken prisoner, you’ll have no problems, ‘cos of your initials and surname – Kaiser Willie Hunn.”

  38. Spamwaffe appears to be out in force.

    Thickshits, don’t realise that we’re onto ’em.

      1. I wonder how those poor thalidomide victims have to suffer with their reduced limb sizes ?

    5. Glorious story! The immediate thing that strikes one is the question – are the pilgrims jabbing people more or less farcical than the pilgrim with the cod arm?
      The Jabberwocks win by a mile for my money!!

  40. Morning all just popping in………what really is getting up my nose is all these bloody so called experts on TV trying to promote this so called ‘vaccine’ programme, but not once do they mention all the suffering caused by it. And how many people have even died, obviously in relation to the injections so soon after the jabs. They obviously haven’t carried out their research in the proper and organised manner expected of so called effing experts. Too many blank sheets of paper being shoved under the proverbial carpet.
    Covid related deaths what exactly does this mean ?

  41. Before I pop off again, has anyone else had a problem trying to get in touch with Curry’s ‘customer services’ we bought an under work top back up fridge around this time last year and suddenly the light doesn’t work when the door is opened. But the bulb is okay if you put pressure on it. I have spent more than two hours trying to get hold of some help, but the only thing I seem to be able to do is turn up at a store or make a phone call at 6 quid through some sort of intermediary and predicted waiting times for a response are not very encouraging.

          4. Talking of G&P. When you post pics of them i don’t remember seeing any toys. They do have some don’t they?

          5. Boxes, paper balls, ping pong balls, cotton-reels on string. Toy goat, toy Father Christmas….twigs, contents of office WPB.

            Outdoors, their toys are rats, mice, moles, rabbits……

          7. They were donated when they were babies – not interested. From age 6 weeks their top toy was to be found in the kindling by the stove – closely followed by a paper ball.

          8. I hope you have had them both ID jabbed Bill you don’t want ‘old bill’ coming around and nicking you for money making piece of government BS. Which is what the msm seem to be revelling today. apart from the Patel bowler who took ten wickets for NZ I expect Lucinda Darhlink will be beside her self due to diversity. Shame we don’t have a Patel that can bowl a decent over.

        1. “There was a young man who said “God
          Must find it exceedingly odd
          To think that the tree
          Should continue to be
          When there’s no one about in the quad.”

          Reply:

          “Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
          I am always about in the quad.
          And that’s why the tree
          Will continue to be
          Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

    2. Well good people there is nothing like DIY. I switched off unscrewed the control panel inside the fridge and removed the lighting cover, it was impossible to take it off whilst in-situ the bulb needed half and extra turn and hey presto. Better then being screwed by the cost of a service engineer eh. 🤩

  42. Good morning. Instead of posting yet another dire story about the killers among us and the brave new world they propose, I thought Nottlers might in small numbers enjoy this, my recent recording of the new translation of Beowulf. The saga highlights so many of the fundamental values that we all seek and that are now so threatened by Mr Global. It’s long, but I’ve broken it to 18 tracks, but the old-timers would have done the whole 160 mins on a pint or two of mead!!

    https://soundcloud.com/josswe/sets/beowulf-read-by-joss-wynne-evans-trans-headley/s-fbIg8h8fHp1?si=243e6a178e214ab39bab9fc73c6ee71d

  44. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3db7237ffd133fe62dbc0f22a9742595c61b88d5ed9f1b238db6c80537212511.png I would cure the hooligan problem overnight (as I would with street gangs). Tie all the culprits to posts and give them all 100 lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Those surviving will then think again.

    The problem with today’s brainless populations (both public and governmental) is the fact that there are too many bleeding-hearts. I am not one of them (have you noticed?). Until we revert to proper and effective mediæval methods of dealing with the detritus of society then the status quo will be maintained.

    The choice is yours.

    1. I would do it at halftime at football matches and leave them tied up at the exits so they can be seen close up too.

      1. I had a letter published in the Daily Telegraph back in October on the topic of Captain Sir Percy Sillitoe. Sillitoe started as chief constable of my town, Chesterfield, between 1923 an 1925 before achieving greatness elsewhere. I have a copy of his 1955 autobiography, Cloak Without Dagger in my bookcase, plus other literature on him.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/efd39145437e20acce567add40e3a12ed455b1967b1cb434bded80a935138728.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec1c1a2d2e4095ebfcee7719aaa179ecac77bf6977c3d35670de35a3a7747de9.png

  46. 342436+ up ticks,

    Could not agree more to another REAL UKIP ex leader put down via treachery by political @rseholes & supporter / voters.

    The battle of fools fighting for THEIR sh!te party to beat the opposing
    sh!te party in the close shop of three sh!te party’s is currently unbelievable.

    Do these current supporter / voters of lab/lib/con realise that paedophilia is ILLEGAL in one instance alone ?

    https://twitter.com/AgainBraine/status/1467087580533567490

  47. US intelligence says Russia is planning an invasion of Ukraine early next year with up to 175,000 troops. 4 December 2021.

    Russia is planning a possible military offensive against Ukraine involving an estimated 175,000 troops that could begin as soon as early 2022, according to a report on Friday.

    An unclassified intelligence document, obtained by The Washington Post, showed satellite images of troop and equipment build up around the border with Ukraine.

    Brought to you by the same people who said, “Weapons of Mass Destruction are There!” “Afghanistan Will be Easy” “Libya Will be a Democracy” and “ISIS is Finished!”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10273817/US-intelligence-says-Kremlin-planning-multi-offensive-early-year-175-000-troops.html#comments

  48. 342436+ up ticks,

    Is it not time yet for a great mass of peoples to gather surrounding
    parliament & contents.

    A silent gathering sending in an emissary
    with a short to the point message enough is more than enough
    QUIT or else.

    After a very short interval start the mantra, one the twisted politico’s would appreciate, NO QUARTER GIVEN.

    1. 342436+ up ticks,
      O2O,

      The common denominator of current society brought about by the lab/lib/con coalition & supporter / voters.

      At any mass anti political overseers meeting & concerning a mantra, that should be “Nobody loves me”

      ” Lest we forget” in many cases, conveniently, the welfare of the children / decent peoples comes before
      any fake,INO, ersatz political party.

  49. In America the The Food & Drug Administration under a Freedom of Information Act have been forced to handover the data on the Pfizer vaccine.

    In the first 90 days of the roll out there were 42,086 adverse reactions & 1,223 deaths.

    Heads should roll.

    1. As I commented earlier the so called effing experts on our TV screen never ever mention the deaths due to the adverse effects. I believe these unfortunate people are mentioned only as covid related deaths. And then seem to be added to the totals of those who actually have died from covid.

    2. I believe that’s out of 10’s of millions of vaccinations, so in percentage terms not actually all that many. I fully accept that at the individual level it is unacceptable but what one cannot tell is whether more people were saved because of being vaccinated than were killed as a result of the vaccination only.
      I believe people should be given the whole picture and particularly they should not be compelled or coerced into having them against their will. Unfortunately I don’t believe we ARE being given the whole picture and people ARE being coerced and compelled.

      2. I find two things very deeply sinister:

        i) The fact that Big Pharma has managed to get governments to supress or illegalise the use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine in several countries;

        ii) That what is in their vaccines gene therapies and the tests they have used on them will remain secret for over fifty years.

        Surely those two things alone should make us very wary?

        There is something very evil afoot.

        1. Nobody I know believed me when all this started when I said and still do say, there is something very dark and sinister about all this corona virus business.
          And they still don’t.
          But nobody can answer my question and that is, why if people have adverse reactions to the alleged ‘vaccine’ why don’t they get hospital treatment. My Invented simile to the NHS logo is FOAD and that really does seems to be the aim.

          1. I agree with you.

            The different ways they have tried to see off the elderly with midazolam and other ways and now removing GP testing for the over 75’s.

            They want them dead.

          2. What is this about removing GP testing for the over 75s? What have I missed.

            Just had an email from my son in reply to mine pointing all this out (all of the above conversation with Eddy). His reply was basically I don’t have enough to do.

          3. Apparently to free up their time so they can give the boosters. It stinks. It has always been the case that to regularly check heart and blood pressure in the elderly would prolong life.

            That policy appears to have changed.

          4. It does indeed stink. How can they claim to be protecting the elderly now, not that they were protecting them before, but all those slogans of ‘Don’t kill Granny!’ – after they tipped out the elderly from the nhs wards into the care homes to infect the elderly there, gave them dnr notices which they didn’t understand when their relatives were banned, denied them treatment and finished them off with Midazolam. And now this.

        2. I always recall the adage that incompetence is more often than not the explanation for such things, rather than deliberate actions.
          Either way I don’t like what is going on.

  50. Please, dear NOTTLers, if you support freedom, democracy and the right of a person to decide what medical treatments they want to take…and if you want to pss off the German government a tiny bit…
    please would you sign the following petition against mandatory vaccination in Germany:
    “No to forced vaccination in Germany”
    https://www.change.org/p/bundespr%C3%A4sident-frank-walter-steinmeier-sagen-sie-nein-zu-zwangsimpfungen-in-deutschland?recruiter=60314748&recruited_by_id=de6f8700-53c0-11ec-92bd-e985c48dc41b&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=fht-18998290-de-de%3A1&fbclid=IwAR3pH_ul9NEYIR9G-pMz5XPDVBAEASaxnTDLh2pLyXPOSwwkx5z_6Uk3tHo
    * Don’t forget to check the box saying you don’t want follow-up emails! And you can refuse all the parts asking you to donate or support other petitions.

    Unvaccinated people in Germany are already excluded from leisure outlets, mass public gathering and non-essential shops. They are locked out of their workplaces (door passes have been deactivated) and only allowed in on presentation of a test result, which is valid for one day. As the example that I posted yesterday shows, they are being refused rental property They need a test that is less than 24 hours old to travel on public transport.

    The German government is proposing mandatory corona vaccinations, likely to be twice a year for the rest of their citizens’ lives. Nobody knows what long term effect this will have on the health of teenagers and young people. In Austria, the proposed mandatory vaccination law will apply from 12 years old.

    If you do not support mandatory vaccination, please forward the petition to all your friends and relatives who believe in bodily autonomy. If this law is successful in Germany, it may be rolled out to the whole EU, and further afield. But if it is thrown out of Germany, it is also less likely to be tried in other countries.

  53. To those who are interested:

    Tonight. More 4. 8:40 – 9:40. Dunkirk: The Forgotten Heroes. The 51st Highland Division who were left behind to defend the evacuation.

    1. You should follow the progress of the 51st all the way into Germany.

      The small town I lived in, during my service in Germany – Goch – still bore witness with bullet-holes on the walls and, apparently, there was a Gestapo headquarters here, turned over by the 51st. The story goes that they emptied the building; and took NO prisoners.

      Shot the little bastards on sight.

      Would that we could emulate!

        1. There are bullet holes in the buildings in Rouen. They’ve never been repaired intentionally – a bit like the Siege House in Colchester (although the French ones don’t have red rings around them).

  54. Phew!
    One trip to Matlock and a couple of hours sorting out some fallen trees up in the far corner of that bit of hillside that calls its self “My Garden” later and I’m sweating my cobblers off!

    Some decade or so ago a large beech came down right on the boundary between my place & next door, getting hung up on a couple of elms as it did so. When I tried getting it down the tosser who used to live there objected, claiming it was his tree, so I left it hanging.

    One of the elms, as is the nature of them, has now died off allowing the beech, by now a well seasoned ton or so of firewood, to fully drop to the ground giving me the chance to get up there and sort both of the elms and the beech out.
    I’m using the battery chainsaw and having used two of the rechargeable batteries, I’m in for a Personal Needs Break to allow the saw motor to cool down a bit.

  56. Afternoon all. Very short update on our son. In an induced coma, on ventilation, and struggling. Need all your prayers for him.

    14. Oh, dear, Maggie. Sorry to hear; tried to post earlier but my aging laptop has been in a mood all day. Thoughts and prayers with you and John -and the son and family.

  57. Labour MPs report Boris Johnson to police over 2020 Christmas parties. 4 December 2021.

    The prime minister has been reported to the police by Labour MPs over allegations there were at least two parties in Downing Street during lockdown restrictions last year.

    Neil Coyle, Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, wrote to the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick, asking her to investigate reports that the prime minister spoke at a leaving do in November and also allowed a staff Christmas party to go ahead in December.

    Sticking to the important stuff then?

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/03/tories-to-go-ahead-with-christmas-party-despite-omicron-risks

    1. How many ministers or MP’s have been fined for flouting their own covid rules?

      My guess would be between none and zero.

  58. I see that Fishi Rishi is planning massive tax cuts. Phew! Thank God there are millions of money trees.

        1. You catch on real quick, Bill. Yes, you keep on cutting taxes, and the tax-take keeps on growing, until you’ve cut taxes to zero.

        2. The country’s wealth is determined by the productive citizens.

          However, if taxes were zero the state would have no income to spend, so shared infrastructure wouldn’t exist. This is obviously not ideal, so some tax is necessary.

          However, we have an effective tax rate of over 70%. The return for that is pathetic, so we must shred the state to ensure it has to be more efficient and spend what little money we deign to give it, better.

    2. Tax cuts are easily affordable. The state just has to do more, with less. As it demands more and more and more while providing an appalling service then cuts are necessary. There’s also the fact that if you cut taxes, you raise more revenue.

      However, that’s basic economics. Government doesn’t understand that.

  59. Just to put our minds at best:

    Michael Deacon in the DT:

    Clearing up the Christmas confusion

    So should you throw a Christmas party, or shouldn’t you? No one seems sure. Least of all the Government. One minister has told us not to invite more than five people, another has told us not to kiss under the mistletoe, and a Government scientist has told us not to socialise “unnecessarily”. Yet a Downing Street spokesman has told us to proceed as normal.

    Thankfully, in order to end the confusion and provide much-needed clarity, the Cabinet has now agreed the following guidance for the festive season.

    1. Your Christmas party may go ahead, provided that it is adequately ventilated. Suitable venues include a wind tunnel or the Grand Canyon.

    2. Kissing under the mistletoe should be done via Zoom.

    3. Doing the conga is permitted, as long as everyone has a scotch egg.

    4. You are entitled to invite vulnerable elderly relatives round for Christmas lunch. For their own safety, however, they should be seated alone in the garden.

    5. If possible, celebrate Christmas in Downing Street. It’s totally safe, no restrictions apply, and no one will find out what you got up to till a year later.

    1. Went to Shalbourne’s monthly Kipper Breakfast at The Plough this morning. Nobody kissed under the mistletoe not least because of stinky breath and the vast majority were men.

    2. I’m perfectly happy to cancel Crimbo, it’s a pain in the *rse.

      Buying pressies for friends and relations who have everything is
      pathetic…..I’ll stick to half a dozen charities – rapidly declining as they are become more and more ‘woke’….
      The pretense of being full of Christmas cheer and goodwill to all men is bluddy hard work…I’m no Greta Garbo.
      FK it…..

      1. I do a low key Christmas too.

        One or two selected friends get a present. Neighbours and other friends get a card. Parcel of goodies to the food bank. Wreath on front door. Absolutely no TV or Radio. Might do the Queen’s speech and might not. Church.

        Family can piss off.

        1. Bury black puddings are the world’s best. I’ve not sampled one yet but I believe Johnny Norfolk.

      3. The only people who get a gift from us are the grand monsters. Past few years I’ve sent them comics with toys attached. They’re older now so will send them some spending money and they can choose what they want to spend it on.

          1. Last time was late last summer when we were in the last place and the boy got stung by a wasp, as did my husband twice! We’d asked the landlord to do something but, as with everything else, he made promises and bugger all happened.
            We had a new home card and MH had birthday and fathers day cards from them. I expect we’ll see them in the new year which is better because it’s been a tough year for us and, right now, we are not feeling too good. Not covid but burn out, I suspect.

          3. No further info- I think he goes into hospital in the new year. He has been treated very poorly by his GP and the surgery. He has changed doctor.
            He is such a nice guy, it’s a shame.

      4. Plum I agree bringing Cheer and good will to all men would be a tiresome bother. May I suggest you simply concentrate on us Nottler chaps?
        With the compliments of the season,
        S

    2. Sadly I am never a member of these organisations that offend me so I cannot repeat what I have said to more than few former employers; “Well stick it up your arse then!”. The solution here; which I know will not be taken up, is for those supporters of the YCC to just jack it in and watch Wendyball or International Cricket. That club they supported no longer exists!

    3. No guessing needed to know who the next coaches will be.
      That bloke who runs the snack bar just outside the cricket ground?

    4. Look, pandering to the Muslim racists is only going to make this country even more unpleasant.

  61. Nigella Lawson ‘had to have her dress tweaked for her Good Housekeeping magazine cover to make her look more family friendly’
    DM Article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10273637/Nigella-Lawson-famous-curves-edited-magazine-cover.html#newcomment

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f1d1fd26716520061ae87d8e80cc7ff87ea11eb6facd7cfb2615406857204b3.jpg

    I enjoyed this BTL comment:

    “But what could be more family friendly than an ample and impressive bosom? Ask any baby!”

  62. Should you experience a number or all of these symptoms following your experiences after a good snog underneath the mistletoe this Christmas:

    Fatigue
    Fever
    Nasal congestion
    Irritability or mood disturbances
    Poor concentration
    Impaired memory
    Itchy eyes
    Muscle pain and weakness
    Sweating
    Incoherent speech

    then don’t assume you’ve caught a COVID-19 virus.
    You may be suffering from a Genetic And Rare Disease called P.O.I.S.

    It will probably appear amongst the results of a web search after pasting the list of symptoms into your favourite search engine.

    3. People might have fallen for the covid scam agenda, but surely they will see this coming a mile off,

    4. Disease definition

      Postorgasmic illness syndrome is a rare urogenital disease characterized by the appearance of flu-like symptoms (fever, extreme fatigue, myalgia, itchy burning eyes, nasal congestion/rhinorrhea), as well as mood changes, irritability and concentration, memory and attention difficulties, within a few minutes to a few hours after ejaculation. Symptoms disappear spontaneously 3-7 days after onset.

      1. Not too dissimilar from the symptoms I got when taking BP medications:

        Blurred vision
        Fever
        Hallucinations
        Diarrhoea
        Nausea
        Stomach pain
        Vomiting
        Drowsiness
        Slowing of the heart rate
        Heart problems
        Mistletoe has been known to cause miscarriage in pregnant women

  63. More than half Omicron cases in England are in the double jabbed. 4 December 2021.

    More than half of those infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant in England were double jabbed, health officials have said, as the number of cases detected in the UK continues to rise sharply.

    Where is the sense in any of this! You might pose a riddle; When is a vaccination not a vaccination? Answer; When it doesn’t work. It looks to me as if the PTB have completely lost it! It’s hidden but it’s panic stations; do anything that might work but don’t tell the peasants!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/03/more-than-half-omicron-cases-in-england-are-in-the-double-jabbed

    1. This is consistent with one of the early reports of a South African doctor who had been recently double jabbed yet was diagnosed as having been infected with the Omicron variant. The reported symptoms were no worse than having had a wild party the night before (or perhaps even suffering symptoms of P.O.I.S. after a serious snogging session).

    2. So the double jabbed are spreading it to the non-vaccinated.

      Araminta, it may not be working as a traditional vaccine would have but the would-be-tyrants continue to push hard for everyone to have it. The promoters of this jab-fest most certainly do NOT want a large cohort of non-vaccinated outliers (possibly > 7 million people) walking around unaffected as the multiple “vaccinated” struggle with breakthrough infections etc.
      I do not think that the ‘Delta’ breakthrough was expected by these morons, they were warned it was more than likely to happen but they ignored the warning and continued jabbing to their hearts’ content. With Omicron breaking out in the jabbed before spreading to the non-vaccinated the warning looks to have been accurate. We are now in a virus/variant – vaccine foot race.

      As there is only the legacy Alpha “vaccine” available that is all they can offer. They made a huge error of judgement and are now compounding it by using a “vaccine” that is not fit for purpose. If this situation was truly about health the useless legacy “vaccine” would be dumped and the use of early intervention drugs would be started immediately.
      Their Titanic has struck the iceberg but they will not admit the fact.This shower in government were bad enough before the proverbial hit the fan, now that they are likely in a panic…

  65. So, at last after a week the military are being sent into the North to help with the recovery from storm damage,

    Why weren’t they sent in a week ago?

    1. As I said the other day…it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.
      Adopt the Pop Larkin method…if he wants a drink, he has one and doesn’t look at the clock.

      1. In GA, I put this notice up in the staff loos…

        The floggings will continue until morale improves.

        Only one person guessed I’d done it and many of them didn’t understand it.

    2. Sorry I haven’t been around much today to deal with them – I see there has been quite a wave and some more to kill off so am dealing with those now.

  69. Indonesia volcano eruption leaves one dead and dozens injured as Mount Semeru sends ash cloud 50,000ft in the air. 4 December 2021.

    The tallest volcano on the Indonesian island of Java has erupted, killing at least one person and sending huge clouds of ash into the air.

    Ooooer! Another one! Gaia is awakening! We’re finished!

    https://news.sky.com/story/indonesia-volcano-eruption-leaves-one-dead-and-dozens-injured-as-mount-semeru-sends-ash-cloud-50-000ft-in-the-air-12486171

    2. All the money forced from th epublic to make us pay more for energy to use less – as if tax isn’t the only demand – and a volcano blows all that years oppressive tax theft in the name of green away in one blast.

      If Boris wanted to do something about the planet, he’d start shredding our population, not increasing it.

  70. I was amused by a comment BTL in the DM:
    We can tell one thing, it is the fully vaccinated who are mainly to blame for the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant, they’re the only ones allowed to travel internationally.

  71. I think that people are getting less and less convinced by the government’s narrative.

    A couple of BTL comments under a DT article on Covid deaths :

    Liberty Walker

    My father died of a heart attack at home on 21st November. He had had his booster vaccine the day before, he’d then immediately felt unwell, the following morning he had chest pain, he died that evening. We will never know whether his heart attack was caused by the vaccine, but I strongly suspect it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. What I do know is that I had only seen my dad for 4 hours since March 2020, because he was scared of catching Covid. His last 20 months were lived in fear, away from his family. People must wake up and realise that Covid is not worth giving up our lives for. Life is for living, not just avoiding dying. We are not merely cells to keep apart, in order to avert death, we are social creatures who need human touch and love to thrive. I hope that in saying all this, one person might go and see their family, one person might stop being so afraid of Covid that they hide away from life. If my comment helps anyone, then Dad’s death will not have been wasted. Please live your life today, because nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.

    LW’s reply to Liberty Walker

    Death within 28 days of a positive Covid test =Covid death
    Death within 24 hours of Covid vaccine =coincidence

    1. Liberty Walker’s post is so sad. So many people are in the same boat, isolating themselves from fear. Our family Christmas meetup has been vetoed for the same reason.

  72. Experts are already warning that the Omicron variant may be resistant to the vaccines, and the CEO of Moderna added his voice to this chorus yesterday, saying:
    “I think it’s going to be a material drop [in vaccine effectiveness]. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to…are like ‘this is not going to be good’.”

    Even if these warnings prove incorrect, and the mainstream suddenly backtracks and starts reporting that the vaccines work “better than expected” to combat Omicron, that’s irrelevant.
    They have just admitted that the “vaccines” could stop working the moment there is a new mutation. And viruses mutate a lot.
    So, they know the vaccine’s don’t work very well, they know they will wear off, and they know any new mutations could stop them working completely.
    The only thing they don’t know is what the long term side effects of the vaccines are, a fact admitted by Pfizer themselves in their supply contracts:

    the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known

    Now, here’s the all-purpose disclaimer: This is not admitting that Covid19 is dangerous, the pandemic real or in any other way endorsing the narrative. Rather, and this is important, it’s pointing out that even on their own terms the establishment’s plan for compulsory vaccination does not make any sense at all.

    The current narrative is that:
    The vaccines do not confer immunity or prevent transmission.
    What beneficial effect they do have wears off, they don’t know when.
    They probably don’t protect against new variants or mutations.
    The vaccines have unknown longterm side effects.
    These are not fringe ideas or baseless theories, they are the self-contradictory supposed “facts” of the schizophrenic covid story.

    Source:
    https://off-guardian.org/2021/12/02/the-case-for-compulsory-vaccinations-is-dead-omicron-just-killed-it/

    3. There are some good comments under it on YouTube, which they probably won’t read of course.

  75. Roasted Greenland Halibut, sautéed mushrooms, steamed broccoli, steamed sweetheart cabbage with garlic and fennel.

    Château Skåne sky juice tapoline.

    1. I know halibut is a meaty fish but mushrooms?

      Cabbage sounds nice.

      I take it back. Appears to be a classic pairing.

      Edit….

      1. It was a case of … oh! there’s some unused mushrooms in the fridge!

        Greenland halibut (aka ‘Greenland turbot’ Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) is not as flavoursome as Atlantic halibut but it was tasty and meaty enough.

        1. ‘It was a case of … oh! there’s some unused’….

          Exactly what went into my carrot and basil soup tonight. All those bits and bobs that needed using up. Sensible housekeeping.

        2. Turbot is easily my favourite fish. I was very pleasantly surprised to see it as the fish of day on the fixed price lunch menu recently. Not an ungenerous portion either. Not bad for a three course with wine for 15 euros.

          1. It costs a great deal more in England. Even though it is the same fish caught in the same waters. Give it back ya Froggy sympathiser !

          2. I’m sure some of the sole (Seezunge) & turbot (Steinbutt) I used to enjoy in Ostfriesland were ‘undersize’. They would fit in my hand from heel to fingertips. Delicious & so fresh.

          3. Good evening, Sos.

            I, recently, enjoyed the most
            memorable meal; the main course
            was turbot, wrapped in ‘summat’
            black …. it was sublime!

  76. Oh, wasn’t that a shame about the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square not being up to scratch
    If only the Norwegians had shown a bit more Spruce Foresight.

    1. It did look a bit scrappy but it was very rude to say so. Just chuck a load more baubles and lights on it and say thank you.

    2. It’s the thought that counts. At least Norway still appreciates the help we gave in WW II.

  77. That’s me for another day. Bloody AGA playing up – wonderful, just as it is turning cold. The temperature is steady at about half an inch below the normal level. Have tried all the tricks I know. No result.

    That is on top of still feeling below par – and so avoiding alcohol – the very time I could do with some.

    Anyway – I’ll see you tomorrow, I hope. Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  78. John Ward writes: “note that EU President Ursula von der Leyen (hot to trot for the EU-wide forced genetic vax tactic) is spliced to Heiko von der Leyen…Medical Director of the US biotech company Orgenesis which – spookily – specialises in cell and gene therapies”,,,,

    1. They really are all in it together.
      When we see it In the Middle East and Africa it’s regarded as corruption.

    4. Covid has always been a device by which the major Pharma companies could make obscene profits. The principal ‘doctor’ and facilitator of the massive transfer of wealth involved is Fauci.

      The politicians were recruited at Davos, bribed and promised a place in the elites by the bankers running the show. Repurposed and effective early treatments for Covid were deliberately blocked (Ivermectin for example) and a variety of dodgy chemical injectates rapidly brought to market and claimed to be safe and effective.

      The media are complicit in steadfastly refusing to report accurately on all of the blatantly obvious misdemeanours and resorting to ‘fact checkers’ to deny the truth and put an alternative spin on it.

      The WHO, supposedly run by an Ethiopian criminal and directed by Bill Gates who owns it, has been complicit in promoting this massive fraud on the world population.

      As ever the great fortunes amassed by such as Gates, Soros and the bankers are the result of great crimes.

        1. I would not wish to be around if implicated in a criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity when the shit hits the Covid fan.

          There is now so much evidence of the unholy alliance of Pharma with Media (giant corporations all owned by three or four billionaires), universities such as Oxford and Imperial College London, Medicos FDA and BMA, the WHO and medical practitioners who administer the poisons.

          1. “I would not wish to be around if implicated in a criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity when the shit hits the Covid fan.”

            This isn’t going to happen though, is it? The world is closing in on those who dare to question.

          5. I’m afraid that the West that didn’t flinch from prosecuting and hanging the N*zi criminals, no longer exists.
            These greedy crooks will get away with it.

          2. The WHO downgraded covid as no longer being a threat to public health on 19 March 2020; three days later Johnson locked the country down saying “some of you are going to lose loved ones and some of you are going to die”. That is what alerted my suspicions in all of this – the discrepancy and the fact that Johnson was invoking fear instead of trying to calm down a panicking nation.

    5. Covid has always been a device by which the major Pharma companies could make obscene profits. The principal ‘doctor’ and facilitator of the massive transfer of wealth involved is Fauci.

      The politicians were recruited at Davos, bribed and promised a place in the elites by the bankers running the show. Repurposed and effective early treatments for Covid were deliberately blocked (Ivermectin for example) and a variety of dodgy chemical injectates rapidly brought to market and claimed to be safe and effective.

      The media are complicit in steadfastly refusing to report accurately on all of the blatantly obvious misdemeanours and resorting to ‘fact checkers’ to deny the truth and put an alternative spin on it.

      The WHO, supposedly run by an Ethiopian criminal and directed by Bill Gates who owns it, has been complicit in promoting this massive fraud on the world population.

      As ever the great fortunes amassed by such as Gates, Soros and the bankers are the result of great crimes.

    6. What a coincidence!
      I can’t help feeling that the rest of Europe won’t take kindly to a German woman telling them to have mandatory gene therapy injections.
      Especially when this fact becomes known.

  80. Well, after my afore mentioned Personal Needs Break, the weather turned foul so I did not get back up to the garden!
    Oh well!

  81. Just back in from the farm. Cold, tired, wet feet. Slaughtering two pigs, 🐷🐷partway through scraping #2 pig.
    Firstborn operated the captive bolt, then cut their throats. And emptied them…
    Rather sad, they were fun and charming animals.

      1. That’s rural life – and death, Plum.

        Do you just shy away from where your food comes from?

      1. I was hoping to not be here. I don’t like killing.
        #1 boss pig went dowm immediately, never knew what hit her #2 pig shied away just as the trigger wa pulked, was shot off-centre and we had to chase her down to finish off. Firstborn was most upset.
        I’ll not be doing this again.

        3. You terrified them , and they knew their end was due .

          So very horrible .. I can hear their shrieks and cries .

          There was a pie factor in Poole , a lorry delivered the pigs and motorists got stuck behind them, and we could hear the pigs crying .

          It was Millers , and they relocated elsewhere . Thank goodness.

          3. Of course I do. The P.O. sorting office was round there too, from where I did 2 Christmas postal rounds when I was in the 6th form.

          4. No, we didn’t terrify them.
            #1 pig never knw what happened, just got her snout into the feed bucket and whammo. Tried the same with #2, but she was wary and twisted her head just as the bolt was fired.
            We’renot happy with that, it was supposed to be a clean exit for both.

          5. We used to have Hilliers pie factory near here – my brother in law (ex) was a slaughterman.

          1. Ideally not. There’s a slaughterer round here that takes small numbers of animals, gives them time to relax after the journey before the deed is done. We’ll book them next time (scraping hair off pigs isn’t fun, either)

    4. Please don’t tell us things lke that OB.

      Pigs have character and curiosity, they are tender creatures, and their little blue piggy eyes are so similar to all blue eyed bods .

      Pigs scrutinise and have a sense of fun .

      I think one becomes tenderer in feeling as one becomes older .

      1. If you are squeamish about killing sentient animals for food … why not try “long pig”?

        Apparently the cannibals of New Guinea swear by its deliciousness and its similarity to pork. Also, since there are more and more specimens of “long pig” arriving every day at Dover …

  82. Well, I must boast (and tempt fate) by lauding Colchester Hospital.
    On Thursday afternoon, I had a phone call offering me an appointment with the consultant on the Friday morning. I accepted (but worried myself sick since our elder son was given a quick appointment when they found his Hairy Cell Leukaemia). Anyway, nothing wrong, just extra efficiency.
    But – the chap who phone me had done so because he knew the letter about the appointment wouldn’t arrive in time. He was right; it arrived this morning.
    10/10 to anonymous chap who used his initiative. THAT is the way to run a health service.

      1. 🙂 Thank you. The appointment was yesterday.
        Looking at it from their point of view, the hospital cannot win. If they are slow with appointments, people complain. If they organise appointments quickly, people worry that something horrible is wrong.
        Maybe we’ll have to accept that some areas of the NHS can be efficient,

  83. The Lemsip winter advert is all bames with illness.
    Do we conclude bames carry disease?
    Be careful what you project!!
    .

    1. Hi Sos ,

      Sometime during the week , some one put a great post on here., an advert declaring 1950– 2020 was the last time an all white couple appeared on TV advert . I don’t know who posted it , but it was wonderful, and I have been trying to find it , but no luck.

        1. I wouldn’t say “lots”. There are predominantly white adverts, but in most of them, somewhere you’ll find at least one black face. Racing has gone woke – they are emblazoning everything with rainbows for “diversity” and “inclusivity”. Actually, I thought it was for queers and it doesn’t include me. It struck me that, although I’ve been involved in and followed racing for decades, I am gradually being so turned off by it, that I’ll eventually stop watching and just read the results and watch the video if one of my horses is running. They are putting off regular race-goers by trying to pander to a demographic that (apart from Mick Appleby and Lee Mottershead) probably has little or no interest in it.

      5. It’s now on my Ar5ebook Page, Maggie, if you care to sift through the rest of the junk.

    2. I was thinking today as I fast forwarded through the adverts between the racing that if blacks were not allowed to appear in adverts, there would be no adverts! They clearly don’t want to sell to me because I’m neither black nor queer.

      1. I was thinking of writing to the CEOs of some of the companies advertising. ” Dear Tesco CEO, I notice that your TV advert for club cards features black people. Is the card available to white people? Yrs etc”

  85. OMG – Interspecies transmission! I give you the Hipposnotamus:

    “A Belgian zoo has said that its two hippopotamuses have been taken into quarantine after testing positive for coronavirus.
    It is unclear how Imani, aged 14, and Hermien, 41, caught the virus, Antwerp Zoo said, adding the animals were doing well – apart from having runny noses.
    Restrictions have been tightened at the zoo until the animals test negative”

    1. How are they tested? Are the poor creatures sedated. Do they take blood samples? Surely they’re not ramming sticks into their nostrils. Unclear how they caught it? Try terrain theory.

      1. “The hippos’ noses are usually wet, but vets at Antwerp Zoo decided to test the pair after they noticed they were “expelling snot”.
        Their enclosure has been sealed off. Their handlers – who have tested negative – must wear masks and safety glasses, and disinfect their footwear before any contact with the hippos.
        “To my knowledge, it’s the first recorded contamination among this species. Throughout the world this virus has mostly been seen in great apes and felines,” said Antwerp Zoo vet Francis Vercammen.
        Earlier this week, Canada also confirmed that three Covid cases had been discovered in wild deer – the first such report in the country’s wildlife.
        But limited testing means no-one knows how prevalent coronavirus is in the wild.”

        We must test every living thing just to make absolutely sure!!!

    2. One wonders what the keepers have been doing at night. Can a creature with nostrils that point upwards have a runny nose…

  86. Another shockingly balanced and measured view from the expert whose earlier views on the subject were described as ‘misleading’ and ‘laughable’ by some other experts known as George Monbiot and Paul Mason.

    Covid variants don’t warrant restrictions on our freedom

    For good reason, we do not respond with border closures and restrictions on school children every time a new influenza mutation is detected

    SUNETRA GUPTA

    The detection of a new Covid variant that has the ability to evade pre-existing immunity, whether naturally acquired or vaccine induced, is understandably a cause for concern. But it is important that these concerns are assessed in a framework that balances the potential health risks of such a variant against the damage associated with the measures taken to curb its spread.

    Variants gain an advantage in two ways: first, by increasing transmissibility and, second, by evading pre-existing immunity. Both the delta and omicron variants clearly evade neutralising antibody responses which can temporarily prevent infection. This gives them an advantage even if they are not significantly more transmissible than the variants they replace. Indeed, they could succeed even if they were less transmissible.

    It is a shame that these well-established principles of evolutionary epidemiology appear to have been disregarded by the majority of the scientific community.

    It is also unfortunate that many thinkers have adopted the argument that pathogens always evolve to be more transmissible but less severe. The truth is that it could swing either way. The outcome of infection is not just determined by the severity of the variant but very much more by the type and amount of pre-existing immunity within the infected individual. Most vulnerable people will now have protection against severe disease either through natural infection or vaccination, so it is of no consequence that this variant may be intrinsically slightly less or slightly more severe.

    We can do more to minimise the risk to vulnerable people. Amplifying efforts to vaccinate them, offering them boosters and investing in social care that could limit their exposure, would reduce the likelihood that they would die of Covid.

    However, it is unlikely that the rapid rollout of boosters to the general population will prevent these deaths. It could be argued that boosters may even increase the selective advantage of a variant that has a strong capability of evading the immune responses elicited by the vaccine.

    Moreover, we should not be reaching back now to the suite of restrictions that we know to have done very little to alter the dynamics of infection and yet, predictably, caused extreme harm to the poor and the young.

    It is time that we acknowledge that the way in which we aggressively implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions – underpinned by multiple lockdowns – caused extensive collateral damage when there were better ways to protect the vulnerable. Yet we remain wedded to the same means of responding to any new potential threat.

    We must regain a position of compassion – one that is in line with the social contract.

    It may therefore be useful to consider how we have managed the threat of influenza. We do not, when we detect new mutations in influenza, lock down borders and force school children to wear masks and eat lunch in the freezing cold. We do not take away jobs and ostracise those who have elected not to take the influenza vaccine. We remember that we do not want anyone to tell their children that there is only baked beans on toast for supper just to protect ourselves from the risk of dying from influenza.

    It is time to move away from the crass individualism that underlies the imposition of these restrictions and try to regain the international communitarian principles which we have so easily abandoned in the fruitless pursuit of living without contagion.

    Sunetra Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/04/covid-variants-dont-warrant-restrictions-freedom

  87. Another shockingly balanced and measured view from the expert whose earlier views on the subject were described as ‘misleading’ and ‘laughable’ by some other experts known as George Monbiot and Paul Mason.

    Covid variants don’t warrant restrictions on our freedom

    For good reason, we do not respond with border closures and restrictions on school children every time a new influenza mutation is detected

    SUNETRA GUPTA

    The detection of a new Covid variant that has the ability to evade pre-existing immunity, whether naturally acquired or vaccine induced, is understandably a cause for concern. But it is important that these concerns are assessed in a framework that balances the potential health risks of such a variant against the damage associated with the measures taken to curb its spread.

    Variants gain an advantage in two ways: first, by increasing transmissibility and, second, by evading pre-existing immunity. Both the delta and omicron variants clearly evade neutralising antibody responses which can temporarily prevent infection. This gives them an advantage even if they are not significantly more transmissible than the variants they replace. Indeed, they could succeed even if they were less transmissible.

    It is a shame that these well-established principles of evolutionary epidemiology appear to have been disregarded by the majority of the scientific community.

    It is also unfortunate that many thinkers have adopted the argument that pathogens always evolve to be more transmissible but less severe. The truth is that it could swing either way. The outcome of infection is not just determined by the severity of the variant but very much more by the type and amount of pre-existing immunity within the infected individual. Most vulnerable people will now have protection against severe disease either through natural infection or vaccination, so it is of no consequence that this variant may be intrinsically slightly less or slightly more severe.

    We can do more to minimise the risk to vulnerable people. Amplifying efforts to vaccinate them, offering them boosters and investing in social care that could limit their exposure, would reduce the likelihood that they would die of Covid.

    However, it is unlikely that the rapid rollout of boosters to the general population will prevent these deaths. It could be argued that boosters may even increase the selective advantage of a variant that has a strong capability of evading the immune responses elicited by the vaccine.

    Moreover, we should not be reaching back now to the suite of restrictions that we know to have done very little to alter the dynamics of infection and yet, predictably, caused extreme harm to the poor and the young.

    It is time that we acknowledge that the way in which we aggressively implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions – underpinned by multiple lockdowns – caused extensive collateral damage when there were better ways to protect the vulnerable. Yet we remain wedded to the same means of responding to any new potential threat.

    We must regain a position of compassion – one that is in line with the social contract.

    It may therefore be useful to consider how we have managed the threat of influenza. We do not, when we detect new mutations in influenza, lock down borders and force school children to wear masks and eat lunch in the freezing cold. We do not take away jobs and ostracise those who have elected not to take the influenza vaccine. We remember that we do not want anyone to tell their children that there is only baked beans on toast for supper just to protect ourselves from the risk of dying from influenza.

    It is time to move away from the crass individualism that underlies the imposition of these restrictions and try to regain the international communitarian principles which we have so easily abandoned in the fruitless pursuit of living without contagion.

    Sunetra Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/04/covid-variants-dont-warrant-restrictions-freedom

    1. I’m amazed that anyone pays any attention to Moonbat, but then I suppose people still listen to Ferguson and Fataturk

      1. 342436 + up ticks,
        Evening M,
        As with the misinformed politico’s they think they are keeping a head with pro muslim issues….physically.

        1. What are they scared of though, some jihadi retribution, or just left wing judgemental shite.

          2. In the short term, the latter is more to be feared. The former will only become a problem when they stick their necks out. And they are unlikely to do that.

    2. More criticism rather than less, is required in order to ensure that our (ha ha) government realises that we are fed-up with the preferential treatment shewn to Islamists, PAKIs , Muslims, Sharia Law in no-go areas.

      Time for a great re-settlement, methinks, in order to remove this dirt from under our feet.

    1. And we pay the owners to shut the turbines down.
      BoJo epitomises the saying that the worst political jokes get elected.

      1. You couldn’t make it up.

        Some 28% of all fuel bills are payed out to landowners that ‘permit windfarms’ on their land, irrespective of the functionality of the windmills – and the narrow margin of wind velocity that allows them to function.

        Unprecedented in industrial history; and ‘fixed’ by friends in high places …

        1. Which is why some a*hole near us tried to build one on his farm – luckily turned down by the planning committee.

        2. Don’t be fooled, lacoste, the same applies to Solar ‘Farms’ which threaten to engulf our little village, proposes to utilise over 500 acres of good, food-producing, arable land to cover it with these Photo-Voltaic (PV) panels, erect fences that will force deer onto the roads and take the land out of food production for at least 40 years, while siting BESS in many places ((Battery Energy Storage Systems) with hundreds of Li-Ion cells that are subject to self-combustion and thermal runaway while producing toxic fumes across the countryside.

          This is what happens in just one cell. Imagine a container full with hundreds:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDhE0pk3FeQ

    2. We need – disparately – a ‘Keep the Lights On’ party …

      Redwood, Tice and Farage, perhaps ?

        1. 342436+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          uKiP should have one light on, that being a spotlight on treachery, you are still considering a tory (ino) top up backing party.

    1. Bring back the idea that ONLY those born in Yorkshire, may play (or administer) Yorkshire Cricket.

      Kick the bluddy PAKIs out.

  91. Evening, all. We are atop a bed of coal and surrounded by fish. Boris’ failure to ensure our fishermen got their rights when he cobbled together a remain leaving agreement means we are not making the most of the latter and his obsession with “green” energy means we aren’t making use of the former either. We desperately need someone in charge who intends to make the UK successful and prosperous.

    1. We are surrounded by far fewer fish than we should be. This is a result of historical mismanagement by our own governments as well as EU CFP deceitful controls. As for gas, oil and coal, it’s just a bloody joke. Too many MPs with social science degrees and no hard science. They hate us oldies who remember being cold in the winter and think ‘green energy’ is the saviour of the planet. They’ll get their comeuppance, but at what cost to the clueless people who believe in them?

  92. ‘White thought crimes’ are resurfacing at Cambridge

    Free speech is being crushed under the guise of keeping students ‘safe’

    CHARLES MOORE

    In the past 12 months, freedom of speech at Cambridge University won two important battles, after several years of losing ground.

    The first victory was that the dons rejected, by four to one, a motion devised by the university’s hierarchy which would have allowed free speech only if it “respected” other views. Freedom-lovers objected that respect cannot be commanded and it is not always conscientiously possible to respect other views. What is possible – and desirable – they said, is to “tolerate” other views. So tolerance prevailed in the free speech definition agreed.

    The second was that a university-wide website called “Report + Support” was withdrawn after protests. It had set out a system for anonymously denouncing staff and students for racism, and defined racism as an explicitly and solely white phenomenon (a definition which would, among many aberrations, have made anti-Semitism racist only if expressed by people with white skins). This was issued in the name of the Vice-Chancellor, Stephen Toope, but he then withdrew it because it went “beyond the approved policy framework”. It has never been reissued.

    Unfortunately, it now appears, these defeated doctrines are undead. A few weeks ago, a Cambridge college, Downing, issued its own instructions on “How to report incidents of racism”, probably using a template similar to that which the university had withdrawn. Racism, it said, “is an ideology and a set of practices based on ideas of inherited white ‘racial’ superiority that normalises control, domination and exclusion over people of colour, while legitimating privilege and oppression”. This included “beliefs, feelings, attitudes, utterances, assumptions and actions” which promote “a system that offers dominant groups opportunities to thrive while contributing towards the marginalisation of minority groups.”

    The Downing document instructed students how to identify “micro-aggressions”. The phrase “Where are you really from?” – friendly versions of which must be commonplace, especially during freshers’ week – was deemed particularly wicked. It also told students that denouncing alleged racists anonymously would build up “a fine-grained archive” of supposedly bad people (who, of course, have no redress against their accusers because they can never know who they are).

    There was immediate outcry from those in Cambridge who believed they had fought off the equation – itself racist, and against the Equalities Act – between racism and being white. Without any explanation of how it had got into this territory in the first place, Downing then reissued its guidance, shorn of the references to whiteness, but with the rest of the ideology intact. The words about “beliefs, feelings, attitudes” stayed, thus making racism a thought crime which only “anti-racists” can judge. So did the apparatus of anonymous reporting.

    In the second version, approved by Downing’s governing body last Friday, that stuff about racism being “an ideology and a set of practices based on ideas of racial superiority that normalise control, domination and exclusion on the basis of racial difference, while legitimating privilege and oppression” stays too. It still implies – though no longer states – that racism is only a white man’s game.

    At the end of both documents is appended the same reading list. Two of its titles use the word “white” as all but synonymous with “racist”.

    Why does it matter how one college, with only 400 undergraduates, behaves? Partly because the revised document might mistakenly be seen as respectable by others. It might become the model into which the explicitly anti-white words can be reinserted later. Also because of the changing state of the law. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is still working its way through Parliament. Those who work to close free speech down will be strengthened if their policies are in place before it is passed. If the Downing policy can be presented as a pastoral device for keeping students “safe”, it could spread much more widely. Then a law defending freedom of speech could, in effect, come to nothing.

    Inflation hits some harder than others

    In formal terms, the argument about whether inflation is coming back remains unsettled. Central bankers fear it may be, but don’t like to admit it. In terms of human psychology, however, I sense its return already. People are now factoring it into their plans to spend or save, sometimes buying more than they need now to hedge against higher prices later.

    Being a child of the great inflation which began in the 1960s and was not crushed until the late 1990s, I remember a depressing non-economic effect of rising prices: people come to hate one another more.

    In non-inflationary times, the decision to buy something depends on the merits of the purchase and on how much money one has. Inflation, however, is another word for a fall in the value of money. When this happens, people become sharply aware if others are being protected from this fall better than they are. They are conscious that two sets of people – bosses and unionised monopoly public-sector workers – tend to do better out of inflation than the rest of us. Private-sector workers, the self-employed and pensioners are particularly vulnerable.

    Once this perception embeds itself, wage-bargaining ceases to be an essentially rational negotiation about what can be afforded and becomes a bloody-minded competition where the strong beat the weak. This is what was meant when inflation used to be described as “immoral”. It is certainly very bad for social harmony.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/30/white-thought-crimes-resurfacing-cambridge/

    1. Petrol prices here have fallen even further, so a bulwark against inflation, if only temporarily. Now 129.9ppl!

        1. About the same here. I have a nearly full tank, so I’m not bothered for at least a month.

          4. It’s right next to it. You can walk through the gate in the hedge from the garage car park to the towpath!

    2. “Some 250 million years ago, simultaneous mass extinctions of marine and terrestrial life occurred in an event known as the End-Permian.”
      Maybe there are some dehydrated early marine dinosaurs in there. ‘Just add water.’

        1. Not very amazing when you consider Mt Everest as having its marine fossils close to the summit.

          2. An old seabed pushed up in an orogenic lift as continents collided. Still moving up slowly.

          3. Thank you – I’ve learnt a new term ‘orogenic uplift”. (I was aware of the Indian sub continent crashing into the Eurasian plate creating the Himalayas but not the geomorphological term)

          4. My house in NC had sandy soil. Under the deck was simply sand- like a beach. I looked it up and the whole area used to be a sea bed.
            It was a bit of a pain because my Golden could see the moles moving just under the surface and would pursue them and dig holes everywhere along the track. Spent half my time raking the holes in.

          5. I guess it had to be when the the ‘State Fossil’ is the ‘fossilized teeth of the megalodon shark’.

          7. I was looking it up and see there are two State Dances. The ‘Shag’, yes, but also ‘Clogging’. I’ve spent very little time in the US, but wish there was more time to do so.

          8. It’s a pretty state in parts and the beaches are wonderful. Didn’t get to the western edges but the east is nice. For real beauty, especially in the fall, CT is tops. The colours and the weather make it lovely. On my way home from school, I turned a corner and there was a large Sugar Maple which turned flame orange in the autumn. Against a backdrop of clear blue sky it was spectacular.
            Edit for spelling error.

  94. Good night all.

    Let’s keep it simple: corn on the cob with lotsa butta & black peppa.
    A custard tart.

      2. I used to love fish pie, making one based on a Delia recipe. Alas shortly after I came out of hospital years ago, I was served* the most disgusting abomination, which, although completely different from anything I understand as ‘fish pie’, has rather put me off.
        *No prizes for guessing by whom.

      1. I love them, although they are probably not overly healthy. They work out at 50p each in W/rose & go very well with soft fruit such as raspberries & blueberries.

          1. When I went to school up near the New Kent Road, sometimes I got the 21 bus, aka the Phantoms, or I got tube mentioned above. It was so crowded and awful. 7 years I did that :-((

          4. In the seventies I hated the journey to work viz. Northern Line from Clapham Common to Stockwell, the Victoria Line from Stockwell to Sloane Square and the District Line from Sloane Square to South Kensington.

            If on a sunny evening on the return journey I tried to find relief by walking to Sloane Square and attempting to get the 135 Bus service to Clapham Common I was doubly disappointed as after a wait of an hour, three buses would arrive at the same time, the first full, the second more than half full and the third subject to the blacks jumping the queue and elbowing you in the eye.

            My wife tells me that services in London have improved. I avoid the place where possible.

  98. If you are unable to travel either to leave the UK or else to return without proof of vaccination it begs the question ‘who other than the vaccinated are spreading the latest virus mutation?’.

    Or maybe I am missing something. Nothing about travel restrictions adds up or bears the slightest scrutiny. You are being conned time and again. Time to wake up and push back against this psycho authoritarian politico medico bankster tyranny.

    1. None of it is rational. None of it. We are being bombarded time and again with so many rules, U-turns on these and then something else – all to create chaos and confusion in the minds of the public. It is all done to put us in a spin so that when the vaccine passport comes along, as it will, they are hoping we will scarcely notice because we will have tuned out all the noise.

      Nothing is logical, nothing is reasonable. It is deliberately so.

      1. Have faith.

        Away from mainstream media reporting (or lack of) there are massive demonstrations against New World Order policies in Austria, Italy and Germany. I expect the UK to lead the way as ever in resisting authoritarian government control.

        Boris Johnson had better grow a pair sharpish if he wishes to remain in power for much longer.

        1. Boris doesn’t care about staying in power. He’s earned his money – the next shill is in line now.

      2. It’s gaslighting of the whole population for nearly two years. I’m so fed up with it all. It’s quite clear the ‘vaccines ‘ don’t work yet they still keep pushing them.
        Another Christmas without seeing my family is on the cards.

        1. I hope you are able to simply ignore the restrictions and return to normality.

          Of course the government edicts follow instructions from the New World Order fraternity to divide families and so far they have achieved a remarkable success in so doing. Families are often divided by those who have accepted the science of the jabs and those who doubt the efficacy of the jabs.

          I do hope your family can rise above those divisions if and as necessary.

          1. Not until we are able to live , travel, see whom we choose without restrictions. It’s worse in other countries I know.

      2. Thanks for the reply, Peddy, I stayed around but didn’t refresh the page. I forgot to do so. A bad night, but I suppose I’m not the only one.

  107. One of the BTL comment in the DT’s life-experience section says that a woman who writes about the difficulties of reaching the age of 40 needs to remember L.P. Hartley’s observation the past is a foreign county. (By 40, I thought I’d have my life under control, but it hasn’t turned out that way – Anna White)

    I am sure I am not the only Nottler to find that the present is the foreign country and I would like to return to the realities of the past but the PTB want to put as many restrictions as they can in my way to stop me getting there.

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