Saturday 7 November: Blithering government red tape that deters Remembrance ceremonies

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/07/letters-blithering-government-red-tape-deters-remembrance-ceremonies/

911 thoughts on “Saturday 7 November: Blithering government red tape that deters Remembrance ceremonies”

  3. Peers will be told to reveal pay from Russia or China in long-awaited crackdown after damning report on influence over British politics. 7 November 2020.

    Peers in the pay of Russia or China will be forced to reveal their earnings in a long-awaited crackdown.

    For the first time members of the House of Lords will have to declare any payments they receive from foreign governments or firms controlled by overseas states.

    The rule was proposed by the intelligence and security committee in its damning report on Russian influence over British politics and will be proposed to the upper house by its conduct committee later this month.

    Morning everyone. I would like to see all their earnings (the Commons as well) from every foreign and domestic source.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8923055/Peers-told-reveal-pay-Russia-China-long-awaited-crackdown.html

    1. The finances of all politicos, local and national, and all public sector employees, and their immediate families should be publicly available.
      If you don’t like it , then work in the private sector.

      1. The best way to avoid arrest if you are a Covid Restrictions Objector would be to have banners with :

        Black Lives Matter Protest Against Covid Restrictions

        emblazoned upon them and then the Police will leave you alone.

    2. Now look here, Sonny Jim. How would you like it if I called you an old Fogey?!?!?

      Oh, you meant it was Sunny in your neck of the woods. Well, don’t take offence, I was just letting you know that here it is Foggy.

      :-))

      1. Good Morning.
        Still as misty as hell up in Derbyshire. Dead calm outside too.
        Heading to Cromford for the paper. Back in an hour or so.

  10. Morning all…….

    SIR – For Remembrance Sunday, government guidance is headed “Local authority preparations”. Yet the great majority of Remembrance Sunday ceremonies are organised by churches, and thousands of war memorials are in churchyards or actually inside church buildings, in which services have been made a crime.

    The regulations and accompanying guidance are incomprehensible. Other than professional or volunteer officials and serving or ex-members of the Armed Forces, the regulations permit only the attendance of “spectators who participate in the gathering alone or only with members of their household [or linked household]”.

    But a “spectator” who “participates” in any way becomes, by definition, a participant, ceasing to be a spectator. “Participating” in a gathering “alone” is a logical impossibility.

    The guidance must be taken into account by the “gathering organiser” when carrying out “a risk assessment that would satisfy the requirements of regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999”. Good luck with that, churchwardens.

    Advertisement

    It requires keeping numbers to a minimum, minimising wider public viewing, and discouraging the public from attending – which defeats most of the purpose of having a ceremony.

    Not only, as your Leading Article (November 6) says, is this “a gross overreach of state power”, it is blitheringly incompetent.

    His Honour Charles Wide QC

    Glapthorn, Northamptonshire

    SIR – Nicky Dunnington-Jefferson (Letters, November 5) can find no one offering poppies. On the Royal British Legion website you can donate easily and download a poster for the window. I wear a poppy on my lockdown walks and in the house too. They who gave their lives will never be forgotten.

    Ann Hammond

    Truro, Cornwall

    SIR – Peter Brown (Letters, November 6) writes that his RAF Station Warrant Officer, admonished anyone wearing a poppy with the leaf not at 11 o’clock. This made me wonder how long it takes for myth to become tradition.

    According to the Royal British Legion, the leaf on the poppy was introduced in 1995 and “there is no correct way to wear a poppy”. Poppies made and sold in Scotland still don’t carry a leaf, but do carry an extra petal.

    Advertisement

    When I was growing up in the Sixties the only kind of poppy was a small red paper flower with a black centre, mounted on thin wire. Everyone, from schoolboy to the greatest, wore the same and the ostentatious blooms now sported by some were not available.

    On Remembrance Sunday the Queen wears the simple poppy, albeit in a group of five, and she wears them without leaves. If that’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.

    After all, what is most important is not the “tradition” of the leaf, but the simple motto: “Lest we forget”.

    William T Nuttall

    Rossendale, Lancashire

  11. Morning again

    SIR – As a scientist, I find it annoying, almost insulting, to see what emanates from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) described by politicians and the media as “science”.

    What emerges from Sage is not subject to any form of scientific rigour or peer review, as scientific work must be, in order to be accepted as valid.

    It is principally a form of modelling based on suppositions and assumptions, not on real studies. It would be better if decisions on dealing with Covid-19 were based on real data, such as that gathered by the King’s College London Zoe study, rather than scenarios generated by Sage.

    It would be even more appropriate to obtain a consensus view of how to deal with the situation by examining the plethora of peer-reviewed studies available in the scientific press, rather than the opinion of one group of modellers. This is how science generally operates.

    The evidence behind any decision made by the Government could then be presented in an open and transparent way.

    We, the general public, deserve better than the current obfuscation.

    Dr Keith Collard

    Minehead, Somerset

    SIR – Sir Patrick Vallance, today’s Groucho Marx. “I have projections – and if you don’t like them, I have others.”

    George Kelly

    Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – I am confused by the new lockdown rules. They state that I can “only” leave home to go to work (I work in a school), exercise, buy food or carry out caring responsibilities.

    I genuinely cannot think of any other reason to leave home at the moment, since everything is closed. In what sense, then, am I obeying the Prime Minister’s plea to “stay at home”?

    Kate Pycock

    Ipswich, Suffolk

    SIR – To encourage people to get out and about, I suggest putting garden seats outside houses. These allow people to rest, have a chat with passers-by and drink their takeaway coffee. All socially distanced, of course.

    Alyson Persson

    Henfield, West Sussex

    SIR – A virtual Berlin Wall has been built around our country, with scarcely a whimper of protest. We are not allowed to leave except for the doleful purpose of committing suicide (report, November 5).

    Lord Grantley

    London SW3

    SIR – As someone who is in the “at risk” age group, the greatest fear I have is of being hospitalised for something other than Covid-19, with the high possibility that I will contract the virus while in hospital.

    Terry Lloyd

    Derby

  12. SIR – A friend of mine was outraged at President Donald Trump’s apparent attempt to overturn what would seem to be the democratic result.

    I agreed, but was also able to remind him that he voted Remain in the 2016 referendum and then went on to support attempts to overturn that democratic vote.

    Deeply satisfying.

    Richard Stowells

    Wallsend

    1. This election has certainly drawn a lot of maggot-like remoaners out of the woodwork to display their hypocritical colours!

  13. SIR – It is nonsense for Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the National Gallery, to claim that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement “has changed the climate so that silence was now perceived as being complicit” (report, November 4). Things are only seen in that way by BLM and inside a small bubble of the chattering classes, not by the vast majority of Britons.

    Anyway, in what would the National Gallery be complicit? In supporting slavery? Absurd.

    There will always be angry, single-issue movements claiming that if you are not with them, you are against them. Such claims are baseless.

    The BLM movement is nakedly political and, if people like Dr Finaldi submit to the wishes of voluble extremist groups like this, they betray their positions of responsibility.

    Their complicity will not be in some imagined genuflection to slavery, but in bending the knee to BLM’s Marxist, anti-capitalist agenda and the violence of too many of its supporters.

    Gregory Shenkman

    London W8

    SIR – There is no chance of halting the “Leftwards drift of the upper middle classes” (Comment, November 4) until we acknowledge the extent to which arts and heritage bodies have been politicised by their administrators.

    An arts administrative caste has for decades substituted social engineering and the imposition of quotas for a due recognition that, in the arts, quality and merit alone are of the essence.

    Any attempted reforms that do not start with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will fail.

    Michael Daley

    Director, ArtWatch UK

    Barnet, Hertfordshire

  14. ‘Morning, Peeps.
    SIR – It is nonsense for Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the National Gallery, to claim that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement “has changed the climate so that silence was now perceived as being complicit” (report, November 4). Things are only seen in that way by BLM and inside a small bubble of the chattering classes, not by the vast majority of Britons.

    Anyway, in what would the National Gallery be complicit? In supporting slavery? Absurd.

    There will always be angry, single-issue movements claiming that if you are not with them, you are against them. Such claims are baseless.

    The BLM movement is nakedly political and, if people like Dr Finaldi submit to the wishes of voluble extremist groups like this, they betray their positions of responsibility.

    Their complicity will not be in some imagined genuflection to slavery, but in bending the knee to BLM’s Marxist, anti-capitalist agenda and the violence of too many of its supporters.

    Gregory Shenkman
    London W8

    SIR – There is no chance of halting the “Leftwards drift of the upper middle classes” (Comment, November 4) until we acknowledge the extent to which arts and heritage bodies have been politicised by their administrators.

    An arts administrative caste has for decades substituted social engineering and the imposition of quotas for a due recognition that, in the arts, quality and merit alone are of the essence.

    Any attempted reforms that do not start with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will fail.

    Michael Daley
    Director, ArtWatch UK
    Barnet, Hertfordshire

    I seem to recall that Bliar and Brown stuffed many of the quangos with Labour supporters, rather than the best people for the jobs. What a legacy.

    1. Good morning all!
      The infiltration of such bodies by Left leaning academics had been going on for years, but yes, Blair sped up the process immensely.

    2. I am not with them. I am very much against them. Finaldi is responsible for holding up a picture of a particular aspect of our history. That of art. To alter the picture in response to hooliganism and distortion is to lie to us and the future users of the galleries.

  16. Something I’ve noticed on the mainstream media this last week is that whenever Trump speaks they report what he says as having no evidence, I’ve never known that done before to the leader of any country, it has certainly lowered the bar, still I suppose we can all do that now whenever a leader makes a speech.
    They might as well roll that bar across the bottom of the screen with danger we think he is lying on it.
    The duty of the mainstream media is to broadcast the news, not say which they think is true or not, that is down to the viewers and people that scrutinise what he says.
    When Boris next appear talking about Covid will they say but there is no evidence?

  18. Good morning All ,

    Milder day , and we had rain early morning . Dull weather , overcast sky, totally different to yesterday’s weather which was crisp and glorious.

    1. Tim Parker described the campaign as a ‘human rights movement with no party political affiliations’ in a statement that risks alienating the Trust’s 5.6 million members.

      The man is a fool. One of the American founders boasted of being a ‘trained Marxist’, while BLM in the UK has applied to become a political party.

      1. Public school, Oxbridge educated Leftist member of the Labour Party – what do you expect?

        1. Yes, it is a definite type, and the University of Oxford is full of them. My children grew up in Bavaria, and are not really familiar with this type. Recently, I saw one of them in the supermarket in Britain, and whispered to my daughter, “Look, that’s a typical Oxford male. If you want to know why I never met my future husband at university, that’s why.”
          She understood with one glance.

          1. I used to bring my two over to Blighty for a week’s holiday in Summer so they could hear Vernacular English.

      3. It looks as if he’s turning the NT into a political party as well.
        On that basis how many more will using that well known phrase…”I’m Out” !

  20. Is anybody else missing their online Telegraph? Mine should have arrived 2 hours ago but so far hasn’t.

    2. How on earth can you ‘celebrate’ such carp. To me, it’s akin to the seditious rubbish put out by so-called (c)rappers.

    1. We’re dealing with a miffed chihuahua; his lockdown waistline needs trimming.
      “Huh! Dog food …. again.”

      1. Dolly is on hunger strike. She has been given diet biscuits as the Vet said she is overweight. She pushes her bowl around the floor making sad mewing noises until i give in.

        1. Dotty has no such problems (touch wood) ‘cos Best Beloved will ensure that she gets her walk at least once a day and that is out in the rural wilds that are being threatened with huge Solar ‘Farms’ as they like to call them.

          Unfortunately, I cannot walk that far these days but I admire her efforts with this little dog who gives her so much joy.

      3. Do you alternate the dog food?
        Missy gets something fishy (different every day) in the morning & something meaty (different everyday) for her tea.

        1. At the moment he’s on dried food only.
          He also has an allergy to grass, pollen etc…. that the vet thinks might be aggravated by diet.
          So the poor mite is on a very limited diet to see what happens as none of us are keen on a young dog popping pills.

    2. One of my favourite ‘Just So’ stories is ‘The Cat That Walked by Himself.’ and I am very fond of cats. After Kipling’s story is his poem about a dog and I must confess that I cannot decide which camp I am in:

      Pussy can sit by the fire and sing,
      Pussy can climb a tree,
      Or play with a silly old cork and string
      To ‘muse herself, not me.
      But I like Binkie my dog, because
      He knows how to behave;
      So, Binkie’s the same as the First Friend was,
      And I am the Man in Cave!

      Pussy will play Man Friday till
      It’s time to wet her paw
      And make her walk on the window-sill
      (For the footprint Crusoe saw)
      Then she fluffles her tail and mews,
      And scratches and won’t attend.
      But Binkie will play whatever I choose,
      And he is my true First Friend!

      Pussy will rub my knees with her head
      Pretending she loves me hard;
      But the very minute I go to my bed
      Pussy runs out in the yard,
      And there she stays till the morning-light;
      So I know it is only pretend;
      But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night,
      And he is my Firstest Friend!

      1. Not really, we have a well insulated house and enjoy a strangely temperate local microclimate , something to do with hills on three sides and Bristol Channel on the other

          3. Once you turn it on – it tends to stay on.

            I can reassure you that the MR is quite content at the moment and will make the decision herself.

            I am but clay in her hands….

          5. Oh I do, Missus – I do. Believe me.

            Four years ago we had new double glazing installed. Cost a bomb but it has reduced all our heating bills tremendously.

          6. Our thermostat is set at 18° Celsius which means it is reluctant to turn intself on until it is quite cold.

            Lockdown has given me time to saw plenty of logs which should keep us going for a few years. We are currently burning last year’s logs in the evening. We have a large Clearview 15 KW stove in the living room and a smaller Woodwarm 6 KW stove in the library.

          7. We wait until Christmas day to put our CH on. It goes on whether we need it or not 😃😊😉

            From an old joke…Bloke to his wife ” Get out of the chair and put yer coat on dear” “ooo are we going out dear”? ” no, but i am and I’m turning the heating off” !

  25. “Biden looks screwed even if he wins.” 6 November 2020.Politico.

    Well, pilgrims, “is a puzzlement.” It seems that Trump has lost (subject to litigation for constitutionality and fraud) but the GOP has actually won broadly speaking. The down ballot results are sadly disappointing for the left. There is still the matter of control of the senate … If the Dems win both run-offs in Georgia, we would have a tied senate 50-50. That would be a bad scene from my POV. With a Republican senate the worst excesses of the 3rd world style yearnings of the Squadies can be restrained, but every move toward across the board Democrat control would push toward Bolshevik re-organization of American society.

    Donald Trump put up one hell of a fight in the campaign. No one could have worked harder. The huddled masses , abandoned and scorned by the elites, rallied to him as their unlikely protector. “We love you” will echo in my head, chanted by thousands of my fellow Deplorables.

    I think it is fair to say that women defeated Trump. He has not the image that they want to see in their heads of a momma’s boy still under momma’s wing. No, he is more like a rogue elephant and that killed him with a lot of women.

    I have to make a decision about continuing SST. pl

    The view from the United States.

    I think Colonel Lang has foreseen that though Biden has been hindered politically by the vote, this will not stop the Globalist agenda. They will press on regardless and one of their main targets will be the Internet and those like himself and Nottl who use it to resist. The coming Online Harms Bill will do a great deal in this direction but one can also expect the targeting of both individuals and websites for dissenting views. This will involve both clandestine operations, the disruption of comments by trolls with vastly increased powers and the criminalisation of views.

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

  26. Because my local health trust, Imperial College, are not honest enough to publish their figures and Barts Health Trust (6 hospitals including the Nightingale) are, I’ve been checking their numbers.

    Across all 6 establishments they have 177 ICU beds. On 1 Nov, 27 were occupied. On 6 Nov, that number had fallen to 19. Are they really untypical? The City may not be heavily populated but the East End is?

      2. I hope you have blocked your chimney, you don’t want that fat bloke with the beard turning up.

    2. I wondered what had happened to the Flagship Nightingale.
      All these figures appear to have turned into a strange version of the US election. More going on under the surface that is ever mentioned.

    2. Appalling!
      This is why the fraud investigation won’t change the election result. They won’t catch every one of the no doubt hundreds or thousands of small frauds. It was done by a huge, dedicated army overwhelmingly composed of Democrats who genuinely believe that they were doing a good and right thing. I doubt there was any central organisation – you don’t need that when you’ve got true believers and blind fools working for your cause!

      2. 326199+ up ticks,
        Afternoon BB2,
        Over the last 3 decades especially,
        the lab/lib/con coalition support proves your point.

        1. ogga, back in the 80s it was common knowledge that Labour in London were voting early and often with their friends M Mouse and D Duck.
          Mind you in those days they all had a handful of fake passports and a different ID in each London borough, complete with flat and benefit claim. I don’t know if it’s been tightened up now or if that old scam is still running.

          1. Back in the ’80s we discovered quite by chance that apart from her wages from us, she had registered herself with every dole office in the Southampton area & was drawing bennies from each one.

          2. 326199+ up ticks,
            Evening BB2
            The massina brothers era
            most likely more safer in london then than now.

          3. 326199+ up ticks,
            O2O,
            Is this jennifer chappie from malta or a relative
            of the massina bro’s ?

  28. Perspective. Counting today and Christmas Day – and using the average daily figure – by 25 December 2020, 83,300 people will have died.

  29. Appalled to see they were still grovelling to Marxism (albeit briefly) at today’s televised FA Cup match. Switched off straightaway as zero respect for all of them.

    1. Does no one point out to the wanqueurs who control these wazzocks that the vile BLM is out to destroy the very capitalism that wendyball* depends on?

      * And other “sports” where blind, ignorant idiots kneel down….

  30. Must go and feed two kittens. Then get lunch ready. The MR is on a marathon Skype today – 7 hours…..Work.

  31. Earlier, I posted two remarkably similar graphs of hospitalisations and mechanical ventilations. Here they are with the y-axis values restored. Mechanical ventilations are barely one-sixth of hospitalisations. Confusingly, the website page from which these graphs were taken has an even lower rate:
    Patients in hospital – 12,999
    Patients on ventilation – 1,181

    How is the public supposed to draw proper conclusions from such shoddily presented data?

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65f6a2d8985b998f9e0e334db5562210ff16b9ea596a9d7da58486475cf3501e.jpg
    ___________________________________________________________

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0719d53494cb5f8ce3181312501eb366a5f4b16ff08eb1150840e04d279dbfe3.jpg

    3. From what Stig says about 2 hours ago, that means Manchester hospitals have about 10% of all the UK’s Covid-19 hospitalised patients. From Sue’s post it sounds like London has about 1%. Immunity in some areas?

    4. One of the lessons learned from wave 1 was that mechanical ventilation is not the best form of therapy for many Covid patients.

      1. So we need a graph of the number of patients receiving drug therapies as well, so the two parts of the graphs can be compared properly.

        1. Many patients who are not receiving “mechanical ventilation” will be receiving oxygen as well as drugs. Mechanical ventilation is a last resort (in almost any condition, it has serious drawbacks and after effects) but increased oxygen provision before the patient reaches the last resort stage is much more effective.

  32. SIR – Well done to the Prince of Wales for his stance on clothes (“Prince hopes ‘throwaway’ clothes will go out of fashion”, November 5).

    I have a lovely duffel coat that I started wearing again recently and discovered that I had a spare nappy pin in the pocket. My youngest child is 55 years old.

    I reckon I must have bought the coat in 1965. It is in excellent condition and very warm.

    Vanessa Long
    Hale Barns, Cheshire

    You are not alone, Vanessa Long: I still have a few shirts and jumpers bearing the ‘Saint Michael’ label. They seem to be indestructible, which may help to explain why M & S have been struggling for some years now, along with an obvious reduction in quality – so much so that I have found better quality elsewhere, and at no more than a similar price.

    1. Dr Daughter picked herself a lovely red duffle coat up from a charity shop when she was studying in London.
      She had to throw it and other clothes away several years later when moth holes appeared in it.

    2. I bought an excellent and smart dark blue woollen overcoat from, of all places, Montague Burton’s, in 1965. Caroline darned a small hole caused by moth damage and our older son, Christo, is still wearing it and it still looks smart.

      I used to have all my suits made to measure but sadly I no longer fit into any of them. I now have lost all interest in smart clothes and have become a scruffy old buffer.

      2. Like a worn out teddy bear. Stuffing leaking out and all the fur gone. One eye and no ears. We still like you though.

    3. My son was looking for a winter jacket in a charity shop last year. He found a nice one and tried it on in front of the mirror. It looked good, so he thrust his hands into the pockets.
      In one of the pockets was a small piece of paper, which when opened, turned out to be the previous owner’s positive HIV test result.
      Very unobtrusively, my son took the jacket off, put it back on the hanger, hung it up again and exited the shop….

      1. Chuckle. It is very unlikely that there would have been any viable HIV bugs remaining in the jacket, but I can understand your son’s reaction. After all, you wouldn’t eat soup out of an even brand new chamber pot.

        1. Some years ago I had a few music lessons with a lady who, with her husband and daughters, lived in a large house on the edge of Shrewsbury. They had a music room; a large room on the end of the house complete with piano, harpsichord, full size harp, double bass and cello, as well as a large number of smaller instruments. I was puzzled, however, by the presence on the hearth of a very prettily painted china chamber pot. When, after my third lesson, I mentioned it she smiled and said that she had bought it because its colours blended with those of the hearth tiles and that it was used for emptying the condensation out of woodwind instruments; in particular her husband’s bassoon and those of fellow bassoonists who also played there.

          A friend uses a matched pair of painted enamel chamber pots as planters on either side of her front door and another friend has a plain enamel one in her stable yard which is used to provide drinking water for the dogs (and the stable cat).

          But I can’t say that I would fancy eating out of any of the numerous ones which can be found in junk/second-hand/antique emporia. While too large for individual portions I suppose that they could be used as tureens – but I don’t think it would catch on.

    1. I can’t play video links on this site, for some reason. Is that the Rossini? That’s the one that will undoubtedly be my earworm for the day, anyway.

  34. SIR – I am self-employed via a limited company. I have not worked since March. If it was deemed appropriate for me to support myself for having over £50,000 of profit after tax, then why not for those furloughed in the public sector with earnings after tax over £50,000? They have received roughly £20,000 in support to date – and there are plenty of people enjoying such privileged status.

    The Chancellor should provide fairer support. While my shoulders are broad, it doesn’t feel as though those with shoulders as broad, or broader, than mine (many of whom have guaranteed jobs to which to return) are taking their share of the weight.

    The Chancellor should review the support for the public sector, rather than raking through the dying embers of the contractor and self-employed sector for additional savings.

    Patrick Taylor
    Warrington, Cheshire

    SIR – Amid vast spending to tackle Covid-19, the former top Treasury official Lord Macpherson (report, November 4) has said that the Government owes it to future generations to spend taxpayers’ money wisely. Economists have said that it could take a decade to tackle ballooning budget deficits – as if this were a recent phenomenon.

    Before Covid, the national debt had doubled in 10 years – more than doubled if debt so disingenuously kept off the Treasury balance sheet is included. Why do so many economics pundits turn a blind eye to the underlying causes of our escalating national debt?

    Bill Parish
    Bromley, Kent

    SIR – How does one describe the scale of debt after it exceeds eye-watering?

    Dr David Shoesmith
    York

    ‘Ruinous’, Dr Shoesmith? ‘Suicidal’? ‘Terminal’?

    Patrick Taylor is not wrong; the wealth creators are being singled out once again, while the feather-bedding of much of the public sector continues unabated. Discuss…

    1. Patrick Taylor is completely wrong. He is not “self-employed via a limited company” that is a legal impossibility. If he has formed a limited company then he is an employee of the company.

  35. Charles Moore today:

    As I write, Joe Biden would seem to have been chosen by the voters. If so, he will duly be elected the next President of the United States of America when the Electoral College meets next month. But note a certain tentativeness. Here in Britain, most of our media, following – as usual – the lead of the main US TV networks expressed outrage at President Trump’s claim that the election was being stolen by Democrat voting fraud.

    Yesterday morning, BBC reporters spoke of Mr Trump’s “false claims”, as if they knew them to be so. How could they? The claims concerned details about voting and vote-counting practices in several states: no reporter could pronounce on their validity. All that could be accurately stated was that Mr Trump was making the claims and was not, at that point, producing evidence to support them.

    Obviously, and as usual, Mr Trump was jumping the gun and – to mix the metaphor – firing it wildly. His words were unstatesmanlike, and they were delivered because he feared he was losing. But it is important to understand that his opponents, though behaving with more apparent decorum, played a similar game.

    The joint effort of media, pollsters and the Democrats themselves for months now has been to try to make a Biden victory – and a Democrat surge in both Houses of Congress and state legislatures – a foregone conclusion. Mr Biden was being given poll leads of 10 per cent over Mr Trump. Such figures were so exaggerated, and so wrong on the night, as to suggest gross incompetence or deliberate skewing, or both, in sampling methods.

    One way of assisting the pro-Biden push was to use Covid-19 risk as a chance to encourage more “mail-in” and “absentee” ballots. Even in Britain, where voting rules are nationally uniform, it is well known that too easily available postal votes are more subject to fraud than the ballot box. In a federal country like the United States, state rules vary considerably. There is a much greater danger than in our unitary system that one-party control of a US city or county may result in abuses – an issue, for example, in Democrat-controlled Philadelphia.

    Mr Trump’s Wednesday outburst did not come out of nowhere: Republicans have worried about postal ballot fraud for years. Indeed, they would be better criticised not for complaining about it, but for not having done enough about it earlier. Democrats have tended to encourage “mail-in” voting since their natural constituency is harder to persuade to enter the voting booth. In close contests, as several states are this time, doubts about the process matter. Recounts are provided for.

    When the Republicans started complaining about voting irregularities, the hostile reaction to them was almost Trumpian in its anger. Commentators tweeting in support of the president’s concerns found their tweets censored by Twitter and replaced by the words “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civil process”. So indeed it might, but how does that distinguish it from millions of words spoken in any election campaign in a free country? When President Trump appeared on television again to expand on his accusations, the three national networks withdrew their coverage after his initial remarks. The word “media” means mediating news and views to others: when media organisations start blocking both, something is wrong.

    The effect of such behaviour is, yet again, to provoke in Trump supporters the belief that they are being cheated by the system and resentment that they are seen as either fools or knaves by the country’s elites. Yet again, Trump’s belligerent exaggeration and the elites’ self-righteous and repressive disdain form an unholy alliance of opponents to embitter the conflict.

    One suspects that the Republican establishment, which has never liked Mr Trump, is content for this to happen. In the Bush vs Gore 2000 election – when Democrats were not so high-minded about contesting ballot results as they are this week – it all came down to disputed voting in Florida. The Bush team, led by the Bush family consigliere, lawyer and ex-secretary of state, James Baker, quickly and publicly flew there to start fighting the legal battle. They won. One does not detect a similar Republican enthusiasm this time. The party grandees would prefer Mr Trump to depart with dignity, though the concept is as unnatural to him as brushing one’s hair is to Boris Johnson.

    What is broadly clear about the results, however, is that the Democrat dream of a blue revival has died. The American people have not cast out the Trump era as an aberration. Indeed, Mr Trump has won the highest vote for a Republican presidential candidate in history. By his capacity to speak and lead from the front all the time he has been in office, he has made himself his party’s best (and worst) campaigning weapon. In this election, it did much better than expected at all electoral levels and it did so chiefly because of the value he added.

    The best Trump qualities displayed were mental and physical energy – truly phenomenal in the wake of getting Covid aged 74 – and his continuous courage in challenging the powerful on behalf of the grumpy. For 99 per cent of world leaders, it is very seductive to be glad-handed by others of your kind at Davos and the UN and wherever they choose to enlarge their carbon footprints by meeting to “save the planet”. You are pleased to have joined a powerful club. Donald Trump seems to have been totally unseduced, if only because his own ego is too great to need the validation of foreigners (except, interestingly, dinner with the Queen).

    As a result, his leadership has not been a dead end for the Republican Party. It has helped reshape it. It was a rather fearful, declining tribe too much associated with hanging on to economic gains. Now it is a movement with much more working-class support and even, against expectation, rising ethnic minority backing. A typical old-style Republican white leader would have responded to Black Lives Matter and the pulling down of statues with limp words of half-baked disapproval. The Trump style is to repudiate such movements firmly, invoking American pride. His style of leadership – entrepreneurial, buccaneering, assertive – appeals more to new entrants than to the comfortable.

    This has made life much more difficult for the Democrats. They can no longer assume working-class support. In economics, they can be outflanked. In the culture wars, they have the awkward problem that lots of militant minorities do not add up to one harmonious majority. They have so often thrown accusations of racism against voters who worry about issues like immigration and crime that they have built a silent resistance into a large section of the population (hence, in part, the misleading polls). People simply will not vote for a party they sense disapproves of them.

    In terms of leadership, the Democrats personify the famous line of W B Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Hence the emergence of conviction-free, elderly Mr Biden, who prefers to stop working after lunch.

    Under President Biden, as he will probably become from January, things may not be so bad. The close results and the failure to take the Senate, may hold back his crazies. But for the Democrats and for America, this is not a new dawn, more a new dusk.

    Edit: A couple of the leading BTL comments:

    French Whisky
    6 Nov 2020 10:16PM
    Thank you Charles. I made a written complaint yesterday morning to the BBC about the BBC News website’s lead story stating equally categorically that “There was no fraud.” and this seemed to lead to the tempering of the tone of the article later that day.

    The BBC journalists and editors covering the US election have taken their usual prejudices and attitudes on a brief trip to the US, with entirely predictable consequences.

    Frankly, the BBC is just too far gone in the direction of the elite illiberal left that the situation there is irretrievable and it will lead inexorably to the BBC losing its funding and its standing and eventually its existence.

    Wendy McNally
    6 Nov 2020 9:52PM
    Well said Charles.

    I’m glad you took the time to praise Trumps attributes and how important he’s been to the Republican Party.

    Someone that loves and believes in their country, is a rare beast in today’s left wing world. Let us hope and pray he has inspired other politicians to say it’s okay to love and fight for your country. It’s about time the politicians started thinking like the people they’re supposed to serve.

    If only we had some of that in our own PM – sadly, there’s none.

    1. Sosraboc put it very succinctly: If Biden won fair and square he must become president; if he cheated he must not.

          1. Seeing that every UK government has been directed by the pro global government billionaires since Tony Blair (who met with Soros at the New York Plaza Hotel on April 20,1996 to do undercover deals) that means nothing.

          2. You must be joking.
            Soros and Schwab and their ilk have been promulgating their evil influence for decades and far longer than when Blair became influential.

          3. Thank you for agreeing with my previous post.

            Blair was never influential. He merely carried their bags.

          4. As I remarked the other day: Soros destroyed John Major over the ERM fiasco and yet John Major still behaves like his little lap-dog.

          5. Was the ERM thing really bad for Britain though? I thought Soros did that for personal financial gain, but it worked in our interests? Norman Lamont was happy about it at the time, I remember, as it put us out of the running to join the Eurozone.

        3. Good morning Polly.

          I often agree with you – but not here. I think Charles Moore is an excellent voice of reason in a muddle-headed world.

    4. It’s quite likely that there was electoral fraud all over America, and it is also quite likely that Trump’s supporters were indulging in fraud as much as his opponents. It is all part of the game. What the constitutional lawyers must determine is whether such antics have influence the result of an election. If they haven’t then they are not worth bothering with. If they have, then it’s helpful to be able to identify them. It’s the job of party observers to come up with evidence, and they are given access to the count and to the polling process in order to carry out their investigations. I personally think that what did for Trump was his performance in the first presidential TV debate which must have led to many floating voters in disgust sending off their postal ballot in favour of Biden, rather than risking the virus in long queues on polling day.

      I have pointed out a clear case of electoral fraud, in the UK during the 2015 General Election, that did seriously influence the result of an election leading to the disintegration of a major party, and the subsequent perversion of democracy when Parliament was thrown into anarchy for several months in 2019 as a direct consequence of this fraud. The perpetrators got off scot-free.

      I refer of course to electoral malpractice in Thanet South, where the party’s then-leader failed to get elected as a result of a gross breach of election expenses in the constituency by the successful candidate. There was no by-election called immediately the breach was discovered.

        1. Then this too should be investigated. These reports suggest that some observers were intimidating the counting officers in the hope of preventing them finishing registering the votes before deadline.

          I would be interested though in some public information as to the procedure for verifying postal votes. The case of gross malpractice in Peterborough, England, suggests that it is possible to pervert this process. It would be a pity especially if postal voting was impeccably conducted, that it should be laid open to suspicion just because the security procedures were inadequately explained to the public.

          1. Do you have evidence of “gross malpractice in Peterborough, England” or is that just your assumption based upon the result?

          2. There would appear to be too many loopholes.

            At the very least there should be a clear audit trail from application for a postal vote, through voter identification, verification and submission, then verification again on receipt at the polling station and through to the count.
            Security should be watertight from issue of the blank ballot to the eventual count, and include the verifications. The vote should never be allowed to pass outside the system nor be subject to delay.

          3. As I said yesterday (and won a down vote for saying it from YKW!)

            ” ….. how on earth can they establish the authenticity of votes beyond all doubt?

            One thing is sure – postal voting is the source of enormous fraud and should be dramatically curtailed.”

      2. I don’t think it’s true that the left and right are equally likely to be engaging in fraud. I was a Conservative party activist in various organisations for years in the 80s and 90s, and fraud of any sort just wasn’t on our horizon. We knew we could win without it. At the same time, we were aware that our opponents were widely using tricks like registering fake voters.
        I think the same is true in the US. Conservatives tend to be people who do rather than people who yap. They might cheat on their taxes, but they don’t see the point of election fraud.

        1. Funny you say that of the Conservatives. I once joined the SDP team canvassing Haslemere at a local council election. At 11am in previous elections, a Conservative party worker would turn up with a wad of proxy votes, harvested from the care homes, which were run by party members. We got wise to this, and buzzed the door bell of a member inmate, who let us in. We were able to get leaflets out and forms for postal votes for most of the inmates before the management threw us out.

          We won that election.

          1. Odd, I have heard a similar story, but it wasn’t the Conservatives doing it….
            I can only say what I saw as a party worker in several constituencies over several elections.

  37. ‘Morning again.

    Lengthy but moving article from Allison Pearson. This was once a humane, civilized and caring country…(and it is “They shall grow not old” Allison).

    They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.” Laurence Binyon’s For The Fallen is almost guaranteed to bring a lump to every throat on Remembrance Day.

    Those who survived the Second World War (the last veteran of the First died in 2012) have indeed lived to be old, but they know they are the lucky ones. With sepia-hued memories of those who left this world too young, our greatest generation are blessed with a there-but-for-the-grace-of- God-go-I perspective. Grandparents and great-grandparents now, they have never stopped doing their duty, seeing out their days with grit, stoicism and an admirable lack of fuss.

    Their spirit is embodied in the person of Her Majesty the Queen, the only living head of state to have served in the Second World War. The young Princess Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and trained as a military driver. Aged 94, she still motors to church and, frankly, you wouldn’t want to be the one to suggest that maybe Ma’am’s days behind the wheel are over.

    While politicians have run around like headless chickens during the pandemic, the Queen has taken sensible precautions while acting with undaunted resolve. She attracted criticism when she turned up to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory without a mask. I’m sure Her Majesty had reasoned, as her parents did during the Blitz, that her people would not wish to see the monarch cowed.

    Earlier this week, the Queen made an unannounced visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey just hours before the second lockdown began. Better than almost anyone alive she knows what is owing to the dead, and to those who served this country. Wonderfully, she would not be deterred from showing the respect that generation deserves.

    Compare and contrast this then with the horrifying lack of respect when Humberside Police arrested Ylenia Angeli, a 73-year-old retired nurse, for trying to remove her 97-year-old mother from a care home. Ylenia, the mother of former Coronation Street actress Leandra Ashton, had not been allowed to see her dementia-stricken mum for nine months because of government guidance on Covid. Like hundreds of thousands of other relatives, Mrs Angeli found the lack of contact absolutely heartbreaking.

    You can just imagine what the wartime generation, if only they could be heard, would make of crazy, cruel rules that aim to keep them “safe” while depriving them of the human contact that makes life worth living. I have had several hundred traumatic emails from readers (see a selection below) who simply cannot believe that such inhumanity is permitted in this country. What the hell have we become when an 80-year-old says that touching her husband’s hand in an ambulance felt “illicit”? Who are we when a distraught man must cash in his life savings to buy a month’s stay in a care home to be beside the darling wife he is forbidden to visit? Not the country that men and women fought and died for from 1939 to 1945, that’s for sure.

    Last week, I wrote an open letter to the Social Care Minister Helen Whately, begging her to allow relatives to be designated key workers so they can be tested regularly and visit loved ones in care homes. I really don’t know how Mrs Whateley, and her boss, Matt Hancock, can sleep at night. Their box-ticking indifference has caused a vast, fathomless sea of anguish.

    If the government, which killed so many old people by returning them to care homes with Covid in the spring, thinks it can rescue itself now through “saving” old people by condemning them to hell on Earth then it deserves the contempt of each and every one of us.

    If her Majesty knew what was being done to her contemporaries I’m sure she would be aghast. (Please can someone tell her?) On this Remembrance weekend, spare a thought for every man and woman, once young and valiant, now locked inside a care home by the cowards we have become. They have not lived so long, nor so well, to be betrayed and abandoned by the nation that they love.

    Below are some of the letters I’ve received from Telegraph readers illustrating the torment they’ve faced…

    In March, Mum will be 100 and we are all hoping we can get together to celebrate
    Christine Vincent​

    Our mother is 99 and currently in a care home in Leeds. Unlike many residents, she has all her faculties and knows exactly what is going on in the world. My sister has written the poem below, setting out her feelings:

    I’m 99

    I enjoyed my life… now it’s an existence

    I enjoyed my family… now they’re unreachable

    I enjoyed my outings… now I’m trapped

    I’m 99

    I need my family… l’m so lonely

    I need a hug… It’s not allowed

    I need a chat… but there’s endless silence

    I’m 99

    I’m a prisoner… but I’m innocent

    I have rights… but they’re ignored

    I fought for freedom… but now I have none

    I’m 99… please help

    Until the lockdown, Mum was used to going out and about with my sister. They would go on shopping trips or for coffee at the garden centre. My brother would take her to the local races where she would have a flutter on the horses. In the last eight months she has only been out twice, for hospital visits.

    Every day, not only are people dying of Covid, they are also dying of loneliness and broken hearts; sadly the latter are not in the country’s statistics. In March, Mum will be 100 and we are all hoping we can get together to celebrate – she has always enjoyed family gatherings. She was married for 60 years before my father passed away in 2006.

    They had served this country through all those years as good upright citizens. My father flew Lancaster bombers during the Second World War and we are now passing their life stories on to her great grandchildren. What message do we tell them, now that she is locked up by those whose freedom her generation fought for?

    My mother may only have months to live; each day before lockdown my father or I would visit her – now she has nothing
    Victoria Amphlett

    My parents, Robin and Audrey, married in 1956 and have been utterly devoted to each other ever since. My brother and I had happy childhoods and we are all still very close. My mother is in a nursing home, suffering from dementia, and it is breaking our hearts.

    Each day my father looks at photographs of their lives together and makes a postcard, which he sends to my mother. The care home must have about 100 by now! The other day he photographed my curtains, which Mummy made in 1971 and I’m still using. Last time I visited my mother I sat 6ft away in a mask, apron and gloves and she ground her teeth and then went to sleep. She may only have months to live. Each day before lockdown my father or I would visit her. Now she has nothing. It’s all unbearable. Please continue to help us all.

    Mum is so confused and thinks that it’s me that doesn’t want to see her
    Elizabeth Coombes

    My dear mum Audrey is in a care home in Lincolnshire. It is good and she is well looked after, but I haven’t been able to hug or hold her since March 12. Mum is 92.

    I am her only daughter and my two children and husband cannot see her at all. She has dementia and I long to kiss her and take her in my arms. I have been able to see her with a carer across a table with a mask on. She is so confused and thinks that it’s me that doesn’t want to see her.

    Skype doesn’t work as mum keeps wanting to turn the computer off. I read her poems, I tell her all the things in my heart, but the conversations are stilted and the presence of a carer offers no privacy and I feel tense and upset. We are not allowed to wave at the window either, which surely can only brighten her day.

    Mum is a strong, funny lady who lived all her life in the same house. I know she loves me so much. I love her so very much and know that she is waiting for me. Surely something more can be done. We are Britain. This is 2020.

    This is a totally inhumane way to treat elderly people at the end of their lives
    Linda Mathews

    My mum was admitted to a new care home in March. She is 88, very frail but compos mentis. My dad is 89 and lives at the family bungalow in Larne, Northern Ireland. They were allowed a few weeks of 15-minute visits behind a screen before the home went into a second lockdown.

    They had their 60th anniversary last week, at which time my mum was allowed downstairs to look at dad through a window. They can’t hear much at the best of times. This is a totally inhumane way to treat elderly people at the end of their lives. I spoke to mum last week on FaceTime; she is literally dying of loneliness. Her words to me: “It’s just so lonely.”

    Can you explain to me how I can pass on the virus when I haven’t got it?
    Keith Banks (former Conservative voter)

    My wife Jane has been in a care home since August 3. We have been married for 42 years. She suffers from a multitude of conditions: cerebral amyloid angiopathy, dementia, very limited mobility and continence issues. From August 3 to September 21 I was allowed to visit outside on five occasions, and each visit was sadder than the last.

    She called me once, very confused and upset; it was horrible. I have not been allowed to visit her since that date and I have no idea when I will be able to visit again. I worry that the longer this enforced separation continues, the chances increase that Jane will forget me completely.

    I have had three swab tests at home, all negative. I have told the care home this but I still can’t visit. Can you explain to me how I can pass on the virus when I haven’t got it? I have been overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, anger, frustration and loneliness.

    The care home manager is outstanding, but she is being tied up in knots by edicts from above
    Mhairi McEwan

    This country is letting my dad down. My 85-year-old father Eddie is a brave, intelligent and staunchly independent man. He served his country for 22 years in the RAF. Dad survived a stroke, which left him with severe speech aphasia. This man, who previously could do The Telegraph and Times crosswords in 10 minutes, could now barely speak.

    I found he enjoyed looking at books with old photographs – the RAF Association Magazine helped me unlock his love of aeroplanes – but he can’t communicate. On March 20, I moved my father to an excellent care home near me in London, so I could go in regularly and be the speech lifeline he needed.

    I unpacked his room, but I have not been allowed in since. Imagine my horror to be told I was not allowed to visit him at all – and the weeks turned into months. Then only garden visits, then a plastic pod… now no visiting at all. Video calls and phone calls cannot work with a person who has speech aphasia.

    The care home manager is outstanding, but she is being tied up in knots by edicts from above – humanity is overruled by risk management.

    This is a vital issue of human rights for elderly people, impacting the very essence of how we value our senior citizens. We have failed to see them as ‘people’ with the same needs and rights as we have. This is actively discriminating against old people and their families by essentially imprisoning them – without possibility of appeal or parole. It’s inhumane and disproportionate.

    If we asked these elderly residents about the risk, what would they choose? Not this, that’s for sure
    Claire Upson

    We go in once a week for half an hour to see Mum. She is behind a Perspex screen and we are seated away with a mask. We find it so hard to be in the same room but not be able to hold Mum’s hand. I come away in tears each time; in fact I am crying as I write this.

    Mum has gone downhill very fast and the pain and heartache are immense. The staff are doing their best and are always willing help her to FaceTime but it seems so cruel for Mum at the end of what’s been a rich and full life to be spending this time without the comfort of her family.

    If we asked these elderly residents about the risk, what would they choose? Not this that’s for sure; being a virtual prisoner. I think the mental health cost is far worse than the risk to their health because as this pandemic continues to go on how long might that be for ?

    They both burst into tears as the one thing they each wanted to do was hold hands, but it wasn’t permitted
    Liz Oldfield

    My dad Doug, 94, is virtually blind and Mum, 92, has dementia and is in a care home. The two visits that were allowed were a nightmare. Dad was forced to wear a mask, which pulled off his hearing aids, and plastic gloves, which he struggled to get on, partly because he couldn’t see what he was doing. He was then draped in a white plastic apron and sat, in his wheelchair, waiting to see Mum for the first time for weeks. She was then wheeled out to the visiting area.

    Mum couldn’t hear a word Dad said and he couldn’t see her. They were forced to sit, observed by staff, two metres apart. They both burst into tears as the one thing they each wanted to do was hold hands, but it wasn’t permitted. They have been married for 68 years. Dad asked me to take him home as he described the visit as “torture”.

    Dad has been tested three times now and Mum is tested every week. You can’t pass on a virus that you don’t have! Sadly, Mum’s dementia means that she suffers delusions. Heartbreakingly, one of the ones she has regularly is that she is in prison for something she didn’t do.

    We just want to be able to sit with my father, chat, have a cup of tea, wheel him back to his old home or down to the beach on a cold, bright day
    Jayne Swallow

    My father, who is 98, is totally immobile and partially deaf and, while having some cognitive limitations, is perfectly able to hold a conversation and is aware of what is going on.

    From June, we were able to book 45-minute visits in the garden. Now it’s winter, there is an indoor option. We only tried this once as it was a disaster. I had my temperature taken at the door. I had to wear a mask. There was a full-height acrylic wall between us. My father was sitting in a corridor with people going past all the time. He couldn’t hear me, or even see me clearly, and became tearful.

    My mother died last month. We have not told my father that she has died as he would not have been able to attend the funeral. My father doesn’t have long to live. We just want to be able to sit with him, chat, have a cup of tea, wheel him back to his old home or down to the beach on a cold, bright day. Is this too much to ask on behalf of someone who served in the RAF during the war and is in the last period of his life?

    It was the Government that sent Covid-positive people into care homes and, because of this, I can’t visit my dad
    Wendy Fairhurst

    I am living in total fear that I will never see my dad again or, if I do, it will just be when he is taking his last breath. The home has told me my father’s mental health has deteriorated and that of every single resident, not just those with dementia.

    It was the Government that sent Covid-positive people into care homes and, because of this, I cannot even visit my dad at a window. There has been an outcry about getting university students home for Christmas. Boris has reassured families that this will happen. There has been no focus on families in care homes being reunited for Christmas. I feel the Government does not care that this is an urgent priority.

    In my heart I feel we have let Mum down at a time when she needs us most
    Sheila Paterson

    My mother is a kind, cheerful lady of 97. I have seen Mum only once, outside, in September. Currently only one visit by two people per week of 30 minutes outside under an open-sided tent is being permitted. There is no hand holding allowed and you can’t hand over gifts or share photographs or any of the things that help to make a visit more meaningful. In my heart I feel we have let Mum down at a time when she needs us most.

    I am not allowed to visit my mother any more and it breaks my heart because she doesn’t really understand
    Sue Thompson

    My mother has been sentenced to die alone until apparently an “end of life” scenario develops, as quoted by the care home manager. My mother is 91. She has Alzheimer’s dementia and, prior to lockdown, she still remembered me and other members of the family and was very caring to what she called “the other poor souls” in the care home.

    Now, with the complete lack of outside contact, she has lost a remarkable amount of weight and has declined rapidly. I am not allowed to visit any more and it breaks my heart because she doesn’t really understand. This situation has had a very bad effect on my own mental health. There is this terrible frustration that I cannot do anything about my mother’s plight and I cannot help her. She has been taken from me.

    We never got to say goodbye to my nan
    Laura Osborne

    My nan’s name was Rose Moody. Nan had celebrated her 100th birthday in February. When we went into lockdown, the home she was in made the decision that residents were not able to have visitors of any kind. So we went for six months without seeing her. Mum and me were her whole world.

    Nan had dementia, albeit early stages, but she could not see and could not hear, so even a simple phone call was traumatic for her. In August, after a fight, we were allowed an outside visit. My nan sobbed all the way through the visit so I took my mask off to console her, only to be shouted at by the nurse, and told: “She can hear when she wants to hear”.

    This absolutely broke me and was to be the last time I ever saw my nan. She passed away on the October 16 and I am completely heartbroken. We never got to say goodbye.

    To think that my mother and the rest of our family may never see Dad again is tearing us apart
    Nick Bennett

    My parents are both 84. My father has suffered with dementia for some years but was cared for at home by my amazing mother, who is not in the best of health herself. After a crisis, my father is now in a home and my mother is on her own after 64 years of marriage. She never leaves her home, has groceries delivered and has pretty much zero risk of catching or transmitting Covid. Despite this, she is unable to visit my father and it’s breaking her heart. I was with her at the weekend and spotted a photo of him tucked under her pillow.

    To think that my mother and the rest of our family may never see Dad again is tearing us apart. My mother has said that she would have found it easier to deal with him dying than going through this as at least she could start the process of grieving. With this situation we’re in limbo – constantly worrying about how he is. To think that he may die alone in that care home, believing that his family abandoned him, brings me to tears.

    Mum has deteriorated so much from not seeing us physically and it’s breaking Dad’s heart by not being with her
    Tracy Giddings

    My mum’s Alzheimer’s got worse in lockdown. Mum became very aggressive and she was screaming that she just wanted to leave the house. Mum was put into 14 days isolation in a nursing home, which turned into 21 days as a Covid test proved inconclusive. So finally, after three weeks, my dad was allowed a garden visit for one hour a week. And now they are saying a further three months of isolation, which will be January!

    Tracey’s mum’s health has deteriorated in the past few months
    Tracey’s mum’s health has deteriorated in the past few months
    The home is currently in lockdown and has been since September. Up until June, Dad was caring for Mum at home. They have been married 62 years and he has seen her for six hours in five months and I can see it is taking a toll on both of them. Mum has deteriorated so much from not seeing us physically and it’s breaking Dad’s heart by not being with her. Myself and my sister have not seen Mum since June.

    I feel Mum would be better off in prison as we would be able to visit her there.

    1. Good morning, HJ.

      Thank you for posting this.
      It makes me realise how
      fortunate we are, on here,
      but how very sad for those
      families mentioned above
      and for all families in similar
      situations.

        1. Good morning Big Bum

          I agree with you entirely. I am reminded of Keef Richard’s remark that it was not just good to be wherever he was but good still to be anywhere.

        2. Good morning Big Bum

          I agree with you entirely. I am reminded of Keef Richard’s remark that it was not just good to be wherever he was but good still to be anywhere.

    2. What utterly heartbreaking stories. Abuse of the elderly.

      I can see how we got here, though. The government got it in the neck for the decision to move patients back into care homes, and the cult of safetyism won’t let them allow any humanity here.

      I have an ex-colleague whose partner is in a care home after a stroke. I feel dreadful for them both that she can’t visit him – but while she is rightfully furious about that situation, she’s also rabidly anti-Tory, so believes that they have done everything too little, too late, and that soldiers on the streets would be great. She would be the first to castigate when a visitor brought Covid into a care home.

      1. The NHS pushed Covid into care homes. Care homes. The people who work there go home after their shift. They travel to and from their home in their uniforms. The get up and dress in their uniforms, and feed their children, feed the dog, take it for walk. They get in the car and take the children to school and then go to work in the care home. They come back and repeat, changing the uniform for a fresh one sometimes.
        Exactly as happens with nurses working in hospitals. Hygiene!

        1. In a few cases maybe, but I think the rules are more closely adhered to these days, certainly in hospitals, clinics & surgeries.

  38. Something I’ve noticed on the mainstream media this last week is that whenever Trump speaks they report what he says as having no evidence, I’ve never known that done before to the leader of any country, it has certainly lowered the bar, still I suppose we can all do that now whenever a leader makes a speech.
    They might as well roll that bar across the bottom of the screen with danger we think he is lying on it.
    The duty of the mainstream media is to broadcast the news, not say which they think is true or not, that is down to the viewers and people that scrutinise what he says.
    When Boris next appear talking about Covid will they say but there is no evidence?

    2. For Boris I think a note that his “evidence” is subject to rapid alteration as the “errors” are discovered might indeed be appropriate!

      Edit – I see Disqus is still distorting the boundaries of space and time! My comment is shown as 17 minutes ago, while Mola’s reply is “an hour ago” [as is Bob3’s comment]!! And now it’s back to normal!

      1. Those stats have now all been discovered to be wrong, for some reason they are always wrong on the side of project fear.
        Bit in the papers about it nothing on the NWO tv and radio MSM

    3. After the 2016 election Trump claimed he’d actually won the popular vote because millions of illegal votes for cast for Clinton. He even set-up a committee to look into the matter. The committee found no evidence of fraud and the matter disappeared, but Trump had done what he wanted to do i.e. create doubt. He’s doing the same now.

    4. If Obama had got one tenth of the abuse Trump receives, there would have been screams of “racism.”

  39. I was watching the talking pictures channel earlier and they had one of those old public information films on about hygiene in the kitchen.
    They took swabs of door and cupboard handles, aprons and other surfaces, they put then in Petri dishes and left them in a lab and kept at body temperature over night.
    They were full of harmful bacteria the next day.
    Which got me thinking about how much bacteria is on those facemasks that people wear every day, I’m sure that most people use the same one over and over.

    2. There’s little evidence that face masks stop the spread of Covid, although they do appear to be more useful for combating common colds. So they’re more of a public reassurance measure. Personally I don’t particularly like wearing one, but until there’s evidence of harm to my health from doing so, I’m not getting all hung up on the issue.

      1. There should be more H&S guidance about wearing them, everyone is simply told to wear a mask and that’s it.

        1. From observation, most people have no idea how to wear a mask or visor correctly. Not their fault, as you say, more guidance needed.

          2. I find my nose is constantly running behind the mask, and the mask slips up into my eyes as I’m trying to pay in the supermarket.

          3. When we were training as students we had a bitchy lecturer nicknamed Rosa Klebb ( I named her for her appearance & mean attitude). One day a mature fellow student was wearing a face mask while treating a patient.
            Rosa came bustling up, “Why are you wearing that mask?”
            Student: “Because I have a cold.”
            Rosa: “You do know that mask is no good at stopping germs, don’t you?”
            Student: “I know, but it saves the patient from having to look up my snotty nostrils.”
            Rosa suchte das Weiten. 😉

        2. There’s loads of public health advice about masks, none particularly convincing, but there are more important issues regarding the Covid response in my opinion e.g. bypassing parliament, the attitude of the Police to ‘enforcing’ guidance and shutting down large parts of the economy. Mask wearing in there with social distancing, hand washing and reducing the number of people you routinely interact with, as something which probably helps reduce the rate of infection of what is a rather infectious disease.

          1. Parliament is by-passed because Johnson surrendered control to Gates who now directs everything.

          2. Good morning Garlands. How odd. I posted a reply ages ago and it doesn’t appear on here.

            Anyway, I had said I’d read the Allison Pearson piece and felt utterly horrified that these very elderly people, who had been through the 2nd world war, measles epidemics, SARS, MERS, CJD, swine flu, Hong Kong flu, avian flu and every other virus visited on the U.K. and survived were being treated so cruelly. It seems that if they were allowed a visit from relatives the visits were policed with a “carer” sitting in on them and the visitors were not allowed to hug or kiss them . Besides being trussed up in a mask and plastic screens etc. This is abominable. It’s unspeakable.

            I hope to God that I drop down dead at home and don’t have to go into a “care home” or, even worse, hospital.

            Do hope you’re keeping well.

          3. Good morning Garlands, lovely bright sunny morning here today, beautiful.

            I read the piece by Allison Pearson a few minutes ago and I can’t believe how utterly cruelly people in “care” homes are being treated. It seems that any visit is policed by the care homes, I.e., you cannot visit your loved one without somebody sitting in on it, to make sure you don’t touch them in any way. It is torture. Please God I drop down dead at home and don’t have to spend time incarcerated in some care home or, even worse, hospital. Mostly these people are extremely elderly. So they have lived through the 2nd world war, measles outbreaks, SARS, MERS, swine flu, CJD, Hong Kong flu, and every other virus visited upon the U.K. and survived ! What a way to treat them and their poor relatives who only want to hug them.

            Hope you’re keeping well.

    3. I have seen items on news programmes where the presenters and interviewees are advising (and assuming) that masks should be washed after every wearing. Realistically, this is never going to happen. Most people will wear it, take it off and put it in a pocket or handbag, then pull it out again to wear it on the next occasion. So masks will be germ-laden pieces of rag hanging about in coats and bags.

    4. Yes, humans are filthy. This really isn’t news. What the film likely doens’te tell you is that contact with that bacteria builds resistance to germs.

      A super clean environment is not only impossible – we’re disgustingly filthy creatures, after all – but unhealthy to aspire to.

          1. I’ll live with that.
            This has to be decided one way or the other. If Biden won fair and square he’s President.
            However, If it is fraud on a massive scale as many believe then if nothing is done it will happen again and a again.

            Listen to Ogga’s Henderson clip above.

          4. I’ve got a few dollars and cents left over from my last trip to the States – the lawyers are not getting their hands on them!

          5. For me, this is the most important thing, and I suspect for most Americans too.
            Not who is President, but what was the extent of the fraud.
            The Dems will be desperate to play it down as a few people using their dead grandfather’s vote.

          6. It’s extremely important that the process should be totally above board. It might not be possible to eliminate all fraud but at the very least the system should be demonstrably clean.

            I would go as far as to invalidate all votes emanating from an address where that has happened.

      3. Electronic programmes to change digital votes and programmes to determine how many votes to change to assure a victory. The lady saying the facts of this subterfuge are being gathered. Seems a bit far-fetched but if proved there will be a major uproar.

        1. And, if Trump is right and it is proved beyond all doubt that the Democrats cheated, what will the BBC and the Wokery say?

          I suspect they will behave as they did over Brexit:

          A vote counts only when the vote goes the way we want it to go.

  42. Don’t blame ‘fraud’ or any other wild conspiracy theories for Trump’s defeat, blame the Libertarian Party which put up a no hope candidate (Jo Jorgensen) who appears to have received more votes than the margin between Trump and Biden is a number of swing states. Apparently the reverse happened in 2016 when the Green Party candidate took votes off Hilary.

    https://www.newsweek.com/libertarian-party-could-play-big-role-trumps-impending-defeat-party-chair-says-theyre-not-1545711

    1. The counting machines are hacked with malicious software. They give you the impression that the vote is close whilst shuffling votes for Trump to votes for Biden in the flash of an eyelid. Magical.

      They do this to ensure that Biden wins but that the margins are small. The actual margins are wide and would otherwise favour Trump.

      As others have noted Hillary Clinton could not believe that she had lost in 2016. She lost because the malicious software developed a glitch. Then Biden was fourth at best in the primaries against Saunders yet magically overcame his rivals for the presidential nomination after North Carolina. That was the software kicking in.

      There is no smoke without fire. Folk have detected the deep state corruption. The Democrats have advertised it with Hunter Biden and Pelosi’s son sitting on the board of a Ukrainian Oil Company. They think they are invincible. They are not.

      1. But, Cori, what can, we, and, more to the point, the great disenfranchised in the US do about.

        It’s tantamount to promoting civil war and, in a well-armed USA, it won’t be pretty.

          1. Maybe he didn’t do enough, early enough to rid himself of the parasites, hell-bent on destroying him.

            Big fleas have little fleas
            On their backs to bite ’em
            Little fleas have lesser fleas and…
            So on, ad infinitum.

  43. Good morning, all. Very late on parade. NO excuse.

    The paper arrived – no news at all, I was glad to see. Sunny but chilly here – milder later.

    1. A pity the police are joining in with enthusiasm.
      Reminiscent of the early 40s, when the Norwegian police enthusiastically rounded up all remaining Jews and put them on a ship to Germany. One or two coppers gave warning of what was going to happen and some escaped to Sweden, and one or two Jews came back after the war was over.

    2. Bully boys delighting in the new found freedom to forcefully express their contempt for anyone outside ‘the job’.

    3. Freedom died many decades ago when Blair and Brown got in.

      As regards the police over-reaction, the solution there is to control them but the state supports this behaviour. It likes the power.

    4. Littlejohn will be delighted to know that The Lives of Others has now been removed from Netflix.

    1. We could. If he can be voted in as an MP in a by-election before the end of December.

  46. Just back from w/rose. Beautiful sunny, crisp autumnal morning, roads quiet & supermarket nearly empty.

      1. Relax for a while, then unload the car, which is in the shade & temperatures are well down.

    1. ‘Morning, P-T. The sun is out and it’s mild, just right for an autumn walk…

      There again, your weather may not be as good.

    4. Good morning Plum

      I cannot wait to get out of my very uncomfortable hard bed in the morning, which Moh loves so much, sleep is a joyless experience since we bought new beds 4 years ago .

        1. Hi Plum,

          The current kingsize has a very thick hard memory foam mattress, and the spare double has the same , there is no relief .

          Moh could sleep on a plank , and is used to sleeping anywhere.

          The old 40 year old bed was a properly sprung old fashioned mattress and divan , I wish we had NEVER ever swapped it over.

          9. You should have tried it first, after all you wouldn’t buy a car without having a test-drive. IKEA let you try out mattresses for an hour or so in their stores (at least they do in Germany & Sweden. Any retailer who wanted my custom would have to offer the same.

          10. I don’t know about IKEA but all the bed shops I’ve ever visited in the UK have been very happy to let one try out mattresses – some even leave magazines lying around for you to read while you rest. 😉

          11. Get 2 singles. One hard, the other as you like it, belle, and push them together.
            I don’t like foam myself, they are too sweaty, but I do like firm – with a 1cm mattress pad on top. Blissful sigh!

      2. Our old bed was falling to bits – the new one we bought three years ago is sprung and also has drawers underneath. It was a good buy.

        1. I have drawers under my super king-sized bed – can’t remember when I last opened them.

    1. Why did election administrators in many states run an algorithm to check from the count “By how many votes is Biden behind?”.

  50. 326199+ up ticks,
    The road to Dover is well signposted on the french side,

    breitbart,
    ‘Not on French Soil’ – Macron Says Islamists Who Want to Follow Anti-Enlightenment Values Should Leave.

      1. 326199+ up ticks,
        S,
        Agreed, ours was spiked by a multitude of treacherous fools
        ie the taking down of the real UKIP.

      2. She appears to be in some trouble with her followers. Odd that Toy Boy should outwit her on the slammer front – using language which, he she said it, he would have castigated her for being extremist!

  51. Good afternoon all.
    There is a couple who, every so often, act as litter-pickers around here. A wonderful gesture. I just saw the lady out with grabber and refuse bag. What a great
    thing to do. BUT … just up the road is a dumped ” Boris Bike ” …
    Our council joined the scheme a while age. Sadly the bike didnt fit into here sack …

    1. There is an elderly couple who do that in my local park. I always make a point of going over and chatting to them. According to them the rubbish appears at the same time each day. School kids.

      1. There is a school adjacent to the Tesco car park in Haverhill. The fence enclosure is piled high with fizzy drinks cans and sweet wrappers thrown away by school kids and picked up by gusts of wind but trapped by the fencing.

      2. We also have an “elderly” couple who do so much locally. Planting the annual plants in the roadside borders and removing them in Autumn. This year, when they phoned the cooncil to ask them to pick up the bits they were told to do it themselves! So much for civic minded volunteers. This is the same cooncil which closes the dump 3 days a week and whines about fly tipping.

          1. Very good Uncle Bill! He was the local bank manager, PTA, etc and she is just a good person. To see them treated like fools has made me quite cross. It’s no longer a village here but there is a sense of being part of a community.

        2. Our Parish council pays a small sum to a chap in the village who collects rubbish from the hedgerows and verges. He can no longer do the litter picking because his knee replacement was cancelled at the start of the COVID panic and he cannot get a hospital appointment for the procedure.

    2. We have gangs of volunteers up here who go round the picnic sites and beaches clearing up the mess that tourists leave – you wouldn’t believe the amount of litter left behind by these dirty b*stards

      1. I have never understood the mentality. Go to a beautiful place and then throw rubbish all over it. Madness.

    3. I don’t suppose she could carry it either – but she might notify the council of its presence.

    1. There was a photo in the DT today showing the little corpses laid out on wire shelves – all had their front paws missing.

      That said – the fur trade and mink farms should have been phased out years ago.

    2. There was a photo in the DT today showing the little corpses laid out on wire shelves – all had their front paws missing.

      That said – the fur trade and mink farms should have been phased out years ago.

      1. Taking that to its logical conclusion one should phase out wool and leather products and any other product involving keeping animals or poultry.

        1. Why, when wool and leather are by products of sheep and cattle farming? We eat the meat and use the by-products. It’s a natural product and most farmers in this country treat their animals well and they are reared naturally, mainly outdoors.

          To keep mink in cages just for their fur when the other parts have no use is abhorrent.

          1. At the personal level, I don’t disagree re fur farming, but if one looks at it as a product, little different from many others where the main bit is used and much thrown away, it has always seemed odd to me that furs are the exception.

          2. Maybe because food is an essential, and fur is a luxury product.
            And they are reared in small cages, not natural conditions which might spoil the fur. They are killed by elecrocution to the anus so as not to damage the fur.

          3. Taking a contrarian view on this, a mink is a wanton killer and perhaps we should exterminate it in the wild as well.

            Grouse is a luxury product, oysters are now a luxury product, most “wild” foods are luxury products to the majority of people on the planet.

            I’m always very wary of banning things, because bitter experience over the years has taught me that the banners are never, ever satisfied, they move onward and upward every time.

          7. There are some exceptional fake furs available but the anti plastic brigade would disapprove of those too.

        1. It’s still allowed in the Netherlands, though it’s being phased out. However, there was some Covid transmission between mink and humans during the summer. I’m surprised it never made the press here.

    3. The whole thing is bonkers. Today out for a walk, Mongo sneezed. Probably a perfume a mile away. The woman walking her childrena good 10 metres away leapt upward and covered her kids with her coat.

      I’m tired of sharing a planet with the stupid.

  53. The figures so far suggest a Biden win by a substantial margin. If President Trump has been the victim of a fraudulent election, it must have been the subject of a wide-spread and large-scale conspiracy with many hundreds of people across the Union being complicit if not actively involved. If we assume that this was the case, why has not a single person come forward with indisputable evidence to support it? No-one who has had an attack of conscience, no-one a closet Republican, no-one offering hard evidence to Fox News, no-one who can’t resist being the centre of attraction, no-one who simply likes causing trouble, and so on? Biden is far from an ideal choice as President but, if he wins, it serves no useful purpose for Mr Trump or anyone else to challenge his legitimacy without robust justification. Democracy involves the freedom to make poor choices. If there is incontrovertible evidence of other than minor, isolated electoral fraud of the type that exists in every election, it should be disclosed but, so far, there has been nothing but unsubstantiated assertions that just make Mr Trump look like a poor loser.

    1. So we just roll over and agree? By not questioning dodgy outcomes we are saying that it is OK!

      1. Biden could not command the support of his own party until the Democrat controllers switched on the malware. Bernie Saunders was the preferred choice nationally and Biden a poor fourth.

        1. The fact that a declared communist — Saunders — was the preferred choice of millions of Americans fills me with dread and foreboding.

          1. The fact that millions of Americans prefer Joe Biden, a dishonest hollowed out corpse, to Donald Trump would fill me with dread and foreboding if it turns out to be true.

          2. I’m glad I didn’t have to make that choice. Two old men – one a dried up near-corpse, the other brash bully.

          3. It is an appalling inditement of US politics that these two are the best that a country of 3.2 million can come up with. Not that things are much better in any western democracy!

          8. You’re right – good job it wasn’t me counting the votes. Diane Abbott – all is forgiven!

          11. Donald Trump has many faults but he fights on the side of the angels. The Left wish to destroy America as we have seen in Democrat run cities.

          12. Well – if I’d had the vote it would have been for the Republicans. One doesn’t have to be a Trump fan to see that the other lot is worse.

          13. Just how i feel. But who would we vote for here? Cameron, Theresa May and now Boris are all following socialist not Conservative policy.

          14. This is the problem though – the man *is* a class A berk. He’s rude, borish, arrogant, pompous, stupid, derogatory and petty.

            However, he’s also a brilliant, capable, brutal, aware and in tune politician.

      2. No, but outcomes that are not what was wanted are not dodgy in themselves because of this. I am simply saying that there needs to be objective evidence that an outcome is dodgy and not simply the claim as a result of anger, pique, partisanship or emotion.

        1. Absolutely agree Enri, but I am neither angry, piqued nor emotional. Just questioning the narrative.

          1. I apologise if it seemed that I was directing my comments at you – they were about the originators of the claims who were undoubtedly driven by those sentiments. I imagine that most of us have, at one time or another, lost some sort of competition and been angry, piqued and emotional about it and it often requires strength of character to put this aside. What has disappointed me most in the US election is that strength of character has been missing across the political divide.

          2. Thank youEnri. I didn’t really take it personally, but I find it frustrating that people of a different political colour, fling the same tired accusations time after time.

          3. On the question of people of a different political colour, I increasingly find that I am strongly supportive of one colour on certain issues but opposed on others, and vice versa. Politics does attract idealism one way or another so it is not surprising that people have strong opinions; I view the tired old accusations as simply a reflection of convictions and often containing a slight ring of truth. I imagine that the ordinary people of, say, North Korea would give anything to hear some tired old accusations if they came from a colour other than red.

        2. When people trusted each other and politicians were not considered to be corrupt the result of a free election would be accepted without demur.

          That nobody trusts politicians any more is the fault of the politicians themselves.

          We have now got to the stage where, with the EU referendum and the current presidential election, we only accept the result we wanted.

          2. Sadly, there is truth in what you say. Dignity, honour, integrity and duty are now unfashionable!

      3. It’s America’s business – not really ours. We are only observers.
        If there was dodgy dealing, let the lawsuits find it out.

        1. I know Ndovu but (without donning the tin-foil hat) it seems to be happening on a global scale.

      4. What is dodgy about an election result just because most here don’t like it?

        There is no evidence so far of mass corruption at the level needed to change the result. Even Republican senators are now saying put up or shut up.

        Trump is off golfing at the moment, maybe will hear from him in a few hours. He has been dissing postal votes for months, he must have been expecting this result.

      1. My impression is that the majority of Remainers have either accepted the fact that we have left (we have left, haven’t we?) the EU or have increasingly been PO by Brussels or both. There are plenty who still think that it was an error but anyone who still wants to overthrow Brexit is a rarity other than in some exalted media and political circles. You won’t like this but constantly complaining about fellow citizens in derogatory terms and claiming that there are more than a tiny number who want to overthrow Brexit is not going to help this country make a success of Brexit.

        1. No, we haven’t actually left the EU yet, except in name. We are still in “transition” until 31st December 2020 (unless they manage to arrange the WA so that the transition arrangements still continue). Until that time we are still subject to the ECJ, still having the EU fish our waters, still subject to various diktats and not able to take advantage of free trade deals.

          1. Yes, I had forgotten about the transition period. With less than two months before the 31st December, I wonder if we actually need worry too much about the ECJ. We might still be subject to it but that that does not mean that we have to obey it and, even if we had to, it would surely take more than 6 weeks before any new judgement was made. Perhaps we can’t make any new trade deals but surely that does not mean that we can’t prepare for them.

          2. We are preparing trade deals, but they won’t, as I understand it, come into effect until we are actually free. I wouldn’t worry about being subject to the ECJ if I trusted those who would be paying any fines or being compliant and actually believed they would put two fingers up to it. The Withdrawal Agreement is more of a worry; it could end up tying us to the EU’s beloved “level playing field” (ie hamstringing us) even though we are supposed to be independent and have taken back control. I am a genuine leaver, not someone who has jumped on the bandwagon for political expediency 🙂

    3. Everything you say is correct.

      The point about investigating the allegations is to show whether mail-in is as secure as claimed and to give any President, in this case likely to be Biden, legitimacy.

      Clinton’s supporters and Gore’s supporters still believe they were robbed by nefarious means.

      EDIT, I would add that many people have come forward and they are not all conspiracy nutcases.

      1. Allegations should of course be investigated but doesn’t there have to be prima facie evidence that an offence (or an offense since we are discussing a US matter) has been committed before they are taken any further? My point was that no real evidence has yet been presented, in spite of every reason to think that some would have emerged. “There’s no evidence of the electoral conspiracy because it is being suppressed by a media conspiracy” is not very convincing!

        1. There are certainly already instances where people are being prosecuted.

          One where my own suspician is that the postal worker was stealing and another where votes were registered without the voters’ consent.

          https://breaking911.com/u-s-postal-worker-caught-at-canadian-border-with-stolen-ballots-in-car-trunk/

          https://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article247027917.html

          Straws in the wind, perhaps, but the most important one is the alledged programme which supposedly changed votes, where even a retired General has raised the issue.

          1. As I said in my original post, every major election has some small and isolated occurrences of fraud but one should not confuse noise with signal. As for retired Generals, history abounds with some who have been outright nutters! Seriously, the one in question may be correct but hasn’t he simply raised the question rather than make a claim of fraud?

          2. The video I saw is no longer readily available, I’ve been hunting for a link.
            The computer issue is such that it could even change the result. I think that that is certainly something that should be investigated.

          4. Well, the Tower Hamlets fraud was in a mayoral election so was pretty small in the context of a UK General Election and the evidence of fraud was very quickly identified (albeit screwed up by the police), and allegations of electoral fraud in South Thanet were found to be without evidence. A Conservative official was found guilty but of expenses fraud and not of vote rigging. I doubt that anyone would claim that these two occurrences impacted any General Election outcome so, yes, small although not to be ignored.

          5. It is probably small, the numbers are not significant, the perpetrators can’t be found, major enquires would upset people, so don’t investigate. That’s best.

            Oh, sorry, I’ve posted this in the wrong place, I was responding to the authorities attitude in condoning the rape of little girls.

          6. As I said below, Tower Hamlets and Thanet and numerous other dodgy results. Not small beer.

          8. I think there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be in the HoC if the ballot was not manipulated.

          10. Let’s just say the percentage of honest, principled ones is probably in single figures!

      2. One of the YouTube videos taken down was by a former Lt General who stated that a US government spyware system was ‘privatised’ by Obama and moved to Maryland. Software was added to enable the system to spy on the American public at large and to identify those opposed to the Democratic Party.

        Algorithms were developed and voting machines hacked to enable the transfer of votes between candidates by stealth but keeping small margins and ensuring a Democrat victory. He explained that the system failed during the 2016 Presidential campaign which was why Hillary Clinton could not believe she had lost. He stated that the system was deployed by Obama and ensured his victory over Mitt Romney for the Presidential nomination.

        I took this man to be an articulate patriot frustrated that Hillary Clinton is still not in jail after the exposure of her illegal emails and their content which was known by the Obama administration who chose to do nothing about it. We now know why.

    5. 326199+ up ticks,
      Evening EDA,
      Early doors yet, may very well be they are consolidating evidence.

      1. It is not who you vote for but who does the counting. (J Stalin and reiterated by D Trump).

        If you control the counting machines you can win. Postal votes are a comparative side issue although open to widespread abuse especially when given to the USPS to deliver.

        1. 326199+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          IMO even a singular solo vote chiseller is carrying out an act of
          what could be life changing treachery for a multitude of peoples.
          The first bent vote will lead to a deluge.
          When proven a substantial incarceration mandatory sentence American style should follow.
          My personal take on it.

          1. I agree. In the US election it is most probably the automatic counting machines with malware to rebalance the legitimate votes, the destruction of bundles of Republican votes by corrupt USPS personnel, the harvesting of votes from old people by unscrupulous agencies, the deposition of fake votes in the middle of the night from private vehicles when few folk are around to count and authenticate them (video evidence exists) and the duplication of votes.

            It is a federal offence to disallow observers proximity to view the voting papers or to paste pizza boxes to windows to prevent the public from observing the goings on inside as has been witnessed.

            I have several close American friends all of whom are incensed at the obvious corruption which has been worsened since the election of Barack Obama who promised much and delivered nothing if you discount the tens of millions of dollars he chiselled from dodgy deals with overseas powers, taking a lead from the Clintons.

        1. 326199+ up ticks,
          EDA,
          One major act of vote treachery
          proven, should void the election,
          elections in my book are life changing issues.
          The vote manipulators MUST be given long stretches of hard time, until that happens peoples will suffer from these treacherous actions.

      3. Visiting the grave yards or maternity hospitals where many of the alleged voters now are ?

  54. 326199+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    “Blithering government” I can’t swallow that, the same types
    politico’s / party’s in the main turning up courtesy of the polling booth again & again.

    Treacherous more like and well greased treachery at that, 80k & exs. subsidised fodder / drink for persuing a semi hidden agenda & supported in that pursuit, for decades it has proved to be foolproof.

    Then again could be mental illness sufferer numbers are going through the roof on account that idiocy pays so well.

  56. I am happy to say that a form of Remembrance will take place in Fulmodeston tomorrow.

    Please wear masks and stand outside the churchyard on the corner where the Act of Remembrance will take place next to the Commonwealth War Grave Memorial stone. Please observe social distancing. There will be marshals to help you.

    The Act of Remembrance, Christ Church, Fulmodeston 2020
    10.55am Gather, reading of the names of the fallen from Fulmodeston and Barney –
    11.00am Tolling of the church bell and two minutes silence
    11.02am Concluding poem – Brigadier Richard Heywood*
    11.03 All depart.

    *Former OC 2nd Batt Coldstream Guards.

      1. We never have a parade. Only two villagers served the Crown – a sign of the times. Usually a very moving service – which we share with the Methodists (yes the real ones).

    2. I’ve just received an email from Fr Marcus headed “Remembrance Sunday is back (sort of)” and stating that he’s not allowed to encourage us to come and isn’t encouraging us to come but we’ll be gathering at West Smithfield Rotunda and here’s the order of service!

      1. But better than nowt. The Council wanted NO commemoration. Our nifty churchwarden produced a “risk assessment (spit) which suggested that distancing could be achieved by people standing in the road – though the risk involved in that was slightly greater than standing in the churchyard…!

        Anyway – at least something will be done to mark the day.

    4. I haven’t had an order of service for ours, but instructions are to arrive by 10.15 to organise paying for and collecting the wreaths. I expect that the wreath-layers will then be lined up, socially distanced, a short prayer to start at 10.50, the reading of They Grow Not Old, the last post and silence at 11.00, then laying the wreaths and disperse.

      1. Dead right……….but some how it all fits in with the usual annual statics of the death rates in the UK.
        But there are statistics and damn lies.
        There seems to be some confusion.

        1. Funny how the 1,700 that die every day – EVERY DAY – are forgotten in this hysteria whipped up by the BPAPM and his gang of incompetents.

          1. From recent experiences it’s also very sad when you can’t attend their funerals. Facebook versions from funeral directors online pages don’t quite have the same atmosphere.

  59. A bleated good morning to all.
    Blithering government red tape that deters Remembrance ceremonies.
    This seems to comply with the current trend of trying to bury the finest achievements in our history.

      1. Yes exactly.
        I saw that fair haired welsh singing chappie on the tv this morning he was speaking about a collaboration with and islamic singer ???

  60. Just stripped the shuttering off the concrete I laid t’other day and had to come in to warm my fingers up!
    1.5°C on the yard thermometer and with the way the mist is hanging about the valley, it’s not going to get much warmer any time soon.

    I’ve now got space to get rid of 40 of the 52 blocks I have left, but it looks like I’ll be needing another bag of cement to do the lot.

        1. I suppose all these bits of work have been waiting for your retirement. You certainly seem to have a lot to do. You’ll be hoping for an open winter to let you get on with it.

          1. I plan having a day off tomorrow.
            After I’ve been down for the paper, I might get my fallen apples crushed & pressed.

    2. 11ºC here in southern Sweden, Bob. I feel even warmer after my morning cold shower to stimulate the circulation and make me feel buzzingly alive.

      I live on the same latitude as Kelso in the border country.

      2. Up to 18C over here in Ontario.

        Unlike the UK we are allowed to play golf. Trouble is most courses close on November 1st and are unwilling to extend the season when the weather makes it possible.

        1. I suppose that once you have “put the course to bed” opening it up again requires effort and inconvenience and you never know how long the fine spell might last.

          I don’t know where you are in the province, but I observe that the centre of Ontario is south of London. I remember being surprised when my brother lived in Brandon MB. to find that its latitude is only a little north of Paris. Of course the continental climate makes an enormous difference but over here we tend to think of Canada as “the frozen north” and whilst it can be frozen for long spells it isn’t really so far north.

      1. I’ve another 15′ of digging out, concrete laying to do and to lay for this wall, THEN I’ve another two walls to finish off!

  63. He has warned Boris Johnson that if Brexit undermines the Good Friday Agreement, there will be no trade deal with the US.

    But as Joe Biden inched closer to the White House last night, his own much-trumpeted Irish roots were placed under the spotlight.

    It came after a photograph emerged in which his arm is around an IRA fugitive with the pair flanked by Gerry Adams, who, in a potentially incendiary claim, said he discussed a united Ireland with the former vice-president.

    https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1325046763116519424

    2. Biden will do what every other US president has done i.e. what he believes to be in the American interest. A phot opportunity with Adams is simply that, a photo opportunity to appeal to Irish-American voters. Reagan was equally vocal about his Irish roots when it suited him to be.

    3. The WA is the thing that breaches the GFA as it treats NI differently to the rest of the UK. Six of one, etc

    1. “So why, then, is this glorious distillery putting out a distinctly average whisky?

      Laphroaig Select is a new(ish) No Age Statement whisky. It’s been aged in a pic-n-mix of casks: Oloroso sherry butts, American white oak, hogsheads seasoned with Pedro Ximenez, quarter casks and first-fill bourbon casks.

      A bottle of Laphroaig Select costs about £35, though it does appear in supermarkets at around £30. It’s bottled at 40% ABV.

      Laphroaig SelectColour: yellow gold, old gold. On the nose: classic sweet Laphroaig peat on display. Hint of malt. Brine, with a few touches of citrus. Really quite lovely. Honey and almonds underneath the smoke. Coastal, almost agricultural.

      In the mouth: a mellow dram, this, and not as potently smokey – nor as sweet – as the nose might suggest. It’s more leaning towards ashes and bonfires, rather than peat. Gristy, malty and briny again. Digestive biscuits. Perhaps cider. A little wood influence towards the end. The thing is: none of these flavours are really coming to the fore. You have to search for them. You have to be patient. I don’t expect that with Laphroaig. I expect the flavours to walk up and head-butt me, but that doesn’t happen here. Not all that much happens, in fact.

      Laphroaig Select is a touch rough and ready, and the nicest that I can say about this is that it’s likely an everyday drinker for those new to peated single malt whiskies. It doesn’t reach the heights of the old Laphroaig 10, which is actually one of my favourites from the distillery. It misses that touch of sweet, strange iodine to balance out the other flavours in my opinion, and I’d love to have seen it just a couple of percent stronger ABV. It’s also not as good as the Laphroaig Quarter Cask, which in the world of No Age Statement whiskies is as good as it gets.

      If you love your peat monsters, you probably should avoid this. If you like Laphroaig, well… I reckon this ain’t for you either. I guess this mellow whisky is designed to encourage non-peat freaks to take a step towards the smokey goodness.

      But that seems to me to be denying the true character of Laphroaig. This is like the sanitised, politically correct version of an Islay great, scared of upsetting anyone with potent flavours. It’s as if they’re shy of being themselves.”
      [Google]

          5. When I was about 26 and I’d never tried it before, it was recommended to me by the present missus for my sore throat. I just opened the bottle and had a swig and gargled with it. She screeched about diluting it and I was speechless for 2 days.

          6. Ooh! I can almost smell you from here! What a shock! We have a bottle in the kitchen cupboard which tipped up when the door closed. The lid was on tight but we could smell it when we came in the front door. Lasted for weeks!
            Off topic – when my Dad played rugby one of props used to swallow about half a jar of Vick before games and then breathe heavily on the opposing hooker/props in the scrum! It apparently made their eyes water!

          7. Do you remember the smell of embrocation… oil of wintergreen. Great for warming up muscles but the smell hung around for hours.

          9. They have changed a lot of formulas. Some are genuinely improved, but many seem to be missing the ingredients which did most good.

  68. I’ve read that as many as 100million votes were made by post. If there is even 0.1% fraud, with those numbers that would be 100,000, more than enough to swing closely-run seats.

    I badly wanted Trump to win, he is the last bastion of the nation-State against the Globalists. At the moment, without hard evidence he simply looks like a bad loser. Let’s see what comes out over the next few days.

    Do I believe that the Democrats were prepared to cheat, and according to Trump not just a small amount but enough to steal an otherwise landslide victory from him? Five years ago, I never would have thought that our own MPs would conspire with a foreign power to overturn the greatest expression of democracy that this country had ever seen. Nine months ago, I never would have believed that governments would use the pretext of a virus to impose draconian restrictions which no dictator in history has achieved.

    Do I believe the Democrats would cheat to steal the presidency? You betcha!

    1. I would not be surprised if something dodgy has happened – after all, the end (getting rid of Trump) justifies the means.

    3. Given the level of venom and aggression against Trump over the last four years, it’s more unbelievable that they wouldn’t cheat.

    4. A social worker has been charged with 134 counts of election fraud. She ordered ballots for mentally ill patients and then filled them in. Maximum sentence 10 years.
      The count had finished at one location when at 4am a van, a Chrysler 300c and a Ferrari arrived with 130,000 ballots. Strangely, all the ballots were for Biden!

      1. “…at 4am a van, a Chrysler 300c and a Ferrari arrived with 130,000 ballots…”, you forgot to mention that the claim appears on 4chan, there’s no film of the alleged incident and the witness is unnamed. Apart from that…!

      2. Were they from the same printing press as the truck load of ballot papers caught at the Canadian border?

        A couple of days ago the conspiracies were claiming that Republicans had secretly spread radioactive markers on all ballot papers and that would allow fake ballots to be identified.

        Well come on, prove its all fake.

      3. How come the MSM is saying the reports of electoral fraud are ‘unsubstantiated’ then?

        2. They are hoping it will shut people up, stop them questioning and get on message. ALL the media have been bought in some way by the globalists. They are doing their masters’ bidding.

      4. I suspect (hope) that we will see many such examples emerging over the next few days. Wasn’t there one state where more people voted than are actually registered to vote? And haven’t there been rumours of dead people voting? That should be fairly easy to check against the death records.

        A joke I have heard circulating – ‘my grand-pappy voted Republican all his life – after that he voted Democrat!’

  70. Well, the MR has just finished her marathon Skype – started at 9.50 – finished at 5 35. Truly global – participants in Vietnam, NZ, Oz, Sarf Efrica, all over the States, Switzerland, Belgium and Cardiff…

    Her eyes are square – and I have pressed a glass of medicine into her willing hand.

    I have had the burden of kitten-sitting all day. Awful that noise they make when they get on your lap and gradually drop off to sleep – purring is it called?

    So I shall sign off, too. Have a spiffing evening counting lost votes.

    A demain.

  71. Anybody got any idea how Biden/Harris have the most votes ever? If it turns out there was no cheating, what are they selling that’s so appealing? Or is it that the American public would have voted Kim Jong-Un into power just because he isn’t Trump?

    1. The latter is certainly what the Democrats would wish us to believe. I just find it rather implausible.

    3. Negative voting is king. How many people voted Conservative because the approved of Boris Johnson and how many voted for him because they hated and feared Jeremy Corbyn?

    1. I disagree with much of the response to Covid, but your argument ignores the fact that Covid is a relatively infectious disease, so people not social distancing is crazy.

        1. There is a parallel between the graphs presented by the UEA climate scientists and those presented by Ferguson and his chums at Imperial College London.

          Both organisations set out to deceive the public.

          It is a simple and obvious matter to conflate the supposedly ‘settled’ science on climate change with the bogus projections on COVID SARS 2. They are part of an international globalist conspiracy, as was the election of that corpse Biden earlier today. All such lies need to be disputed.

        2. A long but interesting condemnation of what Governments are doing to deal with Covid-19 and the “fraudulent” claims they are making.
          Lockdowns,except in very early stages of the epidemic, do more harm than good. The vulnerable people should be encouraged to shield and given any necessary support to do so.. The healthy should go about their ordinary lives and gain immunity.
          We are not experiencing a second wave, it is a resurgence of the continuing outbreak. Cases rise in such diseases at this time of year and this year should be no different. The narrators described our leaders as making lunatic decisions to apply another lockdown.
          The expense of making a vaccine for the current disease is only beneficial to the manufacturers. It will never give full protection and , as one person in the search for a vaccine said, his firm will be happy if their vaccine reduces the severity of the symptoms.
          Track and trace is another expensive and futile activity.
          The West should deal with such outbreaks in their well developed and trusted fashion. They should not follow China’s example.
          Lockdowns should not become the norm in future pandemics.

          The two narrators were part of a large group of specialists with open minds and not afraid to take on their colleagues views. They see a trend in the public now as they seem to be having doubts about the decisions being taken by our politicians.
          Their colleagues are afraid to debate with them in public because they “fear for their careers”
          In short – a factual and scathing attack on our politicians and their advisors

      2. I think most people want to respect social distancing but be allowed to get on with their lives. I just completed designs for a novel coffee bar takeaway in Cambridge, my first job in six months. The company reckon on Chinese students returning to the city.

        Now, when I thought a second lockdown would enable me to retire, I have been approached by another restaurateur to advise on a project for a steak house in Bury St Edmunds. The MD and owner says they have observed social distancing in their existing establishments, continued trading successfully and far exceeded the doom and gloom predictions of others. He reckons others have gone to the wall and vanished because their product and service was rubbish or because they could not support overly large rental bills (too many establishments in the wrong places).

        As I say we just need to be allowed to get on with our lives and with suitable precautions life will return to our cities, towns, villages and hamlets.

        Edit: Masks have no effect whatever on the spread of the virus which like the flu is seasonal. Masks actually endanger the lives of those wearing them.

        1. I agree with you!

          On the specific point about coffee shops and restaurants, then churn rate has always been high, so although it’s sad to see people losing their jobs as a result of lockdown, these jobs will return quickly enough.

          1. Not if we get 4 million unemployed, morning coffee in Nero and the like will be relegated to an also ran.

          2. If we do get 4m unemployed (which I believe is very much at the top end of estimates), the jobs are likely to return quickly once Covid is under control. The latest BoE forecast is that it will take all of next year to recover this year’s GDP decline. However, I suspect the likes of Nero which tend to be in cities and larger towns, will lose out and they’ll be replaced with a strongly local coffee shop industry. I doubt my locale is ‘average’, however, I see lots of local independents food shops doing rather well as people shift to shopping more locally.

          3. Top end of estimates was 7m.

            We can hide quite a few by having them join the economically inactive.

            Jobs will only return if people have the money to consume. A tory government will be idiotic enough to put taxes up and cut spending at the earliest opportunity and so people won’t have money to consume. Rents have risen steadily all year except in London. People haven’t had pay rises in real terms for up to 12 years. Rentseekers eat up ever more of the pie. Welfare is still at roughly 2008 levels and even further back when you factor in changes to housing benefits and council tax benefits. The extra 1k welfare only affects those in work and in-work benefits have been slowly eradicated meaning most don’t qualify for that extra 1k. You’re about to see the upshot of the austerity the people voted for because the right-wing press made so many scared of debt and deficits unnecessarily. Now the deficit is worse than at any time under Labour and in ten years they have doubled the national debt and all we have to show for it is a decade of lost growth.

            The whole situation is an idiot-engineered economic mess.

          4. If we do get 4m unemployed (which I believe is very much at the top end of estimates), the jobs are likely to return quickly once Covid is under control. The latest BoE forecast is that it will take all of next year to recover this year’s GDP decline. However, I suspect the likes of Nero which tend to be in cities and larger towns, will lose out and they’ll be replaced with a strongly local coffee shop industry. I doubt my locale is ‘average’, however, I see lots of local independents food shops doing rather well as people shift to shopping more locally.

    2. No sign of social distancing in this area re day trippers , some one fell off a cliff late this afternoon , all the blues and twos were present , coastguard helicopter in attendance .

      Visitors were flocking up from the beach at Lulworth and the car park was very busy, we just drove 4 miles down the road to have a good nose around whilst we were in the car , after we had visited a garden centre , but we were a pair out of about 3 other couples, that’s it browsing amongst the plants and Christmas stuff .

      I bought a tray of assorted pansies , too late for wallflowers , they had sold out!

      2. 326199+ up ticks,
        Evening TB,
        This falling of cliffs is going to
        accelerate ALL the time the priti one & johnson are overseeing the Dover invasion front.
        Acreage fails to support intake.

      1. Well done. I printed out a government exemption card and wore that and no mask for the last two shopping expeditions. I am glad to say that a) I feel so much better and b) I didn’t wheeze when I was riding today.

    6. The second ‘lockdown’ was never going to be as conscientiously observed as the first. People are tired of restrictions, especially when most of them have not knowingly contracted the virus themselves, or indeed know of no-one who has.

      1. I met a neighbour on my walk today, it turns out her husband has been informed that he must isolate as he has been in close proximity with someone who has tested positive for 15 mins or more. She has been told it is OK for her to carry on as per normal.
        The trouble is, the day this was proximity contact was supposed to happen, it was a nasty day with continuous heavy rain, neither he or his wife left their house, and no one visited.
        Does not fill me with confidence, perhaps he has been Vallenced or Whittified.

      2. Wow – I wonder how many people don’t know anyone who’s had the virus? I live in a relatively low infection area and I know a load of people who’ve had it!

          1. I’m sure I had it in February. One of my friends, who is quite content with lockdown, mentioned three of his friends who’d had it, but they were all fine afterwards. I think he was trying to make out how serious it was, but the fact that none of them was hospitalised and all recovered rather did for the argument!

          2. You were quite poorly, I remember. I just had a persistent cough which lasted several weeks, but I was not particularly ill.

          3. It put me in bed for four days and I couldn’t walk my dog (I have to be at death’s door not to go for a walk with my dog!).

        3. I live in a tier 3 in Scotland (make of that what you want) We know of no one who has had it, let alone seriously.

        4. I live within four miles of the centre of London, have carried on with as much of my normal life as possible and have encountered no evidence of it whatsoever.

          2. That has been predicted but there’s not enough evidence to say that it is seasonal. We still don’t know half as much about this virus as we’d like to.

          3. In fact there is a lot of evidence, globally, supporting the theory that it is not seasonal at all. Quite the opposite.

        5. Lots of posters reported having a nasty ‘flu around Christmas and the New Year. A female friend stayed here over Christmas, had a week in the North East over the New Year, and came down with an bad dose of the “flu”. Mid-January, I stayed at her place in Devon for a week, assembling a truckload of IKEA furniture.

          Early February, for a week, I had a vaguely moist nose. Rather like a healthy dog. No sneezes, no runny nose, but not normal. One morning, I woke at 3-ish, feeling short of breath and tight around the chest. Thinking “heart attack”, I did the obvious thing – made a mug of tea. It worked – the symptoms went away. Around that time, I had half a day of anosmia (at the time, I didn’t know it had a name).

          As for how many people I know who have been hospitalised or died from it – precisely none. Incidentally, as a church organist, a chunk of my income comes from funerals. This year? We’ve had just four (not that I was allowed to play, nor the congregation to sing, at any of them). None were Covid-related. We seem to have outlawed death.

          1. About time you outlawed the downvoting one. At least I am no longer the only one downvoted systematically and of course I do not give a toss anyway.

          3. You are correct as ever. It is an irritation at worst. I know the person has had me banned in the past and gloated over it with the aptly named ‘coven of three’ (named by Dear Phizzee) but then there are just three of them and hundreds of the rest of us.

            I withdraw my request accordingly.

    7. We were invited to our n-d-n’s bonfire evening tonight – I declined, not because I was afraid of rule infringement, but I just dislike the smell of smoke.

  73. I have just been talking to our next door neighbours, well educated, but liberals….. they were shocked, shocked to learn that I have binned face masks forever. I am expecting to have the maskapo on the doorstep. I feel somewhat dejected and the sun is disappearing.

    On another matter entirely, is anyone on here vegan? Or has a close relative who is such?

    Ediit: I am not vegan, neither am I contemplating ever considering this rubbish for me and p’dad. However, over the last year, our younger son seems to have been increasingly cagey about the food they are eating, e,g, when they come round to a meal at our home, in fact his wife cried off because she ‘was tired’. The influencer here is her younger brother and girl friend who seem bohemian, no proper jobs – the brother’s only concern seems to be getting back into Australia anyway he can. Over the summer he was marooned at our son and his wife’s house, although he is in London now but occasionally calls to visit for a weekend. Last weekend we were invited for Sunday lunch and were presented with slices of quorn, onion gravy (brown sludge with no flavour) and roast vegetables. Pudding was applecake (very solid) with Elmlea ‘cream’. During the course of the afternoon I asked them if they would like to come over at Christmas to our home. This went down like a lead balloon, there was a pause and our son said would we like to go go to theirs and he would do the cooking. He hasn’t mentioned his changed diet but the time before this last time for Sunday lunch we were there we were served nut roast. Quite honestly we just want our traditional foods at Christmas.

    I am concerned for the obvious vitamin and mineral and enzyme deficiency from which they would eventually suffer, and because they have a three year old son who quite frankly does not look as robust as he did during the summer months. Also his wife is pregnant again, very early days, she miscarried last March a week or so before lockdown. I am wondering now if it was because her diet would not support a pregnancy. A lot of this vegan stuff seems to be processed rubbish. Any advice? Also I now see one of the points of promoting veganism in the population – it weakens the population and drives a wedge between families, they no longer want to sit around a table together sharing the same foods.

    2. Hi Pmum. Sorry to hear about your neighbours. Never mind, we all love you. 🥰

      Alf is a vegan but he likes meat with it!

      1. And leather shoes. I’m very partial to all those lovely vegan animals and the meat they produce.

      2. I eat less meat as I get older, and love veggie curries. But I’m no vegetarian, couldn’t exist without bacon.

        2. We eat less meat too, I have never been a great meat eater although I do have small pieces because I know I need to eat it to keep healthy. And so far I do not have to take any medication.

      3. Thank you vw I feel very down today and p’sdad is really grumpy! I have added a further paragraph to my comment above in explanation!

    3. No, When our daughter was at Uni, she came home and pronounced she was vegetarian except for lamb chops , she soon gave that up and returned to normal.

      1. About 50 years ago, one our friends decided he was a vegetarian; apart from sausages and steak.
        (In the 1960s, the concept of veggie sausages and cauliflower steaks hadn’t yet surfaced.)

        2. An American friend of mine in the seventies, a professor of English literature at the University of Delft and expert on Malcolm Lowry and other writers was ‘vegetarian’. He would interrogate the staff in the half dozen or so veggie restaurants to be sure that the cheese soup was rennet free.

          He became very ill owing to several vitamin deficiencies resulting from his diet. His sister turned up at my flat and implored me to persuade him to seek medical advice. He was given vitamin supplements and recovered.

          1. Paul McCartney’s first wife — Linda Eastman — started a company making vegetarian and vegan “hamburgers”, “sausages” and various other pseudo-meat products. She preached this vegan/veggie lifestyle for “promoting better health”, and she made millions selling her ersatz “food” to halfwits all around the world. She died, whilst still young, of cancer so her Frankenstein food did little to prolong her own life!

            If vegetarians and vegans are so dead set against eating meat products, why do they not just enjoy eating vegetables? Why are they hell-bent on re-creating “food” with a similar flavour and texture to meat products if they won’t eat the real thing?

            My nephew’s young wife (a rabid pinko) decided to go vegan. She convinced her husband to do the same and they spent months eschewing any animal-derived products, concocting ever-more weird abominations they referred to as “food”. I wondered how long it would last. A year ago they became parents and I feared for the health and wellbeing of their son. Last month they published a photograph of him enjoying his first taste of meat. It seems that some small thread of common sense did not completely desert them.

          2. Yup. In the early seventies there were about half a dozen vegetarian restaurants, a couple in Hampstead (where else) a couple in Covent Garden, Oodles near the British Museum, a couple of Cranks (Soho and off Tottenham Court Road) and the best one, The Bel Pourri House, near Euston Station.

            All apart from the Bel Pourri sold delicacies such as nut cutlets and veggie sausages. The Bel Pourri specialised in authentic wonderful vegetable dishes served with cracked rice and coriander and wafer thin dosa.

          7. God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform:

            Vegan Die(t)

            Paul McCartney got the family round the table the day of Linda’s death and announced to the family, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

            The family says, “What’s the bad news?”

            Sir Paul replies, “Well, your Mother died this morning.”

            “So what’s the good news, then, Father?” the family asks.

            To which Paul replies, “We’re having steak for dinner tonight!”

          8. Vegetarian is OK if you eat eggs and milk. Vegan is plain bonkers. Fruitarian is for half-wits.

          9. This is what worries me, the vitamin, mineral and enzyme deficiencies, and the fact that they gave a three year old son and his wife is expecting again, having miscarried last March.

        3. Cauliflower “steak” Rofl! I’ve been grilling cauliflower for years! I love the bitter/sweet/ charred flavour!

    4. I have never knowingly met a vegan or know someone who has! However, I did once see one spouting forth at Hyde Park Corner about vegan ‘hamburgers’. He was so roundly mocked that I ended up having the tiniest bit of sympathy him for the way he put up with the mockery and abuse!

      1. I once had Christmas dinner with a vegan. She ate her tack & didn’t preach, I ate mine & enjoyed it. There doesn’t have to be confrontation.

      2. I admit to feeling a twinge of sympathy for Dianne Abbot when she appeared to be wearing two mis-matched left shoes.

        It came out later that her drug abusing son was making her life hell. Chasing her around the house screaming and waving scissors. Like the scene in The Shining.

        Still can’t stand her politics though.

        1. So did I. It was obvious that something in her life was going wrong.
          Either a neurological degenerative disease (otherwise she would have immediately felt something was wrong with there shoes) or, as we discovered something so distracting that she just wasn’t functioning properly.

    5. I only wear masks on planes, PM, as they won’t let you on without. Otherwise, I heep me distance according to the rules, or don’t go. You’d be amazed how much money I haven’t spent as a result!

    6. You are the one saving our country, they are the complicit sheep!

      Vegan? My relatives are all perfectly sane, thank you.

      1. My neighbours grand daughter doesn’t eat red meat. When doing a Sunday roast beef for 12 i didn’t find it difficult to poach a chicken breast for her as well.

        I understand what you mean though. I think it is a certain personality type that goes vegan. They normally end up with dreadlocks and piercings.

        1. You’ve done what I would do. We have many friends with all sorts of allergies and dislikes and cooking for some of them is an absolute nightmare at times.

          But my point is, ignoring her age if she is too young, would she prepare a steak for you?

          I accept it might be slightly less problematical for her as a meat eater.

          In my experience of vegetarians the answer is no. Not that I would ask for it, as I am happy to eat pretty much anything that a host serves up at a dinner party. If I really can’t force it down I would leave it on the side of my plate without comment.

          1. I believe she would cook me a steak. She is not rabid and her views are balanced. She doesn’t try to convince other people of anything. She recently got married and red meat did appear on the wedding lunch menu.

        2. It’s tattoos, both of them. Loads of them. Not our son and his wife, I mean his wife’s younger brother and his girlfriend. Such a shame, his girlfriend is such a pretty, sweet-natured girl. It is not difficult doing an extra portion of something else for one person, it is the preparing of a whole something else, like a nut roast. I can understand allergies, but not a deliberate choice – as I have said above, it is almost an illness like anorexia when you actively deprive yourself of certain essential nutrients.

    8. Invite them for Christmas dinner. Serve roast goose (or pork, duck, beef, turkey or lamb), good gravy, forcemeat stuffing, potatoes, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, peas and carrots. Then tell them they can have as many of the potatoes, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, peas and carrots as their little hearts desire.

      Everyone’s a winner.

    9. I know one or two vegans but I’m not one. Your maskapo neighbours will probably be notifying the covid wardens about you! Expect the knock at the door any day now…….

    10. That’s a difficult situation. I’m sorry I don’t know any vegans or not close family. It does make eating together very awkward, I sympathise. Wish I could help.

    12. Alf has just suggested you say to your son yes we’d love to come for Christmas lunch we’ll bring the turkey (or whatever meat you prefer). He thinks you have to “take the bull by the horns” but there’s no use sitting eating nut roast if that’s not your thing. And I’m sure this is “teaching grandmother to suck eggs” but be careful to avoid any criticism of their choices.

      1. It has been such a strange year we just feel we want the security of tradition this year. We have not even been able to get our poppies, the first time ever. I did see them for sale in Tesco a few days ago at the customer service but I didn’t have any cash on me at that time.

        The most important thing to me is my relationship with my son, I have learned to be careful not to criticise. I am starting to feel that veganism is a form of illness like anorexia, one is actively, deliberately making oneself deficient in certain essential nutrients, leading to illness. I don’t have a problem with vegetarianism. Thanks, vw, your advice is appreciated and the timely reminder.

        1. Hello ppm. Your relationship with your son shouldn’t suffer. If they were coming to you they would want what they were prepared to eat and they would probably bring it with them. It really shouldn’t be any different for you. Treat it as a normal affair and you you shouldn’t apologise any more than they would.

          It should strengthen the relationship as you will each know where you stand. They are probably as apprehensive as you are.

    13. One or two responders to your post, who obviously can’t comprehend plain English, seem to think that your liberal neighbours are vegans. I can’t think why, because you haven’t said so.

      1. People don’t read things properly, they skim and then make assumptions. I was rather surprised by the one (guest) downvote. People should have the courage of their convictions.

  74. A suggestion for Trumps concession speech

    If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

    – From this election we know that the MSM is our enemy of the free world

    Can you think of any others?

    1. Wait!

      After four years offering everyone that it would be released soon, my healthcare bill will now be released in two weeks.

    2. “Well, suckers, you didn’t listen. Good luck to all those who are not billionaires, you’re gonna need it.”

          2. No such thing as taxpayer money at a national/federal level in any country with its own sovereign fiat currency that is allowed to free-float. Governments spend by money creation, the same way that bank loans create money. The main function of taxes are domestic demand for the currency, followed by aggregate demand management, and behaviour alteration. Not paying for services. These governments are not revenue constrained.

  76. Biden’s passed the threshold.

    Here we go…

    Good luck if you’re a blue collar worker.
    Good luck if you live in Israel or anywhere else that Iran and Turkey don’t like.
    Good luck if you’re in the South China seas or on Taiwan.
    Good luck if you don’t want to be chipped and vaccinated.
    Good luck if you think the Supreme Court and the Constitiution are sacrosanct
    Good luck if you believe in the freedom of the Press and freedom of speech.

    And particularly:

    Good luck if you are Joe Biden, you’re living on borrowed time.

    1. Things are developing as we speak, reports are coming out that US Supreme Court Judge Alito has issued a directive that any ballots received after 8pm on 3rd Nov must be segregated from ballots received prior to 8pm and must not be counted together. There must be separate totals because as the existing state law stands, absentee ballots received after 8pm is not valid This applies to Pennsylvania only.
      Grab your popcorn, this could get interesting over the next few weeks.

      2. My only request is that the process is fully audited.
        Once that is done conclusions may be drawn

      3. All that Alito has done is confirm the existing state directive to the counties, they should have been keeping late ballots separate anyway.
        The fun will start on Monday if Trump keeps his promise to use legal action against just about any vote that didn’t go his way.

        Fox News are claiming that Biden sees he has been given a mandate to fight climate change, systemic racism blah blah. I suppose that this will bring the US down to Canadas level of wokeness.

        1. The big difference is that Canada is merely a bit part player on the world stage, a poor joke now, pretendy, like its leader.

          America, under Harris, will charge towards the abyss.

          1. It is that AOC (Ocasio Cortez?) biddy from new York that scares me . Green deals, open immigration and so on, she may as well be a Trudeau clone. She may not be leading the charge but she will certainly be pushing from behind.

          2. She and her “squad” are a death squad as far as democracy and genuine integration are concerned.

            However divisive one might think Biden/Trump was, if those characters get anywhere near power it will be exponentially worse.

          3. Canada merely a bit player?

            You write a lot of good stuff there, any chance that you could persuade boy Trudeau of that, it would save us a fortune if he stopped his ego trips.

          4. I fear so.

            All that Canada really has going for it now is its natural resources, tourism and a place for illegal immigrants to head for if the US won’t take them.

            Biden will make Trump look like a benefactor when he stops the energy imports shutting the taps on the Keystone pipeline.

            It’s a wonderful country badly led

    2. Starting with SKY News, all of the declarations of a Biden victory have been from ‘the Meedja’.

      I have not seen any declarations from ‘constitutional’ sources.

  77. A new record for me this evening, dahlinks. I now have 4 downvotes. All from the same person. Ahh, there’s lovely now. This is the most that I have accrued in a single day. I am delighted, even “over the moon”.
    It means that I have said something sensible and right (no sniggering at the back, no muttering “for a change, “for a wonder”, if you please). It is so satisfying to score a hit, a palpable hit. Not once, not twice, but four, let me repeat, four times.

    To the downvoter, “Orraloons Ya Bass!”

    2. Count the downvote (presumably by the usual suspect, I cannot verify on an iPhone) as a badge of honour for saying what you think and believe. I get lots of downvotes, many more than you, so know of what I speak.

      1. Churchill would thoroughly have approved of getting a downvote. “Good! If you have annoyed someone then you have stood up for something in which you believe,”

    3. If you would like more I am sure we could help increase your count but they wouldn’t be in the same spirit as a true downvote.

      I do enjoy a bit of down voting on fox, you can sometimes attract big reactions.

    4. See my post somewhere below explaining that I automatically upvote anyone who is so downvoted!

    5. Up or down – they’re still votes. Obviously, Disqus doesn’t count the ‘down’ variety, but on the basis that one receives flak when one is over the target, I work on the basis that one downvote = two upvotes. At least.

      1. Well, I’ve just noted another down vote. That makes five. Five for the symbols at my door. Records tumbling!

    9. She is not Welsh but Scottish and a thoroughly nasty piece of work. She is both two faced and deceptive. She has infested this forum for years and we simply have to tolerate her. So as she claims to know a lot about farming, an industry which takes millions of acres of our land and now produces sod all, apart from wheat, barley and sugar beet, despite massive subsidies from the EU.

      Private companies meanwhile are building vast nurseries for growing tomato’s as near me, close to Bury St Edmunds,

      Some one has to replace our market gardens when we have left the EU.

      2. I blocked a certain person a couple of years ago. The only person that I have blocked. I have never downvoted anybody.

    10. She is not Welsh but Scottish and a thoroughly nasty piece of work. She is both two faced and deceptive. She has infested this forum for years and we simply have to tolerate her. So as she claims to know a lot about farming, an industry which takes millions of acres of our land and now produces sod all, apart from wheat, barley and sugar beet, despite massive subsidies from the EU.

      Private companies meanwhile are building vast nurseries for growing tomato’s as near me, close to Bury St Edmunds,

      Some one has to replace our market gardens when we have left the EU.

    11. Below is a copy of a post I made 10 months ago to a fellow Nottler explaining myself and my contempt! You are in good company.

      I started to give myself for a few weeks a downvote on my first (and sometimes only) comment of the day.
      This was just to highlight to whatever sad little troll is responsible how little regard I pay to your sad little antics.
      Downvotes will not alter my behaviour on forums such as these, not a jot.
      You lose troll!
      Edit. Oh God I just done it again!

      16:05 hrs 5 downvotes, only 5! What a pi$$poor excuse of a troll you are to only manage 5.
      Come on little sad lefty troll, put some effort into it. I expect a dozen by nightfall.

  78. The socialist Biden as President?

    In the US, BLM, Antifa, assorted looters and rioters and the many fraudsters have won, thanks to the MSM. Communists, especially the CCP, must wonder about the gift that has fallen into their laps!

    Abroad, the ayatollahs are laughing their heads off, Putin thinks it’s Christmas already, ISIS terrorists are dancing in the streets, the Muslim Brotherhood goes from strength to strength. And the very promising road to settlement between Israel and Palestine will now be put back to square one.

    It will be the very IQ-challenged of many Biden supporters who are the reason why the hitherto silent majority, will be the first to pay the price, especially if Biden has to pull out with dementia and the ultra-left Kamala is POTUS.

    The US will be a shadow of its former self and the rest of the world will suffer accordingly.

    The Left wins again!

    1. Keep the faith. This obviously fraudulent election will be exposed as such by President Trump and his lawyers and Homeland Security advisors. Trump is not stupid and neither are the bulk of the American people.

      2. You don’t get to be a billionaire without having the hide of a rhinoceros, an iron will and the utter determination to see things through. In the great scheme of things this may have happened with purpose to expose the Democrats for what they are. The wheels of God grind slow and He works in mysterious ways. I keep the faith.

  79. I’ve just resurrected after having a couple of much needed hours in bed!
    Student Son sent me a link to a concert of music from Anime films and Computer Games that was live on YouTube a couple of hours ago. Sounds quite good:-
    https://youtu.be/xs_io-Mb68k

    3. I welcome an investigation by Trump’s agents and that they will produce evidence of malpractice or fraud for submission to court, and can prove that this could have influenced the result of the election in swing states.

      One thing though – Trump knew months ago that this would happen. Why didn’t he hire a bunch of private detectives then? Were his own team above board? They could themselves be accused of fraud, or intimidation of counting staff necessitating security to be called out. Clearly, they need an answer to counteraccusations.

      The problem with not producing evidence in court is that the other side may well claim that the election was properly conducted, and that this was a fair contest and a fair result.

      1. There was a vid yesterday doing the rounds saying that DT had arranged for the postal ballots to be watermarked so forgeries could be spotted. Not seen anything since.

  81. Bloody Hell!!

    “Stop Press: The headteacher of the Broadgreen

    International School, a technology college in Liverpool, sent a very

    sinister letter to parents yesterday, informing them how “privileged”

    they should feel that the army will be in the school on Monday testing

    all the children, marking them with a barcode and detaining those who

    test positive. The head adds that parental permission won’t be sought

    because “under these very challenging and unprecedented circumstances

    that is not possible”. Surely, this isn’t legal?”

    https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Screenshot-2020-11-07-at-10.27.33.png

    https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/11/07/latest-news-186/

    4. I am shocked and horrified by this. I had an awful sense of déjà vu. The world has seen this before. Na$i Germany here we come once again.

    7. The letter does not say that students will be “marked” with a barcode but that they will be “identified” by one. That could mean a barcode on whatever records the school keeps on students or on an ID card that they might have. The letter also states that the school is “privileged” because it will be the first school to have testing come to the school rather than having to go somewhere else for it, not because it is the British Army doing the testing. The letter is worrying as it stands and doesn’t need its text to be twisted.

        2. I’ve just seen it. My God, it looks like the most awful parody. What are all those illiterate random letters spewed over the letter heading?
          And check out those logos along the bottom!

          Sorry, even with that evidence, I can’t take this rubbish seriously.

          The illiterate fool who produced that utter, utter garbage is actually responsible for childrens’ futures!
          I do hope the parents are not paying fees for this school. They are certainly being conned if so.

          Edit: those weird accents in the school’s name are nowhere to be seen on the main site, so I can’t help wondering if it has been hacked and this letter posted as a joke.
          Looking further at the website – I think it is definitely a joke.

          1. It is telling that we aren’t actually sure it’s a joke! It is, unfortunately, all too believable.

    9. The letter is still on the school’s website this morning (Sunday)…I’m guessing that no teachers read LockdownSceptics….

  82. A number 0f Nottlers have suggested that a Biden Presidency would make little difference to the UK. That is far from my view. The USA is not our friend. They have frequently acted against our interests quite blatantly. Moreover the general thrust of their approach over the last 100 years was to destroy the British empire and negate British influence in the world. They believe that they are entitled to world hegemony by flying a big flag which says on it “We Bring You Democracy. whether you want it or not”.
    Biden does not want us loose in the world, of course, he is a puppet of the globalists and the globalists want us controlled within the EU. Biden has already spoken about the immutable necessity for the Good Friday Agreement to remain in place. The Good Friday Agreement embodies compliance with Human Rights laws, as in the EU. This requirement means that the Human Rights Laws in the UK cannot be repealed without pulling the rug from under the Good Friday Agreement. This binds us to compliance with the EU in this regard for an unforeseeable future.
    President Biden, and successors in his Presidency, ie Harris, will be able to make life difficult for us in respect of trading arrangements. They are always difficult to deal with, as I know from experience.
    Moreover there are other areas in our relationship with the USA where we are in a state of complete dependency. The supply of F35 planes and spare parts for them without which our new carriers are all but useless, and the servicing of our Trident weapons systems, are two examples.

    PS The Good Friday Agreement come about after the intervention of Senator Mitchell of the USA. The alternative to the Agreement was to have American peacekeeping troops in Northern Ireland. Mitchell is a Democrat, the then President Clinton is a Democrat, and Biden is a Democrat. Just saying.

    2. Trump and Biden both profess America first, it’s what all leaders should do.

      Trump has not been a reliable friend to Canada, too many demands, too many attempts to ignore trade deals and invoke spurious tariffs on goods. Biden is already threatening an oil pipeline that Trump approved, Biden is already beating the made in the USA drum so it doesn’t look good for us.

      As for trade deals, forget getting a good deal with Trump. He is essentially a salesman who wants to win and in the nafta renegotiations made very few concessions to Canada and Mexico.

      We are a lot closer to the US than you are, it took a combined effort by federal and provincial officials on both sides of the border to blunt some of Trumps excessive demands. You do not have the same ongoing access to state governments as our provincial leaders do

      2. Plenty of spurious tariffs invoked on UK goods too. Of course his really rich friends can bring their single malts in on private planes and pay nothing – but that’s his idea of “fair”.

        1. He is apparently off golfing today, to me that shows a lack of respect for the electoral system.

          I remember your comments about Trump when he was building that golf course in Scotland, nothing has changed.

          1. He has managed to wheedle his way around Aberdeenshire Council to get permission to build the second golf course and some of the very expensive “executive” housing. No word, of course, of all the affordable houses which he promised to get the scheme accepted in the first place.

            Both his Scottish golfing enterprises have lost money, hand over fist, from day one.

            As you say, nothing has changed.

      1. If we did not need them 60 years ago, why would we need them now? They provide loopholes for criminals, and a fortune to lawyers working against the good of this country.
        We can keep habeas corpus without these recent laws.
        However, may I suggest that you do a bit of research into why we have laws that comply with European laws which come from a diametrically opposite philosophy of law (forbidden if not permitted). Also the EU want to use these laws to bind us to them on an ongoing basis, do they not?

        1. We do need human rights laws. What we don’t need is a legal system which allows endless appeals, but the laws themselves are necessary.

          1. Under common law we had plenty of rights, including habeas corpus. We don’t need laws that can be interpreted and twisted to protect the guilty and the law-breaker – and that’s what the human rights laws do.

  83. I’m watching the Festival of Remembrance. Can someone jog my memory – did any white British men serve in WW2?

    1. A few million, Stormy, but you’d never know it now. I used to watch this every year but as the PC mob got their claws into it I became increasingly disillusioned and decided not to any more. I will still be remembering at our local memorial tomorrow, where they cannot force-feed me with this awful crap.

    2. Of course, alongside a huge number of British Indian soldiers, as well as troops from across the Empire.

      1. My late father served in India and spent over a year in Burma. I have his Burma Star.

        My dad said little about his wartime experiences except to say that he loved and admired both Indian and Ghurka soldiers. My dad’s mother was born in Cawnpore and she had instilled a love of India in my father long before the war.

        My dad would throw the letter invitations to attend Burma Star Association events on the fire.

        He never told me why but I now imagine that so many serving in Burma felt betrayed by our government just as post war evidence has indicated.

    3. Not black Americans in our forces (a few perhaps) but thousands stood up to the plate in the American forces. We remain very grateful for their contribution and valour in helping the free world to defeat Germans.

  84. Evening, all. I shall not stay long as I have to be up early tomorrow for the Remembrance Day service (it isn’t until 10.15, but I have lots to do beforehand). I had a phone conversation with one of my friends who goes shopping for me, debating whether I could come and collect the goods since the government advice was unclear. We decided I could. I caught up with the racing after I got back from the stables; I wanted to watch the racing, not to hear how much the presenters disliked Trump! If I were on Twitter, I’d have given them a piece of my mind. I watch the horses to get away from that sort of thing – otherwise I’d tune in to the Bbc.

    2. it’s about time that you went back to work, just hearing about stuff done is making me tired.

  86. I have never criticised Trump, or gone along with the sneering, holier-than-thou attitude of most media commentators in the media about the man, because he was the elected leader of our closest and most important ally. And in many ways, he did some great things, kept the US out of foreign adventures, initiated Middle East peace agreements and so on…
    But now he’s more or less gone, I have to say, I never warmed to the guy.

    2. He’s not my type, but he is right more often than he’s wrong, and he is the only world leader who was prepared to go to the World Economic Forum and tell Soros and his buddies that their vision for the future of the world is a bad one. He also refused to sign up to the UN Invasion Pact, and the green fraud. For those things alone, he deserves respect.

      1. I agree completely. He has done much better than his recent predecessors.

        I just don’t like him.

        1. I think one of the problems with current politicians is that they have tried to be likeable/liked. Trump doesn’t bother; he just gets on with it. I know which I would prefer.

        2. He’s not very likeable – but you don’t have to like the man, just look at his record – he did what he said he would do, and he started no wars.

  87. There is a lot of comments regarding the validity or lack of it with the US election.
    As Rastus commented earlier, politicians are not trusted these days.
    It seems to me that about 50% of the voters does not accept the fact that this election is a true result, nothing new there, the same could be said in 2016, only the party allegiance has changed this time round.
    The US is truly split right down the middle and is a tinder box waiting for a spark.
    To heal the divisions of the country, a real hard investigation and check of all the votes/ballots in a couple of late declaring states should be done with both sides present and observing. If discrepancies are discovered then the results should be declared void, if not send in armed personnel to remove trump.
    Nothing else will heal the divisions over there.

    1. What the USA needs is a president who does not stoke division. That simply is not Trump. In exactly the same way as our better MPs recognise that they represent 100% of their constituents, the president should represent 100% of Americans. Just about everything Trump has said over the past 4 years suggests he loathes half of his country.

      1. And of course he has scorn and hatred poured over him almost incessantly by not only the MSM in the US but also in the UK.

      3. I’m not sure it’s possible to have someone who represents 100% of Americans as the country, like the rest of the West, is so deeply divided that the two sides are barely capable of communicating let alone compromising.

        1. It is impossible because of diversity. And because of diversity there cannot be democracy, a group of people who are sprung from the same demos and thus agree to be governed by their people.

        2. Well that is Biden’s challenge. But we know with certainty that Trump failed to heal division.

          1. Biden isn’t the problem, it’s Harris; and if you think Trump sowed division you ain’t see nuthin’ yet.

    2. I doubt that the turnout for Biden was anywhere near as claimed. There are all sorts of contrary indicators. Those in the worst hit Covid hotspots voted overwhelmingly for Trump so the Covid promises of Biden were clearly not an influence.

      I would submit that Trump is a more unifying force for Americans than Biden and the mob. Patriots know this and turned out in droves to Trump
      Rallies. Meanwhile Biden hid behind a bush eating a doughnut or else cowered in his cellar reading speeches from an enormous prompting screen.

          1. I’m quite used to it! When we won the Fairs Cup I was still at school! Ask your old man!

      2. Yes, Sos , there are a pair of very happy males in this household at the moment.

        Fingers crossed for tomorrow’s results , Saints don’t want to be dislodged!

        3. It reminds me of that wonderful day, a few years ago,when Arsenal were top and Dog’sbreath were bottom.

      1. Worth reading, our Susan (apologies for length – can’t post a link):

        Lord Sacks: My Lords, when I entered this Chamber for the first time, I did so from the Moses Room. I thank noble Lords for the extraordinary lengths to which they went to make a rabbi feel at home. Today, I feel the other side of that occasion, for it was Moses at the burning bush who felt so overwhelmed by emotion that he told God that he could not speak; he was,
        “not a man of words”.
        Mind you, that did not stop him speaking a great deal thereafter. In fact, on one occasion, when pleading with God to forgive the people for making the golden calf, he spoke for 40 days and 40 nights. However, on another occasion, when asking God to heal his sister, Miriam, he limited himself to a mere five words. I am told by your Lordships that, when making a maiden speech, it is better to err on the side of the latter than the former; and that I will try to do.

        26 Nov 2009 : Column 493

        The powerful emotion that I feel today is simply explained. My late father came here as a child fleeing persecution in Poland. My mother’s family had arrived here somewhat earlier. And the love they felt for Britain was intense. It took me a while to understand it, but eventually I came to realise what so many Jews in Britain know in their hearts and their very bones: that had it not been for this country, their parents or grandparents would not have lived and they would not have been born.
        That visceral sense of indebtedness to this country is what made Jews want to give back, to contribute to society as a whole, which they did with all their heart. They contributed to its arts and sciences, its law and medicine, its business and finance, its Armed Forces and its public life, its charities and its voluntary associations. And they wanted us to do the same, to be proud of being British and be proud of being Jewish, seeing no contradiction between the two but, on the contrary, a mutual reinforcement. I believe that the same is true for other minority groups in this country.
        My late father had to leave school at the age of 14 to help support the family, and he wanted us, his four sons, to have the education that he lacked. For that, too, I am deeply grateful. We were able, all four of us, to go to university, the same university that educated a Foreign Secretary of Israel, Abba Eban, who began his speech, when he returned there many years later to receive an award, with the words:
        “It was here that I learned the honesty, integrity and love of truth that have been such a disadvantage to me in my political career”.
        I, too, learnt lessons there that I will never forget. I was religious; my doctoral supervisor, the late Sir Bernard Williams, was Britain’s most intellectually gifted atheist. Yet never once did he deprecate or even challenge my religious faith. For we were both equal participants in that collaborative pursuit of truth that Judaism’s sages, long ago, called,
        “argument for the sake of heaven”.
        It is this that I have rediscovered in your Lordships’ House. What extraordinary things happen here. When somebody speaks, other people listen. When people disagree, by and large they do so politely. What special gifts these are in this age of clashing soundbites, diminishing attention spans, angry voices and gladiatorial politics. I hope that, whatever constitutional changes are in store for this House, those things will always be preserved. For what I have found in your Lordships’ House, and what I learnt at university, are the foundations of the virtues that made Britain the country my parents loved: its tolerance, its decency, its undemonstrative but indomitable sense of fairness and justice.
        With this, I come to my point. Democratic freedom is not just a matter of political arrangements, of constitutions and laws, elections and majorities. It depends, too, on what Alexis de Tocqueville called “habits of the heart”: civility, the willingness to hear the other side, respect for those with whom you disagree, and friendships that transcend the boundaries between different parties and different faiths. And those things must be taught again and again in every generation.
        If there is one insight above all others to be gained from Jewish history it is that freedom depends on education. To defend a country, you need an army, but

        26 Nov 2009 : Column 494

        to defend a civilization, you need schools. Abraham was chosen, says the Bible, so that he would teach his children to practise righteousness and justice. Moses commanded, in what has become the most famous of our prayers:
        “You shall teach these things diligently to your children”.
        In ancient times, the Egyptians built pyramids, the Greeks built temples, the Romans built amphitheatres, but Jews built schools. And because of that, alone among ancient civilizations, Judaism survived.
        I wonder whether, even now, we value teachers sufficiently highly, for they are the guardians of our liberty. Schools teach us theories and facts. They help us answer the question, what do I know? Schools teach us skills. They help us answer the question, what can I do? But they also teach us the story of our nation, what freedom is and how it was fought for, and what battles those who came before us had to fight. They help us to answer the questions: who am I, of what story or stories I am a part, and, how then shall I live? They teach us about keeping faith with the past while honouring our obligations to the future. At best, they teach us collective responsibility for the common good.
        Sadly today, schools have to fight against a culture that sometimes overvalues material success. Some years ago I visited a school whose children came from affluent backgrounds. They told me that the previous week an inspector had visited the school and tested the children-they were seven or eight years old-on their vocabulary. He asked the class, “Who can tell me the meaning of the word ‘economy’?”. One of the children put up his hand and said, “Please sir, that’s where the other people sit on a plane”. True story.
        Thankfully, such things are rare. Therefore, with your Lordships’ permission, I simply wish to say: let us value our teachers, celebrate our schools, keep education at the top of our priorities, and we will raise a generation of British children who will make us proud.

      1. Apparently Joe Frazier, the former world heavyweight boxer known as ‘Smokin Joe’ has voted for Biden. He has been dead for nine years. I am left wondering whether Muhammed also voted for Biden.

        They might also check the votes of Floyd Paterson and Sonny Liston.

    3. Easily provable, but peanuts in the scale of things. They have to explain those sudden rises in Biden votes on the graphs.

  91. Well, it’s been like the Western Front this evening.
    Small dog completely oblivious to the bombardment. Maybe the shock of his lockdown waistline diet and a bath has knocked him out.

    1. We have had a bombardment, too, although nothing like as bad as in previous years. Thankfully, the mutt is now mutt and jeff, which reduces his anxiety.

    2. I’m beginning to have doubts about just how kind and considerate you might be, Anne. Were you to put me on a lockdown diet and impose a bath when I have a proper old fashioned chicken (with giblets) roasting in the oven, I too would get pretty damned stroppy. In the absence of further supporting evidence, I’m very much on Sparty’s side.

        1. Small dogs can, so easily, become chubby… and from chubby to obese is but a hop and a skip. It’s much kinder in the long run, as you know or you wouldn’t be doing it, to sort it out quickly.

          I’m having to be more careful with mine now. She doesn’t run as far as she used to run – but with the weather turning colder (and I don’t have central heating) I’ve upped her rations just a tiny bit.

      1. Eat, play, sleep, grow – and repeat. It’s really all they do at that age. Puppies are just the same.

  95. Good night all.

    The Welsh lamb was superb, with plenty left for tomorrow.

    Williams pears & Saint Agur.

    Errazuriz Cabernet Sauvignon.

    1. I’ve still got some in the freezer. Might get a piece out next weekend. The Welsh do good lamb as do the Scots, but there’s plenty of excellent lamb in England too … Romney Marsh lamb is supposed to be particularly good, but I haven’t tried it myself.

      1. Dorset lamb is very good. The Romney Marsh lamb is probably similar to Deichlamm in Germany – they graze on salt-blown areas outside the North Sea dykes, where there are a lot of herbs. Hard to come by & very expensive. When I worked in Ostfriesland I was right in the thick of it.

        1. The Shetlanders shut their sheep out onto the sea-shores – where there are fields. In other places the open moorland simply runs down to the shore and the sheep graze at will. Shetland lamb is very tasty. There is a long list of crops which we can’t grow (or can’t grow well) in the UK; but we can, and we do, grow some very good grass.

          Good breeding will get you good conformation and a tendency to put on meat in the right places but the old saying that “half of the breeding goes in at the mouth” holds good and good grass is the key to high quality lamb.

    1. Mine rejects raw potato, onion or garlic – not much else.

      As you can see she isn’t quite completely black either.

        1. I know, although the quantity which might fall to the floor probably wouldn’t be significant, but she tends to give me a look as though I had dropped something she dislikes on purpose – which can be quite funny.

          2. When we had Labs, food never fell to the floor. It fell off the table but was hoovered up after falling no more than an inch or two.

          3. She knows that what slips from the chopping board is “free” but she doesn’t stand around waiting for it, she’s either curled up and responds to hearing it land or she’s busy snuffling at something else.

            Food never falls from the table – a nibble when I’m cooking is one thing but she doesn’t get anything whilst I’m eating. Like all spaniels she pushes, constantly, at boundaries (even at 11 and a half) if she once got the idea that there was food to be had when I’m eating she would pester constantly – so it’s simply a habit that you make sure you never get into.

            It is not entirely true, but there’s a deal of truth in the saying that a Lab is born half-trained and a spaniel dies half-trained. I’ve loved all my spaniels, but the don’t let you relax as they grow older… 😉

          4. Our labs were all guide dog puppies so we never encouraged them watch the food table. However, just like your spaniels, they tried to push the boundaries and, for big dogs, could move like greased lightning when even the slightest crumb was falling.

          5. Most pups will push – just like human youngsters. But spaniels go on doing it – even as old dogs.

            Anyone who has ever worked a lab in the field knows how fast they are. My first was a fox-red bitch and the only dog I’ve had that I couldn’t stop. She was wonderfully biddable in most ways – but she had no brakes! Sadly she died at 5 with a liver tumour so we didn’t have nearly enough years together.

        2. Sinbad has had a comparatively good day. Refused breakfast but spent three hours on my seat in the greenhouse. We tempted him with some raw beef fillet but our cat Paris ate most of it after respectfully waiting for Sindbad to withdraw.

          We had Aldi’s Peking Duck for supper and could not eat the lot ourselves. Sinbad ate everything left from the shredded duck. Four small dishes of duck meat without the crispy skin.

          We think Sinbad was more alert today and although a shadow of his former self is improving. His tail was up for the first time in months and he rushes, barking loudly, to the front door to greet folk when they knock.

          His breed Lhasa Apso was a sentinel so hopefully he is reimagining his roots despite the truly nasty interventions his tumour on the brain had revealed.

          I trust this contribution will not be downvoted simply because someone on here hates my guts.

          3. Ta Conway. It is so lovely to know that others care about real issues.

            I have a contempt for Democratic politicians for the reasons that I have a number of patriotic American friends who keep me informed.

            My neighbour talks with us weekly over the garden fence and she was born in Georgia and is a representative of a major church group who raise funds from wealthy kind hearted Americans and who distribute funds raised to the poorest in the world.

            Like the rest of us she is despairing of the blatant corruption of the Clinton and Obama presidencies.

          4. Bloody hell. I make a personnel comment about my dog and reference the US election and receive an immediate downvote from that ghastly Scottish witch (evidently actually living in Wales).

            God help us from such fools.

            Jesus wept.

  97. There seems to be a rapidly expanding availability of rapid COVID tests and the key performance metrics are
    clinical specificity and sensitivity. But do these really matter if there’s loadsa money to be made getting government contracts?

    “There is a massive opportunity for companies to get very rich selling poor tests, particularly if they get a government contract,” warns Deeks. “Our current regulations don’t protect us. You don’t need to have a good test to be able to sell it.”

    https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3868

Comments are closed.