Sunday 11 October: Calling time on the Government’s unfounded hospitality restrictions

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/2020/10/10/letterscalling-time-governments-unfounded-hospitality-restrictions/

711 thoughts on “Sunday 11 October: Calling time on the Government’s unfounded hospitality restrictions”

  3. If we celebrate Charles Dickens we must also acknowledge his racist views, says historian. 11 October 2020.

    Readers of Charles Dickens should not ignore his troubling attitudes on race, the historian David Olusoga said as he published a children’s book explaining that the author wrote about black people in racist ways.

    Olusoga said he loved to read Dickens and was struck by his compassionate writing about the impoverished residents of London’s slums. But he urged people to look at the full picture, telling The Telegraph that the author also wrote that he would “exterminate” the Indian race and “blot it out of mankind”.

    Dickens supported a British governor of Jamaica who brutally crushed an 1865 rebellion by plantation workers, and wrote in derogatory terms about black people.

    Morning everyone. Aside from the common sense observation that one does not read fiction because of the moral superiority of the author and if you did the impossibility in most cases of discovering what they are would prevent you from reading anything.

    The judgement of past ages and people by present standards is fraught with both arrogance and conceit. The assumption being that you are living in the only perfect civilisation to have existed and that your personal views are truths for all time.

    Olusoga’s comments here about Dickens only serve to illustrate the shortcomings of this approach and are, as always with him, both partial and inaccurate. The comment about the Indians was made in a private letter during the Indian Mutiny where numerous atrocities were committed by the Sepoys, What does Olusoga expect him to say. “Well done lads!” The “support” of the British Governor of Jamaica was that he sat on a committee to defend the said governor against a countervailing committee that wished him to be prosecuted.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/11/celebrate-charles-dickens-must-also-acknowledge-racist-views/

        3. Gove shoved him back onto the school curriculum. Every child, in primary and secondary schools in England, will, perforce, read Dickens.

    2. Olusoga and the BBC – a pair of country-haters made for each other.

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    4. Dickens was a writer of novels, not the steward of a public institution. He has every right in a free country to write what he likes, and his readers have an equal right to argue with him, and ridicule his views, or not, according to how his art resonates.

      The current overseers of the general institutional breakdown of the nation in this century destroy the very free country that writers from Dickens right back to Shakespeare and Chaucer aspired to build up. They should be ashamed, that is obvious, but they should be removed from any position of responsibility and their pensions cancelled, as mine was when I had the temerity to have a beard in an office of women solicitors at County Hall in Worcester in 2007.

      1. How could your pension be cancelled? Pensions can by law only be “forfeited” in very limited circumstances, usually involving a monetary obligation to the employer.

        1. They changed my terms of employment from permanent to temporary with a monthly termination review. When I registered a grievance, they sent me a solicitor’s letter and started disciplinary termination against me. ACAS advised me that fighting them would not get me any better than the month’s pay in lieu of notice they were offering and a lump sum for the accumulated pension. I would probably lose my sanity though fighting their highly trained lawyers paid for out of my Council Tax. The Union was not interested because I was not a woman and therefore do not qualify under their Equality code.

          1. How long ago was this? A month’s pay in lieu would only have been paid in case of wrongful dismissal. If they had unfairly dismissed you, you could have claimed far more, but perhaps you hadn’t been there for 2 years?

            There are certain rights that were only available if you had been working there for 2+ years.

    5. Is he another ‘public figure’ who seems to have suppressed any memory of a white parent?

  4. Who selects these people to be i/c National Maritime Museum? The French?

    Lord Nelson’s ‘heroic status’ to be reviewed by National Maritime Museum

    Museum will capitalise on ‘momentum built up by Black Lives Matter’ to address ‘aspects of slavery relating to Royal Navy’

    Craig Simpson – 10 October 2020 • 5:30pm

    Horatio Nelson towers over the pantheon of British heroes, and even his nemesis Napoleon kept a bust of the admiral in admiration – but such a statue would now be suspect.

    Lord Nelson’s “heroic status” will be reviewed by the National Maritime Museum as part of efforts to challenge Britain’s “barbaric history of race and colonialism”, The Telegraph can reveal.

    The admiral’s legacy is enshrined at the museum in Greenwich, which holds personal effects ranging from love letters to the coat Nelson wore when he was fatally shot during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

    Internal documents seen by The Telegraph reveal that the museum will capitalise on the “momentum built up by the Black Lives Matter movement” to make changes at the repository of naval treasures and address “aspects of slavery relating to the Royal Navy”.

    Nelson displays could be subject to “wholesale changes” in future, and the “more complex” nature of his heroism will be tackled by curators re-evaluating historical events and people as part of a new strategy.

    The publicly-funded museum is seeking to communicate the “often barbaric history of race, colonialism and representation in British maritime history”.

    Statues of Royal Navy heroes such as Admiral Edward Pellew, lionised in the Hornblower series, have also been brought into the review of Britain’s seafaring past.

    A select group of trustees and community groups will guide the new strategy to address “issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement”, purging outdated archive language and using a database to root out links to slavery.

    Following the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol earlier this year, Royal Museums Greenwich director Paddy Rogers told staff that the widespread reassessment of history provided a “moment to shine”.

    The boss of the Maritime Museum’s parent group said perspectives on history and identity “have never been so hotly discussed as they are right here and right now” and the institution could “play a key role”.

    The collections team said: “We are in the process of rolling out our new strategy and part of this is looking specifically at the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. All museum collections are partial, and history is often told from a particular perspective.”

    Nelson has been critiqued for voicing support for slaveholders and the colonies, which the Royal Navy protected, and opposition to the “damnable” William Wilberforce.

    Admiral Pellew will be contextualised as an officer in a Royal Navy which helped protect the slave trade. His statue will be given new labelling information, as will that of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith – of whom Napoleon said: “That man made me miss my destiny” – and Admiral James de Saumarez.

    Captain Sir William Peel, an early Victoria Cross winner, will also be included in the changes intended to “draw attention to areas where we can link to contemporary issues”.

    The colonial legacies of figures such as Captain Cook and Francis Drake have previously been addressed by the Maritime Museum.

    The museum will also work with groups who have been “affected by the legacies of the Transatlantic Slave”. Past external partners have included groups from trasngender charities and refugee networks.

    It has said it does not plan to remove any bust or statues from the collection in its reinterpation, with a statement from curators saying: “Our ambition is to be honest and transparent, to offer people historical evidence and to be a place for dialogue.

    “The museum will continue to evolve, reassessing and reinterpreting its collections and displays. There are no plans to remove any statues or busts, although our displays are constantly changing.”

    The Royal Navy, particularly the West Africa Squadron, ultimately worked to suppress the international slave trade.

    1. “A select group of newly appointed black trustees and BAME community groups will guide the new strategy.”
      Sorted!

    2. I revisited the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, last year, while Mrs HJ was visiting London with our d-i-l. Dotted around the display areas were life-sized cardboard cut-outs of RAF personnel.

      I was amazed at the number of female and non-whites (particularly amongst aircrew) currently serving, in stark contrast to my own experience in many RAF Stations and other service establishments over a period of 44 years…

      1. Also how they search out the scarce examples of WW2 servicemen of colour to “celebrate” their contribution.

    3. Have heard there’s a strong suspicion that ‘leftie place-people’ are in control of Maritime, Army and Imperial War Museums.

      Recent visitor to the latter commented: ‘Large amount of display space is completely empty and a whole floor is devoted to plight of asylum seekers and refugees while conflicts like falklands and Iraq barely get a mention.’

      1. BLM are just a bunch of racists, as are the current custodians of these institutions. Not my country.

        The so-called Left has suppressed all debate in their circles since the New Statesman stopped comments. They are no longer Left Wing and no longer represent the people.

    4. Perhaps this “contextualizing” scheme will remember to mention that Admiral Pellew led an Anglo-Dutch fleet against the Barbary slave states. His victory at the Bombardment of Algiers, in 1816, secured the release of the 1,200 Christian slaves held by the Muslims in the city.

      …. or perhaps not.

      1. It’s design based on an embroidery (C16 or C17) in Blair Castle.
        I just took it from a handicraft book.
        I would love a program so I could design my own. (No, I’m not faffing round with graph paper!)
        Maybe Father Christmas might oblige.

        1. He looks like fun – but you might need that lamp quite a lot.

          If you want Father Christmas to oblige, can I suggest that you do your homework on what’s available and let him know exactly what you want. He’s inclined to be a generalist, rather than a specialist, poor chap; and sometimes needs a bit of a helping hand.

          Sorry if I’m teaching someone who isn’t my granny to suck eggs, but I’ve been caught out in the past …. 😉

  6. 324468+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    With all due respect I do believe it would be more appreciated by many of the peoples if she recognised the peoples that are fighting this unacceptable type of government.

    Especially those who have suffered the head / truncheon connection,

    Queen Bestows National Honours on Members of the Public Battling Virus

  7. Morning all

    SIR – Why does the Government persist in trying to destroy our hospitality industry?

    Most venues have invested a lot of time and money to comply with the (ever-changing) rules, and are not major causes of virus transmission.

    The 10 pm curfew is counterproductive and is ruining businesses. How can people be expected to cope with the constant threat of closure hanging over their heads?

    Charles Murray

    Botesdale, Suffolk

    SIR – Closing the pubs at 10 pm causes bottlenecks, thus undermining social distancing.

    Surely it would be safer to let people go home when they feel like it. Publicans should be able to take their own commercial decisions over when to shut. It is a shame that this Government appears to be full of puritans as well as fools.

    Rupert White

    Pitcombe, Somerset

    SIR – Remove the water pump handle, no more cholera; remove the beer pump handle, no more Covid.

    Bryan W Jones

    Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria

    SIR – Local lockdowns are akin to keeping the whole class in detention because of the misdemeanours of a few pupils. The analogy can go further, since the offenders are usually recidivists.

    Inevitably, once restrictions are eased, the number of infections will again rise. We are not told how many of the infected people are being admitted to hospital, and the number of deaths is small.

    It’s time for Boris Johnson to start treating us as adults. Let us make our own decisions about risk and act accordingly.

    David Nunn

    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – The Government’s approach is only prolonging this disease. We need to let it run and be over. Sweden appears to be managing without draconian measures.

    S C I Cooper

    Seaford, East Sussex

    SIR – The Prime Minister dismissed the suggestion that he had lost his mojo as “self-evident drivel” – propaganda from “people who don’t want this Government to succeed, who wanted to stop us delivering Brexit”.

    In fact, many of us who want him to change course over the virus were also desperate for him to deliver Brexit.

    We wish he had valid excuse for the way he’s been acting, but we certainly did not take back control from the EU only to lose control of our lives to a Government that rules by fiat.

    If Mr Johnson’s personal experience of Covid-19 does not hold the explanation, it must be the deluded bubble in which he has isolated himself. He needs to escape before the economy goes down the pan – along with his political prospects.

    Tim Coles

    Carlton, Bedfordshire

    3. I wonder why people feel the need to drink alcohol in pubs and eat out when they could safely do it at home.

      1. No cask-conditioned ale available at home, Spikey. Proper beer needs to be kept at cellar temperature, tended to by a skilled publican, and served via a beer engine (or by gravity).

        Anything else, bottles, cans (ugh!) are second-rate.

    4. You don’t seem to have been paying attention, Tim; we haven’t taken back control from the EU.

  8. Pristine underpants

    SIR – I met my husband at university 50 years ago and knew immediately that I wanted to marry him – but there was a problem. When he occasionally went home for the weekend he took his washing, as we all did, but his came back immaculately ironed – even his underpants. I didn’t want to marry a man who ironed his underpants.

    Later I met his Mum and she showed me how to do all the ironing: just fold it up and pile it on the Aga lid (Letters, October 4). It does a wonderful job.

    Micky Tomlin

    Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire

    2. I’m surprised that someone with such a delicate constitution that finds a well pressed pair of St Michael’s finest a barrier to true love went on to marry and remain married to the owner of these aforesaid sharply creased trollies.

      2. She foresaw a lifetime of ironing his underpants in order to meet his Mum’s exacting standards….
        Happily she seems to have avoided that!

          1. And the left assume that I hate homosexuals when I say that no other assumptions will ever be made at Chateau Blackbox with relation to marriage…

    3. I used to have a Maltese girlfriend when I lived in Libya between 1968 and 1974. We used to send our weekly laundry to her mother in Malta which was returned the following week, freshly laundered and immaculately ironed.

      The mode of transport? The Maltese diplomatic bag!

    4. All my laundry’s sent to Cairo where they don’t use so much starch.
      (Flanders and Swann, Sounding Brass)

  9. SIR – Now that our long, hot summer has come to an end and the days are getting shorter, darker, wetter and colder, I wonder how many people will still be using our newly created cycle lanes? And if it snows, who will be able to read the lane markings?

    Joan Manning

    Watford, Hertfordshire

  10. SIR – How can Boris Johnson be contemplating a bridge (or tunnel) between Northern Ireland and Scotland (report, October 4) when we cannot maintain the bridges in our capital city (Letters, October 4)?

    It is a disgrace that three are not working – particularly Hammersmith Bridge, which is closed for the foreseeable future.

    Jeremy Roberts
    London SW1

    Do you honesty think, Jezza, sitting there in your pampered London bubble, that the millions of people who live in the rest of the UK (i.e. the real world) give the slightest tinker’s cuss about your bridges?

        1. I don’t know, Bob.

          They are probably ours,
          everything else seems to be
          when it comes to paying for
          anything!

          Good morning.

        2. It would seem to be TFL. But I suspect there are special arrangements for some of the older bridges; London Bridge has its own very well funded (from mediaeval times onwards) piggy bank.

        3. I was under the assumption that Sad Dick Khant’s responsibilities stopped after self-publicity and race-baiting clickbait.

          Every day is a school day.

        4. Hammersmith Bridge has been falling apart since Johnson was Mayor. If he’d spent the money on Hammersmith Bridge instead of the bloody “Garden Bridge” there wouldn’t be a massive problem today. Instead he did a bodge-up job in 2014 and left the rest undone.

      2. Good morning, Garlands.

        The only good point he raises is the idiocy of building a bridge or tunnel between Scotland and Ireland.

  12. A student isolating in Nottingham was given bread, jam and an apple for breakfast

    Universities are facing anger from students over conditions some have faced while self-isolating in campus accommodation.

    Students have criticised the cost and quality of food provided to them by universities while in isolation.

    Undergraduates say food parcels have often been filled with “junk”, meaning they have had to request fresh fruit and vegetables from parents.

    Institutions said they were working hard to provide students with supplies.

    People told to self-isolate because of coronavirus must stay at home for at least 10 days under rules punishable by fines.

    Universities UK has issued guidance on best practice for supporting students who are required to self-isolate.

    ‘Expensive prison’
    First-year economics and politics student Tess Bailie, 18, began a social media campaign after hearing of especially poor conditions for those isolating on her campus.

    Out-of-date food and a lack of catering for religious and dietary requirements are among the complaints at the University of Edinburgh’s Pollock Halls, dubbed the “UK’s most expensive prison”.

    “Students are saying the only thing saving them was the fact that half of them have Covid and they can’t taste it anyway,” Ms Bailie said, referring to a common Covid-19 symptom.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54486269

    1. This situation was totally, utterly predictable! I would have had a stash of food under my bed.
      Apparently you can get enough Vitamin C from crisps 🙂

    2. Couldn’t the universities simply order a load of ready meals from struggling pubs in the neighbourhood?

      2. Morning Jeremy

        What about the companies who provide airline food , or even instant supermarket food?

        Are students expecting a daily gourmet menu?

      3. Did you see my post yesterday in which I said that we could get a far better meal in a local pub at a far lower price than at the UEA restaurant/canteen on campus?

        If a commercial organisation like a pub can beat a university canteen for both cost and quality it shows just how unscrupulously the students are being cheated.

        1. The one thing that Rishi Sunak seems to have done right is the heavy subsidy for pub meals in August. It reminds me of the network of off-ration British restaurants, serving cheap nutritious meals in bulk, so that people spent more time on the war effort and less in the kitchen or queuing for the shops.

          After the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean one Boxing Day, the Thais mobilised the monasteries and got the country up and running far quicker than any of their neighbours and without heavy aid packages from abroad. All they asked of us was to keep sending our tourists – business as usual.

          Could not the British equivalent be to mobilise our pubs, rather than to keep shutting them down? Good cooked food for a fiver anywhere. We could work out the subsidy required to make it viable, but if economies of scale kick in, it need not be excessive.

          2. British restaurants; meals cost maximum of 9d. My youthful neighbour (see earlier posts) also pointed out the inconsistency of the incentive to eat out then closing the pubs. Either they want us to be spending our money out or they don’t – which is it?

          3. Working on the 20p penny, this suggests that a meal today should cost less than £2.

            I agree that pubs, like dogs, are for life not just for the summer holidays.

    3. Good morning, Lovely Maggie

      The exploitation of students is a national disgrace.

      Courses that are a waste of time, exorbitant tuition fees, crippling rates of interest on student loans, higher than normal commercial rates for accommodation, rip-off shops on campus – car parking charges etc. etc.

      When Henry was at UEA he spent the first year in university accommodation and then rented houses with friends the following years and this cost half the university accommodation rate.

      Christopher got a summer vac job working for for six weeks for his university. His rent in university accommodation while he did so swallowed up over half his earnings.

      And politicians wonder why they are despised by both the old and the young.

      1. When I ‘voluntarily’ did a month living in hospital & working in A&E when I was a student, the food & accommodation were free. That was about 50 years ago.

      2. Same when I went to university, Rastus. Quickly moved to a slum in Bow, with my girlfriend, now known as SWMBO. Don’t like the price, don’t shop/live/study there.

    4. They should set fire to the halls of residence then they will be put up in 5 star hotels for free. (Grenfell)

      2. That only worked for the survivors. (I feel sorry for the children; any adult should be aware of risks of living in a high rise block)

    5. “Undergraduates say food parcels have often been filled with “junk”, meaning they have had to request fresh fruit and vegetables from parents.’

      Pffft. Fresh veg indeed. Pot Noodles more like.

    6. ” given bread, jam and an apple for breakfast ” – – Meanwhile our new replacements living free in hotels all over the country get ???

  13. Good morning, all. A dampish looking day ahead.

    We watched “The Choice” on PBS last night – a heavily biased (surprise surprise) prog about the two US candidates. Terribly opposed to Trump, of course, but they didn’t like Biden much, either. The two newspapers represented were – naturally – WaPo and the NYT – both of which make the Grauniad seem very right wing.

    The programme makers seemed unaware that tens of millions of voters do NOT read either newspaper, and will vote for Trump because he is not the usual politician.

    My fear is that Biden wins, then dies or becomes (more) demented – and the black VP takes over and stirs up the BLM mobs. The red-necks will not take that lying down and God knows what the outcome would be.

    On that happy note, I ‘ll go and have my porridge.

        1. My Welsh grandfather had jet black hair and a red beard. My elder brother had brown hair and a red beard. My younger brother had Johnny Rotten blond hair and a red beard.

          Does that make me a ginger? My beard is disgustingly white these days.

        1. Disgust is really excelling itself today. I posted this under HardcastleCragg’s reference to Sunset Strip, where it was liked by three kind Nottlers.

    3. Heyup Bill!
      It’s looking decent over here in Derbyshire so I’m hoping to get the shuttering that’s been on hold for the past week finished off.

      I’m a bit annoyed with myself. In between rain showers yesterday I got my mulcher reassembled and realised that I’ve mislaid the spark plug for the engine! I was hoping to have got a start made on shredding the heap of brambles I need to get rid of.

      2. Toolstation is probably open at Alfreton. They sell a universal lawnmower spark plug.
        Can’t you burn the brambles?

    4. Good morning.

      Blue sky and sunny in South Hants.

      They are all armed to the teeth. It will be a blood bath whichever candidate gets in.

    5. Good morning, Bill

      My fear is that neither side will accept the result and will be far worse and more violent than the Remainers not accepting the Brexit vote.

    6. Buenos dias a todos.
      I wouldn’t worry too much about the USA; not all the Secret Service bodyguards are Democrats, but everyone of them is well armed. And accidents can happen.

  14. Perhaps NoTTLers should complete HMG’s ‘skills assessment test’ and publish results on this blog

    october 11 2020, 12:01am, the sunday times
    If you’re going to ban booze to stop Covid, doctor, you might as well ban eating too
    Rod Liddle

    The process of manufacturing ethanol from potato peelings is trickier and carries more health hazards than I had envisaged. Still, I will soldier on — better blind than sober. There’s always petrol or antifreeze as an alternative. The Russians speak highly of both.

    The peelings piled up in my new mash bin are the consequence of that implacable wee Krankie woman imposing a virtual prohibition upon Scotland, and the fact that our own lumbering idiot leader is poised to follow suit south of the border some time soon. Obviously, as soon as I heard this I bulk-ordered online, but something weird happens to alcohol in our house. One moment the bottles of wine are neatly lined up in their racks. The next, they are gone.

    My wife suspects elves. I blame cyclists. Either way it is not remotely possible that we can have drunk all the stuff only a day or two after it was delivered — quite clearly, a malign outside agency is responsible.

    It is not quite full prohibition. You can still buy alcohol on your suicide run to the supermarket, for the moment. But alcohol has been implicated in Covid’s second, messianic, coming. Not simply that pubs and restaurants are places where we mingle and are thus more likely to make the acquaintance of that spiky little parasite, but that the alcohol itself relieves us of our determination to socially distance, especially if we’ve just pulled. Our inhibitions expunged, the virus zips around in the sodden air and next day the graph looks really bad on the TV news, and health secretary Matt Hancock resembles a man whose boxer shorts have been infested by red ants.

    I wonder what would happen, then, if our leaders decided we deserved full prohibition?

    It is an interesting point. Ban alcohol and almost immediately the accident and emergency wards would see their patient numbers reduced by 35%. In fact, all the wards would be rather emptier, given that there were 357,659 admissions in 2017-18 for which the main reason was alcohol related.

    That other epidemic we face — obesity — would be sharply reduced. The prisons would be much emptier, too: 39% of violent assaults are drink related, about the same proportion for sexual assaults and 15% for robberies. Suicides would reduce by one-third and we would all be more likely to turn up to work — drink is responsible for a very respectable 17 million lost working days every year. Overall, alcohol costs the taxpayer up to £52bn every year, according to Public Health England. Drink is catastrophic to our health and catastrophic to the economy.

    Many ironies have arisen in our flailing and largely inept fight against Covid. Of all of them, this my favourite. We restrict public access to alcohol not because of the proven and indisputable damage it causes to both us and the society in which we live, but instead because it facilitates the spread of an illness that is of vanishingly small consequence to almost all of those who contract it.

    The average age of death from Covid is 82.4 years — and even then this strangely ineffectual little monster usually requires an underlying health condition (such as obesity, perhaps acquired via alcohol) in order to take a life. Comparing the potential lethality of Covid to alcohol is like comparing the potential lethality of a firecracker to that of a nuclear weapon — and yet we are so gripped by Covid, so enthralled by its novelty and its mysterious progression through our ranks, that we lose perspective. Surely, if we “followed the science”, we would weigh things up and think: “Hmm, maybe we can live with this Covid thing. But alcohol? God, no.”

    And then there is this. The limited prohibition is being introduced because our governments do not trust us to behave responsibly — and, further to that, are now prepared to legislate to save us from ourselves. Once, they let us do stuff that was self-evidently injurious because of that quaint notion of freedom of choice, of self-determination. But these things are not absolutes, merely a matter of degrees.

    What if they continue to “follow the science”, as advised by the medical clergy attendant upon them? What if they have got a real taste for saving us from ourselves — and from ready meals, sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, fast food: all those things that are bad for us, and by extension society, and that make life worth living?

    PM’s exciting new energy plan

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F28ee0b90-0b0a-11eb-b792-c9107992ffa0.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=900

    Shakira’s the expert on saving the world
    I will shortly be submitting my entry for the new and prestigious Earthshot prize, unveiled by the Duke of Cambridge last week. My invention is an enormous, flexible mat made from recycled epidemiologists that, when lofted into space, blocks out everything — sunlight, air, carbon dioxide and so on — thus immediately cooling the planet and giving swift respite to polar bears.

    My current model is a prototype. The full version would require 40,000 epidemiologists and so could be produced only on an industrial scale, rather than in my back garden.

    Can I win? It is a tall order. Earthshot has been touted as the new Nobel prize for the environment and you can judge the seriousness of it from the intellectual weight of the judges, who include Shakira and the Queen of Jordan.

    Keep your fingers crossed for me.

    As job advice goes, this is a horror show
    I have just completed the government’s “skills assessment” test to identify a career for which I might be suitable.

    It says I would make an excellent poltergeist, but warns that the training can be arduous and that it is not a vocation for anyone allergic to ectoplasm. It is also poorly paid, and I imagine that by the time you have made a table ascend a few feet in the air a dozen times, the novelty begins to pall.

    Other suggestions for me included wizard, rent boy and biomass.

    Health secretary Matt Hancock’s results, leaked online, reveal he would best be employed as a man being slightly rude to a traffic warden in the Nottinghamshire town of Retford. I had no idea they paid people to do that.

    Devon’s special welcome
    A new study has revealed that, contrary to popular belief, urban folk are no less friendly than rural folk.

    I’m not so sure: there is nuance and context to take into account. While it is true that people in, say, Devon may well tie you to a tree and molest you, screaming “Squeal like a piggy!”, they will also give you a nice cream tea afterwards to show that no malice was intended. It is this combination of bestial savagery and generosity that makes rural England such a charming place to live.

    (Listen, Devonians, I was only joshing. Please don’t ring Ipso. Let’s make up and be friends. Come on, high sixes all round!)

  15. How appropriate that Brash and Trash should have made a podcast for World Mental Health Day.

        1. An appropriate reputation that goes before them. Apparently she is in melt down, being the most abused person on social media.

  16. Puzzle:

    Here are two maps of the UK:

    Map 1 shows the status of a measure involving the population.
    Map 2 shows the planned installation sites of a type of facility.

    Q1. Is there a correlation and if so is one the consequence of the other?
    Q2. If there no correlation can you think of the things that respectively could cause this apparent similarity?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a06695e547859b0f9ba98cb3d7696775ae07b9c28808c5a3775efa62898d9f7b.jpg

    1. 4 star hotels for the illegal economic migrants to wait in while their lifetime benefits are calculated.

    2. Population density would be the obvious common factor. Or population density of certain types of people. Muslims, at a guess, as the Bradford area seems to be particularly well represented?

        1. Job for today.
          Rain stopped at last.
          2am, big kerfuffle, many lights outside and much engine noise. Neighbour having her house pumped out!

  19. The Independent
    Prince William warns impact of climate crisis will be felt by society’s ‘most vulnerable’………….

    That’s all very well William, but every time a ‘vulnerable’ person dies the furnaces are used to cremate their bodies.
    It can’t be helping the rate of pollution any more than allowing millions of people who come from much warmer sunnier climates to arrive and settle in northern Europe, when their previous carbon foot prints then go through the roof.
    I wonder how much carbon is emitted keeping ones family cosy these days.
    Especially ones grandma in her rather large castle.
    Keep the home fires burning eh, it seems.

    1. Grandma has several rather large castles – I don’t begrudge her those but I do resent the heir telling us we’re all to blame for the “climate disaster”.

    2. Grandma has several rather large castles – I don’t begrudge her those but I do resent the heir telling us we’re all to blame for the “climate disaster”.

    3. His father has made a complete prat of himself over environmental issues and it looks as if Prince William has learnt nothing from this and is quite determined to make a complete anal orifice of himself too.

      1. Not one of our political classes ever addresses the immigration issues. We have an estimated population of more than 75 million. There is house building nearly everywhere you look and even more planning taking place. The destruction of our green belt and agricultural land is an absolute disgrace. I mean in England, it doesn’t seem to be taking place anywhere else. our infrastructure is creaking and our resources are being tapped into more and more daily. I think if it had not rained earlier this year we would have suffered drought and water shortages.
        Our Politicians have a devil may care attitude. Wind power is not the answer its never going to supply enough energy to cope with the rapidly increasing size of the population.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk

        1. The Scottish Government has been very eager over the last 20 years to bring in as many immigrants as they can (child rapists and all).

          1. How many of those go South into England because they don’t want to stay in Scotland? Many, I would guess, and even more I would guess that this is the Salmond and the nasty wee Krankie’s intention. A bit like Merkel flooding Germany with immigrants so that the rest of the EU can “take their share”. It was your decision, Merkel, the buck rests with you, not us.

          2. The supposed “need” for immigrants goes back to the Labour administration in Scotland. Jack McConnell, I think it was, who said that Scotland needed 600,000 immigrants to pay the pensions of our ageing population. Apparently , none of them recognise a Ponzi scheme when they see it.
            As it happens 600,000 is the number of abortions carried out in Scotland since the Abortion Act came into law.

          3. That never gets a mention but i have seen footage of muslim women on news items from Scotland. I’m beginning to think It’s deliberately staged.

        2. They do mention it. All the time. We’re constantly told how diversity is a strength, that they don’t blow themselves up to kill us, that they’re all good for us and that we must have more of it.

          Wind, of course is utterly insufficient and in effective. They don’t care.

          Rather than enforce international law the state seems devoted to ignoring it. Instead of meeting demand for energy, the state is desperate to force up the cost of fuel to the point of unaffordability specifically, solely to force down the use of electricity – while making us ever more reliant on it.

          It’s potty. Almost as if the state confused column A with column B.

          1. A couple of British owned and run nuclear power stations wold have lasted decades and no further worries.

      1. He seems like a nice chap. No real life experiences.
        Kate calls him ‘Big Willy’ i suppose he has his uses 😄
        I heard she preggy again.

  20. ‘Morning All

    At about 4am I made the mistake of looking at the front page of the DT,what a picture of the spiralling insanty heading to an ever more dystopian future

    Nelson cancelled

    Children denied NHS treatment

    Travel to be restricted

    More Covid spies

    Green fuckwittery………

    etc etc

    Hang on a minute I think,where have I seen all this already??

    Ah yes,Victoria and Queensland in Aussieland enforced in the most brutal manner……..

    Where are the orders coming from?? I commend this Sky news piece

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

    And why the totally hysterical Trump hate,lie upon lie upon lie…………

    See for yourself

    https://anchoredinhope.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/A-Perspective-1.mp4
    The last bastion against the globalists

      1. Is she trying to swim away from Melbourne?
        Or haven’t the Oz Stasi discovered Moonie Ponds?

    3. I have to echo Alf and thank you for the many humorous posts. I don’t know where you find them, but I regularly spread them further to give my family and friends a few much needed laughs.

  22. 324468+ up ticks,
    The only common sense shown within the past decade was by UKIP designing & triggering the referendum only to have this very same look alike tory party & party supporters making a grand balls up of it, the politico’s intentionally the supporters doing what ovis do.

    If the deceitful, devious dealing disciples of political treachery had played with a straight bat from the outset, with an honest take on this issue peoples would have gone along with them i’m sure, instead are we far off of shooting conscientious objectors to politico’s policy, fines, incarceration and the next step is ….

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1315232926913622016

      1. Without Farage UKIP would now be the transient dust of history; along with the Whigs, The Blackshirts, Veritas and the Referendum Party.

      2. 324468+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Yes eventually the party was there awaiting.
        I was a farage activist follower him for years, I can only fall back on the fact that kim philiby had a great following whilst covert.

        He was a very able mouthpiece
        for UKIP by the same token the party gave him a platform to build his reputation.

        The party membership did not deserve the sort of thanks he gave them after leaving.

        Where would farage have been without UKIP & membership ?

      3. Poor old Nigel seems to have bottled out. I expect someone in ‘authority’ ‘sent the boyz round to ‘ave a word’ !

    2. “The only common sense shown within the past decade was by UKIP designing & triggering the referendum”. That is a claim that rivals the late Enver Hoxha’s claim to the Albanian people that “we and the Chinese are a billion strong”. UKIP undoubtedly influenced the decision to hold a referendum but designing it?????

      1. They did have a great influence. It helped that Cameron is such an over-confident pratt, of course.

        1. 324468+ up ticks,
          Afternoon BB2,
          What gets up a great many nasal canals is that they are very quick to decry many of UKIP leaders, but in the defence of UKIP leaders whether inept or otherwise they were NEVER treacherous towards the Nation.

          Can those supporting the lab/lib/con coalition party over the last three decades
          claim that.

      2. 324468+ up ticks,
        Afternoon EDA,
        Personally my dear / old cock I don’t give a damn what the chinks are up to in regards to this issue,”undoubtedly influenced the decision” reads to me as forced the wretch cameron to grant a referendum.

        But for the fact that 28 plus years ago when UKIP came into being this Country was truly on the road to brussels via the polling booth.

        UKIP was not only fighting the eu / brussels but also the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party

        Without the Formation of UKIP 28 years ago,
        and the current voting mode had continued unhindered we would now all be wearing
        lederhosen & whistling ode to joy.

        By the same token what, may one ask has the lab/lib/con coalition designed & triggered over the UKIP lifespan that benefited this Nation. ?

        1. The referendum was the result of many different concerns – immigration, objections to EU dominance, loss of sovereignty, nationalism to name but a few. UKIP expressed some of these but was never going to win electoral support from more than a tiny proportion of the population. UKIP served a useful purpose as the banner for Brexit but a banner is just a piece of cloth flapping in the wind. UKIP can take credit for helping to trigger the referendum but that is about all.

          2. 324468+ up ticks
            Evening EDA,
            It did win the eu election if I remember right, even so, the very bias take down of UKIP you have would you tell me what benefits the continued support for the lab/lib/con coalition party has given this nation especially since
            M Thatcher was politically assassinated.
            Her political killing opened the door to full on treachery.
            You have me at a disadvantage
            not knowing who has your support, an answer is optional

          3. In response to your final sentence, right now I am not sure that any party has my support and I would say that it is a case of which party disappoints me least.

          4. 324468+ up ticks,
            EDA ,
            I see your dilemma you cannot very well judge which of the lab/lib/con party’s if you are that way inclined, going on the benefits they have accorded this nation these last three decades.
            May I say to my mind it is the party first, nasal gripping, best of the worst brigade that are to blame without a doubt who are the root cause of our present odious condition as a Country.

  23. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    I do hope his tactics are more effective than his command of the English language…

    From today’s Tellygraff ‘exclusive’:

    Britain is preparing to use nets to routinely “disable” dinghies carrying migrants across the Channel, the former marine in charge of preventing the crossings has signalled.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, Dan O’Mahoney, the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, revealed UK authorities were “very close” to being able to deploy a new “safe return tactic” under which personnel would render individual boats inoperable and then use British vessels to transfer migrants back to France.

    However France is currently refusing to accept such migrants back into the country – delaying the use of the tactic.

    Setting out his four-stage plan to tackle the problem of illegal migration across the Channel, Mr O’Mahoney also revealed the Government was using social media campaigns and officials posted abroad to urge would-be migrants in Africa and the Middle East to claim asylum in the first safe country in which they arrive, rather than risking their lives in an “incredibly dangerous journey” to reach the UK illegally.

    In his first newspaper interview since being appointed by Priti Patel in August, Mr O’Mahoney said the current facilities for processing migrants were under a “significant amount of pressure”.

    His remarks came after it emerged that the Government was considering using offshore holding centres, disused prisons or retired ferries to temporarily accommodate those who reach the UK illegally.

    He also suggested that there was a case for increasing sentences for those involved in facilitating illegal crossings, stating: “I think it’s rare for a law enforcement official to say that they think the sentences are sufficient.”

    The number of clandestine arrivals is exceeding 300 per day – the greatest numbers on record – after a sharp decrease in travel by air and rail during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The four stages of the plan comprise:

    Attempting to stop the flow of migrants from Africa and the Middle East into northern France;

    Reducing the number leaving the region for the UK, including by helping to dismantle camps;

    Physically preventing entry to the UK;

    Reforming the country’s asylum system to reduce Britain’s “pull factor”.

    Describing progress on the third stage of the plan, Mr O’Mahoney, a former Royal Marine who was previously director of the Joint Maritime Security Centre, said: “We are exploring tactics to make safe interventions, in order to return migrants back to France.”

    He added: “We definitely are very, very close to being able to operationalise a safe return tactic where we make an intervention safely on a migrant vessel, take migrants on board our vessel and then take them back to France. The problem with that currently is that the French won’t accept them back to France.”

    Asked whether the method mirrored a method trialled by the Royal Navy in which nets were used to clog propellers and bring the boats to a standstill, Mr O’Mahoney said: “It’s that type of thing, yes. So, safely disabling the engine and then taking the migrants on board our vessel.”

    The tactic is one of many “which we may deploy over the next few months. But given that we’re not using them yet I’m not at liberty to go into detail about them … We are working with maritime security departments across law enforcement and military, everywhere across government and come up with new tactics to tackle this problem.

    While in 2019, less than 30 per cent of clandestine entry to the UK was taking place via small boats, the proportion has now jumped to 70 per cent, amid the major impact of Covid-19 on other forms of travel.

    Mr O’Mahoney insists that his team’s first priority is to save the lives of those put at risk by the crossings, followed by focusing on securing the UK border and increasing public confidence in the action being taken against the flow of small boats.

    The first stage of his plan involves using social media and outposts of government agencies to persuade migrants in Africa and the Middle East against heading for the UK via an illegal route.

    “The vast majority of people seeking refuge in the UK are genuine asylum seekers. And they come from incredibly difficult conditions in the country, some of which I’ve been to and witnessed first-hand, and I have a huge amount of sympathy for that.

    “So we’re not saying stay in this very dangerous place, what we are saying is … you will pass through multiple safe countries with perfectly civilised and functioning asylum systems. Rather than paying huge amounts of money for facilitators to move you across Europe through all of these safe countries, and then risk your life in an incredibly dangerous journey, claim asylum in the first safe country that you come to.

    “Another part of the messaging is just about how dangerous the route is. It’s also about the criminal element and not allowing yourself to become one of those criminal elements … a lot of the migrants pay for their journey by essentially becoming an agent of one of the facilitators.”

    The fourth strand includes Ms Patel’s plans to toughen up the asylum regime. Mr O’Mahoney said: “It is illegal to cross the channel in a small boat and we arrest people for illegal entry on their arrival in the UK, but it is also then legal for them to claim asylum. And that doesn’t feel right.”

    Gordon Bennett…does anyone think that any of this will be successful? And why do I have the uncomfortable feeling that we will pay the French yet another ‘ransom’ with nothing to show for it?

          1. There are so many clever people on here who are far more edjumacated than wot I am, I have to have a second tab permanently open to look things up as I go along. Its bl**day annoying though when Disqus takes you back to the comments when you go back to the Nottl page. It never used to do that.

    2. Stopped reading after “France is currently refusing to accept such migrants back into the country…”
      An other breach of international protocols by France. another glaring example of why we cannot trust these self-entitled endlessly demanding, hysterical foreigners.
      Brexit negotiators take note. Oh, what’s the point?

      1. They want our fish, not their exported illegals. Why don’t we arrange that for every fish they can catch, we can send back an immigrant?

    3. Enforce the asylum law – I believe refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. There can’t be many, if any, who fly directly to the UK. If they haven’t made their claim prior to sailing across to the UK, it cant be that urgent. We should NOT grant asy,um to ANYONE arriving via a safe country.

      1. Perhaps Frau Merkel could be arrested for breaching EU laws? After letting everyone in, the tune changed to “EU countries will all have to take their share”. Their share of what? Merkel’s maniacs.

      2. But those who have followed that procedure of claiming asylum in the first safe country, should be allowed to apply for residency in other countries, including the UK, subject to necessary vetting and on condition that they follow our laws and do not expect special rules for themselves.

        1. I’d like to see the government which would bother to enforce such a condition. As it is, they literally get away with murder, and still stay here.

    4. The way to stop the flow would be to prosecute all the aid agencies who are fascilitating the illegals crossing the Med.

      What O’Mahoney is suggesting is the equivalent of a leaflet campaign.

  24. This quiet, gentle war film is a forgotten masterpiece. 11 October 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c027ed06d0c2b5ef51d817e0ff1fd933b33a49fcb6da11e8c433a03cea293231.jpg

    British filmmakers realised the value of propaganda that was generally more in keeping with our distaste for fanaticism, presenting character studies that contrasted Nazi brutality and wickedness with domestic heroism and decency. Often only implied, the contrast is made explicit in Powell and Pressburger’s 49th Parallel (1941) and also in Ealing’s Went the Day Well? (1942), written by Graham Greene and showing the murder of an elderly clergyman by an invading storm trooper.

    I sometimes watch these old movies to remind me of a country that has now been destroyed. Mostly of course by those people charged with keeping it safe. Though it had faults it had many wonderful things in it though these were not buildings or monuments or even the statues that the Wokies eternally complain about and no native ever notices. There were the beauties of a landscape sculpted by generations of people who loved and nurtured it for those who came after. It’s people harboured malice toward none and there was the unspoken security of knowing that those around you held similar views and that your children could be entrusted to the General Good. No locked doors was an actual reality. It had peerless poetry and the freedom to say what you will to any who cared to listen. As nearly as Freedom has ever existed it lived for a time in this magical land.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2020/10/10/quiet-gentle-war-film-forgotten-masterpiece/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

          1. It’s at the bottom of the Movie Channels on Satellite TV!

            EDIT. Though believe it’s called Talking Pics at the weekend!

          2. It’s at the bottom of the Movie Channels on Satellite TV!

            EDIT. Though I believe it’s called Talking Pics at the weekend!

          3. Ah, thanks Minty. Not sure I want to install satellite telly for one film, but thanks for the info.

  25. ‘Morning again,

    Today’s DT Leader. I wish I could believe that it will make a scrap of difference:

    “Swathes of the country will shortly be facing far more severe restrictions, and yet the situation is different from the first coronavirus wave. In some ways, it’s much better: we are more prepared, with a changed mindset, social distancing, personal protective equipment, a massively enhanced test and trace system (as opposed to none) and superior treatments for Covid-19. In other ways, it is worse: we have spent a fortune already, crippling the public finances; the economy remains catastrophically shrunken; an important minority of the population has had enough of surrendering its freedom; and most of the hopefulness, the optimism, the sense that we are all in this together, is gone.

    Astonishingly, we are back where we were in the most important respect: it appears that the NHS isn’t going to be able to cope if the number of cases doubles another two or three times (taking us to early to mid-November) despite all the time it had to prepare. Test and trace is still not good enough, and there will be no reliable vaccine for winter.

    Partly as a result of better preparation, the rate of growth in Covid hospitalisations – one of the few meaningful statistics amid the kafkaesque cacophony of numbers we are being bombarded with – isn’t growing anything like as quickly as it was in March. Yet the numbers are still going up and the logic of compound growth – even in slower-motion – means that unless the epidemic peaks reasonably soon, some hospitals are going to start being overwhelmed.

    Why? What have managers been doing for the last few months while more than 110,000 patients have been waiting over a year for non-Covid treatment? Why haven’t they learnt from what happened in the spring and used this time to build extra capacity? Seven Nightingale hospitals were constructed to deal with this exact problem. But this is a perennial crisis. The NHS struggles under normal conditions in the winter because the system is completely dysfunctional.

    The Prime Minister needs to be honest about all of this and admit that not everything has gone according to plan. He needs to explain exactly why he is shutting down so much of the economy again and why he believes that drastically reducing social and family contacts is a price worth paying. He obviously wants to buy more time, but he needs to tell us how much and what for – and to explain convincingly why isolating the vulnerable (a strategy which seems ever more attractive by the day) while allowing the rest of the country to move on isn’t a better way forward. He needs to sell and explain his vision, not simply expect the rest of us to accept it automatically. Above all, he needs to spell out his Covid exit strategy. Britain’s economy and society cannot face another six months of the current madness.”

    1. (The PM) “obviously wants to buy more time,…
      Till compulsory vaccination is enforced.

  26. A suggestion for those of you who haven’t yet written to Santa:

    “The key to Christmas? North London’s surprisingly in-demand gift

    As Christmas presents go, a small fire brigade key is not the most exciting. But some residents living in Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) claim they are the ‘must have’ present this year.

    Lock shops selling online have reported a surge in sales of keys that can unlock bollards councils install to close off roads to try to promote cycling and walking.

    The increase in demand for the keys is believed to be linked to concerns road closures are hampering fire, ambulance and police response times.

    Homeowners from London and Birmingham have told the Sunday Telegraph they have purchased them after witnessing ambulances performing U-turns when encountering new road closures.

    A resident from Bowes in Enfield, North London, where LTNs have been introduced said: “People have become so concerned by emergency response vehicles doing U-turns after encountering bollards and planters they have bought keys off the internet so they can help if an ambulance gets into difficulty.

    “They are not for personal use, only to have them in case of a life and death situation.”

    A spokeswoman for Seton, which sells locks and keys online, said there had seen a “clear spike” in sales of the keys from June 2020.

    Simon Logan of Lockstation said there had been an increase in sale of ‘FB’ keys in the last four weeks, with 30 per cent coming from private customers, rather than the usual councils or fire services.

    A spokesman for Ealing Council, a borough where there have been two reports of ambulances encountering road closures, said: “The key created for bollards in LTNs is standard to the one already in use by the fire brigade for road restrictions in the borough. The council has not received any requests from any of the emergency services for extra keys, but we are happy to provide extra ones should they be needed and have supplied additional keys to the ambulance service as a courtesy.

    “Following feedback from the London Ambulance Service, we have removed bollards from five locations and replaced them with ANPR cameras.”

    1. My RADAR key has been invaluable for my personal emergencies. On occasions it has helped others, too, who need rapid access to a public loo!

      ‘Moaning, Annie.

    2. My RADAR key has been invaluable for my personal emergencies. On occasions it has helped others, too, who need rapid access to a public loo!

      ‘Moaning, Annie.

      1. Sorry, Maggie. Yesterday evening I was in a fight to the death with tapestry pattern so my laptop lay fallow.
        Could you post it again? Pretty please.

          1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a8c394a65b15f0ea026ec1de33ba49a12a5219d2aa4ebbd37b1383ce6c097d8.png Not sure, Maggie. There were several of them, all with very steep paths leading to the front door. I remember the back garden sloping upwards, not downwards.
            That’s a back view with modern extensions; a lot has changed since 1959.
            Thank you for the picture, but I don’t think that’s the one.
            My brother visited 2 West Lulworth churchyards about a week ago; he couldn’t find the graves, but he did find the memorial seat that my father had installed.

  27. Mrs. Gove in the Mail on Sunday:

    SARAH VINE: Britain is now officially a country where the police investigate journalists like Darren Grimes for asking questions: It’s chilling.. the walls are closing in on our freedoms

    By SARAH VINE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

    PUBLISHED: 01:11, 11 October 2020 | UPDATED: 01:11, 11 October 2020

    “Had someone told me this time last year that so many of the daily liberties we once took for granted – putting an arm around a fellow mourner at a funeral, having supper with friends, booking a holiday, visiting relatives – would, just 12 months on, feel like unimaginable privileges, I would have laughed in their face.

    And yet here we are. The other day I took my car to be cleaned at my local Tesco valeting service. I finished my shop early so I popped into the cafe to wait.

    I had to hand over my contact details and sign my name on a slip of paper before they would serve me a cup of tea. Really.

    How long before I have to notify the authorities of my intention to answer a call of nature? Up and down the country, citizens are being systematically stripped of their privacy and freedoms.

    Covid marshals are being armed (at a cost of £30 million) with body cameras and urged to target weddings, parties, restaurants and nail bars in pursuit of people breaching Government guidelines.

    I spoke to a friend the other day who sings in her local choir. She is so terrified of accidentally breaching Covid regulations that she is thinking about giving it up.

    Meanwhile in Newcastle, private security firms are accosting undergraduates in the street and on campus, demanding to know their identity and business.

    We now live in a world where police are scared to stop and search suspected gang members for carrying blades in case someone accuses them of being racist; but where being young and daring to leave your halls of residence is practically a criminal offence.

    Is it just me, or does it feel like the walls are closing in? But however surreal and insidious all this might feel to you and me, it must be nothing compared with what Darren Grimes is going through.

    Grimes is a young broadcaster and journalist from Country Durham. A few months ago he interviewed the historian David Starkey. It was not exactly Starkey’s finest hour.

    Asked about the Black Lives Matter movement, he responded that slavery was not genocide because there were still ‘so many damn blacks’.

    Quite rightly, Starkey was roundly condemned for what was unquestionably a deeply offensive comment.

    But in an Orwellian twist of fate it is Grimes who finds himself in the dock: he is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred.

    The notion that any broadcaster or interviewer should be held responsible for the views of their programme’s subjects is, of course, completely absurd.

    By that token you would have to prosecute Louis Theroux for giving airtime to the lunatic views of far-Right extremists, or investigate the editors of BBC’s Question Time for giving a platform to former BNP leader Nick Griffin.

    Indeed, you could even argue that Grimes was doing us all a favour by exposing Starkey’s true feelings.

    Isn’t that, after all, what journalism is: uncovering the truth, however unpalatable? And yet here we are. Grimes is in the dock and Britain is now officially a country where the police investigate journalists for asking questions.

    Even in normal times, that would be a pretty chilling prospect, but we now live in a world where all sense of justice and proportion seems to have gone out the window.

    Where freedom of expression is under attack; where a health crisis is being used to pit neighbour against neighbour; where dissent is seen as an act of civil disobedience; where ‘tolerance’ has been redefined as denying any opinion that doesn’t conform to a narrow set of views.

    And, most terrifying of all, where those who were once charged with protecting our rights and freedoms have been redeployed as guardians not of what we do, but of what we think and say.”

    1. Well Mrs Gove, it is woke half-wits like you that created the opportunity for the vociferous minorities to destroy those freedoms.

      1. I wonder if the Goves are on manoeuvres – again.
        I really don’t see Johnson lasting beyond 1st. January.
        Trouble is, you look around at our government – actual and potential – and just curl up and wish the world would go away.

        1. It is a great pity that the Oxford Union’s senior members did not risk blighting some unknown promising young man’s career by prosecution in the summer following the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of the Moynihan Plate while Michael Gove was Union President.

          1. Looking at the MoS headline this morning, I think Hancock’s had his chips. They appear to be gunning for him.

          3. “Health Secretary Matt Hancock makes tasteless Covid test joke in Commons bar as he ‘joined MPs flouting 10pm curfew’ ” looks like a pretty hefty shove to me.
            All we need now is for Boris to express his full confidence in hapless Hancock!

            It’s not optimism – there is an endless line of duffers to replace him. Perhaps a promotion for Therese Coffey is on the cards – she’s a useful idiot who might accept the role.
            None of them can do anything against the Blair-era Sir Humphreys who are really running the country anyway. We’re all doomed until we can get them out!

          4. A bonfire of the vain humphreys.

            And – as I asked below – why can we not organise a million peaceful marchers to go to London to protest?

          5. Well I made a great effort to go on the Brexit march when May was selling us down the river. About 1500 other people did the same.

          6. 1500 the effing Met Farce with its CRS lookalikes and the horses can trample and beat up. A million, on the other hand….

          7. The police were very nice, and one (Indian) was wearing a small enamel poppy badge, as an acceptable way to show tacit support. They probably appreciated having a friendly, good-humoured, polite march rather than the howling, hate-filled Antifa mob on the other side.

            But you have a point of course, that TPTB didn’t see it as a threat. Perhaps the anti-Iraq war marches showed the pointlessness of peaceful demonstrations, as the Govt simply ignored it. Not enough buildings set on fire or windows smashed, I suppose.

            As for the Countryside march, the Govt knows full well that there are more anti-hunting votes than pro.

          8. I made the effort to go on the anti-Hunting Act marches (and a fat lot of good that did), but by the time the pro-Brexit march was needed (and subsequent manifestations), my family circumstances had changed and I am unable to get away for any length of time.

          11. It is not so much that I am stingy – it is my unfailing ability always to choose the wrong horse, person, checkout queue…

            So I don’t bet on anything – ever!

          12. Aaaarrgghhhh ….. I always pick the queue behind some old biddy returning a parcel to Australia.

          13. The shortest queue is always he slowest.

            I was asked yes’day to move to a shorter q. in w/rose, but I had already observed the cahier as she waved each item in the air as she prattled away. I refused to move & told the supervisor why.

          14. ha! I choose the queue by observing the cashier too. Also have to have a look at the people ahead of you – do they look like quick payers or faffers around whose loyalty card is at the back of their wallet?

        3. Owen Paterson for PM with Nigel Farage in the team would be better than what we’ve got.

    3. A” deeply offensive comment? Which part? “not genocide”? Obviously true, or arguably the case. “too may damn blacks”. An opinion. Remove the word “damn” and it is a perfectly arguable point regarding populations?

      1. Yes. I think that was more of ‘quote’ than anything else. DS had probably heard people saying that, and bowdlerised ‘effing’ to ‘damn’.

    4. Paragraph eight, shurely Ms Vine should have said

      “…police are scared to stop and search …black suspected gang members…”

      so as not to be accused of assumption that all gang members are black, as she shurely will be.

    5. 324468+ up ticks,
      Morning Anne,
      What surely is more terrifying is that things started to go noticeably crook post M Thatcher / knife, peoples could SEE the way the Country was deteriorating day on day.
      In the eyes of an electorate of decency surely the lab/lib/con have now burnt their political bridges.

      My belief ? many holding political power are definitely on a promise.

      The last couple of GE especially is on par with entering a polling booth placing a pebble in your boot prior to going on a five year hike if voting for a lab/lib/con candidate.

  28. BTL@DTletters

    Warren Sheehy
    11 Oct 2020 6:37AM
    Instead of focusing on a national hero such as Nelson, maybe the BLM circus could wander off to West Africa, Niger and the Congo and see first hand how slavery is still working for their people. We’ve moved on, perhaps they should too.

  29. (Reposted from last night after midnight)

    11th October

    Hardcastle Craggs

    We hope you have A Marvellous Birthday

    and

    Very Many Happy Returns

    Best Wishes from Caroline and Rastus

    (and a good number of trombones leading your parade!)

    5. Hey oop, HC. So that’s why you were opening a posh bottle last evening!

      Have a good day – and many more.

  30. How beeboid radio 3 manages to put off even the most liberal of listeners. That effing Molleson woman “presenting” a recital from “London’s” Wigmore hall (are there many others?). Her endless, droning remarks (“I use 25 words when one would be too many – oh, and, by the way, am I not exceedingly clever?”)….are enough, generally, to make one throw the radio at the wall. She reminds me of Mrs Murell – without the cheeky one-liners (sarc).

  31. R Nosgrove pointed out that yesterday was world porridge day.

    Today is coming out day, I kid you not.

    https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/coming-out-day/

    In the spirit of this auspicious date, I wish to inform you all that:

    I am a white, happily married, heterosexual, sceptical, conservative, who is becoming more intolerant by the day, due to an acute allergic reaction to wokery and the divisive politics of the racist left.

    4. I picked up the lead and asked Spartie if he was coming out.
      I think he said something very rude in Chihuahuaese.

    6. I came out this morning to walk my dog. I went back in for lunch, then I came out again to do some gardening. I have now come back in to bore people on Nottl 🙂

  32. How come there were enormous – peaceful – protest marches against the Iraq War and the Hunting ban – yet we can’t gather more than a few hundred to demonstrate against the useless shower posing as a government?

        1. Quite possibly due to current restrictions and the majority of the public are compliant, whether they agree with the rules or not.

        2. For most people, getting to the Great Wen involves public transport and that involves wearing a ……. ?

  33. I read that Lord Nelson’s naval career is being questioned by the British Museums regarding the slave trade etc.
    This is due to pressure from the BLACK Lives Matter movement –
    They need a new slogan – “BLACKS RULE”

    1. I read that the preserved Lord Nelson steam locomotive (owned by the National Railway Museum and currently on long-term loan to a heritage line) is considered ‘at risk’. Quite what is likely to happen to it, I really don’t know.

      Just wait until they discover there is a whole class of locomotives called “Black Fives”.

      1. When I was at school a Black Five went through Poole on Wednesdays, also past the school, at the bottom of the playing fields. We used to hang out of the school windows to try & get the number.

        1. I believe there are quite a few running in preservation, including several used on main line charter trains, so you might still see one yet.

          Black Fives Matter!

          1. I think they sometimes pulled The Pines Express, which came from the Midlands/Birmingham to Bourneemouth.

            We had S&Ds too.

          2. Also worked by 9Fs which, for a short while, gave rise to them thrashing along at 90!

    2. As implied by the new tv ad for Barclaycard where the white “sidekick” fawns to his black Master.

    3. How about the cost of and time spent by the navy attempting to prevent slave ships from sailing.

        1. Perhaps the arrogant white supremacists shouldn’t have bothered? After all, the peoples concerned had been doing their thing for several hundred years before ol’ supremacist whitey stepped into the picture.

  34. “Hello, and how did you find yourself this morning?
    Well, I just rolled back the sheets and there I was!”

    Good morning everybody from a sunny but chilly Hampshire.

  35. The Medical hierarchy seem to be calling the political tune threatening us with a large number of deaths and overwhelming the NHS within the next few weeks if we do not accept the new lockdown restrictions. They don’t seem to have learnt the lessons of the last 6 months.
    What medication are they allowing to be used to treat Covid cases.?
    Can they publish the number of Covid -19 cases, patients on ventilators and deaths alongside these numbers for patients affected by other flu viruses.?
    Can they compare the number of flu deaths, including Covid-19 deaths with previous years’ flu death numbers.?
    If they can produce these numbers let us have them published. If not ,why not?
    Are the medics happy about the results coming out of a plethora of Laboratories around the country and if so what checks are done on these laboratories. If so, are the checks all satisfactory?
    The restrictions have ruined the economy and yet the medics keep us in the dark. Not good.

        1. The WHO envoy only appears briefly at the start and end. The rest is very interesting especially if, like me, you are interested in epidemic diseases and the way in which they are tackled. Very much worth watching.

      2. An excellent rebuff of what politicians and Medics are inflicting on the populace at the moment. I hope Boris, Matt Hancock and their medic advisors see this clip. Even the WHO are telling them that lockdown is not advisable and that death numbers are not worse than previous respiratory virus epidemics.

  36. “Covid” Mary Ferrier SNP MP has said to the Sun newspaper that her confusion on the changes in the Covid restrictions over the last 6 months was the reason she travelled back and forward from Glasgow to the HoC whilst infected with the virus. She will remain as an MP. Are these MPs worth the money they get from the taxpayer. I think not.

    1. Leave her there. Her presence in the HoC seriously pees off the Fishwife and Fatso Blackford, so it has to be a Good Thing.

    1. London probably achieved herd immunity in the first wave – which is what the rest of the country should be allowed to do, so we can all get back to normal life.

        1. Building construction legacy? Sorry, I don’t understand what that has to do with Heathrow.

          1. Heathrow is preparing to assess companies largely involved in civil engineering to be part of a UK wide iniative to construct the third runway off site.

            The common factor in the pool of contractors selected for these logistic hubs and the areas of higher COVID-19 infections are the locations of civil engineering and heavy construction jobs involving manual labour and road transport.

            Clearly jobs that cannot be done by working from home.

  38. National Maritime Museum intends to capitalise on the “momentum built up
    by 
the [Black Lives Matter] movement” to 
make changes to its
    collections and to address “aspects of slavery relating to the Royal
    Navy”.
    “BLACKS RULE!”

    1. Mornin gall.

      Eleven days in to BHM,…….. am i alone in eagerly awaiting the important and stunning revelations of how and what black people have actually done to change and make the world a better place..

      1. Depends on what you mean by “black”. If that includes everyone with a slightly darker skin than mine, you’re in with a chance.

        1. As we so often see there’s always a one sided hint of maligning one or other parent.
          Currently there is one of them at this moment in time, on TV far too often. Maligning the white population at every invented opportunity.

      1. The MR is looking very fetching today…must have been seen to by a super cosmetic surgeon…

    1. Yesterday the war queen and I were served Mud Pie with a side of pine cones with a stirred dirt chaser, for dessert was leaves, on a bed of leaves.

      Lovely.

  41. Yesterday afternoon my neighbours’ super-hot 16 year old came knocking at my door, “Hi Jessica, what’s up?”

    “Hi DG” she replied, “Mum & Dad are away for the weekend, I’m just starting to realise I’m probably going to get a bit bored on my own so just thinking of ways to amuse myself. I thought I might paaarty, get wasted, perhaps get laid.” She looked me up and down seductively and asked “So what are you up to this weekend?” I quickly blurted out that I had nothing planned.

    Anyway, now I’m dog-sitting all weekend while she’s off getting stoned and screwed!

        1. Thanks Dev. I might buy Matt’s 2020 little book this year. I have some of his earlier ones plus an original cartoon I bought many years ago.

    2. Morning Dev – If it was the post that you posted late last night the Matt cartoon article does not click up this morning. I get the Telegraph page. The narrative and the cartoons were very good and I hadn’t seen some of them.

    2. As I posted some days ago, Wee Krankie’s husband, Peter Murrell, was instrumental in trying to get Salmond “fitted-up” on these charges.

      At the time, Salmond – always a more charismatic politician than Wee Krankie – had hinted that he was considering returning to active politics and Murrell saw this as a possible threat to his wife’s position.

      1. Wee Eck is – I believe – threatening lawsuits and exposure (if you’ll forgive the word) against both Murrells and others.

    2. Good, I trust that the bad-tempered Scot, Mr Jock O’Vitch, is in line for a good thrashing.

        2. The third set was a bit worrying at times but it was the right result in the end. Well done Rafa!

      1. I thought that you, above all, would have been ‘nose-to-screen’ all afternoon, sweetie ! … x

  45. Of course it is more or less impossible for a black person to be a racist.

    But this woman has gone too far – she can make racially obnoxious comments about white people or Christians – but she has overstepped the mark making racial or religious comments about Jews. (She would not have dared making sick jokes about Muslims!)

    DM story

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8826999/Grazia-magazine-sacks-new-diversity-champion-posting-anti-Semitic-Twitter-rants.html

    Grazia magazine sacks its new ‘diversity champion’ for posting anti-Semitic Twitter rants – including one which read, ‘Auschwitz gas chamber music LMAO’
    Grazia magazine sacks its new ‘diversity champion’ for posting anti-Semitic Twitter rants
    Author and ‘body positivity’ blogger Stephanie Yeboah (left and right) was hired as a contributing editor by the fashion and lifestyle weekly (inset) last month to ‘fight for diversity, inclusion and women’s rights’. But the 31-year-old activist has been axed over hateful remarks about the Holocaust including ‘every Jew has an attic but not every attic has Jews’, and a bizarre tweet which said: ‘AUSCHWITZ Gas Chamber Music LMAO SMH (laughing my a*** off, shaking my head).’

    1. How can anything be ‘more impossible’, Rastus?

      The BLM movement and even “Black History Month” can be easily construed as racist.

      1. If we had a MOWO ( Music of White Origin ) awards we would be wrong – but MOBO is ok.

        As for the Black Police Association – ????? Anyone heard of the White version?

    2. Judging by the size of her arris, the impact when it hit the ground must have sounded like a nuclear explosion.

    3. According to her personal blog, she says, “I am happy in my skin” ……

      Lucky her ….. so much skin, so much happiness.

        1. But it’s fine, Ndovu! She’s happy in her skin and that means she gets to tell us that we mustn’t judge her!! 🙄😱

      2. What a pretty young thing. Just doesn’t understand the imperialist, racist culcher in which she has had the misfortune to be brought up.

        She ought to see if Lineker has room for her…

      1. Degraded? I would say that it is now utterly meaningless, having been so badly abused by politicians in particular. If you can run fast or knock a ball about you are in line for a gong, presumably because an Olympic medal, followed by millions ‘earned’ by advertising stuff, just isn’t enough. Madness.

      2. What’s worse, the RF only ever meet people like them! Reinforces the bubble of the ghastly new elite.

        1. the RF only ever meet people like them

          That is about a million miles from being accurate. The media may make a meal out of such meetings but the royals meet all sorts of people all the time (even if they have to do it virtually at present). Lots of business people – in all sorts of businesses – meet up with them, get the chance to talk to them and yes – get gongs. It’s no good reading the headlines – you have to read the whole list.

        1. I have a vague recollection that their communications were badly hit by one of the recent storms.

    3. I commented on the article to say that this was done 26 years ago by a guy called James Finn Garner, who re-told traditional fairy tales for the politically-correct, humour-bypassed numpties around at the time! He did it with great skill and a lot of fun! I can’t imagine that the screechy, po-faced wokelet Huq will come even close, and she probably doesn’t do irony either!

          2. Little Miss Mufffet sat on a tuffet,
            Knickers all tattered and torn.
            It wasn’t a spider, that’d sat down beside her,
            But a cultural enricher with the horn.

  49. Bummer.
    Yesterdays rain started coming up our neighbours drains. 01:30 today visit by pump wagon to drain their place. They were back this lunchtime for more pumping and video inspection that shows that the sewers have collapsed. So, we all can’t use water (common sewer) until it’s fixed – whenever that might be.
    So, toilets all closed off, sinks and showers too. Was forced to discover a new use for the weird green food recycling bags once the internal pressure became too great :-((
    Looks like we’ll be finding a hotel tomorrow once it’s clarified with the insurance company.

      1. I’d like a nice, long, comfy poo, but a “bash & carry” doesn’t give the same experience…
        First world problems, eh?

          3. She doesn’t sound Indian – and has that funny “crokey” voice so beloved of young females these days.

          4. I think she’s probably high caste, studied all over the place etc, hence the international accent.

          5. As Yank as they come – for an Indian:

            “Sangita is broadly interested in the politics and economics of inequality and making services work in India. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and received a BS from the University of Pennsylvania. After college, Sangita spent several years working in New York in economic consulting but soon became discontent and moved to India where she oversaw a randomized evaluation of a microinsurance program for farmers in Gujarat with the Centre for Microfinance. Sangita holds an MPA in Economics and Public Policy with a Concentration in Urban Policy from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.”

          6. “….and received a BS from the University of Pennsylvania”??

            I didn’t really think that Universities offered degrees in Bullshit but it seems that they do!

          7. As I travelled by taxi from the centre of Bombay to Juhu, where I was staying, I remember seeing a child defecating on a pavement in broad daylight, oblivious to those around him.

          1. I’d recommend a portaloo. Motorhome loos can be somewhat temperamental. I speak from experience.

        4. What a horrible thing to happen, Obers! How long do you think it will go on………?

        5. Get yourself a “jobbie-wheecher”, Herr Obst.

          They work much like a medieval trebuchet. There’s a fixed bucket, mounted on an arm kept under tension by weights, which when released, “wheechs” the waste matter away.

          Only thing to remember is to ensure the safety is on before you sit on the bucket.

          1. Aah! The Billy Connelly aeroplane loo joke! Fabulous! My Dad was crying with laughter at that one!

    2. Oh, bad luck Sir. What an awful annoyance. What about the puddy tats?

      I’m so glad i chose to live on a hill. *he says smugly.

      1. #meetoo… side of a hill. The house downhill of us got the problems, but we can’t use our water.

        1. When all our drains failed, the neighbours at the bottom of the Grove were treated to our sewage all across their gardens. I’m so glad i was using Waitrose quilted. 🙁

    3. Insurance company? “Please don’t hang up…your call is (not) important to us…”

      Best of luck, Paul. My experience of insurers is that they are delighted – and very swift – to take your money; but painfully slow in even thinking about paying out…

  52. That’s me for this dull, wet Sunday. Spent the last hour hanging four pictures. The bloody plaster was either too hard or too soft. The nails with the picture hooks were of crap quality and bent. Why is nothing decent made any more? I ended up quite cross…and will go and pour myself some restorative.

    A demain.

  53. Margaret Ferrier refuses to quit and says 800-mile round trip from Scotland to Commons was a ‘blip’. 11 October 2020.

    The Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP blamed “muddled rules” for the trip and claimed Covid-19 “makes you act out of character“.

    Hmmm. A previously unknown symptom! Does this explain young people surging out of the pubs at ten o’clock? The Prime Ministers dictatorial policies? The murderous utterances of Matt Hancock? Whatever Ms Ferrier is not going to quit because she could not find another job that pays as well before she retires!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/11/margaret-ferrier-refuses-quit-says-800-mile-round-trip-scotland/

    1. The rot set in when MPs were paid.

      Now they expect to live very comfortably on far too generous salaries and expenses and the result is that politics is now crammed full of human dross.

      1. One of the World’s best run countries pays its MPs extraordinarily high salaries, the rationale being that this encourages the brightest and best to step forward for election and, once elected, discourages them from corruption and inefficiency as they do not want to lose such an income. Any guesses as to what country?

        1. Do they get the massive expenses that our lot do? Those untaxed payments make our MPs more than well paid.

          3. I could perhaps to tolerate a malign dictatorship if it was efficient but our lot isn’t even that.

      2. 300 years ago it was blatantly corrupt. Then they disguised their corruption. Now they’re just useless.

        However, I do not believe it is actually ministers who are responsible. Their inept, that’s a given. However the advice they’re given is where the problems come from.

      3. Were they paid in Trollope’s day? He paints quite a depressing picture of the HoC.
        I know far too many MPs from university. Not a trustworthy lot, en masse. One of the few trustworthy people I know who wanted to become an MP was aggressively blocked from Central Office in the Cameron/Gove days.

      1. Perhaps Ian Blackford will make that apology on behalf of MF at PMQs. I don’t think MF will be in the HoC for some time.

          1. Since numbers in the debating chamber – and indeed in the Palace of Westminster – are currently limited many (especially the most distant) MPs have been attending and voting, virtually. He is last recorded as speaking, virtually, on 7th October. He has spoken a lot since Parliament restarted, despite not being in London.

          2. He appears at PM Questions and asks his 2 questions but doesn’t get the answers he wants from Boris.

        2. That bloated windbag doesn’t get a look-in here, one whiff of his windbaggery and off it goes.

      2. Of course, N; I’m sure it must have been the very first thing she said when she realised that she was in the mire!

    1. So why have supermarket cashiers in countries that use mainly cash not been dropping like flies then?
      Fake news!

        1. Even after well over a decade here, I continue to be surprised by how many French people use cheques for all sorts of purchases.

          The supermarkets’ tills are set up to print everything out ready for signature. It’s a real pain as the writer then rummages through handbag or man pouch to find acceptable ID.

          3. True.

            Our supermarkets are ready and have pens to hand!

            Not that they always write straight away.

      1. As Sue E will tell you, keep running the test and anything will eventually come up positive.

      2. I do, because these guys know what they are doing and scientists don’t actually make a habit of lying about stuff.

        But what can survive in an experimental situation and what will be around in a practical situation are so vastly different that it really makes very little difference to what one does on a daily basis. Just means that hand washing remains a good thing to do – but there are so many other nasty bugs, of so many sorts, that regular hand-washing makes sense anyway.

        1. Scientists may not make a habit of lying, but they can be prone to confirmation bias and their findings are not immune from being cherry picked by Civil servants and Government Ministers to support a particular political line.
          I suspect, as with Global Warming, we have a touch of both going on here.

          1. Bob, you make the usual mistake of thinking that those who are advising government, as opposed to the virologists to whom I was referring, are scientists. I have never called them that, I will never call them that; unlike many here who frequently and erroneously do so.
            Epidemiology, as a study of epidemics which have occurred is science; within the broadest meaning of the term, it would be better described as statistical than scientific and any scientist will tell you that statistics is a tool used by scientists rather than a science in itself. Epidemiology as a forecasting tool shatters the first principle of all science, a principle any budding scientist learns somewhere around the age 12 (at the latest) and never forgets; to wit “never, ever, extrapolate beyond your data”.

            The study of how long a virus can remain alive in a given set of circumstances is measurable, the results are data and scientists are very chary about lying about data. Their data may, at some point, be superseded by further data but it is data and therefore worthwhile. Forecasts or, more accurately, guesstimates do not refer to any known data at all and have nothing to do with science.

            Sadly the members of the government are included amongst those who do not know the difference between science and psuedo-science and have packed their advisory panel with those who specialise in the latter.

        2. “….. these guys know what they are doing and scientists don’t actually make a habit of lying about stuff.”

          Oh really? Where have you been for the last seven months? The Government scientists have been caught out lying their heads off time and time again. Mind you, you’re half-right – they certainly know what they’re doing.

          After all, they are the best scientists money can buy, and Gates has an awful lot of money.

          EDIT: I see the “cailleach” has downvoted me yet again, but it’s OK – I have an “eòlas cronachaidh” which protects me against her evil-eye!
          ;¬)

          1. Precisely. This faux pandemic is organised crime but on a global scale. The supposed government experts are nothing of the kind but civil servants pretending to a knowledge of epidemiology.

            Ferguson was discredited years ago having caused the needless destruction of our milk and beef herds with his wanton predictions of deaths amongst the population, predictions which never transpired.

            Our present government is incompetent and unwilling to admit to its mistakes. The mask advice tells us everything we need to know about this corrupt administration.

            God bless Donald Trump, the only leader prepared to confront Soros, Gates, the Bankers and Mafia.

    3. Be interesting to know just how many shop assistants, postmen, dustmen and other willing suppliers of utilitarian service copped it from the Plague.

      Very few – would be my guess.

    4. Weird. I read that the virus does not survive on such surfaces. Are these idiots in government trying to confuse us, now that their deep fraud has been exposed for all to see?

    1. I’m assuming it is not being reported, are you certain that that clip is today?

      Do you have a link to a newspaper or TV channel today?

  57. Having seen an earlier post wondering where Jack and Jill are, one is tempted to say “all rumours of our demise are exaggerated!!” We are well, Jack is still sticking pins in his effigy of Mr Trump, I am keeping calm and enjoying my wine!!!

    2. Just remind him that things could be worse. You could have had Hillary over the past 4y and could still get Biden Kamelarse for the next 4.

      1. Why do people keep giving that Clinton bitch the honour of referring to her by her first name? No other president or presidential hopeful gets that treatment!

          2. Absolutely nothing! She isn’t running for President of the US though.
            Perhaps the comparison was a little unjust. They were the first three female celebs called by their first name alone that came to mind.

    2. The cellar is my downfall. There is something about stairs that wipes my memory clean. Unfortunately there are too many things I could have been going to the cellar for!

  61. SIR – My poor old mother was recently diagnosed with Covid-19 and ever since, she spends all her time just gazing through the window.

    I want to let her back in, but my wife is having none of it.

    Paddy Reilly
    Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan

  62. Parents who used surrogates driven out of Russia amid crackdown on ‘non-traditional’ families. 11 October 2020.

    Conservative politicians are seeking to entrench heterosexual families as the only socially approved form of household

    There are no legal grounds to go after single parents in Russia even if they happen to be gay but President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly conservative rhetoric in recent years emboldened a large number of politicians to push for legislation effectively discriminating LGBT people and prioritising traditional heterosexual marriage.

    Who could believe this? It is stranger than fiction! Russia defender of Christian values. The land of the brave and the home of the free?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/11/gay-parents-driven-russia-government-targets-surrogacy-clinics/

  67. Afternoon, all. I am heartened by a long conversation I had with my youthful (he’s in his early twenties) neighbour whom I met on his way back from the gym when I was walking my dog this morning. He railed against the closing of the hospitality industry, said the government hadn’t got a clue and was making up illogical rules as they went along, were wrecking the economy and promising money we didn’t have; increasing taxes, he concluded, was not the way to get the economy back on its feet – what was the point of working when so much was taken in tax? He believes in personal responsibility and ended with the classic observation, “Freedom is what’s important”. There is hope for us yet!

          3. He seems to have been brought up on a good dose of sense; he voted to Leave and is a staunch Brexiteer for one thing.

    2. Our daughter and son were pro everything that was being done in the early days.

      They have now seen the light. Our son lost his job on Thursday. Dreadful/

      1. A young cousin of mine had just left her job to start another one when the whole lockdown kicked off.
        The new job was organising adventure holidays, I think. Anyway, it disappeared before she could even start it.

        Hope your son finds something else soon. There are still a lot of vacancies in Germany, it would not be bad to get them filled by Britons before Merkel decides to import another million illiterate people with an average IQ of 85.

          3. Integrated with les Boches? Sieg heil! I’m afraid that of all the continentals, I find the Germans the hardest to stomach. I get on better with the Dutch, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Italians, the Portuguese and the French. I have friends among those nationalities; among the Germans, I only have acquaintances.

          4. I dislike the the Belgians & tolerate the Dutch. The Swedes are lazy & stupid. I lived in Germany for 16 years & had a great time.

        2. before Merkel decides to import another million illiterate people with an average IQ of 85.

          Wow, when did she become so choosey?

      3. Should really be a down vote.

        I fear that many, many, young people are going to be finding out the hard way that Government experts are not to be trusted.

          1. Just in time to watch as Labour confiscate any inheritances they might otherwise have received from their parents and grandparents.

    4. On the other hand, I had an outside lunch today with three ladies with whom I used to work, that is, we worked in the same building. They are scared stiff of the virus, rely on the MSM for their information. They don’t seem to have had any alerts in their heads ‘something odd is going on here’ and are swallowing all the claptrap. One had even volunteered to be tested from her home on a weekly basis in exchange for the princely sum of £15 a test. My gaster was flabbered. This particular woman has an MA (not the Cantab variety). One of the group only had not completed tertiary education, and that was because she dropped out mid-course. I was denounced as a conspiracy theorist, urged to get the vaccine when it arrives, not to mention the annual ‘flu vaccine. They cannot see that their freedoms are being taken from them, they do not look beyond the ‘well, it’s for a good cause, it’s what we need to do.’ I despair.

      1. I suspect it’s the recent tertiary education which has caused the problem; my neighbour got a job and didn’t go to university. I went to university back in the seventies when leftism was only beginning to creep in (plus I studied the sociology of state socialist societies and visited the pre-Glasnost’ USSR and saw for myself).

        1. I have to say that the one of our group who was not as vociferous as the others was not from this country, and kept fairly quiet – she was from a very eastern eu country and no doubt, I realise with a few hours’ hindsight, recognised the state taking away liberties when she saw it.

          Hope rests with your neighbour’s generation and younger. The fight is for them, we pass the baton into their hands now. By the time they pick it up we shall be long since passed on.

    1. “I’m sorry Harry but One already has six in One’s household and you know the rule of One!”

    4. I’m terribly sorry Harry, but monarchs have retained one absolute power”

      “Guards, Orf wiv ‘is ‘ead.”

    5. A Royal that gets behind the climate change agenda is the equivalent of them saying, ‘ let them eat cake’.

    6. The one and only reason the ginger minger is coming back is to avoid having to pay Tax to the American government. Not to see his family. Who he doesn’t give two hoots for.

    7. William who I once thought had his head screwed on has now jumped on the climate change bandwagon, this is not going to look good in a few years when commoners are starving while they are still in their castles saving the planet.

      2. I remember that when the Princess of Wales died Richard Attenborough said how brave she had been to support AIDS charities. The fact of the matter is that these were ‘trendy’ charities to support if you wanted to do a bit of virtue signalling. On the other hand It would have taken real bravery for the Princess of Wales to have publicly supported the Distressed Gentlefolk’s Association!

        And today it would be a very brave member of the royal family who dared to say that he or she thought that climate change was a big hoax.

        1. That is the case about AIDS charities now, but in those days it wasn’t. It really did cause shockwaves when she publicly hugged an AIDS sufferer.
          Hard to remember now how different everything was before the crazies all found each other on Twitter. Days when we could read the Daily Telegraph for our news, and the letters for other readers’ opinions!

          PS: the Royals should stop keeping such bad company, then they would come across real people who know that the carbon footprint is a hoax!

  70. Darren Grimes real ‘crime’ was to win his (5 year) case against the Electoral Commission.

    Darren Grimes is being investigated for stirring up racial hatred – and that’s patently absurd

    Are journalists now going to be arrested if the people they’re interviewing say things that could conceivably stir up hatred?

    TOBY YOUNG
    11 October 2020 • 3:08pm
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2019/07/19/TELEMMGLPICT000204207789_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqhjWp680NeA84cw6CZdnx7K8AkPVyf3uffXT739t-jPI.jpeg?imwidth=680
    As the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, I’ve been busy of late. The enemies of free speech don’t rest, so I have to be ready to go in to bat for our members, day or night.

    But even I was surprised when the journalist Darren Grimes contacted me last week to say that the police wanted to interview him in connection with remarks made by Dr David Starkey in an interview he’d done with him on June 30.

    He was asked by police to come and be interviewed at a police station under caution and threatened with arrest if he refused to attend “voluntarily”.

    The crime Darren’s being investigated for is stirring up racial hatred – which is patently absurd. The only hatred David Starkey stirred up was against himself. As a consequence of his remarks, for which he has unreservedly apologised, he has lost every position he held.

    Are journalists and broadcasters now going to be arrested if the people they’re interviewing say things that could conceivably stir up hatred?

    On February 2, I appeared on Good Morning Britain to debate Kehinde Andrews, a Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham University. In the course of that debate, he said “the British Empire did more harm than the Nazis” and that whiteness was a form of “psychosis”.

    Is Piers Morgan now going to be dragged into a police station for interviewing Professor Andrews on the grounds that his remarks could have stirred up hatred against white people?

    In a free and democratic society, it is paramount that journalists and broadcasters are permitted to interview a wide range of people, including those likely to make controversial remarks. Threatening them with arrest if their interviewees say something offensive will have a chilling effect on free speech, which is the lifeblood of democracy.

    It goes without saying that David Starkey isn’t guilty of a criminal offence either. As Lord Justice Sedley said when upholding the right of free speech in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative … Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

    The Public Order Act, which criminalises stirring up racial hatred, is intended to preserve public order, not regulate speech and debate. As the Crown Prosecution Service says in its own guidelines: “The purpose of public order law is to ensure that individual rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are balanced against the rights of others to go about their daily lives unhindered.”

    Because stirring up racial hatred is such a serious crime and carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison, a person can only be charged with the offence if the Attorney General gives her consent.

    I find it hard to believe that Suella Braverman QC, or this Conservative Government, would consent to such a grotesque assault on the freedom of the press.

    The Free Speech Union has found a top criminal solicitor in the form of Luke Gittos, who is so outraged by this attack on free speech that he has taken on the case pro bono. He says: “This is an unprecedented use of public order legislation to target a member of the broadcast media. It should concern anyone who believes in freedom of the press.”

    Given that Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has now sided with Darren, I would be amazed if the police continue to insist that he submit himself for questioning.

    This should never have been a police matter, and I hope they drop the investigation immediately.

    1. The police authorities may well now drop the investigation.
      The real cause for concern is that they even started an investigation, let alone reach the stage where Grimes is “invited” to attend a station to be interviewed.
      There can be no doubt anymore that the police service is being run with the unspoken mandate of being a political instrument of the state, law and order no longer being its primary function.
      When I was a child I was taught that if I was in trouble to seek out a policeman, no longer could I teach my grandchildren that message.
      I do not recognize my country any more, it is looking more and more like a third rate dictatorial run banana republic.

  71. Tonight on the BBC “Enslaved With Samuel L Jackson” (sic). “A look at 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World…”
    Samuel L Jackson is descended from slaves brought to North America from Gabon. Poor thing. I suppose this is to make us feel sorry for people who were too slow or silly to escape being enslaved, usually by their relatives, tribal leaders, and Arabs. Around 12,000,000 apparently.

    Slavery was abolished in the USA as long ago as 1865 so the blacks in the USA who are descended from the slaves of that time, are maybe the fifth generation since then, the great- great- great- great-grandchildren of freed slaves. One would think that they have had enough time to avail themselves of the endless opportunities that the United States has offered.
    Samual L Jackson certainly has. His net worth is estimated at $250m. He is the 13th highest paid actor on the planet.
    Do I detect a failure of the irony meter?

  73. Thought for the day:

    An under 30 is more likely to be stabbed by a Bame than die of Covid.
    Anyone is more likely to be mugged by a Bame than die of Covid.

    Are we putting lockdown in the wrong place?

      1. It was outside; a graveside service. No masks required (although some wore them), but we got wet because there was a fine, soaking mizzle. The deceased’s dog was there to see him off and was very well behaved.

          1. I shall want mine to follow my coffin, assuming I’ve still got a dog when I pop my clogs – I’ll put it in my memorandum of wishes.

  76. To follow on from thought for the day.

    Thought for the night :

    Would the world really be any worse off if there was no UN and no WHO, with all their subsets?

    I suspect not.

          3. She may just be bored, who knows? Maybe her broomstick’s in for a service and she has nothing to do but fester over her keyboard.

          4. She has been busy; I’ve collected a couple tonight. I’m off to down a glass of Chilean Pinot Noir to celebrate.

          11. I still find it difficult to comprehend. Mind you the same intolerance of the honestly expressed views of others is common in certain movements such as BLM, Antifa and Extinction Rebellion activists.

          12. I first noticed it in the anti-hunting brigade. They were incapable of arguing their case. Once one started to put forward arguments they reverted to telling you that you were wrong and then vilifying you. BLM, Antifa and XR are merely progressions in the trend.

          13. I recall the animal rights brigade intimidated a researcher at The Babraham Institute when I was the architect for their Immunology and Signalling Laboratory mid to late nineties.

            The activists sent a package by post which when opened contained some wires, a battery and a message ‘Bang! You are dead’.

          16. I am afraid I am guilty of avoiding Jennifer’s posts, so apologies for that. I find that skipping them is better for my blood pressure on the whole, even if I do occasionally miss something.

          18. I recall the animal rights brigade intimidated a researcher at The Babraham Institute when I was the architect for their Immunology and Signalling Laboratory mid to late nineties.

            The activists sent a package by post which when opened contained some wires, a battery and a message ‘Bang! You are dead’.

    2. It should appear in your notifications, otherwise hover the mouse over the down vote or down vote yourself and it will show.

  78. Anyone bother to read the “avocado” story in The Grimes? It is written in a way to suggest that evil white imperialists are responsible for beating up and, even, killing, workers on avocado plantations in Kenya.

    The reality is that lots of black Kenyan thugs are beating up and, even, killing underpaid black Kenyan workers (one might even call them slaves).

    Funny thing – not a word from Lammy or other other predictably and perpetually enraged bames.

    1. They’ve taken a similar approach to the story elsewhere.

      White shareholders somewhere, presumably

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