Sunday 12 July: The BBC chases chimerical audiences while alienating loyal viewers

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/2020/07/11/letters-bbc-chases-chimerical-audiences-alienating-loyal-viewers/

802 thoughts on “Sunday 12 July: The BBC chases chimerical audiences while alienating loyal viewers”

  1. Good morning all.
    Just in from a 2h walk to try and spot the comet that is supposed to be visible, but it was rather shy and didn’t shew its self.

    1. Will footballers, cricketers, racing drivers, et al, recognise this in any way?

      1. Don’t be silly. They don’t care about that. No bandwagon to leap on to look popular.

  3. ‘His hatred is infectious’: Tucker Carlson, Trump’s heir apparent and 2024 candidate? 12 July 2020.

    For years, Carlson has stoked racial anxieties and courted white supremacists on his Fox News show – and now, some are speculating he could pick up the pieces if Trump loses

    And in recent weeks, as his ratings have topped previous records, new labels have been mooted for Carlson: heir apparent to Donald Trump, leader of the Republican party and future president.

    Morning everyone. Stepping up the pace in the Presidential Election with this attack on Carlson; probably for the reasons given in the second paragraph. He’s thrashing the pants off CNN!

    This said it doesn’t accuse him of being employed by Russia; the inescapable sign that you have been targeted for extermination by the PTB and their Marxist friends.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/12/tucker-carlson-trump-fox-news-republicans

  4. I managed to extract from the comments a list of BBC appointees whose salary is greater than the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. How many of these earn their pay?:

    Gary Lineker – £ 1,750,000 – £ 1,754, 999
    Chris Evans – £ 1,250,000 – £ 1,254, 999
    Graham Norton – £ 610,000 – £ 614, 999
    Huw Edwards – £ 490,000 – £ 494, 999
    Steve Wright – £ 465,000 – £ 469, 999
    Alan Shearer – £ 440,000 – £ 444, 999
    Andrew Marr – £ 390,000 – £ 394, 999
    Claudia Winkleman – £ 370,000 – £ 374, 999
    Zoe Ball – £ 370,000 – £ 374, 999
    Vanessa Feltz – £ 355,000 – £ 359, 999
    Jason Mohammad – £ 355,000 – £ 359, 999
    Nicky Campbell – £ 340,000 – £ 345, 999
    Stephen Nolan – £ 325,000 – £ 329, 999
    George Alagiah – £ 315,000 – £ 319, 999
    Nick Grimshaw – £ 310,000 – £ 314, 999
    Lauren Laverne – £ 305,000 – £ 309, 999
    Gabby Logan – £ 290,000 – £ 294, 999
    Nick Robinson – £ 290,000 – £ 294, 999
    John Humphrys – £ 290,000 – £ 294, 999
    Jeremy Vine – £ 290,000 – £ 294, 999
    Scott Mills – £ 285,000 – £ 289, 999
    Ken Bruce – £ 280,000 – £ 284, 999
    Dan Walker – £ 280,000 – £ 284, 999
    Evan Davis – £ 275,000 – £ 279, 999
    Jo Whiley – £ 270,000 – £ 274, 999
    Sophie Raworth – £ 265,000 – £ 269, 999
    Emily Maitlis – £ 260,000 – £ 264, 999
    Mishal Husain – £ 255,000 – £ 259, 999
    Fiona Bruce – £ 255,000 – £ 259, 999
    Laura Kuenssberg – £ 250,000 – £ 254, 999
    Martha Kearney – £ 245,000 – £ 249, 999
    Justin Webb – £ 245,000 – £ 249, 999
    Simon Mayo – £ 245,000 – £ 249, 999
    Sarah Montague – £ 240,000 – £ 244, 999
    Jonathan Sopel – £ 240,000 – £ 244, 999
    Sara Cox – £ 235,000 – £ 239, 999
    Mark Chapman – £ 230,000 – £ 234, 999
    Greg James – £ 225,000 – £ 229, 999
    Victoria Derbyshire – £ 215,000 – £ 219, 999
    Jeremy Bowen – £ 215,000 – £ 219, 999
    Amol Rajan – £ 210,000 – £ 214, 999
    Jermain Jenas – £ 210,000 – £ 214, 999
    Katya Adler – £ 205,000 – £ 209, 999
    Ian Wright – £ 205,000 – £ 209, 999
    Louise Minchin – £ 205,000 – £ 209, 999
    Clive Myrie – £ 200,000 – £ 204, 999
    Sue Barker – £ 195,000 – £ 199, 999
    Mary Berry – £ 195,000 – £ 199, 999
    Fergal Keane – £ 195,000 – £ 199, 999
    John McEnroe – £ 190,000 – £ 194, 999
    Naga Munchetty – £ 190,000 – £ 194, 999
    Charlie Stayt – £ 190,000 – £ 194, 999
    Tina Daheley – £ 185,000 – £ 189, 999
    Mark Easton – £ 180,000 – £ 184, 999
    Annie Mac – £ 180,000 – £ 184, 999
    Adrian Chiles – £ 180,000 – £ 184, 999
    Clare Balding – £ 175,000 – £ 179, 999
    Nihal Arthanayake – £ 175,000 – £ 179, 999
    Rachel Burden – £ 170,000 – £ 174, 999
    James Naughtie – £ 170,000 – £ 174, 999
    Simon Jack – £ 170,000 – £ 174, 999
    Jonathan Agnew – £ 170,000 – £ 174, 999
    Reeta Chakrabarti – £ 170,000 – £ 174, 999
    Ben Brown – £ 165,000 – £ 169, 999
    Trevor Nelson – £ 165,000 – £ 169, 999
    Sarah Smith – £ 160,000 – £ 164, 999
    John Pienaar – £ 160,000 – £ 164, 999
    Shaun Keaveny – £ 160,000 – £ 164, 999
    Orla Guerin – £ 160,000 – £ 164, 999
    Mark Radcliffe – £ 155,000 – £ 159, 999
    Jane Hill – £ 155,000 – £ 159, 999
    Eddie Mair – £ 150,000 – £ 159, 999
    Joanna Gosling – £ 150,000 – £ 154, 999
    Clara Amfo – £ 150,000 – £ 154, 999
    Dotun Adebayo – £ 150,000 – £ 154,999

    1. Never seen/heard of 1/2 of them. Anyone being paid more than £250k is getting far too much for what they do.

          1. Well if he wrote it, without doing proper research first, then he’s a bigger idiot than I thought he was.

      1. I’m sure in their way they do earn their income.

        The problem is that their funding is by force rather than choice. If, in a market they are still paid those salaries, fine. While the income is taken from the earner without an option of choice then their salaries are not justifiable.

      2. Can anyone please explain to me what people like Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz do other than be paid to be famous?

        1. I’ve been racking my brains and I can’t come up with any explanation for the enormous amounts of dosh flung at these people!

          1. Not making any insinuations about individuals at the BBC, but I once met a young artist who was having huge amount of taxpayer money flung at him via a non-profit institution in the UK. By coincidence, he had spent time at the home of the man who was at the time the head of this organisation. He had met all kinds of famous people too, like Francis Bacon.

          3. I couldn’t comment on anyone at the BBC, but relations may have been involved.
            PS the young man in question had worked for a well known independent broadcaster as well. Amazing how these plum rewards for which many young people would give their right arm all tend to fall into the laps of the same people!

          5. Oh yes, that well known far right wing ex Cabinet minister who was a former member of PIE..what was her name again…

            It’s quite disturbing to think that there are people reading bilge like that tweet and believing it.

          9. No, I was being sarcastic – I’m pretty sure the BBC man was being deadly serious!

          11. Picture looks like a Norwegian police lawyer. Yellow shoulderboards and stars.

          13. Mr Holdstock – are you referring to the Paedophile Information Exchange? That’s Left wing invention. Not to mention the eugenics policies. Those are Left as well.

            A lie gets around the world before the truth has got out of bed. These people will do anything to deflect blame.

    4. Morning J

      It is not as if they have contributed a skill to their country, they haven’t invented anything , or created something to benefit the country.

      All they do is open their manicured gobs!

      I am shocked , so does the TV licence pay their salaries?

      1. From the point of view of the government and its apparatchiks, they are a useful source of propaganda and keep people unthinkingly rooted to their sofas.
        Morning, Maggie.

          1. I value my mental health – and blood pressure – too highly to bother.
            Coffee, chat on NOTTL and snoozing small dog are far more restful. (Thank goodness Spartie isn’t a morning person.)

          2. Missy has had her breakfast & gone back to bed (currently the mat outside the shower) – just purrfect for a Sunday morning.

      2. Yes, but by removing comments, there is nothing we can do about it to make them accountable. Furthermore, they control Freeview, so if we want to watch anything other than the dosh thrown up by the likes of Sky, Netflix, Prime and TV Sport, we have to cough up the dough for their talentless and bigoted primadonnas, and their producers who seek to irritate and enrage rather than to inform and entertain.

        Nobody’s put the management on the list of snouts in the trough. Nor the hedge fund derivatives traders and development consultants who scoop up any spare billions going. They are clearly above the law. Regulations and restrictions are just for little people, so the big ones can corner the market and write their own cheques, forging our signatures.

        Then there’s Putin. He shows the world how it should be done.

    5. How many of them also have “production companies” that make the programmes that the BBC buy? In my opinion Kirsty Wark is a millionairess as a result of her relationship with the BBC, for example.

  5. Morning, everyone. Up early because when wandering down the garden yesterday I noticed that the fish pond had disappeared. Bit of a shock! Fortyish fish in only inches of water.
    Refilled with the hose, and filter cleaned. Crossed fingers.
    Gone again this morning. Rats!

      2. Yurss. I’ve just turned the filter off because there was water shooting out of it. Luckily someone on a local Facebook group gave me the number of a man who knows about such things, so hopefully tomorrow I can get him to look. I’m just sorry for the fish!

        1. Are there any left ashes? It’s such a shame when it happens. I lost several very beautiful fish to a herring (as my younger daughter called it!)

          1. My next-door-neighbour, at a house I once lived at, was furious when she found the carcase of a fish next to her pond. She was screaming that a “bloody herring” had stolen one of her prize goldfish.

            I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the dead “goldfish” was the remains of a red mullet that had been dragged out of someone’s dustbin by a cat.

          2. Love it! Barbounia in a pond! The herrings used to sit on the roof of the nearest house to us and take it in turns to nip down and grab breakfast! We had a 3 legged cat at the time and she managed to jump on to the back of one of them! I had visions of her being flown off to goodness knows where – a bit like the auk!

          3. Well, the herring made me smile!

            Yes, thanks; I suspect they’re mightily displeased but they all gathered in the sump during the emergency and appear to be swimming around. They ate heartily yesterday evening; I thought they might be traumatised.

            Such weird things! I didn’t feed them once since Mother died in January, then all of a sudden they are frantic for food every day.

          4. Yes they are weird but very peaceful. We can’t have them now as the frogs invaded and we have millions (a bit of hyperbole!) of tadpole/froglets and the fish would eat them!

          5. A neighbour of my parents-in-law had a fish pond and was losing them to herons. She put a very realistic looking plastic heron next to the pond, to deter the real things.
            She was very shocked to look out her window early one morning to see another heron either trying to mate with it or attack it, she wasn’t sure which.

            We bought a very expensive cast heron, purely for decoration but it also seemed to be effective in detering others. We no longer bother with ponds, but still occasionally see a heron hunting frogs at the edge of the property. Our heron stands guard by the swimming pool and it’s still handsome.

          7. Seems logical. I should think that anyone who tried to bonk a bronze statue wouldn’t try it again.

            Edited to insert negative.

    2. My grandson is saving up for some sort of whizzy computer thingy.
      After last week, I can thoroughly recommend his pond clearing and mending skills.

        1. Some sort of virtual reality gizmo. All the rage among his chums.
          Look, I just nod and pretend I understand! And stuff his mouth with chocolate Swiss roll before he can ask me any inconvenient questions.

      2. Whilst I would gladly contribute to his whizzy computer thingy fund, I suspect I’m a bit far north to avail myself of his sterling services!

          1. Well, given that we did actually have hail here during the storms a couple of days ago, I’m not ruling it out!

    3. It might be rats, but they don’t normally gnaw away at pond liner. More likely suspect is a heron with a sharp beak that could easily pierce the liner when out fishing.

      Rocks for the fish to hide under only goes so far, and only netting is really effective.

      Someone in my village put some really aggressive giant carp that can take down a heron if it gets too close.

      1. “Someone in my village put some really aggressive giant carp that can take down a heron if it gets too close.”

        Oh yeah. And he has you believing this carp?

      1. Not necessarily. It may be because all the naughty bits don’t have bones.

      2. I was arrested last week. I went to our local cemetery on Tuesday and started digging up an old grave. I was hoping to find some artefacts such as gold rings and the like. After about three hours, with breaks, I had not yet reached the coffin and had sat down to eat lunch. (Cheese and tomato sandwiches.). The police arrived and asked me what I was doing. I told them that it was an archaeological dig, doing scientific research into grave goods of the late 19th century.
        They took me down to the police station and charged me with a long list of things.

    2. I’d imagine because when you’re living day to day with survival being your main goal you really don’t have time and luxury to prat about pretending you’re something you’re not.

  7. As well as the two Police Officers murdered in Texas, allegedly set up by a “come on,” there have been protests about the death of an “unarmed” Black youth who was killed by a Police Officer in Detroit.
    Inconveniently, the Black youth is not only shewn on released bodycam footage as shooting at the officer who shot him, the Officer concerned is Black himself!

    My sympathy & condolences to the Family, Colleagues & Friends of the Texas Officers, but well fucking done to the Black Police Officer from Detroit!

    https://bluelivesmatter.blue/video-bodycam-shows-unarmed-black-man-shooting-at-cops-before-getting-shot/

    1. I guess the nazi left will have nothing to say about the latest death at the hands of a police officer. I’m glad the police officer defended himself successfully.

        1. Until black looters are mindless accept that more police officers are killed by black criminals than have ever killed them, that blacks commit vastly more crime – especially violent crime and set about doing something about that they are simply a whinging Lefty rentamob who should be ignored.

    2. I can see a way forward out of the current morass of racial accusations.
      Police should be issued with colour sensitives guns. That way, white officers will only successfully shoot fellow whitey and black officers will only shoot fellow blacks.
      I’m sure the Chinese can develop such firearms out of melted down western plastic bags.

  9. They’re admitting that “cultural sensitivity” hindered investigation of sweat-shops in Leicester. (No surprise there, then.) A pattern emerges so obvious that the MSM cannot bring themselves to recognise it: cram a load of poorly-paid workers into unsatisfactory working conditions and house them in squalid dormitories, and the infection spreads like wildfire.

    1. Many years ago it was claimed that the vast majority of those machinists in the back streets of Leicester were illegals. Nothing was done.

      1. Would that expose the disgusting failure of uncontrolled massive illegal immigration?

        That in actual fact it’s a lot harder on the illegal and creates and enforces what is effectively slavery?

        Odd that the Left don’t care much once their ego is satisfied.

  10. SIR – My father had very high arches and never tied his shoe laces (Letters, July 5).

    This didn’t cause a problem until he was filming a documentary with the Royal Navy and left a Portsmouth hotel to follow the admiral’s car to the docks. He had, unknowingly, trapped his right-foot lace in the car door, giving him enough leeway to pull off but not enough to reach the brake, and subsequently rear-ended the RollsRoyce at the hotel gates.

    The admiral was surprised but charming about the incident, although he did request a little more caution on his ship. Father still never did his shoe laces up.

    Liz Beaumont
    London SW19

    You’ve just informed the nation, Elizabeth, that your dad was a dangerous and irresponsible idiot. Didn’t he have the common sense to buy slip-on shoes? Couldn’t he see that his ridiculous habit could have caused him to kill someone when he lost control of that car? It’s a shame the gormless clown didn’t trip over those loose shoe laces and break his nose on a lamp post!

    1. 🙂 Morning, Grizz. Saved me some typing!
      Load of bollards; I have high arches, and have always tied shoe laces. Quite frankly, the man was a pathetic attention seeker.

      1. Don’t the vibrant ones go around with the laces of their plimsoles undone?

        1. I have no arches (or “fallen” arches), otherwise known as flat feet. I was a flat-footed flatfoot!

          I prefer to describe myself as plantigrade, a trait which is shared by grizzly bears. 😉

          2. I know the feeling. I’ve received the same mockery all my life.

            As a child I had special shoes made, various “sole-supporting” inserts put in my shoes, much twisting and manipulation of said feet by a sadistic mother (and GPs), all to no avail. I’ve had my feet scientifically measured and scrutinised, and my walking gait analysed by scientists, but all their advice came to nothing: I remained painfully uncomfortable attempting to adopt their suggestions.

            If any new pair of shoes has even a hint of “arch support” in them I find them impossible to wear. I only wear black Reebok training shoes these days since they have flat bottoms and are the only footwear I find comfortable.

            I’ve lost count of the ‘well-meaning’ advice I’ve received from countless people. All of it utterly useless.

          3. And, actually, what’s the problem with flat feet (apart from the shoes issue)? I can walk perfectly well, further than most people, I don’t shimmy my arse as I go. They don’t smell any worse for being flat, and they swim rather well. You can’t even see they are flat, unless walking with wet feet on a concrete swimming pool surround.

          4. In my case I’ve suffered foot pain for most of my life. 12 years ago I had nine titanium screws inserted into my right foot to “fuse” the talar-navilcular joint as a hedge against the arthritis that had set in.

  11. SIR – My father had very high arches and never tied his shoe laces (Letters, July 5).

    This didn’t cause a problem until he was filming a documentary with the Royal Navy and left a Portsmouth hotel to follow the admiral’s car to the docks. He had, unknowingly, trapped his right-foot lace in the car door, giving him enough leeway to pull off but not enough to reach the brake, and subsequently rear-ended the RollsRoyce at the hotel gates.

    The admiral was surprised but charming about the incident, although he did request a little more caution on his ship. Father still never did his shoe laces up.

    Liz Beaumont
    London SW19

    You’ve just informed the nation, Elizabeth, that your dad was a dangerous and irresponsible idiot. Didn’t he have the common sense to buy slip-on shoes? Couldn’t he see that his ridiculous habit could have caused him to kill someone when he lost control of that car? It’s a shame the gormless clown didn’t trip over those loose shoe laces and break his nose on a lamp post!

    1. David Cameron, Theresa May, Priti Patel now Gove. All saying control of our borders. I’ll believe it when i see it. I won’t hold my breath.

      Good morning Miss Plum. Feeling any better?

      1. Good morning Phizzee,
        Close, horse, bolted, stable……..
        Practising my deep breathing to keep calm….!
        Thanks for asking.

        1. Good morning Plum

          Sorry for the state you are in , wretched nuisance for you .

          Politics is just a mess .

          I wonder who has our national interest in their hearts?

          2. Hi Belle….thanks x
            it’s a b88ger…can’t even take Maud walkies.

            Our national interest at heart ? Not our politicians that’s for sure.

            The country is stuffed ….Goodbye ….Hello China.

      2. £700 million to be allocated to provide Border facilities. BBC Radio 4.A bit late. Free ports will be encouraged. Senior Brexiteers saying some of Boris’s proposals contain “poison pills” DT. I believe that too.

        1. £700 million to be allocated to provide Border facilities.

          Yes. Spa resort hotels for the aliens.

        2. As I said over and over and over again on this Nottlers’ site: Boris managed to go into the last election without ever giving any details of how or why his ‘brilliant’ withdrawal agreement was any better than May’s complete surrender deal. (Indeed my repetition even frustrated our friend Peddy who doesn’t like people repeating themselves.) But the fact needed repeating then as is proved by the fact that the Boris WA is now being seen to contain many poison pills.

          Johnson’s evasion was completely intentional and planned. The one person who might have grilled him on live TV about his WA was Andrew Neil and, at the last moment, Boris got out of facing him.

          1. ‘Morning, Rastus.

            Did your saying it over and over and over again do any good?

          3. Sadly, I agree. When the document was written by the EU and accepted by the civil service it was inherently going to be unhelpful to the UK.

            The best we can hope for is that they reject it and negotiations and just ‘force’ us to WTO.

  13. Looks Like George Floyd, Not Derek Chauvin, Killed George Floyd. SST. Larry C Johnson. 12 July 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c54a04968f19e15d219d466c18554701aeb9fe45a3374292f1311f9df1fe3ede.jpg

    The transcript from the body camera worn by J. Alexander Kueng shows clear evidence that George Floyd was suffering respiratory distress before police laid hands on him. He died from a Fentanyl overdose, not from being choked out by Minneapolis police. This news will not bring joy to the crazed, leftist mob screaming to lop off the heads of the Minneapolis police officers who stand accused of “murdering” George Floyd and little attention has been paid to the transcript since its release on July 7. I hope to correct that oversight.

    This is quite interesting since it shows the transcript of a body camera’s recording of Floyd’s arrest. The photo gives a short hand view. Floyd is quite obviously under the influence of drugs!

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/07/looks-like-george-floyd-not-derek-chauvin-killed-george-floyd-by-larry-c-johnson.html#more

    1. Evidence that doesn’t convict Chauvin? That’ll be vaporised pdq. If he survives long enough to appear in court.

    2. This was said right from the start, but howled down by the BLM mob. I very much hope that the police officer won’t be convicted just to prevent more riots.

    1. Spot on and also when did the people of western world accept the responsibility of trying to educate the world’s most ignorant species.

    2. The questions that are never asked by the MSM:

      i) Why should historically Christian countries accept illegal immigrants of a religion which despises them and wishes to destroy them?
      ii) If the Muslim religion is so important to illegal immigrants why don’t they want to go to Muslim countries rather than Christian ones?

      1. Answering your second point.

        They want a global caliphate. They are more than half way there.

      2. There is/was a theory about the Somalian pirates robbing ships. The money was used to spread islam to Australia.
        The ‘destitute’ Somalis were provided with boats fuel and provisions to get to the islands nations in south east Asia, refuel the boats restock provisions and sail on to western Australia. And of course the places where they pre-planned to land are 85% islamic countries.
        Since the Russian navy went into the area were the pirates were operating and destroyed their lively hood by machine gunning them the journeys have stopped.
        Our friends in Perth mentioned some of the people who were actually allowed in to Australia have had the audacity to demand free flights home to visit relatives. On the basis of their Human rights !

        1. If I recall, it wasn’t the Russian navy who were on manoevres elsewhere, but rather an enterprising Moscow travel company specialising in adventure cruises.

          There was a market for well-heeled and intrepid holidaymakers bored with the weekend punch-ups in the woods (their version of the Queensbury Rules is that you’re a wimp if you don’t keep fighting when you’re down; it’s only when the door of the ambulance closes behind you that you’re excused).

          The idea was to arm them to the teeth and then cruise up and down the Somali coast hoping to be boarded by pirates. The ensuing carnage was similar to company of fresh Romans served up to Obelix. They had to fly under a false flag after a while, since the pirates got wise to the Russian tricolor.

          3. That might work. I wonder how one goes about it? One would not need to be too subtle, our English euphemisms may not be understood by non-native speakers.
            ” Hello, Tamara, do you have any boat trips to the Horn of Africa, with exciting extras?”
            “Well no, Tamara, that does sound exciting, but that’s not what I was enquiring about. I’ve got that covered in my next trip to Thailand.”
            “Something more along the lines of big game hunting, at sea, with rifles…?”
            “Oh, you do? Wonderful! Could you email me an itinerary, please?”

          4. I remember seeing video footage of it from along side and behind he deck mounted large calibre machine guns. It looked like great fun to me.
            Perhaps we could persuade them to enter the Thames and carry out their sport from the south bank 😉

      3. They are the advance guard, with the objective of gradually turning the Christian countries Muslim, as has happened in Africa. Not may Coptic Christians left in Egypt.

      5. 321262+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        A,
        because lab/lib/con bloody well say so, & the peoples obviously agree via the polling booth.
        B.
        The UK welfare system beats all.

      6. 321262+ up ticks,
        R,
        Look upon it as with North Sea Gas each muslim being a conversion unit & lab / lib / con & a cast of supporting fools are the overseeing installers.

    3. From another site

      “What are some good Polish sayings?
      Polish sayings and expressions that make you laugh 1 Stuff yourself with hay. Comments are closed. 2 Don’t call the wolf from the forest. Poles don’t tempt fate, they don’t call the wolf from the forest. 3 To throw peas onto a wall. This is how Poles describe being ignored… 4 To drill a hole in someone’s belly. DIY-driven saying expressing annoyance or pestering. More items”

      No 2 says it all. – They won’t have them – We have BF ferrying them in.

    4. So what you’re saying is, you’re an evil man who is a xenophobic racist?

      Cripe they’re desperate sewage. Such hatred and bigotry in their every disparaging word. Tell you what ‘what you’re saying is’ woman, you be the one to lose family when another suicide bombers kills people. You be the one to get raped, your throat slit, knifed.

      Instead you live in a nice, safe little bubble.

    1. Well one thing is for sure, if ‘sir know it all’ becomes the next PM there certainly wont be any money left in the kitty.

  17. Morning all, summer has returned 😃
    England are in trouble in a cricket match.

      1. I didn’t even know it was on until i saw it in the TV listings.
        I feel the same about all sport now VOM, pathetic childlike displays of grovelling over a US felon who died in custody.

    1. It might appear to be completely stupid, but on the positive side she’s teaching her children to obey traffic lights.

      Not so amusing if they ignore a red light and step out in front of a car.

          1. Perhaps she can’t think & walk at the same time.

            Sad to say I knew a dear old lady in Germany who was great company & we spent a lot of time together, including walking in the country. But every time the conversation got interesting she would stop walking.

          2. The Americans used to say that Gerald Ford couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

          3. There was also a tale that when Ford stabbed the back of his hand with a fork at a State banquet, 2 security men rushed up & wrestled the fork to the ground.

  19. I wondered why Soros was funding so many District Attorney’s elections……….

    Now I Know

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0614f679d1c90273988dbfee7564b78f98091acb97a9b85407a3a817442a1d30.jpg

    Meet St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.

    She issued the
    search warrant that sent St Louis cops to the McCloskey home to seize
    the guns, despite the fact the McCloskey’s have broken no laws.

    Ms Gardner made clear her stance on the incident when she condemned how
    “peaceful protesters were met by guns and a violent assault” despite no
    shots being fired and no physical contact reported during the
    confrontation between the demonstrators and the McCloskeys.

    She has released every person arrested during weeks of rioting in St Louis following the police killing of George Floyd.

    Ms Gardner is one of several “progressive” prosecutors elected in the past
    few years whose campaign was allegedly bankrolled by billionaire
    currency speculator George Soros

    3. How far has that old git’s money been spread, we seem to have have a dreadful judiciary in the UK right now………………..hang on some one is banging on the front door !

  20. No shame in being thick. As long as you’re not taking a degree in astrophysics
    Rod Liddle – Sunday July 12 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    A university professor, seething with the sort of restrained rage that I assume afflicts these people most of the time, once told me a story about a contretemps between him and a student. He had marked the student’s essay and given it a very low grade because it was, as he put it, “abject illiterate gibberish, devoid of argument, intelligence, grammar, syntax or point”.

    The student, a woman, complained about the grading to the university authorities, who swiftly summoned the professor for a chat. Why did he give the essay such a low grade? The professor explained. He was then asked: “You do know that this student has trouble reading, writing and understanding things?” He replied that he did indeed, because before every seminar he had to email the woman, in bold 20-point type, the gist of what he would be saying condensed into about four words.

    “Well, then, you need to make allowances in marking,” he was told. How? “You need to imagine what the essay might have been like if she were capable of reading and writing and understanding, and then mark it accordingly.”

    I thought this story hilarious and revealing. I had naively supposed that in further education a certain academic rigour still asserted itself: not so. Not even on the politics course at this Russell Group university.

    I have no idea what the student is doing now. She’s probably somewhere on the Labour front bench, or presenting one of BBC Radio 5’s afternoon shows. But the obvious question is: why would someone who has trouble reading, writing and understanding stuff go to a university? Or indeed be allowed in? Isn’t it a bit like an amputee signing up for a two-week course in arm-wrestling? Isn’t it kind of inappropriate?

    It should be, and yet isn’t. The mantra for the past 20 years has been that university is for everyone, regardless of whether or not they have the IQ of a bowl of oxtail soup.

    The government has, thankfully, dropped the aspiration — held for two decades now — that 50% of school-leavers should go to university. This policy was announced, with pride, by Tony Blair’s government in 1999 and stands as being the third-most-stupid and damaging thing that administration did (after the Iraq War and unconstrained immigration). The idea was to give working-class kids a better chance of further education and thus of improving their station in life.

    It has failed abysmally on the second count. Instead, we have thousands upon thousands of young people, often from poor backgrounds, saddled with £30,000 of debt after three years of gender realignment studies at the University of West Norfolk (formerly Downham Market Tech). Industry cannot find a place for these people, and the kids have been sold a pup, a bad pup. They emerge no more literate than they went in, and the only thing they have gained is a capacity to be annoying. They are devoid of practical skills.

    Worse still, perhaps, it has served to make a university education almost a necessity for young people. The better alternatives — the old technical college qualifications, or apprenticeships — are seen as the options for failures. That mindset has to change. University is not the be-all and end-all.

    If you don’t believe me, take it from a chap called Euan Blair, Tony’s son, who said his dad was wrong and urged the country to pour more money into apprenticeships and on-the-job training. I wouldn’t dispute for a moment that we need to narrow the gap in outcomes between our social classes. Grammar schools managed to do this for a time in the 1960s, but for many reasons they are not the answer now. Nor is the chimera of universities for all. If I were Gavin Williamson, I’d make the new aspiration somewhere in the region of 10%.

    Chancellor’s handout

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ffe6dba62-c380-11ea-9ea2-5a548b3aebca.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Rishy’s dishy is a little fishyI’ve identified my dream job
    Might be time for a change of career. Put something back into society. In particular, our brave and cash-strapped National Health Service. The job that attracts me is at Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust. It’s assistant director, equality, diversity and inclusion. I think I fit the bill. I am attracted not least by the salary, which is £73,664 per annum. I shall go down on one knee at the interview and identify as something I am plainly not: perhaps a hearing-impaired pansexual Comanche. I might even wear a headdress. And they won’t be able to argue. I am what I say I am, and for 70 grand I will be whatever you want me to be.

    Intelligence — just the plaice for Failing Grayling
    The Chinese politburo must be quaking with fear. Yes, the new chairman of the parliament’s intelligence and security committee is Chris Grayling. This isn’t the first time the words “Chris Grayling” and “intelligence” have been used in the same sentence. But it is the first time without a clarifying phrase such as “devoid of”.

    Xi Jinping will be studying Grayling’s unique triumphs while he was transport secretary, trembling with trepidation. My own view is that one should never trust a politician named after a fish. If in years to come we hear of a Heather Wrasse, or Bob Eel, making headway in their party, we should do all we can to stop them. Which brings me very neatly to . . .

    A Scottish holiday is on the cards, if you time it right
    At eight o’clock next Sunday evening you are cordially invited to open your front door to “Clap for Nicola”. Nope, not kidding. A Facebook appeal has been started to urge everybody to give Ms Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, a public ovation to coincide with her 50th birthday.

    It might be a good time to drive into Scotland, then, as the rabid nationalists on the border with their “English keep out!” placards will be otherwise engaged for a few moments.

      1. Not necessarily. I’m sure it’s been shared about among the scissor sisters.

    2. What?
      Clap for Nicola? Is that a joke?

      Why does Liddle disagree with grammars, does anyone know?
      Also, I take issue with his assertion that the 50% target was one of the most damaging things Blair did. If he thinks that, he has no understanding of how Blair wrecked the delicate balance of the British constitution with his postal voting, House of Troughers reforms, Supreme Court, devolved parliaments etc.
      The number of kids in university can be easily reversed – the rest is probably gone forever.

      1. We still have grammar schools in Gloucestershire.
        He doesn’t mention Blair’s legal reforms which nearly cost us Brexit last year. So many things that wrecking government did.

        A few universities were moaning last week about their finances – hopefully some will close, or revert to being FE colleges.

        2. “So many things that wrecking government did.”

          Isn’t it ironic how that “wrecking government” was voted into power thrice, consecutively, by a gullible public who were purblind to all that wrecking, even as it was taking place?

      2. There was a French study a few years back that set out to prove that comprehensive schools were best for encouraging social mobility. Unfortunately for them, they discovered it was actually selective education that did it.

        1. I would have thought Britain was an experiment that proves that on a nation scale!

  21. 321262+ up ticks,
    Gettway how observant of the french considering Mr Gerard Batten has been warning of the dangers of islamic ieology since 2005 in rhetoric & book form only to be tagged, along with a multitude of others, as a far right racist.
    bretrbart,
    FRENCH SENATE REPORT DESCRIBES ‘ALARMING’ SPREAD OF ISLAMISM

    4. They are, as usual, late to the party. My French friends have been banging on about the dangers and the spread of islam for years.

    1. It is very, very depressing to see what our country has become. Mind you, I don’t know how anyone could have thought that nationalised healthcare would be any better than any other nationalised industry.

      Nationalising healthcare at the same time as they nationalised healthcare insurance was a complete disaster.

  24. 321262+ up ticks,
    This ere submissive pcism & appeasement is now down as cultural sensitivity that sort of softens the news of peoples getting shot dead,raped & abused etc it does go a long way to explaining the reason for many of these horrific actions.
    Then again the victim was shot / mutilated with some sensitivity somehow rings false to me.

  25. Morning all. BBC NEWS…..

    SIR – The BBC licence fee is to be reintroduced for over-75s and we seriously wonder about value for money.

    We don’t enjoy Scandi noir, or quiz games, have seen enough competitive dancing, skating and cookery, and regret the loss of experts on nature programmes in favour of campaigners and on history programmes in favour of yoof. We prefer Lord Reith’s recipe for both informing viewers and offering them the best – whether in science, drama or the arts.

    The BBC’s determination to cater for the tastes of those who don’t watch it is infuriating.

    Lavender Buckland

    Iwerne Minster, Dorset

    SIR – Perhaps, rather than bringing back the licence fee for over-75s, the BBC should look at how many of its broadcasters are paid more than £100,000 and consider whether this is money well spent.

    Alan Bristow

    Little Neston, Cheshire

    SIR – At the age of 92 I am due to lose my free television licence.

    I believe it will cost me some £3 per week. That is a price that I am happy to pay to avoid the mindless advertising that is inflicted on us on the other channels. Long live the BBC.

    John Morrell

    Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – BBC radio services are widely considered the finest in the world. I would be prepared to resume payment of my licence fee for these alone.

    Barry Bond

    Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

    SIR – Maybe the BBC could compromise and allow those currently over 75 to keep their free licences. It seems wrong to take away something that has already been given.

    Rosemary Hartley

    Broadstairs, Kent

    SIR – It is unfair to heap all the acrimony over the licence fee on the BBC. What has happened was that one government introduced a range of freebies for pensioners without considering whether they were sustainable.

    A later government revoked or reduced some of these and offloaded the consequences on to others without making alternative provision. The concessionary fares scheme is another example.

    Mike Keatinge

    Sherborne, Dorset

    SIR – The BBC appears less keen to refund licences that have been paid for but are no longer required.

    Having recently moved with 10 months still on my licence to somewhere that already has its own licence, I applied for a refund. While I have settled all accounts with the council and utilities, including cases where they owed me a refund, the BBC remains silent. Maybe I am meant to feel honoured that I continue to pay Gary Lineker’s exorbitant salary.

    Paul Hearn

    Lambourn, Berkshire

    1. Long live the BBC indeed Mr Morrell, you can help pay for it on a subscription basis.
      I suspect with so few who would subscribe to their programs, it will cost you more than £3 a week to avoid advertising, mindless or otherwise.

    2. SIR – Maybe the BBC could compromise and allow those currently over 75 to keep their free licences. It seems wrong to take away something that has already been given.

      Rosemary Hartley
      —————————–

      The BBC are playing God Rosemary.

      ….the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away….

      1. I have never understood why governments don’t take that approach to many freebies and other benefits, both in the public and the private sector.
        Yes, one will get two tier systems but those with higher benefits will die off/retire in due course.

        I once worked for an employer who had a policy of restructuring business areas and making people re-apply for their jobs or who on promotion were offered new contracts but with certain benefits changed.

        The worst case was a distinctly worse pension, moving from fully RPI indexed final salary to lifetime average with defined increases equivalent to lowest of the current triplelock. You kept the benefits accrued up to the new job but then moved on at the lesser rates. If you refused you were made redundant, because your old job no longer existed.

      2. Unto them that hath, much shall be given, while they who hath not shall have even that little which they hath taken away 🙂

    3. How can Mr Morrell have missed all the advertising breaks on the Bbc when it runs through all the upcoming programmes?

    4. MOH has just tried to obtain a TV licence for an elderly bed bound friend. The Government website won’t allow her to purchase one dated from the 1st August 2020. In addition I thought the licence covered the premises so why do they need passport and other ID credentials?
      I think those in charge have succeeded in replicating “Brazil’

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKPFC8DA9_8

    5. widely considered the finest in the world

      Not by me.

      If you’re happy paying it, please do. I for one do not wish to, yet I am forced to. Why don’t we come to an arrangement whereby you want something, and you pay for it rather than you wanting something and making *me* pay for it?

    6. Threaten them with the Ombudsman and your MP, Paul. They won’t stir themselves otherwise.

    1. Indeed.

      I was watching the Antiques Roadshow with my mother when the BBC cut it off to film Nelson Mandela’s release from jail live. Never forgiven them for that! It was on the other side of the bdy world!

    2. Who got a minutes silence from the filth in parliament………………..
      Career Soldier Lee Rigby or Career Criminal George Floyd??
      Just when you thought you couldn’t despise them more……………….
      ‘Morning VOM

      1. They’re just a bunch of bandwagoning halfwits desperate to appease the mob. None of them have any integrity.

  27. Good morning from the warrior daughter of Alfred of Wessex with bloody axe and Longbòw.

    A sunny and bright day but breezy. Birds are still singing and there are butterflies in my bush .

    1. ‘Morning, Ethel.

      Have you put away that axe without cleaning it again? What’ve you been doing with it?

    2. Good morning Aethel – I am pleased to note that my fellow Nottlers are behaving like gentlemen this morning. Sunny and warm here too.

      1. Good morning, indeed a sunny and warm day and everyone
        Is a gentleman of the first waters unless ladies and we always behave well 😉

  28. SIR – Stephen Cottrell, the new Archbishop of York, suggests that Britain has lost its connection to Christianity (report, July 5).

    It appears to me that, with its alarming tendency to capitulate to the spirit of the times and to embrace rejectionist and revisionist approaches to Biblical orthodoxy, it is the Church that has lost contact with Christianity.

    Mike Thompson

    Staines, Middlesex

    2. I’d ask if people have abandoned Christianity or if the Church has abandoned Christians.

  29. Morning again

    SIR – As one who, in happier academic days, taught law in leading English and Australian universities, I endorse Simon Heffer’s attack on ill-considered expansionary higher education policies.

    Dr Heffer aims his bitterest barbs at the 1992 decision of John Major’s government to transform polytechnics into newly minted universities. Instead of their former focus on practical training, they would henceforth ape the university’s academic broad brush. This was a lamentable decision that has led, all too often, to students paying high fees for degrees of questionable value.

    I am ashamed to admit that the 1992 “revolution” may have been inspired by my own nation, Australia, which, in 1987, made instant universities of its technology colleges – with similar results. Indeed the then Labor government minister, John Dawkins, later repented the policy.

    John Kidd

    Auchenflower, Queensland, Australia

    SIR – Simon Heffer argues correctly for the return of vocational education, and laments the loss of the polytechnics, as do I. As an alumnus thereof I can vouch that a poly education in the late Seventies and early Eighties was not second class. A large part of our business studies course came from Harvard Business School and other institutions at the bleeding edge of management education.

    Most “education” involves writing essays about whatever one is studying, rather than doing it. The opposite is true of apprenticeships and in-job training. In our case, we spent a year gaining industrial experience, which made all the difference.

    Academia does not suit all characters or intellects. It was said to me that the highest accolade for a university student was to be invited to stay on as a postgrad. The highest accolade for a polytechnic student was to go out and change the world.

    Andrew J Lewis

    Chelmsford, Essex

    1. The other day, MB was sorting out a garden pond. I’m not sure that a chat from me about Chaucer’s contribution to the development of the English language would have gone down as well as grandson’s muscle strength and sheer practical skill.
      Or that he would have rated my comments about Stalin’s recognition of lock down Blighty above the lass who gave him his first haircut for three months.
      Ooops … good moaning.

    2. The other day, MB was sorting out a garden pond. I’m not sure that a chat from me about Chaucer’s contribution to the development of the English language would have gone down as well as grandson’s muscle strength and sheer practical skill.
      Or that he would have rated my comments about Stalin’s recognition of lock down Blighty above the lass who gave him his first haircut for three months.
      Ooops … good moaning.

    3. My niece recently raised that the ‘teaching’ she was receiving was mainly just reading a powerpoint slide and copying it down. Now, she postulated, what’s the point in taking already compressed bullet points and putting them into your own words as even more compressed bullet points?

      I remember a class where I was told to do much the same at A Level. We were literally copying out of a book. I finished in about 5 minutes and spent the rest of the lesson doodling.

      We learn in different ways but fundamentally the emphasis has to be on understanding and application, debate, discussion of the knowledge in context.

    5. Well said, Andrew Lewis. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone in government could pick up his last paragraph and have at the educational establishments with it?

  30. SIR – I was once a cyclist and am now a grumpy old man.

    Why do cyclists wear dark clothing that doesn’t show up in dim light? Driving last weekend, I passed several wearing clothes that were the same colour as the road.

    Luckily the sun was shining.

    Dr Tony Saunders

    Otterbourne, Hampshire

    1. I passed one of those too. The sun was shining brightly, but he was cycling through a deeply shadowed tunnel of trees, wearing dark grey lycra. Lighting his lamp did not seem to have occurred to him.

      However that was not the stupidest example of cycling that I saw last week. Imagine an ordinary two lane main road, in the rush hour with busy lines of traffic in both directions doing about 50 mph…and a cyclist pedalling furiously down a slip road to join the stream of traffic, which he had NOT A HOPE of joining at the same speed they were going.
      I accelerated slightly and passed the loon while he was still on the slip road, rather than slam on the brakes as he veered out into the road ahead of me.

      In the course of my walk to and from work every day (about a mile each way), I cannot remember one single day when I didn’t see a cyclist breaking the law at least once.

    2. If you wear yellow at night it’ll still be washed out until light hits it. With car headlights (and drivers) looking at the road you simply won’t see people regardless of what colours they’re wearing unless it is fluorescent.

      1. “Flourescent”?

        Who the hell is going to coat themselves in Be-Ro self-raising before they go out cycling? 🤣

  31. The liberal Left now view white British workers as their enemy. DAN HODGES. 12 July 2020.

    Last month a group of Labour MPs, led by Ed Miliband, published their report into the collapse of the party’s Red Wall in the last Election. They identified a number of reasons. The toxicity of Corbyn. The chaotic position on Brexit. The Generation Game conveyor-belt of implausible promises that constituted Labour’s manifesto.

    But they ignored another significant factor. The liberal Left now view white, British working men and women as their enemy. And they hate their enemy with a loathing that is visceral.

    This is true but it is a little tardy. The Labour Party abandoned the White Working Class over twenty years ago. Hodges is correct that this has now morphed into an absolute hatred. This is mostly because they see them as backward racist thugs devoid of any redeeming features and the sooner they are eliminated by mass immigration the better.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8514095/DAN-HODGES-liberal-Left-view-white-British-workers-enemy.html

    1. Hodges is such a hypocrite. He was quite happy with the agenda of ignoring the white working classes as long as the mugs still voted for his party.

      1. Remember his mother is Glenda Slag Jackson so he had to toe the line. I think he is moving to the right now that his mother is no longer an MP.

        He does deserve some respect for intervening in an attack against a black friend in a pub brawl. His face was badly scarred and he lost the sight of one of his eyes.

        1. I will never forget how he gloated over conservatives the day after the gay “marriage” law was passed.

      2. In fairness to him, he does think and dares to hold – and express – opinions that wouldn’t go down well with his tribe. (Mummy is Glenda Jackson, and we know how ‘tolerant’ Hampstead Lefties can be.)

    2. 321262+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      In many decent folks eyes the JAY report done for lab but by no means letting con / lib of the hook, they are still very much so, a coalition.
      Joined at the political hip by mass uncontrolled immigration, ( ongoing).
      The lab party will re-emerge in parliament in the near future heralded by the first prayer of the day from a set of five imo.

  32. CJ Laverick
    12 Jul 2020 8:43AM
    “SIR – BBC radio services are widely considered the finest in the world….. ”

    Barry Bond

    I’m sure Brussels would agree with you.

    1. Good morning, P-T

      Your new avatar reminds me of this song from Shakespeare’s The Tempest:

      The Master, the swabber, the bo’sun, and I, the gunner, and his mate
      Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, but None of us cared for Kate;
      For she had a tongue with a tang,
      Would cry to a sailor, go hang!
      She loved not the savor of tar nor of pitch;
      Yet a tailor might scratch her where she did itch.
      Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang hang!..

      I hope the tennis girl’s itch got a good scratching when it was requested.

      It was fun teaching The Tempest when there was a girl called Kate in the class!

  33. Blue sky here, but guess what , at around about 8am ish , there were four aircraft contrails in the sky, in different directions !

    Bye bye clear blue sky .

    1. When I was skiing in Colorado, there were at least 6 contrails up in the blue at any one time. And most were probably domestic flights.

      1. We haven’t seen any contrails for weeks . Where we are is a cross over point for most aircraft.

        Air travel must be resuming quite quickly, unless of course they were freight and not passenger.

    2. Earlier this morning:-
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c2c469b8492427efe24213499edd5c3f721627173f606ea63f5a36f76da8e821.jpg

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0afb84fe539ae59f527799b2ee9216bbc9e4558cd30756acf0ed0b3811cefb6b.jpg

      Looking across Dene Quarry, Cromford:-
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b6ce059bd77f57c9c57f47a4cd3c5da046d2871d394b3b3e9b23632eb0bbba2.jpg

      Sunrise with Riber Castle shrouded in mist:-
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e28db68fd556448c14f297363c3b345caa548859cf8d7427c022eb7d9a379c4.jpg

    3. When I came back from church this morning there were mares’ tails all over the sky. Then I saw a three aircraft formation that looked like the Dakota and a Spitfire and Hurricane (they were in the distance). Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain, I suppose. By the time I’d got to the stables for my ride, the mares’ tails had turned into a mackerel sky and there was no aerial activity at all.

  34. 321262+ up ticks,
    Old boy kim would have been so proud,

    breitbart,
    BLATANT CORRUPTION’: JESUS COLLEGE AT CAMBRIDGE TOOK £155,000 FROM HUAWEI TO FUND PAPER

      1. 321262+ up ticks,
        Afternoon BB2,
        My personal view is odious consequences of mass uncontrolled immigration.

    1. So what you’re saying is, black pepole have to defend themselves from police brutality?

      1. No, what he’s saying is if nigger hadn’t shot nigger, nigger would have been blown away by nigger.

        [Translation: “If the negro cop hadn’t shot the negro felon, then the negro cop would have been summarily executed by the negro felon.”]

        1. Thank you. I wondered what a Labrador killed in 1943 had to do with the matter.

  40. ‘Fear of being called racist’ stopped police from tackling Leicester’s ‘slave’ sweatshops, Priti Patel believes
    Clothes workers in Leicester are ‘being paid for as little as £3.50 an hour’
    No protection or social distancing was put in place despite ongoing coronavirus
    Priti Patel is thought to have raised concerns behind closed doors about police
    She is understood to be considering new laws to tackle modern slavery

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8513825/Fear-called-racist-stopped-police-tackling-sweatshops-Priti-Patel-believes.html

    Same attitude the police and local government bods have about child grooming by Asians !

    1. ‘Fear of being called racist’
      Such a convenient excuse,these businesses could be almost as profitable as the drug trade,I suppose putting a full team of forensic accountants to work on the accounts of all of those that should of been dealing with this is out of the question??
      Or would that be “racist” too??
      Edit
      Manners,’Morning Belle

      1. 100% of the ones with papers I would have thought, as they are clearly not earning a living wage.

    3. Yo T_B

      The next thing, is that we Whities will be accused of transporting the slaves to UK, by ‘rescueing’ them in The Channel and
      landing them at Dover

      1. Journo to David Blunkett circa 2000
        Q. How many people do you estimate have come in to the UK since you have been in office Homes secretary ?
        A. We have absolutely no idea !
        And i doubt even today nobody has a clue.

      3. Well that’s what we are doing isn’t it? The elites see them in the same way as they see us, as cattle.

    4. They’re probably all illegals working in there if the police turned up they’d all ‘do a runner’.

    5. ‘Fear of being called racist’
      Such a convenient excuse,these businesses could be almost as profitable as the drug trade,I suppose putting a full team of forensic accountants to work on the accounts of all of those that should of been dealing with this is out of the question??
      Or would that be “racist” too??
      Edit
      Manners,’Morning Belle

      1. Audits can* be extremely useful.
        The key is to approach the business via management accounts, wage bills, inputs and outputs. Not difficult but seldom done.
        (*Not usually though, as businesses who hire auditors to do their accounts don’t want anything found, and the auditors want to be hired again next year so don’t want to find anything.)

        I applied for a job in an industry I wanted to learn about. From their published accounts and other available information I deduced that they were not making a profit. Very simple sums. I warned the Agency to be sure to get their fee ASAP. The business went into receivership two months later, without my help.

    6. It bothers me more that all those idiots demanding more uncontrolled illegal immigration don’t give a stuff about the immigrant. They’re more interested in opposing those they hate and making themselves feel better.

    7. We have laws. They are not being implemented. Factories that obey the laws can be identified just by walking in the door. They are plastered with warning notices.

      1. The posters may be there. But few of the staff could read or understand them.

    1. Some one told me about a website where people are suggesting making it very awkward for the BBC, cancel Direct debits, and pay by cheque, cash or postal orders. I’m in favour of anything like that, the BBC are quite deliberately making me feel very uncomfortable in my own home. It should be turned into pay to view.

    9. That petition is actually to revoke the TV ‘licence’ in its entirety. A sentiment which I endorse so I’ve signed it.

      1. Good Luck with that. The British Medical Journal published the under noted. If one reads the technical requirements for masks that stop viruses, it is obvious that nothing easily available or home-made is any use at all. Note that we have recently been told that the virus is free-floating, like pollen, and does not need a droplet to hang on to.

        https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1435/rr-40

      1. Apparently my nearest Cote, in Chiswick, opened on Friday. Hoping to go soon.

          1. I think they are pretty standard – same menu everywhere for each month. I’ve never had a bad meal there.

          2. True, but it’s the service which counts & that buck stops with the manager. I have a discreet word if it’s not up to scratch & I have banned one particular waitress from serving me.

          3. I haven’t been often enough to get to know them – but the service is generally good.

          1. They can’t help themselves.

            I like to read Grace Dent reviews on food. She can be quite ascerbic.

      3. We’ve been thinking of having a takeaway for our anniversary next weekend – what would you recommend this month?

        1. I don’t know your tastes, but I would choose…
          Starter: Pork rillettes or prawn gratinée
          Main: Boef Bourgignon or fish parmentier
          Pudding: Crème caramel.

          1. I might choose any of those, not sure about him though. Will have a look at the menu.

        2. I don’t know your tastes, but I would choose…
          Starter: Pork rillettes or prawn gratinée
          Main: Boef Bourgignon or fish parmentier
          Pudding: Crème caramel.

      3. Double whammy: he had joined the Conservative Party and was caught reading a Toby Young article.

  46. Mail to a Conservative MP……..

    I love the freedom of working from home. It means I can pretty well do what I want when I want. So I have my friends to mine, and I go to theirs. I don’t have my boss watching every move, making me go to meetings and moaning if I get things wrong. I don’t have to try hard, I don’t have the discipline I used to have and I don’t have to wear office clothes, I don’t have to see peeps I don’t like and all my wonderful escapism can easily be covered up. After all, I tell the boss I’ve got a bad connection, that I’m busy on the phone in another room and I can’t do it now because, well… the phone just rang in another room. In fact, it’s all such fun doing everything my way and ignoring the boss that I think I’ll spend all my time having an easy life, go to the beach… and become a politician !

    —

    As a boss, I loathe the freedom peeps have working from home. It means everyone can do pretty well what they want when they want. They can have their friends round or go to theirs. I can’t watch every move like I used to do, I can’t make them go to meetings and I can’t see easily when they get things wrong. They don’t have to try hard, they don’t have the discipline they used to have. Their escapism from work can easily be covered up and it’s a lot harder to keep everything on track. In fact, the sales figures are so bad that I think I’ll give up, have an easy life, go to the beach.. and become a politician !

    Polly

  47. I expect to see flocks of seagulls over this area shortly, since flying ants have started emerging from their nests…

    1. Several fat juicy flying ants on the beach today, but not enough for a sandwich.
      People next to us lit their barbecue, which kept most of the gulls at a distance.
      One bloke insisted on wearing a mask, but to be fair he also had a snorkel.

  48. Britons have been warned to stay alert due to an unusually high number of seagulls “tripping on acid” after eating flying ants.

    Experts say this week’s hot weather has caused a mass emergence of the insects, which seagulls like to eat despite it affecting their cognitive behaviour.

    Dr Rebecca Nesbit of the Society of Biology says the ants contain formic acid, which can cause gulls to appear “drunk” and lose their inhibitions after eating them.

    The RSPB’s Tony Whitehead says seagulls have an increased appetite for the bugs.

    “The gulls are mad for them,” he said in a statement. “There has been a massive emergence of the ants over the last three days and they are like little treats for the gulls.

    “They are like M&Ms to them. They go to wherever they are.”

    The effects of the critters are said to have caused seagulls to fly into buildings and even moving cars.

    “I have seen the crushed bodies of around half a dozen gulls on main roads around the city,” one Exeter motorist told the Daily Star.

    “Normally they fly off before getting anywhere near a vehicle, but they just seem to be getting mown down.”

    https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/seagulls-drunk-from-eating-flying-ants_uk_578f3ecfe4b0b545e5cbf6c9?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvL3RqbFhzbHk2OUw_YW1wPTE&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFCqtmunzZqQo5YZ5cj47iYb_b-QEpZbwN9VR4_RoTpberixd_ilLlMOt001CARrdpb4D-5S6UKY5FXrM4g1rC9_4FSmCrTgILiU4FvF11wtFIJ5_W7L0Gr6VIObBvuDaej50-SJoQ7Sc5GHeph89n9PDDFfQDzqK_2zHuRcaYJY

    1. They emerge this time every year. Is there something different this year vis-à-vis the gulls?

  49. The sun is still shining, we have just finished brunch and there are no
    noisy children in the neighbours gardens as yet ( why must they constantly
    scream and why do patents allow it ).
    Well anyway I am to decipher Beethoven’s works this afternoon and a few other composers .
    Also will miss Wimbledon not occurring ( and Sue Barker fawning over Roger Federer)
    this Spring and Summer will pass without enjoying it then it will be the season of
    fruits and mists .

    1. We have the very same problem with screaming kids, we live in a once quite Cul-de-sac.
      Snowflakes have moved in and sometimes it chaos out side.

      1. Very quiet here – the children that were around 25 years ago have all grown up now. No new families with children have appeared in recent years.

        1. I almost feel it’s ‘our fault’ …..but since we moved in nearly 30 years ago around at least 15 of the 28 houses have changed hands due to the older owners passing away. Younger couples as we did have moved in and built great big ( as we did) extensions, loft conversions must have massive garden rooms, kiddies playgrounds etc etc. And it’s a private road so we don’t have many cars up and down mainly residents. Kids on their bikes racing around, ours did it so i guess i shouldn’t be complaining it’s just that time of life eh 👴

          1. Most of the houses here have been extended – ours was shortly before we bought it. We bought from a woman witth two small children and the stairgate fixings are still there on the top stairs.

            One young couple bought a small cottage just up the hill from us, but they produced three children in a few years so moved out to somewhere larger. Their buyers were a retired couple.

            Most of our neighbours were here before us – all mostly now retired or semi so. We’re very lucky that our next door neighbours are a childless couple in their 50s now, who have been very good people to have in any emergency, and especially for our other n-d-n who is now divorced and on her own. We really couldn’t wish for better.

          2. I use to build loft conversions, we have a huge loft space i have the drawings and planned large bed room with ensuite. And have a spare room for the stairs to fit in, but my good lady was not in favour of the disruption, noise and terrible dust that always occurs. I could have completed the job at a quarter of the usual cost. At the time my sister and B i L who live ten minutes walk from us, were spending a lot of time near their second home north of Cape Town, we could have stayed at theirs house during the construction process. I think she sometimes regrets it. We have fabulous views across the countryside.

          3. J’s niece and husband inherited some money from her grandfather and used it for a loft conversion – we stayed in the new room last year and it is very nice – provided you duck when getting out of bed – but I did miss our en suite loo as I had to clatter down the stairs at night.

          7. I guess it’s inevitable eventually. One of our older neighbours died a few weeks ago. He was the main reason we got a handrail fixed on our steep steps – as he tottered up and down with the parish magazine.

        2. Our rather elderly next door neighbours are moving ( due to heath reasons to be nearer their son )
          so you never know who’ll move in but hope for the best.

          1. It’s the luck of the draw. Sometimes you draw a short straw. I had lovely neighbours to the south, but they split up and moved out. Their replacements are terrible and we had to get the police involved when the husband threatened assault. We avoid them as much as possible. The neighbour on the other side is contemplating moving abroad to be with her Dutch lover, so who knows what we’ll get there.

      2. They do spoil summertime with all the noise, you never hear the parents attempt
        to quiten them down. It’s longer this year because of lockdown, normally it’s
        just the summer holidays and weekends but it’s endless atm.

        1. A few other neighbours have mentioned the lack of discipline aimed at their children from the families.
          We have a face book page and one of the first people to complain because of ‘out side noise’ in the evening is one of the loudest.

      3. Time to move out….it ain’t going to get any better!

        Luckily most of the residents where I live are elderly. When grandchildren visit they are well behaved and consider other residents.
        We used to call it good manners….

        1. We have been looking PT. We love where we live but we can’t move far, we like to see the grand children at least twice a week and we have a disabled daughter in law with two youngsters.
          It’s difficult to find a property that gives us what we already have, being mindful of the frying pan fire situation.

          1. It’s a matter of priorities, nowhere is perfect.
            After downsizing this house had everything i wanted apart from location . I bought it with a view to moving after two years….
            Ten years later I’m still here and love it.

          2. Cornwall is lovey county.
            we were thinking of a holiday with the family later this year north coast is the favourite.

          3. 14 years later & 1/2 the contents of my kitchen in Sweden are still in boxes in the garage.

          4. That’s the point moving house isn’t remotely easy, there
            are commitments and even without commitment you
            never can be sure of what you are moving to might be
            even worse. All part of modern crowded living .

          5. Even though stamp duty has been reduced it still makes moving home difficult. In general It’s very expensive where we live.

      4. Young kiddies playing I don’t mind. The yobs screaming obscenities at one another and playing music until the early hours I do. It makes me very grumpy.

        1. We get that as well we have a pedestrian right of way and a footpath at the far end. But with the pubs being closed it hasn’t been too noisy with pedestrian traffic short cuts late at night.

        2. No, it’s the screaming little girls with that high pitched piercing offering that they produce when over excited. Or wetting their knickers, or both. They are the most offensive. Fortunately, where I live we don’t get the yobs. Other than the Lycra clad ones using our ‘scenic’ road to shout at each other.

          1. Have you ever had a screamer?
            I remember a sort of neighbour in London used to date one. I wasn’t around, but people outside used to mutter darkly, or chuckle enviously.

      1. Ah yes 😉 Rather like Andrew ( whatshisname ) fawning over the sainted Djokovic
        no one else can be as brilliant as Djokovic, hmm.

          1. Yes he did didn’t he, out of all of them it had to
            be Djokovic who caught the virus.

      1. Smoked bacon, eggs ( all with double yolks ) tomatoes and field mushrooms
        with granary bread. Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon with German rye bread
        Is usually the Sunday brunch when not having fish for dinner but I shall be
        having fish for dinner. Did you have a nice breakfast or brunch Mr Viking ?

        1. I had my usual litre of goat’s milk.

          2nd 1/2 of the chicken paprika tonight.

          1. Aren’t you going to give the chicken to Missy? I don’t think I’ve ever tried goat’s milk, but I couldn’t drink a litre of anything.

          2. I’m seriously thinking of carrying out last night’s suggestion, thereby giving Missy a treat, possibly knocking up an additional batch of ‘soup’ to replace it. I had thought of adding some cooked prawns as well to make up the protein.

            I don’t drink the whole litre in one go, but spread it over an hour. I was introduced to goat’s milk by a keeper friend in Dorset years ago.

          11. I like chicken paprika very much ( mushrooms and sherry in the cream sauce ) .
            I’ve never tried goats milk but when I had a problem with dairy products
            In my 20s for awhile I used to drink soya milk.. awful.. like mouldy socks.

          12. I’ve some mushrooms to use up & I thought about adding them last night, but I’m wary of reheating them.

          14. It’s not the bugs, but the fungal toxins.

            When I was on my Swedish course in Kiel I made a risotto of wild mushrooms – very nice. There was enough left for lunch the next day, so I reheated it & settled down to enjoy it. Not even 1/2way through, I had to leap up & vomit into the sink until I had got rid of all of it. I couldn’t understand it, because I had carried out all the usual hygiene measures regarding keeping leftovers & it had smelt & tasted fresh. When I told a German colleague, who fancied himself as a bit of a backwoodsman, he said never, ever reheat mushrooms or any other members of the edible fungi family.
            I’ve noticed since that after the cooking instructions of ready meals containing mushrooms it always says ‘do not reheat’.

          15. I didn’t realise that – but I must have done it many times with no ill effects.

          16. Well I’m sure I’d done it before & got away with it. After all, when I was in Kiel I was 54 y.o.

          17. Indeed that’s what it is, nothing to do with hygiene but fungi related toxins .

    5. Have you been watching the replays of old matches? My OH will be just as grumpy when those finish as he was with the real thing. Still, at least he is able to play now.

      1. No haven’t, don’t watch TV that much and sometimes miss things I’d like
        because of that. I’ll see if i can catch up with a few of those old matches,
        I’d enjoy that .

        1. He’s been glued to them for the last couple of weeks – I’ve looked up from the laptop now and then and some of them are good watching. Boris Becker in his very short shorts, Bjorn & McEnroe likewise……. saw Venus W yesterday – very slender and graceful, unlike Serena, who is all muscle.

          1. Serena Williams is built like a man, she could easily play 5 sets with Andy Murray and
            beat him. I wonder if she thinks the 3 set woman matches demeaning in some way .
            Venus Williams is much more graceful.
            Boris Becker liked his very short shorts . Also Björn Borg with his very long hair .

          8. Serena Williams is built like a man, she could easily play 5 sets with Andy Murray and
            beat him. I wonder if she thinks the 3 set woman matches demeaning in some way .
            Venus Williams is much more graceful.
            Boris Becker liked his very short shorts . Also Björn Borg with his very long hair .

          9. Some of the womens’ matches from years ago look very pedestrian now – Ann Jones would never have won today, nor would Virginia – they look like club players, winning points on unforced errors. OH was laughing at the old-fashioned wooden raquets – of course, he used to use one.

          15. It’s amazing the number of people who have no idea of the mechanics of that misconception.

          20. Yes! That too Peddy! Too much too young? Poor decisions? I feel sorry for him.

          21. I am forever in debt of Björn Borg.

            He and I are the same age. As a teenager, I had great difficulty attracting the girls. All they wanted was tall, dark and handsome, and I was blond and therefore out of the running, except as a “friend”.

            Then in 1973 Borg appeared in Wimbledon. He looked like me, even with the long hair (which I have kept to this day, even though it’s silver now and falling out), and at last I suddenly found myself attractive to girls. He changed my life.

          22. “I am forever in debt of Björn Borg.”

            I bet you cannot pronounce his name properly though.

          25. I am glad Borg changed your life. That happens someone becomes
            famous and they become ‘ the in thing ” The Andy Murray look ,
            mind you will never become popular.

  50. At last! The real reason for climate change revealed. It is because of racism, slavery and colonialism.

    This must be true because ‘Quote of the Day’ in the heretofore respected Nature Magazine online says:

    “QUOTE OF THE DAY
    “When people hear ‘Black lives matter’, they don’t often think of climate change. But the location and nature of climate change’s worst effects on human society are geographically delineated by persistent legacies of racism, slavery and colonialism.”
    Soil carbon sequestration is a key factor in climate justice, argues soil biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. ”

    The Eritrean soil expert was at the most left wing university in the world at Berkeley, California.

    Has she told St. Greta, I wonder?.

    1. Environmentalism and BLM are two cheeks of the same hard Left communist totalitarian
      agenda. One pretends to be green and fluffy ( but is socialist red in the middle )
      and the other has latched onto the racism card when it’s really not about colour
      whatsoever. Domestic terrorism isn’t peaceful protest .

      1. I disagree with you utterly and challenge you to a duel to the death to guard the country I love from vandals.

        I despise those who swallow the lie that the nazi-racist BLM, interested only in racial supremacy, and will trash the Earth to that end, has anything whatsoever to do with environmentalism, which is primarily concerned with keeping the Earth a pleasure to live in, and respects all creatures however unfavoured by the woke.

        1. What I meant by environmentalists were the Greta types
          and not those who wish to preserve our green places.
          So no duels to the death 🙂 and besides I am a 1000 year old
          Saxon Queen 😉

    2. Nothing to do with the felling of billions of trees on 3 continents for 60 years and people with almost zero carbon foot prints arriving uninvited to colder climates living ‘pro bono’ with zero input.

    3. And I thought it was because African men sit around while the women do all the hard work while almost permanently preggers.

      1. Often with a baby strapped to their backs in their back.

        I remember seeing long queues for food aid on the news in Africa and always woman with two or three children.
        I don’t suppose the media would show such patently obvious disregard for women shown by African men. They seem to desert their females as easily as hopping off a bus.

      2. Its going to be like that here soon, but, whats not to like. I’ll get me cattle..

    4. So does she mean sub-Saharan Africa, or does she mean the countries they are all flocking to? Are they all coming here to avoid desertification? Thus creating an over-populated cess pit?

    5. Nothing to do with the felling of billions of trees on 3 continents for 60 years and people with almost zero carbon foot prints arriving uninvited to colder climates living ‘pro bono’ with zero input.

    6. “Soil carbon sequestration”? I do not know what that is. I suspect it is a phrase created to describe some imaginary ill caused by white people in tractors? Can someone please explain?

      2. Actually it’s a very positive thing, and something I do at home.

        It is the locking up of atmospheric carbon in the soil. The process I use is to plant trees and hedges, water them in drought and allow them enough light and protection from browsers, such as the neighbour’s horse. Then wait ten years or so until they start getting in the way or shading things you don’t want shaded. During this time, the trees are taking carbon dioxide and water and with energy from sunlight, converts this to oxygen and wood.

        They are then pruned – in the summer for evergreens and stone fruit, in the winter for other deciduous trees. Instead of burning the brash on the bonfire though, you pile it somewhere out of the way and allow it to rot down in its own time. Chopping up the branches compresses it more. Eventually it turns into topsoil, mostly comprising humus, a carbon-rich material that is wonderful for conserving soil moisture and nutrients, and the more of this, the better. It is essential if you want a decent crop from the soil, enriches sandy soil and breaks down clay.

        However, humus breaks down when oxidised by the air, and eventually turns to carbon dioxide. To maintain levels, it is best to avoid too much tillage, and to cover the ground with plants as soon as possible after cultivation. Some methods do not plough at all, but rather use earthworms to aerate and improve drainage and soil structure, and drill seed direct into the ground without cultivation. This can only work though when the soil is in “good heart”, and this means lots of humus.

        Another way to sequester soil carbon is to grow a crop of “green manure” which is a fast growing crop with an extensive set of roots, which can be dug in just before seeding, and then letting the micro-organisms and worms break it down into humus.

        1. Thanks for that. It fits in with biodynamic farming, I guess. All good, but a lot of work if done commercially, and it would add to the cost of agricultural products. Although I suspect that the agricultural products would be more nutritious than they are now, being forced on for bulk and speed of growth and ROI.
          Really, thanks – it’s like a mini instruction book. I’ll think about it.

          1. It certainly does. Biodynamic adopts organic principles, but adds to them the idea that plants respond to the time of day and perhaps also the tidal pull of the moon when planting or when tending the plant.

            Another important technology is companion planting. Plants are sociable creatures and respond through chemical signals through their roots as well via animal visitors, particularly birds and insects and some mammals. Some discourage competition, such as the creeping buttercup, and others have a symbiotic relationship. I have heard that dill and tomatoes are particularly friendly to their neighbours, onions and carrots repels one another’s flies, and I discovered this year that sunflowers and climbing peas enjoy each other’s company – the peas add nitrogen to the sunflower and in return the sunflower supports the peas, and can outgrow them. Nasturtium and elder are adored by blackfly in preference to broad beans. Alder is a useful screen tree for apple orchards, since it provides shelter from the wind and also fixes nitrogen for the apples.

          2. Wine is traditionally racked and bottled according to the phase of the moon. While that may seem odd, it is in fact an important consideration.

        1. We used to have that in the office in the old days. A page with 3 columns. You chose one word at random from each column and put it into your next memo*. Most correspondents would not respond, but sometimes the phone would ring and one would enjoy the conversation that followed…
          I shall send this modern version to the children,. Thanks…

          * Before the email era.

    7. I don’t think of climate change at all. I certainly don’t associate it with slavery – as such only exists in the third world. Colonialism is something you should be grateful for. It’s why you’ve a platform to whinge about this country now.

    9. Nothing to do with the felling of billions of trees on 3 continents for 60 years and people with almost zero carbon foot prints arriving uninvited to colder climates live with zero input.

      2. 321262+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        Richmond Virginia.
        Have we got sufficient ingredients in the UK for a reenactment to take place here or do we truly need the daily topping up via Dover etc.

    1. Will these people have to go into quarantine?

      Border Force intercepts up to 100 migrants in dinghies trying to enter Britain as people smugglers take advantage of calm weather to make treacherous Channel crossing
      Unconfirmed reports suggest up to 100 people were intercepted this morning
      Coastguard, Border Force and RNLI crews were in the English Channel today
      It comes after 27 people attempted to make the crossing in four boats yesterday

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8514627/Border-Force-intercepts-100-migrants-dinghies-trying-enter-Britain.html?fbclid=IwAR2jliRSGUf8GHQaGldsyIdr4EP0qIG9Zv9ZnNG8MsCT2QH9DcEmscY_-6o

      2. Church was open for a service for the first time this morning (it was very weird with all the distancing, hand sanitising and visors, but still). It turns out it’s Sea Sunday. I prayed for those who are intercepting the boats and that they’d send ’em back to wherever they came from and sink them. I’m clearly going to Hell.

    2. “The only people who should wear masks are Japenese Noh performers,
      bondage kinksters and darth vader cosplayers but enough about my
      lockdown hobbies.”
      Oi Laffed

    4. Love this BTL comment:-

      Don’t wear a mask. Wear a condom.
      During the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s, the official government advice was: “You’re safe if you wear a condom”.
      I’ve worn a condom every day since. I know it works because I’m not dead yet.
      I went to a local supermarket. They said, “You can’t come in without a mask”. I replied, “It’s OK, I’m wearing a condom” and proudly opened my fly to show them.
      The security staff still wouldn’t allow me in. They called the police and I’ve been charged with indecent exposure. But the joke’s on them. Because of the backlog caused by the lockdown, my case won’t come up until 2022.

      1. 🤣

        That reminds me of a true story from when I was the screening supervisor at Norwich Airport. A very loud and “flamboyant” South African chap walked through the archway metal detector, setting off its alarm.

        As my colleague approached him to request a body search the passenger chirped up, “Oh, it’s OK, I know what that is”, before quickly unzipping his fly and pulling out his todger, which was adorned with a very large gold ring through the prepuce! My colleague was less than impressed and advised him to “Put it back before it catches a cold.”

    7. Anyone even thinking of attempting to force me to wear a facial sanitary towel (or nappy, or muzzle) will find it shoved, very f**king forcefully, up somewhere very painful and embarrassing for them!

  55. There is much discussion about the BBC in the letters page today.

    I wonder how many people have noted that a BBC music ‘expert’, Richard Morrison, has said in the BBC Music Magazine, that Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory must be banned on the last night of the Proms. He said that they are a “toe-curling embarrassing anachronistic farrago of nationalistic songs” which “provoke offence or ridicule”.

    Well, I know what I think but I better not say it in a respectable website!

    1. A remark that shows the contempt in which the liberal elite holds the rest of us.
      Having very little self-awareness in my experience, they are usually unaware that it is returned in spades – or digging implements as they would no doubt say.

    2. Morrison is one of those people who pretend that others take offence at things he doesn’t like, in order to ban them. As I said on this subject earlier in the week, it doesn’t look as though the Promenaders are in the least bit embarrassed while singing those songs. They join in and wave flags and sing at the tops of their voices. I don’t see any of them cringing, red-faced in shame..

      1. They wouldn’t buy tickets for the Last Night if they hated it, nor bring flags.

    3. He would probably like to see the second half of the last night completely replaced by something less nationalistic, perhaps Beethovens 9th and the Red Flag.

      The audience will no doubt be encouraged to sing Oh Jeremy.

        1. No, all or nothing – it’s such a masterpiece. I remember going to a concert in Braunschweig; every word, even with the full chorus, was crystal clear.

          1. Of course it is – but the “Ode” is the EU anthem so they’d have to have that. It’s ruined the work for me.

          2. There’s a hymn that’s sung to the Ode to Joy tune and the vicarette chose it for one service I attended. I had never heard such lack of enthusiasm for singing a hymn displayed by a congregation.

    4. Some of us are not that respectable and can probably cope with your views!

    5. They’ll wreck it and both viewing figures and future ticket sales will fall. Then it will be, there, no one wants these concerts so we can cancel them and put the money into a diversity rap fest full of foul language. Job done.

    6. It demonstrates the clear dislike of patriotism and those who are. The contempt, the arroganec, the way he so blatantly looks down on such people.

      Yet it also demonstrates his ego, arrogance and snobbishness, his detachment from the majority. That alone shows how little worth we should giv his verbiage.

    7. The Sunday letters are always a week out of date – but we did discuss the Last Night here a couple of days ago. Good job there are no live Proms this year, at least they may have forgotten his remarks by next year. Hands off our traditions!

      1. The letters in the Sunday Telegraph roll over each week and have no connection, whatsoever, to the letters printed in its sister publication, the Daily Telegraph.

      2. I missed the discussion, I’m afraid. Although, I look through these comments a few times per week, I would like to make so many responses that I end up by saying very little (perhaps to the relief of many)!

        1. No – you should speak up more often – I always enjoy your thoughful and erudite posts.

      1. Thank you for that. It always has an effect on my lachrymal glands to hear such rousing music and words!

      2. What a truly repulsive shirt/jacket the singer is wearing – it is half EU flag and half the British flag. Now that Britain is no longer in the EU nobody should ever wear a nasty garment like this again.

    9. Nobody at the publicly funded BBc should be allowed to express such an obviously hate filled opinion.
      If you don’t like it Morrison, resign.

    12. Yo Sguest

      When I were ‘nowt but a sprog, in the RN’ we had Divisions ( a Parade) every Wednesday morning.

      The Padre would do his bit, then we sang a couple of hymns, the tunes being churned out by the Station Volunteer Band

      Whether it was a new bandmaster or Padre, I cannot remember, but the band played little known tunes, for well known
      Hymns. We being Bolshie Bvggers, sung the Hymns to the tunes we knew.

      After about three weeks, the band joined in with us.

      Those attending the Last Night will sing “Land of Hope and Glory” and “Rule Britannia” regardless of the band playing the tunes

  56. Robert Tombs
    Coronavirus has exposed the EU’s greatest flaw
    12 July 2020, 7:00am

    Politics begins and ends with sovereignty: the duty and right to make the legitimate final decision. We have seen this clearly during the pandemic. In every country, people have come to depend on their governments, whose authority rests on acknowledged sovereignty. This is as true, or even truer, in democracies: while monarchs and aristocrats could dispute sovereignty – and, where it suited them, divide up the cake amongst themselves – in a democracy there can only be one ultimate sovereign: the people. No sovereignty, no democracy.

    For years we have been told the illusion, if not a fraud, that sovereignty can be ‘pooled’. Who takes the final decision when sovereignty is ‘pooled’? If we cannot answer that question, then it shows the fallacy.

    Some have argued that there have been historical examples of pooled sovereignty, often citing the Holy Roman Empire, which exercised a largely theoretical judicial supremacy over Germany until it was abolished in 1806. It’s strange for this kaleidoscope of feudal and dynastic confusion to be put forward by some as a model for 21st century Europe.

    And the EU? As soon as it is put to the test, most obviously by the Covid-19 crisis, ‘pooled’ sovereignty proves to be no sovereignty at all; at once the truly sovereign bodies ­– however incompetent some of them may be – reclaim the right to act in the interests of the peoples they embody. The German constitutional court has recently asserted this very principle.

    The successors of the mini-states of the Holy Roman Empire that now form a large part of the EU – or at least some of their political theorists – might feel some nostalgia for the days when no one was quite sure where sovereignty lay, and so decisions were reached (or avoided) by long and secret diplomatic negotiations, or even longer legal wrangling.

    But that has never been the case of the peoples of these islands. Our history has left its mark: rightly or wrongly, we want to be masters in our own house. Scottish patriots are rightly proud of the Declaration of Arbroath. The English, similarly, of Magna Carta. Medieval English monarchs, and their subjects, were very unhappy to be vassals of the Kings of France for the territories they held across the Channel. Even if they were often stronger than their legal overlord, the humiliation of having to accept a higher jurisdiction was something that galled. And when the French kings began to exploit their legal powers to undermine English rights, it led to conflict. In the end, it caused the Plantagenets to reject this inferior status and claim the crown of France themselves — the only way out of vassalage.

    Does this have any meaning today? Although worldly-wise diplomats claim that sovereignty is meaningless in our global world, the negotiations between the UK and the EU have come down to that very thing: sovereignty, the be all and end all of politics, the right to make the final decision.

    The dispute over fisheries shows this in the most elemental way: who owns and controls places and resources? It does not stop there, of course. Who runs the economy? Who decides taxes? Who makes the rules? What is the status of Northern Ireland? Finally – the origin and essence of sovereignty – who lays down the law? Ordinary citizens sense this intuitively, for we all want a government that represents us and listens to our needs.

    A recent poll in ‘Red Wall’ constituencies –those that gave such an emphatic majority to the Conservatives in ‘getting Brexit done’ – shows that most people want a prompt end to the Transition Period (TP), and two-thirds of voters who switched from Labour to Conservative in the 2019 general election believe that leaving the EU will give back our independent sovereignty.

    On this very question, the EU negotiators have completely reversed their position since 2016. At first, the EU insisted that the UK be treated as a ‘third country’ after Brexit, left ‘lonely on the edge of the Atlantic’ and without any special relationship (‘cherry picking’).

    Later, when the Johnson government said a third-country status was exactly what it wanted, the EU insisted that on the contrary the UK must accept a special relationship because of its ‘economic interconnectedness and geographical proximity’.

    The EU’s demands for a continued Common Fisheries Policy, a ‘level playing field’, a supervisory role in Northern Ireland and sole jurisdiction by the EU Court of Justice amounts to an assertion of sovereignty. This has been pointed out by Boris Johnson and David Frost, who have insisted that the EU should negotiate as sovereign powers or no progress is possible.

    So what is going on? The EU have been making demands that has no parallel in relationships between democratic, sovereign states. It is demanding an unequal relationship which invites indignant language about vassalage and colonial status: ‘unequal treaties’ were what Western powers forced on the Chinese Empire in the 19th century. But they at least had some excuse: Chinese law and punishment were seen as antithesis to 19th century progressive ideas, and ultimately the West aimed to integrate China into the international system with mutual diplomatic recognition and free economic relationships. What is the EU’s pretext today?

    In Barnier’s words, ‘geographical proximity’. This is what 19th century powers, and some even today, called ‘spheres of influence’: a large state asserts exclusive rights and even ultimate control in what they claim as areas of special interest. A limitation of sovereignty, in short.

    In the past, Britain claimed a ‘sphere of influence’ in Afghanistan and Nepal; Russia in Central Asia (and Putin’s Russia today in Ukraine and the Caucasus); the United States in Central America; France in North Africa. Is this not now simply archaic? Yes, of course, and an insulting contempt of democracy.

    But surely modern EU leaders cannot be thinking in such an archaic way, despite Verhofstadt’s neo-imperialist rhetoric? Think again. Some European politicians and diplomats have long considered the advantages of a ‘multi-speed’ Europe. The French, who do most of the EU’s thinking (especially when it serves France’s interests), have long hankered after a ‘Europe of concentric circles’: they and Germany, plus the Benelux countries, would be in the middle (and, of course, run the show); there would be an outer circle of those who could not quite keep up; then again a ring of satellites, revolving around the core: Turkey, North Africa, and – now it would seem – the United Kingdom.

    The satellites cannot be allowed to leave their orbit and, as the Swiss are finding, efforts are made to pull new satellites into the EU’s gravitational field.

    As Michel Barnier sees it, a post-Brexit Britain must slot into this outer circle: its laws must conform to EU laws; it must be an auxiliary, not a rival; its wealth and power must continue to be harnessed to the Continent. In economic theory, this is the ‘gravity model’ – countries necessarily trade mostly with their closest and biggest neighbours.

    The European vision has now visibly faded. The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the weaknesses of every state and system – including ours – and it has hit the EU where it is most vulnerable. It has shown up the weakness of the much-praised solidarity between member nations, and it continues to aggravate the insoluble financial and economic problems inherent in the Eurozone.

    Does that mean that Britain is in a strong position for negotiating future relations with the EU? Yes, certainly, as long as we play our cards resolutely. But a weaker EU is not necessarily more accommodating: perhaps the contrary. Its leading politicians realise the perils of their present situation and the need to limit British freedom of action; to hold Britain within their sphere of influence, not least because of their dire financial needs.

    Can they not see that the EU is too weak and the UK too strong for such a relationship to be sustained? Fortunately, the government gives every sign of knowing what is at stake, and of being willing to defend a sovereignty on which so many people’s future prosperity and security depends.

    Professor Tombs is Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at the Centre for Brexit Policy. This article appears as a foreword for the new Centre for Brexit Policy report ‘Replacing the Withdrawal Agreement – How to Ensure Britain Takes Back Control on Exiting the Transition Period’

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/coronavirus-has-exposed-the-eu-s-greatest-flaw

  57. Much as I dislike his leftist remainer political views, this is a good one from Matthew Parris, writing in the Spectator. I now subscribe, and to the printed edition because it’s nicer to read in the garden, more interesting and cheaper to buy than a TV licence:

    “We
    self-critical British should never forget that other nations are pretty
    crazy too. I write this from Andalusia, Spain; and when it comes to
    cockeyed rules for limiting the spread of Covid-19, the Spanish offer us
    some stiff competition. One is reminded of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.
    Very gradually (I’d guess) over the months during which Spaniards have
    been subject to a face-mask regime, people seem to have lost touch with
    the reasons the rules were laid down in the first place. Practices have
    simply been absorbed into popular culture, their origins now ignored,
    forgotten or never understood.

    We
    landed in Almeria from Manchester last week and, wearing our face masks
    like other Ryanair passengers, picked up our hire car and headed out on
    to the motorway for the hour-long drive to our destination town,
    passing through empty semi-desert and seeing nobody until we got there.
    Night fell as we drove in. Entering the brightly lit town felt like
    coming from outer space into a new planet, its streets, restaurants and
    bars busy, peopled by creatures very like us, yet strangely different.
    We peered out of our car windows, trying to take it in.

    They
    were wearing masks in the open air and taking them off to go into
    enclosed spaces! Not everybody was obeying what appeared to be common
    practice, but most were. Thus began our study, which continues as I
    write this seated outside a bar in a small village not far from the
    Mediterranean.

    The
    first rule is that almost everyone carries a face mask at all times.
    Most use the simple white or pale blue fabric mask with a wire through
    the top edge to help grip the bridge of the nose. Next, then, to the
    circumstances in which they put it on.

    It
    seems that if you are serving or assisting in a bar, restaurant or
    shop, you keep your mask on at all times, indoors and out. So far, so
    rational. But customers’ habits are different. Broadly, these appear to
    encourage the wearing of masks for walking or transacting business, but
    not in social or convivial circumstances. So you wear a mask, for
    example, if strolling down the road accompanied or unaccompanied: even
    on an almost empty pavement, or by the highway, or down the footpath to
    the beach.

    You arrive at (say) the bar of your choice in your
    mask. You then sit down at a table outside or within, or at the bar
    stool itself — and take off your mask! Likewise at the beach: arrive in
    mask, sit down on the sand among other beach-goers, spread out your
    towel, remove your mask. I hardly saw anyone wearing a mask unless they
    were standing up. In one village in the Alpujarras on the verdant slopes
    of the Sierra Nevada mountains, I emerged from a bar — busy, noisy,
    hot, and crowded with the usual old men drinking and talking and
    shouting at the football referee on the television, not one of them
    masked — and into a quiet street, down which a couple of villagers were
    walking, masked-up in the open air. We were lunching at the tables
    outside, watching as masked customers arrived in ones and twos, sat down
    close to other diners, and removed their masks.

    What
    seems to have happened (and it’s only a guess) is that the mask has
    become an accessory, signalling the virtues of social responsibility,
    but actually worn only when convenient. Bars there must be. Restaurants
    there must be. Laughter, backslapping and unmuffled conversation there
    must be. Beverages must be sipped; food must be munched; and politely
    kiss we must. These things being impossible through a muzzle, the mask
    is simply dispensed with.
    Dispensed
    with, yes, but kept by you and visible at all times. Kept where?
    Certain patterns seem to be emerging. The cool youths often wear them
    like an armband above the elbow. Since removing the mask for use then
    means pulling your arm out of both elastic loops, this seems to say ‘I
    could, but am not expecting to’.

    The
    bustling lady running our restaurant yesterday wore hers hanging by one
    elastic loop from her right ear. This seemed to say ‘mostly this stays
    on but, Lord, I need a breather’. Others simply slip mask under chin
    like a little bib, and this is common but (I sense) thought a little
    inelegant. One or two slip them upwards and on to their foreheads, as
    some slickers do with sunglasses: but stored here the mask has a habit
    of slipping back down over the eyes.

    Last
    night, however, we just may have seen the future. A chap in a neat suit
    had folded his mask into a neat point and tucked it into the breast
    pocket of his jacket, only the point showing, as a gentleman might do
    with the handkerchief into which he is never going to blow his nose.

    It’s
    about display, isn’t it? Apparently during the Renaissance there arose a
    fashion for men’s garments to sport a pre-sewn slit, to hint at a
    (highly unlikely) recent sword fight. Ripped jeans in our day, or lads
    with trousers half down, are a nod to the 21st-century fashionability of
    victim status. It all puts me in mind of something Chris Patten
    remarked when I mentioned the widespread use in church of ghastly
    sound-amplification systems, which priests first tap to check they’re
    working. In a hundred years, said Chris, the priest will begin Mass by
    tapping three times on an object that you and I would recognise as a
    replica 20th-century microphone, but the faithful of the future see only
    as a mysterious symbol, anciently associated with holy ritual.

    One
    day, perhaps, after this pandemic and pandemics still to come are part
    of a half-forgotten history, ladies will still hang elegant fabric
    pendants from one ear, young dudes will sport a piece of muslin above
    the elbow, and the well-dressed gentlemen will allow just a discreet tip
    of pale blue to emerge from his breast pocket. And nobody will remember
    why.”
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spanish-approach-to-face-masks

    1. Matthew Parris used to be a Conservative MP and indeed, the fact that the Conservative Party` employed people like Parris and Patten to represent it was one of the reasons why a proper Conservative Party no longer exists.

      1. Patten was MP for Bath my old home City. What with the present MP, Limp Dum Wera Hobhouse, to be honest I could not tell much difference between them.

    2. It must be quite tricky to eat and drink with a mask on as it’s designed to be worn.

      2. I’ve seen women shovelling food up under a niqab without removing or lifting. Must get messy on the inside.

        3. Were they eating with their hands?

          Edit, mind, men with beards who don’t remove or lift them, can be quite messy too unless they are scrupulous…. :o)

        4. Were they eating with their hands?

          Edit, mind, men with beards who don’t remove or lift them, can be quite messy too unless they are scrupulous…. :o)

      3. There was a photo on here not so long ago of an African who had cut a hole in the middle of his mask for his cigarettes.

        2. My leopard print one is on its way and might arrive tomorrow. I might break the habit of a lifetime and take a selfie.

          1. I not buying one. I’m not wearing one. I don’t care about social fashion. Wearing a mask now when the virus is disappearing is crazy. I refuse to go along with it.

          2. I’ve resisted up to now but as I have to go shopping weekly, and they may make it compusory (far too late to be of any possible use) I decided to support a small handicraft business.

            The only time I use the bus is if I go to Gloucester, park at my friend’s house and we go into town together.

            I think it’s ridiculous to bring in now, but hopefully it won’t be for long.

          3. If they make it compulsory to wear one in shops I might dangle one under my chin. I found a couple in the studio; I must have acquired them when I was mixing plaster for moulds – you don’t want to get that in your lungs.

          4. How embarrassing for you. I hope you aren’t channelling Theresa May. If an insane government were ever to make face coverings ‘compulsory’ in England then the most I would do would be to dig out one of my old university scarves from the 60s (yes I do still have them even if a little moth eaten), run it through the washing machine and then go out with it wrapped round and round, like going out by the river on those cold misty winter morns…

          5. I have inherited from my mother and godmother a wide variety of brightly coloured silk scarves, which I will used in lone ranger fashion if it becomes compulsory at any point.

          6. I decided to support one of the multitude of little handicraft businesses selling their wares on Etsy. I’m certainly not channelling Theresa May – I’ll wear it on my face, not my feet.

          8. I didn’t know that – but it’s just a marketplace for individual handicrafters.

      4. I read somewhere that in Ireland they cut a big hole in the mask, for that purpose.

    4. He misses the point completely. We expect foreigners to be dim and badly organised. We expect better from Blighty!

  58. Opinions BTL are sharply divided!

    Stay 6ft 6in apart: How campaigners took on ministers over ‘unlawful’ 2m social distancing signs

    The British Weights and Measures Association complained to Grant Shapps that the signs breached existing legal rules

    Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

    Two-metre coronavirus social distancing signs can be expressed in yards and inches, the Government has said, after complaints from campaigners that they are unlawful.

    Councils and government departments have put up signs across the country saying “Covid-19 Stay 2m apart” to encourage people to practice social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

    However, the British Weights and Measures Association complained in a letter to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps that the signs breached existing legal rules, suggesting that “a reminder to ‘stay apart’ is sufficient”.

    John Gardner, the association’s director, pointed out that the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 (Schedule 18 Part 3) state that the “permitted expressions of distance” are imperial measurements like inches, feet, yard and miles.

    Mr Gardner said in the letter that it was “Government policy not to use metric units of distance on traffic signs”.

    He added: “If the Department of Transport insists on measurements being used on these signs, the units should be yards or feet. But we also suggest there is no need to use units of measurement on these signs at all. As well as two metres having no definitive basis in science (Germany uses 1.5 metres, and Norway one metre), the signs will impose a degree of precision and control that is both unhealthy and unrealistic. A reminder to ‘stay apart’ is sufficient.”

    Mr Gardner also pointed to a letter last year from Chris Grayling, Mr Shapps’ predecessor, to councils reminding them that “distances shown on traffic signs on public highways in Great Britain must be in imperial units, i.e. miles, miles and yards, or yards. Metric units are not permitted as a measurement of distance”.

    In reply, dated June 24, a Department for Transport official said: “The legend on the Covid-19 temporary signs has been chosen to support the central messaging on social distancing from Number 10. A local authority can include the imperial units (6ft 6in) on the signs if they wish.”

    Matters of enforcing the rules were for the Home Office and police to consider, the official said.

    A source added: “There are no plans to change the units of measurement on traffic signs.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/12/stay-6ft-6in-apart-campaigners-took-ministers-unlawful-2m-social/

    1. 321262+ up ticks.
      Afternoon WS,
      I believe it is in many respects the power aspect as with a great many issues in play, showing that the butler now rules the household.

    2. It may or may not be relevant of course but it has been pointed out that satellite surveillance systems have difficulty identifying people standing closer together than 2 metres.

    3. “Social distancing from No. 10.” I live almost 100 miles from Downing Street, is this sufficient distance?

      :-))

  59. The BBC’s decision to snub its core audience will only hasten its demise. 12 July 2020 • 12:00pm.

    Sanctimony pervades editorialising news and current affairs output, BBC dramas and the smug offerings which now pass for comedy. Newspeak masquerades as impartial coverage on the BBC website, which recently described one of the vehicles detonated by Islamist terrorists during the 7/7 bombings as “the bus that exploded”, as if it had done so spontaneously, and characterised Black Lives Matter protests in which 27 police officers were hospitalised as “largely peaceful”.

    Such errors are not just dishonest, but amateurish, as though the newsroom were staffed by interns. Tellingly, the BBC was recently forced to apologise to the conservative commentator Darren Grimes for misrepresenting his YouTube channel’s description, after it emerged it had used an inaccurate article by the LGBT news outlet Pink News as its source. Given the widening disconnect from traditionally-minded viewers, the BBC’s recent directive for staff to state their gender pronouns in email signatures (“Huw Edwards, he/him”) has the air of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

    he/him? God it’s even worse than I thought which is nearly impossible!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/12/bbcs-decision-snub-core-audience-will-hasten-demise/

      1. Could it have something to do with appointments made on box-ticking rather than merit, I wonder?

      1. “It” wouldn’t wash, would it?….Or “Haven’t decided yet, still thinking about it.”

      3. Upvote, Sue – Disqus isn’t letting me upvote just now, wherever I put the cursor. It just takes me through to the last upvoter’s profile.

    3. I signed the petition and threatened to vote Labour.

      How many million over 75’s are there ? Promise to vote Labour if they
      re-instate the free TV licence….vote winner shurely…

    4. The Telegraph’s not far behind – women’s pages full of black models, “The wrong trousers” – though I quite enjoy his column he certainly is deluded. He wrote this week of the “part that is hidden away……very very male” that he couldn’t wait to get rid of. Sadly, no amount of mutilation will make him female.

    1. We’ve got that recording ( I hope) for watching after dinner. They are very special.

  62. Army to be sent into three towns as two areas of Kent are added to list of top 20 places facing a new coronavirus lockdown
    Folkestone & Ashford in Kent are among 20 areas of concern for the government
    Kirklees, Sheffield and Bradford require ‘enhanced support’ and the army will be deployed to facilitate mobile testing in the areas
    Leicester, where 5.7% of people tested have tested positive for the virus, is classified as needing ‘intervention’ as seen in the country’s first local lockdown.
    The 16 other areas don’t face immediate measures but are areas of ‘concern’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8513811/Two-towns-Kent-list-20-places-facing-fresh-lockdown.html

    I wonder what the connection is?

    Like Leicester, many have large South Asian populations and are seen as areas of deprivation. Both factors – large ethnic populations and poverty – are officially recognised as being linked to greater spread of the virus..

    If we didn’t have such large South Asian or African populations , there would be no areas of deprivation or ethnic poverty , and nothing to blame the Virus on.

    This country has made a rod for it’s wn back, and it is still continuing to allow mass migration, whether legal or illegal!

    We could have been a clean happy postwar country with a very healthy economy, but oh no, meddling politicians thought differently.

    1. Has there been an outbreak there with more hospital admissions, I TH beds under pressure, a rise in deaths from CV19??

      Or have they been doing more testing and finding more people with antibodies, or viral fragments??

  63. BBC Four on now 7pm-9pm – slow TV. Repeat of a trip along the Kennet and Avon Canal.

          2. Yes on the Oxford Canal. As they went on their way, by way of reference to one of his theatrical roles, I said “You are welcome Sir Thomas Beecham’ which he acknowledged with a smile & a nod of his head. (Later that day The Community Psychiatric team sectioned me for 28 days…..

          5. Lucky you didn’t say ” I can’t believe it” to Richard Wilson (see Father Ted who did).

          1. She came up to our stall at the Gatcombe three day event last summer – we had a chat then.

          5. So have I, not very long, but more than passing the time of day.

            Rosslyn Park 7’s.

            She sent a lady in waiting/friend to ask why I was supporting Gordonstoun, I explained that my brother and sister had attended (at the same time as her younger brothers) and then I was invited to speak with HRH, a very down to earth woman.

    2. At 20:00 the boat passes Bathampton Swing Bridge – on the right there is a very short boat painted green with one foot high lettering : “My Newt”

    3. I used to cycle along the towpath between Bath and Limpley Stoke in the fifties and sixties on my Palm Beach bicycle with its white walled tyres.

      One of my late sisters worked as a shorthand typist at Harbutt’s Plasticene factory visible on the right.

      Mr Harbutt himself, driving his Rover 65, accidentally ran me over when said sister (stupid) beckoned me to cross the road on the way to school. I was thrown in the air and knocked unconscious. The following day Mr Harbutt called at our house with a large plasticene set of coloured plasticenes and animal moulds.

      Small world.

      1. Plasticine was manufactured in the village of Bathampton between 1900 and 1983 by a company founded by William Harbutt, who also lived in Bathampton.

        1. Sorry, I should have mentioned Bathampton. (The memory plays tricks, is unreliable and we cycled to Bathampton and beyond).

          The Harbutts factory is visible on the sequence to the right of the Kennet & Avon canal.

          The Dundas viaduct was the point at which we often stopped and returned to Bath. This was designed by John Rennie who designed lighthouses (think The Lighthouse Stephensons) bridges and docks.

          1. No worries. The viaduct is a Grade 1 Listed structure. We are hoping to move to Bathampton shortly (our grand children attend the local primary school).

          3. Agreed. Jonty is the local vicar. He’s lucky to be alive after crashing his bike into the back of a car that had come to a sudden stop on the very narrow humped back bridge that crosses the canal.

          4. Years ago, a friend of mine, riding his motorbike while drunk, crashed into a parked car breaking both of his legs and writing off his bike.

            To turn the knife a little deeper, the parked car he crashed into was his 😄

          6. I always wanted to return to Bath but the house prices are now mostly out of our range. We have a lot of stuff so need space.

            We are having to think about moving because our present thatched cottage is expensive to maintain and with two steep stairs with winders would suit younger people with an appreciation of history. £400k is well within our range so I might check it out.

          7. You need to be aware No 1 is only one bedroom and it overlooks The George Car Park at the back …:-(

          9. I always wanted to return to Bath but the house prices are now mostly out of our range. We have a lot of stuff so need space.

            We are having to think about moving because our present thatched cottage is expensive to maintain and with two steep stairs with winders would suit younger people with an appreciation of history. £400k is well within our range so I might check it out.

      2. I had a Palm Beach Bicycle. It had a “Comet” bell and a Dynohub. It was a present for passing the 11+. Alas four years or so later, it was too small for me.

        1. My Palm Beach was given to me by my elder brother. This was because I eventually passed the 11+ whereas my friends at school who failed still received the ultimate incentive of a new bicycle,

          I passed at interview and my parents persuaded my brother to give his bicycle to me (he never used it and was not a good cyclist). My brother went on to cars shortly afterwards.

        2. I had a Raleigh for passing the 11+. I still had it when I left to go to University, but it disappeared afterwards. I suspect my mother got rid of it without consulting me; she got rid of a lot of my stuff like that.

          1. My parents id the same to me – all my medical/dental textbooks ‘disappeared’ a few years after I qualified.

        3. That was nice of your parents. My school just had ordinary exams (so we thought) to get into the Seniors. I knew it was called 11+ but my parents never said anything. Being both Danish, I think they just didn’t know – but if it had been me I think I would have taken a little more interest.

          P.S (edit) – it’s through NoTTL that I realise the things that were done by British families – not that I mind or minded, as I just didn’t know. I gave my children each a present when they got into their chosen secondary schools, though.

          1. A popular reward for girls for passing the 11+ was a year’s riding lessons.
            I opted for a better doll’s house – which I still have.
            My parents did make the valid point that really it should be the ones who failed the 11+ who needed a present.

          4. I never took the 11+, my sister, two years older than me was one of the last to sit it before its demise.

            I did have to sit an entrance exam though to get into my (private) school. I remember having extra tuition in primary school at the end of the day when all my classmates had gone home. I passed quite easily as it happens. Then followed seven years of travelling to the next town every morning to a school away from all my friends. I made new friends of course, but they all lived ten miles away.

          5. Crikey Stormy! I missed the 11+ by a year and went to private school at 8. I sat an exam and then had an interview with the junior school Headmistress! My mother was mortified when I was asked what I liked to do at home and I answered “Stand on my head”. I got in!

          7. As a furriner, some of this stuff is difficult to understand. Nobody explains…

      2. 321262+ up ticks,
        Evening N,
        Lets face it other politico’s in the coalition have not been shy since the knife went into M.Thatcher,
        major, the wretch cameron, & may had a shot at
        b liars title and they were not to shabby at treachery, we are not out of the woods yet by a long chalk.
        We have no idea what has already been decided.

  66. Noticed that if one copies an own post containing a link, the link is usually lost.

    But if one copies an own post on edit, the link is usually kept.

    1. Hadn’t realised that, but thinking about it, if you have edit open, it’s similar to a new post.

  67. Not only do we have the woman with the house at the back of
    us ( three neighbours, with others on either side,
    One side of neighbours are moving to be closer to their son).
    But the woman at the back has the nosiest of children on earth .
    She doesnt like our trees as they make shadows over her garden
    and branches that ” stick out ” no idea why she moved here
    if she doesn’t like trees .
    She also has 3 cats who use our garden as a bathroom, grrr .

    1. One cat in particular seems to regard our whole garden as a lavatory. When I lay thorny branches over the soil, it just does its business straight on the grass! No attempt to bury it. Shameless!

      1. How awful, it really is disgusting how they do that.
        They never do such things in their own gardens
        ( keeping them clean). It’s always other gardens .

    2. If you have no cat of your own, the neighbouring ones always expand their territory. When we moved here, 25 years ago, with our two 11 year old cats, they both got beaten up the same day (two trips to the vets) by the “grey bruiser” from the farm below, who had taken over. It took some months for dear old Pat and Joe to establish their rights.

      1. Neighbours have moved in with 3 cats. We have one old lady cat.

        Neighbours are really nice but their male cat is very aggressive and our little lady was given a big wound by the devil next door, She was also so traumatised that she lost all the fur off her belly and we had to take her to the vet. For ages she wouldn’t go into the garden without one of us, except quickly to do her usual.

        Devil doesn’t usually care much about us unless we hiss him away, but today I threw a cup of water over him. Success – he wailed and fell of the fence. I shall have a cup handy.

        The thing is, one can’t blame him because he is only doing what cats do. So I shall do what I do.

        1. Is he unneutered? It’s quite antisocial to keep an entire tom. Neutered males are usually quiet and home-loving.
          A squirty bottle is useful for the water deterrent. You can spray it a bit further and without the risk to the cup of dropping it.

          1. I think he is neutered, but he is still aggressive. God only knows what he would be like if he wasn’t. Good idea with the squirty bottle.

      2. They do have their own punchups do cats.
        I remember watching a programme once called ” the secret lives
        of cats ” based in this country. They placed cameras or trackers
        on a few cats collars and recorded what they got up to and
        where they went. Apparently they all had some kind of Rota
        and territories to explore, it was fascinating.

        We did have one elderly cat who lived nearby who used to like
        sitting under the rose bush in our garden watching me
        make breakfast through the window every morning,
        It was very sweet and used to fall asleep there
        but disappeared one day, moved away I guess but it was elderly .

        1. Sadly, they don’t live for ever. We have an elderly rescue cat now, Lily. she’s about 13, & has been with us since last August. She’s quiet, and doesn’t go far.

          2. She’s a real sweetie – has her little places where she likes to sit, and enjoys a lap in the evenings.

          3. We have a 13 year-old Siamese, who used to be my mother’s cat (mum has Alzheimer’s, and is in a care home). Poor puss has not only lost her hearing, but has lost her sight as well, due to detached retinas. She lost the sight in one eye about 2 1/2 weeks ago, and lost sight in the other last weekend. Poor thing is struggling a bit to get around. It’s a bit late in her life to adjust easily.

          4. Oh dear…..that’s sad. Lily seems to be fit and well. Our last two lived to be 15 and 17, and the previous two 17 & 18. Suzie lost her hearing, but was otherwise well, and Lily is definitely not deaf.

  69. If the government wants people to return to work it should end the lockdown completly and just telll people to do their own thing.They have spen so much time frightening people that it was the black death they will now reap what they have sown. If you want the economy to sink further just carry on and order people to mask up.Get off our backs and leave us alone.

    1. They can’t. To do that would imply they were wrong from the outset. That none of this were needed. It’s now an exercise in bottom covering.

      1. Oh, but we are still bound by EU rules – we can’t, unless we cut that for all our indigenous.

        Edit: Hey…but not so fair on our own older people who are not yet of retirement age, who can’t get a decent job. Bl**dy Eu.

  70. 321262+ up ticks,
    That gove chap has just entered the political TOP rear exit department with ” we will be recruiting many more border security personnel in the near future to safeguard our borders”
    Peoples, do NOT swallow this political sh!te prior to thoroughly analysing it
    first,
    These border security guards could also be used to keep peoples in as in a captive electorate having to vote lab/lib/con…………. forever.
    We are heading via the polling booth to becoming a slightly bigger Alcatraz.
    The brussels MUST be protected, re-entry must be an option, show pity,
    political lifestyles matter.

    1. ” Lake Markermeer,” No, BBC. “Meer” is Dutch for lake. Markermeer translates as Lake Marken. Marken is the island the lake is named after and it’s a delightful little place.

  72. Remarkable what is going on in Seattle. City employees who happen to be white are being hectored and bullied by their employer. No wonder many private sector employers are shutting up shop and getting out of the state.
    https://youtu.be/gLBQX5Z-j-I

  73. Good night all.

    A big bowl of paprika soup followed by stewed plums for supper. I don’t think I’ll be going very far tomorrow.

        1. Shhhh …

          “Initially the play was titled Mistakes of a Night and the events within the play take place in one long night …”

          1. How dare you, Peddy. Wash your mouth out with soap. And sing Happy Birthday twice at the same time!

            :-))

  74. Completely off topic.

    In the garden at dusk an adult little owl is teaching two fledgelings how to hunt.
    The adult is taking the high position on the electric pole and the two youngsters are sitting down the wire.
    The adult swoops and catches some small rodent/large insect and feeds the two offspring in succession. Every now and then the small birds swoop, mostly unsuccessfully, but sometimes a grasshopper is caught.

    The adult calls repeatedly, I’ve not seen the mate appear.

      1. No, it will be a Little Owl.

        Scops Owl is a rarity in the UK. I once saw one, sitting in a hole in the side of a church tower at Alcudia in northern Majorca. They are really tiny, even smaller than our Little Owl (which itself was introduced to the UK).

          1. Of course he does. D’oh!

            Scops Owl is, indeed, found in most of France, it is a summer visitor and breeds there.

        2. Sosraboc is in France so it could have been a Scopps. We used to have a Scopp visitor perch above our roof late evening in the plane tree, sounding like an electronic warning bleep every thirty seconds or so when we lived in the far south-west of France. I miss them/it. About the size of a plump starling!

      2. Possibly, I was judging by its head shape and size and the fact that we’ve had little owls and young in the garden previously and the Scopp’s owl is rarer around here.

    2. That’s delightful. We have some tawny owls that we hear most morning before light
      but I’ve not seen any baby owls before.

  75. Evening, all. The Bbc is a disgrace. It demands money with menaces regardless of whether you watch their wokery or not.

    1. I’m told that the BBC’s highest paid employee is an ex-footballer with an agency for selling crisps.

      Lord Reith would weep …

      We must exterminate this latter-day Brontosaurus …

      2. Reiths greatest fear was that the left would take over the BBC and he worked hard not to let that happen under his watch. He was so correct as look what has happened.

      3. The problem it seems to me is that the BBC licence fee along with the Council tax are taken from the taxable retirement income of people struggling to pay their bills on minimal state pensions and with little other pension or other income.

        This system of regressive taxation is clearly unsustainable and blights the lives of millions of vulnerable older people.

        The BBC lost the plot and any connection with its watchers a decade or more ago. When we look at the massive sums given to BBC employees and supposed ‘talent’ we look on aghast at the sheer arrogance of the institution.

        The BBC should of course be defunded, its properties requisitioned and its staff either sacked or else re-employed on the minimum wage.

        1. They have generously offered free licences to those over 75s who get Pension Credit, so the very poorest should be ok. Not so much those a little better off, but not by much.

  76. Just spoke on the phone to my Aunt. I’m not in regular contact with my siblings so i haven’t heard the family gossip. But it appears that all but one of of my mother’s brothers and sisters have died. My Aunt died in Barbados being killed by a truck reversing into her and my Uncle had a heart attack on hearing the news. I also heard from my Aunt about all the rest of them. Three from cancer. They are or were in their 80’s.
    They were split up as children to be evacuated and some of them never came back to the family.

    All lives matter.

      1. It’s okay Sue. We all go through it at some point. It just hit me hard when Aunty Mary spelled it all out.

        Her husband who was my Uncle Godfrey always performed magic tricks for us little ones and i didn’t even new he had passed away.

        Mary also told me that my mother killed in a crash was 30 years ago. It’s still raw.

        1. I’m so sorry. To have it all at one time must be quite a shock.
          You only get one Mum and it is an awful feeling. Take care.

          1. I had blanked it out it was my Aunty that told me how long ago it was. Still feels like only yesterday. As others have said it doesn’t get easier but it becomes more bearable

          3. Me also. My mother died alone when she crashed her car coming back from a night of bingo. My father never forgave himself for not going with her.

          4. My mother died in hospital, having been ill for a few months, so not so suddenly. But she had been neglected by her GP, was in severe pain, and eventually a locum dr got her into hospital for “tests”. She couldn’t eat the hospital food, was given no painkillers, and died in agony – we got a phone call just as we were setting off to see her. They did a PM and she had pancreatic cancer. Her GP thought she had an ulcer. An endoscopy had shown nothing, but he refused to deal with anything more, until my ex made a scene in the surgery one day and they arranged for her to have 15 minutes care per day. a woman used to come and make her some soup, which was all she could manage to eat. I should have done more, but I didn’t realise either, how ill she was. She was the sort who didn’t complain.

          5. Sorry to hear that.

            I don’t understand why they didn’t give her painkillers.

          6. I suppose they didn’t realise how bad the pain was because she didn’t complain. She said she had “backache” when of course it was an internal pain from the cancer.

    2. That is the trouble with phone calls , I dread them these days .

      Bad luck Phizzee, so sorry to hear your bad news.

      We have a huge void which has been difficult to come to terms with , as you say, all lives matter.

      1. I hate speaking on the phone. I did want to know if my Aunty had received my letter. Mary and her son in law had done the work on probate.

      1. At least they managed more than three score and ten. Bit numb at the moment. All this going on and it all passed me by.

      1. That’s coming, the food supply is buggered by worker restrictions and lockdowns.

  79. 321262+ up ticks,
    Must be a senior BBc man they are planning on doing it wholesale.
    breitbart,
    ‘ALLAHU AKBAR’ MAN ROBS PENSIONER AND DEFECATES ON HIM

  80. Last year we were told that the Windies cricket team was the weakest they have ever had; we were also told that the English team nearly always won at home.

    Triumph for BCM (Black cricketers matter) – the weakest Windies team ever has just beaten England in England!

    1. I dispute that they are the “weakest Windies team ever”.

      They actually have a number of very talented players and are a much better unit than some of the abysmally poor WI teams that were assembled in the 1990s and 2000s.

      1. England went unbeaten from the 2nd Test in 2000 to the last (4th) Test in 2007, winning 13 of 16 (though to be fair three of the four series were in England). They’d have won 10 in a row had the WI board not doctored the Antigua pitch in 2004 to allow Lara to score 400 in a total of 751/5. England held a 3-0 lead in the four-match series, having won by 10, 7 and 8 wickets.

        The Windies have been improving slowly in the last three years or so.

        1. Probably over 25 years ago I was discussing the test matches with an Auditor who hailed from the Caribbean. England having lost 4 tests with a wide grin he asked me what it was like having the World’s worst cricket team? I had no answer. However, when we next met England had just beaten the Windies, so I asked him: What’s it like supporting a cricket team that’s just been beaten by the World’s worst cricket team…?

          1. The last time WI won four in a series was in 1988, England’s summer of four captains and Mike Gatting’s barmaid.

      2. England went unbeaten from the 2nd Test in 2000 to the last (4th) Test in 2007, winning 13 of 16 (though to be fair three of the four series were in England). They’d have won 10 in a row had the WI board not doctored the Antigua pitch in 2004 to allow Lara to score 400 in a total of 751/5. England held a 3-0 lead in the four-match series, having won by 10, 7 and 8 wickets.

        The Windies have been improving slowly in the last three years or so.

    3. England started on their knees and stayed there throughout the match. Psychological disadvantage from the outset?

      1. The plan is working.

        The whites are being humiliated and ashamed of being white. The team is disintegrating – White Lives Tatter and splatter

        1. I’m not ashamed of being white and I certainly feel no shame for the actions of people who lived over two hundred years ago who may or may not have used slave labour.

          England’s cricketers have nothing to be ashamed of except their cricketing performance.

          1. Well that and taking the knee. English cricket became irrelevant then for me.

          2. Quite – do blacks feel guilt over their ancestors who sold their brethren into slavery for centuries before (and after) the whites even came to Africa? Of course not.The BLM supporters and those other blacks who harp on about white slavery(I’ve met young ones like that all my life) are making fools of themselves as useful idiots for the Marixsts.

  81. Notice that killing of bus driver in France has disappeared from the news almost as quickly as the ‘Reading Three’. No prizes for guessing why, I think.

  82. Some nicked comments……………..

    “A few unanswered questions.

    Why have Leicester MP’s not investigated Leicester sweat shops?

    Why have Leicester police not investigated Leicester sweat shops?

    Why has Leicester City Council not investigated Leicester sweat shops?

    Why has H &S not investigated Leicester sweat shops?

    Why has the Inland Revenue not investigated Leicester sweat shops?

    Actually, I think I know the answer to all of those questions.”

    …………

    “And how many sweatshop workers were being paid cash in hand while

    claiming every benefit available with the full knowledge of the factory

    owner and “community””

    ………….

    I would add ‘why have investigative journalists from our wonderful media not investigated Leicester sweat shops?’
    One would almost think there was a conspiracy of silence…………….ain’t no tinfoil titfer needed here bruv
    Edit
    Now about Bradford etc etc

    1. Why do people think that Walker’s bland crisps (from Leicester) are the best? They are far from it.

      2. I shuffle spuds through my Mandolin and make great music at the same time. You can call me Captain.

      3. Presumably because Big Ears Lineker advertises for them. Lineker played for Leicester City.

        When working on a project in the centre of Leicester, the year of their Premier League win, there were large cut-outs of images of their winning team members attached to lamp posts on the main approach road into the city.

        1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2STPr1Taaw8&list=WL&index=24

          Hi, Corim.

          I was watching a YouTube video, earlier today, on the world’s slenderest skyscraper (in NYC). What is your opinion on the design/concept of the thing … and its designers?

          Personally, I can’t see how such a narrow structure can be stable or have sufficient strength to withstand high winds. It looks as fragile as a lollipop stick.

          1. I think such enormously high buildings can be likened to the temples such as those built at Baalbek. There the most enormous stones were excavated for the columns yet whilst still in one piece had masonry joints carved into them.

            It is the same with grotesquely tall buildings. Their originators are telling us that they did this because they could and to demonstrate their omnipotence.

            There are no advantages in building tall buildings because they require space around them. In addition they require very fast lifts with lift motor rooms at intervals and landings to convey people over the vertical distances involved.

            When you take account of the diminishing floor space which reduces to next to nothing the higher you ascend they are uneconomic.

            There are ways to stabilise the tallest buildings which involve dampening movements or ‘swaying’ to keep this within tolerable levels for humans. This of itself is very expensive to achieve. It can involve mechanisms such as pendula swinging in vast vats of mercury and other devices.

            The Italians devised very expensive mechanisms to stabilise their Blue Riband liners. Nowadays far simpler mechanisms are available to stabilise ocean going vessels.

          2. I think such enormously high buildings can be likened to the temples such as those built at Baalbek. There the most enormous stones were excavated for the columns yet whilst still in one piece had masonry joints carved into them.

            It is the same with grotesquely tall buildings. Their originators are telling us that they did this because they could and to demonstrate their omnipotence.

            There are no advantages in building tall buildings because they require space around them. In addition they require very fast lifts with lift motor rooms at intervals and landings to convey people over the vertical distances involved.

            When you take account of the diminishing floor space which reduces to next to nothing the higher you ascend they are uneconomic.

            There are ways to stabilise the tallest buildings which involve dampening movements or ‘swaying’ to keep this within tolerable levels for humans. This of itself is very expensive to achieve. It can involve mechanisms such as pendula swinging in vast vats of mercury and other devices.

            The Italians devised very expensive mechanisms to stabilise their Blue Riband liners. Nowadays far simpler mechanisms are available to stabilise ocean going vessels.

          3. Thanks, Corim.

            If I had been a filthy-rich billionaire, the last place I would wish to reside would be inside an unfeasibly tall concrete clothes prop (designed by some “Look at me” attention-seeker) situated in the middle of a concrete jungle.

    2. 321262+ up ticks,
      Evening Rik,
      Same umbrella as rotherham same category / cast of players also.

    4. Cultural sensitivity was the excuse the Police gave.

      Only whitey can be a slaver remember…………

      1. Wasn’t the slaver with the most number of slaves in the USA a black himself? I seem to remember reading that. Well, if blacks sell, why not (ed) blacks buy?

  83. Could the stress of COVID-19 be giving some of us a broken heart?

    Some deaths attributable to COVID-19, particularly in the elderly isolated in care homes, could be due to Takotsubo Syndrome:

    https://www.foxnews.com/science/broken-heart-syndrome-increased-coronavirus-pandemic.amp

    https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/medical/what-is-takotsubo-syndrome#:~:text=Takotsubo%20syndrome%20is%20a%20sudden,induced%20cardiomyopathy%2C%20and%20apical%20ballooning.

    1. Not just care homes, the practice of totally isolating infected patients cannot be helping. Saying goodbye through an intermediary who is relaying the conversation over a phone cannot help.

      Jyst watching the CBS news. Apparently 15,000 new cases in Florida today and youngsters are still holding CV parties to see if anyone gets infected. OK there are 21 million people in Florida so 15,000 is not a big percentage but every news channel except Fox is endlessly reporting case counts.

      1. There’s something special about a goodbye kiss – it’s just in case it might not be just an au revoir. 😖

    1. “Incoming!…Incoming!”
      “Let us pray we don’t hit! – five times should be enough!”

      1. The interesting thing is that what he says is virtually the same as what David Cameron said… which is Soros policy.

        Although clearly that is purely a random coincidence.

    1. First excuse – well it is the daily mail.
      Second excuse – as leaders we need to meet people that we may find unpleasant
      Third excuse – there is no proof that we took the bribe

      Carry on as before.

      1. It’s a serialization of a newly published book…..

        ”Adapted from Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, to be published by Oneworld on July 16 at £20. Copyright © 2020 Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg.”

        Boros loves billionaires. That’s why he’s so close to Gates. It’s not a good look… and his love of China – Huawei, HS2, more Hinkley Points – is all too obvious.

        Cameron is in this too, recently discovered to have Soros money in his pocket. Blair too.

        May has recently been filling her boots with huge speaking fees, approx $1,250,000 plus expenses for just eight speeches. One speech has links to Bill Clinton. Those speeches, free to attend, cannot be genuine.

        So the whole UK government, Conservative and also Labor, looks like it’s leaning over a cliff edge… just waiting for the final push…

  87. UnHerd’s Lockdown TV interviews the Swedish doctor/researcher into COVID-19 and discovers the latest findings on the possible role of T-cells in targeting the viral infection and their likely role in providing a much lower level of required herd immunity in the Swedish population than was previously thought:

    https://youtu.be/CwQpg62Kflg

    18 minutes long but a good resume of life in Sweden with non-enforced social distancing – care homes nontheless took a disproportionate death rate.

    1. It’s what they don’t understand, people naturally amalgamate around their
      own kind. It’s why integration doesn’t work. Even immigrants gather in their
      own groups and rather not mix.

      1. Correct. In their case it becomes a ‘community’ and must be treated differently. You try it and you become ‘literally worse than H*tler’ etc. etc.

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