Sunday 18 October: Britain’s economy can’t cope with this endless stopping and starting

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/10/17/lettersbritains-economy-cant-cope-endless-stopping-starting/

634 thoughts on “Sunday 18 October: Britain’s economy can’t cope with this endless stopping and starting”

  1. Tier 2, what Tier 2? Drinkers pack bars in London during first night under new rules while revellers also take to the streets of Leeds and Manchester despite curbs being in place. 18 October 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80c0b805ada19a0781fa2b97addcd69f8a741a65adff85473252b445a8cc4ed9.jpg

    Soho was packed with revelers enjoying a Saturday night in London despite the city moving to Tier 2 restrictions.

    Drinkers packed into the streets of London, Leeds and Manchester last night despite curbs putting a stop to multiple households sitting inside pubs and restaurants.

    In central London drinkers braved the cold to sit outside as the city experienced its first night in Tier Two lockdown.

    They filled streets that been deserted during daylight as businesses reported increased cancellations and said revenue across bars and restaurants in central London had plunged by 85 per cent.

    Morning everyone. I assume these young people have discovered the truth by word of mouth since the MSM would not inform them. That they have more chance of being run over by a truck than succumbing to the Virus!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8850761/Londons-normally-bustling-streets-bars-deserted-day-one-new-Tier-2-lockdown.html

    1. It’s fun watching the intelligent ACB bat all the Leftwaffe inanities straight back at them.

  3. Morning all.. We are stumbling towards disaster, unable to understand science and screened from dissent.

    SIR – Our Government’s confused and illogical policies risk killing more people than they might save from Covid-19. Unemployment and bankruptcy are about to become a harsh reality for thousands.

    We must urgently unlock the economy, accepting the need to live with the virus while ameliorating its effects as best we can.

    The current policies are driven by panic and an over-reliance on the narrow advice of medical experts. Intermittent lockdowns will make little difference to the trajectory of the virus but cause terrible collateral damage.

    The Government should provide warnings and guidance, rather than introducing more petty and unenforceable rules.

    The rumblings of dissent in the North will soon spread nationwide. Many people will not calmly accept the destitution caused by the decisions of our inept ministers.

    Michael Gardner

    Gillingham, Dorset

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    SIR – The Labour politicians I have seen on television recently are guilty of trying to have their cake and eat it. While condemning the Government for locking down cities in the North, claiming that it causes economic harm, they are also calling for a nationwide “circuit breaker” lockdown.

    The Prime Minister is treading a careful path, avoiding economic damage where possible and locking down only when absolutely necessary. Sir Keir Starmer would do well to support the Prime Minister, instead of trying to score cheap party-political points.

    David Kidd

    Petersfield, Hampshire

    SIR – There are many businesses around Britain that are operating 
very effectively. Their stories are not being told.

    A blanket shut-down would close perfectly good ones and cause entirely unnecessary damage to the economy. Attention should be focused on sectors where Covid-19 is not under control, leaving well-managed organisations to thrive.

    Robin Dawson

    Great Brickhill, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – I recently visited two restaurants. I sanitised my hands at the entrance and waited to be called to a table, two metres away from the others. I was in contact with staff only when I was shown to my seat, had my order taken, received my meal and paid (by contactless card). Once I had left the table and chairs were cleaned.

    Why aren’t restaurants being supported?

    Bernard Powell

    Southport, Lancashire

    SIR – On my phone I receive constant requests to download the NHS Covid-19 app, to tell me if my area is low, medium or high risk. Yet the three tiers are medium, high or very high.

    And the Government wonders why its messages are not taken seriously.

    Robin Humphreys

    Exmouth, Devon

    1. One little heartening glimmer in the gloom was when I went to have my flu jab yesterday in Knightwick, a tiny hamlet on the A44 going into Herefordshire.

      It was as efficient as Singapore Customs, with four little tables stacked with syringes under little canvas gazebos each manned by the four GPs, barely recognisable under their masks. Roll up the sleeve, in with the needle, next please, in barely 20 seconds.

      Because the surgery car park was taken up, any non-badge holders had to park over the river in the pub car park, by arrangement. Not that the pub minded. There was a mobile stall serving coffee and sausage sandwiches (with meat sourced from Knightwick’s butcher the other side of the surgery) for a fiver – I was feeling peckish and only too happy to support such enterprise. A sad little notice about the free range pig that used to occupy a bit of waste ground next to the pub. Almost certainly that day a sausage.

      Now if only they could organise London as well as they organise Knightwick!

      1. OH and I have been invited to attend our surgery carpark on Tuesday morning – we’re in two minds, having never bothered with it before, but I think we will probably end up going.

    2. “The Prime Minister is treading a careful path, avoiding economic damage where possible and locking down only when absolutely necessary. ”
      Who is David kidding?

      1. Morning molamola – The very detailed article posted by Ndovu last night around 6pm should be read by SAGE members, Boris and the leading NHS front line doctors . Dr Mike Yeadon said SAGE should have immunologists on Sage rather than multiple mathematicians. He said the immunology data and research proved to him that the worst of the epidemic was over and that lockdown was causing more harm than good He was very critical of the “incompetent” SAGE medics and mathematicians relying on their data for their decisions.
        It is a well written article with opinions based on Immunology research that more people were given some immunity to Covid-19 by previous exposure to similar viruses in the past. This immunity lasts for a long time and is resurrected quickly if needed.
        If I have misinterpreted the article I apologise to Dr Yeadon.
        I suspect that Boris has an inkling that further Lockdowns are unnecessary and is beginning to gain some confidence to cofront his medical advisors.

        1. I hope your suspicions are correct that Boris is beginning to listen to other people than SAGE. I found that article easy to read and understand and I’m no scientist.
          Dr Yeadon is in touch with Chris Green MP, who resigned his PPS post last week over this issue, so hopefully there will be some in parliament to listen. The majority of letters to the DT seem to be in favour of getting back to normal, too.

  4. GPs have let us down. Not all but many have bowed to clinical absurdities without robust defence of their patients. How many understand False Positives? How many failed to shout for Hydroxychloroquine? How many understand what a Polymerase Chain Reaction does?

    GPs are here for you

    SIR – General practice is not closed. GPs and practice teams have been working exceptionally hard throughout the pandemic, delivering essential care to patients with Covid-19 and conditions unrelated to the virus, and doing so in a way that is safe for both patients and communities.

    College data shows that consultation rates are back to near normal levels following a slump. General practice is also delivering the largest ever flu vaccination programme and preparing for a likely difficult winter.

    We do not want to see general practice become a remote service. But we are in the middle of a pandemic. We need to consider infection control and limit footfall – all in line with NHS England’s guidance. Nevertheless, the data shows that more than a third of a million GP appointments are now being delivered face-to-face every day.

    Professor Martin Marshall

    Chair, Royal College of GPs

    London NW1

    6. Tripe! Get your excuses, justifications and protestations in early, eh “Professor”?

    7. Utter bunk! I tried to get an appointment with my GP this week without success. There is no pandemic. You cannot have such a thing where 90% of the population are unaffected by the virus!

      1. Think of the gross dereliction of duty in the management of malignancy. It’s appalling that perhaps more lives will have been lost to cancer than to this festering virus.

      2. But the point is – why can’t you have an appointment with your GP – no appointments available? – unlikely – they just are not seeing anyone. Or No GPs ? – have they all been moved to Dover to ensure those new arrivals are shown THEY are now the NHS’s priority? Why did we bother with months of “Save the NHS” when we now cannot use it? A new slogan has been thought of – space face or whatever – but the people feel betrayed ( rightly so ) and have now had enough.
        A few days ago I was sent a Bowel Cancer screening box where I am supposed to scrape a bit of you can guess what into a plastic bag, seal it and send it back. Not a chance.

  5. Morning again

    SIR – Lord Nelson once remarked: “I could not tread these perilous paths in safety if I did not keep a saving sense of humour.”

    My sense of humour vanished on reading that his memory is to be re-evaluated.

    Lt-Cdr Chris Watson

    Warnbro, Western Australia

    1. SIR – It beggars belief that the National Maritime Museum plans to “review” the displays of various historic naval officers, including Horatio Nelson, in order to “capitalise on the momentum built up” by the Black Lives Matter movement (report, October 11).

      The idea that serving members of the Armed Forces are responsible for (or even support) national policy is extraordinary. Many serving officers disagreed strongly with the involvement of recent governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, but they got on with what they were ordered to do.

      Lord Nelson himself was never even senior enough to have been a member of the Admiralty Board; he was simply a serving officer doing his job. To infer that this made him in some way responsible for colonialism is incredible.

      Lt Col Ray Aldis (retd)

      Salisbury, Wiltshire

      SIR – Archive material has revealed that in 1834 over 46,000 people in Britain owned slaves. These owners were compensated financially 
when abolition was achieved. This means that hundreds of thousands of their descendants, alive in Britain today, may have indirectly benefited as a result.

      Moral values were different two centuries ago. It therefore seems unjust for the National Maritime Museum to single out Lord Nelson and others for vilification. Slavery is evil and the Navy later helped to suppress the slave trade.

      How will our own moral values be judged in two centuries’ time? Our descendants may well ask: “Did people really eat animals back then?”

      Colin Henderson

      Cranleigh, Surrey

      1. I don’t think Horatio Nelson had any strong feelings about black people; he was pretty rude about the French though. Does that make him a racist?

        1. Ginge now faces a dilemma; as a veteran with one arm and one eye, Nelson would have been perfect for disability sporting contests. But would he have been excluded for mind crimes?

    1. I cut both my lawns, trimmed the prunus laurel and tackled (but didn’t manage to successfully subdue) the rampant honeysuckle that had entwined itself through the shrubs. If it’s fine tomorrow I shall have to trim the other shrubs and finish the job with the honeysuckle.

    1. ‘Morning, Rik, I never even bought the book and got Nil Point for getting my name wrong on the exam paper. They claim that there is no such person as “Phuk Yew.”

    2. Ain’t going to work over here.

      I am regularly called a right wing racist because I question the move to take down the John A Macdonald statue that still adorns our main street.

  10. The picture the world has longed to see… Covid vaccines rolling off the production line in thousands of tiny bottles. 17 October 2020.

    Whizzing off the production line in thousands of tiny bottles – this is the vaccine that could end the Covid misery engulfing the planet.

    Drug giant Pfizer has already manufactured ‘several hundred thousand doses’ of the jab at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. They are being stockpiled ready to be rolled out worldwide if clinical trials are a success, and regulators deem it safe and effective.

    The US giant hopes to make 100 million doses available this year, of which 40 million are destined for the UK – a figure that will be dwarfed by the 1.3 billion jabs the company aims to manufacture in 2021. Every patient who receives the vaccine will need two doses.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ac6cb57af0bdbd630ff957d285c3fbbde4e58fbc973b2a480e9c2f6a2f6ebbf.png

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8851467/The-picture-world-longed-Covid-vaccines-rolling-production-line.html

    2. They don’t know if it works, they don’t know if it’s safe, they have no idea whatsoever about long term side-effects or its effectiveness for any period.
      Yet they are producing and stock-piling thousands of doses.
      I understood that vaccines have a shelf-life and that it isn’t very long.
      What will they do with them?

      I would be cautious over any vaccine in the current climate.

      https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/vac-storage.pdf

    3. And if the trials are not successful we can assume that the taxpayer will reimburse Pfizer for its losses.

    1. All the more reason never to own a smartphone, nor to co-operate with a smart-anything.

      1. Smartphones are ok, as long as one is able to remove the battery (to avoid any risk of sparks when working in an explosive atmosphere).

        1. Thanks for the tip. I’ll remember not to use a battery-powered torch and carry a box of matches instead to light my way.

    2. Let’s hope it’s to get the evidence that the system is dire and then to prosecute those responsible, for fraud.

    2. I – eventually – found them by looking down the column on the right hand side, rather than going to the usual page.
      Maybe the letters ed has been on a bender.

    1. The opening couple of paragraphs:

      One of the filthiest tactics of the Panic Merchants is to claim that anyone who opposes their strangling of the country is callous and cares only about money, not life.

      Dissenters have been pelted with slime of this kind by Johnson, the man who ruined Britain, and by his dense sidekick, Hancock – perhaps the first Health Secretary in history who does not know that malaria is spread by mosquitoes. They tell us we wish to ‘let the virus rip’.

      1. Idiot! – If you’d bothered to read down today’s comments, you’d know that malaria is spread by eye contact.

          1. …..and continues:

            When Huxley wrote it in the 1930s, lifelong marriage was normal and looked as if it would stay that way, children were the expected result of sex, and drug-taking was despised.

            His clever idea that a future society would actively encourage promiscuity, abolish parenthood and privacy, and make drug-taking compulsory was too good a prophecy. It’s almost all happened. And, as Huxley feared, we have come to love our own enslavement by pleasure.

          3. I’m watching that series at the moment. It follows the book precisely except Controller Mons is a woman. She does the role credit.

            I’m on the penultimate episode. The last one being called ‘Red Soma’. It has echoes of Orwell’s 1984, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis and Logan’s run.

            Excellent costumes and make-up. I posted the soundtrack last night.

            With what is actually happening in the world today it resembles a natural force. There is no stopping it. It will have to run its course.

            Take a yellow.

          5. They are called ‘Epsilons’. You guessed right though, they rebel. Death and destruction everywhere.

          6. …..and continues:

            When Huxley wrote it in the 1930s, lifelong marriage was normal and looked as if it would stay that way, children were the expected result of sex, and drug-taking was despised.

            His clever idea that a future society would actively encourage promiscuity, abolish parenthood and privacy, and make drug-taking compulsory was too good a prophecy. It’s almost all happened. And, as Huxley feared, we have come to love our own enslavement by pleasure.

          1. Tonic water actually cures malaria, as it does Covid. You might need to get the correct proportion of gin though. Some recommend tonic water used this way works best when dosed homeopathically.

        3. Is the strength of the “eye-contact” virus transmission affected by the wearing of glasses ( especially sunglasses ) or contact lenses. I think this should have a few millions spent on testing this theory.

  14. Infuriating.

    Ministers spent more than £400k on ‘woke’ anti-bias training
    Telegraph reveals £416,644 has been spent on face-to-face courses teaching civil servants about unconscious bias within the last two years

    By
    Dominic Penna
    and
    Christopher Hope,
    CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    17 October 2020 • 9:30pm
    Tory ministers have spent more than £400,000 on ‘unconscious bias’ training, The Telegraph can reveal, including from a consultancy that has previously used Disney characters to highlight issues.

    Civil servants usually take compulsory courses every year that cover similar issues, but an extra £416,644 has been spent on further face-to-face courses in the last two financial years.

    The Department for Education allocated £92,500 to such lectures in the 2018-19 year, while the Department for Work and Pensions has paid £112,500 to the professional services firm KPMG for 720 staff to be trained.

    The Home Office spent £54,080 on training 164 staff as part of two courses run by Civil Service Learning entitled ‘Unconscious Bias’ and ‘Unconscious Bias for Senior Civil Servants’, a Freedom of Information request by the TaxPayers’ Alliance disclosed.

    Equality firm Challenge Consultancy received £38,000 from the Ministry of Justice for two of its advocacy courses, which were delivered as training sessions that spanned up to two days.

    The Departments of Health, Business, Transport, and Digital, Culture Media and Sport spent a further combined total of £119,564.

    A presentation, previously used by Challenge in its workshops, condemned the portrayal of ‘Peter Pan’ character Captain Hook, who has a severed hand, as ‘sinister’ in its ‘messages on disability’.

    Another slide referred to Arlene Phillips’ departure from Strictly Come Dancing in 2009 at the age of 66 as sending damaging ‘messages on age’. It is unclear if these slides were used in the training for MPs or civil servants.

    Challenge uses the slogan “if you have a brain, you have a bias” in its resources, and founder Femi Otitoju said in a 2019 interview she “only worked in order to be an activist”.

    The company has previously used a blue puppet – ‘UB’, short for ‘unconscious bias’, during workshops.

    One blog post published by KPMG, meanwhile, says: “We should never forget that we all have biases.”

    Korn Ferry Hay, which advised Department of Health staff, has said that “reducing bias and barriers to development significantly expands any employee’s productivity”.

    Training across Government departments was intensified after the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, it is understood, with top Cabinet ministers as well as civil servants attending recent events.

    The spending has caused discontent among Conservative backbenchers with one claiming that there was no scientific basis for the activities.

    “Ministers will be furious about how much officials are wasting on courses which the scientific evidence suggests do not work and may be harmful,” he said.

    “The whole agenda behind these courses is highly divisive and sets people against each other rather than bringing people together. They are a terrible waste of poorer taxpayers’ hard-earned money.”

    A second Tory MP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had chosen not to go to any of the classes on offer.

    “I haven’t been to any and I am probably not going to be attending,” he said. The MP went on to claim the “woke training” was “a little bit stupid”.

    James Roberts, political director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers’ money should be focused on high quality services, not wasted on woke causes.

    “There are extensive laws in place to prevent discrimination in the workplace, and mega training programmes like this should not be required.

    “When ministers start the hard work of getting the public finances under control, they should start with stripping back on these controversial courses.”

    The figures come weeks after this newspaper revealed that parliamentary staff are being urged to “profess their privilege” and upload drawings to an online platform.

    Unconscious bias training by companies including Challenge has been rolled out across the BAFTAs, the BBC, and Cambridge and Dundee university departments, in addition to corporate conferences, in recent years.

    Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, passed an unconscious bias course at the end of September, according to his spokesman.

    The Telegraph contacted Challenge Consultancy for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/17/ministers-spent-400k-woke-anti-bias-training/

    At least in the USA, President Trump is trying to stop this tsunami of cr@p. Not here though.

    1. the Department for Work woke and Pensions Penisheads has paid £112,500 to the professional services firm KPMG for 720 staff to be trained.

      1. Or in plain English – taxpayer’s cash has been thrown away to ensure the end result is automatic selection of non-white people for jobs and promotions.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Walter, “…the end result is automatic selection of non-white people for jobs and promotions.”

          Preferably with little or no qualification, apart from a diploma from the Bongo Bongo Land University

  16. 325730 + up ticks,
    So if the plague can be spread by eye contact then surely it follows that
    in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king, beware of b liar
    seeking a cyclops operation.

  17. Dominic West said he jumped in the air with joy when he heard President Trump had been diagnosed with Covid 19. Kinda sounds like a hate crime. Where is plod?

    2. I know nothing about Dominic West but I am not surprised to learn that he went to Eton which seems to produce many completely repulsive people such as David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Justin Welby and the Princess of Wales’s brother!

        1. Boris would have, because he has the knack of making everyone like him. People forget it now, but he was the scholarship boy, odd one out at Eton.
          When I went up to Oxford, Boris had left the previous summer, and everyone kept talking about him. Nobody had a bad word to say of him. Very suspicious, I thought at the time!

          I knew a few other old Etonians. One of them was so smug that he inspired a very strong desire to kick him. Another one was one of Cameron’s cronies, who went on to make a fortune with a tech startup.
          All my Oxford contemporaries who have made millions in this way came from families that were stinking rich to start with. I have a strong feeling that I am a fool, but don’t know how I could have done it differently.

          Edit: Most of the male students at Oxford are complete wimps and milksops. Boris, Jeremy Hunt, Cameron, Osborne, Gove etc are a fair reflection. It is an arts-biased university. I thought this was just my experience, but my cousin’s daughter was there a few years ago, and confirmed that it is just as true nowadays.

          1. The only student out of our son’s year at Bristol University to pick a lodging in St. Paul’s was from Eton.
            Slumming it is just soooooo much fun.

          2. I was at university with a couple of guys who had been to Eton. Apart from the fact that they had cars (not that common for students in the ’70s) and sufficient spare cash to be very generous about buying drinks they were almost excessively ordinary. I didn’t find out where they had been educated until we were in our third year, they just never mentioned it.

          4. I don’t think we talked about school that much. I just wanted to make the point that one shouldn’t really judge a school by a minority of its old boys – or a university by a handful of alumni – however objectionable. Because that handful is never really representative.

          7. St Hilda’s. Principal was a diplomat, with all that that implies. I thought it would be all Dorothy L Sayers and intellectual discussions over cocoa. Instead it was cliques of envy and spite and incompetent, snobby tutors. I hated it.

          9. I understand that, but the only good thing about it was mixing with the other undergraduates. The University itself is rotten to the core.

        1. You beat me to it! Dominic Gerard Francis Eagleton West is the sixth of seven siblings (five girls and two boys) born into a family of
          Irish catholic descent. His mother, Pauline Mary (Cleary), was an actress, and his father, Thomas George Eagleton West, owned a plastics factory           Wiki

  18. Had my flu jab yesterday, it was a drive-through job in the next village fire station, There were no appointments and I was expecting to be caught in a long queue so waited until mid afternoon. No queue, in and out in 5 minutes. Then I found out that if I’d gone in the morning I could have waited 1 1/2 hrs. I expect if the same system is in place next year the opposite will happen.

    1. I was lucky to see the doctor three days after phoning for an appointment. The receptionist told me the surgery was extremely busy and working under pressure.
      Yet when I entered the waiting room after having my temperature taken via a screen,
      I was the only patient!
      I resisted the temptation to ask the nurse if they had finished everyone off!

      1. My last visit to the GP was a few week ago ( they had forgotten a BP test on the previous one ) I was the only one in the waiting area. All I could hear were the office women chatting and laughing away merrily. God knows what they were supposed to be doing with no patients notes etc to process. But they were presumably still getting paid and had not been laid off and losing cash like millions of others.

          1. They did – -that’s all they had me back there for. Luckily it isn’t far away. Squashed my arm three times. Had a nice chat while there. Think she was a bit bored seeing nobody.

    1. What bothers me is that we all know that in no time at all, plod will visit her to ‘correct’ her opinions.

    2. If diversity built Britain, how come the woke mob are now demanding that so much of our history is torn down and rejected? Surely they should be out celebrating.

      It’s just as bad over here with the lefty offended trying to remove all references to the past few hundred years. If the white European influence of the last few hundred years is taken away, what is left?

          5. Nooo, that’s the Wee Crankie. Another comedian (comedienne?) that I find creepy, not funny.

          11. Getting one across.
            Some thing that disgraced MP liberal Jeremy Thorpe and William the Conqueror had in common,…………….
            They were both effing Normans.

    4. All things considered and all the constant whining and other forms of moaning from illegal migrants and all those who live permanently off the UK taxpayers about conditions and all the other daily noises we have to put up with from politics and the MSN. The only people i can bring my self to truly appreciate are my parents and grandparents generations, after making such a gargantuan effort, with no money, to clean up my country, after the determined attempts that Germany made to flatten the superstructure and destroy the mental health and social structure here.
      Long departed but God bless them all.

  21. Spiked,chilling stuff

    And who can forget the reluctance of significant sections of the

    cultural establishment – including columnists and novelists – to stand

    by Charlie Hebdo following the massacre of so many of its

    cartoonists and writers in 2015? Sure, no one should have been killed,

    they said, but that magazine is ‘Islamophobic’; it ‘punches down’, whatever the hell that means.

    All these spineless excuse-makers for religious censorship, all these

    people who failed time and again to stand with people who were being

    chastised, censured or even physically attacked for questioning or

    making fun of Islam, ought to be taking a long, hard look in the mirror

    this morning. For they have contributed to this climate in which

    extremists take it upon themselves to punish ‘blasphemers’. The elites’

    mainstreaming of the idea of ‘Islamophobia’, their treatment of

    criticism of Islam as a racist scourge that must be cancelled, gives a

    green light to Islamists to take even more punishing action against

    anyone who dares to disrespect their religion. The terrible truth is

    this: the No Platforming of people for being critical of Islam and the

    murder of people for being critical of Islam differ only by degree, only

    by severity. In both cases, the exact same warped ideology is being

    applied: that it is legitimate to punish ‘offensive’ speech, especially

    if it is offensive to some Muslims.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/17/je-suis-samuel/

  23. Tier 2, what Tier 2? Drinkers pack bars in London during first night under new rules while revellers also take to the streets of Leeds and Manchester despite curbs being in place. 18 October 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80c0b805ada19a0781fa2b97addcd69f8a741a65adff85473252b445a8cc4ed9.jpg

    Soho was packed with revelers enjoying a Saturday night in London despite the city moving to Tier 2 restrictions.

    Drinkers packed into the streets of London, Leeds and Manchester last night despite curbs putting a stop to multiple households sitting inside pubs and restaurants.

    In central London drinkers braved the cold to sit outside as the city experienced its first night in Tier Two lockdown.

    They filled streets that been deserted during daylight as businesses reported increased cancellations and said revenue across bars and restaurants in central London had plunged by 85 per cent.

    Morning everyone. I assume these young people have discovered the truth by word of mouth since the MSM would not inform them. That they have more chance of being run over by a truck than succumbing to the Virus!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8850761/Londons-normally-bustling-streets-bars-deserted-day-one-new-Tier-2-lockdown.html

    3. I am surprised it has taken this long for the people to say “Enough is enough!” Perhaps Project Fear is losing its clout.

    4. Muslim truck drivers will be licking their lips looking at all those kaffirs drinking al fresco.

        1. Zoom is widely used. A club I belong to arranged the AGM on Zoom. I did not participate as I won’t sign up to Zoom or download any app. Colour me suspicious but I think that Zoom is a Chinese Government scam.

        1. Mine died in 1967 but fortunately, I have a copy of the death certificate as I am about to apply for his wartime Army records.

      3. St George’s Day: believed to be the date of birth (in 1564), and date of death (in 1616) of William Shakespeare.

  25. Morning All.
    Waddaya think of this From Herts police, 1984 room 101 ?


    Please enable images or add us to your Contacts or Safe Senders.
    Embracing uncertainty course

    Dear Watch Member,

    Oaklands college are running an embracing uncertainty course at Oaklands college starting Tuesday 20th October (Next week!) and running for 5 weeks until the 17th November 2020. The session times will be 19:00-21:00 hours.

    There is a £15 registration fee and you can enrol online at http://www.oaklands.ac.uk/acl. When you go on the website you need to click on the wellbeing & personal development panel and select the course or call 01727 737000 and quote course code CL253A1P.

    The course will consist of exploring the basics of CBT and mindfulness. Through engaged experience you will be encouraged to try tasks that embody ‘embracing uncertainty’ while being supported online by your tutor. You will need to have internet access and use of a tablet/laptop/PC with video and microphone capabilities. The course will be delivered using an online platform.

    This is a course run by Oaklands college so any questions please contact them via the methods provided and not myself as I will not be able to assist.

    If you need to reply regarding this message, tap on this email address:

      1. We get at least one of those a week.
        It all started, after the now passed on, old boy opposite was scammed out of a few hundred quid for fake gardening work. Before i knew of it the cheeky bastards tried it on me, but i’m more street wise. And our ‘viscously’ barking Lab put them off.
        Deletion is the norm for these silly emails, they usually pass on details of crimes well after the event and is this day and age, it seems to be the job of the individual to make sure they are safe. Apart from a monthly ‘clinic’ at the village community centre, It’s their there only way of contact now. I don’t even know where the nearest police station is any more.

    3. Yesterday, I received yet another “phishing” email this time from a fictitious company called TVL in respect of TV licensing.
      I looked up the Police Scotland website and there is a section on “phishing”. It gives advice on ignoring such emails. Police Scotland do not provide an email address to which you may forward these fraudulent and illegal emails.
      Clearly they are not interested in being informed and even less interested in chasing lawbreakers.

    2. We drove passed the place a few times a coupe of weeks ago when we were staying nearby. We saw some of the men walking along the local roads.
      I expect they were off to spend some of their new cash.

    3. All already happened in Germany in 2015. Locals have to accept that they’ve got to integrate into the migrants’ culture, or put their daughters at risk. This is what the government wants!

      1. In which case, those locals should have carte blanche to kill any Muslim man who so much as touches their girls.
        It’s their culture.

        1. Like the historical life spans which were brought down by a high rate of infant mortality.
          Our history teacher once asked how many in our class (17, I think) would be sitting there during the Tudor period. After several guesses,he quietly said “One”.

          1. But even that would be guesswork. One year it might be 5, the next year none.

            It has long been recognised that before a population can be persuaded to use contraception on a regular basis, it must be shown to them that the children they have – have a decent chance of survival.

  29. Read all about it — as long as the news suits the purposes of the thought police in Big Tech

    Rod Liddle – Sunday October 18 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Think yourselves lucky. I had intended to write about an issue that surfaced in the New York Post last week, headlined: “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad”. It concerned Joe Biden’s involvement in Ukraine and seemed to implicate him in some sort of scandal that involved his son, large amounts of money, a gas company called Burisma and lots of people with names that I would probably spell wrong.

    A painful and complex process, then — for me, for our sub-editors and for you, because there’d be precious few jokes involved.

    Luckily, Nick Clegg has saved the day. Our former deputy prime minister now has a very lucrative sinecure at Facebook where, among other things, he advises the company about stuff such as “false news”. Facebook concluded of the New York Post story that there were “questions about its validity” and prevented people sharing it. The story was censored.

    That’s good enough for me. We all sometimes worry about what we should and should not believe and — probably much the same as you — at times like those I yearn for guidance from Nick Clegg, for his sheer brilliance and his absence of political bias.

    Facebook was not alone in censoring the story. Twitter banned everybody from posting links to it — the first time this has happened regarding a mainstream news publication. Interestingly, the Democratic nominee Mr Biden made no denial that the email in question had been sent to his son. (I have seen the email, by the way. Christ, it’s boring.)

    As a well-informed observer of current affairs, I have noticed that an election will shortly take place in America. It couldn’t possibly be that those two progressive institutions, Twitter and Facebook, were deliberately suppressing stories hostile to the Democrats, could it?

    Having junked the Biden yarn, then, I wondered if perhaps I should write about the Great Barrington Declaration. This was a statement signed by thousands and thousands of scientists, epidemiologists, health experts and so on, doubting the efficacy of our (by which I mean the world’s) policies regarding the control of Covid-19. In short, they think the cure is more damaging than the virus. The founders of the declaration are professors from Oxford, Harvard and Stanford.

    Luckily you can now read the declaration on Google — but for a long while you would have been hard-pressed to find it. Instead you would be directed to items denigrating the declaration, including several which insisted that it was funded by flesh-eating goblins (or, as they preferred to put it, rightwingers). Nor could it be found on the discussion site Reddit.

    It got scant coverage all round. There was a debate on the BBC Today programme between one of the signatories, Professor Sunetra Gupta, and a member of the government’s Sage committee, Professor Susan Michie. Michie later complained, via Twitter, that she had been assured by the BBC that “this would not be held as an even-handed debate” — in other words, Gupta was to be presented as a bit of a loony.

    This all abides by Ofcom’s instruction to broadcasters that “Covid sceptics” should be given short shrift and not allowed too much time to peddle their idiocies. An odd way of handling a debate, though, isn’t it?

    Those Covid sceptics will also find that their posts on Facebook and Twitter may be deleted. The same goes for videos uploaded to YouTube. I have seen posts from friends removed merely because they doubted the usefulness of wearing a mask. But then, even away from this wretched virus, the trend is towards ever more control of what people can and can’t say. What began as, on the face of it, a well-meaning attempt to remove something called “hate speech” from social media sites is starting to spiral a little out of control. It is becoming just the teensiest bit … um … Soviet.

    The problem being that hate speech, for a certain section of the right-on left, has what we might call a very broad ambit. In the end it tends to mean simply people saying stuff with which they disagree. But such is their tenacity that companies such as YouTube and Twitter, anxious to be seen as right-on, comply with their demands. And Covid is now part of these culture wars.

    The Biden thing? Oh, an email allegedly from a senior bloke in Burisma to Biden’s son, Hunter, thanking him for an offer to introduce him to his somnambulant dad. Joe has been accused of getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired because he was hostile to the company his son worked for. Nothing you’d really want to read about, on the eve of an election. And mercifully, you are spared from doing so.

    US election latest

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fcc71a7bc-1083-11eb-91e1-2b943ee95958.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Shameful students attack Malala
    Should Malala Yousafzai be deported from this country? The winner of the Nobel peace prize and feminist icon was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman for revealing the living conditions under those Islamist lunatics in Pakistan. She graduated from Oxford University in June.

    Now calls for her deportation and other vile abuse have been posted on social media. Comments included “so my hate for her all this time wasn’t unprovoked” and “my gut had a feeling about her and your gut is never wrong”.

    Malala’s crime? She asked students to vote for her friend in a student union election. Her friend is a Conservative.

    Get real: you’ve had enough time off
    For some reason the opinion polls still suggest that, by a large majority, people want more stringent restrictions on our movement than even Chris Whitty is envisaging.

    It makes me wonder if the pollsters phrased the question thus: “Do you want another lockdown — or do you want to kill your own grandmother, you selfish bastard?” Because I can’t find anybody who agrees with the current government policy.

    Perhaps there are legions of Brits out there — almost certainly liberals, working in the public sector — who believe it is a human right never to die and never to have to work. It may even be new Labour Party policy that, racists aside, nobody should be allowed to die of anything, ever, and that being paid a lot of money for not working is the “new normal”, to use that horrible phrase.

    Andy Burnham — a decent politician, for whom I voted when he was standing for the leadership of the Labour Party — and the rest of the metro mayors are screaming for cash. But from where is this money supposed to come, given that we are not doing anything any more? There is a certain blindness to reality at work, I think.

    The first lockdown, in March, was surely right. We had to do what we could to protect the population from a virus about which we knew very little. We know a lot more now, both about how to treat the virus and indeed about its remarkable ineffectuality — its kindly determination not to discommode the vast majority of those who catch it.

    Perhaps the polls are as they are because — as I suggested in May — people rather enjoy lockdown. Not just the not-working bit, but all the rest of it too. A holiday from reality.

    1. The first lockdown, in March, was surely right. We had to do what we could to protect the population from a virus about which we knew very little. We know a lot more now, both about how to treat the virus and indeed about its remarkable ineffectuality — its kindly determination not to discommode the vast majority of those who catch it.

      It is a minor inconvenience except to a tiny proportion of the population and the very old!

    2. “Michie later complained, via Twitter, that she had been assured by the BBC that “this would not be held as an even-handed debate”” Oh dear, they can’t even deliver on their bias properly.

    3. “Michie later complained, via Twitter, that she had been assured by the BBC that “this would not be held as an even-handed debate”” Oh dear, they can’t even deliver on their bias properly.

  30. SIR – I was shocked to hear that HS2 has gone further over budget already (report, October 11). Who’d have guessed that would happen?

    John Stewart

    Terrick, Buckinghamshire

    1. 325730+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      Just picking up speed in the over budget department John, wait till it goes into overdrive and enters the funnel tunnel of unbelievable wasted wonga.

      The question is currently how many private hip / etc operations could have been carried out with the finance
      that has been trousered so far ?

  31. Far-Left extremism has turned California into a dystopian basket case. Douglas Murray. 18 October 2020

    Anyone who has visited San Francisco in recent years will have noticed that one of the world’s most beautifully positioned cities has turned into an American dystopia. Nowhere in the first world is actual inequality more pronounced. The proximity of Silicon Valley has made property unaffordable to anyone below the millionaire class. And when that class comes down from their towers or ventures into the centre of the city they encounter sights rarely seen outside of a zombie movie.

    The incentivisation of homelessness, dire provisions for the mentally ill and easy access to legal and illegal drugs have meant that even the city’s boutique shopping streets are crowded with people who have made the streets their home. A portion of the responsibility for this lies with Mayor Gavin Newsom who, having made such a success of San Francisco, became Governor of California, to see if he could make his policies fail on a larger canvas.

    Although 2020 has not been good to anyone, California has had an especially bad year. On top of Covid and the lockdowns the state has been ravaged by wildfires, Black Lives Matter protests, anti-police riots and more. And all this has come on top of a state that was already staggering under local, state-induced problems. Thanks to a succession of Democrat administrators California has the highest state income tax in the country as well as the highest base sales tax of any state in the union. Further tax rises now being proposed include not just higher taxes on the wealthy but the introduction of retroactive wealth taxes.

    In the middle of all this the state seems to be making it as undesirable as possible to do business. This year California State passed legislation forcing all companies based in the state to comply by next year with a fixed quota system of board representation from “under-represented groups” including trans people and Pacific Islanders. The quota system then mandates higher board representation by the year 2022. Everywhere in the county businesses are trying to work out how they can find a way through this government-imposed assault course.

    The Covid crisis has hit the state as badly as any in the union. But as in so many other places, it has also highlighted the problems that already existed. California’s overpriced real estate only makes sense for an era when people had to be in an office: where Silicon Valley’s techies were taken to work in one of their tech company’s special buses, coding away on the Wi-Fi as they were taken to their hub. Strip away the need to be in any physical locale and you strip away the pretence that there is anything sacred, inspiring or remotely special about the square miles of the Valley. It comes to resemble a disco floor after the lights have come up.

    Today even the major streets of the county, like West Hollywood, are filled with shuttered businesses. Perhaps two out of every three businesses in such formerly commercial areas have closed – many of them for good. The streets are as quiet everywhere, and for as long as indoor dining is forbidden and the rich sit in parking lots eating overpriced food under strict mask laws, California’s good times are not coming back.

    In even the smartest streets in what used to be America’s most glamorous city, the county’s 150,000 homeless have spilled out everywhere. In broad daylight naked people lie among blankets in the doorways of shuttered businesses. Nearly every underpass has become a tent city. Residents who call the police to ask for the now permanent encampments to be moved from their heavily mortgaged doorsteps are told that there is nothing that the authorities can do.
    It is no surprise that the state’s residents are making their reaction to all this felt by their exit. Even before the current concatenation of events the state has been haemorrhaging people. Since 2015 the state has been losing an average net of 100,000 people a year. From 2018-9 the state had a net exodus of almost 200,000 people. Now the trend is accelerating.

    Prominent Californians like the podcaster Joe Rogan have upped and left, announcing that they can no longer live with the ineptitude, misgovernment and ever-higher taxes that have characterised the state in recent years. At tables the discussion is about where the state’s residents will go, with one giant question mark hanging over it all. This is still Trump’s America, for sure.

    But California in recent years has been a petri-dish experiment for another America – the Democrats’ America. For those who have lived that experiment up close, the prospect of a Biden victory makes the question of where to run an international, rather than a national, question.

    Unless Trump wins it is almost certainly too late to save the West and this is probably where we will all end up though with the significant difference that the United States does not have a Muslim Problem.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/17/far-left-extremism-has-turned-california-dystopian-basket-case/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    1. ‘Morning, Minty, it only needs the San Andreas fault to give another heave a la 1906 and all the troubles will be sorted as San Francisco slides into the Pacific. With a bit of luck it’ll take the rest of California and its inept Mayors and Governor with it.

      1. That’s a bit silly, Tom. California is a vast, diverse State which has contributed much to the fortunes of the US and the world. Yes, it has its foibles and plenty of eccentricity but most of it remains a beautiful part of the world, one or two cities excepted.

          1. ‘Afternoon, Horace, we are continually told that WE (the UK) are the 5th largest. Is California’s just another empty boast?

    2. San Francisco’s homeless problem should and could have been nipped in the bud. Instead, the streets are littered with drug-addled zombies and their detritus. The legal availability of skunk and various derivatives has brought this about and the authorities don’t seem interested in addressing the problem.

      What was once a great city to visit has become a nightmare slum. Having been a regular visitor for 40+ years I fear that my last visit was the last.

    3. “Californians fleeing to other states”
      There to vote for exactly the same politicians and policies that reduced their home state to a taxed to death,energy poor,zombie hellhole………..
      “Because it’s only fair man…………”
      Grasshoppers V Ants

      1. Rather like Muslims fleeing their own shiite holes and trying to recreate them wherever they wash up.

  32. SIR – I have to take issue with Peter Froggatt (Letters, October 11) on the subject of Agas.

    My family and I have lived with an Aga for more than 40 years and it has always been the heart of our home. It has cooked wonderful meals (you just need to learn how to cook with it), dried and ironed the washing (no tumble driers or electric irons), heated the water (no immersion heaters) and provided warmth and comfort to us all – including dogs, cats and sick lambs.

    Not for us the impersonal induction hobs and fancy electric ovens that don’t warm the house through. How can it be said that an Aga is just a lump of cast iron? Dame Mary Berry doesn’t seem to have had a problem cooking with one.

    Sarah Westwood

    Plymouth, Devon

    SIR – Micky Tomlin’s husband was right to iron his underpants (Letters, October 11).

    Ironing should be seen as the final stage of the washing process. It kills those bacteria and fungi which have survived the washing process – and some do.

    Norman Defoe

    Fordyce, Aberdeenshire

    1. I was once ridiculed by a visiting female friend who told me off for ironing tee-shirts in winter.

      “They’ll be worn under a jumper, so who the hell is going to see the creases?”, she admonished.

    2. So, Sarah Westwood, you are not only an Aga-braggart, but a name-dropper too. Why does MB, when discussing oven settings on her progammes, quote e.g. 200 ‘fan’?

        1. Whoosh!

          I know, I have one. I meant why does MB say that if she cooks only with an Aga (allegedly)?

    3. Good Lord. I’ve been inflicting fungal infested pants on MB since the …er …. Swinging Sixties.

  33. Copy and Paste from Intensive Care Doctor’s Twitter Page:

    https://twitter.com/rupert_pearse/status/1317784668700397570

    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    Lots of discussion about improved survival in the latest
    @ICNARC
    report on COVID-19 admissions to intensive care published on Friday. But there’s an even more crucial message in this graph showing the rate of increase in ICU admissions. 1/6

    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    28m
    Replying to
    @rupert_pearse
    We can now see that ICU admissions with COVID-19 are increasing at a much slower rate than March. So we are seeing a ‘slow burn’ rather than a ‘second wave’. This could make the vital difference to how well
    @NHSuk
    copes through the winter. 2/6
    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    27m
    This slower rise does NOT mean we will see fewer cases overall in the pandemic second phase. But it does mean we will see fewer cases AT ANY ONE TIME. NHS hospitals are like a flood wall: things are OK until the waters reach the top. But when they do we have a major crisis. 3/6
    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    27m
    The most effective strategy is not to build a higher flood wall (open more beds) but to slow the flood wave. We still see the same volume of water (patients) but spread over a longer time. The high watermark never tops our defences. We maintain good quality patient care. 4/6
    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    27m
    I see this all the time on busy shifts in ICU. I don’t need to find immediate solutions for every patient. I just need to play for time. Sooner or later there will be enough beds to admit every patient. That same scenario is now playing out over weeks rather than a few hours. 5/6
    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    27m
    There’s a vital lesson here. The slow rise in COVID is NO accident. WE made this happen. We slowed the flood wave with #HandsFaceSpace. Less impact on
    @NHSuk
    means ‘routine’ healthcare continues, means shorter restrictions, means less economic impact. Thanks for all you do. 6/6
    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    27m
    A (slightly rambling) discussion of whether survival is improving for patients admitted to ICU with COVID-19:
    Quote Tweet

    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    · 22h
    Some optimistic commentary here from @FICMNews
    Dean @AlisonPittard, suggesting we are getting better at treating COVID-19 leading to fewer deaths than the first wave. Is this over-optimistic, or are patient outcomes really getting better? 1/18
    https://bbc.co.uk/news/health-54568926
    Show this thread
    Rupert Pearse
    @rupert_pearse
    ·
    28m
    The full
    @ICNARC
    report is free to download here: https://icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports

    1. If outcomes are getting better the question is surely why? None of the anti-viral anti-malaria, steroid treatments are any good according to WHO. Is aspirin working?

      1. There is the not inconsiderable possibility that all the low hanging fruit perished in the first wave and the virus is now having to seek out its prey more diligently!

        1. Of no! It ‘s got hive intelligence! We’re all doomed! Doomed I tell you!*

          * © “Dad’s Army”

        2. I thought that the claims were that it is just the young and reckless ones getting infected during the summer, hence the low number of hospital admissions.

          But don’t worry we are told, these inconsiderate youth will spread the bug to their parents and grandparents, we will have please 2 whether you want it or not!

    2. Tell me Doctor Pearse, this time you are playing for, how are you “paying” for it?

      Is it acceptable to you that the time is being bought with non-covid patients’ lives, as treatments for life-threatening diseases are delayed or even cancelled?
      Is it acceptable that delays on treament for diseases that will kill you should take second place to a disease that only might kill you?
      How many life-years of younger people will be lost, to gain a very few life-years for those who are already well past their normal life-expectancy?

      1. I’m not going to post the rather distressing links but I have come across half a dozen suicides of youngsters over the last two days where covid isolation has been mentioned as a major factor
        I fear your hypothesis of a few days ago is all too real

  34. They’ve gone way beyond Barking,headed for Dagenham……………

    Caught by eye contact!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    https://twitter.com/berniespofforth/status/1317514265767661569

    Meanwhile…….

    https://twitter.com/SuzanneEvans1/status/1317567588021555206

    The biggest farce of all??

    https://twitter.com/jadenozzz/status/1317576535801536513?s=20
    Edit,forgot the meme
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/870d91f654e4e96cb1015d6de7a61093528320c18663f37332295a57fcf86811.jpg

  36. From ‘The Matt Newsletter’

    I’m afraid I didn’t get around to my weekend cartoons or unseen sketch this week as I was struck down on Friday feeling unwell. Naturally the first response these days is to suspect Covid, so I’m currently awaiting my test result. If it’s positive I’m going to immediately book a return train trip to Glasgow like the SNP MP Margaret Ferrier.

    3. Nearer Christmas every year, a pop-up stall not far away from me advertises for sale Christmas trees and ‘Holly Reefs’.

    4. To be fair, it is enterprising of them to offer single stalks. How many recipes call for ‘1 stalk of celery’? What do you do with the rest?

        1. Could be, could be. I recently discovered soffritto – a blend of finely chopped onion, celery & carrot. Saves time, money & work.

          https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk0047cXTK2W8HEkC8pXyKIY2dSiRtA%3A1602885460276&source=hp&ei=VBeKX62ADomEjLsP1vGggAs&q=soffritto&oq=soffritto&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIOCC4QsQMQgwEQyQMQkwIyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCC4yAggAMgIIADICCABQ2YeOHljZh44eYIyWjx5oAHAAeACAAZYBiAGWAZIBAzAuMZgBAKABAqABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwit-uPTjbrsAhUJAmMBHdY4CLAQ4dUDCAk&uact=5

          1. HG makes soups for lunches every week, all through the autumn and winter.

            It’s my job to do all the peeling, chopping, slicing and dicing of ingredients.
            I enjoy doing it, I find it quite therapeutic.

          4. Unfortunately we had 100% failure this year, I think they must have picked up some sort of virus. The fruits set and then dropped off at about the 3″ point.
            Most cucurbits were down in quantity.

            Even the butternut squash were down to 25% of normal crops.
            On the plus side the quality was excellent.

      2. – Eat them! For example, fill with blue cheese (Stilton is a particular favorite with Rastus), cut up and serve as nibbles with a drink.
        – Freeze them and use in cooking – useful for flavouring things like stock, soup, or any casserole. I even freeze the leaves for this.
        – Make celery soup.
        – Lots of dishes require celery as an ingredient – and not just Chinese dishes.

        Celery also keeps for ages if you do it right. Cut off the leaves and the bottom bit, wash all the stalks thoroughly and re-compose the bundle roughly. Then wrap some kitchen roll around the bottom, moisten it a little and wrap the whole thing tightly in aluminium foil. Keep this in the fridge and use as required. The stalks will remain crisp for some ten days if you make sure that the kitchen roll remains damp and that the foil is well sealed after you’ve removed your single stalk.

        Bon appétit!

        3. You can even “recover” wilted celery by leaving it in cool water, it perks up surprisingly quickly.

          Chopper’s perk is eating the fresh hearts.

          1. Each to his own…

            Mind you, I would have shuddered at the idea of putting mayo on chips before I moved to Germany.

          4. Man sollte nicht lecker sagen – es ist so ordinair. Das richtige Wort ist köstlich.

          5. Celery is firmly on my “no thank-you Mummy” list; and it’s staying there. It’s not permitted to enter my kitchen.

          10. If you don’t like the taste of something, the soup is never going to be “lovely”. I’m afraid I just don’t like the aroma, or the flavour. I don’t mind other people eating it, but I just don’t. I will happily eat my greens, and most of the other root veg, so I’m not going to get too excited about the ones I don’t enjoy.

        5. Thanks for the tip & see my reply to Sos just below.

          Moi, je préfère manger mon fromage bleu avec des poires.

        6. I only eat celery during the winter; the proper celery with black, Fenland (?) earth on it.

          1. The earth in the fens is certainly very dark in hue, but adding a sufficiency of organic matter will make many soils appear black.

    6. I sometimes buy Lidl’s celery stalks; there’s no waste as all the bits you don’t eat (tops and tails) have already been removed. As I’m the only one who eats celery in our house, a normal sized bunch is too much.

  38. Tony Blair accused of breaking quarantine rules with US trip. 18 October 2020.

    Tony Blair was last night accused of a “flagrant” breach of Covid-19 restrictions, after failing to self-isolate for a fortnight after a two-day trip to the US on a private jet.

    In pictures obtained by this newspaper, the former prime minister is seen leaving a restaurant in Mayfair 10 days after his return from Washington DC last month.

    The Sunday Telegraph understands that Mr Blair appealed to Whitehall ¬officials for special dispensation from the Covid-19 rules, but that he was not issued with the formal exemption letter he would have needed to avoid the 14-day isolation period.

    Lol! A mere bagatelle to someone whose victims number in the tens of thousands! That this creature still stalks the streets spreading poison speaks volumes for the Lost Moral Compass of the West!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/17/tony-blair-accused-breaking-quarantine-rules-us-trip/

    1. Interesting he thought he should be exempt from rules others are supposed to follow. {sarc}. Yet another slime bag. Punishment or consequences for him? No, thought not. Hypocrites the lot of them.

    2. The Met Police did not prosecute Margaret Ferrier MP for her misdeeds . Apparently the law in England was not in force when she took the Covid test. As far as I know the Scottish Police are taking no action against her. One interpretation of law for the lawmakers and another for the rest of us.

    3. Essay Question for the now defunct General Paper which we used to take with our “A” levels if we wanted to go to university:

      “How would you define evil? Using the definition you have given explain whether Tony Blair or Adolph Hitler is the more evil.”

      1. Well of course evil is not mere badness or committing some crime. It must have within it the qualities of acting in service to the thing itself. To actually enjoy and glory in it for the pain and distress it causes. Comparison is always invidious and serves only to lessen the crimes of one at the expense of the other.

        1. It is a difficult one.
          We used to have this conversation on the wards.
          At that time, the hospital still had around 1,000 patients and the nurses had dealt with many more than that over the course of the years.
          Every time, about 3 or 4 names would recur; not necessarily the most florid of patients, not even the most violent, but there was an ‘X’ factor that most staff picked up.

      2. How you answer this question is immaterial. You are judged on what your professionally-trained teacher considers your social category is capable of.

      3. If either were alive during the same period I think Hitler is more likely to have consulted Blair, than the other way around.

      4. Not at my school, Rastus. It was rare to take the General Paper, but going to university was the default for the Sixth Form. We took S Levels and Use of English.

  39. A few weeks ago SkyArts popped up on Freeview. This morning we missed most of the opera “Norma” by Bellini. We must study the RT more carefully.

    1. As part of the great reset, they’re swapping the old Normal for a new Bellini, it’s peachy

    1. 325730+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      What do you think Og ?
      Methinks that we may get one more semi honest GE
      and if the same voting pattern is adhered to then the
      three party coalitions treacherous achievements since 1990 will have come to fruition we will be totally destroyed as a Nation.
      Nother pint OG ?

  41. Good morning, all. Very late on parade. Watery sunshine in North Narfurk.

    No news again, I see. I bet nothing happens to Bliar.

        1. And so would I. The Telegraph article has been carefully worded not to suggest an offence (I know, I know).

  42. Just read about the MPs drinking in their subsidised bars past the 10pm curfew including Matt Halfcock. How about we all go to our locals tonight and, when the landlord calls time, we all say “I’m Matt Hancock” so we can carry on drinking.

    I am so sick of this Government bullying us and telling us what we can and can’t do. Lord Sumption for PM.

    2. Corbyn and Blair have also been seen breaking rules. We’re balanced on a knife-edge at the moment – clearly nobody is going to stick to the rules when THEY don’t, so will they double down and start sending people to prison, or admit the whole second lockdown thing is dead in the water?

  43. Is any more evidence needed to highlight the sheer filth we have as MPs?

    Not only were they happy to take a £10,000 bonus earlier in the year and another pay rise in the last month – now they are too mean even to be expected to pay for their own remembrance poppies from their own pockets.

    The Daily Telegraph should make a point of investigating and publishing the names of these nasty, little ticks who claim poppies on their expenses:

    Daily Mail Story:

    Now MPs are told they can claim the cost of Remembrance Day poppy wreaths on expenses

    MPs have been criticised for claiming for the cost of memorial poppy wreaths, such as Marsha de Cordova, pictured, who suggested her £17 claim was an ‘administrative error’.

    2. hell £17 admin error is nothing, canada had a minister of finance who blamed his failure to pay $100,000 for family holiday jollies on an administrative error.

    3. Morning Richard, I remember reading about an MP who claimed for 1/2 mile in his own car from his house to a constituency meeting……25p.
      I understand that they can claim for their TV licence in their second homes and also food – why food? they have to eat anyway

      1. Vague recall of that short car journey – might have been Prescott and his wife. As for “they have to eat” – yes they do – -and WE are expected to pay for it.

        1. Prescott took the car as it was raining so they drove a very short distance to the venue to save his wife’s hair getting spoiled..

      2. Contractors can charge against tax for their away from home expenses, but these are usually paltry, barely £5 a day or something. MPs put in for every meal possible, usually at a cost of £50 or more.

        Whats disgusting is that 5 of them would get together and submit the same claim for everyone’s food – 5 expenses claims for one dinner, calling it ‘constituent hospitality’.

        1. When I used to travel on the firms business I had a daily allowance for 1) over 5 hours, 2) over 10 hours and c) overnight, I got that allowance to spend as I saw fit with no receipts so I could eat frugally and stay in B&Bs and keep the difference quite legally. One of my colleagues used to travel with a caravan in tow and sleep in it. We used to get around 45p a mile petrol allowance too and this was 30 years ago. That was the Civil Service type of arrangement although I wasn’t a CS…..then the taxman got a grip of it and limited your mileage allowance after which you were taxed on it and you had to produce receipts for accommodation and food. Luckily I had retired by then.

          1. Day subsistence and night subsistence – I remember it well, Spikey.

            Brings back two memories of a Scot I met while on a course in Southend in the 70s. Jim Devine claimed all his due and slept in a tent on the beach!

            He was also a prodigious drinker, whom I recall lying in the gutter, holding on to kerb, slurring “Don’t let me fall!”

        2. As I said: they are sheer filth.

          MPs ought to lead by example and give themselves a 40% drop in salary to show that they have some empathy with those who have lost their incomes completely.

          More MPs need to have their faces spat in!

      3. Two of our sons have been working from home for over 6 months but so far have not been allowed to claim any of the ongoing expenses.

    4. Who has given this grossly insulting permission to them? There really are no words scathing or contemptuous enough to describe these scum.

  44. Have you voted…?

    Coronavirus bombshell: Boris Johnson told to abandon ALL COVID-19 rules – poll
    BORIS JOHNSON should now scrap all coronavirus rules in England, according to a poll of Express.co.uk readers.

  45. Hi everyone.

    Just to get some facts straight:

    In non-COVID year 2018 there were 34,559 deaths in the age group 0 to 50 years in the UK.
    In non-COVID year 2018 there were 581,455 deaths in the age group 51 to 101+ years in the UK.

    This gave a total death toll in 2018 of 616,014 in the UK.

    Above figures source: ONS.

    This means that if you were in the over 50s age group in 2018 you would have been
    581,455/34,559 =16.82499494 times more likely to have died than if you were in the under 50s age group in that year.

    Would I be right in concluding that if this ratio applies to the increased risk of dying from COVID-19 in 2020 for the over 50s age group compared with the under 50s age group then COVID-19 purely works in the opposite way to an anti-aging cream?

  46. At last – after a caramel disaster …. the saucepan will need to soak awhile.
    Good Moaning.

  48. I was sent this post by a friend and thought that NOTLers might appreciate it.

    ‘The ignorance of the “educated”

    They want the song “Rule Brittania” scrapped because, according to them it glorifies colonialism and slavery. It’s a shame their time in education wasn’t put to better use: they got one out of the two but not in the way their ignorant little minds interpret it.
So here is something you are unlikely to learn via the BBC – or most modern schools/universities.

In the 17th century the seas around Britain were ruled by North African Muslim Slavers. They stopped British ships and carried off the crews to be sold as slaves in Algiers and Tripoli and the cargoes as plunder.

    The situation became so bad that fishermen from Devon and Cornwall wouldn’t put out to sea in case they were captured by North African Slavers.

    Between 1609 and 1616, 466 British ships were captured by Slave Traders in the English Channel, Irish Sea and North Atlantic, and the crews were sold into slavery. In 1625 a raiding party landed at Mount’s Bay in Cornwall and 60 people who had taken refuge in a local church were dragged out, the young and fit were loaded up and taken off to Africa to be sold as slaves, the elderly & infirm killed.

    On 12 August 1625 the Mayor of Plymouth wrote to London for military help after 27 ships had been seized by North African Muslim Slavers in just 10 days. In 1645, 240 people were seized as slaves in Cornwall.

    The situation only began to change after the end of the English Civil War when the Royal Navy was built up under Oliver Cromwell. By 1700, North African Slavers generally knew better than to bother the British Isles in the search for slaves because of the Royal Navy.


    It was a triumph that Britain was finally able to control its own coastal waters.

It was in commemoration of this that in 1740, James Thompson wrote ‘Rule Britannia’. It is a hymn of thanksgiving rather than a proclamation of aggressive Nationalism.

If you get this far and are interested to learn more, read “White Gold” by Giles Milton’.

    Right now, there’s a limited-time deal for this book on Amazon which is surprising given that the book is about white people being enslaved by Africans.

    1. I’ve recommended the book several times here “White Gold” by Giles Milton’.

      An excellent read – tells the story of Thomas Pellow captured by Barbary pirates slave traders around the Cornish coast.

  50. Re Eddy’s post below about the “embracing uncertainty” course.

    I see it deals with “….exploring the basics of CBT and mindfulness. ”

    CDT is what we used to call “Woodwork”. Well, give me a piece of wood and a saw (to say nothing of a ladder) and “uncertainty” rules….

      2. Presumably to change everything you learned from your parents and teachers, and to deny everything about our culture before 1970?

        1. It existed long before the Woke woke up. Whether it is of any use is another matter!

          1. It can be very effective for dealing with people who aren’t quite dealing with their lives after bereavement, trauma and illness. It’s really a self-help tool.

        1. Ideally to somewhere where his own flavour of Islam gets him killed by the followers of a different flavour of Islam

          3. One would hope that he’s on a watchlist. This guy is “teaching” impressionable youngsters.

            If the world had not gone soft the French police might well not have used lethal force, because they could be confident the Guillotine awaited.

          4. Thought I loathe the very concept – I would have thought that his tweet would easily come within the heading of a “hate crime”.

            Of course, as he is not a white, conservative, thoughtful person – no action will betaken…

          5. I believe that he’s claiming that there has been some fakery to paint him in a bad light.

            https://www.google.fr/search?source=hp&ei=U2yMX828G8S8adLvhEg&q=dana+nawzar+jaf&gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0TDMsyjKzqCg3YPTiT0nMS1TISyyvSixSyEpMAwCd1Aox&oq=dana+nawsar+&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgoILhDJAxANEJMCMgQIABANMgQIABANMgYIABANEB46CwguEMcBEKMCEJMCOgIIADoICC4QxwEQowI6AgguOggILhDJAxCTAjoOCC4QxwEQowIQyQMQkwI6BQgAEMkDOggILhDHARCvAToECAAQCjoLCC4QyQMQxAIQkwI6BQgAEMQCOgYIABAWEB46BwgAEMkDEA06CgguEMcBEK8BEA06BggAEA0QCjoECC4QDVD5EFidlwFghr4BaAJwAHgAgAGGAYgBmg6SAQQwLjE2mAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdperABAA&sclient=psy-ab

          8. I’m not having a go at you and all others posting on here, Bill, but why is everyone calling this a killing or a murder? It was a DECAPITATION!

    3. Yes, it was a senseless murder by the French police of the Muslim man. But in the spirit of saving the planet and trying to prevent climate change, we should not forego the opportunity of re-use and recycle.

      Feed him to the pigs.

    4. Yes, it was a senseless murder by the French police of the Muslim man. But in the spirit of saving the planet and trying to prevent climate change, we should not forego the opportunity of re-use and recycle.

      Feed him to the pigs.

  52. I’ve been looking at the latest Covid death figures as reported by the BBC. Of the 4301 deaths by/with/from Covid-19 in Scotland to date, 3995 were in hospitals and care homes. That is, 93% of all deaths occurred while in the care of medicos and carers.
    Of those who died, 77% were over 75 years of age, and 14% were over 65. That is, of those who died 91%were over 65. Nobody under 15 died, the 388 in the 15 to 64 age groups were 9% of all deaths.
    Looking at it another way, of those of working age in Scotland 388 died. That is around 0.011% of the working age population, about one in a thousand.
    That is only about twice as many as die in car crashes, never mind other causes.
    Consider that no one is admitted to hospital until they cannot breathe, per the NHS Scotland advice. By which time they are probably doomed anyway. Take into account the anecdotal evidence that the over 65s are treated as DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) and we may see a different picture.
    We see a cull of the elderly, masked by the smoke and mirrors of a useless lockdown .

    1. And don’t forget that of those 338 others, the vast majority will have had serious underlying problems anyway.

    2. Masking, ritual hand washing and social separation have their origins in pagan religious rites. All about subjugation of course.

      1. I think the pagan aspect is this superstitious idea that if we sacrifice our freedoms and pleasures, somehow the gods will be placated. As we live in the 21st century, they have to put a thin, quasi-scientific explanation over this, of course.

    3. And all the time the remedy has been available cheaply and safely. One of the most enormous and calamitous failures of their duty by my colleagues in Medicine. Deeply shaming.

  53. OT – right of passage time. One of the woodsheds needs a new roof. The last one I built – 3½ years ago ended in laddergate. One of my skills had been bodging with pallets and scrap timber and lots of nails.

    The MR insisted on asking a young neighbour – who is a builder – if he could so it. Delighted, he said. I apologised for asking him to do a bit of bodging – but he sad he quite understood – and would do it before Christmas.

    I feel a bit sad, though. The realisation that what you have spent a lifetime doing can’t be done any more…

    Oh well, I’ll have a beer.

    1. I know exactly how you feel. I have a long ladder in the garage that was very useful for cleaning debris from the gutters, unblocking downpipes and cleanings soffits but SWMBO has instructed me in no uncertain words that I must now seek the help of a handyman to do these and many other jobs for which I am deemed to be too old. On the other hand, watching TV documentary series such as “Accident and Emergency” or “Ambulance” does rather remind one of the prevalence of serious accidents involving ladders, power tools, hedge trimmers and gentlemen of a certain age. And, as you indicate, a beer is an excellent alternative!

      1. MB has always been fearful of ladders; even steps to reach into kitchen cupboards set him all a-tremble.
        And that was long before he could blame it on being an old fart.

  54. Reflecting on the “massive” death toll from the Plague – a thought struck me. The vast majority of people who were susceptible to the virus and likely to be killed by it – are now dead.

    Obviously, there will be some who will continue to be struck down – but far, far fewer than during the so-called “first wave”. And in the inevitable third, fourth and fifth waves – well into 2021 – there will be even fewer susceptible. And so only a relative handful of deaths.

    Why are the PTB unable to see this?

    1. You’ve missed their cunning plan.

      By refusing to treat things like early cancers, heart disease and similar potentially lethal illnesses, plus locking people up to eat and drink themselves silly, they are creating a steady supply susceptible people, just so that they can say “We told you so”

    3. According to Dr Mike Yeadon, about a third of the population probably had immunity before the virus even arrived, due to other coronviruses that have been knocking around for years. Plus the official count of those who have immunity now is only done on antibodies, which most people apparently don’t get after having the dreaded virus, therefore it’s way too low.

        1. Interesting. This truth can’t be hidden forever (that many people were already immune). Why are SAGE lying so blatantly?

          2. Don’t forget that most Ministers have not understood what a PCR is nor what is meant by False Positives. The more tests we do the more “cases” we find. Stop testing and unlock the population.

          3. Andy Burnham could be the man…he is resisting more lockdown, pointing reasonably to the fact that Manchester is not awash with bodies. It goes against the grain that a Labour man can be right and the Tories so wrong!

    4. Because all this bollocks has nothing to do with the virus and everything to do with
      “The Great Reset”
      “Build Back Better”
      “The Green Future”
      “The 4th Industrial Revolution”
      When not on camera Klaus from the WEF and his cronies sit in their volcano plotting the serf’s (that’s us) future………….
      No Meat
      No travel
      No energy
      etc etc

        1. In Germany a man got fined for calling a lefty politician a “links-fascistische Sau” and another person got fined for upvoting some comment on Faceache (anti migrant, iirc).

          1. Nothing new. When I was there you could get done for making the ‘Vogel-sign’ at another motorist.

          3. How much? I thought it was a bit of a myth. A neighbour once came out & wagged a finger at my father for sandpapering the balcony railing on a Sunday morning.

          4. No, you can get fined 2K for making a gesture at another driver, because it could distract them and cause an accident.
            My experience in both France and Germany was not to advertise any work that one was doing on a Sunday! A bit hard when you are at work all week, and then running round the shops on a Saturday.

    2. 325730 + up ticks,
      Afternoon Rik,
      Definitely, a spirited fight back against the establishment
      Can they make anything racist or hateful of it ?

    2. I don’t possess a mask (I fail to see why I should spend money on the government’s whim). I wear an old bandana or a large handkerchief (at least they will be useful when we are finally allowed to use common sense).

    2. Simon Dolan got a lot of – probably orchestrated – flak for sharing that on Twatter.

    1. No wonder their children become mental cases if their mothers were subjected to this. I remember watching Sally Field as Sybil. Her inner (private) parts had been attacked with a hook. It fractured her personality into a dozen parts. Why they allow this shit in a civilised country is beyond me.

  62. Good evening Peeps,

    Very late on parade today for various reasons. This morning we had a most unusual visitor to Janus Towers:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqsb1s21uckzf6v/P1020504.MP4?dl=0

    This is a female Sparrowhawk breakfasting on a pigeon. A small trail of feathers indicated that it had been taken in mid-air nearer the house and then taken further down for demolition. It was feasting there for about 30 minutes before flying off, seemingly oblivious to windowns being opened/closed for phototography.

    In all our 31 years here, this was a first.

    1. Brilliant video.

      Birdless feathers are a fairly regular feature of our garden, but although I’ve seen “strikes” the bird has flown by the time my camera is found. The corpse usually gets removed by another creature/creatures before the killer returns.

      1. Agreed.

        Once, in Laure, on the walled in upper terrace – there was a terrific crash – and a sparrowhawk took a pigeon – I don’t know who was the more surprised; the pigeon or me – standing a few feet away.

          1. My closest encounter with a sparrowhawk was about 20 years ago. A juvenile crash landed on my back doorstep. I heard it screeching at the dog – who was outside at the time and wanted to investigate. When I went out it was lying on its back, beak agape and screaming, talons raised… but one look showed a completely shattered wing. I wrapped it up in a dog towel (the only way of picking it up) and took it round to vet for humane disposal. I could have done the job myself but it is illegal to kill a bird of prey and my neighbours at the time were the sort of people who would have reported it – despite the bird having no chance of survival. The vet was in complete agreement that the wing could not be mended sufficiently to allow it to fly and did what was needed. Not a happy encounter, but at least it was given a swift end.

          2. Jennifer, I too had a juvenile crush (Olaf Bloodaxe Senior) when I was a young girl. What happened? Reader, I married him.

          5. Be fair here.

            Her post was not aggressive, it was informative and it was on topic.

            I try to reply, in kind, to anyone who has taken the trouble to reply to me.

            If they set out for a fight, I bite, if they don’t, I won’t.

          6. You must have missed some then.

            Replying in kind if she disagrees with you gets you abuse.

            Clearly in text it is a case of not understanding the humour (yours). She doesn’t have any or have you not noticed?

          9. It was so terrified and so angry, trying to get off the ground when I approached and spitting and screaming when I dropped the towel over it. Often a trapped or badly injured animal becomes very still and quiet (the description of stillness as being “like a tod in a trap” is one that springs to mind) but this bird was “raging against the dying of the light” with every fibre of its being.

          10. I’ve had similar experiences, it has always intrigued me why so often they cease to struggle when they can’t see what is happening. I’m sure I would be the opposite.

            Creatures caught in wire fences, creatures trapped in outside buildings, creatures stuck in gaps that are too narrow to back out of, a cloth over the head often seems to calm them and one can gather them up and release them or take them to a vet. It seems to apply to all sorts, from toads to hedgehogs, deer to birds, cats to foxes.
            I would be extremely wary of assisting a wild boar or similar.

          11. We don’t have boar in this area but I have once, and once only, come across a badger badly entangled in a fox snare. I made a swift detour to a friend with an appropriate weapon – I wasn’t going to put my hand in that tangle, not even with my coat thrown over its head. Besides, the damage was probably too severe for survival. It was obvious – after it was dead, that it had been there for at least a couple of days.

            The snare has its uses, but those who set them and do not walk them at least once every 24 hours …. I won’t write it – I’m sure you can think it.

          14. There was a video here last year or the year before, of a boar ripping a biggish dog to pieces. Nasty.

          15. I’ve seen the result of a young boar climbing into an old boar’s pen (goodness alone knows why). Domestic pigs with nothing much in the way of tusks. He was very badly gashed by the time he was found and rescued (he was less than half the size of the big boy) – and, being a white skinned pig, had a most spectacular array of bruises. We managed to keep him alive, but he was a very unhappy piggy for a long time.

          16. All i’ve ever had to dispatch are Myxie’d rabbits and a couple of cats hit by cars.
            Not a thing I enjoy doing.

          17. As related here a little while ago I once despatched a roe deer which had been hit by a car and badly injured. When I first acquired a working gundog I had to learn to despatch live game when brought to hand – anything else is shirking. But death is a thing to respect – and to do as well as you possibly can. It is easy to appear callous when killing something – but it’s usually a case of “stiff upper lip” and don’t get me started on crying hares….

        1. We have a very local female sparrow-hawk who streaks down the lane then takes a sharp left over our garden. Blackbird and bluetits go doolally and she frequently takes a collared dove. Pink feathers everywhere! Quite sad but there always seem to be more of them.

    2. ‘Ripper’s got talon’.
      Two days ago there was a sparrowhawk on the tarmac in the lane nearby, eating what may have been a sparrow. I videoed it through the car windshield, as it repeatedly ripped the flesh from its victim. Unfortunately another car appeared and it flew away with its meal.
      A fuzzy still is easier to post than a 3 minute video on doorbox.’ https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b553bc232dde84d4a0bda3726285fe8132067f99f0cb01d7e8e598b8d0d9392a.jpg

      1. When I was driving up the M40 a Kite swooped on some roadkill right beside me. I nearly hit it as it flew just in front of the campervan!

        1. I remember once driving in Wales. The road was overgrown with trees and looked like a tunnel and this huge bird following in my slipstream. Don’t know what it was but i kept a constant speed looking in all mirrors just in case i was lunch as opposed to going to lunch.

    3. I saw a pigeon have a close shave last summer.
      I was crossing over the road when a feathered air to air missile flashed over my head into the pigeon and brought it down in the path of a Longcliffe artic tipper, the driver of which slowed down to see what was happening.
      The sparrowhawk flew to the side of the road which allowed the pigeon to fly to the pavement on opposite side of the road.
      The hawk then tried having a 2nd go, but was hindered by the wall beside the path and was again disturbed by passing traffic allowing the rather battered pigeon, minus a few feathers to make its getaway.

      1. Lucky pigeon. I don’t know what the hawk who crashed in my back garden was pursuing – but low flying at speed proved a step too far for it.

  64. Completely off topic.
    By this time tomorrow Bill Thomas will have put up his 100,000th post, if he has not already done so today.
    (Total posts only seem to get “rescored” infrequently)

          2. Nah, the real badge of honour is the nil votes.

            It shows that some snivelling leftie thinks you are worth stopping.

          3. Begs the Question……… Why when Nottlers are in favour of our agriculture and farming in traditional ways a certain person who has in depth knowledge takes every opportunity to rubbish people and downvote them !

            Jen sweetie…if you think it is you…it’s you.

    4. Bill has put up 100,000 posts? I think he must have misunderstood Boris’ order for him to self-isolate. If the posts encircle his entire property, how will he get out to do the shopping for the Most Recent? Use a ladder?

      :-))

    5. That’s not counting the countless other posts he made as LBeagle. Those are not counted.

      I’ve made 19,812 posts under the current Grizzly (with a capital ‘G’) but I made many, many more under the original (and now long defunct — thank you, Disqus) grizzly (with a lower case ‘g’). Not forgetting many more as both Our Grizzly and Grizz, two stop-gap names I adopted when Disqus again fouled up!

      2. Grizz, are you “Old Cop” on the DT? I can see Anne and Rastus and Tartan Pimpernel but wondered about that writer!

        1. No, Sue, it’s not me. I haven’t commented on the DT forum for a number of years and only seldomly then.

          1. Did you read any of the blogs of the Coppers and the Lawyers before they shut them up? Nighthawk for one. Inspector Gadget for two.

            Probably clones now.

  65. Following that embarrassing post by Sos – I’d best be off for the day.

    A demain – I hope.

    1. We will all have to forgive him, Bill. Chateau’s are a bugger to heat. Prolly spends all his time in front of a roaring fire which overheats his brain. :@)

    1. That is so absolutely stupid. Why don’t they just drop into peoples back gardens MaryJane. No one would bother going out Man !

  67. Just recovered from an excellent Sunday Roast. Best I have had in a while. Cob & Pen in Wallington. A real and proper Pub. They were so nice. All the waiting crew made a fuss of Dolly.

    Dolly is now on rations for the next week !

      1. Sounds great but i went to this place for a trad Sunday roast.

        I have heard rumours that Thai shanks are very chewable…naughty you !

        1. A trad Sunday roast what? Beef? Pork? Lamb? Chicken? Camel? Penguin?

          Come on, we must be told!

          1. I asked about the beef and the very nice young lady said the Chef could cook it as i wanted. I asked for rare. I noticed her confusion and so reiterated that it was roast beef and wasn’t it already cooked?

            She said she would check.

            It was very nice though. The Penguin wasn’t oily at all.

            They did do a good roast though. Nice crispy spuds and gravy.

          2. Roast, grilled or fried beef (joints and steaks), for me, should always be cooked to medium-rare (55ºC internal); rare is too raw; medium is overcooked.

            I do, though, like roast lamb and pork to be medium-well (65ºC internal) when served, for both maximum flavour and texture.

    2. Mince pies are on sale.

      I’m just waiting for our version of

      Kristallnacht

      Nike Trainers are favourite.

    3. Black History Month. Black November.
      Gosh, how will we fill in the other ten months of the year?

    4. Why is it called Black Friday?”

      Answer: It could hardly be called “Blacks Fighting In Stores To Buy Heavily Discounted Electrical Goods Because There Was No Suitable Local Riot Providing Looting Opportunities Friday”, now could it?

      The old ones are best!

      2. Black as in bad. As opposed to light. Can’t have that. Let’s just call it Walmart Day of Rob.

    1. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

    1. A question for a Northumberlander:

      Is the North Eastern “Why-Aye” for “Yes” a derivative of the Royal Naval “Aye-Aye”, also for “Yes”?

          1. Diven’t drop yer dottle on the proggy mat! Broons a’ roond! Jackie Milburn laiked tormit! Have I missed any stereotypes??

      3. It is North Eastern, but a little futher soulth.

        It comes comes from the Durham town of Hartlepool, where they are known for killing primates, allegedly.

        The locals wanted to hang one, but the Mayor asked Why-Aye?
        The crowd got their way, shouting YES hang it, and it became good-bye Aye-Aye.

          8. Sue, I reckon Bill must creep into my house at night whilst I am asleep and pinch steal all my old albums with photos of me as a young lady.

            :-))

          9. Sue, I reckon Bill must creep into my house at night whilst I am asleep and pinch steal all my old albums with photos of me as a young lady.

            :-))

      4. Good pre-evening Grizz! I would say that “wey aye” is a more emphatic way of saying “Well, yes”! “Wey” is “well” as in ” Wey a’ave just cum ower the neet from Kingdom Hall ter Gateshead….”
        Don’t think it has anything to do with the Royal Navy.

        1. Good evening, man Sue.

          Since there is a distinct similarity in both the phonetics and the meaning of both phrases, I wondered if one was derived from the other.

          Or am I just plodging with my cuddy?

    2. Men of my generation were taught from a very early age that it was good manners to open the door for a lady, offer one’s seat on public transport to a lady and get up when a lady entered the room. Now we are told that it is sexist. I despair.

    3. MB walks on the roadside of the pavement.
      I find it very touching that he still observes such niceties.

    4. I hold the door for anyone following. No sexism here!
      “I hope you aren’t holding the door because I’m a lady”?
      “No, ma’am, I’m holding it because I’m a gentleman!”

      2. “No, ma’am, I’m holding it because I’m a gentleman and I mistook you for a Lady.”

        1. I make no claim to being a “lady” – whatever it may mean. But the only thing I say to someone (anyone) who holds a door for me is “Thank you”.

          2. I don’t say it because I should though. I say it because I’m genuinely grateful that someone takes that sort of trouble…

      1. 325730+ up ticks,
        Evening GG,
        Simple simon methinks, another with a mental health malady.

        The governance party’s seem to have a need for them as the Dover campaign is showing us, to what ends I know not……. yet.

      1. 325730+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        He will be very cross when he gets his just rewards, he will,one way or tother.

  73. “Jeremy Farrar, who sits on the Sage committee that advises the government, warned it would be a “tough” Christmas.
    The Wellcome Trust director also told Sky News there was “light at the end of the tunnel” as he believed a vaccine would be ready early in 2021.”
    What is it that the Wellcome Foundation does, remind me? Oh wait, I know, it funds the development of vaccines…

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54592112

    1. The Wellcome Foundation (for which I worked) was a Pharmaceutical company originally owned by Sir Henry Wellcome, the main shareholder of which was the Wellcome Trust (a charitable foundation also set up by Sir Henry Wellcome), whose primary aim was funding research to improve human and animal health. In 1995 the Trust sold all its remaining shares in the Foundation to Glaxo in order to diversify its investments.

        1. People with whom I worked were very upset when the Trust sold out to Glaxo. They had the attitude that the profits from the Foundation were going to charity, and that the takeover by Glaxo meant that the company was swallowed up by an organisation which was dedicated to making profits for its shareholders.

    1. The black is doing his Christmas thieving earlier this year.

      Edit: Expect more mayhem and looting from unemployable blacks and disgruntled grasping Muslims as we approach Christmas.

    1. Hunter is obviously such a sleezy piece of shit that even Democrats wouldn’t vote for his Alzheimer father….Oh..wait !

        1. Ying and Yang i suppose. (Just don’t a missile landing in my back yard…just after i have swept up the leafs).

          1. Funny you should mention missiles. I was just thinking how much dystopia will be tolerated before the US Generals step in…..

          3. I agree. The US military will take action when their respected Commander in Chief is shafted by a corrupt voting system and the Biden mafia family of crooks which include Obama and Clinton.

          6. Hey Cori. Fancy a fight? The other two that piss you off seem to have dropped into a stupor. Unsurprisingly really as both of them seem to like to spend all their time fecking everyone else.

            Talk dry stone walling and i’m all yours…. 🙂

    3. I noticed they had a report on the Rust Belt in the US, where apparently even Trump supporters were going to vote for Biden because of the regional economic slump – that has been going on for decades.

      1. Tell them to look at any town or city run by a Democrat. They will consider themselves lucky.

      2. Biden does seem to be leading the polls.

        Can’t imagine why. Probably down to which news feed or poll one takes any notice of.

  77. I notice that the cadaverous crook Joe Biden has hooked up to the climate change agenda in a desperate lunge at President Trump whose energy policies are grounded in common sense use of coal and gas power generation.

    Windmills are and always were unreliable sources of power generation requiring significant back up with nuclear, gas, coal and hydro-electric. Without massive subsidy and a corrupt political class, profiting from the green enterprises, wind power would remain a concept dead in the water.

  78. Yesterday I posted a bar chart comparing 14-day death rates per 10k in UK 2018 with those for COVID-19 in 2020 (14-day period to 15h October 2020):

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ef6973f8dfe025faeb5036c72deb15c54eb160c5d3b98addcddbf608b457225.jpg

    This is deceptive because 14-day death rates were 16 times higher in 2018 for the over 50s who represent the majority of COVID-19 deaths in 2020.

    This chart is adjusted for the over 50s:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/001bebdfe16ea114255e1cd2be507792035e77b7204bcdcc7829b06d0e9385e6.jpg

    1. Just a note to explain interpretation of above bar charts.
      The second chart was adjusted to overcome two issues in trying to compare death rates in UK between 2018 and those in EU/EEA and UK in 2020.

      1. Deaths in a non-COVID year are heavily weighted beyond the age of 50
      2. Deaths in COVID year 2020 are being attributed to COVID-19 instead of being recorded at as a contributory cause.

      This means that where the red bar exceeds the length of the green bar then death rates in 2020 in that country have exceeded the average death rate for the over 50s in the UK during 2020.

      By this token, the UK is far from reaching a critical level of death rate due
      to COVID-19 infections in the over 50s.

      1. We appreciate it Angie O but we already know this. There will be widespread disobedience which will then validate a vanilla type martial law. When that doesn’t work…..they will use tear gas and rubber bullets against young ladies wanting their Friday night Prosecco and Vodka shots. (I enjoyed those nights).

        Gosh ! that has been happening all across europe except the national broadcaster doesn’t consider is newsworthy.

  79. A bit of tidying up done today.
    A fair bit of scrap timber cut up for the fire and nearly half of the ton of ballast delivered t’other day shovelled into smaller bags and carried up to the garden.

    I had an enjoyable chat with a young couple from Lincoln who were passing by on a circular walk from either Matlock or Matlock Bath, directing them towards the nicer path into Cromford through Dunsley Meadows.

    Now shutting down and off to bed. Good night all.

        2. A Labour government, the Brain Drain, massive inflation, unemployment AND we’d just joined the Common Market!

          2. I remember my three elder brothers getting jobs. Two in a local bakery working the night shift. My other brother via my mother got a job as a groundsman (mowing lawns) at Thorn. When i left school in 1980 there was nothing. Fuck all. We seem to be at that point here again. This is why i don’t vote.

          3. I spent the early ’70s in education; first at university, then at college doing my PGCE. I remember the three day week, TV finishing at 10pm and the inflation which wiped out the value of my savings.

          1. Nuance and depth…if it makes you laugh. That’s all that’s needed. Both were well written for their time.

          2. I was talking to Oscar, my dog, while walking this morning. “Lovely boy, lovely chest on you.”

  81. I went to the doctor to get a prescription for my alcoholism.

    “What’s the cost of this prescription?” I asked him.

    “£500,” he said.

    I said, “Woah, and what are the side effects?”

    “Drowsiness, nausea, headaches..” he listed.

    “I’ll decline,” I said. “It seems cheaper just to get drunk.”

    Good night all.

      1. Hand sanitiser is now more expensive than a pint of beer in Manchester. Look out for Mr Whippy.

    1. Same sense of humour as my children. Driving up to Dunkerque: (loudly) “now Ahmed, you must hide under this rug”

    1. Perhaps it’s partly because patients are being treated more successfully, so don’t need to go into ICU?

  84. Good night all.

    Enjoyed the first episode of “Roadkill”. House of Cards revisited?

    1. I might send that to my daughter who got a degree there, but I don’t want 5 years of terror.

        1. “… I’ve had a few
          But then again, too few to mention
          I did what I had to do
          And saw it through without exemption
          I planned each chartered course
          Each careful step along the byway
          But more, much more than this
          I did it my way.”

      2. I have a first degree from Sheffield University. It has served me well for nigh on fifty years.

        Sheffield was and remains one of the better ‘Red Bricks’ and in Architectural Studies second only to University College London, where I obtained my postgraduate Diploma.

        1. Respect to you Sir. However you must be aware that those bricks are under attack. Not just the buildings.

  86. IMHO, Andy Burnham has chosen a bad time to pursue his personal political ambitions; he should be looking after Manchester …

    1. Possibly… but who remembered who the little shit was anyway? Just like the majority of people who live within the M25 knows Boris was once Mayor. They Khant be bothered unless it leans to them.

      A Mayoralty is a step to an office of state. Just like in the U.S.A.

      Rishi, Priti, Khan. Will all beat them to it.

    2. She would be better without all that make up. Even better without the hat and dress. Erm…what do i do now?

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