Sunday 19 December: The Tories’ North Shropshire trouncing was a repudiation of the PM

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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752 thoughts on “Sunday 19 December: The Tories’ North Shropshire trouncing was a repudiation of the PM”

    2. One of the key underlying features of A Christmas Carol which is forgotten, today, is the Malthusian beliefs he attacks. Tiny Tim is part of the “surplus population” and is doomed to die- so why worry about his pitiful life? The Malthusians believed that over-population was leading to doom and it is a part of why the famine in Ireland was not tackled as assiduously as it might have been. In short, the Irish had bred too much and they were bringing this disaster upon themselves and nobody could do anything about it- not least in far away Westminster.
      In my opinion we have a new Malthusian Age- it is shown by this Covid madness and supposed Climate Catastrophe- whose proponents hate humanity and especially their own kind- self-haters that hate Big Time while pretending to care but want people to die by the million. Dickens appealed to the humanity in people and that’s what is so wonderful about this story. I’m with Neil Oliver on this- I am not joining the Covid Cultists that hate humanity while professing to care about the planet- they will only be happy when there are no humans on the planet- except themselves.

      1. There does seem to be a large number of people who revel in the predictions of megadeaths. Scary, really.

        1. Gloom and doom sells it seems and so many people are turned on by it! I’m soon away to work so will be unable to comment further! Have a great day!

      2. How interesting. I had never picked up on that aspect of the book.
        I’ve been increasingly dismayed by the drip, drip of malthusian propaganda emanating mainly from the Greens during my lifetime. Most people believe it on one level or another, as far as I can see.
        I think the truth is rather different – muslim countries’ populations have exploded on purpose as their leaders try to outbreed other religions, using western medicine as an aid to keep their populations expanding. Therefore, I don’t see the problem as a world one – I see it as a continuation of an ancient struggle between the islamic world and everyone else.
        So we should not stop having babies.

    2. Although I’m appalled at how Johnson has mismanaged the past two years, I find that cartoon too cruel.

        2. Since his wine glass is in his left hand, I would hazard a guess that he’s left-handed – certainly his politics now appear cack-handed.

          1. Images show him to be right-handed. However, given his ability to screw everything up, I wouldn’t be surprised that he’s now forgotten.

        3. Then to eat he is left handed – as am I.

          For nigh 18 years the table would be laid wrongly for me. When I did it, I laid it for me. This was considered ‘obnoxious’.

    2. Interesting film. Would have been better if he didn’t mumble so much. I still couldn’t catch the name of the Swiss company.

  7. A return for Tony Blair? That really is my nightmare before Christmas. 19 December 2021.

    A nightmare haunts my dreams, that the Blair Creature will return to rule us again. I very much fear that the country and the Labour Party will soon be ready for this moment.

    I thought that, if I mentioned it here, now, I might somehow make it less likely.

    But think about it. Millions of people clearly want to be ruled by some sort of populist strongman who bosses them around for their own good.

    It haunts mine as well! I can just see Blair cropping up in a National Emergency as the head of the Committee for Public Safety. The Man of Destiny come to save us all.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10324663/PETER-HITCHENS-return-Tony-Blair-really-nightmare-Christmas.html

    3. 343209+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Lest we forget, twas in the name of anthony charles lynton AKA the bog man.

    1. Morning Korky. I would have thought that there was case for encouraging Omicron. So far as is now known, it’s brief, has few serious symptoms and spreads quickly leaving its victims with natural immunity. It’s quite possible that this will occur despite the Governments best efforts and six months from now Covid will have died out!

      1. Morning, Araminta.

        This was the argument of many at the outset. Protect the vulnerable but let the healthy take the brunt of the infection and sterilise it in part of one season. However, that didn’t suit those running this show as their plan required the “vaccine”.

    1. 343109+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      Same as you either trust lab/lib/con
      coalition or you do the decent thing.

    2. Of course, that couldn’t happen here …..
      Bull Dog Breed ….. Mother of Parliaments ….. Habeas Corpus ……… British Sense of Humour …. Knees Up, Mother Brown ….
      (Feel free to add your own cliche.)

          1. Thanks, I almost wrote that but then decided to “play safe”, which in fact was wrong!

          4. I never ever had a problem with switching between left & right sides of the road; same with German & English with capitals, but my spelling went awry in both those languages when I learnt Swedish.

  14. Confused

    A confused nine year old boy goes up to his mother and asks, “Is God male or female?”

    After thinking a moment, Mum responds, “Well, God is both male and female.”

    This confuses the little boy so he asks, “Is God black or white?”

    “Well,” Mum says, “God is both black and white.”

    This further confuses the boy so he asks, “Is God gay or straight?”

    “Darling,” Mum says, “God is both gay and straight.”

    So the child thinks about if for a while, then asks, “Mum… Is God Michael Jackson?”

    1. Nice. Chances are that those two are inhabitants of a beach colony at a place called Penguin on the North Coast of Tasmania.

  16. Here’s an article in The Federalist and here is one paragraph about the UK:

    “Most damning, reports regularly published by the British government show that for every age group from 30 years and up, vaccinated individuals are now actually more likely to test positive for COVID-19. In the case of the 40-59-year-old age group, in the latest report the rate is twice as high among the vaccinated.”

    Here are the authors:

    Dr. Harvey Risch is professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, and Yale Cancer Center. He published the seminal paper on early treatment of high-risk COVID-19 outpatients in the American Journal of Epidemiology and gave testimony about early COVID-19 treatment before the U.S. Senate in November 2020. Dr. Robert W. Malone is a pioneer of mRNA technology and authored groundbreaking research on how RNA could be delivered into cells. Dr. Byram Bridle is an associate professor of viral immunology at the University of Guelph in Canada, whose research team studies the body’s immune response to viruses and develops vaccines to prevent infectious diseases and immunotherapies to treat cancers.

    Here is the complete article:

    The attacks on free speech and science are unrelenting. Academic publisher Elsevier’s suppression of an article documenting the myocarditis risk of the COVID-19 vaccines, with no excuse or pretext offered, is incredible enough. Viewed alongside Twitter’s censorship of the American Heart Association, YouTube’s suppression of a panel discussion of vaccine mandates on Capitol Hill, and the Orwellian call by National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins for critics of the government’s COVID-19 policies to be “brought to justice,” the trend is positively chilling.

    Now more than ever, we need substantive debate about decisions that affect the health of hundreds of millions of people, including views counter to official positions. Instead, we have National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s absurd claim “I represent science” as proof of how one-dimensional our COVID-19 policymaking has become.

    These are just a few examples of the wave of censorship that has accompanied COVID-19, uniting government bureaucracies with obedient news media, academia, scientific publishing, and powerful Big Tech companies. Above all, this concerted campaign suppresses all disagreement about topics including potential early treatments, the natural immunity of recovered individuals, and the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Differing viewpoints on these topics are swiftly labeled “disinformation,” but in fact represent principled dissent based on a large and growing body of scientific evidence.

    Universal Vaccination Based on False Premise
    In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, the censorship aims to stamp out any questions about a universal vaccination program that, it is now clear, was based on the false premise that low-risk individuals must get vaccinated to halt the spread of COVID-19 and end the pandemic. Almost a year into the global vaccination campaign – and starting long before omicron arrived – all the data stand in stark opposition to this belief.

    Rapidly waning vaccine efficacy and COVID-19 surges in countries and regions with high vaccination rates – including Israel, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and now Europe, as well as high-vaccination U.S. states like Vermont – are evidence that vaccinated individuals can spread COVID-19 at rates comparable to the unvaccinated. Multiple studies have shown that viral load in vaccinated individuals with COVID-19 is the same as in the unvaccinated.

    Most damning, reports regularly published by the British government show that for every age group from 30 years and up, vaccinated individuals are now actually more likely to test positive for COVID-19. In the case of the 40-59-year-old age group, in the latest report the rate is twice as high among the vaccinated.

    Whether this is due to the physiological effects of the vaccines or to social factors – for example freer socializing by the vaccinated – the United Kingdom’s record-breaking surge across a mostly vaccinated population makes one thing clear: mass vaccination will not stop the pandemic. Similar surges fueled by breakthrough cases around the world tell the same story.

    This is not disinformation but simply data, which everyone should be free to consider and discuss – even more so as it bears critically on the cost-benefit analysis individuals must make as they decide whether to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and subsequent boosters.

    That’s because, whatever vaccine makers and government agencies may say, it is also clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are not without risks, which for some individuals extend to permanent life-altering injuries and even death. For individuals at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease, the risks posed by vaccines may make sense, but for low-risk individuals, such as the vast majority of children, adolescents, and young adults of child-bearing age, the calculation is very different.

    Discussing Risks Is not Disinformation
    Any discussion of vaccine-related injuries and mortality is immediately labeled disinformation because it necessarily relies on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), an imperfect legacy institution that allows anyone to file a report, conveniently enabling skeptics to dismiss the entire issue of vaccine risks as unfounded anecdote and fabrication. However, any responsible public health program should not take as its starting (and ending) point the assumption that the reports are all false, but instead consider the opposite: what if the numbers on VAERS are real – or even worse, represent substantial underreporting?

    The numbers that we have are not reassuring. Since the COVID-19 vaccination program began last December, VAERS has recorded a total of more than 946,000 post-vaccination adverse events and almost 20,000 post-vaccination deaths. The largest daily death counts occurred within two days of vaccination, gradually subsiding with the length of time since the shot – a very strong temporal signal that there is a causal connection, not mere coincidence, behind these events.

    The trend is corroborated by data from abroad: over the same period, the United Kingdom’s Yellow Card system, equivalent to VAERS, has recorded 400,000 individual reports of adverse events following COVID vaccination, including more than 1,800 deaths.

    Possible Underreporting of Adverse Events and Deaths
    Moreover, counter to those who dismiss VAERS data as inflated, historical data suggests that vaccine-related adverse events and deaths are in fact underreported by a large margin. The Lazarus Report, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported,” and a 2015 study published in the scientific journal Vaccine acknowledged “known underreporting of adverse events to VAERS.”

    A Centers for Disease Control study analyzing VAERS reports from 1991 to 2001 warned that adverse events may be underreported. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has admitted that it was incapable of tracking adverse events regarding the COVID-19 vaccines. In a letter to Pfizer dated August 23, 2021, the FDA stated, “the pharmacovigilance system that FDA is required to maintain … is not sufficient to assess these serious risks.”

    Why would doctors fail to report adverse events, including deaths, among recently vaccinated patients? Consider the fierce warnings issued by national medical organizations and state medical boards, threatening to strip any doctor who questions the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines of his license. If questioning vaccine safety can destroy your career and livelihood, would you create a permanent public record attaching your name and license number to a report doing precisely that?

    Fatally Flawed Safety Reviews
    Again, it is not spreading disinformation to take note of these figures, to ask what they mean, and to raise the possibility that the true extent of these events is underrepresented. But doesn’t all this imply that the safety review process established by the FDA and pharmaceutical companies for the COVID-19 vaccines may be fatally flawed?

    In a word, yes. From the revelations of a whistleblower about the “poor practices” and “data integrity” issues at a Pfizer subcontractor involved in the safety trials, to Pfizer’s minimizing of catastrophic injuries as minor discomfort in the trial for the 12-15-year-old age group, to potential conflicts of interest on the FDA’s vaccine advisory committees, there are plenty of reasons to be gravely concerned about the integrity of the safety review process for the COVID-19 vaccines.

    Just as pressing are these questions: how did the process become so badly broken, and why have all the traditional independent stewards of the public interest, including the news media and academia, remained silent in the face of so many glaring failures? More than that, why have they been complicit in the censorship silencing anyone who raises these issues?

    Questioning the competence and integrity of government bureaucracies like the FDA doesn’t make someone a bad person or a spreader of disinformation. Government bureaucracies can be wrong, and historically the citizens of democracies have viewed it as not only their right but their duty to scrutinize public officials’ decisions. Dissent is an integral part of the sacred compact between government and governed that underpins a free society, and Americans allow the current regime of censorship to continue at their extreme peril.

    1. Academic publisher Elsevier’s suppression of an article documenting the myocarditis risk of the COVID-19 vaccines, with no excuse or pretext offered, is incredible enough.

      One wonders how serious the risk really is. One suspects that with the prevalence of adverse symptoms from even such a small sample base as Nottl that it is probably very bad indeed!

        1. Morning Nick. I can see us exiting the Covid Panic with a generation with long term inflicted heart defects caused by the Vaccination Program, this on top of all those that have been ignored during the process.

          1. Yes, good morning! I am afraid, it is early days and we have a situation where many side-effects will NOT be attributed to the vaccination, we can be assured of that. I’m off to work soon, so will have to bow out but we are once again, on the cusp of institutionally sanctioned madness, it seems.

          2. Another concern is how healthy will the next generation be born to the younger vaxxed age groups in view of the numbers of still births and babies with heart problems etc.

      2. Don’t worry; the government has given them the comfort blanket labelled ‘D Notice: taxpayers’ money variant’.

    2. I wonder how long the vaccination pogroms, oops, sorry, programmes would last if everyone had to pay for their vaccinations themselves.

      1. At the moment, it’s our grandchildren who will be paying for them; throughout their working lives and possibly beyond.

  17. Funny Old World

    I have long felt a vast largely unseen battle for the soul of mankind has been in play and that until very recently we were losing badly

    Now??

    Signs of hope??

    Omicron released by the good guys to give us a safe immunity as opposed to the clotshots??

    Various MSM and scientific rats changing their tune and deserting a sinking ship??

    https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1472350474485604354?s=20
    In the end “I was only obeying orders” didn’t work out too well for either the scientists or the Journalists and trying to cheer on the increasingly irrational orders of politicians doesn’t seem to be working as well any more
    Edit Nicked Comment
    The vaccine passport thing is causing Boris’ demise. Not because he’s trying to bring it in, but because he didn’t do it sooner and is making a pig’s ear of it at all. The NWO handlers are upset as cascade attack from every direction has coincided with all this.

    1. I think Omicron is a stroke of pure good luck (that we got a less dangerous variant, instead of the vaccines helping a more dangerous variant to spread), and we should build on it to push strongly back against lockdowns.
      The next lockdown will be used to usher in the digital currency.

    2. Actually, the scientists only obeying orders were generally whisked off to a new life and treated well. Wernher Von Braun, for example, was whisked off into the sparse conditions of a US army base then after a few years released to a life of luxury with NASA.

  18. Good morning all. I wonder how bad things need to get for Johnson before he either resigns or is deposed? It’s not been a good week has it, with a massive swing to the Lib-Dems in a supposedly safe Tory seat, and the resignation of Lord Frost, the one man with integrity and conservative principles in his cabinet.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/12/18/lord-fronts-resignation-forces-conservatives-ask-stand/

    Isn’t the Conservative Party famously rather ruthless with leaders once they lose their election-winning ability? Where are the men in grey suits when we need them?

      1. Two weeks to go. Plans are being laid. Meetings over the Xmas break. Then, “a word with you Prime Minister…it’s for the good of the Party…I’m sure you understand.”

        1. Well, after a whole year, the wallpaper and matching furniture probably look a bit dilapidated.
          Time to move on.

    4. If Johnson, at his wife’s insistence, puts a dedicated remainer into the position vacated by Lord Frost then the game will not only be up for Johnson – it will also be up for Brexit, the Conservative Party and the country.

  19. Morning all

    The Tories’ North Shropshire trouncing was a repudiation of the PM

    SIR – The North Shropshire by-election result was no ordinary defeat – the consequence of mid-term blues, say, or voter apathy. It was a catastrophe.

    Many factors have been in play – incompetence, sleaze, arrogance and green-liberal rather than Conservative policies – but all can be traced back to 10 Downing Street.

    Conservative MPs have a stark choice. They can either eject Boris Johnson and his gang of fools, or they can face another 1997, with all this will entail for themselves, the party, Brexit and the country.

    Terry Smith

    London NW11

    SIR – Although a lifelong Conservative voter who grew up in a Tory household, and now in my 80s, I feel conscience-bound to say “thank you” to the voters of North Shropshire.

    Gerald Fisher

    Milborne Port, Somerset

    SIR – “One more strike and he’s out,” said Sir Roger Gale of Boris Johnson. I’m afraid it’s too late for that. Mr Johnson has already set in train a series of cost-of-living rises through his addiction to the green agenda. These will kick in next year and keep coming.

    The Tories need to reverse this – the sooner the better. If that means getting rid of Mr Johnson, they must do it now.

    George Kelly

    Buckingham

    SIR – Would I like to have a pint with Boris Johnson? Definitely. Would I want him on my board of directors? Definitely not.

    Melvyn Parrott

    Bedford

    SIR – Once again we saw the smug face of Sir Ed Davey announcing the new dawn of the Liberal Democrats.

    The only person he is kidding is himself. This was a protest vote, announcing that decisive action has to be taken. Whether the Tories have the wit to do that is another matter.

    Charles Penfold

    Ulverston, Cumbria

    SIR – Has there ever been a more unpleasant victory speech in a by-election? Helen Morgan’s was mean-spirited, petty, aggressive and unnecessarily personal in its criticism of the Prime Minister.

    There was no trace of the graciousness towards the other candidates that is customary. Many people disapprove of what the Prime Minister is doing, but there’s no need to be so hateful towards him.

    B M N Clarke

    London W6

    SIR – The trouble with this result is that everyone thinks they have been vindicated.

    Remainers think it was a vote against Brexit; Brexiteers think it was a protest against the failure to get Brexit done. Lockdown sceptics attribute it to the latest measures; lockdown fanatics believe people want tougher rules.

    A return to decent, Right-of-centre Conservative values is long overdue.

    Simon Hubbard

    Brownhills, Staffordshire

    1. Unpleasant, mean-spirited, aggressive and petty? That’s the Lib Dems through and through, so illiberal and undemocratic that I’m surprised no-one’s sued them for misrepresentation.

      1. Named using the same convention that calls a country “People’s Democratic…” – not for the people, and definitely not democratic.

    2. Reverse it? Why would they reverse it? They slap their bills on expenses. It doesn’t affect them. They all want the trougher jobs after office in the green nonsense. There’s plenty of tax payer cash pouring into the furnace and they all want to splash in the trough.

    3. The Lib Dem campaigned like that, B M N Clarke, so her nasty acceptance speech was in keeping. She is a Lib Dem, after all.

  20. Pointed misprint

    SIR – As a young journalist I was once, to everyone’s amusement, given the byline Lady Brown.

    Whether it was a slip-up (Letters, December 12) or the printers getting their own back at me for asking them to work through their tea breaks (a sacred tradition in those strict union days) as we went to press, I’ll never know. But I have my suspicions.

    Lesley Thompson (née Brown)

    Lavenham, Suffolk

    SIR – I have my degree postnominals on my business card. This has led to my being greeted as “Mr Ma”.

    Chris Shore

    Cambridge

    SIR – My late father, the Rev H S Carser, not infrequently received letters addressed to the Rev H S Curser.

    Ronald Carser

    Belfast

    SIR – When I first boarded at Cheltenham Ladies’ College my house mistress, a traditionally built lady, was called Mrs Smallman Smith.

    Her matron, a thin, spare Scotswoman, rejoiced in having the name of Miss Heavyside Pete.

    Diana Crook

    Seaford, East Sussex

    SIR – I once taught a girl called Cherry Orchard and have had two James Bonds in my classes.

    My daughter, when little, thought that the girl down the rabbit hole was called Alison Wonderland.

    Veronica Timperley

    London W1

    SIR – My husband and I once received a letter from our daughter’s school in an envelope addressed to “The Herbs”.

    Judy Parsley

    London W4

  21. Morning again

    Liberty under attack

    SIR – It’s not coronavirus that is tearing apart everything we know and love (Letters, December 17) but the response to it from our leaders, which has been almost unanimous.

    Never before has a society locked down healthy people, or closed schools and businesses as we are doing now. Never before have GPs failed to see sick patients face to face. This disease has an extremely high recovery rate. We have had worse death rates from seasonal flu, but never noticed because there was no agenda, no preferred narrative.

    Now our freedoms are being taken from us with hardly a whimper.

    Margaret Perry-Freese

    Saxmundham, Suffolk

    SIR – Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary who was investigating allegations of Downing Street Christmas parties last year, has now recused himself, following claims that he was aware that his own staff held a festive virtual quiz last December at which alcohol and food were served (report, December 18).

    What planet do these people live on? Such childish, unprofessional behaviour would not be permitted in the private sector.

    Phil Stamp

    Chulmleigh, Devon

    SIR – I am a member of the Conservative Party and work in the health service.

    However, I will now consider not renewing my membership due to MPs criticising the excellent advice given by Professor Chris Whitty (report, December 17).

    I wonder how some of these people ever made their way into Parliament. Standards on all sides have sadly gone down and down over the years.

    Mary Moore

    London E2

    1. Well said, Margaret P-F – the reaction of our panic-stricken government has now persuaded Germany, along with France, to declare this country as some kind leper colony. And there is the prospect of the rest of the EU doing the same. Our so-called leaders don’t seem to have the sense they were born with.

      And don’t get me started on Mary Moore’s comment about the calibre of people in Parliament…

      Morning Epi.

        1. Only because it benefits her. If she were asked to work double shifts without pay would she still agree? Of course not.

      2. The “leprosy” from which they want to protect their citizens is the whiff of rebellion and the desire for freedom…

        1. I hope that it ends soon, and without too much violence. But I feel that, once the conning has been revealed, there will be a great rage, and people will be killed. As long as it’s those that perpetrated it, that’s OK with me. And their fifth column, the press, of course.

          1. I don’t know. I have been on several local actions trying to inform people, and the depth of rage of the believers against anyone who challenges what the government says, is fairly worrying.
            A contact in Austria doing similar actions says that yesterday, a van drove directly at the corona group with their placards, swerving away at the last minute. They didn’t report it to the police, because they were afraid the protest would be blamed and banned. Another driver drove past making a nazi salute at them.
            In Germany, the new Chancellor is openly saying that the state will bring force to bear on those who challenge corona policies – because they (the protesters) could become violent. It’s so obviously whipping up hatred, but seems to be duping many – the ones who didn’t have a lot of brain to wash right from the start, but they are dangerous.

  22. Good Morning All. No golden dawn, or if there is we cannot see it through thick all-pervasive fog that settled on us last night. Cold and dreich.

    1. Magical dawn here… Absolutely clear sky, watched a huge silver moon go down behind the forested Hills. Lovely, so it was.

        1. Nothing to compare it with, there was just the moon. And, being low down, looked massive, silvery and quite romantic!

          1. The only reason I knew was because I get notifications from a website. Apparently it’s due to the distance being the furthest in the orbit. It’s known, amongst other names as a micro moon.
            Oddly enough, I too thought it was exceptionally large and bright last night. Probably a combination of factors; see the link.
            This isn’t my source but it gives some good background.
            https://www.space.com/39238-full-moon-names.html

    2. Magical dawn here… Absolutely clear sky, watched a huge silver moon go down behind the forested Hills. Lovely, so it was.

      1. “Noen lever i tåkeheimen” – some people are perpetually baffled (lit: live in the foggy home)

    1. Well, there’s nothing else going on to occupy the time of our elected representatives.

  25. Been for my routine check up and all was fine and going well until he poked his index finger up my arse….
    I’m seriously considering changing my dentist

          2. My dentist, the cutest wee Blonde German lass you ever saw (especially in her tight white trousers… probably even better out of them…) has great Thruppeny bits. Two only.
            I’ll go and have cold shower.

      2. “Shilling! Shilling! Oh, get you! There’s posh!” We only have silver threepennies and little silver charms. The number reduced every year. We always made sure that Grannie had one or two (a fix) and were naturally disappointed when she cleared her plate and complained that there was no charm in hers.

  26. Fraser Nelson
    My Twitter conversation with the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee
    18 December 2021, 8:03pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltdc8b6610a000fb17/61be3ddbcce68c074259ff8b/Screenshot_2021-12-18_at_19.59.49.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    The latest Sage papers were published this evening, envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how many more restrictions we’ll get – up to and very much including another lockdown. Earlier today I had an unexpected chance to ask questions of Prof Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee. The Twitter thread has received a bit of attention (and comments) making it hard to read. So I’ll reprint it here.

    As well as chairing Sage modellers, Prof Medley is with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which last weekend published a study on Omicron making the case for more restrictions. In a note sent to clients, JP Morgan pointed out that those scenarios assume Omicron was just as virulent as Delta. ‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan said. Adjust for this, it found, and the outlook changed dramatically.

    “‘Bed occupancy by Covid-19 patients at the end of January would be 33% of the peak seen in January 2021. This would be manageable without further restrictions.’

    So JP Morgan had spotted something pretty big; tweak one assumption and – suddenly – no need for lockdown.

    Might it be that small and very-plausible tweaks to these scenarios can make quite a massive difference to the evidence for lockdown? If so, why would this fairly-important and fairly-basic fact not be presented by modellers to ministers – and to the general public? There is no one better to ask about how Sage works than Prof Medley, so I was thrilled for the chance to speak to him on Twitter. It was kind of him to make the time (he’s still going, as far as I can make out).

    The Sage paper-drop tonight – the 6,000-deaths-a-day one – is a ‘scenario’ and Prof Medley emphasises that a scenario is not a prediction. I then jumped in asking why the JP Morgan scenario was not published…

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt0b40eef2215b4883/61be3c378f8a44201b5118eb/WEiejIEhjnBtSnipuYK_UDuSMnuY-desBOvedjo5R3qFGShXs5c1v4KbGyYKL8GuSoI1zrbWYCjE_XE5vLWZ_OIL6k_aBD7XYAleH70u6R724BY4j7EubcDSwbXeZtD6jbMSV_hn.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440

    Apologies for the language at the end, but it was the last tweet that he replied to on this thread.

    I’m still not quite sure what to extract from the above. But Prof Medley seems to hint that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are.

    “‘We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.’

    Might this remit mean leaving out just-as-plausible, quite-important scenarios that would not require lockdown?

    “‘Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.’

    Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are either plausible or likely. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? Worryingly, we see none of that in tonight’s Sage papers.

    From what Prof Medley says, it’s unclear that the central scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. How are they supposed to make good decisions if there is no guidance about the probability of each scenario? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking them for pro-lockdown modelling. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.

    Robert Dingwall, until recently a JCVI member, has said that Medley’s candour reveals “a fundamental problem of scientific ethics in Sage” as “the unquestioning response to the brief is very like that of SPI-B’s behavioural scientists”. He suggests that the Covid inquiry looks into all this.

    At a time when we have just been given a new set of ‘scenarios’ it might be good if someone – if not Prof Medley – would clear up what assumptions lie behind the new 6,000-a-day-dead scenario, and if emerging information about Omicron and its virulence have been taken into account. And how probable it is that a double-jabbed and increasingly boosted nation (with 95 per cent antibody coverage) could see this worst-case scenario come to pass.

    I’ve asked Prof Medley to come on Spectator TV, to have a longer conversation outside Twitter. He has written for us before so I hope he accepts. For now, although I often curse the platform, I should thank Twitter for giving me the chance to ask some questions of someone so relevant to such an important debate.

    ********************************************************************

    Captain Detterling • 12 hours ago • edited
    This is a really good article, and that Twitter exchange has probably been more revelatory – in a useful sense – about this government’s decision making than anything another broadly mainstream media outlet has achieved in the past couple of years.

    It is a fantastic and astonishing insight into what happens when a group of decision makers become prisoners of their own assumptions, and stop trying to challenge themselves.

    GreenAcres • 11 hours ago
    Fraser, you need to go all in on this. If he has revealed that the Government are actually requesting models which suit their pre-planned agenda then this is the scoop of the decade!!

    1. “So JP Morgan had spotted something pretty big; tweak one assumption and – suddenly – no need for lockdown.”
      But it isn’t an “assumption”! Everything you need to know is already reported from South Africa! And being wilfully misunderstood and misreported up here in the West.

    2. I have used modelling (of the probability and consequences of materials failure, amongst others) in Nuclear power plant and offshore oil production.
      When you look at the consequences, you do not base all your decisions on the absolutely, utterly, worst case scenario, as the probability of that is vanishinhingly poor. Example: A failure in a gas pipeline might cause a fire that ignites the wheat belt of the USA and, not only are millions burned to death in the cities, but the rest of the world starves to death. Ludicrous, and with a vanishingly small likelihood. Seems like these clowns have done the same thing, either by coercion or through incompetence.
      Frustratingly the FHI in Norway have just admitted the same failure – they gave out a doomsday prediction (so we’re all locked down) that omitted the assumption that Omicron was worse than Delta. Why assume at all? The data is avalable from S Africa!
      EDIT: I have also made the models, and done the calculations. One thing you ALWAYS do, when the answer is important, is to look at the sensitivity of the answer to the inputs to the model. Such as: What happens if we double the R-factor? Halve it? Does it make much of a difference to the output? Does a variation of 0,1% have an effect? and so on, until you understand how variable the answers are to the inputs.
      Then you make a decision.

      1. Professor Norman Fenton is a mathematician and statistician at Queen Mary University of London and his observations are so perceptive that Youtube has judged that they should be taken down because they do not support the government’s line.

      1. Need a proper slicer – even a sharp knife can’t cut it thinly.
        But lovely flavour! Thanks, Pig #1 (Big pig)

      2. No. 1 pig. The extroverted one, the bigger one (was always first to get her snout into the trough). Was the first to meet her end, too – came trotting out of the pig house, following her favourite bucket of food, until popped in the forehead with the captive bolt. Lights out immediately, nice way to go (equivalent – just got yer schnozz into a big glass of Bunnahabhain, fatal stroke).
        Surprisingly little fat, though. They were free-range pigs, so quite dark meat, too. Lots of pork flavour!

      3. My sister once had an enormous sow called Bathsheba. Bathsheba sired a large litter and they called the one they would not be selling Breakfast..

        When the family went to church the following Sunday it so happened that vicar gave a sermon about the dastardly nature of fornication and cited the story of King David who, as most Nottlers will remember, sent Uriah the Hittite into the first line of battle so that he would be killed and David could slake his lust and enjoy unbridled concupiscence with Uriah’s widow.

        The vicar named this woman from the pulpit and my nephew Jonathan, then aged five, cheerfully announced to the congregation: “Bathsheba’s just had 12 piglets and we’re having Breakfast!

  28. SIR – Derek Coggrave (Letters, December 12) draws attention to the concreting over of urban gardens, usually to provide off-road parking.

    A consequence of this is that an absorbent surface is replaced by an effectively impermeable one, so that rain that previously soaked into the ground runs off into the drains.

    This often adds to difficulties in Britain’s antiquated dual-purpose sewerage system, and can aggravate flooding risks. However, those problems are largely avoidable because permeable hard surfaces – such as concrete lattices, which can be planted with attractive, hardy, low-growing plants – are available at little extra cost.

    Planners, take note.

    Bruce Denness
    Niton, Isle of Wight

    In this part of the country – and others, for all I know – planning authorities acted some years ago to insist that no further impermeable surfaces such as driveways and so on are installed. Perhaps this has yet to happen in the IOW?

    1. Perhaps planning authorities could take the same attitude with Solar ‘Farms’ on arable land: the soil underneath becomes hard-packed and impermeable causing run-off to escape to the roads, flooding and damage – and this over some 500 acres, not just your front garden.

      1. That is one of the objections to the proposed 2,000 solar ‘farm’ currently under consideration on the Lincolnshire/Rutland border. The council has rejected the plans but I bet the plans are passed on appeal, all valid concerns being over-ruled. Got to feed the net zero lunacy, regardless of adverse consequences.

    2. Planning law requires all new impermeable surfaces of more than 5m2 everywhere in the U.K. to have planning permission unless all rainwater is diverted to soak away, not drains.

      I recently extended the impermeable hard areas on my front garden with impermeable Yorkstone. I divert any run off to my rear garden, a longer and more costly arrangement than diverting to drains, but I can now feel virtuous and safe from a vindictive neighbour.

    3. When I had my drive changed to pavers the rainwater run off was not allowed to flow out into the gutter of the road and hence into the drains. The installer had to slope the drive so that water ran onto the slate chip covered beds and a drain that fed into a large soak-away.

  29. First Fatty to Freddy, now the Beano changes Spotty to Scotty to avoid offending modern readers
    The new December issue will explain the name change to the comic book’s young readers

    The Beano has changed the name of Spotty to Scotty, as the comic continues to remove politically incorrect labels,
    As one of the Bash Street Kids, the pimpled youngster has been known as Spotty since his first appearance in 1954, but he has become the latest character to be reappraised by publishers.
    He will now be known as Scotty rather than Spotty, Beano bosses have said, with a new December issue explaining the name change to readers.
    The move comes after the Beano, run by publishers DC Thompson, changed the name of heavy-set character “Fatty” to “Freddy” over fears his nickname could be offensive to some children.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7cc8748be4550843c432ff6a6722c8429cbe445260ae432fe9365aab85d82f7f.jpg

    Political Correctness gone mad.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/18/first-fatty-freddy-now-beano-changes-spotty-scotty-avoid-offending/

    2. Morning!

      You could almost forgive if the publishers were American but they’re Scottish and based in Dundee.

        1. Lord Snooty III and Big Fat Joe? Where are: Skinny Lizzie, Hairpin Huggins, Happy Hutton, Gertie the Goat, Scrapper Smith, Rosie, Snitch & Snatch, Swanky Lanky Liz, Doubting Thomas, Poly Wolly Doodle and Contrary Mary?

      2. IIRR, there was a prime minister of New Zealand who was unhappy about that. Thank heavens NZ now has a much more sensible PM!

    5. The exponentially-increasing high level of stupidity in the human species is now accelerating out of control. What next? Are they going to change the name of Plug to “Paul” and make him much prettier? Imbeciles!

      1. As a person of Scottish ancentry, I’m outrages about the use of the name Scotty for such a ridiculous cartoon charcter. Is this appalling racism to go unchallenged?

  30. The MR’s condition has nothing to do with the paint fumes. She has what used to be called a “Cold”. Remember them?

    Last Tuesday she went out clubbing* and must have picked up the germans there.

    *Gresham’s School Former Staff Club – Mince pies an mulled wine.

    Force feeding her Day Nurse.

      1. She did one on Tuesday. Negative. She has no symptoms other than those normal ones for a cold.

    2. Send her our love and best wishes. C & R.

      Of course if the vaccines were any good at all we would be able to say with confidence:

      “It can’t possibly be Covid because she has been jabbed and boosted.”

    3. I’m in bed with one right now. Nothing like the lurg that brought me down two years ago, this one is a classic dribbly nose job.

  32. The BTLrs are not holding back:

    Martin Selves
    5 HRS AGO
    I have admired Lord Frost for a very long time. He believed in Brexit, and often stood alone as he battled with the Eu over Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister could not make up his mind on A16, and 2 years have gone by without Lord Frost being given enough credit for the work he did, or any backing for his conviction politics on the Protocol. There is only so much a Politician will take before he realises his efforts have been duplicated so many times over, he has seen the Government cannot make a decision, and eventually decides he is wasting his time knocking on a broken door.
    Boris is incapable of making a serious decision. He would rather close the folder and hope the other side gives way. But we know by now it is Boris that gives way, on Green, on HS2 on Fishing and increasingly likely on Northern Ireland.
    Lord Frost does not want to be part of the next fiasco, the big one, the acceptance of ECJ Sovereignty in NI, and the damage, hurt and serious violence that it will bring.
    Nothing seems to jolt Boris into action except Covid. The loss of Lord Frost is grave and another clear message for Boris. He will not respond except to thank this man for his hard work. Boris reminds me of someone who Sees no Evil or Hears no Evil. He appears to be deaf to the huge problems he has created. And this is a big one.
    If he caves into the Eu over NI he will be removed from No.10 imho, and fully deserves it. This surely is the last nail in the Green, Woke, Dithering Coffin.

    Philippa Squeak
    10 HRS AGO
    Congratulations Boris Johnson in squandering an 79 seat majority, losing the Red Wall vote, losing a very competent Brexit negotiator with the corrupt EU and the next election thanks to your utter mis-management of your Conservative (in name only) Party.
    Do the decent thing for this country and resign – and take your ghastly wife with you.
    Step forward Nigel Farage – this country desperately needs you to save it from leftwing wokes.

    The Scot
    8 HRS AGO
    Boris tenure as PM is now over. It’s just a question of how he leaves. He has no one but himself to blame as he was given a clear majority & mandate at the last election but has squandered all by his Blairite actions along with his stupidity over a number of policy areas notably the ‘green’ energy agenda.
    My concern is that many in the Remainer rump within the Conservatives will see this as an opportunity to put in place someone who can start the journey back toward the EU. That would see the end of the Conservative party.

    2. With Lord Frost having resigned out of the sheer frustration of being thwarted time and again and egged on by Gove and by Nut Nuts the Bumbling Bonker’s next mantra will be :

      LET’S GET BREXIT UNDONE

      Nobody must ever forget :

      Lord Frost was holding firm on Brexit negotiations and everyone was convinced that he would not give way on either fishing or Northern Ireland. And then, the day before the deal was agreed, the serpent Gove arrived in Brussels and Britain surrendered to the EU on both these two issues.

  33. Lord Frost has resigned from his post. I wonder if he will become PM? A safe seat would need to be found and the Member concerned would be required to resign to go to the Lord’s or some nice well-paid sinecure, or both. Either an interim PM will hold the place, and we now have a “Deputy”, or the move will be made immediately. January will be fun.
    Of course all of this rather depends on who the Tory grandees report to. If they are working for Soros, Gates and Co, then it does not matter who is put in place.

      1. Yo Nd

        As I said earlier in the week, I can spare Wednesday afternoons and Thursday mornings.

        I do not think Boros put much more time PMing, than that

        1. Don’t panic. Soon I shall become emperor and all our problems will disappear forever.

          Along with sprouts.

    2. We’ve had lords as Prime Ministers before, Palmerston, Melbourne, even the Duke of Wellington but I don’t know if the rules have changed, given the overwhelming number of placemen languishing in the Lords on their £300 per diem.

      2. IIRC, Carrington who was the last peer to hold high office, found it difficult and had to deputise a junior to answer questions in the Commons. Mind you, that was back in the day when we had a House of Commons.

        Given the state of the building, it is only a matter of time before a Notre Dame happens. The main squawking would only come from the Honourable Members, who would fear the removal of the trough.

  34. You will recall the slaughter of that poor little boy Arthur. There is an article about it in the Christmas Spectator. One paragraph caught my eye – because it reveals what I think we all think about the appalling Archprick Welmeaning:

    “…… I looked to the established Church for answers, meaning I checked the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Twitter feed. When George Floyd died, for instance, Welby had a powerful message about the trauma of racist oppression. Nothing for Arthur as far as I can see, though there is no more oppressed or powerless group than the children born into situations like his, what-ever their colour or nationality.

    2. Poor wee lad, never even got going properly in the great race of life. And, seems like nobody cared – apart from little people, whose opinion counts for nothing.

    4. As I have said before, Cameron chose his fellow Etonian with the specific intention of damaging the Christian faith and destroying the Church of England. Maybe they were both badly treated by the chaplain at school and wanted to get their own back?

    5. As I have said before, Cameron chose his fellow Etonian with the specific intention of damaging the Christian faith and destroying the Church of England. Maybe they were both badly treated by the chaplain at school and wanted to get their own back?

    6. Welby is another of those people like Cameron, who sink ever low in one’s estimation, when one thought they had already reached rock bottom long since.

    1. Why associate yourself with something in which you have no faith? Surely, the honourable (Hah!) thing to do would be to resign from that position if you cannot change it.
      He’ll be swinging from the same gibbet. I hope.

      1. She may not have that option. Assault is usually a summary offence, triable only by magistrates.

    2. As I said yesterday – if the police had done their job and cleared the protesters there would be no need to “nudge”

  39. Good morning all. Until we all get it that considering what is happening through the tribalised lens of party politics is simply playing into the hands of those who wish us all ill, we will flounder. Labour, Tory, Liberal, with a few honourable exceptions our elected representatives have been corrupted by fear, threats and personal profit into either inaction or complicity with Mr Global. Johnson is an egregious example but he is not alone. Look at that Starmer… We are going to have to clean the stable thoroughly and the Shropshire result should not tell us any less than that.

    In the meantime those of us who have been urging prosecuting authorities around the country to enforce the law in the light of the now proven forseeability of harm from the jabs (both in terms of results and research) have found a strange reluctance even to reply to letters. As a response to that Mike Yeadon and others have just launched an action in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which it is hoped may at least get a response.

    The latest rivetting piece of work done by a man at Kingston Uni working assiduously with over a million data items on the VAERS data shows a non-random pattern indicating that the Jab makers appear to have been acting in concert to release batches of jabs of varying toxicity, some quite lethal and others less so. If that is not a prosecution coming down the tracks it will spell the end for our justice systems.

    https://www.tarableu.com/vaers-data-shows-collusion-between-jab-makers-and-variations-of-toxicity-that-are-non-random-aka-criminal-conspiracy/

    2. What hope is there now?

      Radice perdito.

      (Using the Latin ablative absolute – Root having been lost.)

  41. Might I suggest that Boris Johnson appoints Liz Truss to take Lord Frost’s place in trying to sort out the disastrously muddled Brexit?

    If she manages to invoke Article 16 and resolve the NI problem it will show that she could be a worthy successor to Johnson as prime minister; if she fails and caves in to the EU it will completely scupper her chances of doing so.

    1. It’ll prove to the PTB taht she is totally unsuited to the role of PM, as she doesn’t follow the narrative.

    2. If she did sort out the mess, Truss would be the last person that they would want as PM

      The PTB, NWO, EU, etc want an malleable idiot to carry the can

  42. Morning all! In haste, but when driving back from London to Yorkshire after the march yesterday, my companions told me that there was footage of violence outside Downing Street.

    I left there shortly before this happened. A few people had been throwing eggs, apparently, so a column of police moved in. Went to have a look; nothing going on. Joked with another line of (non-helmeted) policemen about them doing the can-can, and they responded with laughs, so you can tell the atmosphere was relaxed.

    Between then and my negotiating my way out of London, this violence took place. Hadn’t seen a TV camera all day (although I’m told I was on GB Resistance again – don’t remember being particularly articulate, mind), and the only face covering I saw amongst us were a couple of Vendetta ones. Judge for yourselves.

    1. I saw some reports earlier Ashes that suggested this was False Flag operation! unfortunately I was too sleepy to follow it up!

    2. I saw some reports earlier Ashes that suggested this was False Flag operation! unfortunately I was too sleepy to follow it up!

    3. I saw somewhere yesterday evening (possibly on Daily Sceptic) someone commenting that they thought it was a set-up – small group of people moved in to have a set-to with police followed by camera man and left just as quickly once photo op had been achieved.

  43. Witness: The victim was dismembered and sacrificed in front of an altar made from antlers.
    Detective: Dear God
    Witness: Most likely, yes.

  44. Morning all.
    Matt Le Tissier has been making enquiries as to why so many professional sports people especially Footballers have been suffering from heart problems.
    He has been told by an ’eminent medical professional’ that it’s merely a coincidence.
    I can’t imagine they would want the truth and nothing but the truth escaping with such a Jab drive taking place. I wonder how the drive has been going in certain disassociated parts of our country.
    https://brandnewtube.com/watch/interview-with-ex-footballer-matt-le-tissier-covid-jab-deaths_aqAG4OidkH5kIu9.html

    3. Umm… isn’t it because they work their bodies harder than the average person? I suppose you could correlate why they suffer so many ankle and knee injuries as well.

      2. Well it obviously has absolutely nothing to do with the covid jabs, which coincidently has cause myocarditis in so many who don’t play football, it’s just another coincidence.

    4. Please would somebody explain why the PTB want everyone to have ineffective and potentially dangerous gene therapy injected into them for the rest of their lives?

      1. I think it was Fox News that found that a large number of the members of the US Senate had invested in a few drug companies – Pfizer, Moderna, J&J. As they always say, follow the money.

        Mind you with the world beating a panicked path towards a vaccine, that can hardly be called a poor investment.

      2. At a guess – follow the money! There was a report that one Australian governor had resigned while being investigated for receiving money from lobbyists acting for big Pharma, but that all seems to have gone quiet – nothing to see there?

      3. China or some James Bond villain has already seized control, but it is as secret as Ultra was in WWII.
        There are subtle clues, such as the installation of a puppet candidate in the USA, and PM Johnson has been forbidden from ever cutting his hair.

      4. At the lower level of PTB i.e. national governments they are being paid/intimidated into setting up a digital passport scheme; at a high level the PTB paying the national governments to institute chinese style social credit system using the passport scheme and possibly kill off swathes of population. And then there’s pharma and other industries raking in the money as a bi-product going along with it all. Nothing to do really with anyone being ill – the ‘pandemic’ is just a means to an end.

    1. I heard a witty, yet to the point, saying a few days ago. It fits this government’s, and Javid the Bald’s, erratic actions and panic reactions perfectly: “give a three year old a hammer and everything is a nail.” Destruction follows, of course.

    2. How else will they have an excuse to launch their digital currency, if not via emergency furlough payments?

        2. I do believe that he is not religious actually. He is married to a non-muslim, which is a sin in islam, I think – he should have converted her.
          Khan is a man with unpleasant connections; I may be wrong, but I do not think the same is true for Javid.
          The acid test is whether he does ramadan or not; if he doesn’t do ramadan, he’s not muslim. But then he would be in the firing line to be murdered by muslims who stick to what the koran actually says, as he would have rejected allah.
          I don’t blame him for keeping quiet on this subject. I do blame the entire establishment for conspiring to cover up the truth about islam.

          1. I have no trust in any one of that so called religion. Every where they are or where ever it manifests it’s self, it causes ongoing trouble. And when they are not trying to stir it up, they are fighting their own so called bothers.

          3. I agree broadly – if he’s a muslim, then his loyalty will be ultimately to islam. The distinction that is recognised by muslims and ex muslims is whether or not he does ramadan. If he does, whatever else he says, then he’s a muslim. If he doesn’t, then he probably isn’t..

          4. Ramadan is more cultural than spiritual, really only a problem for people such as bus passengers on a long hot day.
            IMHO many of the fundies would be troublemakers even if they were brought up within a different faith in a non-muslim country, eg Mr Blair and his Scottish Chancellor.

    5. How in the name of all that is holy did we get such an appalling bunch in government? What’s even more depressing is the so called opposition.

      1. I have said this before, I have taught kindergarten children ages 4 and 5, who had more organisational skills and common sense than this whole bunch put together.
        If anymore stupid restrictions are brought in then everyone should ignore them and carry on as normal. That is what we will be doing.

      1. I thought the new advice was to save tests (they’ve probably run out!) until just before you go to meet people.

          1. They must be masochists! I’ve been forced to have one test (in order to see MOH for the last time) and it isn’t an experience I would like to repeat.

          2. But they are ‘doing their duty’, while those of us not playing the game are ‘selfish’ and are the reason why this terrifying deadly scariant is spreading. Bless.

  46. Daily Mail Story:

    Prince William is urged by the Queen to stop flying helicopters himself with his family on board because she is ‘terrified’ disaster could strike.

    And if it did, just imagine: King Harry and Queen Migraine.

  47. It seems from what I can gather today that our beloved government and it’s PIA ‘experts’ have been discussing more lock down implementations for the Christmas period. But only of course for those it will socially harm.

    2. I once went to a fancy dress party one Christmas Eve dressed in a 6foot Cracker. I was hoping to be pulled……

    1. Nevertheless – crocked up people will still get their presents this year even though don’t have presence at the Christmas party.

        1. It was like a fire drill in UK. In GA, tornadoes could spawn out of any serious thunderstorm. Kids had to go into an indoor hallway and crouch as seen in photo. We teachers had to supervise the kids and keep order. It was more difficult if there was a genuine tornado warning, then the kids would be very frightened. (So would the teachers!)

      1. Blimey, Rastus! I’ve got my original copy of that (1963) upstairs! Wonder if it’s a classic?

      2. I wish.
        After my last visit to the dentist (private) I was sent away in considerable pain!

        She extracted a molar last week and one week later I was in considerable pain.I asked for a prescription for antibiotics….and was refused!

        I was tempted to ask her if she was related to Dr. Mengele

        1. If it was an upper molar removed it can fairly frequently cause an infection in the maxillary sinuses. Well mine did several years ago anyway.

          1. Use a good swig of neat whisky as a mouthwash and then swallow.

            Whisky is a powerful antiseptic and the cure may be quite joyful.

          2. And if the first one doesn’t work, then keep trying.
            If you wake up in the morning, lying on the front room floor, then you probably need to buy more “mouthwash”.

        3. You poor thing – maybe Peter/Peddy will have some advice for you?

          I haven’t had toothache since a brilliant Turkish dentist did extensive work for me in 2005 which is all still in place: 6 crowns, 3 bridges, an extraction and a deep filling at a total cost of about £1,000.

    3. Actually, it might also be a drill during the Cold War era in case of nuclear attack. Similar drills to tornado drills were carried out- although I wasn’t in US then. I would say it’s definitely in the 50s looking at the clothes.

          3. As you can see Rumpole was a puppy at the time and he was the only one who really approved of it. My mother was especially scathing – as mothers often are.

          5. Had a beard since I was 20. That’s 40 years, and it’s getting a bit faded now… :-((

      1. Thanks, man pet. I’m now the lightest I’ve been since I moved to Sweden (over a decade) but still a bit to go before I reach my target.

        1. What’s your heaviest ever?

          I once got to 20 stone but I am now rather less than that at 114 kilos. My ideal weight is about 86 kilos or 13½ stone. That was my weight when we first came to live in France in 1989.

          1. My heaviest ever was 116·9kg [18st–5lb–12oz] two years ago. I have lost over three stones since then. Ideally I’d like to go down to 77kg [12st–1lb–12oz], which was my standard, 38 years ago, when I stopped smoking.

            My weight gain was not due to over-eating nor from drinking alcohol. It was simply from eating inappropriate food (too many carbs and sugar) and insufficient exercise. Now that I’ve altered all that, I am fitter, sharper and feel like a million pounds (I don’t do dollars!). :•)

      2. Yellow hi-viz jacket is being modified for bike use. I have three powerful flashing LED lights on the front, and two on the rear. They are quite dazzling.

        I only ride on back country lanes and farm tracks.

          1. Me too. I was dazzled this morning by a lycra-clad idiot cycling towards me in the middle of the road.

        2. If your back country lanes and farm tracks are anything like ours, I expect to read your obituary soon!

          1. Seven miles today, Conners, and I saw one tractor. I’ve never come across more than three vehicles on my perambulations and the drivers all give a cheery wave, never a fist or two fingers.
            The farmer, who has a large lake on his land, has welcomed me to stop by any time I like, and he has given me permission to access his land to photograph the wildlife.

            I couldn’t even start to explain how different it is out here: a bit like what the UK was like in the 1950s of my youth.

          2. Here tractors often come in convoys! Usually lit up like a Christmas tree so you are dazzled, too. They are prone to turning off the road without giving any warning as well.

          1. Plenty of good meat, fish, dairy, leafy veg, fruit, nuts, eggs and decent proteins. Very few carbs and no sugar or alcohol. I feel better and fitter now than I have done for decades.

    1. Absolute rubbish – Javid is yet another serious disappointment! What IS having a damaging impact is Boris and his coterie of morons, whose blind belief in a series of increasingly discredited forecasts and a reluctance to follow any science but “their science” is destroying our country!

        1. And even after he was sacked (resigned?) for being a w⚓️, they dragged him back! What was it they didn’t understand?

    2. I’d suggest that it is the experimental jabs that are having the “Damaging Impact” on Society.

      1. Have you seen the report from Denmark? Epic fail and that was pretty much the conclusion that Professor Norman Fenton (Queen Mary Uni) and his team came to after straightening out the ‘misleading’ government statistics. It’s looking more like a ruse every day.

    3. This is the same kind of sinister rhetoric that has been deployed by the Austrian and German governments to whip up hatred against the unvaccinated.

    4. This is evil.

      Remember how Hitler tried to unite the German people against the Jews? Hitler’s method’s have clearly been noted by Squalid Jawdrip who is a member of a faith group that has always wanted to stir up hatred against Jews.

    5. The vaccinated and the non-vaccinated can catch Covid and pass it on. How can he blame one group and not the other?
      EDIT: The majority of Covid patients in hospital are vaccinated.

      1. When you have an agenda to follow, blatant lying, lying by omission, obfuscation, ignoring data etc are tools of the political trade. He knows that the non-vaccinated are no more a threat, maybe less when viral load is taken into account but the orders are, “Go for the non-vaccinated, we demand that those needles are in arms.”
        What is the potion hiding? There’s lots of information from around the World but it needs pulling together into a neat package. Latest government report indicates there are >20 million of whom around 10 million are adults who do not have a first dose; second dose take-up has dropped off and ‘booster’ needing the Omicron scare to boost take-up. Not quite what they’ve been touting for months.

      2. To be fair, Delboy, the majority of the population is also vaccinated, so, since it doesn’t seem to have much effect, you’d expect the majority in hospital to be jabbed too.
        Over here, they published the proportions, rather than the absolute numbers, and it seems that the vax reduces the numbers inn hospital.

  58. Here’s one to miss!

    Countryfile at Christmas

    Matt Baker and Charlotte Smith head to Christmas Common in Oxfordshire, home to one of the biggest Christmas tree farms in the country, to celebrate the festive season. Matt finds out why a dairy-farming family swapped cows for Christmas trees and how seasonal farming is a year-round business.

    Charlotte channels her inner elf, heading to the local market town of Watlington to help a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker prepare their festive treats.

    The cattle are lowing as Adam Henson visits a Christmas cattle market in Rutland and also launches a cracker of a competition to design a bobble hat for Children in Need. Tom Heap gets gift wrapping with the countryside communities preparing a rural welcome for refugees. John Craven gets a Christmas present to remember as he meets the descendants of red kites he helped release nearly three decades ago, and wildlife cameraman Richard Taylor Jones goes on a white Christmas wildlife walk.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012vxq

    I expect John Craven will be asking the kites how their great-great-grandparents felt as immigrants in a country full of hostile native gamekeepers.

    Meanwhile in BBC Scotchland:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/63bf9c155d9a04e4b2f836dba4070175a3a4c8b56139ae672521387db56a5c7d.jpg

    The byline has since been amended!

  59. Professor Andrew Hayward (Nervtag) has said that COVID virus testing rates in the UK will soon be outstripped by the number of Omicron cases.

    This occurrence can be illustrated in my latest enhancement to the mathematical representation (V5.0) of the way linear increases in UK daily viral tests will be quicky outstripped by the exponentially increasing number of Omicron cases:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bd62e325c2688f062d7e318a1a343ca6906fb42f5364f8f7a00595de126c6097.jpg

    COVID testing capacity assumed to be increasing at 1000 tests per day.
    Omicron cases calculated at doubling every 1.5 days starting with case one (origin) on November 25th 2021.
    Only part of the graph near the origin of the V4.0 graph is shown due to autoscaling of the Google Sheets app.

    1. Sorry, matey. I cannot make head nor tail of your graphs. They could be in Greek or Arabic….

      1. The graphs just confirm your Abbotised predictions of mortality due to following Government policy.

          1. Professor David Spiegalhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, is reported as estimating 11 million cases on Christmas Day.

            He could be dead right!😉

          2. Ah, in the same way that Prof Pantsdown predicted millions of deaths from avian flu? The actual total was 78 people. Not even 78k, just 78.

    2. Oh good, no need to back up predictions with facts then.

      Follow the science, it went from one to two to four cases, therefore it must be at least a million by now.

      1. I have never understood how or if the R number can be used to predict the level of viral infection growth. All I know is that if R>1 numders go up and R<1 then numbers go down.

        With the recent revelation that the understanding of viral rates of growth differs between the scientists, statisticians and Government ministers I have tried to deduce mathematical growth rate formulae for a number of variables that seem to match reality.

        In presenting my findings in the visual form of a graph I am able to judge commenters' understanding of the data being promulgated by the media.

        The mathematical equations in the spreadsheet source have no meaning whatsoever until the parameters of the axes are labelled and that is a matter for discussion.

    3. Why should we care? Since the effect is a heavy cold-alike, why test, why give even a tiny shit about Omicron? Two years ago, who cared about an ordinary cold? Absolutely nobody, except for the mothers of small boys who wiped their noses on their sleeves. Why does anybody care now, or is it because it has an exotic name?

      1. It’s been my solution to the scamdemic, for months! Stop testing and switch the telly off!

        1. Beginning to get both bored and frustrated about it all, Sue, the endless parroting of the wrong answers by the press and many people.

          1. I’d be a lot happier if the press and MSM actually asked searching questions, instead of massaging the ‘experts’ bluddy egos! Such a lot of drivel being spouted at a compliant, thick-headed and unquestioning populace! Frustrating, as you say!

      2. Yes, you are absolutely right.

        The scientific advisers know that what is coming is so big that any mitigating measures that the Government can put in place can only delay the inevitable – they just admit that they are glad they are not in charge.

        Time to break out the tissues {wipes nose on sleeve)!

  60. It’s becoming clear that if our country is ever to recover from the devastating effects of this monstrous scamdemic, the first thing to be done is to disband SAGE and terminate Whitty’s employment, with extreme prejudice.

  61. Hi NoTTlers………………….???

    I recently heard bad news .
    My dear neighbour has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
    I want him to know I am thinking of him and all concerned but can hardly send him a Happy Crimbo card can I?

    I’m often at a loss to know how to handle these delicate situations and tend to avoid
    the issue……but I’d like to wish him well.

    Over to you my learned NoTTlers….

    3. If he is aware that you know then a Christmas card should be fine, even to the extent of stating inside that you were so very sorry to hear of his news and that you are thinking of him.

    4. A card with an angel but blank inside – would that look like you were wishing him on his way, or praying for him? Difficult.

    5. A hand written letter delivered by hand telling your neighbour what your thoughts are and offering any help that might ease their burden.

        1. We generally have a stall for the hedgehogs at the Macmillan Christmas fair in Cirencester Church – cancelled again this year as it was last year. I expect many more of their events wre also cancelled all over the country.

          1. My church has just cancelled the Christingle/Christmas Crib afternoon service – too many children involved to go ahead, apparently!

          2. You couldn’t make it up, Conway! Children aren’t affected and the whole point of a crib service is for the children! What a bunch of ignorant morons!

          5. I beg to disagree. Children are affected, but rarely hospitalised. Most of the people who are running this show are highly intelligent and well qualified, but they have a tendency to be economical with la vérité.

          6. I’m highly intelligent (near the top of the A stream in a grammar school, for a start) and well qualified for my profession. That doesn’t make me very practical or endow me with much common sense!

          7. ‘Highly intelligent and well qualified’ eh? How very reassuring! Just like Ferguson, Whitty, Van Tam, Vallance et al. Not a scrap of common sense or decency between them, and they wouldn’t recognise the reality of the situation if it bopped them on the nose! And as for the truth…well, not not even a passing glimpse of it!

    7. OH was diagnosed earlier this year with PC – he’s having hormone injections – his last blood test showed PSA was 0.2 – down from 293 on diagnosis. The only side effects he has from the treatment is hot flushes – I tell him women know all about those. He’s fit and well and still plays tennis in the summer and table tennis in the winter, as well as running up and down ladders to see to his bird boxes.

      Most old men die “with” PC rather than “from” it. It’s not a death sentence like some other cancers.

      1. Poppiesdad has had pc for 14 years now, but he has been kept under observation with six monthly check-ups. It is a very slow growing pc. Very early on in the process he heard a radio programme recommending lycopene (tomato food supplement) for prostate cancer. About five years into his pc diagnosis his PSA results and biopsy were so good his consultant asked him if he were taking anything for it…. P’dad replied no – lycopene had become such a regular part of his life he had forgotten about it; ‘taking something for it’ to him under those circumstances meant something prescribed by the gp. He now has annual check-ups. He still has prostate cancer but it is very very slow growing. And he is still taking the lycopene daily.

        2. We do eat tomatoes – especially when they are in season and I grew a lot of plants last summer. But by the time he was diagnosed, the PC was already metastatic. He must have already had it for years. It was the oncologist who suggested the pain he was getting was not from the cancer but from an inguinal hernia, and ordered a CT scan. There were two hernias! Our GP referred him to a surgeon to get that sorted and he had the op last month, privately as otherwise he’d be waiting for another year. He was back playing table tennis within three weeks.

    8. Tell him you are thinking of him, or praying for him. You could write it into the Christmas card. Knowing people are actually worried for you is quite uplifting, especially when you have had gloomy news like that.

  62. What has emerged from this total collapse of the Conservative Party is that, as well as being spectacularly incompetent, Boris Johnson is treacherous, mendacious, dishonest, disloyal to his allies and has no sincere belief in Brexit at all.

    One BTL comment under a DT article today drew the parallel between May’s treatment of David Davis and Johnson’s treatment of Lord Frost. David Davis went into battle with the EU on the government’s behalf while all along May was stabbing him in the back and using her agent, the treacherous, Olly Robbins, to undermine everything Davis tried to achieve; in the same way, Johnson sent Frost into battle with the EU only to undermine him behind his back being guided by the equally treacherous Gove and his current wife into surrendering on both fishing and the EU’s continuing influence in Northern Ireland.

    Johnson does not deserve just to be sacked: he deserves to be tarred, feathered and lynched!

  63. A young Lithuanian man I met on the march yesterday told me it’s being reported by the media there that omicron has turned London into a ghost town. Well, I’ve just been to Oxford Street and there are an awful lot of ghosts about. Looks like a normal Sunday. He said life in Lithuania is such that his dad now says maybe the Russians weren’t so bad after all.

    Should have had my phone with me to take a photo this morning walking from Barts to St Pauls tube. The cathedral dome was wrapped in mist.
    Asked Fr Marcus if he saw the Twitter spat yesterday between Fraser Nelson and the Sage guy. He did, of course.

    2. In a story about UK handling of covid our CBC featured a picture of shoppers jamming Oxford Street. The crowds were as bad as the queues for Eurostar.

  64. A young Lithuanian man I met on the march yesterday told me it’s being reported by the media there that omicron has turned London into a ghost town. Well, I’ve just been to Oxford Street and there are an awful lot of ghosts about. Looks like a normal Sunday. He said life there is such that his dad now says maybe the Russians weren’t so bad after all.

    Should have had my phone with me to take a photo this morning walking from Barts to St Pauls tube. The cathedral dome was wrapped in mist. Asked Fr Marcus if he saw the Twitter spat yesterday between Fraser Nelson and the Sage guy. He did, of course.

    1. Want a non-nonsense Brexiteer? Could do a lot worse than trying to get Ann Widdecombe to return to the Commons!

        1. The Daily Express has been surprisingly restrained in its reporting of the possibility of snow over next weekend.

  69. OT – anyone wanting something light but truly bizarre to read might like this:

    “The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking” by Adam Sisman. Available in paperback for about a fiver on Amazon etc.

    The story of a bloke who spent his life conning people by claiming qualifications he did’t have – but, when challenged, got all litigious!

    A good fireside read.

    It reminded me that in the 56 years and 11 months that I have been a solicitor, NO ONE has ever asked me for evidence that I am what I claim to be!

  70. A very good afternoon to all NoTTLer friends.
    Our son has made enormous advances during the past 7 days.
    This morning he’s had his tracheostomy tube removed, he’s s off all IV drips, catheter removed and oxygen by nose clip only. Still has feeding tube for nutrition but is now eating creamy yogurt and smooth soup. Can’t have anything with bits in it. The speech button will be removed soon and he should be home on Wednesday or Thursday. He’s up and walking about but tires quickly as his muscles have all but disappeared and also lost a lot of weight. The nursing staff and doctors have been absolutely terrific and he’s received top notch care.
    He WhatsApp’s each morning and, interestingly, said this morning that he never lost his sense of smell or taste.

    Thank all you NoTTLers for your prayers and support. They seem to have been answered in abundance.

          3. No! Say it isn’t so!
            Strewth, what’s the world coming to. Folk self-declaring their identities…

    6. Good to hear such news, especially after all the negativity we see about the NHS, wonderful Christmas present for the whole family!

    7. Home for Christmas! That is wonderful. Delighted for you, vw and his wife and family. A happy Christmas to you all.

    8. Great news, Alf! What a Christmas present for all the family!
      My love and best wishes to you all!

    11. Fabulous news, Alf! 😀 A relief all round.
      It’s amazing how quickly one loses condition in horsepickle – and how long it takes to regain. He’ll tire quickly for a while.

    13. We went through a very similar situation with our eldest daughter back in 1989 when she was just 12, in an induced coma for 6 weeks with a very poor prognosis, it was a long recovery but it came out well in the end, she’s a mum of 2 and has just completed her masters. The only remaining trace is a husky voice caused by the tracheotomy. We feel and understand your anguish and hope for the best, it’s looking good.

  71. Afternoon, all. I’d say the drubbing they got in North Shropshire was a repudiation of woke, lefty, greeniac policies rather than just Bojo. Not that they will listen. They’ll rearrange the deck chairs and keep heading for the iceberg.

      1. Get with the programme, Bill! It’s climate change now (owing to the fact the ice is thicker than ever).

  72. More good news. Mission to rescue MiL from incarceration in her Nursing Home went like clockwork. Neil with his VW Caddy professionally adapted for a wheelchair passenger was prompt and an all round good bloke., had strung a string of festive lights in the cab. He told us he was doing three pickups on Christmas day. We arrived bang on time at the Hare & Hounds for Sunday roasts and were joined by all but two other members of the MiL’s family. All in all a real success. For me it felt like we were having Christmas a week before the bar stewards cancel the entire thing!

      1. Apart from when sitting at the table because clever Convid can’t get you, or spread from you, when you are seated.

          2. It beggars belief that so many still people can’t see the stupidity of all the contradictory rules. Speaking to son in Ontario, it seems there is as much panic there as here over the Moronic scariant. Some of his in-laws have cancelled plans to join them next Saturday. Some others have said they may meet them for dinner outside at a restaurant one day. Outside dining, in an Ontario winter ….. Mind you, son is fully on board with project fear.

    1. Saturday, I prefer to do nowt, especially if it involves alcohol. Sunday is the day for sorting domestic things – gardens, tidying, you name it.

        1. I went part time for a couple of years before I retired – no more Mondays! They tried to get me to drop Fridays instead but I held out for Mondays.

    5. We started to do some housework upstairs as possibly might have visitors (two sons) for the first time in two years……. wash basin U bend started leaking into the cupboard underneath it……….. probably because it had been dry since the last time it was used. Still even if they don’t get here we really needed to clean up a bit.

    7. Plum bing the depths of despair…?

      I bet when the sky is filled with blue
      Someone will be thinking of you
      And when the sky is filled with rain
      They’ll be thinking of you again.

    8. Plum bing the depths of despair…?

      I bet when the sky is filled with blue
      Someone will be thinking of you
      And when the sky is filled with rain
      They’ll be thinking of you again.

  74. What’s missing from this piece?

    Holy Land Christians are at threat of extinction

    Radicals are waging a war of attrition against peaceful believers who have no desire to fight. We need outside help to survive

    FRANCESCO PATTON • 18 December 2021 • 10:30pm

    I have the privilege to serve and lead the Franciscan Friars living in the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East. For over 800 years, we have honoured a sacred calling as custodians of the sacred sites in this Holy Land: we do so as members of the Catholic Church, alongside the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches and on behalf of the universal Church. We help preserve the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which marks the site of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

    Our ministry centres upon the “living stones” as St. Peter calls them, the precious people who make up the area’s Christian community. We love our neighbours, care for the vulnerable and offer good news to the poor. We provide schools, healthcare, humanitarian support and in parts of the Holy Land, more than half of all public services. The life-changing love of Christ is offered by modern-day disciples from Bethlehem, the town of Christ’s birth, to Jerusalem, the site of his death and resurrection.

    Yet despite two thousand years of faithful service, our presence is precarious and our future is at risk. Where once we numbered 20 per cent of the population of Jerusalem, today the Christian community counts for less than 2 per cent.

    In recent years, the lives of many Christians have been made unbearable by radical local groups with extremist ideologies. It seems that their aim is to free the Old City of Jerusalem from its Christian presence, even the Christian quarter. In the last years we suffered because of the desecration of our holy sites, the vandalization of our churches, offences against our priests, monks and worshippers. The frequency of these hate crimes leaves families and communities who have lived here for generations feeling unwelcome in their own homes. These radical groups do not represent the government or the people of Israel. But as with any extremist faction, a radical minority can too easily burden the lives of many, especially if their activities go unchecked and their crimes are unpunished.

    They are waging a war of attrition against a community with no desire to fight. As with the founder of my Order, St. Francis, our calling is to reject violence and reply with acts of compassion and love. To this end, we remain dedicated in our service towards the community, our defence of the holy places and our determination to maintain our living witness at the epicentre of the Christian faith. The Franciscans, along with our brothers and sisters in the other Christian Churches, are committed to remaining as the continuing presence of Christ in this place. But to do this, we need help.

    In his encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti”, Pope Francis writes, “in the face of present-day attempts to eliminate or ignore others, [I hope] we may prove capable of responding with a new vision of fraternity and social friendship that goes beyond words.” This is a call for us all to love our neighbour, as Jesus demonstrates in the gospel – and as the gospel story of the Good Samaritan tells us, our “neighbour” is not just those who live near us, or look like us, or believe the same things, but anyone in need, near or far.

    Our appeal to the world is this: the Christian community of the Holy Land is your neighbour, and we are in need. Here we daily recognise and help our neighbour, regardless of their religion or background. We ask for that same support so that we can continue to preserve the rich diversity of this Holy Land. However loud their actions speak, radical groups cannot be permitted to undermine the presence of any community or the beautiful diversity which makes Jerusalem the spiritual capital of the world.

    This Christmas, as every year, I will be in Bethlehem, celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in the place where it happened. I will be praying, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, that the Lord will grant peace to us all.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/18/holy-land-christians-threat-extinction/

          1. “These radical groups do not represent the government or the people of Israel” suggests Jewish extremists. Clarity would be appreciated…

      1. Like most of them he might have plenty to say, but like most of them they actually do eff all.

  79. We know that lockdown is a social and economic disaster. Please, Boris – don’t do it again

    Why give in to the same combination of flesh-creeping forecasts and hair-raising headlines? Here’s six reasons why, hopefully, we might not

    DANIEL HANNAN • 18 December 2021 • 7:24pm

    Not again. Not after all the vaccines, all the precautions, all the privations. Not after all the models that turned out to be so absurdly alarmist. Our freedoms are elemental. They are what make us who we are as a nation. We can’t surrender them on the off-chance that some putative ill might materialise.

    The original lockdown was justified on grounds that it was the only way to prevent a meltdown in our healthcare system. In the event, our Nightingale hospitals stood empty, and real-world data (as opposed to modelling) showed that the peak in new infections had passed before the restrictions were imposed.

    The second lockdown had a sounder rationale. It was supposed to buy time while the vaccination programme was rolled out. Since, by definition, lockdowns push infections into the future, rather than prevent them altogether, this at least made sense. [Some sense, perhaps…]

    But we have more than done our bit. We are among the most inoculated people on earth, with some of us now on our fourth jabs. Vaccines were supposed to be the way out of this nightmare. If they are not, then we are facing chronic lockdowns forever.

    I’m confident that, had that been the proposition in March 2020 – had we been told that we faced a lifetime of stoppages – we’d have refused point-blank. But we have been boiled slowly, like so many frogs in the pan. A three-week lockdown became six weeks, then 12 weeks, then a wait until we could vaccinate the clinically vulnerable, then the over-50s, then all adults, then kids, too. After all that, the idea of annual lockdowns can feel almost like a logical next step.

    At each stage, we have been lulled, habituated, anaesthetised. Human beings tend to anchor to the status quo, becoming irrationally change-averse. When the status quo involves being paid to stay at home, along with a satisfying sense of solidarity and community, it is hardly surprising that some people take to it readily.

    Government advisers originally feared that a lockdown of more than three weeks would be unenforceable: a free people would shake it off, as a horse shakes off flies. In the event, they need not have worried. Our liberties turned out to be much easier to remove than to restore.

    Still, it is worth pointing out that, at every stage, the models used by public health agencies exaggerated the numbers of infections and of deaths. Indeed, it may well be that, once again, the lockdown will come into effect only after the peak in new infections has passed. Why do our leaders keep falling for it?

    Because, I’m afraid, all the incentives are stacked one way. No politician ever gets into trouble for erring on the side of caution. Nor does any public health adviser. No one has ever been hounded from office for spending too much on test and trace, or for imposing restrictions that had little effect, or for making predictions that were excessively alarmist. Make the slightest slip the other way, though, and you’re finished.

    Will that logic once again push Boris Johnson into a course of action that, in his heart of hearts, he doubts? Not necessarily. A number of things have changed since we last faced such a decision.

    First, there is now organised political opposition to more bans. Last week, 100 Conservative MPs voted against the relatively mild restrictions set out in Plan B. They were not concerned, in most cases, about masks in cinemas. The vast majority of them recognised that, even with Plan B, Britain would remain more open than Europe. No, what they were really doing was drawing a line, seeking assurances that ministers would go no further. In some cases, they withdrew their opposition after reportedly getting such assurances.

    Second, we have now had ample opportunity to measure Sage’s forecasts against the reality. We saw their predictions for the first wave, their predictions for the second wave, their predictions for what would happen after the July opening, their predictions for what would happen this autumn. Every time, what actually happened was less severe than their central predictions and, in almost every case, less severe than best-case scenarios.

    Third, this wave began in South Africa, giving us a few extra weeks of data to study. Everyone accepts that the omicron mutation has been less lethal in South Africa than the delta, but there were worries that this reflected a difference in demographics: the average age is 27 in South Africa, 40 here.

    Last week, though, studies started to come in that broke down South Africa’s hospitalisations by age group. They confirmed the view of both the European Medicines Agency and America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, namely that this is a milder variant than its predecessors.

    Fourth, we have had a control in the experiment all along. It has become almost indelicate to mention Sweden, these days, but there she stands, stolid, sensible and social-democratic, a living refutation of the claim that house arrest was the only way to avoid mass fatalities.

    It takes a real effort of will to recall how affronted foreign media were by Sweden’s refusal to shut down. “Heading for disaster,” went one headline. “Leading us to catastrophe,” agreed another. Time magazine reported that “Sweden’s relaxed approach to the coronavirus could already be backfiring” and quoted a doctor saying that it would “probably end in a historical massacre”. “We fear that Sweden has picked the worst possible time to experiment with national chauvinism,” chided the Washington Post. It was “the world’s cautionary tale”, pronounced the New York Times.

    So, do Sweden’s fatality rates stick out in every chart? Hardly. They are roughly in line with those of, say, Austria or Greece, and better than in Italy or Britain. At first, commentators tried to claim that this was because of some unique characteristic, such as low population density. In fact, Sweden is an urbanised society, with 85 per cent of its population occupying two per cent of its territory. Then they compared it only to its neighbours, pointing to better outcomes in Norway and Finland. But the original claim was not that a lockdown would fractionally lower the death rate; it was that nothing else would prevent a calamity. So now, commentators simply ignore the place altogether.

    Fifth, public opinion has finally begun to turn. For 18 months, YouGov polls have shown unwavering support for every kind of prohibition: closed shops, closed schools, closed pubs, closed borders. But on Friday, there was a significant shift, with 60 per cent opposing shop or pub closures and 62 per cent opposing a ban on mixing with other households. Perhaps, after long slumber, we are remembering who we are as a people.

    Sixth, and most significant, the PM ignored the official advice once before – and was utterly vindicated. When “freedom day” was decreed in July, public health agencies predicted disaster. Modellers at Warwick University forecast at least 1,000 deaths a day (in the event, the highest daily toll was 188). Sage told us that daily hospital admissions would be between 2,000 and 7,000 (the highest daily total was 1,086). Neil Ferguson predicted 100,000 infections a day (they peaked at 56,688).

    I have criticised the lockdowns often in these pages. But the PM deserves vastly more credit than he has had for trusting his judgment in July. Britain is, as I write, still a freer society than almost any of its neighbours. Our businesses are open, our retail sector is prospering and we have more people in work.

    Why throw it all away? Why give in to the same combination of flesh-creeping forecasts, hair-raising headlines and lockdown-nostalgic devolved administrations? The same off-the-record briefings? The same reports of “major incidents”? Why allow models, necessarily academic, to trump our real-world experience of having reopened and avoided the worst?

    Had the lockdowns been a clinical trial, they would have been called off on grounds of the damage they were doing to public health. We all now know the effects. The disorientated teenagers, the rise in undiagnosed cancers, the bankruptcies, the mental health problems, the tax rises, the sheer human misery. Are we seriously proposing to go through it all again, at a time when the coronavirus has become endemic, and when, according to the ONS, 95 per cent of us have antibodies? Why inflict such ruin on ourselves and our posterity?

    At such times, only Shakespeare will do:
    Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,
    Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/18/know-lockdown-social-economic-disaster-please-boris-dont-do/

    1. Seventh
      They won’t pay the slightest attention to what you suggest and will lock down even harder and to Hell with the consequences to the economy, the nation’s long term health and real science.

    2. I bet he can’t wait to feel his ‘hand on history’…..A veritable Lazararse of British Politics?

    3. I bet he can’t wait to feel his ‘hand on history’…..A veritable Lazararse of British Politics?

    4. Can’t be right. Surely he will be the President of the new Republic? That’s always the argument against the abolition of the monarchy.

      1. Look on the bright side.
        When he and Cherie take over, the general populace can eventually have a splendid game of Ceausescu.

    3. Any challenge for the role of Prime Minister from Lord (David) Frost would cause me some concern:

      Frost left HM Diplomatic Service in 2013 to become CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association, a trade association;[13] he was admitted as a liveryman of the Distillers’ Company[15] in 2016. It was in his capacity as CEO that he wrote an article before the Brexit referendum[16] for Portland Communications, in which he supported the case for remaining in the EU’s Single Market and said that leaving it would be “fraught with economic risk”.

      Where do his interests really lie?

      3. Was that before the referendum was announced? I guess it has been fraught with risks – but still the right decision.

      4. Following those of his employer.
        Obviously a man who does what his employer tells him to.
        Whether that makes him a leader is a moot point.

        1. My consolation is the thought of those 3, and the rest, bawling and screaming in the early hours of the 24th June 2016.

        2. Because the idiots don’t do joined up thinking. It’s rather like the Scots Nats who want Independence, but to be in the EU.

    5. I’m still waiting for reply from her in respect of the Dutch Customs wilfully delaying exports and imports for weeks. All our Cabinet Ministers should not only be capable of getting hold of their civil servants by the scruff of their necks but should doing that very thing at least once a week.

  82. That’s me gone for another miserable, foggy, damp, unwelcoming day. MR suffering still – but gamely carrying on. As one would expect – since we see no one – she seems to have passed the saw (sic) throat on to me and – before you ask – I am NOT going to do an effing “test”. If I have a cold/flu/Greek letter – so be it. What is the point of a test? I am not going anywhere; neither is she. One simply treats the symptoms as one always has.

    So I may see you all tomorrow – or not. But at least, wherever I am, I’ll be happy!

    A demain.

    2. Lots vitamin C, and in the evening some / lots alcohol to aid sleep and dull pain.
      Have a good one, Bill 🙂

    3. It is your solemn duty, as a lawyer, to pass it on to as many people as possible so that they can employ your fellow lawyers suing the powers who said it was safe to stay at home.

  83. STOP PRESS – for some reason the MR has done a LFT. Negative. So it is just a cold + sore throat. As we both thought.

    TTFN

        1. It means that the pins that you stick in the long-suffering woman’s doll don’t work.

          That MUST be good news, not just for her but also the rest of us.

      1. Hardly.
        He worships the very ground she walks upon.
        And quite right too.
        How many people, let alone women, do you think would put up with him?

        1. True.

          Though i have some experience with cantankerous old gits. He refuses every invitation to luncheon that i send him.

          8. Does he know that?
            And can you afford to pay for all those invitations he’s collected and will use every week until he has the opportunity to sue for breach of contract?
            More seriously, I believe he is actually a far more private individual than his career and Nottle profile might lead one to suspect.

    6. Well that’s not going to do much for the government’s scare campaign is it? Vallance and Whitty would be very disappointed in you.

  84. ‘Twas the week before Christmas
    And all through the house,
    Nottlers were stirring and having a grouse.
    Their stockings are hung by the chimney with care
    In hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be there.
    Boris won’t spoil our Christmas
    Nottlers mumble and grumble
    Whatever Santa gives
    Will make us feel humble.
    With great scratching of head Santa starts a long list
    With an ever increasing feeling of dread.
    For Craggers, some headwear, perhaps a new beret,
    And for Plum, a cask of very fine sherry.
    To the pub then for Mola for open mic night,
    Includes plenty of Guinness- a very nice sight.
    Sos gets a book about French butterflies
    And Stig can have what he wants,
    Right up to the skies.
    Nvodu’s hedgehogs will be safe and sound,
    And all our lost car keys soon will be found.
    No insults to weasels, to please Still Bleau’s heart
    And let’s just imagine where we’d put Whitty’s chart!
    Peddy will miss his sweet furry friend
    But you never quite know what might be round the bend.
    Oscar will stop biting Conners’s toes
    And Oberst in Norway will have gentle snows.
    Anne will be gifted a tech savvy elf
    And Alf and VW’s son will return to full healf.
    To Geoff, our founder and boss
    Without this page there would be a great loss.
    I’ve missed many out but I have done my best,
    And now I think I shall have a short rest.
    To all of the Nottlers, no matter what age,
    Individually we’re smarter than those halfwits in SAGE.

    2. And to LotL, a sword, to smite the unwary
      And when she’s done that, on the tree as the fairy.

      Well done, that was splendid

    2. Welby will say something similar, but his will be about welcoming gimmigrants, the green agenda and the NHS. He’ll probably give it just after the call to prayer, from a mosque.

  86. As a general query, does anyone else find this time of year to be nothing but an exhausting slog?

    I know I’m supposed to be happy. I know I’m supposed to be exciting Junior and the Warqueen with all the surprises they’ve got – which they picked out (apart from one) but I find it an annoying, expensive time of year filled with pretence and sham.

    OK, much of this is childhood lark but still, I’m far older now and there is no mother demanding I decorate it only for her to throw a tantrum and do it all again. No one to whinge about the length of ribbon or colour for the cards to hang off. There wil be no complaint ‘did you keep the receipt?’ (I kid you not, every year, without fail, no matter what Mother was bought) on Christmas morning.

    Mother in law’s here. The wife is pretending to be ok about it but is climbing the walls – not helped as every comment is a sodding snipe and yes, I’ve said endlessly, stop saying those things and ‘I think you’re perfect’ but it doesn’t get through and it’s a dremel to bone.

    I spend lots of time pretending to do work with Mongo flopped on the floor, me not sure why I’m fed up and him not knowing why I’m so wound up. It hasn’t been helped by the energy bill jumping nearly 30%.

    Anyway. I’m sick and tired of this cheap wrapping paper as well, and I can’t get any more so will have to go out tomorrow and deal with morons in shops who are rude and have no spatial awareness. Maybe I’ll put Mongo’s therapy dog harness on and take him in with me. At least that way if I throw some daft bint who rams me with her trolley (how do the bloody well miss me? I’m sodding huge, in every dimension!) across the aisle I’ll have a ready made excuse.

    I did that once – only the once. A woman parked her trolley right in the middle of the aisle side on. I pushed it with my finger and sent it flying. It was very satisfying.

      2. OMG, what is it with you boys? Y’all need us “nottly” girls to whip you into the Christmas spirit!!

          3. I hope I have not missed something untoward.
            If so, I apologise.
            How’s the chap in need of vinegar and brown paper?

          4. No Sos, you haven’t missed anything…he who needs vinegar and brown paper is alive and kicking, thanks for asking!!!

          5. Pleased to read that.

            He used to be regular contributor to Nottle and whilst he and I did not always see eye to eye, please give him my kindest best wishes.

    4. The only gifts we do are to the grand monsters who used to get comics with toys attached. This year, as they are older, we have sent them £10 each to spend on what they want. I have got MH a gift, a bottle of very posh Brandy which he will enjoy for several months, weeks, days or hours;-)

    5. I hate Christmas more-so every year. Probably OK when children are young but now nothing more than a retail fest with an overdose of Slade and Mariah Carey. Miserable weather, short days, can’t wait until New Year. I would normally go skiing but I’m not looking to plan anything until summer now. The only plus side is that nobody visits us, so lockdowns have made no difference!

      1. A word to the wise.
        Look back on the Christmases you’ve really enjoyed and remember them.
        I can always find something that makes me smile, makes me maudlin, makes me sad and they all have something in common:
        Happy days with my family.
        Enjoy it for all the good times you recall.

      2. We don’t join in the retail bit, just a very few small gifts to immediate family, cards to the rest.
        Plenty good food & alcohol, even though no relatives visiting – again.
        Found I’d bought a box of Mother’s favourite white & put it in the fridge – then realised she ain’t coming, both due to Covid and that she’s in the dementia ward in Barry Hospital. What an idiot, eh? Well, I’ll just have to drink it myself.
        Cheers! Absent Friends!

    6. Sorry you feel like that, wibbles. I’ve just got back from a very uplifting service of lessons and carols. Fantastic choir, great hymns to get your tonsils round (we nearly raised the 15th century roof with Hark! The Herald Angels Sing) and generally a lovely atmosphere in a beautiful setting. Now I’m tucking in to mince pies and mulled wine because the grinches in government had decreed we couldn’t have any refreshments afterwards.

      1. Me too. Our rector told me this morning that he isn’t cancelling or restricting any more than the law absolutely forces on him. Full church for nine lessons this evening.

      2. Snap, Conway.

        But we held our Service outside [in the Church
        garden] this evening …. with nearly 200 tea lights,
        very pretty, tomorrow I have to make sure they have
        dried and are clean.

  87. Open letter from The BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg ( A real ZUCK YOU!)

    Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

    We are Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi, editors of The BMJ, one of the world’s oldest and most influential general medical journals. We are writing to raise serious concerns about the “fact checking” being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook/Meta.

    In September, a former employee of Ventavia, a contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial, began providing The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. These materials revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety. We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.

    The BMJ commissioned an investigative reporter to write up the story for our journal. The article was published on 2 November, following legal review, external peer review and subject to The BMJ’s usual high level editorial oversight and review.[1]

    But from November 10, readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share our article. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their posts flagged with a warning about “Missing context … Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share “false information” might have their posts moved lower in Facebook’s News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were “partly false.”

    Readers were directed to a “fact check” performed by a Facebook contractor named Lead Stories.[2]

    We find the “fact check” performed by Lead Stories to be inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.

    — It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong

    — It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials”

    — The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a “news blog”

    — It contains a screenshot of our article with a stamp over it stating “Flaws Reviewed,” despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article

    — It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert”

    We have contacted Lead Stories, but they refuse to change anything about their article or actions that have led to Facebook flagging our article.

    We have also contacted Facebook directly, requesting immediate removal of the “fact checking” label and any link to the Lead Stories article, thereby allowing our readers to freely share the article on your platform.

    There is also a wider concern that we wish to raise. We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. To give one other example, we would highlight the treatment by Instagram (also owned by Meta) of Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of the medical evidence.[3] Rather than investing a proportion of Meta’s substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ.

    We hope you will act swiftly: specifically to correct the error relating to The BMJ’s article and to review the processes that led to the error; and generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.

    Best wishes,

    Fiona Godlee, editor in chief
    Kamran Abbasi, incoming editor in chief
    The BMJ

    2. And there you have it.

      However, I seem to recall that the BMJ refused to publish anti-vax articles too.
      Pot Kettle?

      1. Let them fight.
        So satisfying to watch the woke (other adjectives are available) eating each other!

          8. Had homemade pork sausages made from homegrown pork for dinner last night.
            Superb!
            Plenty salt & pepper, good pork flavour… 🙂

          15. Oi!
            It’s long past your bed time.
            People write nice things about you at this time of night, so piss orf you miserable Grinch.

      1. I think you’ll find that is the BMA (Otherwise known as the Royal College of Shroud Weavers and Wavers – although they haven’t really had to do much shroud waving with all the Coviditus that’s currently going around….)

  88. Well that’s a few items on E-bay in the hope someone might want them!
    Did have a couple of hundred posts to catch up on, then rather stupidly tried to respond to one and got kicked out.

    So I’m off to bed. Goodnight all.

  89. Good night all.

    Managed to get all the food shopping done for Crimble this afternoon, just need to pick up some milk, tonic water* & salad items mid-week, then it will be drawbridge up.

    *Bought some tonic today & enjoyed my first G&T for a week with the News. Last Sunday I scooped up 3 bottles of Schweppes Slimline without really looking, poured a ‘G&T’ that evening & discovered it was soda water – Ugh! Have been taking my gin with cranberry juice all week.

    Tonight; Goat’s milk gouda & grapes, fresh pineapple.

  90. Here’s one for you: In our socialist alcohol-hating paradise on earth, you can buy more varieties of The Glenlivet (evidence there truly is a God) from the state-run Wine Monopoly than they sell all varieties of whisky in Aberdeen Airport duty-free – and cheaper, too! Duty paid and shedloads of tax too.
    Guess what Christmas spirit I’ll be buying tomorrow? Regretfully, my Bunnahabhain is empty… and Second Son now needs a taste of Speyside (he prefers lighter spirits than West Coast whiskies).
    So, it’s educational. That’s all right then!

    1. I feel duty bound to support my new found friends in Speyside for their hospitality when we visited the Speyside Whisky Festival for my 60th birthday several years ago. I entered into the spirit of the festivities and its true to say that a fair amount of the spirit entered me. A few minutes ago I broached one of their products!

      1. I’d prefer to get a bottle of Macallan, but not so available. The Glenlivet will have to do, I suppose… }:-))
        It’s only about £60.

          1. I feel the need to raise a glass to “absent friends” coming on.
            There seems to be a lot of them.
            Can’t toast in cheap spirit, so… ;-))

          2. I do understand. 17th just now was 39th anniversary of my mother’s death and tomorrow, ditto for my dear old dad. It’s been a long time.
            Christmas and New Year is a very bittersweet time.
            I love the lights and carols and, of course, the grub, but it can be tough.

          3. What I miss most about Christmas is small children.
            Ours are grown up now, but no grand-children.
            Nobody to be in awe and overexcited about all the fuss and bother.

          4. This is out first grandchild’s first Christmas but my son and DiL will be spending it at DiL’s parents. It’s a pity but I console myself with the thought that she’s too young to ‘get it’ and that there will be further Christmases to come.

          5. Tiny children only become interesting once they can sit up and do things. Up to then, they are a leaky bag of , well, eeuw.
            Once they can do things, you can play with them and teach them stuff.
            Like with Firstborn and the wooden cubes. Taught him aged about 18m – 2y how to build a pyramid standing on it’s point – try it, not so easy. So, when he went to the health worker assessment and she asked him to build a pyramid with blocks, he did it on it’s point – and was marked down for not understanding that pyramids are triangles with point uppermost! :-D)

          6. Our youngest was seen by our excellent GP for her 2 year ‘assessment’. As she refused to undertake any of the tasks he set for her, the GP called it a day. As youngest was putting her coat on she asked: “Mummy what did that silly man want me to do all those silly things for?” Our GP said to mum don’t bother making another assessment appointment….

          7. The ‘health worker’ is, obviously, one of those who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

          8. Also a dog. There’s a wonderful photo of my last Golden Henry eyeing up the pressies on the coffee table and wondering which are his;-)

          9. There are times at Christmastide when I just want to sit with a mug of tea/glass of ale/tot of rum/drop of malt and listen to Bach, Praetorius, Scheidt and ignore the rest of the world.

  94. I truly believe the wheels have fallen off the vaccine mandates bollox. A cursory glance at the graphs and figures show that the supposed pandemic is finished and cannot be maintained. The man made virus has weakened and is now a mild cold Corona virus, albeit producing unnatural ‘variants’ as opposed to natural virus ‘mutations’.

    The sooner we get back to our normal lives the better. We have been taken for mugs over the past two years. We now need to frame and prosecute the evil people responsible for the current position. Those bastards have trousered billions of taxpayer monies in order to fund their evil and nefarious activities and must be pursued by the law officers and the courts.

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