Sunday 19 July: The Government’s guidance is sowing confusion across the country

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/18/letters-governments-guidance-sowing-confusion-across-country/

849 thoughts on “Sunday 19 July: The Government’s guidance is sowing confusion across the country”

  6. SIR – Those championing working from home appear to be in the advanced stages of their careers.

    When they first entered the workplace, many would have benefited from the experience gained while working closely within a team of older colleagues. How will the aspiring youth of today, denied such experience, advance their careers?

    Julian Hales
    Saffron Walden, Essex

    1. tch tch Julian, you are assuming they have something to learn. Aren’t you aware that they already know it all?

    2. At the end of the sixties a third year student nurse would routinely be put in charge of a thirty bed ward in a major teaching hospital and if they made a mistake they would be hauled into the office to face a number 7.

      Nowadays you might well get a reaction from a university trained nurse on ward experience by getting a refusal to help with dealing with sh1t because it was beneath them.

      1. Or because there was no room for any more brown stuff, what with their being full of it already.

  7. Morning all,

    BBC Radio 4: 1.8 Trillion – Is that all in € or will EU be demanding some £ ?

    That’s the amount that the EU are considering handing out to meet the cost of dealing with the effects of COVID in the EU.
    They have spent three days now trying to agree how the ‘rich’ countries in the EU are going to fund the poorer countries.
    I know the UK has left the EU but hope there are no nasty surprises to come before the end of the trade agreement period.

      1. 321482+ up ticks,
        S,
        Forward thinking, saves on future welfare etc, and cuts down on anything nasty entering via the seemingly governing parties channel, via the channel.

      2. I have mentioned before that GCHQ/RAF should have her co-ordinates.
        Morning, sos.

        1. Anne, she was a fifteen year old child when Gatwick Airport Security let her through.
          Someone in the Home Office wasn’t doing their job properly. And there has been no change.
          Don’t forget, female muslim teenagers are known to be at risk of being taken (or lured) abroad for forced marriage.
          You can not rely on white or BAME security staff to uphold security protocols, there has to be a robust system.

          1. Don’t forget, female muslim teenagers are known to be at risk of being taken (or lured) abroad for forced marriage.

            …& for FGM.
            .

          3. Bring in the old crone for a holiday in Blighty and hold the Afro-Muslim equivalent of a chicken pox party.

          5. Which raises lots of questions.

            If the kiddie is hidden under an oppressive tent covering will the security force her to take it off to see the individual beneath?

            Will they be allowed to check for date rape drugs?

            The security groups at these borders are not idiots, but they also don’t necessarily have the authority they need and worse, the legal support necessary to prevent such emigration.

          6. This innocent little fifteen year old – in-between slavering over videos of men being burnt alive or having their heads slowly removed with a blunt penknife – managed to acquire the airfare for a flight to Syria.
            She either had one helluva well paid Saturday job, pinched the readies from her mother’s knicker drawer, or was given financial help. Oh, and she had a current passport, so presumably this upright Muzzie family either nipped over to see the Bangla rellies or enjoyed a fortnight in Shagaluf on a regular basis.
            Lock on her co-ordinates and …. Kaboommmmm …… At the very least it will save more babies being condemned to a few miserable days in the arms of their loving, over-fertile mother.
            And I agree about the airports, but looking at the staff manning the check points, is it any surprise?

          7. I seem to remember one of those girls used her sister’s passport. Not sure if it was Begum or one of the others.

      1. I had 2 visitors in the night:
        The first was a small tortoiseshell butterfly, since disappeared.
        The second was the first mosquito of the season, which bit me 3 times on the arms.

  10. Now civil servants claim they ‘do not feel comfortable’ with a Treasury room named after Winston Churchill
    *A Treasury room is named after former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
    *Civil servants are uncomfortable with the name and have complained about it
    *Rishi Sunak has defended the name of the room due to its historical significance

    Civil servants have complained to their superiors that they ‘do not feel comfortable’ with a room in the Treasury being named after Winston Churchill.

    Reigniting attacks by Black Lives Matter protesters and Left-wing critics on Britain’s wartime hero, some staff at the vast Whitehall department have demanded that its Churchill Room be confined to history.

    It was named after the former Prime Minister because he used the room’s balcony to give an address to the crowds below on VE Day in 1945.
    *
    *
    *
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/07/18/23/30926022-0-image-m-68_1595112171060.jpg

    D’you know what? Just boogger orff the lot of you.

    1. 321482+ up ticks,
      C,
      People power must get real, confine the CS to history,
      nobody should feel uncomfortable at work, sack um.

      2. Certainly not by a room name, and a room named after a great liberator and leader. if they don’t like that tradition of public service they can always resign.

        1. 321482+ up ticks.
          W,
          I do not believe they would resign such a profitable way of earning a crust in to much of a hurry.
          It is obvious by their own admission that they are discontented, there by not giving their ALL in value to the tax payer so sack um.

    2. It would not be proper to sack these snivel servants, I suggest a transfer away from the room that offends them so much would be the answer.
      Suggestions as to where required, I nominate Port Stanley, please feel free to add to the list.

          2. If the penguins don’t get all the mines, the mines will get all the penguins!

          5. Indeed, and they are a bugger to deetct, too. Probe with a skewer… preferably not! Tank with flail would be my preferred solution.
            In any case, the exlosive in the body and the detonator becomes unstable with time – think of sweaty dynamite…

          7. An earlier generation of penguins were hoping for a visit from Princess Di. By the time they got planning permission …

      4. The defence radar station at Benbecula, North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. When Ivan finally kicks off that will be up for early obliteration.

          3. ‘Fraid so, Alec. Another advantage to such a posting would be the fact that no one would be able to hear their whining…

          5. Difference between a pilot and a jet engine – the engine stops whining after the trip

          6. That’s what they used to say about the BA 747 from London arriving in Perth: The whining continued when the motors were switched off.

        2. No, please. Benbecula is quite nice on a warm sunny day. There are several such every year or so.

    4. Who employed them with that attitude. They should be told where to get off.

        1. “Universal egalitarianism” – everybody in the shit, except those that are more equal than others.

          1. What he forgets of course is that such is antithetical to human nature.

            He also forgets, comically; that he is the one who wants to tell others how to live. Hardly equal there, is it: making others do what you want them to against their will? Sounds like oppression to me. Sounds like fascism.

          2. It’s really about power – for him, to direct folk, and eventually to hang them when he feels like it.

    5. I wonder do they feel uncomfortable being paid from funds provided by taxpayers, the majority of whom like the room being called the Churchill Room.

    6. That’s fine. They are more than happy to use a different room. One excluded from the meeting in question.

      Then, when they are unable to do their jobs they can be sacked for incompetence.

  11. Andrew does the wrong thing again.

    Featuring prominently on many of Sunday’s front pages is the photo of newlyweds Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. “Where’s Dad?” is the question posed on the front page of the Sunday Mirror. The couple is photographed with the Queen and Prince Philip outside The Royal Chapel of All Saints at Royal Lodge, Windsor. The absence of the bride’s father, Prince Andrew, from the official royal photos is a “glaring omission from family snaps”, the paper writes.

    He should have joined the pose & nobody would have said anything.

  12. PETER HITCHENS: Face masks turn us into voiceless submissives – and it’s not science forcing us to wear them, it’s politics

    In the name of Covid, the State has already thrust itself into every corner of our existence.

    It has come between husbands and wives at the ends of their lives. It has forbidden the old to embrace their grandchildren.

    It has denied us funerals and weddings, locked the churches, silenced the ancient monastic music of cathedral choirs and prevented the free worship of God for the first time in 800 years, and banned us (unless we are Left-wing) from holding or attending public meetings.

    It has ordered us to stay at home, scolded or fined us for sunbathing, going on country rambles or even entering our front gardens.

    It has forced millions of us to stop working, sabotaged the educations – at school and university – of untold numbers of young people and has become our boss and paymaster in the biggest state takeover of life and work ever attempted by non-Communists.

    Soon we will discover that it has also wrecked an already wobbly economy and separated untold numbers of us from jobs and businesses we thought were safe. Soon, too, it will also separate us from our savings, through punishing tax and savage inflation, to pay for the disaster it has caused.

    Now it presumes to tell us what to wear. And what it wants us to wear is a soggy cloth muzzle, a face-nappy that turns its wearer from a normal human into a mumbling, mouthless submissive.

    And this, it seems, is popular. Is there nothing the modern British people will not put up with? Britain’s muzzle consumption is now so high that six months from now there will be reports of dolphins and whales floundering about in an ocean made sticky by millions of gallons of hand-sanitiser, as they choke on congealed clumps of used muzzles. These items are set to become the new plastic bags.

    Why is this frenzy taking place?

    Here is a clue. On July 12, Deborah Cohen, the medical correspondent of BBC2’s Newsnight, revealed an astonishing thing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had reversed its advice on face masks, from ‘don’t wear them’ to ‘do wear them’.

    But the key fact was that it had not done so because of scientific information – the evidence had not backed the wearing of face coverings – but because of political lobbying.

    She revealed on Twitter that: ‘We had been told by various sources [that the] WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying.’ She said the BBC had then put this to the WHO, which did not deny it.

    In March, the WHO had said: ‘There is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can protect them from infection with respiratory viruses, including Covid-19.’

    The American TV news channel CNN reported on March 31 that Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies programme, had said at a briefing in Geneva: ‘There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit.

    ‘In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly.’

    A few weeks ago, the WHO changed its advice to say it ‘advises that governments should encourage the general public to wear masks where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult, such as on public transport, in shops or in other confined or crowded environments.’

    Earlier that same month, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, had said that wearing face masks would do little to combat the outbreak.

    While noting that if someone was infected, they might reduce the danger of spreading the disease by covering their faces, Prof Whitty said wearing a face mask had almost no effect on reducing the risk of contracting the illness.

    He stated: ‘In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.’

    Also in March, the Advertising Standards Authority banned two firms’ advertisements for masks, saying that the adverts were ‘misleading, irresponsible and likely to cause fear without justifiable reason’.

    At about the same time, Dr Jenny Harries, a Deputy Chief Medical Officer, warned that people could be putting themselves more at risk from contracting Covid by wearing muzzles. She said masks could ‘actually trap the virus’, and cause the person wearing it to breathe it in. She explained: ‘For the average member of the public walking down a street, it is not a good idea.’

    On April 3, the other Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said he did not believe healthy people wearing them would reduce the spread of the disease in the UK.

    The British Government has also zig-zagged. As recently as June 24, in a series of official pamphlets for reopening shops and services, the Department for Business and Enterprise said repeatedly: ‘The evidence of the benefit of using a face covering to protect others is weak and the effect is likely to be small.’

    This was true at the time and it is still true. The evidence is indeed weak. There is plenty of research showing that the case for muzzles is poor, especially a survey done for the dental profession four years ago, which quietly vanished from the internet after mask opponents began to cite it.

    The scientific papers in favour of muzzling are full of weak, hesitant words such as ‘probably, ‘could’ and ‘may’ – which can equally well be expressed as ‘probably not’, ‘could not’ or ‘may not’.

    There has not been any great discovery in the past few days.

    Generally, the main way of discovering if something works is the Randomised Control Trial (RCT), in which the proposed treatment or method is tested directly and thoroughly.

    This hasn’t been done with muzzles, probably because it would be a bit difficult and possibly because muzzle zealots fear the results would not help their case.

    Amazingly, the chief spokesman for science in this country, who should surely support proper rigour, has dismissed such RCTs.

    Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, sneered at ‘inappropriate’ RCTs as ‘methodological fetishism’. He did this while advocating more compulsory muzzle-wearing when he appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme on July 7 – as the political lobbying for muzzles intensified. All that has changed is the politics.

    Why are they changing?

    Interestingly, Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s muzzle edict was the first action by the London Government which actually copied a move made by Nicola Sturgeon’s extremely Left-wing Edinburgh administration.

    There are many signs that it has not been thought through, at least by scientists.

    Why are we more likely to spread Covid in a shop than we are to do so in a pub or restaurant? The question cannot be answered.

    What evidence there is certainly suggests that the risk of transmission is greater if we linger longer, but the Government does not dare close down the catering trade again, because it would be wildly unpopular and because these businesses are on the point of bankruptcy – and such an action would shut them.

    The truth is that the muzzle policy is all about power and fear.

    The Government began its wild, disproportionate shutdown of the country by spreading fear of a devastating plague that would destroy the NHS and kill untold thousands.

    Now, as many people find that Covid-19 is, in fact, nothing of the kind, new ways have to be found to keep up the alarm levels.

    One was exposed on Friday by the superb scientists of the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. Puzzled by the way that Covid death figures in England continued to pour in, while they had all but ceased in Scotland, they looked at the figures from Public Health England (PHE).

    And they found, in their own devastating words ‘It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not.

    ‘PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.

    ‘By this PHE definition, no one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but been successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.’

    This problem would be avoided by having a simple cut-off, where those who tested positive more than 28 days ago were no longer counted as Covid deaths. Scotland does this. That is why its figures are lower.

    Findings are now also pouring in which suggest that a horribly high number of the excess deaths during the last few months were not caused by Covid, but by people failing to seek treatment for heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

    Despite the propagandists of the BBC, which has tried as hard as it can never to mention the legions of dissenting scientists who dispute the Government’s policy, people are beginning to wonder, in increasing numbers, if they might have been taken for a ride.

    This Government has no great authority. It is a Cabinet of undistinguished, inexperienced unknowns, headed by an exhausted and empty Prime Minister whose sparkle, such as it was, is fast fading.

    In a few weeks’ time, the Government faces the onset of what may be the worst economic crisis since 1929. It needs to keep the fear levels up to maintain its authority.

    One way of doing this is the ceaseless promotion of an alleged ‘second wave’ of Covid, for which there is no evidence.

    Another is to undertake a ferocious testing policy. This is now happening in Leicester where testers go from door to door to discover people who are ‘infected’ with Covid, even if they have no symptoms (which is usually the case) and are perfectly healthy. Then they can raise the alarm and close down the city.

    But muzzling the populace is even better. People such as me, who think Ministers’ response to the virus is wildly out of proportion, have until now been able to live amid the propaganda, trying to stay sane.

    But the muzzle is a badge of subservience and submission. Anyone who dons it publicly is agreeing to the Government’s crazy assessment of the level of danger.

    Societies in which citizens are discouraged from speaking out against the regime, as this has become, are pretty disgraceful. But countries where the citizens are compelled to endorse the opinion of the state are a serious step further down the path to totalitarianism.

    It is even worse than that.

    Look at the muzzled multitudes, their wide eyes peering out anxiously from above the hideous gag which obscures half their faces and turns them from normal human beings into mouthless, obedient submissives. The psychological effect of these garments, on those who wear them, is huge.

    And it also has another nasty result for society as a whole.

    Dissenters, who prefer not to muzzle themselves, are made to stand out from the surrendered majority, who then become quite keen on pressuring the non- conformists to do as they are told, and on informing against them.

    I predicted the same outcome during the House Arrest period in April, and was mocked for it, but it came true.

    When all this began, I felt fear. But it was not fear of the disease, which was clearly overstated from the start.

    It was fear of exactly what is happening to us, the final closing down of centuries of human liberty and the transformation of one of the freest countries on Earth into a regimented, conformist society, under perpetual surveillance, in which a subservient people scurries about beneath the stern gaze of authority.

    It is my view that, if you don that muzzle, you are giving your assent to that change.

      1. I suspect that numerous politicians will try.

        Except that we’re now out, and if we went back in the price would be Schengen and the Euro on top of what we had when when we left.

        1. Maybe that’s the plan? Pushing these arrangements failed while we were in, so maybe leaving and coming back is the way to do it?

      2. Brexit is a sort of myth anyway. I have yet to see any evidence of anything meaningful happening, such as our laws diverging from the EU’s.

        1. It is going to take many years for meaningful change to come about.

          What’s more important is that we can make those changes.

          1. With the cultural marxists firmly in the driving seat, we may go one step forward and two steps back. I’m dismayed at how they took advantage of coronavirus to push their agenda further forward, and the lame Cons did nothing to stop them.

    2. I wonder if a study was taken that it would be the Left and Remainers that are most in favour of compulsory project fear mask wearing

      3. Of course. Twigged that a while ago.
        Ditto the ruination of Britain by diehard Remainers embedded in the public sector.
        I admire the Australian attitude to legislators; if you want to be an Aussie MP, you must ditch your second passport.

        1. Some MPs should never have been given a British passport in the first place.

    3. Evidence is “weak”??? There is more evidence that the Earth is flat!

    4. Wearing a face mask makes me feel that I am being suffocated. I feel just as Desdemona must have felt when her BAME husband pressed a cushion on her face.

    5. If you don’t, you get fined. There were already cops ‘visiting’ Tesco today.

      The use of masks is political bottom covering. We live in a disgustingly dirty world. We continue to exist in it literally *because* we live in it.

    6. I shall wear my muzzle under protest so that I can do the weekly food shop, not because I am giving assent to it.
      I’ve done the shopping each week as normal since this all began in March, with no ill-effects at all.
      I don’t want someone else choosing my shopping and palming me off with substitutes for items not available. So I don’t do my food shopping online, although most other things I do.

  13. SIR – Julie Burchill poses the question: at what age are we supposed to pull ourselves together and grow up?

    This is a country where you must take criminal responsibility for your actions from the age of 10, can get a part-time job at 14, apply for the Army at 15 and seven months, marry with parental consent and have sex at 16, hold a driving licence at 17, officially become an adult at 18 and adopt a child if you’re 21. I expect a person to be reasonable and considerate well before their thirties.

    “Cancel culture” isn’t a case of the narrow-minded younger generation getting angry with the older one. Cancel culture is what happens when anyone of any age is unable to distinguish between prejudice and simple disagreement.

    Emilie Lamplough

    Trowbridge, Wiltshire

    1. I don’t wish to appear maudlin, but if you ever visit any war grave cemetery (of whatever nationality), you can pay your respects to people who pulled themselves together, but never even got close to their thirties.

      1. Where we live travel in almost any direction will, within a few miles, take you past a war memorial or a Commonwealth war grave cemetery.
        Every small village has a memorial, even those to small for a single shop. These date back to WW1. The thousands lost in previous wars are less well commemorated.
        When we are young we tend to think of war in the much the same way as a sporting contest. See below, re “Play Up”.
        As we mature and grow older, we hopefully become more circumspect and better informed about consequences. Our politicians have become younger, even younger than our policemen, and are far from circumspect or cautious, or discriminating. They seem to plump for the demonstrably wrong course of action, as in Iraq and Libya which countries never threatened us, ever. Yet when we are deliberately attacked physically and economically on a massive scale by China, they do nothing other than stop them selling us smartphones.

  14. Luscious, sweet kippers with plenty of butter & black pepper for brekkers.

    1. I like them but they tend to repeat on me all day afterwards.

      Two boiled eggs for me and soggy soldiers

    2. I like them but they tend to repeat on me all day afterwards.

      Two boiled eggs for me and soggy soldiers

      2. It means you.& anyone you meet, can enjoy them all day. Sometimes eggs repeat on me.
        It’s ages since I had boiled egg; must do something about it.

      3. Our friend has not reported this problem or he would not have touched them!

        Orange juice, toast or croissant for me. I have bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding and tomato on the rare occasions when we stay in an hotel

    3. Good morning, Peddy

      Which are better: your teeth or your digestive system?

    4. Slice of (last night’s) peperoni pizza for me today, with a double espresso to wash it down.

      1. Standard pint of water for my breakfast.

        My Sunday dinner (at 13:00 hrs; remember, I’m a northerner) will be a medium-rare ribeye steak with two fried eggs and a salad of red cabbage, celery and yellow pepper. And another pint of water (and an espresso-based flat white coffee).

  15. Sir – I have just received my new Driving Licence and am amazed that the EU logo is still there.
    Could someone please explain to the DVLA that we left the EU at 11pm on January 31.
    John Owen
    Gloucester.

    Our humble servants appear to be dragging their feet.

  16. SIR – Why are white-collar workers in the public sector still at home, while other taxpayer-funded groups such as nurses, police officers, refuse collectors and road sweepers are expected to carry on regardless?

    Ted Shorter
    Tonbridge, Kent

    Regular contributor to the ST forum, Ted Shorter, asks perhaps the most pertinent and sensible question of this silly ongoing debacle. Why, indeed, are some workers expected to carry on as normal whilst people in other — less important — jobs are wrapped in cotton wool?

    [Footnote: Last week a regular, geographically-challenged, contributor made reference to a place he called “Tonbridge Wells”. He should be advised there is no such place (nor ever has been). The Kentish town of Tonbridge is close to another town called Tunbridge Wells.]

      1. A lorry delivery driver, who worked at Raleigh Cycles, once told me of an overnight stay he took, in the cab of his lorry, in a large car park in the town. He was woken by an irate local knocking on the lorry’s door.

        Local: “You can’t park here overnight, driver. You’ll have to move on!”
        Driver: “Why? What’s so special about Tunbridge Wells?”
        Local: “It’s ROYAL Tunbridge Wells to you!”

        He must’ve bumped into the famous “Mr Angry” of that town’s fame.

          1. No it wasn’t!

            It was “Disgusted” of ROYAL Tunbridge Wells throwing his teddy out of the cot.

    2. Good morning, Grizzly

      We have had Sixth Formers from Tonbridge School and Tonbridge Grammar School for Girls on our courses but to date we have not had anyone from either Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys nor Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Girls.

      1. Good morning, Rastus.

        There must be some kind of social divide between the towns. I wonder if any Tonbridge residents ever dare to venture into the other place’s lovely Pantiles shopping complex?

        1. It must be a long time since you’ve ventured into the Pantiles, it’s lost a number of quaint places that are now offices, restaurants or closed. It is now surrounded by appartments too.

          Bits remain true to its character and it’s certainly a lot pleasanter than Tonbridge.

          2. It’s an odd little corner, it seems to go downhill, gets a bit of a makeover and revives and then heads downhill again. There are a few times of the year when it really buzzes but they were becoming fewer and further between, the fairly regular markets often tend towards tacky. Very much tourist orientated.

          3. There is a very similar and even larger area in Exeter (can’t remember its name) alongside the river. I was most impressed when I visited.

        2. Yes, the (social) divide is Southborough, a well known and much cursed traffic bottleneck – but easily avoided by the locals…

  17. SIR – I disagree strongly with Daniel Hannan, who seems to believe that universities have no role in developing the skills that employers

    and the country need.

    Whatever one thinks of Tony Blair’s higher education target of 50 per cent, we must remember why it was created. It was believed that the only
    politically acceptable way to get more people from disadvantaged backgrounds into university was to increase the absolute number of young
    people attending.

    Professor Graham Galbraith
    Vice-Chancellor, University of Portsmouth

    Shirley, Professor Galbraith, is that not what the 11 Plus, 13 Plus and Grammar Schools used to do, until someone scrapped them/made them accessable
    only to Labour MPs children, without £30,000+ debts

  18. Independent reporting that Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton has been in Lockdown after a hospital worker was stabbed this morning. A 30 year old man has been arrested.

          1. As long as it inflates the stats, I don’t think the ‘experts’ are too fussed.

    1. Thank you for the clarification of our guidelines/rules/laws or whatever.
      It would be really, really funny if it wasn’t so bloody true.

    2. Sounds like the Python sketch featuring Cleese as the headmaster (The Meaning of Life?)

      1. He was.
        I don’t recall seeing the whole film but of course many scenes have almost gone into folklore.

    1. …and so unnecessary. Another planning failure when the post-virus enquiry takes place.

    2. Doctors are reluctant to see patients and they are assuming every on is on Zoom or has access to a modern mobile phone .

      Doctors diagnose by touch, smell , feel, and observation and examination.. how many people are slipping through the net.

      We are regarded as expendable .. they don’t mind that we don’t matter.

      1. I bought a new phone as mine died back in February – but I’m not very good with it and I refuse to use Zoom.

      2. Nationalised industry. As long as all the targets are met, it will be deemed to be successful. They used to have cartoons about that in East Germany.

    3. Is it just months? I thought that it was expected to be years before normal service resumes.

  22. Those who ‘know’ Boris Johnson is guilty should beware the lesson of history.Indy. 19 July 2020.

    Brian Hutton died this week at the age of 88. He was the judge and peer who carried out the inquiry into the death of David Kelly, the government scientist who killed himself after he caused the BBC to accuse Tony Blair of interfering with the intelligence case for the Iraq war.

    Lord Hutton’s report is a reminder from another era, 16 years ago, that public inquiries do not always come up with the answer that everyone first thought of. His exoneration of the government was described at the time – by The Independent – as a “whitewash”, but its findings were supported by two later inquiries by Lord Butler and Sir John Chilcot.

    It cannot be assumed, therefore, that the public inquiry into the government’s handling of coronavirus, which Boris Johnson confirmed this week would take place, is going to confirm what “everyone knows”. It may seem that “everyone knows” that the prime minister is guilty of ordering the lockdown too late and that lives were lost as a result.

    Morning everyone. I’m absolutely certain that any inquiry will find the Government innocent of anything whatsoever. Experience has taught me this. Kelly, Windscale, Iraq, pretty much any you choose to name always came up blank. I don’t expect this to change. They are simply tools to delay public anger and pardon the Government of the day.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-coronavirus-inquiry-lockdown-iraq-war-brian-hutton-sage-patrick-vallance-a9626136.html

  23. Morning all,

    BBC Radio 4: 1.8 Trillion – Is that all in € or will EU be demanding some £ ?

    That’s the amount that the EU are considering handing out to meet the cost of dealing with the effects of COVID in the EU.
    They have spent three days now trying to agree how the ‘rich’ countries in the EU are going to fund the poorer countries.
    I know the UK has left the EU but hope there are no nasty surprises to come before the end of the trade agreement period.

    1. As the EU has no money what they really mean is enforced socialism.

      Germany has already said no. It simply can’t afford to waste over 600bn, nor can the other nations.

  24. Nagsman has been having technical problems logging on to this blog. she sent me the following yesterday: It makes for interesting reading.

    Lockdown laws in England have been revoked
    July 8, 2020 / gathering, social distancing / By Editor

    Fiction: The lockdown is still on and guidelines must be followed

    Law:
    Unreported by the media, quietly at 00:01am on 4th July the government revoked the lockdown restrictions in almost entirety and replaced with a “No. 2” set by the same title but far reduced. Since 4th July, a list of businesses required to close remains but has been shortened (hairdressers and pubs being let free). Otherwise, the only general restriction remaining in England is not to gather in groups of more than 30, increasing from 6 previously.

    The definition of ‘gathering’ has not been changed since our previous post. The general point to observe, therefore, is that there are no restrictions in the regulations on social distancing so as to affect most people going about their daily lives.

    We are free to hug one another in the street and in our homes
    We are free to hug one another in our homes
    We are free to serve pints in a crowded bar
    We are free to run premises without one-way systems
    We are free to sing in places of worship and elsewhere
    We are free to stay with friends or family
    We are free to keep our faces uncovered
    We are free to make our own risk assessments based on evidence

    Meanwhile, businesses and public are social distancing because the government, BBC and media generally are putting out misleading statements that they ‘must’ follow guidelines. This is simply untrue. (A new legal requirement has been introduced for social distancing at outdoor gatherings, but not indoors. This is explained within another post here.)

    Shop and drink somewhere else
    Yes, customers have to follow social distancing rules when visiting a shop or pub or restaurant if the controller of the premises chooses to adopt social distancing rules and the controller can refuse entry or eject the customer if they are not followed.

    Yes, customers have to wear masks when visiting the hairdresser if the hairdresser chooses to adopt a mask-wearing rule and refuses to cut hair if a mask isn’t worn.

    But this is because when customers enter the premises, they do so with subject to legal ‘licence’ of the controller of those premises.

    However, there is no obligation on the customer to enter the shop. Customers are free to take their custom elsewhere to a shop, pub, restaurant, hairdresser or other business that is exercising different or no social distancing rules at all.

    Why are businesses imposing these rules?
    Businesses and employers can choose not to impose social distancing rules if they wish.

    There are two reasons why they are not doing so:

    Fear of Covid-19 which remains fixed in the public mind
    Misinformation regarding health and safety obligations and risk assessments

    As for inducing Fear, the legal rights and wrongs are far too complicated and we may leave to academics to consider. In practical terms, it may be unlikely that anyone, even Simon Dolan, will want to focus his energies there.

    As for misinformation and risk assessments, however, it is vital that the public and businesses get a better understanding and wake up. We will be setting out the issues in a specific article on the point.

    Finally, it is interesting to note that the No. 2 regulations introduce an important and wide ranging power for the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, to direct that public areas must be closed where and when he considers it necessary (e.g. specifics beaches or parks, or even all beaches and parks). That power has not yet been exercised yet, since Leicester is being shut down under separate regulations.

    The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020
    The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020

    Wales

    In Wales, it is different. See our previous article on social distancing explaining why and our article explaining the difference in definition of a ‘gathering‘. The main UK legislation website does not, at time of this post and unlike the regulations for England, show within the principle regulations how they have been amended, but amended they were on 7 July and a document of sorts has been provided by the Wales Assembly Government. Initial observations are to see significant additional protections being added in Wales but we will consider this further in due course.

    The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Wales) Regulations 2020
    The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Wales) Regulations 2020 as amended

    Warning: Law and circumstances can change very quickly. Please note the date of publication of any blog post and check for any updates on the issues addressed. In any event, we do not condone or encourage breaching the law and neither the above nor any information posted on this website constitutes legal advice. It must not be relied upon as such and specialist legal advice should be taken in relation to specific circumstances. Please read our disclaimer.

    http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/lockdown-laws-in-england-have-been-revoked/

    1. 321482+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      As a sign of getting a grip hancock could very well start with Dover in the way of beaches.

  25. Right, that’s me off on my travels for a couple of days. I’ve a couple of items to pick up from Skegness on Wednesday and plan meandering down the Lincolnshire Coast between now & then.
    Hopefully I’ll be able to keep in touch via my laptop if/when I find a connection.

    1. Have a good meander, but that’s a pretty bleak bit of coast separating Grimsby and Skeggy. Mablethorpe isn’t exactly an oasis.

    3. Are Now & Then good places to start & finish a journey? Sounds like Middle Earth,

      Gute Fahrt!

      1. Plan heading across to North Lincs and follow the Humber to Grimsby, then South along the coast. No plans on where to stop yet. Will take pot luck!
        Logging off not, TTFN

    5. There’s a decent brewery tour not far from Skeggy Bob, but at the moment i cant remember the name of it. It’ll be on line somewhere.
      Have a good trip.

      1. You’re possibly thinking of Bateman’s at Wainfleet? Excellent beer too!

        1. I use be a member of a 12 man share club we often went away for weekends to places where we did Brewery tours. You’re probably correct M, we ended up in Lincoln and a visit to the castle. I have just looked on Google earth and we stayed in the Wool Pack Hotel In Wainfleet All Saints for two nights.

  26. Morning all

    SIR – We have just been to Cornwall, where we sampled a range of offerings from the hospitality industry.

    There is no consistency in the application of anti-Covid precautions. One restaurant in three asked for contact details. We had menus handed out and collected, handed out but not collected, written on a board and offered via a screen shot on our phone. One restaurant had plastic screens between diners, while others had no barriers. Wetsuits were washed in detergent, while waterproof clothing and life jackets were not sanitised between users. Some toilets were open; others not. The number of people permitted in small shops varied widely, as did the sanitising, paying, touching and queuing arrangements.

    The only sure consequences are confusion and a disincentive to spend money. Does the Government really think that its mask-wearing proposals are going to improve matters, or are they simply about exercising control?

    Clare Seymour

    Chelmsford, Essex

    Show more

    SIR – I have just booked a room with a well-known hotel group, only to be told that the bar is shut, along with the restaurant. Any food has to be eaten in my room.

    I do wonder who comes up with this nonsense. Having been to hotel chains for years, I’ve yet to see overcrowding in any of the bars or restaurants. The people responsible for such rules have obviously never used these hostelries, otherwise they would know better.

    John Baker

    Crayford, Kent

    SIR – There are plenty of people coming to Dorset. The roads are busy and the countryside is bustling.

    Why, then, can’t people return to work? This is a complex question, but one thing is certain. Too many are enjoying their free holiday on the Government’s furlough scheme. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

    Running the scheme until October will only prolong this crisis, as many will not return to work until the funding dries up. Winter will also be fast approaching. Far better to get the immunity levels up in the summer months. Our economy will not survive another ill-thought-out lockdown.

    Nick Hazelton

    Wimborne, Dorset

    SIR – Why are white-collar workers in the public sector still at home, while other taxpayer-funded groups such as nurses, police officers, refuse collectors and road sweepers are expected to carry on regardless?

    Ted Shorter

    Tonbridge, Kent

    1. It’s a well known fact that all national presidents – particularly if they are dictators – are financially and sexually as pure as the driven snow.
      Good heavens, Nurse. Is it really time for my tablets?

      1. And that is why it is so tragic that we never got Charles Lynton as our President of Blighty. He was such a perfect fit for the job description. {:^))

    2. Even our dentist in Germany had money salted away in Switzerland. He said we should as well. He owned our rented house.

      1. Luxembourg was a popular depository for Schwarzgeld from my neck of the woods. There used to be a procession of unmarked Mercedes down the Autobahn from the Ruhrgebiet every weekend.

        1. Well, I assume you know how that one ended.
          A bank employee in Lux sold two DVDs of names and addresses to the German Finanzamt for 3 million euros IIRC.
          Switzerland have been got at and now demand proof that the tax authorities know about your money before they let you take it out.
          I’m told the smart money is in south America these days.
          Not that any of mine is!

          1. I didn’t know that. I left Germany in July 2002 for Sweden. Perhaps it was after that?

          3. I was back in Blighty by then. Der Aufenthalt in Schweden war wie ein Griff ins Klo.

          4. South America? The home of stable, growing economies? That’s smart money… :-O)

        2. Do you remember G. Northcote Parkinson’s description of tax rates being like a bucket with holes in the side starting a third of the way up and getting progressively bigger. By the time you get half way up the bucket everything leaks out?

          I blame tax avoidance and tax evasion on governments – it is entirely their fault that it happens because they are too greedy and want to tax too much.

          1. Politicians always think they lknow how best to live a life, spend a dollar, raise a child, run a business – yet they always make a pigs ear of it. They always need more money for their schemes, and are unable to see that where ther rate of return has diminished to zero or less, hthere will be no more input. Look at how productve the Soviet Union was back in soviet times – nobody did anything more than bugger-all, as they got paid anyway, so there was no development or wealth in society (“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”).

    4. I beg to differ with the BBC: “Spanish newspaper El País, traditionally a staunch Juan Carlos supporter,”. Traditionally it’s twinned with The Guardian.
      ABC is the conservative rag. The ex-king’s problem is that he never had any family money when he was young, but he was expected to socialise with wealthy grandees, superrich businessmen and other heads of state.
      40 years ago the little palace that he lived in had a dining room (or table, my memory fails) so modest that the King and his missus could not seat 12 for dinner.

      1. No wonder his Greek Mrs always looked so sad.

        We could get 12 around our wind-out dining table in Dorset, although the most we ever did was 10.

        1. My dining table will seat 8 comfortably. It’s a large munkebord – refectory-style table with semi-circular ends, 2 huge legs and a top that takes two guys to lift. Arctic pine – very dense. One of it’s attributes when we bought it was that it’s too sturdy & heavy to wobble – I HATE wobbly tables!

      2. I was always taught that a King (or Queen) was that for life, even if sent packing. Therefore, according to my late History teacher, he can’t be an ex-King.

  28. Don’t mention the dog (Apologies if I missed this amongst NoTTls 700+ comments yesterday):

    SIR – Following a review of its “historical assets” – in truth, a response to recent Black Lives Matter protests – the Royal Air Force thought it best to erase the name of 617 Squadron’s mascot, a black labrador, from its gravestone.

    As this serves no real purpose other than to erase an immutable historical fact, it says more about the virtue-signalling of those in charge of today’s Royal Air Force than it ever could about the power of protest.

    Stefan Badham
    Portsmouth, Hampshire

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/17/letterstumbleweed-blowing-streets-london-birmingham/

    1. ‘Morning, LD. Here’s wot I posted yesterday, no need for apologies:

      ‘Morning, Peeps.

      Guy Gibson’s dog has made it to the DT Letters, but no reference to his name, nor of his master’s inaccurate decorations…

        1. Why do ni**ers have 2 holes in their top lip? – so they can see where they’re going when they’re whistling

        2. Great song. Jeremy Taylor is a lovely man – he takes great joy in poking fun at pomposity and hypocrisy. With this song, he apparently sold more records than Elvis Presley in South Africa!

      3. How has his name been erased from his gravestone?
        By overwriting with WHITEY?

          1. In that case erasing an important historic identity from such a gravestone amounts to desecrating a war grave.

    2. At the end of Mass we say a prayer, “Saint Michael the Archangel, Defend us in battle…”
      We as citizens also pay for a military that will do the same. Regardless of the faith one has in God, it seems that we can hardly have any faith in an RAF that cannot, or will not, defend itself against a verbal attack by cultural Marxists and vicious hooligans..

  29. Bullying Xi, predatory Trump: where does Britain turn in a divided world? 19 July 2020.

    Likewise, Washington’s overbearing, predatory behaviour towards friends and allies may also change dramatically if Biden wins in November. The Democrat, mocked by Trump for being soft on China, has been more sharply critical of Beijing of late.

    Yet Biden’s whole approach to foreign relations is summed up by the term “strategic empathy”. He has spent decades as a senator and vice-president building bridges, not burning them. He knows China well. As some in Whitehall and Westminster seem to hope, his election could improve the geopolitical climate overnight.

    With a new president in the White House, there would still be tensions with Beijing. But talk of cold war would be likely to recede rapidly. Biden is an old hand. He knows the geopolitical game. And he believes in win-win outcomes. That’s something the infinitely conflicted Johnson could learn from.

    This is a nice rosy view, unfortunately Biden is an intellectual turnip who has difficulty remembering his own name!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/19/bullying-xi-predatory-trump-where-does-britain-turn-in-a-divided-world

    2. Lunacy! Just what we need, a rapprochement with China, only a year after their full on and nearly successful attempt to destroy the West. America’s friendship with us is illusory, merely an attempt to hang to at least one country in the world in a cordial manner.

  30. Vitamin D boosts

    SIR – We know that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, as well as those who mainly work indoors, especially shift workers, are Vitamin D-deficient during the British winter – which is why Public Health England already recommends daily Vitamin D doses for “most of the population”.

    There is now strong observational evidence from many countries and cultures that the groups vulnerable to Covid-19 are often Vitamin D-deficient, and that low Vitamin D is strongly linked to increased severity and poor outcome of respiratory infections generally, and Covid-19 in particular.

    The recent pronouncement by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that there is no conclusive evidence of Vitamin D’s role in Covid-19 is technically correct, in that there are no randomised controlled trials that directly address the question, but is otherwise a perfect example of what Martin Luther King described as “conscientious stupidity”.

    In the absence of a vaccine, the most cheap and effective step that PHE and the Government could take to reduce Covid-19 attrition this winter would be to ensure optimal Vitamin D status for all NHS and care-home staff, the BAME population, the elderly and care-home residents, and those who work indoors. Employers may reasonably be expected to address the needs of the last cohort. Planning is needed now to avoid the logistical problems which we saw this spring.

    Dr Jon Broome

    Durham

    1. Here’s a thought – why don’t those BAME people who wear long flowing garments which cover them from top to toe switch to a more European type of dress during the summer e.g. shorts, t-shirts, summer dresses etc. Free boost to vitamin D levels.

      1. Because the Prophet decreed that in Arabia in summer, the sun is dangerously strong and must be avoided.

  31. Don’t touch the truth with a bargepole — that stuff is toxic, my activist chums
    Rod Liddle – Sunday July 19 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    The battle has at last been won. Britain’s leading cervical cancer charity has accepted that it is not only women who can get cervical cancer, despite the fact that it is only women who can get cervical cancer. According to Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, the illness is now open to “everyone with a cervix”, even if, perhaps, they only have a cervix glued to the top of their head and worn like a festive hat.

    This all follows a long campaign from transgender activists and Pink News, which called the suggestion that only women can get cervical cancer a “disgustingly transphobic lie”, rather than — as almost everyone else would see it — “a patent and obvious truth”. Denying reality (never mind the cervix, have a look at the chromosomes) has become a fashionable position for many on the identitarian, intersectional left — because, alas, reality does not remotely accord with their agenda and therefore reality needs to be cast aside.

    Its most perfect expression came five years ago in a study reported by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Liberals and conservatives were shown a shape that definitely wasn’t a circle — it was an irregular ellipse — and asked if it was a circle or not. The conservatives tended to say no, of course not. But liberals were significantly happier to describe this blob as a circle. If it identifies as a circle, that’s fine with me. Why hurt its feelings? Why be so circlecentric? Reality once again cheerfully discarded.

    A few weeks ago I called this tendency — which through the avidity and hysteria of its advocates now infests most of our institutions — the Unenlightenment. But I accept the De-enlightenment would serve just as well.

    There was an interesting discussion about “knowledge resistance” on Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed, hosted by the BBC’s most agreeable of avuncular Marxists, Laurie Taylor. The Swedish professor Mikael Klintman explained that in a survey, sociologists would be resistant to any findings that derived from competing disciplines, especially evolutionary psychology, even if they knew them to be true. That’s the important bit: even if they knew them to be true.

    The example Klintman cited was little short of the history of the world: since the dawn of time, in pretty much every society that has ever existed, men have controlled women and they have also been the more violent of the sexes. Evolutionary psychologists have decent evidence that this a consequence, primarily, of genetics. But sociologists insist that it has always been a case of social conditioning (in which case, how did that conditioning begin and perpetuate, and why is it omnipresent?).

    More importantly, the sociologists admitted to being “knowledge-resistant”. Even if it’s true that genetics is at the heart of the matter, which they didn’t necessarily dispute — it is dangerous to admit this because it might militate against action to redress the balance now. This is what we might call weaponised stupidity. Stupidity as a radical political tactic.

    Let me give a similar example. An eminent professor of history asserts that not absolutely everything about colonialism was bad, even if in general it was “bad”. He is denounced by all of his colleagues as a white supremacist and a petition is got up to have him defrocked, or whatever you do to dodgy academics. And yet the suggestion “not everything that came from colonialism was bad” is patently true — even if it was only the building of a railway, or a bridge, or a school — and his infuriated colleagues know this. But they cannot bear to accept it because it introduces that awful thing, nuance.

    As Orwell had it, in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

    PM’s road map to recovery

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8f76c480-c922-11ea-a4b9-03f8110e32cc.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Support us – or else
    An actress I know was recently contacted by her agent to ask why she had not signed her support for Black Lives Matter. “Because I don’t really want to,” came the response. The agent sympathised but added, “Sorry – it’s compulsory.” If you don’t signal your support, you will not be cast in anything by anyone. She signed.

    Meanwhile, Jasmine Archer-Jones has been stripped of her title of Miss Swimsuit UK for having posted the deeply offensive comment “All lives matter”. Not merely stripped of her title, but all references to her removed from the Miss Swimsuit website.

    Free country, innit.

    Breaking pup is hard to do
    The Duchess of Sussex has given up her lovely rescue dog, Bogart, because it loathes her husband. The creature has been left behind, with friends, in Canada. Someone who knows Meghan told The Sun: “Meghan adored that dog, but the decision not to take him back was based on Bogart’s relationship with Harry.” Bogart confirmed yesterday: “The bloke raises my hackles. Get a spine, you mithering ginger limey toff. I’d bite him but he’d probably taste of Styrofoam. Never could stand poodles.”

    Guardian’s not left enough? Too right
    An excellent suggestion from Laura Alvarez. (Laura is Mrs Corbyn. I mean, obviously she is more than just Mrs Corbyn. She is a proud and vibrant woman in her own right. I mention that she is Mrs Corbyn just to give you a certain locus. No, not a locust — a locus. I do not mean to imply that she should be defined by the occupation of her husband. It’s more a case of “This is the sort of person Alvarez hangs around with”.)

    Alvarez says we should all boycott The Guardian for the good of our mental health — something I have been urging for years. She thinks the paper is too right wing, of course. (Hell, wait till she sees the Express.) But, whatever the reasoning, it’s good enough for me. Her tweet to this effect has 2,500 heart emojis from people whom one supposes have taken up her clarion call. Soon the only people still buying The Guardian will be from the BBC.

    The Valleys aren’t singing any more
    This is a terrible thing to report – the Welsh have been banned from singing, under draconian Covid regulations. They’ve also been told not to run for the bus or talk loudly – but it’s the singing ban that’s upset me. Singing exacerbates the spread of the virus, apparently. Welsh is, I suppose, a very expressive language, full of aspirates. One verse of Sosban Fach and you could wipe out half of Pontypool. But it’s always depressing when a country is prohibited from indulging in one of its favourite pastimes. Luckily, eating seaweed and burning down English people’s homes are still OK, I think.

    1. Excellent, thanks for posting Citroen. For years I have been doing my bit to push the Graun into bankruptcy – I don’t buy it and I never click on any link involving this poisonous rag. Seems to be working if their falling numbers are any guide!

      1. How come we never thought of anything as clever as to start a Twitter campaign that the Guardian is too right wing, though? We really missed a trick there!

      2. The grauniad will never go bankrupt. it is funded not from sales but from a tax avoiding trust arrangement and, of course, offsetting the profits from autotrader.

        The Left wail about tax avoidance but they quite like doing it themselves.

    2. When I studied physics to O-level, we usually followed the text-book, but we skipped the chapter on dry-cell batteries. The school’s head of science had banned it, as its explanation of how dry-cells work was demonstrably untrue.

      I hope that this good and wise man enjoyed a long and happy retirement, but I also hope that mortality has spared him from this new age of unreason.

        1. Something about its still working if you tale the carbon core out, I think. This was 55 years ago, I’m sure they don’t use that text-book any more.

    3. What was truly sad about the swimsuit lass was that she presented facts and evidence.

      The Left hate that. As Mr Liddle states, they cannot ever see the real shades of grey – only their obtuse desperation of good and evil – casting everything they dislike into evil and painting themselves as the heroes. Of course, the Left have done this throughout history. The Austrian was the last bloke who thought himself a righteous avenger.

    4. “According to Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, the illness is now open to “everyone with a cervix”, even if, perhaps, they only have a cervix glued to the top of their head and worn like a festive hat.”

      Well, I have news for you Rodney. Everyone does have a cervix and it is below their head not above it. “Cervix” means neck, and your cervix (neck) is made up of seven cervical vertebrae (the same number that both a shrew and a giraffe possess).

      Gynaecologically, the cervix only refers to the neck of the uterus and not that organ as a whole.

  33. https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/incendie-de-la-cathedrale-de-nantes-qui-est-le-servant-de-messe-rwandais-place-en-garde-a-vue-20200719

    39 year old Rwandan arrested for the Nantes Cathedral arson but he has not been charged and he might well be innocent as he was an altar server and had been entrusted to lock up the cathedral on Friday night. The local people cannot believe it was him and it is possible that the fire was caused by an electrical fault. More news will doubtless follow.

    2. Seems less likely if he was a Christian and religious. But he may know who the real culprits are.

      1. Happy birthday, Jules. hope you have a happy one.

        [I refrained from wishing you a greeting earlier since you had not turned up on site and I wanted to tell you to your face. 😘]

        1. Thankyou! I have some catching up to do – we went out for late lunch

          and haven’t been home long.

    3. Ah, yes. I’ve read that report. However, the fire is said to have started in three separate places. (If he locked up, had the fire started and he didn’t notice? Or did the fire start spontaneously in 3 places after the Cathedral was locked?)

  34. The Observer view on Russian interference in British democracy. Editorial. 19 July 2020.

    Blanket denials by the Russian ambassador, Andrei Kelin, are not sufficient to dispel the serious concerns provoked by Moscow’s activities. Downing Street’s delays, obfuscation and lack of candour over the entire question of Russian destabilisation efforts are a matter of deep concern. More worrying still is the lack of a plan to punish Russia. Sanctions imposed after the Salisbury poisonings have not changed its malign behaviour. Recent changes within Russia mean Putin could be in power until 2036. We ask again: what will the government do to halt his ongoing assault on Britain?

    Well I suppose the facile answer is that there’s not much “Democracy” to interfere with but let us take a closer look. The UK is 1500 miles from Russia. To reach there it is necessary to cross the Channel, 4 Countries and 2 Time zones. We share no borders of any kind, land or maritime; trade is minimal. Russia is a great, though declining power; it has the world’s largest nuclear stockpile; a large and well organised army with powerful Air and Naval contingents. When the UK wishes to confront these forces it flies to Lithuania. It has unlimited supplies of almost all the raw materials necessary for an industrial economy. Fourteen other countries are its neighbours; three are overtly hostile, one of them; China, is a nascent Superpower. Yet apparently this colossus regards Britain, a small island off the coast of Europe, whose economy is hanging by a thread and with minimal defences (shortly to be reduced further) as a unique threat requiring destabilising attacks via the internet!

    There’s some kidding going on here but it’s not coming from Moscow!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/19/the-observer-view-on-russian-interference-in-british-democracy

    2. Let’s not mention China. Please ignore the blatant threats just recently delivered by China’s Ambassador to the UK. Let’s not ask why the Chinese Ambassador was not immediately termed persona non grata and asked to leave our country.

  36. SIR – We know that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, as well as those who mainly work indoors, especially shift workers, are Vitamin D-deficient during the British winter – which is why Public Health England already recommends daily Vitamin D doses for “most of the population”.

    There is now strong observational evidence from many countries and cultures that the groups vulnerable to Covid-19 are often Vitamin D-deficient, and that low Vitamin D is strongly linked to increased severity and poor outcome of respiratory infections generally, and Covid-19 in particular.

    The recent pronouncement by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that there is no conclusive evidence of Vitamin D’s role in Covid-19 is technically correct, in that there are no randomised controlled trials that directly address the question, but is otherwise a perfect example of what Martin Luther King described as “conscientious stupidity”.

    In the absence of a vaccine, the most cheap and effective step that PHE and the Government could take to reduce Covid-19 attrition this winter would be to ensure optimal Vitamin D status for all NHS and care-home staff, the BAME population, the elderly and care-home residents, and those who work indoors. Employers may reasonably be expected to address the needs of the last cohort. Planning is needed now to avoid the logistical problems which we saw this spring.

    Dr Jon Broome
    Durham

    Never mind the BAME crew, Dr Jon, I am a pink dude and I take a daily capsule of Vitamin D₃ alongside two capsules of Omega-3 fish oil to supplement my diet and — hopefully — ward off viruses (viri?). Every little helps.

    1. Ditto, Grizz, + Vit C. I seem to have survived what I’m pretty sure was the Chinese Virus when it found me at home in late Feb/early March, thus proving beyond all doubt that Vit D is indeed the dog’s bollux. (Must go, now need to buy some shares in Healthspan…)

      1. If vitamin D is good, and works against Covid-19, and is made in the body in response to sunshine, why have the people of a sunny country like Brazil been so hard hit?

          1. Vitamin D synthesis is highly dependent on the concentration of melanin in the skin as melanin absorbs and scatters UVR-B, resulting in a less efficient conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3[3]. Therefore, dark-skinned individuals will experience slower vitamin D synthesis than light-skinned ones.

    2. “…there are no randomised controlled trials that directly address” anything to do with Covid-19.
      It seems to be mostly guesswork.

      1. Surely all medicine is guesswork. That’s why there is more than one drug for most ailments. They will have been tested but still don’t work for all.
        We take 5000 iu of vitamin D3 daily and bought 270 capsules for about £15. Very inexpensive but I’m certain the NHS could find a company to charge the at least three times that amount.

        3. Yes. However the Government don’t clamp down on our every freedom as a result.

    3. I take Cod Liver Oil from October to April.
      I tried 1200 mg (?) but found it upset my system; 500 daily seems to be enough.

      1. Morning Anne. I take Cod Liver Oil all year round plus one high strength vitamin C tablet and one Vitamin B Complex daily and have done so for many years. It is of course impossible to say with absolute certainty but I seem to have avoided the vast majority of seasonal and aging symptoms!

  37. Finally, the little grey cell farted out the answer I’ve been looking for ages for… couldn’t remember the composer, so YouTube was no help. Now I’ve got it! Perfect for a slow wet Sunday afternoon!
    https://youtu.be/IjR3mTbwPCo

  38. Facebook is telling me that it’s Happy Birthday Ndovu today 😀. Have a good one!

    2. Hippo Birdy Two Shrews
      Hippo Birdy Two Shrews
      Hippo Birdy Dear Ndovu
      Hippo Birdy Two Shrews!

    5. Hi Ndovu! Many happy returns and hope you have a wonderful day!🎉🍾🎂

    11. A joyous Happy Birthday and Many Happy Returns Ndovu.

      Perhaps a well organised Nottler could start a birthday calendar. Caroline was born on 26.3.1962; I was born on 1.7.46. Any others happy to give their birth dates?

      Who is the father of the Nottler house? Delboy36 is either 84 or 85 – are there any other contenders? I have no idea who is the baby of the house.

        1. I was born in 1362. I grew up as a peasant.

          Nowt’s changed. No, I tell a lie. Loo roll’s quite nice to have.

        1. You share a birthday with Wellin’ton, orphan main character in The Perishers cartoon strip in The Daily Mirror.

          [I grew up with him but, as I aged, the kids in that cartoon strip never did]

    15. Thankyou Sue! I’m still trawling through today’s Nottl posts! Haven’t got to Facebook yet!

      1. You look like a consultant surgeon who had just been “advised” by a junior house registrar.

        1. “I beg your pardon – you want me to put this ventilator tube where?”

      2. Cultrual appropriation! He’s gone all whiteface!

        Bloomin racist! So is snow. Winter’s racist! And yellow with black stripes? Is he taking the mick out of blacks and the Chinese? So waycist!!!!

        I apologise. I simply cannot gather such a degree of pointless undirected, baseless, utterly empty anger as Lefties are capable of.

  40. Deadline. July 17, 2020 8:40pm.

    It was the first time a significant number of fans were present at a NASCAR race since the Confederate flag was banned. Several thousand fans were on hand – and so was the flag.

    Jenna Fryer, the Associated Press auto racing reporter, tweeted that many Confederate flags were sighted in and around the Bristol Motor Speedway.

    “FWIW, in addition to Confederate flag flying over Bristol there was another hanging off a balcony of a condo across from the main entrance as well as others along Speedway Blvd. Spoke to fan @Matt2Harrison and he said he say many flags on shirts and other items in stands.”

    Fryer also reported that Wallace, NASCAR’s only top tier African American driver and prominently in the news when reports surfaced of a noose found in his garage at another track, was booed when he was introduced and had fans cheer when he crashed.

    Lol! I hope that toad Hamilton gets the same treatment!

    https://deadline.com/2020/07/nascar-bubba-wallace-booed-crashes-confederate-flags-fly-at-tennessee-race-1202988976/

    2. I notice that all those “German” cricketers are Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Afghan.

      I doubt you could ever get yer average Fritz’s head around: third man, deep extra cover, a full toss, leg byes or just short of a length.

      1. My Aussie mate was almost adopted onto the Norwegian international cricket team – together with other Aussies, Pakistanis, Indians and so on. Not an ethnic Weegie to be seen.

        1. I gave up on attempting to explain cricket to Scands yonks ago. You have to be born (and absorbed) into it to completely understand* its psyche and idiosyncrasies.

          [*Note to any potential anally-retentive pedants peering through the curtains: “split infinitives” are good and perfectly acceptable English H.W. Fowler.]

          1. And I’m not into cricket. I understand the mechanics, but the passion… nope.

      1. I was being sarcastic…….!

        “Vitaï Lampada”. The title is taken from a quotation by Lucretius and means “the torch of life”. It refers to how a schoolboy, a future soldier, learns selfless commitment to duty in cricket matches in the famous Close at Clifton College:

        There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
        Ten to make and the match to win—
        A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
        An hour to play and the last man in.
        And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
        Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
        But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
        “Play up! play up! and play the game!”
        The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
        Red with the wreck of a square that broke;—
        The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
        And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
        The river of death has brimmed his banks,
        And England’s far, and Honour a name,
        But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
        “Play up! play up! and play the game!”
        This is the word that year by year,
        While in her place the school is set,
        Every one of her sons must hear,
        And none that hears it dare forget.
        This they all with a joyful mind
        Bear through life like a torch in flame,
        And falling fling to the host behind—
        “Play up! play up! and play the game!”

        Henry John Newbolt

      1. Posted earlier…
        Do catch this on iPlayer…totally brilliant.
        BBC4 Nigel Kennedy at the BBC 7pm.

        At last something worth watching from Aunty..

      2. Posted earlier…
        Do catch this on iPlayer…totally brilliant.
        BBC4 Nigel Kennedy at the BBC 7pm.

        At last something worth watching from Aunty..

    2. I’m sure he’s right but those deaths will be mysteriously invisible while everyone is still dragooned into mask wearing and church is banned again.

    1. Just vote seeking from we all know who.
      Another labour leader who has not an ounce of respect for public opinion, the nations social structure, or long established culture.

    2. People will still vote for the little shyte because he looks like someone trustworthy. All Reform Acts after 1832 were a mistake and should be repealed!

  46. Morning all

    New push to RENAME body parts like the Adam’s apple and Achilles’ tendon because they are ‘irrelevant and misogynistic’
    Australian doctors call for people to stop using medical terms named after men
    Anatomy lecturer Dr Kristin Small asks her students to phase out the language
    Dr Small is pushing for people to use more practical terms for the body parts
    Eponyms are parts of the body named after a person, yet they are mostly men

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8537393/Sexist-body-terms-like-Adams-apple-no-longer-used-doctor-says.html

      2. From that is derived Köter – something that shits.

        Search Results
        Web results

        Köter – Wiktionaryen.wiktionary.org › wiki › Köter
        NounEdit. Köter m (genitive Köters, plural Köter). (derogatory) dog, pooch. Usage notesEdit. The pejorative nature of the word depends somewhat on the context …
        ‎German · ‎Noun

      3. Morning Peddy.

        I wonder how they will rename these?

        The Graffian Follicle is an ovarian follicle that secretes hormones that guide the menstrual cycle. Regnier de Graaf — yet another Danish anatomist — named this part in the 1600s.

        Fallopian Tubes are part of the uterus named after 16th century Italian anatomist Gabriele Fallopio;

        1. At the time when these anatomical discoveries were being made, women were not encouraged to be surgeons/pathlogists.
          In the same way, they were not encouraged to be sea captains. Must we therefore consider renaming such places as the Cook Islands, Bolivia, the Philippines, to name but a few.

          2. Good one.

            Or the Hebrides – Islands of the He-brides; both sexes catered for in that one.

          3. In my yoof, Frankie Howard came up with that one.
            At the time we thought its sheer impossibility highly funny.

    4. Oh, goody.
      Me: “Doctor, I seem to have an inflamed platypus!”
      Dr: “You WHAT??”
      Me: “My speaking platypus”
      DR: “Nurse, bring a sedative and a straitjacket!”

          1. Probably, but I’ve never heard of a man or woman called that. Perhaps if the Beckhams had had a 5th…?
            Yes, Beaver Beckham has a certain ring to it.

    8. Surely, to be misogynistic, the name must be anti-woman, as opposed to just a male name?
      So, the Adams Apple is just named after a bloke called Adam (I guess – maybe not) and is thus neutral, but to be misogynistic would have to be named something like “All-women-are-b*tches apple”. Or am I mistaken?

      2. A woman’s AA is usually smaller than a man’s. That’s one of the giveaways with transvestites.

        1. That, and (as seen last time we were in Manchester on the way to he airport (Pride Parade) their cock & balls hanging out under the miniskirt!
          (God, I wish I hadn’t remembered that… pass the mind bleach, quick!)

        2. That, and (as seen last time we were in Manchester on the way to he airport (Pride Parade) their cock & balls hanging out under the miniskirt!
          (God, I wish I hadn’t remembered that… pass the mind bleach, quick!)

          1. I remember seeing a tall, strapping bloke in Düsseldorf with wife & baby in pushchair in tow. He was striding out in tight hotpants with not a sign of a packed lunch. God knows what he did with it.

          4. The Germans are mostly more conformist than the Brits, but when they go strange, they don’t do it by halves.

        3. One who was a customer of mine in JobCentre days had the AA removed to make the voice more female.

    9. I raise my Eponym to Dr Small

      Small by Name, Small of Brain, Small of Stature, Small of Mind

    11. It beggars belief. Instead of driving the human race forward, the Left want to force it backward.

      1. Was hoping support was dwindling. Also hoped that Hamilton would lose ….

    2. Yo VOM

      I suggest that those against kneebending should jump in the air and wave their arms, whilst the Wokers make fools of themselves

  49. Apparently Boots are doing a 3 for the price of 2 on hearing aids – Who on earth has 3 ears besides Van Gogh and his wife?

    1. Maybe friends & family are encouraged to get together to enjoy the benefit of the offer.

    2. Goes with those beauty salons that offer ear piercing while you wait

      Does anyone drop their ears off in the morning then go back to pick up the pierced items after lunch?

      1. 🎶
        Fal di ri ….. fal di rah ….. Fal di ri ….. fal di rah ha ha ha ha …..

  52. SIR – I disagree strongly with Daniel Hannan, who seems to believe that universities have no role in developing the skills that employers

    and the country need.

    Whatever one thinks of Tony Blair’s higher education target of 50 per cent, we must remember why it was created. It was believed that the only
    politically acceptable way to get more people from disadvantaged backgrounds into university was to increase the absolute number of young
    people attending.

    Professor Graham Galbraith
    Vice-Chancellor, University of Portsmouth

    Shirley, Professor Galbraith, is that not what the 11 Plus, 13 Plus and Grammar Schools used to do, until someone scrapped them/made them accessable
    only to Labour MPs children, without £30,000+ debts

      1. Exacto. One of my friends went there to do Latin, got confused & switched to psychology. When they’d finished with him he went to work in the tax office.

        1. Polys had their place.
          I went to Hatfield poly to learn computery stuff. It taught me all that I needed to enter the work force and live a good life. The work oriented courses allowed me to progress from the disadvantaged background that Galbraith references.

          Am I on a par with the learned nottlers who attended public school and then universities? Not a chance, the classic studies were not relevant to work so we never looked at anything of that ilk.

          1. I studied engineering at Oxford. Approximately thirty years later, one small piece of knowledge that I learned on that degree course came up as part of my job. And even then, it was only peripheral knowledge.
            Where did I learn the skills that I use every day of my working life? Plymouth CFE.
            Also, I learned how to analyse things when I studied history of art separately. The Oxford course was very poorly structured in those days, and included almost nothing in this line. Probably isn’t much better today.

          2. I certainly wasn’t having a go at Polys! They did what they were there for and filled the gap between a Tech and a University. They should never have been lumped in with Universities. Different market altogether.

          3. I don’t recall any classic studies when I was at Univ. of London, Queen Mary College. Classics of metallurgy, beam theory, polymers, mathematics, and other technical stuff. Seemed to be useful. And I had hoped to go to Hadfield to study Aeronautical Engineering. Ah, well, it turned out fine as it was.

          4. All 3 of my sons went to former Polys in the 90s.
            2 of my daughter in laws, my wife & myself went to Ancient Scottish Universities.

            My qualifications ensured I had a well paid job for nearly 40 years – I am a comfortably off pensioner and earned “good money” for most of my working life. The sons’ earnings mean they, their wives & children live in a completely different world from me or 98+% of the UK population.Do not mock attending a red brick / former Poly

            1) choose the right course – a “proper degree” with prospects
            2) stick in at Uni
            and a new world could open up for the rest of your life.

        2. The tiering of academia is a bit odd. If someone wants to achieve, they do so. Where they do it doesn’t really matter.

  57. I’ve just watched the BBC News. We are going to war with China! How we get there. What we do when we arrive. No one seems to have considered!

    1. It might show the world just how deeply the Chinese are embedded in Britain and by inference the West, let alone Africa and Asia Pacific.

      1. Unlike our politicians who are incapable of looking beyond 4/5 years and the next election the Chinese can and will take a long view………..
        See 99 year leases for details

      2. Flood the market with subsidized product, till the local manufacturers fold up due to financially unviable manufacturing. Once the local manufacturing is finished, you have the market to yourself and raise prices as there is no competitor.

        That has been done by British in India, by Americans, Japanese and now by Chinese.

        1. Aided by vote truffling governments making it too expensive and too much hassle to employ people.

      3. Well I don’t like China but we have already annoyed them with the Huawei decision and now we are accusing them of various unpleasant activities of which they are almost certainly guilty but there is nothing the UK can do about any of them. The UK is not in a position where it can afford to offend anyone!

        1. No – but we can make it clear we disapprove and it would be good to not rely so much on Chinese goods.

          1. The solution is to pay more for US, German or other European versions. Even UK goods.

          2. If they are available. The problem seems to be that Chinese goods & components have swamped our market.

          4. Our politicians encouraged trade with China.
            China is flooding Indian markets with Chinese goods to overwhelm Indian manufacturing industries to make India a consumer market solely dependent on Chinese goods?

          5. Why not? I had my first argument about buying British around 55 years ago. It was with a priest who drove around in a VW Beetle.
            I asked him why he drove a German car when he was entirely supported by donations from his parishioners who lived, worked, and paid taxes in the UK.
            He got very shirty with me…

          6. I bought a Swedish specification VW Golf & brought it back to Blighty. It was a damned good car.

          7. Well I now have a not-China-if-at-all-possible policy. But millions of idiots will still search on the internet and if it’s 1p cheaper they will buy it.

        2. Interesting that when we ban a Chinese company the loudest voice is from their Government with added threats. No connection obviously.

        3. Could be a good move. If they stop selling us their cr*p we’ll probably find we could have done without it all along. Then we can afford to buy something better but at a slightly higher price produced nearer to home.

          5. Well, if you must mix with the alligator and other Nottlers snapping at your heels, what do you expect?

      1. It’s an interesting one that.

        Technically Australia is a “contact country” of NATO, so in theory, if the chinks attacked, WW£ would be inevitable.

  58. According to the Times it’s Olga Krankies 😡 birthday today, i wonder who was responsible for that little problem back in November 1969 ?

      1. Once again Happy Birthday!

        I share a birthday with Diana, Princess of Wales.

          4. I read it some time ago, in fact I think it’s still in my father’s former bedroom. Can’t remember anything about the plot.

      3. Happy birthday Elie, 😍 one of my nieces shares it with you, and she’s a lovely lady.
        Sadly lost her hubby to cancer earlier this year.

        1. Thanks for the good wishes – sad for your niece. Just heard from my son that his girlfriend’s in a bad way – not only no job, as she’s a theatre technician, but her Mum died recently too.

          6. Are they? We walked to Burleigh Court, which isn’t far, but a bit up and down the hills. Our nearest Cote is Cirencester or Gloucester – roughly equidistant.

    1. “Snout funny when you push your nose against a window pain – you’d have thought I’d been bred like that!”

    1. The fact that my elderly father is cowering at home, terrified of going out or having visitors or letting anyone else who lives with him go out to work either, when hydroxychloroquine with Zinc is known to save the vast majority even of high risk patients, makes my blood boil.

      2. Trouble is, your statement is just not true. A bit of fact checking is called for,.

        2. It’s too true and it is negligent to disparage it. There will be many lawsuits I hope to punish the doctors who failed to use it or were complicit in trials deliberately structured to indicate its therapeutic value. So corrupted were the papers that they had to be withdrawn from medical journals.

      3. Try warfarin or some other blood thinner. A few days ago an Israeli doctor was promoting Tricor (fenofibrate).
        My intuition (born of total ignorance) reckons that existing pharmaceutical products will be much more practical than an endless succession of jam-tomorrow vaccines.

    2. There are so many wonder drugs nowadays.
      I think it’s because you wonder what adverse side effects you’re going to get when you take them.

      1. 321482+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Aoe,
        Well, we are suffering the side affects of the multitude rhetorically drugged & wondering which is the best of the worst on voting day, to re-install.

          1. 321482+ up ticks,
            Aoe,
            They are a work of fiction, for proof check out the political scene over say, the last three decades

  63. The growing threat of licence-fee scams

    SIR – With the reintroduction of the television licence fee for over-75s (Letters, July 12), scammers are going to have a field day.
    I received my first scam email last week, and there are no doubt more to come. Unfortunately, many elderly people will be caught out.
    I hope the BBC will be prepared to support those whose bank accounts have been emptied by sophisticated crooks.

    Quentin de la Bedoyere

    London SW19

    TV Licence payments for over 75s

    A query, what % of the residents of the largely BAME areas of Leicester, Bradford, Luton etc pay for licences.

    The same for Road Tax, MOT and Car Insurance

    1. I’d wondered if the scrapping of tax discs might have been to assist certain groups who are reluctant to pay.

    2. The webby thing reveals that he is 85 years young, and I would guess that he can afford to pay for TV.

    3. In the last week we have had two demands for payment of BBC licence, both from scammers. I forwarded them to the Fraud people who will do nothing, of course.

    5. “…those whose bank accounts have been emptied by sophisticated crooks.”

      I assume Mr de la Bedoyere is referring to people who decide to pony up the licence fee?

    6. Perhaps the BBC might re-consider. There is so much objection to their callous greed.

      2. Yo RE

        Perhaps,

        The cheque is in the post
        A politician will tell the truth
        Pretty Polly will raelly love Soros

        etc

    2. Therefore I read NOTTL to remind myself that there are other sane people in the world, which is a great comfort to me.

      I’ll take pissed off over perpetual tiredness and physical pain, which is what I would get if I drank.

          1. I’m Einstein! (On Sundays only, Attila the Hun on Mondays and Wednesdays, Admiral Cochrane on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Charlemagne on Fridays and Baden-Powell on Saturdays.)

          2. Ah. Well I guess every system needs a benchmark against which everything else can be measured!

    3. Yesterday our family were treated to a house warming party at our middle son and his wife’s new home. He cooked some lovely food and we all had our fair share of fizz, beer, cocktails and wine. Along with our three lovely grand children and their parents, It was a joyous occasion.
      All my help with ‘DIY’ paid off i was presented with a selection box of wine.
      Yesterday morning i re-bottled vodka after it had been soaking up the flavour of two punnets of fresh raspberries, filled the bottle right to the top and a small tumbler as a bonus. With the previous addition some of caster sugar, although i’m not keen on vodka, it is very palatable.

  65. Travel latest: Sturgeon urged to rule out quarantine for English amid plunge in holiday book

    Am I the only one who thinks ‘a hard border’ would be impossible

    The lawyers would have a fieldday

    Mr Hamish Angus McJock lives at
    6 Friendly Street
    Mixed Town
    England

    and he can travel from his home in England urestricted to anywhere in Scotland.

    His neighbour

    Mr Algernon Fotescue English
    8 Friendly Street
    Mixed Town
    England

    tries to enter Scotland and is put in quarantine

    Owzabout those those living on the Englishside of the border, but work in Scotland

    And who will Perlice it?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/travel-latest-barcelona-shuts-beaches-covid-19-spike-lockdown/

    1. Anyone arriving from England will be put into quarantine. They will also be required to learn Gaelic during this period. This will include Scots.
      So, for example, our trip into England yesterday to buy sausages would be followed by a two week quarantine in which we would be required to learn Gaelic as well as studying the theory and practice of caber-tossing, and sword dancing. For the elderly, caber-tossing can be replaced by port à beul.

    1. But when their children get to university, all the kids whose parents didn’t bother will come steaming past them for university places, cos they is deprived, or something like that.

    5. That’s no good. Bloomin’ French paper is written in French.

      Bit short sighted of them, and racist.

      1. Johnny Foreigner should have learned blooming’ English by now, what? what?

  69. Good evening from Barton on Humber. Van’s parked for the night down the road and I’m in the White Swan enjoying a pint.
    Trying to decide where to go for a walk.
    A couple of pictures.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/afcd313f0cafb403d16be5dd2aeadc047d76815f7239c16a7ba55cbcdb711e80.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff4c16c7fb8090cdea27538e033da9261a0feb8f003ccaba15f206bb6562c438.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9298e98cc715691c8c20d4f18d88d4b8c430cccaf18b2c20c1d4b763d2305a0c.jpg

    1. Lovely pics Bob! We have friends who live there! Would you like their address? Just mention our names….!

    3. I walked across that bridge, both ways from the Hull side to Barton and back again, not long after it had been opened.

      1. Wot? Church of Scotland, Wee Frees, Scot’s Presbyterians, etc.; there’s nothing worth burning…

        };-O

      2. Ah, well. In a Christian country your church is in no danger, so no money for you.

        2. Sadly, our country is becoming less and less Christian and the church will be annihilated by islam if we aren’t careful.

          2. They will certainly be useful idiots, but the push will come from islam. We’ve got a new Bishop of Chester, who, apart from being a bit of a greenie, does at least appear to be a Christian.

          3. They will certainly be useful idiots, but the push will come from islam. We’ve got a new Bishop of Chester, who, apart from being a bit of a greenie, does at least appear to be a Christian.

          5. He made the right noises in his podcast. Whether he will fire up the church militant in his See is another matter.

          6. Davos bishops, surely ?

            After all, now we know there is a financial link between George Soros and David Cameron, doesn’t it look ever more likely that it really was Soros who appointed Welby ?

          8. I think this goes half way to proving what everyone previously thought, that David Cameron likely really is dodgy and really is the heir to Blair. Shortly after resigning, he told friends he was ”going to put some hay in the barn”, and, imho, he did that by calling in his likely promise from Soros and his reward was legitimized via this directorship……….

            ”In May 2017 the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) granted Cameron’s appointment as a Director of U2 Frontman Bono’s One Foundation which is also supported by Bill Gates and George Soros’s Open Society”.

            If it’s all as premeditated as I think it is, and as his ”hay” statement suggests, then it explains why Cameron suddenly U turned on the Marriage Act from not interested to being full of enthusiasm, and why exactly the same thing happened on Gaddafi. Also inward migration where he said he would reduce numbers but increased them and in every respect, including speech laws and greenery, kept the Blair/Soros project going just as before.

            At least now there’s a strong foundation to ask lots of very embarrassing questions, and to include Theresa May and her 8 speeches totaling over a million dollars, which were free to attend and for which she got paid even if she didn’t do them !

    2. The bit that gets me is ‘the government can help’.

      No, the government can’t do a damned thing. All it does is appropriate funds from people who earn money, destroy 90% of it and spend the remaining 8.67% on telling me what to do.

      The government does nothing. It’s just stolen from me. As I pay all the taxes in the entire UK.

    2. This reminds me of the wistful little boy watching his mother go off to the shops in the advertisement for Rowntrees Fruit Gums.

    1. Now now, don’t tell the truth.

      A very good friend of my son is a Nigerian.
      He says that it was the norm for chieftans to get rid of all their thieves, ne’er-do-wells and enemies as slaves, to the trade routes.

      He also said he thought that criminality is genetic and that it’s small wonder America is infested with black criminals.

      I’m guessing that the Twittersphere would attempt to crucify him.
      He’s one of the least politically correct people that I’ve met and he makes the ace of spades look slightly anaemic.

      1. He sounds intelligent and educated. I would also guess that he doesn’t identify his skin colour as part of who he is beyond a descriptive identifier.

        Ergo, he’s not a victim and is a Conservative and I claim my £5.

        1. MSc, they met on the same course. He’s very proud of his African heritage and he’s now a teacher in the UK.

          I might be wrong, but his “voting” politics are left of centre, his “gut” politics would fit here at Nottle.

          1. Which rather annoys me. If intelligent, capable self aware people won’t stand up to the Left state and he prefers to live here rather than improve his home all we do is encourage brain drain.

          2. Possibly, but to be frank, I’d rather have him and his ilk here than many of the totally brain-dead lefties that infest these Isles.

          3. Voting politics left of centre? Fine – he’s a “Conservative”. Not to be confused with a “conservative” – for whom no party currently exists.

    1. I bet he didn’t interview her the in same manner that he interviewed Helen Mirren.

    2. I was pleased to read in the Excess the other day that she doesn’t share her brother’s concerns about climate change and said livestock is an essential part of land management.
      Many years ago when I worked for a small local caterer, we used to do lunches there for her staff. At that time her white bull terrier, Eglantine, was quite young – she used to clean up the plates.

        1. Thanks – she’s down-to -earth, businesslike and not stuffy or showy.
          A few years ago, when she came to our stall and stopped for a chat, there was a family choosing what they wanted to buy. We were just two women having talk about hedgehogs, and when she’d gone, I turned back to the customers and they hadn’t realised who she was.

      2. Speaks softly and carries a stick.
        Nearly fifty years old, no sign of obesity.
        Clean shoes. Married with a child.
        Hails from the North, not a southerner.

          1. Appearances are often deceptive. He is an alternative thinker, and cares nothing for what you and I may think. Good luck to him – for the time being.

          2. He is probably what used to be called a “mad professor”, whose type were never too concerned about sartorial elegance.

    3. He has more spine than Bojo. Good luck to him (Reservation: for the time being….).

    1. Wrong carrier, wrong deck configuration, wrong aircraft.

      Incapable of launching and retrieving aerial surveillance and air-to-air refuelling aircraft.

      Incompatible with our NATO allies equipment.

      We don’t have the ships for one carrier group, let alone two.

      A legacy of Gordon Bruin’s make-work for Scottish shipyards.

  76. Not stopping. But I thought you would be interested in the”suspect” for the fire at Nantes Cathedral.

    “Agé de 39 ans et de nationalité rwandaise, il est bénévole au diocèse.”

    No translation needed.

    Back later in the week. Prolly.

    2. Apparently three spots show signs of fires starting, but the suspect’s arrest is “normal”.

      https://www.euronews.com/2020/07/18/large-fire-at-nantes-cathedral-in-france

      The person “was responsible for closing the cathedral on Friday evening”, according to the city’s public prosecutor Pierre Sennès, who stressed however that there is no direct correlation between him and the incident, and his custody is “a normal procedure”.

      That’ll have been after Friday prayers will it?

    4. Apparently all three spots where the fire started were just by electrical appliances – which rules a major electrical fault back in. The Rwandan who was arrested was a regular in the cathedral and also served at Mass. An unlikely suspect. He was held in custody because he contradicted himself about his movements on that Friday night – but he might have been covering for something that has nothing to do with the fire. Or he might have been negligent and not locked the cathedral on time, or not checked that the place was empty when he closed up. There are no signs at all of a break-in; the doors are all intact.

      2. Almost the whole interior was renovated after the 1972 fire.

        Three simultaneous fires of electrical appliances/wiring seems too much of a coincidence, unless they were very close to each other.

      3. Yes, he seems an unlikely culprit. Then again. three simultaneous electrical faults seem unlikely. Don’t most electric circuits/systems now have trips that will cut off all electricity in the event of something going wrong? The fault that started the first fire would have, should have, tripped the failsafe.

  77. Astonishing:

    Has Public Health England been exaggerating the Covid-19 daily death statistics? It appears that PHE compiles “out of hospital” deaths by searching the NHS database for whether that person ever tested positive. It then apparently fails to consider how long ago that person tested positive or their actual cause of death. “By this PHE definition, no-one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness,” Professors Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan, who discovered the statistical flaw, explain.

    It is astonishing: under these terms, a person who tested positive a few months ago but then gets hit by a bus this week would be recorded as a Covid death. In fact, if left unchanged, every single one of the 292,500 people who have tested positive will some day be a Covid-19 death statistic – even if they live for decades and die of completely unrelated causes. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent review.

    This scandal has real consequences. It provides the impression that England is still experiencing over 100 deaths some days, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have near zero. It has played havoc with analysis about who is most at risk from the virus, be it by age or pre-existing condition. It also undermines our understanding of the extent of spread, hotspots and the steps required to combat the virus.

    The PHE death figures have been reported every day in news bulletins and on newspaper front pages. They have fed into existing public anxieties that are holding people back from shopping, dining and drinking. They have also dissuaded people from returning to work.

    Covid-19 is a serious threat and Britain has among the highest death tolls in Europe, as measured most accurately in death certificates and excess mortality. But we need to be clear-eyed about the current risk.

    The latest Office for National Statistics data shows that deaths in England and Wales are now slightly below the five-year average. There are fewer than a few thousand people in hospital with the virus and about 150 on ventilators. In London, there are fewer than 50 new cases most days, in Manchester it is less than a dozen and the entire South West’s case numbers have been in the single digits for the last week.

    This latest scandal is just another example of PHE’s miserable handling of this crisis. PHE’s job is to track and prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases. It failed at the first hurdle. It neglected to ramp up testing earlier this year, rebuffing private sector offers. This led to the ill-fated decision to abandon testing and tracing in March.

    PHE’s future is now very much in doubt. Perhaps it is time to put the quango out of its and our misery.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/17/public-health-englands-exaggerated-death-statistics-scandal/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    1. PHE is just one of many Government organisations which are not fit for purpose. The rot is deep and wide.

  78. Right you lot.

    Admit it. Come clean. Who suggested David Weber’s books? Who was it? I’ve a proper bone to pick because it’s cost me a bally fortune. I’ve been forced – forced I tell you – to buy not only the entire Honor Harrington series but also Saganami Island and now his Safehold series.

    I will confess I was waiting for Flag in Exile before continuing but now it’s here once the Witcher series and Redemption by Will Jordan are read I’m properly Honorversing.

    But, you, you, you… recommender! I’m trying to save money!

    1. Phizzee and I plead guilty {:^))
      Try Tom Kratman “A desert called peace” series next

  81. Trump refuses to commit to accepting election result as Biden enjoys poll lead

    Fox News also released a poll on Sunday. It put Biden ahead on coronavirus, race relations and the economy and eight points up nationally.

    In an interview with Fox News Sunday recorded at the White House on Friday, Trump said “I’m not losing, because those are fake polls” and refused to say if he would accept the result if Biden won in November.

    “I have to see,” Trump said. “I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/19/trump-joe-biden-coronavirus-polls

    The quotation attributed to Trump sounds just like Trump being Trump. This is hardly evidence that he has said he is definitely going to ignore the result of the election. This is the Guardian, for Christ’s sake. If that’s the best that the top European centre for Trump Derangement Syndrome can come up with then isn’t it just a bit of chatter?

    I remarked a day or two ago that there was a recording of Trump at a rally saying “Eight years? Why not 12?” Is this the basis of the claim? It’s just mischief.

    1. The quote was in a fox news interview. fox news have published a transcript.

      It’s not just Trump, it is American politics playing win at all cost.
      That being said, what an awful thing for a leader to say. How would you have liked it if Blair had said that he would not accept the general election result?

      1. Blair wasn’t Trump. Trump pulls people’s chains. It’s not a good habit.

        1. So it is OK for Trump to say that he will not accept an election result?

          Pulling chains is Trumps trouble, when the country has needed aleader, he has continued upsetting people with stupidly aggressive comments.

        2. So it is OK for Trump to say that he will not accept an election result?

          Pulling chains is Trumps trouble, when the country has needed aleader, he has continued upsetting people with stupidly aggressive comments.

          2. Considering what he’s up against, frankly, I don’t blame him. He upsets those who don’t like him to start with, and if he doesn’t fight his own corner, no one else is going to. He’s facing a deeply biased and hostile media, where 96% of the coverage is negative from the same 96% of the media who donated to the Clinton campaign in the last presidential election cycle.

          3. Trump only has himself to blame. He will never get CNN to bless him but a less aggressive approach in public would help.

            When talking about the CV response, how many Democrat governors and mayors has he called idiots? Divide and rule might be in his Gene’s but it is not working.

      2. The uk establishment didn’t accept the Brexit result. Look what a mess that created.

      3. Or Hillary Clinton….
        The Democrats haven’t accepted the result of the 2016 election yet, and have been doing everything they can to get rid of Trump. There was speculation about impeaching him in April 2016, well before the election.
        I suspect that he’s just unwilling to commit himself whilst knowing his opposition will be doing everything they can to win the election, including cheating.
        The Democrats are pushing hard for postal ballots, knowing that it is open to fraud. A dead cat has received a mail-in ballot. Tim Pool received a postal ballot for someone who doesn’t live at his address. Tim didn’t request the ballot, so why was it sent to him? That’s one instance, but there are others, including a mailman caught dumping mail-in ballots instead of delivering them. Illegal migrants have been given driving licences in California, so what other ID would they need to register to vote if they chose to?

        1. If Republican states would ensure that all citizens could vote, do away with discriminatory practices that work against voters in poorer neighborhoods then postal ballots may not be needed.

          They are both as bad as each other.

      1. So are you even sans feet.
        };-O

        Sorry GG open goal.

        I’ll take my yellow card and would not be surprised by a red!

    2. She looks so intelligent…. and dogs do not have an agenda. By their very nature they cannot lie.

      1. Oh, I don’t know. Mine pretends things he’s done are nothing to do with him 🙂

    3. So far, I’ve been reassured that the new Speaker is more intelligent than the dog, unlike the last one.

  84. 321482+ up ticks,
    Dare I say it, could we not start producing a great deal of our imports
    ourselves.
    Then start a “Ho look another UK made product” a must buy.
    If the campaign had the same intensity as the BLM campaign only for beneficial reasons we WILL have a success story.

    1. If we import 3 million HK chinks we will have all the rubber dig shot we will ever need.

  85. Evening, all. I doubt I’ll stay long; I had a very disturbed night last night. My dog was obviously not feeling too good and kept asking to go out every twenty minutes or so. Eventually, I kept him downstairs and set up a bed to stay with him. He finally settled about four thirty and I got to sleep, only to be woken up when MOH came down to make a drink at about five thirty. Click – light on; crash, bang, wallop – banging pans in the kitchen; swish – curtains flung open to let in the full light of a glorious dawn. Just what I needed. After that, I had no chance of getting back to sleep. Had to laugh at the Connemara this afternoon, though. I promised him a Polo after he’d worked hard, only to find, having left my jacket at home because it was warm, I didn’t have any with me. I gave him a pony nut instead. He gave me the filthiest look as if to say, “this isn’t what you promised me!” 🙂

    1. Hi Conway – I hope you get a better night’s sleep tonight. Poor horse – he knows what a Polo is! Not good for his teeth though!

      1. Thank you. He only gets one. I make him bend his neck for it – a stretching exercise because he’s a bit stiff through his body (like me). I used to give him an apple, but we’re not allowed in the stables at the moment and putting an apple in my pocket isn’t very practical.

    2. Our little hound is very disturbed these summer nights, more so than when we were in France. Up, down, up again, jumping off the bed, click-clacking with her claws and paws on the floor, then snoring her head off underneath the bed, and can she snore and snuffle! She very often properly only settles down just after dawn. She comes and paws at me (wake up! wake up and pick me up!) because the bed is too high for her to jump upon. During the winter months she sleeps soundly all through the night at the foot of the bed.

      Dogs, horses, understand more than ever we think they do. And they remember.

  87. Oh dear, has the doggery one been banned?
    I was just starting to enjoy myself.
    He’s completely lost it.

      1. I enjoy watching him implode.

        This evening has been a perfect example of Max the Troll trolling.

        The more who see it, the fewer will reply.

        I see it as a service to Nottle to show for those who didn’t know that he’s only here to stir to make him break cover, as it were.

      2. Someone is removing posts, most of the replies to me can’t be responded to, because they’ve been deleted,unless it’s disqus doing it.

        1. Some of Andy’s posts were modded. The one inviting me to fuck off, I restored, so I could reply to it.

          Perhaps his previous nom de plume, Angry Lady, was closest to the truth. Otherwise, he’s the only bloke I’ve ever encountered with PMT.

          3. Oh, he’s not the only one. I used to work with a guy who I always said had the worst case of PMT that I’d come across.

        2. Some of Andy’s posts were modded. The one inviting me to fuck off, I restored, so I could reply to it.

          Perhaps his previous nom de plume, Angry Lady, was closest to the truth. Otherwise, he’s the only bloke I’ve ever encountered with PMT.

      3. I enjoy watching him implode.

        This evening has been a perfect example of Max the Troll trolling.

        The more who see it, the fewer will reply.

        I see it as a service to Nottle to show for those who didn’t know that he’s only here to stir to make him break cover, as it were.

    2. What’s so fun about the Nttl blog is that you can wait hours for abuse and then suddenly a whole thread of them come along at once.

  88. Three new students arrived today: a girl from Downe House, a boy from Winchester and a girl from Wycombe Abbey.

    We are so lucky to have such delightful young people with us on our courses.

  89. Oh for God’s sake grow up the lot of you. This nightly unpleasentness is becoming rather boring.

    Is no one big enough to just shrug their shoulders and ignore unreasonable, insulting comments.

    1. I don’t have the energy to join the fight!! It’s too darn hot here, howzit up north?

Comments are closed.