Sunday 3 January: The great vaccination campaign needs to use all the goodwill on offer

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/01/03/letters-great-vaccination-campaign-needs-use-goodwill-offer/

1,008 thoughts on “Sunday 3 January: The great vaccination campaign needs to use all the goodwill on offer”

  2. Your story for today:

    Say it like it is

    Lawyers should never ask a Georgia grandma a question, if they aren’t prepared for the answer.
    In a trial, a Southern small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, ‘Mrs. Jones, do you know me?’

    She responded, ‘Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a boy, and frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you’ll never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.’
    The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, ‘Mrs. Jones, do you know the defence attorney?’

    She again replied, ‘Why yes, I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He’s lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can’t build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him.’
    The defence attorney nearly died.

    The judge asked both counsellors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said,
    ‘If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I’ll send you both to the electric chair.

  3. Like I guess 99.9999999% of the World’s population I haven’t paid much attention to the subject of “The Great Reset”. Here’s a one page summary from The Mises Institute, which summarises the salient points:

    https://mises.org/wire/what-great-reset-part-i-reduced-expectations-and-bio-techno-feudalism

    In that’s too much here’s a short synopsis:

    “The WEF envisions a bio-techno-feudalist global order, with socioeconomic planners and corporate “stakeholders” at the helm and the greater part of humanity in their thrall. The mass of humanity, the planners would have it, will live under an economic stasis of reduced expectations, with individual autonomy greatly curtailed if not utterly obliterated. As Mises suggested, such planners are authoritarians who mean to supplant the plans of individual actors with their own, centralised plans. If enacted, such plans would fail, but their adoption would nevertheless exact a price”.

    1. ‘Morning, Stephen, so, as usual, the message is, “Be afraid, be very afraid.”

      If I were younger, I would be plotting as to how to infiltrate, get close to the leadership and assassinate the lot.

      Any likely lads out there? (That statement includes lasses, Stormy).

          1. Whilst I agree, Sos (and Good morning) the evil empire cannot be recognised, even though it considers itself a state.

            The only state it may become will be a state of decay.

        1. Indeedy, and I’ll give you three guesses as to whether it was written by a woman or a male.

          1. ‘Morning, Stormy 01:14 05/01, you do get a bit obsessed about this don’t, you? C’est la vie. Women didn’t have the vote in 1850.

      3. Appreciated that you’re thinking of us but might I make an eency weency suggestion that we don’t have to be called lads.

        It would sound odd to all the lasses* on here if I addressed you all as lasses and said that included the males too.

        *That includes the males too

    2. The mass of humanity, the planners would have it, will live under an economic stasis of reduced expectations, with individual autonomy greatly curtailed if not utterly obliterated.

      In other words they will be slaves! Morning Stephen.

      1. In the Catherine Austin Fitts video posted here a couple of days ago, she makes the point that slavery has throughout history always been one of the most lucrative trades, and is just as attractive as it ever was.

        I don’t think research is yet at the point she suggests, where people can receive nanoparticles via a vaccination that can be used to manipulate body functions – and could of course be abused to control the patient – but this sort of thing is of course currently the subject of medical research.
        The principle of using vaccinations for more than one purpose of preventing disease has been the subject of at least one research study in which the Gates foundation participated.

  4. Meet Moscow’s renegade cat activists bending the law to save felines from the frozen winter. 3 January 2021.

    The NGO’s head Anna Feldman, 44, a former HR professional has for years been battling to overcome the hostility of utility workers who used to claim that cats are a health hazard. But Russians’ overwhelming love of cats has helped her campaign grow.

    “People in Russia really like cats and denounce those who don’t,” said Ms Feldman who is open about using social media for shaming authorities or companies who seem to be scared to death of being exposed as cat haters.

    Obviously Our Bill and the Russians have a lot more in common than one might suspect!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/03/meet-moscows-renegade-cat-activists-bending-law-save-felines/

    2. Far from being the major threat to the West, as the Powers The Be would have us believe, I view Russia as a potential ally against the two real threats we face, Islam & China.

      1. Totally agree.
        Be realistic about the nature of Russian allies, but accept that they have more clear-eyed vision of China and Islam.

  6. SIR – While I agree with Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s theory about weight loss up to a point (Features, December 27), I think the key issue is that many people simply don’t need and can’t burn off the calorie load that they believe is reasonable for them.

    If I want to lose one pound each week (or even less), all I can really handle is about 1,350 calories a day. For me, that means: cereal and juice for breakfast, Greek yogurt and fruit for lunch, and scrambled egg whites and vegetables or salmon and vegetables for supper. Treats are one square of dark chocolate, a macchiato, teas, and a scone lunch on Saturdays.

    People feel they have a right to regularly eat sandwiches, pasta, potatoes, cakes and muffins. Unfortunately, there is no such right – unless one is under 25, training for the Olympics or blessed with a fast metabolism.

    Susan Postill
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Whilst you are perfectly correct, Sue, in your statement that people don’t need and can’t burn off their daily calorie load; you are going about your diet in completely the wrong way by eating four meals a day, plus ‘treats’ (snacks). By doing this you are ensuring that your body is constantly striving to burn off those calories and is never given any rest from its toil.

    My advice to you is to watch, listen to, and take heed of the guidelines given in this excellent video, entitled ‘Longevity and why I eat one meal a day’. I am following this advice and my weight loss is steady even without overloading my body with calories. The other benefits are that I don’t feel constantly hungry, I sleep much better, and I feel fitter and more alert. Try it and see for yourself.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKfR6bAXr-c&list=WL&index=9&t=407s

    1. It’s currently 14 1/4 hours since I last ate, but I will break that mini-fast soon. I can’t do the one meal a day thing – respect, Grizzly! – but I already see health benefits from a daily 14 hour stretch between last and first meals.

      1. That is good, BB2. As you have discovered, everyone has their own strategy and if it works, then it is a success.

        The essential thing, when dieting, is to give your body a rest from ‘processing’ a constant stream of food provided by eating, in order that it can concentrate on attacking the body fat that has accumulated as a result of eating all day long.

  7. Reparations row MP adds plantation to his register of members’ interests. 3 january 2021.

    Leading figures from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Reparations Commission insist that Drax must acknowledge the wealth brought to his family from slavery and make reparations. Sir Hilary Beckles, the chair of the Reparations Commission and vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, said: “If Richard Drax was in front of me now, I would say: ‘Mr Drax, the people of Barbados and Jamaica are entitled to reparatory justice.’

    David Comissiong, the Barbados ambassador to Caricom, said: “This was a crime against humanity and we impose upon him [Mr Drax] and his family a moral responsibility to contribute to the effort to repair the damage.”

    Neither Drax nor anyone else in the modern world owes these panhandlers anything for events of three hundred years ago. There is also the factor that the Black Barbadians are not themselves native to the Caribbean but colonists who played their part in the genocide against the indigenous Caribs..

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/03/reparations-row-mp-adds-plantation-to-his-register-of-members-interests-richard-drax

    1. This is utter vile nonsense to pursue Drax in this way. Whole empires rose and fell in Africa and across Asia, fueled by slave trading and run on slavery.

    2. This is utter vile nonsense to pursue Drax in this way. Whole empires rose and fell in Africa and across Asia, fueled by slave trading and run on slavery.

    3. Were individual Nazis pursued for reparations after the end of WWII?
      Edit: Or their families?

      1. Or the Italians, the Danish, the People of Normandy or Saxony for the harm caused to our ancestors during their ancestors’ invasions of our country?

    4. Were individual Nazis pursued for reparations after the end of WWII?
      Edit: Or their families?

    5. And these people remain silent or blind to modern day slavery imposed by blacks on blacks.

      What about child slave labour in the cobalt mines in central Africa?

      Black people need a black Wilberforce to stamp out black slavery as the white Wilberforce did in leading Britain into abolishing the slave trade.

    1. I saw Ivor’s video a few days ago but didn’t post it here in case I was accused of being an extremist lacking scientific knowledge. If the Rapid Antigen Tests are indeed as accurate as suggested then it would appear the Government, the Civil Service and their scientific advisors are being totally negligent or perhaps there is another agenda as outlined by this BTL comment from The slog:
      I understand DoH Guidance to Pathology Labs indicates 45 cycles are required for the PCR tests which generates a tsunami of cases. However,

      “KJH on January 2, 2021 at 6:12 pm
      The snake-oil salesmen at the WHO have now told labs to turn down the amplification dial for the PCR test, which produces masses of false positives.
      Soon we will see a spectacular drop in new cases -conveniently coinciding with the vaccine roll-out, to show us how effective it is.
      Smoke, mirrors and BS.”
      https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users

    2. I saw Ivor’s video a few days ago but didn’t post it here in case I was accused of being an extremist lacking scientific knowledge. If the Rapid Antigen Tests are indeed as accurate as suggested then it would appear the Government, the Civil Service and their scientific advisors are being totally negligent or perhaps there is another agenda as outlined by this BTL comment from The slog:
      I understand DoH Guidance to Pathology Labs indicates 45 cycles are required for the PCR tests which generates a tsunami of cases. However,

      “KJH on January 2, 2021 at 6:12 pm
      The snake-oil salesmen at the WHO have now told labs to turn down the amplification dial for the PCR test, which produces masses of false positives.
      Soon we will see a spectacular drop in new cases -conveniently coinciding with the vaccine roll-out, to show us how effective it is.
      Smoke, mirrors and BS.”
      https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users

      1. I have become somewhat of an extremist since I started taking notice of what the government is trying to do. Reading what Michael Yeadon and other equally qualified experts have to say against PCR etc. has certainly opened my eyes.

  10. SIR – As a veterinary surgeon in practice for 40 years, I always understood that any vaccine should be administered according to the manufacturer’s instructions and the licence.

    If the Pfizer Covid vaccine was licensed to be given as two doses three weeks apart, and this interval has formed the basis of all the trials, surely it is reckless to alter these guidelines without further research (report, January 1). If the Oxford vaccine is licensed to be given as two doses 12 weeks apart, that is excellent – but surely this does not mean that the interval for the Pfizer vaccine should be changed.

    It is deplorable that people due to have second doses have had appointments cancelled.

    Elizabeth Rhys Jones
    Guisborough, North Yorkshire

    I couldn’t agree more, Liz, but like so many in the meeja I think you have used the word ‘cancelled’ when you really meant ‘postponed’.

    1. Welcome to the new world, Mrs Rhys Jones, where rules are changed to suit the authorities at any time.

    2. The govt repeatedly “postponed” brexit hoping it would one day turn in to “cancelled”.

  11. BBC marks Brexit with left-wing comedians trashing Nigel Farage and comparing EU withdrawal to a cancer. 3 January 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e854dd3cb13751bf51485c6b2437374084e1c17721098a42b16900bfc37b5bd5.jpg

    Kumar, who hosts the BBC Two satire show The Mash Report, delivered his diatribe during an appearance on Graham Norton’s New Year’s Eve special.

    The 35-year-old began by describing long-time Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage as ‘a sack of meat brought to life by a witch’s curse’, adding: ‘Now we have finally completed Brexit, I predict we will have a taste for leaving things and will vote to leave more stuff, starting with the continent of Europe, then the United Nations and finally the Earth by strapping rockets under the country and blasting off into space.’

    Hilarious! Not! Thankfully I no longer watch this PC tripe!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9106745/BBC-marks-Brexit-left-wing-comedians-comparing-EU-withdrawal-cancer.html

    1. And the BBC’s medical drama last night was all about Covid – and continued shoving of Project Fear and Control. Our licence fee goes to push brainwashing on us – just like our taxes are used to give illegal migrants better conditions than we get.

    2. 328095+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      The farage chap in the eyes of many has
      condemned himself on the LBC rant taking down decent peoples, adored by many a current dodgy tory as an asset.

      That aside I totally agree with the rest of your post we are in great need of a peoples reset.

    3. Not a pretty picture. Indeed it is a face that might be used to frighten children when they hear stories about monsters and bogeymen.

  12. Julian Todman’s letter is by far the most useful one today, although as a fellow sufferer I am biased:

    SIR – I would recommend that Judith Young (Letters, December 27) uses ordinary hand soap (hard or liquid) on her glasses to prevent them from steaming up when she wears a face mask.

    Just put a very small amount of soap on a tissue and rub it on to each side of the lens, then polish it off. No more fogging. It works perfectly on bathroom mirrors, too.

    Julian Todman
    Gloucester

    2. Certainly is useful,

      I shop, Moh doesn’t . My glasses are always steaming up when I wear my mask shopping .

      My initial reaction when that first happened months ago was to spit in them … Oooh no , not a good idea . Meant taking mask off and going through a rigmarole hiding behind a pile of bogoffs!

    3. Just tried it and it works. I need reading glasses for the weekly shop and the fogging up has been a curse and stressful.

      2. They should say “Did you invite me onto your program to listen to me or for me to listen to you?”

        1. There is a presenter on the local Beeb radio who does exactly the same – depending on which side of the fence they are – on Brexit and Islam. Promoters of those two are allowed to speak – others are talked over all the time. Must be Beeb’s orders to their staff – as the late night chap on R5 live – 1am on – allows people to talk away – some who REALLY should be in some kind of hospital. I’ve heard demands that people who go outside during lockdown are “going to kill us ALL – -they should be fined a £1000 and then shot “. Another woman who was singing hymns ( loudly ) down the phone – at three in the morning. Caller after caller saying how fantastic it was as they were injected with GKW etc etc.

          Mention stopping immigrants, Islamic takeover or say Brexit is good – you are gone in seconds.

  14. Good morning all…….. we arrived home about an hour ago having spent all night in A&E. As it was Gloucester Royal I was able to compare it with the sneaky little film which got its maker arrested last week. There were a few people waiting on trollies in the corridor, the staff were busy , but not rushed off their feet – and they were all thorough, very hygiene conscious and attentive.

      1. We’re fine thanks Belle. I mentioned to Poppiesmum last night we’d had a stressful evening – that was when we were waiting for the call back from NHS 111. Husband had had pains all day and couldn’t pee. During the evening he went into agony and was writhing on the floor. When I finally got through to 111 after all the recorded messages about covid, we were promised a call-back from a doctor. She finally rang at 11.45pm (nearly two hours after I’d called them) and she told us to go to A & E.

        I don’t like driving in the dark at the best of times and there was a fair bit of snow coming down as we got into Gloucester. We hadn’t a clue where to go in the hospital complex but the ambulance drivers pointed us in the right direction. We were in such a rush that I left my car on a double yellow, and thought I might get a ticket but all was well when we got back in this morning.

        1. You can do without that kind of excitement of an evening.
          Glad it turned out ok in the end. Including the parking!

          1. I thought we’d be there for a couple of hours and it turned out to be eight! But there it was, all on its own on the yellow line.

          2. My last hasty arrival at hospital as the car driver had the car left, door open & keys in, outside the entrance for about 30 mins. No ticket, and car still there! That’s when I found a Golf GTi can do over 120mph on the bypass…

          3. On my last holiday to Malta i arrived back at the airport carpark to discover the drivers side window was fully open. Two weeks and the seat wasn’t even wet.

        2. Oh goodness that must have been terrible for your oh and you. Do hope there is a permanent solution.

        3. What a sweet relief for your Moh .

          We had a similar experience with Moh when he started to pee blood a couple of years ago . As you probably know he enjoyed running , 5kms and 10 kms and Park runs .. I am the tortoise and he is the hare!

          He was whisked in to hospital and had lots of bladder investigations , they found a few problems which were sorted , and he was advised if he wanted to continue running to make sure his bladder was partially full .. of course as he is type 2 diabetic , peeing frequently is an issue . Friction on the bladder lining is a well known problem!

          So Moh has the occassional jog these days , but no long distance stuff.. He copes with golf well though.

          1. In the reception area where I work OOH (in my second, part-time job), one of the radiators has been stuck on full redders since October. I have reported it three times to no avail.
            It was 27 C in there last night. Such a waste of money as there’s no option but to have the windows open and let all the heat out.

          2. The pain relief he got as the catheter bag filled up was immense. He’s fine now, with a carrier bag full of goodies.

          4. Morning Belle.

            The first half of you comment must be the understatement of the year. :-))

          6. Been there and done got a catheter as well. It IS bluddy painful but fortunately this was before Covid and Ipswich A & E were very good once they heard what was the problem – straight through, doctor arrives and feeds in the catheter and then shews me how to empty the pee bag – which filled almost immediately.

          7. I sympathise as I’ve had that problem for years, enlarged Prostate, and take a capsule a day which sort of helps. Hope he’s better in the long run. Wish him well for us.

            Being a young 74 it’ll be many years before I have ‘old man’s troubles’. :-))

          13. ‘Morning, Alf, as a young 76, I’ve been on daily Tamsulosin for several years – same prostate trouble.

            It can still be a bugger though.

          15. 328095+ up ticks,
            N,
            All’s well that ends well,good,
            Satisfy my curiosity, did he
            mention Mafeking in passing ?

          20. In the reception area where I work OOH (in my second, part-time job), one of the radiators has been stuck on full redders since October. I have reported it three times to no avail.
            It was 27 C in there last night. Such a waste of money as there’s no option but to have the windows open and let all the heat out.

        2. Thank you Ndovu! Best wishes to both of you and keep taking the tablets! My old man has kidney stones – too big to pass, too small to pulverize! Big pain! Take care!

    1. Yeah but…..you do live in a wonderful part of the country PT.
      Thing’s can only get better.
      Happy new year to you.

        1. See……if I went for a walk I’d be in mud upto my ankles.
          This time last year we were in beautiful Northumberland. Walking along the beach with our Black Lab in front of Banburough castle.
          Then on to Lindisfarn. Etc.

          1. The only time I’ve been to Bamborough the sea fret (in June) was so thick you couldn’t see the castle.

          2. There were probably no more than 30 people on that splendid beach, and free parking all day.

          3. I think we were the only people on the beach that day! But it was so foggy that they might have just been invisible.

          4. Think I was about seven the last time I was at Bamburgh Castle. Still remember it well (I think…).
            Morning, Eddy.

          5. Morning Obs, we loved staying in Northumberland it’s a wonderful county. It was very quiet this time of the year. Lots of places we knew from previous visits had closed until the spring.
            I was so impressed with the wonderful castle, if we lived there I would apply for a volunteer position on maintenance. I noticed an archeological dig had/is talking place to the lower RH side.

          7. When I walked past our local tennis courts mid last week.
            All four courts were busy.
            I might be considered a bit ,
            ‘biatchie’ but it looked as if they needed the exercise.

          9. I’ve have a long overdue appointment with an orthopaedic specialist at Spire Tuesday arvo. He’s going to check out my worn out left hip joint and the left knee. Strangely I can sometimes walk 5 miles. And on many other occasions I have a job walking the length of our garden.
            Apart from that I’m all right but not too far over there.

          10. Good luck. It is quite bizarre. I could stand for ages, but sitting could be painful. Walking was sometimes dead easy, other times a nightmare.
            I tried different shoes and inserts, but eventually had to admit that bits of me were crumbling.

          11. I tried the inserts as well.
            I had a metal on metal right hip resurfacing op just over 12 years ago it’s been really good. I have it checked annually. Funnily enough on one of my longer countryside walks I pass along the perimeter fence of ‘the ranch’ that is the property of surgeon who carried out the operation. He’s retried now.
            Just before the op he came in as I lay almost completely under influence of the drugs and asked me if is was okay, i tapped him on the arm and said
            “I know where you live”. He larrffed.

    2. Good morning Plum and a Happy New Year

      When I saw your change of avatar from the tennis girl with alluring buttocks to a little pig I wondered if it had anything to do with Jack Horner (who pulled out a plum from his Christmas Tart) or that you had had a disagreement with the pâtissières in the Penzance area.

    5. And a very Happy new Year to you. I hope it won’t be tool long before you are smashing your partner’s balls…

  18. 328095+ up ticks,
    lab/lib/con coalition governance party’s mindset right up to the last minute, a hunger for pre cooked fish methinks.

    In January 2018, the European Parliament approved a call to ban electric pulse fishing, seen by some as cruel. The UK banned it on 1st January 2021 as one of the first actions after Brexit, even though divergence from the EU was not required to ban it. France banned electric pulse fishing on 14 August 2019.

  19. How America has changed Prince Harry. 3 January 2021.

    Her husband, however, has become a shadow of the prince I once knew. Throughout the 15 months I spent with him, he exuded an extraordinary combination of royal stardust, accessibility, confidence and mischief, a mixture that enabled him to connect instantly with people of all ages and types. “It was very important for me,” he explained, “that what I do is authentic.” He particularly excelled with anyone who had been damaged, physically or psychologically. Several former servicemen at the Help for Heroes Centre in Wiltshire told me that he had given them a reason to live.

    Those enviable qualities are far less visible today. He seems to have discarded his life as an action man to become an airy-fairy do-gooder. It is so out of character for him to lecture us on how to live our lives (Don’t take flights! Have fewer children! Be aware that unconscious bias can lead to racism!). Last year, he was even moved to wonder out loud: “What if every single one of us was a raindrop…?”

    Morning everyone. He’s a poodle!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2021/01/03/america-has-changed-prince-harry/

    2. Good morning, Minty

      The word Milton used to describe Adam, who weakly gave in to Eve over the forbidden fruit, was Uxorious.

      Harry, poor chap, has become the embodiment of that word.

  20. The Saxon Queen shall place the oven on for a sausage sandwich at lunchtime .
    Lots of tomato sauce and dijon mustard.

    1. We’re still using repurposed Christmas chow.
      MB has just had a filling brunch of homemade smoked salmon pate.

      1. I’me eating a toad-in-the-hole with broccoli, cauliflower, peas and some delicious duck gravy made from the drippings and stock of the New Year’s duck carcase.

        3. Grizz? Cup here.
          Was it you who said you’re on the fasting diet and eat once a day?
          Are you allowed anything e.g cups of tea in between or just water?
          I’m thinking of trying it.

  21. Whatever challenges the vaccination program presents, whatever red tape needs to be cut out, whatever systems are needed, you can be quite sure the Welsh Assembly government will make a complete mess of it.

    1. A new name to me here, although I have seen you on BB.

      Welcome

      I would add that all governments will probably make a complete mess of it as London is demonstrating with alacrity.

      1. Thank you for the welcome.

        Compared to Cardiff, Westminster is a palace of shining efficiency and well thought out policy. We have Dopey Dripford and charge and Vaguely Guessin’ as Health Minister. Both have a single talent, and that is smarming their way up the Labour Party ladder.

        Did I mention corruption? Well, no need, that sort of thing never happens in Cardiff, ever. And as for nepotism, it is quite unknown – except in the Labour family.

          1. I think it was reading your comments that brought me here, thank you. Picked it up from your posting profile. I would prefer a more polite style than BB offers, rudeness has no place in discussion, no matter what one thinks of the comment. I used to post on Guido but the auto-censor became entirely obstructive and I gave up.

      1. With your name I’m sure you will agree there is a lot to be said for ‘arschloch’, goes with the splendidly expressive ‘scheisse’, a word you can put real feeling into. As English is entirely klepto with words, I’m surprised we haven’t nicked it.

        1. I’ll let you into a secret.
          I’m a Yorkshireman, expatted in Norway for well over 20 years. Adopted the German handle many years ago because is pi$$ed a lot of people off – and I was told I should have been such rank anyway!
          German has a lot of lovely expressive words, even though you may not know the meaning, you get the emotion!

          1. Spanish is an excellent language for insulting people if you want to take your time over it, Italian if you want to make it clear what you think of them, German if you wish to make it clear they should leave the planet. English is really not up to snuff for insults.

          3. On the football pitch at Oxford I once called the referee an an utterly pudendic child of simian habits. He sent me off, 2 minutes to go, wasn’t bothered. He said afterwards he had made note to use it to describe his Professor.

          5. Norwegian is, frankly, perflibbub (c)Rowan Atkinson as regards swearing & insults.
            I believe Russian is excellent in taht regard, but since I can’t manage much more than “two beers, please”, I’m in no position to confirm or otherwise.

    3. One of my favourite sayings is “Everything the political classes come into contact with, they eff up” !
      Do you play golf Rodger ?

      1. No, I’m not a golfer. Athletics, swimming, football and cycling have been my sports down the years. I don’t do ‘slow’, although ex-teammates might disagree.

        1. I only wondered, as were i use to play we had a great reference system for members nick names.
          Dodgy Rodge was one of them,…….. aka Arfur Daily.
          But i take you are in Wales. We had a lovely family Holiday near Tenby late last September, Lydstep.

          1. My name comes from park football in south London as a lad. I have a very Welsh name, the lads couldn’t do that, one of the wags had a cousin called Rhodri, so I got Rodger, the Dodger came from my ability to run into the penalty area junking and swerving, but alas rarely with the ball under control. It looked good though, got a lot of penalties.

  23. It’s Greta Thunberg’s 18th birthday today. Let’s all wish her many happy returns and a long and cheerful adulthood!

    6. The opportunity to be allowed (should we be so fortunate) to forget about her completely would be absolutely wonderful. May she drift into obscurity.

      1. The only way this lovely girl (and regardless of her ‘Doom Goblin’ meme, she is just that) can do this is for her predictions to be shown to be false. I very much hope they are, and I suspect so does she.

    7. how about a gift voucher for diesel or a free flight on ryanair? that will surely please her.

  24. Protecting parishes
    SIR – I agree broadly with Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali: instead of proposing to reduce clergy numbers and change parish boundaries, the Church of England should acknowledge the amazing work of clergy and lay people during the pandemic. Helping to care for the isolated, and ensuring that Christians had access to services online, were done at parish, not diocesan, level.

    Parish work is at the heart of Christian ministry. Diocesan bureaucracy is the area where cuts should be considered.

    Linda Peake
    Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire

    Maybe the top management should be culled unstead – AoC is a particular waste of oxygen, but how many parishes have functioned even adequately when no meetings, services, worship was & is allowed?

    1. My parish has held odd (and I use the word advisedly) services until the latest, Tier 4, lockdown. As I’ve refused to attend because I won’t wear the compulsory mask, I’ve been getting links to YT services and the collect for the day together with the sermon, so at least I’ve felt sort of connected.

  25. Britain can learn from abroad on assisted dying
    SIR – Ruth Davidson (Comment, December 27) is not alone in changing her views on assisted dying after seeing the effects of dementia on a loved one.

    It would, of course, be essential for any assisted dying law to require mental competence throughout, as is the case in the many jurisdictions that already have such a law. In order to help those in early-stage dementia, before they lose their capacity to safely make a life-ending decision, Britain needs a law that does not limit eligibility to those with a short life expectancy.

    A public inquiry is needed so that politicians can hear the evidence from around the globe, including those jurisdictions such as Canada and Spain, where laws extend not only to the terminally ill, but also to the incurably suffering. The Justice Secretary must stop ducking the issue.

    Trevor Moore
    Chair, My Death, My Decision
    London EC1

    Who needs assisted dying when you have the government & nhs exporting infectious people to care/old people’s homes?

    1. SIR – Ruth Davidson talks about “conflicting evidence”, but the evidence is not conflicting. It is indisputable: whenever assisted dying legislation is introduced only for terminally ill patients, there inevitably follows pressure to extend it to include groups whose death is not imminent.

      Canada, which introduced medical assistance in dying in 2016, is already careering down the track towards full-blown euthanasia. There are proposals in the Netherlands to extend the euthanasia law to people who are healthy but “tired of living”.

      A report in 2019 by the European Institute of Bioethics into Belgium’s liberal assisted dying regime highlighted that psychological suffering has been a contributory justification in four out of five recent euthanasia cases.

      Our present laws provide clarity, assurance and stability. We change them at our peril.

      William W Baird
      Dunblane, Perthshire

      It’s not fair to ask someone to off you – what about their feelings and mental stability? If it’s that bad, do it yourself, but be tidy about it. Don’t forget, some poor bastard has to clear up after you.

      1. “I am just going out. I may be some time.”

        Lawrence Oates’s body was never found.

          1. On the plus side, I’m sure he’s in better condition than you or I will be, 109 years after we snuff-it, Jules!
            ;¬)

      2. Canada is hardly careening down the track towards full blown euthanasia. There is talk of end of life relief but there is a strong lobby against allowing people to end it all.

        Better a “quietly changed drip” than the month of ever increasing morphine that my mother was given, followed by sedation and being effectively starved to death. No pain at the end but getting there wasn’t pretty.

      3. Thing is, the DIY options are limited. People are afraid of getting it wrong. I tend to think that offering access to rooms with suitable drugs, easy to administer and painless, after several independent checks that it’s your own idea, might be a least-worst idea. I may well be wrong, though.

      4. If you wish to commit suicide, buy a full coverage sleeping bag and an old banger. Take the car to the middle of nowhere, take the pills, leave a hand written signed note, zip yourself up and go to sleep. No postmortem, the car goes straight in the crusher, no mess, it wasn’t in anybodies house, just a car park.

        2. no mess, it wasn’t in anybodies house, just a car park.

          Just a car park where someone is going to find a corpse.

          No car goes “straight in the crusher” without being checked for bodies and yes, there will be a post-mortem.

          You can’t go without leaving something for someone to clear up – a public space isn’t a good space to die in.

          1. Do it that way and there is no more ‘clearing up’ than if you died in hospital. Whoever finds you just sees a ‘grey face’ and calls the police. The police officer sees someone who clearly want ed to go and no mess to clear up, light work in a police officer’s scale of duties. The car is not dirty, that’s all in the sleeping bag and there is no problem scrapping it.

            BTW, it was a police officer who told me, if you have to do it, do it like this. The hand written note is essential, that takes it straight to ‘no suspicious circumstances’. The body will lie unregarded in the morgue a while then go straight to the Undertaker.

          2. Every word of that is nonsense.

            A note does not, ever, preclude suspicious circumstance. Bodies are never “unregarded”. Corpses are always a shock. The police hate suicides and do not regard them as “light work”.

        3. My father once found a car full of fumes parked by the woods on Christmas Day.
          He and his riding companion revived the occupant, and as a youngster I was so proud of my Dad.
          The man recovered, and went on to kill himself at a later date.

          1. I had to go out just before Xmas to recover a car whose occupant had died of CO poisoning. Sealed all the vents and lit a camping stove on the back seat. The Emergency services had removed him by the time I got there thankfully. This was in a public car park at a tourist spot too. Been there for 4 days and nobody had noticed.

    2. Having helped 3 aunts in their final months through dementia, and seeing what a terrifying condition that is, I strongly support assisted dying. I used to drive from London to see them, twice a week. No other family member ever visited. People don’t like visiting husks, neither did I.

      Unable to enjoy a meal because by the end you can’t remember the beginning, not knowing who you are, or who anyone else is, not knowing where you are, not knowing anything apart from some fragmented memories of 70 years ago. Wetting yourself in terror when a woman in a white coat walks up to the bed because … there is no because anymore.

      I want to make a Will that defines a level of deterioration that, when two doctors and two family members agree I have reached that level, they quietly change the drip one night. No one should be forced to undertake that task, I would prefer a family member to do it anyway.

      1. Oof, that sounds really unpleasant. My sympathies.
        My father was running down the last hill, with cancer, in 1997. His sudden end makes me suspect they “quietly changed the drip”.

        1. I’ll try to be discreet.
          Someone I know of was dying at home, of cancer. Situation beyond awful.
          One evening the visiting palliative care Doctor wrote out the death certificate, and said that the family should say their final farewells. Poor man died during the night, possibly not a coincidence.

        2. If they did, they did him a favour, you can scarcely imagine how dreadful the end can be. Assisted dying for those are reasonably healthy is one thing, but when there is no hope whatsoever of anything more than a few weeks of pain and terror, it’s a no-brainer for me. Provided the person has said that is what they want when they get there. Your father may have said many times to the medical staff “I just want to die”, people do, you hear it a lot in terminal wards, those exact words.

          1. My sister told me she didn’t want to live anymore.
            When taken into hospital she refused any medication and food. She took a few sips of water when we visited but hat was it. I think she knew exactly what she was doing and died very peacefully and at peace with herself, I imagine.

          2. when mother in law caught covid at the end of october, she basically did the same thing. The nurses in the home respected her wish and did everything to make her comfortable but basically let her slip away as she wanted.

          3. I had POA and the hospital begged that they should be allowed to feed her by tube. After a lot of soul searching I agreed to one try. She ripped it out immediately. Knew exactly what she was doing.

          4. Those POA are an unpleasant responsibility. With my mother it was up to me to decide when the hospice changed their care and stopped feeding her.

            Not that I have regrets about the decision I made.

          5. I was happy to have both POAs which enabled me to look after her finances. Both her husband and 2 daughters had died and she had been abandoned by her grandchildren until they realised there was money and have been absolutely vile.

          6. I have POA for MOH. If there is a choice it will be a case of “Goodnight Vienna” because that’s MOH’s frequently expressed wish.

          7. ooh I know that relatives after money problem.

            One niece really upset my brother with her ongoing demands for money. But nan promised, but no one would know if you let me take it. To stop her claiming it, we ended up driving around with a big old teddy bear strapped into the back seat of the car.

    3. The government and NHS are killing plenty of people who are unable to be referred for investigation/treatment/diagnosis. This is absolutely criminal. What can we do, now there is talk of even more drastic measures (which aren’t working anyway), what else can they bring in?

      1. The faster spreading mutant virus may be a better “vaccinator” than the 2 vaccines about to be used not in accordance with the protocols advised by Pfizer and Astra- Zenica. A stricter lockdown is not likely to make the situation better. The under 70s, especially children, with other more life threatening conditions need to be dealt with immediately and not left to suffer and die in silence.

        1. As the vaccine is supposed to introduce the virus to your immune system to fire up your T cells to fight it when they meet it, what is the point in vaccinating someone who has already had it? Surely their T cells would already be activated. Why isn’t there a test (like the one for BCG where if you react, you don’t need the jab) to see who needs the shots and who doesn’t?

        2. I shall not be having any vaccine, as long as I am able to decide for myself. Vaccines, safe ones that is, that have been rigorously trialled and tested first, take many years to develop. This “vaccine”, allegedly developed within a year, is not what they are telling us it is. And the fact they wish to muck about with one dose or two, or decide the second dose is not necessary within the time the manufacturer has said, surely must make people pause and think a bit.

          I’m pretty sure there will be consequences for those who refuse a vaccination but I am convinced there is another agenda, and plenty of money, behind it all. Besides anyone who catches it has a higher survival rate than the vaccines themselves.

          1. If one dose is as good as two, then it does give the impression that this vaccine is a form of mind control. First ramp up the fear – then give out the antidote.

          3. They have only been “following the science” in the way that they have been “following the science” on global warming climate change.

      2. 328095+ up ticks,
        Afternoon VW,
        The same vote & whinge, party before Country brigade will support
        a governmental kill bill, they have been doing it for decades already.

        We could never have got into our
        present condition as a Nation without their input.

  26. Leaky HMS Prince of Wales spends fewer than 90 days at sea in two years. 3 January 2021.

    One of the Royal Navy’s new flagship aircraft carriers has spent fewer than 90 days at sea in the two years since entering service after springing leaks twice in five months

    The Ministry of Defence has admitted that HMS Prince of Wales has spent just 87 days at sea – a third of the time of her sister ship HMS Queen Elizabeth.

    It comes after the Prince of Wales was reported to have found leaks twice last year – in the engine room last October and in a crew area in May.

    These things should never have been built. They are utterly useless for our purposes!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/02/exclusiveleaky-hms-prince-wales-spends-fewer-90-days-sea-two/

        1. We still have the temporary tax imposed to fight Boney, so why shouldn’t we continue with the C18 method of sealing ships’ hulls?

    2. The ship is probably very appropriately named. The ideas in the head of Charles, Prince of Wales, are extremely leaky.

    3. Who built these ships? British Leyland?
      Not a good advertisement for British manufacturing.

          1. Personally, with his Meccano set, judging by the way they haemorrhage taxpayer’s money.

    4. I hope that nobody is going to sail these ships anywhere near explosive devices.

      They could spring multiple leaks and disappear very quickly.

    1. I expect we will shortly read some negative stuff about Kirsty Allsopp in the totally independent media, that renders her completely untrustworthy as a source of information.
      Reading the Daily Mail these days is an exercise in Spot the Propaganda, and I doubt any of the paid newspapers are much different.

    2. The woman who, with BBC5Live, initiated this scare story has been exposed as a leftist activist/scare-monger by a number of paediatricians. Too late of course, the tweet had been seen by >million by the time the rebuttals were published. Al-Beeb doing more dirty work for Johnson, Hancock et al.

  28. ‘Morning, Peeps. Late on parade today, but here’s some further correspondence about the all-powerful and hugely destructive NHS bureacracy. For how much longer is Handycock going to ignore it’s crippling effect on the vaccination programme? Pesumably until he’s sacked:

    SIR – You report that, out of the 40,000 retired doctors and nurses who applied in March to return, 30,000 were eligible but only 5,000 were given jobs by July.

    We also read of venues, from racecourses to conference centres, offering space for jabs to be administered – and being ignored.

    The NHS’s bureaucracy will delay the vaccination programme. While it insists that it can cope, it is all too apparent that every single resource must be used if the millions of vaccinations required are to be achieved.

    Lavender Buckland
    Iwerne Minster, Dorset

    SIR – I don’t understand why it has been made so difficult for retired doctors and health professionals to participate in the vaccination programme, as performing an injection isn’t that difficult.

    Three or four years ago my husband was in hospital, where he acquired a pulmonary embolism. He had to have a six-month course of warfarin, and for the first month this needed to be injected.

    He was sent home with a box of pre-loaded needles, information about where to stick them in, and a box for the used ones. He then had to inject himself once a day, although I admit that most days I did it.

    So just post me a couple of needles pre-loaded with the Covid-19 vaccine, and instructions for my husband and myself, and I will do our vaccinations. Imagine the results if a large number of people were prepared to do this.

    B D Dye
    Harpenden, Hertfordshire

    As it happens, B D Dye, I like your suggestion. Three years ago I had to inject myself for a few weeks following an op…it really wasn’t difficult. The hardest part was getting the local authority to collect the sharps afterwards.

    1. Off Topic, but how is “Iwerne Minster” pronounced?
      I would automatically say “Ive-earn” but that’s probably hideously off-target.

    2. Morning, HJ.
      Snap. I had to travel to a helpful chemist for the sharps box to be accepted as the local Boots branch wouldn’t accept it. I wonder how many of those boxes are wrapped in an old carrier bag and included in the general rubbish out of sheer frustration?

      2. I live quite close to a cottage hospital. Thinking (stupidly) that sharps disposal would be a daily occurrence there, I wandered in with my yellow box – only to be told, very politely but firmly, to get lost. I have never been able to work out the logic of this – probably because there isn’t any. It sounded like just another silly rule, just one of many with which the NHS is infested.

        1. They have to pay for clinical waste collection, usually per container for the smaller sites without a bulk contract. That and lack of storage space would probably be the reasons why they dont want to start a patients’ used sharps service.

          1. I remember when we had music rehearsals in a local retirement home (the owner was a member of the group) there was a large sign up in the downstairs loo which read “Do NOT seal yellow bags until they are FULL”. When I was curious enough to ask she explained that the council charged for each bag collected, not the total weight, so bags closed by a clip until full and then sealed for collection.

    3. ‘Morning, Hugh, I also commented BTL (as Best Beloved, who has the subscription):

      “As the first 4 letters (and the headline) are about vaccination, I can’t help wondering why the letter’s editor chooses a picture of a blood sample being taken; hence the tourniquet on the upper arm and the needle into a vein below the elbow.“

      1. Well spotted, Nanners! However, allowances have to be made because this is the DT. Were you expecting accuracy?

  29. Good morning, my friends

    An interesting article by Douglas Murray about the dangers of China. (I have posted this below my comments)

    We must not forget the complicity of Cameron and Osborne in cosying up to China and this BTL comment is one with which I agree.

    “The competition for being the worst chancellor and the worst prime minister this century is pretty stiff. Many would say that as prime minsters the worst were undoubtedly Blair and May and that Brown was by far the worst chancellor but history will probably tell us that Cameron was just as bad as Blair and May and that Osborne was even worse than Brown.”

    Here is the Douglas Murray article:

    2020 was the year the West woke up to China’s threat
    Beijing has weathered the economic storm of 2020 but thanks to the virus it finds itself under more scrutiny than ever before

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    Whatever 2021 is going to be, there is no doubt what 2020 was. It was the year of China. In China’s self-estimation the year that just passed could be seen as a success. That is certainly how President Xi’s New Year address came across. 2020 was one big Communist success story.

    At the beginning of last year, China was losing an increasingly bitter trade war with the United States being waged by the first US president in recent times to recognise China as a serious, unfriendly competitor. President Trump’s insights may have been basic but they were also accurate and long-held. No one could accuse the president of being purely cynical in his China policy. As far back as 2000 (in a book called The America We Deserve), the man then best known as a businessman and reality TV host wrote: “Our biggest long-term challenge will be China. Though we have the upper hand, we’re way too eager to please the Chinese. We see them as a potential market … even at the expense of our own national interests.”

    He was right and, once he was in the Oval Office, Trump acted on that insight. He warned that unfair competition from China was a disadvantage to American workers and that the free trade arrangements that Joe Biden and others had spear-headed over recent decades had been at the expense of American jobs. China was finally facing a rival that had its number.

    Then the coronavirus hit. A virus that the Communist Party that rules China had known about for months before it bothered to allow the rest of the world in on the fact. Among much else, in the early months of 2020, China allowed flights to leave the country but not to fly within it. And as the world started to question just how this virus had come out, the Chinese authorities did everything they could to ensure the world never knew.

    They disappeared scientists and others who could have helped. Just this week they jailed a journalist looking into the virus. The CCP even threatened countries like Australia whose governments asked for an international inquiry into the roots of the virus. And as the world’s economies closed down, China found itself at an advantage. It was able to shut down its populations in a way that countries ruled by the consent of their peoples could never do.

    In similar fashion it was able to reopen faster. As President Xi boasted in his New Year’s message: “China is the first major economy worldwide to achieve positive growth, and its GDP in 2020 is expected to step up to a new level.” Indeed. While the US, UK and every other major economy saw a vast fall in GDP and soaring government borrowing, China appeared to be coming out of 2020 with growth upwards of 2 per cent. And that wasn’t the only benefit the CCP enjoyed from 2020.

    The prospects for Donald Trump’s re-election relied on a simple formula (as one of his closest aides told me in 2019): the US economy needed to continue to grow and the US needed to not get into any foreign wars. Trump was true to his word on not getting the US entangled in any more failing foreign adventures. But once Covid landed and he was forced to shut down the country, the American economy hit the doldrums. Whether or not that was the main reason for Trump’s failure to win the election in November, it was certainly a contributing factor. In 2016 Trump had promised the American voters that they would be tired of winning. In November 2020 he had to concede that the US economy had had the worst year in recent history. The fact that it was someone else’s fault ended up being an ineffective excuse.

    So the CCP enters 2021 with a growing economy, its primary challenger exiting the White House and a new team entering it led by a man – Joe Biden – who has not only never recognised the threat that China poses to America but whose own family members appear to have been compromised by enriching themselves at Beijing’s trough. In many ways 2020 was a good year for China. It acted unusually, for sure. But it won.

    And yet. The virus which emerged from Wuhan – whether from a laboratory or a wet-market we may never know – also had a contrary effect. For suddenly the world became interested in China in a way that it had not previously been. This new-found interest turned up a lot of odious practices that Beijing had previously been able to get away with.

    There was nothing new about China’s mistreatment of the Uighur minority. For years the world had known – and brave dissidents from China had tried to make sure the world knew – that the Chinese authorities had been rounding up and “re-educating” hundreds of thousands of Chinese Muslims. Increasingly the policy looked like nothing so much as a remake of the concentration camp systems that the world’s worst regimes had instituted in the 20th century. Here the CCP was in the 21st century, doing exactly the same thing. And yet the world did not much appear to care.

    In 2020 the world began to care, because an increasing number of people began to know about it. Pictures and footage that had been released before suddenly gained a new life. Videos of horrors that the Chinese authorities didn’t want the world to know about became more and more widely known. So it was in 2020 with everything else that China did.

    For years the Chinese authorities had been squeezing Hong Kong with an ever-tightening noose. Some brave voices objected. Some Western allies expressed solidarity. But Hong Kong was a niche issue until 2020. Then, as the CCP tightened the noose once more, the world – led by Britain – began to object. Perhaps it even began to understand. For in 2020 the world could see that Hong Kong was not an oddity but a glimpse into a potential future. For wherever the CCP increases its power, there freedom and democracy diminish and finally disappear.

    It wasn’t only places that Beijing continued to view as its possessions, but countries that are noble and independent powers themselves which began to feel China’s wrath. Until 2020 it would have been unprecedented for Chinese officials and state organs to be as openly threatening to a free democracy as they were in 2020 to our allies in Australia. As Beijing’s goons online and off threatened the presumptuous Australians for daring to ask where the economy-shutting virus had come from, the world could see that the CCP was not simply interested in its own territorial issues. It was interested in an expansionist and ultimately a globally dominant position, in which countries like Australia – and Britain – are brought to heel wherever and whenever they are seen to have “stepped out of line”.

    Early last decade, when the UK government of David Cameron and George Osborne kowtowed to Beijing, the public didn’t seem to understand the poison that Britain was drinking. Like every other country we looked to China for its money and its investment opportunities, and we recognised that even if the bill for these things had to be paid in some other currency then the payment would not be due for another day. Some are still taking that stance. The EU just signed a trade deal with China and seems remarkably reluctant to criticise a country whose gold it needs.

    Of course the question of what to do looms large. At present the young “woke” generation have yet to find the bravery to confront any “oppression” that they cannot invent at home. Perhaps that will soon change. Perhaps the world’s economies will finally recognise that China has been undercutting everyone, dishonestly and with bad intent, for too long. Some multinational action against the country and a certain disentangling from its supply chains would be one good thing to come from the year that is past.

    So 2020 was China’s year, certainly. But it was also the year that the rest of the world had an opportunity to realise what an unpleasant entity we have been willing to deal with in the CCP. Not too late, perhaps. But certainly not a moment too soon.

          1. Now that is interesting.
            I am a subscriber, but the link is wrong.
            When I use your link, it is correct, but the DT treats me as a non-subscriber.
            Co*k-up rather than conspiracy, I suspect.

      2. They are still there Bob though the article has been moved. Probably had a call from the Chinese Embassy!

        1. The article was published at 07.00 yesterday morning, so has been moved to make room for more recent articles (Bryony’s mental problems, anyone?)
          You will find it in the Opinion section, below reders’ letters’.
          The link is faulty, it leads you to today’s letters.

    2. One thing that Mr Murray forgot to mention is that China announced that it had vaccinated all its armed forces by last July.

      1. This statement appears to have been determinedly ignored by the British MSM

      2. Obviously the Chinese were pretty confident of the efficacy of their vaccine to vaccinate ALL their armed forces with it.

      3. The Chinese haven’t stated what proportion of their civilian population have already been vaccinated.

      Time to think seriously about Chinese power!

      1. 328095+ up ticks,
        Morning J,
        Methinks as with the islamic ideology political set up and thriving, well past time.
        ALL in the pursuit of a party before Country voting pattern impo.

      3. I’m still waiting to see evidence of our political classes etc taking the jab.
        They don’t hold back when there is anything else on offer.
        Journalists should also set an example they are out and about a lot mixing with the public. Or sitting in the news rooms surrounded by fellow workers.

    3. Good morning Richard

      Strange isn’t to think that when I was a child at school , we were told by some highly strung teacher that China would rule the world !

      Of course then much later on , I met many older RN types when I was nursing , who had been involved in the Yangtze incident. History starts talking!

      Those who had served on the China station were very erudite about the intentions of the Chinese .

      We shouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of security.

    4. 328095+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      Keep in mind there are those among us who, with a blinkered view of the future would pursue an anti Chinese agenda whilst neglecting the active, firmly established in the seat of power, and even being given substance via the parliamentary canteen menu, a threat on par / more serious than the Chinese problem.

      As is the islamic ideology & political following.

      Let us also remember who warned us of the dangers of islamic ideology back in
      2005 in the start of this era of enlightenment, the one castigated and
      deemed to be a far right racist Mr Gerard Batten.
      One must surely keep ones head when weighing up the importance of these two
      treacherous issues as to which is of the more importance.

  30. SIR – Many medical consultants are giving up their limited time to help with vaccinations free of charge.

    General practitioners, who often earn over £100,000 a year, are receiving £10 for each care home resident they vaccinate.

    Given that the country can ill afford it, and given that there are many people who will not charge but are not being used, how can this possibly be justified?

    Dr A John Shipman
    Bedford

    Possibly because GPs are currently trying to keep their surgeries functioning in a sea of bureaucracy…just a thought. By the way, I wonder if the author of this letter gas ever wondered why he might have the shortest list in the NHS??

    2. It all seems more than a bit convoluted, if as my wife and I did, people can visit the local surgery together to get the flu jab why do doctors have to be paid extra for what the practice nurses can already do ?

      1. Remember Nye Bevan’s comment?
        (Can’t believe I’m referencing a Welsh socialist.)

        1. Ah, Nye Bevan, who was so delighted that, in recognition of his part in founding the National Health Service, they named a medical condition after him (Aneurism). Aneurin hurried to the Medical Dictionary to look it up. It read, “A bloody clot that ought to be removed immediately.”

        2. I might have to look that one up Anne.
          I suppose if the surgery window was open we could form a socialy distanced queue and shove an arm through the window for a quickie.
          Jab that is of course.
          Or conversely someone could lean out and administer.

          1. “In 1948 Bevan boasted that he was able to accomplish his goal “by stuffing the doctors’ mouths with gold.”1 What he meant by his famous and oft quoted statement is that he allowed some British doctors or consultants as they were called, to continue seeing private paying patients if they accepted NHS patients.’
            Nowadays it’s for giving vaccinations, but the principle is the same.

  31. He’s right, government IT projects should be avoided at all costs:

    SIR – As chair of the Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon’s role is surely to scrutinise unworkable policies – not advocate them.

    His proposal for a national database to micro-manage the “lost learning” of individual children is a perfect example of blinkered Whitehall thinking. Worse than that, it seems to represent Whitehall’s only response to a challenge these days.

    Bringing a pupil up to exam standard is the responsibility of the teacher. You cannot replace their professional assessment with a clumsy, error-strewn computer assessment. Individual solutions to individual problems work. National solutions to individual problems do not.

    It appears that Whitehall has learnt nothing from the Test and Trace fiasco. It should try better managing itself, and leave the management of children to their teachers.

    Tristram C Llewellyn Jones
    Church Stretton, Shropshire

    And listening to the depressing news this morning ttat teachers are taking on an admittedly spineless and incompetent Sec of State for Educashun, how about telling them, today, that failing to turn up for work will be regarded as strike action, so no pay??

    1. MoH suggested that if the Kiddies can’t go to school in January for two weeks just extend the summer term by two weeks reducing the summer holiday to 4 weeks. It will give more time for Exam Revision and really piss the Teachers off – what’s not to like!

  32. Good morning from a damp & dull Derbyshire.
    Just a tad below 0°C on the yard thermometer half an hour ago.

  33. And finally…a couple of Brexit letters:

    SIR – Thank goodness the Brexiteers held their nerve while their opponents pulled every trick in the book to undermine the biggest democratic vote in British history.

    The majority voted for freedom, guided by a gut feeling that countries should be able to make their own decisions. They did not vote on the basis of economic costs and benefits, for in matters of such complexity no one – even the most ardent Remainer – could pretend to know all the details. It took a leap of faith.

    We should now face the challenges of the post-Brexit, post-Covid future with a united sense of purpose – with courage and ingenuity, tempered on the anvil of the last four years.

    B V Marshall
    London N11

    SIR – Robin SeQueira (Letters, December 27) wonders, “now Brexit has been delivered, whether other EU countries follow suit”. I doubt it.

    Gordon Brown wisely denied Tony Blair his wish that Britain should adopt the euro, and it is because we kept sterling that leaving the EU was possible.

    William Hague, when he was Foreign Secretary, pointed out that the euro “was not built with exits”. The EU countries who dumped their currencies in order to adopt it might have done well to consider that.

    Tom Benyon
    Bladon, Oxfordshire

    1. Astonishing that Hague ever got anything right. He is now a total, unmitigated nincompoop.

        1. 328095+ up ticks,
          Morning BB2,
          Cannot say I have known it to be right twice a day, or for that matter even once.
          I could be wrong in not being right about that, or right about not being wrong about that.
          It calls for pondering and another pint of tea.

    2. That gut feeling is also the fire behind Scotland’s independence campaign.
      The difference being that we don’t wish to join an even more remote bureaucracy after our ‘freedom’.

    3. I have always held that the Euro could be left.
      The country can leave at the same rate rate it went in, followed by floating the currency and letting the markets decide what their exchange rate should be.

      Most of the real basket cases are tourist destinations and would get a tourism boom.

  35. Morning, Campers.
    Yay. It’s fox mating time again.
    Last night I was woken by the sound of someone being murdered. Even when you know what it is, those blood curdling sounds are an exceedingly unpleasant way to be jolted out of sleep. They are primeval and make your whole body go into flight or fight mode.
    Then the dog foxes replied.
    Spartie woke up and started barking in frustration.
    Eventually he settled down again (we didn’t go downstairs as he’d realise it was a good way to get attention).
    This morning, MB found he’d savaged the newspapers in the rack.

    Maybe the government could micromanage foxes’ private lives and insist they wear masks, keep 6 feet apart and don’t socialise outside their social bubbles.

    1. “we didn’t go downstairs as he’d realise it was a good way to get attention”

      Very sensible, Dotty was doing that attention-getting barking until we learnt to ignore her. If she continues to bark after any perceived threat has gone, she gets reprimanded with a very stern, growly “BAD!”

    3. Calls to mind the woman wailing for her demon lover in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan

      Is your part of Essex renowned for deep romantic chasms which slant down green hills athwart cedarn covers and are inhabited by vixens? And are these caverns at their most impressive when there is a waning moon?

          1. I’m gobby all the time. Phases of the moon don’t affect an innate characteristic.

          1. Did he? Well, someone has to.
            One of my best friends did a history degree at UEA, but she is a good bit younger than us.

    4. Morning all.
      Living adjacent to woodland and open countryside we get the same problem usually in February.
      It’s the vixens calling for a mate. You’d think the furry little ladies would be a little more discreet on the street. 🦊

      1. Morning, Belle.
        That is part of our trouble. Several twerps round here feed the bloody things.

        1. ‘Morning, Anne, there are similar twerps in the suburbs of the Great Wen. They also feed grey squirrel vermin.

          3. Was it illegal during the Victorian era?
            I don’t think people had woken up to the dangers of importing species with no natural enemies.

          4. Perhaps immoral would have been a better adjective. Those Victorians also started he craze for bringing inappropriate plant species from all around the globe. Many have proved beneficial as foodstuffs and others have medicinal value; however, a huge number have turned out to be pernicious and hardy weeds with detrimental effects for nature; easily as bad as tree rats, rabbits (and cane toads in Queensland) among others.

          5. Himalayan Balsam.
            The Roman River near Layer Woods is choked with it, but, like ragwort on Hilly Fields, our bossy, micromanaging authorities some don’t notice anything that might mean work for them.

          7. ‘Morning, Paul, the suburbs are doing quite well by self-immolation on black knives.

            A handful of grenades would hardly be noticed.

    6. The government has made sure that foxes are not culled in a natural manner. Couple that with bunny huggers feeding the vermin and you could have a lot more disturbed nights.

        1. That’s one of my least favoured ales, Harry; never liked it. I can tolerate the odd pint of their Abbot, but that’s about it.

          Now, if you give me Timothy Taylor’s of Keighley or John Harvey’s of Lewes, then you’re talking my language.

          1. I think Abbot is a pale imitation of what it would have been in your day. I used to enjoy it, but no longer nearly as much.

          2. It’s awful beer. My comment about their IPA was with reference to your abstention, being virtually alcohol-free! I agree on TT and Harvey’s. Adnams is also up there.

        2. Greene King gave money to BLM.
          I wrote a snottogram to them and haven’t used one of their pubs since.

          1. I didn’t know that. It’s a company I have never relished, their policies and beers are less than acceptable.

        1. I do it every year now (for the past three years) and it doesn’t bother me.

          When I take my first sip of ale (or scotch, or gin) in May, it is like nectar.

          3. Flagellation involves pain, of which I’m allergic. There’s no pain involved in my self-inflicted ‘temperance’.

  37. Yo All

    SIR – Many medical consultants are giving up their limited time to help with vaccinations free of charge.

    Dr A John Shipman Bedford

    Shirley a man of courage. to send in a letter for publication

    1. ‘Morning, OLT, some wit on the BTL comments has said he should change his name. Another answered that he has dropped the H and now calls himself Arold.

    2. “Yes, we can fit you in for an appointment this morning at 11 o’clock with Dr Shipman, Mr Brown.”
      “Uh, thanks, but I’m feeling better,”

  38. Sun shining now – At 10 I shall go and start stacking logs – if only to get rid of my fury at seeing, in The Sunday Grimes, two of my least favourite people – Cur Lennie (unfunny) Henry – whinging on about how lonely it is to be black – and the Swedish Muppet – telling us we can fly if we want.

    1. I think it’s the muppet’s birthday today. 🧎‍♀️
      Why Len is lonely is another matter.
      Surely he can take solace in watching tv advertising and reflect on how successful all of his fellows have been. Or not.

  39. Boris on the AM show – – looking at the country as a whole – -Yes Boris – you and your pals are certainly turning the UK into one !

    1. Morning walter -The public can see it, but the politicians can’t. They cannot control natural events and as Covid-19 has shown it just makes them look incompetent, foolish and destroyers of the economy. Their next massive failure will be their attempt to tackle climate with their ill thought out, destructive and costly plans to reduce our insignificant contributions of CO2 into the global atmosphere.
      Health matters should be left to the medics to advise the people of the risks and what are sensible decisions to make to reduce them.
      There is still time to persuade the PM to reconsider his absurd plans which he will be planning to reveal at the forthcoming Green gathering in Glasgow later this year.

      1. This Green gathering in Glasgow later this year. Is that the one where all these ‘celebrities’ fly in using their private aircraft to tell the rest of us that we shouldn’t fly?

        Thought so.

          1. No social distancing either. Let’s hope they all catch the plague and suffer a slow demise.

          3. Hi John. Happy New Year to you and Maggie. Off topic, I just saw your response from a few days ago. Yes – Wanborough station is on the North Downs Line. Between Ash and Wanborough, the ‘permanent way’ runs along an embankment, dodging all the pikeys. When I moved here in October, contractors were reinforcing the North side of the embankment with steel sheet piling, between Westwood Lane and Wanborough Station. They had almost finished, when Storm Bella arrived. It seems that the embankment to the West of those works became waterlogged, resulting in a landslip.

            They’ve been driving piles 24/7 for the last few days, and – by all accounts – the line is due to re-open on Wednesday. I don’t mind the sleepless nights – I want the trains back. I’m less than five minutes from the station, and can get to Guildford or Aldershot for around three quid, return.

          4. Happy New Year to you Geoff from us.

            Sounds as though you’re in an ideal spot for transport and it’s very inexpensive.

      2. Need to dispense with Carrie then. Can’t see that happening any time soon. Besides I think that’s part of the plan to completely change our way of life – and not for the better either.

      3. This needs to be brought to his (Boris’) attention:

        John Kirby
        26 Oct 2020 4:28AM
        @Kevin Bell ,,,,Hi Kevin, I agree 100%
        As I write the BBC have a group discussing Global Warming.
        All of them believe that carbon dioxide causes it. No scientific debate then, no Devil’s Advocate. They want “De-Carbonisation” of the economy by 2050.
        Successive governments have taken us along this path with the Climate Change Act of 2008.
        No attempt has been made to follow true scientific debate. Any opposition has been treated as some sort of heresy.
        Our politicians have followed the dogma. This is a much greater threat to the economic and intellectual future of Britain than the Covid virus.
        Yet the government continues with this dangerous and wrong-headed policy.
        I repeat some facts:-
        1) CO2 is a trace gas.
        2) At 0.04% it is 1 part in 2,500 of the atmosphere.
        3) But 24/25ths of atmospheric CO2 comes from nature,
        4) From rotting vegetation, volcanoes, wildfires and the oceans.
        5) So manmade CO2 is 1 part in 2,500 X 25 of the atmosphere
        6) That is 1 part in 62,500 of the atmosphere.
        In terms of Statistical Thermodynamics and in terms of Common Sense, that is insignificant.
        I think the slight increase in CO2 is CAUSED by global warming, warming up the oceans and driving out dissolved CO2..

        2. Don’t forget extra CO2 in the atmosphere helps plants grow (including food crops to sustain the extra billions) more plant growth means more CO2 produced at night….

          2. “During daylight hours, plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, and at night only about half that carbon is then released through respiration….”Phew!

          7. 6CO2 + 6H2O (in the presence of sunlight) = C6H12O6 + 6O2 (given off). That’s the formula for photosynthesis (I did biology O Level).

          8. Well if plants take in CO2, then it is really easy to see which governments truly believe in global warming.

            They are the ones planting lots of trees.

            The rest are just talking virtuous twaddle

          9. Meanwhile the govt here is chopping trees down to make room for houses for immigrants – who will be producing MORE . . .err . . CO2.

  40. The tiering system may get tougher.

    Marr keeps butting in ..and changing the conversation.. and playing GOTCHA’S with Boris .. Marr is a mean little twerp.

    1. That was an appalling interview. At one point, Marr was answering his own questions and not letting Boris get a word in. I’m surprised that Boris didn’t put him in his place.

    2. Why do you watch his programme? All it does is up the viewer’s blood pressure and increase the feeling of hopelessness.

      1. You can loathe him while paying the licence fee, or loathe him without paying it though!
        The latter is more comfortable.

          7. He’ll be getting a craic in his neck by the looks of it if his tongue goes any deeper!

          2. I have had 9 years off paying and having got used to it I have no intention of starting to pay again.

          5. We don’t watch a great deal but oh likes to see the wildlife films, vet programmes and for some reason – the Beeb news. Plus the B4 saturday night subtitled Scandi series – French one started last night. Far better than anything produced by the Beeb. The subtitles mean it doesn’t matter if they mumble.

          6. 328095+up ticks,
            Morning N,
            If you mean Spiral we found it very good and the continuity from the last series acceptable and pleasing.

          9. It was…….but as mentioned earlier, our internet connection is not brilliant for watching YouTube and we don’t have a Netflix subscription.

          11. I watch BBC I-Player and at the moment they have films and series , some of which I have the DVDs such as Night Manager, Black Adder, Heroes of Telemark. Others which I haven’t seen. I watched an Iceland detective series, am watching a French detective series, 3 of the St Trinians School films, Whisky Galore [ modern production] Many documentaries. Last night I watched North, North West and Sherlock Holmes. Much better choice than the live BBC Channels

          13. We watched the Iceland one – so dark you could hardly see what was happening! The Bridge we were completely hooked on , and the French one is good.

          14. The French interviews are quite brutal with even the female detective whacking the suspect. They also seem to go out in droves to break into properties with abandon. The Bridge was excellent on the i-player. The Icelandic one was dark. I had to watch it with the light off.Most of the detective programmes seem to have corruption among the police particularly at the top

          15. Be nice when someone comes up with a new thread for a detective series that doesn’t involve:
            – Corruption / incompetence at the top
            – Conflict with superiors who know better
            – Doing it his own way / maverick
            – Shooting every bugger
            Morse was good as they mostly missed these stereotypical storylines, although the TV series did gratuitously introduce conflict between Morse and his boss.

          16. Nonsense, I’ll give you 24hrs and an inept sidekick to convince me otherwise or i’ll have your badge and gun and you’ll be out of NTTL PD before you have the time to buy an unappetising hotdog from that unhygenic east European street vender who just happens to be your number 1 stoolie .

          22. We’re watching Drop the Dead Donkey at the moment and are up to series 3 which covers 1993ish, although it’s 28 years old the humour is pertinent, vibrant and still valid today, no snide remarks, no swearing, no obvious political bias and a cast of more or less believable characters, it only goes to highlight the woeful selection of todays offerings.

          23. Damien and his discarded child’s toy has been the mainstay/prop of many of the churnalists polluting our screens for the past few decades.

          24. Ever since we watched the series originally we’ve noted with amusement that so many reporters seem to have attended the Damian Day school of false sincerity and bogus compassion.

          25. On of the best ever comedy series. A collective, co-operative effort where the actors and actresses played off each other to perfection. Thanks for reminding us of how it can be.

          26. I recall a classic line when Henry was discussing obituaries with an old friend. Henry said he wished to be remembered as: “A cavalier amongst pork swordsmen.”

          27. We need a more modern telly with internet access and a better broadband speed to use i-player. It’s much too slow to watch anything – we may upgrade at some stage…….

          28. I recommend biting the bullet – I used my long service award to by a Sony Android TV some years ago and it has been absolutely brilliant – all the streaming services built in – we rarely watch live TV now. Would also recommend going for the fastest speed possible that you can afford.

          29. After some time I have finally got our Amazon Fire Stick Mk1 to work. Sort of. When I set it up we started to watch a series on “Walter Presents”. Now it does not really work. I can select the programme and episode and set it to play. The adverts play, then the screen goes blank except for the message “”Content Not Available . Please try later.”
            Repeated attempts on various All4 programmes produce the same result.
            I have looked online and there is lots of incomprehensible geek stuff, about resets, and coding and so on. None of which helps me.
            Does anyone here no the solution, please?

          32. Haven’t a clue about the Fire Stick, but I watch Walter Presents on my laptop. That’s if you’re desperate. Good luck – there’s some great stuff on there.

    4. He’s a self obsessed toad.
      The posting earlier re TV ‘comedy’, my favourite programme use to be HIGNFY.
      What it use to be was very clever satire.
      Something went wrong with that as well. It’s become a nasty hate filled political programme with more coprolalia than a sad drunken stag night.

    5. I would like to see Marr trying to tackle Jordan Peterson – Peterson would take him apart.

  41. Today’s DT Leader:

    Amanda Spielman, HM Chief Inspector of education, writes in this newspaper that schools “should be the last places to close and the first to reopen”, and that the consequences of shuttering them can be devastating. Ofsted has found that in the course of last year’s disruption, “some younger children had forgotten how to hold a pencil or use a knife and fork” and among older pupils there were increases in eating disorders and self-harm.

    Schools are critical, Ms Spielman argues, not just to teach face-to-face but to create a special environment in which children want to learn: many parents do not have the time, resources or support networks to do it. Anybody genuinely concerned with fighting inequality would move heaven and earth to keep them open and to avoid “furloughing our children”, to use Ms Spielman’s terminology. Last year’s online teaching was a calamity, and this week’s repeat, as the epidemic spirals out of control, is likely to be almost as bad.

    Tragically, the teaching unions do not seem to understand this. Having forced the Education Secretary to close all primary schools in London at the start of the spring term, they have now expanded their demands to encompass all schools in England. One union leader warned that their union would not hesitate to take action “to protect members whose safety is put at risk”. Strangely, these activists often forget to mention that millions of others, from factory employees to delivery workers, are working on site, despite the risks – as of course, are NHS workers.

    If they put the interests of the children in their care first, the unions would focus overwhelmingly and with passion on demands that help keep services going, such as special protection or dispensation for a minority of vulnerable teachers, or arguing for the early vaccination of teachers (though of course this would involve a tough ethical trade-off).

    But these are not their chief requests: they want to end all in-school teaching, which would be a disaster for British education. What we are seeing here is the flexing of political muscle by a group of militants who, having humiliated a secretary of state once, are determined to do so again.

    A BTL comment:Andrew K Smart
    3 Jan 2021 8:58AM

    At least we now all know that teachers are really simple souls, who are incapable of thinking for themselves, and who will gladly accept their salaries for doing Sweet Fanny Adams. Just stay clear of hospitals and supermarkets and those other places where decent people continue to work for the benefit of us all. That would be hypocracy.

    2. How come the pupils have forgotten how to use a pencil or a knife and fork? What are parents for?

  42. Look back at our past wickedness and we all have reason to feel ashamed
    Rod Liddle
    Sunday January 03 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    The Christmas holiday season is never complete for me until I have had my head plunged into a bucket of lukewarm, sententious platitudes, courtesy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Justin Welby’s address on Friday was miraculous in its vapidity: it is, I think, the mark of the man.

    Back in the summer he joined the progressive anti-history obsessives in insisting that some church statues would need to be removed because they might offend modern-day sensibilities. He didn’t specify whether or not these included statues of Jesus Christ.

    Justin was always going to be a sucker for the programme advanced by a tiny minority of liberal maniacs who wish to abolish the past because they disagree with some stuff that happened in it. Why so many institutions wish to ingratiate themselves with these Year Zero nutters, though, is a mystery to me. It won’t do Justin much good, either, when they realise that in his previous incarnations he was an executive at the oil company Elf Aquitaine and later became treasurer of Enterprise Oil — both companies seen by the left as being controlled by Satan and His Infernal Imps plc.

    The Year Zero business continues, meanwhile, with three universities compiling a database of everybody in the UK who had anything whatsoever to do with slavery at any time, ever. Why? To tarnish their distant descendents, much as did the British Library when it, wrongly, associated the poet Ted Hughes with a bloke born in 1592 who may have had some connection to the trade.

    What is the point of this expensive research, apart from an excuse to indulge in more psychotic self-flagellating? How will it help?

    It is the monomania of the thing that most disturbs me — as if slavery were the only crime committed in our past, or the only one we should feel bad about now. Whisper it quietly, but it may not even be the worst. Should we not compile a database of all those who connived in the persecution and murder of Catholics under Elizabeth I — and before, and since? Those mass executions for supposed treason at Tyburn? The burning of the monasteries? Or a list of families descended from those who collaborated in the expulsion of 3,000 Jews from England in 1290, a policy supported by at least one of Justin Welby’s predecessors?

    Should we not identify those distant relatives of legislators who prevented women getting the vote until 1928, and working-class men a decade earlier? Note too, the executions for homosexuality until the early 19th century: where is the list naming the hangmen and judges and mass of ordinary people who wholly supported such, uh, vigorous punishment? And then colonialism — a little list, please, of both its architects and foot soldiers, the ones who planned it, the ones who carried it out.

    Pretty soon, of course, you will have an inventory of everyone who ever lived in this country — and, by extension, all of us living here today. Seen from the supposedly pristine perspective of now, everything in the past is tainted and rank because everyone, from the highest born churchman or ruler, down to the lowliest mud-chewing serf (serfdom — there’s another one for the list) was possessed of views different from the ones that we have now.

    Nor should we exclude immigrants and the children of immigrants from this inventory of disgust. My belief in British exceptionalism is on the thinnish side and certainly does not extend to swallowing the notion that Britain was exceptionally wicked. Every country did what it thought it could get away with, according to the morals and expediences of the time.

    Yet the left does buy into this facet of British exceptionalism: everything we did was bad and it was just us doing it. Oh and maybe America. It is a denial of reality similar to that expressed by Liz Jolly, chief librarian at the aforementioned British Library, who said white people invented racism. (Seven Dials, London, 1608: a baker called Bob comes home from work and says to his wife, “Hey, love, I’ve had an idea. Let’s hate black people.” Bingo — racism is born.)

    So you now have a list which sort of comprises everybody in the world: all weirdly complicit in the past and what happened in that strange country. This leaves us with a simple proposition advanced by John Betjeman, which I would have thought commended itself to Justin Welby, especially in its cute skewering of virtue signalling: “Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime-juice minus gin / Quite can drown a faint conviction, that we may be born in sin.”

    Williamson in school-closure U-turn

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F5232e1de-4d17-11eb-85f4-073f76dca568.jpg?crop=1000%2C1500%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    A germ of an idea
    I notice that Sage, the undoubtedly aptly-named coven of scientific experts, is now saying that full lockdown might not be enough to contain Covid. This is presumably because the virus, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, knows that you’re inside your house and will knock at the door pretending to be a Hermes delivery driver — and then pounce.

    It all suggests to me that lockdowns are not terribly effective. A senior member of Sage, the renowned epidemiologist Dr Niall Izzum, said yesterday: “The only sure way to defeat this virus is to try, as hard as we can, to cease to exist. Covid depends upon us. Once we have all bought the farm it will be utterly bereft and will turn to drinking, or even self-harming.

    “That will be the advent of our total triumph over this pathogen. Though I suppose it is a shame we will not be there to gloat.”

    China has worse to give us than Covid
    Nothing can have given the nation greater cheer on New Year’s Eve, as we sat alone in our bio-hazard gear in front of the TV, than watching the gay abandon of the revelries in Wuhan. It is a shame we were not also treated to footage of the undoubted merriment in the Urumqi concentration camps for Muslims, or subjugated Hong Kong.

    I do not think, as some do, that the virus was manufactured in a sinister Chinese bio-lab. But nor do I go along with the reality-denying sanctimony of western liberals who refuse to call Covid the “Chinese virus” (it’s a virus, it came from China) and seem to exculpate the appalling country from every allegation levelled at it. Rather than Covid, it is China’s other diseases which we must, sooner or later, confront — brutality, totalitarianism and oppression.

    If only Sheen were long gong too
    With deep regret I must announce that I will hand back my ABE (Acquaintance of the British Empire) medal. This is to show solidarity with the actor Michael Sheen, who has returned his OBE because the English have sometimes been beastly to the Welsh — sniggering when we beat them at rugby, making fun of their vibrant and intelligible language, and telling stupid jokes like “What’s the best thing to come out of Wales? The M4!”

    Like Michael, I felt honoured to be given this richly deserved bauble. But I also wanted to show my right-on friends my radical credentials; let the rest of the country know that I had been honoured; and take the chance to do a spot of virtue signalling, like the puffed-up narcissistic tosser I am.

    1. Rod Liddle had better go and re-read his Tudor history sharpish, if he thinks the worst persecutions were of Catholics under Elizabeth.

      1. He is correct, though, that every human who ever lived is complicit.

        Take, for example, just one of those guilty of expelling 3,000 Jews way back in 1290. Presuming (reasonably) that each generation is, on average, 25 years, that one culprit will have doubled by 1315 and doubled again to four by 1340. Now, providing that each successive generation doubled, regardless of how many offspring each generation procreated (but, for the purpose of this exercise we shall stick with one each), then today, after 30 generations, that initial one would have produced a grand total (so far) of 536,870,912 humans. And, don’t forget, that is just one of the guilty many from back in 1290.

        We truly are a naughty bunch of reprobates and we should all go and stand in the corner. Now we need to find sufficient corners for us all to stand in!

        1. Not forgetting the descendants of those who burned women for ‘being witches’, and tied women to ducking stools to punish perceived misdemeaours.

        2. Grizz, do you know the name of a closed shape with 536,870,912 corners? I’m nearly going round in circles trying to remember.😎

      2. My thought, too. What about “Bloody” Mary and her attempt to turn back the clock? “… it is China’s other diseases which we must, sooner or later, confront — brutality, totalitarianism and oppression” all of which are coming to a neighbourhood near you in the not too distant future.

  43. Good morning from a Anglo Saxon Queen with blooded axe and sprung longbow.
    Its a nice sunny day today. But not mild enough at night for me to replace the heavy
    Norwegian with the lighter one on the bed. Shall stick with the heavier duvet for awhile yet.

      1. Hello Mr Viking.
        I hate being cold and have many layers to wear at night as well as the duvet and a wool throw over the top .

          2. Take great care he doesn’t find your address, he’ll be there to demonstrate and you may need to consider using yours on his.
            chopper

        1. No. I sleep on a HUGE bath towel – very cosy, very easy to make the bed, just a good shake & spread. Easier to wash & dry than sheets.

          1. With nothing at all covering you?
            What do you wear to bed? What temperature do you keep your thermostat set at?

          2. Nothing at all. Missy comes & gives me a cuddle 2 or 3 times in the night.

            A t-shirt & a slip. I’ll send you a piece – please state preference, would you like top or bottom?

            Downstairs thermo set at 20C, but heat rises. I keep all the inside doors open.

  44. Mistakes don’t fade in this digital world — and they’re catnip for the cancel vultures
    Lionel Shriver
    Sunday January 03 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Four years ago, Mimi Groves of Leesburg, Virginia, had just acquired her learner driver’s licence. Clearly elated, the 15-year-old sent a friend (who must also have been white, or the immediate hoo-ha would have been off the charts) a three-second Snapchat video declaring, “I can drive, n*****s.” Given this story’s worthiness for a column, I trust you can parse the hyphens.

    Mind, Snapchat images promptly disappear, although recipients can, alas, rescue messages from oblivion. So the video seems to have circulated among a few kids at Heritage High School in 2016, if to little effect.

    But Groves’s mixed-race classmate Jimmy Galligan, who claims he was sent the tiny clip only three years later, recognised the video as a mighty weapon. According to an extensive New York Times article run on Boxing Day, the young man tucked it away for public posting “when the time was right”. The time was apparently “right” when Groves had been accepted by the University of Tennessee and the Black Lives Matter movement hit fever pitch last June. Galligan hit send. Cue uproar.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F25746d76-4ce4-11eb-81f9-1b786036a268.jpg?crop=2250%2C1500%2C0%2C0&resize=1022
    Jimmy Galligan, right, says Mimi Groves was ‘taught a lesson’ by his releasing a three-year-old clip of her using the n-word

    Amid the gales of righteous huffing and puffing online, University of Tennessee administrators bullied Groves into withdrawing from the school, threatening to rescind her acceptance if she did not. She is now enrolled in a local two-year community college less likely to pave the way towards a promising career.

    Fine, the girl’s use of the notorious n-word wasn’t advisable, to say the least. But does the punishment fit the crime? I’ve watched this minuscule moment of indiscretion, which is still on YouTube. Sitting in a car, the slight blonde teenager is wearing shades and listening to hip-hop. Her usage is clearly neither pejorative nor even racial. Obvs, as the on-trend would say: she is trying to be cool.

    Although Groves now notes apologetically that the slur was “in all the songs we listened to”, a double standard has been writ in stone. Just because rap and hip-hop are awash with the word doesn’t mean that white people can ever, ever allow those two terrifying syllables to escape their lips. These days, when posting dance videos, clued-up white music fans singing along with black artists apparently put a finger to pursed lips whenever that word arises — like prim, shushing librarians from the days when those censorious biddies didn’t let us talk. It’s hard to imagine these prissy performances of purity improve the choreography.

    I have written before about “the n-word”, a euphemism that I find off-puttingly precious, as if we can’t all spell it out. I dislike the imputation of magical powers to the pronunciation of the word itself, as if its invocation by folks who don’t have permission will suddenly install worldwide apartheid.

    Superstitiously, the extravagance of the taboo implies that white people command fearsome witchcraft. Hypocritically, black singers and comedians gleefully fling the insult every which way, while their white audience members hysterically observe a no-touch rule — a rule that has, if anything, made the pejorative more potent.

    It’s a dubious business to cast the slandering of one race as so much more egregious than the slandering of other groups, for no such shall-not-pass-these-lips taboo pertains to ugly names for, say, Asians, Muslims or Jews. By contrast, the triumphantly reclaimed slight “queer” has been given the green light for angst-free usage by everybody.

    The New York Times window-dressed this story to make Leesburg seem a hotbed of bigotry — noting that the town was “named for an ancestor of the Confederate general Robert E Lee” and chiding that the region originally resisted court-ordered desegregation — about 60 years ago. Leesburg was the site of an early Civil War battle (er, 160 years ago). Slave auctions were once held in its courthouse grounds (at least 160 years ago). What the newspaper actually means: Leesburg is in Virginia.

    Strip off the ideological bunting and this is a supreme example of the petty, unwarranted and gratuitous destruction of a young person’s life to no purpose. The newspaper dug up no other evidence that Groves holds racist views; on the contrary, she has posted enthusiastic support online for Black Lives Matter.

    The fact that Galligan lay in wait with the video — looking for the juncture at which he could do the young woman maximum damage — is outright skin-crawling and belies his having acted from a burst of impetuous indignation. He concedes that his own relatives (his mother is black) sometimes throw around the same racial slur at family gatherings. Whatever grudge he might bear Groves personally is opaque, but one thing is clear. He wanted attention.

    He’s getting it, if not perhaps the sort he hoped for. To be kind, in the wake of BLM fever, mixed-race kids insecure about their identities may have particular motivation to ratchet up their black credentials. (Galligan scolds his own father for “white privilege”.) To be less kind, despite the journalist’s justifying efforts, the young man comes across in the feature as self-congratulatory and lip-smacking.

    “I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” he is quoted as saying “with satisfaction”. “You taught someone a lesson.” What lesson? White folks better not use that bad word? Hey, pal, that message was out already.

    This is a classic instance of the “cancel culture” that its persecutors often claim doesn’t exist. What’s been cancelled is not only a young woman’s further education but also her reputation and her future in the workplace, because this story is bound to follow her. For we live in a digital world in which every mistake clings to us like a smell — a world not so different from one in which we’re never able to wash our clothes. Even Leesburg itself is eternally stained by the original sin of its naming and its segregation of half a century ago. Personally and historically, we now live without mercy.

    Exactly how does such social skeet shooting make the world a better place? I’ve read sheafs of disgusted online comments. Touts are rarely popular, scheming touts even less so. The disproportionately harsh punishment for a 15-year-old’s momentary lapse of judgment reads loudly and clearly even to many black observers. Contrary to the young man’s probable expectations, this episode will not necessarily redound to Jimmy Galligan’s glory. Students of any race at his university might wisely give such a smug predator a wide berth.

    1. “The fact that Galligan lay in wait with the video — looking for the juncture at which he could do the young woman maximum damage — is outright skin-crawling and belies his having acted from a burst of impetuous indignation.” Sums it all up, doesn’t it – this reeks of an act of petty revenge – what an are$hole the man must be.

    2. When I was little there was no racism. Today racism has been invented and promoted out of sheer nastiness and spite. It’s not the ordinary people who are doing it. Ordinary people have never cared much one way or the other about the colour of someone’s skin.
      At the time when I left school there were a number of very large prestigious insurance companies in the city who would not have employed me. I would not have got as far as an interview. They would not have ever seen the colour of my skin. They’d have read the name of my school* in my application and it would have gone straight into the waste bin. That is a plain fact.

      *Catholic school

      1. What’s going to happen with Downside and Ampleforth? Stonyhurst still seems to be going strong.

        1. It tends to be erosion, until there is a sudden collapse. The Catholic Hierarchy have folded in Scotland and Catholic schools now admit muslims…

        2. Applications to Ampleforth have increased since Gavin Williamson and the rest of his class warriors issued their threat to shut the place down.

          1. Over the years we have had about 25 boys from Ampleforth and the first girl who joined the Sixth Form there. Very decent young chaps they are too.

      2. When I was little there was no racism.

        I’d never heard of ‘nig-nogs’ and ‘coons’ till Alf Garnett went on about them.

      3. A Glasgow Rangers scout once ruled out recruiting a young Danny McGrain because he felt that his name suggested he was a Catholic.

        In fact, Danny’s family was protestant and Danny himself supported Rangers as a lad, but, as it turned out, Rangers’ loss was Celtic’s gain. He was probably one of the best defenders of his day – world class!
        :¬)

      1. Careful, Sos. I’ve had comments deleted by our politically-correct mod. from Trudeaunia, simply because I referred to his favourite nigger – Baroque O’ Banana – as a ….. er …… nigger!
        ;¬)

        (Good morning BTW)

        1. My take on these creatures, who conveniently black out their white ancestry, and then use their preferred option to denigrate white people, deserve all the abuse they get, however offensive they find it and particularly however offensive those taking offence on their behalf find it.

          1. I am mystified by the efforts taken to vilify those who take the sting out of this word, along with the heavy grievance and vengeance from its Americanized associations, by making it instead an alternative and rather affectionate description of the colour of a war hero’s favourite dog.

            They’ll be saying that calling your pet dalmation “Spotty” is an affront to acne-sufferers next.

          3. Ah ken readin’ aboot Black Bob in thae Dandy. Naebody said a’thing aboot that name.

          10. If a proscription is threatened, the title can be changed to “Black is Beautiful”.

        4. I recall deleting a post that was unnecessarily racial, you could have made your point just as well without using what is nowadays called inflammatory speech.

          There is a time and a place, that was not it. Discussing that vengeful release of an old post seems to be quite appropriate.

          1. “Discussing that vengeful release of an old post seems to be quite appropriate.”

            WTF is that supposed to mean? Do you mind running that by me again? This time, in English – or Gàidhlig if you like…

          2. just read back up through the thread, it started with someone commenting on an old message being recycled at a time that would do most harm.

        1. I’m thankful I’ve used up a reel of dark brown cotton from my godmother’s sewing basket that I inherited some 20 years back.
          Now the woke police might leave my front door standing.

      3. There is a word, two ‘g’s. an ‘er’, an ‘i’ and an ‘n’. Only a person who is one can call another one by that word. I’m not red haired myself.

      4. When I was a child, we had a black dog called Nick – but our cleaning lady called him……….

    4. “The fact that Galligan lay in wait with the video — looking for the juncture at which he could do the young woman maximum damage — is outright skin-crawling and belies his having acted from a burst of impetuous indignation.” Sums it all up, doesn’t it – this reeks of an act of petty revenge – what an are$hole the man must be.

  45. That well-known epidemiologist, Tony Blair, is pontificating – again – about vaccines …

    1. O/T

      At the opening of Tate Modern in 2000, Tony Blair told the novelist Ian McEwan that he had several of his works hanging on his walls.

        1. “Better to say nothing and look a fool than open your mouth and prove you are … ”

          Abe Lincoln, no less !

  47. Supper tonight. Lamb shanks in rosemary, green beans and aligot.

    **Nods head to all those that opened a tin. Aligot is murder on the shoulders…

      1. Just waiting my thyme.

        Dolly has been bouncing up and down until i gave her the bone…

      1. You mean beating. Just taking out the stress on some potatoes. No Police presence necessary.

    2. Since when did the teaching unions care about the welfare of pupils in schools/colleges? Rather like the NHS unions and patients. It’s all about the workforce, money and political power over government. That and indocrinating more useful idiots when they are working.

      Funny how all the private schools, hospitals and dental practices not being forced to re-task or close by government dictat are all working near normally, even those that don’t charge a fortune for their services.

      My NHS dentist was due to reopen tomorrow (despite them being allowed to in late summer), but I suspect that’ll be shelved with excuses, yet my parents’ private dentists has stayed open since the regulator allowed them to reopen in early summer, and more importantly, undertaking routine work and not just ’emergencies’.

      1. They’re all on the Daily Mail bleating “you don’t have to work in a confined space with 150 children a day”

      2. My hygenist appointment in June was cancelled, but I went last month and things were more or less normal with the hygenist and the dentist.
        Hairdressers, too, have been forced to close and reopen several times now. My hairdresser used to own the salon, but he sold up a couple of years ago to a company with two or three other salons – he’s pretty glad he’s not in charge now.

  49. Radio 5 news yesterday:

    The RSPB has criticised a government decision to permit an offshore wind farm which will harm birds feeding in the North Sea. The giant Hornsea-3 development lies opposite England’s biggest seabird colony in Yorkshire. The government says it’s taken the risk to the birds into account. Our environmental correspondent Roger Harrabin has more:

    “Seabirds, like most wildlife, are already affected by climate change. Take kittiwakes; they nest on cliffs at Flamborough. Their main food source, sand eels, is overfished and the RSPB says climate change is already depleting their food supply. The kittiwakes are now seeking food 75 miles out to sea through an area increasingly populated by giant wind turbines. The government has just permitted another wind farm which it admits will harm the birds, killing perhaps 70 a year.”

    Also here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55509225 but no mention of Danish boats stripping the North Sea (especially the Dogger Bank) for its pig industry.

    Poor Roger must be feeling conflicted by this.

    1. The government says it’s taken the risk to the birds into account…and ignored it

        2. Sorry ‘Effing seagulls, is that better? But mainly the land based common gull, though land based Heron gulls can go too.

          4. An overflying heron once completely splattered my windscreen when I was driving in Germany. The wash system couldn’t cope, so I had to pull over & wipe it all off. It stank!

            No need to apologize – we all make mistakes.

            Willkommen im Club!

      2. Wrap a small piece of calcium carbide in a piece of bread. Throw up into the air for the gull. Stand back and watch it explode. 🙁

    3. “Seabirds, like most wildlife, are already affected by climate change” – then goes on to say the real reason is the overfishing of the sand eels.

  50. That’s me for the day. I hope to join you tomorrow, all being well. It is supposed to be a sunnyish day.

    A demain.

  51. Now folks you couldn’t make it up as they say…….. here we go again with another computer problem, on my Virgin Media email page the send icon/tab has absolutely no where to be seen ??? It’s vanished and I cannot send emails. I’ve looked at their website and it keeps telling me to describe the problem but it will not let me type anything in the highlighted space. I did manage to type in a message telling them in no uncertain terms how useless their ‘customer service’ is and all I want is to be able to send the stack of saved New Year message, emails to my friends and relatives.
    Any ideas please ?

    1. If they’ve messed up the web user interface, it might mysteriously right itself in a day or two when they get enough complaints.
      Do you have other menu options like Reply or Forward? If the latter, simply forward to another email account.

    2. If they’ve messed up the web user interface, it might mysteriously right itself in a day or two when they get enough complaints.
      Do you have other menu options like Reply or Forward? If the latter, simply forward to another email account.

        2. I nearly pitched a work PC out of the office window some years ago. It was only that the window didn’t open saved the bløødy machine from being exploded on the pavement outside.

          1. You should have listened to the DT’s late and much-missed columnist, Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn). ‘Bron’ never tired of telling us, “Computers don’t work!” He typed out all his copy on an old trusty Olivetti typewriter. He flatly refused to give house space to a computer.

          2. I used to work for a man like that very early in my career. I saw him mentioned in the paper recently, so he is still in the same workplace. I would be surprised if he has mastered a computer.

          3. I can understand your frustration. And sympathise. It is time to renew the Anti-virus on this laptop ( it came pre installed and as usual fights like hell if you try to uninstall it and change to another brand) and I know from previous years I will end up with blood pressure through the roof. On an older laptop I have Bullguard – and renewal on that takes two minutes.

          4. I used to have Bullguard on my previous Windows computer and their customer support is superb. Bullguard also has a very useful backup system. I no longer use any proprietary anti-virus tools because, with Windows Defender, good protection is built in. Stand by for a torrent of people who say that Norton, McAfee or Avast are essential.

          5. Since my professional insurers demand evidence of paid-for protection (I have a lot of clients’ financial data on my computer) then something of the sort is “essential” to the running of my business. Whether they are, in fact, essential for the protection of the data I don’t know.

            I use Kaspersky on both computer and phone, and I’ve had no problems. If that means that I’ve got belt and braces I’d rather have that than any sort of “invasion”.

          6. My comment was in the context of a normal home user, and I can well appreciate that a business user such as you might need something extra. Might I respectfully suggest that, if you don’t already do this, make sure that you have a reliable and routine backup system? The best anti-virus and internet protection in the world cannot preserve data if something drastic and terminal happens to your computer.

          7. I don’t take the suggestion amiss, I often read odd tips here which are useful. I’m no techie; but I’ve been free-lance for 26 years and running the laptop with client data for 20. I leave a copy of each client’s data with the client (as a fall back, and in case I fall under a bus) and I’m pretty religious about backing up all my work data very regularly.

            I don’t do copies of personal stuff (like photographs) as often as I should, but I’m very particular about work. As you say, there’s no real alternative.

            When I worked at the haulage yard I was using their computer. The client moaned, frequently, about the time the tape-streamer took to run and the fact that I refused to go home without running it. Then, one Sunday, someone smashed the office window and took both computers. Everything up to Friday night was backed up… he never complained again about how long it took!

          8. Yes, having a backup is a wonderful feeling when things go badly wrong. My home office window was also smashed and an almost new IMac stolen. Fortunately I had a backup drive. I also now have an additional backup drive so belt, belt and braces.

          9. We once had a support ticket (level 3 support for a large telecom company) that was resolved by the terse message “The customer does not have a computer any more.”

          1. I don’t really understand that. He obviously wanted to ‘print’ what was on his screen, but why on earth did he take the toner cartridge out? If a printer doesn’t work there are few reasons, but the most likely is it’s jammed somewhere and that means – as he found out – that you’re going to get sprayed with toner.

      2. I’ve done it several times run tests and run out of options. I’ll try virgin media tmz. I’m sure a nice Indian person will be able to help, they usually do. There wont be any one accountable in this bloody country.
        The dulcet tones of the dinner gong had sounded i’m off.
        Cheers Obs 😎

          1. Morning fellow Paul, the good news is I switched on early this morning and bingo it worked. The SEND icon/tab is back on my email account.
            It’s a strange occurrence with virgin media everytime you can’t get a reaction from ‘customer service’ and have expressed certain feelings, the problem seems to be solved overnight. 😉

    1. And British boats excluded from Norwegian waters.
      Both until an agreement is in place.

    2. The nurse at Whittington Hospital admits that nobody had checked this patients oxygen. The hospital hadn’t run out but the staff on the ward had not checked a patient’s oxygen bottle.

      Talk about producing a lying headline out of someone’s error.

    1. What an utter mess the NHS is in.
      Perhaps they should move the Army in to take over the running of he NHS although, of course, it would be better run by proper managers from the private sector.

        1. The difference is the NHS are supposed to be professionals.

          G4S employs on price.

    2. I remember watching a YT video that said after the public got tired of the pandemic lockdowns, then there would be an orchestrated ‘internet attack’ on utilitiy companies that would be blamed on the usual suspect of Iran, Russian, North Korea or China (or more than one) to justify a draconian lockdown – literally EVERYONE bar the Army, certain ‘critical’ NHS staff and other civil servants, Police, certain government politicians would be not allowed to leave their homes – period – and would have to rely on food deliveries via the Army and Police.

      That’ll scare ’em into submission for Phase 2 – ‘vaccinating’ everyone (possibly by force), except the rich and powerful (who either don’t or get the REAL vaccines) and Phase 3 – The Great Reset, Chinese social credit/virus status system, etc.

      Notice also the distinct LACK of ANY evidence to prove their statements on NHS capacity, etc. It would sooo easy for them to prove that lady wrong about hospitals being deserted, and yet they stay silent about it and arrest her.

      1. Cracks are appearing and are driving Johnson, Hancock, SAGE et al to clamp down harder. The end-game approaches.

        1. It’s their go-to position when forced to use their brains to come up with useful and/or novel solutions to problems. Unsurprising for most senior civil servants who crave to justify their existance and more power over us all.

        2. It’s their go-to position when forced to use their brains to come up with useful and/or novel solutions to problems. Unsurprising for most senior civil servants who crave to justify their existance and more power over us all.

  56. Three fishermen were rescued from their yacht when they drifted dangerously close to a shipwreck packed with 1,400 tonnes of explosives.

    The 27ft vessel was floating near the mouth of the Medway Estuary in Kent, close to where the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery lies beneath the surface.

    Lifeboat crew were sent from Sheerness in Kent to help the yacht and those on board and a tow rope was then fixed to pull it to safety.

    The SS Richard Montgomery is feared to have enough remaining munitions on board to cause a massive 1.4 kiloton explosion which could lead to a four-foot tidal wave in the Thames estuary.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9108669/Three-people-rescued-yacht-drifted-dangerously-close-shipwreck-packed-explosives.html?ito=push-notification&ci=65248&si=7271111

    1. IIRC, that was one reason to not build an airport there – the wreck would have to be moved, and it’s load is very unstable.

      1. No it would have to be unloaded. Now who wants to salvage what could to all intents and purposes be a large bomb with the possibility of there being some very shock sensitive detonation chemicals on board.

    2. I imagine there are some wonderful specimen fish on and around the wreck. Just imagine, no one’s (legally) fished it for more than 75 years. I’d take my chances, and I think these 3 thought, “Why not?”.

      1. Read an article about defusing a WW2 bomb recently, in London, I believe.
        When they opened the detonator, the inside was in as good condition as it was when it was made. So, not all rusted and jammed, just waiting for the tiniest jolt…

        1. wasn’t that the bomb that was found inside a gas holder?

          The disposal crew had to dive into the water at the bottom of the gas holder to deactivate the fuse and then haul the bomb up to the surface before lifting it out to the open air. All of it done by feel because the water was so cloudy.

          I think that the leader of the disposal team died in the last week or two. An understatement to call him a brave man.

          1. That’s the one. Thanks for remembering for me!
            Yes, he was a Reverend as well. The story of that defusing gave me the heebie-jeebies – diving in 0 visibility, in the tank, to defuse a live bomb.

      2. I bet Dutch fishermen will be there like a shot if it goes off. Beats the heck out of electric pulse fishing…

    3. If that ship goes up, the Isle of Sheppey will be wiped out.

      An improvement to North Kent?

  58. Ogga’s post about domino playing has been removed. I tried to post that police were wasting police time.

    1. 328095+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Atg,
      Atilla post still shows an arresting officer in more ways than one, maybe to heavy to move so they will cone him off.

      Update,comment still in position.

          2. We all know you are desperate to get your missives out to us as soon as possible, just as we are eager to receive them, but a little patience is called for.

            Immer mit der Ruhe!/Ta det lungt!

          3. 328095+ up ticks,
            Afternoon Ptv,
            Am I picking up a touch of sarcasm vibes there ?
            not very well concealed either.
            I may presume to much in thinking you are a voting tory of long standing,or one of the odious trio, and have a great deal troubling your conscience regarding the last three decades at this moment in time.
            I do hope that many of the same ilk will self confess as in ” what have I done” in regards to our
            current condition as a nation.
            Ps
            A little honesty is called for.
            English,
            A little honesty is called for.

            PPs
            Could you be a tad clearer on this “we” many thanks.

          5. 328095+ up ticks,
            Ptv,
            I truthfully would find standing by an open sewer more acceptable but no accounting for taste, so this “we” business can you shed any light on that ?

          8. 328095+ up ticks,
            Afternoon Anne,
            There are certainly some strange couplings of late
            according to the telly adverts.

  59. Phew! Huzzah! Ring out wild bells!
    My new printer is now working and it and my laptop are now the best of friends. My pet computer nerd was right; the size of the house and thick walls were causing the problem.
    A question for techie NOTTLers. MPCN doesn’t rate signal boosters. My internet provider (Zen Internet) has an additional service called Everyroom which is supposed to overcome the Victorian pile problem – an extra £7.99 pm.
    I will ring them this week to discuss. I’m looking to techie chums to offer their advice on additional service v. signal booster and also to suggest which questions I should ask.

      1. I couldn’t believe how quickly it fell into place once I moved it.
        I knew we had problems at the back of the house downstairs because there is a solid chimney stack that used to house a ruddy great Victorian range. It is part of the wall of my playroom/study but isn’t actually in the way of the router. The previous owner was a builder and, judging by some of the horrific plumbing and lekky we had to sort out, I do wonder what he shoved into the walls when he changed doorways and so on.
        Talk about life being a learning curve.

        1. He’s been too busy sitting on MB’s lap, fixing his beady eye on every morsel of smoked salmon pate passing the boss’s lips.

          2. He’s due for a weigh-in on Thursday. I may add a smidge to his supper this evening.

      3. I couldn’t believe how quickly it fell into place once I moved it.
        I knew we had problems at the back of the house downstairs because there is a solid chimney stack that used to house a ruddy great Victorian range. It is part of the wall of my playroom/study but isn’t actually in the way of the router. The previous owner was a builder and, judging by some of the horrific plumbing and lekky we had to sort out, I do wonder what he shoved into the walls when he changed doorways and so on.
        Talk about life being a learning curve.

        1. Our bedroom/ downstairs study extension was built in th eearly 90s a couple of years before we bought the house. It’s always been cold and the radiators struggle to keep it just not freezing.

          Last spring OH decided to set a swift brick into the gable end wall…… it’s solid breezr block under the stone cladding. No insulation or gap at all…….. why they didn’t insulate it as it was built, as all the neighbouring houses have been I don’t know.

    2. We use a booster produced by Google and it’s reasonably successful. It doesn’t work everywhere but we have fairly thick stone walls and the wireless Livebox isn’t in the ideal place

      1. Early last year, we were planning with my pet computer nerd to change the position of the router and have a general sort out.
        And then events spiralled out of control and here we are.

        1. Unfortunately we were stuck with an extremely complex set of wiring when we bought the old place and the phone engineer was hopeless and could only get one of about a dozen of the available sockets to actually function.

          1. One of the first jobs OH did when we moved here was to label all the many different circuits in the fuse box.

          2. The fuse boxes are pretty good, it’s all the telephone sockets that are a complete mystery.

          3. Not to mention all the cables with funny bits on the ends cluttering up at least two drawers and a box in the shed.

          4. Yes indeedy.

            I’ve just taken a couple of crates worth to the tip.
            Nothing older ever seems to fit a more modern PC.

          5. We had the place rewired – among other things – c.2000. Again, every circuit is now labelled. Saves an awful lot of switching on and off and yelling at each other from far, far away.

    3. We have similar problems with broadband – our house is an old stone cottage with extensions both sides so it’s spread out and has thick walls. Our next door neighbour said we should get BT to send us their disks till we get a good signal in each room but I haven’t tried that yet as not sure what to do with them……..! When they forced us to have their super duper new hub last February, I spent ages on the phone to tech support (son in Basel) to get the network back up and running.

      Sadly I think he made a slight error and we now have two networks – both called Home/home. ‘Home’ works in the newer part of the house and ‘home’ works in here (old cottage part). My phone only picks up ‘Home’ in the newer part and doesn’t recognise ‘home’. I’m sure he could rectify that in moments if he had been here at Christmas, but I’ve got used to it and don’t want to hassle him.

      1. All these things are difficult enough at the best of times. In the current panic, they are becoming next to impossible to sort out.

          1. Like plumbing, cars, electricity and so on – I use them. I don’t expect to have to do the other stuff. Oh well, one must rise to the challenge, like Dowager Duchesses during the war when their maids went off to work in aircraft factories.

          5. Our printer stopped working a few months ago……..a couple of people told us how to fix it. As I wasn’t doing any minutes for meetings, etc I got used to not having it. The other day, husband discoved the problem…………one of the plugs in the back had worked loose………

          8. Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
            Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
            It is the business of the wealthy man
            To give employment to the artisan.

          9. I try to do my best. I really feel for my hairdresser, she and her girls have been messed about something chronic.

          10. Indeed. When I was at the hairdresser recently, all their stuff – robes, chairs, combs etc – had been ruined by disinfection fluid between each customer. Anything plastic was falling apart, and will all need replacing. She said “when this is over” – I did not share my fear that lockdowns will continue into the foreseeable future, until the globalists have achieved whatever it is that they want to achieve, eg the fall of national currencies.
            By various devious tricks, they do not qualify for furlough money this time round, although they had to close.
            They are only still going because she had some money saved for a regular refurbishment programme. She said that every time she gets the trade news, there are more salons going under and equipment being offered for sale.

    4. Ummm… I imagine the ‘everyroom’ thing is simply a repeater. The BT wifi I think uses a mesh network.

      You could consider a mesh network, with devices upstairs and in hard ot reach places? Amazon make a boxy white on, Google make some really nice, simple kit that doesn’t scream techie.

      I confess I’ve not used it, but it might be one to try. An alternative entirely is good old ethernet.

      1. I’ve seen the word ethernet but never known what it means.
        A vision of an ancient aunt cackling over her steam driven computer comes to mind.

        2. Cable instead of wifi. Generally faster, but it means plugging in a laptop or desktop directly to a router or using a powerline adapter (using the ring main as an ethernet cable).

        3. I am using ethernet to connect to the router by LAN (Local Area Network) cable. I used to use it from downstairs to upstairs (where the router is), but now I’ve moved the computer next to the router I still use it because I don’t have a wireless card in this machine.

    5. If the electrical wiring of your house is in good condition, then a booster that plugs into the mains and broadcasts the signal it gets via the wiring, can be effective. Those that simply repeat the wifi signal it receives are dependent on themselves receiving a good signal. Additionally, they usually do not result in a higher speed at the device because they have to act in both directions (ie. from and to the router and to and from the device). I have used the latter type and I would agree with your PCN. I imagine that what Zen Internet is offering you is a “Mesh” system that consists of two or three devices that “talk” to one another and broadcast the same signal so that, in theory, you will get a good signal anywhere in the house. They are expensive and, although I have no personal experience of them, reports on the various forums suggest that they do not always work properly

      The truth is that the best quality and most reliable signal will always be achieved by connecting your router directly to a device using ethernet cable. However, that is often not possible because of house construction features and, of course, smart phones and tablets do not have ethernet ports.

      In my experience, PCNs tend to be attracted to the latest, and usually expensive, technology so do not rush into anything. The best solution will probably depend on a number of aspects – the distances between devices and router, the type of walls in between, condition of electrical wiring, do you want to have a good signal anywhere and everywhere in your house and so on, and a cheap solution may be all that you need.

      Given that the cost of the Zen Internet solution is close to £100 per year, it might be worth your trying a second-hand range extender/booster from eBay before incurring what might be unneCessary expenditure. There’s a couple of BT 610 Dual Band N600 wifi range extenders going on Ebay right at this link:

      https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=bt+600+range+extender&_sacat=0

      I have used one of these myself and they work reasonably well and are very easy to set up.

      1. One of the unsavoury facts lodged in my memory is the advice that haemorrhoid cream reduces the dark circles and bags under the eyes.
        For some reason, I’ve never bothered to experiment.

        1. I always wondered about the verse in The Wild West Show about the rhinoceros being the richest animal in the world. A quick check on the etymology on the internet informed me that rhino used to be an English slang term for money. Hence rhino = money and sore arse = piles – so this pachyderm is very rich because he has piles of money.

        2. I always wondered about the verse in The Wild West Show about the rhinoceros being the richest animal in the world. A quick check on the etymology on the internet informed me that rhino used to be an English slang term for money. Hence rhino = money and sore arse = piles – so this pachyderm is very rich because he has piles of money.

        4. I don’t blame you, Anne. How far up one would need to apply the haemorrhoid cream to reach the bags under the eyes?

          Doesn’t bear thinking about.
          :¬(

        5. I assume that works when smeared around the eyes…? Not as a by-prouct of it’s original function.

        6. Beware . . .
          THIS IS AN ACTUAL
          CUSTOMER REVIEW FROM A MAN ON AMAZON AFTER USING VEET HAIR REMOVAL CREAM
          After having been told my danglies looked like an elderly Rastafarian I decided to take the
          plunge and buy some of this as previous shaving attempts had only been mildly
          successful and I nearly put my backout trying to reach the more difficult bits.

          Being a bit of a romantic I thought I would do the deed on the missus’s birthday as a bit if a treat.
          I ordered it well in advance and working in the North Sea I considered myself a bit above some of
          the characters writing the previous reviews and wrote them off as soft officetypes
          Oh my fellow sufferers . . .how wrong I was.
          I waited until the other half was tucked up in bed and after giving some vague hints about aspecial surprise I went down to the bathroom.Initially all went well and I applied the gel and stood waiting for something to happen.
          I didn’t have long to wait. At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head.
          Religion hadn’t featured much in my life until that night but I suddenly became willing to convert to any religion to stop the violent burning around the turd tunnel and what seemed like the the destruction of the meat and two veg.
          Struggling not to bite through my bottom lip I tried to wash the gel off in the sink and only succeeded in blocking the plughole with a mat of hair.

          Through the haze of tears I struggled out of the bathroom across the hall into the kitchen, by this
          time walking was not really possible and I crawled the final yard to the fridge in the hope of some form of cold relief.
          I yanked the freezer drawer out and found a tub of ice cream, tore the lid off and positioned it under me.
          The relief was fantastic but only temporary as it melted fairly quickly and the fiery stabbing returned.
          Due to the shape of the ice cream tub I hadn’t managed to give the starfish any treatment and I groped around in the draw for something else as I was sure my vision was going to fail fairly soon.
          I grabbed a bag of what I later found out was frozen sprouts and tore it open trying to be quiet as I did so.
          I took a handful of them and an tried in vain to clench some between the cheeks of my arse.
          This was not doing the trick as some of the gel had found its way up the chutney channel and it felt like the space shuttle was running its engines behind me.
          This was probably and hopefully the only time in my life I was going to wish there was a gay snowman in the kitchen which should give you some idea of the depths I was willing to sink to in order to ease the pain.
          The only solution my pain crazed mind could come up with was to gently ease one of the sprouts where no veg had gone before.
          Unfortunately, alerted by the strange grunts coming from the kitchen the other half chose that moment to come and investigate and was greeted by the sight of me, arse in the air, strawberry ice cream dripping from my bell end pushing a sprout up my arse while muttering “ooooohhh that feels good”
          Understandably this was a shock to her and she let out a scream and as I hadn’t heard her come init caused an involuntary spasm of shock in myself which resulted in the sproutbeing ejected at quite some speed in her direction.
          I can understand that having a sprout fired against your leg at 11 at night in the kitchen probably wasn’t the special surprise she was expecting and having to explain to the kids the next day what the strange hollow in the ice cream was didn’t improve my status
          …so to sum it up, VEET removes hair, dignity and self-respect!

    7. I bet that set you back a bob or two, given how computer parts are in very short supply since the pandemic broke.

      Not that I’m a computer whizz myself, but I wonder if those systems that use electrical sockets and the wires as carriers of PC network signals are of any use here?

      1. I think that you are referring to powerline adapters. You plug one into the mains near your router and connect the router to it with an ethernet cable. This becomes the master adapter. You then plug in another adapter near where you want to connect your computer; this is the slave adapter. Depending on its type, you either connect the slave adapter to your computer via an ethernet cable or via wifi. They can cope with very large distances. However, they do depend on the wiring standard in your house and do not like extension sockets or dual circuit wiring systems. For what it’s worth, I used a number of Comtrend 902 adapters which worked well but failed after a year or two.

      2. The printer was a free replacement from Amazon for one that proved faulty.
        As my pet computer nerd has to isolate because of ill son and elderly mother, I had to get on with it myself.
        I was ready to throw in the towel and ask 15 year old grandson to take over, but my computer chap wondered if distance and solid Victorian walls might be the problem. And it was.
        I can leave it where it is for the moment and then worry in a few week’s time. Meanwhile, as people have kindly given me useful advice, I now know what to research.

    8. 7.99 a month is way too expensive.
      You can buy a WLAN repeater, which basically just picks up the signal and repeats it.
      Or else you can buy a system that shoots the WLAN signal down the electricity wires. It’s just a couple of plugs – you plug one in at the router, and the other(s) whereever your computer is. Then you attach your computer to the plugs via LAN cable if I remember correctly.

      https://www.argos.co.uk/sd/tp-link/
      The extender and booster is the WLAN repeater.
      The powerline extender is the one that broadcasts the signal down the electricity wires.

      tp-link is a Chinese company. There is a US company that makes similar stuff and you can buy their products in PC World, but I can’t remember their name.

      1. Thank you. I never ceased to be amazed at the range of knowledge on this site.
        I’ve now been give plenty of food for thought and research.

    1. Playing politics, and he can’t lose.
      Boris orders more lockdown – Starmer wins, Boris did what he wanted.
      No more lockdown and the virus infects many more (as it inevitably will) – Starmer wins, Boris should have done what he said.

      1. Which just goes to show that if Starmer follows his nose, he’ll be going round in circles.

      2. …especially when there’s a whole raft of civil servants ready and willing to do Starmer’s bidding to show he ‘was right’, with a very grateful MSM to back him up because they want those on high to fail.

      3. He’s the leader of the opposition. It’s his job to make the most of the government’s errors. If Johnson and co gave him a bit less in the way of ammunition he’d have to work a bit harder.

    3. …safe in the knowledge that he will still be paid, and no risk of losing his house if used as security.

    4. Remind me of the last leader of the Labour Party who was a knight of the realm…..

    5. For all people on the public payroll, except front line workers dealing directly with covid sufferers and other “essential workers”

      Tier one full pay, tier 2 – 20% tier 3 – 40%, tier 4 – 60% and tier five – 80%.

      That would concentrate a few minds

          1. As t is on mine, but, by your own admission, you could hardly see it on yours.

            Is this a 5-minute argument, or the full 1/2 hour?

          1. As there is a space between ‘-‘ & the %, I didn’t recognise it as a minus sign. Pedantry wins every time.

          2. When I typed it up as -nn% the minus on my screen is almost invisible so I put the spaces in and presumed that most people would see it as such rather than a space or a hyphen.

          4. I rely on the more intelligent posters on here being able to work out such things for themselves.

          5. “I put the spaces in and presumed that most people would see it as such rather than a space or a hyphen.”

            Ah, but you forgot the old saying, “There’s none so blind as those who will not see.”.

          9. Which is why, when searching databases for an empty cell, you search on [field] = NULL

    7. On the condition that all those working in the public sector suffer the same level of financial consequences as the self-employed and those working in the private sector?

      MPs should receive no salary at all until the problem is over.

    8. 328095+up ticks,
      Afternoon TB,
      Ogga’s calling for a General Election to get the 650 politico’s culled and under control.

    1. After grilling the gang, new information has lead to raids all over the country on other secret games in a domino effect.
      So when you hear a knock knock on the door, you know it’s your turn.

    2. I once ate a whole pack of those gaming tiles
      I could do a great impression of Farts Domino for the next week

    3. After grilling the gang, new information has lead to raids all over the country on other secret games in a domino effect.
      So when you hear a knock knock on the door, you know it’s your turn.

      1. 328095+ up ticks,
        Afternoon M,
        And never forget and one for his hat, now get me another Guinness whilst I get me pipe going,
        happy days.

    4. Twelve? Our enforcers broke up a six person gathering (can’t call six a party) on new years eve.

  62. Just back from w/rose. Set off in dazzlingly bright sunshine. When I came out of the store after 1/2 hour’s shopping, thick, grey cloud, heavy drizzle & sleet falling. Dry again now.

  64. I think that the BPAPM should simply go straight to Tier 10 – none of this “death by a thousand cuts” malarkey.

    Then we’d all know where we stand – forbidden to leave bedrooms – even to go to the loo.

  65. Well, that’s the end of the dullest Christmas/New year ever. No relatives, no parties, no visitors, not even a pub trip. Firstborn just scraped the snow & ice off his truck, and is away to his smallholding in daylight, so he can get the tractor & snowblower on the drive before dark. Worl for us all tomorrow.
    But hey, things can only get better! :-))
    Hope all Y’all had a good break, with too much good food and too much booze, and contact with nearest & dearest. Zoom doesn’t cut it…

    1. Thank you we had a pleasant Christmas day with our son, d-i-l and grandson. Broker all their silly rules and we’re still alive and so are they.

    2. It’s been rather weird having two weekends of four consecutive Sundays!

      Back to normality tomorrow when every day is exactly the same!

  66. Had roast duck for dinner last night . Tonight its Salmon en Croute, baby roasted rosemary potatoes, carrots peas and broccoli.

    1. I’ve had a late lunch/early supper of chicken & leek pie, boiled potatoes & sprouts, then bread butter pudding, washed down with a yellow label Wolf-Blass Chardonnay, which was I was given for Christmas.

    2. We had roast duck on Christmas Day….cold duck on Boxing Day……………and the day after…… finally three days of soup.

      1. Sounds delicious. Its very much a favourite meat but it lasts ages as you ‘ll know.
        We had little partridges for Christmas day , very nice but I may have overcooked them a little .

        1. There’s not a great deal of meat on a duck – so never enough for four. As we were just us this year I thought duck would make a change. My son was spared the turkey soup on his birthday, as we were finishing the duck soup. He said he had chili con carne instead.

        2. Secret of cooking partridges, Aethel, is to let them ‘rest’ for a wee while after cooking – preferably in a pear tree.

      2. Wot U need is duck of Dordogneshire, after they’ve been fattened for foie gras.

        The problem is that they are very expensive. The big ones on the market were offered at 60 euros each.

        Ouch!

        1. People who call Norfolk ‘flat’ have evidently never visited the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.

          2. I’ve done lots of that. I’ve ridden most of the A149 coast road (my favourite road in England) but I’d think twice today with the amount of traffic on it these days.

          4. After my knees were damaged, playing too much contact sport, I found walking up hills or stairs was more comfortable than walking down.

          5. Because I have arthritic knees, I confine my running to running up hills. “Quality running” as my Swedish marathon-running friend calls it.

          11. I have never forgotten my first sight of Ely Cathedral across the Fens.
            You can see why it’s called The Ship of the Fens.
            I found the Great Ouse being about 20 feet above the houses very discombobulating.

          12. I used to like driving from Cambridge to Ely where the optical illusion of it sailing across the route was wonderful.

          13. I have never forgotten my first sight of Ely Cathedral across the Fens.

            Nor have I. I was visiting the fens to see a red-necked phalarope and the vista all around that area near Ely was stunning. I love all of Britain’s wild places: mountains, estuaries, woodland, moorland, lakes and rivers as well as the flat lands and fens. My favourite, though, has to be wooded hillsides. No one does them like the UK.

        1. I heard you say you wrapped one Christmas present this year. No friends ! Can’t imagine why.

          1. Unlike you & other materialists, I don’t measure my friends by the presents they give or receive.

  68. Off topic.
    HG has just made me feel very, very old.
    “Would you like to watch the TV, Aled Jones at 50?”

    It seems only yesterday that he was a treble.
    {:-((

    1. Even I am shocked he is fifty, and I’m only a couple of years older!
      I’ve still got it vaguely in the back of my mind that I ought to listen to his choirboy songs.

        1. its Tuesday that everyone should worry about. If the dems win those senate seats in Georgia, there will be no stopping the left.

          1. Sadly McConnell hasn’t done the GoP or his own standing any favours by his recent pronouncements. He’s coming across rather like the LibLibCon establishment lot over here – varying flavours of the same. There needs to be a HUGE clearout of establishment politicians across the world.

            Whether this will come before China have played their hand (as well as the WEF lot in full), I don’t know. I do find it amazing how so many people naively believe that 2021 will be better than 2020. I think there’s going to be a lot worse this coming year and likely for the forseeable future, assuming Trump doesn’t pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat come Wednesday. Even if Pence does call it in Trump’s favour, I can’t see that washing with the rest of the Establishment and Left, who will make the riots of the last year look like REAL (mainly) peaceful protests look like a child having a huff and having to eat their greens.

            I bet Trump now bitterly regrets not going after Section 230 now. Even with all the Dems cheating and the MSM lies, it still took the social media and tech giants to cover things up and censor enough to effectly turn that all-important 7% or so of voters to Biden from Trump. You could tell they meant business after what they did at the start of the pandemic to frame it all as Trump’s fault.

          2. I certainly agree about a clear out and take Pelosi out of politics as well. There is no chance of things in the US improving while the old guard stays in power.

            The rest you know I don’t agree with.

            Have you seen the latest Trump attack doing the msm rounds? Trump apparently spent an hour on the phone with the Georgia Secretary of State yesterday and openly told him to find more votes, no matter what it took.

            Are we really supposed to believe that he would have made that kind of call in front of witnesses and allowed a transcript to be released? Like most Canadians,I don’t like the way he has treated canada but to be so stupid as that! No way.

          3. Given it was apparently (according to Tim Pool) using many ‘jump cuts on the version the Washington Post ‘leaked’ and their political affiliation, I wouldn’t trust it at all. Rather like that YouTuber who made another guy sound like some ist or phobe or suchlike but who got caught after the interviewee recorded the entire conversation themselves and released it to show them up.

    1. I read about his “battle” yesterday! Can’t remember if it was in the Fail, but glad he’s put them right!

      1. Next headline – JC loses mind – doesn’t realise how bad he’s affected by Covid. – still thinks he’s OK.

          4. Thanks Walter! It’s just that I was in an article in The Fail years ago and the words attributed to me were absolutely, completely and utterly made up!

          7. Walter I can assure you I’m not going to waste my life trying to search decades of archive material….

          9. It was a “lifestyle” swap thing with my younger daughter! Quite a laugh really! We got “styled” and dressed up, and made up and photographed etc. And they paid us! Anyway it came out in print and the article was absolute tripe! Not one word was anything we had said! Meh, it was an experience!!

    1. The only thing about that is that whilst I’m similarly bemused about reality show “stars” etc, it lumps them together with “entertainers”. Who were the ones who provided the content of Netflix, the livestream opera performances, the living room concerts, and the books that everyone devoured during lockdown. Just a small, squeaky plea for my kind!

      1. “To them that hath much, shall more be given. From them that hath little, shall even that they hath be taken away”
        Luke.

    2. We don’t need the 8000+ freeloaders that have got here in the last 12 months – – but the govt keeps waving them in for us to keep.

  72. Back from a stroll along the Kennet & Avon Canal. I came across this boat that I shared 16 locks of the Caen Hill Flight 3 years ago. The first photo was taken then because the skipper (who couldn’t see over the top to steer) told me all his worldly possessions were on the boat. I thought he was on his way to the Council tip. As you can see from the second photo taken today there doesn’t seem to have been much if any rearrangement of the kit on the roof…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8ceca8b3c12fa9a86f501d01fbaacddb6c1a608c57a0a7d98b8e32dec7077445.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5553954d6299685917e4791dea06c996f7a23c750cfe35e34c59f7134211e596.jpg

      1. There is so much kit inside there ain’t much room for oxygen. I did wonder if oxygen starvation might be an issue….

      1. He solved the steering problem by bending sideways and peering down the length of the cabin sides….

  75. 328095+ up ticks,
    Fact that must be faced, the real danger facing the peoples
    is being being given succour via the polling booth and resides in parliament.
    Seemingly this political hydra’s staple diet is
    murder/ rape / abuse / unending chaos on a daily basis if this is NOT recognised by now by the majority of the electorate then they must be as thick as shoat sh!te.

    Terrorist Who Plotted Police Beheading ‘Highly Likely’ to be Released with Lifelong Anonymity.

    1. It was better than the opening episode but there’s still a lot that it could improve on. In particular, the portrayal western diplomats was disgraceful.

    4. I saw the resident woodpecker when down at my parents’ place for Christmas. Not pecking any trees mind you, just the grass and surveying (presumably) his manor. Oddly enough back home, I now hear some birds chipring at midnight to 1am – I wonder what they’re getting up to?!

      1. Firstborn has both green and black woodpeckers at his smallholding.
        We have black ones here – our lot like to bang on the tin caps to the telegraph poles – almost like applause for the nhs, it is.

        1. The resident one at my parents’ back garden is the green type. I never realised there were more types than just the black ones until it arrived on the scene.

  78. Evening, all. Been a sunny, if very cold, day here, with blue sky. I managed to get into the garden to carry on tidying up for the first time in 2021. Let’s hope it’s the first of many.

  80. HAPPY HOUR – come on NoTTlers fess up. Do you have it…?

    The Essence of Charm By Laurie Lee

    Charm is the ultimate weapon, the supreme seduction, against which there are few defenses. If you’ve got it, you need neither money, looks, nor pedigree. It’s a gift, given only to give away, and the more used, the more there is. It is also a climate of behavior set for perpetual summer and thermostatically controlled by taste and tact.
    True charm is an aura, an invisible musk in the air; if you see it working, the spell is broken. Charm is dynamic, and cannot be turned on and off at will. As to its ingredients, there is no fixed formula. A whole range of mysteries goes into the caldron, but the magic it offers must be absolute-one cannot be “almost” or “partly” charmed.

    In a woman, charm is probably more exacting than in a man, requiring a wider array of subtleties. It is a light in the face, an air of exclusive welcome, an almost impossibly sustained note of satisfaction in one’s company, and regret without fuss at parting. A woman with charm finds no man dull; indeed, in her presence he becomes not just a different person but the person he most wants to be. Such a woman gives life to his deep-held fantasies by adding the necessary conviction to his long suspicion that he is king.
    Of those women who have most successfully charmed me I remember chiefly their voices and eyes. Their voices were intimate and enveloping. The listening eyes, supreme charm in a woman, betrayed no concern with any other world than this, warmly wrapping one round with total attention and turning one’s lightest words to gold. Theirs was a charm that must have continued to exist, like the flower in the desert, even when there was nobody there to see it.

    A woman’s charm spreads round her that particular glow of well-being for which any man will want to seek her out and, by making full use of her nature, celebrates the fact of his maleness and so gives him an extra shot of life. Her charm lies also in that air of timeless maternalism, that calm and pacifying presence, which can dispel a man’s moments of frustration and anger and restore his failures of will.
    Charm in a man, I suppose, is his ability to capture the complicity of a woman by a single-minded acknowledgment of her uniqueness. Here again it is a question of being totally absorbed, of really forgetting that anyone else exists, for nothing more fatally betrays than the suggestion of a wandering eye. Silent devotion is fine, but seldom sufficient; it is what a man says that counts, the bold declarations, the flights of fancy, the uncovering of secret virtues. A man is charmed through his eyes, a woman by what she hears, so no man need to be too anxious about his age: As wizened Voltaire once said: “Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce the Queen of France.”

    But charm isn’t exclusively sexual; it comes in a variety of cooler flavors. Most children have it–till they are told they have it–and so do old people with nothing to lose; animals, too, of course. With children and smaller animals, it is often in the shape of the head and in the chaste unaccusing stare; with young girls and ponies, a certain stumbling awkwardness, a leggy inability to control their bodies. But all these are passive and appeal by capturing one’s protective instincts.
    You know who has charm. But can you acquire it? Properly, you can’t, because it’s an originality of touch you have to be born with. Or it’s something that grows naturally out of another quality, like the simple desire to make people happy. Certainly, charm is not a question of learning palpable tricks, like wrinkling your nose, or having a laugh in your voice. On the other hand, there is an antenna, a built-in awareness of others, which most people have, and which care can nourish.

    But in a study of charm, what else does one look for? Apart from the ability to listen–rarest of all human virtues–apart from warmth, sensitivity, and the power to please, there is a generosity which makes no demands. Charm spends itself willingly on young and old alike, on the poor, the ugly, the dim, the boring, on the last fat man in the corner. It reveals itself also in a sense of ease, in casual but perfect manners, and often in a physical grace which springs less from an accident of youth than from a confident serenity of mind. Any person with this is more than just a popular fellow; he is also a social healer.
    Charm, in the end, is a most potent act of behavior, the laying down of a carpet by one person for another to give his existence a moment of honor. It is close to love in that it moves without force, bearing gifts like the growth of daylight. It snares completely, but is never punitive. It disarms by being itself disarmed, strikes without wounds, wins wars without casualties–though not, of course, without victims.

    In the armory of man, charm is the enchanted dart, light and subtle as a hummingbird. But it is deceptive in one thing–like a sense of humor, if you think you’ve got it, you probably haven’t.

        1. A charming fart is one which embraces you warmly, even comfortingly, until it suddenly constricts your windpipe.

    2. Those words were charm itself:) courtesy, good manners. English traditional virtues are / were charming. Charm is a delight in an aggressive modern world.

    3. I have charm gu leòr,Plum.

      Along with my charisma, razor-sharp mind, mordant wit, and devilish good looks, it’s one of my many endearing qualities.

      1. Blugger – I was just going to write ‘you forgot “modesty”’ and then scrolled down to see that I had been beaten to it.

          2. There’s always a bit of repartee.

            Give as good you get and go for it!

            You got picked up on one of the favourite bits earlier:

            No such thing as a seagull.

            You know what you meant, I and most others knew what you meant, but you still “had to be told”

          3. He was correct. No complaints. I guess someone who cares about birds and the distinction is important.

          6. So do I, on the west wall. David Austin always said that Seagull & Rambling Rector are one & the same. I have both, and I don’t accept that.

          7. Rambling Rector and Seagull are different roses. Whilst I admire David Austin, most of the books on roses I possess agree these are different.

          8. My Seagull always flowers ahead of the Rambling Rectors, but of course, it has the advantage of the west wall. It also has far larger flower clusters than RR. One of the RRs is on the north wall of the house, but it has spread on to the south wall of the garage; that part blooms ahead of the rest.

          9. My Seagull was rampant and had shot across my neighbours’ property. I offered to cut it back but they took delight in Its
            abundant foliage. I have previously posted photos of this specimen, but am unable to post the same from my iPhone.

            As you remark, Seagull has larger flower clusters than Rambling Rector.

          10. I share my south hedge with my neighbour. In order, starting at the house, they have the benefit of Teasing Georgia, Albertine, Félicité et Perpétue, The Garland, Veilchenblau, Mme Albert Carrière, another The Garland & finally Bobbie James. I say the benefit, because most of the blossom is on their side, but I get the scent. These roses once stopped a night-time prowler crossing from their garden into mine. A defensive barrier was part of the plan – applies to the other boundaries too.

            As said, my Seagull occupies a large part of the west wall & at the northern end it mingles with Sander’s White around my study window, which is a late season flowerer, so I have continuous blossom for quite a few weeks.

    4. Charm:

      The Essence of Charm By Laurie Lee

      By definition, one cannot ‘have’ charm; It can only be smelt by others, sweetie … x

    5. It’s not for me to say,….. but on the subject last night after my better half had gorn up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. I poured my self a 12 year old Scottish tan liquid and sat and watched the old film Notting Hill. Having never seen it before i Thoroughly enjoyed it, it even brought about a slight amount of dampness to my eyes as it ended ‘happily ever after’. Mind you i did take another dram and it might have been the fumes. 😎

    8. Having thought about it, it is easy to refute your argument that charm is some kind of a natural quality. When I went to Oxford from my very humble background I observed the charm of the ex-public schoolboys. They all had it, except when they weren’t trying and then they could be as nasty as anything you might find in my native Merthyr, and believe me that can be very nasty. They had been taught it at school, they had learned it, although some not terribly well.

      So I copied what they did. I also learned the accent, which is still very occasionally useful. I watched what the best of them did, and how they did it. It wasn’t very hard. I can assure you as a Merthyr boy with a sarf Lunnon on accent (I learned that too, to stay in one piece) it was absolutely necessary when chasing girls. I just never answered the question “Which school did you go to”. Tut tut, no no. I wasn’t fake, I never pretended to be what I wasn’t, I just let people make assumptions, and women do make the most flattering possible assumptions about a man they fancy. I should say that since Oxford my accent has migrated to an entirely un-placeable generic “English educated”. An accent that no one can object to, a rule of charm, do nothing that people might object to.

      When I go abroad I get told “Ah the English gentleman is so wonderful, so charming”. Not once, but frequently. I once took a lady on holiday with me and I showed her how it’s done. How to dress, how to speak to people, how to sit, how to walk. She picked it up in a day. After a couple of days of wait staff fawning over her, being the centre of attention in restaurants, getting the best tables, having people get out of her way as she walked down the street (in Italy for heaven’s sake) she decided she really really like being a charming lady. But not in the UK, it doesn’t work in the UK.

      1. When did you matriculate, if it’s not giving away too much information?
        I was there in the late 80s – just want to be sure that you are not one of my contemporaries who might be the holder of embarrassing memories!

      2. I’ll be heading down the A470 past Merthyr on Wednesday if the Covid Police let me past Storey Arms. I have a PET scan booked at the Heath in Cardiff.
        My story is the reverse of yours. Having left Malvern Col. in 65, I started an apprenticeship at AEC and had to attend Soufall Tech. I found it quite hard changing my accent to Indian to fit in!

        1. I haven’t lived in Merthyr since I was 16, and that was too long. South London was an astonishing cascade of opportunity and experience. Sport, music, pubs, girls (although it must be said girls didn’t discover me) – I was just blown away for the first year. Then I discovered hard work, which ruined my life, obviously.

    9. My dog has charm in abundance. Even in old age, he has a really cute face and he attracts people to him to ooh and ah. I used to tell him “your face is your fortune”, but he’d just flutter his eyelashes 🙂

    10. I thought Laurie Lee the most charming of men. He would prop up the bar with the landlord Sean Treacy in The Queens Elm on Fulham Road in the seventies.

      Another charming visitor to the pub was Eduardo Paolozzi with whom I was fortunate to collaborate on several projects. His studio was nearby.

      1. Snap: I too, had the good fortune to meet Laurie Lee and Sean Tracey in the Queens Elm on Fulham Road c. 1967 – 68; the walls were festooned with smoking pipes from all over …

        Much later, I was saddened to learn that the pub has gone …

        1. Both were good company. Sean Treacy was writing a book at that time c1973 and I have a copy. It is entitled ‘A Smell of Broken Glass’ and relates his childhood in Ireland.

          Previously to taking on the Queens Elm, Sean Treacy ran a pub on Kings Road and there are accounts of the same friendships and the gentle conversations between Treacy and Laurie Lee. I have forgotten the name of the pub for the moment but often drank there post Treacy, having friends in Chelsea.

          Paolozzi was not the only sculptor to inhabit the Queens Elm. Often Liz Frink called in.

          My other memory apart from the pipes you recall is the collection of framed JAK cartoons when JAK was the cartoonist for the Evening Standard.

    11. Sorry, but charm can be turned off and on at will. As a man it is skill you learn, some of it just rules to follow, some of it technique to learn. “He made me feel like I was the only person in the room” is 100% technique, and only happens when you bother to make it happen.

        1. Actually I have, when I want. Unfortunately, so many British women are no longer possessed of good manners, let alone charm, so it is somewhat wasted at home. I think that is due to Soap Operas, but I cannot be sure. There is a reason why the English gentleman is so admired overseas (believe me, he is), but no one has ever heard of the English lady. It wasn’t that way a few decades ago, but it is now.

          BTW, a person possessed of charm would never post a snap judgement as you did, they wouldn’t make that mistake. One of the rules.

          2. I’ll bet that’s been a relief to you throughout your life!

            };-O

            I was expelled from charm school…

          3. I sent my photo to a Lonely Hearts club once . . . They sent it back saying that NOBODY would be THAT lonely.

          6. So only people who are deaf have charm? A strange definition, but each to their own.

          8. Not me Belle….give me a red – blooded Englishman anyday

            Extract – Daniel. Defoe
            Thus from a Mixture of all Kinds began,
            That Het’rogeneous Thing, An Englishman:
            In eager Rapes, and furious Lust begot,
            Betwixt a Painted Britain and a Scot.
            Whose gend’ring Off-spring quickly learn’d to Bow,
            And yoke their Heifers to the Roman Plough:
            From whence a Mongrel half-Bred Race there came,
            With neither Name, nor Nation, Speech or Fame.
            In whose hot Veins new Mixtures quickly ran,
            Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
            While their Rank Daughters, to their Parents just,
            Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
            This Nauseous Brood directly did contain
            The well extracted Blood of Englishmen.[3]

          10. I remember returning to England in ’76 after 2 and a bit years working in Geneva. The Swiss wife wouldn’t speak English to me (to force me to improve my French). I returned, sans femme, and for some reason the girls went wild for me (honest). I had an accent.

    12. Is there something called “Uncharm”, with the exact opposite properties to charm? I have it. Even when going into a pub, the barman will walk into the other bar.

    13. The wife tells me I am charming quite often.

      Just a moment ago she asked me to empty the bins. I said ‘You do it.’ Charming, she said.

      (While a funny, I had already emptied the bins, tidied her desk, set out the bathroom stuff, got breakfasts ready, got the coffee ready for the morning, set the alarms and got dinner out for the evening. I capped this delightful manliness off by getting her a giant cookie and a glass of milk. )

  81. Thought for the day:

    If a high profile MP or minister gets Covid and I assassinate them within 28 days, I can’t be guilty of murder because according the NHS and Government’s own statistics they will have died of Covid not my machete.

    What a nonsensical world we live in.

    1. You gonna need a long machete Sos, 8 feet at least. And don’t forget the mask you might get a fine.

    3. While we jest, when government conflates deaths from into deaths with the statistics simply cannot be trusted.

      2. I use to live in Whetstone chandos Avenue. Just outside the Griffin Pub on the end of the high street at the side of the road, is the original whetstone where knights would sharpen their swords. And grind their axes.

    5. And to think the expression ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’ was once a light hearted quip.

      1. 328095+ up ticks,
        Evening Anne,
        Why was / are the lunatics allowed to continue voting in one political farcical treacherous force after another, for decades, wanting no opposition to the close shop.

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