Sunday 6 December: No freedom-loving prime minister could allow vaccination passports

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/12/06/lettersno-freedom-loving-prime-minister-could-allow-vaccination/

687 thoughts on “Sunday 6 December: No freedom-loving prime minister could allow vaccination passports”

  1. Queen ‘to get Covid vaccine in weeks’: Monarch, 94, will ‘wait in line’ for over-80s roll-out with Prince Philip, 99, before revealing she has had the jab to boost take-up. 6 December 2020.

    The Queen is expected to receive the Covid-19 vaccine within weeks – and then reveal she has been given it to encourage more people to take up the vital jab.

    Senior sources say both the 94-year-old Monarch and Prince Philip, 99, will not get preferential treatment, but will instead ‘wait in line’ during the first wave of injections reserved for the over-80s and care home residents.

    Morning everyone. That’s very noble of them! I don’t see any queues forming in Westminster either. You would think that all these scions of society would be straining at the leash to show the peasants how safe this stuff is; after all it’s only an injection. In truth they are all waiting to see how many drop dead or turn into zombie’s before they try it!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9022047/Queen-94-Covid-vaccine-weeks-Prince-Philip-99.html

    1. Little Matty Hancock, best friend of Bill Gates, George Soros and Klaus Schwarb should be first !

    2. The important thing is that they don’t do the Cambridges until they are sure that it’s safe. Otherwise, we’d be reigned from California!

    4. It is a great mistake to rope the RF into the propaganda like this. It will diminish any respect that people might still retain for the Queen.

      1. Fully agree. It seems the politicians will push anyone to the front, other than themselves of course.

  3. Hundreds of young people try to enter Harrods in chaotic scenes as police make four arrests for affray and Covid rule breaches as huge crowds gather in Covent Garden. 6 December 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/263823956663f4453fb27812d65d860e5d529e354e47ec4643121931aee76766.jpg

    Hundreds of teenagers and young people caused mayhem today while gathering outside Harrods in London, prompting four arrests after police swooped in.

    Chaotic scenes ensued at the luxury department store in exclusive Knightsbridge as the large group attempted to enter and crowded together in the streets outside.

    The group was made up of hundreds of young people who were not wearing masks and were not paying attention to social distancing.

    This incident tells us better than any fake TV or MSM headline a simple truth. The kids don’t believe the government line either!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9021981/Hundreds-young-people-try-enter-Harrods-chaotic-scenes-police-make-four-arrests.html

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9022389/Police-break-huge-party-Christmas-market-Nottingham.html

    1. Sensible kids – except why would they gather in Covent Garden to enter a store miles away in Knightsbridge?

      Good morning!

        1. Morning Richard

          Years ago when the boys were teenagers , we travelled to London to do the usual touristy things . I thought it would be a good idea to pop into Harrods .. we popped in , cast our eyes around on what was on offer.

          We hated the smell of the place , the bling, the ethnicity , we left after half an hour, boys don’t like shopping , so we ended up in HMV . Far more enjoyable .

  4. SIR – I read with horror the suggestion by Peter Leon (Letters, December 3) that vaccination passports could be required to access certain public and private spaces (care homes, entertainment venues, flights). These are the tactics of despots.

    To paraphrase Boris Johnson himself, writing in The Daily Telegraph in 2004 during the debate over national identity cards: I am a freeborn Englishwoman. I refuse to carry papers to show evidence of a medical procedure.

    Alexandra Seear
    Calne, Wiltshire

    1. These are the tactics of despots.

      We are living in a despotism what else would you expect?

    2. SIR – Perhaps the simple solution to identifying those who have been vaccinated is to issue them with an unremovable security wristband as proof.

      R A Collings

      Presteign, Radnorshire

      SIR – When I was an Army officer, I was taught through training, common politeness and even through books such as Serve to Lead, that an officer always made sure his soldiers were fed, watered and tended to before he looked to his own comforts.

      I wonder whether our country’s leaders will be at the front or the back of the queue for the coronavirus vaccine.

      Peter Cooper

      Bradley Green, Worcestershire

      SIR – As a 73-year-old, I would be very pleased to see MPs given the vaccine as a priority, both as an example to others and to remove the social distancing in Parliament, so that MPs can again vociferously scrutinise the Government’s handling of the pandemic and the country’s return to normality.

      Michael Staples

      Seaford, East Sussex

      SIR – I watched Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, answering questions in Holyrood on Thursday and celebrating the fact that the first Covid vaccines should be available in Scotland early next week (report, December 3).

      I wonder if it has crossed her mind that, if her longed-for scenario of Scottish independence together with membership of the European Union were a reality today, she would be sitting north of the border watching the rest of the UK starting its vaccination roll-out and waiting for the lumbering red-tape machine that is the European Union to give safety approval, which it seems will take another month at least.

      Joy Blackwood

      Potters Bar, Hertfordshire

      SIR – Private-sector companies such as Pfizer and Moderna developed and manufactured Covid vaccines incredibly quickly.

      Why is the private sector not also being asked by the Government to distribute and administer the vaccines, thereby avoiding the risk of state incompetence?

      John Walker

      Colwall, Herefordshire

        1. It would be easier for recipients of the vaccine to be given a tattoo. This would consist partly of a number. I think that has been tried before, but I can’t think where…

        2. I think it’s a great idea. Those who take the vaccine can wear an electronic tag. It’s totally in line with their beliefs, after all.

          2. They’ll make us ring the bell, and shout “Unclean!” before we’re allowed out without the vaccine.

    3. Come now Alexandra, you should know the worm has well and truly turned. That was 2004, this is 2020. A lot of dosh has paid for a lot of politicians since then.

  5. How Vladimir Putin’s anti-vaxxers are trying to use Covid to kill us as surely as his agents did in Salisbury. 6 December 2020.

    As soon as it emerged that the Oxford vaccine was making progress, GCHQ was tasked with defending it from a Russian misinformation campaign.

    And last week the Army mobilised its shadowy 77th Brigade, which specialises in ‘Counter-adversarial Information Activity’, with the mission to specifically counter anti-Covid vaccine cyber activity from Russian and Chinese operatives.

    But while our spooks and soldiers are deploying, there is uncertainty in Downing Street about the best way to confront Putin and his dark-net saboteurs.

    This infantile drivel makes anti-vax conspiracies look sensible. There’s a supporting wimpish post from a 77 Brigade operative (probably the boss) below the line.

    Are you sure you are not part of the Russian bot farm Fran12, as you like to post a lot of conspiracy theories, anti-vax unsupported claims and false information on here… You seem to be very keen on sowing disinformation… It may have been rollled out in a record short amount of time, but thats because there is a global pandemic going on, so vaccines have been focused on globally but have still gone through the same trials as other vaccines to make sure they are safe, hence why they are now being rolled out. You have the right to question but instead of being concerned, why not try to trust the real scientists, instead of the DM/FB armchair scientists/anti-vaxxers who like to scare other people into not taking the vaccine. Refusing vaccines wont help anyone.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9021779/DAN-HODGES-Vladimir-Putins-anti-vaxxers-trying-use-Covid-kill-us.html

        1. A goodly number – I would say 80% – of the comments are very clued up about what is going on. I wish I could say the same within our village. Good morning, Anne.

    2. Let’s not beat about the bush (or any other euphemism); this could be very welcome news on a global scale.

      Less nookie: fewer mouths to feed.

          1. According to Marr this morning, the Queen has said she is happy to take the vaccine early on and share her experience with the nation.

    3. Morning Anne 1962/63 Winter was my first winter at work in Cumberland.. After a long day’s work I fell asleep whilst driving to a calving late at night on a side road with ploughed snow on each side and icy in the middle. I woke up to find my car sliding along the road on its side. Suddenly the car righted itself and I managed to get to the farm, notify my irascible boss, calve the cow and enjoy coffee and farmhouse buttered scones. It transpired that it was his sister’s farm so I didn’t get much of a bollicking when he arrived to collect me.
      He hitched my car to his with a towrope and dragged me at speed back to the surgery, . I was given the spare car to deal with any further night calls and to get on with the next day’s work. A character building experience.

        1. Morning T-B It has been raining intermittently since 4 pm yesterday. I have been soaked 3 times out on my bike. I managed an hours walk at Sutton Bank yesterday afternoon. There was a smattering of snow and ice there. We are in a Bird flu restriction zone. There is a sign at the outskirts of Thirsk that we are leaving the Animal Restriction Zone . If I had a turkey I would not be able to take it for a walk but the wild birds which no doubt are the carriers of the virus can still fly about freely.
          Yes, I was a Vet and was as proper as I could be.

          1. I guessed you were a vet ages ago.

            Just wondering whether there are still game shoots this season .
            I haven’t heard from the Harsley / Borrowby relatives for a while . I guess no news is good news.

          2. Game shooting can still take place (it’s an outdoor activity) as long as the Covid guidelines are observed. Hunts can meet in England, but in Wales they are limited to 30 followers.

          3. I think most of the country is in now in a bird restriction zone. I know a notice has gone out in Wales for all domestic fowls to be housed and my friend in Aberdeenshire has been blocking up the gaps where their resident robin (and a few of the other small birds) sneaks in to steal the hens’ food. Usually she turns a blind eye to such small scale thieving but as she had a fresh batch of (6) pullets in the spring she would like to keep them healthy.

      2. Wooh that’s sounds a bit dodgy clydie………..
        I had just started my apprenticeship in summer 1962, working in Harrow. I had to walk most of the way home to Mill Hill after the buses stopped running. The bus i was on skidded onto a roundabout at Belmont circle. The route i walked in the freezing blizzard was about six miles and it took me well over 3 hours. We had no phone at home, but when i arrived home around 9pm my dinner was in the oven rapidly consumed after a hot defrosting bath.
        I love Yorkshire on of my grand father’s was from Scarborough. We stayed at HPB Lodge Yard around three years ago the adjoining pub was were a lot of the scenes from All Creatures were filmed, it was The Woolpack in the series. The Kings Arms Askrigg, not far from Wensleydale.
        Just a quickie if i may ask, should we be worried about fat blobs under our ten year old labs skin, they don’t seem to bother her at all.

    6. Any more ‘coulds’ this lot can think of? So that they can get a few more scurrying along for a pcr test?

  7. “No freedom-loving Prime Minister could allow vaccination passports” – well, there’s the problem – we don’t have a freedom-loving PM!

    1. Yes we do. Passports and certificates, the yellow arm band will never be compulsary.

      The state will simply ensure you cannot function without one BUT they will never be made compulsary.

    1. Grattis på födelsedagen, Duncan. A ’guidhe co-là breith sona dhut, Uachdaran nan Eilean (agus den fhòram seo).

    2. Happy Birthday Duncan! Hope it’s a really good one and you get plenty of practise in for Christmas! Don’t forget the Strepsils! 🎉🍾🎂

    3. Happy Birthday, Duncan, and many happy returns of you special Day. Have a great day – how nice it is that it is on a Sunday this year.

    5. Thank you, Rastus and Caroline, and thank you to all you NotTlers for your kind birthday wishes. How time flies …. I barely feel a day over seventy-six…

      …… I’ll get me shroud.

      1. Thank you, Maggie!

        Aye, Major Dennis Bloodnok, one of my noms-de-plume in the DT’s comments, before they made it subscriber only. When will we see his like again?
        ;¬)

        1. And many more of them Duncan.
          I like your reply to the abject trouble maker, but not sure what it meant.

    1. This woman was probably brought here and abandoned for the sole purpose of freeing her relatives of the strain and expense of looking after her!

          2. Airlines don’t let women fly if they’re in the later stages of pregnancy. I believe there was once a case of a Nigerian women who came here early in her pregnancy to take advantage of the NHS and this one-off event has led to wild claims about late stage arrivals.

          3. Its up to the individual to say how far gone they are. If a Dr’s letter was needed, I’m sure they are not too difficult to obtain from a Dr Rashid, Lagos!

          5. It is impossible to know, but as people risk their lives daily to get here. I’m sure a small untruth is not going to stop anyone accessing NHS facilities if that is their aim.

          6. According to people I know who work in the NHS near airports and ports, these claims are anything but “wild”.

          8. How did you know that they were coming to the UK to scam the NHS? Did they tell you or did you make the assumption because they were pregnant and not white?

          9. Why would they be travelling at that late stage of pregnancy? I did not see any white women so obviously ready to give birth; there may well have been others who were not so encumbered.
            What, and why, does it matter to you that I made that assumption, and came to that conclusion? I can tell you that in that late stage of pregnancy, travelling is something you simply would not do unless you had a deliberate purpose to achieve and especially to do so on a ferry, such would be the discomfort.

          10. “Why would they be travelling at that late stage of pregnancy?” Perhaps, like you, they were returning home.

    2. Anybody who thinks that our politicians give a toss for the native indigenous population of Britain is completely deluded.

      How long before the civil unrest on the streets spreads to the majority of rational, sensible people rather than the fanatical freaks who demand so much MSM attention?

    3. So she was allowed to have her medication in pill form rather than a much more reliable injection, presumably because it is her human right, despite posing a danger to others that was recorded. And yet the danger of Covid means that our right to human contact has been withdrawn. If safetyism is to be applied, at least make it consistent. Appalling.

      1. You… you… you… waycist! Bigot! Don’t you believe she has the same rights as everyone in this country regardless of where she’s from?

        You should be cancelled and sent to re-education. Next you’ll be expecting people to provide for themselves rather than get a 5* hotel suite on the government for life.

        1. “… expecting people to provide for themselves …” – you’re avin a larf inch er? 😃😃😃

    5. Are you perchance suggesting that we simply shouldn’t have accepted a mentally ill gimmigrant? That a white life is worth more than our duty to feed the world at tax payers expense so Islingtonites can feel good about themselves?

      Shocking. What next? That our borders should be enforced so only those productive and not criminal can get in to this country? Dear life. Such nonsense. The life of a child – of the many childre and adults killed by illegal immigrants or faux asylum seekers is irrelevant against the righteous duty of ‘rubbing the Right’s nose in diversity’.

      Good grief, sorry, I can’t do it. I’ve run out of sarcasm.

    6. That is such a sad story Anne……..as you say, how did we get into such a state.
      Don’t tell me i know, the same old same old political classes, never get anything right.
      A full bore, full on ‘eff up’ for the last three decades.

    7. 327240+ up ticks,
      Anne,
      Hard to judge really taking into consideration b,liar, brown,
      major, the wretch cameron, treacherous may & now johnson.

  11. Stanley Baxter is in the news. I remember his “thick Irishman” sketch, which is inexplicably not on Youtube. Allez-y, Notttlers!

    1. Is he still alive? I thought he died thirty years ago. They must have injected him with something. It’s getting like the House of Lords!

      1. Funny you should mention injecting the House of Lords. I recommend that politicians in both Houses of Westminster, the Assemblies in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh along with all their civil service staff get the Covid-19 vax first.

        It would cover a wide range of age groups and, more importantly, allow the politicians to actually attend their place of work so that bills could be properly scrutinised instead of the current nod through on Zoom.

        Of course there would be the additional benefit of allowing the scientists they are following to observe results firsthand.

    2. If you ever see a hearse go by,
      Do you ever think you’re going to die?
      OOH OOH OOH OOH where will you be,
      Where will you be in a hundred years from now?
      OOH OOH where will COVID be,
      Where will it be in a hundred years from now?

      They wrap you up in a crisp white sheet,
      And tuck in the corners all nice and neat.
      They put you into a wooden box,
      And cover you over with earth and rocks.

      The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out,
      They crawl in thin and they crawl out stout,
      Your teeth fall in and your eyes pop out,
      Your brains come trickling down your snout

      OOH OOH OOH OOH where will you be,

      Where will you be in a hundred years from now?

      OOH OOH OOH OOH where will you be,

      Where will you be in a hundred years from now?

      DEAD!!!!!!!!! D…e…a….d. Ha, ha, ha, ha!
      Dead.

      OOH OOH OOH OOH where will you be,

      Where will you be in a hundred years from now?

      OOH OOH OOH OOH where will you be,

      Where will you be in a hundred years from now?

      DEAD!!!!!!!!! D…e…a….d. Ha, ha, ha, ha!
      Dead.

  13. “Build Back Better” – Joe Biden
    “Rebuild the World” – Lego

    Just coincidence? Am I paranoid? Are there other similar examples?

  14. There are three sticking points in the EU negotiations:

    The EU – the French want all our fish, now and forever,

    The EU requires a “level playing field”. This means that the EU countries can continue to give State Aid, even EU Aid (including our money) to assist their industries and businesses to survive and be competitive. We will never be allowed to assist our businesses with grants from our taxes as we cannot be allowed to revive our industries or develop others in competition with the EU. (The expression is an oxymoron, of course, they don’t want it level and the are not playing as they are serious.)

    The EU wants to continue to set the rules for us in all aspects of trade (and other things) and administer them and take us to their courts when we seem to be getting ahead. We will have no representation in these courts, nor any say in how the laws and rules are made and changed.

    In the next 48 hours our negotiators and our PM will agree to all three and our independence, still just within our grasp, will finally vanish

    1. My faith in Boris to finally free us from the clutch of the EU is clinging on by its finger-nails, Horace. But I am still prepared to wait and see. There are, after all, just 25 days to the end of the year.

    2. And if Johnson caves in Britain, the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson himself and what is still left of Britain are finished for ever.

    4. The EU is terrified of our becoming competitive. If our industries are not hamstrung by expensive legislation and do not face heavy taxes then they’ll produce goods more cheaply and efficiently than their EU partners. The EU likes this grand socialist experment and the idea of competition is anathema to it. If everyone produces expensive things then there’s no choice for other nations under treaty.

      Of course, this is why unemployment is so high in the EU and growth so low. It’s why it is getting poorer. Eurocrats don’t, like all good socialists; care about that though. Theirs is just to ensure their gravy train continues.

  16. Good morning all.
    Birthday greetings to Duncan Mac – thank you Richard for that information.

    1. Firearms officers to control whether people are wearing a mask or not?
      Even South Yorkshire police have not yet got to that stage.
      More likely they’ve had some information about seasonal attacks from the people we’re not allowed to mention.

      1. That’d be the Muslims. The Muslim suicide bombers. Or truck crashers – that’s why there are massive concrete bollards in our high street.

        But don’t forget! Our way of life won’t be changed. We’ll just have more of these nutters forced on us and if we complain, we’ll be told to shut up.

      1. More likely they’re there to prevent Muslim terrorists from trying to set off suicide bombs at Christmas. Fanatics like a good atrocity. They think it sends a message that this is their country and they’ll do what they like.

        And the BBC, like a good little lapdog will not only excuse, but enforce this attitude.

  18. Most of us here believe in free speech – especially for people who agree with us!

    Here is the excellent Douglas Murray on the subject.

    There is only one way to stop the woke takeover of Britain’s elite institutions
    The likes of Eton and Cambridge are adapting to the impulses of the age

    DOUGLAS MURRAY
    6 December 2020 • 7:00am

    There was a time when I assumed that the inanities of the age would confine themselves to the dim and third-rate. Sure, the University of Canterbury could treat itself to a lecturer whose expertise was “zombies” and the University of Southampton could employ an “expert” on video games. But this would simply constitute a tax on the gullible and stupid. Eventually applications would fall off, and such institutions would close. The elite institutions, meantime, would purr along like the well-oiled machines that they are. I was wrong.

    What I failed to take into account was that ancient institutions are expert at adapting to whatever era they are in. And ours is an era whose boundaries have been subtly, but significantly, mis-drawn. Like a post-war border-treaty, a single deviation of the pen stores up trouble generations down the line.

    In our age anything deemed “hostile” by a member of a “vulnerable group” is made impermissible. Not simply in polite society, but in law – even in policing. What is a “non-crime hate-incident” but a bogus concept written into law? It makes no judgment on whether the “hostility” was real or imagined, and it cannot adjudicate whether the claim is made sincerely or in order to win some other (often political) battle. To make such a claim is to win, leaving our society and its institutions permanently at the mercy of (among others) the deluded and malevolent. Of course institutions that survived the Reformation, the civil war and much more should know how to adapt to the guiding faith of the age. They have spent centuries practising.

    There has been much attention paid to the case of Will Knowland – the Eton teacher sacked after uploading to YouTube a talk to pupils in which he said that differences between men and women aren’t always attributable to environmental factors.

    What he said was true. It also runs against one of the prevailing lies of the age (that sex differences are not biological but environmental). So just as in a previous age an Eton master might have made himself vulnerable by doubting the eucharistic bread was the actual body of Christ, so Knowland became vulnerable. But it is the badly drawn laws of this country that did for him.

    The recognition that such lines must be drawn well is why a fight is going on at another of our ancient institutions. At Cambridge University, a free-speech row is ongoing thanks to its vice chancellor Stephen Toope. This Canadian lawyer heads an institution that has developed an apparent habit of punishing academics who step outside the orthodox lies of the age. Witness Cambridge’s treatment of Noah Carl and Jordan Peterson. Now Toope is trying to double-down by pushing through a new free speech policy. Recognising the drawing of a poorly-drawn line when he sees one, a much smarter man than Toope (senior philosophy lecturer Arif Ahmed) is leading a push-back.

    The Toope policy demands that differences of opinion be “respected”. Ahmed rightly says that, no, another person cannot simply demand or expect “respect” for their opinion. What we should have is “tolerance” for other people’s opinions.

    Quite so. The demand of our era that everybody and anything be “respected” has become one of the bully-words to shut down discussion of difficult issues and the bully’s way to bulldoze through their own, often erroneous, claims. Once the line is drawn where Toope wants to draw it, good people (including people telling the truth) are left permanently at risk of being stranded behind enemy lines.

    This may seem theoretical. But it is not. In defending the sacking of Mr Knowland, the headmaster of Eton said that a lawyer employed to give an opinion on the case warned that Knowland’s speech may have broken this country’s equality laws.

    And here is the thing. Perhaps it did. But that is because the equality laws of this country – like Toope’s “respect” rule at Cambridge – are an ass. Institutions like Eton hide behind their wretched lawyers only because the law can be interpreted as being on their side. It is no good complaining about cowards in high places if those cowards have (or even believe they have) the law on their side. What would be good would be for this country – and specifically this Conservative Government – to change the law: to undo the last Labour government’s deeply inexact tampering in the Equalities Act.

    Ancient institutions are designed to adapt to survive whatever era they are in. It is no surprise that they have adapted to our new woke state religion. For as long as they have the law on their side, it is not enough to demand the presence of braver or better people at the top of our institutions. It is necessary to change those laws. And the religion.

    Related Topics

    1. If Boris had a freedom-loving bone in his body, he would have made repealing the Equalities Act a priority.
      Sadly, he demonstrated years ago as Mayor of London that freedom of speech is not important to him. Search for “Mayor of London Christian advert on bus TfL” to find the details. Boris caved in to Stonewall bullying to silence a dissenting view.

      We need something more than the current line-up of future Open Borders directors before we will see any improvement.

      1. The state won’t permit it. The equalities act is a fantastic hinderance to achieving necessary change.

          1. Gone to the great bunker in the sky – he’ll need more than a sand wedge to get of this one

    2. A sad loss. A great commentator the like of which will probably not be seen again.

      Golf’s equivalent of Brian Johnston?

    1. The most annoying thing it does is shoot around when you try to make a comment or upvote someone.

      1. Or, when there is a high comment total loaded onto the page, you click for an upvote and the page goes blank!!

      2. Sometimes if i want to uptick the names of the previous up tickers blocks the access, so i click reply and don’t reply and then it’s possible to make the uptick. A lot of the added links are not showing on todays pages.
        Have to go, the family are popping in later got a bit of tiding to do, we have a very mobile 10 month old little grand daughter who likes ‘to explore’.

        1. I have to scroll the up-arrow to typically the top of the page, rest the cursor on it until the list of tickers appears, then carefully tick th tick. Otherwise, the screen darts up or down, or I click on a profile from the list of tickers.
          If you see what I’m getting at…

          1. That’s as clear as dimma, Paul. All I have to do is move the scroller a smidge & the way is clear to upvote.

          3. Otherwise, if it’s too far down the page, you just click on one of the voters and get their profile.

    2. The most annoying thing it does is shoot around when you try to make a comment or upvote someone.

  21. 327240+ up ticks,
    Tell me what other choice have the treacherous bastards got ?
    breitbart,
    Boris Johnson’s Cabinet Backs a No-Deal Brexit if EU Trade Talks Collapse: Report

      1. I see that she and Lenny Henry adopted a child when they were married to each other but wiki doesn’t tell me whether or not they could have biological children of their own.

        3. Unless freely given, such information should remain in the private sphere. IOW, MYOB.

    2. Well that’s a bowl of cold sick.

      Why must this racism be enforced? Black lives don’t matter. Not a jot. Judging people by their skin colour is offensive. Who you are is all that matters, not what you are.

    3. In a move critics say could undermine the BBC’s Impartiatity (sarc), the Reverend Geraldine
      Kennedy- played by Dawn French- address the killing of the Daily Mail

      A bit harsh

      1. His commentaries were so much better than the American experts that we normally suffer in the broadcasts on this side of the Atlantic. During the Open, it was a real treat when we were allowed to hear the Allis commentary.

        1. Peter Alliss had the extraordinary skill of making golf interesting to watch even for those who didn’t particularly like golf.

    2. What’s sad (other than his demise) is that the BBC tried to cancel him a few years back, settling for sidelining him instead. Nearly all the great sports commentators (and I’m glad to have been around when they were at the height of their powers) have now gone (dead or retired). Now just the second and mostly third-raters and especially diversity-hires remain. You have to also wonder where all of the TV licence fee is going, given the BBC has almost zero live sport or bought-in new TV from the US (not even accounting for the pandemic).

  24. Douglas Murray in the DT, apologies if already posted:

    There was a time when I assumed that the inanities of the age would confine themselves to the dim and third-rate. Sure, the University of Canterbury could treat itself to a lecturer whose expertise was “zombies” and the University of Southampton could employ an “expert” on video games. But this would simply constitute a tax on the gullible and stupid. Eventually applications would fall off, and such institutions would close. The elite institutions, meantime, would purr along like the well-oiled machines that they are. I was wrong.

    What I failed to take into account was that ancient institutions are expert at adapting to whatever era they are in. And ours is an era whose boundaries have been subtly, but significantly, mis-drawn. Like a post-war border-treaty, a single deviation of the pen stores up trouble generations down the line.

    In our age anything deemed “hostile” by a member of a “vulnerable group” is made impermissible. Not simply in polite society, but in law – even in policing. What is a “non-crime hate-incident” but a bogus concept written into law? It makes no judgment on whether the “hostility” was real or imagined, and it cannot adjudicate whether the claim is made sincerely or in order to win some other (often political) battle. To make such a claim is to win, leaving our society and its institutions permanently at the mercy of (among others) the deluded and malevolent. Of course institutions that survived the Reformation, the civil war and much more should know how to adapt to the guiding faith of the age. They have spent centuries practising.

    There has been much attention paid to the case of Will Knowland – the Eton teacher sacked after uploading to YouTube a talk to pupils in which he said that differences between men and women aren’t always attributable to environmental factors.

    What he said was true. It also runs against one of the prevailing lies of the age (that sex differences are not biological but environmental). So just as in a previous age an Eton master might have made himself vulnerable by doubting the eucharistic bread was the actual body of Christ, so Knowland became vulnerable. But it is the badly drawn laws of this country that did for him.

    The recognition that such lines must be drawn well is why a fight is going on at another of our ancient institutions. At Cambridge University, a free-speech row is ongoing thanks to its vice chancellor Stephen Toope. This Canadian lawyer heads an institution that has developed an apparent habit of punishing academics who step outside the orthodox lies of the age. Witness Cambridge’s treatment of Noah Carl and Jordan Peterson. Now Toope is trying to double-down by pushing through a new free speech policy. Recognising the drawing of a poorly-drawn line when he sees one, a much smarter man than Toope (senior philosophy lecturer Arif Ahmed) is leading a push-back.

    The Toope policy demands that differences of opinion be “respected”. Ahmed rightly says that, no, another person cannot simply demand or expect “respect” for their opinion. What we should have is “tolerance” for other people’s opinions.

    Quite so. The demand of our era that everybody and anything be “respected” has become one of the bully-words to shut down discussion of difficult issues and the bully’s way to bulldoze through their own, often erroneous, claims. Once the line is drawn where Toope wants to draw it, good people (including people telling the truth) are left permanently at risk of being stranded behind enemy lines.

    This may seem theoretical. But it is not. In defending the sacking of Mr Knowland, the headmaster of Eton said that a lawyer employed to give an opinion on the case warned that Knowland’s speech may have broken this country’s equality laws.

    And here is the thing. Perhaps it did. But that is because the equality laws of this country – like Toope’s “respect” rule at Cambridge – are an ass. Institutions like Eton hide behind their wretched lawyers only because the law can be interpreted as being on their side. It is no good complaining about cowards in high places if those cowards have (or even believe they have) the law on their side. What would be good would be for this country – and specifically this Conservative Government – to change the law: to undo the last Labour government’s deeply inexact tampering in the Equalities Act.

    Ancient institutions are designed to adapt to survive whatever era they are in. It is no surprise that they have adapted to our new woke state religion. For as long as they have the law on their side, it is not enough to demand the presence of braver or better people at the top of our institutions. It is necessary to change those laws. And the religion.

      1. I simply can’t believe she meant that. A child is born with genitals. Those define the gender. The hormones churned out determine everything from brain chemistry to bone density.

        1. A child is born with genitals. Those define the gender SEX.

          Come on Wibbling! Stop genuflecting to their delusions and bullshonet!

    2. I’ve been saying this for years now, and why I passed on Public Sector projects (when able to) in my job because of all the corrupt, woke and anti-democratic actions of those who run many of these institutions – on our payroll. Sadly, most people shrug their shoulders and say ‘what can I do?’ Society these days is like the appeasers of the 1930s. And we all know how THAT ended.

    3. This daft idea that men and women are the same has to stop. They’re not. Our bodies are very different, with different fat make ups, muscle capacities, pain tolerances, hand eye co-ordination – you name it.

      The moron Left have got to stop pretending that equal means ‘the same’. It damned well doesn’t.

    4. I’ve been saying this for years now, and why I passed on Public Sector projects (when able to) in my job because of all the corrupt, woke and anti-democratic actions of those who run many of these institutions – on our payroll. Sadly, most people shrug their shoulders and say ‘what can I do?’ Society these days is like the appeasers of the 1930s. And we all know how THAT ended.

  26. The chairman of the rugby football union has decided that he shall no longer sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, because of its associations with American slavery.

    The children’s charity, Dr Barnardo’s Homes, is ‘advising’ parents and grandparents to teach their children about ‘white privilege’.

    A correspondent in today’s letters’ page is suggesting that everyone having a Covid vaccination be fitted with an unremovable wristband as proof.

    These are just three examples, in today’s Sunday Telegraph, of how the Common Purpose brigade have taken over all positions of influence in the country and are now wielding their power to affect all our lives in a detrimental fashion.

    All this has been taking place over the past few decades whilst we, on the Right, have slumbered blissfully in our complacency.

    Is it too late for us to wake up and do something, positively, about it?

    1. Since we have supposedly had right wing Government since at least 2010, and some argue that there is little that is Left Wing about Blair’s term in office, then I suggest that it is the Right, rather than the Left, that has presided over these unwelcome developments – and quite possibly shielding themselves under a False Flag operation, relying on the stupidity and gullibility of Left Wing campaigners?

      1. There is little doubt that what now passes for the Right was responsible for presiding over these unwelcome developments.

        However, all the undercover foot-work that enabled the mitochondria of evil Left-wing influence to be surreptitiously installed in every echelon of British society was done stealthily under the very noses of those Right-wing administrations. This was done in precisely the same way that the Cambridge spy ring managed to do their dirty work whilst masquerading as establishment figures.

      2. 327240+ up ticks,
        Morning JM,
        Left / right went out the window along with majors morals when
        entertaining a curry.
        Right / wrong entered the polling booth, that was the peoples choice.

      3. Let’s dispense now with the myth that the Conservative party is right wing. They did a devil’s pact with Blair’s unelected Establishment, that they would stick with the same policies and not overturn the applecart, and in return, they would be allowed to “govern”.
        Look what happened to Trump when he didn’t make that pact.

        1. I’m afraid so. The poison has spread too far. That country that you and I were born into has been destroyed.

    3. When they get into positions of power, they only give jobs to others like themselves. It is hard to fight this kind of zealotry, especially when it is organised eg via Common Purpose.

      Realistically, our only hope was ever to wait until things got bad enough for the sheep to notice, and then resist it together.

      Remember that planeload of Britons who left the UK every day under Tony Blair? I’ll bet few of them were unemployed or unemployable (lefty suckers on the taxpayer teat).

    4. Unremovable wristbands can be removed by experts.

      The only guaranteed way is to tattoo all patients’ forearms.

  27. Sat with a well deserved mug of tea after dragging the Dearly Tolerant out in the van to bring in the firewood I’d stacked at a couple of collection points and also cutting & loading a couple of fallen ash branches close to the collection points.

    I got the last bit of the wood I’d already brought home cut and temporarily stacked yesterday, giving me space for the load I’ve just brought home.
    The Still @ Home is currently in bed, presumably recovering from a hangover after meeting up with his mates up Masson Hill!

    And just to keep Bill happy, this is what I cut & chopped yesterday and now waiting until I have room to stack it properly:- https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0232fd755b653d8d4e735c2921440dbe3dff2838e25bb7439664bbb2d8c99e59.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a60130af6e87bb93b45a61379e5f5ec2cbc3520e4b533a589595fe647525d695.jpg

    The mushroom trays are full of sticks waiting to be shifted & stacked round the back of the house.

    1. How are you going to manage all of that when you progress in your years.

      It appears to me that you have a very tough existence. Be careful!

      1. It’s not that tough.
        Mind you, the DT is not a lot of use on rough ground as she’s a poor sense of balance.

      2. He’s stocking up now for those far-off days! That lot would last us years – though we do have a woodshed full of sawn-up pallets. OH lit the woodburner last night for the first time this winter.

    2. “Emergency services called as mass of chopped timbers falls into road…”

      Well done, Robert. I must send you a snap of my two woodsheds…

  29. SIR – It is surely not the role of the National Police Chiefs Council or the Police Federation (report, November 29) to bypass improperly and very deliberately laws made by Parliament regarding cannabis by supporting an unofficial “Cancard” – a driving licence-style card designed by campaigners that can be shown to police to encourage them to be lenient to users of illegally bought or home-grown cannabis.

    Despite pressure, Parliament has not legalised the growing of cannabis for self-medication of conditions like anxiety or by those who are otherwise unwell. Prescription of cannabis-based medications is strictly controlled and clinicians are hesitant about its use – for good reason. The warnings on existing legal cannabis medications are extensive. The most recent research indicates that cannabis is teratogenic (like thalidomide) and can have effects that are carcinogenic (especially for testicular cancers) and epigenetic (gene-changing).

    What is suggested is a slippery slope to lawlessness and to cannabis normalisation. In California, similar moves led to the selling of thousands of highly dubious prescriptions. Let the campaigners involved lobby Parliament and these matters can be properly debated.

    David Raynes
    Executive Councillor, National Drug Prevention Alliance
    Slough, Berkshire

    Come along now, David Raynes – where have you been these past years? Had you been paying attention you would know that Plod only upholds those laws it likes. It’s called ‘partial policing’. Want to nail a boat to the road in central London and cause complete chaos? No problem! Want to vandalize statues and deface our Cenotaph? Be our guests! If you want to break the law while we look the other way just make sure it’s a cause which we support!

    1. I am no expert on the subject and I never touched the stuff but from what I gather the sort of cannabis available today is several times stronger than the cannabis available when we were young.

      The son of one of my friends had his life wrecked by drugs and he is now nearly 40, has had several visits to The Priory and has never held down a steady job in his life. Thank God my boys have never been remotely interested.

      However if the dangers of addiction and psychological damage from today’s Polecat brands are very high – perhaps the home grown cannabis of a milder non-addictive strain for personal rather than commercial use should not be punished so severely?

    3. A valid doctor’s prescription is an adequate defence against charges of cannabis possession. I don’t know about cancer risk, but I do know about the link between cannabis use and schizophrenia onset in the growing brain. Otherwise, the age-old precaution is discretion. If nobody knows, nobody cares.

      As for selective policing, it seems that British citizens these days, through their institutions and representatives, are more lenient towards murderers, vandals, thieves and fraudsters than they are to those who say something that might offend a “protected” identity group. They only reflect the national values set by our “betters”, which I concede are rotten to the core, but needn’t be.

      1. The Police have been picking and choosing which laws to enforce for many years. If they devote resources to monitoring social media at the expense of pursuing real criminals, they are to blame and should be held to account.

        1. Who by? The Police & Crime Commissioner elections were a buck-passing relinquishing of public responsibility by the authorities, so that they no longer need hold the police to account.

      2. …. “but I do know about the link between cannabis use and schizophrenia onset in the growing brain. ”
        Totally agree. We’ve seen too many lives blighted by teenage dabbling.

        1. I am always amazed that Keith Richards, now still alive, has managed to get to get to the age he has. As he said at one of his concert venues: “Good to be here….. it’s good to be anywhere!”

          Incidentally, looking him upon the Internet I have discovered that he is just under a fortnight younger than our birthday boy.

  30. What’s Putin planning? Russia sends NINE ships past UK waters as Navy ‘ready to respond’. 6 December 2020.

    Russian leader Vladimir Putin sent a number of vessels, including a surfaced submarine, a destroyer, a corvette, and a patrol ship, near UK waters. The ships travelled through the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and passed the Outer Hebrides. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, First Sea Lord Admiral Tony Radakin said: “This is why the Royal Navy is at sea every day.

    “ready to respond.” What with one is tempted to ask? They can’t even stop people paddling across the Channel! As to the rest. “The ships travelled through the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and passed the Outer Hebrides.” It’s called going home to everyone else!

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1368971/russia-news-vladimir-putin-russian-ships-uk-waters-royal-navy

    1. as Navy ‘ready to respond’.

      The team sent to dig up Horatio Nelson, who is needed to take our only serviceable warship, HMS Victory to sea, to challenge
      the damned Ruskies, were told by him to enjoy sex and travel

      When questioned why, he said the the Woke fatherless rulers of UK, who accused him of being involved in thr slave trade
      can fight their own battles

    2. The effing meeja also fail to point out that the seas in which the warships were sailing are international waters.

      1. It is the Express Bill which runs the same story with different words three times a week!

      2. Do the Japanese have similar MSM panics when a Russian navy ship sails out of Vladivostok into the Sea of Japan?

    3. as Navy ‘ready to respond’.

      The team sent to dig up Horatio Nelson, who is needed to take our only serviceable warship, HMS Victory to sea, to challenge
      the damned Ruskies, were told by him to enjoy sex and travel

      When questioned why, he said the the Woke fatherless rulers of UK, who accused him of being involved in thr slave trade
      can fight their own battles

  32. Don’t talk while eating in restaurants, a study has warned, as it claims people can be infected by Covid-19 more than 20ft away.

    Diners should refrain from having “conversation during meals” as well as avoid “loud talking or shouting”, according to South Korean researchers. Their study claims that people who are more than 20ft apart can still infect each other, and the window of transmission can be as little as five minutes.

    Restaurants should consider installing dividing walls between tables to prevent this happening, they argue. The researchers used interviews, credit card records, CCTV and phone location data to analyse how easily Covid-19 can spread in dining spaces.

    In particular, they wanted to find out what impact air flow had on the number of infections. They concluded that two of the participants in their study did not come into direct or indirect contact in the restaurant, yet one still infected the other with Covid-19.

    The pair were 21ft 4in (6.5m) away from each other and were in the same room for only five minutes. However, the study claims direct air flow carried infected saliva droplets from the first person to the second person, and this was the source of transmission.

    The researchers suggest that wind partitions should be used by restaurant owners to reduce air flow between different tables. They also believe masks should be worn before and after eating.

    Their findings were published in the Journal of Korean Medical Science. Previous studies have found that Covid-19 can remain floating in the air when an infected person breathes out.

    Unventilated rooms have been identified as particular risk hotspots, as there is not enough air to carry away or dilute the virus particles. However, it is believed the greatest risk of transmission remains close contact between people.

    Don’t talk? Apart from the age-old etiquette of not speaking with one’s mouth full, what will be the next gem of advice to contain the virus? Don’t eat? Don’t breathe?

    1. Morning to you, I can remember seeing my father clearing snow off the roof of the house as he was concerned about the weight of the snow. We ended up with a mini Snowdonia on the front lawn.

    2. Good morning, Anne

      We couldn’t see out of the windows in my dormitory at Blundell’s when we woke up as the condensation of the breath of all the boys therein had frozen forming a layer of ice several millimetres thick.

    3. 327240+ up ticks,
      Morning Anne,
      Pull a length of pipe from the rack and it froze to your gloves then the snow ball behind the ear didn’t help.
      Then old anthrax ( hair grew back different colours post alopecia) got hit / missed and when found had trousers
      frozen to legs, still on site ,on time.
      Kings Lynn 63.

    4. ‘Moaning, Annie. I remember the snow in our garden was well over the tops of our wellies, and the sea at Brighton froze.

    5. I was 8 years old in Newbiggin by the Sea which, largely I believe due to its seaside location, dud not get anywhere near as much snow as the rest of the country and remember watching TV news reports of the amount of snow elsewhere in amazement!

    6. Richmond Park looked like the wilds of Alaska and was a glorious place for a kid. I do remember getting home and having to be massaged by mum for an hour to stop the terrible shakes and shivers.

          1. 327240+ up ticks.
            M,
            I lived in Kew so it was KIngs school kew, & Gainsborough
            sec,mod, Richmond.
            Three Rs and a daily good hiding, a successful campaign no scars,mental / physical.

          2. Meadlands Primary in Ham, where we lived, and Shene (different spelling) Grammar in East Sheen. Lived in Ham, Teddington, Twickenham, Whitton and Richmond during my early life.

      1. We lived in a Victorian townhouse in London at that time.
        I remember the snow was up to the rail of the balcony outside the French windows.
        I was cold so often from standing in food queues with my mother, that the actual temperature didn’t particularly register.

          2. It can get mighty cold in the White Highlands at night in winter, even though they are on the Equator.

    8. Morning Anne. I remember it. Not the snow that everyone talks about but the paralysing cold!

      1. We were unprepared for it. Clothing at that time just wasn’t designed to cope with such conditions.
        Very few homes had central heating.
        MB still has some stunning B&W photos he took at the time.

        1. I’d just started work the previous Summer and I had to walk to the factory (which looked as though it was in Siberia) wearing three layers of clothes!

      2. I remember when the snow finally cleared (this was in London, by Finchley Road Tube station) they found a Lambretta scooter under a pile of snow!

        1. On our first visit to St. Petersburg, there were ‘shapes’ beside pavements that proved to be parked cars.
          It looked as if the owners just left them there until the thaw.

        2. Morning Bill -The frost got so deep into the ground that many water pipes burst when the thaw eventually came.

          1. That happened to a work colleague who lived out in the boondocks.
            After weeks of walking a mile or so to a neighbour to have a bath, she was delighted by the thaw, until ……

          2. The snow was plied up at the edge of pavements so my friend and I would run up and down these mounds on our way to and from school, imagining we were motor cycle scramblers. In short trousers, natch.

            My bed was up against the blocked up chimney breast which kept residual warmth from the living room coal fire below.

    1. That’s what I posted to the Daily Fail, but it didn’t get posted. Bluntly until people stop paying for the players they will never get the message.

      The players are free to do whatever they want in their own time, but this nonsense of pushing an agenda while being paid to perform is idiotic. What’s that? They can do what they like? I’m sure they *think* they can.

  35. Here’s some heartening news, to lift your spirits.

    Latest ONS figures show that the life-expectancy for a male, at birth, is 79.4 years. However, according to the Government, the life-expectancy for those males that reach 80 increases to 85. This means that in addition to an enhanced Winter Payment and an extra 25p on their pension, all men over-80 will be automatically be allowed five extra years in which to enjoy those benefits.

    Which is nice…

    3. Ah yes, the winter fuel allowance. An invention to disguise the crippling green taxes the Left slapped on energy bills as part of EU regulation.

    6. Reminds of the response given by the centenarian when asked how they had reached that age milestone. “By not dying”.

    8. Understand it’s your birthday, Duncan.
      Hope you have/had a better day than you could wish for yourself!

          1. Weird. I posted the comment above as a reply to Duncan (through the “notifications” function), but can’t edit it – no Edit function available!

          9. Weird. I posted the comment above as a reply to Duncan (through the “notifications” function), but can’t edit it – no Edit function available!

    9. Have a good day, O Monarch etc etc.

      I am looking forward to making that extra 25p eke out….

  37. Can’t stop – off for a skype with my gorgeous grand-daughter. If she remembers!

    She is now 14 – and sent me, yesterday, a copy of her school essay about her recollection of the day her father died 4½ years ago. I know I’m biased – but it was a stunning piece of work which could have been written by someone twice her age. A theme is the clothes she was wearing, shorts and a T-shirt – and how she used them to mop her tears. The essay ends perfectly. “I never wore them again”.

    Back later – still a very heavy frost in yer Narfurk.

    1. That is a heart wrenching ending. She’s a very good writer.
      And I can’t believe it’s over 4 years ago.

  38. The Independent reporting that Gordon Brown is saying Boris Johnston will be the most isolated Prime Minister in British History after a No Deal Brexit.
    I think not.

      1. As much as I appreciate the attitude, that wretched B’tard can never, ever be forgotten. The damage he did to the economy – entirely avoidable, pre-warned, obvious damage did catastrophic damage to this country.

        His malice, spite and idiocy can never be forgotten or forgiven.

    2. As opposed to Brown who *should* have been isolated from being prime minister.

      Why do all the nutcase Lefties keep thinking that Brexit means suddenly we cut ourselves off? The whole point – which none of them understand – is that we open ourselves *to* the world.

      We trade as equals with other nations, not as simply another nation chained to the EU, voiceless and silenced by an arrogant bureaucracy. Nations can now trade with the UK as an entity, giving only what they want to and what we want to sell. There’s no need to bother that France wants to sell string in 2cm increments or Belgium is annoyed they can’t sell chocolates with 3mm rather than 4mm icing swirls.

      It’s free trade. Something the EU hates.

      1. … Lefties keep thinking that Brexit means suddenly we cut ourselves off
        They don’t think it, they say it. It’s to try to poison the whole thing, so they can say “I told you so!”

  39. How to put winter fuel payments to good use

    SIR – As Adrianne Leijerstam (Letters, November 29) states, many of us do not need the £100 winter fuel payment. However, to subject it to means testing would cost millions of pounds – possibly more, given the Government’s poor record on administration.

    I enjoy choosing a charity, usually one for the homeless, and in this way I have the pleasure of seeing just how the money is spent. This makes a refreshing change from having the Government choose the beneficiary of my taxes through foreign aid.

    Eve Wilson
    Hill Head, Hampshire

    Madam , You are lucky enough to live in a very expensive area .

    Many of us need our £100 fuel allowance . I need it to replace a ruined tyre or two thanks to the neglect and non repair of our roads .

    I can find a trillion ways of using my fuel allowance , new covering for the roof of the shed , dog flea and worm treatment x2 , topping up the coal bunker .

    Buying a few extra items whilst shopping to contribute to the local Food Bank . I have also just bought 36 2nd class stamps , did you know that one hundred 2nd class stamps costs £65 pounds , nearly a pension payment worth .

    Why do people like you say you don’t need this that and the other .. in these days of negative interest, are you awash with money?

    Please don’t write smug letters to the DT , your type does this every year.

      1. It’s £200 per household (or £300 for the over 80s) so if there’s only one oldie in the house he/she will get £200 (or £300), but where there are two who qualify they will get £100 each (or £150 if both are over 80). If one is over 80 and one over 66 but under 80 they will receive £150 and £100 respectively.

        Since the payment is designed to pay for increased heating costs it is argued (reasonably) that 2 people living together will not need any more heating than a single person.

      2. It is £200 per household, Mr Grizzly. Therefore if you are couple within that household at and over pensionable age, it is £100 per person.

        1. It was originally £250, poppiesmum, but was reduced to £200 after just a few years – without much fanfare, of course.

        3. I’m getting £200.
          Or so the letter advised me a week or so ago.
          ‘Snot arrived yet.

          2. It was a bracing 28F when we teed off at 09.40 this AM. A balmy 36F by the time we finished.

          3. T’was bloody steaming 20 minutes ago when I dragged the DT out in the van to pick up a load of logs, including taking the little battery chainsaw to a nice couple of ash branches that had observed the laws of gravity earlier in the year!
            Now waiting for the S@H to drag himself out of bed after he got pissed with his mates on top of Masson Hill last night!

          5. As I’m sure you know, but others may not:

            That’s because France’s average winter temperatures are not cold enough.
            And why is that one might wonder?
            Because “France” includes it’s overseas Departments in Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyane where it is hot all year round and the UK makes use of that fact, notwithstanding that’s it’s a lot colder here during the winter than it is in many parts of the UK.

    2. And the letters usually suggest that means-testing would solve the problem, whereas it is a proven fact that means-testing would cost the country (taxpayers) more than it would save us.

      1. The Government has said many times that employing the extra civil servants would cost more than they would save.

        Perhaps the people who are so keen for extra civil servants are union officials, or even civil servants themselves?

        1. A good theory, janetjH. But I suspect the real reason is many people’s stupidity. (Call me a cynic, if you will.)

    3. The Winter Fuel Allowance was simply a bribe by Brown, if I remember correctly, to get the pensioner vote. There’s a whole government department dedicated to its payment. It should be scraped by wrapping it up into the state pension and if some pensioners are really unable to budget, the annual pension could be paid in instalments that are higher over the winter months.

      1. Then there is the ludicrous £10 Christmas bonus to pensioners. What is the point? It must cost a substantial amount to make this type of payment. Scrap it.

      2. Sorry, but wrong way to think about it. The fuel allowance was because green taxes hammered the elderly most.

        What should happen is not the allowance be changed but scrapped entirely – along with the green taxes. No taxes, cheaper fuel, no need for the WFA. Simpler, smaller, flatter government.

        But it’ll never happen. Big state wants to tax energy use into the wazoo to continue the abusive lie of ‘climate change’.

      3. If wrapped up in the state pension, it becomes subject to income tax for those in that category.

    4. Morning all.
      Are we an unusual couple? We actually use ours to pay for the heating costs.
      Our boiler is playing up at the moment i have to top it up every morning, Graham the plumber gas/heating engineer is coming in to have a look at it this week.

        1. Can you still get anthracite TB ?
          My paternal grand father became a coal merchant when he came to live in north London from Scarborough, he was only in his teens then.
          He did well enough to raise 6 sons in a huge house in Willesden. At one stage he had one of his workers lodging with the family.
          Were i grew up In Mill Hill there was once a gas works about two miles away. Us youngsters after training, could take a pram base, wheel it all the way to the depot and get a few bags of coke placed on it for about ten bob. And wheel it back up the hill and home for the kitchen boiler/water heater.

          1. I had eight bags of “Anthracite Nuts” – otherwise known as Stovesse – delivered Thursday. Probably have a small top-up just before xmas to ensure i’m ok over the break – and in case we have a big snowfall.

          2. I buy anthracite (in bulk) from my regular coal merchant. Welsh is the best, but hard to come by.

  40. That the BBC chooses to show footballers bending to the whims of the
    BLACK LIVES MATTER – Semi Political Movement, shows the direction of travel –

    Just wait for this obligatory/compulsory salute before the daily 6.00 news

    1. Not a semi political movement at all , it’s a full on destructive marxist nihilistic bunch of bas***ds with a brainwashed phalanx of woke virtue signallers who have no idea of the damage they’re doing to race relations, well that’s how I see it anyway.

    2. Perhaps predictably the Sunday Leftygaffe is moaning about the “racism” of the Millwall supporters because they booed the SJW wendyballers for “taking the knee”!

      1. No comments allowed on that article, but have a look at the one on “Swing low, sweet chariot”! Not much doubt there!

  41. A very good piece on today’s Lockdown Sceptics.
    https://lockdownsceptics.org/its-the-covid-panto-but-the-children-arent-laughing/

    Yesterday, Friday, was my darkest Covid hour. But then there dawned a
    light: Covid is this year’s panto. It’s just that the children aren’t
    laughing.

    First, the darkest hour:

    I was called to collect my younger boy from school; he, along with
    the rest of his class, is sent home for two weeks on account of one of
    his teaching assistants having tested positive for COVID-19.

    2. Done, but as the government don’t seem to listen to anyone with an alternative view, I can’t see it making a difference. The Boris/Halfcock stance is resolutely “Don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up”! 6,750 at present

      1. They do issue a response, though, after 10,000 signatures, and they have a mini debate if it reaches 100,000. Also gives them some idea of strength of opinions.

        1. It was weird listening to it on the radio trying to visualise the plays! I’ve got to say that Matt Dawson went up in my (extremely low) opinion as a commentator! And sorry Rastus, I think England deserved the win!

  44. The BLM movement appears to be an establishment invention acting as a divisive organisation that is suppose to speak for minority groups.
    Controlled opposition in other words.

    1. black looters are mindless was an attempt by idiots who took advantage of a bunch of thugs to push a hard left agenda using violence, thuggery and mob behaviour.

      The uneducated, bored, and criminal saw an opportunity to take what they hadn’t earned from those who had. The Left like that sort of disaffected mob. They proclaim to support the underdog when really they just use them to undermine society, decency and law.

      1. Yet again, no comment allowed! Are they frightened of the response they’ll get? I can’t imagine why can you?

      2. I’d have preferred the fans to tun their backs to the kneeling players, rather than booing, which just plays into the hands of the wokerati.

    3. 327240+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      On par with the brexit group then under it’s current
      leader / member.

    2. Grooming report? Dear life. Look: the state won’t let anything out that suggests there is a problem with Muslims.

      It will say nothing – absolutely nothing – to indicate that there is a problem in that community, no religious references, no cultural failures, the council wil be let off scot free, as will the police.

      All the blame will fall on the girls who were raped and probably the social workers who tried to raise the issue. It will say they didn’t do enough, or a junior officer who first reported the paedophlic rape of children by muslims.

      I’d put next month’s salary on it. No government report has ever published anything that embarrasses the state.

      1. From the Met Office site ” Fog and mist differ by how far you can see through them. Fog is when you can see less than 1,000 meters away, and if you can see further than 1,000 metres, we call it mist.”

        2. What’s the difference between “ground frost” (which I have known all my life) and “grass frost” which seems to be a beeboid construct?

          1. You need grass for grass frost. Otherwise it might be confuserated with shrub frost, or gravel frost… I’ll get me icicle.

          3. I wish I hadn’t.

            I suspect some prat thought it was “catchy and/or with it” but that it has now been cancelled (as they say these days).

  48. Latest DTHeadline

    Brexit talks could be extended if progress made in next few days, says George Eustice
    Environment Secretary says negotiations entering ‘final few days’ but more time may be needed to thrash out details

    Next thing we know Britain will not leave the EU after December 31 this year, next year, next decade or until ‘negotiations’ are finished.

    There will be no petrol or diesel car left on the road when a provisional deal is finally thrashed out in 2050.

  49. One of the world’s top trophy hunters has been revealed as a Cambridge-educated lawyer who has been accused of killing over 200 animals worldwide.

    Abigail Day, who graduated with a law degree in 1987, has won more than 20 awards from Safari Club International, a major US hunting organisation whose London chapter she founded in 2006.

    She is one of only two living British hunters known to have won SCI’s “African Big 5” award for shooting a lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, and cape buffalo.

    The revelation comes amid calls for the Government to speed up its long-awaited ban on the import of hunting trophies from endangered species.

    The full details of Ms Day’s involvement in the hunting world will be revealed in a new book, Trophy Leaks, out on Monday by Eduardo Goncalves, the founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting.

    Ms Day has hunted in at least 36 countries across six continents and in 2008 was the recipient of SCI’s Diana award, named after the Roman goddess, for the world’s top female trophy hunter. She now co-chairs the committee for the award.

    The hunting prizes account for more than 200 animals killed, but the total is likely to be lower as some animals count towards more than one prize.

    “There is no other Briton so deeply in meshed in the global industry,” Mr Goncalves said. “To see her list of awards was extraordinary.”

    The Sunday Telegraph tracked down Ms Day to her west London home, where the busts of two mighty Oryx adorned the walls of her front room, their horns nearly touching the ceiling.

    Either side of a mirror, two warthog heads protruded out from the wall, and on the mantelpiece was a stuffed big cat, thought to be a leopard.

    Abigail Day
    Abigail Day, left, is a Cambridge-educated lawyer who has been accused of killing over 200 animals worldwide
    Despite repeated requests, she declined to comment on the contents of the book.

    Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who has been a vocal opponent of trophy hunting, said the revelations were shocking. “The government has promised to deliver the world’s toughest ban on trophy hunting imports.

    “The shocking revelations in this book, including the leading role British hunters have played in shooting threatened species all over the world, must surely now spur it to act,” the veteran explorer said. “Voters want a ban today, not tomorrow.”

    Although the Conservative manifesto promised to ban trophies only from “endangered” species, activists have called for the Government to go further to ensure it covers the hunting of lions, tigers and other non-threatened species.

    Ms Day is known to be a champion of the activity, writing to the Telegraph in 2005 about the “vital role” it plays for conservation.

    “Your reporter loses no opportunity to turn your readers against trophy-hunters, and mentions conservation only in passing, although he is forced to acknowledge the vital role trophy-hunting plays,” she wrote.

    “If your article succeeds in demonising trophy-hunters, the future of the African lion will be less secure.”

    Many conservationists argue against an immediate ban on trophy hunting without a plan to plug the funding gap that it would create.

    Trophy hunts pour millions of pounds into local economies, which some conservationists argue helps maintain a balance between communities and animal populations.

    But even advocates of the industry have called for tighter regulation of trophy imports to ensure they maintain conservation standards.

    Actress Joanna Lumley, who has called for swift action on trophy hunting, said: “The issue of trophy hunting goes to the very essence of what British values represent and what kind of society we want to be.

    “There is absolutely no justification for killing animals purely for entertainment.”

    She added: “It is horrifying that a British woman should be one of the world’s top trophy hunters, and that she will have put her name forward to receive prizes for her gruesome so-called achievements.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2020/12/05/britains-prolific-female-trophy-hunter-revealed/

    3. Such people who hunt animals should themselves be hunted. In fact, no. Hunt their family, their children. Hang those trophies from the wall and see how she likes it.

  50. Yo, as wot I posted elsewhere

    SIR – Perhaps the simple solution to identifying those who have been
    vaccinated is to issue them with an unremovable security wristband as
    proof. R A Collings Presteign, Radnorshire

    Here is a novel suggestion.

    Let us not concentrate on those who are vaccinated, but on those who are notEverybody who is not
    vaccinated MUST wear a Yellow star on their left arm.

    But would we have to pay Royaties (or is it Republcies) to an EUSSR country, ruled by Wee Jimmy
    Krankies twin sister

    1. I’ve had vaccines for most things, but I’m not having this half tested one. I already have a little record card which lists all jabs I’ve had in the last 30 years, but that’s just for my private info.

        1. No – that’s one I didn’t have!
          In 1981 (I think) a local girl from here went to India, came back with rabies and died.

  51. The Prophet Isaiah foretells Christmas 2021.

    “And it came to pass that the Brexit negotiations were to be extended to ascertain whether an agreement might be made in the year of Our Lord 2022.”

    “And the sixteenth wave of the Plague did arrive and the country was locked down…again”

    “The Lord God wrought vengeance on the vaccine sellers, those bringers of Death…”

    You read it here first….

    1. Do not forget, the year 2020 in the year of our Lord is Year 1W in the Land of the Woke

        1. …and they need to retrace their steps Eastwards, PDQ with a ravening horde of Huns after them.

  52. The Prophet Isaiah foretells Christmas 2021.

    “And it came to pass that the Brexit negotiations were to be extended to ascertain whether an agreement might be made in the year of Our Lord 2022.”

    “And the sixteenth wave of the Plague did arrive and the country was locked down…again”

    “The Lord God wrought vengeance on the vaccine sellers, those bringers of Death…”

    You read it here first….

        1. Not today. Covid got him. And a massive WELL DONE to George Russell for qualifying second in Hamilton’s car. Hope he finishes the race and does well. He could have a very bright future in F1.

      2. Hamilton is, IMHO, a hypocrite and a liar. For years, he never mentioned anything about racism in his formative years grwoing up in Stevenage, only that which he got (which was wrong) from ‘fans’ of Spanish driver Alonso when he raced in Spain.

        If I recall correctly, it was only after he got called out by the woke brigade a few years ago for (rightly) poking fun at the woke brigade that (presumably after his PR team ‘had a word’ following a twitter storm [make of that what you will]) that he suddenly changed his tune and went woke, and tried to wrap himself in the victim flag of BLM.

        He should’ve left well alone (as most F1 drivers do) and concentrated on his driving. Up to that point, he’d been maturing as a person as well as a driver and been far more respected by fellow drivers and fans alike. He’s the greatest F1 driver of this generation, but his judgement elsewhere is, in my opinion, sadly lacking.

          1. Never said he was the greatest driver ever – just that in the last 10-15 years. Difficult to compare one generation with the next, given the improvements in technology and especially the training drivers do today as opposed to the original ‘gentlemen drivers’ and the party animals of the 1950s – 1970s. My guess still would be Senna as the best.

        2. agreed, he’d should’ve taken his cue from the Iceman [for those that aren’t familiar – Raikonen] :When asked, his response “No T-shirt, no bending knee, none of my business, so no comment”

  54. 327240+up ticks,
    It would be preferable to have a pro English / GB dodo in number ten and has been so over the last three decades, because it is blatantly obvious the party name that counts.
    These party name rustlers are getting away with odious daily actions today on the strength of the genuine lab/con. party’s actions of yesteryear two totally,totally, totally, different things,

    breitbart,
    Sunday 6 December: No freedom-loving prime minister could allow vaccination passports.

  55. Yesterday I made a prediction that Goatface would start last night’s MOTD with a dose of moral outrage about the Millwall business. He didn’t. It was mentioned only in passing at the end of the programme with the newspaper headlines. I felt almost let down but, in another way, MOTD didn’t disappoint. The commentator at West Ham v. Manchester Utd informed us in his introduction that “The Premier League welcomes back the Rainbow Laces campaign this week with the aim of making football a safe space for all, whatever your sexuality or gender indentity.” Thanks for letting us know.

    As for Millwall – George Eustice may be a useless environment secretary but he has at least a couple of vertebrae:
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/06/millwall-fans-who-booed-players-taking-a-knee-should-be-respected-says-eustice

    1. Gee, does anyone in the Foopball Premier League play soccer any more, or is it a campaigning organisation?

      1. The anti-racism campaign ‘Kick it Out’ has been around for more than 20 years but it’s only since the BLM nonsense that MOTD commentators have been reading from a script in their intros as though making a public service announcement, usually in a bored monotone.

        Still, some small progress is being made. Last night’s MOTD gave us only the very briefest view of the knee-bending at West Ham and none at all at the other three games.

      2. The anti-racism campaign ‘Kick it Out’ has been around for more than 20 years but it’s only since the BLM nonsense that MOTD commentators have been reading from a script in their intros as though making a public service announcement, usually in a bored monotone.

        Still, some small progress is being made. Last night’s MOTD gave us only the very briefest view of the knee-bending at West Ham and none at all at the other three games.

    2. “Minister fails to condemn Millwall fans who booed players taking a knee”

      “Fails to condemn”. There – the matter is pre-judged. If you are not with us, you are against us. Why should spectators be condemned for not wishing to show support for a political movement?

      1. Why? Because it is expected that you will show obeisance to the party. Freedom of thought cannot be permitted.

        A boot stamping on a human face, forever.

        The Left are evil. Worse, they think they are righteous and that insanity permits them to continue their abuses of common sense and individuality.

        https://bookriot.com/1984-quotes/

          2. Sex is fixed at the moment of conception. So far, medicine hasn’t found a ways to change 37 trillion cells.
            (Maybe that’s what the vaccine is for.)

          3. Ahem… At the moment of fertilisation. Conception follows a while later, ….or not.

          4. For pities sake.

            These people are mentally ill. If he’d put on a woolly coat and said he was a sheep the docs would send him off to the funny farm. They need intensive therapy and consideration for their illness, not pandering to indulge their delusional fantasies. This nonsense must stop.

            Especially as a police officer this *man* could be assigned to duties where only a Woman PC should be serving. Hell, we’ve already seen men pretending to be women demanding to get into women’s refuges only to rape the women there. When will this idiocy end?

        3. And the player in pink giving a black power salute over the knee bent evil white men paying their homage.

          1. I bet Mr Pink has no problem taking his “wage” from the ticket money paid by all the white fans.

      3. ‘Fails to condemn’ is implying that unless he does as they say, then he’s ‘bad’. How sanctimonious of them. I know how racist Millwall fans could and can be like, but on this occasion, they are correct in booing people taking the knee. What else they chanted, I’m not sure, but if if it were genuinely racist (of old), then those doing so should be rightly punished. Objecting to bowing down to a (IMHO) racist movement in BLM is NOT racist or in need of condemnation.

      4. Fails to condemn virtue-signalling claptrap.
        I haven’t followed. Who is this minister possessed of uncharacteristic spine?

        2. George Eustice, Environment Secretary. Apparently the interviewer tried to push him into criticising the Millwall fans for booing the BLM knee-taking gesture. He didn’t rise to the bait.

    4. re Eustace and Millwall – wise man. MOTD doesn’t air in Kenya, no great loss especially if still being fronted by that Walker crisps salesman

    5. Racing has been infected as well, although, as few people wear laces at the races, it’s been a rainbow armband.

  56. 327240+up ticks,
    May one ask, in regards to these governance party’s just who is responsible
    for the current condition of these Isles ?
    This present sh!te storm blitzkrieg has not just hit us it has been building for years.

    It cannot just be the MPs they had a 10K
    pay rise not so long back followed by 3K
    just recently I take that to be for services
    successfully rendered.

    Many of these MPs are not new additions
    they have been handling the
    peoples / Country’s welfare for decades
    especially the top echelon.

    Would these party’s, if found to be
    inept / treacherous in any manner towards
    The Country / peoples / children’s welfare
    would that party NOT be removed ?

    1. Yo Mt T

      They had been told, that a couple of servants were looking for a dominating pair of Gingers.
      You must have passed the interview.
      Well done
      The Ashes of our cats will be scattered with ours… eventually

          1. As soon as my old man or I get up from our usual space, Dobby, the naked cat, makes a dive for the warm spot! Cue “would you jump in my grave as quick?”

          3. I just get a sigh from hm as he’s generally actually down the bed! He likes the skin contact!

          6. ‘fraid so.

            It’s your own fault:

            I just get a sigh from hm as he’s generally actually down the bed! He likes the skin contact!

            Much too strong for the old boys who frequent Nottle.

          11. I have indeed, thank you Sue. The “uisge beatha” has flowed as free as …. er … “uisge”.
            ;¬)

          12. I always set the alarm to wake me up at 0400 hours. I do this because years ago, I read somewhere that most natural deaths occur at that time.

            Well, I wouldn’t want to miss it. After all, it’s a once in a lifetime experience.

          14. Urghh. I should think an alarm going off at 4 am would just about finish me off even if Nature hadn’t already intended to.

          15. 4.00 am is the time I frequently awaken ‘in the middle of the night’. It is also the time I get the first twinges of migraine if I am in for an episode. The first twinges can rapidly develop over 30 seconds into the full-blown horror. And not uncoincidentally, 4.00 am is when our blood sugar levels are at their lowest.

          16. It’s also a prime time for babies to be born! Apparently our bodies/metabolism are at the lowest ebb! I’d be careful if I was you!

          17. Lily wants to sit on a lap – preferably the other one, but mine will do….. when he sits down, she walks on my keyboard and deletes stuff…..

          18. Hello, Ndovu – yes, I’ve read your message from Twitter, received and understood late afternoon…. I replied via nttl.blog – couldn’t find where to reply to your later Twitter email even though I pressed reply!! – so hence this reply here. I am going to have another look at the Twitter thingy shortly!

          21. Success! I did wonder where it would go when I clicked ‘Retweet’. It was a leap of faith into the darkness of Twitter.

  58. That’s me for the day. A dreary, foggy day tomorrow – and cold as well. Winter weather shock!

    Have fun this evening.

    A demain

      1. Please, T_B, say it the right way round

        Stay warm cats, hope your snuggly servants are behaving themselves.

  59. Covid-19 vaccine ‘very safe and highly effective’, UK health chief says. 6 December 2020.

    On Sunday, Raine said the process of monitoring safety would continue, with scrutiny of the vaccine’s use in practice.

    “It’s continuous, it’s real time, and we’ll be sharing any new information that comes to light,” she said. “But my overall message is that the safety profile of the Covid-19 vaccine is really no different from any other vaccine – might have a mild symptom, it will probably disappear in a day or two, and nothing at all of a serious nature, so you can be confident there.”

    “Mild symptom.” “new information.” “probably”? I do not find this reassuring. Fortunately I’m not taking the damned thing which I find infinitely reassuring!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/06/covid-19-vaccine-safety-message-vitally-important-uk-health-chief-says

    1. “really no different from any other vaccine” – does that include the one for swine flu?

    4. “really no different from any other vaccine” – does that include the one for swine flu?

      1. It’s actually Mandy Rice-Davies (with a hyphen). Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

    7. On the BBC website today Mr Hancock said that the vaccine suppresses Covid-19.

      When will one be developed that prevents us catching Covid?

      He didn’t say.

    2. true enough. the Drs v true in Germany, 2 were later arrested, then evenutally released. Drs in US did the same around the same time Trump refused to wear a mask. C-19 testing kits were on the W.H.O.’s moving order for airlifting, interestingly in this part of the “parish” to all African countries holding elections this year: Tanzania, Burkino Faso etc. 10 kits are sitting in Kampala for next yrs “re-election” of M7

  61. Apologies, but just heard this on local radio:

    Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
    A. Because the chicken coming towards her wasn’t wearing a face mask!

  62. Afternoon, all.

    Had an interesting conversation with the guy sitting exactly one metre distanced to my right in church this morning.

    He spends part of each year in Trinidad and tells me that friends there who watch the BBC World tv channel ask, “Aren’t there any white people left in England”?

    He also knows an Indian guy who got the sack from BBC World because he, “sounds too English”. His replacement speaks with such a strong Indian accent that his English is difficult to understand. So it seems that broadcasting is no longer about communication.

    1. Not true, Sue.

      The BBC is communicating it’s message loud and clear. It’s just not interested in reporting the news any more. It would prefer to set it.

      1. It wants to set it and report its own agenda as news. Never anything that does not meet the required standard.

    1. Well, there has been at least one arrest in respect of “hate speech” response the Millwall match players “taking thr knee”.
      Of course the actual comments are not reported, so we have no idea if we might say the same.

  64. I’m trying to watch the highlights of the rugby.

    Why, oh why, do I have to watch a couple of airheads yakking at each other instead of actual play?

    2. It seems to be par for the course. The racing today was interrupted by some long spiel about “diversity” (aka promoting perversion and delusion with LGBTQUERTUIOP). Eff off! I don’t want to know what you do in the privacy of your home.

  66. End of first half – France 13 England 6

    France deserve to be well ahead – their defence was rock solid in the last few minutes when England were pressing on their line.

    At least here in France we can watch matches live in which France is playing – unlike in Britain where the policy is to stuff the public.

    What are you paying your licence fee for?

    Back to the tele for the second half.

  71. – Latest breaking news – A man who fell into the shark tank at the London Aquarium has since died after tasting positive for corona virus

    1. I feel sorry for the cleaning staff. No one cares about the people that have to clean without any protect

    1. Nice to catch a glimpse of it. I wouldn’t call it bleak at all – though I daresay it can be stormy.

    2. The epitome of a bleak, Nordic hell; I would recommend Alaska for light relief – try Skagway and the Yukon …

      1. This was shot in early spring, whilst there was still a little snow and before the green had sprung. Normally, the scenery is green, or white. Beige only lasta a week or two.

  73. At last Farrell gets a kick between the posts and England win.

    But in my opinion France were the better team today.

    Now Johnson has a more important battle – against Macron’s EU team he must win or England will really have lost.

    1. I had a kick between the posts, once. It was so painful that I couldn’t even squeak.

    2. France were the better team today.

      Only because they demanded full access to the entire pitch.

  74. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/06/rewilding-wild-swimming-nature-has-hijacked-modern-day-marie/

    “From rewilding to ‘wild’ swimming, nature has been hijacked by modern-day Marie Antoinettes

    In recent years, the word ‘wild’ has come to mean not life-affirming risk but self-denying caution

    Julie Burchill6 December 2020 • 10:00am

    In the decade I defined recently in this column as the Troubled Teens, many words have changed their meaning. Now, it isn’t just old fogeys muttering darkly about verbal appropriation, as one lovely word after another falls to the monstrous regiments of the woke. I am, too.

    “Brave” – once meant rescuing orphans from burning buildings; now means talking about one’s troubles in public. “Activist” – once meant getting out and about to help others; now means staying indoors on the internet screaming at people who think differently. “Community” – once meant a cheery group of neighbours getting together for street parties; now means a posse of peevish wallflowers going for gold in the Victimhood Olympics.

    And now “wild” – a word which, predictably, I have a weakness for. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “uncontrolled or extreme” with the slang “unusual, often in a way that is attractive or exciting”. This is the wildness that produced numerous cultural artefacts: songs like Wild Thing, films like Wild At Heart, books like Where The Wild Things Are.

    But in recent years there’s been a creeping encroachment of a version of the word which doesn’t mean life-affirming risk but rather self-denying caution – to quote Cambridge, “wild land is not used to grow crops and has few people living on it”. “Rewilding” predictably showed up in the woke Archers a while back when the rich old Archer matriarch Peggy awarded half a million pounds to a “rewilding” project. Though it seemed an unlikely alliance at first, it’s worth remembering that “conservative” and “conservation” have a common root – and probably a manky old root thieved from common land and made into a stew, if the two-legged hedge-hogs have anything to do with it.

    Lockdown, meanwhile, has exacerbated the craze for foraging as part and parcel of the wildness trend, along with wild swimming (swimming outside) and wild dining (dining outside) to the point where Epping Forest – once most notorious for dogging – has been rebooted as an Essex Eden, keen to share its opulent bounty with the furloughed.

    You can see how plague-laden supermarkets might make outdoor scavenging look like the healthy way to get your five a day, but I’m not convinced. As a big people fan, I’ve never been overkeen on nature; when as a teenager I heard that there was a book called Against Nature, I became so thrilled I carried a copy around for a year, as though it was a trendy Etam handbag. This aversion stayed with me into adulthood, to the somewhat illogical point where, living in a house with fruit trees in the garden, I would leave them for the birds and buy apples from the supermarket, all nicely done up in plastic.

    In recent years, commercial mushroom foragers in Epping Forest have been fined thousands of pounds for removing the fungi that supports ancient trees and serves as food for wildlife such as deer. I’ve never trusted mushrooms since I saw some growing on the bathroom carpet of a friend (reader, I married him!) and the idea of breaking the law in order to get your greedy paws on some does strike me as somewhat surreal. And the only forager I ever knew fell in a stagnant pond while reaching for blackberries, having scratched her arms and legs; soon after, she woke up with a brain infection and had to learn to walk all over again. Give me the concrete fields of the city any day, where you can see trouble coming.

    As a counter-jumping meritocrat, I’ve always thought Nature best left to the posh; like them it doesn’t have a lot to say and clings blindly to an outdated “natural” order. Scratch a friend of the earth and find an enemy of earthlings; look how ecology movements are so white and bourgeois they make a Monday Club meeting look like the Reggae Sunsplash festival. Because rewilding is an attempt to go back in time, before pesky people and their petty desires to have a decent standard of living caused human habitats to blight the landscape.

    “Gonna make it happen/Take the world in a love embrace” sang Steppenwolf in one of my favourite songs Born To Be Wild. Let the modern Marie Antoinettes keep their fellow humans six feet away while they gorge themselves on buckshee fungi; this fashion for “the wild” is an adventure only for the mild at heart.”

    This follows on from an earlier discussion about the environment. I found it in the BTL comments under Julie Burchill’s article. It is over 2 years old, but this dogma still exists.
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/dutch-rewilding-experiment-backfires-as-thousands-of-animals-starve, care or lack of

    1. I remember reading at the time about the Dutch nature reserve when they released far too many grazing animals and most of them starved to death.

      1. Oostvaardersplassen. The area is reclaimed land originally meant for industrial use but left on its own, it ‘wilded’ from scratch and became a wildlife haven.

        I’ve been past it on a train a few times and yes, it does look a bit barren. The original plan was to create a ‘wilderness’ corridor from the Oostvaardersplassen to link up with the national park to the east, but the money ran out.

        Incidentally, wolves have been sighted in NL in recent years. For such a small crowded country, there is a surprising amount of wild life in the Netherlands.

          1. There is a Kanaalstraat in Amsterdam but there is no canal there and no tourists. If you mean the seedy bit, it’s called the Oudezijds Voorburgwal and the Oudrezijds Achterburgwal. This area serves the useful purpose of keeping all the pi$$ed up dope -headed morons in one part of the city, leaving the civilised parts to the art/history and architecture geeks like me.

            I’ve been a Museumkaart holder for about 10 years which gives unlimited free entrance to most museums in the country, all for (currently) 65 Euros per year. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/39fb40cab695c74172a790b0ec6f2443b05b7ed98e2f82fef3bb83c2c2ddf56e.jpg

        3. Big excitement over wolves in S Norway. Apparently, some need shot due to overpopulation, but the treehuggers are up in arms about it.

      2. I’d never heard of it before. I can’t say I feel any better now I have that knowledge.

        1. It was irresponsible to release so many herbivores in such a barren area. It’s one thing to have controlled grazing with a small group of animals, which can then be moved somewhere else, but that place was a disaster.

  75. Gender or sex?

    sex (n.)
    late 14c., “males or females collectively,” from Latin sexus “a sex, state of being either male or female, gender,” of uncertain origin. “Commonly taken with seco as division or ‘half’ of the race” [Tucker], which would connect it to secare “to divide or cut” (see section (n.)).

    Secus seems the more original formation, but it is strange that the older texts only know sexus. The modern meaning of sectiō ‘division’ suggests that sec/xus might derive from secāre ‘to sever’, but the morphology remains unclear: does sexus go back to an s-present *sek-s- ‘to cut up’, or was it derived from a form *sek-s- of the putative s-stem underlying secus? [Michiel de Vaan, “Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages,” Leiden, 2008]
    Meaning “quality of being male or female” first recorded 1520s. Meaning “sexual intercourse” is attested by 1906; the meaning “genitalia” is attested by 1938. Sex appeal is attested by 1904.

    For the raw sex appeal of the burlesque “shows” there is no defense, either. These “shows” should be under official supervision, at the least, and boys beneath the age of eighteen forbidden, perhaps, to attend their performance, just as we forbid the sale of liquors to minors. [Walter Prichard Eaton, “At the New Theatre and Others: The American Stage, Its Problems and Performances,” Boston, 1910]
    Sex drive is by 1918; sex object by 1901; sex symbol by 1871 in anthropology; the first person to whom the term was applied seems to have been Marilyn Monroe (1959). Sex therapist is from 1974.

    gender (n.)
    c. 1300, “kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits,” from Old French gendre, genre “kind, species; character; gender” (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) “race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species,” also “(male or female) sex,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.

    Also used in Latin to translate Aristotle’s Greek grammatical term genos. The grammatical sense is attested in English from late 14c. The unetymological -d- is a phonetic accretion in Old French (compare sound (n.1)).

    The “male-or-female sex” sense is attested in English from early 15c. As sex (n.) took on erotic qualities in 20c., gender came to be the usual English word for “sex of a human being,” in which use it was at first regarded as colloquial or humorous. Later often in feminist writing with reference to social attributes as much as biological qualities; this sense first attested 1963. Gender-bender is from 1977, popularized from 1980, with reference to pop star David Bowie.

    2. Swahili has 9 ‘genders’. All adjectives & verb forms have to agree in singular & plural.

      1. A paltry 3 genders in Germanic languages. That’s enough for me to get my head around, though.

    3. I think gender is more a grammatical construct, rather than a biological one. However, the word has been taken over in recent years especially in the context of people who want to be the sex they were not born with.

      1. I think gender has been adopted by those precious people who still regard sex as a dirty word.

        1. About the same as those using the word “passed” because they are too scared of the concept of death that they can not say “died”.

          4. It is from some pome (sic) that people who are unaccustomed to the idea of death wish to have read when someone has “passed”….

            To make you feel better…..etc etc. Instead of recognising that the person is dead.

        3. In the same way as “illegal economic migrants” has been replaced by “refugees”.

          1. Whatever was wrong with Niggers – it’s what they call each other and I wouldn’t want to confuse them.

        4. When did “sex change” become “gender re-assignment”? (The more syllables the better.)

          1. 1960s.
            A particular New Zealand born sex-change quack surgeon operating in the USA coined the term to obfuscate his activities.

          4. The former involves surgery, whereas the latter doesn’t – just a piece of paper or a suitable declarative post on social media.

        1. I wonder if HM will resign when Phillip is gone? That will be a terrible blow to her; she might well feel that it’s time to wind down when she no longer has his support.

          1. It’s his brain function that worries me. That part of his functions seems to immature with age (as Harold Wilson said in reference to Anthony Wedgwood Benn).

          2. It’s his brain function that worries me. That part of his functions seems to immature with age (as Harold Wilson said in reference to Anthony Wedgwood Benn).

          7. Be interesting to see whether or not he gets a telegram from his wife when he reaches his next birthday.

      2. I think Prince Charles looks rougher, he has the voice and the mannerisms of a real old geriatric.

        I have some horrible thoughts that Harry and his Bint might be rubbing their hands together.. Remember her ambition is to be QUEEN.

        1. Great. The child bearing age women become sterile and the men have to buy Pfizer’s Viagra and hope for the best. Population control via vaccination was always Bill Gates’ declared aim.

    4. I would much rather see Johnson, Hancock, Gove and the rest of the Cabinet publicly vaccinated with the stuff injected into them verified beyonf doubt to be the genuine vaccine and not a placebo. Then Gates, Soros, Merkel, Macron etc should also be vaccinated in public under the same conditions.

      This is the only way to get a higher level of confidence among the public,

      1. You getting soft in your old age?
        I would have expected:

        I would much rather see Johnson, Hancock, Gove and the rest of the Cabinet publicly vaccinated with the stuff injected into them verified beyond doubt to be the genuine vaccine and not a placebo. executed

        Then Gates, Soros, Merkel, Macron etc should also be vaccinated executed in public under the same
        conditions.

        This is the only way to get a higher level of confidence among the public

        1. Take an upvote to cancel the downvote.

          There are some stocks in the Market Square in Stow on the Wold. It was customary to wrap a large stone in cabbage leaves and by taking careful aim breaking the villains’ skull. The wimps would gain satisfaction from throwing rotten fruit at the villains.

          1. I have accumulated well over a quarter of a million downers; one more is water off a duck’s back.

        2. @disqus_jP1JipKHzK:disqus

          Away with you and your downvotes, ya miserable auld ‘bàirseach’.
          :¬[

    6. “I promised, whether my life be short or long, that I would serve. I am now prepared to test the safety of this on your behalf”

      1. Glad you’re here. I am late because I went riding, had a long soak in the bath (riding without stirrups, while beneficial, does tend to make me ache!) and then watched the recording of the racing. Then my printer decided to throw the paper out rather than print the agenda I need, so I tried to sort that out (I failed) and then the computer decided to show the Blue Screen of Death (which it does from time to time, but hasn’t for some while in order to lull me into a false sense of security).

      2. I thought I’d watch the last game – and it went on for over an hour.

        Congratulations to Niall Roberston and bad luck for the other Trump, Judd. Both are fantastic players,

  82. Peter Alliss RIP …. a few quotes ….

    “I like a bit of rough,” he would say, “who doesn’t?” Or: “I haven’t
    seen a grip like that since they closed the gents at King’s Cross
    Station.”

    1. Exactly as we’ve felt and been saying all along.

      Using us oldies as an excuse is unforgivable.

    2. Read some more of his comments.
      He’s really good isn’t he.
      Thanks for posting this.

    2. We now need a new Conservative Party as well as a new right of centre newspaper and a new broadcaster.

      What is behind this mass movement to the left? And what have we done to deserve it?

      1. mng, we haven’t deserved it in any way, it’s the mindset of creating garbage in line with their own belief system. Viz Kay Burley spots an albino squirrel

    2. The Dems will just claim the machine was, er, fixed. Of course, if they do it means they admit it isn’t incorruptible.

      1. Didn’t soft furnishings like blankets also have the “Utility” symbol. I wonder if any are still in use.

        1. I think we have an old utility mark blanket knocking around somewhere. My parents still had “cheese mark” chairs when I left home in the seventies.

      1. ‘I don’t do good photos.’
        That is a pikature of you
        I did not know, you were a redhe
        ( ad, The missing bit

  88. It has taken me a while to defeat Disgust and get back here, but ” The Usual Suspects etc'” are all some place else
    I cannot be bothered anymore, last post on here was over an hour ago
    Yo OB, i enjoyed my time in Noggyland,, especially when we escorted ERII to the war cemetaries, by Bergen back in the 80’s

    1. I use an ipad with safari. It logs me out every time I refresh and I can not post pictures only links. It didn’t used to be like that but it is what it is.

      4. I have found that Safari on an iPad refuses to let me post images. All I get is red text telling me that have to log in even though I am logged in.

          1. That is certainly about the time that I started to get problems posting an image. Wasn’t that also about the time when this particular forum moved to a different host, though? Whether Disqus or iPad/Safari, it is very irritating.

        2. I’m on firefox and have problems posting pics. Normally takes three attempts before it will post it. I think it’s a Disqus problem.

      5. iPad/safari works fine for me, Kaypea. No logouts and no problem posting pictures. It’s quite an old iPad running iOS 10.3.3

        1. That’s the glitch. Mine has been updated and it started playing sillies about 2 years ago, prob ios 11!

    2. The lack of comment does seem odd. Maybe it is a Disqus glitch! It’s made me log in a couple times today even though I hadn’t logged out.

      2. We were having dinner and then watched another episode of The Bridge, followed by the news, and now snooker.

    3. Yo, OLT.
      Glad to hear it! We quite like the place… and it’s good to see from you again. :-D)

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