Sunday 7 June: Britain is waiting for a dose of Boris Johnson’s trademark optimism

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/06/letters-britain-waiting-dose-boris-johnsons-trademark-optimism/

834 thoughts on “Sunday 7 June: Britain is waiting for a dose of Boris Johnson’s trademark optimism”

  1. Abolish the police? US cities imagine a world without cops. The New York Times – 06 June 2020.

    After more than a week of protests against police brutality and unrest that left parts of the city burned, a growing chorus of elected officials, civic leaders and residents in Minneapolis are urging the city to break up the Police Department and reimagine the way policing works.

    “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the City Council, said on Twitter this week. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together,” he added. “We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.”

    Morning everyone. This is ample warning for anyone White Person living in Minneapolis. Either form a Vigilante Group or fill in your application forms for emigration to Russia.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/defund-police-floyd-protests.html

    1. You don’t have to be white to be terrified by the prospect of no policing in the ‘hood..

      1. Morning Citroen. It looks to me like Revolution is in the offing. They all begin with an idealistic vision and radical proposals followed by the overthrow of the Government and then repression, murder and foreign wars. The stage and the players are all set for such a scenario!

        3. Attempted coup rather than revolution.

          ‘Revolution’ however stage managed at least implies up some sort of popular sentiment.

          The leaders of the coup have several advantages – they already control almost the entire media, much of the bureaucracy, the financial system, many tiers of government and so on. It only remains to browbeat the deplorable white people into accepting their fate.

        4. Attempted coup rather than revolution.

          ‘Revolution’, however stage managed, at least implies some sort of popular sentiment.

          The leaders of the coup have several advantages – they already control almost the entire media, much of the bureaucracy, the financial system, many tiers of government and so on. It only remains to browbeat the deplorable white people into accepting their fate.

          1. “Attempted”? I would say that as the Government has no response to the law being broken by large numbers of people, it’s pretty well done.

            PS. Will boatmen of the RNLI be arrested for conspiring to bring in illegal immigrants?

      2. Most small towns and villages in the UK really don’t need policing. Nothing much happens. Unless there are incomers.

    2. ‘Morning, Minty. It would seem that the next pandemic has started and crossed the Atlantic in record time. It’s called Stupidity-20.

  3. SIR – Lawrence Kirk (Letters, May 31) suggests refitting doors in public spaces with copper handles to prevent the spread of disease.

    Unfortunately, they would be nicked before nightfall.

    Gordon Brown
    Grassington, North Yorkshire

      3. Are the BLM warriors arriving to arrest Trudeau (or is it Macaroni?) for being too white?

    2. “ Not only that, but ever since the election of Trump, all the vociferous Trump-haters have been undermining the legitimacy not only of Trump himself, but of the political system which made his election possible. I have been saying that for years: by saying “not my President” the Trump-haters have de-legitimized not only Trump personally, but also de-legitimized the Executive branch as such.”

      You could replace Trump with Brexit or with Boris and get the same result. These people hate with such fervour that they cannot see the anarchy they are heading for. When the mob, that they have whipped up and encouraged, comes knocking at their doors it will be too late.

    1. BTL@DTletters:

      Brian Thorne
      7 Jun 2020 6:12AM
      How many of those protesting yesterday were teachers and University staff too frightened to go back to work?

      1. Business Idea – Set up a network to collect £1 per week from everyone’s doorstep in the country.
        Store the money away and when somebody dies the fund pays out enough to pay for the Funeral.

        The man from the Pru, Pearl Assurance etc etc did that for decades …………. penny policies paid for over say 25+ years meant the poor had enough to pay for a decent funeral. Tremendous returns were possible in the past unlike today’s advertised plans which are really “Advance HP Payments” as there seems the investment uplift goes to the provider rather than the policy holder.

        However, it takes commitment of people to think ahead for “the day” it will be needed – sadly lacking in today’s young when there are important matters like the latest fashions, tech & i-phones to buy.

        1. Could they deliver a daily pinta too.
          During lockdown/incarceration the milkman could have provided a valuable service.
          Where’s Ernie?

    2. Afternoon, Peddy. (I was up early, but have been doing a lot of washing and several odd jobs, including phoning around friends and family.)

  8. You know all those infuriating ads on the telly for Life Insurance/Funeral Plans?

    Friends of Labour have been given a free ad in the DT letters for the Nanny State to put them out of business.

    IR – During these extraordinary times, people are under great pressure – and none more so than the thousands who are unexpectedly having to pay for the funeral of a loved one.

    The funeral plays a crucial role in the grieving process. Families, many of whom have been unable to see their loved one before their death, are doing all they can to organise meaningful funerals – but, for many, the additional financial pressure is overwhelming.

    According to the Office for National Statistics, since the first Covid-19 death in March, 169,500 people have died in England and Wales. Nearly 56,000 of these have been excess deaths. Research from Europe Economics, commissioned by the National Association of Funeral Directors, suggests there will be between 33,000 and 85,000 further excess deaths in the event of a second wave.

    There are also growing concerns about the casualties of lockdown – the impact of rising unemployment, loneliness and financial hardship. ONS figures show that the areas with the highest death rates are also the poorest, where people are least able to pay for a funeral.

    We are therefore calling on the Government to introduce an interest-free crisis funeral loan, covering funerals that have taken place during the lockdown and continuing for as long as restrictions are in place.

    This loan should be available to all, without being means-tested. It could be administered through existing mechanisms such as the Bounceback Loan and Child Funeral Fund. Repaid over 12 or 24 months, it would ensure that those who have had the traumatic experience of organising a funeral at short notice do not have the additional stress of financial uncertainty. It is the right thing to do – for the sake of decency and social justice during this unprecedented period.

    Carolyn Harris MP (Lab)

    Mark Isherwood MS (Con)
    Chairman, Cross Party Group for Funerals and Bereavement in the Welsh Parliament

    David Collingwood
    Director of Funerals, Co-op Funeralcare

    Jon Levett
    Chief Executive, National Association of Funeral Directors

    Mohamed Omer
    Board Member, Gardens of Peace Muslim Cemetery

    Sir Mark Hendrick MP (Lab)

    Jim McMahon MP (Lab)

    Matthew Reed
    Chief Executive, Marie Curie

    Rt Rev Paul Ferguson
    Bishop of Whitby

    Sam Kershaw
    Chief Executive Officer, Funeral Partners

    Alison Crake
    Senior Partner, Crake and Mallon Funeral Service

    Absurd

    2. What actually is ‘social justice’? What is it those using it’s banner want?

      As I’d bet it has nothing to do with society or justice.

    3. If ever proof was needed that the Welsh Assembly is just a meaningless, expensive, talking shop.

      “ Chairman, Cross Party Group for Funerals and Bereavement in the Welsh Parliament”

      Whilst checking on a couple of facts I came across this – all those brainwashed highly educated children added to the electorate, what could go wrong?

      “ The Act will for the first time in Wales afford 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote, beginning with the Welsh General Election in 2021.[2] The decision is the largest franchise extension in Wales since 1969, when the Representation of the People Act 1969 reduced the voting age from 21 to 18.[2] The franchise will also be extended to “eligible foreign nationals”.[2]”

  9. Madeleine McCann suspect may be linked to murder of German girl found dead on beach in Belgium, it is claimed. 6 June 2020 • 2:19pm

    The prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann case may be linked to the murder of a German girl who was found dead on a beach in Belgium, it is claimed.

    I expect to read shortly that this guy is suspected of being in Whitechapel in 1888, they having gone through every other available unsolved murder/disappearance in Europe over the last twenty years.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/06/madeleine-mccann-suspect-may-linked-murder-german-girl-found/

    1. Is he a Methodist? Does his mum love him? Does he keep himself to himself and not bother his neighbours?

          2. I’m aware of what you said. I was just trying to match your humour, like for like (and, no doubt, failing).

            [Paul would get the joke, I’m sure he wouldn’t be offended]

    2. The police had him on a list, admittedly a very long list, but ignored him and let him go. Just as they had the Yorkshire Ripper, Robert Black, Peter Tobin, and Harold Shipman.

    3. On their journey through time, they could check up on the murder of Mary Kriek.

  10. Sub heading over on ZH:

    “Bush’s recent ‘moral guidance’ has as much credibility as former president Bill Clinton bewailing the decline of chastity.”

    :-))

    1. Lammy is a complete and utter berk, and a race-baiter extraordinaire. He cannot possibly hold a shadow cabinet position on merit, so presumably Mr Ikea appointed him to tick a box…

  12. Good morning, all. Another wet day in prospect. And what utterly depressing news. I’ll go and light the fire.

    1. Good morning Bill

      I wish we had had some decent rain, it skirted over us for five minutes yesterday . Bright sunny day here , we have put the CH heating on though!

        1. We leave ours on 24/7/365. If it gets cold in summer or warm in winter it trips in. It wasn’t on for long but took the morning chill off.

          1. We have solar panels that heat the water (from long before photo-voltaics became available) so when it was hot and sunny turned the whole lot off, so the CH didn’t come on to unnecessarily heat the water. When it heats the water it also heats up the radiator in my bedroom for some obscure reason and as my bedroom gets overly hot in sunny weather I prefer to turn the whole system off.

          2. The radiator in one of our bathrooms comes on with the hot water. The only one I turn off in the summer. Our system (?) was put in when an extension was built in 1991, 5 years before we moved in. Even plumbers we’ve had in don’t understand it but if works.

  13. Tom Slater
    The march of progressive censorship
    6 June 2020, 6:01pm

    It’s official: criticising Black Lives Matter is now a sackable offence, even here in the British Isles, thousands of miles away from the social conflict currently embroiling the US. As protesters again fill the streets of a rainy London on Saturday, as part of a now internationalised backlash against the brutal police killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, those who criticise them do so at their peril – as two men have recently found out.

    Stu Peters, a presenter on Manx Radio, has been suspended, pending an investigation, for an on-air exchange with a black caller. He said nothing racist, you can read the transcript for yourself. What he did was rubbish the idea of white privilege: ‘I’ve had no more privilege in my life than you have.’ And he questioned the wisdom of staging a protest on the Isle of Man against a killing in Minnesota: ‘You can demonstrate anywhere you like, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.’

    For this, he has been taken off air. Manx Radio has even referred the exchange to the Isle of Man’s Communications Commission to assess whether any broadcast codes have been broken. And for what? He took issue with the idea that skin colour confers privilege, regardless of any other consideration: a mad ideology whose adherents will actually readily say that white homeless people enjoy white privilege.

    And he wondered out loud if a protest against US cops on a small island in the Irish Sea is, well, a bit pointless. If Peters has broken any code it is a very new and unwritten one, and he’s not the only person to fall foul of it in recent days. Martin Shipton, chief reporter for the Western Mail, has been asked to step down as a judge of the Wales Book of the Year competition over some tweets he posted about the BLM protests in Cardiff. He said they were exercises in ‘virtue-signalling’ and expressed concern about the effect they might have on the spread of Covid-19. He also got into some robust exchanges with people who told him that, as an old white man, he should just shut up.

    How did we get here? In the space of just a few days, Black Lives Matter, its tenets and adherents have become almost unquestionable. No one worth wasting breath on disagrees with the literal message of the movement. But those who dare criticise a lot of the identitarian ideological guff that unfortunately accompanies the movement now risk being treated as heretics. Even criticising these mass gatherings for breaking lockdown – remember when sitting too closely on a beach was a scoldable offence? – is treated as alarming evidence of non-conformity or perhaps even racism.

    This is all a neat demonstration that censorship is not exclusively about state clampdowns. The suspension of Peters and the sacking of Shipton are examples of what John Stuart Mill called the ‘tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling’ – ‘the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them’. If expressing an opinion, even one as mild as ‘I support the sentiment, but I’m not sure these protests are a great idea’, the resulting backlash can cost you your job or social status.

    But this is also profoundly worrying – not only for free speech but also for the quality of our discussion about racism and how to defeat it. We are being compelled to have ‘a conversation’ about race, but one in which any dissent from the most extreme and absurd positions – such as that Western society is still racist to the core and that dirt-poor white folk benefit from it, even if they don’t realise it – are treated as suspect. This is a recipe for censorship, division and neverending culture war – and nothing else.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-march-of-progressive-censorship

    1. This is just the beginning. Soon it will be the dismissal of people like Hitchens, Murray and Liddle from their jobs and then their arrests for anti-state activities.

    3. The slack rapidly rotting moral fibre of mankind is leading to a state of complete anarchy.

    4. “He took issue with the idea that skin colour confers privilege, regardless of any other consideration: a mad ideology whose adherents will actually readily say that white homeless people enjoy white privilege.”
      Richard Feynman said once “Better the question that cannot be answered rather than the answer that cannot be questioned”.

    5. ‘Morning, Citroen, “Martin Shipton, chief reporter for the Western Mail, has been asked to step down as a judge of the Wales Book of the Year competition…”

      I suppose his replacement will be an illiterate black who will judge entirely on the pictures – if there are any. I trust someone will read the books to him and translate those in Cymraig.

      1. In accordance with current hiring practice, I expect the local constabulary will be able to provide pictures of the nominee. After all, the fascists of Antifa and BLM have a convicted felon as their ‘martyr du jour’.

    6. Apologies for banging the drum, but the racist Lefty protestors are now making criticism of their racism illegal.

      It’s hypocrisy, but the Left have never cared about that. It’s all about controlling the language and thus contorlling what people can think out of fear. That’s oppression.

      Racists complaining about racism, oppressors dictating what people can say while demanding they – and only they – be heard

  14. Morning, Campers.
    A comment from Ian Rankin, no friend of Conservative governments, but sadly, this is near enough to the truth to strike a chord.
    ‘Ian Rankin, was struck by the similarity between MPs queueing at Westminster to vote and people waiting to get into Ikea. “The difference being,” he says, “that at Ikea you might just get a cabinet that works.”’

    1. What a flat pack they are – not a sharp amongst them as they quaver pathetically.

    2. Morning Anne – The £10000 that was given to each MP as expenses to provide equipment, which they probably had already in their homes, to communicate with the HoC whilst in lockdown would have been better spent on providing an electronic voting system in the HoC. The present system is an outdated time wasting procedure and should be abolished.

      1. I agree, but the fundamental problem the bullyboys have with electronic voting is that it’s much more difficult for the whips to catch/prevent someone going into the “wrong” line before the event.

        They don’t find out the rebels until it’s too late.

  15. Anyone who has seen that awful moment when the mounted policeman hits the traffic lights and then crashes like a sack of spuds to the ground should be horrified. Not, however, if you are a Guardian journalist column writer: you want it edited to display the scene over and over to music.
    Has this piece of excrement been suspended/sacked for requesting such a thing? Debate your opinion sensibly on radio with your callers and woe betide you along with suspension from your job if your opinion differs from what the extremely noisy minority demands.
    The Tweet was taken down but the internet does not forget.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/df00fd87f213e0eedadac21d43093d8bb9146e9f480d42903d546223ebb31dfb.png

    1. The BBC reported that with an overly light touch. I suppose that half the mob were BBC employees working from home.

  16. Britain is not America. But we too are disfigured by deep and pervasive racism. David Olusoga. Sun 7 Jun 2020.

    The demonstrators and activists who have taken to the streets have, however, been motivated by more than revulsion. They have also been stirred to action by acknowledging a fundamental truth – that the killing of Floyd has to be understood as a symptom of systemic racism. By building their campaign around that reality they have promoted radical and challenging conversations – in countries on both sides of the Atlantic – about the nature of racism and the actions that people of all races can take in eliminating it. These are conversations that we have needed for a very long time.

    This is Olusoga a mediocre historian at best and a BBC mendicant whose wages come from the licence fee extorted from the population under criminal sanction. We can see here his inverted racism in action. Floyd is not a victim of systemic racism; assuming that there were such a thing, since he wasn’t arrested for being black but for suspicion of criminal activity. He is not Martin Luther King. He was a career criminal and drug addict. In fact an embodiment of all those qualities that the black community seek to deny not only to others but to themselves.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/07/britain-is-not-america-but-we-too-are-disfigured-by-deep-and-pervasive-racism

    2. That’s the half-caste – who loathes “imperial” England but accepted an OBE.

      1. ‘Morning, Bill, never was it truer in Olusoga’s case that OBE stands for Other Buggers’ Efforts.

        A slime bucket who cannot/will not see the irony in his acceptance of the honour.

    3. “The demonstrators and activists who have taken to the streets have, however, been motivated by more than revulsion.”

      I agree. The racism of the demonstrators and activists is all to clear to see, and since it is systemic in the black community, and has led to much bloodshed in the tribal culture from whence they came, I suggest the only way to eliminate such racism in the UK is to expel them into exile and not allow them back until they have addressed their problem. Such a sanction is not available to indigenes, so we have to live with indigenous racists.

      Edit – a thought just struck me that if we apply that principle in the United States, we might end up with a whole load of religious fanatic gun-toters of the KKK persuasion back on our shores. Even Donald Trump might end up shacking out in his golf course in Scotland if he doesn’t watch out. Would we be able to deal with them?

      Not all brown and black skinned people are racists though, any more than the palefaces are. We all come in all sorts. The knack, however, must be to sort out which are the racists, and of these ignore the mere thought criminals and concentrate on those actually perpetuating crimes for the sake of their racism, and separate them off from those who are prepared to live alongside the honky as equals. Like sorting the wheat from the chaff, it requires discrimination and a judge of character – things that are deeply unfashionable in the British Establishment right now.

      1. “But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

        Matthew 25:31–46:

    4. Slavery had been relegated to a footnote in UK history until recently. It has now become a coat peg on which to hang almost anything, especially if it can be connected to “black” no matter how loosely. I have said before that the contribution made by slaves has never been calculated. It has been assumed by historians, whose knowledge of economics, accounting and business has been non-existent. It is usually ignored, or not known, that most historians rewrite other historians books rather than do sensible thorough research.

      1. When do we get reparations from Norway, Sweden & Denmark for the slaves taken durig Viking times?

    5. We aren’t the ones making an issue out of race. There are not different races merely different skin reactions to sunlight.

      Your very position and that you can write such an article is evidence there is no racism except in your contrived demented mind.

  17. Britain is not America. But we too are disfigured by deep and pervasive racism. David Olusoga. Sun 7 Jun 2020.

    The demonstrators and activists who have taken to the streets have, however, been motivated by more than revulsion. They have also been stirred to action by acknowledging a fundamental truth – that the killing of Floyd has to be understood as a symptom of systemic racism. By building their campaign around that reality they have promoted radical and challenging conversations – in countries on both sides of the Atlantic – about the nature of racism and the actions that people of all races can take in eliminating it. These are conversations that we have needed for a very long time.

    This is Olusoga a mediocre historian at best and a BBC mendicant whose wages come from the licence fee extorted from the population under criminal sanction. We can see here his inverted racism in action. Floyd is not a victim of systemic racism; assuming that there were such a thing, since he wasn’t arrested for being black but for suspicion of criminal activity. He is not Martin Luther King. He was a career criminal and drug addict. In fact an embodiment of all those qualities that the black community seek to deny not only to others but to themselves.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/07/britain-is-not-america-but-we-too-are-disfigured-by-deep-and-pervasive-racism

  18. Yesterday night damask rose posted a filmed interview that Douglas Murray gave to The Sun which was very interesting even though poor Mr Murray looked exhausted, jaded and despondent about the state of the world.

    Amongst the many points that Mr Murray made was that surely the British have done their best to atone for slavery and did more than any other country to stamp it out.

    On the subject of slavery Murray asked why the protesters concentrated on events of 200 years ago rather than the slavery that still exists in Africa and other parts of the world today; on the subject of atonement, if George Floyd’s last few years of prison-free life life wiped out the stains and atoned for his criminal past then why don’t the efforts of William Wilberforce and other fearless British enemies of slavery not free Britain of the historical stain and give Britain atonement?

    The forgiveness of sins is one of the core principles of the Christian ethos; why should Britain be exempt from this?

    1. Hi Rastus, that was one of the best interviews I have seen for a good while. Douglas Murray was allowed to organise his thoughts and answer the questions/points raised in a calm manner without the usual hectoring of BBC interviewers.

      Of course the BBC et al would never air such an interview as it doesn’t fit their narrative of events. They would though edit what he says into thirty second sound bites in order to ridicule or outcast him. He is a brave man and should be heard by much larger audiences.

    3. Thankyou for the summary. I watched the start but didn’t have time to watch all of it.

      There seems to be a strong element amongst the black community, that doesn’t want to be bothered dragging itself out of poverty and making a go of life, which then tars all blacks with the same brush. It must really infuriate those who try to improve their lives. I think the focus on race or colour is a really bad thing – things might be a lot better if it wasn’t discussed at all and the real causes of deprivation might have to be faced instead.

      1. Hi Cynarch, if you can find the time it is well worth listening to the whole interview.

      2. ‘Morning, cynarch, a case of treating the symptoms and ignoring the cause(s).

  19. Sammy Cohen, having luckily survived the Holocaust as a young man, moved to England and worked hard as a tailor for many years, just barely making a living.

    One weekend he decided to buy a National Lottery ticket, and was thrilled when he won 10 million pounds!

    He gave up work and had a wonderful country home built, with a swimming pool, ballroom, marble columns, statues and chandeliers… He invited all his friends to a sumptuous housewarming party.

    At one end of the ballroom there was something on the wall covered up and Sammy got everyone together to see it unveiled. He pulled a cord and there was a gasp of horror as a life-size portrait of Adolf Hitler was revealed!

    “Sammy, for God’s sake!” they said, “This money must have lost you your sanity! How can you, a Jewish person, have a picture of Hitler on the wall?”

    Sammy grinned, pulled up his sleeve, pointed to his forearm and said, “Who do you think gave me the winning lottery numbers?”

  20. Is the charge of White Privilege really any different in nature to the Nazi claim of Jew Privilege?

    1. If society is not careful it could well end up the same way. On a global basis whites are a minority. Look at how they are treated in many parts of Africa.

    2. The white privilege charge appears to be coming from the white privileged classes against the white working classes for some reason

      1. In short, the revolting peasants can now afford cars, bathrooms and – eek – foreign holidays.
        There’s no escaping the scrofulous plebs.
        They’re getting above themselves.

  21. When was the last time a nottler stayed on message? Aren’t we supposed to be discussing Boris’s optimism?

    1. I don’t think nottlers ever stayed on message. I can remember many moons ago back on the DT comments others complaining about the off-message comments on food, recipes and any number of topics entirely unrelated to the letters.

      I hadn’t spotted we were supposed to be discussing Boris’s optimism, but to get back on topic, I thought he is looking very tired (too much worrying work, perhaps still not fully recovered from Covid and a crying baby waking him up in the night). He’s probably got too many gloom and doom advisors whispering in his ears to feel optimistic.

      1. I think he’s knackered. Surely they can have a nanny for the baby, but recovering from a flu variation takes time.
        Is he being fed on vegan crap?

    2. I don’t know what the hell it was but after I’d clicked on the bloody thing I couldn’t get rid of it!

      I had to close down the page and open up a new one to come back on this forum.

          2. But when they send bills to other customers they use their names, don’t they?

    7. I wonder if any Nottler has pressed it

      If a similar case occurs, perhaps the email address could have 6, instead of a @

      Yo issy

    8. I keep getting a Vodaphone ‘survey’ popping up when I go into the DT.
      After a lot of bad language and constant shutting down to obliterate the darn thing, I now leave it there to fester and return to the DT via a new window.

  23. Has the British scientific establishment made its biggest error in history?

    A strange obsession with mathematical modelling has compromised the country’s covid response

    MATT RIDLEY

    The scientific establishment in this country has had a bad war. Its mistakes have probably made the Covid-19 epidemic, as well as the economic downturn, worse. Britain entered the pandemic late, with lots of warning, so we should have done better than other countries. Instead we are one of the worst affected in Europe and one of the last to begin to recover.

    Not all the mistakes were driven by science. The decisions by Public Health England not to go out to the market for testing, protective equipment and logistics, to cease testing almost completely in March and to send people to care homes from hospitals affected by the virus – these were just bureaucratic bone-headedness. But the obsession with mathematical modelling lies behind other mistakes and continues to this day with the ridiculous fixation on a meaningless generalisation called R.

    Expecting a typical flu virus, scientists were surprised by the explosion of cases in hospitals and assumed it signified exponential take-off of the virus in the community. In fact it was mainly the rapid spread of infection within hospitals, some of which probably started with staff returning from holiday in Italy and Spain. It was known in February that the virus is dangerous to the elderly and ill yet could be spread by the young and healthy. Was it therefore not obvious that infection control in hospital wards and care homes was vital? Apparently not if modelling an epidemic in a homogeneous “community” is your guide.

    Government advisers became over-reliant on models that were both too complex and too simplistic at the same time, and failed to challenge underlying assumptions. The Imperial College model does not take into account high variability in social connectedness or susceptibility to infection among otherwise similar people. We now know that about 10pc of “superspreaders” cause 80% of infections, primarily because they meet many more people – which also makes them much more likely to become infected.

    If you tell the models there is thus a correlation between susceptibility and infectiousness you get much lower forecasts of cases and deaths. Add that we now know that cross-immunity from common colds probably allows 40-60pc of the population to resist Covid-19, and the result is – as the work of Gabriela Gomes at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine indicates – that herd immunity is probably reached when as little as 15pc of the population is infected, rather than the 50-60pc implied by Imperial’s model. Hence the epidemic is petering out in London despite crowded streets.

    True, not all of this was known at the start, but that is exactly why it was a mistake to rely so heavily on models that were bound to have wrong assumptions. Modellers often come to mistake their models for the real world. There was an embarrassing moment in a press conference in April when a scientist was asked whether we could learn anything from Germany’s relative success in containing the epidemic and replied that our contribution was to lead the world in modelling.

    We now know that outside the healthcare system the growth of the epidemic had ceased to be exponential before the lockdown. The peak of 3-day average deaths on 10 April implies that the peak of infections occurred around 20 March, before the country locked down, according to Professor Simon Wood of Bristol University. He argues that bans on large gatherings and voluntary social distancing would have been sufficient. The head of the Norway’s Institute of Public Health now says that the country’s lockdown was unnecessary.

    The outcome of the epidemic in different countries or American states is pretty much uncorrelated with the severity of lockdown. Sweden, with no lockdown, did no worse than Britain and far better than the models predicted. By now the models say it should have had up to 40,000 deaths with a lockdown; it has had under 5,000 without. Had Sweden managed to keep the virus out of care homes and hospitals, as Germany partly did, it would have done much better than us despite no lockdown.

    Reversing these mistakes will not be easy. Britain needs to get out of lockdown quickly, ditching the stable-door-locking policies like 2-metre distancing and travel quarantine before damage to the economy becomes terminal. And science needs to rethink its affair with models rather than data.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/06/has-british-scientific-establishment-made-biggest-error-history/

    1. it’s pretty much over bar the tighter, more restrictive, hurtful, new laws.

      PS The”second wave” may be a complete fiction, a spurious invention to justify the worst restrictions ever inflicted on the British, including war time.

      1. The only question is whether the laws will be inflicted in August or October.

      2. Even the WHO thinks a second wave unlikely, though it attributes this to the restrictions and not to typical virus behaviour.

  24. Channel 4 reported on a tsunami of COVID surviving patients on the long haul road to recovery.
    There is a second wave already emerging but it could due to a big strain on secondary followup healthcare for post-COVID rehabilitation:

    https://youtu.be/4Sujxp1Zy2I

  25. With a preposterously outrageous 7,800,000,000 (and rising rapidly) irresponsible, irredeemably stupid and selfish humans on this tiny planet, ALL LIVES — human (black, white, brown, pink, yellow, red, green and blue), plant and animal species — ARE IN DIRE DANGER.

    WAKE UP, mankind: you are the cause of all this! Your self-initiated extinction will come as a relief to all other life forms that have the intelligence to remain in balance with nature.

    2. In balance as best they can, bearing in mind Man’s destruction and alteration of Nature.

    3. Especially all animal species. Most of them in danger from humans of all colours.

  26. SIR – Lord Carey’s article struck a chord, in particular his words on how the Church of England’s bishops joined the “storm of hatred” over Dominic Cummings.

    Many Christians feel that these bishops are focusing on political correctness and minority interests at the expense of their ministry.

    However, it is the apparent lack of support for persecuted Christians worldwide that is most worrying. From the Surabaya attacks in Indonesia to the recent massacre of 52 Christians in Mozambique, we have not heard much public condemnation from the Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury and his army of bishops need to address these issues if they wish to alleviate the concerns of a growing number of Christians.

    Michael Nicholson
    Arundel, West Sussex

    1. I have a lot of time for Lord Carey, I find him sensible and unafraid to speak his mind. Furthermore, he seems to shun PC. Welby could learn a lot from him but shows no sign of doing so.

    2. Mozambique is a member of the Commonwealth and recipient of a share of UK wealth. Maybe we should have a quiet word?

    3. Spot on Michael Nicholson! There seems to be an excess of “turbulent priests” at present – sack them and get a few Christian bishops!

  27. SIR – Lawrence Kirk (Letters, May 31) suggests refitting doors in public spaces with copper handles to prevent the spread of disease.

    Unfortunately, they would be nicked before nightfall.

    Gordon Brown
    Grassington, North Yorkshire

    EDIT: Doesn’t Gordon Brown have form when it comes to nicking the peoples’ gold?

    2. When I first went to Northern Italy, I was surprised to see the frequent use of copper for guttering and downspouts.. But I suppose it reflects the common minerals of the area. We have lead and iron, they have copper…

  29. Targets of Salisbury Novichok poisoning flee Britain after two years in MI5 safe house. 7 Jun 2020, 2:34

    THE targets of the Salisbury poisoning have fled Britain after two years in an MI5 safe house.

    The pair nearly died after Russian agents smeared the deadly chemical Novichok on their front-door handle in Salisbury, Wilts, in March 2018.

    They were found unconscious on a park bench together and rushed to hospital, where doctors put them into a coma to stop the poison ravaging their bodies.

    Both left hospital within a couple of months, and security services have since kept them safe.

    British mother Dawn Sturgess, 44, died and her boyfriend Charlie Rowley, 45, was seriously ill after she used the contents of a perfume bottle he found seven miles away.

    It contained Novichock discarded by the Russian poisoners.

    So few words. So many lies! This is actually a warm up for the TV Series The Salisbury Poisonings airing on BBC1 next weekend. This is reported to be “based” on the true story, mostly one suspects because an actual true version of events would have to be entitled Carry on Spying with Mi6. The holes in the official account are so gargantuan that a Documentary is literally unthinkable whereas errors in a fictionalised account may be dismissed as dramatic licence. There is a darker side to this ludicrous litany of disinformation. The Skripals have not retired to Elysian Bliss in New Zealand. They have been murdered.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11801065/salisbury-flee-britain-years-safe-house/#comments

    1. You are obviously convinced the Skripals have been murdered, but can you really claim that as a fact. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

      1. Conspiracy abhors a vacuum? On the other hand, reality is looking rather unbelievable.

      2. We have the unenviable choice of believing the British Government or the Russian Government.
        In my youth, there would have been no doubt, but a lot of lies have flowed under the bridge since then.

        1. I agree that they are dead is the conclusion to be drawn, it is just that there appears to be no evidence to confirm it as a fact. I thought it probable quite early on, as there were no photos of either of them in hospital unlike the other Russian (whose name escapes me) poisoned in London a few years ago.

  31. Morning all

    SIR – Some weeks ago, an optimistic Boris Johnson predicted that Britain would bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic.

    But how is this possible in the face of continuing and mounting restrictions? Entrepreneurial Britain cannot function in such a climate.

    The Government seems paralysed by its own Project Fear.

    Rosemary Davis

    Harlow, Essex

    SIR – I despair at this Government’s decision-making, with constant U-turns undermining the return to economic normality.

    For instance, just when we need to get the tourist and aviation industries going again, it has decided to impose a 14-day quarantine on everyone entering the country.

    If the Government continues with its current strategy, the Labour Party will be the beneficiary in four years’ time.

    Ian Grice

    Northampton

    SIR – By all means introduce a quarantine system – but keep it on standby. We need visitors, and we need to travel ourselves.

    It would make more sense to demand a health certificate from those entering the country, proving that they have been checked. They should also be required to record their movements.

    The Prime Minister and Home Secretary need to be brave and change direction. They will get some brownie points for doing so.

    David Germain

    Coombe Bissett, Wiltshire

    SIR – Perhaps pensioners can help the airlines survive? If my wife and I are allowed to travel abroad, we would be perfectly happy to self-isolate for 14 days upon our return. That’s what we have have for the past 10 weeks.

    Peter Wilkie

    Tamworth, Staffordshire

    SIR – Where is the conclusive evidence that wearing face masks will help to contain the spread of the virus? If there is none, why is it being made mandatory?

    I would urge the public to ask this question before accepting yet another draconian measure.

    Elvina Parker

    Overton, Hampshire

    SIR – Now that face masks are essential products, alongside toothpaste and toilet paper, why is it still so hard to find them in shops?

    I have read many articles explaining how easy it is to make them. But most of us don’t even darn our socks anymore, and half of us can’t sew loose buttons back on to our shirts. How, if we suddenly find ourselves without a mask, can we be expected to sew one?

    Andrew Denny

    Willington, Derbyshire

    SIR – If I wear a mask on public transport, how do I stop my glasses steaming up?

    John Brandon

    Tonbridge, Kent

    1. Hello Johnny B.

      Try taking your glasses off & putting them in their case.

      1. Knee on the throat should do it. They’re doing special Pilates classes to get it right. Don’t forget your mask.

    3. Does it have to be a facemask or can you just wrap a scarf round your face and look like a bandit?

      2. I think you can just wrap anything round your face. Masks are brilliant for the blackshirted fascist thugs out for a days destruction and good news for the dealers who with their hoods and masks evade most detection..

        1. I have a very wide selection of silk scarfs of varying shape size and colour; I might take a variety with me when I go out in case of being accosted by plod and should I decide to rob a bank.

    4. “It would make more sense to demand a health certificate from those entering the country, proving that they have been checked. They should also be required to record their movements.”

      Thus creating a new market for bogus certificates.

  32. SIR – On Friday afternoon I tuned in to the one o’clock news on Radio 4.

    Was the top story coronavirus? Brexit negotiations? Racial unrest in America?

    No. The top story was that the BBC had appointed a new director-general. I would estimate that the BBC talks about itself on its news programmes 100 times a year. When is the Government going to get to grips with this self-serving organisation?

    Baz Hopkins

    Shepperton, Surrey

    1. When is the Government going to get to grips with this self-serving organisation?

      It’s not! It has no more power to get rid of the BBC than to stop the Home Office smuggling migrants into the UK!

      1. Surely Boros Johnson is deliberately encouraging such activity, especially as he shows no sign at all of wanting to stop it ?

    2. When is the Government going to get to grips with this self-serving organisation?

      It’s not! It has no more power to get rid of the BBC than to stop the Home Office smuggling migrants into the UK!

    3. Well said, Bazza. Worse still are the invented ‘news’ items as thinly-disguised plugs for their own wretched programmes!

      ‘Morning, Epi.

  33. I wonder if anyone noticed the various media stories yesterday promoting the plan to build a new Hong Kong for 3 million inhabitants in Britain, and even to give it special tax status ?

    All of which looked like Downing Street open borders globalist spin intended to lead public opinion and planted with tame journalists by…

    Boros Johnson.. the open borders globalist cuckoo in the UK nest.

    1. At last Boris Island can go ahead. He’s been itching to do this for ages, and was only put off because seabirds and aeroplane engines do not go together comfortably.

      2. Good point. So Hong Boros Kong will be in the Thames Estuary..

        ..what could possibly go wrong ?

        1. ..what could possibly go wrong ?

          The American Liberty ship, SS Richard Montgomery, laden with high explosives could go boom. Clearing the wreck would be problematic and so could leaving it there and building an international airport a few miles away.

        1. I’m glad I no longer fly. I thought landing at Bombay was bad enough.

        3. Particularly after the 180° turn, you saw the huge checkerboard on the side of the mountain that the aircraft had been heading for!

          1. Almost as much fun as landing a Boeing 737 at Khota Baru in NE Malaysia. Another very short runway.

      1. Oh wow… all that new stuff’s so dated now….

        Nobody’s wearing masks.

  34. If our politicians, especially Johnson as pointed out in the attached tweet, had the merest smattering of the guts shown by the D-Day forces – and very many of them were frightened shitless, and who wouldn’t be, by what they had to endure but nevertheless went through with what was demanded – then this Country would be in a far better place. These political charlatans don’t even have the guts to stop events like yesterday happening.
    Where was Patel when anarchy reigned in our capital? She must know that Khan and Dick are both beyond useless and appear to be unwilling to enforce the law. Immense damage is being done to the UK’s prestige and these elected and appointed ‘elites’ are found to be wanting at the very moment leadership is required.

    https://twitter.com/A_Liberty_Rebel/status/1269358870406758400

    1. Yo Korky

      Are not the Head of the Met and the Mayor of Lunnun a Civil Pair

      Otherwise, how does he get his name Sad Dick-Khan

      1. They’re a pair well enough, a complete pair of… select your own pejorative term to suit your mood.

    2. Except today, Boris we are still faced with fascism if not in name by the liberal leftards certainly by the mis-named Antifa who are just anti sweet FA to do with decency, the rule of law and anything they class as old, white and male.

      Wake up you witless fool and start to put some gumption into government and the rule of law. LET’S GET THIS DONE!

    4. A Machiavellian thought occurred to me.
      The government have got themselves into a right mugger’s buddle by giving in to media generated hysteria.
      It is looking for a way out without losing face.
      This demo is a perfect excuse to let things drift back to normality; after all, Black Lives Matter and we cannot be nasty to an oppressed minority. Be seen to be right-on while surreptitiously loosening the ill conceived restrictions.
      Short term loss of face v. long term loss of economy.

      1. If there’s a spike in infections after these mass gatherings then the law-abiding will be even more restricted for longer. If there’s no spike – then we will know the whole lockdown was pointless.

        2. As the Government controls the reporting, there is sure to be a spike. The riots, parades, and protests will thus have been instrumental in imposing even greater restrictions on the law-abiding.
          For the last week or so, I’ve been considering turning myself in at the police station. If everyone over 65 did that it just might work.

      2. As I see it one element of that, “mugger’s buddle,” is the manner in which they’ve counted/attributed the deaths related to CV-19. Putting every death with some hint of CV-19, and some without, exclusively down to the virus might have seemed a good idea at the outset.
        Frighten the plebs and the lockdown restrictions didn’t seem too bad, sensible even. Now, however, the Grim Reaper’s total is >40,000 and the Government’s performance is in tatters as we race to be top-dog in the race of death. It’s the old, no, very old Government failing: let’s have a plan to achieve a) but fail to think it through and then unintended consequences achieves b) and it’s either U-turn time or a clear disaster.

        1. It seems that they intend to inflict more of the same with masks compulsory everywhere and limits on travel. That will not apply to groups that include more than 12 non-white persons. They may do as they please. “But you, grannie dear, as you walk slowly and stiffly along the pavement had bloody better not step out of line!”

  35. Morning all 😊
    On the bright side of the road….
    Things are quickly greening up after yesterday’s downpours.
    But the poor roses suffered a battering.
    But….. I’ll have to get the long ladder out to clear the upper guttering of moss. The gutter and downpipe did overfloweth !
    Thanks for the crows for pecking it loose on the roof, job done, the rope, stand off bracket, black bucket and garden trowel
    will be employed later today. Or maybe tmz.
    After my home made bloomer bacon and egg sarnie and freshly made coffee…….
    But I might even decide to put my feet up. Working from home has its benefits eh 😊

      1. No worries TB.
        I’ve been up and down ladders all my working life.
        It can’t slide on hard standing it has rubber feet and the stand off bracket has non slip grippers where it sits against the brickwork. Getting it up, that’s the problem 😊

        3. Getting it up, that’s the problem 😊

          At our age that’s not unusual.

      2. …expert advice available free of charge from Wm Thomas Esq of Fulmodeston

    2. Our problem is a tall fir tree slightly to the west of Allan Towers – next garden but one.
      Prevailing winds mean a constant battle with pine needles in the guttering.

      1. My next door neighbour cleared all the leaves out of the guttering on my garage last week completely unasked. He then knocked on the door to say what he had done.

  37. Bishop of Dover, on BBC breakfast , she is a black woman agreeing with standing up to racism, why isn’t she standing up for murdered Christians in Nigeria!

    1. The continued murders and torture rape of South African farmers and their families.
      Oh i nearly forgot, white lives don’t matter, in most cases.

    2. The CoE is a busted flush.
      It’s had a five hundred year run.
      Morning, Maggie.

      1. Gone the same way as the catholics and moslems, reliant on African illiterates for its future congregations.

      2. The combination of Rowan Williams and Justin Welby was more than it could sustain. It is probably finished – and maybe this is long overdue.

        Surely the only hope is for Anglicans to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church. After all the CofE’s conception was an accident which was due to Catherine of Aragon’s conception failure by not giving her husband a male heir.

        Of all the hypocrisies of the CofE I find that its objection to Mrs Parker Bowles’s marriage in church to the Prince of Wales because of her divorce was astonishing. The whole existence of the Church of England was based on Henry VIII’s divorce from his first wife.

        1. Technically, Henry never divorced any of his wives. He got his new Church to annul the marriages, meaning they were never valid in the first place. Contrary to what many people think, Henry was not a Protestant, remaining Catholic in doctrine until he died. His was a political rather than a religious reformation of the Church – he wanted to control religious life in England, supplanting the Pope as leader.

          1. Exactly. Technically, on two of the occasions, Hal was a widower.
            His younger daughter didn’t share her sister and brother’s fanaticism.
            She was pragmatic: “I would not open windows into men’s souls.”

          2. The Tudors collectively were not a nice bunch. Mind you, nor were any of the other dynasties.

          3. You didn’t get to the top by being nice. If, by accident of birth, you reached the top, you certainly didn’t stay there.
            The Plantagenets had a long run; it was one of their ‘nicer’ – i.e. ineffective – kings who paved the way for the Tudors.

          4. Seeing the Popes nowadays, it is still understandable – they would have us back in the EU in a trice if they could

          5. The Pope’s political powers disappeared hundreds of years ago – even the Holy Roman Emperor ignored the Pope at the time of Henry VIII and made the Pope a virtual prisoner.

          6. That doesn’t stop them pontificating- and being Common Purpose graduates..

          7. The higher up in the hierarchy a clergyman rises, the further away he or she gets from the lives and opinions of his flock. This is true for both the RC and the CofE.

    3. I was told repeatedly for years that a former vicar of Fulham was denied promotion in the CofE because he didn’t have a degree. This woman left school in Jamaica at age 14. She’s been given an honorary doctorate as a cover.

  38. From the unbiased BBC:
    “Protests on Saturday were largely peaceful, but were marred later by the disturbances outside Downing Street.”
    The pictures tell a different story.
    The person responsible for maintaining law and order, Commissioner Dick, is quoted as saying “I am deeply saddened and depressed that a minority of protesters became violent towards officers in central London yesterday evening. This led to 14 officers being injured, in addition to 13 hurt in earlier protests this week. We have made a number of arrests and justice will follow. I know many who were seeking to make their voices heard will be as appalled as I am by those scenes. I would urge protesters to please find another way to make your views heard which does not involve coming out on the streets of London, risking yourself, your families and officers as we continue to face this deadly virus.”
    My highlighting. This is not the robust response that one might expect from Cressida Shoot-to-Kill Dick. It seems that the police were not to respond to being insulted and attacked. Just an Aunt Sally. Why were they there at all? Oh, and how many arrests, 600? 300? 100? 30? 10? Give us a clue?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52954899

        1. That’s what they all asked when I was thrown & broke my arm & lost consciousness for 10 minutes. That was over 60 years ago.

          1. Apparently the horse made its won way back to the stables, probably in Hyde Park.

      2. I wonder if Dick Head’s sleuths have identified the little toerag who was hanging from the Cenotaph flags. Ought to be easy enough these days.

      3. Another example of biases reporting. Our CBC news just reported that a policewoman was injured after her horse bolted and hit a traffic light.

        No mention of why, it gives a completely different flavour to the crowd behaviour.

        1. Hi Richard, I noted that in teh report as well:

          “ One Mounted Branch officer remains in hospital after she was knocked from her horse when it hit a set of traffic lights whilst appearing to bolt.

          The officer had struggled to stay in control as she was riding down the street surrounded by protesters.”

          No mention of the bike hitting the horse and causing it to bolt. It makes it look as if the officer just rode into a set of traffic lights and lost control of her horse. – Nothing to see here – they are utter bast@rds.

          1. Police horses are very well trained to remain calm in the face of protests and noise – but that kind of missile was too much – no wonder it bolted.

        2. I heard that she was unhorsed and then her mount, frightened, bolted. That seems more plausible, given the training police horses have to go through before they are allowed out on patrol.

      1. What would we do without music…………….’if music be the food of love play on’.

      1. Not to be missed………..I previously posted

        John Williams at he BBC ….catch it it on Iplayer

      2. Have seen Tommy Emmanuel live Richard ?
        His one of top ten guitarist in the world.

        1. The Happiness Business……love this guy. In fact love all musicians. I’ve met a few…..WOW!

    3. Lovely music.
      I have the same notes on my guitars 😆
      Not nessecarly in the same order. 🎸🎶

        1. I saw the programme about his life last week.
          I have often used one of his lines regarding mrs B. Liar.
          👄👂💋👂👀

  40. Perfect timing, finished clearing the blocked downpipe and the back guttering half an hour ago. A whole black (whoops), builders bucket full of soggy moss.
    It just chucked it down with rain. Rest of the day off. 😊

      1. Not seen those, tanks I will look into it.
        I have the top edge plastic grates clipped onto the gutter of my work shop. It’s under our neighbours oak Tree. The droppings and leaves break down and turn into solid compost in the guttering. Hard to get out. The roof and guttering feeds our pond. Because of the nutrients we have duckweed growing all over the surface.
        I can’t scoop it off it’s full of wildlife,
        PIA. Barley straw doesn’t seem to work.

    2. OH cleared out the gutters of the conservatory the other day, only to find two panels of the roof had slipped down. He’s up there now trying to fix them back. I’m keeping out of his way.

      1. It’s probably caused by the hot weather. The seals soften and the weight of the panels causes them to slip on the pitch of the roof.
        Did they leak ?

        1. We didn’t have any rain till yesterday – but we had the ceiling insulated a couple of years ago, so if they did it’s gone into the insulating material.

          1. Oh dear it might stain, if it does seal off the stains with watered down PVA let it dry and paint over.

          4. I hope so – it’s gone very quiet outside………. the insulation made a big difference – the conservatory is our dining room but it was always too hot in the summer and so cold in winter that we had to close it off and eat in the kitchen. It’s usable all the year round now.

          5. I know several people who have done this. Far too hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.

          6. We had ours insulated last September. It is northwards facing and always so cold in the winter and yet so hot in the summer – it did get the early-morning-to-noonday sun on its roof. Now we can use it all the time and we do – it’s brilliant and I would highly recommend to anyone contemplating going down that route.

    4. You can do mine anytime.
      Last time I was ripped off £65 for clearing a blocked downpipe….took the b/stard less than 30 mins.!!!

      1. I built our extension and left a bottom section accessible and I only have to unscrew that lowest wall bracket to take the section out. Peasy.
        Next time we come to lovely Cornwall I be in touch 😊

        1. Please do… love to welcome you both and put my cooking skills to the test!!!

          2. It’s strange in the past we use to visit Cornwall a lot. The last time we went we stayed in Lostwithiel on the Fowey river. Theres an old medieval stone bridge there. Trebetherick before that, Helston, Falmouth, and other places in can’t remember the names of. I love walking on the beach near Rock. I would have loved have played St Enodocs GC.
            We have also taken the rolling ferry from Penzance to St Mary’s.
            We are HPB members and they have Duloe Manner just a few miles in land from Loo.

          3. Lived in North Cornwall near Port Isaac before moving south….one year we actually had snow!

          4. Our opposite neighbours spend a lot of time in Port Isaac.
            To get there these days, they always leave home around 2 am.

    1. When you’re in your eighties, in a care home suffering from dementia, this will not be top of your list of concerns for your health and safety.

        2. Well, Joe. You were the one who decided to push religion down our throats.

          Are you making this discussion a one-way-street?

          2. I seriously doubt that. A few have tried: they have invariably wished they hadn’t.

  43. Dear Metropolitan Police, since it is blindingly obvious now you are incapable of doing the job we pay you to do, may I suggest that in future when you permit demonstrations in Whitehall you pay some contractor to put protective hoardings up around the Cenotaph and other national monuments before it starts?

  47. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-street-protestors-exempt-from-the-corona-clause/amp?__twitter_impression=true
    Douglas Murray: Why are street protestors exempt from the corona clause?

    Like America, Britain is still meant to be in corona lockdown. But here, as there, this one cause was granted a mass exemption. On Sunday, thousands of protestors gathered in Trafalgar Square, and from there processed to the US embassy by way of Downing Street where parts of the crowd stopped to shout ‘Fuck the police’ at the men and women on duty.

    Politicians who spent recent weeks shaming people over their lockdown childcare arrangements seemed supremely relaxed about this.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

    Over 1,000 health professionals sign a letter saying, Don’t shut down protests using coronavirus concerns as an excuse

    “….as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators’ ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders.”

    If you’re black, you’re more at risk from this virus, unless you support the BLM movement, in which case it’s fine to go out and demonstrate.
    White people, and anyone else who doesn’t support the stringent and illogical lockdowns that have been imposed must stay at home, and are not allowed to protest.

  49. Cressida Dick has sent a Briefing Note around the Met. As of tomorrow every available officer is to be put on lockdown patrol.
    Officers will be on duty in every supermarket and supermarket car park. Commissioner Dick has stated that she is insisting that no little old ladies will get away with breaking lockdown and social distancing rules. She is firm in her resolve that the full force of the law will be brought to bear no matter how many are involved.

      1. Nowadays, you can never be sure.
        Hence the reaction to the PC Tw@ video I put up yesterday.

      2. Er, yes. It is becoming increasingly difficult to spoof reality. The police threaten old people sitting on a park bench. The police ignore rioting thugs throwing bicycles into the legs of police horses.

          1. It would seem so. My little fanciful notions have in the past been so outré that I have been mercilessly mocked, even by those who understood them. Now the world has gone bananas and I am stranded on the beach of sanity like the forgotten ribs of an old boat.

    2. …and, Horace, no blacks are to be arrested, they, being a law unto themselves, will police (and murder) their own.

      1. The number of blacks killed by whites is infinitesimally small compared with the numbers of blacks killed by blacks. This applies to both the UK and USA.

        My wife has just shown me an Instagram post which shows the supposedly elderly gent being shoved over by Police is in fact a hoax. The chap is wearing a wig and presses a button to release blood from his ear. Who to believe in these mad times?

    1. St George’s Place in Glasgow was renamed Nelson Mandela Place in 1986 in honour of the murderous black terrorist.
      (Leith Public Library was defaced in the main book room by a ten foot long oil painting of Mandela’s face at around the same time.)

  51. OT – last night we watched a recorded prog on Channel 4 about Pompeii. “Presented” by an obese slapper – Bettany Hughes – who used, in the past to be a competent historian.

    She has become a telly tart. Her voice has become estuary, with the added “gravelly” tones used by teenage girls (I still don’t know how they do that…!). What might have been a good, informative programme became a vehicle for the telly tart – with bits of Pompeii as the background.

    And at two hours was 90 minutes too long. There is another this week on ancient Greece. The Sunday Grimes blurb about it says, “She wastes no opportunity to enjoy herself, whether relishing the joys of sailing, eating, dancing or the obligatory swimsuit scene – bathing.”

    So that’s another thing to avoid.

    1. Oh thanks Mr. Thomas! Have just set that to record the series! Forewarned and all that…!

      1. I spent a lot of the programme wondering why her cleavage didn’t get sun burnt.
        Pompeii is hot and open and the heat fair bounces off the stonework.
        I even had to wear a sun hat, let alone covering most of my skin.

        1. It was the voluminous dress effect. Plus the mandatory scarf. And the bloody flicking her hair every thirty seconds. Why not tie it back – or wear a hat. Telly tarts (male and female) often wear silly hats… Viz that Sebag bloke.

          2. I ‘did’ Knossos & the other Cretan sites in October. It was warm but not hot.

          3. I never reached Crete in my travels round Greece pre-university, but would love to visit the Minoan sites. These days I would choose to visit in the winter not the summer.

        3. Philippi in a heat wave was something approaching Hades. Interesting site, but blimey!

      2. Well, the next prog is “only” an hour….of which perhaps fifteen minutes will reveal Greece.

        2. Can she really be as bad as the very “woke” Simon Reeve? I “watched” him do Greece and Cuba, both with an unbelievable political agenda! Blooming annoying, it was!

          3. MB and I went to see him at a live show in Ipswich (MB enjoys his programmes).
            All went well until towards the end he started bigging up the EU. The temperature plummeted like a stone; he forgot he was in Leave supporting East Anglia (or didn’t care).

          4. I’d say worse. But prolly they are about the same.

            Woke Views Matter.

    2. These programmes just send me to sleep, they keep repeating the same thing over and over after every advert break as if peoples attention span is less than five minutes

      1. That too.

        It must be part of the rush to attract “youth” who, apparently, cannot hold any idea for more than two minutes and, so, have to be reminded.

        1. Believe it’s to fit the US TV – short bursts of programme interspersed with mega-long ad breaks, so by the end of the ads, you are so menatlly stupefied that you need reminded what went on in the previous bit of the programme.

      3. I don’t understand why people bother with the TV programmes, when you can find interesting lectures on all such topics on YouTube without all the posing presenters.

        1. There was an excellent one from the British School at Rome last week – available now on Youtube. About the Jewish expulsion from Spain (and Portugal) and how many ended up in Rome.

          7. Except , of course, for the MR.

            [Henry’s MR … Catherine Parr … outlived him and remarried.]

        2. At Firstborns place, there’s YouTube, Netflix and something else streamy. No “TV”. It’s excellent!

          1. Hi Oberst, the only ‘live’ TV I watch is sport (not available at the moment), everything else is either streamed on Netflix, Prime or YouTube. Very occasionally I see something worth recording on mainstream TV but that is getting rarer.
            If SWMBO did not watch live TV I would dump the license and watch my sport on catchup.

          2. I feel the same. I watch the racing, record a few programmes like Endeavour that I missed first time round and that’s it. I could make do with watching the individual races on the Sporting Life website. MOH, on the other hand, watches TV religiously and thus,it would be a hardship to lose it.

      4. Yo Bob

        We have started to view th TV in a new way

        We select a programme

        Record it

        Select it to watch

        Then watch all the adverts, by fast forwarding the crap.

        I now know that

        There are No White Family Units in UK

        All White Wimmen have BAME Spouses

        No White children at all

  52. I sometimes commented on the blog “Catholic Truth”. The most recent thread was. “Racism, a Sin – Pope Francis… But, is it?”
    My first comment suggested that a homogenous society was the optimal one and generally preferred. I pointed out that the definition of “racism” in the Shorter Oxford conflated preference for one’s society with hatred for others. I got away with that.
    My second post suggested that non white contribution to Western civilisation had been nil and when separate development (apartheid) was abandoned South Africa began its plunge into the abyss. This post was promptly deleted by the Editor, who stated:
    “Please read the introduction to this thread again. You have misunderstood the purpose of this thread, which is to discuss the FACT that no Catholic can be racist because that is to be (drum roll) uncharitable.”
    There was so much political nonsense and confusion in this post,     assertions with no sources provided to support them, that I had no alternative but to delete it. Please make sure you understand the key question in every thread introduction before posting in future.”

    I’d have thought that both of these assertions were both clear and true. I had thought that the Editor might have come back at me with Augustine of Hippo, an Algerian, but no, it was a complete wipe out.

    1. which is to discuss the FACT that no Catholic can be racist

      How is that a fact?? I’m confused. The tone of the reply to you appears to suggest that only agreement with the statement is acceptable.

      2. Ah, but…

        If you are a racist you cannot be a true Catholic, no true Catholic can be a racist, and therefore you are a not a Catholic.

    1. Sometimes making a mockery of an extremist movement is the only way to defuse a situation.

  54. Disqus is still bluddy useless with regards to ‘New Comments’ being effective once two pages are open.

    The software must be absolute shiite, i.e., a waste of space.

  55. James Corden informs us that we should be shamed by our “white privilege” in the wake of the George Floyd murder.

    If I wanted to feel ashamed for the actions of someone else James, I’d simply apologise to the USA for foisting an unfunny fatty like you onto them.

    2. I don’t think anyone who was brought up in the post-war austerity years of the 1950s needs to apologise for “white privilege”. Whatever we have now, our lifestyles and health, was all hard-earned by our wartime parents and our own efforts.

    3. Let them carry on with their virtue signalling. It’s dividing people further and causing more racial tension everywhere. It won’t end well, but will give Trump four more years, as long as they don’t assassinate him first.

      https://mobile.twitter.com/Timcast/status/1269268424192151554
      Tim Pool:
      I talked to someone I know who was a lifelong Chicago Democrat
      They said to me “the only way this stops is if Trump wins a second term and Republicans take the house”
      The sentiment wasn’t unique to just them but it may just reflect the suburbs, still it was surprising to me

      Zombie Jesus @christisundead
      Replying to
      @Timcast
      I too have been a lifelong Democrat, and I will be voting a straight republican ticket this November, as will my wife and others I have talked too. The rioting, looting, and wanting to disband the police force rather than fix it are just solidifying that decision.

  56. As the amazing James Delingpole tells us in his latest piece on Breitbart……

    ”Friday was World Environment Day, apparently, and, to celebrate, the leader of the world’s fifth-largest economy has promised to commit green suicide”

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/07/delingpole-we-voted-boris-johnson-we-got-pol-pot/

    ”What I also note in Boris’s pronouncements….. is a remoteness from reality at once breathtaking and terrifying”.

    I think Boris’ ”remoteness from reality” includes his latest plan to relocate Hong Kong to the UK and apparently to build a ”self governing” city as outlined here by Daniel Hannan…..

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/06/build-self-governing-hong-kong-britain-defiance-big-bully-china/

    I suspect the Downing Street spinners might have been busy with Daniel as ”building a self governing Hong Kong” sounds very Boris Johnson.

    So… reading between the lines… where did this massive Hong Kong project perhaps really come from ?

    I wonder, could it have perhaps been promoted to Prime Minister Johnson by the well known Hong Kong multi billionaire developer behind Greenwich Peninsula ?

    https://www.greenwichpeninsula.co.uk/

    That might well explain Prime Minister Johnson’s enthusiasm about Hong Kong… and apparently he likes billionaires.

    Just a theory !

    2. If she wanted to save effort, she could have just held up one hand with two fingers. But she’s American, so would have no idea about the V-sign.

      1. I don’t know, Bill. It was posted 10 hours ago on FB by Raheem Kassam but he doesn’t give the source. I assume from Karen’s mask that it’s recent but that’s the only clue.

  58. Charles Moore
    What is it about Chinese totalitarianism that makes clever people so silly?
    7 June 2020, 9:00am

    There is something about Chinese totalitarianism which brings out the silliness of many clever people. I suspect it is to do with the fact that Chinese civilisation, being old and arcane, makes a certain type of person prize uncritically whatever privileged access he gains to the country.

    A fortnight ago, I mentioned the fellow-travelling influence of Joseph Needham, Cambridge’s indisputably scholarly historian of Chinese science. Here he is writing to the Cambridge Review in 1976, the last year of Chairman Mao’s reign. He rebukes a lecturer in Chinese, Michael Loewe, who had criticised the regime:

    “‘On the question of the number of executions which took place during the Revolution and since then, I much regret that Dr Loewe… is evidently unaware that the expression translated by “liquidation” carries the meaning of solving a problem, and by no means necessarily implies the disappearance of the offender.’

    And perhaps ‘final solution’ in German meant completing the crossword.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-it-about-chinese-totalitarianism-that-makes-cleaver-people-so-silly-

  60. Made the mistake of getting to Waitrose today at 10am, daughter came with me as a minder.
    That’s good I thought got parked easily and only half a dozen people queuing when I got there.
    Joined the queue, daughter said we shouldn’t stand together, I said don’t worry there is nobody here we can just go in separately.
    Then the diligent man in a cap announces that we have to wait until 10.30, only over 65’s are allowed in at 10am.
    The rules are all on their website and on the big sign by the entrance.
    I’m tempted to say that all over the country people are trashing their town centres and not bothering so much about all these cranky distancing rules, it’s like we are living in alternative universes but the jobsworth was a black man so thought better of it.
    There were no over 65’s in the queue,
    I remarked to the woman waiting behind that at least they don’t think we look over 65.
    Hardly any old people rolled up until 10.25 when they all did at once, walking sprightly, most of them to the front, thanking the capped diligent man for handing them a trolley freshly sprayed with sanitizer.
    Then the diligent man says to me that we cannot go in together as it will cause the store to become overcrowded, daughter goes off to get a coffee and wait in the car, leaving me with the list, big mistake.
    eventually I found all the items on the list but still managed to get the wrong stuff, meatballs they said, meatballs I buy, unpack the shopping when I get home, these are pork meatballs they say, we wanted beef, we always have beef, they say.
    When I left the store around 11am there was no queue at all, the store was almost empty, the officious man wouldn’t look at me.
    These first world problems are the worst.

    1. They don’t like the meatballs, buy them their bloody selves!
      Grr!
      Morning, Bob

    2. Couldn’t you and your daughter have gone in the store one after the other, then met up inside?

      1. Well not after he thought we were together for some reason and it would have meant her going to the back of the queue Obama style

      2. Well not after he thought we were together for some reason and it would have meant her going to the back of the queue Obama style

          1. Oh yes they were. ..

            Then the diligent man in a cap announces that we have to wait until 10.30, only over 65’s are allowed in at 10am.
            The rules are all on their website and on the big sign by the entrance.
            I’m tempted to say that all over the country people are trashing their town centres and not bothering so much about all these cranky distancing rules, it’s like we are living in alternative universes but the jobsworth was a black man so thought better of it.
            There were no over 65’s in the queue,
            I remarked to the woman waiting behind that at least they don’t think we look over 65.
            Hardly any old people rolled up until 10.25 when they all did at once, walking sprightly, most of them to the front, thanking the capped diligent man for handing them a trolley freshly sprayed with sanitizer.

          2. Peddy, you must have misread it. If he was over-65, why didn’t he just go straight in when he arrived at 10:00? He said that there were no over-65s in the queue. They didn’t appear until 10:25.

          3. He probably thought he could go in with daughter at 10.30, hence the hesitation.

    4. Round our way we avoid wrinkly hour,. Half of the locals are retired, it makes no sense to try and jam us into a small time slot.

    6. If you had unfurled a black lives matter banner, wouldn’t you have been above any distancing and crowd control rules?

  61. On a brighter note, if anyone fancies a drink, the Blue Anchor pub on the river front at Hammersmith is open.

    There’s a table across the door with a young man taking the money and handing out trays full of pints to groups of happy young people enjoying some healthy socialising, albeit with a brolly in one hand and a glass in the other, though the pub does have a canopy.

    2. Fullers ?
      There’s a few near us that have been allowing customers to take beer away in large plastic containers……Personally I wouldn’t dream of it :-)))

          3. The only way to make it by closing time – avoiding LHR and 14 days quarantine.

          5. Bloody silly name for a bloody good car.

            Had things worked out differently, our plan was to take it back to France (it has French plates) and sell it there.

            Dunno what we’ll do now.

          6. Had the same issue with SWMBOs Golf when we moved here. To return it to the UK, het insurance, MoT and road tax would be a nightmare, so we sold it locally in Norway. Got quite a good price, too. Maybe you should advertise it and see who comes with ££

          7. Aren’t all the continentals fleeing these shores. Perhaps you can find someone going the other way.

          10. I had hoped to dispose of it there – on a return trip in April…..

            I have already written off the price – just to be rid of it.

          12. They don’t take foreign registered cars. I may have to replate – shag though that is. More money down the C-19 drain.

          13. You could try ebay. There is a smattering of LHD cars on there. In fairness, ebay is generally a better place to buy, rather than sell, a car. Too many time-wasters, tyre kickers, and no-shows. But worth a try.

          15. I’ve bought a few cars on ebay, and was disappointed only once. Trouble is, I flew – one way – to Glasgow to collect the disappointing one, and it was a long walk back to Surrey.

          16. There are several websites where you can sell LHD cars in this country. Honest John recommended 4 about 14 years ago. That’s how I disposed of my Swedish-reg Golf for a good price (cash). I no longer have the details.

    4. Where did the pub get the beer from? Any stock (especially real ale) would have gone off ages ago.

      1. My local brewery (Hog’s Back) is doing ‘click and collect’, and ‘drive thru’, and also delivers free locally for orders over £40. They have added local groceries to their offering, so it’s not too difficult to spend £40. I can buy their bottled beer more cheaply from the supermarkets, but the bright and sedimented draught beers are great if one wants to recreate the pub experience at home.

        So, not only do I have a milkman three days a week, I have a beer man every fortnight or so. What’s not to like?

          5. Bugger. There are only three…

            Seriously, though, this was endowed and built as a Verger’s Cottage in 1936, by Miss Dorothea S Courtuald of the fabric dynasty. The Parish has fallen on hard times, and has decided it must sell it, as its most liquid asset. I’ll end up in rented property, prolly in Aldershot. Or if hymn singing and organ music are excluded from the ‘New Normal’, I’ll be buggering off back to my native Carlisle, where property rentals are around a third of those in Surrey and Hampshire.

          7. All will be well. Eventually. There’s a five-year contract on offer, which would cover my rent, as well as the pittance for being Director of Music, Verger, and Parish Clerk (i.e. custodian of the Parish photocopier). So, within three miles, there are new-build apartments within budget.

      2. Plenty around my way, the pubs are bottling cask ale in home brew plastic containers and one place has a canning machine.

        1. Any beer in the cask from before the lockdown would have had to be discarded ages ago. Breweries are still producing beer, but as you say, for canning or bottling.

    5. Is the Dove still nearby?
      Great to see you Our Susan. Remember my invite x

      1. In Bolivia there is a wonderful tradition of Baroque music – brought to the natives by the Jesuit missionaries – when we were there we were
        treated to an organ recital by a little boy, and a violin recital by a
        teenager, and a special concert by a group of youngsters.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa6e29e582c60f53b79764b1749ac548dad3c99aa45d14f9e0dcec7baa00d9ac.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58cb19c97cf08b25d219006fda8d9ad00f181d700d4c5acba31d185563432beb.jpg

        1. So some missionaries are still teaching – pity ours are so backward in coming forward!

    3. Making such a sweet sounding fiddle out of old tin cans shows up Antonio Stradivari for the charlatan that he was!

          1. I gave my idiot son Olaf Junior a liquorice stick in the hope of him becoming a second Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. Instead, he just chewed it and chewed it and then threw it away!

            :-))

    1. “Take it from a guy who voted Democrat for 35 years. This is no longer the party you signed up for.”

      For the UK, insert ‘Labour’ or ‘Tory’ for ‘Democrat’.

    2. “Take it from a guy who voted Democrat for 35 years. This is no longer the party you signed up for.”

      For the UK, insert ‘Labour’ or ‘Tory’ for ‘Democrat’.

      1. That’s very kind of you. I do come back every now and again to have a laugh with Beatnik- aka Grizzly.

  66. That’s me for yet another frightful, lawless day. What are we going to do?

    I’ll look in tomorrow if I make it through the night. I hope it will be less cold and less damp.

    Have a jolly evening pulling down historic monuments.

      1. Bristol was the second city to London in Colston’s day. There are mines under Redcliffe where the earth was excavated to make green bottles and beads. The green beads were prized by the Africans who sold their people into the slave trade in America.

        It is a dangerous deception for people to try to erase and otherwise rewrite historical memory. Isis do it and have wrought destruction on some of the world’s great historical artefacts. The lefty mob in Bristol are proving to be of the same ilk.

        1. I remember attending a police federation rally at the New Colston Hall in 1978, where we petitioned the then Home secretary, Merlyn Rees, for improved pay and conditions. The police were, at the time, at the bottom of the pay league and had been so for decades. Other rallies were also held, that year, at: De Montfort Hall, Leicester; Kelsey Kerridge Hall, Cambridge; Fishponds Hotel, Matlock Bath; a theatre in Scarborough; and Westminster Hall, London. I attended them all.

          The result of this pressure brought about the Edmund-Davies review into police pay and conditions which, for the first time since 1919, gave the British police a decent living wage.

          I recall the New Colston Hall in Bristol being an impressive building.

          1. I recall our school attended Faraday lectures in the Colston Hall. The same lefty mob have been agitating to have the building renamed. They suffer from the same disease as the Rhodes scholar who wished to have the small statuette of Rhodes removed from Oriel.

            Colston Hall is as you state an impressive building.

            One of several other benefactors to Bristol were WD and HO Wills, makers of Woodbines. The Wills Tower at the top of Park Street on Whiteladies Road is the centrepiece of Bristol University.

            Bristol was blessed with its very own equivalent of Brixton when the West Indians moved into the St Paul’s Square area of Bristol. They have been making a nuisance of themselves ever since. The area is now a tip.

          2. My father increased the wealth of the Wills family exponentially. He chain-smoked “Wills’ Wild Woodbines” for the best part of 70 years!

            I remember the St Paul’s riots vividly.

          3. My dad smoked Woodbines too. He claimed they were made from the finest Virginia tobacco whereas rival brands were inferior. He was born in 1910 and died aged 68 so I reckon he smoked Woodbines for all of fifty years. (I am not sure what he smoked in the Royal Artillery in Burma).

          4. When our elder son was at Bristol, one chap in his year was from Eton. He decided to lodge in the St. Paul’s area (a version of slumming it). All the students who came from less exalted backgrounds made sure they shared houses in the better areas of the city.

          5. I recall our school attended Faraday lectures in the Colston Hall. The same lefty mob have been agitating to have the building renamed. They suffer from the same disease as the Rhodes scholar who wished to have the small statuette of Rhodes removed from Oriel.

            Colston Hall is as you state an impressive building.

            One of several other benefactors to Bristol were WD and HO Wills, makers of Woodbines. The Wills Tower at the top of Park Street on Whiteladies Road is the centrepiece of Bristol University.

            Bristol was blessed with its very own equivalent of Brixton when the West Indians moved into the St Paul’s Square area of Bristol. They have been making a nuisance of themselves ever since. The area is now a tip.

    3. I used to be quite tolerant but the more this sort of thing happens the less tolerant I become.

      1. Unfortunately, that’s why they do it.
        Many of them are well-meaning and believe it all, but there are plenty of others who know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, i.e. to destroy society

        1. They are anarchists, and probably the same people behind XR. They exist to promote division and unrest.

      2. It’s the same with homosexuality. When I was in my early 20’s one of my best friends was homosexual and it did not occur to me to be judgemental. But there has been so much bullying and opinion censoring aimed at us all by the homosexual community that I fear I am becoming less tolerant than I used to be.

        1. Yes my tolerance is sorely tried by all the minorities demanding special treatment, whether on grounds of race, sex or any other identarian aspect they choose

      3. A friend who used to be more right-on than I could ever be, was all in favour of women’s rights – especially maternity leave which got longer and longer.
        Until she found she was covering for women who mysteriously managed to pop out babies regularly enough to ensure they were never at work, and that anybody who wanted the job could only provide ‘cover’ rather than get proper settled employment.

    6. Shoot to kill! Where are the police? If they are afraid to confront rioters destroying our heritage the army should be called in to deal with them.
      I seem to recall a peaceful civil rights march being brought to an end by deadly volleys from the Army.

      1. The Bishop of Dover, Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who is the Church of
        England’s first female black bishop, told BBC Breakfast racism was
        killing people.

        1. The blacks are saying that things have to change. Do they mean that they will value education, get a job and stop glorifying drugs and violence. Nope, Then I guess it will be back to normal soon.

          1. In the late 1970’s , Moh and I lived outside Port Harcourt .. Moh was flying helicopters. We lived in a residential area, security guards etc but our beautiful spacious bungalow was pepppered with bullet holes .. courtsey of the Biafran civil war , 10 years before .

            The Biafrans were Christians , the Hausa Muslim.. There was still much bitterness and sadly that productive clever country is an absolute hellhole , and ruined forever.

            We experienced the same in the Sudan as well, and elsewhere in Africa.

            Why don’t these so called BLM’s apply some of their energy to righting the wrongs in Africa instead , to make Africa prosperous once more , instead of the needy head case it is now, full of victims!

          2. Hello Belle,

            Like you and Moh, I spent years in Nigeria and many other parts of Africa – I was SORM in Mombasa. One has to conclude that the African colonies are beyond hope after 60 years of independence. I was very touched by the number of older Africans who said ‘Bwana – please bring back Kingi Georgie’

            My wife and I went to Nairobi and Mombasa on holiday ten years ago and I was reduced to tears when I saw what they had done to Kenya.

            Progress is a terrible thing in the wrong hands.

            Terry
            xxx

        2. Wonder what her qualifications for the job were.

          Not being a Christian, obviously; just can’t think of two other boxes……she might have ticked…(sarc)

          1. She was just another mouthy black bint , Bill .

            Why, because she can do that here , because old slime ball Arch bish encourages religion and politics ..yet does nothing .. God won’t listen to people like that .. Their heads are too full of ideas above their calling !

          3. With all the churches closed they are an irrelevance. What are they doing apart from spouting on the Biased BBC?

          4. Ignoring their congregations; being diverse – and highly political.

            Best not get Our Susan going on this…{:¬))

          5. Simon of Sudbury’s bonce reposes in a Sudbury church.
            Once upon a time we knew how to deal with unpopular ABCs.

      2. The police are too busy on their knees, or gone to London to help with the expected riots there.

  68. Policemen and emergency services of the world unite.

    Strike for a week and watch the anarchy.

    Police, fire, ambulance and medical lives matter.

    2. They’re about to try it in a few American cities. I’m sure it will go as well as it did in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police pulled back and reduced their presence….

    1. The “small group of people” was about 50 to 100.

      I’ll bet you all an old sixpence that – amazingly – none of them will be identified.

          1. Not in the Thomas household.

            Before he was a poor lawyer they used golden guineas.

            In later years it was sixpences.

      2. I do not expect Bennett’s people will be looking too hard to find the culprits.

    2. Given the context of the demonstrations, even a police commander might have worked out that Colston might be a target.
      Stupid enough to get a Lammy award.

    5. “…ongoing…different dynamic…challenging…our partners…”

      It’s English, Jim, but not as we know it.

    6. Looking at the comments in support of this wanton vandalism by Maya Goodfellow, a lefty freelance ‘writer’, the perpetrators will be mostly white and from wealthy districts living at home and sponging from their stupid parents.

      There is plenty of footage so if serious the plods could find and prosecute the vandals.

      1. But they were wearing proper masks and everything like the authorities say.

    11. The shame of the police. These women leader in the police need to toughen up.

      1. Leaders in name only, JN. They would recognise leadership if they tripped over it.

    12. ” … this was a safe event for all who attended”

      This was not a safe event for British heritage and history, nor for the reputation of our police.

    1. I’ll bet they will still be queuing up outside supermarkets, maintaining a 2-metre distance.

      2. Filling the trolleys with all and sundry and walking through the checkouts.
        Who’s going to do anything about it ?
        Remember the gangs robbing people on the trains.
        In South Africa the drivers are instructed by the robbers not to stop if the emergency chords are pulled.

        1. I was referring to the woke whitey liberal middle-class demonstrators, who were busy kneeling down.

    2. Our social long established structure has been flushed down the drain.
      It’s been superceded by a hugely over developed sense of self importance and self entitlement.

      1. Good job that I’m not the P.M. Water cannon and baton rounds would have been my first wave of attack.

        1. I’d be applauding you.

          I sent clip of the black American women Candace Owens putting her case,
          to a friend who is an ex superintendent from the Met.
          He fully agreed with her.

        2. Weakness only encourages. There should have been a robust response way back when ER were digging up lawns and blocking roads. See what it leads to?

  73. Evening, all. Optimism has been in short supply since we voted for freedom. Anybody would think they wanted us to be depressed and regret our choice.

    1. It’s not just us, i.e. the UK. It’s everywhere, the U.S., Canada, Australia, everywhere the Far Left have got into power.
      At which point, regarding Boris, with the exception of Brexit (so far, but who knows), if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck…

        1. No, he’s not, and he’s not part of the Washington swamp, which is why they’re so desperate to remove him. But he doesn’t directly control the individual states. The cities and states where this is all happening are run by Democrats.
          There’s the king of virtue-signalling and blackface, Trudeau, in Canada, ostentatiously taking a knee.
          In Australia, despite there being very low CV19 there are some states with very stringent lockdowns, arresting people for sunbathing in a park, or fining a young girl for going out for a drive with her mother who was teaching her to drive.

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5SuFXgMXuE
          Fewer than 460 active COVID-19 cases in Australia

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=voz8CDXLNw4
          ‘Double standards’ exemplify how Australians are ‘not all in it together’

  74. Highest scoring comment under the Spekkie article “Boris needs to get a grip”.
    I’m trying to make allowances for his post-flu poop aftermath and Brexit simmering away in the background, but ….

    “If anyone had said last November that next June you will be under house arrest and solitary confinement from March onwards, that you would be allowed out to queue for food and then a bit of exercise, that you could not see your family, have s-x with your partner, that you had to cover your face, that you were to be monitored and reported on by your neighbours, that protests would be illegal, that you would be stopped from leaving or entering your country. That your children would have no Education then when they were allowed a little it would be under the most grotesque child damaging experiment since Mengele. That the Police will follow you with drones for being outside or stopping on a Park bench, that they could inspect your shopping bag, that if you were ill with Cancer or any other illness other than one favoured by the state you would be left to allow the disease to grow. and finally that your business and the livelihoods of your employees would be taken away from you by the Government, and that the majority as we are informed by the Media of the UK citizens all think this is a good idea and the way life must be I would have called that person insane and an extremist. Well look at this country and its willing herds of sheep now.”

    1. He does indeed need to get a grip. I knew four people who have recently died with cancer. Two under 50. One other older man who died from pneumonia. Only know two who had virus both well over 65 and both survived.

      1. He seems to have gone AWOL. The pronouncements coming out of the government make little sense. It’s like they’re taking orders from someone else whose best interests aren’t for this country.
        The only one making any sense and standing up for the UK is David Frost, the UK chief negotiator on Brexit. I think I’d rather have him in charge.

    2. And no sign of an end to this madness. Apart from the illegal protests, the rest of us are being taken for fools.

      1. Have the politicians performed so many U-turns that now they don’t where to turn?

        1. They are leaving multiple skid marks.
          And have left themselves wide open to opportunistic
          point scoring.

  75. It is a great pity that the Minneapolis police force doesn’t all go on strike for a week and then see how many stores and public buildings and wealthy looking homes have not been ransacked. They could make it clear that no crimes committed during their strike will be investigated later.

    Fortunately for Minneapolis I suspect that their police are not as minded to poetic justice as I am.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8395687/Minneapolis-Mayor-BOOED-protest-refusing-defund-citys-police.html

      1. Wikipedia tells me:
        “Black people account for 60% of Minneapolis Police Department’s low-level arrests, overall. Between 2012-14 Minneapolis police arrested blacks nearly ten times more for low-level offenses than whites.”
        EDIT: But that’s no help.

    1. Run the idiots down. They’ll soon get out of the way.

      Wouldn’t you just love to have a truck with a snow-plough blade.

    2. And where were the police I wonder…cowering behind their pc shields I imagine?

    3. OK, give up. Your lot are way beyond anything happening this side of the Atlantic.

      The best that the States can do is getting rid of a Confederate statue, the rest is good old honest looting.

      Do the well behaved ones think that anything will come of their virtue signalling, will Trump care enough to force drastic changes in society? How about the real racists in the South?

    4. Belle,
      So where the hell are the the police upholding the rule of law?

      We would be better off with the Salvation Army providing policing services.

      Terry
      XXX

    1. I dursn’t show our garden – battered by rain and gales. The roses are suffering.

      However, the trombetti – outside – are thriving, despite night temps of about 6ºC

      1. It looked as though a wedding had taken place in our garden yesterday, red and white rose petals scattered all over the lawn.

    2. ‘You’re closer to God in a garden’. Well, they do say most accidents happen in the kitchen and the garden, must have no chance in a kitchen garden.

      1. I found him once (God) a long time ago….I’ve been looking ever since.
        I’m obviously an unrepentant sinner….

    7. What’s the rambler over the window?

      Mein are going full blast now with just my 2 Sander’s Whites to come next month & R. moschata in September.

      1. It’s from a cutting of the shrub rose Penelope which threw a sport and turned itself into a rambler. I took several cuttings before I moved from the Cotswolds.

        1. Ah yes, the Pemberton Musks are inclined to climb in the suitable conditions. I had a Cornelia in Dorset, which spontaneously shot away & climbed right over a pergola.

          Lovely garden you have.

          1. Thanks ped….it’s small so manageable.
            I couldn’t cope with a large garden now… you can’t get the staff!
            I have Cornelia growing through a rhododendron….

  78. I posted earlier that many of the mob in London were maybe BBC employees. I began to wonder who the others might be, apart from the obvious non-white thugs and thugesses. I remembered that long ago we had in the office a small aide memoire with three columns, two with adjectives and one with nouns. by randomly picking a word from each column you produced a very technical expression that meant nothing. Useful for inserting in memos in order to impress.
    The Sultana and I played a game of inventing job titles for those in the social work halo. We looked them up on Google.
    The following were invented:
    Social Cohesion Co-ordinator
    PTSD Counsellor
    ADHD Counsellor
    Equality Mediator
    Bereavement Counsellor
    Social Interaction Counsellor
    The internet search revealed that all of these jobs actually exist. Now I am fairly sure that these jobs did not exist 40 or 50 years ago. So why do we have them now? It seems hard to imagine that we need them more than we did then, or that they make any positive contribution to the economy.

    Give it a try! Make up your own modern society job titles. Have fun! Then remember that we had a civilised, decent and prosperous country without any of them.

    1. Don’t forget the “Diversity and Inclusion Managers” in the NHS and elsewhere, on salaries of £50,000+

        1. Plus:

          That you are a strong Labour supporter. Against Brexit – and deffo believe that Lives of Color Matter. And that you have a standing order to fund “refugees” crossing the Channel.

          Wear one of those t-shirts to the interview.

          “When can you start?”

          3. So passé

            Diversity and cultural awareness balancing and compliance department.

    1. Good night Peddy and his cute black cat. I enjoyed the last bit of my roast lamb this evening with mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, onion gravy and mint jelly. Yummy. (Sorry Missy, there wasn’t any left for you.)

        1. Oo-er, I was obviously not paying attention the last time I saw her.

  80. I’ve just watched Priti Patel speaking about the riots/demonstrations on the BBC and SKY. Do not look to these people to save you. They are made of straw!

  81. Meanwhile.
    In Scotland no new cases of Covid-19 have been reported.
    The BBC article includes a heading:
    “How many people are in hospital? The coronavirus outbreak is creating a huge load on Scotland’s hospitals and its intensive care unit capacity.”

    The numbers:-
    There are 1000 people in hospital with Covid-19. NHS Scotland has 18,000 acute beds.
    There are less than 20 people in Intensive Care. NHS Scotland had 180 ICU care beds at the start of this outbreak and this number should now be around 700.
    These figures and the clear trend should signal the immediate end of lockdown and everything else. Remind me why even more restrictions are being imposed by law?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52009463

    1. To keep law-abiding people at home while anarchists demonstrate and tear down statues. Not to mention assaulting police and their horses.

      1. Most of these demonstrators are not black – they’re anarchists.

        Of course, because blacks don’t really care about this stuff, they’re just out for the gibs. The antifa/anarchists are there for the revolutionary violence.

        Virtue signalling middle class w@nkers like this shower aren’t really anarchists, they’re just a type of pathologically stupid liberal. They believe everything the media tells them.

        1. The anarchists are orchestrating the virtue signalling middle class w@nkers who think they’re doing a grand job rewriting history.

      2. Where is our useless government,……….. send in the army to beat the shonet out of all of them.

      5. They should be prosecuted and imprisoned.

        After a few years of being assaulted and donated a dose of HIV I’m sure they will feel differently about their fellow man.

        1. Absolutely nothing will happen to any of them, sos.

          Apart from acclaim from the local beeboids, local press and local “politicians” of all parties.

          Oh, and Cur Ikea Slammer will say that he was with them in spirit.

          Churchill, Thatcher and the Cenotaph will be the next targets.

          1. {:-((

            I fear you’re right.

            Still, we can always close all our univerities and use the buildings for illegal immigrants and refugees.

          2. I thought they were doing it already, and calling them “students”….

    2. Yes it’s all coming apart at the seams. The New Cultural Revolution has begun.

    1. Yet despite that Western Civilisation – and the white people who created it – are being destroyed at an increasing rate. How did that happen if we won? Did we actually win at all?

      Once we start acting as if ‘racism’ was real, we’re doomed. The outcome of defeating this allegedly ‘racist’ ideology leads us to exactly where we are right now.

      1. Because Western Civilisation has a few chronically sick and greedy people who use their useful idiots to whip up hate and/or envy in race- or whatever other guise, in order to lead to their own control.

    1. Why do rubber (or stronger) bullets, CS gas, fire-hoses, and/or tasers. spring to mind?

      1. If the Met are incapable of protecting the Cenotaph – the symbol of heroic sacrifice in two world wars and more – it is/ they are, unfit for purpose.

        Do a Reagan: “sack ’em all and replace them” !

    2. Sad to say, Mags, that freedom of speech is very selectable these days – your clip comes up as “The media could not be played”.

      Who the hell has the right to say what can and cannot be played?

      We are supposed to be a ‘free-speech democracy.’ Who gave the little twerps the right to censor our publications?

      1. I’ve managed, by ‘opening in another tab’ to view it but, despite the little arsehole eventually being cordoned off by thuggish police, we don’t see him being taken down beaten and marched off under arrest.

    3. The Police stand back and watch, doing nothing. At Bristol they said it was to prevent further violence – it means they have ceded control of the streets to the mob.
      The more the police allow them to get away with the more emboldened they become. Will Churchill’s statue be the next to be pulled down and dragged into the river? When will the police decide enough is enough? I look at the news and despair.

      1. The soy boys masquerading as police will soon find their courage returning when it’s time to crack down on misgendering on Twitter or appalling “ITS OK TO BE WHITE” stickers oppressing people.

    1. Well, that stirred up the antifart brigade. Some are even accusing Farage of ‘inciting violence’. LOL.

      1. My father got his prosthetic leg there in about 1972. He hated it and for the next 12 years, until his death from cancer, it hung from a coat hook.

  92. From Monday’s letters:

    SIR – My family has spent weeks in lockdown at personal cost. I wept on Saturday night as I watched the news of the demonstrations in London.

    Everything we have sacrificed has been for nothing. Who is organising it and why are the police doing nothing?

    Nicola Williams
    Cobham, Surrey

    Some of us might weep for you, Nicola – for thinking that the lockdown served any useful purpose.

  93. Good night folks – tomorrow I shall post a copy of my letter to both Boris and the DT.

    God bless you, one and all.

  95. Dear old Countryfile has been at it again: “Could the coronavirus lockdown have led us to a rural cycling revolution?”

    We were told about the need to make high streets coronavirus safe (?) after which followed the predictable pro-cyclist/anti-car propaganda. When the reporter asked the question “If high streets are made more cycle-friendly, how do those in outlying villages get there?”, I thought he was about to discuss car drivers unable to park but no, we were then subjected to the usual pictures of ‘roads too dangerous for cyclists’.

    Pedestrians were mentioned only briefly – no reference to their safety – and the exclusion of cyclists from some rights of way was presented as a bad thing.

    Another one-sided report from the impartial BBC.

      1. There is a proper three-way discussion (pedestrians, cyclists, motorists) to be had about access to town centres, particularly in rural parts. This programme didn’t have it.

      2. There is a proper three-way discussion (pedestrians, cyclists, motorists) to be had about access to town centres, particularly in rural parts. This programme didn’t have it.

      3. Well that’s obvious isn’t it, Peddy? Go to their front doors on Thursdays and give the authorities the clap! (Or stay indoors and paint rainbows.)

        :-))

    2. It’s just another bbc programme is don’t watch anymore.
      The list gets longer every day.
      I must be due a rebate.
      We live very close to the country side and we are inundated with BOB’s bombing about on bloody bikes especially on public footpaths.
      It seems no coincidence that all the NO CYCLING signs seem to have gone missing.

      1. You must watch it for your weekly dose of outrage. Every time you miss it you give them a little victory.

        1. I spent less and less time watching it from about 18 months ago.
          When that idiot leftie jumped up ‘planted reporter’ Tom Heap came on and blamed domestic dogs for the death of sheep. We all know what leaves half butchered sheep dead in farmers fields.
          I emailed the programme and politely pointed this out to them……no reply.

    3. We are indeed living in dystopian times,
      I want to go back to last October , and wake up knowing I have been having a bad dream and everything is really going to be okay .. because it was just a dream!

      This strange thing we are experiencing feels probably like the last hours of the Titanic!

      1. The main presenter was Margherita Taylor, who can gush for England – whenever I see her on TV I think of Spitting Image’s Roy Hattersley. In this edition she was on Hampstead Heath, eulogising about the view from Parliament Hill: “It’s so special!”

        So special that all you can see is cranes and the Shard. I had to stop the iPlayer to identify Wren’s masterpiece. Well done, Margherita! Drip! Drip!

        1. Well said, WS. In Janus Towers any programme in which Taylor appears goes off immediately. She is known here as ‘Gusher’ and typifies the type of low-grade presenter so beloved by the BBC and others. Wonder how someone so awful gets the job…hmmm, tough one that.

          Similarly I find Countryfile a shadow of what it was under Miriam O’Reilly. It is now at a level well below that of Blue Peter. Needless to say, it’s another programme I gave up on some time ago.

        2. I looked for St Paul’s but couldn’t see it. I like the view of it from Richmond Hill.

      3. Hello Belle,

        It’s beyond dystopian and I’m greatly fearful for my twenty year old daughter’s future. My son in Vancouver says it’s even worse in Canada. Our weak, inept and corrupt politicians of the last 30 years have much to answer for, as do my generation for letting them get away with it.

        I have this terrible premonition that we are now on the edge of a precipice and having allowed mob law to prevail yet again, with a weak and politicised police force and not a single person of sufficient strength of character to provide a rallying point, then there is little hope. We desperately need a Trump, Putin, Churchill, Lincoln or Disraeli to provide someone we could rally to and support us. Johnson, I have no trust in at all, being shacked up with somebody from the enemy camp. A shallow and vacillating ‘man’

        At 75, in poor health, knowing any leadership qualities I had are far in the past, I feel completely helpless to do anything.

        Perhaps it is time for dinosaurs like me to enjoy my whiskey and baccy and watch events unfold, until it’s game-over.

        It is truly heart breaking to have lived thro’ a golden age and see it turned to lead. I hate going knowing I did not do enough.

        I hope you and Rodney are well and very best wishes for whatever the future may hold.

        Love and regards from one of the old guard.

        Terry
        xxx

  96. It does seem odd that the ‘death’ of a drugged up felon with underlying conditions, in Minneapolis, could generate such a worldwide reaction. Are we sure that Floyd is actually dead or hiding away somewhere. Something about this stinks, it is a pre-planned and orchestrated insurrection.

    Much the same might be said about the unlawful assemblies by BLM and their hi-jacking by Antifa. All pre-planned and predictable.

    It is possible to imagine that the ill conceived lockdown of the rest of us is also deliberately designed to allow and facilitate the demonstrations, (looting to follow as sure as night follows day) and rioting.

    Edit: And the resurrection of the McCann story is surely opportunistic distraction politics. There are many more important things going on in the world which the PTB and MSM wilfully ignore.

    1. I feel the same as you corri. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean to say somebody is out to get us.

    2. Watch for the opportunists. It may not be planned, but they were ready for an opportunity.

  99. From Monday’s letters:

    SIR – My family has spent weeks in lockdown at personal cost. I wept on Saturday night as I watched the news of the demonstrations in London.

    Everything we have sacrificed has been for nothing. Who is organising it and why are the police doing nothing?

    Nicola Williams
    Cobham, Surrey

    Some of us might weep for you, Nicola – for thinking that the lockdown served any useful purpose.

    1. Morning Geoff, I’m trying to think of something good about it. 🙂

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