Thursday 13 May: The tedious torture of trying to get an appointment to see the doctor

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/05/12/lettersthe-tedious-torture-trying-get-appointment-see-doctor/

673 thoughts on “Thursday 13 May: The tedious torture of trying to get an appointment to see the doctor”

  1. GPs told to screen patients online first. 13 May 2021.

    Doctors have been told to discourage patient appointments in person to promote the use of virtual consultations.

    New NHS guidance instructs family GPs to embed a system of “total triage”, meaning that anyone seeking to see their doctor must first have a discussion online or by telephone.

    The advice, first issued in April last year, and updated last September, as a short-term measure, has now been formalised into annual NHS operational planning guidance, which came into force last month.

    Morning everyone. If this is true the inevitable conclusion is that sometime last year, whilst keeping it a secret from the public, the NHS told doctors to abandon their patients so as to save themselves and the NHS from Covid19!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/12/exclusive-gps-told-stop-seeing-patients-face-to-face/

    1. Ah, but Minty it could have been the forecasted Black Death with squillions dying and as a result lots of doctors would have been needed to sign the death certificates…..

      1. Morning Stephen. This thing is being portrayed as a victory for the Government when in fact it is a squalid con-trick. They pursued political glory by exaggerating a minor ailment into a Global Pandemic and in the process engineered, the as yet uncounted deaths, from more serious conditions.

        1. Morning Minty et al.

          What is even more remarkable if the sheer number of people who are totally signed up to the official narrative.

      2. Morning Stephen. This thing is being portrayed as a victory for the Government when in fact it is a squalid con-trick. They pursued political glory by exaggerating a minor ailment into a Global Pandemic and in the process engineered, the as yet uncounted deaths, from more serious conditions.

      3. A rubber stamp marked COVID, is quite sufficient

        After the panicdemic is over, squad of naughty boys will be sent out to commit murders, so that pathologists can be

        reaquainted with their jobs

    2. Yo Minty

      The simple answer would be for all shops, tradespeople, garages etc to withdraw their services from recaltricant GPs

      1. Doctors to phone (if they can get through…) a day in advance to book a 10 minute slot at the pub bar, after being quizzed by the publican about their health as it might be affected by whatever drink they plan to have.
        Then told to collect said drink from the off-licence.

    4. So GP telephone consultations could now be done cheaper by subcontracting to India. At least you would be glad to get a call that starts with “I’ll only take 3 minutes of your time”.

  3. Leslie Wakeford’s onto a winner, while others are having a bad hair day, touch of deafness and looking for gobstoppers;

    SIR – I recently needed a district nurse to check something wrong with the leg of a 90-year-old. I phoned the surgery and was told to speak to a GP. For that I must phone first thing in the morning.

    At 8.30am next morning I started dialling. On the 123rd call, I got through, to be told I was number six in the queue. By the time I finally spoke to a receptionist, no appointments were left for the morning. I would have to try again at 12 noon.

    On the dot of noon I started again. After another 100-plus calls, I got through and was number six in the queue. By the time I got to number two in the queue, it was 1pm, when the surgery closes. The plug was pulled and I was left high and dry again.

    How on earth is a 90-year-old supposed to access a GP these days?

    Janet Milliken
    Folkestone, Kent

    SIR – I don’t think GP surgeries realise that contacting them and attempting to see a doctor is extremely stressful and very, very difficult when you are old and feeling ill. When I was unwell three years ago, it wasn’t until a visiting friend handed me the phone that I contacted the surgery. Otherwise I think I would have died sitting in the chair, too tired and ill to help myself.

    Doctors do not realise how hard it is for sick people to lift up the phone and wait in a queue for 30 minutes.

    Jean Cochrane
    Bourne, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Letters from people who state that GP surgeries are holding face-to-face consultations come from doctors or from representatives of medical organisations, such as Dr Nikki Kanani, the medical director of primary care of NHS England (Letters, May 7).

    My husband is dying and, although he is at home, he is under the palliative care team at a hospice. They are available to me, and to him, 24 hours a day and are truly amazing.

    It is, however, a drastic way to get medical help.

    Elayne M Benjamin
    London NW4

    SIR – Dr Kanani wrote to all GPs on September 14 2020: “Many of you will be aware of reports by some patients that they are experiencing difficulty in accessing their GP for needed face-to-face appointments. We are writing to you to reiterate the importance of providing face-to-face appointments.”

    Dr Gregory Tanner
    Middlezoy, Somerset

    SIR – I have been doing research into types of medical practitioner in the 18th century. Physicians (the ones with a medical degree) were not expected to examine the patient, instead using history alone to reach a diagnosis.

    Is this where 21st-century general practice is heading?

    Incidentally, I managed to see my own GP during lockdown. My tips for getting past the receptionist are to be pushy, sure of your ground and in possession of a medical degree. I then had to shout my name through the surgery letterbox before being let in.

    Dr Hilary Aitken
    Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire

    Monumental folly

    SIR – It seems as if the woke leadership that alienated Labour supporters with metropolitan assumptions that they were stupid and racist is now running the Church of England.

    As congregations return to the buildings from which they have been largely excluded during the pandemic, they are being asked to consider church monuments and their links to slavery (Letters, May 12).

    In 40 years of priesthood, I have never known a monument to inspire anyone to take up slavery or think racist thoughts.

    It is said that the aim is not to abolish history. I disagree.

    At this critical time of rebuilding a broken Church, worshippers should be welcomed back, not rebuked for not being woke. Let God be the judge on memorials, as indeed he is of us all. Christians have other priorities.

    Canon Keith Punshon
    Dalton, North Yorkshire

    Treasure trove

    SIR – After my husband died I put the house on the market. The day before completion, I went to the empty house for a last look. In my husband’s study I noticed a loose panel inside a cupboard (Letters, May 5). Behind it I found a box of gold coins. He had never told me about them or the hiding place.

    Sue Johnson
    Swanage, Dorset

    Where to get garlic

    SIR – Like Derek Foster (Letters, May 10), I was appalled to find that Tesco and Asda import garlic from China.

    I now buy my garlic from Lidl. It’s both Spanish and cheaper.

    Leslie Wakeford
    Sowerby, North Yorkshire

    SIR – The answer is to grow your own garlic – which could not be easier – in pots if garden space is unavailable. Then no air miles are involved.

    Lesley Snell
    Hoylake, Cheshire

    Legislation with bite

    SIR – Does George Eustice, the Environment Secretary (report, May 9), realise that the world’s deadliest snakes, such as the black mamba and
    king cobra, will come under the Animal Sentience Bill? Perhaps MPs should undergo a snake-pit test before voting.

    Rev Philip Foster
    Hemingford Abbots, Huntingdonshire

    Checks on gamblers

    SIR – Two million people in the UK are affected by problem gambling – with, on average, one gambling-related suicide every day.

    Urgent action is needed, and measuring affordability is key. Currently, however, only some companies check that customers aren’t gambling beyond their means.

    The Gambling Commission has consulted on compulsory affordability checks for all operators. However, the Government now intends to strip the watchdog of its power to impose such checks (report, May 4). This is a statutory power which cannot be removed without legislation.

    We hope that the Gambling Commission will persist with its plans, so that vulnerable gamblers do not have to wait many more years for the Government to make good its election promise to tackle gambling addiction.

    Lord Foster of Bath (Lib Dem)
    Chair, Peers for Gambling Reform
    London SW1

    Vaccinated visitors

    SIR – My family and I will visit the UK from Hong Kong, a city of seven million people averaging fewer than one local case of Covid a day.

    We are fully vaccinated and must test negative before flying. On what scientific and legal basis can we, as British citizens, be judged a risk and forced to self-isolate for 10 days?

    Jonathan Evans
    Hong Kong

    Care conundrum

    SIR – I began my career in social work in 1965. The hot topic at that time was how social care and healthcare could better work together. That conundrum remains, not because of resource constraints but simply because of the intractable question at its heart: who controls the resulting service?

    Is it to be local government, through locally elected members, or central government through Parliament? Therein lies the rub: the control of social care is locally determined but within parameters set by central government. The control of healthcare is firmly embedded in Whitehall. Neither entity is likely to give ground.

    The problem, therefore, is not about resources but power.

    Robin SeQueira
    Former Director of Social Services
    Dorset County Council
    Lytchett Minster, Dorset

    Ever-closer drinking

    SIR – I read with interest your report (May 11) that strangers who drink alcohol move one centimetre closer every three minutes, but hoped that the researchers would extend their graph to a time frame of five hours or more, to include day-drinking events.

    What, for example, happens at weddings? At Henley Royal Regatta? At Wimbledon?

    Alice Loxton
    London W1

    Self-walking dogs

    SIR – Tim Stanley (Comment, May 10) says dogs do not take themselves for a walk.

    When I was a child in Surrey in the 1940s, living a few minutes’ stroll from the river Thames, our little dog (a mongrel) would often take himself to the river for a swim and return home to be towelled dry before being allowed back indoors.

    These swims, plus a rather restricted diet due to the war, were clearly good for him, as he lived to the age of 16.

    Joyce Nicholson
    Bishopsteignton, Devon

    Shops we came to rely on during lockdown

    SIR – The lockdown seems to have brought shoppers back to village shops, with fishmongers, butchers and greengrocers all doing well.

    Charles Moore (Notebook, May 11) rightly laments the closing of his local butcher’s shop. I was brought up in the adjacent village of Burwash in the 1960s and I recall a flourishing wheelwright, a chemist, vet, doctor, forge, a garage, seed merchant, grocer, an old-fashioned sweet shop/tobacconist selling
    gobstoppers in jars, a village store and five pubs – two of which remain.

    There was also Jarvis the butcher, about which Lord Moore writes. It frequently has a small queue outside, which must be a comfort to the owner and also to us locals – to whom the message must be “use it 
or lose it”.

    Neil Mackwood
    Dallington, East Sussex

    The upper classes, according to Nancy Mitford

    SIR – Shirley Page (Letters, May 11) spotted errors in the BBC’s The Pursuit of Love. There are more.

    The fox hunting scenes position hounds within easy kicking distance of horses’ hooves, when they would be quite apart from the followers and with the huntsman. Aristocratic wedding receptions in the 1920s did not feature a few dreary tables of six. In those days, they took the form of a glorified drinks (champagne) party, a great number of people jostling together and possibly getting exceedingly drunk.

    Why did Lily James walk in as if going up the aisle, while the groom waited at the far end of the room?

    The bright spot was Dominic West’s portrayal of an overbearing father.

    Marian Waters
    Pebworth, Worcestershire

    SIR – When taking visitors round his home at Leixlip Castle near Dublin, Diana Mitford’s son, the late Desmond Guinness, used to gesture to a row of portraits of the six Mitford sisters, declaring: “Fascists to the right, communists to the left”.

    The Mitford sisters covered the political spectrum, and to write them all off as “fascist Nazi collaborators”, as Tracy-Ann Oberman did (report, May 11), is inaccurate and crass.

    Roger White
    Sherborne, Dorset

    SIR – I can forgive the hairstyles being wrong, and even hunting in midsummer, but why can’t the BBC produce something that is audible?

    I am not deaf, but however far I turned the volume up, all I could hear was mumbling.

    Wendy Tanqueray
    Esher, Surrey

    1. How on earth is a 90-year-old supposed to access a GP these days?

      Janet Millikens experiences mirror my own, though in a more extreme form. Possibly because I simply gave up!

      1. Bureaucracy. There’s little to no intent of surgeries operating as previously. am sure “Janet’s post” is placed so as to trigger responses on emotive level to measure how successful the current approach is doing

    2. How on earth is a 90-year-old supposed to access a GP these days?

      Janet Millikens experinces mirror my own, though in a more extreme form. Possibly because I simply gave up!

    3. Like Neil Mackwood, our local butcher (we lived over the shop) in Newport Pagnell, Douglas, always had a queue outside on Saturdays. The other butcher, Dewhurst, never had a queue. Douglas was very focused on quality – I recall he wouldn’t sell us some rolled rib, as the meat wasn’t fully hung, having just come into the shop.

      1. Morning. Paul.

        On holiday in Skipton, a couple of years ago, I visited a butcher’s shop that made the “Championship winning” pork pies. My visit was just after noon and all his pies had sold out (along with a lot of his other meat products).

        I then entered another butchers’ shop, next door, and was greeted by a sullen-looking miserable chap in an shop where, quite evidently, nothing had sold. I bought one of his pork pies and regretted doing so the rest of the day. It was beyond bland. It’s a wonder his business lasted.

        1. Morning, Grizz.
          Probably survived on disappointed folk from the shop next door – such as you.
          Dewhurst also put a display of meat outside their shop-front, on shelves on the pavement. Not very inspiring.

          1. There were two butcher’s shops in Chesterfield in the 1970s under the Dewhurst chain. Their meat was invariably bland. I used the same independent butcher that my mother had always used and I was seldom disappointed.

      1. Boris Johnson knows very well that by the time the excrement hits the ventilator as a result of his gormless green policies that have ruined the economy, or what is left of it, as well as the lives of everybody he and his paramour will not be there with a shovel to sweep up the pieces of faeces, the bits of shits and the lumps of dumps!

        1. Come off it: Carrie Antoinette’s taste in decor isn’t THAT bad.
          The carpets are quite colourful.

  6. Sage calls emergency meeting over rapid spread of Indian variant as No10 plays down reopening fears
    Scientists fear the new ‘variant of concern’ could push back PM’s fourth and final step out of lockdown on June 21

    Well….Who’d a thunk that was going to happen??

      1. We can always count on Eeyore to look on the bright side of life. The MR is a Saint

    2. Build people up then knock them down again, the same old trick again.
      And just after an election, how fortunate.

  7. Stop Press

    200 people who did not have a cold or flu , but died from COVID, risen from the dead

    Boros’ statistics going to be messed up

  9. It is interesting to note that a report in today’s Daily Telegraph tells that Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian warlord, will serve out the rest of his life sentence in a British prison for his ‘war crimes’ including the genocide of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

    It is also interesting to note that had this man lived over seven centuries earlier, he would have been lauded and garlanded as a hero of The Crusades, the aim of which was to achieve precisely what he did in the late 20th century.

    1. The Balkans. A shining example of a Diverse Society in reality. Perpetual Wars interspersed with massacres, repression and mutual hatred!

    3. Apparently the problem is now the Muslims might kill him.

      Considering they make up about a third of the prison population, but barely 3% of the entire population, maybe this has been the plan all along?

  10. Since he is currently being investigated for ‘Racism’ let’s just look at what the Origin of the Species has produced for us.

    A Re-run Of The 2013 Darwin Awards

    Eighth Place

    In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

    Seventh Place

    A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who “totally zoned when he ran”, accidentally jogged off a 100-foot high cliff on his daily run.

    Sixth Place

    While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug an 8-foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom, when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

    Fifth Place

    Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burgling. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands free rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

    Fourth Place

    Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

    Third Place

    After stepping around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather & Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a uniformed officer was standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol.

    The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, and several customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No one else was hurt.

    HONOURABLE MENTION

    Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie were bored just driving around at 2 A.M. so they lit a quarter stick of dynamite to toss out the window to see what would happen. Apparently, they failed to notice that the window was closed.

    RUNNER UP

    Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more excited, and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge, they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman’s cable lay nearby. They secured one end around Bingham’s leg and then tied the other to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham’s foot was never located.

    AND THE WINNER IS….

    Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt (Paderborn, Germany) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded.

    The sheer force of the elephant’s unexpected defecation knocked Mr Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that proves… ‘Shit happens’

    It Always Seems Important To Thank These People For Removing Themselves From The Gene Pool.

    1. Thanks, Tom. An excellent and funny start to the day. (And “Good Morning” to all NoTTLers.)

      1. German efficiency. Of course they would win.
        I wonder if the elephant was using one of those bogs with an inspection shelf?

    3. 47 expended rounds and only 23 gunshot wounds in a shop at close range?

      Why is gun crime a problem in america? They can’t hit the side of a barn!

  11. COVID Enguiry – Now or Later?

    Having one now is like getting out of your broken down car in lane one of a smart motorway to find out what went wrong by looking under the bonnet.

    1. Morning Angie. Boris would like to get it done before a General Election so pretty soon if he’s going full term and postponed if he’s going to have one next year!

    2. 332710+ up ticks,
      Morning Aoe,
      I do believe the quicker the better, many peoples tend to visit forgetsville
      and many politico’s use the delay to
      construct a credible answer whether or not the truth….

      See where the mayday 9 month delay led us.

        1. 332710 + up ticks,
          Aoe,
          I do agree,
          there’s that alright as we have witnessed, the quick to retain the same parties regardless of consequence, and the dead,
          maimed and mentally damaged,due to those consequences.

          2. 332710+ up ticks,
            Morning NtN,
            As found in equal numbers in any of the lab/lib/con coalition.

  12. Good morning all.

    Can anyone give me a reason why the Left believe voter ID is racist?

      1. Mng AWK. Yes, i believe that to be the reason but how do they justify that it is racist? I know Muslim women are allowed out so it can’t be that.

        1. it’s the only card they feel they can play when everyone else asks “where did all these Osama Bin Ladens appear from on the voting register” and who’s behind it. They know they have nothing left to campaign with, their old traditional base has gone and they’ve lost the people’s trust. As usual, anything that floats “racist” is merely trying to create heat and light when everyone knows its bollocks

        2. I think it might be connected with the ‘black economy’. A lot of people in the country don’t have bank accounts, pay tax or are on any accountable register.

          5. I think a large proportion of the dark economy is made up of BAMEs, hence it’s racist to require ID.

    4. Ayup, Phil.

      If the Left says that anything is “Racist”… then it is!

      OK?

    5. They don’t. It’s just another way to get people going about racism.

    6. They don’t. It’s just another way to get people going about racism.

    8. Because it will reduce the number of ethnic lefty votes, hence the Racist! cry….? Everything is racist when it is not going the way of the left.
      Good morning. Phizzee.

      1. Good morning.

        It undermines democracy. The Left are the enemy of the state.

    9. That’d be hypocrisy. They like skewing elections in their favour. It’s what they call fair.

  13. Tuesday lunch with the Nagsman (she sends felicitations and love to all) was lengthy and full of immensely worthwhile giggles but I need to confess more …..neither she nor I were wearing a muzzle unlike the poor hound below
    ‘We got engaged in October and married in April!’ Readers on finding true love in lockdown
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bebf135beb8e4874eaa4969fce58e1f429eed080/0_104_1080_648/master/1080.jpg?width=940&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ae64a03dff872609977f5479f9e16840

  14. Barnier’s incendiary immigration U-turn betrays the panic gripping the French elite. 13 May 2021.

    Hilariously, Michel Barnier, the EU’s erstwhile Brexit negotiator, believes he has the answer. Barnier has always been part of the problem, building an undemocratic Europe and causing untold misery with the euro. Yet he craves rewards for his many failings, and fancies himself as president.

    In a breathtakingly hypocritical reinvention, Barnier is now calling for the end of all immigration from outside the EU for three to five years, and a rethink of the Schengen agreement.

    The really funny part here is that the author believes this ridiculous story. Just how would Barnier implement such a policy? Send the immigrants a postcard telling them to wait five years? They cannot stop them now! It’s quite clearly a ploy to split the anti-Macron vote.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/12/barniers-incendiary-immigration-u-turn-betrays-panic-gripping/

    2. In the meantime, he will hasten the relocation of those immygrunts, already in France, to Dover/UK

  15. 332710+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Install a pro United Kingdom security force in the English Channel and challenge their illegal entry would be a good start.

    Stop supporting mass uncontrolled immigration parties
    whos agenda as DOVER clearly shows is ” keep your nose out of OUR affairs” yours is but to do & ………..

    https://twitter.com/vanliferules/status/1392521469683507202

      1. which explains why Billy boy topped up his account [and answers Janet’s Q yday what he got money for]. This month at least

    3. Let us not count the Chickens before they hatch. If things get really ugly in France, given the current thoughts of a significant section of the French Army as well as ordinary citizens, we might yet witness another ‘Dunkirk’ or more likely a Dunmosque…….

      1. 332710+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        Not until people power want it to happen, the key to it happening is not to be found on the lab/lib/con keychain, never has been.

    6. Given that British governments now go in a for a spot of retrospective legislation …. any chance of chucking out the arrivals from way back when?

  16. And in other (cat) news – I was down before the cats woke this morning. They spend nights in the kitchen.

    One was asleep on the kitchen table; the other on the draining board. They were astonished – and not a little put out – to see me so early. One could sense them looking at their furry watches and thinking, “WTF?”

    But I made up for it by turfing them out into the garden at 6 am…!!

    They are just back in and eating an enormous breakfast.

    1. I know that expression. I’ve seen it on Spartie’s face. I think the technical term is “death stare”.

  17. Good morning from a bright but overcast Derbyshire with an almost warm 7½°C on the yard thermometer.
    Has Spring finally sprung one wonders?

  18. 332710+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    “Moral high ground,”
    Thats rich, keeping in mind the mental scars created via
    rotherham, rochdale, etc,etc,etc.

    Starmer lets the PM escape in a cat and mouse battle for the moral high ground
    Each desperately tried to out-do the other in gravitas and solemnity as a public inquiry into the covid pandemic was announced

      2. 332710+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        Within the lab/lib/con coalition political hierarchy. sucking the life blood out of the Nation.

    1. Wade says: “Perhaps because in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.”

      For virologist, substitute climate scientist.

  22. Exclusive: Student reprimanded after backing teacher who showed picture of Mohammed
    Trainee summoned to fitness to practise hearing after telling course leader that he would not hesitate to show similar drawings in class
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/12/exclusive-trainee-fighting-career-backing-teacher-showed-mohammed/

    So a teacher who believes in free speech is not fit to be a teacher?

    How long is the government going to allow this to happen? The longer they put off making firm decisions about stopping the pernicious and invasive influence of Islam poisoning everything in Britain the worse the final reckoning will have to be

    1. There will be no “Final Reckoning” until there is a mosque on every corner and our great great grandchildren either go to the slave blocks or the Jannissaries
      Islam is a vicious violent but most importantly cohesive force,our politicians already appease it on every hand for two reasons
      1 Every party needs to appease the Moslem block vote to get elected and keep their noses in the trough
      2 They are terrified of the rioting that would happen if they tried to rein the Moslems in
      We have NO leadership either political or religious and without it our civilisation is doomed.
      We are fortunate, most of us are old enough to avoid the worst of the fall,our offspring??
      Not so much

          2. 332710+ up ticks,
            Morning R,
            We are not only fighting the overseers we are in many respects fighting our neighbours who insist voting lab/lib/con coalition & HOPING things will get better.
            Peoples of Anne Marie Waters ilk must be given support and a country wide platform, the political forces of sh!te & supporters “nige” inclusive took Batten & REAL UKIP down
            they cannot be allowed to continue.

            The twatoligist within the electorate will have to reset their
            mindset, unless this Country take down is intentional then it will surely have to be solved as last resort via bloodshed.

      3. 332710+ up ticks,
        Morning Rik,
        That will explain in some ways why the likes of Gerard Batten & real UKIP had to go.
        The man warned rhetorically & in book form the dangers of islamic ideology back in 2005
        ongoing.
        Instead of the lab/lib/con coalition ruling the roost the lead steer of people power
        ( the electorate) wants a weight
        in its ear to turn it on to a pro UK course.
        15 G should suffice say, the weight of a ’45 bullet.

        1. The Establishment treatment of Batten,Tommy,Jayda etc,the constant harassment,denigration, lawfare shows they stand with our enemies not with the people.
          I don’t want the Moslem population of the UK dead,I want them gone,deported with full compensation for their property,but gone
          Before anyone starts whining about “The Mioderates” please note second/third generations from “Moderates” seem to produce ample violent fanatics
          Time for our 1492!!!

      4. Let them riot, close the mosques and madrassas prior to demolition, and declare Islam a terrorist ideology, undermining our culture, religion and way of life., round ’em up and dump them in Lebanon, from where they can take their own long march back to their shitehole roots.

        I know it sounds like an enactment of the holocaust but we must fight fire with fire and we ain’t murdering them – yet.

    2. There will be no “Final Reckoning” until there is a mosque on every corner and our great great grandchildren either go to the slave blocks or the Jannissaries
      Islam is a vicious violent but most importantly cohesive force,our politicians already appease it on every hand for two reasons
      1 Every party needs to appease the Moslem block vote to get elected and keep their noses in the trough
      2 They are terrified of the rioting that would happen if they tried to rein the Moslems in
      We have NO leadership either political or religious and without it our civilisation is doomed.
      We are fortunate, most of us are old enough to avoid the worst of the fall,our offspring??
      Not so much

    2. So it now causes impotence – in more way than one? This whole sh*t show is starting to make the Salem trials look like an ocean of sanity. Discovered the other day that a neighbour I’ve known for years is also red-pilled. We plan to have a girlie supper and a natter in the next week or two. She’s American and a concert pianist. Currently making her living teaching. Think she’s seeing pupils face to face too and not via zoom but will check on that.

    1. 332710+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      I belonged long term to a party that forever called for controlled immigration, etc,etc, they were castigated and cried down by the lab/lib/con coalition, supporters / voters.

      May one ask what is their
      answer now ?

    2. Simple solution to those with no ID. They will be taken by a wallowy trawler, (sea-sick is us) packed tightly in the hold, round the Cape of Good Hope and dumped at midnight on a Somali beach, clad only in their underpants.

          2. If Mugabee backwards is Ee’ba’gum then Zim backwards is Miz or the misery the poor land has become.

  26. 332710+ up ticks,
    The capital has fallen, birmingham is tottering uncontrollably proving surely that a continuing lab/lib/con coalition vote has nigh reached fruition, that is the total
    destruction of a once world leading decent
    peoples / Country.

    ‘EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC’ STREET SIGNS AND STATUES FACE REMOVAL IN MULTICULTURAL BIRMINGHAM

    1. I wonder where China would feature; not that we could trust anything from their reporting.

    2. Are we the highest because we have the largest concentrations of Muslim slums?

      1. Nope, we have by far the highest number of gullible doctors reporting deaths as Covid when in fact they are far more likely to be down to the diseases of old age.

  28. To counteract all the death , destruction and misery I ambled over to the Ignoble awards results of 2020, my personal favourite was:-

    On 18 September Associate Professor Takeshi Nishimura of the Primate Research Institute (PRI) attended an online ceremony to accept the 2020 Ig Nobel Acoustics Prize, awarded to him and four colleagues for successfully “inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air”

    https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig2020

  31. Posted from yesterday –
    My post stirred the imagination of our talented NoTTlers producing excellent book titles
    …. more ideas welcome.

    NHS and The Case for Covid
    Radio, TV, social media, BBC and the press Covid dominates our lives and the NHS has played it’s part leaving many non Covid patients in dire straits.
    ….. I could write a book.

    ‘Live and Let Die’

    3. Thank you Google
      “Stayin’ Alive” by Bee Gees
      “Bad Medicine” by Bon Jovi
      “I Want a New Drug” by Huey Lewis & The News
      “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen
      “Doctor! Doctor!” by The Thompson Twins
      ‘Fever’ by Peggy Lee

    5. I missed yesterday’s post. Out having a good time.

      How about……….Atlas Shrugged… again.
      Once upon a time…… Three Men in a Boat.
      Atonement. We know what you tried to do Mr effing Blair
      Mobile Dick….be with you later !
      Count me in Monte Cristo.
      Brave New World……Yeah right.

  32. I am still struggling to get Dolly’s weight down so have put her on half rations. The Vet said it should be 55grams a day of dry slimming biscuits.

    She turned into the Incredible Sulk. She didn’t bark or raise her head when the postman put a parcel in the porch which is a first.

    She refuses to follow me around or play and just looks at me reproachfully.

    Anyone who says i am anthropomorphisising isn’t a pet owner.

    1. I give Spartie an ounce of dried dog food per day – split over two meals. I add a bit of wet dog food or roast meat/fish to make his meals more exciting and to secrete his Apoquel tablet.
      He has regained his sylph-like figure and is bouncier; as he is obviously at least 25% Jack Russell, I make allowances for the different physique.

      1. Good Moaning, Anne

        I had to re-read your posting because at first I thought you were referring to YB, poor little soul

        1. It was a complete relief when the nutritionist told MB that, as he’d reached 80 before having a heart attack, he must be eating the right stuff, so she wasn’t making any dietary recommendations.
          On a purely selfish level, I was dreading a lifetime of serving up boiled chicken and lightly poached fish.

          1. I dread being on the receiving end of that, Anne. Back to school food – YUKK!

          3. When i lightly poach fish i often serve it with a a little tub of Morcambe bay brown shrimp. Saves making a sauce.

        1. Put it in bowls with peanuts and crisps on the table when you next have a drinks party, Plum.

    2. We’ve had the opposite problem with our cat.

      She seemed to have gone off her normal diet of Felix and had lost a lot of weight (down from 3kg to 2.5 kg – a lot for an elderly cat) so we tried a variety of the mainstream cat foods but to no avail. The vet couldn’t find anything amiss so we switched (on the vet’s recommendation) to Applaws, available from Amazon at about 3 times the price (!) of the bog-standard muck. It seems to have done the trick and she’s regaining her lost weight at a rate of knots.

      Who’d have thought a cat would go on a hunger strike out of boredom?

      1. Lily eats her Felix but without enthusiasm. Give her a bit of roast lamb, pork or chicken and she gets really excited!

        1. Funny, Meg turns her nose up at scraps. It’s always surprised me. Mind you, she was a recue cat who had been found abandoned so It may be she’d had some bad experiences with food in the past. It certainly explains her hissing and spitting at all strangers when we first got her. She still does it but there’s no force behind what seems purely a reflex action now.

          1. Lily clearly had a happy life with her former people……… the old man died and the old lady went into care, which is why she went into the rescue. She took a couple of weeks to settle in here but she’s a real sweetie and just loves cuddles. She also likes to lick dishes……..

      2. I think they do like a bit of variety. Seeing as you are paying so much why not buy her fresh meat and chicken? I do that with Dolly. Mix in some cooked rice and some minced up veg. Goes quite a long way. I put it in a tub in the fridge normally.

        1. I’ll look into that when we’ve got her weight back to normal.

          1. Yes, definitely get ‘real’ food. Cats do genuinely like fish, so try tuna, salmon.

      3. Our two have as much dry food as they want, unlimited water, and a sachet of wet food between them a day. They get excited about the wet food, and snack the dry food throughout the day.
        Both are nowt but fur & muscle. In excellent shape. (7kg & 10 kg of it…)

        1. Meg’s not too keen on dry food (apart from Dreamies) and has managed well on Felix and the like for over a decade. Seems the worm has turned and she was doing a Bobby Sands (minus the dirty protest so far).

        2. My Vet told me not to leave biscuits down for Dolly. Probably the reason why she started looking like a blonde coffee table.

          A suppose your cats are active. Climbing trees, bringing down Deer and burying the odd postman. So they will burn off the calories.

    3. I sympathise entirely. They are distinct characters all their own.

      If Mongo doesn’t want to walk, he won’t. He’ll sit there, looking at you either wwith abject disdain or more usually, pull the other way and flop on the floor.

    2. The average MacDonald customer will probably think they are promoting heroin use.

    3. Given that those ‘chips’ are grease filled straws, there are more urgent health concerns.

    5. It means no more need to munch your way through their tasteless garbage. Have it injected straight into your bloodstream.

    1. If they are not firing rockets Mahatma blowing up innocent people and children, stabbing and shooting they are shagging gang raping and little white girls. Blood and Gold………..
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03b2nqh
      Thousands of slave children prisoners held captive and fed to the pet lions after they had finished with them.

      Stay as safe as possible Matey. 😉

      1. Thanks Eddy . 90% of rapes , murders, car jacking & burglaries in Israel are committed by Arabs, they are such wonderful people I can’t understand why Europe doesn’t want another 100 million or more to emigrate there !

        1. My father was in the RAF during WW2 he served in Egypt,Algeria, then moved on to Sothern Italy. I lost count of the times he said to me ‘Never trust and Arab son’.
          I just hope our less than useful government are checking the shipping containers from the middle east for inappropriate cargo.
          My personal feelings about the ever worsening situation in the UK is that the government have already been threatened by the islamist living here that if they don’t comply to their wishes, there will be wholesale destruction and mass rioting. I remember the police escorting these unsavoury people, on a march through London They had their faces covered and had banners that said behead those wo are against islam. I expect our pathetic political classes thought ……’Oh really ? They are only joking’ !

          1. Happy Friday Eddy, on both sides of my family I had uncles who were in the 8th Army in the desert & Italy ( my late father was still at school when the war started but left school as teenager to do war work before the end of the war & after the war did his National Service in the RAF ) . I used to have a neighbour as a child in London who was a veteran of the 8th Army & absolutely hated the Arabs, he was a lorry driver & got separated from his convoy in a heavy sandstorm & asked directions at some Arab hovel & whilst he was trying to make himself understood to a shopkeeper a mob suddenly appeared, looted his lorry ( he was carrying ration tins ), set it on fire then attacked him, he had a rifle but only 3 rounds which he used to deadly effect until by chance an MP jeep arrived which had been searching for him after they noticed he was missing from the convoy. I suppose he had what is now known as PTSD & would get angry at anybody he heard saying they liked the Arabs on TV & one day his wife told us he smashed the TV because the BBC were showing a propaganda program showing the Arabs as nice civilized & cultured people!

    2. It’s Ascension Day, Hat. If one has to be sent to the hereafter, it’s perhaps one of the better days.
      Take care!

    1. They don’t stop me from breathing properly. Government should not be in the business of impeding that most basic of rights to life, the right to breathe freely.

  40. Morning all.
    Head line to day reveals many a true word. I have had very similar experiences my self. Surely the message has penetrated the barriers they have set up.

    Along with Virgin Media, we had 4 weeks of serious pixilation on our most channels of our TV screens. It was absolutely impossible to speak to any one. The closest I could get was a listen in dial 150 phone call from me, press this that button etc. etc. telling what to do which, I carried out their instructions several times. To no avail.
    I tried to email the CEO with my complaint about none existent ‘customer services’ and after I spent about 45 minutes writing the inclusive email, I sent the email and it bounced. My only option left was to send a copy by Post. I printed off the email and my wife had just returned home from a walk with our grandson and our dog. She told me that there was a Virgin media van parked on the drive of a neighbour, I rang him and he told me of the wonderful deal he had just had from VM including a free mobile phone !!!
    I put the copy of the email in an envelope and walked to the end of the road hoping to see an engineer, but they were obviously busy inside the property. I left the envelope under the windscreen wiper and within hours and after nearly 4 weeks of trying to speak to someone the problem on the TV screen was fixed. What an absolute irony, with a high tech company hiding behind a high tech barrier,………. I found a way through eventually.

  41. Beeb Headline:

    “St Paul’s Cathedral could close without tourism cash”

    It’s got a dome – could be put to other religious uses – there are precedents….

      1. Ah, yes but St Paul’s could be rechristened ‘The Old Lady of Treadbare Street”…..

    2. Two long white rope loops hung from either side.
      It could become a focal point for the mask worshippers.

  43. re. the US pipeline fiasco.
    I’ve read elsewhere that there was never a problem pumping products through the pipes.
    The computers that were compromised were the ones that monitored who got what so that they could be billed.
    They didn’t know who to bill so they shut the pipeline.
    Has anyone else heard this?

    2. feedback I got from a couple of lads those sides, without obviously any cast iron docs: intention was to increase billing charges for those that voted for Trump and who accurately monitored their metres / usage and were about to take up arms and hit the pipe, and who happened to be predeominantly white. Antifa / BLM receivers got deducted bills, which they didn’t pay either. So it sounds like the rationale created to shut the pipeline

    3. feedback I got from a couple of lads those sides, without obviously any cast iron docs: intention was to increase billing charges for those that voted for Trump and who accurately monitored their metres / usage and were about to take up arms and hit the pipe, and who happened to be predeominantly white. Antifa / BLM receivers got deducted bills, which they didn’t pay either. So it sounds like the rationale created to shut the pipeline

    4. feedback I got from a couple of lads those sides, without obviously any cast iron docs: intention was to increase billing charges for those that voted for Trump and who accurately monitored their metres / usage and were about to take up arms and hit the pipe, and who happened to be predeominantly white. Antifa / BLM receivers got deducted bills, which they didn’t pay either. So it sounds like the rationale created to shut the pipeline

    5. Maybe it’s a question of systems: A built on B, B on C.

      The ability to bill may be directly related to the ability to pass fuel. One system cannot operate without the other?

    6. The DarkSide Hackers – TTG, 13 May 2021.

      Like many other ransomware variants, DarkSide follows the double extortion trend, which means the threat actors not only encrypt the user’s data, but first exfiltrate the data and threaten to make it public if the ransom demand is not paid. This technique effectively renders the strategy of backing up data as a precaution against a ransomware attack moot.

      Below the Line.

      Fred, who said the control system was hacked? I certainly didn’t. I and every report I’ve read said the IT system was hacked and Colonial shut down their pipeline out of an abundance of caution. I applaud them for that decision. They obviously knew their pipeline control system was vulnerable. An tech audit of their systems in 2017 revealed major problems.

      https://turcopolier.com/the-darkside-hackers-ttg/

  44. “Barnier’s incendiary immigration U-turn betrays the panic gripping the French elite”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/12/barniers-incendiary-immigration-u-turn-betrays-panic-gripping/

    “Incendiary” you say,realistic I say

    Top BTL comment

    “I fear the author grandly overstates Britain’s multicultural
    successes. We have a growing Muslim population that follows a set of
    teachings which tells them not to befriend non believers, who are
    inherently inferior human beings. Over half believe homosexuals should
    be illegal. Two in three would not tell the police if they knew of
    someone who was going to join terrorist action in Syria. Many would not
    condemn violence against blasphemers, nor condemn the stoning of
    adulterous women.

    We have the BLM movement – their narrative is
    naked racist scapegoating. Founders are cited as calling white people
    ‘recessive genetic defects’ and say, in all manner of ways, humanity
    will be better when the white people are culled.

    The point is
    that these groups are incubated in Britain, exploiting the naive and
    self indulgent ‘tolerance’ the author celebrates. It is not tolerance at
    all, but cowardly acquiescence. Right now, though, they remain
    relatively small groups, though even so are having a disproportionate
    say on what parts of our history we are allowed to remember, or what
    analysis we are allowed to use to explain social trends, and thereby who
    the state is allowed to help.

    Extrapolate the trends just a few
    years forward. Will we still have a tolerant multicultural Britain, when
    white people are taxed more, where laws practically allow any form of
    disorder from minorities but sanction the speech crimes of the white
    people, and where sharia law becomes formally adopted in certain
    cities?

    The only reason there is not greater tension is that the
    minority population remain small and densely concentrated, and in the
    places where they are concentrated, the authorities pander to their
    every whim, and the white population flee.”
    Ain’t THAT the truth !!!

    2. Just look at London now. White flight was very real.

      Look at the mayor they’ve elected. Look at how social services, the police and councils protected Muslim rapists.

      The funny bit is the Left can’t see how they’ve done this exact thing before, over and over again.

    3. These people have seen kindness as a wedge to drive deep into European cultures and are causing trouble all over the world now, it’s time to tell them to stop, or go back to whence they came.

      Apparently Barnier is thinking of trying for the French presidents post. They seem a bit worried about Marion Anne Perrine “Marine” Le Pen gaining more support due to Toy Boy and his divisiveness.
      And Von de Liar is becoming more of a every day.

    1. Brilliant.
      What a shame they can’t send them back to explode where they were launched from. Or even where they originally came from. Give it time eh !

      1. Sadly, the rockets Hamas launch do fall on Palestine.

        They do kill Palestinians.

        I don’t get it. They could stay in, make a packed lunch, nice cup of tea and wander to work, fill in their objectives and spend an hour talking about cheese with their mates.

        But no. They go ‘ loo and a snack bar! I want to launch missiles against my evil hated enemy I’ve never met, nor never will from inside a classroom.

        What sort of mentality does that?

  46. I was reading a report in today’s Grimes of a case being heard by Mr Justice Goose.

    I’ll bet he gets the bird if he ducks the issue.

    (Over to you, punsters!)

    2. I suppose an old Lag would have to be up before the Beak before an appearance in front of this old bird…..?

        1. You have to listen to Noel Coward’s introduction and then listen to the song right to the end when the seafaring Italians make their move.

          I certainly met Caroline ‘in the nick of time’ as I was saved from making old bones as Mr Chips did. At our wedding, in my speech I quoted from Peter Lawson’s song :

          When he fancies he is past love
          It is then he meets his last love
          And he loves her as he’s never loved before.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIoGE2ntZrg

  47. Moh’s 75th b/day today .

    How time rolls on so quickly .

    Weather is really miserable, can’t even go out for a picnic or a crab sandwich to watch the rushing sea at Portland Bill, well we might , the day is still young .

    Bought a new bread maker on line , a Panasonic, it arrived within 24hours . Our old one which is 20 years old, was grinding to a halt , getting slower and slower .

    1. Happy birthday to him……….was the breadmaker his present?

      Are you feeling better?

      1. Our Panasonic is a similar age and is used every other day – still going strong.

    3. I used to like making rolls when I baked. However whenever I made bread it was the consistency of concrete.

    4. Happy Birthday Wannafight from all the Nottlers you didn’t wind up ! That would be me and Dolly. :@)

    6. Happy birthday to Mr TB.
      Tell him he’s very fortunate he can still play golf TB,…… i wish I could. I have played a few in Dorset and I would loved to have another game at Purbeck.

    1. For goodness sake.

      A pointless selfish, spoiled child in a pointless, expensive, unnecessary post. This is an example of why this country is stuffed.

    4. Used to abuse? Can’t imagine why. Though if you are going to make a spectacle of yourself you leave yourself open to it i suppose.

    5. Not sure how the binary system works. Is he a 10011100111, whatever that means.

  49. I told you so…

    “Minister hints England’s June 21 ‘freedom’ day could be DELAYED if SAGE decides Indian variant poses a threat as No10’s top scientists hold ‘urgent meeting’ after cases TRIPLE in a week and experts warn ‘local lockdowns won’t stop spread'”

    1. Didn’t Johnson proclaim, and Truss repeated the message last week on radio, that the “end” would be irreversible? Of course, the “end” can only be irreversible if said “end” is reached. The cynics amongst us have been harbouring doubts about Johnson’s “road map”, more so since he managed to get his Tory stooges to vote for an extension of the CoronaVirus Act to the end of September. Lying charlatan doesn’t cover what Johnson has revealed about himself and his aims.

        1. I think all politicians should be tracked and traced permanently. With their phones and homes bugged. See how those fukkers like it.

      2. I have been confirmed in my belief that Johnson can’t lie straight in bed (like his predecessors) since he failed to be “dead in a ditch” when we didn’t leave the EU as promised. As far as I”m concerned, we still haven’t left properly.

    2. In relation to the population of India there infection rate is far lower than ours was although our was engineered to seem worse.

      The average age of death remains stubbornly at 82.4 years and that’s only if you believe the false statements from this faux government.

    3. Ah that’s nothing.
      The Canadian Medical Association just came up with the bright idea of extending our lockdown until the end of summer.

      Thankfully roundly rejected by anyone with common sense – and the government.

  50. 332710+ up ticks,

    From leggit nige the power behind the johnson throne
    as opposition, the stand up/stand down £25 a pop artist
    new parties a speciality.
    breitbart,

    ‘Socialism Is Dead in England, Hurrah!’ – Farage Hails Downfall of ‘Open Borders’ Labour Party

    1. Hmm, I seem to remember the Blessed Margaret saying something to that effect. She obviously neglected to give the coup de grace as has the Non pareil Nigel.

    1. Much of it was filmed just down the road from us at Groombridge Place.
      A beautiful house.

      2. I thought you lived in a Chateau in France. Don’t tell me you have two houses!

        2. If only. Groombridge place was large but not stupidly so.

          I suppose one could say we have two houses, as the gite is a small self-contained detached property.

    2. A fantastic film – superb diialogue; remarkable casting and smashing music.

        1. The Master of the house engages an artist to draw the house and grounds. The artist captures all the not so obvious affairs and other shenanigans.

          I’ll get me wig.

          Peter Greenaway films are often difficult to understand on the first watching. My favourite is ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’.

      2. I enjoyed it. Are you being sarcastic…again?

        I like it because it is full of stuff which is not immediately obvious.

  52. This morning we had – in sequence – another coffee accident, a lot of shouting, an explanation and a lot of tears.

    Then a proper breakdown and a thrown shoe

    For the last 8 or 9 years, since the war queen and I moved out of hell and on to the train there has been a simple formula.

    Wake up, wash, dress self and squalling baby, then less squalling toddler, then energetic child. Typically this involves bundling self, dressed wife and organised child into car for train at stupid o’clock whereupon we say goodbye and off she goes to return in 12 hours. Then said children (dog, man, boy) come home and do their breakfast, dressing, washing in, tumbler on, play|school.

    Now, us three blokes have evolved a routine of packing stuff the night before, putting it by doors, with known routes and sidings. Shoes are at this point, trousers here, shower takes this long, dog is at this point, lunchbox on this shelf in fridge, bowl goes in this part of dishwasher, Mongo food is here, eaten by.. water dumped on floor at this point, mopped…

    You get the picture. It’s the Breakfast sketch from Morcombe and Wise.

    Now we have a fourth passenger who isn’t normally on our morning rush hour. Who doesn’t know the routine. Who has no timetable. Who gets in the way, moves shoes, lunchbox, closes dishwasher.

    Charging child goes to fridge – Daddy knows this as it is same time as Mongo is putting his water bowl on the floor. Daddy ready with mop, fridge door opened. Wife smashes into open fridge door. Trips on mop. Lunchbox not found. Dog sits in water. Coffee on floor. Mug smashes, blouse ruined. There is chaos where there was order.

    She [imagine Ursula Andress enraged] screams a torrent that would power a windfarm for a month. I stand in the gale and… eventually she falls apart and then it becomes clear: she doesn’t feel welcome. It’s not her home. It isn’t, after 6:16am. There’s no place for her. She’s “in the way”.

    Now, being the paragon of empathy and not remotely autistic myself, I say ‘You’re right, we’re not used to you being here.’

    This is true, but it makes her cry even more. It doesn’t mean she’s not welcome, just that our mornings are a ballet of an hour crammed into 42 minutes – I’ve timed it. So she cries some more and after a bit we decide to talk about incorporating her into the set up (which will be sit here, in this chair in the corner).

    I like routine. She copes better than I but still has her rituals that set up the day. Hell, she works nigh 10 hours straight. She needs the safe take off.

    The mare kicked the shed door and threw a shoe. The motor vehicle didn’t start meaning a complete decamp to the much smaller runabout.

    It’s been an exciting day. I don’t like exciting.

    1. Goodness wibbling exciting is one word for it. Glad you can let off some steam on here KBO.

      1. Aye, it’s a huge release valve as you’re all vastly more normal than me and mine.

        One day I shall regale you all with the day we couldn’t find chicken steaks in M&S and my brother’s reaction.

        2. Regale away! I love your writing. I wouldn’t assume that *all* of us are normal, though 😉

    2. Obviously the ‘WarQueen’ is stressed.

      You sound as if you are used to the ‘hairdryer’ treatment.

      Deap breaths. Keep cool. Carry on.

    4. Is she still working from home? You could build her an office/shed so you and the boy and the dog have the house to yourselves…….

    5. I’m with you on that; I like a routine that runs like clockwork. If it’s any consolation (which I doubt) apart from the dog (he would have been the least of my problems) and the tiny appendages it has echoes of my attempts to get away on time for my riding lesson yesterday.

    6. Sounds like me running around in circles trying to find Moh’s favourite hat or crawling around the floor yesterday afternoon trying to find a lens that had dropped out of 52 year old son’s reading glasses!

      Things just vanish , and the dogs are NOT guilty, because they hide away from the rumpus!

  53. Another Michael Nyman-Time Lapse from the Peter Greenaway film-A Zed and Two Noughts.

    Weird film about decay. I remember one scene of identical twins lying naked on tables being crawled over by 100’s of slugs. Filming themselves as thy died and decayed. Fun Movie !

    https://youtu.be/ZSy-gfnvIM4

  54. 14.30 PM here in sunny Tel Aviv, sirens have gone again heard first 3 booms to the north, TV reports heavy barrage of rockets all over the Tel Aviv region

        1. You sure its an old Arab greeting?
          It only works in the English language.

          3. Phew! There are one or two round here who just don’t get our peculiar lines of thought. Delightful people, of course, but lacking irony!

          5. Well, of course, coming from where you do…{:¬))

            Join the club, by the way!

          7. Only metaphorically.

            Keep this to yourself, but I am one of the very few NoTTLers who hates pubs…

    3. Bomb the Mosques. That is where the trouble is fomented. Fewer women and child casualties too.

  55. UK government ‘truly sorry’ for events in Northern Ireland where 10 innocent people were killed in 1971.

    The UK government has said it is “truly sorry” for the events at Ballymurphy in Northern Ireland 50 years ago in which 10 innocent people were killed during the Troubles.

    Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis made the apology in the Commons, telling MPs that Boris Johnson would be writing personally to the victims’ families.

    “The events of Ballymurphy should never have happened, the families of those who were killed should never have had to experience the grief and trauma of that loss,” Mr Lewis said.

    Are the Irish Government going to apologise for the Omagh (29 dead) bombing or the assassination of Mountbatten?

    https://news.sky.com/story/ballymurphy-government-truly-sorry-for-events-where-10-innocent-people-were-killed-in-1971-12305166

    2. I grew up in NI..left at the age of 22 (1967)
      There were NO innocent people..everyone took a side.

      1. I recall being sent to Belfast to do a piece on the radio. I was asked whether I was a Prod or a Papist. I replied that I had no religious belief. “Well, are you a Prod Atheist or a Papist Atheist?”.

        5. I remember having a “discussion” (like talking to a brick wall) with a NI student on teaching practice. He insisted that the Catholic-Protestant division was “racist”. It was impossible to convince him that it didn’t matter what race you were, you could still be either Catholic or Protestant (or neither) – rather like adherents of islam.

      2. And that’s the truth of it.

        Folk who don’t know Northern Ireland will not find it easy to understand the strength of the sectarian hatred. I served during Operation Banner and I found the polarisation between the two sides – Orange and Green – was absolute.

    3. But did Boris Johnson add anything to back up his promise that there would be no further prosecutions of NI veterans or is his promise going the same way as his promises about no border in the Irish Sea and the complete restitution of our fishing waters.

      It is beyond understanding that Boris Johnson has any credibility with anyone anymore.

    4. Hey, your government has learnt from Trudeau.

      The useless one apologises for some past indiscretion every week (or so it seems). For really good causes he can also add tears to make his apology more meaningful.

    6. What about all the innocent British soldiers killed while just doing their duty?

      1. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Armed suppression should not be used to cover up decades of political chicanery.

      2. One of the major errors in NI was to use the Armed Forces instead of enabling the Police to deal with the problems, as I was once told by the son of some senior officer. Soldiers are trained to kill and to protect their mates.

    7. Well, the government has apologised for Ballymurphy. What hypocritical claptrap! The murdering terrorists of the IRA were given immunity from prosecution by the evil actions of a previous UK government. That should never have happened and should be rescinded. There should be no statute of limitations for serious crimes, even you were wearing a British uniform, or are clutching a letter. It cannot be argued that the shooting dead of unarmed and passive civilians is anything other than murder. The officer commanding 1Para had seen service in Malaya and he took the same approach in NI as had been taken against the Malayan insurgents. There was a much clearer distinction between communist insurgents and the villagers of Malaya, and a greater acceptance by the ruling authorities of brutal action.. There was no such distinction in NI so that officer made one up, in my opinion. All working class Catholics were to be treated as armed insurgents. Nicely simple-minded. That viewpoint undoubtedly fed down the ranks and resulted in a lack of discipline, gratuitous brutality and murder.
      Subsequent to the murders in Ballymurphy the officer should have been court-martialled. That did not happen. On the contrary, 1 Para were sent to Londonderry a few months later. They then murdered innocent unarmed people on Bloody Sunday. Our government instead of hunting down the murderers and bringing them to justice, decided to cover it up. The Army covered it up. Captain Jackson who subsequently became Chief of the General Staff, was adjutant of 1Para at the time of both incidents. He wrote “news” articles about Ballymurphy that seem to have borne little or no relation to the truth.
      In terms of atrocities perpetrated by us, these incidents reflect little change since Amritsar. Moreover, and very importantly, these incidents would surely have quadrupled recruitment to the various armed factions of the IRA. Not exactly clever?
      What kind of country do we wish to be?

      1. What we wish to be is irrelevant. What the state is forcing on us, what is being tolerated and encouraged by the utterly deranged, insane Left is what will come to pass.

        That will be war. The sane against the utterly insane. Normals against deranged Lefty fanatics.

      1. One wonders which side they will choose if civil wars do break out, God forbid.

  57. Guess who??/

    “Gaza is terribly distressing and I feel…
    That my mental health is deteriorating
    Because I too know what it’s like to be in an abusive situation
    And feel unloved and we must stand together
    And demand real change, so I will be your voice Gaza ”
    Yes,yes I made it up,but I had you going didn’t I

    1. Sounds like the sort of tripe that Meagain would spout. Any bandwagon will do.

  58. There’s always a downside…

    Ukraine needs to strike a deal with Moscow to import Russian oil, or the country could soon face an acute shortage. That’s according to the Chief Commercial Officer of UkrGasVydobuvannya, a Kiev-based energy producer.
    Speaking to online outlet Ukrainian News last week, Sergey Fedorenko explained that the political decision to stop buying oil from Russia and Belarus could have severe consequences for the country. A deal needs to be made with Moscow soon, or the problem will only get worse, he believes.

    In recent weeks, Kiev has lost much of its fuel supply. On April 1 this year, the Swiss company Proton Energy entirely ended its oil supplies to the country. Since 2016, the company has been the only supplier of Russian energy giant Rosneft’s products to Ukraine, and made up almost a quarter (23.4%) of the country’s entire diesel imports, and 22.3% of purchased liquefied gas. The decision to stop sending energy to Kiev was made after the Security Service of Ukraine recommended that other companies stop cooperating with Proton Energy.
    These issues were made worse later that month, following renewed US sanctions against Belarusian enterprises. Russian pipeline transit company Transneft, which supplied the Vitebsk Naftan Refinery, temporarily stopped selling its oil. This exacerbated the issue in Ukraine, which receives more than half of its diesel from its northern neighbor. Furthermore, another facility in Belarus, the Mozyr Refinery, is undergoing repairs.
    The lack of imports now means that Ukrzaliznytsia, the country’s government-owned rail company, has no fuel, and doesn’t have enough tank cars for transporting diesel that arrives at ports.

    3. We’d get in trouble here under the Brownface (Hate Crime) laws if we tried that here though.

    5. At least it’s natural unlike the political crap that’s flung in our direction…..

  61. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to serve rest of sentence in British jail..

    Well well..funny old world.
    In another age he would have been marching shoulder to shoulder with Richard the Lionheart to the Crusades.

    1. Wonder if they’ll incarcerate Karadzic in a muslim controlled prison in an attempt get him killed, as they tried with Tommy Robinson?

      3. How many of his “fans” turned out to support TR at Leeds Crown Court Dunc?
        Just asking.

        ETA: Apart from ogga’s mate Emily Enso.

          1. From the video she posted on YouTube, half-a- dozen.
            More than turned out to support the Veterans defending Churchill’s statue Dunc.

          3. From this tablet you’re having a laff NTN.
            Do you dispute how many turned up at Leeds Crown Court?
            Or how many turned out to support the Veterans???

          4. No dispute but it would be good to see it for oneself rather than depend upon another’s word.

    2. Wonder if they’ll incarcerate Karadzic in a muslim controlled prison in an attempt get him killed, as they tried with Tommy Robinson?

  62. Afternoon, all. I’m here early today partly because I’ve been up since the crack of dawn to ensure I caught the delivery of some stuff from the NHS for MOH and partly because my Canadian friend wanted to try a Whatsapp conversation. Between my phone locking up, my Whatsapp jumping on the bandwagon and doing the same and problems his end, we have called it a day. Hence I’m here to plague you lot. Ain’t technology wonderful?

      1. Thanks. I had a look. The problem is, distance. They all expect lots of visits to “bond” with the dog and the ones I like are at the far end of the country! I could happily have taken Frank (from Wolverhampton), but judging by the replies, he’d be inundated with offers.

  63. Latest Breaking News – Scotland is to get another Independence Referendum in a new Supreme court ruling, the judge has said that although the last referendum was to supposed to be a once in a generation event, but since then we have had a mass vaccination roll out and a generation has now been re-calibrated to mean only seven years.

      1. G’afternoon Jack – I wondered where you were, it being Thursday & all………..

        2. Calamity Ndovu!
          Seems the old laptop has finally died and taken my Jack S account with it.
          Not having much joy winding up the eejits on Breitbart either 🙁

          4. He is playing coy on here, his glory days on the DT & on the numerous channels that used to exist are a thing of the past, so he is a little more restrained nowadays.

    2. I do not know how this once-in-a-generation idea about the Scottish Independence Referendum crept in. I couldn’t see why they couldn’t have one each year if they felt it was worth it.

      Maybe to save money on elections though, the Scots should really have a reserve bank and armed forces adequate to defend Scotland as well as leaving the rest of Britain set up before calling another Referendum.

      How far are they on with it?

      2. Scotland should be offered independence.

        However, the terms should be so incredibly abusive, so financially punishing, so deliberately, willfully, crushingly spiteful that they go for it – and then are hammered so hard, so much and Sturgeon blamed that her greedy hopes are smashed to dust, the SNP annihilated and the union reformed, with no concept of independence offered ever again.

    1. Could have been worse. During May’s dependence on the DUP it might have been London-Birmingham via Belfast.

  65. The indian variant doesn’t appear to be having much impact on the East End of London. Barts Health Trust have had no deaths from Covid in the past 9 days, only one in the past fortnight, one new diagnosis in the past week, 2 people in intensive care and 22 in-patients with “labroartory confirmed Covid”.

  66. Israeli military draws up plan for ground invasion of Gaza
    Hamas has fired a large rocket at Israel’s Ramon airport near Eilat as flights diverted from Tel Aviv

    Why not give the Hamas terrorists in Gaza a bit of prior knowledge, DT? Be sure that they’re prepared.

    A classic example of MSM bias in favour of Islamic terrorists:

    https://youtu.be/blhTyBDJRsY

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/13/israel-military-draws-plan-ground-invasion-gaza/

    No comments allowed – of course.

    1. Or you could get an “independent” view from one of the presenters on the AshleyTabor owned Global Media radio stations.

      1. Since that’s the second time you’ve mentioned it – without any links – I guess that Ashley Tabor must be beating the drum for the Arab, feelthy postcard sellers.

    2. We announced publicly 2 days ago that we have called up 5000 reservists & have moved additional regular troops , tanks, artillery & supply convoys down south. Its all been on TV & its not the sort of thing that can be hidden anyway in the age of drones & satellites, besides it has had some sort of psychological deterrence effect on Hamas operatives & supporters in that they have moved away from the Gaza border where they were demonstrating , burning tires, throwing rocks, & petrol bombs across the border fence until recently.

    3. What a crock. If he were an honest journalist he would say who is actually interfering and making the situation worse.

    4. Some of the BBC reports are quite subtly biased being phrased as “Israel attacks…” when the actions of Israel up until now have been largely defensive, even if pre-emptive.

      1. They try for subtlety but fail badly. We know who the aggressors are. Fuck the BBC.

        1. They try? Really? If you only listened to the BBC Israel is slaughtering thousands of Palestinians for fun, killing women and children while denying ‘good, kind’ Hamas a place to live.

          Their bias is so blatant it dwarfs Jupiter.

    5. Considering the miserable and mindless nature of the situation over there what’s really needed is a nice, nasty war, dragging all the whinging, bitter little scrotes into conflict and then to send our whinging, whining, non binary – no brainery more like – cross dressing trans weirdos on to the front line, all the Karens, all the Lefties, all the wokists and just let them kill one another.

  67. Furious Number 10 accuses the EU of ‘issuing threats at any sign of difficulties’ after Paris ‘warns it will block a post-Brexit deal on financial services’ unless Boris Johnson grants French fishermen greater access to British waters
    Number 10 today accused the EU of ‘issuing threats at any sign of difficulties’
    Was in response to France warning it will block EU-UK deal on financial services
    Paris said to have linked financial services to ongoing row over fishing rights
    The post-Brexit fight last week saw France and UK send patrol vessels to Jersey

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9575005/Furious-Number-10-blasts-EU-post-Brexit-fishing-row.html

    The French politicians are behaving like gangsters.

    Are there any remainers who can seriously claim that our EU ‘friends’ should be trusted one inch?

    Come on Grieve, Clark, Soubry, Benn, Heseltine and Co – what have you to say?

    Does anybody still seriously think that the Johnson/May surrender WA and the absurd “deal” are better than a clean WTO arrangement would have been?

    1. If you appease bullies then they just demand more.

      Most people learn that at school.

    2. Let them. At this point, the Frogs need a lesson in hw unimportant they are. It would serve them right to be told,
      publicly to get stuffed and that Brussels rules them.

  68. England, my England…

    ‘You can be Muslim and still enjoy playing football’

    When Leicester City defender Wesley Fofana walked to the sidelines to break his fast against Crystal Palace, it was the first time Premier League players agreed a pause in the game for that reason. It’s since happened in other Premier League matches during the Muslim month of Ramadan…

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57056933

    2. If my mate Mo scores two or three tonight he can do whatever he wants on the sideline..

    3. But successful footballers become role models and icons. As we know muslims consider iconoclasts worthy of destruction.

    4. Bloody idiots to allow, and pander to it.
      Either you are fit to play, or you are not.
      Why don’t they cancel all matches where star players are injured until they are fit?

      Next up:
      I’m sorry, but I see that Mincy Poofda is playing for the opposition.
      I demand that we stop so I can throw him off the West Stand.

    5. The world has gone nuts. Categorically nuts. The complete lack of cognisance some people have, the absolute, unadulterated selfishness, egotim, arrogance and outright bloody minded spite..

      You rather think they need a war – and to be pushed into the front lines so they can grow up and learn their damned place is under the boot of better men.

  70. Just had to block Jack Shit again. Bad enough having a homegrown troll without them infecting us from other sites.

          2. Isn’t that what the menu on the right is for.
            You don’t have to see his posts.

          3. Yes and i have blocked him but that doesn’t stop me from bitching about the git.

    2. Each to their own.
      I never block, I never flag. (apart from obvious spam).
      I know I’m blocked by some of the Nottle most favoured,that’s their choice.
      My view is that I like to see every post and judge the post on its merits.

      1. Saintly Sos…

        If someone is prepared to defend their post then i will read it. Just bitching about others from a previous argument on another site is tedious.

        Do you enjoy ogga’s repeated message over the years? Yawns. It why we lose Nottlers…

        2. It’s what scrolling is for.

          Generally I see certain posters/pictures/recipes and I move past.

          Even the ones I dislike sometimes post “provocative” observations that are interesting.

          1. Intentionally or not you have revealed something about your online character.

  72. Police Scotland. Kick in doors to arrest people in their own homes because they have one too many people per Covid regulations. (Story from Aberdeen some time ago.)
    Police Scotland incapable of clearing a street crowd so that people can carry on with their work of deporting aliens. Police now succumbing to demands of the mob and enforcing the release of aliens. Scottish Justice Secretary personally intervening in a matter that is none of his business either from an immigration viewpoint or from a policing viewpoint (he has no authority over police, he claims). Woke Mob Rule!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-57100259

    1. You mean this chap, HP?

      Humza Yousaf was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Justice in June 2018.
      The Cabinet Secretary is responsible for:

      police
      courts, sentencing
      justice system and criminal law procedure
      violence reduction
      criminal justice social work, victims, witnesses, female offenders
      human rights
      prisons and prisoners
      reducing reoffending
      security
      youth justice

      1. Yes. If you ask him about the police he says he does not comment on individual cases and refers you to the Scottish Police Authority. I quote from a letter that I received in response to a query:

        “The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 stipulates that the Chief Constable of Police Scotland is responsible for the policing of Scotland, and is accountable to the Scottish Police Authority for this, rather than to Scottish Ministers directly. These arrangements are in place to ensure public confidence that the police act independently, free from unwarranted Ministerial interference. I hope you will understand it would therefore be inappropriate for the Scottish Government to comment on the police handling of any individual case or day today operational decisions.”

        The highlighting is mine.

  73. Beautiful day here – sunny, about 20C. :-))
    Just spent all day with Firstborn, digging out about 20 tons of aged sheep poo from the poo cellar under the barn – the od msn who owned the farm before kept sheep, shovelled the poo down into the cellar, and then died. His nephew who took over did nothing with it, so it’s about 40 years old (well matured, natch), and finally, it’s out.
    Man, I’m tired and smelly. Showers R us…

        2. I’ve done bugger-all physically for nearly a year, apart from polish the seat of my trousers 🙁 Trying to rectify that at 60 is a struggle… Missed 2 winter holidays for skiing hasn’t helped. Now struggling to develop some muscles… so I’m glad to be tired from physical work, maybe the can’t be arsed effect will be diminished.

          1. Ever since laddergate, I have had a hell of a time doing anything physical. When your back is even wonkier than before, you discover all sorts of things that give you pain – leaning over, bending, stretching, putting your socks on – and as for cutting toenails….{:¬(((

          2. :-((
            Getting old isn’t fun – but beats the alternative.
            My ambition is to meet and love grandchildren – how lovely would it be to to have a small, blonde grand-daughter?. So far, no progress on that front.

          3. You could rent some!

            My beloved grand-daughter has been a revelation to me.

          7. “…as for cutting toenails…

            ‘Evening, Bill, we have a wonderful young lady who comes in from Ipswich and sorts out, not only all 20 of our toenails but massage up to the ankle and one feels such a relief of strain. It’s magic.

          9. OH is finding tennis much harder now, and he has lost a lot of muscle. He’s having to come to terms with that.

    2. You could make a fortune by selling it to India just now:

      Old Superpoo slides on slowly …

    3. You could make a fortune by selling it to India just now:

      Old Superpoo slides on slowly …

      1. That’s got some style! May be a money pit, but … a big chunk of countryside isn’t to be sneezed at.
        I own 1/2 an acre, Firstborn’s botton filed is more area than anybody in my family has ever owned, summed up.
        Trees, fields, streams… and associated wildlife. Utterly magical.
        And – it’s effing hard work. Relentless things need done.

        1. It has underground passages, dungeons, guardrooms, a chapel, a ghost etc.
          I would have been as happy as Larry living there. We would have had to run it as a B&B to afford it.
          {:-((

          The total grounds are mostly the moat and the long drive down to the entrance, 10 acres absolute tops.
          The moat was probably 60% of the source of the sheep shit.

          It’s an historic monument de France and I understand that it actually went back to the Chirac family.

    5. I wonder if that is why the old man died?

      What can you grow there? Not roses obviously but that amount of elderly poo must be good for something.

          1. The home field has just been sprayed with slurry. Whole farm honks..

          2. Gosh – not the slurry with the fridge on top?

            I’ll get me ten-gallon hat.

          1. At the time of year we get Moose we wouldn’t have roses and vice versa.

          2. Firstborn has a freezer filled with moose. And venison. It’s a luxury for him to eat beef mince…

          4. Lovely with cranberry.Only a small amount per person needed, ver fillijg and very low fat – to th extent that you often need to add some for a decent roast.

      3. Main product is trees. Lots of trees
        Otherwise, the small fields are rented to the neighbouring farmer to grow grass for silage and put his cows on it in the autumn.
        Firstborn is working up blackberries, honey, other wild soft fruit (raspberries, blueberries, cranberries), also junipers.

          2. No. Firstborn hates mushrooms, so sees no point in growing things he won’t eat.

      1. I remember hugs (and other more energetic things) related to naked girls in showers… Sigh…

  74. You couldn’t make it up could you……….
    Smithsonian Channel,the Pacific War,first thing you get is the trigger warning
    “Some may find these images distressing”
    Oh noes reality upsets me
    W*nkers
    It’s Tarawa,I recommend Battle Cry by Leon Uris

    1. I enjoyed Leon Uris books when I was a teenager.
      They were not so gripping when I went back.

    2. People are weak and pathetic, unable to deal with reality so they escape into a childish fantasy where they can control everything.

      1. Safe spaces ‘R’ us. I think i see a business opportunity with soundproofed padded cells.

    3. Not as bad as: “This programme contains racist language that some viewers may find offensive”.

    4. Hi. I used to think that Battle Cry was the best ‘fictional’ book about the US Marines in the Pacific in WW2. It isn’t.
      I’ve spent the last 3 years reading about this subject. ‘With the Old Breed’ by Eugene Sledge is the best. ‘Helmet for my Pillow’ by Robert Leckie comes a good second. But there are many, many books better than ‘Battle Cry’.

      1. Cheers,just downloaded “With the old breed” I’ll let you know how I get on

        1. Fyi, there’s a book called ‘The Pacific’ by Hugh Ambrose that puts Eugene’s book into context.

          1. General Purpose vehicle. Although who General Purpose was I shall never know……

          8. …and? My father was a Provost Marshall with the Suffolk Regiment in WWII having fought in WWI through Belgium and France, been wounded and commissioned in the field in August 1915. For that, I’m very proud of him.

      1. Yo Plum

        To use the vernacular:

        “Ya wot”

        I have work noise induced deafness

        I use my ‘mobile’ when forced into a corner to answer calls

        Zoom is what I got for my Brownie 126 camers 50 years ago,

          2. My sister and I used to do this as our party piece. It always went down well.

    5. “A fire at the GP surgery? We’ll be there as soon as we can get the barbecue gear and some sausages together.”

  76. 332710 up ticks,
    Seems like the rail company’s future uniforms are going to comprise of a mask & striped jumper to be worn at ALL times to protect the guilty.

    The financial rape & abuse of senior citizens backed by, I believe the governance parties ( travel cards this is ) is
    daylight, in your face, tough tittie, robbery.

  77. Well, I can’t stay and enjoy myself.

    A very good day. Successful market. Lotsa garden work. Trevor the Painter well over half way through. The outside does look nice. At last! It is 20 years since it was last done.

    Cats given their monthly anti-flea/tick treatment. The MR still under the weather since her 2nd Phizer poison 48 hours ago. Insists that she will be, “OK tomorrow…”

    So I will wish you a good evening and say

    A demain.

    2. Bill ,

      I do hope your MR recovers sooner than I did , I felt terrible after 3 days ,it just built up , my headache was in the side of my head , and ached all over , slight temperature etc .. resulting a trip to A+E, I am still feeling strange , have been informed after effects can persist for nearly 2 weeks .

    3. “Cats given their monthly anti-flea/tick treatment”. So you’ve ticked all the boxes have you, Bill?

      :-))

    1. They’ll just claim they are from XR or BLM. Then the police won’t touch them.

  79. Is there no limit to how dumb they think people are?

    twitter.com/USCPSC/status/1392482092823502849

        1. Well, that depends on whether you think the recent US Presidential elections were rigged or not.

      1. And the black one sixth from the left is checking see if the food of the white one (seventh from the left) is of a better quality than his own. Either that or he’s weighing up the chance that he might be able to pinch a bit of his neighbour’s grub!

        :-))

  82. After phoning my dentist several times this week I finally received a phone call
    this morning. I have an app. early next week…… optimistically hoping for a filling!

    Do dentist have the same problem ….who fixes their teeth?

          6. So did mine when I was first able to visit her four weeks ago. But this week she insisted I keep my mask on. The reason for the change? It seems the jobsworths at the local council are making regular checks to see if they can close hairdressing businesses down! AAARGH!!!

          7. So did mine when I was first able to visit her four weeks ago. But this week she insisted I keep my mask on. The reason for the change? It seems the jobsworths at the local council are making regular checks to see if they can close hairdressing businesses down! AAARGH!!!

        2. I was offered root canal work, at about £1 300. Extraction, at £65 was a better solution.
          I HATE dentists.
          My dentist is the most gorgeous blonde little lass, well-remunerated, utterly to die for. But she’s a dentist. So I hate her. Dilemma, or what?

          1. But it’s fun, Paul, to rest your weary head on her ample breasts while she rootles about among your roots.

        3. To some extent, NHS dentists are motivated by the ‘price per procedure policy’. – Natch.

          These ‘Piece-Work Rates’ were (are?)set by a bunch of bureaucrats.

          When I served on a large Scottish NHS Health Board in the ‘Eighties, I was instrumental in the sacking of a Pakistani dentist in Paisley Greenock.

          He selected ‘free’ – exempt patients’ – young, pregnant and otherwise exempt patients – for special treatment:

          Invariably, ‘Eight crowns and four gold inlays’.

          Within the system, that was the best way to maximise hourly income – irrespective of need.

    2. You ride into town.: Ther are .two dentists

      One well dressed, with perfect teeth

      The other looks as though he has been hit in the mouth with a baseball bat

      You know which one to go to

    1. “Mask” clearly being the new term for “yellow star”.
      I hope this will be challenged in the courts.

  84. Probably I am behind on this one, but

    “All prosecutions under the Coronavirus Act have now been dropped, CPS admits
    All 270 prosecutions withdrawn because police confused by constantly changing laws were charging people with the wrong offence.”
    I wonder if the CPS found that most jurors were unwilling to be fined for sitting together?

    1. What about the many fixed penalties (up to £10,000) isshooed by the Stasi?

    2. I would like to see by

      Location
      Religion
      Gender(?)
      Age
      Job Title
      Who they work for
      Political affiliation/leaning

      who is involved, before I agree

      The ‘dropping of charges’,with the above info, will say far more about the aims of our government, than they think

  85. Kill them! Kill them all!

    Time to cull Britain’s feral pigeons

    On our crowded island, nature has to be managed – and that includes these filthy, pestilential birds

    CLIVE ASLET

    Hungerford in Berkshire is a beautiful town, with perhaps only one flaw: it has too many pigeons. So the local authority has arranged for some of them to go on an avian holiday to the far away coastal town of Whitby. Whitby is another gem of a place with a ruined abbey and an association with Dracula. The last thing it needs is somebody else’s pigeons – and as for the birds themselves, it would serve Hungerford right if they used their homing capabilities to fly back there again.

    It isn’t humane to trap and disorientate a creature by transporting it to a locale it doesn’t recognise. Similarly well-meaning but misguided attempts are made to relocate urban foxes, with the result that dozens of vermin, brought from cities and released in fields, can be seen wandering about, dazed and unable to cope without a ready supply of dustbins to feed from. Why ignore the altogether more straightforward solution to deal with the problem of such pests, which comes from the end of a barrel? And I don’t mean a barrel of beer.

    I admit to having a bit of a private war on with pigeons. When we moved to our London home many years ago, we had those strips of plastic spike fitted on every ledge. Over the years they have fallen off, which has allowed the wretched avians to repossess their former haunts – with predictably dire consequences for the garden bench, recently repainted and supplied with new cushions, beneath one of their favourite perches.

    These are not like the sleek racing version of the species, popular alike with Her Majesty the Queen and Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. They’re dull of feather and pestilential. And they do everything they can to provoke me.

    Outside my study window is an elbow of drainpipe where a couple of them are routinely to be seen cuddled up, despite every effort of mine to dislodge them. I hear them coming, noisy as helicopters as they flap effortfully in order to keep their fat bodies airborne. Fortunately, I have a novelty pencil a yard long which I can rap on the windowpane, but they aren’t always frightened.

    Don’t think that is the only weapon I have in the arsenal. As twilight descends, a sudden flash from the torch on my mobile phone has salutary effects. They flap off, to a roof a few feet away. Invariably they wait, foolishly sussing out the place they’ve just left, before – whirl, flap – returning to it. I rush upstairs, open the window above them and chuck out some water. My theory is that they will come to fear an unexpected threat from overhead. Counter-pigeon methods such as these are only a release valve to stop me blowing up with rage. Offensive cooing will once more be heard outside the window next morning.

    In 2000, pigeon haters such as me received support from an unlikely quarter: Ken Livingstone, for all his fondness for newts, wanted to expel the pigeons from Trafalgar Square – or more particularly, the people who sold them food.

    This led to a rumpus and the formation of Save the Trafalgar Square pressure group; but pigeon numbers did fall until the scheme was abandoned.

    Since then they have gone back up again. Tourists in St James’s Park seem to enjoy being covered in pigeons, ignorant, presumably, of the diseases they spread (histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis and psittacosis, to name three). Coronavirus is a disease that originated in the animal kingdom, before leaping the species barrier. Just saying.

    I don’t advocate exterminating all pigeons, and certainly not wood pigeons, despite the toll they take on crops. But they’re like all wild or feral creatures on these small and densely populated islands: some, in their proper place, are okay, possibly delightful – but get an overabundance of anything and it will need to be controlled. Too many protected badgers are disastrous for hedgehogs, whose numbers have plummeted. Seagulls are wonderful when they’re at sea; the semi-domesticated variety which rip open bin-liners and swoop on children’s fish and chips in seaside towns are revolting. Red squirrels good, grey squirrels bad.

    Nature doesn’t exist in its wild state anywhere in Britain. It has to be managed. Pigeons, I do hope your time is up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/05/time-cull-britains-feral-pigeons

  87. Message to government: “excuse me but do you think you could leave us alone”?

    Your every inference to the ‘scamdemic’ merely makes matters far worse.

  88. Just popped in to read the latest 30 or so posts and wish you all a good night. I’ll pop in early tomorrow morning to wish you all a very good morning. Sleep tight tonight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite.

      1. Wot, no post of the Avalon Jazz Band tonight?
        OOPS! Didn’t notice the Pink Martini post above. Which is great, I am a big Pink Martini fan. And also a fan of the Quebe Sisters, especially their version of “It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie” which my father used to sing all the time when I was a child.

          2. Nite nite Elsie I posted it much earlier on today & also Pink Martini song “Nana Nana” about an hour ago , Nite nite its 02:06 AM by me & I am off to bed!

  91. mng to those up and about and online. Obligatory power cuts here to accompany rains – Downtown Nairobi back to being a temporary boating Lake. Here’s the woke seeking an attempt at defence, good to know what floats between their ears https://unherd.com/2021/05/in-defence-of-the-woke-left/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=a9950b47cf&mc_eid=f8bf59e7dc

    The woke / non woke comments

    Kevin Thomas

    The battle on the left is not between the working class left and the middle class woke left. If it was, the working class would feel they had a stake in it. It is between the middle class centre left and the middle class woke left. The section of the party that came from the working class and cared about them has gone. Occasionally you can spot its ghost, when Alan Johnson or Caroline Flint says something sensible on a current affairs show, but there is no one in the party who could be their heir. Labour is now a party of middle class graduates, much like the pre-Nick Clegg LibDems but more left wing.

    As for the people living hand to mouth to afford to live in London, move out of there. You can’t afford to live there. The reason people of that social class are so unhappy is they’ve been brought up with such enormous entitlement until the day they leave university and then reality hits them like a ton of bricks.

    Richard E

    …and then when the woke have families, they often decide they need to move away from the ‘vibrant and diverse’ areas because there is a ‘crime problem’, or an issue with the ‘local school’.

    kathleen carr

    Towns and cities have become unrecognizable. I observe the different clothing-some ladies are not only covered head to toe but have strange grille bits to see out of-must be difficult for them ? I was in a shop and suddenly a lot of people scuttled out from the cellar-where they obviously live.I don’t think a lot of people who come here do get a better life-I would imagine they are being exploited. This is a situation that benefits only a few.

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