Thursday 14 May: Tax rises risk demoralising the public – and stifling Britain’s recovery

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/13/letterstax-rises-risk-demoralising-public-stifling-britains/

792 thoughts on “Thursday 14 May: Tax rises risk demoralising the public – and stifling Britain’s recovery”

  1. Good Morning Folks,

    The blue sky is back, the moon is just drifting over the conifer trees to the south

  2. Good morning. Brightish morning – gentle breeze. I am off to have a bonfire. I shall stand 2 metres from it at all times.

  3. Lot of fuss about health workers getting a pay freeze this morning.
    It seems to me that is like getting a pay rise in kind while everyone else is getting a pay cut or losing their job.

  6. Falls in gun and knife crime a ‘silver lining’ to pandemic, says Met chief. 13 May 2020.

    Cressida Dick, the Met commissioner, said officers had a “smile on their face” as they had more time to go after criminals.

    “There are undoubtedly some silver linings,” Dick said. “With people not being on the streets, [there are] less opportunities for criminality during this period. We have seen a relief from violent crime for so many people. And clearly many criminals being inhibited in their activities.”

    She said the Met had been able to hunt down longtime wanted suspects, who had often shielded at their home addresses. “Some of them actually aren’t so bright, and they’re in rather obvious places,” she said.

    Here’s another copper that lives in her own private world! Of course if we nuked the place the crime rate would drop to zero.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/13/falls-in-gun-and-knife-a-silver-lining-to-pandemic-says-met-chief

    2. “With people not being on the streets, [there are] less fewer opportunities for criminality during this period.

      Clap her into a cell!

    4. This is nonsense. Rural crime is still going strong, and the usual suspects appear to have no fear of the police. It’s almost as though they know they are untouchable!

  7. The new Labour leader got off to a very slow start, no bounce, Labour continued to slide down the polls, so now the MSM are giving him a bit of a helping hand it seems.
    He’s the new Perry Mason of politics, so good that he came into politics, hope it wasn’t to make more money.

    1. 319223+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      May one enquire as to his views on the JAY report & his views on the release
      of the latest regarding paedophilia report yet to be seen.

    2. He does not represent a fresh start of any kind. He has a proven track record of Blairite destruction.

  8. 319223+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    They are making more problems recirculating the peoples finance with the 80% of wages ongoing coupled with the mucking fuddle that is allowing more via the Dover beach to join the welfare state, and that in turn will entice more coming from ALL points of the compass in war canoes fighting to get ashore.
    Looks very much like living in a perpetual state of sh!te
    for some time to come looms.

    1. Morning, Peddy.
      Sunny & chilly here – the penalty for a sunny night. But bright is good, and energising!
      But who’d a thunk it, 5 weeks from midsummer, and we’re still getting minus temperatures and snow down here in the South. I thought global warming was going to stop all that?

      1. Go’morgon, Paul.

        I seem to recall frosts in early May in Lindesberg.

      2. I still remember the snow in early June 1975.
        The awful weather that day chimed with a tempestuous ward meeting during which a couple of lazy and trouble making staff stormed out …. into the storm.

        1. I recall that. Sitting in German class, watching the snow fall heavily outside.

        2. I remember 1975 as being a warm-up act for 1976. Did the summer start late that year?

          1. It was a hot summer – eventually.
            We were moaning on the wards that “our shoes felt full of feet”.

  10. The ‘official Covid story’ is one-sided to the point of deceit . 14 May 2020.

    Arguably, the Covid crisis is being presented in such a one-sided, misleading and alarmist manner that the public is effectively being lied to. But the lie is now so dramatically compelling, so morally powerful, that, like the virus itself, it may be impossible to defeat and prove endemic. The best we can do now is to manage it in a targeted fashion. We might do this by setting “The Official Version” against the fundamental facts (as we know them so far) in two particular areas.

    The first regards the true scale of the Covid crisis. An FT study that estimates Britain has suffered 41,000 coronavirus-related deaths has been widely circulated in recent days. So too the latest ONS figures that put the weekly Covid death rate up to May 1 at 6,035. At first glance, these figure are horrific. But let’s put them in perspective: forty-one thousand is below the number of excess winter deaths in 1998, 1999 and 2014, which immediately raises questions about whether this crisis is truly “unprecedented”. And 40 per cent of Week 18 Covid-related deaths reported by the ONS occurred in care homes, which immediately rings alarm bells about whether it was right to pursue blanket lockdown rather than a more targeted strategy of protecting the vulnerable.

    This woman is a treasure, if they don’t drum her out of the business on trumped up PC charges she should mature into a journalist of considerable stature.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/14/official-covid-story-biased-selective-point-deceit/

    1. I’ve given up reading the news about coronavirus. Very little of it is true, it simply reflects what the government or the media want us to believe.

  11. 319223+ up ticks,
    May one ask bo the magnificent, what with our daily mounting dept is HS2 still on track ?

  12. Taxes. Morning all.

    SIR – I read with concern your report (May 13) that the Treasury may attempt to rebalance the books quickly, using the old strategies of tax increases and pay freezes. In normal times this might be the correct approach, but we are experiencing a once-in-a-century event, comparable to a war.

    The goal must be to instil confidence in the population and the markets with a long-term recovery plan. People need a vision to engage with and money in their pockets, rather than the threat of another decade of austerity.

    D J B Shearer

    Glasgow

    SIR – Britain’s coronavirus-induced recession presents as many economic and political opportunities as challenges.

    The immediate priority must be to encourage enterprise, employment and efficiency. Supply-side fiscal reforms that enhance productivity, growth and job-creation will produce a cycle of higher tax revenues, lower state spending and a falling debt ratio. Future spending increases on priority public services should be financed from efficiency savings and higher public-sector service charges.

    Advertisement

    Now is also the time to redress some of Britain’s inherent economic inequities. There was already an overwhelming case for higher taxes on non-productive assets such as land and property, and a widening of the scope of VAT and consumption taxes.

    This Government has the chance to address issues such as the equal tax treatment of the self-employed, the abolition of higher-rate tax relief on pension contributions and the abandonment of the “triple lock”. The long-term gains would be incalculable.

    Philip Duly

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – The problem with tax rises is that there will be less income, and fewer assets, to tax. Employees have been furloughed, businesses and the self-employed are suffering losses, and investment income has been cut (and in many cases cancelled) as corporations try to repair working capital. These losses will be carried into next year, too.

    Taxing assets will merely cause a price collapse; fire sales are already taking place. Draconian tax increases will simply shrink the economy.

    The solution has to be a bonfire of regulation, massive investment to improve productivity and – quelle horreur – longer working hours. And we should thank God that interest rates are negative.

    Charles Pugh

    London SW10

    SIR – If we are to grow our way out of this crisis, an increasing deficit will have to take the strain for now.

    However, there is one tax that Rishi Sunak should introduce: an online sales tax. Its fairness would be recognised by most, and some balance is needed if our bricks-and-mortar retailers are to survive.

    Ross Ellens

    Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire

    1. As long as every retailer is paying VAT on their sales in the same manner, then why extra tax for online? That will stifle innovation, and restrict choice. If folk want physical shops, then they need to go there and spend their money there.
      Anything imported from abroad should be subjected to the same import duties as it would if it were imported by a large organisation or sent by a retailer in Uzbekistan, and the applicable VAT paid as well, by the receiver of the package. This could be by paying the postman and getting a receipt (COD), or on collection at the post office.

      1. Royal Mail deliver neither parcels nor packages upon which import duty or VAT is due.
        Instead they deliver one of their infamous cards advising you that the package is waiting to be collect by yourself and that to collect it you will not only need to provide the duty payable, proof of id & address, but also a fixed “service charge” of, I think, £2.50 for the privilege of doing so.

        1. Even on second hand items bought from the USA and valued at £20. Customs and Admin adds around 50%.
          It is possible to pay these charges online, otherwise it is a 20 mile round trip to the Royal Mail office.

    2. H’mmm …. it would seem that Ross Ellens and Philip Duly are public sector employees with a lot of time on their hands and money to burn.

  13. 319223+ up ticks,
    May one ask, is the Broken Biscuit Co, switch off still the order of the day ?

    1. I can’t speak for anyone else Oggy but I still ration it to ten minutes a day!

        1. Morning Stephen. Ironically even this is due to the virus. Without it I wouldn’t watch any!

  14. The two metre rule is an absurd construction designed by ignorance ……

    SIR – If the economy is to recover soon, there is one simple change the Government will need to make.

    In practice, it is impossible to get to work on public transport while observing two-metre distancing. Other countries have recognised this and reduced it to one metre (Austria, France, Italy, China) or 1.5 metres (Denmark, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands). Britain must follow suit.

    Tony Jones

    London SW7

    SIR – If construction workers need to get to building sites and the London Underground is becoming overcrowded, why can’t contractors run buses of their own on specific routes with occupied seating properly spaced?

    Dr Maurice Lipsedge

    London SE1

    1. Polish contractors here run their own minibuses to collect their folk from designated pick-up points and take them to work – and back. I would be surprised if the Poles in the UK behaved differently.

    2. Boris may not know very much about the best way for the UK to cope with Covid19 – but nor does anyone else.

      However he is an experienced bonker and he should apply his mind to his own undoubted field of expertise and explain how we are going to procreate while keeping a two metere distance from each other?

    3. When I was little waiting for a bus the buses passed by with their destinations on the board on the front. I always wondered where “Contract” was. Near Danderhall, or maybe Uphall?

      1. When TV shows had write in competitions, I used to wonder where Random was.

  15. SIR – After I had cleaned the house, mowed the lawn, cut the hedges and cleared out the shed and garage, my wife pointed me towards the ivy and weeds on the gate and gatepost.

    Once these were clean, the gatepost was free to fall over of its own accord, having been supported by the ivy for 25 years. Doing nothing is often the cheaper and more useful option.

    Martin R Cooper

    West Horsley, Surrey

      1. Or demonstrate such utter incompetence that you aren’t asked again!

    2. We have a fence like that. It also provides support for blackbirds’ nests, robins’ nests and for the first time for years we have thrushes in the garden.

    3. Yo Epi

      The Government’s new mantra

      Doing nothing is often the cheaper and more useful option.

  16. Morning again

    SIR – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s accurate and long-overdue indictment of the handling of Covid-19 (Business, May 13) exposes the myth that we have an effective and envied Civil Service. Politicians are equally unable either to rely upon them or to muster effective action despite them.

    I wonder whether in two or three years’ time we shall be reporting the same incompetence in Brexit negotiations and their outcome.

    Tony Brook

    Malvern, Worcestershire

    SIR – The latest government regulations and advice do not follow logic.

    If a married couple are out exercising and bump into their next-door neighbour, then they are compliant, but the neighbour is breaking the law by meeting more than one person.

    If that neighbour has a baby in a pushchair, are both parties then at fault?

    Cliff Billington

    Bingham, Nottinghamshire

    1. Politicians are equally unable either to rely upon them or to muster effective action despite them.

      The Civil Service are a law unto themselves Mr Brook. In many cases they are the government!

  17. SIR – Not many years ago, I enjoyed playing Llanymynech, a beautiful golf course that straddles the Welsh border with England (report, May 12).

    Many thousands of golfers throughout the United Kingdom have been looking forward to playing again since the lockdown started nearly two months ago.

    Sadly those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are still not allowed to play, despite golf being a safe sport with appropriate precautions. Why do the devolved UK governments feel that an appropriate Covid-19 response is to make many of their citizens miserable for no obvious reason?

    Barry Smith

    Loughborough, Leicestershire

    1. “Why do the devolved UK governments feel that an appropriate Covid-19 response is to make many of their citizens miserable for no obvious reason?”
      Because they have the stunted intelligence of spoilt teenagers and just want to show off.

      1. ‘Morning, Anne, “Because they have the stunted intelligence of spoilt teenagers and just want to show off.”

        And, by so doing, should be signing their own death-warrants.

      2. I think someone somewhere else responded to the same question with the answer “Because they can”.

    2. Easy.
      Because the people want as many handouts from England as possible, so they elect socialists, and socialists make their citizens miserable, because it’s what they do.

    3. They could play the English holes, but they’d have to leave the Welsh holes closed.

  18. Part of me thinks that the longer these wretched people are kept separated from their responsibilities the better.

    SIR – What are the teaching unions so worried about? Research suggests that children, especially those of primary and preschool age, neither succumb to nor pass on Covid-19.

    Our special schools in Nuneaton have stayed open throughout the lockdown. We average 25 children a day, some with personal care needs and others who do not understand “distancing”. Almost all our staff have worked at school on a rota and, despite this being a Covid-19 “hotspot”, there has not been a single case of the virus either being caught or passed on.

    While many teachers have been providing work for pupils during the lockdown, many have not. At home on full salaries, they might spare a thought for the parents struggling to teach their children while trying to work from home or worrying about frozen businesses.

    Hilary Ward

    Ansley, Nuneaton, Warwickshire

    SIR – The main teachers’ unions are advising their members not to cooperate with an early return to work, or with online teaching. I wonder if they have advised their members not to accept their salaries while they are not working.

    David Kidd

    Petersfield, Hampshire

    1. On the plus side, they’re not as dedicated to brain washing as we thought. Too much like hard work.

  19. Morning, Campers. I’m not sure if this DT article was posted yesterday; if so, my apologies:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/13/get-grip-cannot-stay-suffocated-state-lockdown-forever/

    “Get a grip, we cannot stay suffocated by the state in lockdown forever

    The longer this economic purgatory lasts, the greater risk of catastrophe. We need an alternative

    13 May 2020 • 9:30am

    Every day that goes by in which we are locked down, there will be more incremental deaths from non-Covid related disease and the risk of a catastrophic economic outcome grows. An outcome which would be more of a Nike swoosh than a Victory V recovery. Every action or inaction has consequences and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

    Right now we are half-way there, captured in the purgatory of lockdown, suffocated by the iron mask of the state. The longer the lockdown goes on, the more difficult a good recovery will be and the greater the government debt. The Chancellor’s latest statement on furloughing does not bode well.

    Rishi Sunak’s decision to extend the furlough scheme until October is symptomatic of how the government have missed the vital need to preserve the economy. Paying people not to work, which some will be enjoying too much, and asking employers to help pay for it from August, encourages businesses to wind up rather than keep going as costs stack up, with no certainty of being able to generate adequate income. The government should be supporting business activity, not inactivity.

    So far ministers have done tolerably well, given that they were acting in circumstances unprecedented in many of our lifetimes. If this is to likened to a war, as our Churchillian PM is wont to do, historians will say that rarely does a plan survive the first battle and that the first casualty of war is often the truth. Nonetheless, before another policy step is taken, a number of truths need to be addressed honestly.

    Firstly, there is no guarantee that an effective vaccine will be developed given the mutation of the coronavirus and the inherent difficulty of developing stable and safe vaccines anyway. Even if a vaccine is developed it is unlikely to be so any time soon. And what if another variant of Covid arises or another, unrelated, pandemic strikes?

    Are we to remain locked down wholly or in part for months or years? If so, is that until our GDP goes back fifty years, until we have mass unemployment and public services are starved of funds save for an ever more resource-hungry NHS? I exaggerate to make the point – I hope!

    Honestly, we will have to learn to live (and die) with this virus or the consequences will be far worse than the virus itself and, after all, herd immunity will eventually catch up with us as it has with other pandemics throughout history. The clock is ticking, the longer we wait in vain expectation for an alternative outcome, the more damage will eventually be done to both our health and our economy.

    Secondly, does the science really stack up? This is not an academic question even though we are leaving the answer to academics, it is vital to the outcome of the health of us all and the economy on which we all rely.

    There are a lot of questions being asked about the epidemiological modelling of the outbreak on which government policy seems to rely and indeed, the quantitive analysis of this. What if Sweden has got it right? We know from the perverse science of the Treasury, the IMF, Bank of England and the CBI – how wrong these things can be.

    Their analysis in respect of the Brexit referendum effect on the economy proved to be seriously flawed. A case of “Garbage in, garbage out”. The data can be wrong, the model inadequate and yet our lives and businesses are being turned upside-down on the back of the analysis.

    As for assessing the ongoing situation, here also the data appears suspect. There have been many cases reported of death certificates issued as corona-related, when death was manifestly going to happen anyway by other means. Establishing the true incremental death rate from Covid and also from other sources as a consequence of lockdown is crucial to the risk reward ratio decisions that need to be made.

    I would be more sanguine if I thought that the politicians taking advice from scientists and making decisions were themselves scientists, and thus able to understand better the challenges and limitations of science and also recognise that science is itself rarely free of values and politics.

    Finally, there needs to be an honest assessment of the optimal approach to managing the economic consequences. Everything possible must be done to avoid post-coronavirus austerity. Instead, we should rely on unprecedented low interest rates on government borrowing, coupled with deflationary pressures, to enable us to pursue an economic stimulus programme based on tax cuts, investment, public procurement, state aid and reduced external tariffs.

    This would mean focusing on those measures which we can implement unilaterally rather than relying on trade deals, for which we ultimately need to rely on others and which should be treated as a bonus. After all, trade does not depend on trade deals and most trade in the world takes place without such arrangements.

    In order to have the freedom, we need to deliver a super-growth agenda we need, as a nation, to exit the Brexit transition period at the earliest opportunity and at the latest by the currently appointed date. Preferably, we should also repudiate certain parts of the Withdrawal Agreement. We also need to get back to work and conduct productive business pretty well immediately.

    People respond to economic incentives and the government support mechanisms will only work if the incentives they create are targeted on delivering desired outcomes. A number of us questioned a furlough scheme designed to keep people at home when it was so important to keep enterprises in business and avoid them being wound up.

    For a short period it was possible to get away with this, but a clear path to part-time and/or shift working must now be the priority for government/Bank of England support of both business and personal income.

    It is good that the Chancellor appears to have acknowledged part-time work. Business needs to be kept in being if there is to be an economy to reboot, not mothballed.

    Similarly, what entrepreneur would take a loan without any certainty of future business income, let alone jump through the bureaucratic hoops erected by the banks. Just opening an account with a bank can be a nightmare let alone trying to take a loan, even if the banks enjoy double indemnity from the government guarantees.

    However, furloughing and unsecured loans can only be sustained in the short-term if we are to avoid huge future cost and avoid austerity. The government need to start making the case, setting out honestly the alternatives and their consequences.

    I may of course come to personally regret these views as we are all at risk of being ill, especially it seems middle-aged men. Forty million people died or were wounded in the First World War, one million died out of a population of 46 million in Britain.

    The Spanish flu killed a further estimated 40 million worldwide. My great-aunts, I remember well as a child, never married because there were so few men and one was profoundly deaf because of contracting Spanish flu. She learned sign language and to lip read superbly which she said was a great bonus in the noise of a weaving shed, such was the positivity and sangfroid of our forebears.

    Millions more died in World War II including nearly half a million Brits. Many more were wounded, some horribly. That generation seemed phlegmatic. Many die each year of malaria worlwide. Smallpox used to be a mass killer. Many other diseases still are, including flu.

    We are not gods, hence these great corrections of war and pestilence take their toll. We are not being faced with the horror of war or going unprotected from disease. The most we must risk are the train, the supermarket and the workplace. Get a grip, people. Get a grip, Government. The alternative may be far worse.”

    John Longworth is Chairman of the Independent Business Network, director general of the Centre for Brexit Policy and a former Conservative MEP

    1. Furlough money was a huge mistake. All the people currently enjoying it have no incentive to go back to work, and can afford to indulge their bat flu fears while the economy crashes around them.

    2. Good morning from a bright & sunny Derbyshire.
      Yes, an excellent article.

  20. Novichok: family of Dawn Sturgess wins first stage of legal challenge. 13 May 2020.

    The family of Sturgess, a mother-of-three, has many questions about her death, which came four months after the attack on the Skripals, and is keen that the inquest is as wide-ranging as possible.

    Their lawyers challenged the coroner’s ruling and the family has been granted permission to apply for a judicial review. A two-day hearing is expected to take place before a senior high court judge in London in the summer.

    Hmmm. I’m not sure what the Sturges family are after here but I don’t like their chances. The PTB have tried to shut this inquest down from the beginning for obvious reasons and I can’t see that changing.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/13/novichok-family-of-dawn-sturgess-wins-first-stage-of-legal-challenge

      1. No I don’t think so! Perhaps they have some suspicions that they would like to air.

    3. They’ve two chances of the truth coming out, a dog’s chance and no chance.

      1. Morning Bob. I place no faith in the impartiality of the Judiciary. Tommy Robinson has taken care of that!

    4. Will the families of rough sleepers who die of lung diseases sue the authorities for leaving fag butts in waste bins?

    1. Who would I rather be at dinner with? My German is moderate, but it will have to do.

        1. Bother. I forgot. Bring own sandwiches, and wine too. Well, it’s the company that makes the party, isn’t it?

  22. Morning all! Heartening to hear that a 100%-accurate antibody test (from Roche) has been approved for use in the UK. Definitely a positive step.

    1. I hear that “The Department of Health and Social Care is reportedly in negotiations with Roche to buy millions of the kits.”
      So October perhaps?

      2. Sorry! Read that as “kilts”! In case there is a flare-up presumably?

    2. Except that the 100% rating was given by Professor Legover Branestorm. (Only joking…)

    3. BBC Radio 4 this morning reported that the experts need to test it further to ensure that the antibody will provide adequate immunity and for how long.

  24. Apropos the discussion, yesterday evening, on the best political and current affairs cartoonists in newspapers (Matt, Blower, Bob, Adams, et al), my favourite artist in this category is the now-retired Tony Hall of the EDP (Eastern Daily Press, Norwich). His skill and the level of detail in his drawings —as well as his sense of humour — knew no bounds.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P5KZx6dkb4

    I was fortunate enough to meet him on one occasion when he turned up unexpectedly at Norwich airport when I was on duty after the airport had closed for the night. He had brought with him a very large cartoon that he had produced for the airport’s marketing department. I took the opportunity of asking him about the materials he used and which was the best ink to buy. He was a very funny, pleasant and amusing man. His newspaper cartoons are much-missed in Norfolk now that he has retired.

  25. Good morning, everyone. We are opening our bowls green next week. I am very busy.

    3. Good morning DB

      Frost here this morning , nice blue sky.

      Moh has had to queue and get confirmation for golf Tee off times for next week when the course opens .. success.. He is delighted , as I am sure you are when your bowls recommences .

      1. ‘Morning, Mags, given the unintentional slips made by both Stephen and me, should we in future refer to it as bowling?

      2. Blasted cold last night. MB brought his more delicate plants into the kitchen.

        1. Good grief! I do need to go to the optician; I read that as YB brought his more delicate parts into the kitchen! 🙂

    4. Good. But then, that is the sensible age group who’ve been through flu epidemics before.

    5. Good morning Delboy. Good for you and your club.
      We’re still prevaricating. The rest of the committee want to wait for Bowls England to tell them what to do. I’m the lone ‘let’s get on with it’ member.
      Are you imposing any restrictions and time limits? Are you just open for roll-ups or are other clubs involved? We’re talking about maximum of pairs on alternate rinks. I proposed all rinks as they’re 4 metres wide therefore 2 metres distancing no problem. Would be really interested if you could let me know. Many thanks.

      1. I’m not a bowls player so this might be completely off track.
        Taking an example of 4.
        Can’t the lanes/rinks be played N/S/N/S so that you keep to alternate lines but still allow maximum usage?

        1. Good thought sos but there will be two players each end in pairs. Even in singles there would be 3 on each rink as there are the two players and a marker.

          2. PS
            Why not use one of the opposite pair to act as marker for the adjacent lane, while waiting their turn?

          3. The pair at the opposite end are giving directions to their partner. Games also play at different rates i.e. some players are quick others very slow. Good thoughts though sos and thanks for your interest. You should pop along to a bowls club and watch for half an hour when you’re back in the country.

      2. We hope to carry out the club competitions and to aid that I am prepared to keep the green open into October. Management are terrified and want to open alternate rinks so only three open. As the rink centre lines are 5 metres apart I will insist that all rinks can be used. Members will be told to conform to social distancing. At the moment they say only married couples can be on one rink , otherwise just one person on a rink. So roll-ups initially. I will be pressing for more and I have the club president on side.

        1. We have a lot who want to dictate to people. My view is that we should only issue advise but say to members they can play as they wish but they take responsibility for their own actions. People wait to be bossed about by an external organisation, Bowls England, but then want to dictate to members. I think my president is my side but the rest of the committee seem to be simpering idiots. Hope they don’t read this bit on reflection wouldn’t be a bad idea. Anyway thanks for your response and hope all goes well for you.

    6. Oops, Good Morning, Delboy, my mischievous eyes added an extra ‘e’ into bowls and the thought of it being green, gave me quite a nasty turn.

  26. Big Bob’s old lady was thinking about getting a boob job, so she hit him up for money.

    Bob said, “You don’t need my money. Just grab some toilet paper and rub it between your tits every day.”

    “And how is that going to make my boobs any bigger?” she snapped
    .
    “Beats me,” Bob replied. “But it sure as hell worked on your ass!”

  27. Bonfire virtually finished – all hedge trimmings etc burned. Just leaving the heap to chunter on. Very satisfying to have done all this before 8 30 am…

  28. Apropos the parasitic, idle, self-obsessed, workshy, uncaring teechurs.

    A colleague of the MR is head of an international day school in Belgium. There are 350 pupils.

    The school is, of course, closed. David has arranged full on-line courses for all the children – with the enthusiastic cooperation of his staff.

    Every child receives a full day’s work every day, which is marked, corrected and returned. Full classes are also being run by Zoom.

    He has arranged parents meetings online. At night, he is an examiner for an international exam board.

    A fantastically charismatic chap, he just says, “It’s been a bit of a challenge…”

    Read this, you NUTters – and squirm.

    1. I received an email yesterday re my daughter who is in her GCSE year. There has been an attempt at education but from my brief scan it seems to have been a list of internet facilities and web sites sent to the ‘learner’. Essentially, the missive said, Bye, see you in September. I imagine that exams would be starting about now so the teachers feel that no further effort to make good is required. So having wrecked a complete year’s education, the school seems to be starting their summer hols early.

    2. RHS is holding online classes every day. The only thing missing is sport.
      As the classes are based on the British time zone, pupils from other parts of the world are doing classes in the evening or at sparrow fart.
      But then it is a private school.
      Grand-daughter at a state school has been tipped out and left to her own devices; her GCSE results will be based on assessments and past record.

    3. If the childcare aspects could be solved it might be poetic justice if large numbers of teachers lost their jobs to be replaced by limited numbers of “super-teachers” taking classes on-line.

      Certainly secondary school age children would be a possibility for such an approach.

      2. The NUT (other useless teaching unions are available) are ‘doing a Scargill’.

    4. This is exactly what we did.

      I submitted an article to the DT which they did not even acknowledge as they prefer to write articles about how to do marital infidelity during lockdown.

      Here is my article:

      Our Pragmatic Solution for Academic Study for Sixth Formers during an International Pandemic. Richard Tracey

      This week we have 6 “A” level French students on our intensive, residential French course: a boy and 2 girls from Scotland, a girl from London, a girl from Wiltshire and a girl from Surrey. As is often the case, two are siblings of former students and one also came to us last year. I can hear Caroline explaining the agreement of the past participle with the indirect object from our mezzanine library as I write this from my study/office on the ground floor. What is not usual is that the students are not physically with us – they are attending the course via a Skype conference link.

      On March 16th we took the decision not to cancel our Easter holiday French courses but to modify them as it was likely that travel between France and the United Kingdom would become difficult. We e-mailed all the students’ parents to explain that we would still be running the courses as all of our students were relying on it for their pre-exam revision and we did not want to let them down. The students’ parents had all paid a quarter of the course fee when booking so we said that we would make no further charge for the amended course which we would effectively offer at a quarter of the normal price.

      Caroline has written a very detailed French Grammar book (Essential French Grammar for the Sixth Form and Beyond) but each year she also writes a new dedicated course-book of about 100 pages so that the course material is as up-to-date as possible. This was already printed so we put each copy in a rigid A5 envelope to send to our students by post. As President Macron had announced that France would ‘shut down’ from midday on Tuesday 17th March we took our books to the post in good time only to discover that our local Post Office was closed and the cost of a courier delivery service was prohibitive. So we sent each student a copy of the course-book by PDF file so that it could be printed at home.
      As our home, Le Grand Osier, is in a rural setting and our internet connection is not very good we managed to get a computer technician to come to install a booster which works well. Computer technicians are allowed to continue working and visiting their clients in France because, without the internet, there could be another French Revolution during close down – the incidence of domestic violence has already increased!
      On the 20th March we heard that “A” level, Pre-U and IB exams in Britain were to be cancelled which was devastating news for many students who felt they had lost two years of hard study. Only one parent, a divorce lawyer, decided she did not want her son to attend our course and demanded the return of the course fee but most of the parents were delighted that our internet course would keep their sons and daughters gainfully occupied while they were confined at home as schools in both France and Britain were then closed or about to close.
      Of course our courses by internet link will never be as rewarding as our usual courses at Le Grand Osier. In addition to feeding our students lavishly, taking them out to local restaurants and giving them daily practical projects and cultural visits where they have to communicate with local French people we insist on a French conversation rule at home. As we take all our meals with our students we spend at least two hours a day around the dining table chatting in French and trying to stimulate lively conversation. As we are both musicians – Caroline plays the piano, squeeze box and organ and I play the acoustic guitar – we often have music after dinner in which our students participate and we teach them French songs and we sometimes have our local young friends to dinner asking them to bring their instruments with them. Of course we can offer none of these life enriching experiences on our internet courses so we decided that it was most important that the courses we are running are as structured as possible. Each morning students are called to sign in for classes which run from 9 a.m until midday. Caroline sets homework each day which she corrects and returns immediately she receives it and she then runs another class from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. In the morning she concentrates on French language and in the afternoons she discusses French history and culture. She is finding it difficult not to be in the physical presence of her students as personal communication is such an integral part of teaching. Caroline appears on our students’ computer screens but she cannot see them as our internet link is not quite up to that. However, we have asked each student to send us a photograph of him or herself and we have made a composite collage group photo which Caroline has before her as she speaks to them through cyber space.

      Our Covid 19 French courses by Skype are an interesting departure for us and Caroline is doing her best to entertain and teach our students while I man the office but we do hope to be able to return to normal as soon as possible. We are keeping cheerful but we do not yet know whether our summer holiday courses which are provisionally fully booked will be able to go ahead but we also plan to continue with our residential French courses for Sixth Formers during the October half-term break this year and our February half-term and Easter holiday courses in 2021. We are coping well with ‘isolation’ and, after 32 years of happy marriage, we are still confident that we shall not need the professional services of the mother of the student who withdrew her son from this Easter’s courses.
      (990 words)

      (2020 is Caroline and Richard Tracey’s 31st year of running residential French courses for Sixth Formers from their home near Dinan in Brittany. http://www.tracey.frenchcourses.com

    5. Respectfully, my sister, a teacher is doing this for her class. What she can’t do is hold a ‘classroom’ as there are 20 pupils in her A Level and GCSE maths group but she checks in on her students at set times morning and afternoon, marks and returns work to them.

      The idea teachers aren’t trying isn’t true. It’s important to remember that the unions are not the teachers.

  29. Not my words: found elsewhere, but very apposite in these trying times.

    “I’m sick to death of the thick twats, posting on here, who can’t think or act for themselves. Boris cannot be in every household telling every single individual what to do, he has to have a plan for the whole country. If not, the poor bloke would get laid into over that.

    What the hell do people want? To be guided through every minute of their day?

    7:00 a.m. Wake up.

    7:15 a.m. Go to the bog.

    7:30 a.m. Get dressed.

    7:45 a.m Have your breakfast, etc …

    FFS! Think for yourselves! Stay safe, wash your hands, keep social distance. How the fuck do you think the key workers have carried on through this? Is this country just full of fucking sheep, waiting to be told what to do?

    Do you not understand the country can’t stay shut forever, business are on the verge of bankruptcy —everywhere — which means you won’t have a job! The country can’t pay for furlough indefinitely; the country will be on its knees and then you will want Boris to sort that out with his magic fucking wand.

    Yes, you can go out, but keep your distance, wash your hands, go to work if your employers can keep you as safe as possible but, most of all, think for your bloody selves, just do your best.

    You didn’t mind the people in the shops filling your shelves full of food everyday; the lorry drivers moving food around; the pickers in the warehouses going to work; the hospital staff looking after the sick; they didn’t magically grow fucking wings and fly to work, or sit at home being paid. NO! They carried on and did everything in their power to stay as safe as they could.

    So, guess what, everyone needs to be sensible and pull together. The country needs to open, the country needs to at least try and see if it works. I’m sick of people wanting their arses wiped. It’s everyone’s job to try their best to stay safe.

    Boris can’t hold everyone’s hand, you have a brain so pissing well use it. He didn’t ask for this virus, the rest of the world are dealing with it too; there is no fucking manual or written rules on how to sort this shit out, but everyone seems to be giving Boris a hard time when he clearly states that clarification will come in the next few days. Jesus Christ! He’s not a miracle worker, he’s just a man, trying his best, in a unprecedented situation.

    But I’m guessing that the brainless sheep of this country can do much better, from their fucking armchairs!” 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

    2. That is precisely why I spent last Friday in a state of barely suppressed rage.
      All the sentimental caterwauling and self-congratulations sat ill with the compliant sheep that most Brits have now become.
      Under the present spavined generation, Germany would have strolled into Blighty on 4th. September.
      And found a very willing population of collaborators.

      1. The quality of our breeding stock has gone down.

        Kennels can find that pedigree dogs have more natural physical defects than mongrels – and the case is similar with race horses.

        On the other hand cross breeding amongst humans may or may not be good for physical hardiness but it is not good for moral fibre?

        1. The bicycle brought about an increase in the gene pool. Now we have “British” who repeatedly marry first cousins (and we know what problems that caused the crowned heads of Europe). The problem with dog and horse breeding is the owners who have an animal that isn’t much good for anything else so they think they’ll breed from it! The mantra always used to be “breed the best to the best and hope for the best”.

      1. I’m not sure that’s strictly true.

        People have been told what to think – because people are easy to control if they don’t – for so long when told to think for themselves they can’t and look for someone to tell them what to do.

        Govt has been doing that for the last three decades, so it’s obvious people would continue to demand govt ‘does something’. This is why the state needs shredding. It keeps thinking it is the master rather than the servant.

        The problem is that when people *do* act for themselves because the advice between departments is contradictory chances are the state, still thinking it is in charge rather than the facilitator and will punish the citizen.

    5. The few who are not politically motivated are the product of big state. Government painted itself into a corner. It has told people how to think for so long, now it wants them to think for themselves they can’t.

      1. Especially since the education system penalised those who didn’t toe the line and thought for themselves.

  31. FBI accidentally names Saudi diplomat it suspects having links to 9/11 hijackers. 14 May 2020.

    The FBI has accidentally identified a Saudi diplomat whom they believe had links to the terrorists behind the September 11 attacks, confirming for the first time that US authorities suspected Riyadh’s Washington embassy was involved in the atrocity.

    In a court filing responding to the families of September 11 victims, who claim in a lawsuit that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the attacks, the FBI apparently forgot to blank out a reference to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah.

    Mr Jarrah was assigned to Saudi Arabia’s Washington embassy from 1999-2000 in Washington DC, and the US authorities believe that he oversaw assistance given to two al-Qaeda terrorists as they settled in the US before the attack..

    It was as plain as a pikestaff that the attack was financed, organised and carried out with the tacit approval of the Saudis. This was the reason for my opposition to the Iraq War with its “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which was simply a distraction from the truth.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/13/fbi-accidentally-names-saudi-diplomat-suspects-having-links/

    1. or could it be

      FBI accidentally names Saudi diplomat it suspects having links to 9/11 hijackers. 14 May 2020.

    2. I suspect sometime in the future France might come to its senses about the Notre Dame fire.
      And the UK possibly regarding a few problems we’ve had.

      1. You are right.

        How did Islam succeed in getting politicians in both Europe and the UK so tightly by the short and curlies?

        (How does your lovely guitar sound?)

        1. Good sound Richard.
          Honduras mahogany has an excellent sound quality.
          Because it’s a new structure it tends to need retuning quite often.
          I had the same problem with the Martin kit I made 12 years ago.
          I found a site in the UK where they are recycling old furniture as I did.
          They are supplying kits for makers.
          As soon as possible I’m going to try to get hold of some decent old furniture from the council tip nearby. Instead of throwing unwanted furniture away people take decent items in to the area next to the tip.
          Take a look at ‘cigar box’ guitar websites. I’m going to make some for friends and family. Good fun.
          No bending involved.

        2. IMHO.
          I think Islamics have made threats to western cultures. Weapinising vehicles in public spaces, do or die riots bombings and other threats of damage.
          They have access to most of the world’s oil.
          The west ruined the middle east by taking Saddam out of the equation.
          And latterly the same happened in Libya. It’s now been in turmoil since Gaddafi was dragged from a drain pipe and stabbed in the backpassge on camera.
          Someone in the West gave the order to bomb the pipeline Gaddafi had built from the aquifers in the southern desert supplying water to most of his towns and cities.
          Why ?
          The same tactics have been used in Syria. But it didn’t work. Because the Russians could see through it.
          I wonder just who has supplied all the arms and vehicles used by Isis.
          Something very dark has been happening in the world for over 50 years.
          Politicians i think quite deliberately eff up everything they come into contact with. I guess it was ever thus. Except for Winston.
          None of us would be here today if it hadn’t been for his dedication and acumen.
          Now we have a lot of sick people who are stuffing their bank accounts at public expense, for doing little more than public speaking.

    3. Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah is named in a load of websites I never heard of, and the Daily Mail.
      Cats, pigeons and a failure to social distance comes to mind.
      Excellent!

    1. If Cameron could not get an outright victory against Brown, May could not get an outright majority against Corbyn, and Johnson could not get a greater victory over Corbyn than Atlee got over Churchill with a far greater majority than the Bullshitting Bonker achieved last year then, whatever we Nottlers may think of Starmer and however truly awful he is, he is likely to squash the Conservatives when the election comes..

      1. How could he not fail to win – wasn’t Blair his flatmate at one time?

      1. Morning Tom,

        I guess the Left will treat that as an inconvenient truth .
        Starmer reminds me of a serpent coiled in the branch of a tree, hissing , just waiting to strike.

      2. Good letter – it needs to be highlighted whenever the hypocrite Starmer starts trying to score political points after his comments about “working constructively”. Perhaps we need to look again at some of his errors when DPP?

      1. Quiet then.
        I sometimes don’t notice that my special chucker alters my requests.

        No neighbours going to work but milky out side at 6 am.
        I wish he’d sort his crates out some where elicit.

          2. I quite enjoy the challenge NTN.
            You should hear the language sometimes. 😁
            I’ve got an iPhone that belonged to one of our sons it’s less than 12 months old.
            But at the moment getting it up and running is a bit of a problem.

        2. Sorry Eddy! Wasn’t having a go! It made me laugh! Good heavens we need it! 😳

          1. Not a problem Sue.
            Since my TIA I often have problems noticing spelling and other errors.
            Leading up to it is suddenly wondered what I was actually writing as I typed.
            I was lucky enough to be taken to Lister hospital in North Hertfordshire. They have specialist stroke unit. Unlike three other guys in the ward, I was out within a week. The therapist asked me to draw the face of a clock. A simple circle but not so easy when asked to place the numbers in the correct order. It all came out backwards.
            It’s hard to believe that happened now.
            All the best to you thanks xx
            Oh I was actually filmed by BBC Look East and interviewed by a reporter they were running a programme about stroke care.
            I recognised the camera man as the same one who came to Mid Herts golf club years ealier to film Terry Wogan in his round with a man who donated a lot of money for children in need.
            But I couldn’t really tell what time it was 😀😁😃

          2. It is odd how the body reacts to things.
            After my hip replacement it was recommended that I had some hydrotherapy.
            Very good, until I tried to swim.
            Much to my surprise and my wife’s amusement, try as I might, when using a kickboard, I went backwards instead of forwards.

          4. Nearly Bill. it was a really wierd experience, 30 o’clock only happens once in yer life eh!

          5. Hi Eddy! My gloriously verbal great-aunt had a TIA and she was completely devastated by it! I take my hat off to you and hope I ddid not offend.

          6. Good to know that about the Lister, and that you were treated so promptly and have made such a good recovery. We are not too far away from the Lister but just over the county border in Cambs. My mum suffered from what I have come to realise now were several undiagnosed TIAs in her mid to late eighties, undiagnosed so therefore untreated.

    1. Many years ago I worked in Central Edinburgh – a few hardier souls biked it from 5+ miles and a few further afield came on “poser motorbikes”. What did they have in common?
      The came in the front door at 8.50 & then headed off to showers / changing rooms, for 15 mins, to get ready for work –
      with the handful it was not an issue but if 25% of the office “biked it” it would be chaos.

    2. And the weather is rather nice at the moment. Driving gales, rain and ice, think I’ll take the train..

    3. Cycled in the Netherlands some many years ago. On a large circular course, returning to start at he end, it felt as if it was downhill all the way there and back… magic!

      1. I used to have on office, that was adjacent to the ‘peri track’ at large, bur now defunct RAF Aircraft Repair Base

        Cyclists using the peri track pedalled on the left and swore it was uphill into the wind whichever way they were going

      3. There is ‘The Hill of Holland’ – the north wind that streams off the Zuider Zee

      4. Caroline aas a little girl used to cycle to and from school each day when she lived in Holland. It was a distance of 10 km each way.

    4. When I was at school I used to cycle as much as I could. At the end of term I cycled home either from Tiverton to Lymington or from Tiverton to St Mawes – both of which were trips of over 100 miles over very hilly country.

  36. https://www.dennisprager.com/column/the-worldwide-lockdown-may-be-the-greatest-mistake-in-history/
    The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History
    Tue, May 5, 2020 • Prager’s Column

    “The idea that the worldwide lockdown of virtually every country other than Sweden may have been an enormous mistake strikes many — including world leaders; most scientists, especially health officials, doctors and epidemiologists; those who work in major news media; opinion writers in those media; and the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who put their faith in these people — as so preposterous as to be immoral. Timothy Egan of The New York Times described Republicans who wish to enable their states to open up as “the party of death.”

    That’s the way it is today on planet Earth, where deceit, cowardice and immaturity now dominate almost all societies because the elites are deceitful, cowardly and immature.

    But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic, “mistake” and “evil” are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.

    The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem “essential” has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.

    The United Nations World Food Programme, or the WFP, states that by the end of the year, more than 260 million people will face starvation — double last year’s figures. According to WFP director David Beasley on April 21: “We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries. … There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself” (italics added).

    That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

    Foreign Policy magazine reports that, according to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020, marking the biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and the U.S., the eurozone and Japan will contract by 5.9%, 7.5% and 5.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, across South Asia, as of a month ago, tens of millions were already “struggling to put food on the table.” Again, all because of the lockdowns, not the virus.

    In one particularly incomprehensible act, the government of India, a poor country of 1.3 billion people, locked down its people. As Quartz India reported on April 22, “Coronavirus has killed only around 700 Indians … a small number still compared to the 450,000 TB and 10,000-odd malaria deaths recorded every year.”

    One of the thousands of unpaid garment workers protesting the lockdown in Bangladesh understands the situation better than almost any health official in the world: “We are starving. If we don’t have food in our stomach, what’s the use of observing this lockdown?” But concern for that Bangladeshi worker among the world’s elites seems nonexistent.

    The lockdown is “possibly even more catastrophic (than the virus) in its outcome: the collapse of global food-supply systems and widespread human starvation” (italics added). That was published in the left-wing The Nation, which, nevertheless, enthusiastically supports lockdowns. But the American left cares as much about the millions of non-Americans reduced to hunger and starvation because of the lockdown as it does about the people of upstate New York who have no incomes, despite the minuscule number of coronavirus deaths there. Or about the citizens of Oregon, whose governor has just announced the state will remain locked down until July 6. As of this writing, a total of 109 people have died of the coronavirus in Oregon.

    An example of how disinterested the left is in worldwide suffering is made abundantly clear in a front-page “prayer” by a left-wing Christian in the current issue of The Nation: “May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake.”

    “Merely inconvenienced” is how the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a Protestant minister and president of the North Carolina NAACP, describes the tens of millions of Americans rendered destitute, not to mention the hundreds of millions around the world rendered not only penniless but hungry. The truth is, like most of the elites, it is Barber who is “merely inconvenienced.” Indeed, the American battle today is between the merely inconvenienced and the rest of America.

    Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford Medical School and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, recently stated, “There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.”

    To the left, anyone who questions the lockdown is driven by preference for money over lives. Typical of the left’s moral shallowness is this headline on Salon this week:

    “It’s Time To Reject the Gods of Commerce: America Is a Society, Not an ‘Economy,’” with the subhead reading, “America Is About People, Not Profit Margins.”

    And, of course, to smug editors and writers of The Atlantic, in article after repetitive article, the fault lies not with the lockdown but with President Donald Trump. The most popular article in The Atlantic this week is titled “The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump.” The elites can afford to laugh at whatever they want. Meanwhile, the less fortunate — that is, most people — are crying.”

  37. I was being premature. I went up to check the bonfire at 8.30 only to find that the MR had ” found” a whole lot more stuff that needed cutting into small pieces and burning.

    She has given me an undertaking that there will be no more……………today.

    1. 319223+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Keep in mind we have the same peoples in play in the main that post victory rent the air with the cries WE
      have won, LEAVE IT TO THE TORIES then immediately returned to
      supporting / voting lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party, methinks a multitude of the herd are dining on loco weed.

  40. It was the Chinese Communist Party and their idiot ideology that allowed the virus to spread, their authoritarian dogma silenced any dissent, Chinese Doctors who were trying to warn the world were arrested and terrorised into silence.

    When all of this is done the world should total up the bill and convert it into a bond and tell the Chinese Communists – this is your mess, you pay the bondholders.

    1. Quite right. I suspect however that there are too many high-ranking politicians in the (deep) pockets of China for any real action to be taken. Will Boris cancel Huawei 5G after this? Don’t count on it.

        1. It mIght be hard to tell them apart from those who are bought and paid for by the EU.

    2. How many assets do the Brits hold in China compared with how many the Chinese hold in Blighty?
      The word ‘ransom’ is hovering in the air – but then I’m just thinking aloud, you understand.

  43. I’ve just had a look at the 10 day weather forecast for my locality. It suggests there may be some rain on the 27th of May but none until then. So far this month we’ve received less than 7% of our historical monthly average rainfall. 🙁

    2. Whereas in my former French village – they have had, since we left on 20 March, 50 cms of rain…..

    3. You were noting recently how much excess rain you’ve had. These things even themselves out.

      It could almost be a metaphor for the Virus

      1. Correct but in all the years I’ve been gardening I cannot recall one that’s been so out of kilter with typical UK weather patterns as outlined by Hubert Lamb.

    5. We had more than enough rain during the winter. It’s evening itself out as it usually does.

      1. Many farmers will be worried by the drought. Some who had autumn-sown crops ruined by floods and were grateful for the dry March that allowed them to get out on the land will now be watching their spring-sown crops struggling.

  44. If I wanted to thwart Brexit despite the Electorate’s clear wishes, I’d be inclined to crash the economy by borrowing and spending such huge sums that the government would have to turn to the IMF for a financial bailout. I’d be pretty certain that the IMF would make any huge loan conditional on having the security of the UK remaining in the EU…..just a 🙁 thought

      1. I can’t think of any other logical reason for continuing what has become a Whitehall Farce….

        1. 319223+ up ticks,
          S,
          I posted that I saw it as a multi – staged rocket
          with the wretch cameron as blast off then may burning out
          leaving the re-entry section prior to knowing
          who was taking over, now we know.

      1. Let us hope so – it seems to me that The EU is a modern Hydra, cut off one head and….

        1. 319223+ up ticks
          S,
          If the eu implodes first
          it will leave us with
          the dangeling testicles,
          the political rubber stampers in the lab/lib/con coalition party, as a legacy.
          Claiming that the downfall was of their making, no good.
          We want total severance prior to eu
          implosion.

    3. 319223+ up ticks,
      Morning S,
      Would that be the same as the bulk of the politico’s saying we are considering,
      in the peoples interest, of some form of re-entry ?
      They are running a “least damage to brussels” campaign since the 25 / 6 / 2016.
      My post’s have been pointing this out since the 9 month delay.

  45. “SIR – The article by the Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York designate (Comment, May 11), is disingenuous.

    The bishop insinuates that clergy are suggesting that the Church, rather than the Government, demanded the closure of churches to public worship.

    In fact opposition has been to the instruction, which was entirely the Church’s own decision, to forbid even clergy from praying in their churches (although bizarrely allowing for cleaning and other housekeeping).

    The House of Bishops has now caved in on this specific principled and reasonable opposition. The House of Bishops had not simply followed government guidance – it had gone beyond it, dissembled and then backtracked.

    If the Church is to survive, let alone become stronger, perhaps its prelates might learn the virtue of humility.

    Dr Richi Mohammad

    London SE13”

    I’ll come up with a really radical idea; bishops should tell the truth. Believing in Christianity would also be a bit of a bonus.

      2. Firstborn’s Godfather says he is the last C of E vicar to believe in God.
        Evidence seems to be on his side!

      1. He’ll be praying hard that Islam doesn’t take over, Muslims don’t take kindly to apostates.

  46. Vigilante attacks in beauty spots feared after lockdown rules are relaxed. 13 May 2020.

    Police chiefs are braced for a spike in vigilante attacks as city dwellers are expected to take advantage of new guidelines allowing them to visit rural areas, the Telegraph has learned.

    But police and crime commissioners in rural areas have warned that the newly relaxed restrictions risk sparking a backlash from locals, fearful of coronavirus transmission.

    During a meeting, the National Police Chiefs Council, was warned that unless officers remained visible in and active in these areas, there could be a rise in vigilante attacks on property, vehicles and even people.

    Morning everyone. I’m almost beginning to hope that this is after all a gigantic Soros/Blair plot to take over the UK and turn it into an Islamic front for the Globalist Cartel, because if it isn’t, it means that the PTB are losing what remains of their marbles!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/13/vigilante-attacks-beauty-spots-feared-lockdown-rules-relaxed/

    1. 319223+ up ticks,
      Morning As,
      Fair do’s they warned us enough times
      they are ALL in it together.
      Peoples no blurry listen, you can’t blame a decent bent politico all the time.

    2. Nope. Well it may be. On the other hand it will mean lots of jolly outings by Plod, to beauty spots, beaches, parks and resorts. As they are apparently not required to be separated by 2 metres , it will be almost romantic. With ice cream and sticks of rock.

  48. Students will pay the price for this lockdown

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Young people have lost rent, motivation, work placements and vital interaction with tutors and fellow students

    Rishi Sunak just threw another few billion at the furlough scheme, paying the wages of 7.5 million people until the end of July at least. An act of visionary generosity or total economic insanity? Either way, the bill looks set to be about £100 billion which means Wilfred Johnson and his contemporaries will still be paying for it in middle-age.

    One group which has yet to benefit from the Chancellor’s largesse is students. Last week, I wrote about the grotesque unfairness of young people having to pay full price for university degree courses which, if they exist at all, are now patchy and online. Six days later, I am still reading my way through your emails. It’s fair to say the feelings of parents and grandparents are running high. Many are extremely worried about young people who have lost rent, motivation, work placements, access to libraries and vital interaction with tutors and fellow students.

    Susan fumed: “For failing to deliver one third of my daughter’s course this year, the University of York have offered students…wait for it…£150. Not in cash, mind you, but ‘towards learning opportunities’, such as books or short courses. This is even more insulting than not giving her anything. What planet do these universities live on?”

    Meanwhile, poor Charlotte is supposed to continue a degree in Ceramics from home. Yes, ceramics. “An email from our President and Vice-Chancellor confidently assured us that teaching had been transferred online successfully. How can you throw a pot, mix glazes and roll out clay slabs online?”

    Claire, a mother of three writes: “My son is at Sheffield studying Engineering. He had precisely one full week of teaching last semester. This was followed by 4 weeks of strikes (2 days, then 3, then 4, then the whole week) and then Coronavirus struck and the University was closed. He is meant to be getting 30 plus contact hours. Working at home on a tiny desk in his bedroom with 5 mbps of internet download does’t cut it. The one I feel most sorry for is my youngest son who was meant to be doing his A levels. He is getting increasingly depressed. He has said to me he would 1000 times rather be at school and that he has lost 6 months of his life. If this was not bad enough, we are now learning from the UCAS Facebook presentations that the universities are thinking of replacing teaching with online learning next year, but still charging £9,250 pa. That is ridiculous! Do they not realise that there is so much more to University than an online course. It’s about making friends, learning new skills, joining societies, using the ‘world class’ facilities. This time of life is crucial to their development as social beings. I do feel that the effect of lockdown on young people is being completely underestimated by the powers that be.”

    Richard says: “My daughter is a second-year student at a Russell Group university. She is at home, has had to continue paying rent on her accommodation and has also had to commit to a rental for next year. So if the university does not reopen in the autumn she will have paid two terms worth of rent for which she has had no benefit. Obviously not being on campus for two terms means that the students are missing a lot of the ‘university experience’ which is a great shame. However, the main purpose is academic learning and to suggest, as the Government seems to, that one can receive the same quality of tuition online as on campus is at best ignorant and at worst dishonest. Young people like my daughter know that they are likely to suffer from the economic fallout having already seen friends have work placements withdrawn. And the Government is asking them, uniquely, to potentially pay for a quality of education that they won’t receive.”

    Those are just a few examples from several hundred outraged responses. As I was reading your emails, it struck me with great force that these young people are having their lives upended unnecessarily because Corona poses no threat to them. At the very least, the Government should offer a full rebate for tuition fees during the lockdown and prevent universities from charging the same amount for courses next year which they have the nerve to offer online.

    Let the final word go to Katie who works as a university counsellor. “To the costs of lockdown, the Chancellor should add in a figure for suicides, particularly amongst young men, which I fear is going to be a bigger concern to their welfare than Covid-19 in the next few years when they graduate and discover how few jobs there are, how terribly bleak their prospects.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/universities-treating-young-people-scandalously/

    1. Either way, the bill looks set to be about £100 billion which means Wilfred Johnson and his contemporaries will still be paying for it in middle-age.

      What’s the problem with £100 billion? Wasn’t that the sum, for starters, that a certain Mrs May was quite happy to donate to the EU and then allow them to tie us into vassalage in perpetuity? ‘Conservatives’ throwing money around like confetti, whatever next, Starmer calling for austerity?

      1. Ah, but Labour “austerity” isn’t austerity as we knew it in the fifties.

    2. Maybe, the Open University should be the standard for book based courses. For the social aspect, join a local sports club and you can still go down town and get wasted at the weekend (and all other days).

        1. Made by Whitbread.

          Irishman goes into a pub.
          Irishman: “Pint of bitter, please”.
          Barman: “Whitbread?”
          Irishman: “Two slices”.

    2. We went to a garden centre on Monday and they now sell beer as well as garden stuff.

      Maybe not new for the UK but in God fearing, booze is bad Ontario that is quite a change.

      Note we are a long way from the big city, rules don’t always apply equally here.

  50. Good Morning to the Two Metre Club

    Thanks to Horace Pendleton for pointing out to me that that COVID-19 is really a prothrombotic disease the nature of which has been in the public domain for some time. The link to an article that I posted yesterday about the problems of treating the complex thrombolysing features of this disease with anticoagulants illustrates the way that the COVID-19 pathogen targets the elderly who are likely already to have to be on anticoagulants and ethnic groups who are prone to having platelet disorders and vitamin D deficiences. The targeting of males by this pathogen does have synergy with their susceptibility to hemophilia which is only carried in the female line.

    4. I think this may be up there with trialing the contact tracing app on the Isle of Wight. I’m told that to get a phone signal on the Island is practically impossible in many places.

  53. Funny old thing, life. The MR and I panned to go to Salamanca to celebrate our silver wedding on 27 May. Flights booked and paid for; hotels booked; bus from Madrid Airport to Salamanca booked and paid for.

    Had to cancel, of course. Spain has closed its borders.

    Airline (KLM) = voucher only; barstewards.
    Hotels – very understanding – no charges
    Bus company – can ONLY cancel by complicated online process in Spanish. The “helpline” is only in Spanish.
    They were happy to take the money in a trice; unwilling to return it.
    How I wish I spoke Spanish… Grrr

    1. I have applied for a KLM voucher for failed trip to Wales in April – no answer yet.
      It can be used up to end December 2020, and if not used, apparently can be converted back to cash.
      Let’s see how that works.

      1. I went to Cornwall in the summer of 1953.

        Though it was sunny – the sea was bitterly cold and uninviting.

          4. Deleted because word for word last sentence same as Phizzee. I should have read further down. Again. Anyway, Cornwall and IoW can stay in the 1950s for as long as they like. Lovely time.

        2. You should have visited again in 1967….the Summer of Love..
          WOW….great time to be young and free.

          Peace and Love Brother…

    4. I’m not sue they can get away with just a voucher Bill I’ve heard of other people demanding refunds and getting them.
      get in touché with the Spanish embassy, you shouldn’t be expected to put up with this.

      1. KLM ” give” you the voucher – but say that if you haven’t used it at the end of the 12 months – they’l give a refund.

        Of course they are supposed to make an immediate refund….. EUSSR “law” and all that bollox. Does’t work in real life – as with so much of the EUSSR.

  54. Arggh. The self educated Dr Thunberg has finally reappeared and been appointed to CNNs panel of experts on the lurgy. On Twotter apparently. No link as I am banned.

    1. COVID-19 has achieved more in cleaning up the planet than Greta ever hoped in ten years.

      It’s just that all plastic in the sea
      Could be better used as PPE.
      I would add more to this !ittle rhyme
      But I don’t really have the time!

  55. I have no idea who *I is, this was sent to me by a friend.

    Here below is a letter *I wrote to my MP some weeks ago – he agreed with all I stated but has done nothing.

    —————
    Coronavirus Lockdown

    It is becoming increasingly clear that the lockdown is based on faulty science and erroneous theories. The Government’s position does not withstand the lightest scrutiny.

    1 Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), to 16 April 2020 reveal:

    No one had died from coronavirus under the age of 15. Total deaths amongst the working-age population (16 to 64 inclusive) were 1,704.

    At the end of 2019, 41.38 million people in the UK were of working-age population, between 16 and 64.

    Thus, to 16 April 2020, 0.0041% of the working-age population died from coronavirus.

    2 These statistics were similar to those from Radio 4’s ‘More or Less’ programme on 22/4/20 (which appear to have escaped the BBC’s censor). 18 minutes into the broadcast (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000hfqq ), it is revealed that of
    42m people aged between 15-65, 2145 died in UK hospitals (up to the date of the recording, presumably). This represents a death rate of 1 in 19,000 from the working age population, ie 0.005%.

    In the NHS, the death toll is no higher. There are around 1.5m NHS staff; 98% are under 65, ie 1,470,000. The death toll for NHS staff, at the time of the programme, was 77. By coincidence this is also exactly 1 in 19,000.

    However, most virus patients in hospital have an underlying pre-existing health problem and so, are more likely to die and that is certainly the situation for those over 65 years of age. Unfortunately, those dying with the virus are often misrepresented as dying from the virus.

    The R4 Programme, above, produced this comment from a local doctor (and constituent): “A very honest and rational view of what the real facts are. Having spent my working life as an epidemiologist I do despair, as time goes by, of some of the less than logical restrictions placed on the nation.”

    Clearly, the overall death rate as a percentage of the population is tiny, but particularly amongst the working population, who have been forced out of work. What, therefore, is the purpose of this lockdown?

    It is evidently clear that the media and the Government have exaggerated the loss of life and, not least, the danger to NHS staff. This raises a number of questions:

    a) Deaths on the road are not dissimilar to the aforementioned figures, in percentage terms. Should the Government not therefore ban cars?
    b) Deaths and disease from smoking have produced a greater number of victims. Why has the Government not banned cigarettes?
    c) Why is the media in lockstep with Government propaganda? Where is the analysis and objectivity from both?

    The Government, it seems, has relied for the most part on the advice generated by Imperial College. However, there are countless experts of considerable achievement who dispute the opinions of those such as Professor Ferguson. Not least, it is notable that Imperial College is closely aligned to ‘big pharma’ and the WHO. 80% of the WHO’s funding originates from ‘’big pharma’. This represents a significant conflict of interest.

    A Misleading Mantra

    According to statistics last week, 2700 cancer appointments, per week, are being lost because patients are fearful of attending hospital. This is in addition to those with heart conditions, sepsis, symptoms of strokes and similar severe life threatening circumstances.

    It is evidently clear that the Orwellian statement “Protect the NHS; Save Lives” – clearly conceived by a slick PR company – has created an atmosphere of opprobrium, which is deterring many from seeking urgent medical attention. How many have already died, despite the mantra “Protect the NHS; Save Lives”, which has produced the opposite effect?

    Then there are the suicides, now rising as a result of the ramifications of the lockdown. Unemployment, salary cuts, house
    repossessions and the collapse of many SMEs will create a suicide wave over the next two years.

    Summary

    It is accepted that the elderly, with underlying and often fatal conditions, are more likely to become a victim of the virus. However, this does not warrant placing the entire population under what is akin to house arrest. It does not justify the destruction to the economy. It is also evident that the claimed high death toll in the NHS is not true and the media has created a condition of hysteria.

    In Sweden, which does not rely upon the opinions of Imperial College, there is no lockdown and Sweden is expected to reach herd immunity within weeks. So far, the death rate per head of the population is lower than that in the UK.

    I wish to know why, based upon the statistics quoted above, there can be any justification behind this lockdown and I hope you will answer this as an individual, rather than as an MP who feels he must defend his party and Government against the indefensible.

    Is it not understood that the economic damage – which in itself will create poor health, as recessions and depressions always do – will cause irreparable damage to the economy, far out of any proportion in terms of what limited good can be done from following the flawed and disputable opinions of some medical advisors?

    The damage wrought to the economy so far exceeds that inflicted by the Luftwaffe during the totality of WW2. It would be difficult for an enemy of the realm to create the current damage during a war, unless by a nuclear strike.

    One really could not make this up. Quite apart from the questionable science, there are also major issues relating to essential civil liberties. Forbidding those who wish to work from doing so is oppression. Not least, the closure of the churches is utterly
    unacceptable and without precedent (and is ridiculous when viewed alongside packed tubes in London). One has to look to the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917 (and the bloodshed that accompanied it) to discover a parallel.

    The public will not tolerate this much longer, even with good reason. The reasoning, so far, does not withstand scrutiny.

    Yours sincerely, *

      1. You’re not wong Bill.

        Whoops a missing R,…. quite often in the wind the r’s blow off.

    2. A very good letter by the anonymous author – should be sent to all MPs and the PM should be publicly grilled on every item raised in it and be made to justify the government stance in every detail.

    3. I’m struggling to understand what the hidden agenda is. Why have most countries around the world put themselves and entire populations under the lockdown? We now can see the repercussions and severe economic damage this has caused, and will cause for years to come. Why??

      Is it to enable the globalists to reset the world? To fast-forward the climate change agenda? To reduce the use of fossil fuels and oil-driven transport? To stop travel and kill off aviation and tourism?

      We have to “follow the money” to see the winners and losers from this situation. The losers certainly include many businesses, ordinary people, workers and retired, throughout the world. Who are the winners?

      1. Not being a believer in pollyspiracies, might I suggest:

        1. A much more severe than normal bug caused health care systems to be stretched beyond this limits. Maybe total numbers were not much higher, but severity of symptoms made it worse.

        2. Governments had all forgotten their prime role is to protect their population which led to healthcare being stretched.

        3. The general population has lost its sense of can do, they are focused on woke issues and their rights rather than accepting their responsibilities. Blame this on left leaning education. Government workers are not exempt from this malaise.

        Then you come to the villains of the plot, the media. They need to fill their 24 hour news channels, so they were quick to pick up on the severity of the disease and then the shambles that has been the government / NHS response. The media spooked people into panic then the politicians reacted to the panic. Once the juggernaught started to roll, it has been easier to stoke the flames than to bring things back into perspective.

        Politicians are not exempt from blame, especially in the US where CV19 has become politicised and accusations and denials have replaced fact and rational thought. Look at the debate(?) around face masks, anti malaria drugs and so on, all of it is now being taken way out of context.

        So no hidden agenda, just a total balls up

          1. That us much more likely than it being a conspiracy led by Bill Gates.

            The conspiracy might be a globally agreed move to a left leaning snowflake version of education.

      2. My guess is it’s a world government, in the form of dictatorship.
        Slow population growth, individual governments will become a thing of the past.

    4. Deaths on the road are not dissimilar to the aforementioned figures, in percentage terms. Should the Government not therefore ban cars?

      Isn’t that the longer term plan? Isn’t that part of Shapps’ announcement of £2billion for more pedestrianisation of town and cities, to encourage people to walk or cycle instead, as they do in China? All the better to reach “Carbon Zero”…

        1. Hmm, how are they going to replace the money from VED, the tax on car insurance, the VAT and fuel tax on petrol/diesel and the revenue from fines (parking or speeding)? I don’t think they have thought this through (well, colour me surprised!).

          1. We’ve just sent an email to our local council regarding the dusgusting state of our local roads. The repairs are continually failing.
            I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that so many ride their bikes on our footpaths. Our roads are probably the worse in Europe.

          2. At least social distancing has had one positive effect; yesterday the fact I was walking on the pavement forced one cyclist to move into the cycle lane. I expect once he’d swerved past me, he got back on the pavement, though 🙁

  59. “…The goal must be to instil confidence in the population and the markets with a long-term recovery plan. People need a vision to engage with and money in their pockets, rather than the threat of another decade of austerity…. ”

    Right. Two things wrong here.

    The population does not need confidence, it needs money. It needs jobs. It need industry. Those come about by radical reductions in tax and regulation.

    Austerity – or spending what the net tax payer can afford – is not only necessary, it is crucial. The state doesn’t just need reducing, it needs shredding. It is only through significant reductions in state spending and tax *cuts* that we will recover.

    Howver, the state will do what it has always done. It will tax and waste it’s way out, dooming the economy to decades of suppressed growth and people to poverty as spending falls, tax revenue shrinks and the costs grow. Unemployment will rise, jobs will be lost, industry will collapse. Debt will spike and the state, the state will keep spewing bollocks about taxing the rich when really the poor will pay.

    It’s wrong. it’s obviously the wrong decision. The state does not care – nor, seemingly, understand.

    1. I think the population needs confidence that they can actually get out and about and they won’t die from it unless they are very unlucky. With everybody cowering in their bunker they won’t be going out spending any money, even if they’ve got it. Safe Spaces ‘R’ Us has been far too successful.

  60. I found £20 in Tescos car park and I wondered what to do with it. I thought what would Jesus do?
    So I turned it into wine

  61. It’s a beautiful day outside, sunny, warm, no wind. We’re finally allowed to go somewhere else for a walk, but I’m inside.

    I can’t think of anywhere I really want to be.

    The cree door has been left wide open and I’m sitting on my perch with no inclination to fly out.

    I think they’ve won.

    1. We’ve been to the local garden centre. Whoopee! Minimal queuing, i.e. same number of people there as normal.
      Bought a few plants and some Growmore.

      Maybe your lack of get up and go is the lack of places to go that doesn’t involve queuing.

      1. The places I would go don’t even have people, never mind queueing.

        Wide open spaces. I’m spoilt for choise all around me. Just me, the camera and whatever I point it at. The last thing I want to see is people.

    2. Ye’ll hev te be put inte a baskit & teken away a few miles then released to fly back hyem.

      I still remember the racing pigeon specials that used to leave Newbiggin Station.

        1. The coach used to lay over in the bay parcels platform most of the week, being picked up on the Friday evening after the local pigeon lads had had their birds ringed for the race & loaded up.
          We used to play inside it!

      1. Huh – I was out at 7 am lighting the bonfire….

        No stamina you young people….{:¬))

      3. Now if I could be in proper contact with our 5-year-old grand-daughter, and she with us….

        1. Ah! Grandchildren…! Just had a photo of our little thing wearing a new pair of dungarees we sent her, and one of her very tall Daddy’s shoes! My heart is aching…!

          1. I don’t have any grandchildren of my own (nor any children, come to that) but I am exceptionally good at “borrowing” (and spoiling) those of my brothers. :•)

          2. I did not become a father until the age of 47.

            But as both my elder sisters married at 20 and started their families immediately I became an uncle at the age of 10. As you suggest there are great advantages in this and my nephews and nieces often accompanied me on my sailing adventures and became more like friends than nephews and nieces.

          3. She’s missing us as much as we are missing her. We normally have her for at least part of the day three days a week, all day during school holidays. It’s been two months now. We were at her house for her 5th birthday just before the imprisonment.

          4. I’m sure she is! It’s a real theft of family time which we’ll never get back and neither will our precious little ones. I’m not generally a moaning Minnie but this makes me so sad.

      4. I’m only indoors now because the sun has gone from the back garden – and I can’t use the computer outside 🙂

        1. Cripes I miss the sea. Grew up with the sound of the waves at night. Now… motor way traffic.

          Disgustingly the wretched scum have jammed windmills in the channel.

    4. Rubbish! There are birds and countless natural wonders that urgently need photographing.

      Go to it.

      1. I’m re-scanning some negatives from 1968. Someone’s been in touch and thinks he wants to use one as a finale to a book he’s putting together. Not birds, trains.

        I could do it later, I’d like to be out, but a destination just won’t come to mind.

        1. You could lick the windows at your local, to get the taste for when it reopens.

  62. Oh well ….

    I saw my mate Charlie this morning, he’s only got one arm bless him.

    I shouted – “Where you off to Charlie?

    He said, “I’m going to change a light bulb.”

    Thinking about his just one arm, I just cracked up and couldn’t stop laughing, then said,

    “That’s gonna be a bit awkward isn’t it?”

    “Not really.” he said. “I still have the receipt.”

    ___________________________

    Angela Merkel arrives at Passport Control in Athens airport

    “Nationality?” asks the immigration officer.

    “German,” she replies.

    “Occupation?

    “No, just here for a few days.”

    ___________________________ ___________

    After both suffering from depression for a while,

    me and the missus were going to commit suicide together yesterday

    Strangely enough, however, once she’d killed herself, I started to feel a lot better.

    So I thought – sod it, I’ll soldier on.

    _____________________________ ___________

    I woke up this morning at 8am and could sense something was wrong.

    I got downstairs and found the wife face down on the kitchen floor, not breathing!
    I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.

    Then I remembered the local café serves breakfast until 11.30.

    _____________________________ ___________

    “Jesus Loves You.”

    Nice to hear in church but not in a Mexican prison

    _____________________________ ___________

    Got caught having a pee in the local swimming pool today.

    The lifeguard shouted at me so loudly, I nearly fell in

    ____________________________ ___________

    I woke to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and noticed a burglar sneaking through next door’s garden.

    Suddenly my neighbour came from nowhere and smacked him over the head with a shovel, killing him instantly.

    He then began to dig a grave with the shovel.

    Astonished, I got back into bed.

    My wife said “Darling, you’re shaking, what is it?”

    “You’ll never believe what I’ve just seen!” I said,

    “That bloke next door has still got my bloody shovel.”

      1. A few milliseconds longer than it would take for the bullet to leave the barrel of the gun.

    2. There is definitely a coordinated attempt to thwart any return to normality. No public transport, no schools – as if people believed that we can all be on a permanent summer holiday.

    3. We must never forget that it was Blair who imposed having an over-powerful mayor of London upon us. Like everything that that repulsive man has initiated it has done – and is still doing – a great deal to destroy Britian.

      If Blair had been born 25 years earlier than he was born, I have little doubt he would have worked for Hitler — the odious turd loathes Britain and has always wanted to destroy it.

      1. “Like everything that that repulsive man has initiated it has done – and is still doing – a great deal to destroy Britian.”

        That was surely his aim?

      2. If Blair had been born 25 years earlier than he was born, I have little doubt he would have worked for Hitler — the odious turd loathes Britain and has always wanted to destroy it.

        You mean Stalin of course. Hitler admired Britain.

    1. Yo T_B

      The equivalent of the person who murders his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court because:

      he is an orphan

    2. Most of us, I should imagine, prefer to see the faces of those with whom we make love. I should imagine that this is also true of those of the Muslim faith and, because their co-religionists are often covered up, they look for other victims.

      The burka and other face coverings should be banned in order to protect non-Muslim women.

    3. “This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists.”
      Funny thing, really. The internet will make you free. The internet is an opportunity for rebellion and anarchy. The internet must police itself. The internet now works for the Establishment.
      It did not take long, did it?

    5. and while his Wiki entry mentions no prosecutions from the death of Jean Charles de Menezes and a couple other controversies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Starmer ] there is no mention of rape gangs – convenient, eh? [and I don’t see Savile either?]

    1. The biggest political ruse of our time has now spiralled so far out of control that it has become almost impossible to distinguish fact from deception. Every day we are besieged with such a selective and biased artillery of “scientific” assertions that it makes a mockery of expert insight.

      Every day we are subjected to yet more bitesized epidemiology that gives an utterly false impression of risk. And every day we are bombarded with terrifying death figures so out of context that they are effectively meaningless.

      But instead of calling out Downing Street’s constructed hyperreality, the London liberal bubble is busy getting high on confected confusion. This week the BBC has relentlessly pumped out No 10’s basic pro-lockdown propaganda message without question, genuinely convinced that they are holding the Government to account by spinning news items about a“No 10 shambles”.

      Meanwhile Keir Starmer has cemented his new role as the PM’s useful idiot, as he positions Labour as even more pro-Government policy than the actual Government.

      Arguably, the Covid crisis is being presented in such a one-sided, misleading and alarmist manner that the public is effectively being lied to. But the lie is now so dramatically compelling, so morally powerful, that, like the virus itself, it may be impossible to defeat and prove endemic. The best we can do now is to manage it in a targeted fashion. We might do this by setting “The Official Version” against the fundamental facts (as we know them so far) in two particular areas.

      The first regards the true scale of the Covid crisis. An FT study that estimates Britain has suffered 41,000 coronavirus-related deaths has been widely circulated in recent days. So too the latest ONS figures that put the weekly Covid death rate up to May 1 at 6,035. At first glance, these figure are horrific.

      But let’s put them in perspective: forty-one thousand is below the number of excess winter deaths in 1998, 1999 and 2014, which immediately raises questions about whether this crisis is truly “unprecedented”. And 40 per cent of Week 18 Covid-related deaths reported by the ONS occurred in care homes, which immediately rings alarm bells about whether it was right to pursue blanket lockdown rather than a more targeted strategy of protecting the vulnerable.

      The tragedy is we have blown coronavirus out of proportion to such a degree that it is obscuring our view of another epidemic – surging non-Covid excess deaths. Warnings from cardiology experts that soon the daily excess deaths related to illnesses untreated during lockdown – from heart disease to cancer – could soon be greater than the daily Covid death rate remain dangerously unheeded.

      Which brings us on to the second area of the official narrative that demands further scrutiny: the risks of lifting lockdown. Prof Neil Ferguson may be destined for the dustbin of history, but mainstream appetite for garbage-in garbage-out modelling is, if anything, becoming even more rapacious. My latest favourite is an Imperial College study which gloomily warns of a possible second wave in Italy; its projections are based on the strange assumption that the only change in public behaviour after nearly two months of lockdown will be to travel about less.

      A correlation also seems to be emerging between how one-dimensional modelling is, and how much traction it generates. Take the much-dicussed study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), which warns 100,000 may die if lockdown is lifted too early. A more sophisticated study would also project the death toll if lockdown is lifted too late, by combining data about the economy and health.

      The latter is exactly what some experts, such as Prof Philip Thomas at the University of Bristol, are exploring. He suggests that hundreds of thousands could die if lockdown is ended too slowly – and yet his findings have not enjoyed nearly as much publicity.

      We are being brainwashed into a view of the risks around lifting lockdown that is not only one-dimensional, but also downright wrong. The most disgraceful example of this is misinformation regarding the R number. Much of the public now accept the PM’s misleading insinuation that reducing the R number to lush green Zero is our only path to freedom, and Britain is doomed if the R number grows above vampire-red Number One.

      So too outlets like the Guardian, which are now furiously tracking R numbers in countries such as Germany, which have been foolish enough to start unwinding lockdown. But this Crayola-coloured impression of science misses one little fact: the R number falling straight to zero is not the only way for an epidemic to end, it could rise before falling; such is the logic behind “herd immunity”.

      Which just about captures the spirit of the deceit. Throughout this crisis, our post-Blair leaders have had countless opportunities to level with the public that finding a solution to this crisis might involve taking a risk. Instead it has sold them the old managerial lie that the only solution is to avoid all risks. We may have a new leader, but nothing has changed in British politics

      1. Thanks for posting Mola…..

        We continue to be duped….whilst the shit hits the fan..

      2. Indeed.
        Godfrey Bloom comes about it from a different angle, but is on a similar note, i.e. questions the MSM are not asking.
        Molasses: assuming you have a Telegraph subscriber account, perhaps you can post this below Sherelle’s article, and she can pose them more publicly:

        https://going-postal.com/2020/05/mainstream-media-failure/disqus_thread
        ”
        Mainstream Media Failure
        Godfrey Bloom 13th May 2020

        Confidence in MSM it appears has fallen by a whopping 25%, from I suspect an all time low in any event. There are a number of reasons for this in my view but out of sheer frustration I commit them to paper.

        Government started by making a supreme tactical error. It came on TV every night regardless of any new developments this made the presentations look vague & indecisive, never a good look for government in a crisis. Worse they politicised the problem unnecessarily, the presentation should have been weekly, which would have given them more focus, something new to say. The platform should have been chaired by the Health Minister with the senior medical & scientific adviser joined by a senior member of the NHS executive ( remarkable for their absence so far). Only medical & science correspondents should have been invited not political journalists who turned it into a political jamboree hostile to the government & Boris Johnson in particular.

        This ensured no relevant questions were asked, few answered & public interest sacrificed. We now have a public bewildered, angry, some frightened & confused. The most important questions remain unasked.

        I simply list the questions still relevant, some of which I have been pressing journalists to ask on my Twitter & blogs for six weeks.

        In no order of priority they are as follows, add your own if I have missed any.

        1/ In view of the appalling track record of scientific ‘experts’ like Neil Fergusson, why were their views given so much weight?

        2/ Mortality rates were much higher in past pandemics what makes this different (1957, 1968, 2008)

        3/ At least eight of the last 40 years had greater excess deaths than this year (take the financial year for accuracy) why would 100% of them assumed be due to covid19 when the NHS closed down for seven weeks for other illnesses?

        4/ Protocols for death certificates have been drastically changed in the face of covid19, why is this?

        5 / How do seasonal flu epidemic mortality rates compare with covid19?

        6/ Quite early in the crisis evidence it was plain vitamin D & C plus zinc deficiencies were critical to immune systems, particularly in the elderly. Yet no effort was made to give immune system dietary or lifestyle advice.

        7/ Sunshine is essential for Vitamin D, yet parks & beaches were closed by police, why?

        8/ Police behaviour has been boorish & ill conceived, confidence is now at an all time low, along with their morale. Where has the Home Secretary been, should she not have appeared at some of the briefings?

        9/ Why was a regional policy not considered when Durham, North & East Yorkshire, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire & many other have tiny confirmations of covid19.

        10/ why are mortality statistics not readily available in acceptable form?

        Deaths from covid19
        Deaths with covid19 directly
        Deaths involving previous health conditions
        Deaths from previously healthy people by age group, ethnicity, regional location.
        Why are overall figures of no statistical value heralded in the same crude way as cricket scores?
        11/ Will cabinet meeting minutes be made available for the lockdown decision. Un unprecedented but how else can the same mistakes be avoided? If it is not accepted mistakes were made it can do no harm to release them.

        12/ Are there independent economic assessments for the lockdown from non government funded institutions?

        13/ The government committed to paying private sector employees 80% of earnings with a cap. Why are public sector employees not treated in the same way for those not working ?

        14 / As there are now empty beds in most hospitals & a complete close down of the Florence Nightingale initiative, why can people with English holiday accommodation booked not enjoy a holiday? With large caravan sites on assessment .

        15/ In lockdown people were asked to stay at home many in their gardens, why were garden centres part of the closure, what rationale could there have possibly been for that decision?

        16/ No children have been ill from covid19 nor under 60s outside the NHS died. What therefore is the rationale for closing schools ?

        17/ Whilst acknowledging the efforts of doctors & nurses, should we not be acknowledging the failure of the NHS executive for strategic assessment & procurement. The NHS executive is well funded & fully staffed, given previous post war pandemics it is irresponsible to suggest this situation is unprecedented.

        18/ Some front line NHS staff are exhausted & stressed but many idle & bored stiff. What are the reasons for a clear failure to reallocate resources given the high level of NHS staff attached to HR.

        19/ Would it not been in the public mental health interest to allow paint, or household decorations to be sold. These were embargoed by police patrols in some areas.

        20/ Notwithstanding the difficulty of micro managing people’s behaviour, are politicians & bureaucrats in committee the right people to be entrusted with the task?

        Just twenty questions, amazing none of these have been asked hitherto,

        This is a massive journalistic failure.”

      3. The key thing, the CRITICAL thing that has changed is that on May 3rd Roche released the first accurate test for Covid19. And yesterday it was approved for NHS use and is in mass production. Until then, ALL figures for covid19 around the world have been based on poor, inaccurate or non-performing test methods.

        At last, and only now, can we begin to understand the size of the problem that we have or don’t have.

        Note that this test requires the use of a proper testing machine. It is not a freestanding, instant result test in a plastic box.

        https://www.roche.com/media/releases/med-cor-2020-05-03.htm

    2. Website outline.com allows you to paste the url into a dialogue box, which then displays the full article to read, even if it’s an subscriber-only article.

        1. It was working, but now seems to have stopped. 🙁

          However, my Kindle has a “show in reading view” function which does work so far. Not helpful for anyone else, of course…

    2. :o) There’d be no point in having the worlds largest organ if there was nowhere that would accommodate it although Corbyn springs to mind

  69. I see there is zero news in the DT from their dozy Washington wallah about the unfolding scandal that has been dubbed “Obamagate” as further fallout regarding the entrapment of General Flynn is laid bare for scrutiny- with evidence now in the public domain. Clearly, as we all know, the MSM follows its own favoured narratives and when the current flow of serious evidence against the Obama administration becomes a flood, I wonder how the media here will present it? In the USA it has already been suggested that the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize should be withdrawn for being given an award for fake news.

    1. The Grimes covered it:

      https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obamas-halo-is-looking-tarnished-qhh0z8jvr

      Every presidency gets a reappraisal at some point — some for the better, some for the worse. John F Kennedy’s went from Camelot to Sodom and Gomorrah and back again in a few years. Ronald Reagan was supposedly a halfwit B-movie actor bent on blowing up the planet until he won the Cold War and reinvigorated American capitalism.

      There is no chance Barack Obama will be removed any time soon from the pedestal the world’s media put him on the first day he ran for office.

      For his many admirers, his successor serves only to polish his halo. Donald Trump is everything Barack Obama was not: inarticulate; boorish; unsophisticated. Trump is well-done steak and vanilla ice cream. Obama is sushi and crème brûlée. Above all Trump is a corrupt, scheming crook who has abused high office for his own advantage and to hurt his enemies. Obama was an incorruptible champion of the highest values of liberal government.

      Yet in the past week documents have come to light that cast Mr Trump’s predecessor in a very different light. They provide the strongest evidence yet that members of the Obama administration promoted the idea that Trump’s campaign had colluded with Moscow and that they used the federal government to investigate and prosecute key figures around Mr Trump, even as they acknowledged under oath that they had no evidence to support their case.

      A year ago, an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. For years this claim had been trumpeted by news organisations, fed by statements and leaks from Obama administration officials, to make the case that Mr Trump might be some kind of agent for the Russians. James Clapper, Mr Obama’s director of national intelligence, told CNN in 2017, “He [Vladimir Putin] knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the president.”

      But recently published transcripts show that, at around this time, Mr Clapper told Congress in secret and under oath that he “never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” Several other Obama aides said the same thing.

      Then came the news that the justice department wanted to drop its case against Michael Flynn, Mr Trump’s first, shortlived national security adviser. General Flynn had pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about a phone call he had with the Russian ambassador a few weeks before Mr Trump took office in January 2017. Justice department documents show that during this period, the waning weeks of Mr Obama’s presidency, officials were trying hard to make the Russia allegations stick.

      In December 2016 Mr Flynn, as incoming national security adviser, had a phone conversation with the Russian ambassador in which he asked Moscow to delay responding to sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama White House. The Trump team — for good or ill — wanted a better relationship with Russia and, as the man tasked with shaping Mr Trump’s foregn policy, it was entirely reasonable for Mr Flynn to engage in such conversations.

      US spies eavesdropped on the call because they were wiretapping the Russian ambassador’s communications. Ordinarily, the name of a US citizen picked up in such surveillance would not be made known. But this week the plot thickened even further, with potentially significant consequences for this year’s election. It was revealed that top Obama administration team members had asked for the release of Mr Flynn’s identity at the time: among them, Joe Biden, then vice-president and now the Democratic candidate for president.

      Officials subsequently laid a trap for Mr Flynn by conducting an ostensibly friendly interview with him which they later used as evidence that he lied.

      The most charitable case that can be made for Mr Obama’s team is that they genuinely believed that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia, based in part on Mr Trump’s friendly tone towards Mr Putin. But believing is not sufficient for asserting it as fact, still less for prosecuting over it. The whole Russia collusion story was in fact propelled by officials’ belief in the story — one shared by a complaisant media — that was unsupported by evidence.

      We now know, from a justice department investigation last year, that the whole saga was triggered when a former Australian ambassador to London told Obama administration officials that a Trump campaign staffer had “suggested . . . that the Trump campaign received some kind of a suggestion from Russia that it could assist the campaign by anonymously releasing derogatory information about . . . Hillary Clinton”.

      A suggestion of a suggestion.

      Investigators took this flimsiest of pretexts and, when they failed to find evidence, bent the rules to find more. They got judges to authorise wiretaps on a Trump adviser using the infamous dossier produced by Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer, even when they knew that the main source for its salacious allegations told them they were untrue. When that produced nothing, they went for Mr Flynn. All under the protective cover of an administration that promoted the collusion narrative to a friendly media.

      “Obamagate!”, President Trump tweeted this week in the wake of the new revelations. It won’t be that. The Obama-adoring press will never let their idol be held to the investigative standards that did for Richard Nixon 50 years ago. But we can at least hold off on the canonisation.

      1. Have we ever been told how an obscure law lecturer in Chicago became the Democrats’ presidential candidate?

          1. Course not.
            Or the fact that he was brung up by his white mother and white grandparents while daddy sodded off to herd goats.

          2. Bill thank you for posting that up- the first thing I have seen that looks at this series of revelations. I trust that the final paragraph written does not portend what will occur over this series of dirty tricks perpetrated by the DNC.

        2. Everything about Baroque O’Banana is false, from his forged birth certificate to his academic qualifications.

      1. What I am wondering, is how they can report this after four years of Orange Man Bad stories and the rest of the fake news that has been served up. It will involve a complete about face. Indeed, they may try to avoid it- but for how long? We will have to wait to see how much more comes out in the near future- it looks like it might be plenty.

    1. …probably until they published the research that led to it not being recommended due to nasty side effects.

      1. Trump favouring B over A is sufficient to generate N Reports rubbishing B within days, whatever the previous state of opinion or research. We have to be wise to the incentives in operation here with a potential moneymaker larger than MSOffice.

      2. Of course that research was published, in BLOCK CAPITALS and evey other piece of research that suggested it might be beneficial was swept away in a tidal wave of Trump hate.

  71. Q: How did passing Martians get the impression that dogs were the kings in the UK/USA?

    A: They observed that the humans scooped up the poops left by the dogs

    1. Looks remarkably like a rude gesture. I have graph fatigue; just don’t want to see another one.

    2. An excellent article.

      When I was a student over 50 years ago, I would buy a Camembert & put it on a bookshelf in my room. After a few days it perfect. Not so today.

  74. Morning! Feeling slightly better about the CofE after a phone call from our vicar. She tells me there was mass rebellion at a big clergy meeting yesterday. Not sure if it was at diocesan or just deanery level but still good to hear. Assuming it was via Zoom of course.

      1. Ah, if only. I was just relieved to hear that they haven’t all tamely accepted the dictats from The Midwife.

      2. I had a grumble about the general attitude behind depriving the masses of the Mass. Got it off my chest, so to speak.

        Heard on tv this morning that the PGA tours are to go ahead. One of the reporters made a sarcy remark that the safety guidelines will probably advise against having sex with strangers on the golf course, as in, how condescending can all this stuff get.

          5. In these times one needs to get down to the nuts and bolts of the matter.

            A lunatic escaped from an asylum and raped all the women in the local launderette. Police are still looking for him
            The headlines read:
            “Nut screws washers and bolts”

  76. I am signing off – early. I just hope that Luigi Salami has got his act together and that the lecture at the British School at Rome WILL take place at 5 pm.

    Have a jolly evening deciding which person you will see tomorrow.

    TTFN

  77. An elderly couple was at home watching TV.

    Phil had the remote and was switching back and forth between a fishing channel and the porn channel.

    Sally became more and more annoyed and finally said:

    “For god’s sake Phil, Leave it on the porn channel.

    You know how to fish!

  78. Good afternoon from a Saxon Queen with longbow and Axe.
    It’s absolutely freezing cold today, thought it was just me but the husband Is cold too.

    1. Where is Ukip (etc., etc.)? At least Nigel came up with some illuminating videos.

    1. Oh Dear, Halfcock strikes again! Am I supposed to ask all the people I meet (and pass at a good 2m separation) while out walking for their names? For heaven’s sake [polite version].

      1. If asked, just reply, “Matthew Hancock”.

        Once a couple of million have been noted, even Plonker Halfcock will get the message.

      2. I do know most of the people I meet when I’m out and about (it is a rural area, after all), but even I don’t know ALL of them. What it would be like in Lunnon I dread to think.

    1. and its hard to get by when your arse is as wide as a small country,….. I love that line….

    2. Fellow on the left looks like a Brown Job – not a real airman…

      “I see you are wearing PPE – just remember to stand 2 metres away from anyone else.”

    3. Sorry boss, no matter how much you point at it, there’s no teddy bear on the map.

  84. At least 95,000 people arrived by air to the UK during coronavirus lockdown, a key scientific adviser has revealed.

    Professor John Aston, the chief scientific adviser to the Home Office, told the Commons science and technology committee that the plane passengers arrived between April 1 and 26, and included a total of 53,000 British citizens.

    He said: “We believe that less than 0.5 per cent of those people arriving potentially had Covid-19.”

    However, that would still mean that about 475 people entering the UK had the virus.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/14/95000-people-flew-uk-lockdown-nearly-5000-may-have-infected/

    53,000 British citizens , so who on earth were the remainder.. some 42, 000 visitors?

    1. 42,000 immigrants adding to the 8 million they know about, already here.
      Journo question circa 2000: “How many people do you think have arrived in the UK since you have been in government Mr Blunkett” ?
      Answer: “We have absolutely no idea”.
      And 20 years later, it still goes on. WTF ? They don’t have a clue.

  85. I have to make a grovelling apology to the Spick bus company.

    After what I described below, I e-mailed them (using (ugh)) google translate explaining that I dont’ spikka da Spanish and their helpline did not spikka da Ingles – so could they please help me.

    15 mins later this e-mail arrived (in Spanish) – I used (ugh) google translate:

    “We inform you that we have carried out the checks and the tickets have already verified that they have been canceled today at 12:23 hrs and they are correctly canceled at no cost. The amount of the return will be received in the account associated with the card that has been used for the purchase within approximately 1 to 2 business days.”

    Servicio with a smile. I am reet chuffed. And feel slightly foolish…

    1. At least you had the good grace to apologise.
      Perhaps you could set up training courses for politicians and snivel serpents.

      1. Possibly.

        But most such cartoons are not necessarily meant to be merely funny, they are also intended to make the viewer regard the situation in a different light, as you have.

        1. Yes, that’s so. My jokes are seldom just jokes. Sometimes they are not even funny.

  87. The slime buckets of the EU mafia have launched legal action against the UK for breach of their lockdown rules. Not sure of the details they have made up.
    More to come from Calais I wonder.

        1. Do you have a link? I accidentally joined fb yesterday, I thought I was signing up for membership to a local (plant) nursery. It was cunningly disguised.

          1. Sorry no, it just appears on my page if i open it. Sometimes the pages dissappeare ax quickly as they turn up.
            I can’t cut and paste with my elderly android.

      2. Too polite PT. they don’t refer to us as Lè ferkoffs for nothing. 😒👤

  89. Went past Reading Prison this morning.
    Saw a dwarf climbing down the wall.
    I thought that’s a little condescending.

    2. Reading Gaol’s an imposing structure.

      Somebody really ought to write a ballad about it…

  90. My doctor thinks I may be suffering from Coprolalia ….. fucking twat.
    :¬(

  91. From :https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-british-state-needs-rewiring

    Covid-19 has been perhaps the biggest test of governments worldwide since the 1940s,’ declares the government’s command paper on the virus. The fact that the following paragraph proposes ‘a rapid re-engineering of government’s structures and institutions’ is telling. It is an implicit admission that the British government machine is, in several important areas, failing this test.

    The argument about whether the UK has the worst death toll in Europe risks descending into statistical absurdity. Until excess mortality figures are known, it won’t be possible to come to a verdict. But it’s hard to argue that the UK has done much better than France, Spain and Italy. We have clearly done worse than Germany and are miles behind South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

    To put it another way, there’ll be no international teams coming to this country to learn how to prepare for a pandemic. This is all the more shocking given that for some time a pandemic had been at the top of the national risk register. The UK government regarded itself as being one of the best–prepared in the world. But it had been preparing for an influenza pandemic. Considering that Covid-19 is the third coronavirus outbreak this century (after Sars and Mers), this was an unacceptable failure of imagination.

    Britain has long prided itself on its Rolls-Royce government machine. This crisis, though, has exposed its limitations. One Whitehall veteran says that the ten days leading up to 23 March were ‘the nearest the wiring of the state has come to collapse. It wasn’t just blowing a fuse: the motherboard was beginning to melt down.’

    The lockdown has cast the state centre stage. It is paying the bulk of the wages of 7.5 million private sector workers and offering cash support, loan guarantees and cheap credit to business. But as one Secretary of State admits, ‘the government couldn’t have got through this crisis without the private sector’. For instance, there haven’t been the food shortages that many feared there would be when supply chains began to be disrupted. When the government was failing on testing, private companies stepped in to help it hit its 100,000-a-day target. This private sector involvement is going to continue to be crucial. I understand that key figures in government believe this country will need the capacity to carry out 500,000 tests a day if the lockdown is to be properly lifted, though others think 200,000 will be enough for a comprehensive track and trace strategy.

    A hubristic belief in the ability of the state to do it all lay behind the most disastrous decision of this whole episode: the ending of testing and tracing early in the outbreak. Ministers were told that there wasn’t the capacity to carry out enough tests as the virus started spreading. But there could have been. The problem was that businesses, universities and research institutes were not being asked for help by Public Health England. A more collaborative approach, as seen in Germany, would have allowed testing to be increased at sufficient speed.

    Part of the difficulty was that Public Health England, created in 2013, is an arms-length body. This means that while the Secretary of State for Health can remove its chair, he can’t tell it what to do on a day-to-day basis. One result of the past few months will be that these arms-length bodies will lose their autonomy. In future, ministers will be able to issue them with instructions.

    Another body that is the subject of much ire is the Cabinet Office. One of its jobs is to coordinate between various players: the scientific advisory committee (Sage), the Department of Health and Social Care, Public Health England and the rest of government. According to Whitehall sources, it has struggled. At first blush this seems strange: it is run by Michael Gove, regarded as the Tories’ most effective departmental minister. Indeed, Gove’s ability to run a department is one of the reasons Boris Johnson kept him in the cabinet despite their spectacular rupture in 2016. But only half of the Cabinet Office answers to Gove: the other half is a civil service fiefdom. This must change if government is to function better.

    Theresa May’s time in No. 10 made this problem worse. There used to be three secretariats: one covering economic and domestic policy, another national security and a third EU and global issues. She merged them into one. This has led to a lack of debate within Whitehall. One hawk in government says that this issue has been compounded by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill staying on as national security adviser. They complain that in a well-functioning system the national security adviser would have challenged the Cabinet Secretary on the Huawei decision, but that can’t happen when the national security adviser and the Cabinet Secretary are the same person. A break-up of Sir Mark’s empire looks inevitable.

    Cabinet government has also been a victim of lockdown. Even one ally of the Prime Minister admits ‘everything is getting more fractious’. The mood of the outer cabinet (everyone in cabinet apart from Gove, Matt Hancock, Rishi Sunak and Dominic Raab) is turning rancorous. They are irritated to see decisions taken before the cabinet has met. They feel that their advice is being ignored.

    Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has told allies that he offered the military’s help to try to lessen the tragedy seen in care homes. On one occasion last month, Wallace wanted to join the morning coronavirus call, which is more important than cabinet meetings these days. One member of the inner cabinet who is always on the call said he wasn’t comfortable with the chatty Wallace dialling in, with the result that the Defence Secretary was not involved. He has, though, been on the calls which have discussed the armed forces’ role in the Covid response.

    The debate in this country is too often about whether we want big or small government when what we really need is effective government. Britain has long flattered itself that it leads the world in administration, but Covid-19 has highlighted how far from being true that now is. The British state needs rewiring for the 21st century if the system is not to melt down completely in the next crisis.

    1. We all know the problems. The state machine, awash with money, with no need to be efficient, effective or fuctional does whatever it wants to with impunity.

      Nothing will change. Big state doesn’t want to. It likes hiring 500 pointless wasters to sit on quangos. It likes giving away foreign aid. It likes the EU – power without responsibility.

      All such organisations – the Home office employs more bureaucrats than HP, the global computer firm for goodness sake – become too big to bother with annoyances like ‘value’ and as for failure standards – if there were most of the senior civil service would find itself sacked.

    2. Britain has long prided itself on its Rolls-Royce government machine.

      It’s now a Camel Train!

      1. That at least would keep going with a modicum of use! The current public sector management is more a Ford Anglia – on strike and when they do do something it’s broken.

      1. Not government (although I think the cabinet is far, far too large) but the public sector management.

      1. They’ve all had it really C. The BBC. The sacred NHS. The Home Office. Etc. They are all Zombie organisations that need to be put out of their misery.

        1. Should have been done a long time ago, but those who could do it, lack the will and those who don’t want to do it are determined to block it.

        3. Those responsible will merely tinker around the edges, cover the failings and be totally unprepared to lurch into the next crisis. Lessons will be learned is the most misused and abused pledge of recent times. It will take someone with real balls and a workable long-term plan to sort this shitstorm out. Can you see anyone in the political arena with the credentials to do the right thing?

    5. Taking orders from the EU for 40 years has left us with no decision takers.

        1. Oi, that’s not fair.

          You should be thoroughly ashamed..

          Bill Thomas shaves that face every day

    6. 319223+ up ticks,
      Evening W,
      Re, UK governance has on a daily declining scale lost it’s integrity since the mid 70s.
      There is no arguing against that and mass uncontrolled immigration ongoing, resulting in mass, ongoing paedophilia, mass murder / injuries,
      confirms it.
      They have failed and in a most treacherous manner for at least four decades.
      Sadly enough with the consent via the polling booth of the peoples.

  93. ♪♫♪♫ Notes from a small town.

    Apart from a weekly late-night shop, I’ve not been beyond the end of the street since the 21st March, until today – and what a joy it was. Tootling round the block isn’t my cup a soup so I’ve not had the inclination to go out.

    Walking through town, I saw out of the corner of my eye a scruffy old bugger – unshaven and unbarbered. Only when I saw he was walking in step with me did I realise it was my reflection in a shop window. Luckily, I had my balaclava in my pocket (use it for muggings) and whipped it on my head sharpish.

    Psychology’s an amazing thing and knowing I can now go out for my long walks, whether I want to or not, has given me a boost.

    I won’t need a lullaby tonight.

  94. Evening, all. Been a lovely day here after an unpromising start. My lawns need cutting again, but I went down with a bad case of CBA syndrome and will do it tomorrow if it stays fine.

    1. I am frequently afflicted by CBA syndrome these days, it must be a reaction to the strange times in which we live.

      1. Know what you mean, PM. A while back, a pal of mine approached me and some like-minded folk suggesting we form a CBA club.

        I don’t know if it ever came to anything – I couldn’t be arsed to answer him.

      2. I seem to have it most of the time, though I did potter in the garden for a while this afternoon.

    2. I am with you, leave it until tomorrow. Oops, weather forecast is for rain, ah well never mind.

      2. Lottie tells me that the procrastinators’ meeting has been put off, sine dei…

      1. Same here. I had the pa’io doors open for what turned out to be a very short while.

  96. Looking at other stuff, I came across this. It is an official overview of crime in the UK in the 20th century. The graph is spectacular. By what can only be an amazing coincidence crime in the UK shoots skywards in th same timescale and at what may be much the same rate as immigration. That cannot be right surely?
    https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/crimes-of-the-century/

    https://www.parliament.uk/ImageVaultFiles/id_11178/cf_578/olympic-crimeanddefence-crime-chart1-standard.jpg

    Offences per 100,000 people.

    1. “Server Error – The page you are trying to access is not available”

        1. Thanks – working now. That’s an interesting pdf to which you can click though.

    2. And falls about twenty years after abortion was legalised. Both effects purely coincidental, I’m sure.

  97. Yay, golf courses opening at the weekend, shops opening on Tuesday. No hairdressers allowed yet, nor bars nor restaurants nor gyms.

    Ah well at least Ontario is beginning to open up a bit.

      1. Our courses would not normally open until late April so we have only missed a few weeks.
        Now I have to find a way to run our seniors league whole adhering to the distancing and wrinkles stay at home rules. Ah Premier just said seniors should use their common sense about golfing – must book my first tee time then.

  98. Supper tonight…Wild mushroom Risotto with scallops dressed with Caviar and Rocket.

    The ‘Caviar’ is Anuga. Not a true caviar but if you are not drinking shots of ice cold Vodka…i find the real Caviar too intense. And Anuga is a fraction of the price.

    1. That sounds so grown-up and sophisticated compared to our supper tonight. Nobody can be arsed to cook, so we’re having “grabbit” – grab summat from the kitchen & eat it – my version was a tin of baked beans with brown sauce tipped in. Straight from the tin, with a spoon. How to live high on the hog, eh?
      :-((

      1. I just really enjoy cooking. I’m crap at most other things. Can’t paint or draw. Rubbish on the piano etc.

        1. Absolutely Phil
          #MeToo
          The joy of cooking for and feeding people,giving pleasure to ourselves and others,taking out a warm banana bread loaf to share with the Awkward Squad,we need all the small wins we can get

        2. I’m carp at most things social, but can open a bottle… food used to be fun, but since I lost all sense of taste, isn’t so interesting. Bizarrely, it does mean I can eat napalm curry wihout wincing, but that too, is not so attractive as a social superpower.
          If you can’t taste, cooking more than hotting up the ingredients doesn’t work. How can you balance the flavours, the saltiness, and so on, if it all tastes of wet cardboard?

          1. I know the MacMillan trust does a coffee morning for people having treatment for cancer. One of the side effects of the treatments is losing all sense of taste. They provided recipes from sufferers and volunteers that people in this terrible condition could taste and enjoy.

            This link may help. https://coffee.macmillan.org.uk/

      3. Funny that, Paul. We were similar, having dealt with the bins and defrosted a freezer. Had cheese on toast: one with HP, one with Dijon mustard for me. The pretty one needed green and red stuff with hers, which I forewent.

    2. Gourmet,…
      but even more tasty, super tasty sausages, eggs, chips and baked beans. Ketchup and a home made bread chip buttie. Two glasses of 14.5 % south African wine. Both for me.
      Lovely.
      Feet up not my turn to wash up 😊

          2. ME! Being smutty! Perish the thought!!

            I meant smoked salmon with scrambled guggies on toast,
            with champers, a small drop of fresh orange juice and an
            even smaller drop of brandy to soften the acidity of the orange.
            [My Father’s favourite breakfast.]

    3. Sounds delicious … all except for the rocket! I simply do not get why rocket is so popular. I much prefer watercress.

      Had my homemade minestrone today (veg stock, olive oil, peas, broad beans, string beans, onions, garlic, celery, white cabbage, tiny bit of broken linguine. I served it up with grated fresh parmesan, a dollop of pesto and a sprinkling of crispy bacon bits. Eaten with a piece of low-carb bread made from almond flour, cottage cheese, eggs, potato starch and psyllium husk.

      1. An epicurean delight in a bowl of soup.

        I do have some watercress but i was saving it for another dish.

        Rocket has a nice peppery taste. I was doing a balancing act with the flavour profiles.

        I am also very lucky to have local Watercress growers in Hampshire. They also have a watercress fair annually which is a good laugh. Morris Dancers and lots of beer and watercress.

        They used to ship the watercress up to London.

        We have the historic Watercress line which is still in operation. Here is me and my friend fine dining on it.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0d4d45f2a53bd42610fead64c902aadf2bb29eaac760ec11698b758486dfa88f.jpg

          1. Well it does here. Peppery. We get lots of sunshine unlike your more Northern climes.

        2. At first glance I thought “Typical Phizzee. They’re still on the first bottle of champagne and the poor woman has already lost all her clothes.” On closer examination…

        4. Great picture.
          So much enjoyment.

          What was the celebration to be attired thus?

          1. The Watercress line run two types of event. An Ale train with food such as curry and fish & chips and a fine dining with wine and Champagne. Guess which one this was……..

          3. We all did the Ale train first. As it stops en route the fine dining train stops on the other line and you can see in. We liked the look of it so much that we booked immediately. Normally it’s booked a year in advance because it’s so popular.

          4. That ale train stopping sounds like a line near my son’s home. oop north.

            He tells me that one can stop at eight stations, get off and have a pint at the pub by the station, catching the next train down the line, in a pleasant, unhurried afternoon/evening.

          5. Sounds good. A bit like the Vintage bus event on the Isle of Wight. The buses are free and they stop at all the pubs. The Watercress line uses a whole carriage as a bar with a dozen different barrels of Ale.

          6. I love beer.
            There used to be an event in Cambridge called the King Street run, eight pints in different pubs without a pee or a puke.
            I could do the beer, I could avoid the puke, but the pee? Forget it. Premier league kidneys, Sunday league bladder.
            The alternative was the King Street dozen. 13 pints in an opening time. That was easy, because there was no limit on peeing.

          7. I have a young friend who is a part owner of a micro brewery in one of the (hoped for) up coming districts of Sarf London. He asked his patrons to name his latest offering and once all the on line votes were counted “Lazy Jesus” happened to come out top. I thought that was a tad inappropriate as the drinking process turns the beer into water…

          2. You have a long list?….
            To the left or the right?

            Do you know, I think I have a dirty mind!

        6. It’s May. Why was the watercress I ordered from Waitrose from Spain and not England? And, it went damp and yellow very quickly.

      2. Because rocket is available; watercress isn’t (in yer England)

        And one can grow rocket dead easy – but watercress NOT.

          2. I live on top of a hill where nothing grows but within a (downhill) bicycle ride, a subterranean stream emerges to run alongside the lane with plenty of wild watercress. Not enough for commercial shipment to Nine Elms but quite adequate for locals’ needs.

          5. Yes. yes, yes – CV – I was talking about ones garden.

            And even with Alresford, it is NOT easily available in greengrocers.

          6. One needs a chalk stream for growing watercress. Limestone streams may be equally good for trout but not for watercress. Very little scarce produce makes it beyond Nine Elms (New Covent Garden market) to the wholesale distributors and greengrocers as it’s largely snaffled by the (largely London based) Restaurant trade who will pay anything for rarity. I used to go there once a week (as an observer, not a participant) and found it fascinating.

          3. Seems to do best with running water. We have several trout/chalk streams in Hampshire so watercress is abundant. Not sure how one could grow it in a garden, so as you say…Rocket is the answer.

          4. I like rocket, but it goes to seed so quickly here that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to grow and on the market it’s really cheap. I stick to the professional producers.

            But I still prefer watercress…

          5. It was brown looking from the mushroom liqour i threw some rocket over it to garnish.

          6. ???

            Are there some posts that don’t feature?
            Disqus is playing up, and that’s a non-sequiter for me.

          7. I tried to respond but it kept duplicating the post so i edited them out and reposted.

        3. Good evening, Bill,

          Have you heard of ‘land cress? it is a ‘North American’
          invention but it is very tasty……[T&M sell the seeds,
          other sellers may be available.]

      3. Can I drop by? My beans were the cheapo variety, not so good…
        Edit: WTF is psyllium husk? Do you get ointment for it?

          1. Ah… thanks.
            Sounds bad, like a skin disease associated with feet…

          3. You have a pantry, George – there’s posh. Used to have a larder, now just cupboards.

          4. We have a small room (≈six yards²) sitting between the kitchen and my workshop. It has no window and some large cupboards in it that we use for storing dry, jarred and tinned goods. We simply call it “the pantry”.

          8. I’m sure it tastes great but it does look as if someone has already eaten it….

          10. Er … if you look just a bit further up the post you will see, my dear, that it is my delicious home-made minestrone soup, together with the recipe for it.

          12. I thought for a moment it was a large sea mollusc that had exploded.

    4. Roast chicken tonight with the usual trimmings,roast spuds,onion,steamed carrots and spring greens,aparagus tips were a nice seasonal touch and the best gravy I’ve made in ages
      Washed down with a 2013 Saint-Estephe La Commanderie,a Majestic bargain at 10.98 from 21.99

        1. Chook cooked on trivet of onion,carrot,celery moistened with water and white wine,after the chook is removed to rest squish all the veg,fork over all the brown stuff stuck round the edges to loosen add some good chicken stock to dissolve it,boil together,then pass through a sieve and then reduce,add the juices that emerge from the resting chook as they appear
          Edit
          Used two onion halves to stuff the chook rather than lemons

          1. Perfection. I cook all my roasts in a similar fashion. I found that people who use Bisto (spits) or flour to thicken it makes me go to sleep.

            A trivet of veg is much better.

      1. The Autogyro – fairly safe craft – if the engine fails the rotor blades continue to turn allowing it to safely drift downwards and land. However I understand if you try to pull the nose up and go towards the vertical one could find oneself in deep shite mostly one’s own – a couple of feet underground!

  102. Since I’ve been on lockdown I’ve been getting acquainted with the garden wildlife, mainly birds, some greedy pigeons that come within a few feet after the bird seed, robins, sparrows, blue tits, magpies after the cat food while nesting in the tree out the front, scary crows, mice from under the shed after the birds seed, foxes, a timid black and white cat and even bats when I’ve been satellite watching., we had a hedgehog a while back though not seen since, plus parakeets early in the morning.

  103. Goodnight all. I need to get away from all these posts about FOOD 🙁 It’s hell trying to diet.

  104. Another extract from my Journal:

    “The journey to Sells Green is a short one once down the Foxhangers Flight of seven locks. Starting very early it also a very peaceful one. During the day I got talking to the couple with a narrowboat which, like mine, had also been built by the same boatbuilder as mine. It was fitted out professionally by MGM boat builders less than two years ago and so was in pristine condition. The skipper was keen to glean information about the transit of the Thames to and from the Limehouse Basin as well as the journey from Portishead Marina to Sharpness and on to Gloucester Docks, both of which I had completed a couple of years ago. His wife suggested we might meet up later for a drink and I suggested that we play cards which was duly agreed.
    They had never played Contract Whist before so I felt duty bound to let them know that the game itself has a tendency to induce involuntary swearing. As the game progressed lubricated by a reasonable but not excessive volume of wine, so did the volume of the expletives increase purely due to the competitive nature of the game. At one point when the Skipper was trailing badly in the scores his wife comforted him by saying: “Never mind dear. You know what they say – Unlucky at cards, lucky in love”. At this point I observed that she too was lagging somewhat in the points stakes and looking down at the score sheet, said to them: “Looks like you are both in for a very lovely evening”. They laughed knowingly (as per the Biblical definition!).
    Following heavy rain overnight and during the early part of the morning, I went to ask the couple if there were planning to go that day as we could potentially share locks. He greeted me dressed in his dressing gown, clearly his luck had changed overnight!”

  105. Evening all, trust your day has been enjoyable if a little windy and chilly.

    Just a quick alternative to brash and trash – H & M – needy and greedy.

    1. Ginger and Minger?

      (OK, I know it doesn’t rhyme but written down, it looks good.)
      ;¬)

  106. Yes, I know I’m making unfair capital here, but come on all you lockdown fans, tell me how it’s the best way forward.

    This kind of thing may turn into an avalanche.

    Add to that all the deaths of those so scared by the MSM that they dared not attend their doctor’s surgeries or A&E.

    Come on, tell me again why the current way is the best way.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8320623/Heartbroken-daughter-27-dead-not-able-attend-grandmothers-funeral.html
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8320521/A-level-student-dead-park-left-notebook-fears-lockdown-affect-exams.html

    But hey ho, we must save the NHS.

      1. Quite.
        It’s far, far too close to home for my family; and the problem needs to be raised.

        I fear we’ve got the whole thing, and the approach to the solution, very badly wrong

        1. Good evening sos,
          …….very badly wrong. Bloody disastrous. I continually wonder how so many supposedly intelligent could get it wrong at every twist and turn. Herd lunacy rather than mentality or immunity.

    2. There don’t seem to have been any reports abut the condition of those who have hd the virus, been in hospital and have been released. “Recovered” might just mean “not quite dead”, and not that they are fully restored to good health.

    1. Why do Muslim communities matter? We don’t want their confidence. We want them to stop drugging and raping under age girls.

    1. It’s the only decent channel – Scandi dramas on Saturday nights, and the Young Musicians on at the moment. They should scrap BBC3 instead – does anyone watch that?

      1. Yes J, absolutely .

        BBC4 is the only decent channel . Why on earth do they want to attract a younger audience, they don’t watch TV , or do they.

      2. I known how the BBC could save money. They could find a bunch of old B-list celebrities, fly them halfway round the world and have them spend weeks gallivanting around India, followed by a film crew and sundry supporting people.

    2. I read that as “Bbc four faces” [is] being switched off. I knew they were two-faced, but four? 🙂

    3. Conveniently blaming the Covid crisis for a fall in revenue? Within three months? They are utterly delusional.

    4. Am I being obtuse, TB? I thought that the BBC didn’t show paid adverts**? In which case, how has the Covid-19 crisis caused a £125 million hole in its finances?

      ** I assume that BBCtv – like radio stations – are showing Government public service announcements about the Corona virus. Does this not produce an extra income?

      1. That’s a good point. Given that they have stopped production of so many programmes and, presumably, some staff have been furloughed, they should have saved millions.

    2. The obvious way out of this PC-speak nonsense is to say: ‘When can my children see their friends again?’

        1. Using “they” has become standard to avoid saying he or she, and unfortunately I think it’s gone too far to stop now.
          First it was to placate the feminists by replacing the neutral “he” with “they”, and now it’s to placate the trans lobby. I have argued strongly against both in the past.
          I can just about accept “When can my child see their friends again?” if we are talking about an unknown child, though I myself use a neutral “he” in similar situations as a point of principle.

          But the trans lobby’s requirement leads to nonsensical, ambiguous sentences like
          “Robert says they have a coffee machine at their workplace”
          they/their refers to Robert, not to Robert’s colleagues, because you must not assume that Robert’s preferred pronouns are he/his.

          The trans lobby is now pushing for people who formulate sentences that avoid pronouns altogether to be punished for being “transphobic.”
          This has caused a few fights on popular websites, as trans extremists try to railroad this rule change through.
          Formulating sentences without pronouns is a lifeline for people who mix with trans people in real life but do not wish to say what they believe to be untrue or grammatically incorrect, and the trans lobby knows it.

          1. Not sure about your 2nd paragraph. “Robert says they have a coffee machine at their workplace”

            Surely ‘they’ refers to Robert & his colleagues – an impersonalised collective to refer to all the staff. C.f. “They say (who says? We don’t know) it’s going to rain tomorrow”.

          2. In normal, sane times, your interpretation would be correct.

            This is why I loathe this usage of they/their so much, because it introduces ambiguity. On achingly politically correct websites, “Robert says they have a coffee machine at their workplace” means “Robert says he has a coffee machine at his workplace” because you are guilty of imposing a possibly unwanted “gender” on Robert if you assume that Robert wants to be referred to as “he.”

            Yes, this is the far realms of pc lunacy – however, it hit the popular programmers’ website StackOverflow recently. They sacked a moderator who had put hours of unpaid work into their site, because she apparently intimated that while she did not want to offend anyone, she also did not want to use grammatically incorrect sentences, or I believe, say something that she did not believe to be true. (It’s hard to know if I have this exactly right, as the company never actually admitted why they had sacked her).
            StackOverflow then doubled down on their mistake by going out of their way to praise and highlight the employee responsible for the sacking. They appear to believe they are too big to fail.

          3. The child in your first example might very well be unknown to the reader or listener but from the point of view of the speaker or writer, the child’s sex will be no mystery. “He” or “she” can be correctly assigned, unless it’s one of those oh-so-modern parents who prefers not to gender (horrible verb) his or her offspring.

      2. or

        When can children see their friends again

        There should not be special provision for this person’s offspring

  114. The BBC news (R4, 6 pm) has reported with some relish the results of the virus testing programme in England:
    “In a two-week period, official estimates showed that 150,000 people had it and that children were just as likely to catch as any other age group, though there was still uncertainty about whether or how much they spread it.”

    There then followed various reports and interviews spreading the fear, including one from Wee Krankie saying this weekend’s planned demo against the lockdown is a very bad thing.

    My view is that the virus has in fact infected 90% of the population. Neurologically.

    1. Children not spreading germs is as likely as bears not defecating in forests.

      1. “A small number of COVID-19 patients may develop psychosis as a side-effect of their infection…this can manifest itself as hallucinations and hearing voices…”.

        “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”

  115. I’ve just put the TV on prior to watching a DVD and caught Sky News where the interviewer (I forget his name) was giving the Chinese Ambassador a severe roasting over pretty much everything from the origins of CV to hacking. Now in the normal course of things the Chinese are treated with kid gloves by the MSM so my guess is that this presages a campaign of distraction from the present home grown fiasco. You can probably watch hourly repeats and excerpts for the rest of the night if you wish to get a flavour if it!

    1. China in DENIAL: Sky host in disbelief as ambassador rejects probe ‘We’re the victim!’ 18:35, Thu, May 14, 2020.

      Chinese ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming engaged in a fierce row with Sky News’ Mark Austin over coronavirus. Mr Austin questioned whether China would admit, currently, the globe is less trusting of the communist country due to their handling of the coronavirus crisis. Mr Liu insisted there was no cover-up and China came forward with information as soon as possible to the World Health Organisation.

      I was right! They must have had this written before the interview!

      https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1282357/China-coronavirus-latest-probe-sky-news-chinese-ambassador

  116. My take on the Covid pandemic is we are sailing across the Atlantic quite happily aboard the Titanic, there is a fire in the hold and we have glanced an iceberg, but the ship is unsinkable, so there is nothing to worry about.

    1. 319223+ up ticks,
      o2o,

      I do believe that it is a confirmed case of we were being played whilst he was being laid.

    4. He doesn’t even look like a prof / expert, god knows what he looked like 20 years ago when he was destroying out beef cattle farming

      2. To be fair (why?), he wasn’t the decision-maker, just the purveyor of over-dramatised information. The decision-makers should have asked for other opinions. ‘Tis they who are the eejits here.

  119. “IOC president Thomas Bach reveals decision to delay Tokyo Games until 2021 will cost Olympic organisers another £650MILLION”

    Oh how sad.

    1. Damn I’ve bought front row tickets for the whole event and first class return airline tickets and three weeks accommodation in a 5 star hotel all for 6 people.
      Bill ? Help. 😨

      2. After lockdown is lifted i suspect many people will no longer be able to get through their front door.

        1. I weighed myself today. 60 kilo. Dolly the fat hound weighed 4.8 kilo and she’s only a Chihuahua. I think i will start eating her food and she can have mine. 🙁

    3. The Olympics is an anachronism.

      Most sport now is professional. Most sports have “grand slams” , world championships, etc etc etc annually.

      The modern Olympics is now merely a money making exercise.

      If it never happened again, so what?

      And I write as one who once had (brief) aspirations to Commonwealth Games and Olympics

      1. I can’t stand the Olympics – it’s just another opportunity for the BBC to thrust multi-kulti down our throats. And frankly, who cares who can jump or throw something faster or further than someone else? I mean really, who cares?

        1. I used to.

          Competitive sport has a lot to commend it, but at the elite level it’s now a business, pure and simple.

  121. Dr Mike Hansen reveals the truth about how COVID-19 has been killing vulnerable people – something that can only be revealed by doing an autopsy. In line with my previous post here he reveals that anticoagulants have become a routine form of treatment for dealing with COVID-19 symptoms but admits that there still many unknowns in relation to their use either in a prophylactic role or at higher dosage rates as therapeutic treatment.

    One significant point he makes is that the virus has been found in many different organs and not necessarily in the throat and pharnyx meaning that COVID-19 swab tests made in these regions can give false negatives.

    A medically oriented video but with concluding remarks that can be understood by non-medical professionals.

    https://youtu.be/y6h8TIxeg1g

    1. This really is a Must Watch video. It also perhaps help explain why some young people with the virus have had strokes.

    1. No matter which party is in power they always go after the soft targets…the bastards.

      1. Phew, that’s a relief, my parents were married well before I was born…

          1. Yeah, but you’re a fish, so I suspect two is out by a factor of thousands.

            Perhaps the molamola dynasty will save us!

    3. Plum now that lock down has eased why not get rid of all that pent up frustration by banging a few balls against a wall

      1. Easier to kick MP’s in the balls rather than banging them. Unless she is Ace with a sledgehammer.

    4. As you say, FFS. First they lock us up for months at a time then they take our money. Well, they were always going to weren’t they – where else will it come from? People will have lost their jobs, business will have gone bust, someone’s got to pay for all this furloughing lark.

      Why the heck don’t they send everyone back to work? Those over 70 (more vulnerable so they say) and those with underlying health problems will already be taking extra care so for goodness sake tell people it’s back to work time. Sunak should never have extended furlough scheme beyond June it would have concentrated minds.

      1. Now we’re being told off by the idiot media were not going to see our GPs often enough.
        Or turning up at A&E on a regular basis.
        The question needs to be asked …….
        WTF ?

        1. It’s not a case of “we’re not going to … “ the hospitals and surgeries have all stopped service – their decision, not the public’s. Put the blame where it belongs. Plus the fact that government and the MSM have scared the public to death with their warnings.

          Sorry to reply so late Eddy.

    5. ‘king illegal immigrants get more per year than the average fully paid up pensioners.

  123. From the DT:

    Fewer than 24 people are catching coronavirus each day in London, new modelling suggests, with forecasts predicting the virus could be wiped out in the capital within a fortnight.

    Analysis by Public Health England and Cambridge University calculates that the “R” reproduction rate has fallen to 0.4 in London, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days.

    If cases continue to decrease at the current rate, the virus will be virtually eliminated in the capital by the end of the month, raising questions about whether the strict lockdown measures would need to continue.

    1. Funny how the DT is so London centered , when sadly the North East and other areas up there are really suffering , the virus is causing much havoc.

      Is it because they have been having colder weather , closer communities , tea and biscuits , that sort of thing?

    2. ‘Virtually eliminated’ isn’t sufficient. It has to die out completely, otherwise we’re back to square one.

    3. Does this mean that herd immunity works. The only ones who could not practice social distancing. Funny old world isn’t it. Just continue to ignore the evidence and the science?

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