Thursday 21 January: Anxiety among over-80s that the vaccination system may leave them out

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/01/21/lettersanxiety-among-over-80s-vaccination-system-may-leave/

873 thoughts on “Thursday 21 January: Anxiety among over-80s that the vaccination system may leave them out”

  1. Morning, all Y’all!
    Hope you’re not suffering flooding… much rainon the snow and ice here, best stay indoors until it subsides.

    1. I’ve been out, and returned… unable to get through to today’s destination. Water in a few places I haven’t seen it before (I’ve lived in the area for 30 years). Fortunately no water indoors! Client is a native and understands situation… work rearranged.

      The sun is now shining and the wind is blowing so it will go down fairly quickly – but we are expecting a peak level of well above 7 metres at the bridge (less than a mile away) this afternoon/early evening.

  2. Is Joe Biden really capable of uniting America? Janet Daley 21 January 2021.

    The tone could not have been more different from that of his predecessor whom he did not mention by name. But there are questions that will only be answered over the coming months and years about the real meaning of this message for his presidency and for his party. What kind of reconciliation is this to be? What sort of unity is he proposing?

    Being the patently decent man that he is, Joe Biden was clearly sincere in his longing for tolerance to return to the public discourse (to “stop the shouting and lower the temperature”). Otherwise, there would be no nation at all, he said, only a state of chaos. (“Let’s listen to one another; hear one another.”) And he celebrated the fact that in that very spot the “riotous mob” which had tried to overturn the democratic will and the Constitution had not succeeded. (“…it did not happen. It will not happen – not ever.”)

    Morning everyone. Since it is patently obvious that he is nothing of the kind he is unlikely to unify anything!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/20/joe-biden-really-capable-uniting-america/

  3. So … one of our moderators
    is prepared to stand ‘arm-in-arm’
    with one of our down-voters…….

      1. Not much impartiality on display in the post you’ve just answered. But when the leader himself breaches confidentiality, what more can you expect?

        1. What confidentiality has the leader breached ….. or is that information confidential?

          Just curious.

          1. He deliberately revealed the real surname of a poster & made fun of it, about a week ago. I can’t say more without breaching a confidence myself.

          2. Ah! I must’ve missed that but judging by the downvotes which descended upon the forum last night – coming down thicker than the Persian arrow storm at Thermopylae – I can guess who the “victim” was. It would explain her particularly angry mood – excessive even by her standards – lashing out at all and sundry, and her downvoting Geoff, while ranting on about “threats to life and property”. But it begs the question – why did she give out her “confidential” details in the first place?

            Since she must be well aware of the strife she causes in the forum and the inevitable backlash she provokes, I surprised she doesn’t just go away as any normal person would. Unless of course, as I suspect, she derives some weird comfort from casting herself as a “victim”.

            But then she is raving mad, after all.

          3. …why did she give out her “confidential” details in the first place?

            See my reply to Sos, just above.

        2. As sites go, this is one of the best I have experienced.

          The best way to maintain confidentiality is not to share confidences with strangers, and if the confidences are important to you to be wary of sharing them even with those you think you know.

          1. That is all very true, but I seem to remember that when you sign up to Disqus/this site you have to reveal a certain amount of personal information which should be subject to confidentiality.

            One of the worst breaches I experienced not so long ago, when I still had to make an annual tax return (now excused), was when I went to my bank for a print-out of the interest on my savings account – needed for the tax man. It took the young blonde teller some trouble to unearth it & when she did she announced sarcastically in a loud voice for all to hear how much it was.
            Next time I was in the bank, she wasn’t in sight & I asked a colleague who she was, describing her, “Oh, that’s the manageress,” came the reply. “Not for long, I hope,” came my reply. She didn’t last long.
            In all my 40+ years as a dentist, I have never breached a patient’s confidentiality

          2. The choice is still the individual’s.

            When I was auditing I was often asked by people if they could give me information in confidence, and I always replied that nothing said to the auditor could be given in total confidence that it might not be used.

            I then went on to say that anything they told me would be verified and that the process of verification should provide the necessary evidence to allow me to feature a finding in my report, without referring to them. I would not expose the whistleblower unless it was absolutely necessary.

            I never had to expose anyone, and most of my best findings came by that route, I guess because the jungle telegraph worked well and people trusted me to work that way.

    1. Theresa May built her entire career around saying what she thought people wanted to hear, and doing the exact opposite when in power. Dishonest as the day is long. The only time she was honest was when she gave her opinion that her fellow Tories were “nasty” – and the fools sucked it up!
      That was the moment when I and the Conservative Party parted ways!

        1. IDS couldn’t pull it off, but he is a good man, and subsequently tried to take on the Blob at social security, which is more than anyone else did.
          Hague was just an embarrassing interlude where one hoped something better would come along quickly.
          Who else was there? Major, the Gordon Brown of the Conservative Party. He didn’t sell our gold, but he did give our country away.
          I suppose the party had left me, but I hung on until May. I couldn’t believe what she was saying, and that those fools lapped it up.

          The problem is that we are only about 10-12% of the electorate. No party can win just with our support, and the Cons have figured out they don’t need our support to win. We’re effectively denied a vote under FPTP.

    3. 328700+ up ticks,
      Morning S,
      What is it about our leaders that promotes total fawning or alternatively total condemnation?

      The encouragement they continue to receive via the ballot booth.

  5. Good morning all,
    a few days ago, someone posted a photo collage with the captions Normal people (wearing PPE) and Conspiracy theorists (taking a group photo).
    I can’t find it on this website – does anyone know the source?

    1. I posted it BB2 but all my memes are fresh picked daily and I don’t save them {;^((
      If you really want to find it you could go through all my comments…….

  8. Joe Lieden just picked a CIA Director with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

    Bill Burns served as the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which has a long relationship with the China-US Exchange Foundation, founded by Tung Cheehwa. First Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

    Tung Cheehwa is former boss of Patrick Ho.

  9. Winston Churchill bust ‘not on display’ in Joe Biden’s Oval Office. 21 january 2021.

    Joe Biden on Wednesday night risked a transatlantic spat with Britain after it appeared he had decided not to display a bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the Oval Office.

    Donald Trump had given a prominent spot to a Jacob Epstein bust of the British war leader. But as Mr Biden entered the Oval Office for the first time in his presidency the bust did not appear to be there.

    There’s not going to be any “Spat” of course. Still it is a small indication of Biden’s mindset in that he actively dislikes the UK and anything to do with it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/21/winston-churchill-bust-not-display-joe-bidens-oval-office/

    1. And that he did so, so quickly!

      Are you certain about this, Minty?

      I continue to be amazed that the
      greatest, most tolerant, most welcoming
      Country in this World continues its downward
      path.

      1. Joe Biden Removes Winston Churchill Bust, Andrew Jackson Painting from Oval Office

        https://media.breitbart.com/media/2021/01/decor-wh-oval-office-joe-biden-1-20-21-getty-640×480.jpg

        President Joe Biden shuffled the decor in the Oval Office after former President Donald Trump left Wednesday, removing the bust of Winston Churchill and the painting of former populist Democrat President Andrew Jackson.

        Instead, Joe Biden added several additional busts to the office, busts of Robert F. Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, according to the Washington Post, who got an exclusive preview of the new decor in the Oval Office.

        Trump notably reinstated the bust of Winston Churchill when he became president after former President Barack Obama controversially removed it. Trump kept the Martin Luther King Jr. bust that Obama displayed in the Oval Office, and Biden has also kept it in the room.

        Trump also featured in the Oval Office a large portrait of former President Andrew Jackson.

        Biden removed the Jackson painting and replaced it with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Biden also hung a large portrait of Democrat hero former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

        An admitted fan of the Broadway musical Hamilton, Biden also included a portrait of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in the Oval Office. White House staff noted to the Post that they were political rivals but historic figures in the formation of the country.

        Biden also removed the flags of the different branches of the United States military, choosing to only display an American flag and a flag with the presidential seal.

        1. Dear God Almighty;

          I had thought the man to be imbecilic
          I had not, previously, realised he is a total
          loony!

          More fool me!!

    3. I suspect when they have their private meeting his first instruction to BJ will be “Drop you pants and bend over!”. But it will be OK think of all that preparatory training received at Eton….

    1. Some of us are stranger than others.

      Incidentally I hear that JSP is running a campaign to win support for those unfortunate women who still suffer from PMT long after they have gone through the menopause.

  15. Day One…………….The madness starts

    Biden, on his first day, destroys women’s sports and women’s rights.

    Any educational institution that receives federal funding must admit
    biologically-male athletes to women’s teams, women’s scholarships, etc.

    Equality, raising female standards.

    1. When those “women” start rising up the rankings will they be selected for the Olympics or become professionals without let or hindrance?

      2. This move will split the left and give enormous momentum to the feminists in their struggle against having trans women accepted as women.

        1. At some point there is going to be a backlash against all the wokery, and it isn’t going to be pleasant.

  16. Morning all

    SIR – I am 87, and my wife, who is 78, has been allotted a time and place for her vaccination.

    We share the same address and are registered with the same GP. I am told that I am in a higher priority category than my wife, but I am not confident that the system is entirely glitch-free.

    We are asked not to contact our GP, but I hope that I’ve not been forgotten.

    Chris Sneath

    Eastbourne, East Sussex

    SIR – The logistics of vaccination are certainly patchy. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have, it is reported, “negotiated” supplies of vaccine for nursery workers. But in my area of Fenland, people over 80 have yet to be offered an appointment.

    Either this reflects on the competency of those managing the process or a deficiency in the system’s set-up. Let us hope that the target of February 15 does not become another unfulfilled commitment.

    Peter Williman

    Chatteris, Cambridgeshire

    1. SIR – I have always been proud to be Welsh. I am 82 and still awaiting the vaccine, with a further delay of two to three weeks, my surgery informs me.

      Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, recently said on television that this “is not a race”. But it is. Many may die because of such an attitude and lack of organisation.

      Carl Harris

      Cardiff

      SIR – My 82-year-old mother, near Wrexham in North Wales, is desperate for her vaccine but has been given no indication when she might receive it.

      Her GP surgery has said that it won’t be administering it. She is scared to leave the house, because of the Covid risk and in case she misses a phone call from Public Health Wales offering an appointment. This spoils her only daily pleasure, 30 minutes walking her dog.

      Victoria Eastman

      Ellesmere, Shropshire

    2. Not wishing to be unkind to Mr & Mrs Sneath, but they appear to have gone way beyond the allotted span and are probably past their Best Before Date….

      1. Mr. Sneath certainly is, by 5 years. He must hope that his lady wife doesn’t dream of a few years as a merry widow.

  17. SIR – My daughter in Sussex was contacted by a schoolfriend who volunteers at a London vaccination centre, and so 50 vaccinations that might otherwise have been thrown away last Friday were given to a small group of people (me included) who dashed there just after closing time.

    Whoever facilitated this should be congratulated. Initiative should be encouraged if vaccines go begging.

    Luci Collings

    London SE27

    SIR – No one is really vaccinated until their second dose – ideally within the prescribed time frame which, for the Pfizer vaccine, was three to four weeks.

    Now that the supply of the Pfizer vaccine may be limited for a time, with the intended shutdown of a Belgian factory, should not the vaccine now available be used to give the required second dose? All other first doses should be with the Oxford vaccine.

    Otherwise there might be no Pfizer vaccine available in time for the necessary second doses.

    Rod Clayton

    Norwich

  18. SIR – I was driving north recently on the motorway section of the A1 after dark when my engine cut out. The traffic was very heavy. Had there not been a hard shoulder to pull on to (Letters, January 20) I would probably not be here to write this letter.

    Robert Tyers

    Cambridge

    SIR – The Government’s own report into smart motorways last year confirmed that the chance of a collision between a moving and stationary vehicle is higher on a smart motorway.

    The justification for a continuation of the programme seems to be that there are fewer collisions between two or more moving cars, resulting in lower casualty rates overall.

    This is put down to the technology that is installed as part of the upgrade. It displays up-to-date information and smooths traffic flow via variable speed limits, thus giving drivers more time to react to incidents and hold-ups.

    The obvious conclusion is to go on installing the smart technology but retain the life-saving hard shoulder. It’s the only way to make sure that motorways are as safe as possible.

    Clare Partridge

    Epsom, Surrey

    1. I was once driving an American Ford on a very busy roundabout in Riyadh when the engine suddenly cut out. Of course, I incurred the anger of other motorists and the traffic rapidly came to a standstill. I didn’t know what to do.

      A kind Saudi behind me got out of his car and asked me to open the boot. He pressed a button in it and, lo and behold, the engine worked again. I still don’t know what the button was meant for!

    1. 328700+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      I really must nominate Gerard Batten as
      super Seer of the decade.

    2. I’ve tried to find the WHO guidance for a reduction to 20 cycles for PCR tests but if it exists it is very well hidden….

  20. Penal stamp duty

    SIR – In the Seventies and Eighties, I moved house four times. The stamp duty on buying those four properties was zero. It was regarded at that time as a tax to be paid only by the rich.

    By contrast, my son and his wife, on top of the large deposit to buy a modest house in London, have had to find thousands of pounds to give to the Treasury. Where is the fairness in that?

    Steve Pitman

    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    1. SIR – My distaste for stamp duty is rooted in my wife and I moving from Exeter to north Devon, to be able to care for ageing relatives We had to pay the chancellor (Gordon Brown) nearly £10,000 for moving from our four-bedroom house to a three-bedroom bungalow. It felt more painful as we’d save the state money through being active in the care of our wider family.

      Andrew C Pierce

      Barnstaple, Devon

  21. Chaucer courses to be replaced by modules on race and sexuality under University of Leicester plans. 21 January 2021.

    The University of Leicester will stop teaching Geoffrey Chaucer’s work and other medieval literature in favour of modules on race and sexuality, according to new proposals.

    Foundational texts like The Canterbury Tales and Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf would no longer be taught under proposals to scrap medieval literature.

    Instead the English faculty will be refocused to drop centuries of the literary canon and deliver a “decolonised” curriculum devoted to diversity.

    There is no actual relationship between these two subjects. This is simply converting the English Department into the Woke Propaganda Unit. Two blows in one!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/20/chaucer-courses-replaced-modules-race-sexuality-university-leicester/

    1. And will all those existing staff be made redundant so that wokists can replace them?
      I don’t suppose so for a moment.

      1. I passed my Highers in 1963 (Highers = AS Level)
        Over the years- every 8-10 years, the breadth of topics has narrowed and the depth of study has been diluted.

        My sons sat their Highers 25+ years ago, they got an “A” – they were good passes. My eldest granddaughter is forecast to be awarded an “A” this year. Although she is in the top stream she can struggle with some aspects – she would have drowned had the syllabus been that of the early 60s.

        1. I think older generations all tend to believe standards have dropped.

          Rote learning has all but disappeared and more reliance seems to be placed on knowing where and how to look things up rather than learning them.
          It is why “fake” news and knowledge” is so dangerous.

          I sometimes see what my grandchildren are studying and things have changed beyond my ken.

          1. Admittedly I retired 22 years ago, but I noticed a definite drop in standards during my time at the chalkface. I had to invigilate A level papers and frankly, I could have answered most of the questions just on my general knowledge.

    2. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

      When I started teaching English at “A” level Paper 1 was on Shakespeare’s plays with detailed context questions on the set plays and essay questions both on the set plays and on Shakespeare’s plays in general; Paper 2 was on Chaucer and Milton – again with context questions on the set works and essay questions; Paper 3 was an essay paper based on set plays, novels and poetry.

      And at French “A” level Caroline tells me that the same level of French of the pupils she taught who got C grades when she started teaching would now get them an A*.

      Of course young Sixth Formers are just as clever – and just as stupid – as they ever were! The people who are really suffering from the lowering of standards are the intelligent ones.

    3. Good BTL Comment:-

      Sharon HW 21 Jan 2021 11:41AM
      Regarding the article about the University of Leicester dropping Chaucer from its curriculum, I wonder if this is because the academics there find it too hard to teach? The great dumbing down and woke-ification of education continues.

      Flag4Unlike
      Reply

  22. The Last Chance Saloon

    There I was sitting at the bar staring at my drink when a large, trouble-making biker steps up next to me, grabs my drink and gulps it down in one swig.

    “Well, whatcha’ gonna do about it?” he says, menacingly, as I burst into tears.

    “Come on, man,” the biker says, “I didn’t think you’d CRY. I can’t stand to see a man crying.”

    “This is the worst day of my life,” I say. “I’m a complete failure. I was late to a meeting and my boss fired me. When I went to the parking lot, I found my car had been stolen…

    …and I don’t have any insurance. I left my wallet in the cab I took home. I found my wife with another man and then my dog bit me.”

    “So I came to this bar to work up the courage to put an end to it all, I buy a drink, I drop a capsule in… and sit here watching the poison dissolve; then you show up and drink the whole bloody thing!

    But enough about me, how’s your day going?”

    1. It reminds me of a pub my good lady and I visited a long time ago.
      I asked for a vodka and tonic emphasising Ice and lemon. And a pint of bitter.
      The drinks were shoved on to the counter, no ice no lemon. I asked the bar lady why, she replied tersely we’ve run out. Why didn’t you tell me that when I ordered the drink ? She shrugged. The beer was cloudy I took a thirsty swig and if was horrible, I spat it back in the glass. I complained and she called the manager. He made excuses about the ice the machine was broken. And they’d ran out of Lemon ???
      On the beer, he said, nothing wrong with it, I’ve been serving it all night.
      It was clearly the end of the barrel.
      He said mind if I try it ? Go ahead.
      Tastes okay to me do you mind if I finish it ? No go ahead . When he had I told him that I had spat in it and I hadn’t paid. We turned around and walked out.
      To a soft round of applause. 🙂

  23. We need an early return of children to school

    SIR – I cannot understand why we are hearing nothing about getting the students back to school and university.

    Why not give the teachers the vaccine and get them back? Given the sometimes inadequate online teaching, consequent mental-health issues and the knock-on effect on the parents, why is this not a priority?

    Pupils cannot afford to miss any more schooling.

    Judith Pelham

    Surbiton, Surrey

      1. I think they are more worried about having to teach 9C last thing on a Friday afternoon 🙂

    2. Wotcher, Rik!

      I couldn’t see any link or picture – or anything. It’s happening with several posts from people – I just can’t work out what to try to look for on my laptop that might be causing this. It happened with BoB’s (below) as well, although I can see many pictures and links on other posts?

      Any ideas?

      1. Wotcha Lass
        At the top of the thread there is your name and a little grey/red circle
        Click on your name and a drop down menu will appear
        Counterintuitively select “Hide Media”
        With luck the links will appear
        Right click select open in new tab,voila

  25. Two days ago Patel issues a threat to the people re adherence to lockdown. Now she’s declaring that she wanted the borders closed last March.If Patel had thought really strongly about border closure back in March – and it’s likely very many would have agreed with her – why didn’t she resign when Johnson wouldn’t agree?
    Only now when the government is out of control does she mention her earlier stance. Positioning herself for when the shit hits the fan?

    https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1351827684653998083

    1. 328700+ up ticks,
      Morning KtK,
      By the same token, farage took on the mantle of the Grand old Duke of York.

          1. I don’t think it is a question of liking or disliking.

            Nigel Farage is a very good orator but I do not always agree with him and when I do not I say so – just as I say when I agree with him.

            Don’t become like the Down Voter who strikes at night and disagrees with everyone she considers to be right of centre.

          2. 328700+ up ticks,
            Morning R,
            I have no intentions of becoming like anyone, neither am I following the main herd that
            has been / is being led by lead steers that have proven to be/ are of a highly treacherous nature.

            A con artist without believable highly polished patter would starve to death, the lab/lib/con coalition politico’s present brilliant sounding manifesto’s, they can shout “we are honest and with political integrity” up the canyons all the peoples will receive in return, every time is empty
            ECHO’S,echo’s.

            Talks cheap & money buys houses.

            He “nige” talks a good fight but his actions of late.
            are highly questionable.

    2. Given her track record with illegal immigrants she should keep her mouth shut about closing borders.

  26. Tony Blair backs cross-party calls for new child poverty strategy. 21 january 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f7e493b38b564d6957d5a8bc78cb500103abfc731d332be35734620fb17084d5.jpg

    Tony Blair has endorsed cross-party calls for a new national child poverty strategy amid concerns about rising social inequality as a result of the pandemic and forecasts that a third of all UK children could be living below the breadline by 2024.

    The former Labour prime minister, whose government’s 1999 flagship strategy took 1 million children out of poverty, urged ministers to rise to the challenge of eradicating child poverty within a generation, calling it “huge and urgent but achievable”.

    Total rubbish of course. Poverty is a comparative condition. If you are a Millionaire in a land of Billionaires.. You are poor! I put it up for the photograph which shows Blair looking even more demented than usual!

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/21/tony-blair-cross-party-new-child-poverty-strategy-uk-inequality-covid

    3. Funny a bandwaggoner like him should say that. If he and Cameron etc were honest about the invented situation they might have realised it would have happened, as they allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants with no interest in European culture etc to flood into the country and do nothing to help themselves but justify their existence by having children and living off the UK taxpayers.
      An admission of guilt ?

      1. Oh, Eddy, and help themselves, of course they did – to anything that wasn’t nailed down!

    4. 328700+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Was he not the chap that was in court some time ago appearing under a shorten version of name to protect the alledged guilty ?
      or just “ugly rumours”.

        1. 328700+ up ticks,
          Morning Anne,
          Wonder if the Colombo type mac is still in the closet ? check out Ugly rumours in early days.

    6. Are he and the fragrant Cherry opening up their 8 houses to shelter the poor? Are they off loading some of their £millions to feed the paupers?

  29. Patrick Vallance warns Covid jabs may be needed EVERY YEAR as he warns he will continue to push ‘harder rules’ because there is an ‘upswing’ when measures are lifted too quickly. 20 January 2021.

    Britons may need to be vaccinated against Covid every year to keep the disease at bay, Sir Patrick Vallance warned today.

    No10’s chief scientific adviser said a regular flu-style rollout may be required to ‘keep on top’ of the virus for the next few years.

    No surprises there then?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9166981/Patrick-Vallance-warns-Covid-jabs-needed-YEAR.html

    3. Are there any reliable figures for how many lives are saved by the flu vaccine each year?

        1. My thoughts as well.
          Of course, the government will claim that at least two million lives have been saved by the world-beating Oxford vaccine developed in Great, Great, Great Britain. Sigh.

      2. The flu vaccine was 110% successful in 2020, Ms Abbotopotamus

        No-one has died ‘from thr flu’ since Feb 2020!

        1. So, if they are being logical, they ought to put the corona virus into next year’s flue vaccine if they want it to be really effective.

      3. There aren’t reliable figures for how many die from flu-induced illness each year. Those that are available are revised (usually downwards) in subsequent years.

        1. Flu, Norway 2018: 1 400 (a particularly bad year. 5-year average is ca 900)
          COVID, Norway: 521 to yesterday.
          UK flu deaths 2018: 64 157 (from ONS, iirc)
          COVID, UK: 93 290 to yesterday

          1. That would include people who coughed before they were run over by a bus or succumbed to cancer, I take it.

    4. Very profitable.

      MOH pointed out recently that Moderna claim that they will make $13 billion profit this year.

  30. The five stages of woke debating:

    1: Your ideas are evil.

    2: You are evil.

    3: I will no longer talk to you.

    4: You aren’t allowed to talk to me.

    5: You aren’t allowed to talk to anyone.

  31. Morning all.
    Amazing how innocent members of the UK’s general public are not even allowed to go for a country walk and clearly risk arrest and fines. Yet British TV ‘journalists’ can fly across the globe to sit at an open air desk in Washington to discuss and ‘report’ an event that is inevitable, not really our business and most people in this side of the world don’t really care about.

    1. More importantly my faithful old van passed its MOT once more. I was as happy as Larry (who ever Larry is) when the man at the garage phone me yesterday afternoon.

        2. I had a mate who once chose to drive a truck or van in that sort of condition for a delivery. He was stopped by two coppers in central London, one green & one experienced. The youngster started with the old show me your papers routine. My pal knew how to deal with that, and after a few moments of skilful ignorance the older PC realised what was going on; knowing the enormity of the paperwork awaiting him after impounding an unroadworthy vehicle near Hyde Park Corner, he said “Son, we have to go, give him a warning”. The youngster was furious!

          No tax, no insurance, fake MoT, no driver’s licence, no ID, a load of scrap metal, and a vehicle that probably wasn’t even safe to tow.

        1. It was something I looked forward to as a youngster, the Christmas edition of the Giles book.
          I wonder where those books went, sadly all chucked away I guess.

          2. I’ve got an inherited set of Charles Dickens books very small print.
            And a set of Chambers encyclopedia. In the loft.

          3. The early ones are worth a bit now, I believe. It’s amazing how much people will pay for stuff on ebay.

            A story from a well known fast food company….at Christmas, they gave away tree ornaments for one day only.
            At the end of the day, the boss was chucking out the rest of the box. The person who told me this story filled his pockets, and subsequently sold these things on ebay for ten euros each.

          4. We still have many of the Giles annuals. Our boys loved them when they were little – the sub-plot or story going on in the background were a delight.

          5. I’m afraid to say but I’m a bit of a Giles nerd. I have every one since the first annual (1946). The more recent ones (since his death) have a lot of repeats but there are always some (until now) fresh ones. What is mildly depressing is that a lot of the older cartoons now are explained to put them into context whereas in previous years, it was assumed the reader was sufficiently au fait for this to be unnecessary..

          6. it was assumed the reader was sufficiently au fait for this to be unnecessary..
            And a sad reflection on life as we know it, in general.

          9. Correct! Mr Giles is also at the top (upside down as we look at it). All of the characters are drawn into the leaves in the whole cover. In the mid 80s, I drove from home in Birmingham to a specialist book dealer in Norfolk who was something of a Giles expert, but he’d never noticed this before. I parted with about £180 that day for six early editions. Worth every penny!

            Edit: Here’s the whole cover:

          11. I always got one at Xmas, alas they all got flung when I left home to join up. The Grandma was my favourite character as she was very like my own

  35. Good morning from a dullish Derbyshire slowly draining off after yesterday’s deluge.

  36. Good morning all.

    Crazy weather here. Overnight we’ve had hailstones the size of … well, hailstones .

    1. And in Wales concern for the storage of the oxFord vaccine.
      Sand bags and pumps on stand by.
      No room on any shelves ????
      No fork lifts available ???

      1. You cannot reasonably expect the WAG to aware that in Wales one needs to plan for rain in winter. They cannot be held responsible for the fact that over the last 20 years they have done almost nothing the alleviate flooding so and so floods are a commonplace consequence of heavy rain.

  37. I’ve heard it all now – a Jamaican on Radio Scotland this morning saying that the majority of BAME people are refusing Covid vaccinations because the information is given out by posh sounding white people and he wants more black doctors on TV giving the information. I wonder if he’d have said that if there was no TV and you couldn’t see the colour of the skin on the radio.

    1. I think there is a lot of truth in that actually. But it isn’t “institutional racism”, it’s a perfectly normal human reaction.

      1. This guy certainly believed that – I guess it was ‘normal’ for him. However why is it that there’s no complaints when BAME doctors give info to whites. Racism appears to work one way

          2. Or because, like everything in visual media, casting choices are made at almost every step. Often ones which give the viewer an impression that is quite at odds with reality. There’s a even a word for it, on the tip of my tongue – ‘flying’, ‘buying’? Got it! Yes, it’s called ‘lying’.

          3. Last couple of times I was in hospital, there were no BAME doctors and only the last time were there BAME nurses (2015 and 2017).

      1. He’s been here for a long time – in fact his parents brought him here…..I wish I’d been the interviewer!

    3. The Beeb could provide a ‘spell of the day’ provided by a celebrity witch doctor as part of their swell of black offerings. Juju specialists could sit around a coffee table and advise our incomers of the best potions to ward of ills. Tssk! back to reality, government advisors will keep enforcing policies that have trashed the nation and led to ever increasing infections. Considering the options, maybe a slot for a witch doctor might be of more use..

      1. Maybe a sacrificial white cockerel and the throwing of bones on the ground might be the answer

    6. There is a distinct timbre in the voice of many people of African heritage, so a whitey on the wireless wouldn’t have the desired effect.

      1. Clearly you never heard Tony Cozier commentating on the cricket. He sounded just like any other Afro-Caribbean commentator, I remember being more than a little surprised to discover that he was white… you certainly couldn’t tell on the wireless.

    7. I’m sure he’d be better off in Jamaica then; presumably all the doctors there are black.

  38. Forgot to mention , I’m feeling a bit better this morning after 4 Disprin and a reasonable sleep – my thanks to all who wished me well.

    1. I missed that yesterday, Alec. Me taking the pee makes me feel bad. What reaction did you have?

      1. Yo Mo

        Me taking the pee makes me feel bad.

        That used to mean a trip to the Sickbay and stoppage of Tot, allegedly

      2. Glands swelled, sore throat, little lumps at the back of my throat – I guess it was my immune system fighting against whatever was injected

        1. Sorry to hear that, hope it goes away. Our local GP surgery vacced all the staff, with ‘spare’ Oxford vaccine and 2 of them had to be sent home with a reaction yesterday. I’ve got an inside source.

    3. Good you’re feeling better, as I guess I’m almost standing in line, I’m still waiting to hear what effect if any the jab might have on me.
      I’m not holding my breath.

          1. I’m home now! I think they wanted to decrease the infection risk, so I was back about 6pm! They were brilliant and I’ve just had a shower! That was bliss!

          17. Brilliant Sue , goodness me, that was so quick .

            How are you feeling , and do you have stairs to climb?

            So pleased all went well for you , modern surgery is terrific these days .

      2. I would be interested to hear if anyone feels any psychological symptoms in the days after getting the vaccine – more than usually worried, disturbed, gloomy etc.

        1. I have just had a conversation with one of my nephews he should be a Nottler, he’s on the same page. But he was telling me about my sister, his mother and his father who are about ten years older than i am, the over 80s who were cock-a-hoop that they had received their ‘jabs’ yesterday but were at the same time slightly put out that other people they know who are younger had their ‘jab’ before they did. It seems to working on the human competitive psyche. I’m still not sure.

          1. A friend of a friend in London recently turned 70, and had her jab a couple of weeks ago.

            Around here they’ve just started vaccinating the 80/90 year olds.

        3. All the ones who ring the Beebs phone-in radio shows rant about how wonderful having the jab is – even at 3 in the morning. Seems to make them deliriously happy – AND unable to sleep. It sounds SO unreal it’s stupid.

    4. Excellent!
      Mind you don’t get over-excited and exercise yourself into knackeredness, F_A.

  39. A comment from DT’s letters ….

    Alan Douglas:

    How wonderful to have Lady Gaga singing at Biden’s inauguration.

    Soon she can be brought back to sing for President Gaga himself, prior to President Harris taking over.

    3. MOH called me in yesterday afternoon as she was watching it and asked me who this woman was in a weird dress and makeup. I worked out that she was going to sing but had not a clue who she was. Quite a good voice though.

  40. The BBC – the UK Government has started a mean minded dispute over the EU’s diplomatic status.

    Also the EU is not a country, the UK was a sovereign nation within it.

  41. Great news today…….are you ready for this ?
    Golf’s ‘EUROPEAN’ tournament season gets underway today……..wait for it…….in……Abbudabi. ⛳

      1. They showed some footage on bbc sport this morning. Rory Gallagher sinking a putt on a very dry looking putting green.
        Sport……Anything for money eh.

  42. Now I’ve seen it all. Dominic Rabb being interviewed in Kenya. Talking about rich countries supplying more vaccines to Africa.
    Really.

    And how wonderful our own families are able to contact each other across the wide open spaces on what’s app and zoom. Or email.

        1. We have kids going hungry – can’t go to school, needing 2nd hand laptops etc etc – and our leaders throw millions away to show how good THEY are. The UK is being took on the road to becoming a 3rd World country – all with our leaders help.

    3. It’s truly quite astonishing how they think. Her they are, telling us how much of a mess the economy is in – a mess they caused by not opposing Brown – and that we must pay for them to live how they want to, then there they go, giving our money away to other countries to give them what we don’t have.

      Is it just me, or is anyone else tired of wasteful, arrogant politicians burning our money?

      1. Although i believe the foreign aid budget has been reduced form over 13 billion PA. We still pay out far too much and these countries have become reliant on it. And have increased their expectations and consumptions to suit and child birth has also increased along side this.

    4. From the BBC this morning it was said that Raab has given away £500 million of British taxpayers’ money to Third World leaders “so that they can buy vaccines”

      Whether that money is ever spent on vaccines is very doubtful!

      1. Why can’t they just ship the vaccines direct? I’d rather pay for that from my taxes than have the money go into the despots’ back pockets.

  43. This might help ‘Made in Britain’:
    From the Beeb website:
    “Anyone in the UK receiving a gift from the EU worth more than £39 may now face a bill for import VAT – with many items charged at 20%.
    For goods costing more than £135, customs duties may also apply, which can range from 0% to 25% of the product you’re buying if they have not been paid by the sender already.
    The extra charges are usually collected by the courier on behalf of the government, with customers asked to pay before they can pick up their package.
    Some firms have started charging additional “handling fees” to shoppers to cover costs associated with extra customs checks and paperwork that must be filled out.
    Royal Mail, for example, is charging an £8 fee it says “reflects the cost of clearing items through customs and presenting them to Border Force”.
    Meanwhile, delivery firm DHL says it is charging UK customers 2.5% of the amount paid to clear customs, with a minimum charge of £11.”

    1. Wasn’t this always the case for stuff ordered from the US?
      I’ve certainly had to go and pick something up from the customs.

      1. Usually these days, the shipper will send you a bill for the VAT plus handling which you must pay, then they pay the VAT for you and deliver the goods. It is different for high value items where you can pay customs directly, but there is still a handling charge.

        1. A son bought his son a new desk for his room. It was part of his birthday on 2nd December. It failed to turn up so switched a Xmas present and hopefully give it to him as part of his Xmas.

          It came in 3 deliveries – post Xmas, 2nd January and the last box was 15th January along with an Invoice for import duty, admin etc of £85.

          The goods were despatched in November i.e. No import duty etc was due………………. the saga continues with the UK agent / site owner for a refund!

    2. Look at it this way. Export from Germany is VAT-free (26% rate?) and then you pay 20% on import. So, cheaper. What’s not to like?

      1. The shipper’s handling charge on the VAT is the problem. See my reply to King Stephen above.

    3. Problem with VAT rated imports is that if the VAT is £x, the shipper places a £x handling charge on top of that, which means that import VAT is effectively 40%. The VAT charged includes the shipment cost, so if you buy something from the US at £65, US postal charge £35, the VAT is £20, handling £20, what you pay is £140 for a £65 item.

      If the goods + shipment is less than £30, the goods come in VAT free, no charge.

      I don’t understand why postage from the US is so ridiculously expensive, but all shippers are about the same, with USPS marginally cheapest.

      1. Again, Rodger, another incentive to buy British, even if it is marginally more expensive before VAT is applied.

        1. Yes certainly. Except that this never seems to apply to China where everything, at no matter what price arrives with cheap transportation (fair enough) and no VAT. I think that means they are lying on the declaration form. I’m not sure who is legally responsible for that, knowing HMRC probably the end purchaser.

          1. Then it’s up to HMRC, guided by Government to levy a bluddy great tariff, paid by the importer (China) before the goods are allowed to land.

          2. That would require a) the intention to benefit the UK and b) some idea of how business works.

    4. Problem with VAT rated imports is that if the VAT is £x, the shipper places a £x handling charge on top of that, which means that import VAT is effectively 40%. The VAT charged includes the shipment cost, so if you buy something from the US at £65, US postal charge £35, the VAT is £20, handling £20, what you pay is £140 for a £65 item.

      If the goods + shipment is less than £30, the goods come in VAT free, no charge.

      I don’t understand why postage from the US is so ridiculously expensive, but all shippers are about the same, with USPS marginally cheapest.

    5. Tax on tax on tax on tax on tax.

      Why not put the costs on to the seller to pay? Oh, hang on. They’ll be imposed on the customer. OK, why not remove the taxes entirely to promote free trade? Hang on, the state is a greedy fat pig.

      Do border force charge the gimmigrants £11 to land? Ah, of course not. Those goods are worthless.

        1. Assuming that’s the twit JenniferSP yet again presenting no rational argument and therefore irrelevant.

          A downvote from them is really an upvote.

    6. No real change there. I’ve often had to go to the Post Office to pay the fees and collect the parcel. But that applied only to non-EU purchases.
      It now applies to the EU.
      However, eBay is now automatically charging 20% VAT on all purchases from the EU, up to the £135 figure, even if the items are zero-rated, like books.

    7. So, Stephen, as you say, Made in Britain is the answer.

      Now let’s have the Government and The Chancellor do something like tax free manufacturing incentives and campaigns like the old Buy British. Start charging reciprocal charges for anything arriving from the EU to be paid by the EU before we will accept it here.

  44. Funny that, folks, just 10:00 and not a single downvote, despite some contentious posts. Must be the weather, which I’m going to battle with on my to the Surgery (6 miles) for another INR – the one last week was too high so they want to check if reducing the rat poison has the desired effect.

    Play nicely as I shall be back later to check…

    1. Don’t knock the downvoters, I see it as them having the honesty to tell us who they really are.

        1. People who cannot argue competently might as well confine themselves to downvoting.

        2. I see that, like Cori, I seem to be being stalked. Good to know I’ve upset it. Tit for tat and other schoolchild, “I’ll get you!”

      1. I asked, Eddy and was fed some claptrap about cost and potential harm with other medication.

        1. I think they cost as much as a pound each.
          But don’t quote me.
          But it’s got to be less expensive than the whole warfarin routine.

          I see the moron is back
          down voting you ???? WTF is that supposed to mean ?

          My best mate was also fed some clap trap today regarding his intense knee pain and has been told his going to be given a programme of exercises. Been there done that, but it made mine far worse.

        2. I’ve been on Xarelto (rivaroxaban) 15mg for over 3 years, along with 5 other meds without problems. I have a med review every 6 months & no fiddling about with frequent testing. It can’t be expensive; my GP is very cost-conscious.

    3. Assume that you are on warfarin?
      Whatever happens, be very cautious and reluctant if they try to recommend a medication called edoxaban, marketed in UK as Lixiana. Works for some people, but has awful side effects for others, including breathing difficulties.

      1. Oh, whoopee, as Poppiesmum says it’s a badge of honour to have pi55ed of a downvoter. Especially that one. I can only say, “If the cap fits, wear it.”

          1. A lot of votes are disappearing today. I have up-voted your primary post 3 times, but my upvote is never there when I look.

          2. I noticed that earlier today – I had upvoted posts on my phone, but they had disappeared when I was on my laptop so I upvoted them again.

          4. For quite a long time I’ve had the feeling that some of the upvotes which I give have been removed. It recently came out that the mods have the power to do this.

          8. No, J, still there, even after a refresh and I note that at 15:10 they’ve flowered all over the earlier posts.

  45. It is good to know that St. Tone cares enough about our wonderful, world beating, envy of the world etc. NHS to be offering his management skills again. This time he made a foray into treatment management, because as an ex-PM, Barrister and Oxford PPE, he would know far more about that than Doctors, obviously.

    His brilliant intervention to suggest that the 2nd dose of Pfizer vaccine should be delayed to 12 weeks, instead of 3 to 4 weeks, so more people can have their first dose has completely transformed our vaccination program. Under this scheme, more people will get their first dose, which gives only 30% protection. The 1st dose is only preparation for the 2nd dose which is the real hit, but by 12 weeks the effect of the 1st dose has worn off, so all the 12 week 2nd dose achieves is another round of 30% protection. This is the sort of profoundly effective contribution that Tone is renowned for.

    St. Tone, a man whose opinion of his own capabilities knows no bounds.

    1. On Tuesday Jeremy Vine (Radio 2) was insisting that the 1st dose of Pfizer gives 90% protection & the 2nd dose boosts that to 95%. I don’t agree with his figures.

    2. Let me guess – he’s soaked up a good few million for being wrong?

      The cretin should be banned from the public sector permanently. He’s a parasite.

      1. No, I knew what he was first time I saw him on TV. He is a recommend and run management consultant. In other words, the archetypal complete knob.

    4. We expect the cretin to get it completely wrong for us, after all everything he has touched apart from his bank account has turned to shite!
      The real question is why do people like our Government listen and take any notice?

    5. Does it not amount to an admission that for a disease with only a 0.2% fatality rate, it really doesn’t matter? It’s popular on Twitter to draw a false equivalence with smallpox but smallpox had a 52% fatality rate. Tuberculosis still has a 12.4% fatality rate and kills around 1.4 million annually.

      (When I Googled smallpox fatality, among the search results was “Amazon UK, Get Smallpox, Smallpox at Low Prices”. You can buy anything on Amazon. Even a dose of the ‘pox!)

      1. For an illness that results in average hospital stays of over 5 weeks and still kills between 25 and 30% of those hospitalised (it was over 35% in the spring)

        Look at it that way and it matters… a lot.

      2. You can also get it in any red light district, but as we’re not allowed to travel, I suppose having it delivered to your door is a service of sorts.

      3. According to worldometers the world has seen 2,086,159 deaths from 97,422,070 cases. That’s a per case fatality rate of 2.14%. The UK case fatality rate is slightly higher at 2.66%. You can set against that the vcurrent best estimate is 50% of all cases are a-symptomatic and generally not diagnosed. That still leaves an alarming death rate if everyone catches it.

        Agreed there is many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip but those figures suggest to me that the govt. is right to be cautious in its approach to the disease.

          2. The UK is ‘cases’ is positive tests. OTOH, since posting that I remembered that I saw a few days ago that they estimate 20% of the population of England now carry antibodies, which would mean a ‘let it run’ death toll of about 500,000. Pro-rata for population size slightly worse than Spanish flu, but not as bad because it mainly takes out those near the end, as opposed to the young and healthy.

          3. And don’t forget that Flu deaths seems to have virtually disappeared. Strange how we don’t trash the country for Flu isn’t it?

    1. Joking aside, i wonder how many meals the so called ‘starving’ might be able to afford with out their huge monthly mobile phone bills.
      Most of their individual bills are more than our first monthly mortgage payments.

      1. Entirely agree, R-E. What they pay out on mobile phone contracts, stupefying quantities of unhealthy take-away food, and tattoos could service the National Debt of a medium sized African dictatorship.

        1. I don’t really know what the TV prog was yesterday but they showed a female with her lips looking like a serving hatch with a rubber ring shoved in it. She was scantily clad and was cover in tattoos from head to toe and by her own admission everything in between, armpits covered also, you name it, just a small area around her massive limps left for future scrawling. She had a young child with her and that also had some tattoos. Mindless stupidity.

          1. “Mindless stupidity.”

            And who is the more stupid? These creatures, or us for simply putting up with it?

  47. I see that one of Biden’s first acts, on the now inexorable downward path to socialism, was that he removed the bust of Churchill from the Oval Office. Compared with Churchill, Biden is nothing but an earthworm.

    Don’t forget what Churchill said of socialism: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

    1. “Biden is nothing but an earthworm.”

      I disagree with vigour! Earthworms are vital to the health of planet. Without them there would be no agriculture. They are one of the most crucial life forms to have ever developed.

      If you had said that Biden is slug slime then I would concur.

    2. I see no objection to that. A man is entitled to adjust his office the way that pleases him. It is different to Obama, who very pointedly put it in a taxi and sent it round to the British Embassy. Biden likes the UK no better than Obama did, but at least he is not being gratuitously rude. So far.

        1. He will find ways to express his dislike, as you say, sooner or later. One thing, unless things go very well with the economy (which I doubt) in 12 months he will be pre-occupied with the mid-terms, where he is likely to lose both the House and the Senate. If that happens he will be a lame duck, plus too old to run for re-election with a huge nomination fight brewing in the Democrat party. Harris will be the DNC candidate and they will pull every dirty trick to get her through. I can guess who she will be opposing. It is going to be fun to watch. There are structural problems building in the Dems which will be very hard to control, but the DNC will do everything it can to suppress them, not fix them.

          If the Republicans go back to same old same old they will be irrelevant. If they find a younger but slicker Trump the Dems will be floundering.

          1. The Dems will cheat massively in all future elections, just as they did in November, if allowed to do so.

            But everyone is assuming it’s over for Donald right now when that is by no means true.

            Wait and watch !

          2. We were promised a kraken but all we had was an octopus that could predict the world cup and has since shuffled off to Davey Jones’ locker. It will be interesting how dem Dems approach Antifa/BLM, I suspect that they know that defunding the police is not going to work. It was all Donald’s fault previously, so who to blame now. It didn’t take long for the rioters to bite the hand that feeds them. Sadly, the unelected supra-national bodies will once again getting their mits near the levers of power and will be keen on forcing through change before 2024. Greta for supreme leader?

          3. The kraken didn’t happen because of bribery, blackmail and intimidation.

            But it’s not over. Wait and watch !

          4. I shall. Nothing else to do as it seems that we are to be locked up, vaccine or not. Thankfully, I don’t have to earn a living anymore, the company went bust without the help of the lurgy!

          5. The Dems will cheat massively in all future elections, just as they did in November, if allowed to do so.

            But everyone is assuming it’s over for Donald right now when that is by no means true.

            Wait and watch !

          6. The only Republican allowed to be elected from now on will be one who is fully signed up to the Great Reset agenda.

          7. I doubt that. US elections have always been dirty, and both sides cheat. The pointed refusal of the Courts to get involved has clearly defined all issues of cheating as a political matter. Two can play at that game, and it will be very difficult for the State Courts (where the matter was decided) to take a different tack. The Courts have defined cheating as an acceptable part of the election process. They have sown the wind.

          8. The one who owns the voting machines has a clear advantage though, so the cheating of past years is irrelevant now.
            We haven’t had a Prime Minister who wasn’t fully signed up to the globalist agenda since 1997, and some would argue before that. The US is about to enter the era of one party politics too, they just haven’t realised it yet.

          9. Why do people always assume that the fight is lost forever just because the opposition is currently do well at one aspect of it? You are old enough to have seen how things turn around, and the ‘ownership’ issue that you refer to is fluid because it’s business.

          10. “Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake” – and in politics, mistakes a-plenty.

          11. Because times have changed. In past years, one accepted that the election was lost and that there would be another chance in four or five years’ time.
            In the UK we have not had “another chance” since Cameron took over the Conservative party and they fell prey to the idea that they would never hold power again unless they followed the Blair/globalist agenda.
            The Biden victory is frankly not very credible. If one election can be fixed, then the next and the next and the next certainly can be too. So the Republicans must toe the line if they wish to be elected.
            If the ability to form a government depends upon ownership of the voting machines, we are already in a post-democratic state.

          12. The great reset will be achieved by destroying the past so that things can not be turned around. Coal power stations demolished, history rewritten, statues pulled down, the racial balance of the West and unfettered spending now on ‘change’ resulting in big projects being irreversible. So much will have been spent on them that there will be no cash left to fund what is really needed, think HS2 and updating the rail network. Change is inevitable but there are ugly forces around that prevent anyone even discussing a point of view which is not deemed correct. In that atmosphere, unelected supra-national bodies and their benefactors can impose lasting change on a country and it simply can not be revered by voting for the ‘other’ lot at the next election.

      3. I RAte your comment not very highly

        Strange, that Burden wants the US of A to be Democratic, but want Northern Ireland to be Republican

      4. The United States has never been the friend of the UK. They have behaved towards us like jealous, nasty children towards their parents.
        They have acted against us throughout the 20th century, time after time.
        It is marvellous to see our politicians and chatterati grovelling, falling over themselves to praise Biden, when he may be the most pernicious enemy for many decades. When the time comes that we have to sort out the Irish border – the one in the Irish Sea – be sure that he will stick his oar in.
        “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

        1. My understanding of the ‘border in the Irish sea’ is that Gove constructed an agreement that allowed the issue of a hard border in Ireland to be deferred for 4 years, with the eventual decision being taken by Stormont, That will come down to a stark choice, hard border in Ireland or unification with the RoI, because I don’t think the EU will allow the current compromise to continue indefinitely. I think it was right to defer that decision, the choice was not clear until late on, and Norniron need time to look carefully at the two alternatives and make up their minds. Of course the EU will try and rig the decision in favour of unification, which means they won’t stomp on the RoI for years, if they were ever going to do that – again.

          I can offer no useful comment as to what Norniron will decide.

          1. Last time I spoke with an Irish guy very close to the top of politics in the Republic, he was telling me that, despite the noises, the Republic absolutely does not want NI. There’s be too much trouble to integrate them, too much IRA activity yhat would be down to the Republic to solve, and too much money required.
            Should make for interesting times.

          2. The RoI electorate will vote for unification pretty much whatever the cost. It is a deep emotional thing and they will go for it. OTOH, the cost would be humungous as you say, and the RoI cannot afford to keep Norniron in the style to which it is accustomed. As you say, the RoI political class dread the backwash.

            I had lunch with a group of middle aged people from Donegal 18 months ago who talked about moving Donegal back into the UK. I laughed at their joke – they corrected me, they were deadly, deadly serious. They feel neglected and dis-connected from the Republic and all their friends are in Norniron. They called it Norniron too, it was when I settled on that name. I asked – they were all Catholics, a distinction they rightly saw as irrelevant in modern Ireland.

          3. Well, Donegal is (and has always been, along with Cavan and Monaghan) an integral part of Ulster.

          4. To add to my previous reply: Those guys from Denogal pointed out that the Republicans in Belfast had not thought about the ‘2nd city’ syndrome that unification would bring, and as for Derry they have no idea of the consequences. “We know what it is to be ignored, Belfast would find out”.

          5. That has certainly been the case in the past and the UK gov’t has offered NI to the South twice (Churchill made the offer in 1940, wanting use of Irish naval pots in exchange) and I believe the offer was repeated in the 70s, and then Thatcher had a plan for the UK to unilaterally withdraw from the border counties, retaining just the Protestant heartlands.

          6. I don’t believe that Thatcher ever made the offer (though she certainly considered making it – she was convinced by wiser heads a) that there were no exclusively “Protestant heartlands” the 6 counties are very mixed even in “loyalist” areas and b) that it would be even harder to manage a much reduced NI… mostly because the “loyalists” are anything but loyal.

          7. The Thatcher plan was not an offer to the ROI, it would have been a unilateral action by the UK, but I believe there was an offer in the 1970s (as there was in 1940).

          8. And how would a unilateral withdrawal have worked? It wouldn’t have a hope of working…it would have left half of NI stranded unless there was the possibility of a link up with the Republic.

        2. If George III had sent a lot more redcoats over in 1776 the it would be a different—and far better—place now. For a start they would be speaking and writing proper English instead of the retarded Pidgin variety they now use.

          3. If the French hadn’t interfered they’d still be a colony (and France might well still be a monarchy).

      5. Rudeness would only be fair. After all, were not the Great & Good rude to the POTUS who just stood down peacefully – by flying balloons of a baby in a nappy, for example? If I were running UK PLC, I’d be expecting backlash for that unpleasantness.

        1. “Peacefully”, no not quite… in fact not at all.

          As for rudeness May positively grovelled, very nearly prostrated herself at his feet.

          Trump never cared a damn for what the hoi polloi thought – his own or anyone else’s.

      6. Sir Peter Westmacott said the bust was only ever on loan as a personal gift from Tony Blair to George W Bush for the duration of his presidency.

        It was returned to the Embassy because that was where it belonged.

        1. I’m sure, if asked, he could’ve kept it on. It says rather a lot, in my view, that he gave it back on his first day in office. Hardly a priority, was it?

          1. The switchover in the Whitehouse is done by the staff, not the incoming President. The item was clearly noted for return and was returned. I don’t expect that Mr Obama was even consulted on the matter since the item was British property on loan to President Bush. It would have been removed together with any of the previous President’s personal items and dispatched accordingly. The very fact that it was returned immediately tells you that, if you cared to think about it.

          2. I believe there were actually two busts in the White House; the one everyone makes a fuss over and a second one not in the president’s office. Mountains and molehills come to mind.

          3. So where was it during Obama’s presidency? It wasn’t in his office. If, as you say, it was the staff who deal with it, then they would’ve given it back. As I recall, Trump specifically requested it when he started on the job.

          4. 20 January 2017…

            The bust on show, however, is not the one loaned by Blair, but one the White House has had since the 1960s and which had, until now, been displayed in the private residence rather than the Oval Office.

            Different bust, one which never left the Whitehouse and was on display in the private residence throughout the 8 years of the Obama’s sojourn.

            If, as you say, it was the staff who deal with it, then they would’ve given it back.

            And, as I mentioned above, they did give back. Wasn’t that what you were moaning about in the beginning?

          5. No – I was saying it was telling that it was removed by Democrats but brought in by Republican Presidents.

          6. It says rather a lot, in my view, that he gave it back on his first day in office

            Looks a lot like a moan.

            No it wasn’t “brought in” by Republican Presidents. It has never returned to the Whitehouse after being returned at the end of G W Bush’s tenure.

            For an engineer you seem to have a remarkable difficult in counting up to 2.

    3. I wonder if he’ll replace it with one of the IRA hunger strikers? After all, it was an issue dear to his heart, and he apparently hates the English.

  49. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    We don’t care who’s President: Antifa rioters smash windows at Oregon’s Democratic Party headquarters in Portland, burn American flags in Denver and vandalise stores in Seattle just hours after Biden took office

    Very encouraging to see that there are still some impartial people in the USA!

      2. Surely they did, and that is why they now feel safe to riot. They’re helping Joe in his fight against domestic terrorism.

    2. The Dems wished for Pandora’s box to open. Now that they have their wish, they are going to reap what their sowed.

    2. Philip Larkin was a great Jazz enthusiast. Here is his poem for Siney Bechet.

      For Sidney Bechet

      That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
      Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
      And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

      Building for some a legendary Quarter
      Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
      Everyone making love and going shares—

      Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
      Others may license, grouping around their chairs
      Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced

      Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
      While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed
      Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.

      On me your voice falls as they say love should,
      Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
      Is where your speech alone is understood,

      And greeted as the natural noise of good,
      Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.

  51. Correct me if i’m mistaken.
    After my comment about Cornwall yesterday and the G7 summit being held there this June. I think i heard that the previously postponed Olympics, now re-planned in Japan this year, will only be allowed to happen, if as the Japanese organisers say, the spectators are allowed to attend.
    I think seeing UK journalists in the US and UK (Rabb in Kenya) politicians reporting from foreign countries, i might appear that the very strict virus regulations we have to strictly (but the afore mentioned don’t) adhere to. Are becoming more than slightly more obvious as a scam than ever before. It’s all wearing a bit thin now.
    But what i find completely and utterly hard too understand is, just because you have ‘taken the jab’ it does not mean that you can’t be a carrier and pass on the virus.

    1. Be advised. This is the start of the end of humanity’s tenure on this planet. His implosion has started and will only accelerate. When the least capable of a species rises to the top to lead them, then the only way is downwards.

          1. I’ve never been a fan of DT but i respect the american system and they voted him in. But it remains to be seen how he was voted out.

          2. He wasn’t voted out, he was forced out by a bunch of criminals who will get their comeuppance pretty soon !

        2. Not really, Eddy. I’m talking about the fact that every leader of every country, currently, has an imbecile for a ‘leader’. Not one country, as far as I can see, has anyone of intelligence, intellect, stature or statesmanship at the helm.

          Leaders used to be selected from the most capable. Generations of tribes going back millennia had their elders, i.e. the most experienced, respected and knowledgable among their numbers, to lead them. Nowadays it seems almost de rigueur to have the most clueless in that position.

          1. It becomes a vicious circle.
            The poorer the standard of leadership, the more contempt is felt for them and their efforts. Ultimately, we get low standard politicians because nobody else wants the job.
            Think about it: a country of 320 million people ended up with the campaign for the most powerful job on earth to be between a couple of pensioners.

        1. Something we only rarely get in the UK, Poll, we always seem to end up with an elected by default dictatorship, the majority almost with out exception, vote against the incoming government.

    2. And having had the jab of ??? old weeping grandma’s think they can instantly go and hug their grandkids as the jab has suddenly freed them from lockdown. No it hasn’t.

      1. Yes i believe the British psyche and trust in our social structure and cultural upbringing has been totally destroyed by this ‘pandemic’ and it might well as many have suggested, the intention.
        The absolute b8st8rds.

        1. Indeed – I think those behind the authoritarian power/wealth grabs, mask and vaccine passport madates and lockdowns had a plan in place for this all since their ‘false start’ in 2010/11 for the ‘swine flu pandemic’ that never was. They knew another would come out of China, and this time they had the media on their side and a public worn down by the Culture Wars.

        2. Today, I watched for Darwinism to take effect. While walking Spartie, several runners leapt out into the road to avoid us. Their chances of being mown down by a bus on a busy artery leading into Colchester was far greater than my breathing a virus over them.

      2. There are still about 193 countries to give their name to C19 virus. And now we are on to individual English counties; I’m slightly mystified as to why the first county mentioned is Kent.
        (Gosh, nurse, is it time for my tablets already?)

        1. I believe that they mutation was first isolated from a person living in Kent but I expect that it is called something else outside the UK.

          They’ve isolated tens of thousands of minor mutations since they isolated the first ones. The UK is doing a lot of the sequencing.

    1. Rather less suggestive is ‘Heavy Plant Crossing’. I look out for triffids, but no luck so far.

        1. 🙂 We have an aspidistra that is supposed to be 150 years old, presumably an offshoot of the original plant.
          It certainly adds to the Victorian ambience of Allan Towers.

          1. Mum had one for a while – we had a rather dark house and since they like shade it was one of only a few things that did well. Later on as we modernised (new windows let in a lot more light) she was able to grow more interesting things and the aspidistra disappeared.

            But “the biggest aspidistra in the world” was always her comment when a “heavy plant crossing” sign appeared… funny how the oddest things stick in the mind.

          2. Like my father’s comment every time my mother made junket: “Ah, Junkers 88”.
            Looking back, I think he deliberately said it to wind us up.

          5. My grandmother had one in the front parlour (which was never used in the ordinary course of events; it was dark even with the gas light on).

  54. Britain needs Biden to succeed, but US decline might now be unstoppable

    The president’s speech struck the right notes, but I still can’t help fearing for the United States’s future

    ALLISTER HEATH

    Our fate is inseparable from America’s: if the Republic falls, if individual liberty, constitutional democracy, free markets and equality before the law fail, so does the whole of the West. The United States may never have lived up to its ideals, but it remains a beacon among nations, a beautiful idea, a country with a unique, liberating mission.

    In stark contrast to his predecessor’s inauguration four years ago, Joe Biden’s speech was befitting of the office he has inherited: this was indeed “democracy’s day”, with all of the proper iconography, and his message of healing and renewal exactly what the world was hoping for. As he put it, “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.”

    Much will now improve. His administration will respect democratic, civil and constitutional norms; global affairs will no longer be randomly upended by a stream of half-baked, fanciful Twitter egotism. The rupture with despicable neo-fascists will be total, and presidential pronouncements no longer designed to shock and provoke enemies while achieving little else. The fight against Covid will be conducted more professionally.

    Yet America’s challenges are profound and existential, and long predate Trump’s sinister demagoguery. Despite its military superiority and its scientific, technological and corporate triumphs, the country has been in relative and sometimes absolute cultural, social, political and economic decline for at least two decades. George W Bush messed up, Barack Obama failed to stem the slide and Trump left in disgrace. I hate to be pessimistic so early into his presidency, but it is hard to see how Biden will be able to truly move the dial.

    He is right that a central problem is that America has become poisonously divided into two warring camps as part of the “uncivil war” described in his speech, but a truce will prove almost impossible to negotiate.

    In the Sixties, all classes shared similar values when it came to religiosity, the family and patriotism. The rich didn’t form their own caste, and could easily relate to the rest of the country. The ideological gap between Democrats and Republicans was minimal. Today’s America is unrecognisable. The highest earners, mostly Ivy League and similar graduates, marry others like themselves, spend a fortune on their children’s education, live in urban areas or wealthy enclaves, and worship at the church of woke. The poorest no longer marry, drop out of school, earn less and increasingly depend on opioids and videogames. Cultural inequalities have reached extreme levels.

    The old, quintessentially American “yeoman middle class” of blue and white collar property owners and believers in the American dream is being hollowed out, as Joel Kotkin warns in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism. Surging property and health care costs have squeezed living standards. As a recent article in the Atlantic put it, in the Nineties The Simpsons felt realistic; today, their quality of life is beyond the reach of much of Middle America.

    Power and influence have shifted not just to a new oligarchy, led by the Silicon Valley barons, but also to a credentialed clerisy of tech workers, academics, lawyers and creative types. In the past, Left-wingers used to want to help the poor; today, the younger woke vanguards are more interested in shaming working class voters who disagree with them. The same is true of the more extreme environmental activists, hence a class war based on education and values.

    Tragically, the rise of critical race theory means that the ideas of Martin Luther King, one of the greatest Americans of all time, are now losing popularity. Instead of seeking a colourblind society where race no longer matters, the woke ideology prefers to accentuate differences.

    It is no wonder the political system looks broken. Both sides view the other as morally flawed, contemptible and illegitimate, a perception that Trump deliberately stoked but one that Biden will find it hard to reverse. Younger voters tell pollsters they don’t trust in democracy as much; they are much more likely to embrace socialism and even communism. Woke ideology’s inherent illiberalism, its central belief that anybody that doesn’t agree is suffering from “false consciousness” is itself profoundly totalitarian and driving a tragic loss of faith in American institutions from the Left.

    The ever-increasing power of the juristocracy, promoted by Left and Right, is an inherent flaw in the US system. Another is the Faustian pact under which a small cadre of corporate interests are allowed to exercise undue, illiberal and anti-free market influence on rule-making through lobbying and political activity, in return for billions of dollars of “protection money” for Washington. Most politicians benefit; a tiny group of established, corporate insiders stand to gain; but taxpayers and genuine entrepreneurs lose out. It’s a warped system but won’t go away under Biden, who now also has to cope with an explosion of crime in the biggest cities.

    The next great challenge is that the frontier spirit is in decline: America is becoming staler, less innovative, less willing to take risks and reinvent itself. Around a fifth of Americans moved home every year in the Fifties and Sixties, a proportion that was fleetingly reached once again at the height of Reaganomics; yet mobility has been in decline since and by 2018-19 fell below 10 per cent for the first time since 1947.

    Paradoxically, despite the staggering success of Californian tech firms, the start-up culture is dying, and moving out of the US. Fewer Americans work for younger companies, and more and more work in larger firms. The share of companies aged 11 or older has shot up. The answer is not higher taxes or more regulations, yet that is exactly what Biden’s team is proposing. Capitalism needs to be rebooted, not throttled further, and economic and productivity growth bolstered, and yet the new administration is promising policies that will reduce incentives while fuelling the asset and debt bubble.

    I hope I’m wrong, and that Biden can somehow deliver a series of miracles. His speech struck all of the right notes, but words alone cannot heal the fissures at the heart of the Republic. A new, more civilised era is beginning for his country, but I continue to fear for America’s future.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/20/britain-needs-biden-succeed-us-decline-might-now-unstoppable/

    1. I’m waiting for Biden to be give the Nobel Peace Prize, a fortnight after entering Office.

          1. But still does the “young girl” look. No make-up, hair in plaits etc. I think it is done for effect. And a look that seems she hasn’t ever smiled. EVER.

    2. I haven’t read the whole article, however, it’s not what you say that counts it’s what you do .

      Edit: Posted by vw: for some reason it’s come out as Alf’s post.

      1. And tellingly, Biden has said very little about what he plans to actually do, after he has undone everything that Trump has done that is.

        1. But he did say that he was going to wage war on “domestic terrorists and white supremacists”.

        2. He’ll be healing the nation by going after his predecessor and those on the Right. That will do the trick. I did find it comical that Robin Pagnamenta though that Biden would ‘go after’ big tech to split them up and regulate. As a Telegraph reader put it in the comments below the article, why would he bite the hand that feeds him?

    3. I’m afraid I got no further than, “His administration will respect democratic, civil and constitutional norms”. Twaddle.

      3. I found it so funny that his ‘speech’ (Bill Clinton nodded off) yesterday contained so many platitudes about ‘healing’ whilst the politicised witchunt against Trump as regards the events of 6th Jan and shutting down right of centre media, commentators and free speech, whilst being silent on AOC and many Dems wanting GoP/Trump voters punished for their ‘crime’ of voting that way.

      4. Heath’s analysis of the USA’s economic and social problems is the pertinent part of his article. Biden is unlikely to tackle those. The conditions that led to the election of Trump will return the Republicans in four years – if they can find a better candidate.

        1. The problem is, Trump *was* a good candidate. He spent 4 years fighting the media and Left.

      5. Sue, I’ve just this minute got that far and decided that Heath is an arse licker extraordinaire and is incapable of objective judgement. I gave up before I threw up.

    4. Britain needs Biden to succeed. Why?
      As an independent nation we should be out making friends with our friends in the Commonwealth and in South America. We should not be sucking up to the USA any more than we should suck up to Russia. Russia is more likely to offer us friendship, the USA never will.

      1. Anglo-US friendship is a fairly recent phenomenon largely built on being allies in WW2 and then through NATO, and even then there have been periods of relative ‘coldness’. It was probably Thatcher who really positioned the UK as being the US’ ‘closest ally’.

    5. Democrats don’t like capitalism though. People get rich in capitalist economies. Jobs are created. Wealth! Freedom!

      The Left can’t have that! If people are rich and happy, they don’t need a massive government and stop clamouring for high taxes on ‘da evul wich’ because.. it’s them!

    3. They have to be in the league of rich of the social media barons, Soros and Gates to get that level of preferential treatment.

  56. Oh how interesting……….

    ”While serving as United Nations Development Programme Administrator, Malloch Brown spoke beside George Soros in 2002 suggesting that United Nations and Soros’s Open Society Institute, as well as other organizations, work together to fund humanitarian functions” Wikipedia.

    The UN now interchanges personnel with Open Society in New York, so the UN in many ways is Open Society.

    1. I do find it ironic that (as it appears) his Open Society Institute is funding organisations committed to ending free speech and transparancy in government.

        1. Well, he (as I understand it) does like funding Antifa by various shell ‘charities’. They like destroying, burning and violence against the person.

    2. I do find it ironic that (as it appears) his Open Society Institute is funding organisations committed to ending free speech and transparancy in government.

    1. It’s easy to make a profit in a rising market. The trick is not try and guess the top of a volatile market but get out while you’re in the black.

  59. A good article from yesterday by (if I recall correctly) former BBC reporter Robin Aitkin:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2021/01/20/biden-presidency-will-push-news-medias-claims-impartiality-breaking/

    Just a shame that 95% of the rest of the coverage from the MSM, Telegraph included, is biased and poor quality. ‘Normality has returned’, as has the swamp. What was also telling is that the comments to that article I referred to all got deleted last night. Could it be that they agreed with Aitkin, but went further and criticised the Telegraph’s own coverage?

  60. I must take my dog for a walk, she is giving a most disdainful look whilst sulking on her bed.

    1. We were forced to turn back early on our walk, because the path was flooded – not as bad as Bangor-is-y-coed, though.

      1. A short drive away we have a lovely piece of common land and along side it a large wooded area. She jumped into the passenger seat of my old transit connect and off we went for an hours ‘walkies’. Not too muddy either.
        She’s was ten last July but still runs like a train to fetch her ball.

        1. Mine was 17 last December. He leaves that ball malarkey to the younger ones now 🙂 He still likes to plod on for his walkies, though. It’s just that we don’t go anywhere fast, these days.

  61. As far as I am aware our bombastic PM has never explained his damaging last minute cave in on the Trade Deal agreement with the EU, an agreement which the EU has unilaterally extended the transition period to end of February and most likely beyond. Very little in the EU trading news is positive for the UK at the moment.
    Where are the ERG group and Nigel Farage?

    1. Last minute cave-in? You mean the last minute announcement of something that had already been agreed to?

      1. Walter – I am now pretty sure that was what Johnson intended all along and was lying to the electorate and I suspect to his negotiator. . I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I have only contempt for him now. He is destroying this country.

    3. 328700+ up ticks,
      Afternoon CS,
      Standing in the shadow of johnson, as moggy did with mayday and his day tours to the wire running an attack / defence campaign regarding may, erring mainly on defence.
      The “nige in Grand old Duke of York mode ready to go into action as he did last time,
      IMO favouring johnson.

      1. The “nige” in Grand old Duke of York mode ready to go into action ……

        WHAT?? You mean Farage is away to America, to shag underage girls?

        1. 328700+ up ticks,
          Afternoon DM,
          The original in this instance , but nothing currently would surprise me.

  62. Phew. I just cannot take the hectic pace of life at the moment.
    This morning, I’ve visited three – yes, three – shops and walked Spartie.
    At this rate, I’ll have something approaching a life.
    p.s. Allan Towers is now well stocked up with haggis.

      1. Particularly lethal if hurled at the enemy piping hot whilst distracting him with unintelligible Rabbie Burns verses! 😉

          4. You are quite correct although RAF Coltishall, where I lived for a while, was reasonably level. Oddly enough, I remember falling over a few times in those days but nothing to do with different length legs more to do with Adnams ales.

      3. The Black Watch used to have their Burns Night Haggis from a butchers in Norfolk as he won the blind tasting competition. Would not be allowed to happen today.

          3. Very true, Billy, but some of their produce was very good. I liked Papworth’s sausages, some of the best in Norfolk. Graves’ in Briston (they also had a stall inside Larner’s in Holt) sold some delicious pork and bacon. I also remember an excellent sausage shop in East Dereham (I think they had a stall on Norwich market) but I forget their name. There’s also a decent butcher’s on Shirehall Plain in Holt.

      4. An answer to ‘Addressing The Haggis’

        Burn’s Night – A New Interpretation

        Oh whit a sleekit horrible beastie
        Lurks in yer belly efter the feastie
        Jist as ye sit doon among yer kin
        There sterts tae stir an enormous win’
        The neeps ‘n’ tatties ‘n’ mushy peas
        Stert workin’ like a gentle breeze
        But soon the puddin’ wi’ the sauncie face
        Will hae ye blawin’ a’ ower the place
        Nae maiter whit the hell ye dae
        A’bodys gonnae hiv tae pay
        Even if ye try tae stifle It’s like a bullet oot a rifle
        Hawd yer bum ticht tae the chair
        Tae try an’ stop the leakin’ air
        Shif yersel fae cheek tae cheek
        Pray tae God it disnae reek
        But aw yer efforts go assunder
        Oot it comes like a clap o’ thunder
        Ricochets aroon the room
        Michty me a sonic boom
        God almichty it fairly reeks
        Hope a huvnae s**t ma breeks
        Tae the bog a better scurry
        Aw whit the hell, it’s no ma worry
        A’body roon aboot me chokin
        Wan or twa are nearly bokin
        A’ll feel better for a while
        Cannae help but raise a smile
        Wis him! A shout wi’ accusin glower
        Alas too late, he’s jist keeled ower
        Ye dirty bugger they shout and stare
        A dinnae feel welcome ony mair
        Where e’er ye be let yer wind gang free
        Sounds like jist the job fur me
        Whit a fuss at Rabbie’s party
        Ower the sake o’ wan wee farty

        1. “Where e’er ye be let yer wind gang free…” As quoted by Peter Alliss on one occasion when walking round a golf course.

          1. Seen on a Dorset gravestone…

            “Always let your wind go free
            ‘cos keeping it in was the death of me”.

  63. Today’s rant.

    Totty on beeboid Radio 3 introducing recital from Leeds Town Hall:

    “The first concert here was in 1726. Since the seventeenth century…..” AAARRRGGGHHH!

    2. Years ago I attended a concert in the Brangwyn Hall Swansea. It was a BBC concert broadcast live, and as the first movement started we were treated to some woman rabbiting away over the music. It must have annoyed their viewers as much as it annoyed us.. Eventually a bloke close to her said in a stage whisper “Will you STFU?”. Apparently it as audible to viewers, and no, she didn’t.

      1. There are some very large tapestries lining the walls there – I don’t know what that does to the acoustics.

        1. The acoustics are OK, but not wonderful. You get bass ‘bounce’ off the back wall, so never sit very close to the back. I was stuck there for Janet Baker who had a noble pair of lungs on her and it wasn’t good. I managed to move at half time. Plus the covered iron work across the hall does something funny to the treble. One third of the way back best, has a very good acoustic. Chamber music with the hall laid out transverse, the acoustic is excellent.

          1. I haven’t been to concerts there. I was lucky enough to see Janet Baker in recital at our local music society, many years ago, when I was a teenager and she was early in her career. A wonderful singer.

          2. Dame Janet is still here.

            Unfortunately for us, she retired in 1982 and devoted herself to her husband – who had a stroke and live on until last year.

            Her records are a great treat.

  64. BBC News at One

    Announcement of major distribution of oximeters to the public to give warning signs of excessively low blood oxygen (SpO2) levels that could go unnoticed in patients with COVID-19.

    There is no doubt that these finger sensors, also used in hospitals, are a useful tool in showing warning signs of potentially dangerous conditions that may go unnoticed through lack of symptoms. However there is a danger that failure to meet the SpO2 targets mentioned by the BBC could lead to unnecessary referrals to A&E due to the wide variability and instability of this measure under different circumstances.

    Ideal however to instil a higher level of panic in the UK population by suggesting individuals may be suffering from silent hypoxia.

    1. The report did mention that if the reading was 92 or lower, the measurement should be repeated. I’ve used one for about ten years and it is pretty reliable, with only a few instances where I had to repeat the reading.

      1. Agreed.
        There needs to be some detailed instructions for using oximeters to prevent false interpretation of readngs.
        I use a video recording of mine for one minute at rest to enure stability.

        I took one last Monday to confirm that the Pfizer jab I had last week hadn’t altered my vital signs.
        This shows SpO2 level, pulse rate, Peripheral Infusion at the monitoring site and my respiration rate.
        It also displays my heart’s blood flow as a plesythmographic waveform.

        1. Ooh; a new word to me! Bit long to be useful in Scrabble, but appreciated nonetheless.

      1. Watching your oximeter going down below 92% SpO2 is likely to give you a heart attack!

        1. Had 3 already, obviously I’m a tough old git who can’t be killed – said he frantically touching wood.

        2. Tell me about it. When I was in the NNUH in August – it was down to 89%

          Last checked two weeks ago 99%

          3. Actually, because of the shortage of oxygen, medics have decided to let patients go down to 88% SpO2. That’s usually the accepted lowest tolerable value.

            However, there appear to be reports of patients with COVID-19 with levels far below this.
            This is quite possible because SpO2 can reach well below alarm thresholds during critical periods of potential congestive heart failure (CHF).

            Nocturnal oximeter recordings are the only way of establishing interpretable measures capable of forming a diagnosis.

            The frequency of monitor alarms in intensive care is a real problem for nursing staff as a result of alarm fatigue.

      2. Well, they can’t say “I can’t breathe!’ as that has been copyrighted by BLM.

          2. He should have said:
            “Excuse me officer, but you’re occluding my carotid artery which may inhibit my ability to breathe should the level of ensuing hypoxia in my cranial area compromise the funtion of my medulla oblongata!”

  66. I see the fascist Left are out in force despite their man taking office.

    Some things change… but the Left never do. Truly, these brattish whelps need a damned good thumping to be reminded how pathetic they are.

    2. Most of the ‘free’ laptops and/or tablets are now appearing on eBay. Gotta get the money for fags, booze and ta’oos from somewhere, innit?

      1. I agree with you. The same happened some years ago when the then gov’t did much the same and dished out free laptops to some wasters (well the parent(s) were wasters).

    3. Who could have predicted that, eh?

      Pay peanuts – get monkeys! The Government pays much less than the private sector, or they outsource it to the cheapest bidder.

  68. Video calls: Are the most appalling introduction into business life that I can remember. Conference calls are good. Then if someone is blethering on over ground already covered and the Chairman doesn’t know their job, you can press Privacy and get on with something useful, make calls on the other phone, do emails, drink coffee. Now you have to sit there, pretending to be interested. It’s far worse than actual meetings, because there is no ‘rest of the room’ to get across the message “SHUT UP!”. Everyone talking to their neighbour is a rock solid.

    I want an App that up will make my video up stream ‘break up’, on demand. The mike has a switch on it, so that’s covered. Or perhaps loop some film of me sitting there lapping up every word of the drivel being inflicted upon the non-assembled gathering.

    1. I can’t remember if was here or on Ar5ebook but someone suggested blowing on your cup of wine to let the others think it’s hot tea you’re drinking.

      1. “Can I just return to …. It needs to be said …”. No, no, no you bloody can’t, and no it ‘effing doesn’t. But then, when I am Chairman I am proudly fascistic.

        1. #Me Too. Once I took over the chairmanship there was no more “we’ll have to suspend standing orders to finish this discussion”, we were finished, usually, even with a lot of planning to discuss, with half an hour in hand.

          1. “I’m sorry, we have moved on from that Agendum. If you want further discussion of the matter then schedule it for our next meeting”.
            “We have already considered that argument and unless you have something new to offer, we must move on”.
            “Please, that is very interesting, but not relevant to the matter in hand. We have a lot of payroll sitting here, we must not waste time”.

            “You’re such a fascist!”. Yup.

          2. I used the “very interesting, but not relevant” line a lot with one particular committee member. He was very prone to wandering off topic.

          4. I had stood down as chairman once, but at the next AGM I was voted in again by popular request 🙂

    2. Turn off the video, mute yourself and do whatever you want. You can also sue the chat function to slag off others just need to be careful to address comments to the intended recipients only.

      1. I wouldn’t dare. Sooner or later I would cock it up and make enemies. I don’t mind making enemies, but it must be for a clear purpose.

      1. Sharp intake of breath….

        You suggesting that the “democratic process” was, er, flawed?

        1. I’m sure the 84 million Americans who voted for Biden will be along to upvote the post soon…

          3. We can just ignore it, and then say it’s not significant because if it was, somebody would have noticed it at the time.

    2. Perhaps it was due to upvotes from people from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona? Y’know, those that automatically delet those of the opposing viewpoint at the same time. Or perhaps Dominion employees?

  70. Well I had a reply from my GP he rang me earlier. And informed me that none of my medication puts me in jeopardy if I ‘take the jab’. I’m not sure if where or when it might be. I’ll get back to you all, with calm waters and light breeze. ⛵

      2. The Donkeys’ Charter

        Oh you may think just because I own a donkey
        That I can treat him any way I like
        But the fact is that the donkeys have a charter
        For in Blackpool even donkeys have their rights
        Now the charter was drawn up in May of Nineteen Forty Two
        Some of its stipulation I now will tell to you:

        I’m not allowed to kick my ass
        Such a thing must never come to pass
        I can ply me ass for hire
        From ten o’clock till one
        After that we take a break from toiling in the sun
        After we’ve taken our break
        The children on the sands we’ll take
        If you’re under 14 years of age and less than 8 stone
        You can ride on my ass but I must have it known
        if you’ve got your heavy boots on you can stick to your own
        For I won’t have you kicking my ass.

        Now Sunday is the day of rest
        For asses who’ve been doing their best.
        Once a week it’s nice for them to have a holiday
        They can have it at home or they can have it away
        Even then you have to watch out
        You never know if there’s a thief about.
        Now the other day a feller – it were last Friday week
        Took hold of my ass and away tried to sneak
        I said: “Young man, that’s quite enough you haven’t half got some cheek.
        Trying to steal my ass.”

        Now many proprietors I’ve seen
        Not keeping their asses clean
        They’re liable to inspection from the RSPCA
        And if they still don’t clean them they’ll be taken away
        Every ass must be controlled
        And learn to do just what he’s told
        Now just imagine what would happen if in one fateful hour
        The asses all went mad and made a dash up the Tower
        What a demonstration they could give of Donkey Power
        They wouldn’t need a charter then Oh Lordy, Lordy
        They wouldn’t need a charter then.

        [Jeremy Taylor]

        1. Better be careful giving them a rest on Sunday after a week’s hard work; they might go down with Azoturia (set fast), otherwise known as “Monday morning disease”.

    1. No need to worry. Won’t need to build on green belt there will be loadsa space in offices and restaurants that have gone bankrupt this year. Just need converting.

  75. Pubs and restaurants should not open before May, says Government adviser.

    Is there any chance that this totally risk averse doom-sayer could be stripped of all his earnings and all his savings, so that he and his family are made destitute as many of the businesses’ owners will be if his advice is followed.

    1. As a matter of interest, are the [subsidised] restaurants etc in the HoC open?? I can’t find an up to date list – some seem to have been open during previous lockdowns.

      1. I believe they were open. After an outcry they were closed, but I’m not sure if that is merely after 10pm curfew, or completely

    2. I totally agree. I am semi-retired and able to get by but several clients have been devastated by these nonsensical closures and lockdowns. My wife will not receive a state pension until mid 2022 as a result of yet another sneaky government bright idea (born 1956).

      The MD of a shop fitter I assist with planning consents and detailed drawings just this week tells me that he has lost contracts worth hundreds of thousands through cancelled projects in the hospitality sector. He complains that he is unable to sleep at night with worry and that it is often difficult to get paid for work completed. If a tradesman tests positive for Covid (useless PCR tests) his site has to close and staff quarantined.

      A local farmer for whom I do occasional architectural work and who has several farms has been hospitalised with a suspected duodenal ulcer. His wheat and barley yields are 30% down on previous years and he has to pay his contractors and workers. The lockdown restrictions simply add insult to other grievances.

      1. Those who give the advice to the government, government ministers and most of the public sector do not have anything like enough “skin in the game”

        1. That’s why I won’t fly in a pilotless plane. If the pilot is likely to die, and die first if they make a mistake, it will focus their minds rather.

          1. I won’t fly in a pilotless plane because I don’t trust the software – blue screen of death, literally! 🙂

          2. Yet AF447, if they had just taken their hands off the controls and switched on the autopilot, everyone would have lived. There are many similar accidents.

          3. Actually, but would they? I thought the instruments weren’t giving a true reading, so that would have affected the autopilot as well, I would have thought. Admittedly, they kept pulling on the yoke when they should have been putting the nose down. Mind you, so few pilots these days are taught to really fly. I think that’s why Sully made such a good job of it; he had real flying practice, not just simulations.

          4. The speed indication failed for 60 seconds due to iced up pitot tubes. That was a known problem with a simple procedure that they didn’t follow correctly. After that 60 seconds there was nothing wrong with the plane. The pilots became completely confused, stopped believing their instruments which were working correctly, and became afflicted by severe spatial disorientation. They flew into the sea with a severe stall they didn’t realize they were in and a vertical speed of 100mph. 1st Officer Bonnard was the pilot at fault, but he was probably very ill, but we don’t know because the French authorities cannot release the Autopsy under French law.

            As far down as 3,000 feet if they taken their hands away from the controls and switched on the Autopilot everyone would have lived.

            Right at the start they set the weather radar to the wrong setting on the ground in Rio (2 not 3), which led to them flying into the storm that all other planes that night avoided.

          5. The Captain was on a rest period at the beginning as well and I think the delay in bringing him in was probably significant.

          6. The essential problem was that there was no proper cockpit discipline. It was not clear who was actually supposed to be flying the plane. Relief pilot Robert in the left hand seat thought he was, 1st officer Bonnard in the right hand seat thought he was. Bonnard kept pulling his stick back almost throughout the descent to the ocean. The cockpit recordings are available, they were not communicating, they were in no sense working together.

            Airbus designers had not foreseen a situation where both pilots might think they were flying plane, and not communicating, so Robert got no warning that Bonnard was operating his stick. With competing inputs like that the flight computer averaged the two inputs. Since AF447 that has been changed and now there would a loud ‘competing inputs’ warning. There have also been major changes to Air France pilot training so that they do more hands on flying, rather than just programing the computer. Both pilots thinking they are flying the plane is unheard of, it is inexcusable, it never happens.

            A plane oancaking rapidly like that, the turbulence would have been extremely violent. It is doubtful that Robert and DuBois could have changed places. It would not have changed things, Bonnard was the problem. DuBois sitting behind both pilots in the closing stages didn’t identify the problem although from there he could see exactly what was happening. It never occurred to him either that Bonnard thought he had control.

          7. I was taught that if I took over from my instructor I said, “I have control” and when I handed it back, “you have control” which was confirmed. That’s basic, I thought.

          8. Yes, I agree that’s the basic discipline. It didn’t happen on AF447. Rio is the coke capital of the world and Bonnard’s communication was consist with a massive coke hangover, but still he would have wanted to live. It is more likely that he had a cerebral event, brain tumour or something, and his mind was just not working. He was a young man, but it does happen.

          9. Whatever happened to “twelve hours between bottle and throttle”? Or in this case, coke and yoke.

          10. Nowadays its 24 hours. DuBois is known to have done that, nothing is known about how Bonnard spent his time in Rio. It was a three day layover, and a serious coke hangover lasts for a long time.

          11. “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I am sorry to say we having a bit of a problem with the plane. If you look out to the starboard side, you will see a yellow inflatable dinghy on the water. That’s me sitting in it, waving”.

    1. What a pathetic twisting of the truth – that Trump led America out of these globalist traps.designed to bring it down.

      2. Trump did take the US out of the WHO and Paris climate change lies. They were designed at a global level and they were incredibly poor value for the US in expense and policy.

        So… not really twisting the truth, more the literal truth.

        The WHO asked for more money at a point when it had abjectly failed in it’s duty. It was proven toothless and to a degree corrupt. The Paris climate change thing is just a disaster. It’s a Lefty, economy destroying nonsense which will do absolutely nothing – but it isn’t designed to. It’s solely a means of impoverishing Western economies for the gain of a tiny clique promoting this nonsense.

    2. Those are pretty straight lines for ‘Shaky Joe’. Plus, I was sure he must be left-handed after those sinister videos of him with children.

  77. City of London votes to remove statues of former Lord Mayor William Beckford and philanthropist MP Sir John Cass for links to the slave trade
    Comes after recommendation from The Tackling Racism Taskforce
    It was set up after last year’s Black Lives Matter movement in 2020
    Prominent City of London figures William Beckford and Sir John Cass will fall

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9172847/City-London-remove-statues-former-Lord-Mayor-William-Beckford-MP-Sir-John-Cass.html?ito=push-notification&ci=70479&si=7271111

    How dare they do this , and why aren’t our statues protected .. this similar to the work of ISIL n the Middle East and Africa.

    Boris has to stop these people , they will be trashing us next.

    1. Good evening, Maggiebelle

      Do you really believe that Boris and his woke paramour are capable of doing anything to protect Britain’s identity and history?

      1. I wonder whether anyone here actually knows anything, or cares a jot, about William Beckford or John Cass? Or can tell you (without looking it up) exactly where the statues in question are? The country is full of statues which no one ever even notices, of people about whom no one cares.

        We used to look at the one of Robbie Burns in Aberdeen from time to time – to see whether his daisy had been half-inched again… but I think that they stopped replacing it eventually.

        We’ve got far too much stuff in this country which is “protected” and serves no purpose at all.

        1. I think the subject needs to be approached with a calmer frame of mind than people on opposing sides. Mob rule and vandalism can’t be allowed to reign and I disagree with you in that I notice most statues and appreciate being able to find out a bit about some often obscure, historic figures. But, it’s also not unreasonable to remove those that celebrate people whose actions we now find repellent as long as there’s been a proper debate first.

          1. I am torn here, between agreement and disagreement; by tearing down any of the history one is little more than a book burner.
            By all means put up a plaque explaining why we should look at the individual in a different light, but where does one stop, once removing our history starts?

          2. It’s difficult and it needs to be case by case. Personally I tend towards opposing any removal of statues, but renaming buildings concerns me less.

          3. Even there I disagree.

            Let’s take some of the London hospitals and university colleges at major universities. Many will be named after men and women who provided endowments from money gained on the back of things the woke now disapprove of.
            Had those teaching hospitals and colleges not existed many discoveries might well not have taken place.
            Erasing the names of the beneficiaries is rewriting history in ones own image

            In 100 years time I can be reasonably certain that by the standards of future times that current role models will be denigrated.

          4. You shouldn’t be torn. Those who say they are merely ‘contextualising’ are speaking with forked tongues.

          5. I disagree, there is nothing inherently wrong with putting anything into context, but one must accept the context and not be an iconoclast, particularly just to show, in current vernacular, that you are woke.

          6. Well, yes, but this thread started with a report about more calls to remove statues. Those who wish to do this are the iconoclasts and no amount of contextualising will change that.

          8. I was very vehement on another message board that mob rule and vandalism are not – and never can be – acceptable. But our built environment changes all the time and the removal (usually actually the repositioning) of statues should not be regarded as some sort of taboo or something which requires a legal process lasting for years and costing millions.

            Here we suffer from a “listed” bridge – hopelessly inadequate as a river crossing, and all too frequently closed for a repairs which are extortionately expensive relying (as they do) on licences to get stone from a closed quarry (in another country) and an ever diminishing number of stone masons. They could have built a bridge to do the job for the next 100 years for less than they’ve spent on repairs in the last 10. But that can’t happen because the useless edifice is a “monument” – as though a bridge were ever intended as anything other than a means to get from one side of the river (or other obstacle) to the other.

          9. As a matter of interest, why don’t they build a new bridge elsewhere and leave the old one?

          10. The water is 7 metres deep along there, as I type. The number of places where it is possible to put a bridge are very limited, which is why the present bridge is where it is. We have a 15 mile detour to get around at the moment because the road is flooded (a fairly frequent winter occurrence) – which makes road closures in summer for repairs even more infuriating.

          11. Most old bridges were built in the best place for their time.

            If the old bridge must be retained, for whatever legislative/heritage reasons, surely it is not beyond the skill of engineers to put in another bridge close by, if necessary immediately parallel with the current one.

            Even a relatively small town like “mine” has several crossings of varying ages within a few miles, in one case yards, of each other.

          14. Unfortunately there isn’t another easy crossing point alongside – and there’s a churchyard in the way to complicate matters.

            Bridges over the Severn are not very numerous. Shrewsbury only has 3 and one of them is a toll bridge on a narrow road.

        3. “We’ve got far too much stuff in this country which is “protected” and serves no purpose at all.”

          The ‘activists’ who wish to remove particular statues are making an aggressive political point, not a judgment of functionality. Their purpose is to denigrate British history and, by association, the ancestral British. It is a provocation.

          1. Much like the wearing of the burka, etc. It is not a mandatory requirement in islam – all that is necessary is that a woman dresses “moderately” – but it is a political statement, like a dog marking its territory.

    5. I’m sure the City of London has many historical links to the Slave Trade, so why don’t they abolish themselves?

      1. The actions of the mob in Bristol and various vandals since are illegal and those people should be prosecuted. But, that does not mean every statue should remain for ever. I wouldn’t expect India to still maintain colonial era statues, nor Russia statues of Lenin et al, so if after a proper consultation, the authorities decide to remove some statues (or my personal preference add more detail to the explanatory boards), then that should be ok.

    6. “William Beckford (baptised 19 December 1709 – 21 June 1770) was a well-known political figure in 18th-century London, who twice held the office of Lord Mayor of London (1762 and 1769). His vast wealth came largely from his plantations in Jamaica and the large numbers of enslaved Africans working for him.”

      “One of the most powerful men in Britain, Beckford owned 13 sugar plantations, over 22,000 acres of land, and about 3,000 black slaves.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beckford_(politician)

      1. So what if it was.

        The past is a different country.

        I’ll bet his wealth has eventually done more for the benefit of mankind than the racists who are trying to cancel him will ever do.

        1. Possibly, but no-one is proposing to raise statues to them. My personal preference is for more explanation / context to be given for these statues, but as long as proper consultation (as opposed to mob rule) takes place, I don’t disagree with these actions. There’s obviously a sliding scale of acceptability here, as I doubt you’d be ok with a statue of Hitler, so the question becomes where to draw the line? Anyway, this is not as is being claimed, an attack on us all.

          1. Reply further down, crossed in the post.

            Actually, I would allow a statue of Hitler or Stalin or Mao Tse Tung in the appropriate location. To me context is the important part.

          2. It’s an interesting challenge. When visiting Georgia I made a conscious decision not the visit the Stalin Museum in Gori because it glorifies him, however I did visit his underground printing press in Tbilisi which was full of Stalin / other communist paraphernalia. The presentation and context was indeed everything.

      2. A lot of edits to that Wiki in 2020 relating to slavery as far as I can see.

        curprev 06:09, 23 December 2020‎ Citation bot talk contribs‎ 11,145 bytes −48‎ Alter: template type. Add: doi. Removed proxy or dead URL that duplicated free-DOI or unique identifier. Removed parameters. | You can use this bot yourself. Report bugs here. | Suggested by Abductive | Category:1709 births | via #UCB_Category 99/234 undo
        curprev 16:02, 18 December 2020‎ Mikesiva talk contribs‎ 11,193 bytes −6‎ →‎Involvement in slavery undo
        curprev 16:02, 18 December 2020‎ Mikesiva talk contribs‎ 11,199 bytes +310‎ →‎Involvement in slavery undo
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        curprev 15:43, 18 December 2020‎ Mikesiva talk contribs‎ 10,870 bytes −6‎ →‎Legacy undo
        curprev 15:42, 18 December 2020‎ Mikesiva talk contribs‎ 10,876 bytes +309‎ →‎Legacy undo
        curprev 17:30, 26 November 2020‎ Leutha talk contribs‎ 10,567 bytes +42‎ undo
        curprev 06:48, 19 November 2020‎ 24.222.173.206 talk‎ 10,525 bytes +9‎ undo
        curprev 08:07, 27 October 2020‎ Freezingwedge talk contribs‎ 10,516 bytes −57‎ undo
        curprev 20:05, 14 September 2020‎ OAbot talk contribs‎ m 10,573 bytes +16‎ Open access bot: doi added to citation with #oabot. undo

        I don’t know how it is edited, but someone’s been busy recently.

    8. They are already trashing us, Belle. We are being “cancelled”. I doubt very much this quango Tackling Racism Taskforce will acknowledge any racism towards us.

  78. I was always told that British Justice is the best that money can buy, it now appears that what with the election fraud that American Justice is the best that China and Iran can buy.

    2. Hang on – if you can buy it, our justice system is good and if you can’t… it’s rubbish?

      No surprise there looking at the corruption and fraud.

      1. He’s a good’un. The Hollies’ close harmony was one of the best things in pop music in the 60’s and 70’s.

        1. Well spotted, when you said his name I could see the likeness. I don’t trust anyone at first glance anymore, you can’t be too paranoid.

      1. That makes me feel very young! I’d never heard that song all the way through before. It’s beautiful.

      1. Must be, B3. Either Cochrane or my former BiL who is still a snooty, gormless OE yobbo who bores for Britain.

          1. I know exactly what he has to say about me……he’s almost as original as you are. {:^))

      1. Back in the day, I use to see him taking his two dogs for a walk on Hampstead Heath.
        We breathed the same air.

          1. The only masks back in the day were used by robbers.
            And I don’t think the word ‘dogging’ was invented back in the early 70s 😉
            But the pub at the top of the Heath, Jack Straws Castle had a bit of a reputation.

      1. Good evening, peddy

        Of course I am not as competitive as you are but I beat you to it by over an hour and posted a link to one of the Hollies’ best recordings!

        1. I was busy watching the News & having an early supper. It would have been a courtesy to all if you had put a spoiler around your answer.

  80. Slightly off topic, because someone referred to bitcoin spam/scam earlier.

    After a long time with hardly any spam getting through, I am being swamped.

    Usually I mark it as spam and block the sender, what are the risks of blocking the domain?

  81. I am off – re-reading (for the first time since the 1960s) le Carré’s “Call for the Dead”.* I treated myself for my birthday to a second-hand copy.

    Gosh, his early stuff was good. In later years, IMHO, he became a bit pot-boilerish.

    Anyway, I’ll pull up a kitten and go back to the novel.

    * It was made into a damned good film – “The Deadly Affair” – with James Mason playing the rol of Smiley (though in the film he had a different moniker)

    A demain.

  82. Evening, all. I’d be more concerned that the vaccination system might include me! Anybody heard how Alec is?

    2. My next-door neighbour had her first dose today. I must admit that she looked a bit rough when she spoke to me – maybe she just hadn’t had time to put her face on (I think that’s the correct term).

    3. He said this morning that he was feeling better than yesterday, he sounded as if he was on the mend.

  83. Gosh – I don’t know what happened there.

    I had made a post about going to the empty GPs to give some blood – and the obese lady who dealt with it said to a colleague, “Ask the nurses, they haven’t done anything this afternoon”.

    NHS in crisis, eh?

    2. My local surgery has been like that throughout the pandemic. I think the feeling was since they seemingly got away with taking off the ’emergency surgery’ a few years before (you couldn’t just phone in at opening time and make an appointment for that morning up until 10am), they now could push their luck further and do away with almost all appointments.

      When I was there before Christmas – the only other person was, like me, seeing the nurse (I was getting a wound on my arm redressed as I couldn’t manage it using one hand).

      To this day, I still think that the NHS is run (managed) for the benefit of its workforce and not us taxpayer patients. No (completely) separate facilities for infectious disease recovery (the modern equivalent of ‘fever hospitals’) and large numbers of staff trained (secondary to their normal speciality) in that discipline, huge amounts of money wasted on hair-brained schemes, politically correct/expensive bureaucrats and non-jobs, getting into bed with shady giant pharma firms who now stand to main untold riches out of COVID and thereafter yet the government (taxpayer) underwrites it all at no cost to them with no comeback if the vaccines either don’t work or have serious side effects.

      1. That is why nationalising healthcare and running it until today under the “NHS” umbrella was the worst possible idea! It has turned into a mammoth that works to preserve its own health and wellbeing.

      2. My mother used to say that hospitals were kept so warm for the benefit of the nurses in their thin uniforms with short sleeves, rather than the comfort of the patients.

          1. My experience was that it was sweltering on the ward, but freezing cold in the corridor while waiting for scans, etc.

          2. Oh well – I guess she was talking about the 1950s or 60s. I think the temperature last time I was a patient in 2010 was ok.

          4. I think each time I’ve been in hospital for whatever reason it’s been during winter months.

        1. Kim has received a higher percentage of the vote, I believe, but then he’s had more practice.

      2. A small fiddle on your post, if I may

        A big Fiddle by Biden

        There goes the most popular President Never elected in history

    3. Even better – the video when the motorcade is passing showing many soldiers deliberately turning their backs on it.

          2. Perhaps the second. For those who aren’t aware of it, it’s Sargon of Akkad’s (Carl Benjamin) new YT channel and website.

      2. Security is there to watch the crowd, not the celebrity. Stare at POTUS, miss the guy pulling a gun or a bomb.

        1. What crowd? They were already behind the fence and nowhere near the (VIP only) crowd at the front. And besides, they don’t need all of them to do that. Some actually turned around as the motorcade passed.

          1. Yes, and as POTUS gets close, the crowd close to the front are the ones who are the dangerous ones. No line of soldiers will stop the distant sniper, but the presidential limo has to be close for a bloke to throw a grenade into it. So, as he’s close, they turn round.

          2. as POTUS gets close, the crowd close to the front are the ones who are the dangerous ones

            But there were no crowds. Or rather only a few people here and there. Still, Joe should feel at home with that after his triumphant rallies across the US in 2020 where he must have spoken in front of literally tens, if not dozens, of people. #mostpopularpresidentever

  85. And after the recent announcement of the proposed G7 conference in Cornwall in June this year.
    Bungling Boros is now talking about the present covid restrictions carrying on until the end of May. That’s a bit of an awkward one Bozza.

    1. I don’t think we will ever be allowed to vote again but given the hash made of this ABC….

      1. Instead of elections in the future. It might become a question of how much money an individual is prepared to place in a brown envelope.

        2. In the future, politicians won’t be elected, but appointed by ‘leders’ of the multinational firms. We’ll all be effective peasants living on a pittance handout whilst doing meanial work for those at the top. Rather like 100-150+ years ago, going in the opposite direction back to serfdom. The difference being this will all be via a 21st Century social credit system of wokeness and priviledge, as shown in China and now starting in the US, where non-Dem voters will be punished for their ‘crimes’.

          1. 1984 No
            1884 No
            !784 No
            1684 No
            1584 No
            !484 Action Replay, with Chairman Sorea$$ in charge

          2. I had the idea that already happened Andy.
            Most if not all our political figures have well paid positions out side of Westminster.

          3. The difference would be that the notional elections would no longer exist, and how influential you are depends on wealth and your position in a firm or organisation, as well as political opinions.

            We’re just in the transition from swamp-like to full blown medieval country again, just with the robber barons now being bosses/owners of international businesses.

      2. We will get a meaningless exercise of placing an X somewhere on a bit of paper, but then that’s what we’ve had for twenty years now.

    2. Mustn’t let the pleb frivolling on their pathetic little holidays upset the big boys’ important meeting.

  88. Re: Nagsman, the Birthday Girl

    I don’t believe that she has been on this site today but she is aware of everybody’s good wishes. Guinness, one of the three nags, got an abscess in a hoof last night so she was up until all hours at the barn waiting for the vet. Back at first light this morning to change the poultice then over to chez Citroen for Birthday takeaway Fish & Chips – I really know how to treat a girl – and to pick up her week’s supermarket shopping which I’d done earlier at W/rose, Marlborough. She’s now back in the barn with Guinness and the vet.

      1. Yup…and there seems to be still more to come but situation improving and Guinness loves all the extra special attention and nibbles (that the other two nags are not getting)

        1. Good. A case of poulticing, box rest, keeping it clean and probably antibiotics, then. Sending good vibes to Guinness and best wishes to Pat.

    4. All being well I will be tootling in your neck of the woods later in the Summer. A Birthday tincture or three will be on me!

        1. Indeed. Heading for dry dock at the end of August….(my screw needs attention and bottom needs blacking – I may just modify my stern gear!)

          1. “my screw needs attention and bottom needs blacking” Too much information, Stephen! 🙂

          7. Totally legit. If the builders move in all water and power will be cut off for approx 6 months – I will have to go and live on the boat. It’s within the rules to travel for essential services e.g water, pump out… 🙂

          8. Totally legit. If the builders move in all water and power will be cut off for approx 6 months – I will have to go and live on the boat. It’s within the rules to travel for essential services e.g water, pump out… 🙂

          14. Don’t forget you’ve an invitation waiting here as well, King Stephen! May be able to ope a lock or two by then!

      1. I doubt it (unless he’s a retired racehorse and that’s his stable name); Wetherby’s is unlikely to pass that name.

      2. Nooooo. But still enjoys the occasional gallopy, gallopy and throwing off any rider when jumping a fence.

  89. This obit (it’s a reheated verson from the Indie on msn (the rubbish you get when logging out of Outlook.com, etc) of the recently deceased joint DT owner, David Barclay just shows how the MSM is now just a club of chums, and nor rivals of old:

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/david-barclay-billionaire-who-built-a-business-empire-with-his-brother/ar-BB1cXKjI?ocid=mailsignout&li=AAnZ9Ug

    They were actually nice to him. I’ve noticed this quite a lot over the last year – none of the MSM have laid into eachother because their views – especially on the pandemic, are almost as one. It’s almost as their different views on Brexit have dissolved because, well, it doesn’t matter any more giving we’re now in an era of massive wealth transfer from poor to uber rich but woke types, but which the MSM naiveley believe they’ve got their power over us back again.

    1. We are in a post-truth era. Its what the establishment want you to believe that matters, not the truth. As the Canadian judge ruled last year, it doesn’t matter if you can prove scientifically the sex of an individual, its what they say that counts not the facts ( my precis).

      1. So someone caught bang to rights robbing a bank can say “I’m innocent, guv” at their trial?

  94. John Ward on top form:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/39a8dec9c573b285f98b371692982c9dde825b511259a86b60830eceb458ca19.png

    “During Wednesday’s coverage itself, Alternative State former Presidents fell over each other’s knickers to condemn by implication Donald Trump’s attempt (albeit flawed) to stand up to that secretive State. “I think inaugurations signal a tradition of a peaceful transfer of power that is over two centuries old,” said Uncle Tombama. “The fact that the three of us are standing here speaking about a peaceful transfer of power speaks to the institutional integrity of our country,” agreed Dubbya Bush, Obama’s predecessor. “It’s a new beginning,” lied Slick Willy Clinton, “Everybody needs to get off their high horse and reach out to their friends and neighbours and try to make it possible.”

    Empty black suit Obama (a bloke that led millions of his fellow black Americans to stay home during the 2016 election) and Alkeedi in Eyerack Dubbya were anally on message; and Arkansas’s finest cigar-Willy may perhaps have been talking about “reaching out” to bring new meaning to the Killy & Killary Show.

    I went to bed Wednesday night trying to avoid the desire to projectile vomit.”

    2. I’m not sure whether a civilian should salute the Armed Forces, even if they are Commander-in-Chief.

      3. One should only salute if wearing full uniform including headgear. To salute whilst not wearing a hat looks ridiculous.

        1. I always thought it weird that Yanks saluted when not wearing a hat. Not to mention the strange way they performed the salute.

  96. Apropos the discussion, earlier, on The Hollies, it seldom gets mentioned that Tony Hicks, lead guitarist, was probably the most underrated guitarist in pop history. His mastery of the instrument is phenomenal.

  97. Fury as Joe Biden REMOVES bust of Boris Johnson’s hero Winston Churchill from the Oval Office – and replaces it with RFK, Rosa Parks, a Latino American civil rights activist and Martin Luther King
    Photos suggest new US President Joe Biden has removed bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office
    Bust was removed by Barack Obama in a move which Boris Johnson previously said may have been a ‘snub’
    The well-known sculpture was then reinstated when Donald Trump became US president back in 2016
    The Prime Minister’s Spokesman insisted it is ‘up to the President to decorate’ the Oval Office ‘as he wishes’
    But Tory MPs are concerned removal could be a message to the EU that the US is now ‘less worried’ about UK

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9171789/Joe-Biden-removes-bust-Winston-Churchill-Oval-Office.html

    1. No surprise. Obama did the same. And Biden says “I’m Irish”. So having a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office is really a no-no for him. But – who cares?

      1. “… and replaces it with RFK, Rosa Parks, a Latino American civil rights activist and Martin Luther King.”

        That’s a declaration of ‘Woke’ rather than ‘Irish’.

    2. Who g.a.f? If we need our tummy tickled we could at least go for a country that isn’t 15 trillion dollars in debt.

  98. I see Bbc4 are showing ‘All the President’s Men” tonight. Ironic or what?

        1. My primary school teacher when I was five was 21 every year on her birthday, and every year a class of five year olds believed her!

      3. Yes thanks for that, I was distracted during the post last night. Our labrador decided she wanted to go out in the garden for a wee. So one has to oblige eh 😉

      1. That sounds like a good excuse for opening the bottle of Prosecco in the fridge, sweetie ! … x

  101. A page (that I just read) by, probably, my favourite author;
    “A few minutes later Stephen was standing there with his baggage by the side of the road while the dim coach disappeared in the dust-cloud of its own making and a long trail of early-morning rooks passed overhead. Presently the door of the ale-house opened and an amiable slut appeared, her hair done up in little rags, very like a Hottentot’s, and her garment held close at the neck with one hand. “Good morning, now, Mrs. Comfort,” said Stephen. “In time pray let the boy put these things behind the bar till I send for them. I mean to walk to Ashgrove over the fields.”

    “You will find the Captain there, with some saucy foremast jacks and that wicked old Killick. But won’t you step in, sir, and take a little something? It’s a long, long way, after a night in the coach.”

    Stephen knew that the Jericho could run to nothing more than tea or small beer, both equally repugnant to him in the morning; he thanked her, and said he believed he should wait until he had walked up an appetite; and when asked whether it would be that wicked old Killick who came in the card for his portmanteau he said he would make a point of asking the Captain to send him.

    For the first mile his road was a lane between high banks and hedges, with woods on the left hand and fields on the right — well-sprung wheat and hay — and the banks were starred all along with primroses, while the hedges had scores of very small cheerful talkative early birds, particularly goldfinches in their most brilliant plumage; and in the hay a corncrake was already calling. Then when the flatland begin to rise and fall this lane branched out into two paths, though on carrying on over a broad pasture — a single piece of 50 or even 60 acres with some colts in it — and the other, now little more than a trace, leading down among the trees. Stephen followed the second; it was steep going, encumbered with brambles and dead bracket on the edge of the wood and farther down with fallen branches and the dead tree or two, but near the bottom he came to a ruined keeper’s cottage standing on a grassy plat, its turf kept short by the rabbits that fled away at his approach. The cottage has lost its roof long since and was filled up right with lilac, not yet in bloom, while nettle and elder had overwhelmed the outbuilding behind; but there was still a stone bench by the door. Stephen sat upon it, leaning against the wall. Down here in the hollow the night had not yet yielded, and there was still a green twilight. An ancient wood: the slope was too great and the ground too broken for it ever to have been cut or tended, and the trees were still part of the primaeval forest; vast shapeless oaks, often hollow and useless for timber, held out their arms and their fresh young green leaves almost to the middle of the clearing, held them out with never a tremor, for down here the air was so still that gossamer floated with no perceptible movement at all. Still and silent: although far-off blackbirds could be heard away on the edge of the wood and although the stream at the bottom murmured perpetually the combe was filled with a living silence.

    On the far side, high on the bank of the stream, there was a badger’s holt. Some years ago Stephen had watched a family of fox-cubs playing there, but now it seemed to him that the badgers were back: fresh earth had been flung out, and even from the bench he could distinguish a well-trodden path. “Perhaps I shall see one,” he said; and after a while his mind drifted away and away, running through a Gloria he and Jack had heard in London, a very elaborate Gloria by Frescobaldi. “But perhaps it is too late,” he went on, when the Gloria was ended and the light had grown stronger, brighter green, almost the full light of dawn. Yet scarcely were those words formed in his mind before he heard a strong wrestling, sweeping bumping sound, and a beautifully striped badger came into sight on the other side of the brook, walking backwards with a load of bedding under its chin. It was an old fat badger, and he grumbled and cursed all the way. The last uphill stretch was particularly difficult, with the burden catching on hazel or thorn on either side and leaving long wisps, and just before the entrance the badger lifted its head and looked round, as though to say “Oh it is so bloody awkward.” Then, having breathed it took a fresh grip on the bundle, and with a final oath vanished backwards into the holt.

    “Why do I feel such an intense pleasure, such an intense satisfaction?” asked Stephen. For some time he reached for a convincing reply, but finding none he observed “The fact is that I do.” He sat on as the sun’s rays came slowly down through the trees, lower and lower, and when the lowest reached a branch not far above him it caught a dewdrop poised upon release. The drop instantly blazed crimson, and a slight movement of his head made it show all the colors of the spectrum with extraordinary purity, from a red almost too deep to be seen through all the others to the ultimate violent and back again. Some minutes later a cock pheasant’s explosive call broke the silence in the spell and he stood up.

    At the edge of the wood the blackbirds were louder still, they had been joined by blackcaps, thrushes, larks, monotonous pigeons, that a number of birds that should never have sung at all. His way now led him through ordinary country, field after field, eventually reaching Jack’s woods, with honey buzzard said once vested. But it was ordinary country raised to the highest power: the mounting sun shone through a faint trail was never a hint of glare, giving the colors of freshness and intensity Stephen had never seen equaled. The green world of the gentle, pure blue sky might just have been created; and as the day warmed a hundred scents drifted through the air.

    “Returning thanks at any length is virtually impossible,’ he reflected, sitting on a stile and watching two hares at play, sitting up and fibing at one another, then leaping and running and leaping again. “How few manage even five phrases with any effect. And how intolerable are most dedications too, even the best. Perhaps the endless repetition of flat, formal praise” — for the Gloria was still running in his head — “is an attempt at overcoming this, an attempt at expressing gratitude by another means. I shall put this thought to Jack,” he said, having considered for a moment. The hares raced away out of sight and he walked on, singing in a harsh undertone “Quoaniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus altissimus” until a cuckoo called away on his left hand: cuckoo, cuckoo, loud and clear, followed by a cackling laugh and answered by a fainter cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo far over on the right.
    His happiness sank at once…    “

  103. I’ve just been looking at the pictures of the Biden Oval office. Yuk, simply. The Trump version was far better – I suspect Melania had a hand in that.

    It made me think of all those ‘cool’ apartments in dramas and estate agent plugs, all with rooms that are entirely off-white and utterly soulless.

    1. Sauce for the Goose? Mind you, they’ll have to wait until the mid-term elections so the Republicans can get a majority in both Houses for it to actually succeed.

  106. Goodnight, all. I am intrigued as to how peddy knew what JSP’s surname was to claim that Geoff disclosed it deliberately. If he hadn’t mentioned that, I wouldn’t have picked it up. Perhaps they have been having secret assignations outside Nottl 🙂

      1. My nom de plume is over 50 years old. It was a joke name given to me by friends at UEA where we based our nicknames loosely on our actual names. e.g. Ian Bennett became Beenet or Beano or the Bean, Peter Innes went on holiday to Spain and became Pedro Don Oinzo, Diana Temple became The Religious Building, Geoff Todd became the Toad, Gerry Frost became the Frosticle, Andy Ripley became Ripple etc. etc.

        Yes, we were young and stupid but they were happy times.

        1. My comment was simply that some Nottlers are not all that they seem.

          My own moniker derives from the family motto: Steadfast Heart.

          I have noticed over the recent years that some, shall we say, conspire together to undermine others to whom they take a dislike, whether for political differences or differences about vaccinations (to be topical).

          I have noted a half dozen who will claim that white is black and that black is white. I try really hard to avoid them but am occasionally drawn in by my own anger at their subterfuge and hidden alliances.

      1. They certainly like to back each other up. If peddy hadn’t mentioned it, I wouldn’t have looked up the thread and worked it out. Hoist with his own petard, it seems. Too clever by half and so sharp he is likely to cut himself 🙂

  108. Some clues…

    Why would Donald Trump be the first president to not attend his successor’s “inauguration”?

    Why would Trump be the first “outgoing” president to leave in Air Force One with the nuclear codes? Instead of the plane picking up his successor. Note this clue in particular.

    Why would the Pentagon not give him a sendoff, and why would Pence and the cabinet secretaries including Pompeo not see Trump off?

    Why did Trump say “we caught them all”?

    Why would Trump tell us in every “statement of defeat” that our incredible adventure is just beginning, and the best is yet to come?

    1. 1. Two Adams and a Johnson refused to attend their successors inauguration, Trumps not first.

      2. Your hero was president until midday, just because he ran away early did not change that fact. At midday, those codes were invalidated and new ones given to Biden.

      3. Because they hated him after the way they were treated.

      4 and 5. Self delusion.

      Not even a straw to clutch at.

        1. Right! So once Austin is confirmed on Friday, how long do you think obstruction by bad losers will last.

          1. You’re rushing in making assumptions about what you think happened.

            Watch and wait to see what is revealed in the coming weeks.

          1. 328713+ up ticks,
            R,
            If that encapsulates MsM, & the toxic trio lab/lib/con coalition governance party then that is as it should be.

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