Thursday 21 May: Teachers should be free to disagree with their bullying unions

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 blacklisted.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/20/lettersteachers-should-free-disagree-bullying-unions/

996 thoughts on “Thursday 21 May: Teachers should be free to disagree with their bullying unions”

  2. Nigel Farage condemned for boat trip into English Channel to report migrant ‘invasion’. 21 May 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7664b876b36d697ac4baf8c74e43ed069761c332ab8f81d7fcf9e67d1270a8c5.jpg

    Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrat shadow home affairs spokesperson said: “The actions of Nigel Farage today are appalling. To disregard those struggling to survive in such a callous and heartless way is a new low, even for him.

    “Priti Patel’s decision to pander to individuals such as Farage only increases incidents such as these.

    “By making it harder to come to the UK safely, the Conservatives are playing into the hands of criminal gangs who exploit desperate people for profit.”

    She called for a stronger Border Force to stop people smugglers and legal routes to sanctuary to help people claiming asylum.

    Morning everyone. You are spoiled for choice in this brief article which is an absolute goldmine of distraction, disinformation and outright lies. I’ve chosen Jardine’s contribution because of its utter mendacity and perversely comical portrayal of what is happening. Her description of the “migrants” is almost Dickensian and yet we can see from their faces in the photograph that they feel no trepidation whatsoever. Nor should they! They are on a small boat excursion as a part of their luxury trip to the UK. Sunny day. Sea calm. Escorted by both the French and British to their new home in the UK. What an adventure! They will be able to tell their British Grandchildren about it when they are old enough to go to the Mosque. They are better treated than when I went to Australia in the seventies. Lol!

    The “Criminal Gangs” is of course a euphemism for the Home Office that as the final destination is clearly organising these trips. The only wonder here is that Nigel does not seem to have realised this though perhaps he feels that such a claim would make him vulnerable to further MSM attacks.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-boat-trip-migrant-invasion-english-channel-latest-a9524086.html

    1. It is a poor picture though, it would have been better to show the escort ships.

      2. ‘Morning, B3. They are to be found in the video clip, although it is alleged that the skipper of the boat he was on was threatened with boarding if the filming continued. If that is true then it is extremely sinister, and such a threat possibly unlawful of course.

    2. “By making it harder to come to the UK safely, the Conservatives are playing into the hands of criminal gangs who exploit desperate people for profit.”

      I would have thought the opposite is true. Because criminal gangs know that their ‘customers’ will be picked up and safely transmitted to British shores by UK authorities, it only encourages these gangsters to send more and more of them, and gives confidence to the migrants that their money will not be wasted because they will not be turned back.

      1. So what happens to them when they get here? where do they go?
        Are they given health checks? are they checked for possible links to terrorism?
        This is the great mystery.

        1. Firstly they have to er, ‘liberate’ certain tiny bundles which may take a day or two. Border Force take their cut, the Albanians cut their take and then the happy mules are free to go and apply for work and tax credits etc.

      1. Er, um, well OK, Captain, Aye Aye, Sir and that. But it’s our ship, Cap’n, are you sure?

    4. The current channel Border Force should be put into permanent Lockdown and our Royal Navy put in its place with instructions to halt this invasion and escort these ships back to France.
      Our government is abetting criminal activity and will pay a heavy price for this as will the taxpayer.

      1. 319465+ up ticks,
        Morning C,
        Who is in charge of our Royal Navy,who for the last 4 decades say has been in charge ?

    5. “To disregard those struggling to survive in such a callous and heartless way” – this is why I despise the Limp Dumbs; these “poor people” are fleeing the horrors of war torn France (??) in fear of their lives it seems! Absolute rubbish – these people are coming here to sponge off the UK taxpayers and it needs to stop. A first step would be to return them to France asap, and stop paying the French for their “assistance” as they are clearly not doing anything to stem this flow of illegal migrants!

    7. 319465+ up ticks,
      Morning A,
      As with the referendum the ersatz tory party knew the herds needs for exit had entered the red zone so had to be
      seen to be dealt with.
      Enter the ersatz tory limited damage to brussels campaign.
      The “nige in my book is a ersatz tory
      safety valve and should be treated with caution.
      This collection of politico’s who have the shout currently know the peoples
      are wised up about the back door entry at Dover .
      Action must be seen to be taken on the issue ALREADY strongly suspected of happening regarding illegal transportation.
      Contain within the party is to my mind the order of the day.
      Talking of beaches remember the little boy?
      I bet stage setters have freedom to travel.
      Nowadays view any serious issues from all angles NOT via blinkers would be good advice methinks.

    8. ‘Morning, Minty.

      “Bolleaux to the Limp Dumbs.”

      They are not of this planet, a total irrelevance.

    9. “To disregard those struggling to survive in such a callous and heartless way” – this is why I despise the Limp Dumbs; these “poor people” are fleeing the horrors of war torn France (??) in fear of their lives it seems! Absolute rubbish – these people are coming here to sponge off the UK taxpayers and it needs to stop. A first step would be to return them to France asap, and stop paying the French for their “assistance” as they are clearly not doing anything to stem this flow of illegal migrants!

    11. Yo Minty

      Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrat shadow home affairs spokesperson said:

      In Engineer Speak, she is a ‘Third Class’

      Hands the tool, to the man who hands the tool, to the Man who uses it

  3. Another doctor on BBC Breakfast this morning re-iterating the point that children are at very little risk of contracting, suffering from, or indeed transmitting the virus, so parents need to know these facts when weighing up the decision whether or not to send their children back to school. Teachers should also listen to these facts when deciding whether or not to go back to work.

  4. Just when people thought it was safe to go back in the water,
    Some beaches were packed yesterday by all accounts.
    Then this morning
    Dur da, durr da, durdadurdadurda

      1. He’s a bit late isn’t he, Angie? Both Zorro and The Lone Ranger beat him to it by many, many years.

        :-))

      1. Before long these places will be begging for tourists to return. (Yes, Seaford, that includes you, so locking all your public toilets last week, even those for the disabled, was not a clever move.)

        ‘Morning, Anne.

        1. Warning to these recalcitrant tourist ‘hot spots’. Inconvenient memories tend to linger in the public conscience.
          What springs to mind when I mention Austrian wine?

          1. Yo anne

            A parallel

            Sony reckon

            if they sell a good product, no-one hears

            if they sell a bad one, 100 people hear

            PS Always keep a bottle of Austrian wine in the car in winter totop up radiator with antifreeze

  6. In days of old when people were normal it was considered beneficial for health to spend some time in the sunshine down the seaside, especially if you have been unwell, I’ve never heard of anyone catching flu or a cold on the beach on a hot day let alone covid.

  7. Good morning, all. Another still start to what looks another nice day.

    At 10.05 pm yesterday, the MR and I had the pleasure (nay wonder) of seeing the International Space Station flying across Fulmodeston.

    The whole thing is, to me, who can’t nail two bits of wood together, an extraordinary achievement

  10. The lockdown has done untold damage to this country. Spiked. 20th May 2020.

    The role of the citizen in the Covid dystopia is to applaud the state, not question it. Every Thursday night, on your doorsteps or your balconies, you must clap for the benevolent state and its gracious health service. Big Brother loves you and you must love it back. Vast propaganda billboards remind us of this duty. From Wembley Stadium to motorway hoardings to the front windows of the most respectable citizens’ houses, the same three words loom, like an omnipresent reminder to the masses of the only opinion you’re allowed to hold in Covid Britain: ‘Thank you NHS.’

    Morning everyone. Well that leaves me out! I await the attentions of Big Brother!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/20/the-lockdown-has-done-untold-damage-to-this-country/

    1. Thursday evening is the best time to go to the supermarket to avoid the queues. Am I obliged to clap when picking up a tin of beans?

      2. Yo JM

        Thursday evening is the best time to go to the supermarket to avoid the queues.

        I must be more carefullyisterer. I misread the last word

    2. I have spent many years, in many countries avoiding The Clap

      I am not going to get it now

    4. #MeToo – I did notice that last Thursday the clapping, banging of pots and whooping was at a much lower level than previously; carried on a shorter time also.

    5. I find it ironic in our small village that the only people to clap on Thursdays are our immediate neighbours (from hell), who have private health insurance and I assume never use the NHS.

  11. Letters: Dr Michael Pegg

    “Cash is now finished in this country, and may never return.”

    I think we need a response from Mr & Mrs Bloggs on that one.

    On the subject of non-cash payments, we can pay our bills, give birthday and Christmas presents using just an account number and sort code. Why can’t we give to charities or even organisations such as the NHS in a similar manner?

    1. So that’s why the illegals don’t pay the NHS for treatment; they don’t have a bank account….{:¬))

        1. It has been at Watton for two months – I expect the illegals are now registered British subjects with lotsa money and a nice flat.

          3. Lifted by the bailiffs to pay the Council Tax for the lesser indigenes.

  12. Every Liberal Helps:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/20/peer-milking-taxpayer-furloughing-claiming-lords-allowance/

    “Exclusive: peer ‘milking’ taxpayer by furloughing himself and claiming Lords allowance

    Lord Fox, who owns two homes worth more than £2 million, is the first Parliamentarian known to use wage subsidy scheme to pay himself

    20 May 2020 • 9:00pm

    Lord Fox is the Liberal Democrat frontbench spokesman for business and the owner and sole employee of Vulpes Advisory, a ‘strategic communications’ company

    Lord Fox is the Liberal Democrat frontbench spokesman for business and the owner and sole employee of Vulpes Advisory, a ‘strategic communications’ company

    A frontbench peer has furloughed himself despite having a £100,000 cash pot in his company and claiming the daily House of Lords allowance during lockdown, The Telegraph can reveal.

    Lord Fox, who owns two homes worth more than £2 million, is the first Parliamentarian known to use the Government’s wage subsidy scheme to pay himself.

    The 62-year-old Liberal Democrat frontbench spokesman for business is the owner and sole employee of Vulpes Advisory, a “strategic communications” company.

    His decision to double dip into the taxpayers’ pocket was criticised as “milking the taxpayer” by MPs, who said on Wednesday that he should pay the money back.

    The peer has chosen to take the £162 daily allowance for his work in the Lords, which is being conducted by Zoom during the lockdown.

    Asked on Wednesday night whether having his private income paid by the state as well as taking the Lords stipend was “greedy”, Lord Fox said: “I don’t think conflating the two is even logical.

    “It’s what many companies are doing, which is furloughing their employees. If HMRC had thought it was ineligible for me to have applied for that, then they would have said so.”

    Accounts filed with Companies House show Lord Fox has access to more than £100,000 cash in his Vulpes bank account. Instead of using the money to tide the business over, he furloughed himself and has already received his first month’s wage subsidy, of about £1,000, from the Government.

    Asked why he did not first use the £100,000, he said: “I’m hoping to tide the business over, I’m hoping to relaunch it properly when the scheme… when the virus lifts.”

    Lord Fox has a five-bedroom house in Windsor, which he reportedly bought in 1995 for £280,000 and which is now estimated to be worth up to £1.89 million, as well as a second home in east London.

    He sits on the Lords economic affairs committee, before which Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, appeared as a witness this week.

    It has held four hearings over the past month, for which Lord Fox will receive £648. He also claims the daily allowance for his work as the Liberal Democrat spokesman for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

    Conservative MP Robert Halfon said: “It’s incredible that, when my residents in Harlow are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, this peer seems to want to milk the taxpayer at both ends, for every penny – both through the Lords allowance and the furlough scheme.

    “The Chancellor needs to nip this in the bud and make sure this is not allowed. The least he could do is pay the furlough money back.”

    Mr Halfon said the furlough scheme “was never meant to be for wealthy Lords”.

    Sir Iain Duncan Smith said it was ‘a bit rum’ for Lord Fox to furlough himself Credit: Heathcliff O’Malley

    Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “It’s a bit rum, furloughing yourself while being a legislator.”

    Asked how many days in total he has claimed the Lords allowance for during lockdown, Lord Fox said he did not know the exact number but added: “It works out as quite a lot of work.”

    Asked whether he plans to repay the furlough money, he said: “That’s not something I’ve given much thought to at the moment, because I’ve been working about 14 hours a day on legislation.”

    Lord Fox made his career in communications, working for companies including Tate & Lyle, and held an executive role at engineering company GKN. He was awarded a peerage in 2014 and founded Vulpes Advisory in 2016. Through it, he has consulted Spectris PLC, a FTSE 250 technology company with factories in China, which has been making ventilators during the health crisis, as well as before it.

    Asked why he had furloughed himself, he said: “Because the business is absolutely moribund,” adding: “My only customer before the lockdown was a company called Spectris.”

    On Wednesday, Spectris said Lord Fox’s work for it was “completed in January 2020”.

    More than £11 billion has so far been claimed through the coronavirus furlough scheme, which has been extended until the end of October.

    At the committee hearing with the Chancellor, Lord Fox declared an interest as “being a director of a company that’s invoked the job retention scheme”, but did not say he was the furloughed employee.

    He denied that his position as a business spokesman and place on the economic affairs committee constituted a conflict of interest with his consultancy work, and said: “I absolutely do not do any public affairs or any public relations.”

    The Liberal Democrat party declined to comment when asked if it is appropriate for its frontbench peer to be furloughing himself while claiming the Lords’ stipend.”

  13. We will protect our society’s hidden victims. Priti Patel. 20 May 2020 • 9:30pm.

    Protecting our children from life-shattering sexual exploitation and abuse will also be at the top of the summit’s agenda. From the start of this lockdown, we have been alive to the risk that depraved predators may take advantage of the fact that our young people were going to be spending more time online. And the devastating scale of the problem was revealed when the Internet Watch Foundation reported a shocking 8 million attempts by UK users to access indecent images of children during the pandemic.

    Oh look at those8 million white squirrels over there!

    Priti I’m unsurprised to say has been brought on board the Westminster Machine. You will find no mention here of Pakistani Grooming Gangs Reports or “unsupervised” children crossing the Channel. She has learned her lesson and that is to keep her gob shut and do as she’s told!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/20/will-protect-societys-hidden-victims/

    1. There is talk of (yet another) reshuffle. Perhaps she’ll get the boot.

      1. I thought she’d been on furlough.
        Shame more high hopes of stopping the invasion lost in the dust of politics.

    2. Yes, just more PC bollux from Priti, a shame as I had high hopes for her. Does she not think that there could be a correlation between bored, frustrated adults locked up at home with their children/partners and increased domestic violence? Just another consequence of this useless and harmful lockdown.

      On another note, I received an email from the government today about the release of the grooming gangs report. Just more fudge and delay:

      The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) has published the Home Secretary’s response to the its request for a revised response.

      The Home Secretary’s response now states that that the Government will publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation later this year, which will set out their findings and set the direction for future policy and research. The letter from the Home Secretary is available here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1193/documents/10184/default/

        1. Morning Araminta. That was the whole email. I believe the Home Office got a bit of a roasting because their response was late and er, didn’t actually respond to the request to release the report. But hey, they are going to publish a paper sometime this year and do some further research – look out groomers, we’re formulating a policy and you ain’t gonna like it!

          We don’t need any more reports, policies or research. We all know who is carrying out these despicable acts and why they do it. What we need is action to deport them and their immediate families to their country of origin. I’m not holding my breath.

          https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/11/grooming-gang-rapists-remain-in-rochdale-two-years-losing-citizenship/

      2. The expression “take down” is meaningless jargon. The current “in” word is “disrupt”. Neither “takedown” or “disrupt” means anything. Neither means, arrest, prosecute, imprison and then deport.
        I am ineffably saddened to now realise that this will not ever change, No real obstacles will ever now be put in the way of muslim transcendence in this country. There will be no impediment to gang rape of small children, to occasional outrages of random murder, to the incessant wailing of the muezzins calling their faithful to prayer in all cities and towns, to sharia courts replacing UK law, or to the suppression of unpleasant and offensive Christian images and practices such as church bells, processions, and the mention of Christianity.

  14. Good morning everyone.
    “SIR – If players are to be stopped from using saliva to polish cricket balls (Letters, 20 May), could a “No Spitting” rule be enforced in all sports?
    Actually, make this a rule for everyone. Everywhere. For all time.
    Anne Jappie
    Cheltenham, ”

    Silly woman, what happens when a small flying insect enters one’s mouth?

    And I shall refrain from repeating the old joke about how to get rid of pubic hair.

  15. SIR – The Government must publish all the scientific advice it gets, along with the minutes of meetings of its Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) committee.

    Boris Johnson pledged that he would be more open, but his Government is treating the people who elected it like fools.

    Graham Mitchell

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – One expert thinks there could be a vaccine by September; another says coronavirus will never be eradicated. Yet another thinks that it will die out naturally. Perhaps, like me, they don’t really know.

    Andrew Horrocks

    Bury, Lancashire

    SIR – It may be heresy to say so, but the Conservative MP Thérèse Coffey is quite right to suggest that the “science was wrong”.

    There are now only three countries with a worse coronavirus death rate than Britain, but officially appointed scientists still boast daily of “success”.

    The “science” in Britain has produced a wretched death rate per million of 513. Japan’s figure is just six; South Korea’s is five, and Australia’s four. New Zealand’s rate is four per million, as is Singapore’s; in Thailand that figure is 0.8, in Hong Kong 0.5, and in Taiwan 0.3.

    Martin Burgess

    Beckenham, Kent

    SIR – Instead of fixating on the number of deaths attributable to coronavirus, it would be equally relevant to report the number of survivors.

    Britain has been declared the nation most scared of the virus. We need a measure to put things in perspective.

    Paul Reed

    Stirling

    2. ‘Morning, Epi, Martin Burgess notes, “The “science” in Britain has produced a wretched death rate per million of 513. Japan’s figure is just six; South Korea’s is five, and Australia’s four. New Zealand’s rate is four per million, as is Singapore’s; in Thailand that figure is 0.8, in Hong Kong 0.5, and in Taiwan 0.3.”

      What he doesn’t say is that all the countries he quotes with the exception of South Korea and Thailand, are ISLANDS, supposedly protected by a vast moat filled with very deep water.

      Britain chooses to ignore our moat and goes so far as to make a compact with the French Navy to effectively provide a bridge across La Manche/English Channel.

  16. SIR – If players are to be stopped from using saliva to polish cricket balls (Letters, 20 May), could a “No Spitting” rule be enforced in all sports?

    Actually, make this a rule for everyone. Everywhere. For all time.

    Anne Jappie

    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    1. Morning Oggy. I forecast all this twenty years ago, the violence and the corruption and the decadence. I would like to claim some fantastic insight, some amazing perspicacity for this but it was as plain as a pikestaff. Everyone had better hope that I’m wrong about the rest!

      1. I’ve been banging on about it for as long as I can remember.
        Our government knows exactly what is going on but refuses to face the facts.
        They keep making excuses for all the trouble caused by ‘the religion of peace’. The organisers of this invasion did their homework.

      2. A Midlands conservative MP warned the politicians and the public about the likely dangerous outcome of uncontrolled immigration into the UK more than 50 years ago. He was treated as an outcast. This long deceased MP’s prediction is now coming to fruition and still the politicians refuse to take action other than to prosecute “racist” offenders. I and many others agreed with that MP’s prediction at the time. I haven’t changed my mind.

    2. In Sydney yesterday someone in a 4×4 slammed into a hijab shop window. Sorry officer I was trying to avoid a stray dog.

      1. 319465+ up ticks,
        Morning Tb,
        True, but the ultimate deciding power comes via the polling booth, if peoples wanted change why is it not showing via the polling booth instead of repeated failure ?

        1. No Oggy. The Polling Booth is now irrelevant. They have found a way around it. Democracy in the sense of representing the people is now dead!

          1. 319465+ up ticks,
            As,
            If that is the case then the only alternative is civil war or complete submission.
            You cannot make a countrywide omelette without breaking eggs
            the death tally could put coranavirus numbers well in the shade.

          3. ‘Morning, Minty, all this will come to fruition when austerity has to kick in, resulting in higher taxes and reduced benefits.

            Those currently on benefits will quickly realise that their loss is directly due to the over-weening actions of government towards immigrants. They will turn on the immigrants with fury and there you will have the ‘Rivers of Blood’ identified in Powell’s oft misquoted speech.

  18. Morning all 😕
    Thunder.storms and torrential rain forecast. Oh dear just as we are enjoying a few days off and putting our feet up.
    Boris severely criticised by the EU mafia for supposedly underfunding the NHS.
    Grow some Boris, send the Mafiosi a huge Bill for all the illegal migrants they are shoving on us. A million pounds for every single one of them. Surely that’s what it’s going to cost our taxpayers.
    With Thousands of job losses in the UK. There’s only so much fruit and veg that needs harvesting.

    1. 319465+ up ticks,
      Morning Re,
      That is not how a lab/lib/con/brussels
      coalition works.

  19. Good morning all.

    More roses out: Danse de Feu on the north wall & Paul’s Himalayan Musk in the sycamore tree.

  20. Morning everyone.
    Seven days ago I mentioned that so far in May we had only received 7% of our historical monthly average rainfall. Since then not a drop of rain has fallen in my locality. The 10+day weather forecast from ‘Weather.com’ indicates no rain is expected until 4th June. If that forecast is accurate (the company has been fairly successful in its forecasts of late) we will have gone almost a month without rain. I’ll keep you posted.

    1. No rain recorded here in May. March and April just over 60% and most of April’s came in the last three days.

      Amidst the noise of the virus there have been reports on the needs of agriculture and how the nasty Immigration Bill will stop all those wonderful foreigners coming here to ‘put food on the nation’s tables’. They might not be needed. If this drought continues for much longer there will be no crops to harvest.

    3. I think that a false impression is given if the photo is taken near ground level.

      1. Yes, perspective gives the illusion that people are actually sitting above one another.
        In that case the Government requirement of two metre horizontal spacing does not apply.

    4. Longish telephoto so the false perspective gives the impression of everyone being much closer than they are.

    5. I would not even dream of walking onto a beach like that. Not now and not before Covid-19. There’s always been social distancing, and for most people it comes naturally. There are the unaware, the ‘Space Invaders’, who want to talk to you six inches away and you just have to keep backing away.

      1. ‘Morning, Mola, “…and for most people it comes naturally.”

        Not the Spaniards; you can be the only person on the beach and here comes a Spanish family – and plonks themselves down, right beside you.

      2. Social distancing has a lot to do with culture; different cultures require more or less space between people conversing. Anglo-Saxons aren’t happy if people get too close (I remember backing away from one woman who engaged me in conversation about my dog because she came well inside my comfort zone – and she kept following me until I was backed against a pillar!).

          1. Brick. I felt extremely uncomfortable. I’d read about it (in linguistics books), but it was the first time I’d actually experienced it.

  22. A Conservative MP writes about ”billionaires”…………

    ”Billionaire influence?

    By JOHNREDWOOD | Published: MAY 21, 2020

    Some people want me to publish their personal campaigns against a few named billionaires. I tell them repeatedly I will not do so. It is not the purpose or nature of this site.

    Some claim these billionaires lobby governments, setting up lobbying institutes to seek attention for policies they favour. Indeed , some of them do just that. So do Trade Unions ,raising millions from their members, large charities, spending a fortune on adverts and lobbying, opposition political parties, every large company that has a government affairs department and many others. All of these people and institutions use money they have earned or raised to sharpen their message and to try to influence Ministers who make decisions and to influence the officials who help them. Sometimes they want governments to do things that are self serving for them and possible damaging to the rest of us. Ministers need to stay alert and work out who to trust.

    One of the purposes of this site is to examine the quality of the decisions governments and public institutions make and the consequences of them. As an MP I am also seeking to influence government on behalf of my constituents and in line with my and my party’s view of how to proceed in the national interest. Where external lobbies are putting forward damaging or ill judged proposals then I am always willing to give a voice to the counter arguments to their theories and propositions.

    I am not willing to publish personal attacks on people who believe they are working for the wider good just because one or you – or I myself – disagree with their advice. I do not have the capacity to research the truthfulness of claims made about them. Please find somewhere else in the media who do want to run with conspiracy theories if you believe you have a case. Governments do not have to follow these people – sometimes they choose to do so, presumably when they think they are right.”

    1. I think it is legitimate to question the actions of a billionaire just as much as to question the actions of a trade union or other lobby group. We shouldn’t automatically trust something just because it comes from a philanthropic organisation and is labelled as helpful.
      What website is John Redwood writing for?

    2. “Governments do not have to follow these people – sometimes they choose to do so, presumably when they think they are right”

      …. and only if the brown envelopes received by ministers are sufficiently bulky?

      1. Please could you leave a reply on his blog to that effect !

        http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/

        Also. as I have asked but have never been answered, please ask why is it that almost all UK government policy going way back to 1997 looks virtually identical to Soros policy ?

    3. Redwood is of course entitled to put whatever he likes on his own website just as Geoff decides here. Unfortunately he appears to have no understanding of the change in the nature of the worlds elites as represented by Billionaires. They have become as rapacious as wolves, as merciless as vultures, They are not engaged in a process of enhancing Freedom and Democracy but destroying both the better to serve their own selfish interests. The UK has become a Globalist Milch Cow. Having undermined its legitimacy they are beginning the plundering of its resources and its people.

    2. Lovely performance.

      Amazing none of the Lefties have waded in accusing her of Cultural appropriation yet!

  24. 319465+ up ticks,
    Could someone enlighten me as to when Soylent Green
    biscuits will be added to the parliamentary
    canteen menu ?

      1. 319465+ up ticks,
        Morning Kp,
        Seeing as I am rarely indoors owing to the fact I am up a scaffold
        topping about 50 conifers by 5/6′ your recons, fall on deaf ears.
        Rain has just stopped play.
        The parliamentary menu leaves a lot to be desired with it’s inclusion of halal choices don’t you think ?

          1. 319465+m up ticks,
            Kp,
            With our continuing voting pattern we will not have long to wait now to see how much”choice” the islamic ideology followers give us post takeover ie submit or ………
            The Conifer war continues with regular tea breaks, it is said that they grow 3′ 3 3/8″ a year, not a lot of peoples know that.

          5. You are far too young to remember about cones (north and south)…{:¬))

          6. Very kind of you but my Dad was a met officer in the Navy! He also used pine cones and seaweed in forecasting!

          7. ‘Morning, Bill, brought up on Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. Lot’s of sailing and weather awareness and the methods of warning.

          8. Morning, Tom

            “We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea” – is obviously used as a training manual by the illegal slammers in Calais…..

          9. I think it was ‘Winter Holiday’ when they first used North and South Cones on the side of the barn.

          10. Ahhh! Swallows and Amazons. An Engish childhood. We shall see your like no more!

    1. Bomb them. there is no other workable option. (Well , maybe make our own stuff or get the Indians to make it.)

    2. I bought a glass light fitting yesterday, and remembered to check where it was manufactured first. “Made in India” – would prefer a home country, but India is fine. If it had been China, I would have put it back on the shelf.

      If people do boycott Chinese goods, expect them to pull the Italian leather industry trick all over the world though.

      1. The Chinese Government are dreadful, deceitful bullies. Unless countries start to stand up to them they will carry on and get worse.

        1. Yes. Countries must stick together and not appease the crocodile. I hope Boris got the memo.

    4. There are two Canadians languishing in prison in China, they were arrested immediately after Canada detained a Huawei director in Vancouver.

      The Chinese have been quite blunt about the fate of the canadians depends on the result of the extradition hearings for their director.

      Why do people express surprise at the way the Chinese act according to their rules and customs, not the wishy washy PC ways of the west?

      1. My fear is that capitulating and appeasing them will have a similar result to appeasement of 80+ years ago.

        They are already trying to annex territory in the South China seas.

  26. Sitting in the garden (briefly – work to do) having a cup of coffee – wile recovering from my panic attack at the garden centre – I felt several spots of RAIN. Only spots – nothing useful. But a shock!

    Nearby it rained quite hard, but very briefly. Thunder, too.

    1. Nothing here. A single dark cloud went over around midday, but that was about it. Very disappointing…

  27. Just wondering – since the Met. Office weather forecasts seem to be so consistently wrong – the law of averages suggests that it might get it right once in a while – could our esteemed meteorologists be basing their predictions on one of Prof. Neil Ferguson’s computer models?

    1. Sure fire definitions of Lieing

      Weather Forecast

      Pusser’s Menu (The menu put out on a ship of what you will get to eat}

      A Politician opens his/her mouth

      The BBC says……

      The cheque is in the post etc

          1. Wood’s Navy rum is the only rum I really enjoy drinking.

            I must remember to buy some the next time I’m permitted to visit the UK.

          2. NEVER x 27add anything to it, except of course another tot

            Not ice, water (there 27,000 different tastes of those). Cola etc

            and of course:

            The rum ration or “tot”, consisted of one-eighth of an imperial pint (70ml) of rum at 95.5 proof (54.6% ABV), and was given out to every sailor at midday.

            Ratings with ‘Two Tots of water Grog)
            Senior Ratings Neat
            Orficers Zilch

          3. I NEVER dilute scotch, rum or brandy with anything.

            I dilute gin with soda water (tonic water ruins the flavour, I want to taste the gin).
            I dilute tequila with triple sec and lime juice (Margarita).
            I dilute vodka with espresso coffee and Kahlua (Espresso Martini).

    2. Wouldn’t surprise me.
      Forecast for Norwich for the last 4-5 days was for rain today, and that included the forecast yesterday afternoon. Didn’t water the garden yesterday because of weather forecast.
      Today, no rain. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Hot, humid, uncomfortable and not so much as a single drop of rain.

  30. Morning all – another one I nicked earlier …

    A man had two of the best tickets for the Cup Final. As he sits down, another man comes along and asks if anyone is sitting in the seat next
    to him…
    “No”, he says, “the seat is empty.” “This is incredible!” said the man, “who in their right mind would have a seat like this, the biggest football event of the whole world, and not use it?” He says, “Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. My wife was supposed to come with me, but she passed away. This is the first Cup Final we haven’t been to together since we got married.”
    “Oh… I’m sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. I guess you couldn’t find someone else?.. a friend or relative or even a neighbour to take
    the seat?”
    The man shakes his head….”No. They’re all at the funeral.”

    1. Maintaining those two homes doesn’t come cheap you know! Why, the taxpayers positively owed him that money!

    2. If the Government/Chancellor is stupid enough to give away money almost indiscriminately why is anyone surprised that people will take advantage of what is a legal, if not moral opportunity.

    1. Many excellent reasons not to visit such a filthy slum. Abbotites at their worst.

    4. OMG. I used to go there more or less every week with my mum. Unrecognisable. Didn’t look like U.K. at all.

    5. Hi TB, what a depressing set of photographs and comments. If these people are the ‘benefits’ of diversity then god help us.

      2. I was born and raised in Hackney.
        I always hated it, from the time of my first holiday in the countryside, about age six. I’m soooo glad I got out.
        The only thing that could improve it is a small-yield tactical nuclear bomb…

    6. First thought: what a s***hole. Which country is that in?

      Second thought: Ridley Road market. 😕 It looked like that during the dustman’s strike back around 1970.

      1. Third thought: thank God I left there years ago.

        And that’s what the rest of the country will look like in another sixty years, i.e. a third world s***hole.

        And in the meantime, one of our neighbours is playing some “music” which I have the misfortune of being able to hear. It’s been the same continuous bass beat for the last twenty minutes or more. The neighbourhood is going downhill already.

        1. With third word s**ts being the majority. (NOT the Stamford Hill people who I mention below – they were civilised, if rather insular) I don’t know how the people in Stamford Hill manage, being surrounded by the cess pit areas.

        2. Me too – I lived in Stamford Hill for a while. What with there, and Ridley Road, it was quite an eye-opener. I went back to the area around Hackney and Tottenham a couple of years ago, having given a lift to someone who lives there.

          Wild horses couldn’t get me to live anywhere near there now.

      2. An article was written in American Thinker.

        He described how they defecate in the streets. The hot sun dries it out an it eventually turns to dust. It’s in your eyes, your mouth, up your nose and all over your body and clothing.

        It is on every surface and in the food.

        This article appeared after President Trump called them shitholes. He wasn’t wrong.

  33. From PA Media.
    “The leader of far-right political group Britain First has been found guilty of an offence under the Terrorism Act after refusing to give police access to his mobile phone on his return from a political trip to Russia.
    Paul Golding, 38, was stopped at Heathrow Airport on October 23 last year on his way back from Moscow by officers from the Metropolitan Police.
    He refused to give the pin codes for an iPhone and Apple computer and was later charged with wilfully refusing to comply with a duty under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
    Golding denied the charge but was found guilty of the offence following a trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Wednesday
    Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot ruled there was “no doubt” that Golding had failed to comply with requests for information, despite his obligations being explained to him and being warned “over and over” that if he did not he risked arrest.
    She handed Golding a conditional discharge for nine months and ordered him to pay a £21 surcharge and £750 in costs.
    Ms Arbuthnot said Golding had been lawfully questioned and that under Schedule 7 there had been no requirement for “reasonable suspicion” for the stop.
    Giving evidence earlier, Pc Rory O’Connor, a borders officer with the Met who questioned Golding, told the court that Schedule 7 enables accredited officers to “speak to people in order to make a determination of whether they are or have been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”.
    The officer explained that it also permitted police to interrogate, search and detain anyone for up to six hours at UK port.
    He said he had cause to examine Golding under the legislation and recalled him being initially “agitated” and “clearly angry” at being stopped, with him shouting at officers. (I’ve cut a bit out here for brevity.)
    Representing Golding, Abigail Bright said Britain First had never been a banned organisation.
    She said Golding had been “calm, compliant and respectful” during questioning under what she claimed was a “predetermined operation”.
    Ms Bright said he was “tired” and had not wilfully disobeyed a lawful instruction and that evidence from officers left the court “none too wiser” as to whether they had “screened against” Schedule 7 being used “in an arbitrary way”.
    Ms Bright had Pc O’Connor confirm that he had no belief before Golding was stopped that he may have been involved in the preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”

    I’ve barely heard of Mr Golding. I have noted that Britain First members get a very hard time for, it seems, nothing more than being against the influx of muslims.
    A number of points are clear. Under the Terrorism Act people can be held and interrogated for no reason. They can be convicted for not co-operating. This is quite different from normal criminal procedures where you are not required to say anything and legal advice is to say nothing whatsoever. Apparently the result can include being heavily fined under the guise of being charged costs. It looks if Mr Golding had been targeted solely to harass him and to put “the frighteners” on him. If reported correctly the evidence from the police officer involved appears to be contradictory (he had cause to examine Golding under the legislation/he had no belief before Golding was stopped that he may have been involved in the preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism). An interesting concomitant of being convicted under the Terrorism Act is that he is now officially a terrorist and he will not be allowed to enter certain countries, including the United States.
    A very far cry from the treatment of illegal immigrants, what?

    https://uk.yahoo.com/news/britain-first-leader-convicted-terrorism-143310066.html

    1. It looks if Mr Golding had been targeted solely to harass him and to put “the frighteners” on him.

      Morning Horace. This is true of course and he also acts as a Propaganda pivot for the mythical “far-right”.

    2. Mr G has a previous criminal record, so the USA would not welcome him. But I doubt that he will be installing the NHS tracking program.

  34. Time for a little laughter amid all the doom and gloom:

    Two midgets are in a hotel bar talking to a couple of girls. They ask them back to their rooms and the girls agree.

    The one midget is having a horrible time. He can’t get it up and the girl, who is very drunk, pukes and passes out. But from the other midget’s room he hears “One, two, three, HUH! One, two, three, HUH!” all night long.

    The next day, over breakfast, they compare notes.

    “How’d it go last night?” the first midget asks.

    “Terrible,” replies the second midget. “The equipment wasn’t working, if you know what I mean, and she was sloppy drunk anyway, pukin’ all over the place.
    But at least I could hear that you were having a good time!”

    “Good time?” the first midget replies, “I spent all night trying to get on the bed!”

    1. As the midget complained about his attempts to make love to his very tall girlfriend: When we’re nose to nose my toes are in; and when we’re toes to toes, my nose in in and I get lonely because II have no-one to talk to.

      1. Sounds to me as if you’re describing John and Sally Bercow’s wedding night, Richard.

  35. 319465+ up ticks,
    May one ask could any of the governance parties political hierarchy or supporting member tell me what of these men are bona fide, genuine, going back multiple generations indigenous men. Plus what is % Countrywide ?

    If known would it alter the voting pattern or does the party come before all else ?

    27 BRADFORD MEN ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

    1. 27 BRADFORD MEN (OF PAKISTNI ETHNICITY) ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

      1. 319465+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Olt,
        I know that & you know that but the establishment although knowing it will NOT acknowledge it, as for governance party supporters although knowing, go for the three monkey mode of voting.

  36. This is what the Home Office told my MP – about the illegals. So that’s alright, then.
    “Working flat out”….

    14 May 2020

    Dear Mr Mayhew

    Thank you for your email correspondence of 13 May 2020 on behalf of Mr
    William Thomas, , Fulmodeston,
    who is concerned about crossings via the English Channel. Your
    correspondence has been passed to me to respond and your office has agreed to
    accept an emailed response.

    Firstly, it is wrong to say that the Government is not working flat out to stop these
    crossings. It is a fact that these crossings are undertaken and facilitated by criminal
    gangs. The Home Office has been and is working very closely with the French
    Government as well as the relevant international law enforcement agencies to tackle
    this dangerous and illegal activity. The Home Office has a specialist team working
    solely on this issue with the French Interior Ministry.

    Both Governments have a bilateral agreement and a joint action plan in place to
    tackle migrant crossings – and illegal migration more generally – at every level with
    every law enforcement agency, including Border Force, Immigration Enforcement,
    the National Crime Agency (NCA) and policing teams working in tandem with the
    French authorities. Our work is extensive and we jointly undertake police patrols on
    French beaches, deploy drones, specialist vehicles and 24/7 detection equipment to
    prevent small boats from leaving French shores.

    As a result, there are multiple live criminal investigations ongoing and we look for
    every opportunity to gather evidence and intelligence to disrupt these malicious
    criminals and bring them to justice.

    Secondly, in the last year alone Immigration Enforcement has made 418 arrests,
    leading to 203 convictions and amassing a total of 437 years in sentencing. This
    includes over 100 people smugglers convicted for a total of 320 years, some of
    whom were using small boats to commit their crimes. So far this year, eleven people
    smugglers have been convicted and put behind bars as a result of our investigations
    and more are underway. In addition, working with our French colleagues, between
    the period December 2018 and December 2019, there were 16 successful French
    prosecutions which have seen 30 individuals convicted with sentences of up to six
    years.

    Thirdly, it is a fact that despite our robust action to tackle illegal migration both
    domestically and internationally, traffickers will always seek to find clandestine ways
    to get people to the UK. The Home Secretary is developing plans to reform our
    policies and laws that will change the UK’s overall approach to illegal migration and
    the associated criminality that takes place to stop these crossings completely. As with
    all organised criminal activity this will take time, but we are absolute in our
    determination to use all our means to end it and change our laws where we need to.
    Finally, you assert that Coronavirus is impacting our bilateral work on this issue. Let
    me be clear that Coronavirus has had no impact on our operational capability to
    respond to illegal migration. All our teams are fully operational and Border Force and
    Immigration Enforcement will always have the resources needed to tackle these
    dangerous crossings.

    In line with well-established operational processes, all people who reach the UK on
    small boats are medically assessed on arrival and – when safe to do so – taken to a
    processing centre where it is assessed whether or not they have a legitimate asylum
    claim or if they should be subject to return in line with existing legal provisions.

    Yours sincerely
    J Fuertes
    Assistant MP Account Manager

      1. Cynic!

        Only what I expected the HO to say. They completely ignored the point I made with some vigour that it was – during the 8 week quarantine in France, impossible to be out and about without the signed, dated and timed bit of paper AND a justifiable reason. That the French police were enforcing it enthusiastically; and that it was simply unbelievable that a gag of wogs could leave their jungle, wander several miles to a beach, and get in a boat WITHOUT being seen and stopped by the French police. For whom, apparently, we are paying…..

      2. Just like if you buy a ticket for the Match from a tout. You shouldn’t be allowed in.

        To enter a country illegally they should forfeit the right to claim asylum.

        The vast majority of them are illegal immigrants and will cause us many more problems in the future.

    3. Blah blah blah blah blah, yours sincerely, nothing at all sincere about all that clap trap.

        1. I’ve got a stack of paperwork from way back when I tried to make a complaint about the government ripping me off over my pension payments.
          I Paid in for more than 50 years.
          Also a stack of paper work regarding the sudden withdrawing of the 60.00 a week i managed to queeze out of the government after I’d had a hip op. And self employed couldn’t work. Because I couldn’t walk with out using sticks. But the eastern european ATOS biatch (on a grand a week) regarded me fit for work because I could pick up a pound coin and make a cup of tea.
          I also attended tribunals to no avail.
          Because in effect, as you discovered Bill, the British public are continually stitched up by their own deeply established supercilious pompous civil service. Just say, Yes Minister. 😊

      1. ‘Morning, Mags, and Fuerte means ‘Fort’ in Spanish and J Fuertes is merely shoring up the weak wall of defence put up by the government.

        May I draw your attention to my post of the e-mail I sent to my MP

        Please will you and lots of NoTTLers, feel free to copy it and deluge our MPs from all parts of this over-populated island with a flood of protest asking for this matter to be raised in the House.

    6. How many people are In these teams? I always like to look at numbers as they give scale. For example, the numbers given say that the UK has convicted 203 people and the French have convicted 30 in a similar time scale. Some imbalance there, as the problem starts on the French side one might reasonably expect it to be the other way round??

    7. “These crossings are undertaken and facilitated by criminal
      gangs”.

      That would be Border Force, The Home Office and the frog Navy.

      2. Morning Phizz. Comical is it not? I’m curious as to how much the individual members of the Border Farce are getting as their payoff. It must be pretty good!

        1. Yesterday’s film of a ‘handover’ in the Channel should set alarm bells ringing in the HO. If the HO is unaware of what the BF is up to then they will be seen, as they were once described, unfit for purpose: if they are aware then the politicians will have to act sooner rather than later. This scandal doesn’t look like it is going away any time soon and with several months of good weather to come the numbers will climb into the many thousands.

        2. Morning Minty.

          Like traffic wardens they probably get paid per head. Nothing surprises me any more.

    8. If, as J Fuertes states, the Home Office are doing all they can as they work day and night – Ms Patel’s claim – to solve this problem is there a whiff of lack of HO control over the Border Farce? There have been suspicions that both the French and the Border Farce have been involved in shepherding illegals across the Channel and yesterday Farage and his team filmed what was described as a handover in mid Channel between French and UK patrols. Strong threats were made to the boat’s crew re the filming. Something is very wrong and Patel needs to put a stop to any manner of ‘shepherding’ these illegals into the UK.

      1. Morning Korky. Patel does not control the Home Office. It is a law unto itself. It is the organiser of these cross channel forays and the Border Farce acts as their agent!

      2. Morning Korky. Patel does not control the Home Office. It is a law unto itself. It is the organiser of these cross channel forays and the Border Farce acts as their agent!

        2. I’ve posed a similar idea in a reply to you up the page. Nothing would surprise me. The very aggressive reaction to Farage’s boat and film crew yesterday is an indication that neither the French patrol nor the BF wanted the ‘handover’ to become public knowledge.

      3. Worse than that. The RNLI is involved as well. I really do not think the this volunteer workforce should be used to assist illegal immigrants to break into this country. I wonder if the many donors who contribute to the RNLI in order to assist in saving the lives of daft kids on inflatables and fishermen foundering in storms realise that the RNLI is running an illegal ferry service for foreign invaders?

        1. The RNLI has lots of pet projects.

          One is to teach Somali girls swim in their home waters.

          I cancelled my donations

          They have been infiltrated by momentum like most others.

    9. Since they came from France, they have no legitimate claim, and so should be returned immediately, without troubling to step on UK soil.
      How difficult is that?

    2. Are they covid proof? Seems to me that a great marketing ploy is being missed here. Rejuvenate and protect, the duty of every avocado!

    5. I take my hat off to the manufacturers for thinking of another cunning way to part fools from their money.

  39. Morning

    SIR – The British Medical Association has effectively distanced itself from the views of its chairman, Chaand Nagpaul. It is now saying that, while it is impossible to guarantee that reopening schools on June 1 would be without risk, the situation is as safe as it possibly can be.

    However, this is not good enough for Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), who has threatened to name and shame head teachers who are prepared to reopen their schools – a move that amounts to nothing more than hard-Left intimidation.

    John Ball

    Shoeburyness, Essex

  40. SIR – Teaching and medicine have always been regarded as vocations.

    Compared with the doctors and nurses pursuing their vocations on the front line of the battle against coronavirus, teachers returning to school face a relatively low risk.

    Common sense has at times been in short supply during the lockdown, but I hope teachers have enough of it to ignore the NEU’s list of “more than 100 issues on which their members should seek assurance from their school before returning to work”. Children need to be at school, and teachers should not play truant.

    Norman Macfarlane

    Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

    SIR – In what state would Britain now be if, at the end of March, the private-sector supermarkets, food producers and distributors had reacted with the negativity shown by parts of the public sector and their trade unions?

    David Coker

    Great Easton, Leicestershire

    1. Quite. Why is it ok for nurses, doctors, cleaners, check-out staff etc to face the general public in hospitals and supermarkets, but not ok for teachers to face a set group of schoolchildren in a controlled environment? This is just unions doing what they always do, trying to cause trouble for a Tory government and get extra perks for their members. I hope that decent teachers, parents and the government give them extremely short shrift. They are using children as political pawns. They should be ashamed of themselves.

  41. Morning again

    SIR – I congratulate the NEU on having achieved a risk-free working environment before the pandemic. I think we should know how it did so.

    Annie Bennett

    Oving, West Sussex

    SIR – My daughter, a primary teacher, has attended school to support the children of vulnerable workers and those who have learning difficulties.

    On her first morning, the first child to attend rushed into the classroom and put his arms around her, declaring how much he had missed her. How can we expect these children to understand social distancing?

    Kay Harte

    York

  42. Apologies if this offends anyone.
    The first Chinese virus death that I heard of on the grapevine was a 70+ male of ethnic origin, in the London area; a friend of a friend, but not known to me.
    Next was the husband of someone who is known to me; he was aged over 80, suffered from dementia and he needed frequent dialysis; his imminent demise was expected some six months ago.
    Then I heard of a male who was only 70, but who had severe Alzheimer’s and weighed almost nothing, about 35 kilos (not eating).
    And in early April a family friend who would have been ninety later this year. Sadly he also had dementia etc and he was in a residential care home.

    Meanwhile, I am gardening frantically, and endeavouring to lose excess weight.

    1. ‘Morning, Tim, no apologies necessary, as those who wish to be offended will be, despite any apologies.

  43. I’m an NHS doctor – and I’ve had enough of people clapping for me. Thu 21 May 2020.

    What I don’t find nice, and I really don’t need, is people clapping. I don’t need rainbows. I don’t care if people clap until their hands bleed with rainbows tattooed on their faces. I don’t even (whisper it) need Colonel Tom, lovely man as he clearly is.

    Hmmm. I wonder if this guy is a secret Nottler?

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/21/nhs-doctor-enough-people-clapping

    1. The NHS was effectively turned into M*A*S*H, an Army Surgical Hospital, apart from the facts that it is now dealing with biological warfare and car parks at the front desk.

      The real front line is in the community where the elderly have been resigned to hold the fort with the enemy using under resourced nursing backup, just as short of PPE and withdrawal of hospital based pathology making it even more difficult for district nurses to keep the elderly out of hospital.

      1. I was reliably informed that the govt ordered the army etc to a state of readiness in late March, but then refused to actually deploy the RAMC etc in order to avoid panic.
        In other words, the govt forced elderly NHS in-patients (so-called bed blockers) back to their care homes, rather than use the Potemkin-Nightingale facilities. A waste of resources and possibly criminal negligence.

    2. How do you know “this guy” even exists.

      My level of trust in the MSM and The Guardian in particular does not give me cause to believe the article.

      I am not even sure you exist, or me for that matter.

  44. Good morning, Gentlefolk, last evening, Ogga put up a tweet from Nigel Farage who had seen the French Navy escorting illegal immigrants into British Waters and effectively handing them over to the Border Farce. I copied the URL and sent an e-mail to my MP as follows:

    Dear Dr Poulter,
    As my MP, I require that you raise in the House, the level of co-operation there currently is between the French Navy, escorting illegal immigrant into British waters and handing them over to our own Border Farce, as evidenced by this clip taken by Nigel Farage:

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1263119692484481025

    I also require you to ask the PM what action he intends taking over the recent letter I sent with a copy to yourself and re-attached in case of doubt.

    I would like to hear from you both, even if it is just a courtesy puff.

    Regards
    Name, full address and postcode

    Might I suggest that those who can, send a similar e-mail to their MP. We need to raise a furious noise about this blatant pulling of the wool over our eyes.

    If you do send an e-mail, it is a Parliamentary detail that, for you MP to reply, you must include your name, full address and postcode so that he/she/it may be sure that you are a voter living in the constituency and require parliamentary representation.

    Let’s make noise that’ll drown out any hand-wringing and pot-bashing.

    1. If there is evidence to show that the French Navy – which can only be acting under orders from the French Government – is orchestrating an invasion of the UK by illegal migrants and has threatened to board British ships by force of arms in International Waters, then it’s clearly a hostile act, possibly even an act of war.

      At the very least, the British Ambassador should be recalled from Paris immediately,
      the French Ambassador should be expelled from the UK as persona non grata and an explanation demanded from France at the UN Security Council.

        1. Waste of time, Geoff, their white flag factory is working overtime at 3 metres distancing. We should just walk in and patrol their beaches ourselves with the Royal Navy’s row-boat patrolling the waterside.

        2. No need for sarcasm, Geoff. If you read my comment again – carefully this time – you may notice that I did not advocate declaring war on France, what I said was that the French Navy’s threatening to fire on British vessels in International Waters possibly constitutes an act of war.

          Since the French Navy would not do such a thing without the approval of the French Government, what I did suggest was that Britain should make the strongest possible diplomatic protest to Paris and raise the matter at the UN Security Council.

          1. It wasn’t sarcasm, Duncan. Nor was I entirely serious, but by all accounts, Boris was forced into the lockdown by Macron, who otherwise threatened to close the border and starve us. In more emlightened times, that might have been construed as an act of war..

          2. What on Earth could the little shit starve us of? Illegal immigrants. Road transport can be easily diverted to Knokke and Ostend, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Vlissingen etc.

      2. I suspect that the French were there to mark the border and would remain until the Brits picked up the migrants. The blustering by the Gov is breathtaking, and I would suspect some collusion. The Official Gov response is posted below in a letter to BT for those who missed it. As ever they answered a question they could but not the point that was poised.

    2. And ask your MP to complain to the police and require a full investigation as Border Farce are aiding and abetting the breaking of the law. Suggest the minister involved should be arrested for conspiracy.

      2. Undoubtedly, Cynarch, and probably taking quite large back-handers for so doing.

    4. This went into the post 1 minute ago:-

      Dear Miss Dines,
      As my MP, I require that you raise in the House, the level of co-operation there currently appears to be between the French Navy and the UK Border Force where the former appears to be escorting illegal immigrant into British waters and handing them over to the latter.

      I am no doubt you are fully aware of the video produced by Nigel Farage, if not then it is available at this UR:-
      https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1263119692484481025

      I hope that, as a Conservative MP, you will share my own concerns about how we seem to be allowing, and cooperating, with a foreign power, France, to assist the invasion of our country by people who have no legal right to be here.

      A further concern is that it appears that both the French Navy and the UK Border Force are aiding and abetting the breaking of immigration law by assisting the illegal trafficking of people into the UK. Is your friend and colleague The Home Secretary Miss Pritti Patel, aware of the illegality that may be going on under her watch?

      I look forward to your response.

      Thankyou,

      1. Thank you, BoB, how unfortunate you are to have that Lib Dumb as your MP.

        It will be interesting to see her reply and particularly if she dares to raise it in the House.

        1. She will tut at the number of racists in her constituency who aren’t welcoming the invaders with open arms.

          1. ‘Afternoon, BB2, if the definition of a ‘racist’ is one who prefers those of his race above others, then count me in – and I’m proud to stand up for those of my race.

          2. It’s normal to prefer to be surrounded by people who look and behave roughly as one does oneself. It’s part of the globalist, cultural Marxist demolition of society that they want to tell people that normal feelings are wrong.

          1. I thought that she was the one pissing and moaning about how beastly Farage was for calling out the French Navy and the Border Farce for rescuing the filthy scum ‘poor migrants’ (her words not mine).

    5. Done. I expect a sterile long-winded reply that in reality will say nothing meaningful, as befits a lawyer MP.

    2. We’re opening the green on Monday. 2 hour slots, singles only and £1.50 per person per session, no subscription this year and all memberships carried forward from last year. I sourced 80% alcohol sanitiser in 5 litre containers that we’re decanting into spray bottles for sanitising mats, jacks, rink markers at beginning of each session we’re following Bowls England guidelines. We chose 80% alcohol sanitiser as it was recommended by a doctor neighbour who said it will destroy the the sheath if the virus. If you’re interested I got it from medisupplies.co.uk. Ordered Tuesday afternoon delivered yesterday morning. Good luck with your opening.

      1. ‘Morning, Alf, I’ll stick with 40 proof internal sanitiser – it’s kept me going since March 17th and I expect another 3 litre delivery from Sainsbugs this afternoon.

        1. Fully support you with that as inner health is so important. :-)) 5 litres of the 80% ABV is only £42 but, unfortunately, is not potable.

      2. Many thanks. We have bought automatic hand sanitisers, sprays and also a 5 litre container of 80% alcohol. We were told that less than 80% was not effective. I am to lay out only three rinks a day, 1,3,5 or 2,4,6. If enough players are brave enough to come out we will try to play club competitions. I hope to see the lifting of more restrictions. Best wishes.

        1. The club are paying for the bulk sanitiser, for equipment, but individuals buy their own. We’re doing the same as you l/3/5 or 2/4/6 but prebooking via our President and players will be invoiced at year end. When booking they will be given a rink number, direction of play and colour. Apparently the uptake has been brisk. Each of us committee members have been calling members to check they’re OK and I’ll be calling my group this afternoon.
          So pleased you’re able to start up again and wish you good luck for the rest of the season.

  46. For those who have the sense not to pay DT subs:

    The real scandal about illegal immigration into this country is the collusion of the French Navy
    Given how helpful the French and British authorities were to this migrant boat, I am sure the trafficking gangs cannot believe their luck
    NIGEL FARAGE21 May 2020 • 11:49am
    There is a scandal that has been known about for a long time among seaside communities but which, until now, has never been filmed or broadcast to the British public. I refer to the arrival of illegal immigrants in British waters with the active participation of the French Navy.
    Over the last few weeks, I have been doing my best to expose the rapid rise in illegal immigrants entering Britain via small boats in the English Channel. Since lockdown began on 23 March, at least 1,085 people have been picked up, according to official figures. These are just the cases that are known about.
    Having witnessed such a French Navy-assisted crossing myself this week, I feel qualified to predict that if this influx is not tackled, thousands more will come over the summer. It is important to be clear from the outset: the vast majority of the people choosing this route into our country are young men and economic migrants. They are not refugees. It is as if a sign has been hung on the White Cliffs of Dover that reads: “Everyone welcome.”
    This is pretty much the case, of course, because these days almost none of these illegal immigrants is returned to France, despite it being one of the safest countries in the world.
    The origins of my investigation into this matter lie in a process called ‘the handover’. I had heard about this, but I needed to see it at first-hand to be able to write about it. What happens during ‘the handover’ is very simple. The French Navy escorts migrant boats out of French waters and into British waters so that our Border Force can accept them and take their passengers into Dover to begin their lives in the United Kingdom. For some time, I have wondered why no media organisation has touched this story. Now that I know the truth – and given it was relatively easy to establish the facts – I am even more puzzled by this collective failure to scrutinise.
    On Tuesday morning, I went out to sea looking for any migrant boat activity and any French Naval activity, but I drew a blank. Undeterred, I left Dover Harbour again at 5am on Wednesday in conditions which were perfect for migrant boats, a light southerly wind helping vessels go from France to England. On a map, the English Channel may look small, but when you’re out there, it is a very large expanse of water.
    On the way out, the skipper heard on the radio that Dover Lifeboat Station was already engaged and had reached two migrant boats, with Border Force officials not far behind to collect the occupants. As we continued our journey, we heard over VHF radio that a large passing commercial vessel had spotted a migrant boat in the shipping lanes with an estimated 10 immigrants on board, all wearing life jackets. The point was three miles from our position, so we made full steam ahead. After an initial sighting we lost the dinghy, but worked hard with our binoculars and once again located it. Spotting small boats in an open sea is not easy, incidentally, which is why the Border Force now uses small spotter planes and drones to do so – at vast expense to British taxpayers.
    As we approached the dinghy and came within a few yards of it, I was astounded at the scene before me. More than 20 people were crammed into a boat that could not have been more than 16 feet long. Some were even lying on the floor. It was so overloaded that it was taking in water at the back. A can was being used to bail it out.
    Our position was made known to both the RNLI and the Border Force and, fearing a sinking was close at hand, we readied ourselves to take the migrants on board. Luckily, the lifeboat arrived, swiftly followed by the Border Force. By now knowing they were safe, the migrants smiled, made thumbs up signs and lit cigarettes. They were jubilant and kept saying: “England, England, England.”
    Soon, we headed back towards French territorial waters having heard reports that the French Naval vessel ‘Fourmentin’ was escorting a small dinghy towards England. Then the trouble began. Incredibly, the French Navy began threatening us by radio, telling us that we were interfering with a search and rescue mission. Apparently, they always say this, but it is, of course, nonsense. Apart from anything else, we had already saved one boat that morning. Presumably, the French show such hostility in order to hide the truth. They do not want anyone to know what is really going on, but we saw it – and we recorded it.
    Close alongside the migrant dinghy was a small French inflatable raft that had come off the mother ship. This stayed very close to the dinghy to ensure safety. As a Border Force vessel approached, Fourmentin very deliberately put herself between us and the ‘handover’ that was taking place. The French knew we had a camera on board from their previous sighting and they did not want this activity to be filmed.
    Even more shockingly, the UK Coastguard then spoke over VHF radio to my skipper and told him that if anybody filmed the handover, his boat would be held in port. The skipper is tough, but he was visibly shaken. I told him: “Please don’t worry, I have a very good lawyer and the country will be behind you if they dare to behave in such an appalling manner.” I also said the truth has to be told, and he agreed.
    After the handover, things arguably got even worse. We then heard a radio conversation between the French Navy and the Border Force. The French conceded that they must do things differently next time, aware that they had been rumbled. Incredibly, our side responded by saying: “Thank you for your assistance.” Yes, really. UK Border Force officials gave thanks to the French for escorting illegal migrants into British waters.
    The perversity of this is impossible to accept. The French Navy is supposed to stop these boats from entering the United Kingdom. Yet the truth is that they rescue a few if they are sinking and take them back to Calais. The rest are taken into UK waters where some British officials seem only too happy to help. I am sure the trafficking gangs cannot believe their luck.
    You may be wondering, as I am, if this is really what the UK Border Force is paid large sums of taxpayers’ money to do. I would also be fascinated to know what the Home Secretary Priti Patel makes of what I saw this week. As I have said before, if she fails to get a grip on this scandal now, lives will be lost and she will face far trickier questions.
    Some will ask why I take such an interest in this matter. Aside from the fact that £400m of British taxpayers’ money has been spent in the last decade trying to stop this criminal trade (much of it has been spent in France, by the way), I and millions of others remain profoundly uneasy about people just being able to turn up here at will.
    Many citizens from all backgrounds are worried about our national security. Others have concerns about public health as a result of Covid-19. And although it may be deeply unfashionable to say it, there is also a sizeable group in Britain who still believe in law and order. If they are wrong to raise legitimate objections to illegal immigration, something has gone very badly wrong.

      1. The NHS must be overrun with surgeons, consultants, doctors, dentists, theatre nurses….

        And then there are all those architects, designers, film-makers, entrepreneurs.

        I’ll go and have a lie down.

    2. For some time, I have wondered why no media organisation has touched this story. Now that I know the truth – and given it was relatively easy to establish the facts – I am even more puzzled by this collective failure to scrutinise.

      It is difficult to believe that anyone at all, let alone Nigel Farage, could be so naïve as not to have realised by now that the whole operation is run by the Home Office and that the “media” follows orders. Whether this is a self-protective mechanism or simple ignorance I do not know!

      1. I have posted the latest net migration figures below and another city the size of Leicester, population wise, has been shoe-horned into these islands.
        Surely by now, if the MSM is to be believed (ho, ho, ho), the UK should be overfull with the highly skilled people to make this Country surge forward in the World. Therefore immigration should be reduced to a level where one highly skilled person leaves or dies then one new immigrant is allowed in.
        As I’ve posted before, the figures for mass replacement over the period of this medical disaster will make interesting reading: if the level of incoming has been maintained then Johnson et al. will have some awkward questions to answer, should anyone be found to ask them.

        1. No one bar Farage will publicly ask the question.
          Plenty of others ha asked, but been effectively silenced.

        2. They’re planning on replacing the people who have died of the bug with newcomers.

          1. Problem for our children and grandchildren is that they are not planning to stop there.

    3. 319465+ up ticks,
      Afternoon C,
      Well penned post, thanks, IMO the governance political power players are treacherous pratts in total.
      The politico’s know the sh!te is in very close proximity to the fan and something must be seen to be done hence priti good convincing rhetoric chanters come into play patel / nige
      enter the revealing.
      The revealing that has been know about for a good while.
      Shades of rotherham lest I forget.
      All these actions MUST be contained,
      that is inclusive of revealing of known facts, within the tory party.

    4. Inflatable immigrants are making the Maltese Cross.
      The Maltesers are melting with anger but giving the invaders the GPS coords of handy Italian ports.
      I think they have even gone overboard in giving them extra fuel for their outboards.

  47. I’m sure many of us heard on R4 from our down trodden Migrant working as a cleaner for the NHS. Much was made of him being on min wage and he was here ‘dying’ for this country. Its amazing how quick these people get a sense of entitlement, and no mention of the benefits his family were collecting (if they are here). I suspect he will become the equivalent of Brenda from Bristol and will become the go-to hero when comment is needed. I think that they mentioned he was a film maker.

    2. Did any one at the bbc suggest that to stop the suffering he could always go back and live amongst the folk from whence he came.
      At least he’s had free training to be a cleaner. Even been paid for it.

  48. Just heard that the furniture etc will definitely arrive tomorrow between 8 and 9 am. The firm sent their “protocol” for the plague. Only one person can be in the house when the lads arrive.

    So – and I don’t know how to live with myself – I shall have to sit in a chair in the garden and do the crossword…

    The fun will start once the chaps have left……

      1. Nah – I have to be 6 feet away!

        I’d be (even more) useless standing outside the front door…

  49. Mark Zuckerberg has just admitted on BBC lunchtime news that posting anything that might damage the fiscal interests of preferred businesses is adequate reason for political censorship. Facebook will take such material down, quoting specifically David Icke’s conspiracy theory as regards 5G. Presumably all information reporting anecdotal evidence of health risks from widespread radio transmission will be suppressed, making it impossible for the public to know what is really going on. It does give credibility to Icke’s messages of turquoise lunacy.

    If the covert negotiations between the British Government and the United States are anything like TTIP, then we should expect the courts to legislate in favour of privileged business and laws made here to protect people can go hang.

    Next stop Bhopal?

    1. Tobacco companies?
      The drug company that made thalidomide?

      How very authoritarian of Zuckerberg.
      It’s way past time the social media companies were treated like all others and were subject to the same monopoly laws as others, for a start. If they cease to become mere platforms, and behave like monopolistic publishing companies who get to decide who can speak and what they can say, treat them as such.

  50. The postman has just been. To spread some light relief in these dreary days, he is dressed as a Roman senator – even down to the little gold wreath on his cap!

    I’d clap him – were I ever to take up clapping; which I am not.

    1. When the storm clouds are gathering do you greet him with “Hail Caesar?”

  51. “I’ve not seen friends or family for two months now because people are dying and I think that’s more important and if there’s a second wave because of idiots like this then shame on them.”

    So spoke a young man on Southend seafront when interviewed by the BBC. He was complaining about the influx of visitors. This was on today’s ‘World at One’ on Radio 4. There then followed tedious and contorted discussions about social distancing, including one metre or two*, indoors or outdoors, the arrangements that businesses might make if they open up (especially pubs and restaurants) and so on. I began to despair as I listened to the mind-numbing awfulness of it.

    FFS. Let it run. Get it over and done with.

    *David Shukman, science editor, told us that different countries have different distances: 1,1.5, 2, even 1.8 in the USA. That’s 6 feet, David…

    1. I always wonder when I see these “interviews” how many people they passed over before finding one suitable to their purposes!

    2. I always wonder when I see these “interviews” how many people they passed over before finding one suitable to their purposes!

    4. That’s why I don’t watch the BBC, or any of the MSM news channels. They’re tacitly endorsing and promoting that viewpoint, without sufficient attention to the other side of the argument, i.e., going out to a beach in the open air and sunshine is far better than staying at home.
      And people die every day from a multitude of causes, including plain old age, or accidentally breaking your neck while trying to put your trousers on and losing your balance. Should we ban trousers and underwear on that basis? (Absolutely not!!!). Should we all isolate ourselves forever because someone somewhere has died?

      1. Don’t give them ideas. If they ban trousers men will have to wear a Jellaba.

  52. I would like to know how the ‘track and trace’ app works. When for instance a person is out with their dog walking for legitimate exercise on public footpaths and a few crazy (which often happens) cyclist wizz past with complete disregard for distancing. The paths are usually too narrow.
    There is no way to identify the BOB’s, no registration number or any other forms of recognition. Gone in sweaty seconds and often puffing and blowing.

    1. Moaning all.

      Seems to me tracking and tracing is completely pointless. The virus is fading in London, wither worst affected area due to density of population (in more ways than one!) and the lockdown should be ended immediately. It has all been a gigantic overreaction with huge implications for those not treated by NHS because we were “saving it”) and jobs and businesses. Not to mention our complete way of life. Is there something even more sinister behind it all?

      And it turns out the number of deaths in U.K. care homes is way fewer than other countries but you wouldn’t think so by the publicity.

      1. Another vague commitment from the goverment regarding people who are supposed to self isolate for 14 days after returning to the UK. There is no way of monitoring this. The authorities are holding the address of the returnees.
        But again it all comes down to morality and honesty.
        And I think we are all aware of how this factor is observed.

      2. 319465+ up ticks,
        Morning V,
        Seen to be doing something
        when power over people is their real aim.
        Encouraged by, may I add, the peoples themselves via the ballot booth.
        Politico’s are the peoples servants went out the window
        4 decades plus ago.

      3. Who seriously thought ‘tracking and tracing’ was only for this ‘medical emergency’?
        Soon, you will be a non-person if you don’t carry a mobile phone containing your ‘virus free’ certificate.
        Remember John the Savage in Brave New World.

      4. ‘something even more sinister…’ I was reading yesterday evening in ‘guardian-off’ the link to which someone here y’day that this was a rehearsal for a ‘climate change lockdown’. I am sure the peoples of the world will be accepting of that, not. I did find the site very entertaining and the comments interesting. I noticed names from the old DT comments there.

      5. Some sums. Call the UK population 70m. Call average life span 70 years. That means that if the population remains constant around 1m will die every year. That would be 250,000 every 3 months. If 40,000 die from or with Covid 19 that hardly makes any difference at all, an increase of 16% in the critical period, and 4% over the entire year. Given the annual variation in deaths because of ‘flu, mild/severe winters, this is a barely noticeable blip. Yet we have wrecked the entire world economy, outside China, for this?

      6. Who thought the British public would take up “stay at home” with such enthusiasm? We are well on the way to giving up our freedom and cash – and being under total surveillance. In Dubai there are amazingly draconian measures, you must be trackable and are punished if you lose your phone.

    2. I would imagine that the app exchanges IMEI numbers with the bluetooth partner, which makes it possible to identify the phone number and thus owner of the cellphone.

      1. Can’t be IMEI surely, because that’s a hardware number IIRC, and the phone could be second hand. IMSI perhaps.

      2. Surely I don’t need any special app in order for my movements to be traced via my cellphone?

          1. Exactly. Which is why, as per your comment above, I don’t take my phone with me every time I go out!

          2. Hi, Sue.

            I take your point but I take mine everywhere since I might have some misfortune befall me when I am miles from help (or a kiosk). After all, that was their primary purpose when designed.

          4. I never bother taking my mobile with me when walking in the hills. It’d be little use in an emergency since you can’t get a signal in many places, as Robin Cook found out to his cost.
            ;¬)

          7. This is it, isn’t it. It is there for my convenience, not for that of other people. I am very careful to whom I give my mobile number, it is for nearest and dearest only; we have a landline for business calls and suchlike. Neither of our sons and wives has a landline now, they rely on mobile phones – we need a landline as mobile signal is intermittant here and that is the way we like it.

          11. Our sons misbehaved all the time…. only a few months ago our younger son (aged 35) declared ruefully, with all the benefits of experience and hindsight ‘I know we didn’t make it easy for you, Mum….! Actually, they weren’t too bad, mostly.

          14. Poppy is clearly very lucky to have such a nice looking and kind-hearted mum!

          15. Thank you, Rastus, that is a kind thing to say. Hopefully our two boys appreciate their mum, as does Poppie, our little dog. She has me wound around her little paw. I should add that I do know how to spell our cheerful red flower of the summer cornfields – we decided to spell it with an ‘ie’ instead of a ‘y’ in order to differentiate from all the other dogs named Poppy who would have to turn up to the vet during the course of their lives. So Poppie Farmer she is!

          21. Ah, confusion, c’est moi. I’m sure you’re right, although I think it’s her mum’s ID. Is she a Sue, or am I misremembering that as well?

      3. Of course JS but does everyone take their mobile out every time the leave home ?

        1. I seldom even turn mine on.

          Only to make the very occasional phone call or to get an authorisation code from a supplier.

          1. Ditto – I ring the landline on the mobile once a month to keep the SIM alive.

          3. Ho ho!

            Most of what people describe as friends are really only acquaintances and often more trouble than they’re worth.

            I have a very few good friends. They use my landline or visit.

          4. We get more calls from Oz on our landline (funny expression, sounds like dad’s Army) than from its the only reason we keep it open.

          5. I love Oz, but it’s so far away.

            We actually get to hug our grandchilden once a year for a few days, if we’re lucky.
            It will be two years minimum at the moment.

            Facetime isn’t a substitute.

            But on balance I think they’ll get a much better life there than ever they would in the part of the UK that they left.

          6. Last time we went nearly 5 years ago we did the south west we have friends who live south of Perth. We loved it. We drove to the bottom tip stayed in a huge wooden ‘shack’ in Denmark.
            I could have spent the rest of my life there. It was so peaceful. Back in the day We travel the whole of the eastern coast from Adelaide to Rockhampton. Living in a caravan towed by our LWB Landrover. I loved that as well. It was long before the sunshine coast existed. It was just beaches.
            The wonderful evening we spent watching the little penguins come ashore on Phillip island brings a tear to my eye even now.
            I just wish we’d stayed in Oz, but it wasn’t meant to be.

          7. If we could guarantee the family will stay we would leave asap.

            We’ve done a few long drives when visiting, Noosa to Adelaide along the coast was probably the furthest.

            What a beautiful place it is.

          8. I’m having fond recollections, we have ‘done’ the great ocean road three times.
            Lots of bush bashing, Adelaide through Broken Hill, Willcania. Opel fields, huge sheep stations. Pig shooting.
            I wish I could win the lottery, our friends in Victoria have a beach front house to sell on Phillip island. Silver Leaves. Fookin Paradise.

        3. Always. Not much point in having something some people call a mobile if you don’t.

          1. Indeed. I take my mobile when I walk the Springer in the forest as I have had three falls after tripping over on unseen tree roots. In two of the falls I injured myself quite badly.

    3. On the plus side, unless they actually run you over, they’re not actually doing you any harm. My neighbourhood has a high percentage of BAMES, who may be deemed the most vulnerable but appear to me to be the least bothered too, so “social distancing” isn’t much practiced around here.

      1. And they wonder how so many have gone down with the virus.
        Of course as usual, it seems to be everyone else’s fault but their own.
        Similar to the Jewish communities. High percentage.
        A friend who lived in Africa for decades told me that funerals in SA have been restricted to 50 service panticipates. In the UK it’s 10.
        But I’m sure that will be abused in certain circumstances.

  53. 319465+ up ticks,
    What a complete shower of sh!te, compared to the board the felon is a goody.
    breitbart,
    Man Who Tied Up, Raped, Broke Ribs of Pensioner Deemed ‘Suitable for Release’ by Parole Board

    1. I agree with Professor Gupta that social distancing is counterproductive due to the inhibition of the populace to acquire natural immunity through having colds, taking anti malarials, swallowing sunlamps and inhaling ozone.

    1. Disgusting

      Treason

      Soon, it will be proven that Mary Seacole was the Captain and she was killed by slave traders plying their trade from Bristol,
      She had successfully stoped stopped a trader packed with Lawyers, Nuclear Physicists, Chemists, Doctors, Poets being sent to the US. She was helped in this task, by the Arab crews of 6 dhows, who just happened to be passing

    2. I hope they have removed the brass plaque on the quarterdeck with the inscription “Here Nelson fell 21st Oct 1805”. I’m not surprised Nelson tripped over it.

    3. History is being deconstructed.

      Yes we know; it’s inescapable. Just watch Michael Portillo’s programme Empire if you should doubt it!

  57. Just back from the garden centre. Not all that many people there; as you can’t stuff your face, only people interested in, er, gardening were there. Virtually all wearing masks, gloves and looking petrified. Fortunately there were a few people like us – not giving a toss.

    And virtually all the scaredy cats were in their 60s+ – and bloody well ought to know better…. Grrr.

    1. Young lads and lasses in their 60’s lack the backbone and moral fibre of those who have already completed their allotment of three score years and ten!

      1. …and I’m trying for the next 30 – only 24 more to go after Sunday.

        ‘Morning, Richard.

      2. Hoi!
        Cheeky bugger!
        Many I know, from late teens upwards, have a great deal of moral fibre, and certainly aren’t whimpering & whining about viruses – or anything else, apart from the uselessness of government.

        1. Ah, but, Paul, are you talking about British or Norwegian youth?

          At the moment, I’d back the Norwegian youth.

      3. I doth protest!!
        I’m not wearing a mask out in public, and will resist doing so with extreme prejudice.
        My local garden centre had very few people wearing masks yesterday, just a couple. Everyone else did not.

    2. John R now only prepared to reply to his own constituents, it appears. Who do you write to if your own MP couldn’t give a toss. Plus, JR’s Diary is open to all, so why shouldn’t we reply to it?

      1. JR’s Diary is open to all, so please do make your feelings known.

        I often do, though usually my post disappears into the endless void.

        I’m sure he’d love to hear from you about Soros !

        1. I did. I received back the automated reply to put my address so that he could see that I was a constituent. I then wrote back much in the terms that |I wrote above.

          I was writing about the film clips of the French taking immigrants into English waters, there to be picked up by our so-called Border force/patrol/navy/whatever.

  60. Traditionally the usual form for sleaze is that Labour concentrate of personal financial greed, the Conservatives concentrate on sex and Libs concentrate on kinky sex.

    Here is a Liberal peer flaunting the convention and going for personal financial greed rather than kinky sex. He should be ashamed of himself as he has clearly let down his party’s reputation and should be expelled just as Keith Vaz should have been expelled from the Labour Party for crossing party frontiers and sending confused messages by doing both kinky sex as well as money sleaze.

    DTStory today:

    Exclusive: peer ‘milking’ taxpayer by furloughing himself and claiming Lords allowance
    Lord Fox, who owns two homes worth more than £2 million, is the first Parliamentarian known to use wage subsidy scheme to pay himself

    Anna Mikhailova, Deputy political editor of the DT deputy political editor

    Lord Fox is the Liberal Democrat frontbench spokesman for business and the owner and sole employee of Vulpes Advisory, a ‘strategic communications’ company
    Lord Fox is the Liberal Democrat frontbench spokesman for business and the owner and sole employee of Vulpes Advisory, a ‘strategic communications’ company
    A frontbench peer has furloughed himself despite having a £100,000 cash pot in his company and claiming the daily House of Lords allowance during lockdown, The Telegraph can reveal.

  61. Totally agree with the headlines.
    Teaching used to be a vocation but now it’s heavily politicised and controlled
    by those with their own agendas which has very little concern about the future
    of children.

  62. A great poet, such as Shakespeare and Milton, does not just speak for his own age he speaks for all time.

    I have quoted this before but the way that Britain seems to have been so easily seduced by furlough and getting money for nothing (and their drinks for free) and not wanting to go back to work reminds me of Milton’s words which will remain eternally true:

    “But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt,
    And by their vices brought to servitude,
    Than to love Bondage more than Liberty,
    Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;”

    Having voiced these borrowed words I shall now go out of the house until lunchtime and follow Voltaire’s advice: Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

  64. Afternoon. I’m no expert in birdsong recognition. I’ve tried looking it up, but to no avail, but there’s a little blighter near here today whose song is essentialy A B♭ C, A B♭ C, A B♭ C. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. Any thoughts?

        1. That suggests one of the smaller songsters.

          A wren makes a lot of noise (opening for the smutty brigade) and the redstarts/black redstarts are also very vocal.

    6. That three-note rising motif, constantly repeated, is distinctive and most likely a great tit, usually better known for its see-saw ‘teacher, teacher’ call.

      Bassetedge will probably be along to correct me…

        2. The great tit’s ‘teacher, teacher’ call is well-known and by far its most common call but there are variations. It’s the repetition that makes it most likely to be the great tit. I’m struggling to think of anything else that it could be though there is something nagging away at the back of my mind.

  65. UK National debt clock shows debt is now in excess of £2.35 trillion and increasing at £5170 per second.

    1. Now the Lords have been reminded where the trough is, its not going to slow down for a while.

  66. I found a nice sharp pair of medium sized scissors tucked away in a forgotten drawer, a pair that hadn’t been ruined by twine or cardboard cutting .

    After I had finished a few household chores, I washed my hair , and then gave myself a lockdown haircut .. The internet can be very useful .. You tube , how to cut hair , that sort of thing . Moh uses clippers on his because he hasn’t much there ,

    Carol the weather woman has manageable locks , I looked just like a hedge .. so snip snip snip , and really and truly does it really matter if I have botched a few strands .. it is just me inside after all.

      1. I suppose, George, it’s better than forgetting your drawers.

        Yeah, I know, you set ’em up.

    3. Can we have a photograph of the new look, Belle? It may inspire me, one way or the other…

  67. Today’s Ponder

    British cats, dogs and ferrets will need an EU pet passport to travel to Northern Ireland after Brexit

    It should also state:

    No UK Citizens (this includes all ‘Southern Irish passengers) will require to show their passports when crossing from Ireland to UK

    The right for the ‘Irish’ to travel to, and be domiciled in, the UK must be stopped

    All those Irish who live here must have permanent addresses: Gypsy (pikies) site will not do

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/21/british-cats-dogs-ferrets-will-need-eu-pet-passport-travel-northern/

    1. ‘Morning, OLT, and remove their right to vote in ANY of our elections, both Local and General.

      1. Oops! Another case of noninfervidverbia*.

        *I’m trying out new words for failing to read further down.

        1. If I knew what you meant…

          But be careful, Horace, I have a pedant antidote.

    2. I believe I said that couple of months ago , along with abolishing their privilege of voting in the UK, when Veradkar and his side-kick Coveney set about blocking Brexit at the behest of the EU bureaucrats.
      Also we have stopped buying anything that emanates from Ireland.

    3. Irish travellers are a protected minority – you can be sure they won’t be subject to any extra rules, because that would be waycist.

    4. Pikies should be sent back to Ireland. They don’t want them – guess what, neither do we.

    5. If they wont stop the people trafficking across the channel, they won’t do any of your post, you can be sure of that.

  68. Fake news has been with us a long time..

    Hedda Hoppa and Louella Parsons. Los Angeles gossip collumnists.

    If our heroines were long on

    self-importance, they were also the possessors of very short fuses when

    it came to having their legs pulled.

    Ida Lupino and Howard Duff had been happily married for several years: so

    had Hjordis and I, but for some reason both couples had lately been

    subjected to a spate of printed rumours. So we decided to have a little

    fun with Hedda and Louella.

    We chose as

    the battleground a place called Ciros, the ‘hot’ restaurant of the

    moment and one certain to be infiltrated by spies for both gossip

    columns.

    After dinner at Ida’s home, I

    called the head waiter and asked for a table to be reserved for me at

    around midnight. ‘Please don’t seat us near the dancefloor,’ I added.

    ‘In a dark corner… just for two — you understand.’

    Around midnight, I arrived with Ida Lupino on my arm and the head waiter’s eyebrows shot up into his hair-line.

    Vibrating with suppressed excitement, he led us to a dark corner at the far end of the room and stood with eyes glistening as Ida started nibbling my ear.

    Somebody wasted no time in getting to the phone because, by the time Ida and I had finished our second drink, a battery of photographers was massing in the bar.

    Howard and Hjordis timed their arrival perfectly and the entire restaurant watched spellbound as a jittery head waiter led them to a table as far away as possible from Ida and myself. They made a lovely couple and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Howard draping himself over Hjordis like a tent.

    Howard had quite a reputation as a brawler and as I was pretending to be quite ‘high’, there was an expectant hush when Howard suddenly pushed his table over with a crash and rose to his feet. He pointed at me across the room with an accusing finger.

    Hjordis tried to restrain her partner as did Ida when I staggered to my feet, though I thought she over-acted a bit by screaming: ‘No, no! David, you must flee! He’ll kill you!’ Shrugging off the clutching hands of women and waiters, Howard and I advanced upon each other from opposite sides of the restaurant.

    Photographers, headed by the veteran Hymie Fink, moved expectantly into position as we advanced on each other like two cowboys in an empty street at sunset. At the edge of the now deserted dance floor, with eyes locked, we removed our jackets and rolled up our sleeves.

    Then we advanced again and circled each other a couple of times. You could have heard a pin drop… people at the back were standing on chairs.

    Suddenly, we sprang, grabbed each other round the waist, kissed on the lips and waltzed slowly round the floor.

    The two queens of the columns were not amused. I got calls from both the next day, telling me that they would not tolerate being woken up in the middle of the night over a false alarm.

    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Hedda in particular, became a little power-mad and soon after the war laid

    herself wide open to lawsuits when she wrote a book, The Whole Truth And

    Nothing But. In it she wrote that she had summoned Elizabeth Taylor to

    her house and tried to dissuade her from marrying Michael Wilding

    because not only was he too old for her but he had also long indulged in

    homosexual relations with Stewart Granger.

    She had some qualms about printing this passage, however, and one Sunday

    afternoon she called me to come and see her urgently. She lived in a

    charming, white house on Tropical Avenue in Beverly Hills — The House

    That Fear Built, she called it.
    As usual, I was given a hefty gin while Hedda toyed with the tonic. Then she came to the point.

    ‘Isn’t it true,’ she asked, ‘that Michael Wilding was kicked out of the

    British Navy during the war because he was a homosexual?’

    When I had got over the shock of this nonsense, I told her of the actor’s

    gallant record and explained the true meaning of being ‘invalided’ out

    of the service.

    ‘Well,’ she sniffed, ‘I know that he and Stewart Granger once had a yacht together in the South

    of France and I know what went on aboard that yacht.’

    ‘So do I,’ I answered, ‘and it’s a miracle that the population of France didn’t double.’

    She let out her great hoot of laughter and then read me the passage she had written.

    I told her I thought she was mad to print it and was bound to get sued if she did, but she said that the
    publishers wanted her to spice up the book and be more controversial.
    ‘They won’t sue me,’ she said airily, ‘it would only make it worse for
    them to drag it into court — they’ll be sore for a while then they’ll
    forget it.’

    In the event, Hedda and her publisher were sued for $3million and had to cough up a hefty settlement and an abject apology.

    Narration from David Niven’s memoirs.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e78b99da8efbb7412e78fd81436bec9ee851a637ca0bdd9a76da55de6be37439.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9105c1470a5dc71d0e4f82d771920efb6bcd32cfcbdb074755022c288334231a.jpg

    2. Dangerous material, Johnny! Whoever said that is spouting pure balderdash.

    3. You are no longer allowed to contradict the official narrative on Facebook!

  70. Good afternoon, Chums.

    Totally off topic!!

    What is your very favourite telly series?

    I know mine but I wonder what you enjoy/have enjoyed?

    1. Dad’s Army. Just reflecting, that in those days we had organisations who would repulse invaders.

    2. The original Brideshead Revisited;
      The original Tinker Tailor
      The Forsyte Saga.

      1. Very good Bill,…….. but not the winner!!

        After all I set the bar….so I choose :-))

        1. Well, for you, it MUST be

          Magic Roundabout

          To go with your herbak teas

    4. I enjoyed Harry’s Game from the Seymour book and the Morse series, with John Thaw.

    5. Hello Garlands,

      For me, It’s hard to pick out a favourite, but Tinker, Tailor and Smiley’s People, also I, Claudius and more that were produced back in the 60’s and 70’s when they knew how to do it!!

      1. They did, Jill. I certainly enjoyed them. I have not had a
        telly since ‘la Balding’ chose to give us her opinions
        about the ‘Thames Pageant.!!’

        1. la Baldinghas changed her name, to be ‘more Islington’

          She is now La Alopecia

    6. Comedy: Only fools and horses
      Drama: Morse
      Current affairs: Panorama pre 1990

      2. If I said I used to record the music from the test card when I was a teenager, would it diminish your justifiably already low opinion of me? But then my little brother used to enjoy winalot sandwiches, we are thank goodness, an odd family…

    10. ‘Afternoon, little g, I was never really a TV buff having been brought up with ‘Journey Into Space’ but favourites on the old steam radio have to include, The Goon Show, Hancock’s Half-hour and later Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken.

      1. Good afternoon, Nanners.

        In my opinion. without any doubt, the most
        watchable series was..M*A*S*H*

        I still watch it and my heart strings are still pulled!!

        Yes it was American……but the inbuilt compassion
        [okay, okay…..left wing compassion] seems very
        real.

        Edited.

        2. Certainly one of my favourite comedy series.

          The film was excellent too, unlike the execrable Dad’s Army one, although to be fair I believe M.A.S.H on TV was a spin off rather than the other way around.

          1. Good morning, Sos.

            You are correct about the film coming first, it was
            based on a book, some of the actors were in both
            the film and the series. Alan Alda, who also directed
            and wrote some of the scripts, was in the TV series but
            not in the film.

          2. I always wondered whether Catch-22 would have been an equally successful venture, with all its absurdities.

          3. Yes, when I read Catch-22 it did remind me
            of M*A*S*H [obviously I didn’t read it when
            it was first published. We were very restricted
            in the Convent Library!!…It took me a while to
            catch up on my reading, many authors were banned.]
            I have just had a quick look and there has been a
            series, it aired last year and a second series
            has been made……I shall have to investigate
            YouTube.

          4. Very recent I see, and it’s got a reasonable IMDb rating too.

            It’s a long time since I read the book, I think I must have been at school. From recollection, I didn’t particularly enjoy the film; certainly nowhere near as much as I did MASH

          5. I haven’t seen the film.
            I have just watched an interview, with the stars,
            on YouTube also a trailer. I have Amazon prime
            and they screen Hulu series,
            I shall have to investigate!
            Who knew George Clooney was a comic?!

        3. Agree, I had forgotten about M*A*S*H*, it was as great series on so many fronts. Likewise, another American series called “Treme” set in New Orleans after hurricane Katerina was excellent in it’s portrayal of jazz, and how the community pulled together after the devastation. But I’m not sure if it ever made it to the UK though.

      2. Do you know Nan that TV may have been a backward step? I can still remember sitting in front of the fire listening to the wireless with my ears and seeing it with my imagination . It had a magic to it that I’ve never experienced with Film and TV!

    11. One Foot in the Grave, Dads Army , House, The West Wing, and others. Dad’s Army my favourite

      1. I was at the Theatre before the lockdown to see Ian McKellen in his one man show after touring the country in his 80th year. Richard Wilson was sitting two seats away from me. (namedrop namedrop)

    12. Well Tinker Tailor was the apogee of the BBC, since then it’s been downhill all the way. Some American series. (The Wire, The West Wing) have equalled if not surpassed it but that could simply be due to greater production values and technology. My own personal TV tastes as in films and books is abysmal but as Orwell himself observed in one of his essays, they have a charm all of their own.

    15. The Onedin Line
      Morse
      Rumpole
      Gardeners World
      Old Grey whistle test
      Jules Holland

      I also enjoyed Mash, perhaps the music struck a few chords.
      We also currently enjoy that daft American sit com called Two and a half men .. on one of those other channels .
      The Repair shop

      Can’t remember anything else at the moment .

      1. Yes, Minister
        and
        Yes, Prime Minister
        Rumpole
        House of Cards (UK)
        Tenko
        Edge of Darkness
        Poldark (the first one)
        Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle) – I also love the theme music, it is so lighthearted.
        Gardeners’ World

        I should point out that I have gone off some of a few of the central characters when they came out as Remainers and tried to persuade us to do likewise. These people should never have been encouraged to voice their political views.

      2. BtL was good but perhaps, as you say, of its time. Which actress played Neil Pearson’s girl – I quite fancied her?

        1. Looking at the cast list I would guess Barbara Wilshere? There are some quite well known names who appeared in that series!!

          1. No, Lesley Vickerage, who played Jenny.

            Lazy git has now done his research!

          2. That was my second choice, but she was in fewer episodes so I assumed (yes, I know) that it was Wilshere!!

    17. I’m a Hepton fan, so I also enjoyed secret army.

      I always suspected ‘allo ‘allo was a mickey take of that one.

    18. Yo, G. I ditched my TV in 2012. However, I’ve redeployed my Telegraph subscription in favour of Netflix, and I confess I’ve been enjoying & binge-watching Designated Survivor. I’m at the end of Season 2 – strangely, Dominic Raab has yet to appear…

  71. “Johnson of Gaunt”

    I see concerns have been expressed about BoJo’s health and he’s described as appearing “gaunt”. His face may look strained at times but have to say that when I look at pictures of BoJo, “gaunt” – which means excessively thin and angular – is not the adjective that first springs to mind. The man’s a lard-arse and needs to shed more than just a few pounds for the sake of his health. His “pot” is bigger than a senior civil servant’s pension fund.

    Since the obese have been found to suffer more severely from the dreaded virus, maybe he wouldn’t have needed hospitalised if he’d made some effort to keep himself in good shape, instead of in pear shape.

    1. His hair when he appeared in Parliament yesterday was a disgrace. I cannot understand how such a physically repulsive looking man has any success at all with the ladies. It is not as if his external ugliness conceals a beautiful soul beneath – he is selfish, overbearing, arrogant, muddle-headed,
      nasty and treacherous

      We had daily a check from the beady eyes of the school prefects on our dress and appearance each morning as we came out of chapel when I was at school. You were automatically punished if your shoes were not clean and polished and if your trousers, shirt, tie and jacket were not all clean, pressed and smart.

      I did not really approve of this and was constantly punished for being scruffy but Boris Johnson’s scrofulous scruffiness makes me look very chic by comparison.

      Let’s face it – the man is a disgrace and we need someone like Owen Paterson in his place.

          1. I’m a double loser then, no power and I could never bring myself to take in oysters.😎

          2. Oysters are overrated, Korky. The last time I tried half-a-dozen, only five of them worked.

          6. Colchester is renowned for its oysters and has a prestigious Oyster Feast in the Autumn. My father, when a town councillor, was invited to the Feast but never could eat one. Oysters, mussels, scallops etc are foods that I avoid. Crab, properly prepared is fine but lobster is, in my opinion, overrated.

          7. Scallops are good – not keen on mussels, crab’s ok, but prefer the white meat; lobster good but rather pricey, and I don’t like the thought of boiling them alive.

          8. Lobsters many be stabbed to death before going into the pot, bu inverting thr point of a knife into a crucial spot on their back. However, I’ve been told that the best way is to pop them into warm water and then bring it gently to the boil. Apparently they suffocate before it becomes painful.

        2. Boris is a slob and some women are attracted to power.

          Boris is a slob and all women are attracted to power.

          1. You may think that, I couldn’t possibly comment. (I value my skin too much)

      2. On the news yesterday certain parts of Boris Johnson’s ‘brilliant’ withdrawal from the EU began to emerge.

        It is no better than May’s surrender deal and it is no wonder than he did not wish to give any details of it before the general election. And now we know just why he cowardly got out of being interviewed on television by Andrew Neil who would have brushed aside his bluster and got to the truth about the WA..

        1. I am also pondering on Boris’s ‘brush with death’ was in fact that he required a respite from the ongoing pressures, with which he could no longer cope. This would chime with his unwillingness to be interviewed….. A man who does not have the courage of his so-called convictions.

          1. I can’t help it.

            I never judge people by their appearance or utterances, apart from the usual suspects, naturally.

    1. It was typical political bribe for votes, that will be extremely difficult to withdraw.

      2. It’s over 10 years old, I think. A ‘review’ could be justified and implemented, but the saving in the context of recent extraordinary costs is minimal.

        1. I agree it’s minimal in the great scheme of things but I can see why the “let’s bash the oldies” brigade would like it.
          Average earnings moved ~ 22% where the pension went up ~ 31%
          The fact that the UK state pension is very low by Western standards escapes them.

          I suspect there will be a lot of sacred cows slaughtered if we are ever to get out of this Covid-19 mess.

    2. Will the state pension triple lock be scrapped to help pay for the government’s coronavirus spending?

      Yes and there will be raids on savings!

        1. I’ve said this for a while. Prolly (©BT) won’t affect me, since 10% of bugger all isn’t a major problem. But I’ve suggested to a friend who recently downsized, with a few grand left over, that she might consider which is the best place for her nest egg. Nice new avatar, by the way… :-))

          1. Thank you!

            Gold is probably the best way to go – it always has been, always will be, when the going gets tough – literally in the hand and not as a ‘guaranteed’ promissory note. It is hard, though, to ignore those habits of a lifetime.

          1. Yes. Just rub a steak over your scalp and then put the steak in the fridge (after a rinse) and Dolly will do the rest. She will expect some steak as payment of course. Possibly all of it. You will need to KowTow. She is after all only 12 inches high.

    5. Neat job.

      I’ll bet that set you back a lot more than the last time you went to the barber.

      1. Not much more. £30 for a full groom. £1 to pay by card and a £4 tip. They normally get a fiver for the tip but i chose them to pay the surcharge.

      1. No, not at all. That is a support groomers use to help keep them in position.

        1. It’s just that she seems to spend a lot of time lying or sitting down in your photos and then she was supported in a sling. My aged hound does have a problem with his back legs due to wear and tear in the discs in his spine. It doesn’t stop him wanting to go for a walk, though.

          1. Whenshe is bounding around house, garden and the Park she would just be a blonde streak of light. i don’t photograph her

      1. I think so, Ndovu. I was also on DM website when I was looking about an hour ago.

    2. “Take me to the UK, the benefits are better than France, for the bear necessities.”

  79. Phew – wot a scorcher.

    Half the outdoor tomatoes planted. The rest tomorrow or Saturday. Come to think of it, I might do it tomorrow when I am forced out of the house while the removers are here.

    Have a jolly evening – Don’t be alert; Control Yourselves; Get on with your lives. Snappy, eh? Better than Halfcock’s one, anyhow.

    TTFN A demain.

  80. For those of you who like statistics (as opposed to lies and damned lies) here is a statistic for you to get your heads around.

    At the time of writing, the number of people, worldwide, who have died as a result of the current Covid-19 virus outbreak is 328,000

    OK so far?

    Right.

    As of 18:00 hrs BST, today, the world’s population increase, for today only, stands at 166,000 and continues its unstoppable progress. This means that by this time tomorrow, all of those succumbing will have already been replaced! [Anyone thinking that I am being callous may think whatever they wish, I am beyond appalled at how my species is gormlessly trashing its environment].

    This virus is having no effect, whatsoever, on the exponential rise of humans infesting the planet to the detriment of itself and all other life forms.

    2. Gosh yes! I have posted earlier my crude calculations for the UK which suggest that the death toll in threUK from Covid-19 and with Covid-19 is a tiny blip on the annual figures. Nothing that would be remarked upon were it caused by sever winter flu outbreak.
      We do not close down the country, we do not shut down industry, we do not lock every one indoors as the flu goes round. Far from it, if Jeannie crawls into work blasting flu germs in every direction, everyone says how brave she is, instead of dragging her into the car park and shooting her (as would be my strong inclination).

  81. I just opened an email giving an update on a petition I had signed, concerning making the review on Child-Grooming (a.k.a.

    1. Is there a need for a new petition, identifying that we DON’T WANT A PAPER – we want the original, warts and all.

      Is there anyone out there that can start such a petition?

      2. The establishment is of the opinion that we can’t handle the warts and all. In fact it’s the establishment that do not want the warts exposed, for very obvious reasons: it would finish many people and force the PTB to actually do something to stop the criminality.

        1. Well, they may not want the warts published. But we are well past the point where anything will be done to stop the criminality.

      1. I pressed for more information on the site and was told that I had withdrawn my signature. I haven’t – nor my interest in what is happening on it.

        1. That’s odd – I’m assuming you didn’t – I wouldn’t know how to once I’d signed.

          1. I received an email supposedly giving me an update on a petition I had signed.

          2. I got that one.

            You recently signed the petition “Release the Home Office’s Grooming Gang Review in full”:

            https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300239

            The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions
            system) has published the Home Secretary’s response to the its request
            for a revised response.

            The Home Secretary’s response now states that that the Government
            will publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation later this
            year, which will set out their findings and set the direction for
            future policy and research. The letter from the Home Secretary is
            available here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1193/documents/10184/default/

            Thanks,

            The Petitions team

            UK Government and Parliament

      2. Because you’ve hit the ‘less than’ key instead of ‘M’ in ‘Moslem’ in the first line. It’s an HTML tag for the formatting of text.

      3. No idea. Here’s mine…

        Dear Geoffrey Graham,
        You recently signed the petition “Release the Home Office’s Grooming Gang Review in full”:
        https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300239
        The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) has published the Home Secretary’s response to the its request for a revised response.
        The Home Secretary’s response now states that that the Government will publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation later this year, which will set out their findings and set the direction for future policy and research. The letter from the Home Secretary is available here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1193/documents/10184/default/

          1. Apparently the full report contains sensitive in formation which they will thoroughly purge before release.

          2. Yes, sensitive to slammers, who if course don’t want any repercussion on them (social cohesion or something) for what their males have been doing. Perish the thought that they should feel “not wanted”. They know the perpetrators, they feed the perpetrators, they are in fact aiding and abetting them.

            Chuck them out of this previously decent country.

          3. Not just the slammers. Skulking in the dark recesses of this awful episode are those in authority that either turned a blind eye or actually facilitated the rape and trafficking of these unfortunate girls. Some of these people will be household names locally and nationally. They may well remain in positions of authority. There is not a cat in hell’s chance that these criminals will be exposed: the fallout would probably destroy the establishment. Think Jeremy Thorpe and Cyril Smith writ VERY, VERY large.

          4. And they need quite a bit of time to concoct some sort of reply they think may fool the gullible. Well, they are the gullible ones if they think that.

    1. Apart from the horrors of halal, the supermarkets failed miserably to cope with the upsets caused by Covid-19 and panic buying. We cannot get a delivery from Sainsbury’s at all, despite having been a fairly regular delivery customer before all this. At the very start Sainsbury’s closed their fish and deli counters.
      Ditto Tesco. We cannot get a delivery from them either.
      We’ve been regular customers of both stores for over 15 years. No more. Our local wee shops have been able to deliver to us, even though we were not regular customers at all.

      1. 319465+ up ticks,
        Evening Hp,
        We have used the small shops all the time ( a market town) because nothing looks worse than ghost shops.
        During the incarceration we order in the morning delivery within hours, everything as normal.

        There has been no “normal times” as such especially over the last two decades, but what passes as normal times.

        Supermarket occasionally, small shops mainly.
        In my book any business dealing in halal products needs boycotting.
        Any political parties with halal on their menu needs boycotting.
        Common decency dictates that.

  83. I have had to edit this and repost as i cocked up the last one.

    Fake news has been with us a long time..

    Hedda Hoppa and Louella Parsons. Los Angeles gossip collumnists.

    If our heroines were long on self-importance, they were also the possessors of very short fuses when
    it came to having their legs pulled.

    Ida Lupino and Howard Duff had been happily married for several years: so had Hjordis and I, but for some reason both couples had lately been subjected to a spate of printed rumours. So we decided to have a little fun with Hedda and Louella.

    We chose as the battleground a place called Ciros, the ‘hot’ restaurant of the moment and one certain to be infiltrated by spies for both gossip columns.

    After dinner at Ida’s home, I called the head waiter and asked for a table to be reserved for me at around midnight. ‘Please don’t seat us near the dancefloor,’ I added. ‘In a dark corner… just for two — you understand.’

    Around midnight, I arrived with Ida Lupino on my arm and the head waiter’s eyebrows shot up into his hair-line. Vibrating With suppressed excitement, he led us to a dark corner at the far end of the room and stood with eyes glistening as Ida started nibbling my ear.

    Somebody wasted no time in getting to the phone because, by the time Ida and I had finished our second drink, a battery of
    photographers was massing in the bar.

    Howard and Hjordis timed their arrival perfectly and the entire restaurant watched spellbound as a jittery head waiter led them to a table as far away as possible from Ida and myself. They made a lovely couple and out of the corner of my
    eye, I could see Howard draping himself over Hjordis like a tent.

    Howard had quite a reputation as a brawler and as I was pretending to be quite ‘high’, there was an expectant hush when Howard suddenly pushed his table over with a crash and rose to his feet. He pointed at me across the room with an accusing finger.

    Hjordis tried to restrain her partner as did Ida when I staggered to my feet, though I thought she over-acted a bit by screaming: ‘No, no! David, you must flee! He’ll kill you!’ Shrugging off the clutching hands of women and waiters, Howard and I advanced upon each other from opposite sides of the restaurant.

    Photographers, headed by the veteran Hymie Fink, moved expectantly into position as we advanced on each other like two cowboys in an empty street at sunset. At the edge of the now deserted dance floor, with eyes locked, we removed our jackets and rolled up our sleeves.

    Then we advanced again and circled each other a couple of times. You could have heard a pin drop… people at the back were standing on chairs. Suddenly, we sprang, grabbed each other round the waist, kissed on the lips and waltzed slowly round the floor.

    The two queens of the columns were not amused. I got calls from both the
    next day, telling me that they would not tolerate being woken up in the
    middle of the night over a false alarm.

    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Hedda in particular, became a little power-mad and soon after the war laid herself wide open to lawsuits when she wrote a book, The Whole Truth And Nothing But. In it she wrote that she had summoned Elizabeth Taylor to her house and tried to dissuade her from marrying Michael Wilding because not only was he too old for her but he had also long indulged in homosexual relations with Stewart Granger.

    She had some qualms about printing this passage, however, and one Sunday afternoon she called me (Niven) to come and see her urgently. She lived in a charming white house on Tropical Avenue in Beverly Hills — The House That Fear Built, she called it.

    As usual, I was given a hefty gin while Hedda toyed with the tonic. Then she came to the point. ‘Isn’t it true,’ she asked, ‘that Michael Wilding was kicked out of the British Navy during the war because he was a homosexual?’

    When I had got over the shock of this nonsense, I told her of the actor’s gallant record and explained the true meaning of being ‘invalided’ out of the service.

    ‘Well,’ she sniffed, ‘I know that he and Stewart Granger once had a yacht together in the South of France and I know what went on aboard that yacht.’ ‘So do I,’ I answered, ‘and it’s a miracle that the population of France didn’t double.’ She let out her great hoot of laughter and then read me the passage she had written.

    I told her I thought she was mad to print it and was bound to get sued if she did, but she said that the publishers wanted her to spice up the book and be more controversial. ‘They won’t sue me,’ she said airily, ‘it would only make it worse for them to drag it into court — they’ll be sore for a while then they’ll forget it.’

    In the event, Hedda and her publisher were sued for $3million and had to cough up a hefty settlement and an abject apology.

    Narration from David Niven’s memoirs.

    1. Could you make it even less easy to read when you post it the third time?

      Just asking…{:¬))

        1. I find, Philip, that any story like this is best copied and pasted into WORD, wherein you have free rein in altering the line spacing and sectionalising it into readable paragraphs. You then, when finished, highlight it all (Ctrl + A) copy (Ctrl + C), find your way back to the NoTTLe page and the paste (Ctrl + V).

          Bob’s your Uncle and Fanny’s…

    2. Is this from The Moon’s a Balloon Phizzy which I read many years ago?.

        1. Interesting man.
          Per Wiki:

          The day after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Niven returned home and rejoined the British Army. He was alone among British stars in Hollywood in doing so; the British Embassy advised most actors to stay.

          He remained close-mouthed about the war, despite public interest in celebrities in combat and a reputation for storytelling. He once said:

          I will, however, tell you just one thing about the war, my first story and my last.

          I was asked by some American friends to search out the grave of their son near Bastogne.
          I found it where they told me I would, but it was among 27,000 others, and I told myself that here, Niven, were 27,000 reasons why you should keep your mouth shut after the war.

    3. “The moon’s a balloon” and “bring on the empty horses” are highly entertaining books.

      1. Can you remember if it was Trubshaw or Niven himself who was guilty of “very poor form” in going to a party disguised as a goat?

        When I was 19 years old I shared a flat in London with a chap called Andrew who had been to Stowe and who idolised David Niven who was an old Stoic who went there in 1923 the year the place was founded. My friend Andrew was also very charming and had a tremendous amount of success with young women.

        The school has always had a somewhat racy reputation and the several Stoics who have found their way to our French courses in Brittany over the years have all been very charming. Niven also amazed everybody by taking a tart to the school’s speech day.

        For many years Niven insisted that Trubshaw – his great friend – had to be given a minor role in any film in which he was going to appear.

      2. Can you remember if it was Trubshaw or Niven himself who was guilty of “very poor form” in going to a party disguised as a goat?

        When I was 19 years old I shared a flat in London with a chap called Andrew who had been to Stowe and who idolised David Niven who was an old Stoic who went there in 1923 the year the place was founded. My friend Andrew was also very charming and had a tremendous amount of success with young women.

        The school has always had a somewhat racy reputation and the several Stoics who have found their way to our French courses in Brittany over the years have all been very charming. Niven also amazed everybody by taking a tart to the school’s speech day.

        For many years Niven insisted that Trubshaw – his great friend – had to be given a minor role in any film in which he was going to appear.

        1. Sorry, no idea.

          I read Moon when it first came out and enjoyed it sufficiently to buy horses later.

    1. If the NHS is so bloody wonderful, why are so many people dying here compared with other countries?

      1. Maybe our lockdown hasn’t been as tough and maybe those countries aren’t full of daft old fools who think it’s the flu.

        PS surely “here” is France for you.

      2. The countries doing best are the ones who locked down early and locked down hard, tested extensively and contact traced early on. Both Britain and the US failed to do this, hence the spread and all the deaths.

        2. If the experts are to be believed, when the lock downs end, the second wave will be even worse.

    3. I haven’t heard the clap for any of the past Thursdays. This clap performance is so patronising towards those who view their work as a vocation.

    4. Ooo, I’d forgotten all about that. I do hope no one thought my strimming from 7 till 9 was for the NHS.

    5. Clapping, whooping, pan bashing … According to someone in the next village, there was clapping yesterday for ‘educashun’ staff.

      1. When is it going to end, where will it all end? I see it morphing, sliding, laterally into some of weekly political clap…. Perhaps winter will put an end to it all.

        1. We are not doing any of the ‘happy clappy’ stuff here, at least not where I live. Donations are asked for to buy meals from different local restaurants for carers, medics and emergency people.

    6. “Good News PrimeMinister, there are millions of voters out on the streets joyously clapping their own imprisonment, some are letting off celebratory fireworks. There’s no need to let up for another month at least….”

    7. There ought to be 2 minutes silence for those poor souls who have died because treatment for the cancer and cardiac illnesses was withdrawn. The government decided a Covid life was worth more than a cancer/ cardiac or any other life. Despicable and heartless.

  88. Sadly I have to announce another COVID death.

    Bumble was surfing the web last night in MOH’s greenhouse and unfortunately got caught in it.
    I couldn’t just stand by and watch Bumble”s struggles to get free.
    I did my best to release our friend from the arachnid’s trap with my dental forceps but I fear the poor bee had suffered from a lethal anaesthetic overdose.

    I recovered Bumble this afternoon.

    This image is a memorial to Bumble’s life as bee.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/df4af8b4900333fdc3cd60444cc3918d7c70de6a8a5140b26e7373958b95d12a.jpg

      1. Actually I laid Bumble to rest back in the spiders web from whence the rescue was attempted to await events as nature intended.

      1. OK Bill,

        I suggest the applause should follow the music I’ve chosen to celebrate Bumble’s life – Fantasie Psalm 42 – K.J. Mulder – Ichthuskerk Urk – Gert van Hoef A beautiful and peaceful piece of music with a third movement having bee overtones followed by a more powerful movement and a resounding finale.

        https://youtu.be/xcM5C62gNI0

        🍷😉

          6. I used to have a holiday job with the legal firm that acted for the singer who purchased from his earning large chunks of Covent Garden during the late 1960s…

  89. Well my wife picked up our lovely nearly 5 years old grandson this afternoon.
    His mum was feeling the pinch after his 3 month old sister is suffering from the most recent inoculations. Dad’s working flat out from home. Lovely Mum has long term MS and probably a touch of post natal depression.

    His ‘nanny’ Took him and doggo for a walk. They played in the river. He was full of himself later, exuberant is the word. I’d made a table out of surplus 90 × 45 par for the garden and he was delighted to be the first to sit at it with a drink. And he won’t be the last.
    We made paper aircraft and he had susages for dinner. It was absolutely lovely to see the little lad again.
    Please don’t dob us in.
    Sleep well little fella and your mum and lovely sister.
    I’m off to the end of the garden with a drinkiepoo to listen to the birds watch the bats and skylab pass over later.
    Night all.

    2. If you are happy with the risks and mitigate, then good on you. The rules are for the oafs who do not have a clue. I have my 87 yo demented mother living with me. If I didn’t go out with her now and again, I’m sure I would end up writing fish puns.

    3. Enjoy your time together, Eddy, – the shame is that, with Common Purpose throughout his schooling, we can only hope that his good sense will see him through.

    1. Polly, you are another that I’ve just unblocked in order to be able to convince myself that, like Mad The Dog, you are a rabid animal that is best ‘put down’.

  92. It’s all very well sticking it to the unions but do we know what level of support there is for a return among teachers and parents? I wonder if it’s proportional to the size of their back gardens…

    Boris can’t afford to surrender to the contemptible teaching unions

    The real critique of No 10’s plans is that they are too modest. Schools should be reopening even faster

    ALLISTER HEATH

    What is going on? Are the hard-Left education unions actually going to manage to delay the partial reopening of our primary schools? Is the great Vote Leave Government, until now an astonishingly successful establishment-slaying machine, about to suffer its first defeat? Are the Michael Gove/Dominic Cummings schools reforms of the 2010s about to be avenged by a tiny rump of unrepresentative activists convinced that they are refighting the Miners’ Strikes of the 1980s?

    Let us hope that it is a clever bluff from the Government, a case of “appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak,” as Sun Tzu put it in the Art of War. Boris Johnson can’t afford the unions to defy him. Schools must start reopening on June 1, and the small gang of selfish activists seeking to derail this must be crushed pitilessly.

    This is not an attack on teachers. With the infection rate collapsing, most are keen to return to some sort of normality, as are heads and governors. They miss the children in their care and have done their best to continue to teach them remotely in the chaos of the past few months. They deserve our utmost gratitude. We should ensure that the return to the classroom takes place as safely as possible.

    But I strongly object to elitist union leaders who are seeking to sabotage, through undemocratic means, the extraordinarily careful, limited reopening planned by the Government. Theirs is a contemptible ideological act, an offensive, snobbish snub to the millions of workers who have already returned, without complaint, to hospitals, factories, shops, logistics operations and offices.

    The prolonged closure of our schools – a move I supported, perhaps mistakenly, at the start of this crisis, when the scale of the pandemic, the forms of social interaction most likely to spread it, and the groups most at risk from the virus were all unclear – is fast turning into an educational, social and economic calamity. Millions of children are not being educated at all, others barely so; by the end of the summer, they could have fallen 12 months behind, forgetting everything they learnt earlier this year.

    Others are missing the sport, the clubs and friendships. Some are depressed; many poorer children are going to bed hungry; abuse cases have shot up. The consequences in terms of social mobility, knowledge, productivity, mental health and crime will plague us for years.

    The gains in achievement eked out by the Gove/Cummings reforms in the state school sector, and the return to greater rigour over the past 15 years, could be wiped away. We will tumble down the international Pisa league tables, especially if our schools end up shut for longer than those of our European neighbours. The gap between poor and rich is growing again; the private schools, to their credit, are doing far better than the state sector, with some even delivering full, real-time online lessons.

    The indirect impact is equally cataclysmic. Parents of younger children cannot work at all, Zoom or no Zoom. Millions of others are house-bound: they cannot travel to shops or factories or hospitals or warehouses. Our economy depends on childcare and schooling for parents to be able to operate, especially with grandparents in confinement. The costs in terms of unemployment will be horrific. Hundreds of thousands of lives will be ruined.

    The real critique of the Government’s plans is that they are too modest, given the dramatic decline in new infections, especially outside care homes: Labour should be arguing that schools should be reopening faster. Why isn’t Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, pointing out that his R-rate has collapsed to almost zero, demanding that all schools in the capital be released from lockdown to allow the city he supposedly cares about to start to recover? Instead, the Left, once again, has allied itself with the barons against the people.

    It is not as if reopening schools is somehow eccentric. Europe is leading the way, with adaptations for social distancing, without a surge in new infections. It is now clear that almost no children have died from the virus, that they usually suffer far less than adults when they do get it, and that they are unlikely to pass it to adults. Yes, a small number of youngsters have suffered some rare symptoms – but why do the British trade unions believe that what is good for French, German, Danish and Swedish children is too dangerous for British ones?

    It’s time for the Government to return to its Vote Leave ways, and launch a proper fightback. This is no longer a “national”, “wartime” Government with mass support that therefore needs to tread in a bipartisan way: politics is fast renormalising. Brexit and Tory voters agree with the Government, Labour supporters and Remainers don’t. Sir Keir Starmer is on the warpath.

    Johnson must consider urgent legislation to force all state schools to reopen, drafted in such a way as to prevent any informal boycotts. The growing number of councils that are refusing to comply should lose control of their schools, with all of them turned into academies. This may be the time to wipe away the Local Education Authority model in its entirety. Schools should also be mandated to keep online lessons going for those year groups still at home. The timing of the summer holidays should be reviewed: the school year must either be extended, or the autumn term should start earlier. Every state school should publish a 12-month plan detailing how they will ensure that children catch up.

    This crackdown should go hand in hand with leniency in other ways. Parents who are too worried to send their children to school should be allowed to keep them at home until the start of the next academic year. Teachers in vulnerable groups should not be forced to work. The authorities should do everything in their power to minimise risk and pay for plentiful PPE.

    But our democratically elected Government has the right to reopen state schools, and the unions no right to obstruct it. Johnson cannot allow himself to be cowed into extending the lockdown yet further. He should show some Thatcherite ankle, and call the far-Left’s bluff.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/20/boris-cant-afford-surrender-contemptible-teaching-unions/

    1. You are just being Homophobic

      Now…. if it were Aids, which does not affect man to man ball fiddlers

    2. I’ve commented on the YouTube website that this is, “A prime example of lefties painting themselves into a corner.”

        1. Downing Street’s use of Covid pseudo-science to justify lockdown
          could be the greatest scandal of our time. Granted, the initial decision
          to shut down the country was taken in a gormless panic of bug-ridden modelling and media hysteria. But since then, has the Government’s strategy become more sinister?

          There’s almost a whiff of superstition about No 10’s secretive
          “evidence-based” approach to lifting lockdown. Ministers are peddling an
          esoteric assortment of “precautionary” measures, from a scientifically baseless two-metre rule
          to a pointless 14-day holiday quarantine. They are obscure and
          enigmatic on risks and trade-offs. And, in the daily press conferences,
          they continue to bewitch an already hyper-paranoid public with lurid
          graphs and charts that propagate bogus science.

          All the while, No 10 has failed to publish the full scientific advice
          provided by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) that
          has apparently been so influential in its decision-making. It is worth
          taking in the full weight of this particular point. We are under a
          virtual house arrest that, judging by the spiralling care homes tragedy,
          may not even have been effective at preventing deaths. We are trapped
          in a lockdown that may yet trigger thousands of non-Covid fatalities,
          and wreck millions of lives for decades to come.

          And yet our Government refuses to publish in its entirety
          the scientific advice that informed this seismic decision, nor share
          with us the up-to-date recommendations that supposedly justify its
          ruinously slow lifting of lockdown.

          It gets murkier still. As the goal posts slide from “flattening the
          curve” to “driving down the R number”, the Government is still yet to
          share with us our basic national goal: suppression or managing the
          virus?

          Then again, this secrecy may be a hint of what is really going on.
          Perhaps No 10 is reluctant to publish Sage documents because that might
          expose the unedifying truth. Namely that, in the absence of reliable,
          uncontested science, it has pursued a political strategy, selectively
          exploiting scientific advice and using Sage as a smokescreen.

          After all, it doesn’t take a genius to realise the political logic of
          the Government’s move to ditch herd immunity – nor its extreme caution
          over lifting lockdown, as a care home inquiry looms, and the public
          fixates on a second wave.

          It also doesn’t take an “expert” to twig that the “science” being
          peddled by No 10 to justify its positioning is guff. Its travel
          quarantine move makes no sense at this point in the pandemic,
          given that the UK no longer has a lower infection rate than many EU
          countries. The two-metre rule is a ‘rule of thumb’ unsubstantiated by
          scientific evidence – unlike the one-metre rule used in other countries
          that at least is informed by studies in clinical settings; it is further
          discredited by the lack of agreement over the extent to which Covid is
          airborne.

          It gets worse. Despite the fact that “driving down the R number” is
          now at the forefront of the nation’s collective mission, No 10 still
          won’t tell us which R number Sage is providing.
          Is it the basic R number, which tells us how many people a
          Covid-positive person infects? This is not valid in real life, as it
          assumes everyone is equally susceptible to the disease. Or is it
          measuring the “effective R number” which takes the number of immune
          people into account? In which case, given the lack of certainty about
          who is immune, from where exactly are Sage modellers getting this data?

          We know even less about Sage’s deliberations on the likelihood of a
          second wave. This is a vital question, not least because Covid-19 seems
          very different to the pandemic viruses that inform second wave theories.
          In particular this coronavirus has, in the fashion of a seasonal
          outbreak, disproportionately affected the elderly; in contrast, pandemic
          viruses from Spanish flu to Swine flu have over the last 100 years,
          tended to disproportionately affect younger people. Such is why Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has
          posited that current data supports the theory that Covid-19 is “a late
          seasonal effect in the Northern hemisphere on the back of a mild
          influenza-like illness season”. Has Sage taken this hypothesis into
          consideration?

          Of course, a second wave might still materialise, but it comes down
          to a balance of risks. A concept to which No 10 seems allergic. Why is
          it up to pubs to lobby to halve the two-metre rule? It is a disgrace
          that the economic impacts of the one- and two-metre options have
          apparently not been weighed up against health risks. So too is the
          revelation that politicians did not initially consider the seemingly
          small viral benefit of border closures against the huge fallout if
          summer tourism is decimated.

          It says it all that, as shunted economists lobby for a cost-benefit
          approach to coronavirus, Boris Johnson prefers to chat vaccine efforts
          with Bill Gates – a man whose very success is down to his
          tunnel-visioned approach to gambles (the minds of the epidemiologist and
          software entrepreneur are in that respect surreally similar).

          Still No 10’s ruse of “following the science” slowly unravels with
          each day. The question is, when the gig is up, can it shift to a more
          honest and nuanced position after brainwashing the public so effectively
          with its one-sided account of this pandemic?

          1. Thanks sos.
            Always worth reading Sherelle

            “The Government’s approach to following expert advice is utterly strange, utterly opaque – and utterly reckless”…..intrigued me.

          4. And it would be so easy (though, of course, very embarrassing) to say:

            “Sorry, folks, we flucked up big time. The good news is that
            everything – YES everything – will be back to normal next Tuesday
            morning.”

          6. Except there is a huge economic cost, many businesses bankrupt, people with no jobs to go back to, and a lot of people died.

          7. True – but breaking the vicious circle NOW, rather than waiting till October – and later – would be a huge relief to the economy

            And – callous though it sounds – many of those people would have died anyway.

            I am not underplaying the virus – just the OTT, vacuous un-thought through reaction to it. Destroy the economy = OK? Not in my book.

    2. Excellent article.
      Wait for our resident nay-sayer to pop up and defend the “ferguscience”.

  95. 319465+ up ticks,
    Don’t tell me that this revealing in mid channel between
    UK & france governance employees is a surprise, they have been allies for 4 decades, then 1997 b liar lifted the latch allowing mass uncontrolled immigration it really took off.
    The ersatz tory party are still very much an eu asset under these current parties the decent peoples of these Isles will NEVER be forgiven for the referendum victory.

    1. Get out of that one, you thick-shit Democrats. Democrats – you just smear the word with the crap you are!.

    2. It appears there are still one or two good men!

      Highly commendable short <5 min video.

  97. Evening, all. I’ve spent the day in the garden (dug out the front border and replanted it as well as tatting around tidying up). I happened to be out at 8pm and discovered that the NHS fanatics (their kids have drawn rainbows all over their drive) about a quarter of a mile away were banging their pots and pans. First time I’ve heard it, probably because I couldn’t hear anything once I’d gone indoors.

    1. We had the doors open this evening as it was so warm. OH said “What’s that racket?” It was the first time we’d heard it here.

      1. I was just finishing off, putting my tools away, when I heard the racket. ‘What the heck?’ I thought, then I looked at my watch and realised it was Thursday (all days are alike, these days). I really had thought we were sensible round here, but obviously not.

        1. We have a lot of virtue signalers around here. As I said earlier we should have 2 minutes silence for those cancer and cardiac patients who had the treatment withdrawn and their lives sacrificed to the great god Covid-19.

      1. It’s the first time I have. I put it down to the stillness of the evening (and the fact that they were clearly enthusiastic).

    1. Ha, Lakes and Snadders plus a vision of many of our football geniae – hush ma mouth, mustn’t throw de bananas!

      1. Looks like Bill Gates and his ”partner” Boris Johnson might say you must..

        2. They will probably make it impossible to go anywhere or do anything without a vaccination certificate.

          1. Swiftly followed by a tracking chip in everyone’s shouder.

            Apart from people who live/arrive from in Africa, South America and Asia of course.

          2. Has there been mandatory vaccination for anything else in the UK historically ?

          3. Not as far as I know, but there are some places you can’t visit without a yellow fever certificate, for instance.

          6. There are some places in the UK I wouldn’t want to visit – with or without a certificate.

          8. There are probably some places in the UK where you’d need some vaccinations.

    2. Roll on the court cases. Human Rights Act etc may be very useful to fight this rubbish. Forcibly inserting a needle into my body? I do not think so.

    3. My policy is to follow the Holy Bible, where it states that the last shall be first, so I shall generously offer my place in the queue to some gimmigrants .

    4. If that’s true, hancock deserves to be first victim, followed by all other politicians.

          6. He doesn’t like being called a shark, even though the Bills were sting rays.

  102. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE………………

    “Girl, 19, is charged with perverting course of justice after telling

    police she was drugged and raped by Asian sex gang in Cumbria

    WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT:

    The girl walked into police station to allege she was beaten up by grooming gang

    She later claimed on social media that she was taken to an address on Tuesday

    Cumbria

    Police said today the teen had been charged with perverting the course

    of justice and was in custody, having allegedly breached her bail

    conditions

    Police force also reassured the public it was investigating her claims robustly”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8343421/Teenage-girl-says-grooming-gang-beat-burned-drugged-force-having-sex.html
    Robustly you say…………..No evidence you say…………. Are you claiming all those cuts bruises and burns are self inflicted???
    Or are we talking the “Rotherham Robust” Youi know,where an underage girl found in the process of being Pakigang raped is arrested for being drunk while the rapists are ignored,or a father is threatened with arrest when he tries to save his daughter from another feral pack.
    It took the National Crime Agency to begin to get past the Police and other Authorities collusion and cover-ups in Rotherham leading to dozens of arrests,looks like another job for them
    Edit
    Apologies for the language,this one got to me,I had bloody nightmares last night with the poor lass’s face front and centre

    1. It seemed an odd story when I first saw it written on FB. With the sort of claims being made, it was hardly a case to be solved by crowd funding on the social meeja but a very serious criminal matter for the police. We shall see.

        1. Well I suppose with the change of story the earlier ones would be irrelevant. We’ll have to wait for the truth of the story.

    3. My initial reaction was similar to yours, but having seen self-harm “up close and personal” I can’t help wondering if there’s something amiss here.
      Surely the police are being very careful?
      Ok perhaps not…

      1. I understand that,the real problem is the loss of trust in our public institutions

        2. A loss of trust that is entirely justified, since the police and the judiciary, together with other public institutions, have been thoroughly infiltrated and corrupted by those with a political agenda.

    5. After seeing what is going on in the channel it looks like our government and our security and police forces no longer work for us, in fact they are working against us, I have thought this for some time, but now it is blatantly in our faces and there is nobody to take them to task.

    2. When I lived in a shared house in Whetstone north London in the early 70s. We had a guy who use to pop in now and then, he could play anything on the piano.
      You name it. We spent many a happy evening listen to Rhet Wade.

      1. Be grateful.

        If you were Scarlett O’Hara it would have been Rhett Butler

  104. I’m mostly clapping our coastguards and the French navy tonight for risking their lives to bring the illegal immigrants safely across the channel

  105. 319465+ up ticks,
    Funny old world currently, they have now agreed to drop the charges for immigrants working within the NHS, will they drop the charges against ex military now / future who actually physically fought / will fight for these Isles.

      1. 319465+up ticks,
        Evening B3,
        Going on their past record it would be a first seeing as they have yet to do anything PRO UK.

      2. That was boat loads, you must have missed the end of the sentence. (And not fishing boats, cod almighty)

        1. He didn’t succeed in any of the things he tried to do and he did not succeed in the things where he didn’t try either. He was a complete disaster.

          Incidentally, now that he is no longer in government are his children still going to state schools or have they been moved to private ones?

    6. Don’t know but signed x 2. Sadly couldn’t sign 6617 times! Total 3,383 so far.

    8. I’m sorry, I have a problem with this.

      What we’ll get is not people who will contribute as soon as they arrive but people who cost the UK far more than they contribute.

      Don’t put absolute numbers, put skill numbers: X nurses, Y Doctors, Z Engineers etc.

  108. Rubbish, Tom. As an ex-Labour man you’re being too hard on the Tories!

    It’s time we started demanding the truth, no matter who it inconveniences

    We’re in danger of turning coronavirus into as culturally toxic an issue as Brexit, with each side claiming only they have the answers

    TOM HARRIS

    We Brits like to congratulate ourselves on having avoided some of the more obvious pitfalls of America’s culture wars. Yes, we’ve succumbed to “Trick or treat” every October 31 and it’s surely only a matter of time before young people start referring to their mobile phones as “cell phones” and to a can of Coke as “soda”. But when it comes to politics, (we tell ourselves) we leave the more divisive language to our transatlantic cousins.

    But recent events – and some not-so-recent – give the lie to our smug complacency.

    It probably started back in the 1990s, when the judgment as to whether or not Bill Clinton had committed an impeachable offence came down, not to the facts of the scandal but to whether or not you supported him politically. Then, a couple of years ago, America divided itself again over the issue of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. The judgment as to the veracity of the accusations brought against Donald Trump’s nominee centred on whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, and not on how cooler heads might have assessed the accusations brought against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford.

    But on this side of the Atlantic we’re heading in the same partisan direction as our American cousins. In the noughties, for instance, opinion as to the truth of scientific claims about global warming and its causes divided public opinion precisely down the same Left v Right lines. If you were on the Left, you absolutely believed that climate change was man-made and that anti-capitalist measures were the only possible solution. And if you were a climate sceptic, you were almost always on the Right of the political spectrum.

    Inevitably, perhaps, that absurd mindset has infected our broader political spectrum, even the controversy over how we deal with Covid-19. Both sides like to claim that they want to follow an evidence-based approach to the fight, but both sides are being economical with the truth. So when a Conservative government announces that schools and some businesses will re-open, the initial instinctive reaction from that government’s opponents is to oppose. And not only to oppose, but to imply dubious motives to the actions of ministers.

    Which means that we now have Labour politicians rejecting vociferously the government’s plans to send children back to school, effectively encouraging their constituents to ignore government advice and to keep their children at home after the beginning of next month. After all, how can we trust the word of a minister when he’s a member of the Conservative Party?

    How truly absurd it is that we now make such profound decisions about our families’ health, safety and education based on which box we placed our cross six months ago.

    And it’s not just schools, of course. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House of Commons, has scrapped the “virtual” parliament that allowed MPs to broadcast their questions and contributions from the safety of their own homes. As soon as the Whitsun recess is over, they will only be able to contribute – including voting – if they are physically present. Now, you would expect a fairly robust debate to take place about this issue.

    After all, MPs of all parties will be putting themselves at some risk by using whatever form of transport they choose to get to London. Then they will be facing more risk as they move around the palace of Westminster. So of course they should debate and decide such matters.

    But what have we here? Ah yes, opinion on the wisdom of Rees-Mogg’s order has been divided, not by available scientific evidence, but by the political affiliation of whichever MP is speaking. As with most subjects, all the SNP MPs have an agreed, centrally approved line to take. But the same seems to be true also of both main parties. Tories are actively disparaging Labour MPs who are reluctant to return and risk infection, while Labour MPs, almost unanimously, have decided that now is not the time (weirdly, the party is reluctant to take such an unambiguous stand when it comes to children returning to school).

    We’re in danger of turning the threat of coronavirus into as culturally toxic an issue as Brexit, with each side impugning the other’s motives and integrity and claiming that only they have all the answers. As with Brexit, an individual’s moral worth can be gauged (or so their opponents claim) by whether they voted Leave or Remain. And so with Covid-19: if you support sending kids back to school or MPs returning to the Commons, you are morally disreputable, you want to put profit before people and you don’t care if people die. And if you reject a relaxing of the lockdown, you’re an anti-science troglodyte.

    It’s a nursery-level quality of debate. It would help, of course, if all the scientific advice on which the government relies was made as widely available as possible. But I fear that the cultural and political divisions within our society are so ingrained and cleaved to by the participants that even advice from government advisers will soon be dismissed, depending on the political colour of the government that pays their salaries.

    What’s particularly odd is that we live in an age where, we are told, confidence in our elected representatives is at a historic low. Which hardly explains why we are so content to take politicians’ leads on on issues that, in a normal, functional polity, we would analyse using cold, hard facts.

    Which brings us to the fundamental problem with the culture wars, both here and in the United States: its combatants constantly talk about the importance of “my truth” and “her truth”. It’s time we started demanding “the truth”, irrespective of which side it inconveniences.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/21/time-started-demanding-truth-no-matter-inconveniences/

    1. A very succinct observation – sadly, mostly true.

      How do we remove the left and give them a right-wing version of their own brain-washing?

      Firstly, Common Purpose needs to be outlawed as an offence against the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta and, not least, Habeus Corpa.

  109. Goodnight Gentlefolk, I’ve enjoyed baiting the Mad Dog, as it is the first time in yonks that I’ve seen his ridiculous posts. I shall probably have to block him again tomorrow, as such stupidity cannot be abided for long.

  110. 319465+ up ticks,
    All this clapping for the NHS is all very well & appreciated no doubt by the staff.
    Why not the decent segment of the peoples organise
    a boycotting on a Monday say of ALL supermarkets that
    deal in halal meat products, if the results are slow being taken up then Wednesday plus, you hit the takings you get results, guaranteed.
    Action that makes ALL decent peoples feel good, doctors, nurses, employees inclusive.

  112. Good morning from an insomniac Bob enjoying a mug of tea!
    Good point raised in one of the letters this morning and my response to it:-

    SIR – All the fish in UK waters are a UK commodity, just like minerals and oil. The EU has for too long benefited from this unacknowledged contribution by the UK of its natural resources.

    The French have grown accustomed to netting in our territorial waters while we were members of the EU, and now must now accept that our waters belong to us, just as theirs belong to them.

    We simply cannot agree to a blanket inclusion of fishing rights within the proposed trade agreement.

    Trevor Butterworth
    Horsham, West Sussex

    An excellent point made by Trevor Butterworth.
    Surely, when calculating the UK’s financial contribution to the EU, the value of the fish caught by EU countries should be added to the sum?

  113. Good Lord!
    I’ve just seen the “discussion” (that is if one can have a discussion with a ranting, closed mind Leftie) my posting of the petition engendered!

  114. And another decent comment from AC White:-

    Horror-movie news
    SIR – I was rather bemused by to read the self-gratulatory piece by Sir Tony Hall (Commentary, May 20), about the way in which the BBC has kept the public informed during the Covid-19 crisis.

    What he fails to say is that BBC sensationalism has also helped to scare the British people to such an extent that many are now too afraid to come out of lockdown. And this as the economy falls off a very steep cliff.

    The BBC has reported extensively on those cases where death and incapacity might not have been expected, such as deaths of young and active people, and infants. This reporting is detailed in “horror- movie” depth, This has included “horror movie” details, which is sometimes misleading as well, since co-morbidities are less evident in these gruelling accounts. Is this because that doesn’t fit the narrative?can be misleading. Honest and thorough accounts would place those desperate cases alongside statistics of those who recover. Or would this not fit the narrative?

    A  C White
    London SW1

    Robert Spowart
    22 May 2020 4:26AM
    Well said AC White.

    Sadly, thanks to the panic and scaremongering sensationalism of the MEEJAH, both printed as well as broadcast, we have been turned into a nation of hysterical and paranoid Germaphobes.

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