Thursday 23 December: People have the right to refuse a jab – but they also have a responsibility to others

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 we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here

618 thoughts on “Thursday 23 December: People have the right to refuse a jab – but they also have a responsibility to others”

  1. For those wondering about this very early start. No I haven’t wet the bed!

    Morning folks and thank you Geoff.

    1. I think he’s already told the Queen that one shouldn’t bend over forwards after Christmas for fear that 2022 might turn out to be another annus horribilis.

      1. “My Lord, I had forgotten the fart.”
        EIR to an embarrassed nobleman who took himself off for several years after an incident when bowing to her in court.

        1. I note that the NHS recommends charcoal for treating flatulence – hang on, that’s pure carbon so without it our planet will be doomed with excess methane!

          1. That’s what Alfred the Great was creating when the housewife rudely interrupted his work.
            He knew about the side effects of the Vikings’ diet of dried fish.

  6. SIR – I followed the process to order a lateral flow test kit for home delivery via the NHS website.

    After I entered all my details the site reported that there were no kits available, and suggested I collect one from a nearby pharmacy via a specific link. After I had inputted precisely 
the same details, it identified our village pharmacy and emailed me a “collect code”.

    On offering this to the pharmacy, I was told that there had been no kits in stock for days, but that the NHS was still issuing codes.

    Dr Tony Parker
    Ringmer, East Sussex

    Abolish, abolish, abolish

    1. Dis-Connecting For Health? Looks like another £18 Billion down the drain…..

      The Government is clearly testing our patience…..

      Morning Michael.

    2. SIR – I was a registered nurse and midwife for more than 40 years, and am now retired.

      I was very keen to volunteer as a vaccinator: I am still able-bodied and wanted to do my bit. However, I found out after the rollout started – and again recently when there was a plea for more help – that I would have to complete numerous online courses in such things as lifting and handling, fire training, equal opportunities and conflict resolution, and would then have to drive about 25 miles to be shown how to administer an injection.

      This is crazy. I understand that I might need a small amount of training, but much of it would be unnecessary – while costing a lot of money. Sadly, the NHS’s administrators are wasting funds in this fashion time and again.

      Jane Day
      South Warnborough, Hampshire

      *********************************************************************

      BTL:

      Steve Jones
      5 HRS AGO
      The letter from Jane Day says all anyone needs to know about what is utterly wrong with every aspect of public service and related bureaucratic entities.
      These moronic zealots focus is on idiocy like “equal opportunities and conflict resolution training”…these people are utterly insane and in the process are destroying everything they touch.
      The very experienced Ms Day want’s to give injections to help out – what imbeciles these people are who won’t see this…….how and why are they still employed never mind in control???????

  8. Spurious links between Culloden and slavery

    SIR – The news that the National Trust for Scotland has added the field of Culloden to a list of sites with links to the slave trade (report, December 21) shows that its administrators are as ignorant of history as their counterparts at the National Trust in England.

    As the site is dedicated to the memory of Jacobite soldiers killed in action or murdered on the spot, it is clearly impossible that they went on to engage in the Atlantic slave trade.

    Indeed, many of the captured survivors were despatched to the Carolinas as indentured bondsmen, which was effectively a form of slavery.

    Nikolai Tolstoy
    Southmoor, Berkshire

  9. ‘Morning All

    Marvelous,just marvelous,I discover my niece who has been a total paranoid “Karen” for the last two years has become addicted to LFT’s she and all her mates self test before every meeting…………..

    She was hosting the family Christmas this year,yes you guessed it she’s just tested positive,backed up by a PCR test so the whole thing is cancelled 10 people’s plans buggered

    Symptoms?? None apart from the mildest of sniffles

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2728c0c28aeedbae5615b2e2857ae0ef0fcf11a3dfd5bedeaafb0d2c933bf8ef.png
    Oh Well steak at my sister’s it is

    1. Tell your niece to prepare everything as planned and leave the front door open. She can then go hide in her bedroom !

  10. It’s good to know that ‘Democrats’ in the US are getting first hand experience of the fruits of their policies…

    “A US congresswoman has had her car and possessions snatched from her at gunpoint in a daylight carjacking in the city of Philadelphia.
    Mary Gay Scanlon’s government phone and ID were among belongings that the two robbers took. The Democrat was not injured, her office said.

    Her robbery in Philadelphia comes just 24 hours after another US lawmaker was carjacked at gunpoint in a suburb of Chicago.
    Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford, a Democrat, and her husband had their Mercedes SUV taken at gunpoint on Tuesday night, police say.”

    I don’t doubt for one moment it is a ‘right-wing conspiracy’….

    1. If the Three Kings had been “Three Queens”, would we still be debating their sex or sexual preferences.

      Would their camels have minced across the desert?

    1. …And I bet there isn’t a clause in the contract agreeing to a refund if the medicine is proven not to work…..

  13. Covid cases hit 100k in the UK: The 10 virus hotspots revealed. Aliss Higham – Yesterday 16:23

    The UK has reported more than 100,000 daily positive coronavirus tests for the first time since mass testing began in 2020. A further 106,122 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the UK as of 9am on Wednesday, the Government has confirmed.

    So what? I might remark. This is like reporting an outbreak of Athlete’s Foot if it has no further implications for Public Health. One notes this change from the former practice of blending all forms of Mortality into one gigantic Death from Covid. Have the PTB succumbed to their own Project Fear? Starting at every threat? Every possibility? We know that the present Parliament is probably the most cowardly and morally corrupt of all that have ever sat in their places before. Is this the end of them? We can only wish it were so!

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1539925/covid-cases-uk-virus-hotspots-evg

      1. Good morning Minty.
        Sleet & rain forecast here for Saturday, so a slightdrop in temperature might happen.

  15. I was watching Dr John Campbell’s take yesterday on the global response to COVID-19 and he pointed out that primary protection against infection comes from the immune antibody IgA which acts as a gatekeeper against viruses in the mucosal tissues of the nose and throat.

    He says that we have been paying insufficient attention to the role of IgA because the jab only boosts immunity to the secondary antibodies. This supports his conjecture that natural exposure to a new virus is still an important protective measure against harmful pathogens.

    Are we doing something fundamentally wrong by expecting that we can live with rapidly evolving mutant variants by trying to find jabs that are not addressing the most important part of our immune system?

    1. Are we doing something fundamentally wrong by expecting that we can live with rapidly evolving mutant variants by trying to find jabs that are not addressing the most important part of our immune system?

      Morning Angie. Yes! We should have let the Coronavirus rip at its first appearance. This would have killed a fair few of those most susceptable but created a vast Natural Immune Pool to protect against future outbreaks. All previous Immunisation Programs have followed this criteria. all that the Government has done is prolong the agony and the exposure!

    2. Are we doing something fundamentally wrong by expecting that we can live with rapidly evolving mutant variants by trying to find jabs that are not addressing the most important part of our immune system?

      Morning Angie. Yes! We should have let the Coronavirus rip at its first appearance. This would have killed a fair few of those most susceptable but created a vast Immune Pool to protect against future outbreaks. All previous Immunisation Programs have followed this criteria. all that the Government has done is prolong the agony!

  17. People have the right to refuse a jab – but they also have a responsibility to others

    Just another meaningless psyop statement

    1. As the jab is more important to people other than the recipient perhaps the latter should only be offered a jab until they have attained vaccinator proficiency and jabbed at least a number of people greater than the current R factor.

  18. People have the right to refuse a jab – but they also have a responsibility to others

    Just another meaningless psyop statement

  19. ‘Tyrannical’: Boosterless Europeans to Have Corona Passports Disabled

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2021/12/GettyImages-1237286603-e1640096918280-640×480.jpg

    The EU has announced that vaccinated individuals who fail to get their booster are to have their Coronavirus passes disabled, in a move that has been called ‘tyrannical’.

    The European Union has agreed that those who are considered fully vaccinated will nevertheless have their EU COVID passes disabled after nine months, should they fail to get a booster jab, in a move that has been lambasted by one MEP as ‘tyrannical’.

    It follows a French announcement last week that individuals who were once considered fully vaccinated will begin to have their domestic “Health Passes” disabled from the centralised database unless they get themselves boosted within a given period.

    According to a statement posted on the European Commission website, passes belonging to boosterless individuals will now have a “binding acceptance period” of exactly 270 days.

    Once that period has elapsed, the certs will cease to function.
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/12/22/tyrannical-boosterless-europeans-to-have-corona-passports-disabled/

    4. How many of those who proudly boast on their social media of being ‘fully-vaccinated’ are now feeling a bit foolish? They will never been fully-vaccinated, it was not ‘two jabs and then you’re done’ but in fact signing up to a life-time subscription (just like Microsoft Windows).

      Alas, as someone who is yet to receive his first jab, I am too far behind in the jabs race to ever catch up. What a shame…

  21. From John Redwood. ” The Long Shadow of Project Fear.”

    I am all in favour of experts. I read a lot of expert opinion. Daily I
    learn something new from reading someone’s research findings about
    issues of public interest.

    Reading plenty of experts has taught
    me several things. It has taught me that some so called experts are not
    up to the title, producing ill thought through material with
    insufficient proof. The BBC is specially good at mistaking
    establishment propagandists for experts. It has reminded me that in many
    difficult areas the experts disagree amongst themselves, which is often
    a welcome way of moving towards a greater understanding of the issue. I
    have also discovered in fields I study that there can often develop an
    expert consensus, held by many for fear of getting out of line. This can
    result in a catastrophic establishment failure because most of the
    tenured individuals dare not disagree. In economics the Exchange Rate
    Mechanism boom and bust and the banking crash great recession are two
    examples of groupthink gone wrong.

    The worst feature of recent
    years has been when the establishment consensus allies itself with
    political forces and tries to dominate the democratic debate about a
    topic. The Treasury and Bank of England forecasts prior to the
    referendum we now know were wildly wrong and were clearly designed to
    help the Remain campaign. They forecast a fall in house prices, a fall
    in employment, a rise in interest rates and a fall in the pound if we
    left. Instead in the early months after we finally left the reverse of
    all those forecasts occurred. In the year immediately after the vote as
    well house prices rose, employment went up and interest rates went down.
    This poor forecasting undermines public confidence in official
    forecasts. It also angers the majority who disagreed with the
    establishment political view on the underlying question.

    Today
    expert epidemiologists need to grasp that their forecasts will be
    carefully scrutinised and subjected to commonsense checks because of
    past forecasting errors by government advisers. Net zero advisers keen
    to speed the transition will need to ask why the public does not rush to
    transform their lives in the recommended ways. They will find they need
    to overcome scepticism about some of their claims.

    Democracy
    places non experts in positions of power to take advice, to consider
    conflicting expert claims and to apply some commonsense to
    recommendations. It remains the best way of proceeding in a world where
    the future is always uncertain. For a democracy to thrive we need to
    debate the cosy and sometimes horribly wrong consensus views of a self
    selecting group of experts in any given area. No one peddling views gets
    a ride free from criticism in a thriving democracy.

    1. You can understand why JR isn’t in the Cabinet.
      He has too many brain cells and dares to use them.

  22. MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his traditional end-of-year press conference, which is expected to gather over 500 journalists representing national and international news agencies, in Moscow.
    The conference will start at 12:00 p.m. local time, or 9:00 a.m. GMT, and will be broadcast live.
    Last year, the press conference was held for the first time via video link due to COVID-19 restrictions. This year the event will return to the traditional in-person format, though the attending journalists are required to take several PCR tests as a precaution.
    The number of journalists accredited for the conference is 507, which is nearly two times lower than in previous years because of the pandemic. Aside from Russian news agencies, including those with foreign agent status, the conference will be attended by representatives of leading foreign media outlets, such as AFP, Bloomberg, Le Figaro, Euronews, Xinhua, Le Monde, AP, DW, Financial Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, and the ВВС.

    https://sputniknews.com/20211223/president-putin-to-hold-annual-end-of-year-press-conference-in-moscow-1091737888.html

    1. Morning Harry. I remember the last BBC appearance where Simpson and Rosenthal posed an insulting question worthy of two sniggering schoolboys!

    3. I have suffered mini drop outs recently. I find resetting the router and clearing cache and cookies solves the problem.

      In addition, if you are doing a heavy download or operating a high use website it will have a similar effect.

      Morning, Minty.

  24. Yesterday afternoon the BBC, via its local Essex station, plumbed new depths with a phone-in, the subject of which was the “vaccine” and should it be compulsory. I caught the last few minutes of ‘Steve’, who, from what the female interviewer said, is a regular contributor. Steve’s contribution as his segment came to and end was to claim that, “…they will all die.” I didn’t catch what he said immediately before but he was, in my opinion, clearly referring to the non-vaccinated.

    Following Steve was Alan. He declared that the ‘snowflakes’ i.e. the non-vaccinated, should have to be jabbed. Alan’s decision didn’t appear to have been driven by facts, only regurgitating the government and MSM line. Alan declared that he, his wife and children and other close family had all been jabbed because they were intelligent. Ergo, the ‘snowflakes’ are stupid.

    Now, if Alan was really intelligent he would suspect that the “vaccine” is not all it seems because in the course of around 9 months, he, his wife and that section of the Essex intelligentsia they have spawned, have had to endure two jabs to ‘get back to normal’ that clearly failed because life isn’t back to normal, followed by a ‘booster’ to defeat a variant. The latter described as more infectious but less virulent in its symptoms by the South Africans.

    It’s clear that an assault on the non-vaccinated is being mounted and the BBC are keen to join in. I turned off after Alan’s intelligent contribution so I have no idea if any balance was allowed in the phone-in.

    1. There is a lot of debate at the moment in the press about whether vaccination should be made compulsory. This is all simply softening us up to the idea, the same as Johnson’s call for a ‘national conversation.’ They have already decided to jab every man, woman and child on the planet, it is now simply a matter of getting the vaxxed population to help them by turning on the non-vaxxed.

    2. Morning, Korky.
      I am loath to invoke Godwin’s Law, but Blighty seems to be intent on creating a class of untermenschen.
      To give my point a more global flavour, Stalin picked on the Kulaks and Cambodia killed intellectuals – which meant those who wore glasses. And the word ‘bourgeois’ has been the trigger for persecution by every left wing coup for 200+ years.

      1. But nobody can deny than John Major put the bore in bourgeois just as ‘Call me Peppa’ Johnson put the boar in it.

  26. 343154+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Thursday 23 December: People have the right to refuse a jab – but they also have a responsibility to others,

    I do agree and that goes for a great many issues take for instance the odious rotherham revealance via the JAY report.
    Many walks of life in the main AKA nasty dregs, had a hand in the 16 plus years cover up much in protection of the party name.

    Many of us have suffered the fall out from the lab/lib/con
    mass controlled immigration / mass foreign paedophilia,
    ALL STILL ONGOING.

    The only ones finding telling support are the very politico’s that are running the replace / reset campaign
    SUPPORT = CONSENT.

    This “responsibility” material is not a selective tool to be used by the political overseers & supporting minions in a
    bludgeoning manner, but a commodity to be used by ALL
    with the welfare of ALL firmly in mind.

  27. Good Moaning.
    Are people beginning to wake up?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/22/amazon-finds-consumers-losing-interest-alexa-privacy-fears-mount/

    Amazon finds consumers losing interest in Alexa as privacy fears mount

    Online giant predicts a slowdown in sales of its Echo devices after its research finds many go unused

    22 December 2021 • 3:09pm

    Consumers are losing interest in Alexa smart speakers as privacy fears mount and their novelty wears off, internal documents from Amazon have warned.

    The company has predicted a slowdown in sales of its Echo devices and research has shown that many go unused, Bloomberg reported, citing Amazon planning documents it had obtained.

    Smart speakers, led by Amazon’s Echo, have been seen as the next big consumer device after the smartphone and a gateway to the internet of things, in which dozens of household objects are connected to the web and controlled by voice.

    However, many owners are believed to only use Alexa, Amazon’s smart assistant, for basic tasks such as playing music or setting timers, and are yet to embrace the advanced features introduced in recent years.

    According to the internal documents, in some years about 15pc of new Echo owners are no longer using the Alexa assistant in their second week.

    Last year, an Amazon analysis predicted that sales of smart speakers would rise by just 1.2pc for the next few years, with the market having “passed its growth phase”.

    The documents also underlined privacy fears, which have repeatedly dogged smart speakers that rely on voice activation to wake up. In 2019 it emerged that many recordings of customer voices were being reviewed by humans to check for errors.

    Amazon has invested billions in its Alexa assistant, which was a pioneer when the first Echo device was unveiled in 2014.

    The company has continually released new versions of the speakers, which have been a key priority for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and heavily discounted them during sales such as Black Friday.

    The company has added the voice assistant to other gadgets such as TV boxes, while Google and Apple have both released speakers featuring their own voice assistants.

    Amazon said many of the claims in the documents were outdated or inaccurate.

    It told Bloomberg: “The fact is that Alexa continues to grow – we see increases in customer usage, and Alexa is used in more households around the world than ever before.

      1. They lurk. I know people with them, and these devices lurk.
        On the plus side, they are guaranteed to strike me dumb.

      2. I’d probably be glad of them if my mobility were severely limited. Until then, absolutely not. I unplugged a plethora of the nasty little beasts after mother died and stuck them in a box for my brother labelled “spyware”. And that was before I woke up.to what’s going on.

  28. Can we say that Omicron is milder yet? 23 December 2021.

    Given that we could by now have been in lockdown on the strength of scientists’ statements at the weekend, many will now be asking why it took British government scientists so long to accept South Africa’s research. It is still fairly early days — and none of these studies have yet been peer-reviewed — but the story of Omicron in Britain could be about to take a sharp turn.

    It’s already taken a sharp turn in my view. In fact it’s disappeared up its own fundament. Where are the reports of massive hospitalisation? The deaths? Plenty of Booster propaganda of course. Is this program to claim that it eliminated the threat and thus excuse the catastrophe that the PTB have inflicted on us?

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-we-say-that-omicron-is-milder-yet-

    2. Or is it that people with IBD are drinking more bottled water? Edit 0916: thinking that it will flush out their IBD.

      2. Is that the same as IBS which I had but I didn’t drink loads of water bottled or tap – what cured my IBS was going gluten free

    3. Wait till the billions of nasty blue masks reach the sea, rivers and everywhere else. At the moment they seem to mainly infest pavements, carparks and footpaths.

  30. You Get What You Pay For

    Queen Elizabeth was visiting a hospital, and during her tour she passed a room where a male patient was masturbating.
    “Oh my God”, said the queen, “that’s disgraceful, what is the meaning of this?”
    A doctor explained: “I’m sorry your majesty, but this man has a very serious condition. His testicles are constantly over-full of semen. If he doesn’t masturbate at least 5 times a day, he’ll be in excruciating pain.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said the Queen. “I was unaware that such a medical problem existed.”
    On the same floor, they then pass a room in which the Queen could clearly see a young nurse giving a patient fellatio.”
    “Oh my God!” the Queen shrieked. “What’s going on in there?!”
    The doctor explains: “Same problem, better health plan!“

  33. SIR – I could not agree more with Philip Johnston (Comment, December 22) about the risk that the unvaccinated now pose to the rest of society.

    There seems to be little recognition that with rights come responsibilities.

    Joanne Hayes
    Berkeley, Gloucestershire

    SIR – As a retired surgeon and a volunteer vaccinator, I believe it is now vital that the harm being caused by the unvaccinated is widely publicised.

    A large proportion of patients in intensive-care beds are from this group. Without them there would be no undue pressure on the NHS.

    Moreover, were it not for this group there would be no need for the current restrictions. Pubs, restaurants, transport and other public venues could continue to function normally. Many people’s livelihoods are being ruined by these selfish individuals.

    If members of this misguided group remain unvaccinated, their access to public places should be limited, in the interests of the sensible majority who have been willing to take up the offer of these amazing vaccines in order to protect themselves and everyone else.

    Peter Jones
    Marden, Kent

    Is the letters’ editor of this pathetic, once-formidable, rag intent on selecting only the most idiotic letters on this subject?

    These two gormless idiots (one a former surgeon FFS) are telling the world that the unvaccinated are “posing risks to the rest of society” and “causing harm”.

    What risks and harm would that be then, wankers? If those who have succumbed to the pressure to have three or more doses of a vaccine — that clearly doesn’t work as one — are somehow being “harmed” or “risked” by those who haven’t, then this shows nothing more than the fact that their vaccines don’t work.

    Clearly, taking the “vaccines” damages the brain and it ability to rationalise.

    1. …in the interests of the sensible majority who have been willing to take up the offer of these amazing vaccines in order to protect themselves and everyone else.

      There seems to be little recognition that with rights come responsibilities.

      These cant phrases read uncannily like manufactured 77 Brigade propaganda!

    2. Morning, Grizz.

      Not just the brain. Evidence coming to light after the efforts of many scientists/physicians/immunologists, who are not tainted by government or foundation grants, indicates that the kidneys, liver, spleen, ovaries, testes etc. are all at severe risk. Micro blood clotting within the capillaries is seen as a real threat as organs are starved of oxygen and nutrients.

        2. When the scared people who rushed out to have the “vaccine”, and who currently are vilifying the non-vaccinated, wake up, their horror at what they’ve done to themselves will be palpable.

          1. I’m not sure they will wake up – trying to blame the unvaccinated for the fact that your jabs don’t stop you catching Covid seems to lack logic?

  35. If we ever needed more proof that the Western world has gone mad, here is another: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/23/prof-lockdowns-apocalyptic-omicron-claims-undermine-faith-vaccines/

    Why is anyone paying any attention to Ferguson after decades of doom-and-gloom projections that have repeatedly been horrendously wrong and his breaking the Covid lockdowns he’s so enthusiastically demanding?

    Edit: on a wider note, if the government continues to listen to such an obviously wrong figure, what are they doing with such modelled claims elsewhere, in eg ‘climate change’?

    1. Well here, for once in his broken-clock life, doesn’t Ferguson seem to be correct?
      He’s saying this one ain’t so bad.
      I’m not sure where the article is going though –
      “Nor can they legitimately assert that there is “no evidence of omicron having lower severity than Delta” since their sample was vanishingly small, the timeline was too short,…”
      Well, yes they can. And they do by looking at what is happening elsewhere. And the article says as much later on.
      And looking elsewhere is what they refused to do at the beginning of this crisis when they refused to see that early therapeutics were being used in Asia. When Plaquenil aka HCQ went from over-the-counter to unavailable overnight.
      I do agree that the Western world has gone mad. But it seems that the rats that have been sailing HMS Boris Simmons are angling to drop the captain in the drink (sorry for messing up the metaphors.)

  36. Oh dear, the doomsters will not like this. Is the Omicron variant going to break the narrative? More infectious, less virulent, fewer hospitalisations, fewer deaths (WITH). Panic³ Johnson’s is looking more and more like someone who has lost control and is clutching at straws to keep the project on track. How will he justify more restrictions if the data remains as it is? He may make an attempt on the back of increased “cases” after ramping up the daily testing numbers but will that ruse work again?

    https://twitter.com/KatieM12121/status/1473919120387321864

    1. 343154+ up ticks,

      Morning KtK,
      How will he justify more restrictions if the data remains as it is?

      Simply by adjusting the data.

    2. Hence the demonisation of the unvaccinated; the C21 untermenschen.
      The narrative must be kept at fever pitch.
      Oceania v. Eastasia v. Eurasia and ever lasting permutations thereof.

  37. Good morning dear Nottlers

    Mild drizzly day here , have turned the heating off and have opened the top window in the living room.

    Moh played golf yesterday , and by the evening he was spluttering, sneezing and not to brilliant although he ate delicious cottage pie and runner beans . He had a restless night , bit warm and I could hear him coughing .

    He got up this morning ate his porridge , drank his tea and went back to bed .

    Son and I feel much better than we did 3 days ago , runny noses and a cough still, not so congested and the shivers and aches have gone

    We took it in turns to sniff the steamy air when we opened the dishwasher when it had finished its cycle .

    Last year , 2020 in January, we experienced a similar 4 day flu effect , knocked us out , then vanished , just wondering whether that was a Covid reaction?

    Dare we relax , or have we just experienced a cold virus?

    1. Snap!

      I experienced both – a ‘flu-like horror that started in November 2019, but came back with a vengeance a few weeks later and kept me down for over a year, and last weekend what can only be described as a good old-fashioned runny nose cold, the sort I had throughout my youth. Spending the entire weekend in bed, with honey-and-lemon seems to have done the trick, and it had already largely gone yesterday. I tested negative for Covid.

      Even at the start of both, they feel quite different. The 2019 was like something I had never experienced before, as if my body really didn’t know what to make of it. The symptoms were mild only because there was little immune response, yet I already felt it was doing great harm, and there was a sense of trepidation about it all. Not like this cold I have just had. This was like an old familiar friend, and my immune system knew precisely what to do about it.

      1. My “unflu” in Feb 2020 was associated with a feeling I’d never had before, of the back of the nostrils deep in my head being briefly raw, followed by deep freezings up & down my back. Rapidly came to dread these, it wasn’t nice. Followed by 3 days horizontal in the sofa.

    2. I had a dose of ‘something’ in January 2020 which I still have no reason to think was not covid. The cough lasted for several weeks, though I was not particularly ill. I’ve had no bugs since.

      I think you’ve had a cold – unless you want to do a test? You probably picked it up at your lunch party the other day.

      2. MB had the same in January 2020; he had a dire cough and easily got breathless for about a fortnight. I wonder now if there is link between that and his blood clot a fortnight after his first jab the following year.
        Possibly he was overdosed on covid viruses.

    3. I had a dose of ‘something’ in January 2020 which I still have no reason to think was not covid. The cough lasted for several weeks, though I was not particularly ill. I’ve had no bugs since.

      I think you’ve had a cold – unless you want to do a test? You probably picked it up at your lunch party the other day.

    4. I told you yesterday, Mags – you have had a “cold”. Simple. They used to be everywhere.

  38. Ian Fleming died in 1964, so his works go out of copyright in 2034, and are therefore thrown open to the imagination of his readers.

    Two items of news over the last couple of days collided in mine and came up with a Frankenstein vision that a proper novelwriter (like my ex-wife) might find amusing. It concerns the death of actress Sally Ann Howes (coincidentally bearing the same birth surname as my ex’s current married name) and the recent Reith lectures on artificial intelligence.

    One character played by Howes was an automaton, which had a special dance. She was a mannequin on a musical box in a film setting of a book by Ian Fleming – two spies dressed and acting as dolls in order to get behind enemy lines. A real person masquerading as artificial intelligence: Turing in reverse. The same might be said of contemporary film maker Gerry Anderson – the only one of his characters he ever voiced was the robot in Fireball XL5 with its catch phrase “on our way ‘ome”.

    It struck me then what would happen if Truly Scrumptious, rather than being the heiress of a sweet factory, was herself a very accomplished artificial life form created by inventor Caractacus Potts to alleviate his loneliness and his own dissatisfaction with real humanity?

    This is my own fantasy, long disillusioned by women as created by human society into the woke monsters of feminism scrapping like rats over what is meant by a “woman”. All I want for Christmas is a real, loving wife to be my companion in life with a symbiotic relationship with me, complementary, equal, but opposite sexually. Whilst this was taken for granted in my childhood, it is now forbidden in the real world and has to be imagined.

    [edited because I mispelt ‘Reith’ to the name of a hill close to where I grew up where my family used to hold a running competition.]

      1. Indeed. Eliza Doolittle reformed in the image of her creator – the intention of every makeover that ever there was. Dr Frankenstein’s (or even that of Pinnochio’s toymaker) approach simply used a blanker canvas.

        There used to be a show on BBC called ‘Style Challenge’ where they would start with a beautiful, natural girl and through processing by hair, makeup and fashion experts, transform her into this most hideous, ugly old bag and call it a triumph of BBC persuasion.

        It begs the question – were we born ugly and made beautiful, or born beautiful and made ugly? I suspect that a great deal of paedophilia is borne of too much belief in the latter.

        [edit-typo]

        1. We are all beautiful. Look at a baby! Not just a squished faced thing that only a mother could love , but a small person waiting to be a big person. Life will define them!

    2. No-one will ever be what you imagine and can only dissapoint that standard, as you will no doubt disappoint hers.
      But there are plenty also unconvinced by the wokish standards imposed on them looking for a companion.
      If you look for someone to love rather than expect to be loved this way or that you will probably find someone doing something similar.
      It’ll be messy and complementary, hard work and natural.
      I’m speaking as a 36 year veteran, 8 kids and 8 grandkids later.
      As I told her on our anniversary – if I’d killed her when we met, I’d be out by now. She smiled. It went both ways.
      But I wouldn’t be without her. I suspect she feels the same, as I’m not dead yet.
      In a nutshell – as an Anglican vicar once said at a wedding:
      Love is preferring the other. Look for that person to prefer you and might find her.

    3. Maybe it’s the work I do or the environment I live in, but the feminist monsters you describe are absent. I see a few, mostly meejah types, banging on about how unfair it is, but don’t meet them. One woman I know was outraged that the company brought in a scheme to prefer women for promotion, saying she wanted to be promoted because she was good at the job (she was), not because she sat down to pee. There are many like her around.

      1. When I was married, I encountered women’s groups full of them; there was one even in my tiny village, and used to meet at Saltmarshe Village Hall in Herefordshire every Monday evening to discuss the shortcomings of men and how to shut them out of the workplace and the family. Not the WI either, which was quite benign but a different generation. They even set one up at the Green & Away camp in the Malvern Hills, which I attempted to gatecrash and put an alternative view.

        I also encountered this at school meetings, where discarded fathers were not considered proper parents. At best, they were to be humoured, because they were legally obliged to do so, but the looks of hatred coming from them was palpable. I had to learn to take it like a man.

        At Relate, which used to be called the Marriage Guidance Council, I was told that they do not give assertiveness training to husbands, only to women, and that they had already given training to my wife.

        I note that even now a Government Minister works for the ‘Women and Equality Ministry’, on the presumption that some people are more equal than others. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-equalities-office https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-for-women-and-equalities–3 https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/328/women-and-equalities-committee/

        1. Jeremy- historically women were ‘the weaker sex’ and were kept in that position by men.
          You can’t blame every woman now for the failings of some and the aggressive measures they have deployed over the last 50 years.

          1. I’ve never believed that.

            The biological instinct for men has always been to provide, to protect and to cherish their beloved who would in turn pass on his genes down the generations. Who is the master, and who is the servant? My mother, who was born in Wales and has Welsh ancestors often said that a canny Welshwoman would make a man believe he was master in his house, to strut about like a peacock in “his” garden, not realising that it was her who held the power and pulled the strings.

          3. Why do you think it was that until the mid 19th century the majority of women couldn’t even sign their names? Why do you think they had such huge families? Why were most bigamists male?

          4. To keep warm? Were there as many male bigamists as male cuckolds through history?

            There are all sorts of dodgy simplications, select data, modern presumptions and sheer prejudicese used to pad out GCSE ‘Women’s Emancipation in the 19th Century’ which forms the core of any history syllabus allowed to be taught to schoolchildren.

            The Education Act was around 1870. Before then, only the wealthy could afford to send their children to a decent school; most were expected to earn a living. Literacy was subordinate to work among the “deserving poor”.

        2. Goodness… the only time I encountered that kind of attitude was at a mother-and-toddler club in Horsham when SWMBO was away working & I stood in with Firstborn. Nobody talked to me the whole time, I wasn’t invited to coffee and cake – a thoroughly unpleasant experience.
          Never had anything like that in Norway. Weegie women seem much more, well, man-like in their way of getting on with things. Female bus, tram, lorry drivers are common sight; buildders, decorators, soldiers, engineers…

          1. I’ve always liked the idea of going with a Norwegian. They seem more thoughtful, resourceful, natural and imaginative, with values based on wholesomeness, but without narrowmindedness. There are also some real beauties in Norway.

          2. Whilst they can be quite feminine, they are also practical and independent. Just what one looks for in a woman – but it’s a real surprise to find them wearing skirts & dresses. Trousers is the normal rig – and the way the chill winds blow, seems sensible to me!

      2. I wonder if we work for the same company. I have recently been slightly dismayed be emails vaunting She for He at the bottom of their emails.
        I find that none of my female colleagues have any time for this.

          1. It is supposed to mean that those who have drawn on their unearned patriarchal privileges should refrain from applying for advancement so that the proportionate pool from the opposite, oppressed sex be more likely to gain representation in the upper echelons.
            Yes. It is a thing. They are oblivious to the idea that if it were adhered to it would inevitably decrease the pool of talent from which promotion could be drawn.
            Fortunately, apart from the virtue signalling of putting it in an email signature, I don’t think it has much practical traction.

        2. I don’t understand why so many males want to be thought of as females – is it because they are insecure as a man? or are they closey mysogenists? It’s very baffling.

          1. Dominant mothers appears to be a theme from my own personal observation. Wanting to be special. Wanting to make the cruel world dance to their tune and wield power over those around them.

        3. There’s a click button on LinkedIn where you can select & display your chosen pronouns… ffs.

      3. She is right, and this is a great threat to all women in the workplace.
        As soon as they get a few incompetent box-tickers in, there will be a general expectation that all women are weak links in the chain.

    4. It’s not forbidden, Jeremy – but you have been unlucky – and perhaps your view of womanhood is tainted by your perceptions that all women are as nasty as your ex-wife.

      There are many of us who are just normal people – female.

      1. I’m sure there are, and I meet many of them in the choirs I sing with. By the time they get to with age-reach of me (and a woman of childbearing age is now a quarter of a century away), they are either married or happily single, leaving a handful to find the needle-in-the-haystack of mutual attraction, whilst under constant bombardment to the contrary by the propagandists.

        Not that the young, retreating to the safeguarding of their smartphones, and pretty much isolated in real life from one another and from everyone else, have it any easier.

        It’s the George Clarke grandfather in me that wants kids to make fantasies in a tree house built by me for that purpose, rather than stuck all day being directed how to think by their phones, as if they were the artificial intelligence. Even stepgrandchildren would do.

        My uncle in America once sent me a quote that included that a good woman can make a home out of a house, breathing life and fertility and solid future into what is abstract.

        1. Maybe you need to come to terms with life as it is – my sons are both single men and I know I will never have grandchildren. Life deals you the cards and you have to make the most of it.

          2. I think yours are younger so you may still have time.
            My younger son is arriving home today – 48 next week. I fear he’s become a covidian so I might have to be careful what I say. Haven’t seen either of them for two years. The last time I was in Switzerland we fell out over Brexit. I’m dreading the chat over the dinner table this time as the elder son is an unjabbed.

          3. My Brother is daft like that. Oh, well, maybe one should agree to disagree and go with other themes.

          4. So I have been advised over the last thirty years. Still would like grandchildren though.

  39. One of the world’s deadliest snakes is found in Manchester: Saw-scaled viper is rescued by RSPCA after forklift driver spotted it in shipment of bricks from Pakistan
    Worker spotted saw-scaled viper was at Manchester Brick Specialists in Salford
    Staff researched what type of snake it could be but did not realise its danger
    Viper is one of four species behind the highest number of human deaths in India

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10337487/One-worlds-deadliest-snakes-Manchester-shipment-bricks-Pakistan.html

    What on earth are we doing importing bricks from Pakistan?

    1. Staff researched what type of snake it could be but did not realise its danger.

      Yes it followed its human counterparts to the UK!

    2. We don’t have clay in the UK we know what to do with.

      The Old Brickworks in your village is most likely to be a housing estate these days.

      1. Luckily for us, the woods across the road, which go down to the banks of the Tamar, hide several ruins of a brickworks from 200 years ago.

    3. Fareham red brick is a famous red-tinged clay brick, from Fareham, Hampshire. Notable buildings constructed of these distinctive bricks include London’s Royal Albert Hall and Knowle Hospital (previously known as Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum).

      My front garden wall was Fareham red brick.

      The bricks from Pakistan are cheap and rubbish. It’s what all the new builds are made from and won’t last 20 years.

        3. My father spent a year in Haslar’s TB ward from autumn 1943 to Christmas Eve 1944.
          The full works; bed on verandah, snow covered bedspread – but it worked.
          The TB was discovered when they realised he was a grammar school boy and started to train him up as an officer. Presumably, health checks were minimal when he was destined to be a disposable grunt, but officer training cost more so candidates needed to be healthy to ensure the country got its money’s worth.

      3. How times change. In 2012 I had a wall built on my front boundary. I purchased the bricks from a local builders merchant and when discussing what I wanted I was told that the majority of their stock was manufactured in Belgium. Now Pakistan is a source.

      1. Didn’t Leonard Cohen’s muse, Suzanne, get the tea and the oranges which she gave him that came all the way from China?

  40. Talking cricket

    SIR – Simon Heffer (“Lancastrian was a joyous antidote to today’s bland team of commentators”, Sport, December 22) is absolutely correct in many of his comments.

    Test cricket is no longer the premier interest of the England and Wales Cricket Board, and the move to a game that is hardly recognisable as cricket has been further demeaned by the bland, dull commentators currently employed.

    With the honourable exceptions of Jonathan Agnew and Michael Atherton, current commentators tend to be old players who appear to think that stories of their antics are of some interest, accompanied by banter of a second-rate quality, all delivered in a one-tone media accent.

    Surely there are some lessons to be learnt from Arlott, Blofeld, Johnston and Benaud, who all in their different ways were highly skilled at their art and very knowledgeable.

    Martin R Cooper
    West Horsley, Surrey

    Here’s the article by Heffer:

    David Lloyd was a joyous antidote to today’s bland commentators – Sky and the BBC need more pundits like him, not fewer

    Procession of former players into the commentary box is taking cricket broadcasting the way of football

    SIMON HEFFER • 21 December 2021 • 3:44pm

    Because cricket is a game of long duration – well, proper cricket is – it has in the past 80 or so years acquired a culture of rich commentary that has entered the consciousnesses even of those who aren’t especially partial to the game.

    There was a time when just about everyone knew who John Arlott, Brian Johnston and Henry Blofeld were. They were not just superb natural broadcasters, each with an excellent command of the language, but they had insight, character and charm – all qualities that suggested that they had a hinterland beyond cricket, intellectual curiosity and a sense of context.

    Now David Lloyd has retired after 22 years at Sky it marks another dilution of personality in cricket commentary, and one fears a further move towards a banal, estuary-English dominated commentary of bland ex-sportsmen and women.

    Lloyd had been a terrific cricketer in Lancashire’s glory days in the 1970s, and some of us are old enough to recall his towering 214 for England against India at Edgbaston in 1974. He then became a superb broadcaster because he had real character. It was no hardship to spend time in his company as a member of his audience. And he brought to the world the magnificent accent of rural Lancashire, which coupled with his natural articulacy and wit made it a pleasure to engage with him. There are fewer and fewer cricket commentators of whom one can say that now.

    Lloyd follows out of Sky David Gower, who was the perfect front-man for their cricket coverage; Ian Botham, who brought huge authority as well as a touch of mischief to his work; and Michael Holding, whose voice was unique and whose wisdom was abundant. Of their present line-up only really Michael Atherton has the brains and the judgment to be considered in the first class; most of the others are relentless, dull, and when commentating on Test matches too damaged by their exposure to the permanently-excited demands of T20 to make the adjustment to real cricket happily. In tone it is all becoming a bit too much like football.

    Test Match Special has nothing to boast about either: it is held together by the magnificent professionalism and character of Jonathan Agnew, and if he were to leave then the exercise would become pointless. Soon, if the pitiful quality of our cricket isn’t sufficient to drive people away, the tedious and shallow quality of the commentary will do it.

    Lloyd is nearly 75, and perhaps age was a consideration in his decision. One hopes Sky were not stupid enough to push him. ‘Johnners’ was commentating into his eighties, and ‘Blowers’ almost to that age: we all thought ‘Bumble’ had a few years in him yet.

    A successful commentary team requires a selection of voices – male and female – of different accents, backgrounds and types. TMS especially has in recent years sounded increasingly like a PE masters’ and mistresses’ convention, with all the colour and flavour one would expect of such a gathering. Both Sky and the BBC need to cast the net more widely, and establish true diversity – with some people over the age of 50, and some who do sound as though they have just come off the sharp end of a grouse moor; and, despite the excellence of Lloyd, Agnew, Atherton and others, to remember that one does not need to have played first-class cricket to be able to describe it in the most brilliant terms. Arlott and Johnston managed all right.

    But perhaps in an age when Test cricket appears to be dying, and a form of the game few of us recognise as genuinely being cricket is in the ascendant, staffing commentary teams with people who sound as though they’ve just been dragged at random off the floor of a supermarket is, indeed, the way forward.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/12/21/david-lloyd-joyous-antidote-todays-bland-commentators-sky/

    I hadn’t known of Lloyd’s departure from Sky until I saw this letter. I thought he had a few more years in him. And then the truth…Azeem Rafiq. Lloyd had apparently been recorded as saying:

    …the club houses are the life blood of a club and Asian players don’t go in there…getting subs out of Asian players is like getting blood out of stone.

    It is reported that Rafiq said the Sky Sports commentator tried to smear him in an attempt to suppress his allegations of racism.

    The cultural cleansing continues.

    1. Dame Maureen Lipman has said comedy is in danger of being “wiped out” due to fears over being cancelled.

      She told the BBC she believes comedians are now so worried about offending, “a revolution” is taking place.

      “It’s in the balance whether we will ever be funny again,” she said.

      Her comments come as more than half of Britons say they have stopped themselves from expressing political and social views for fear of being judged.

      A YouGov poll seen exclusively by the BBC found 57% of those asked said they censor themselves on issues including immigration and trans rights, particularly if their views are deemed at the less politically correct end of the spectrum.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59703257

    2. As I have suggested before it would seem that the best way to eliminate racism in cricket is not to allow people of different races to play in the same teams.

  42. I caught a segment on GB news last night where they were discussing Blair`s comments that the unvaxed were idiotic. The panel (by zoom) were a medico, a female who thinks we should be left alone to decide, and an older bearded `Mr shoutey` who agreed with Blair.

    Th female had to fight to be heard that she and other non vaxed had an opinion and wanted to be left to make their own mind up. Mr shouty, who was incensed she had a different opinion from him and the saintly Blair, seemed to think that if he interupted loudly enough she would change her mind.

    The medico said that he agreed with Blair`s comments but telling people they were idiots was the wrong approach. Said of course the vaccines worked but lost potency after some months and depending on the age of the subject; hence the need for boosters. He had that smug, resting bitch face the rightious have when they just know they are smarter than you.

    Mr shouty shouted that the unvaxed were idiots and indeed stupid and were causing the NHS to collapse. He also shouted that other lifestyle choices such as diet and substance abuse were not a burden as the NHS had factored them into their spending but anti-vaxers were not.

    My take from this was that the medico (although condescending) and female had their own opinion and thats fair enough. The other two were just offensive for the sake of it. Both of them know (maybe know) that calling people names and insulting their intelligence/religious belief/medical condition will not get the non vaxed to change their views.

      1. MUD

        THOWN

        IS

        GROUND

        LOST

        (When my grandfather, a country GP in rural mid-Devon, was campaigning for a local election in the first decade of the 20th century his opponents smeared his publicity billboards with mud. He responded with the above – which was excellent because it worked both literally and metaphorically)

    3. “He had that smug, resting bitch face the rightious have when they just know they are smarter than you.”
      The same face that all CND supporters showed during my youth.

      1. The ‘three lInitials letters’ that maintained the peace for many years, were MAD, not CND

    4. It does not changed the views of the vaccine-free but it deepens the division and polarises the two stances. And that is what Blair’s and Mrs Shouty’s rants were all about. What they were not about was getting the unvaxxed to change their views.

    5. That Mr Shouty you mention, whose name I forget, is totally odious. He would have betrayed his own parents and children to the Gestapo had he lived in Nazi Germany.

    6. One of the predominant points that is not taken into consideration during these mass debates is….they wouldn’t be happening at all if the so called ‘vaccines’ actually worked.

    7. If people want to defend an opinion they should find the facts. Blair is a lying parasite, as he has demonstrated here and on a thousand other occasions. Only the symptomatic spread flu. It’s not a complicated thing to grasp. And as we know, for example, that the triple jabbed are 4 times as likely to get flu as the unjabbed draw your own conclusions. The jabs reduce natural immunity – they are a threat to those who get them and anyone nearby when the infections get a hold.

      https://www.tarableu.com/do-you-want-to-make-sense-of-all-this/

      1. Blair is a lying parasite not quite right, he’s an extremely wealthy lying parasite. In the past 5 years he’s had a newly built an 8 ft high brick wall all around his property in Bucks ….why would he need to do that ? He already has 24/7/365 security paid for by the UK tax payers.

    1. The relatively low occupancy is due to hospitals ‘running down’ in the last few days before Christmas (surgeons not wanting to undertake complex cases that may require intervention over Christmas) and patients reluctant to undergo elective surgery. Things will be back to normal a few days after Christmas when bed occupancy will return to 95+%

    1. ‘Morning Rastus. I saw most of this, it was like a breath of fresh air. I was particularly impressed by the Reverend William Pearson-Gee! His ‘rant’ was long overdue. His subsequent interview on GBN was very good too.

      1. Funnily enough I made that very point to Caroline yesterday. He interrupts the person he is interviewing when he should not and fails to do so when he should. However he is getting better at his interviewing technique and his turn of phrase is a delight.

  48. ‘Morning Peeps.

    Late on parade again…

    From Tuesday’s DT…he lived to 100, which makes me believe in miracles!

    Flt-Lt Ernie Holmes, Lancaster pilot who was shot down, sheltered but then betrayed, and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III – obituary
    One of thousands forced on the ‘Long March’, he stayed in touch for the rest of his life with the Dutch family who had protected him

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    21 December 2021 • 6:00am

    Flight Lieutenant Ernie Holmes, who has died aged 100, was one of the few surviving Lancaster Pathfinder pilots. After being shot down, he was imprisoned in Stalag Luft III.

    On the night of May 22/23 1944, Holmes and his crew took off in their 35 Squadron bomber to attack Dortmund. For most of the crew it was their 30th operation. After leaving the target at 16,000 feet, the Lancaster was crossing the Dutch border when it was attacked by a Messerschmitt Bf 110 night-fighter flown by the Luftwaffe experten (roughly equivalent to an Allied “ace”), Oberleutnant Hans-Heinz Augenstein, who manoeuvred into position under the Lancaster before opening fire with his upward-firing cannon. An engine was set on fire and the bomber became uncontrollable, so Holmes gave the order to bale out just before the Lancaster exploded.

    Three of the crew, including Holmes, were thrown out but Holmes’s foot became jammed by the control column. After a struggle he was able to free himself and open his parachute. Five of his eight-man crew lost their lives.

    He landed in a field near the Dutch/German border and, after hiding his parachute, he started walking. Early in the morning he met a young farmer’s daughter, Netje van der Heijden, who was cycling to do the milking. She alerted her father Fons, who took Holmes to his farm and hid him in the roof of a pigsty, where he remained for two weeks.

    Eventually, he was taken by Dutch patriots to the Belgian border, where he met up with his bomb aimer. Together with two other escapees they were escorted to the Belgian border, where they were collected by a Belgian woman who took them to Antwerp.

    As they were sitting in a café, a man joined them and pulled out a ripped piece of paper which jigsawed into a complementary piece held by the woman. The four were taken out of the café and bundled into the back of a waiting car which drove off. A few seconds later, the car swung into a courtyard – the Gestapo headquarters; the line had been compromised and they were trapped.

    As he was in civilian clothes and carrying false papers, Holmes was in danger of being shot as a spy. He was ordered to strip and the interrogator quickly saw that he was circumcised and said: “we shoot spies; but we have special treatment for Jews.” Later, if asked how he was captured, Holmes would sharply reply: “I was not captured. I was betrayed.”

    Holmes was eventually incarcerated in Stalag Luft III. In January 1945, with thousands of other PoWs, Holmes set off on the “Long March” through appalling weather conditions with inadequate food and clothing. Many died before the group arrived on the outskirts of Lübeck weeks later, and where they were liberated in early May.

    On his return to the UK, Holmes discovered that he had been awarded the DFC for his skill and determination as a Pathfinder. He also discovered that on September 20 1944 Fons van der Heijden had been arrested by the Germans and shot for harbouring escaping airmen. Within days his village was liberated.

    The son of a shipyard worker, Ernest Holmes was born in Hebburn, on the Tyne, on January 29 1921. He tried to join the RAF aged 16 but was told to return “once you are out of nappies”. Three years later he re-applied and was accepted.

    After completing his training as a pilot, and a conversion course to fly bombers, Holmes was posted to 35 Squadron equipped with the four-engine Halifax, and one of the squadrons that formed part of Bomber Command’s Pathfinder Force. Their task was to drop flares and markers to illuminate the target for the following main force of bombers.

    Holmes began operations in late October 1943, just before the opening of the main phase of the so-called “Battle of Berlin”. Holmes and his crew had flown seven raids when they made their first visit to the “Big City” on November 24. Over the following weeks, they made four further visits as well as bombing targets in the Ruhr.

    In the lead-up to the Normandy invasion they attacked marshalling yards and railways in northern France until they were shot down.

    Following repatriation, Holmes served in Transport Command, and in 1948 flew on the Berlin Airlift delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged city; the irony was not lost on him. Later, as a flying instructor on the Glasgow and St Andrews universities air squadrons, he took to the parachute for the second time when he and his student had to abandon a Chipmunk which would not pull out of a dive.

    After leaving the RAF in February 1962 he worked as a civilian flying instructor for Airwork Services Training at Scone, Perthshire, training pilots from many countries. He received a commendation for saving two Iraqi students after his Cessna 310 crashed in flames on take-off. He was badly burned and spent weeks in hospital.

    After his recovery, Holmes went to Uganda to set up a flying school for the East African community. It was there that he began to lose his sight, and thus his flying career, and he returned to Perth. Undaunted, Holmes retrained as a social worker and was based at Perth Prison until his retirement.

    Holmes kept in touch with the Dutch family to whom he owed his life, and that link has been sustained by his children and Fons’s children and grandchildren, who still live in the farmhouse. To remember those lost when Holmes’s Lancaster crashed, the local historical society erected a monument close to the crash site.

    On September 29 2018 Holmes was taken to the Netherlands by his son and daughter to unveil the memorial: “I’m so humbled, thank you,” he said emotionally. One of Fons van der Heijden’s granddaughters was moved by the gratitude that emerged during the ceremony. She said of the bond between the two families: “Ernest stayed with my grandmother and grandfather for two and a half weeks. That was 74 years ago, and once again we are standing here together.”

    Holmes was a religious man and, until the end of his life, carried with him the bible he was given in Stalag Luft III. On his 100th birthday earlier this year, students of the East of Scotland Universities Air Squadron (ESUAS) gave a virtual celebration of his life attended by many hundreds, including his children, grandchildren and members of the van der Heijden family.

    In September 2021, the Leuchars-based headquarters of ESUAS was named in his honour and the Netherlands Defence and Naval Attaché attended to present him with the Dutch Liberators medal. He died two weeks later.

    Ernie Holmes died on October 14. In 1946 he married Irene Spinks who died in 2019. Their son and daughter survive him.

    Ernie Holmes, born January 29 1921, died October 14 2021

    * * *

    Pathfinders were the creme de la creme; their navigation and flying skills were equalled only by their courage and determination.

    1. A most fitting BTL:

      Glenn Pearce
      1 DAY AGO
      What a marvellous and courageous man. The writer of this obituary deserves great praise for writing such a moving testament to a truly great man – it moved me to tears.
      Rest in peace and may God bless you for your bravery in war and peace.

    2. One of my friends, who also died fairly recently, aged 100, was the sole survivor of his Lancaster crew. It blew up and he, as pilot, was the only one wearing a parachute. He was captured and spent the war in a prison camp.

  49. 343154+ up ticks,

    The political plaything of the electorate, politico’s and
    foreign paedophiles.

    Lest we forget the JAY report.

    Vatican Says Children the ‘Most Vulnerable Victims’ of the Pandemic

  50. Morning all, just popping to Screw Fix to pick up a replacement latch for a bedroom door the spring has broken, and the door wouldn’t close.
    All in a days work eh.

  51. Good Morning. The lies keep coming, don’t they? The “threat” of the unjabbed is only to the criminals who would like you swallow the guff. If you are asymptomatic you are a threat to nobody. If you are symptomatic you have flu and should stay away from others until you are better. It’s as simple as that – no different from any time in the last hundreds of years.

    The Austrians and the Swedes have just shown us – as if we didn’t know – that fascism does nothing for flu and a good deal of harm to civilisation.

    https://swprs.org/judgment-day-sweden-vindicated/
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ad507a0a71743b6e0b005c1a65899dcac26b2c3562fa4729038ba2e75361148.png

    1. I live in Sweden. I wasn’t aware it is a “fascist” state. There is no pressure on me, from any quarter, to have a vaccination. In fact my own Swedish GP advised against it in my case.

  52. Good Morning. The lies keep coming, don’t they? The “threat” of the unjabbed is only to the criminals who would like you swallow the guff. If you are asymptomatic you are a threat to nobody. If you are symptomatic you have flu and should stay away from others until you are better. It’s as simple as that – no different from any time in the last hundreds of years.

    The Austrians and the Swedes have just shown us – as if we didn’t know – that fascism does nothing for flu and a good deal of harm to civilisation.

    https://swprs.org/judgment-day-sweden-vindicated/
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ad507a0a71743b6e0b005c1a65899dcac26b2c3562fa4729038ba2e75361148.png

  53. An interesting study of something that bothered me last winter. Independent French medical commentators remarked on the surge in British, Israeli and UAE mortality when the vaccines were first rolled out in a vain attempt to slow their own national uptake of the Messianic cure. A Tory shill on another blogg dismissed it caused by the Kent variant. In the Emirates, for goodness sake.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vaccine-linked-to-blindness-deafness-miscarriages-and-5000-deaths-2/
    … As important as it is to quickly arrest the spread of the virus by immunising the population, it would be vastly worse if hundreds of millions of people were to suffer long-lasting or even permanent damage to the brain or heart microvasculature as a result of failing to appreciate in the short term an unintended effect of full-length spike protein-based vaccines on these other organs.’

    A mechanism of this kind may have been at work in the tragic loss of life experienced by Gibraltar, reported here on March 29. Within the space of a few weeks the Rock suffered 94 deaths, giving it the highest Covid mortality rate in the world proportional to its tightly-knit community of fewer than 34,000 people.

    SARS-COV-2 was first reported in Gibraltar in March last year and by November 11 there had been 842 confirmed cases, with only one death. By January 10, when an intense rollout of the Pfizer vaccine began, cases had risen to 3,109. There had been 16 deaths at that point. But three weeks later, with 13,286 jabs administered, the total had soared to 78, out of 4,128 confirmed cases. Most of the victims were among the elderly, who were prioritised for the vaccine.

    The death toll rose more gradually after that, reaching 93 by the end of February, when 36,808 doses had been administered. There has been only one other death since.

    After nearly a year of strict measures to control viral spread, many on the Rock are grateful for the rollout, which made the British territory the first place in the world to have vaccinated the entire adult population against Covid-19. There are now no Covid patients in hospital, and no new cases reported.

    But after our report appeared, some Gibraltarians contacted us to say they regard the achievement as a Pyrrhic victory. They are angry about the hardship brought by nearly a year of lockdown, only to be followed by the record-breaking loss of life; by a lack of transparency within the medical authorities over the circumstances of the deaths, with refusal to acknowledge that the vaccine might have played a part; and by triumphalism surrounding the success of the vaccination campaign, which they see as a distraction from any examination of the circumstances that brought about the grievous loss of life.

    A glimpse of the suffering behind the numbers surfaced in an exchange on the Gibraltar government’s Facebook page, in which one person wrote: ‘I have an 85-year-old father who took the jab. I totally agree with you about them having lost the will to live. They just don’t care any more. They are too weak and old to make a difference. Living like they are is insufferable. Taking the jab is a win-win, they think. If it doesn’t kill them, they’ll be able to do more things; if it kills them, they’ll be out of it. Extremely sad. Breaks my heart to see my father like this.’

    If Gibraltar were alone in signalling a potential hazard from the vaccine, lack of attention to the tragedy might be understandable.

    But that is not the case.
    …

    1. Ah ha! If the adult population is all vaccinated then, by default, all deaths are caused by the vaccine!

      Oh how I love politician’s logic.

    2. Ah ha! If the adult population is all vaccinated then, by default, all deaths are caused by the vaccine!

      Oh how I love politician’s logic.

  54. I would be interested to know how many MPs have not had the vaccines and are pretending that they did. And of course, we have seen the photo of the Archidiot of Canterbury being vaccinated with the protective blue cap still on the needle. I think there was a subliminal message in there somewhere as if to say that if you are going to fornicate heterosexually, homosexually, transsexually or pansexually – then the Christian way to do it is to wear a condom.

    I have revised the post I made after midnight last night:

    I wonder if Tony Blair and Bill Gates have been double vaxed and boostered. And what about Whitty and his reptilian co-conspirators?

    If the conspiracy theory that the vaccines are deliberately designed to exterminate a significant proportion of the human population then it seems to me that Tony Blair must be in on it and will make sure that he himself is not given the gene therapy and has Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc and Ivermectin readily to hand so that he will be safe if he catches a cold.

    Of course this is a fantastic and absurd conspiracy theory and of course even to postulate as to whether there is any truth in it brands you as, to quote from Blair himself, “an idiot”. And what about the Archidiot of Canterbury? Has he had the jabs?

    Mind you, the 2020 conspiracy theories that Covid came out of the Wuhan Lab and that Vaccine Pisspots would be introduced have been proved in 2021 to be conspiracy theories so we were wise not to have been taken in by them weren’t we?

    1. That Archidiot was posing for a photograph (shown in the DT) the other day. The syringe, clearly, still had its cap on!

      1. Good morning Grizzly

        I made that very point above and compared the cap on the needle with a condom. The subliminal message in this was that no matter whether you are heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, pansexual or any other sort of sexual the Christian way to fornicate is with a condom.

    2. I wonder why so many health professionals are facing the sack because they aren’t vaccinated? Is their reluctance because they know what’s in it?

      2. If that number of people knew it was lethal, you’d have heard by now. Secrets cannot be kept if people are told them, and the more you tell, the more quickly the secret escapes.

      1. Judging by the granite and the number of empties on the front doorstep, that would be a leading candidate but the gable does not look Aberdonian to me.

  56. Back from the market and Morrisons. In town, in the open air – about half the “frightened well” were bagged up; virtually everyone in Morrisons – apart from the staff!!!

    Quite thick misty/fog. Damp and unwelcoming – what we’ll get used to calling “typical Covidmas weather”.

    1. I was the only one sans mask in Waitrose, the farm shop, Boots, and M&S yesterday. The world seems more frightened than ever. Or frightened of getting a cold for Christmas.

      1. Here is France masks are obligatoire in all indoor public places, and also in a number of outdoor places. Unfortunately there are no exceptions – so I can’t claim that they make me suffocate or feel panicky; although that’s the truth, that’s no excuse… and I certainly can’t say that the wretched things are useless, anyway.

        I wear the thing only when I absolutely have to and take it off the moment I get back outside. My one good fortune is that, as the church organist, I have the priest’s special dispensation to take my mask off at the organ on the basis that my glasses fog up if I don’t, and I can’t see the music! But the congregation has to wear masks – but at least they’re allowed to sing.

        1. There ARE exemptions – but ONLY with a doctor’s certificate:

          Les personnes en situation de handicap munies d’un certificat médical justifiant de cette dérogation
          Les personnes dont l’état de santé, dûment justifié par un certificat médical, contre-indique le port du masque

      2. Maskless in the shopping centre, but no admonishment – maybe because Firstborn had a rifle in a soft case over his shoulder, on his way to the gunsmith.

      3. Did Bakewell Aldi and, because I had things to drop off at a charity shop in the town, Matlock Coop & Iceland.
        All three places VERY heavily masked with me the only unmasked.
        However, no odd or hostile looks and even had a short conversation with one lady in Aldi.

      4. I merrily waltz in and out of shops; no-one has yet questioned me or given me a ‘significant look’
        Maybe they think I’m exempt because I could throw a wobbler and embarrass them.

        1. I was nervous this time because three weeks ago I was accosted by another customer “get a mask on” she hissed. I told her I was exempt. “Get a mask on” she said again. I repeated my exemptness. “Stay well away from me, I don’t want you anywhere near me”. I told her I didn’t want her near me either, not with that attitude. I should have added ‘and with that germ-ridden nappy across your face.’ She was late middle-aged, academic, long grey hair and a voice and attitude as cold as ice. It has dented my confidence as I was caught by surprise, but I am ready for them now with come-backs although I don’t like confrontation. This was in mask-central, Waitrose, Cambridge. Remain territory.

  57. Just had a run to Bakewell Aldi for a few bits & bobs.
    Called into Thornbridge Brewery and found they do not accept cash, so walked back out again.

    1. I trust that you had a huge selection of their products ready to buy on the counter so that they could see how enormous their loss was and that they had to handle them putting them back.

    2. Ummm… it’s legal tender. Why didn’t they? Are’t they required to do so?

      I cna understand if they *can’t*, such as we don’t have a float and can’t give you change or something, but just refusing money seems a bit silly.

    3. That happened to me about 4 years ago I was doing some work for friends in WGC in their new apartment. I popped into the Tesco HQ shop picked up some sandwiches and other bits for lunch arrived at the check out and was told no cash. So I left everything on the check out counter and walked out. But it was a long walk to Waitrose and back instead.

    4. That happened to me about 4 years ago I was doing some work for friends in WGC in their new apartment. I popped into the Tesco HQ shop picked up some sandwiches and other bits for lunch arrived at the check out and was told no cash. So I left everything on the check out counter and walked out. But it was a long walk to Waitrose and back instead.

  58. Just read the article about bitcoin mining in Siberia. Frequent references to “kW per hour”. Is it because English is not the writer’s first language, or because, like most journos, she has n arts degree and never opened a science book after the age of fourteen?

    1. One could argue it’s two sentences – ignoring the appalling grammar. No, young folk under 5 haven’t had the vaccine and yes, children do die in hospital.

      A chum lost her 11 year old 15 years ago in a car accident. It’s horrible. It also isn’t related to covid. Much like government, the conflation of two events does not force causality.

  60. The middle daughter arrived yesterday evening. She took a bus to Lowestoft and traveled from there to catch a train from Norwich and on to Peterborough. The Edinburgh train was late in arriving in Peterborough because of electric faults in Stevenage. On to Doncaster where the train was further delayed by police removing anti-social elements from the train. Onwards northwards and the train was delayed again because of trespassers on the line*. The train arrived in Edinburgh close to the timetable time and our girl caught her connection to Tweedbank. (The previous train to Tweedbank had been cancelled.)
    All good fun on public transport.
    *By which time our child said that you could hear the weariness and despair in the voice of the train manager/announcer.

    1. I am very confused.

      Lowestoft is at the most easterly point, why not go to Peterborough directly? Or was she heading to Edinburgh? Goodness! Where did she start from?!

      1. Starting point Hopton-on-Sea, destination Scottish Borders via Edinburgh. (East coast train does not stop in Berwick.)

    2. Yes, Annie (good day, btw) but what a silly sausage to spend all that money on the electric car in the first place.

        1. Oh you railway station
          Oh you Pullman train
          Here’s my reservation
          For my destination…

        1. MB is the nitter.
          In the past he has even done fancy stuff such as Arran.
          I think I could get interested if tumbrils and guillotines were involved.

    1. We have the band. The end of the Robertson’s Golly marked the end of common sense, humour, and a sense of proportion in UK society.

  67. 343154+ up ticks,

    The Bow Street Runner,

    Delingpole: ‘If You Don’t Get Vaxxed You’re an Idiot!’ Says Satan’s Envoy, Blair

  68. Russia causing ‘severe deterioration’ of European security – EU. 23 December 2021.

    The EU’s top diplomat has accused Russia of creating “a severe deterioration of the security situation in Europe” while calling for dialogue to avoid conflict in Ukraine.

    Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign policy, was responding to Vladimir Putin’s proposals for security guarantees for Russia that would effectively rewrite the post-cold-war order.

    It is this Globalist anti-democratic organisation that is behind many of the difficulties in Europe. This Borrel; the self-entitled so called High Representative has never been elected by one single European citizen. The policies he espouses have appeared in no political manifesto in Europe. The EU is simply the ancestor of Wilhelmine Germany and the Third Reich. It has no democratic legitimacy whatsoever and has no right to speak on behalf of the people of Europe!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/23/eu-russia-european-security-josep-borrell

    1. Putin has not engaged with the EU.
      He has sent proposals to NATO and US.That is where Russia’s problems originate.

    3. As Billy Connolly once remarked: the brave Highlanders and Jacobites deserved much better than to be led by a wee dandified Italian dwarf who legged it as soon as there was trouble.

  70. Just been to the supermarket and got everything for Christmas lunch as they advertised

    Well, almost everything they advertised – all I need now is a random black person to join us and we’re all set

    1. Weirdly enough I know (but only as a slight acquaintance) an extremely successful bloke in advertising who happens to have an, er, African appearance. He is British, highly intelligent and well educated. Next time I see him, which is not often nowadays, I will tentatively ask him about certain trends on commercial TV.

  72. I gazed upon Doris with distaste, this dishevelled OAP sat in front of
    my TV binge watching Eastenders on catch-up and munching her way through
    her 3rd packet of Werthers while her dentures and her knitting needles
    clacked away in unison. I whispered to my girlfriend “C’m on luv, your
    Gran’s been here for 6 months, she’s leaky, she smells of vegetable soup
    and she’s getting through a hundred quids worth of food a week. Time
    she went back home!”
    She looked me with dawning horror and said “MY Gran? I thought she was
    your Gran!!”

  73. 343154+ up ticks,

    There is openly an anti indigenous political campaign afoot, there are many that could die without politically waking up, STILL believing “their” party lib/ lab.or con will see them right.

    On passing and within the spare parts ( human) their brains will command the highest price in transplants,on being totally unused.

    https://twitter.com/jabbydodgers/status/1473961920524959745

  76. Photographs from Katherine the Wench’s cottage down the valley where she has been toiling all night and day to provide me and her family with mince pies.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d9546fba2520de037068419e6069d90b6ed9e1da2e788fdb45a7f4085f9e044e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c365690da921e5e51c6304a25db59e5c3f3ed88ef5806e68eac3628b81eee1c6.jpg

    to be delivered later this afternoon before a Waity-Rose blow out and partridge pie at The Swan. At first light tomorrow morning, she has to drive to Evesham for Christmas with her fractious elder sister and her children who have already started fighting via the ‘Family What’s-App Group’. Had a message from Nagsman to say that she is already fed up with her family and wants to come here for lunch on Sunday, Boxing Day.

    1. Them’s proper mince pies; not at all like the manicured ones in boxes from the supermarkets, full of all manner of iffy ingredients.

        1. A slice of cake without the cheese,
          Is like a kiss without the squeeze.

          Old Yorkshire saying.

          [Alt: a slice of pie (apple) …]

          10. Toot sweets sound like what they are
            So do lollys in a lollypop jar
            Gingerbread men have a gingerbread sound, we’ve found
            Sugar plum cinnamon and lemon tart tell you what they are right from the start
            And your name does the same for you
            By coincidence, Truly Scrumptious
            You’re truly truly scrumptious
            Scrumptious as a cherry peach parfait
            When your near us
            It’s so delicious
            Honest Truly, you’re the answer to our wishes
            Truly Scrumptious
            Though we may seem presumptuous
            Never, never, ever go away
            Our hearts beat so unruly
            Because we love you truly
            Honest Truly, we do
            Truly scrumptious
            You two are truly scrumptious
            Scrumptious as the breeze across the bay
            When you’re smiling
            It’s so delicious
            So beguiling
            You’re the answer to my wishes
            Truly scrumptious
            You two are truly scrumptious
            And I shan’t forget this lovely day
            My heart beats so unruly
            I also love you truly
            Honest truly, I do

            source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/c/chittychittybangbanglyrics/trulyscrumptiouslyrics.html

  78. Well, not me but……

    I walked into a New Orleans restaurant to have dinner tonight and was greeted with “do you and your guest have your vaccination cards with you?”️. Here is what actually transpired:

    Hostess : Hello.

    Patron : Hi, table for two, please.

    Hostess : Sure, and your name.

    Patron : Tracy.

    Hostess : Great. And do you and your guest have your vaccination cards?

    Patron : We do. Can you tell us who our server will be?

    Hostess : Um, looks like Tom will be your server tonight.

    Patron : Great. Can you show us Tom’s vaccination card?

    Hostess : Um…

    Patron : And also, can you provide me with proof that Tom is not a carrier of HIV, Hepatitis A or B, or any other communicable diseases such as VD?

    Hostess : Um…

    Patron : Also, we would prefer not to be served by someone who is on or uses recreational drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, meth, fentanyl, etc., so if you could provide us with Tom’s most recent tox screen, that would be great.

    Hostess : Um… Let me get the manager for you.

    Patron : That would be great, thanks…….

    2. Ha. All shopping finished and wrapped at the end of November.

      The few things I was waiting on arrived last week.

  81. Even this dog lover would treasure a cat like this!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/23/keith-kleptomaniac-cat-steals-drugs-underwear-neighbours/

    Keith the kleptomaniac cat caught stealing drugs and underwear from neighbours

    The New Zealand-based moggy returned home from a night of pilfering with a cannabis bong and a ziplock bag of white powder

    23 December 2021 • 2:25pm

    “Keith, the kleptomaniac cat, steals drugs and underwear from neighbours

    A kleptomaniac cat in New Zealand has taken his thieving habits to a new extreme, stealing drugs and a pair of lacy knickers from the neighbours, according to his owners.

    ‘Keith the thief’, as he has been dubbed by the local community in Christchurch, began his wave of terror over three years ago.

    Throughout his criminal career, Keith has been indiscriminate, stealing entire washing lines, live eels from the local river and even the shirt of a neighbouring prison officer.

    But his flagrant disregard for law and order sunk to a new low recently, when he returned home after a long night of pilfering with a cannabis bong and a ziplock bag of unidentified white powder, as well as a pair of knickers strewn across the garden fence for good measure.

    “We’ve been playing a bit of cat and mouse with this prolific offender,” a police spokesperson told the local media outlet Stuff.

    “Of particular concern is Keith’s latest find – an implement used to smoke cannabis. We’ll be seizing the implement and speaking to Keith about where he’s acquired it from.”

    ‘I suggested to him diamonds and cash would be better’

    So productive is Keith’s habit that his owners, Ginny and David Rumbold, normally spend their early mornings rounding up his night’s haul and placing it in plastic containers at the front of their home so the neighbours can reclaim their property.

    “I suggested to him diamonds and cash would be better,” Ginny Rumbold told Stuff. “But that hasn’t happened so far.”

    Keith, the kleptomaniac cat, steals drugs and underwear from neighbours

    However, returning the stolen property seems only to further motivate Keith, who has apparently begun targeting specific items.

    Among his favourites are a pair of steel-toed boots of a local tradesperson. Despite the best efforts of the man to prevent the thefts, including weighing down each boot with a 2.5kg fluorescent green weight, Keith still manages to muscle them back home, one boot at a time under the cover of darkness.

    The roofer has been a long suffering victim of Keith, with the ‘cat burglar’ having previously stolen a glue gun, underwear and entire load of washing from the man.

    However, his compulsive habit seems to have amused, rather than annoyed the neighbourhood, according to Ms Rumbold.

    “He’s just got the cheek of old Joe,” she said.”

    1. I bought a shoulder of lamb a couple of weeks ago. Will get it out of the freezer tonight to thaw tomorrow. I’m going to try the recipe which was in the DT a couple of weeks ago – plenty of garlic & paprika involved. We’ll have the usual trimmings with it.

      Did the last minute shopping in Waitrose at lunchtime on the way to the station to pick up younger son. Just working up the strength to make some mince pies.

    2. Goose, duck, chicken, capon, pheasant, grouse, partridge, ostrich, emu, cassowary, rhea, parrot, budgerigar, sparrow.

      ANYTHING but bloody turkey!

        1. I’ll just sit quietly in the corner of her lounge with my Christmas pie, putting in my thumb and pulling out a plum.

      2. Snap. The dullest of meat. I just take the view that everyone eats what I choose 364 days of the year, so I shut up and chow down.

        1. It doesn’t have to be. Take off the legs and wings and brine the crown for 48 hours. Then nappe in butter flavoured with herbs and garlic and finish in the oven.

          1. “Take off the legs and wings and brine the crown for 48 hours. Then nappe in butter flavoured with herbs and garlic and finish in the oven chuck it all in the bin then go to the chip shop.”

          3. “Take off the legs and wings and brine the crown for 48 hours. Then nappe in butter flavoured with herbs and garlic and finish in the oven chuck it all in the bin then go to the chip shop.”

        2. We had beef last year, and a goose a few years ago .

          If the weather had been decent and if we had been feeling not so rubbish as we are now , we would have cleared off for a picnic !

        1. Brace of pheasants £12. Will keep me going for a week at least. Cold leg + mug of tea for breakfast – Delicious.

          4. The traditional Christmas turkey was a fashionable meat in the Tudor court, made popular by Henry VIII following its arrival from America in the 1520s. In fact, demand for turkeys was so high the birds were walked to the capital in flocks from as far afield as Norfolk and Suffolk!

          6. He’s not the pheasant-plucker.
            He’s the pheasant-plucker’s son.
            He’s only plucking pheasants,
            Till the pheasant-plucker comes.

        2. Don’t you mean beak?
          Big rip off – haven’t bought a turkey for 40 years
          It’ll just be me and the cat this year feasting on turkey flavoured crisps, can’t drink as I’m on call with the recovery truck

  84. Well, it’s a refreshing relief to see that the police are not the only occupation that employs perverts that end up in newspaper reports (and gaol).

    Deputy headmistresses can also be perverts it seems.

      1. I applied for a DBS when I returned over here, in case the ideal job came up. Not only was my history here checked out but I had to go and be fingerprinted and a copy of the fingerprints and a request for info was sent to the FBI in the US. I knew it would be OK but it is a worry in case there’s someone else with the same name etc. Anyway, I hold an enhanced DBS certificate which will be needed in the new year if I volunteer at the library- maybe do a children’s programme.

      2. DBS won’t find any unrecorded crime or misdemenour. If they’ve been getting away with kiddy-fiddling for years but never reported they’d still pass muster.

      3. DBS won’t find any unrecorded crime or misdemenour. If they’ve been getting away with kiddy-fiddling for years but never reported they’d still pass muster.

      2. Be very careful what you say to Our Grizz…

        Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
        Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
        Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy
        No, by gosh, he wasn’t, was he?
        Silly Willy was a worm
        Silly Willy wouldn’t squirm
        Silly Willy wasn’t silly
        No, by gosh, he wasn’t really
        Iddy Biddy was a mouse
        Iddy Biddy had no spouse
        Iddy Biddy wasn’t pretty
        Oh, by gosh, it was a pity
        Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
        Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
        Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy
        No, by god, he wasn’t, was he?

          1. Just keep wearing ya titfer, slaphead.

            I of course as a Southerner have the most lustrous barnet. :@)

  85. The European Commission has received a complaint from Ukraine’s state energy giant Naftogaz, alleging that Russia is manipulating the energy markets by refusing to send more gas than it is obliged to, it was reported on Thursday.

    According to Kiev, Saint Petersburg’s Gazprom is abusing its dominant position on the European market by artificially sending less of the commodity through Ukrainian pipes, which is supposedly causing an energy crisis. Naftogaz wants Russia to be legally obliged by EU anti-monopoly laws to send significantly more quantities of natural gas through Ukraine, even though Moscow and Kiev agreed to a contract in 2019, and Gazprom has already met its obligations for 2021 in full.

    https://www.rt.com/russia/544101-kiev-asks-eu-gas/

      3. No..It seems Ukraine is complaining that Russia aren’t sending enough though they’ve sent more than the contract stipulated.
        I think they’ve started early on the Christmas hooch.

    2. So they want more than was agreed and they want the EU to force Putin to say yes?
      I can hear Vladimir laughing all the way to the Urals.

  86. Why cancel Bonnie Prince Charlie now?

    Focusing on slavery while ignoring his many other failings exposes the folly of the woke view of history

    ROBERT TOMBS • 21 December 2021 • 4:55pm

    Bonnie Prince Charlie, “the lad who’s born to be king”, has had a pretty easy ride in popular memory – one of many examples of history not being written by the victors. Romantic nationalism cast him (wrongly) as fighting for Scottish freedom. But now he has had his come-uppance, and from the Scottish National Trust, who have “cancelled” him, at least to the extent of pointing out his connections with the slave trade in their description of the battlefield of Culloden, where he was finally defeated on April 16 1746.

    His links with the French slave trade were more than accidental. Jacobite exiles from Ireland, led by Anthony Walsh, were important players in the slave trade, and did much to found the brandy trade, too. Walsh was a crucial financial backer of the prince, and in June 1745 provided him with two ships to sail to Scotland from Nantes, the headquarters of the huge slave trade to the French Caribbean colonies.

    Charles’s aim was not Scottish independence but to seize the throne of the United Kingdom by fomenting civil war and forcing the French to invade England. This he was able to do thanks to Walsh, who enabled him to sail without telling the French government. I have read Charles’s letter to Louis XV in the French archives, written in a big childish hand, apologising for acting without permission and begging for help. The French were not too pleased. They (understandably) did not trust a Stuart, and had no interest in shoring up a weak Scotland. But they decided that making trouble for England was worth a gamble and prepared to invade.

    In Scotland, Charles’s unexpected arrival caused alarm. Here too, civil war was his instrument: mobilising the semi-feudal and Episcopalian Highlands, whose clansmen had to follow their lairds into battle, against the Presbyterian cities and the Lowlands. His hope was to march into England and set off a Jacobite uprising there, which the French would then take advantage of by landing on the south coast.

    The gamble failed. There was no uprising in England, except for a handful of Lancashire Catholics. The French never got their invasion fleet to sea. The Highlanders gave up at Derby and turned for home, to Charles’s fury. And they were slaughtered at Culloden, after which the victorious Duke of Cumberland (son of George II) was feted by the Lowland Scots.

    If we really wanted to draw up an indictment against Charles Edward Stuart for a posthumous war crimes trial, it would be quite long. Fomenting civil war in Scotland and in England. Encouraging a foreign invasion. Abusing the loyalty of the Highlanders. Attempting to impose a royal dictatorship by force. The danger to life and liberty was potentially huge. And all for personal and family ambition. Yes, and also drawing on funds and ships derived from the Atlantic slave trade – a secondary aspect of his disastrous adventure.

    Yet this, it seems, is the only thing that touches modern consciences – or at least, the conscience of the Scottish National Trust. Slave trading was widely thought to be a nasty business even at the time – a time in which a large part of the population of Europe were serfs, and would remain so for another century. We might include the Scottish clansmen, who depended on the lairds’ good will for their land and livelihood. But slavery, though evil, was considered an eternal part of the human condition, practised round the world, a pillar of the societies of Greece and Rome, and condoned, and even approved, by the major religions.

    To condemn Charles for his slave-trade connections and ignore the rest is not history, but virtue-signalling. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, says the Gospel. Our own comfort and security today often depend on some pretty dodgy businesses [a reference to cotton produced by Uyghurs], to which, like our 18th-century forebears, we turn a blind eye.

    They thought that they could not do without sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton and the slavery that produced them, and if they refused slavery, others would profit. Doubtless, most thought there was nothing they could do anyway. I write these words on a computer that I imagine is produced largely in China. I know about the Uyghurs and Hong Kong. But I feel there is nothing I can do. We are not in a very strong moral position to signal our virtue by indignation against people long dead.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/21/cancel-bonnie-prince-charlie-now/

    1. It’s going bloody mad.

      A BC museum has several exhibits that show life in the early days, complete homesteads from around the province. The whole lot is being ripped out because it offends colonial sensitivities.

    2. Fear not, Mr Effort.

      By that time, Geriatric Joe will have as much life in him as Lenin does in his mausoleum. In fact, Lenin shows more vitality now that old Joe does.

    3. With Hilary Clinton as running mate? Well running might be pushing it a bit. More of a slow stagger behind their walkers.

      Seriously 81 and 77 year old candidates? Is there no competent young politician that could stand for either party and maybe appeal to anyone under retirement age.?

        2. Ooh, Bill, you’ll upset the diehards (railway and linguistic) by using the definite article.

          As for the locos, the GWR ran a bit out of control with its naming of the class. Having long had a tradition of naming passenger engines after grand buildings and historic ruins (‘Abbey’ and ‘Castle’ classes), it flogged the theme to the point of tedium with the ‘Halls’, ‘Granges’ and ‘Manors’. There weren’t enough stately homes in the country that were Halls, so public buildings (concert halls, colleges etc) also featured. ‘Marble Hall’ was probably the low point!

          2. I feel that the GWR were rather scraping the bottom of the barrel when they named one of their engines, “Henry Hall”.

  90. Evening, all. Whether people have the jab or not hardly affects others. In my local rag the comment mentioned Covid patients being sent home to be monitored remotely. The comment was that Covid patients were usually cared for by family if they were at home, yet, strangely enough, those caring didn’t go down with the disease. Why? That was certainly my experience. Although I went down with it, MOH was not affected.

    1. I read an article on the HART group website that said only a small minority of people are likely to get each variant, but I didn’t completely get why.

      1. If you get every variant out there and survive, will you be captured and ground up for a new vaccine?

    2. I mentioned that at the start of the week S-I-L tested positive for Covid. The rest of the family are still clear of it 4 days later.
      It is odd isn’t it.

    3. Did anyone NOT know this? It doesn’t lessen the importance of care over covid, but it does provide clear information on how the data is derived.

      Truly, there seem to be people in this country who don’t understand that folk die. It’s the one final consequence of life.

      1. 343154+up ticks,
        Evening M,

        He’s a bloody GUARD DOG that’s why, therefor NOT open to titillation.

    2. Sod the lot of them! They call themselves SAGE- good, shove an onion up each of their arses! Grrr.

  95. That’s me for this extremely dreary, drizzly day. Market sorted; nice joint of beef bought for Cook to play with on Saturday. Evenings drawing out.. New puzzle on the go.

    Have a spiffing evening in the company of a nice glass of suffin’ agreable.

    A demain – DV.

    1. If you’re not going to be around tomorrow let me and my old man wish you and the MR and all your family a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful time together.

    1. I’d like to vaccinate him with a double dose in each eye. With an air bubble in each syringe.

      2. My oppo had a detached retina.
        Amongst the treatment was to overpressure the eye with an air bubble.
        He could see it, like a kaleidoscope – of course, at the bottom of his eye, not the top. and if he shook his head, the bubble turned to foam.
        Personally, I’d use a 9mm needle.

  97. I actually bought a copy of the DT today and read the good news on the front page revealing that Omicron was pretty tame compared with Delta. But a critical review was featured inside of Imperial College’s forecasts of doom predictions of the number of people getting sick, going to hospital and dying.

    I’ve pointed out to Nottlers that all figures in a graph are meaningless unless you can define what you think you are measuring and even then you might have actually recorded something else.

    I’ve also shown how Nottlers can create really big numbers with the humble domestic calculator as long as you have an x raised to the power y key on it. What is more, if you don’t like the look of the number you’ve created you can get rid of it by pressing the CLEAR key.

    In what I called my Omicron graph I chose not to model the virus but create a graph that represented the best mathematical expression that would fit all the data being promulgated from various sources.

    I chose the equation represented by 2 raised to the power of (number of days in which a virus had been hanging around divided by the number of days in which it was expected to double) which sort of represented what various virologists, statistitians, epidemiolists, university professors, Government officials, advisers and BBC broadcasters thought the way Omicron was replicating.

    My first graph had no upper limit, no UK population, no date timeline and no indication of the level of definitive whole genome testing in the UK. In fact is was complete rubbish. Thanks to Nottler comments however these omissions were addressed and the graph started looking like a proper Government briefing slide. However, up until now the graph has still been lacking dates on the bottom line (the abscissa if you insist).

    I have now fixed this by setting the graph origin as the quite likely date the Omicron virus appeared in the UK:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c05963dec9e3f6e5f0fe60bc95c315971f26755bc926802afa3a334d55e96102.jpg

    This graph is still rubbish but nonetheless accurately represents the average mindset of the various people who contribute to the information that the PM uses to set the level of UK lockdown. It is still far short of what people think of as an Omicron model but is a good framework for instilling the necessary level of fear in the general public in the hope that they might turn up for a COVID-19 jab.

    1. Quite surprising that the UK isn’t higher, given the obesity and number of Vit D challenged people, plus the neglect of all other ailments.

      Be interesting to see this graph plotted against jabbed % in each country.

  100. Britain facing ‘national energy crisis’: Warning bills could skyrocket by more than FIFTY PER CENT to £2,000 in spring as gas prices hit record £4.50 per therm and Tories accuse Putin of holding Europe to ransom
    Good Energy, EDF and trade body Energy UK are calling for urgent intervention
    Energy UK chief Emma Pinchbeck described the situation as a ‘national crisis’
    Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith blamed Vladimir Putin for ‘driving up prices’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10339237/Britain-faces-national-energy-crisis-bills-FIFTY-CENT.html

    Rubbish , serves them right for trashing the coal fired power stations and oil fields , and not creating refuse derived fuel .

    The Greens have alot to answer for .

    1. “Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith blamed Vladimir Putin for ‘driving up prices'”
      This government is a disgrace. I’m glad I didn’t vote for them, but that doesn’t help much. We are reaping what those bastards have sown.

      1. IDS clearly doesn’t understand supply and demand – more people imported to increase the population = more people needing to keep warm, especially as most come from hot countries = more demand for gas which we a) don’t frack for and b) no longer seem to store in gasometers. Add to that the ecolunacy of lumping ever greater tax burdens on heating fuels and bingo! Bills skyrocketing.

        1. I don’t think IDS understands very much. He’s a smug, self satisfied ex-serviceman who has done not much with his talent. He does write very well.

          1. I have met him . he was a supercilious b#####d , he was visiting a small village near here . he was an absolute cold fish , and marched along as if he had a swagger stick under his arm .. dammit ,he was walking amongst many loyal elderly blue rinse ladies , who lived in thatched cottages and who had been solid Tories for decades .. he just looked through people and was so out of his depth.

            What really hurt was the entourage that had come down from London , amongst them , poppsie types from Central office and rah rah blokes who hadn’t a clue .. it was horrible and considering the many attempts being made to get a Tory government back into power when IDS was leader .. utter pillock .

            The only one I had an time for was Michael Howard , and that was at a push and a shove.

          2. I can second that 100%. I met him as well, handshake like a wet fish, came across as a brainless, supercillious twat, with an unwarranted air of self imposed superiority. A true representative of many who inhabit the upper echelons of the present day Conservative Party. Couldn’t wait to get back inside the M25.

      1. I’m surprised wind is even producing that much – it must be measuring the outpourings of Westminster and Whitehall.

        1. So, with gas in short supply and rather pricey, that green electrricity is mostly coming from gas, and thus going to cost rather a lot.

    3. “Iain Duncan Smith blamed Putin…..” It’s no good blaming Putin. IDS. Do something about it. Actions always speak louder than mere words.

  102. One% Flu over the Cuckoo’s nest:
    UK Official figures:
    “Through Respiratory Datamart, influenza positivity is low at 1.1% in week 50. Other indicators for influenza such as hospital admissions and GP influenza-like illness consultation rates remain very low. Respiratory syncytial virus positivity remained low but increased slightly to 3.5% in week 50, while rhinovirus positivity remained stable at 12.0% in week 50. Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) positivity decreased to 7.3% in week 50, while parainfluenza and adenovirus positivity remained low at 1.2% and 3.1% respectively.”

    Covid on the other hand is overunderwhelming ICUs….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f68772ecd33ee610d4770467dbb1676c946cd59560d183d7eb0aa9049a5eb03d.png

    1. With much of the media announcing the rise in ‘cases’ with almost sadistic glee, it would be useful to know how many people might test positive for any cold or flu virus in any winter. It would also help if the current figures could tell us many +ive tests are genuinely new (the subject has never been tested before or has never had a +ive test), how many people have tested themselves more than once, how many have been ill if ever and…well, you get the point.

      Is this level of testing actually of any use without strict controls on who is tested and how often?

        1. Indeed, nothing meaningful.

          Sometime in the last week or two I heard a presenter in his introduction say something like “We have so much knowledge and data and so much of it is of so little use”. I wish I could remember who, when and where.

          1. The information you have is not what you want.
            The information you want is not what you need.
            The information you need cannot be obtained.

  104. Harry Miller has taught the thought police a lesson. But there’s still a long way to go

    The battle against “non-crime hate incidents” is only half won

    MATTHEW SCOTT • 22nd December 2021 • 1:41pm

    In January 2019 a woman – who can be identified only as “B” – contacted Humberside Police.

    “I would like to report an individual by the name of Harry Miller [she gave his work details]. Miller has been making transphobic remarks on his Twitter account under the handle @HarryTheOwl. These comments are designed to cause deep offence and show his hatred for the transgender community.”

    Mr Miller believes that biological sex is immutable. His tweets – which were not directed at B – often made the same point, sometimes in rather coarse terms, as when he quoted a snatch of doggerel:

    ” Your breasts are made of silicone Your vagina goes nowhere And we can tell the difference Even when you are not there…”

    In 2014 The College of Policing had issued Guidance to all forces, informing them that they must record all “hate incidents.” In so far it was relevant to transgender people, a “hate incident” was defined as:

    “…any non-crime incident perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender…”

    Such records “must be made,” the Guidance insisted, “irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element.” In the Looking Glass world of the College of Policing the police had a role to play even when there was no evidence of a crime having been committed, no reason to suppose a crime was likely to be committed, no identifiable victim and no evidence of hatred.

    So an officer visited Mr Miller at work. He told him that he should “check his thinking.” His tweeting, he was told, while “not in itself criminal” was nevertheless a “hate incident” and must be recorded as such.

    The report described him as a “suspect” and B as a “victim.”

    If he posted further offensive tweets the police warned him, the matter might be “escalated”; or if he applied for some position requiring an enhanced criminal record certificate, then – at the discretion of the Chief Constable of Humberside – a potential employer might be warned about him.

    Bravely – because litigating against one public body, let alone two, is potentially ruinous – Mr Miller challenged both Humberside Police over their behaviour, and the College of Policing which issued the official guidance which they were following.

    Mr Justice Julian Knowles, the trial judge, ruled that Humberside Police had acted unlawfully. There was “not a shred of evidence” that Mr Miller had committed any offence, and they had no business warning him about possible “escalations”. His tweets were not “grossly offensive” and the use of words such as ‘breasts’ or ‘vagina’ was not (you will probably be pleased to hear) “indecent…at least not in the satirical context in which they were deployed.”

    So far so sensible, and indeed Mr Justice Knowles’s judgment contained some strong language condemning the police behaviour: “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi.”

    When it came to the College of Police Guidance however, the judge dismissed his claim. The Police, Mr Justice Knowles said, had a right to record whatever they liked.

    Mr Miller took his case to the Court of Appeal, which on Monday unanimously agreed with him and ruled that the College of Police Guidance was indeed unlawful.

    Although very few self-professed “human rights” lawyers have been publicly supportive of Mr Miller, there is no question that he has the Human Rights Act to thank for his victory. The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial judge that under the common law the Police were indeed entitled to record the incident in any way they wished.

    He succeeded in his appeal only because Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights gave him a right to freedom of expression. The requirement to record his lawful tweets as a “hate incident” had a “chilling effect,” the Court said, on his freedom of expression.

    But while declaring the College’s existing Guidance unlawful, the Court declined to rewrite it, or indeed to make entirely clear what changes are needed to make it lawful, beyond a broad hint that it should remind officers to use their “common sense.” The Government has since announced plans to overhaul laws on “hate incidents”, to make officers focus on policing actual crime, not hurt feelings. But the details are far from clear.

    It is hard to imagine that either the general public or the overwhelming majority of serving officers see the policing of Twitter as a core policing priority. I daresay an overwhelming majority of both would welcome guidance that the police should stay out of social media unless there was clear evidence of criminality, and even then to tread with great care.

    Nevertheless, I predict that the College will aim to change their maligned Guidance as little as possible. The Court’s suggestion that it should invite officers to apply their common sense will be particularly hard to swallow for an organisation that has for many years manifestly failed to demonstrate that it possesses any such quality of its own.

    When, for example, in 2016 Mr Justice Henriques criticised the College’s instruction to officers to “believe the victim” in his report into Operation Midland, it had little effect on the College’ s guidance on the investigation of non-recent child abuse. The latest version still describes all complainants as “victims” and instructs officers that even when cases are dropped “…the victim should not be left feeling that they have not been believed…”.

    There are many reasons why a case might be discontinued, but when the reason is that the complainant’s account has been exposed as demonstrably false, an instruction to reassure the false accuser that they have nevertheless been believed will seem bizarre to those not attuned to the College’s approach to policing.

    So, whilst anyone believing in the importance of freedom of speech should welcome the Court of Appeal’s forthright defence of Mr Miller’s right to tweet provocatively, whether his victory actually produces any real change of policy by the College of Policing remains to be seen. Mr Miller has won an important battle, but the culture war of which it was a part is far from over.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/22/harry-miller-has-taught-thought-police-lesson-still-long-way/

    1. Every single tranny. male to female and female to male who instigates such legal actions should be required to show the jury their genitals and then let the jury decide.

  106. Praised by Gordon Brown: “Jon Snow bows out of Channel 4 News after 32 years” Haven’t watched this individual for years….

    1. “Never seen so many white people in one place.” Good riddance to him. I expect his successor will be the same.

  108. Slightly off topic.
    The French tend to celebrate the festivities on Christmas eve, so we start tomorrow.
    What is the order of play on the eating and drinking front as Nottlers roll onward to Christmas?

    Tonight. We’ve started with mulled wine. A few mince pies, savoury snacks and walnuts. Lots more wine. The last of the boeuf bourguignon, which was delicious, thank you YG.
    Not necessarily in that order (c) Eric Morecambe.

    Tomorrow will include smoked salmon, avocado and prawns with salad and a Marie Rose dressing; yes we know it’s naff but we’ve done that for the better part of 50 years and our children do the same, so it’s a tradition of sorts.

    Christmas day will be with friends, I’ve supplied the wine, a 2015 St Emilion, which I hope they enjoy as much as I do.
    A full on with all the trimmings Anglo Francais lunch, which makes it fun, plus a bilingual quiz, of which I can only contribute to half the answers!.

    If, and it’s a big IF, we are still hungry when we return, more smoked salmon.

    Boxing day. Duck breasts slow cooked over beans, it’s a Nigel Slater recipe and it is delicious. A tiny Christmas pudding for two and some sherry butter (Brandy butter but using sherry instead).
    Christmas music and lots of fine local wines to wash it all down.
    I hope you all enjoy your Christmas celebrations as much as we will.

    1. We do a little on Christmas Eve. We start eating our very large Pork Pie. New yeras eve we start our pork pie with boiled eggs inside.We also have a game pie for Boxing Day before the Hunt meet in Lewes.

      1. I’d be pie-eyed by then. Is it all dragging a scent for the hounds these days? Can’t say I’ve ever been up for chasing a fox. Hope you have a good time anyway.

        2. Thanks.Just see what they do when the get into the hens. You could kill them with your bare hands.

          2. When we lived in our last place down here, our bedroom faced out onto the road, quite a busy one. There was/is a side road opposite and one night while looking out the window, a fox appeared. It stopped on the kerb, looked both ways and then crossed the road. I was stunned. Told MH and he thought I was seeing things. So canny and also street smart.

        4. “Can’t say I’ve ever been up for chasing a fox.”

          Tried it once, Mola, but I couldn’t catch it … the bastard was too quick for me.
          :¬(

    2. Not sure about tomorrow although we do have smoked salmon, shrimp, cheeses and crusty bread, so suspect that may be it.
      25th is turkey which I stuff with sausage meat, homemade stuffing, mash and small spuds, lots of sprouts, carrots and gravy. Boxing day is cold turkey and salad stuff.
      We have so much grub and I have already been grazing…munch, munch.

    3. Will go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and then probably have a glass of sherry and a mince pie before going to bed. Christmas Day I will cook the full Monty for Oscar and me – turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets, roasties, parsnips, broccoli and cauliflower plus peas. No sprouts this year as I don’t like them and I only cooked them for MOH. Gravy, of course. Then Christmas pud doused in brandy with custard (can’t be bothered with white sauce). Have got a Ca Va chilling in the fridge to accompany it. Tea will probably be turkey sarnies, Christmas cake and mince pies if I have any room. Otherwise, that will be for Boxing Day.

    4. All sounds delightful! Have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy. Our plan for tomorrow is crusty bread and pate with some nice red wine (I leave the choice to his ‘nibs’) Then we depart for dinner on 25th to daughter and family for a slap up English (style) roast beef dinner, I believe! All I have to do is make sausage rolls and mince pies. We shall stay over night and return home sometime on Boxing Day.

      1. That’s the day I make sausage rolls. 20 minutes cooling, but still warm out of the oven. I could just eat 4 of those and not not bother with anything else.

      2. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Jill. Hope it’s a good one and the weather cooperates!

        1. We have been promised (threatened) with temps in the 60’s for Christmas day!
          A very Merry Christmas to you and yours.

    5. Tonight we had chicken risotto for three with a glass of sauvignon blanc. I made a tray of mince pies.

      Tomorrow fish pie and on Christmas day slow cooked lamb shoulder as mentioned earlier; starter of smoked salmon, prawns, avocado as required. Veggies – sprouts, carrots, broccoli, roasties (King Edwards) and parsnips. Trimmings – in separate dishes: stuffing, bacon/sausage rolls, cranberry and orange relish. Four of us – if elder son is allowed out of Wales.

      1. Have a lovely celebration , and enjoy all the preparation . Lamb is such a good idea, sadly I can hear the early lambs bleating in the fields around here.

        While shepherds wash their socks by night !

          1. Dorset sheep are early lambers.

            Moh has gone to bed early , he is still coughing and sneezing . and his nose is running like a tap .

            Younger son and partner are staying away from us , and are having a Worthing Christmas .

          2. We’ve all gone to bed early tonight. Son was up at 4am Swiss time (3am here) to get the bus to the airport. He arrived at lunchtime.

      2. Ditto tonight on the risotto, chicken and mushroom, but I cook it it and don’t eat it as it’s a bit rich for me.

  109. Govt preparing the ground for another round of psymeds.

    “Such a decision by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation
    would put the UK in line with Israel and Germany, which have both given
    the green light to a second round of boosters.” Love the way they market it as a “second round” rather than a fourth round, and the subtle juxtaposition of the Israelis and the Germans.

  111. The father of four boys killed in a south London house fire was joined by scores of well-wishers tonight as they released hundreds of balloons into the air in their memory.

    Dalton Hoath, 28, has been left ‘devastated’ after his two sets of twin sons Kyson and Bryston, four, and Leyton and Logan, three, after the fire ripped through their Sutton home last Thursday.

    Mr Hoath was pictured tonight surrounded by neighbours, friends and well-wishers who had gathered to pay their respects.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10340673/Father-four-boys-killed-London-house-fire-leaves-heartbreaking-note-sea-tributes.html

    Balloons balloons balloons , they are a damned menace !

    1. It could have been worse. The same idiots might have employed aerially launched incendiaries viz. Chinese Lanterns.

      Chinese Lanterns have caused immense damage from ruminating cattle in the fields where they land to several thatched cottages in my area of North Essex Suffolk Border (River Stour).

  112. British public would welcome an ethnically diverse Santa – but as long as he’s not gay or a woman
    A YouGov survey found that half of those polled would be happy with a non-white Father Christmas

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/23/british-public-would-welcome-ethnically-diverse-santa-long/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR10Mf6KNPIjfQznVOpY67ZTWlwtSW3ZqnxQBa0F2Xcy264rFvAz33MYZgs#Echobox=1640286201

    The last thing children want to dream of is a bogey man creeping into the bedroom .

  117. A BTL comment I’ll probably repeat tomorrow:

    J G Gibson

    As far as I am concerned, Azeem Rafiq bowled out English cricket this summer with some very average off-breaks. Its readiness to prostrate itself in guilt and self-loathing before the tides of Wokeness and Political Correctness (for example, the idiotic suspension of Ollie Robinson for tweets he made as a 14-yr old) is extremely annoying and debilitating to behold. No guts, no self-confidence, no pride, no defiance. Would that we had Boycott, Barrington, Thorpe, Botham, and Trueman out there, in their prime.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/12/23/glenn-mcgrath-exclusive-interview-england-nice-feels-politically/

    1. It was a mistake for Yorkshire County Cricket Club to both admit and encourage overseas players for starters.

      It was an even bigger mistake to both admit and encourage Pakistani’s, by accident of birth, to play for Yorkshire.

      These Pakistani’s are the proven enemy within.

      I recall that Fred Trueman was expecting to gain free admission to Headingly and when refused free admission and asked the reasons for his expectation of a free pass stated “301 wickets for England”.

  118. Most of you will have read of the libel case involving Rachel Riley of ‘Countdown’. The defendant was Laura Murray, an activist in Corbyn’s rotten anti-semitic Labour Party. You may not have known of Murray’s background. I didn’t until I read this:

    Rachel Riley deserves every bit of compensation for the hard-Left abuse she’s endured

    Ms Riley could have lived comfortably without taking on the vile anti-Semitism of Corbyn’s Labour. She instead made tremendous sacrifices

    IAN AUSTIN • 23 December 2021 • 12:36pm

    The court case between Countdown presenter Rachel Riley and Labour’s Laura Murray told us so much about the crisis of antisemitism that poisoned the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

    Congratulations and thanks are due to Ms Riley and her lawyer Mark Lewis. The TV presenter and Strictly celebrity could have had a much easier life if she had concentrated on her show business career instead of standing up for herself and the Jewish community so strongly over the last few years.

    She bravely took on the anti-Jewish racists and refused to back down despite the abuse and threats she faced. She demonstrated much more bravery and principle in tackling racism in the Labour Party than many of the party’s most senior members, many of whom now in positions of leadership. Perhaps if they had fought more strongly, she and others would not have needed to. Frankly, they should be ashamed that a TV celebrity showed more political courage in tackling a problem in their party than they did.

    It is extraordinary how Jewish women like Ms Riley, the actress Tracey-Ann Oberman or Members of Parliament like Luciana Berger, Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth or Louise Ellman bore the brunt of the harassment and abuse meted out by the hard left during this terrible period. And let’s not forget how the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg needed a bodyguard just for doing her job at the Labour conference, protection not required by any of her male colleagues.

    Second, Ms Murray was not some insignificant Labour member with an over-active Twitter habit, but part of the hard left leadership, working in Corbyn’s office and as a senior official at the party’s head office.

    Her family connections can’t have harmed her meteoric rise to these positions. Her father Andrew Murray is one of the most senior figures on the far left of British politics, chairing the so-called Stop the War Campaign which argues against Western governments, acting as Chief of Staff to Len McCluskey at Unite which bankrolled the party under Corbyn and even working as one of his closest aides as well. Her mother, Professor Susan Michie, famously sold a Picasso worth £50 million she and her siblings had inherited.

    Ms Murray and her family are not just Labour aristocracy but come from the actual aristocracy too. Despite being a lifelong communist, her father is the son of stockbroker Peter Drummond-Murray, a descendant of the Earl of Perth who held the title Slains Pursuivant of Arms. His grandfather on his mother’s side was Baron Rankeillour, the Governor of Madras and a Tory MP. Professor Michie’s family are just as grand. Her grandfather was the Eton-educated Baron Aberconway.

    None of that prevented the hard-left Corbyn-supporting campaign Momentum from greeting the court’s verdict with the words: “The establishment always closes ranks. Solidarity with Laura Murray, a kind & principled socialist.” According to Momentum’s class-warriors, the establishment figure is not Ms Murray but the self-made Ms Riley whose talents and hard work have taken her from an ordinary background in Southend.

    And isn’t it ironic that left-wing activists called on Ms Riley to donate her damages to a soup kitchen but don’t demand their comrades to donate the proceeds from the sale of the Picasso as well? The whole sorry story shows us so much of what happened to the Labour Party under the hard left: nepotism, entitlement, anti-Jewish racism and hypocrisy.

    Well done to Ms Riley for having the courage to shine a spotlight on it all and exposing the toxic, morally vacuous far-left for exactly what they are.

    Lord Austin of Dudley was the Labour MP for Dudley North between 2005 and 2019

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/23/rachel-riley-deserves-every-bit-compensation-hard-left-abuse

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